1911
BOOKS OF THE YEAR
12 Jan. '11
The practice of reviewing the literature of the year at the end thereof is now decaying. Newspapers still give a masterly survey of the motor-cars of the year. I remember the time when it was part of my duty as a serious journalist to finish at Christmas a two-thousand word article, full of discrimination as fine as Irish lace, about the fiction of the year; and other terrifying specialists were engaged to deal amply with the remaining branches of literature. To-day, one man in one column and one day will polish off what five of us scarcely exhausted in seven columns and seven days. I am referring to the distant past of a dozen years ago, before William de Morgan was born, and before America and Elinor Glyn had discovered each other. Last week many newspapers dismissed the entire fiction of 1910 in a single paragraph. The consequence is that there has been no "book of the year." A critic without space to spread himself hesitates to pronounce downright for a particular book. A critic engaged in the dangerous art of creating the "book of the year" wants room to hedge, and in the newest journalism there is no room to hedge. So the critic refrains from the act of creation. He imitates the discretion of the sporting tipster, who names several horses as being likely to win one race. "Among the books of the year are Blank, Blank, and Blank," he says. (But what he means is, "The book of the year is to be found among Blank, Blank, and Blank.") Naturally he selects among the books whose titles come into his head with the least difficulty; that is to say, the books which he has most recently reviewed; that is to say, the books published during the autumn season. No doubt during the spring season he has distinguished several books as being "great," "masterly," "unforgettable," "genius"; but ere the fall of the leaf these works have completely escaped from his memory. No author, and particularly no novelist who wishes to go down to posterity, should publish during the spring season; it is fatal.
The celebrated "Dop Doctor" (published by Heinemann) and Mr. Temple Thurston's "City of Beautiful Nonsense" (published by Chapman and Hall) have both sold very well indeed throughout the entire year. In fact, they were selling better in December than many successful novels published in the autumn. Yet neither of them, assuming that there had been a book of the year, would have had much chance of being that book. The reason is that they have not been sufficiently "talked about." I mean "talked about" by "the right people." And by "right people" I mean the people who make a practice of dining out at least three times a week in the West End of London to the accompaniment of cultured conversation. I mean the people who are "in the know," politically, socially, and intellectually—who know what Mr. F.E. Smith says to Mr. Winston Churchill in private, why Mrs. Humphry Ward made such an enormous pother at the last council meeting of the Authors' Society, what is really the matter with Mr. Bernard Shaw's later work, whether Mr. Balfour does indeed help Mr. Garvin to write the Daily Telegraph leaders, and whether the Savoy Restaurant is as good under the new management as under the old. I reckon there are about 12,055 of these people. They constitute the élite. Without their aid, without their refined and judicial twittering, no book can hope to be a book of the year.
Now I am in a position to state that no novel for very many years has been so discussed by the élite as Mr. Forster's "Howard's End" (published by Edward Arnold). The ordinary library reader knows that it has been a very considerable popular success; persons of genuine taste know that it is a very considerable literary achievement; but its triumph is that it has been mightily argued about during the repasts of the élite. I need scarcely say that it is not Mr. Forster's best book; no author's best book is ever the best received—this is a rule practically without exception. A more curious point about it is that it contains a lot of very straight criticism of the élite. And yet this point is not very curious either. For the élite have no objection whatever to being criticized. They rather like it, as the alligator likes being tickled with peas out of a pea-shooter. Their hides are superbly impenetrable. And I know not which to admire the more, the American's sensitiveness to pea-shooting, or the truly correct Englishman's indestructible indifference to it. Mr. Forster is a young man. I believe he is still under thirty, if not under twenty-nine. If he continues to write one book a year regularly, to be discreet and mysterious, to refrain absolutely from certain themes, and to avoid a too marked tendency to humour, he will be the most fashionable novelist in England in ten years' time. His worldly prospects are very brilliant indeed. If, on the other hand, he writes solely to please himself, forgetting utterly the existence of the élite, he may produce some first-class literature. The responsibilities lying upon him at this crisis of his career are terrific. And he so young too!
"THE NEW MACHIAVELLI"
2 Feb. '11
A pretty general realization of the extremely high quality of "The New Machiavelli" has reduced almost to silence the ignoble tittle-tattle that accompanied its serial publication in the English Review. It is years since a novel gave rise to so much offensive and ridiculous chatter before being issued as a book. When the chatter began, dozens of people who would no more dream of paying four-and-sixpence for a new novel that happened to be literature than they would dream of paying four-and-sixpence for a cigar, sent down to the offices of the English Review for complete sets of back numbers at half a crown a number, so that they could rummage without a moment's delay among the earlier chapters in search of tit-bits according to their singular appetite. Such was the London which calls itself literary and political! A spectacle to encourage cynicism! Rumour had a wonderful time. It was stated that not only the libraries but the booksellers also would decline to handle "The New Machiavelli." The reasons for this prophesied ostracism were perhaps vague, but they were understood to be broad-based upon the unprecedented audacity of the novel. And really in this exciting year, with Sir Percy Bunting in charge of the national sense of decency, and Mr. W.T. Stead still gloating after twenty-five years over his success in keeping Sir Charles Dilke out of office—you never can tell what may happen!
However, it is all over now. "The New Machiavelli" has been received with the respect and with the enthusiasm which its tremendous qualities deserve. It is a great success. And the reviews have on the whole been generous. It was perhaps not to be expected that certain Radical dailies should swallow the entire violent dose of the book without kicking up a fuss; but, indeed, Mr. Scott-James, in the Daily News, ought to know better than to go running about after autobiography in fiction. The human nose was not designed by an all-merciful providence for this purpose. Mr. Scott-James has undoubted gifts as a critic, and his temperament is sympathetic; and the men most capable of appreciating him, and whose appreciation he would probably like to retain, would esteem him even more highly if he could get into his head the simple fact that a novel is a novel. I have suffered myself from this very provincial mania for chemically testing novels for traces of autobiography. There are some critics of fiction who talk about autobiography in fiction in the tone of a doctor who has found arsenic in the stomach at a post-mortem inquiry. The truth is that whenever a scene in a novel is really convincing, a certain type of critical and uncreative mind will infallibly mutter in accents of pain, "Autobiography!" When I was discussing this topic the other day a novelist not inferior to Mr. Wells suddenly exclaimed: "I say! Supposing we did write autobiography!"... Yes, if we did, what a celestial rumpus there would be!
