Books and Persons; Being Comments on a Past Epoch, 1908-1911
Arnold Bennett
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Books and Persons
BEING COMMENTS ON APAST EPOCH1908-1911BYARNOLD BENNETT
LONDONChatto & Windus1917
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
_NOVELS_
A MAN FROM THE NORTHANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNSLEONORAA GREAT MANSACRED AND PROFANE LOVEWHOM GOD HATH JOINEDBURIED ALIVETHE OLD WIVES' TALETHE GLIMPSEHELEN WITH THE HIGH HANDCLAYHANGERHILDA LESSWAYSTHE CARDTHE REGENTTHE PRICE OF LOVETHESE TWAINTHE LION'S SHARE
_FANTASIAS_
THE GRAND BABYLON HOTELTHE GATES OF WRATHTERESA OF WATLING STREETTHE LOOT OF CITIESHUGOTHE GHOSTTHE CITY OF PLEASURE
_SHORT STORIES_
TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNSTHE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE TOWNSTHE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS
_BELLES-LETTRES_
JOURNALISM FOR WOMENFAME AND FICTIONHOW TO BECOME AN AUTHORTHE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHORMENTAL EFFICIENCYHOW TO LIVE ON TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAYTHE HUMAN MACHINELITERARY TASTEFRIENDSHIP AND HAPPINESSTHOSE UNITED STATESPARIS NIGHTSMARRIED LIFELIBERTYOVER THERE: WAR SCENESTHE AUTHOR'S CRAFT
_DRAMA_
POLITE FARCESCUPID AND COMMONSENSEWHAT THE PUBLIC WANTSTHE HONEYMOONTHE GREAT ADVENTUREMILESTONES. (_In Collaboration with Edward Knoblock_)
(_In Collaboration with Eden Phillpotts_)
THE SINEWS OF WAR: A ROMANCETHE STATUE: A ROMANCE
Books and Persons
BEING COMMENTS ON APAST EPOCH1908-1911BYARNOLD BENNETT
LONDONChatto & Windus1917
_First published June 1917__Second Impression Aug. 1917_
PRINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRESSWEST NORWOODLONDON
TOHUGH WALPOLE
PREFATORY NOTE
The contents of this book have been chosen from a series of weeklyarticles which enlivened the _New Age_ during the years 1908, 1909, 1910,and 1911, under the pseudonym "Jacob Tonson." The man responsible for therepublication is the dedicatee, who, having mysteriously demanded from meback numbers of the _New Age_, sat in my house one Sunday afternoon and infour hours read through the entire series. He then announced that he hadmade a judicious selection, and that the selection must positively beissued in volume form. Mr. Frank Swinnerton approved the selection andadded to it slightly. In my turn I suggested a few more additions. Thetotal amounts to one-third of the original matter. Beyond correctingmisprints, softening the crudity of several epithets, and censoring lineshere and there which might give offence without helping the sacred cause,I have not altered the articles. They appear as they were journalisticallywritten in Paris, London, Switzerland, and the Forest of Fontainebleau.In particular I have left the critical judgments alone, for the goodreason that I stand by nearly all of them, though perhaps with a lesschallenging vivacity, to this day.
