FICTION, EARLY AND LATE.
There lies before me a roll containing certain newspaper extracts pasted on paper and sewed together. They are cuttings from the North Wilts Herald, and contain a romance, entitled "A Strange Story," written "expressly" for that paper, and signed "Geoffrey." That Geoffrey—let us reveal a long-buried secret—was none other than Richard Jefferies himself. The "Strange Story" was published on June 30, 1866. It is blood-curdling; it is, in fact, the work of a boy. Between July 21 and August 4 of the same year, a second tale appeared by the same author; it is called "Henrique Beaumont." There is a murder in it, and, of course, a murderer. Lightning—sign of Heaven's wrath—reveals that the murderer's face, after the deed, is as pale as death. A third tale is called "Who Will Win? or, American Adventure." There is fighting in it, with negroes, hairbreadth escapes, and such things, in breathless succession. A fourth and last tale is called "Masked." These boyish efforts are only mentioned here to show in what direction the lad's thoughts were running. Considered as a lad's productions, they require no comment. At the outset, Jefferies proposed fiction to himself as the most desirable form of literature, and the most likely form with which to court success. Almost to the end he continued to keep this ambition before himself. The list of his serious attempts at fiction is respectable as regards number. It includes the following:
"The Scarlet Shawl," one vol., 1874.
"Restless Human Hearts," three vols., 1875.
"World's End," three vols., 1877.
"Green Fern Farm," three vols., 1880.
"The Dewy Morn," two vols., 1884.
"Amaryllis at the Fair," one vol., 1887.
To these may be added—but they must be treated separately—"Wood Magic," a fable, 1881, and "Bevis," three vols., 1882. Perhaps "After London" may also be accounted a work of fiction.
"The Scarlet Shawl" was published in July, 1874, in one volume. As the work is stated on the title-page to have advanced to a second edition, one of two things is certain—namely, either the book appealed to a large number of readers, or the editions were very small indeed. I incline, myself, to the latter opinion.
Great as is the admiration of Jefferies' readers for his best and noblest work, it must be frankly confessed that, regarded as a story-teller, he is not successful. Why this is so we will presently inquire. As regards this, his earliest serious work of fiction, there is one remarkable fact, quite without precedent in the history of literature—it is that the book affords not the slightest indication of genius, insight, descriptive or dramatic power, or, indeed, of any power, especially of that kind with which he was destined to make his name. It is a book which any publisher's reader, after glancing at the pages, would order to be returned instantly, without opinion given or explanation offered; it is a book which a young man of such real promise, with such a splendid career before him, ought somehow to have been prevented from publishing. Two reviews of it are preserved in a certain book of extracts—one from the Athenæum, and one from the Graphic. The story was also made a peg by a writer in the Globe for some unkind remarks about modern fiction generally. It is only mentioned here because we would not be accused of suppressing facts, and because there is no author who has not made similar false starts, mistakes, and attempts in lines unsuited to his genius. It is not much blame to Jefferies that his first novel was poor; it was his misfortune that no one told him at the outset that a book of which the author has to pay the expense of production is probably worthless. It is, perhaps, wonderful that the author could possibly think it good. There are, one imagines, limits even to an author's illusions as regards his own work. But it is not so wonderful that Jefferies should at this time, when he was still quite young and ignorant of the world, write a worthless book, as that he should at any time at all write a book which had not the least touch of promise or of power.
Consider, however. What is the reason why a young author so often shows a complete inability to discover how bad his early work really is? It is that he is wholly unable to understand—no young writer can understand—the enormous difference between his powers of conception and imagination—which are often enormous—and those of execution. If it were worth while, I think it would be possible to extricate from the crude pages of "The Scarlet Shawl" the real novel which the writer actually had in his mind, and fondly thought to have transferred to the printed page. That novel would, I dare say, have been sweet and wholesome, pure and poetical. The thing which he submitted to the public was a work in which all these qualities were conspicuously wanting. The young poet reads his own verses, his mind full of splendid images, half-formed characters, clouds of bewildering colours, and imagines that he has fixed these floating splendours in immortal verse. When he has forgotten what was in his mind while he was writing that verse, he will be able to understand how feeble are his rhymes, but not till then. I offer this as some explanation of these early novels.
Consider, again. He never was a novelist; he never could be one. To begin with, he knew nothing of society, nothing of men and women, except the people of a small country town. There are, truly, materials for dramatic fiction in plenty upon a farm and in a village; but Jefferies was not the man to perceive them and to use them. His strength lay elsewhere, and as yet he had not found his strength.
Another reason why he could never be a novelist was that he wholly lacked the dramatic faculty. He could draw splendid landscapes, but he could not connect them together by the thread of human interest. Nature in his books is always first, and humanity always second. Two figures are in the foreground, but one hardly cares to look at them in contemplating the wonderful picture which surrounds them.