The carping at "The New Machiavelli" is naught. For myself I anticipated for it a vast deal more carping than it has in fact occasioned. And I am very content to observe a marked increase of generosity in the reception of Mr. Wells's work. To me the welcome accorded to his best books has always seemed to lack spontaneity, to be characterized by a mean reluctance. And yet if there is a novelist writing to-day who by generosity has deserved generosity, that novelist is H.G. Wells. Astounding width of observation; a marvellously true perspective; an extraordinary grasp of the real significance of innumerable phenomena utterly diverse; profound emotional power; dazzling verbal skill: these are qualities which Mr. Wells indubitably has. But the qualities which consecrate these other qualities are his priceless and total sincerity, and the splendid human generosity which colours that sincerity. What above all else we want in this island of intellectual dishonesty is some one who will tell us the truth "and chance it." H.G. Wells is pre-eminently that man. He might have told us the truth with cynicism; he might have told it meanly; he might have told it tediously—and he would still have been invaluable. But it does just happen that he has combined a disconcerting and entrancing candour with a warmth of generosity towards mankind and an inspiring faith in mankind such as no other living writer, not even the most sentimental, has surpassed. And yet in the immediate past we have heard journalists pronouncing coldly: "This thing is not so bad." And we have heard journalists asserting in tones of shocked reprehension: "This thing is not free from faults!" Who the deuce said it was free from faults? But where in fiction, ancient or modern, will you find another philosophical picture of a whole epoch and society as brilliant and as honest as "The New Machiavelli"? Well, I will tell you where you will find it. You will find it in "Tono-Bungay." H.G. Wells is a bit of sheer luck for England. Some countries don't know their luck. And as I do not believe that England is worse than another, I will say that no country knows its luck. However, as regards this particular bit, there are now some clear signs of a growing perception.
The social and political questions raised in "The New Machiavelli" might be discussed at length with great advantage. But this province is not mine. Nor could the rightness or the wrongness of the hero's views and acts affect the artistic value of the novel. On purely artistic grounds the novel might be criticized in several ways unfavourably. But in my opinion it has only one fault that to any appreciable extent impairs its artistic worth. The politically-creative part, as distinguished from the politically-shattering part, is not convincing. The hero's change of party, and his popular success with the policy of the endowment of motherhood are indeed strangely unconvincing—inconceivable to common sense. Here the author's hand has trembled, and his persuasive power forsaken him. Happily he recaptured it for the final catastrophe, which is absolutely magnificent, a masterpiece of unforced poignant tragedy and unsentimental tenderness.
SUCCESS IN JOURNALISM
16 Feb. '11
It is notorious that in London—happily so different from other capitals—there is no connexion between the advertisement and the editorial departments of the daily papers. It is positively known, for instance, that the exuberant editorial praise poured out upon the new "Encyclopædia Britannica" has no connexion whatever with the tremendous sums paid by the Cambridge University Press for advertising the said work of reference. The almost simultaneous appearance, of the advertisements and of the superlative reviews is a pure coincidence. Now, in Paris it would not be a coincidence, and nobody would have the courage to pretend that it was. But London is a city apart. In view of this admitted fact I was intensely startled, not to say outraged, by a conversation at which I assisted the other day. A young acquaintance, with literary and journalistic proclivities, and with a touching belief in the high mission of the London press, desired advice as to the best method of reaching the top rungs of the ladder of which he had not yet set foot even on the lowest rung. I therefore invited him to meet a celebrated friend of mine, an author and a journalist, who has recently quitted an important editorial chair.
The latter spoke to him as follows: "My dear boy, you had better get a situation in the advertisement department of a paper—no matter what paper, provided it has a large advertisement revenue; and no matter what situation, however modest." Here the youth interrupted with the remark that his desire was the editorial department. The ex-editor proceeded calmly: "I have quite grasped that.... Well, you must work yourself up in the advertisement department! What you chiefly require for success is a good suit, a good club, an imperturbable manner, and a cultivated taste in restaurants and bars. In your spare time you must write long dull articles for the reviews; and you must rediscover London in a series of snappish sketches for a half-penny daily, and also write a novel that is just true enough to frighten the libraries and not too true to make them refuse it altogether: it must absolutely be such a novel as they will supply only to such subscribers as insist on having it. When you have worked your way very high up in the advertisement department, and are intimate with advertisement agents and large advertisers to the point of being able to influence advertisements amounting to fifty thousand pounds a year—then, and not before, you may look about you and decide what big serious daily paper you would like to assist in editing. Make your own choice. Then see the proprietor. If he is not already in the House of Lords, he will assuredly be on Mr. Asquith's private list of five hundred candidates for the House of Lords. The best moment to catch him is as he comes out of the Palace Theatre, about a quarter past eleven of a night. Tell him on the pavement that you have edited a paper in Chicago, and he will at once invite you into his automobile. You go with him to his club, and then you confess that you have not edited a paper in Chicago, but that you have adopted this device in order to get speech with him, and that all you desire is a humble post on the editorial staff of his big serious daily.
"He will insult you. He will inform you that he has forty candidates for the most insignificant post on the editorial staff, and that there is not the remotest chance for you. You then tell him that you are an expert writer, a contributor to the monthlies and quarterlies, and the author of a novel which Mr. James Douglas has described as the most stupendously virile work of fiction since Tourgeniev's 'Crime and Punishment.' He will insult you anew, and demand your immediate departure. You then say to him, in a casual tone: 'I can bring you ten thousand pounds' worth of ads. a year.' He will read your deepest soul with one glance, and will reply, in a casual tone, 'I dare say I could find you something regular to do on the magazine page.' You go on airily: 'I'm pretty sure I can bring twenty thousand pounds' worth of ads. a year.' He will then order R.P. Muria cigars, and say with benevolence: 'It just happens that the head of our reviewing department is under notice. How would that suit you?' You then unmask all your batteries, and tell him squarely that you can bring him advertisements to the tune of a thousand pounds a week. Whereupon he will reply, shaking you fraternally by the hand: 'My dear fellow, I will make you editor at once.'"
So spake my celebrated friend. Of course, he is a cynic. He may be a criminal cynic. But he spake so. From time to time London dailies do me the honour to reprint saucy paragraphs from this weekly article of mine. My friend said to me: "You can print what I've said, if you like. No daily paper in London will reprint that."