ARNOLD BENNETT
_February 1917_
CONTENTS
1908
WILFRED WHITTEN'S PROSE 3UGLINESS IN FICTION 8LETTERS OF QUEEN VICTORIA 11FRENCH PUBLISHERS 16WORDSWORTH'S SINGLE LINES 18NOVELISTS AND AGENTS 22THE NOVEL OF THE SEASON 26GERMAN EXPANSION 30THE BOOK-BUYER 32JOSEPH CONRAD AND THE _ATHENAEUM_ 36THE PROFESSORS 41MRS. HUMPHRY WARD'S HEROINES 47W.W. JACOBS AND ARISTOPHANES 53KENNETH GRAHAME 57ANATOLE FRANCE 59INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY 63MALLARME, BAZIN, SWINBURNE 65THE RUINED SEASON 68
1909
"ECCE HOMO" 77HENRY OSPOVAT 79FRENCH AND BRITISH ACADEMIES 81POE AND THE SHORT STORY 84MIDDLE-CLASS 88THE POTENTIAL PUBLIC 101H.G. WELLS 109TCHEHKOFF 117THE SURREY LABOURER 120SWINBURNE 123THE SEVENPENNIES 130MEREDITH 134ST. JOHN HANKIN 140UNCLEAN BOOKS 143LOVE POETRY 145TROLLOPE'S METHODS 148CHESTERTON AND LUCAS 150OFFICIAL RECOGNITION OF POETRY 155ARTISTS AND CRITICS 158RUDYARD KIPLING 160CENSORSHIP BY THE LIBRARIES 167
1910
CENSORSHIP BY THE LIBRARIES 181BRIEUX 195C.E. MONTAGUE 201PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS 204TOURGENIEV AND DOSTOIEVSKY 208JOHN GALSWORTHY 214SUPPRESSIONS IN "DE PROFUNDIS" 217HOLIDAY READING 222THE BRITISH ACADEMY OF LETTERS 228UNFINISHED PERUSALS 235MR. A.C. BENSON 239THE LITERARY PERIODICAL 242THE LENGTH OF NOVELS 248ARTISTS AND MONEY 250HENRI BECQUE 255HENRY JAMES 263ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM 267MRS. ELINOR GLYN 271W.H. HUDSON 278NEO-IMPRESSIONISM AND LITERATURE 280
1911
BOOKS OF THE YEAR 289"THE NEW MACHIAVELLI" 294SUCCESS IN JOURNALISM 300MARGUERITE AUDOUX 305JOHN MASEFIELD 311LECTURES AND STATE PERFORMANCES 315A PLAY OF TCHEHKOFF'S 321SEA AND SLAUGHTER 325A BOOK IN A RAILWAY ACCIDENT 328"FICTION" AND "LITERATURE" 331
INDEX 333
1908
WILFRED WHITTEN'S PROSE
[_4 Apr. '08_]
An important book on an important town is to be issued by Messrs. Methuen.The town is London, and the author Mr. Wilfred Whitten, known tojournalism as John o' London. Considering that he comes fromNewcastle-on-Tyne (or thereabouts), his pseudonym seems to stretch apoint. However, Mr. Whitten is now acknowledged as one of the foremostexperts in London topography. He is not an archaeologist, he is ahumanist--in a good dry sense; not the University sense, nor the sillysense. The word "human" is a dangerous word; I am rather inclined tohandle it with antiseptic precautions. When a critic who has risen highenough to be allowed to sign his reviews in a daily paper calls a new book"a great human novel," you may be absolutely sure that the said novelconsists chiefly of ridiculous twaddle. Mr. Whitten is not a humanist inthat sense. He has no sentimentality, and a very great deal of both witand humour.
* * * * *
He is also a critic admirably sane. Not long ago he gave a highlydiverting exhibition of sanity in a short, shattering pronouncement uponthe works of Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson and the school which hasacquired celebrity by holding the mirror up to its own nature. The wonderwas that Mr. Benson did not, following his precedent, write to the papersto say that Mr. Whitten was no gentleman. In the days before the _Academy_blended the characteristics of a comic paper with those of a journal ofdogmatic theology, before it took to disowning its own reviewers, Mr.Whitten was the solid foundation of that paper's staff. He furnished thesubstance, which was embroidered by the dark grace of the personality ofMr. Lewis Hind, whose new volume of divagations is, by the way, just out.
* * * * *
But my main object in referring to Mr. Whitten is to state formally, andwith a due sense of responsibility, that he is one of the finest prosewriters now writing in English. His name is on the title-pag
es of severalbooks, but no book of his will yet bear out my statement. The proof of itlies in weekly papers. No living Englishman can do "the grandmanner"--combining majestic dignity with a genuine lyricalinspiration--better than Mr. Whitten. These are proud words of mine, but Iam not going to disguise my conviction that I know what I am talkingabout. Some day some publisher will wake up out of the coma in whichpublishers exist, and publish in volume form--probably with colouredpictures as jam for children--Mr. Whitten's descriptions of English towns.Then I shall be justified. I might have waited till that august moment.But I want to be beforehand with Dr. Robertson Nicoll. I see that Dr.Nicoll has just added to his list of patents by inventing Leonard Merrick,whom I used to admire in print long before Dr. Nicoll had ever heard thatMr. J.M. Barrie regarded Leonard Merrick as the foremost English novelist.Dr. Nicoll has already got Mr. Whitten on to the reviewing staff of the_Bookman_. But I am determined that he shall not invent Mr. Whitten'sprose style. I am the inventor of that.
