While I Remember

by Stephen McKenna

I

While there is excellent authority for the statement that the Holy Roman Empire was not holy nor Roman nor an empire, the reader of mediaeval history has, for a century and a half, been left without an equally trenchant definition of what that empire was. In like manner, while it is comparatively easy for the student of modern manners to assert that "literary London" is neither London nor literary, he might find it difficult to amplify this in positive terms unless he described it as "cultured Kensington." The first phrase, like its baffling brethren "a man-about-town" and "the Oxford manner," to which reference has already been made, is part of modern currency and is tendered by the press and accepted by the public without a thought on either side whether it represents any value as an idea. Is the literary London to which newspapers refer synonymous with the committee of the Authors' Society? Is it to be found, of a Sunday afternoon, at Mrs. Leo Hunter's house? Does it lurk, unrecognised and fiercely retiring, in that district which cabmen call Chelsea and more poetic spirits "the Latin Quarter of London"?

Or is it but a flight of fancy, like "the upper ten" or "the middle classes"?

Regret is sometimes expressed that there is no assembly in which all men-of-letters can gather and explain—in a phrase beloved of H. G. Wells—"what they are up to." Though the experiment had often been tried, it has always failed. There is, indeed, an abundance of literary societies which meet for dinner and damnable iteration in honour of one or other "immortal memory"; there is a plethora of the larger, looser associations which have been formed to entertain authors and, in sheer lust for culture, to submit to their lectures. There are houses from which no author is long secure; there are clubs, founded to aid their members in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, where authors meet in large numbers. But there is no one literary clearing-house, there is nothing that can be called "literary London." For this, the unreflecting world is not always sufficiently grateful.

The first business of a poet, it may be submitted, is to write poetry rather than to talk about what he has written; the second, to write it by himself, as the pure, unaided expression of his genius, rather than to labour under the limitations and confusions of a school; the third, to let his poetry stand as its own explanation and apology to the critics and to the public. If, in the end, his readers persist in wishing to discuss it with him, he may not always be able to escape, though he may forestall disappointment by warning them that, because a man can express himself on paper, he need not be able to express himself in conversation and that the poet in hours of idleness is not necessarily better worth meeting than the dentist on holiday. This caveat once entered, he can offer no further resistance, short of a blunt refusal, to the hostesses who are still eager to secure "the distinguished author" of this or that: sooner or later his neck will be bent over their dinner-tables.

There follows one of two inevitable results: the author, from modesty or self-consciousness, curvets and shies from the one subject which he has been summoned to discuss and takes refuge in the Russian ballet and Ascot;[50] or else he resigns himself to his apotheosis and gobbles more complimentary sugar-plums than are good for his soul's digestion; he is fated to spoil the party or to be spoiled by it.

Next in the preparation of his spiritual downfall comes the bland assumption that the creator must also be a critic; when he has adequately descanted upon his own books, he will be required to give an opinion on the books of others. These, unless he loftily (but impressively) refuse to admit that there have been poets since Shelley, he never wholly condemns for fear of seeming vain or small-minded, though he may sometimes admit that he has not had time to read them; it is easier to disparage by flattery and to say that his rival has not yet done his best work or that he will never give rein to his genius until he is less influenced by the spell of Swinburne (within an hour this has been crystallised into the judgement that "X writes such dreadful Swinburne-and-water"); it is easier still to shake a regretful head and to hope that X is not sacrificing Art to Popularity. As a rule the creator-critic praises vehemently, thus gaining for himself a reputation for generosity and doing service to a friend who is doing him the same service at that moment in another part of London. Mutual admiration and log-rolling have not changed since Du Maurier satirised them in the Punches of the eighties; and the gentle art of self-advertisement has at least not diminished in the resourcefulness of its technique during the last forty years. There are, however, so many opportunities of securing a wider publicity that the author who shews himself off in a drawing-room is wasting his time and energy: the columns of the press are already open to him, and, as his new book draws near to publication, he can always direct attention to himself by inaugurating a discussion on the pagan tendency of modern poetry or on the victimisation of young poets by unscrupulous editors; he can let himself be persuaded into speaking at public dinners and having his speeches reported; he can be affably at hand when professional writers of paragraphs are short of copy. If it be his ambition to keep his name before the public, he can without difficulty emulate the methods of one author who backed himself to be mentioned in the press on every day of the year—and won his wager. It may be doubted, nevertheless, whether public or private popularity-seeking is good for the fibre of a man's soul.