MARGUERITE AUDOUX
2 March '11
Among the astonishing phenomena of a spring season which promises to be quite as successful, in its way, as the very glorious autumn season (publishers must have spent a happy Christmas!) is the success of a really distinguished book. I mean "Marie Claire." Frankly, I did not anticipate this triumph. For, of course, it is very difficult for an author of experience to believe that a good book will be well received. However, "Marie Claire" has been helped by a series of extraordinary reviews. No novel of recent years has had such favourable reviews, or so many of them, or such long ones. I have seen all of them—all except one have been very laudatory—and I am in a position to state that if placed end to end they would stretch from Miss Corelli's house in Stratford-on-Avon across the main to Mr. Hall Caine's castle in the Isle of Man. This may be called praise. One of the best, if not the best, was signed "J.L.G." in the Observer. It is indeed a solemn and terrifying thought that Mr. Garvin, who, by means of thoroughly bad prose persisted in during many years, has at last laid the Tory Party in ruins, should be so excellent a judge of literature. Mr. Garvin made his debut in the London Press, I think, as a literary critic; and it is a pity (from the Tory point of view) that he did not remain a literary critic. I am convinced that Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne would personally subscribe large sums to found a literary paper for him to edit, on condition that he promised never to write another line of advice to their party. The Telegraph would bleed copiously; the Observer would expire; the Fortnightly Review would stagger in its heavy stride, but there would be hope for Tories!... In the meantime, five thousand copies of the English translation of "Marie Claire" were sold within a week of publication. It is improbable that the total English sale will be less than ten thousand. Now translated novels rarely achieve popularity. The last one to be popular here was Fogazzaro's "The Saint"; but the popularity of "The Saint" was not due to artistic causes.
I think I may say that I am thoroughly accustomed to the society of women novelists. Peculiar circumstances in my obscure life have thrown me among women writers of all sorts; and I can boast that I have helped to form more than one woman novelist; so that the prospect of meeting a new one does not agitate me in the slightest degree. I make friends with the new one at once, and in about two minutes we are discussing prices with the most touching familiarity. Nevertheless, I own that I was somewhat disturbed in my Midland phlegm when the author of "Marie Claire" came to see me. The book, read in the light of the circumstances of its composition, had unusually impressed me and stirred my imagination. It was not the woman novelist who was coming to see me, but Marie Claire herself, shepherdess, farm-servant, and sempstress; it was a mysterious creature who had known how to excite enthusiasm in a whole regiment of literary young men.... And literary young men as a rule are extremely harsh, even offensive, in their attitude towards women writers. I stood at the top of the toy stairs of the pavillon which I was then occupying in Paris, and Madame Marguerite Audoux came up the stairs towards me, preceded by one of her young sponsors, and followed by another. A rather short, plump little lady, very simply dressed, and with the simplest possible manner—just such a comfortable human being as in my part of the world is called a "body"! She had, however, eyes of a softness and depth such as are not seen in my part of the world. With that, a very quiet, timid, and sweet voice. She was a sempstress; she looked like a sempstress; and she was well content to look like a sempstress. Nobody would have guessed in ten thousand guesses that here was the author of the European book of the year. But when she talked the resemblance to the sempstress soon vanished. Sempstresses—of whom I have also known many—do not talk as she talked. Not that she said much! Not that she began to talk at once! Far from it. When I had referred to the goodness of her visit, and she had referred to the goodness of my invitation, and she was ensconced in an arm-chair near the fire, she quite simply left the pioneer work of conversation to her bodyguard. Her bodyguard was very proud, and very nervous, as befitted its age.
It was my reference to Dostoievsky that first started her talking. In all literary conversations Dostoievsky is my King Charles's head. She had previously stated that she had read very little indeed. But at any rate she had read Dostoievsky, and was well minded to share my enthusiasms. Indeed, Dostoievsky drew her out of her arm-chair and right across the room. We were soon discussing methods of work, and I learnt that she worked very slowly indeed, destroying much, and feeling her way inch by inch rather than seeing it clear ahead. She said that her second book, dealing with her life in Paris, might not be ready for years. It was evident that she profoundly understood the nature of work—all sorts of work. Work had, indeed, left its honourable and fine mark upon her. She made some very subtle observations about the psychology of it, but unfortunately I cannot adequately report them here.... From work to prices, naturally! It was pleasing to find that she had a very sane and proper curiosity as to prices and conditions in England. After I had somewhat satisfied this curiosity she showed an equally sane and proper annoyance at the fact that the English and American rights of "Marie Claire" had been sold outright for a ridiculous sum. She told me the exact sum. It was either £16 or £20—I forget which.
When Madame Audoux had gone I reviewed my notions of her visit, and I came to the conclusion that she was very like her book. She had said little, and nothing that was striking, but she had mysteriously emanated an atmosphere of artistic distinction. She was a true sensitive. She had had immense and deep experience of life, but her adventures, often difficult, had not disturbed the nice balance of her judgment, nor impaired the delicacy of her impressions. She was an amateur of life. She was awake to all aspects of it. And a calm common sense presided over her magnanimous verdicts. She was far too wary, sagacious, and well acquainted with real values to allow herself to be spoilt, even the least bit, by a perilous success, however brilliant. Such were my notions. But it is not in a single interview that one can arrive at a due estimate of a mind so reserved, dreamy, and complex as hers. The next day she left Paris, and I have not seen her since.
JOHN MASEFIELD
20 April '11
I opened Mr. John Masefield's novel of modern London, "The Street of To-day" (Dent and Co.), with much interest. But I found it very difficult to read. This is a damning criticism; but what would you have? I found it very difficult to read. It is very earnest, very sincere, very carefully and generously done. But these qualities will not save it. Even its intelligence, and its alert critical attitude towards life, will not save it. I could say a great deal of good about it, and yet all that I could say in its favour would not avail. It would certainly be better if it were considerably shorter. I estimate that between fifty and a hundred pages of small talk and miscellaneous observation could be safely removed from it without impairing the coherence of the story. The amount of small talk recorded is simply terrific. Not bad small talk! Heard in real life, it would be reckoned rather good small talk! But artistically futile! Small talk, and cleverer small talk than this, smothered and ruined a novel more dramatic than this—I mean Mr. Zangwill's "The Master." I am convinced that a novel ought to be dramatic—intellectually, spiritually, or physically—and "The Street of To-day" is not dramatic. It is always about to be dramatic and it never is. Chapter III, for instance, contains very important material, essential to the tale, fundamental. But it is not presented dramatically. It is presented in the form of a psychological essay. Now Mr. Masefield's business as a novelist was to have invented happenings for the presentment of the information contained in this essay. He has saved himself a lot of trouble, but to my mind he has not yet come to understand what a novel is.
His creative power is not yet mature. That is to say, he does not convince the reader in the measure which one would expect from a writer of his undoubted emotional faculty. And yet he is often guilty of carelessness in corroborative detail—such carelessness as only a mighty tyrant over the reader could afford. The story deals largely with journalism. And one of the papers most frequently mentioned is "The Backwash." Now no paper could possibly be called "The Backwash." It is conceivable that a paper might be called "The Tip Top." It is just conceivable that a paper might be called "Snip Snap." But "The Backwash," never! Mr. Masefield knows this as well as anybody. The aim of his nomenclature was obviously satiric—an old dodge which did very well in the loose Victorian days, but which is excruciatingly out of place in a modern strictly realistic novel. A trifle, you say! Not at all! Every time "The Backwash" is mentioned, the reader thinks: "No paper called 'The Backwash' ever existed." And a fresh break is made in Mr. Masefield's convincingness. A modern novelist may not permit himself these freakish negligences. Another instance of the same fault is the Christian name of Mrs. Bailey in "The New Machiavelli." It was immensely clever of Mr. Wells to christen her "Altiora." But in so doing he marred the extraordinary brilliance of his picture of her. If you insist that I am talking about trifles, I can only insist that a work of art is a series of trifles.
