A Likely Story

by William De Morgan

AN APOLOGY IN CONFIDENCE

The present writer has a weight upon his conscience. But he has no desire to disburden himself at the expense of the future reader of his works. This is addressed solely to those whom he has acquired the right to apostrophize as "My readers"; and, indeed, properly speaking, only to such of them as were misled by a too generous appreciation of his first four novels, into purchasing his fifth. For he cannot free himself from a haunting sense that he was guilty of a gross neglect in not giving them fuller warning that the said fifth volume was not Early Victorian, either in style or substance.

It is well understood nowadays—and it is not for so humble an individual as the P. W. aforesaid to call in question the judgments of everybody else—that each living author, whether he be painter or writer, shall produce at suitable intervals, preferably of twelve months, a picture or volume on all fours with the work from his hand which has first attracted public attention. And the P. W. cannot conceal from himself that in publishing, without a solemn warning addressed to possible purchasers, such a novel as his last ("An Affair of Dishonour": Heinemann), he has run the risk of incurring the execration or forgiveness—the upshot is the same—of many of his most tolerant and patient readers, to remain on good terms with whom is, and always will be, his literary ambition.

For the "Affair" is certainly not an Early Victorian story in the ordinary sense of the words. A certain latitude has been claimed by some critics in the choice of names for the periods treated of in the other humble performances of its author; but so far no commentator has called its epoch—that of Charles II.—"Early Victorian." It has been spoken of freely as sixteenth and eighteenth century; but that is immaterial. In fact, it is difficult to resist the conviction that in what may be called sporting chronology—a system which seems to have a certain vogue of its own—so long as the writer says "century," one number does as well as another to make the sentence ring. The expression "Early Victorian," however, is embarrassingly circumscribed in its meaning. If cannot be applied at random to any period whatever, without danger of the Sciolist, or the Merest Tyro, going to the British Museum and getting at Haydn's "Dictionary of Dates," and catching you out. Still, it does not do to be too positive; seeing that the P. W. has here—and can show it you in the house—what seems a description of the Restoration as "Pre-Cromwellian." There it is, before him, as he presently writes, on the shiniest paper that ever made an old fogy wish he had been born fifty years earlier.[#]

[#] I will be just and generous to this writer simultaneously. The Protector was born in 1599. Pre-Cromwellian days were the sixteenth century, clearly. In the sixteenth century St. James's and Piccadilly would not be includable in residential quarters, because the latter was not born or thought of. If by Pre-Cromwellian this writer means Pre-Commonwealth, the inclusion of Piccadilly in the description of a country girl's conception of swell London, written a hundred years later, when Piccadilly was "fait accompli," seems to me not unnatural. I am bound to say, however, that when I first read the passage (p. 181)—immediately after I had written it—I thought "those days" meant the days of the story. Analysis of London topography would have been out of place in treating of the cogitations of a country girl unfamiliar with the metropolis.

To fulfil the conditions which literary usage appears to dictate, and to signalise his conformity with public opinion, there is no doubt that the writer of "An Affair of Dishonour"—or, shall I drop the thin veil adopted to avoid egotism, and say I myself—should have made that work not only Early Victorian, but Suburban. For, as I understand, I am expected to be Suburban. This is less difficult, as suburbs do not depend on chroniclers, like periods, but remain to speak for themselves. One knows when one is being Suburban. Among epochs one treads gingerly, like the skater on ice that scarcely bears him. I may take as an instance a book I wrote, called "Somehow Good," whose cradle, as it were, was the Twopenny Tube. The frequent reference to this story as an "Early Victorian" tale has impressed me that Early Victorianism is an abstract quality, which owes its fascination neither to its earliness, nor to its epoch. I am stating the case broadly, but as this is entirely between ourselves, very great niceties are hardly called for. We may leave the Sciolist, and the Merest Tyro, to fight about niceties. On the other hand, outside opinion, though a little vague about Early Victorianism, has not been inconsistent about Suburbanity. It has shrewdly identified, in my first four novels, the Suburban character of Tooting, Balham, Hampstead, Putney, Shepherd's Bush, and Wimbledon; and I now perceive that my reader was entitled to expect Clapham Junction or Peckham Bye, at least. Nothing would have pleased me better, when writing my last book, than to supply the nearest practicable Carolean equivalent, had I seen more clearly how the land lay. However, it's done now and can't be helped.

Broadly speaking, then, non-Victorianity and defective Suburbanity seem to be responsible for my slump in conformity. And, though I have to go to America for distinct proofs of it, I am obliged to recognise suggestions of the same critical decision nearer home. The first three of the following American reviews appeared at intervals in the same journal, showing how deeply the writer had taken my delinquency to heart:

"Probably written years ago, and found in an old desk."