[_2 May '08_]
A few weeks ago I claimed to be the discoverer of Mr. Wilfred Whitten as afirst-class prose writer. I relinquish the claim, with apologies. Messrs.Methuen have staggered me by sending me Mrs. Laurence Binyon's "NineteenthCentury Prose," in which anthology is an example of Mr. Whitten's prose.Though staggered, I was delighted. I should very much like to know howMrs. Binyon encountered the prose of Mr. Whitten. Did she hunt through thefiles of newspapers for what she might find therein, and was she thusrewarded? Or did some tremendous and omniscient expert give her the tip? Idisagree with about 85 per cent. of the _obiter dicta_ of her preface, buther anthology is certainly a most agreeable compilation. It shows, likesundry other recent anthologies, the strong liberating influence of Mr.E.V. Lucas, whose "Open Road" really amounted to a renascence of thecraft.
And here is the tail-end of the extract which Mrs. Binyon has perfectlychosen from the essays of Mr. Whitten:
"...The moon pushing her way upwards through the vapours, and the scent ofthe beans and kitchen stuff from the allotments, and the gleaming railsbelow, spoke of the resumption of daily burdens. But let us drop thatjargon. Why call that a burden which can never be lifted? This calmnecessity that dwells with the matured man to get back to the matter inhand, and dree his weird whatever befall, is a badge, not a burden. It isthe stimulus of sound natures; and as the weight of his wife's arm makes aman's body proud, so the sense of his usefulness to the world does butwarm and indurate his soul. It is something when a man comes to this mind,and with all his capacity to err, is abreast of life at last. He shall notregret the infrequency of his inspirations, for he will know that the dayof his strength has set in. And if, for poesy, some grave Virgilian lineshould pause on his memory, or some tongue of Hebrew fire leap from theashes of his godly youth, it will be enough. But if cold duck await--why,then, to supper!"
UGLINESS IN FICTION
[_9 May '08_]
In the _Edinburgh Review_ there is a disquisition on "Ugliness inFiction." Probably the author of it has read "Liza of Lambeth," and saidFaugh! The article, peculiarly inept, is one of those outpourings whichevery generation of artists has to suffer with what tranquillity it can.According to the Reviewer, ugliness is specially rife "just now." It isalways "just now." It was "just now" when George Eliot wrote "Adam Bede,"when George Moore wrote "A Mummer's Wife," when Thomas Hardy wrote "Judethe Obscure." As sure as ever a novelist endeavours to paint a completepicture of life in this honest, hypocritical country of bad restaurantsand good women; as sure as ever he hints that all is not for the best inthe best of all possible islands, some witling is bound to come forwardand point out with wise finger that life is not all black. I once residednear a young noodle of a Methodist pastor who had the pious habit ofreading novels aloud to his father and mother. He began to read one ofmine to them, but half-way through decided that something of Charlotte M.Yonge would be less unsuitable for the parental ear. He then called andlectured me. Among other aphorisms of his which I have treasured up wasthis: "Life, my dear friend, is like an April day--sunshine and shadowchasing each other over the plain." That he is not dead is a great tributeto my singular self-control. I suspect him to be the _Edinburgh_ Reviewer.At any rate, the article moves on the plane of his plain.
* * * * *
The Reviewer has the strange effrontery to select Mr. Joseph Conrad's"Secret Agent" as an example of modern ugliness in fiction: a novel thatis simply steeped in the finest beauty from end to end. I do not supposethat the _Edinburgh Review_ has any moulding influence upon the evolutionof the art of fiction in this country. But such nonsense may, after all,do harm by confusing the minds of people who really are anxious toencourage what is best, strongest, and most sane. The Reviewer in thisinstance, for example, classes, as serious, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad,and John Galsworthy, who are genuine creative forces, with mere dignifiedunimportant sentimentalizers like Mr. W.B. Maxwell. While he was on thebusiness of sifting the serious from the unserious I wonder he didn'tinclude the authors of "Three Weeks" and "The Heart of a Child" among theserious! Perhaps because the latter wrote "Pigs in Clover" and the formerwas condemned by the booksellers! Nobody could have a lower opinion of"Three Weeks" than I have. But I have never been able to understand whythe poor little feeble story was singled out as an awful example of femalelicentiousness, and condemned by a hundred newspapers that had not thecourage to name it. The thing was merely infantile and absurd. Moreover, Iviolently object to booksellers sitting in judgment on novels.