Mr. Masefield's style suffers in a singular manner. It is elaborate in workmanship—perhaps to the point of an excessive self-consciousness. But its virtue is constantly being undermined by inexactitudes which irritate and produce doubt. For example:
"They entered the tube station. In the train they could not talk much. Lionel kept his brain alert with surmise as to the character of the passengers. Like Blake, a century before, he found 'marks of weakness, marks of woe,' on each face there." Blake in the tube! Mr. Masefield will produce a much better novel than "The Street of To-day."
LECTURES AND STATE PERFORMANCES
25 May '11
Driven by curiosity I went to hear Mr. H.G. Wells's lecture last Thursday at the Times Book Club on "The Scope of the Novel." Despite the physical conditions of heat, and noise, and an open window exactly behind the lecturer (whose voice thus flowed just as much into a back street as into the ears of his auditors), the affair was a success, and it is to be hoped that the Times Book Club will pursue the enterprise further. It was indeed a remarkable phenomenon: a first-class artist speaking the truth about fiction to a crowd of circulating-library subscribers! Mr. Wells was above all defiant; he contrived to put in some very plain speaking about Thackeray, and he finished by asserting that it was futile for the fashionable public to murmur against the intellectual demands of the best modern fiction—there was going to be no change unless it might be a change in the direction of the more severe, the more candid, and the more exhaustively curious.
Of course the lecturer had to vulgarize his messages so as to get them safely into the brain of the audience. What an audience! For the first time in my life I saw the "library" public in the mass! It is a sight to make one think. My cab had gone up Bond Street, where the fortune-tellers flourish, and their flags wave in the wind, and their painted white hands point alluringly up mysterious staircases. These fortune-tellers make a tolerable deal of money, and the money they make must come out chiefly of the pockets of well-dressed library subscribers. Not a doubt but that many of Mr. Wells's audience were clients of the soothsayers. A strange multitude! It appeared to consist of a thousand women and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Women deemed to be elegant, women certainly deeming themselves to be elegant! I, being far from the rostrum, had a good view of the backs of their blouses, chemisettes, and bodices. What an assortment of pretentious and ill-made toilettes! What disclosures of clumsy hooks-and-eyes and general creased carelessness! It would not do for me to behold the "library" public in the mass too often!
I could not but think of the State performance of "Money" at Drury Lane on the previous night: that amusing smack at living artists. There has been a good deal of straight talk about it in the daily and weekly papers. But the psychology of the matter has not been satisfactorily explained. Blame has been laid at the King's door. I think wrongly, or at least unfairly. Besides being one of the two best shots in the United Kingdom, the King is beyond any question a man of honourable intentions and of a strict conscientiousness. But it is no part of his business to be sufficiently expert to choose a play for a State performance. He has never pretended to have artistic proclivities. Who among you, indeed, could be relied upon to choose properly a play for a State performance? Take the best modern plays. Who among you would dare to suggest for a State performance Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman," John Galsworthy's "Justice," or Granville Barker's "The Voysey Inheritance"? Nobody! These plays are unthinkable for a State performance, because their distinction is utterly beyond the average comprehension of the ruling classes—and State performances are for the ruling classes. These plays are simply too good. Yet if you don't choose an old play you must choose one of these four plays, or make the worst of both worlds. Modern plays being ruled out, you must either have Shakespeare or—or what? What is there? "The Cenci"?
Can you not now sympathize with the King as he ran through, in his mind, the whole range of British drama? But the truth is that he did not run through the whole range of British drama. Invariably in these cases a list is submitted for the sovereign to choose from. It is an open secret that in this particular case such a list was prepared. Whether or not it was prepared by Mr. Arthur Collins, organizer of Drury Lane pantomimes, I cannot say. The list contained Shakespeare and Lytton, and I don't know who else. Conceivably the King did not want Shakespeare. To my mind he would be quite justified in not wanting Shakespeare. We are glutted with Shakespeare in the Haymarket. Well, then,—why not "Money"? It is a famous play. We all know its name and the name of its author. And that is the limit of our knowledge. Why should the King be supposed to be acquainted with its extreme badness? I confess I didn't know it was so bad as now it seems to be. And, not very long ago, was not Sir William Robertson Nicoll defending the genius of Lytton in the British Weekly? It is now richly apparent that "Money" ought not to have been included in the list submitted to the King. But it is easy to be wise after the event.
Let it be for ever understood that State theatres and State performances never have had, never will have, any real connexion with original dramatic art. That is one reason why I am against a national theatre, whose influence on the drama is bound to be sinister. To count the performance of "Money" as an insult to living artists is to lose sight of a main factor in the case. The State and living art must be mutually opposed, for the reason that the State must, and quite rightly does, represent the average of opinion. For an original artist to expect aid from the State is silly; it is also wrong. In expressing a particular regard for the feelings of musical comedy, and in announcing beforehand his intention of being present at the first night of the new Gaiety masterpiece, the King was properly fulfilling his duties as a monarch towards dramatic art. Art is not the whole of life, and to adore musical comedy is not a crime. The best thing original artists can do is to keep their perspective undistorted.
A PLAY OF TCHEHKOFF'S
8 June '11
At last, thanks to the Stage Society, we have had a good representative play of Anton Tchehkoff on the London stage. Needless to say, Tchehkoff was done in the provinces long ago. "The Cherry Orchard," I have been told, is Tchehkoff's dramatic masterpiece, and I can well believe it. But it is a dangerous thing to present foreign masterpieces to a West End audience, and the directors of the Stage Society discovered, or rediscovered, this fact on Sunday night last. The reception of "The Cherry Orchard" was something like what the reception of Ibsen's plays used to be twenty years ago. It was scarcely even a mixed reception. There could be no mistake about the failure of the play to please the vast majority of the members of the Society. At the end of the second act signs of disapproval were very manifest indeed, and the exodus from the theatre began. A competent authority informed me that at the end of the third act half the audience had departed; but in the narrative fever of the moment the competent authority may have slightly exaggerated. Certain it is that multitudes preferred Aldwych and the restaurant concerts, or even their own homes, to Tchehkoff's play. And as the evening was the Sabbath you may judge the extreme degree of their detestation of the play.