Again, he did not understand, so to speak, stage management. When he had got a lot of puppets in his hands, he could not make them act. And he was too self-contained to be a novelist; he could never get rid of his own personality. When he succeeds in making his reader realize a character, it is when that character is either himself, as in "Bevis," or a part of himself, as Farmer Iden in "Amaryllis." The story in his earlier attempts is always imitative, awkward, and conventional; it is never natural and never spontaneous. In his later books he lays aside all but the mere pretence of a story. The individual pictures which he presents are delightful and wonderful; they are like his short essays and articles—they may be read with enormous pleasure—but the story, what is the story? Where is it? There is none. There is only the promise of a story not worked out—left, not half untold, but hardly begun, as in "After London" and in "Amaryllis at the Fair." You may put down any of his so-called novels at any time with no more regret than that this scene or that picture was not longer. As the writer never took any interest in his own characters—one understands that as clearly as if it was proclaimed upon the house-tops—so none of his readers can be expected to feel any interest. It is the old, old story. In any kind of art—it matters not what—if you wish your readers to weep, you must first be constrained to weep yourself. Many other reasons might be produced for showing that Jefferies could never have been a successful novelist; but these may suffice.
Meantime, the wonder remains. How could the same hand write the coarse and clumsy "Scarlet Shawl" which was shortly to give the world such sweet and delicate work, so truthful, so artistic, so full of fine feeling? How could that be possible? Indeed, one cannot altogether explain it. Collectors of Jefferies' books—unless they are mere collectors who want to have a complete set—will do well to omit the early novels. They belong to that class of book which quickly becomes scarce, but never becomes rare.
There are limitations in the work of every man. With such a man as Jefferies, the limitations were narrower than with most of those who make a mark in the history of literature. He was to succeed in one way—only in one way. Outside that way, failure, check, disappointment, even derision, awaited him. In the "Eulogy of Richard Jefferies" one can afford to confess these limitations. He is so richly endowed that one can well afford to confess them. It no more detracts from his worth and the quality of his work to own that he was no novelist than it would be to confess that he was no sculptor.
But the wonder of it! How could such a man write these works, being already five or six and twenty years of age, without revealing himself? It is as if one who was to become a great singer should make his first attempt and break down without even revealing the fact that he had a noble voice, as yet untrained. Or as if one destined to be a great painter should send in a picture for exhibition in which there was no drawing, or sense of colour, or grouping, or management of lights, or any promise at all. The thing cannot be wholly explained. It is a phenomenon in literature.
It is best, I say, to acknowledge these limitations fully and frankly, so that we may go on with nothing, so to speak, to conceal. Let us grant all the objections to Jefferies as a story-teller that anyone may choose to make. In the ordinary sense of the word, Jefferies was not a novelist; in the artistic sense of the word, he was not a novelist. This fully understood and conceded, we can afterwards consider his later so-called novels as so many storehouses filled with priceless treasure.
I have in my hands certain letters which Jefferies addressed to Messrs. Tinsley Brothers on the subject of his MSS. They are curious, and rather saddening to read. They begin in the year 1872 with proposals that the firm should publish a work called "Only a Girl," "the leading idea of which is the delineation of a girl entirely unconventional, entirely unfettered by precedent, and in sentiment always true to herself." He writes a first letter on the subject in May. In September he reopens the subject.
"The scenery is a description of that found in this county, with every portion of which I have been familiar for many years. The characters are drawn from life, though so far disguised as to render too easy identification impossible. I have worked in many of the traditions of Wilts, endeavouring, in fact, in a humble manner to do for that county what Whyte Melville has done for Northampton and Miss Braddon for Yorkshire."
As nothing more is written on the subject of "Only a Girl," I suppose she was suppressed altogether, or worked up into another book.
In 1874 he attacks the same publishers with a new MS. This time it is "The Scarlet Shawl." It will be easily understood, from what has gone before, that he was asked to pay a sum of money in advance in order to cover the risk—in this case, to pay beforehand the certain loss. He objected to the amount proposed, and says with charming simplicity:
"I mean to become a name sooner or later. I shall stick to the first publisher who takes me up; and, unless I am very much mistaken, we shall make money. To write a tale is to me as easy as to write a letter, and I do not see why I should not issue two a year for the next twelve or fifteen years. I can hardly see the possible loss from a novel."
This is really wonderful. This young man knows so little about the writing of novels as to suppose that, because it is easy for him to write two "Scarlet Shawls" a year, there can be no possible loss in them! You see that he had everything to learn. You may also observe that from the beginning he has never faltered in his one ambition. He will succeed; and he will succeed in literature.
Terms are finally agreed upon, and "The Scarlet Shawl" is produced. Some time afterwards he writes for a cheque, and receives an account, whether accompanied by a cheque or not does not appear. But he submits the account to a friend, who assures him that it is correct. Thus satisfied, he finishes a second story, this time in three volumes. It was called "Restless Human Hearts."