LETTERS OF QUEEN VICTORIA
[_16 May '08_]
The result of _Murray_ v. _The Times_ is very amusing. I don't know whythe fact that the _Times_ is called upon to pay L7500 to Mr. John Murrayshould make me laugh joyously; but it does. Certainly the reason is notthat I sympathize with the libelled Mr. Murray. The action was a great anda wonderful action, full of enigmas for a mere man of letters like myself.For example, Mr. Murray said that his agreement with the "authors" (Icannot imagine how Lord Esher and Mr. A.C. Benson came to be the "authors"of the late Queen's correspondence) stipulated that two-thirds of theprofits should go to the "authors" and one-third to Mr. Murray. Secondly,Mr. Murray said that he paid the authors L5592 14s. 2d. Thirdly, he saidthat his own profit was L600. Hence L600 is the half of L5592 14s. 2d. Ihave no doubt that there exists some quite simple explanation of this newarithmetic; only it has not occurred to me, my name not being Colenso. Thewhole enterprise was regal, as befitted. Proof-corrections cost twice asmuch as the original setting up! A mere man of letters would be inclinedto suspect that the printing was begun too soon; it is usual to postponesetting-up a book until the book is written. Balzac partially beggaredhimself by ignoring this rule. Balzac, however, was not published by Mr.Murray. L950 was paid to the amanuensis! Oh, amanuensis, how I wonder whoyou are, up above the world so high, like a fashionable novelist in thesky! And so on.
* * * * *
The attitude of Tunbridge Wells (the most plutocratic town in England, bythe way) towards the book was adorable. "Mr. Daniel Williams, a booksellerand librarian, of Tunbridge Wells, said that after the review by 'Artifex'people complained that the price of the book was too high. No complaintswere made before that." They read their _Times Literary Supplement_ at theWells, and they still wait for it to thunder, and when it hasthundered--and not before--they rattle their tea-trays, and the sequel isred ruin! Again, Mr. Justice Darling, in his ineptly decorated summing-up,observed that it was hardly too much to say that "the plaintiff'shouse--the house of Murray," was a national institution. It would behardly too much to say that also the house of Crosse and Blackwell is anational institution, and that Mr. Justice Darling is a nationalinstitution. By all means let us count the brothers Murray as a nationalinstitution, even as an Imperial institution. But let us guard against thenotion, everywhere cropping up, that such "houses" as the dignified andwealthy house of Murray are in some mysterious way responsible for Englishliterature, part-authors of English lite
rature, to whom half of the gloryof English literature is due. It is well to remember now and then thatpublishers who have quite squarely made vast sums out of selling the workof creative artists are not thereby creative artists themselves. Apublisher is a tradesman; infinitely less an artist than a tailor is anartist. Often a publisher knows what the public will buy in literature.Very rarely he knows what is good literature. Scarcely ever will he issuea distinguished book exclusively because it is a distinguished book. Andhe is right, for he is only a tradesman. But to judge from the otiosemajesty of some publishers, one would imagine that they had written atleast "Childe Harold." There is the case of a living publisher (not eitherof the brothers Murray) whose presence at his country chateau is indicatedto the surrounding nobility, gentry, and peasantry by the unfurling ofthe Royal standard over a turret.
* * * * *
To return to the subject, the price at which the house of Murray issuedthe "Letters of Queen Victoria" was not "extortionate," having regard tothe astounding expenses of publication. But why were the expenses soastounding? If the book had not been one which by its intrinsic interestcompelled purchase, would the "authors" have been remunerated like themanagers of a steel trust? Would the paper have been so precious andcostly? Would the illustrations have so enriched photographers? And wouldthe amanuensis have made L350 more out of the thing then Mr. Murrayhimself? The price was not extortionate. But it was farcical. The entirerigmarole combines to throw into dazzling prominence the fact that modernliterature in this country is still absolutely undemocratic. The time willcome, and much sooner than many august mandarins anticipate, when such abook as the "Letters of Queen Victoria" will be issued at six shillings,and newspapers will be fined L7500 for saying that the price isextortionate and ought not to exceed half a crown. Assuredly there is nocommercial reason why the book should not have been published at 6s. orthereabouts. Only mandarinism prevented that. Mr. Murray's profits wouldhave been greater, though "authors," amanuenses, photographers,paper-makers, West-End booksellers, and other parasitic artisans mighthave suffered slightly.