A director of the Stage Society said to me on the Monday: "If our people won't stand it, it has no chance, because we have the pick here." I didn't contradict him, but I by no means agreed that he had the pick there. The managing committee of the Society is a very enlightened body; but the mass of the members is just as stupid as any other mass. Its virtue is that it pays subscriptions, thus enabling the committee to make experiments and to place before the forty or fifty persons in London who really can judge a play the sort of play which is worthy of curiosity.
In spite of the antipathy which is aroused, "The Cherry Orchard" is quite inoffensive. For example, there is nothing in it to which the Censor could possibly object. It does not deal specially with sex. It presents an average picture of Russian society. But it presents the picture with such exact, uncompromising truthfulness that the members of the Stage Society mistook nearly all the portraits for caricatures, and tedious caricatures. In naturalism the play is assuredly an advance on any other play that I have seen or that has been seen in England. Its naturalism is positively daring. The author never hesitates to make his personages as ridiculous as in life they would be. In this he differs from every other playwright that I know of. Ibsen, for instance; and Henri Becque. He has carried an artistic convention much nearer to reality, and achieved another step in the evolution of the drama. The consequence is that he is accused of untruth and exaggeration, as Becque was, as Ibsen was. His truthfulness frightens, and causes resentment.
People say: "No such persons exist, or at any rate such persons are too exceptional to form proper material for a work of art." No such persons, I admit, exist in England; but then this play happens to be concerned with Russia, and even the men's costumes in it are appalling. Moreover, persons equally ridiculous and futile do exist in England, and by the hundred thousand; only they are ridiculous and futile in ways familiar to us. I guarantee that if any ten average members of the august Stage Society itself were faithfully portrayed on the stage, with all their mannerisms, absurdities, and futilities, the resulting picture would be damned as a gross and offensive caricature. People never look properly at people; people take people for granted; they remain blind to the facts; and when an artist comes along and discloses more of these facts than it is usual to disclose, of course there is a row. This row is a fine thing; it means that something has been done. And I hope that the directors of the Stage Society are proud of the reception of "The Cherry Orchard." They ought to be.
SEA AND SLAUGHTER
6 July '11
Recent spectacular events at Court have been the cause of a considerable amount of verse, indifferent or offensive. But it is to be noticed that the poets of this realm have not been inspired by the said events. I mean such writers as W.B. Yeats, Robert Bridges, Lord Alfred Douglas, W.H. Davies. And yet I see no reason why a Coronation, even in this day of figure-heads and revolting snobbery, should not be the subject of a good poem—a poem which would not be afflicting to read, either for the lettered public or for the chief actor in the scene. However, the time for such poems has apparently not yet arrived. And meanwhile the sea-and-slaughter school have been doing an excellent work these last few weeks in demonstrating how entirely absurd the sea-and-slaughter school is. Mr. Alfred Noyes has been very prominent, not only in his native page, Blackwood's, but also in the Fortnightly Review. Mr. Noyes is, I believe, the only living versifier whose books are, in the words of an American editor, "a commercial proposition." He is by many thought to be a poet. Personally, I have always classed him with Alfred Austin, not yet having come across one single stanza of his which would fall within my definition of poetry. Here is an extract from his "A Salute from the Fleet":
Mother, O grey sea-mother, thine is the crowning cry!—
I am bound to interrupt the quotation here in order to vent my feelings of extreme irritation caused by the mere phrase. "O grey sea-mother." Why should this phrase drive me to fury? It does. Well, to recommence:
Mother, O grey sea-mother, thine is the crowning cry!
Thine the glory for ever in the nation born of thy womb!
Thine is the Sword and the Shield and the shout that Salamis heard,
Surging in Æschylean splendour, earth-shaking acclaim!
Ocean-mother of England, thine is the throne of her fame!
Fancy standing on the shore to-day and addressing the real sea in these words and accents! Fancy the poet doing it! The mood and the mentality are prehistoric. I would not mind Mr. Noyes putting himself lyrically into the woaded skin of our ancestors. But I do think he might have got a little nearer the mark in indicating the "throne of her fame." Because I expect Mr. Noyes knows as well as anybody that the real throne of England's fame is not in the sea at all. England's true fame springs from the few acts of national justice which she has accomplished, and from the generous impulses which as a nation she has had—as, for example, in her relations with Italy; as, for example, in the Factory Acts which prevented children from working eighteen hours a day six or seven days a week. The patriotic versifiers of this country will, if they persist, end by making the sea impossible for a plain man to sail on. I have long felt that I want never again to read anything about the sea, except the advertisements of auxiliary yawls and cutters in the Yachting World. I recommend these advertisements as a balm for sores caused by rhymed marine Jingoism.
A BOOK IN A RAILWAY ACCIDENT
20 July '11
Books are undoubtedly cursed, and rendered unreadable in a new sense. I don't know how many years it is since I was informed that Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's "L'Ève Future" was a really fine novel. I bought it, and I was so upset, in my narrow youthfulness, to find that the author had made a hero of Thomas Alva Edison, and called him by his name, that I could not accomplish more than two chapters. Later I was again informed that "L'Ève Future" was a really fine novel, and I had another brief tussle with it, and was vanquished by its dullness. I received a third warning, and started yet again, and disliked the book rather less, and then I completely lost it in a removal. After months or years it mysteriously turned up, like a fox-terrier who has run off on an errand of his own. But I did not resume it. And then after another long interval the idea that I absolutely must read "L'Ève Future" gathered force in my mind, and I decided that the next time I went away for a week-end I would take it with me. This was in France. I took it away with me. I read a hundred pages on the outward journey and I got on terms with "L'Ève Future." "Ce livre m'attendait," as a certain French novelist said when he read "Tom Jones." On the return journey I was deep buried in "L'Ève Future," when a fearful jolting suddenly began to rock the saloon carriage in which I was. The jolting grew worse, very much worse. Women screamed. I saw my stick fly out of the rack above my head across the carriage. The door leading to the corridor jumped off its hinges. Then shattered glass fell in showers, and I saw an old lady beneath an arm-chair and a table. The shape of the carriage altered. And then, after an enormous crash, equilibrium was established amid the cries of human anguish. I had clung to the arms of my seat and was unhurt, but there were four wounded in the carriage. My eye-glasses were still sticking on my nose. Saying to myself that I must keep calm, I put them carefully away, and began to help to get people out of the wreck. It was not until I looked about for my belongings that I saw that the corner of a tender had poked itself into our carriage. Outside, a mail-van and two enormous coaches were lying very impressively on their sides, and two wounded girls were lying on the grass by the track, and people were shouting for doctors. I ultimately got away with my bag and stick and hat, and walked to the nearest station, where a porter naturally asked me for my ticket. I hired an auto and reached Paris only a quarter of an hour late for dinner. And I congratulated myself on my calmness and perfect presence of mind in a railway accident. Only "L'Ève Future" was not in my bag. I had forgotten it, and my presence of mind had thus been imperfect. I did not buy another copy of "L'Ève Future," and I don't think I ever shall, now.