If a writer should avoid the food and flattery of the professional lion-hunter, so, for a different reason, he should resist the temptation to closet himself with those who are plying the same trade. If it produce nothing else, the inevitable discussion of himself and of his work produces self-consciousness; and a man will commonly achieve less valuable results by harkening for the applause of a clique or by trying to follow lines and tendencies set by a committee. The great work of art is individual; and, though a painter may have his school, though the technique of painting is usually taught in a school, there is no ground for thinking that a man may be taught to write by those who are themselves learning.

As an author should work by himself to produce what is in him, so, when he has produced it, he should neither explain nor complain. It is perhaps a counsel of perfection to say that authors and critics should never meet. Mr. Walkley has expounded this difficulty in dramatic criticism: is the critic to eschew the actor's company? Is he to rise from the same dinner-table and slay his friend in print? Should he disparage a friend for fear of partiality or praise an unknown playwright because he is unknown? The difficulties are not less great when the novelist and his critic are on terms of friendship; but literature and criticism both suffer when this personal relationship is used to influence the author or the critic. As a rule the press, turning its back on the brutalities of the early nineteenth century, encourages the new writer and relieves its feelings at the expense of one who is considered to be "established"; in dramatic criticism it generally ignores the newcomer and atones later for its neglect by praising indiscriminately the man who has won his niche. Either practise may be considered as at least no more senseless than any other which criticises the writer rather than the book that he has written. No reasonable man will object so long as criticism is independent of personal obligations, advertisement-revenue, æsthetic prejudice and private predilections; so long, too, as the reviewer is neither a careless young man in a hurry to create on his own account, nor an embittered old man who has tried and failed; so long, finally, as the critic brings to his task as much experience, self-discipline and labour as the author has given to his.

The danger which threatens the deliberate formation of a literary society is that authors and critics will both lose something of their independence. In other callings there is often a rigid etiquette to protect social intercourse from professional abuse: the barrister who dines too regularly with solicitors will expose himself to suspicion, and the surgeon is expected to shew by his demeanour that his guests are friends and not potential patients. Among writers there is no recognised etiquette and, though the man whose friendship with reviewers secures him a good press may be despised by some, he is envied by more. This is no new vice; and its ill effects are limited by the logic of facts, whereby a good press cannot for ever sell bad books. Vested interests in criticism only become formidable to literature when the spheres of creation and criticism overlap and when critic-creators combine to organise a crusade. The complaint has of late been heard that literary criticism in London is being syndicated: six or eight papers are said to be inspired by four or five critic-creators who set their own standard of taste and value, praise one another's work and advance across literary no-man's-land in massed formation. It is easy to make too much of this. The amiable practise of mutual back-patting has always existed; the honest zealots of literature have always tried to define a formula for exclusive literary salvation; and those who stood outside the ring have always fumed and protested.[51] Is there anything new in Fleet Street? Or in those who accept Fleet Street at a pontifical valuation? When will authors learn how very little influence the press can exert over a book? The favourable review of a good book may hasten its recognition; the unfavourable review of a bad book may retard that measure of success which even the worst book achieves; but, after the first indeterminate months of life, favourable reviews will not sell a bad book, nor unfavourable kill a good.[52]

If, then, an author shews to disadvantage at his apotheosis enforced and if he cannot be left alone with fellow-authors lest he preach that his doxy is orthodoxy and that every other doxy is heterodoxy, is there any virtue in a literary clearing-house where any one man of letters can be sure, sooner or later, of finding every other? The salon is not acclimatised to London; while it flourishes in Dublin and Paris, it languishes here for want of a hostess to inspire it. Daily and nightly throughout the year there are parties at which eminent men of letters are present in force, with a flanking claque of women who have expressed vague desire to meet them; the general judgement on them is as true now as the particular judgement which Oscar Wilde passed some thirty years ago on "Lady Brandon," who "tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in opening a restaurant."