In the following year "Restless Human Hearts," in three volumes, was brought out by the same firm. In the book of extracts, from which I have already drawn, there are four or five reviews preserved. They are all of the same opinion, and it is not a flattering opinion. The Graphic admitted that there was one scene drawn with considerable power. One need not dwell longer upon this work. Jefferies, in fact, was describing a society of which he knew absolutely nothing, and was drawing on his imagination for a picture which he tendered as one of contemporary manners. At this juncture—nay, at every point—of his literary career, he wanted someone to stand at his elbow and make him tear up everything—everything—that pretended to describe a society of which he knew nothing. The hero appears to have been a wicked nobleman. Heavens! what did this young provincial journalist know of wicked noblemen? But he had read about them, when he was a boy. He had read the sensational romances in which the nobleman was, at that time, always represented as desperately wicked. In these later days the nobleman of the penny novelette is generally pictured as virtuous. Why and how this change of view has been brought about it is impossible in this place to inquire; but Jefferies belonged to the generation of wicked dukes and vicious earls.
The terms upon which "Restless Human Hearts" was published do not appear from the letters extant. Jefferies writes, however, a most sensible letter on the subject. He refuses absolutely to pay any more for publishing his own books. He says:
"This is about the worst speculation into which I could possibly put the money. Therefore I am resolved to spend no more upon the matter, whether the novel gets published or not. The magazines pay well, and immediately after publication the cheque is forwarded. It seems the height of absurdity, after receiving a cheque for a magazine article, to go and pay a sum of money just to get your tale in print. I was content to do so the first time, because it is in accordance with the common rule of all trades to pay your footing." The resemblance is not complete, let me say, because the new author, on this theory, would not pay his footing to other authors, but to a publisher, and, besides, such a proposal has never been made to any author. "I might just as well," he concludes, "put the cheque in the fire as print a tale at my own expense."
Quite so. Most sensibly put. Young authors will do well to lay this discovery to heart. They may be perfectly certain that a manuscript which respectable firms refuse to publish at their own risk and expense is not worth publishing at all, and they may just as well put their bank-notes upon the fire as pay them to a publisher for producing their works. Nay, much better, because they will thus save themselves an infinite amount of disappointment and humiliation.
Before "Restless Human Hearts" is well out of the binder's hands, he is ready—this indefatigable spinner of cobwebs—with another story. It is called "In Summer-Time." He is apparently oblivious of the brave words quoted above, and is now ready to advance £20 towards the risk of the new novel. Nothing came of the proposal, and "In Summer-Time" went to join "Only a Girl."
In the same year—this is really a most wonderful record of absolutely wasted energy—he has an allegory written in Bunyanesque English called "The New Pilgrim's Progress; or, A Christian's Painful Passage from the Town of Middle Class to the Golden City." This, too, sinks into oblivion, and is heard of no more.
Undeterred by all this ill-success, Jefferies proceeds to write yet another novel, called "World's End." He says that he has spent a whole winter upon it.
"The story centres round the great property at Birmingham, considered to be worth four millions, which is without an owner. A year or two ago there was a family council at that city of a hundred claimants from America, Australia, and other places, but it is still in Chancery. This is the core, or kernel, round which the plot develops itself. I think, upon perusal, you would find it a striking book, and full of original ideas."
In consideration of the failure of "Restless Human Hearts," he offers his publisher the whole of the first edition for nothing, which seems fair, and one hopes that his publisher recouped by this first edition his previous losses. The reviewers were kinder to "World's End." The Queen, the Graphic, and the Spectator spoke of it with measured approbation, but no enthusiasm.
He writes again, offering a fourth novel, called "The Dewy Morn;" but as no more letters follow, it is probable that the work was refused. This looks as if the success of "World's End" was limited. "The Dewy Morn," in the later style, was published in 1884 by Messrs. Chapman and Hall.
The appearance of "World's End" marks the conclusion of one period of his life. Henceforth Jefferies abandons his ill-starred attempts to paint manners which he never saw, a society to which he never belonged, and the life of people concerning whom he knew nothing. He has at last made the discovery that this kind of work is absolutely futile. Yet he does not actually realize the fact until he has made many failures, and wasted a great deal of time, and is nearly thirty years of age. Henceforth his tales, if we are to call them tales, his papers, sketches, and finished pictures, will be wholly rural. He has written "The Dewy Morn," and apparently the work has been refused; there was little in his previous attempts to tempt a publisher any farther. He will now write "Greene Ferne Farm," "Bevis," "After London," and "Amaryllis at the Fair." They are not novels at all, though he chooses to call them novels; they are a series of pictures, some of beauty and finish incomparable, strung together by some sort of thread of human interest which nobody cares to follow.