"FICTION" AND "LITERATURE"
31 Aug '11
Publishers' advertisements of imaginative work are so constantly curious that one gets accustomed to their bizarre qualities and refrains from comment. But Messrs. Hutchinson, who are evidently rather proud of having secured Lucas Malet's new long novel, have thought of a new adjective, and the event must be chronicled. They are announcing to the world that Lucas Malet's new novel is "literary"—"the literary novel of the autumn." I cannot be quite sure what this means, but it is probably intended to signify that, in the opinion of Messrs. Hutchinson, Lucas Malet's novel is very special—that is to say, it is not a mere novel. Less adroit publishers than Messrs. Hutchinson might have described it as an "art novel." (Cf. "art furniture," all up Tottenham Court Road.) Some of the most esteemed provincial dailies have a column headed "Literature" on five days of the week, but on the sixth day that column is headed "New Fiction." You see the distinction. Messrs. Hutchinson are doubtless hinting to the provinces that the new book is something between "literature" and "fiction," and combines the superior attributes of both. Once the Athenæum, apparently staggered by the discovery that Joseph Conrad existed, reviewed a novel of his under the rubric of "Literature," instead of with other novels under the rubric of "Fiction." Messrs. Hutchinson have possibly an eye also on the Athenæum. Personally, I would not permit my publishers to advertise a novel of mine as literary. But on the whole I wouldn't seriously object to the adjective "unliterary."
INDEX
Academies, French and British, [81]
Academy, the British, [228]-[234]
Academy, the, under the editorship of Mr. Hind, [4], [19];
under other controls, [38], [64]
Advertisements, [300]
Agents, literary, [22], [72]
Aid, State, for the artist, [319]
Albert, Henri, [78]
Alexander, Sir George, [63]
American postal censorship, [193]
Anderson, Sir Robert, [193]
Andreief, Léonide, [224]
Anglo-Saxon, the, [243]
Anthologies, [5]
Antoine, director of the Odéon, [257], [259]
Apoutkine, [225]
Archer, William, [140]
Aristophanes, [54]
Arnold, Matthew, [19], [268]
Art, the theory of, [283], [284]
"Art of the short story," the, [86]
"Artifex" reviews the Letters of Queen Victoria, [12]
Artists, creative, [13], [158], 228
and critics, 158
as critics, [158], [283]
and money, [242], [250]-[254]
Asquith, H.H., [302]
Athenæum, the, [68], [71];
its review of "A Set of Six," [36], [332]
Audoux, Marguerite, [305]
Austin, Alfred, [325]
Author, the, [130]
Author, the, and the publisher, [13], [16], [17], [22], [33], [71], [204]
Authors and gift-books, [68]
Authors' Society, the, [130], [171], [233], [277], [291]
Autobiography in fiction, [295]
Ayscough, John, [28]
Balfour, A.J., [82], [87], [291], [306]
Balzac, [12], [134], [183], [252]
Balzac, Prof. Saintsbury's introductions to the works of, [43], [183]
Baring, Maurice, [208]
Barker, H. Granville, [317]
Barrès, Maurice, [82]
Barrie, J.M., [5], [94]
Barry, Dr. W.F., [143]
Baudelaire, Charles, [16], [221]
Bayle, Pierre, [267]
Bazin, René, [65]
Becque, Henri, [255]-[262], [323]
Beerbohm, Max, [145]
Bennett, James Gordon, [193]
Benson, Arthur Christopher, [4], [11], [239]-[241]
Berenson, Bernhard, [158]
Bernhardt, Sarah, a caricature of, [79]
Bernstein, Henri, [197]
Beverley Fathers, the, and their library, [189]
Bible, the, [172]
Binyon, Mrs. Laurence, edits "Nineteenth-Century Prose," [5]
Blackwood's Magazine, [325]
Blake, William, [18], [314]
Book in a railway accident, a, [328]
Bookman, the, [5], [143]
Book-buyer, the, [32], [71]
Book-market, the, [133]
Book-pedlar, the, [105]
Books of the Year, [77], [289]
Boot, Sir Jesse, [106], [173]
Booth, E.C., "The Cliff End," by, [26]
"Borgia!" a sensational novel, [226]
Boston Libraries Censorship, the, [190]
Bourne, George, [120]
Bournemouth, [227]
Bradley, A.C., [269]
Bridges, Robert, [22], [63], [325]
Brieux, [155], [195]-[200]
British Academy of Letters, the, [228]-[234]
British Weekly, see Nicoll, Sir W.R.
Brontë, Charlotte and Emily, [42], [210]
Browning, Robert, [126]
Bunting, Sir Percy, [295]
Caine, Hall, [56], [175], [206], [305]
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, [87]
Cambridge University Press, [300]
Capus, Alfred, [197]
Carpenter, Edward, [22]
Censorship by the libraries, [167], [181], [271]
postal, in England and America, [193]
Cézanne, [282]
Chamberlain, Joseph, [137]
Charity, the sale of books for, [68]
Charmes, Francis, [81]
Chavannes, Puvis de, [190]
"Cherry Orchard, The," Tchehkoff's play, [321]-[324]
Chesterton, G.K., [150]-[152]
Christie, Manson, and Woods, [281]
Christmas, the publishers', [73]
Churchill, Winston, [291]
Circulating libraries, the, [88]
Classics, the reading of, [33]
Clear, Claudius, see Nicoll, Sir W.R.
Clemenceau, [61]
Clifford, Dr. John, [196]
Coleridge, S.T., [268]
Collins, Arthur, [318]
Collins J. Churton, [41], [269]
Colonial expansion, German, [30]
Comedians, stage, [63]
Composition, the foundation of all arts, [27]
Conductor, an orchestral, [43]
Confessions, [77]
Convention, literary, [118]
Conrad, Joseph, [9], [27], [32], [36]-[40], [87], [94], [231], [238], [332]
Corelli, Marie, [32], [47], [48], [49], [56], [103], [206], [305]
Corroborative detail, [312]
Criticism, English literary, [267]
the, of artists, [158], [283]
Critics, artists and, [158]
newspaper, [26], [36]
professorial, [41], [269]
Crosland, T.W.H., [64]
Cross, Donatella, [235]
Crosse and Blackwell, Messrs.
Curel, François de, [253]
Daily Mail, the, [127], [138], [139]
Daily News, the, [150], [295]
Daily Telegraph, the, [306]
Danby, Frank, [10]
D'Annunzio, Gabriele, [235]
Dante, [19]
Darling, Mr. Justice, [12]
Davies, W.H., [78], [325]
Davray, Henry, [220]
Debussy, Claude, [280]
Defoe, Daniel, [172]
Dehan, Richard (Clotilde Graves), [290]
"De Profundis," suppressions in, [217]
Dial, the, [243]
Dialogue, novel, [311]
Dickens, Charles, [105], [134], [139], [252]
Dilettanti of letters, the, as a class, [229]
Dilke, Sir Charles, [295]
Dixie, Lady Florence, [193]
Dobson, Austin, [270]
Donnay, Maurice, [197]
Dostoievsky, F.M., [117], [208]-[213], [216], [308]
Douglas, Lord Alfred, [64], [325]
James, [303]
Drama in the novel, [311]
Dumas fils, Alexandre, [200]
"Ecce Homo," Nietzsche's, [77]
Edinburgh Review, the, on "Ugliness in Fiction," [8]
"Editions," French and English, [59]
Eliot, George, [8], [135]
Elton, Oliver, [269]
Emerson, R.W., [190]
"Encyclopædia Britannica, The," [300]
English literary criticism, [267]
English Review, the, [66], [145], [294]
Epic, the, and the Sonnet, [87]
Esher, Lord, [11]
Factory Acts, the, [327]
Fay, William, [63]
"Fiction" and "literature," [328]
Fiction, autobiography in, [295]
ugliness in, [8]
Fielding, Henry, [172], [192], [271]
Flaubert, Gustave, [16], [212]
Florio, John, [223]
Fogazzaro, Antonio, [306]
Forster, E.M., [292]
Fortnightly Review, the, [193], [306], [325]
France, Anatole, [59], [82], [232]
Free library, the Municipal, [104]
Frith, W.P., [210]
Galsworthy, John, [9], [95], [184], [214]-[216], [317]
Garvin, J.L., [291], [305]
Gauguin, [282]
Gaunt, Mary, [276]
Gautier, Theophile, [139]
George V, King, [317]
Georges, Mlle., [99]
German Colonial expansion, [30]
Gide, André, [66], [155]
Gift-Books, Royal, [68]
Gil Blas, [259]
Gilchrist, R. Murray, [87], [94], [117]
Gladstone, Lord, [157]
W.E., [51]
Glasgow libraries, censorship in the, [192]
Glyn, Elinor, [10], [271]-[277], [289]
Goethe, [19]
Gogol, [117], [208]
Gorky, Maxim, [224]
Gould, Jay, [193]
Grahame, Kenneth, [57]
Grosvenor library, the, [106]
Hand, T.W., librarian at Leeds, [189]
Hankin, St. John, [140]
Hardy, Thomas, [8], [9], [87], [94], [96], [137], [172], [192], [267]
Harland, Henry, [91]
Harper's Magazine, [51]
Harraden, Beatrice, [47]
Harriman, [193]
Havergal, Francis Ridley, [241]
Hazlitt, William, [268]
Heaton, Sir J. Henniker, [196]
Heinemann, William, [169], [170]
Herford, Prof. C.H., [84], [269]
Hewlett, Maurice, [130]
Hill, Rowland, [135]
Hind, C. Lewis, as editor of the Academy, [4]
Hocking, the brothers, [103]
Holiday reading, [222]
Holmes, O.W., [190]
Hope, Anthony, [47], [130]
Houssaye, Henry, [81]
Hudson, W.H., [278]
Hugo, Victor, [134], [155]
Hull and the libraries Censorship, [185]
Hull Daily Mail, the, [186], [187]
Hutchinson, Sir G.T., [130], [169]
Thomas, Wordsworthian researches of, [18]
Ibsen, Henrik, [321], [323]
l'Illustration, [260]
Impressionistic Method, the, [37]
Ingram, J.H., [84]
Intimations of Immortality, [63]
Irwin, Mabel McCoy, [194]
Jacobs, W.W., and Aristophanes, [53], [94]
James, Henry, [87], [95], [263]-[266]
Jaurès, Jean, [61]
John o' London, see Whitten, Wilfred
Johnson, Lionel, [267]
Journal, a report in the Paris, [223]
des Débats, the, [81]
Journalism, success in, [300]-[304]
Keary, Peter, [188]
Keats, John, [237]
Kingsley, Charles, [105]
Kipling, Rudyard, [55], [57], [94], [160]-[166]
Knight, Prof. W., Wordsworthian researches of, [18]
Labourer, the Surrey, [120]
Lamb, Charles, [268]
Lambert, Canon, [186]
Lane, John, [120]
Lang, Andrew, [51], [83], [114]
Lansdowne, Lord, [306]
Laprade, Pierre, [283]
Lectures and State Performances, [315]
Leasing, [159]
Letters, the, of Queen Victoria, [11], [16], [68], [69]
Libraries, [106]
the circulating, [88]
and their subscribers, [33]
the, and "His Hour," [271]
censorship by the, [167], [181], [271]
Library, the Municipal Free, [104]
Literary criticism, English, [267]
Literary periodical, the, [242]
Liverpool, [44]
London, [160];
and the Neo-Impressionists, [280]
a book on, [3]
the potential reading public of, [101]
the Bishop of, [77]
Longfellow, H.W., [190]
Love poetry, [145]
Lowell, J.R., [190]
Lucas, E.V., [6], [150]
Lucifer, an American journal, [193]
Lytton, Lord (and "Money"), [316]-[319]
Mackail, J.W., [270]
Macmillan, Sir Frederick, [130]
"Madame Bovary," terms of the publication of, [16]
Madeleine, Jules de la, [16]
Malet, Lucas, [331]
Mallarmé, Stéphane, [65]
"Man of Kent, A," see Nicoll, Sir W.R.
Manchester, the potential reading public of, [101]
Manchester Guardian, the, [47], [84], [237]
Marjoram, J., [145]
Masefield, John, [28], [311]-[314]
Mason, Frederic, [77]
Mathews, Elkin, [267]
Matisse, [283]
Maupassant, Guy de, [86], [117], [137], [252]
Maxwell, W.B., [9], [27]
Meyerfeld, Dr. Max, [217]
Memoirs, books of scandalous, [98], [181]
"Mercure de France, Société du," [59]
Meredith, George, [87], [95], [134]-[139], [173], [227]
Merrick, Leonard, [5], [94]
Methuen, Sir A.M.S., [130]
Middle-class, [89]
Milton, [19], [20]
Mitchell library, Whitman's poems at the, [192]
Molière, [19]
Money, artists and, [242], [250]-[254]
"Money," a gala performance of, [316]
Montague, C.E., [201]-[203]
Montaigne, [222]
Montenegro, the Queen of, [276]
Moore, George, [8], [87], [94], [172], [176], [190]
Morley, Lord, [22]
Morning Post, the, [208]
Mudie's, [33], [52], [88], [173], [174], [175]
Municipal Free library, the, [104]
Murray, John, action against the Times, [11], [16]
Napoleon's mistresses, [99]
Nation, the, [84]
Nelson's Sevenpenny novels, [107], [130]
Neo-Impressionism and literature, [281]
Neolith, the, [243]
New Age, the, [122], [246]
"New Machiavelli, The," [294]-[299]
New York, [160], [161]
Newcastle-on-Tyne, [3]
Nicoll, Sir William Robertson, [5], [26], [29], [67], [114], [222], [319]
Nietzsche, Friedrich, [78]
Norris, W.E., [49]
Novel, a "literary," [331]
a sexual, [271]
dialogue and drama in the, [311]
library censorship of the, [167], [181], [271]
the sevenpenny, [72], [107], [130]
the six-shilling, [22], [72], [131]
the, ugliness in, [8]
of the season, the, [26]
Novels and short stories, a perennial discussion, [86]
autobiography in, [295]
shilling, [107]
the length of, [248]
the sales of, [68], [131]
Novelists and agents, [22], [72]
Nousanne, Henri de, [259], [260]
Noyes, Alfred, [325]
Numès, M., [259]
Omar Khayyám, [84]
Ospovat, Henry, [79]
Pall Mall Gazette, the, [137]
Paris, [155], [256]
Pater, Walter, [227]
Pedlars, book-, [105]
Pemberton, Max, [103]
Periodical, the literary [242]
Persky, Serge, [224]
Perusals, unfinished, [235]-[237]
Phillpotts, Eden, [47], [87]
Pinero, Sir A.W., [140]
Play of Tchehkoff's, a, [321]-[324]
Poe and the short story, [84]
Poetry, love, [145]
marine, [325]
official recognition of, [155]
Poets, contemporary, [63], [325]
Post-Impressionists, see Neo-Impressionism
Postal censorship, English and American, [193]
Prices of books, the, [14], [130]
Prose, the, of Wilfred Whitten, [3]
Professors, [41], [269]
Provinces, the potential reading public of the, [101]
Public, the, [88]
a publisher on "the public," [204]
disdain of artists for the public, [243]
the characteristics of the middle-class public, "the backbone," [88]-[94]
treatment of this class by contemporary novelists, [94]-[96]
unreadiness of this class to be pleased, [97]
explanation of its concern with fiction, [98]
the potential public in the industrial Midlands, [101]
trade failure to cater for this public, [102]-[104]
the Free Libraries, [104]
the book-pedlar, [105]
cheap editions, [107]
the sections composed of dilettanti, [229]
"right people," [291], [294]
as book-buyers, [32]
Publishers' Association, the, and Library Censorship, [169], [277]
Publishers and authors, [204]-[207]
English and French, compared, [17]
their place in literature, [13]
profits, [11], [16], [72], [182]
Publishing seasons, bad, [22], [26], [68]
Punch, [143]
Putney, the High Street, [123]
Quiller-Couch, Sir A.T., [55], [87]
Railway accident, a book in a, [328]
Raleigh, Prof. Sir Walter, [44], [238], [269]
Reading on holiday, [222]
Realism, the progress towards, [118];
Russian realism, [208]
Rembrandt, [281]
Reprints, cheap, [33]
Reviewers, [26], [36]
Revue des Deux Mondes, the, [81]
Reynolds, Stephen, [78], [120]
Richards, Grant, [26]
Richardson, Frank, [109]
Samuel, [139], [172], [192]
"Rita," [51]
Robaglia, M., [259]
Rockefeller, J.D., [193]
Rodin's statue of Hugo, [156]
Rosebery, Lord, [250]
Ross, Robert, [217]
Rossetti, D.G., [172]
Roussel, [283]
Rouveyre's caricature of Bernhardt, [79]
Royal Academy, the, [234].
Russian fiction and drama, [117], [141], [208]-[213], [224], [321]
Rutherford, Mark, [94]
Sainte-Beuve, [267], [268], [270]
Saintsbury, George, [42], [269]
Sales, the, of novels, [59], [68], [131]
Sampson, John, his edition of Blake, [18]
Sargent, John, [95], [190]
Savoy, the, [243]
Scarborough, [227]
Schücking, Dr. Levin, [66]
Scott, Sir Walter, [86], [105], [134], [139], [252]
Scott-James, R.A., [295]
Sculpture, proposal for an academy of, [234]
Sea and Slaughter, [325]-[327]
Season, the novel of the, [26]
Seasons, bad publishing, [22], [68]
Sélincourt, Ernest de, his edition of Keats, [18]
Series of reprints, cheap, [33]
Sevenpenny novel, the, [72], [107], [130]
Shakespeare, [19], [172], [318]
Shaw, George Bernard, [84], [130], [195], [200], [291], [316], [317]
Shelley, P.B., [172], [318]
Shilling novels, [107]
Short story, the, in England, [38], [84]
Shorter, C.K., [26], [29], [42], [114], [188]
Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., [105]
Sims, G.R., [126]
Single lines, the, of Wordsworth, [18]
Six-shilling novel, the, [22], [72], [131]
Smith, Sir F.E., [78], [291]
Nowell, his edition of Wordsworth, [18], [21]
Smith, Reginald, [130]
the Rt. Hon. W.F.D., [47]
and Son, W.H., [88], [132]
Smollett, Tobias, [192]
"Société du Mercure de France," the, [59]
Sonnet, the, and the Epic, [87]
Sphere, see Shorter, C.K.
Stacpoole, H. de Vere, [28]
Stage Society, the Incorporated, [256], [321]
State performances, lectures and, [315]
Stationers' shops and books, [103]
Stead, W.T., [295]
Stendhal, [60], [96], [134], [211]
Stephen, Sir Leslie, [19]
Sterne, Laurence, [172]
Stevenson, R.L., [37], [81], [86], [221], [252]
Stock, M., the French publisher, [256], [260]
Strand Magazine, the, [113]
Strauss, Richard, [280]
Style, English, [45]
Success in Journalism, [300]-[304]
Suppressions in "De Profundis," [217]
Surrey labourer, the, [120]
Swift, Jonathan, [172]
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, [22], [66], [123]
Switzerland, [227]
Symons, Arthur, [209]
Synge, J.M., [63]
Taine, [267], [270]
Tchehkoff, Anton, [117], [141], [208], [225], [258], [321]-[324]
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, [84], [85], [103], [125], [126], [156]
Thackeray, W.M., [134], [139], [315]
Thurston, E. Temple, [290]
Times, the, and the letters of Queen Victoria, [11]
an article on Trollope in, [148]
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