"A totally uncharacteristic and thoroughly disappointing 'historical romance.'"

"'A perfectly good cat,' that I have found in the literary ash-pan .... differs from everything that has come to us previously from the author's pen, as lifeless clay differs from living spirit."

"Wherein lies the superiority of fiction that can give us nothing better than this?"

"It is not, in itself, worth reading ... being an unpleasant, unexciting, and unoriginal experiment in historical romance ... leaving us disappointed of what we hoped for, and unedified by what we get."

"The ghosts of 'David Copperfield' and 'Joseph Vance,' 'Alice-for-Short,' and the 'Little Marchioness,' may together weep pale spirit tears, or nobly repress them, in the hope that 'It Never can Happen Again.'"

"We can but hope for a return from this invented matter and artificial style to an unabashed Victorianism, from which it should appear the author is trying to escape."

There is something spirited in a selection of quotations which begins and ends with such different conjectures as to the genesis of their subject. There can be no doubt about the earnestness of the hope expressed in the last one, for it is confirmed in the same words by more than one American journal.[#]

[#] The force of the unanimity of two or three American papers grows less when their reader perceives the verbal identity of the article throughout—and that their writers are not only unanimous, but unicorporeal. Numbers are impressive, but when they play fast and loose with plurality in this way, all their edge is taken off.

Another accusation against me is that I have given up nice people, and only write about nasty ones. Is this true? I myself thought Lucinda a nice enough girl, particularly when she was fishing in the sea for the phosphorescence. All the same, the following seemed to me quite a just comment, and very well worded: "There must have been something of Phaedra in Lucinda for her to act as she did, unless we are to revert to the belief in a baneful Aphrodite no human will can resist." Something of Phaedra—but still, I submit, not much, for Sir Oliver was passionately urgent; while Hippolytus—to borrow a phrase from Mrs. Steptoe, a quarter where I have unlimited credit—didn't want to any such a thing.

Every book has a right to an assumption intrinsically improbable, to make the story go. What a flat tragedy Hamlet would have been without its fundamental ghost! And my "quidlibet audendi" is a small presumption compared with my giant namesake's. Of course, I have no right to the comparison unless you grant like rights to tittlebat and leviathan. "Semper fiat aequa potestas," for both. Indeed, the dwarf needs artificial latitude more than the giant.

In my capacity of tittlebat in an estuary of Leviathan's great sea—or, should I not rather say, a sandhopper on its coast?—I have assumed that this baneful Aphrodite no human will can resist had possession of Lucinda; who was, and continued to be, a very nice girl for all that. Phaedra was not nice, because of the attitude of Hippolytus, as sketched by Mrs. Steptoe; and even more because of the fibs she told when she found the young man blind to the attractions of his stepmother. Lucinda was not a bit the less nice because she was swept away by, absorbed into, crushed under, a passion of which she only knew that it was the reverse of hate, and of which few of us know much more. Indeed, all male persuasions get so very mixed, owing to the Nature of Things, that they are almost a negligible factor in the solution of the problem. Now and again, however, it is hinted at by thoughtful male persons—Shakespeare and Browning, and the like. Read this, for instance:

"But, please you, wonder I would put
My cheek beneath that lady's foot;
Rather than trample under mine
The laurels of the Florentine,
And you shall see how the Devil spends
A fire God gave for other ends.

"I tell you, I stride up and down
This garret, crowned with Love's best crown,
And feasted with Love's perfect feast
To think I kill for her at least
Body and soul and peace and fame,
Alike youth's end and manhood's aim."

*****

Perhaps you will say that no ladylike, well-brought-up girl, ever feels so explosive. About a Man too—the idea! But for my part, I don't see that Browning's chap need have been a nasty chap. Nevertheless, my sense of the proprieties—which is keen—compels me to admit that if I had a daughter, and she were to go on like that, I should feel it my duty to point out to her that if she continued to do so, she would run the risk of being taken for a suffragette, or something. I might get no farther, because I word things badly.

Lucinda, you see, might have gone on like that about Oliver; only no doubt the memory of old precepts hung about her, and acted as I trust my remonstrance would have done in the case of my hypothetical daughter. Anyhow, I do think that the time-honoured usage which keeps girls as ignorant of life as possible, so that they shall be docile when a judicious Hymen offers them a marriage with a suitable parti, ought at least, as a set-off, to go hand-in-hand with leniency towards this ignorance when it betrays its possessor into an indiscretion she has no means of gauging the dangers of. For my belief is that the wickedness of her action seemed purely academical to Lucinda. And Oliver knew how to manage cases of this sort, bless you!

As for him, I readily admit that he was not nice, but I take the testimonials to his nastiness as complimentary. When an Italian audience pelts Iago with rotten eggs, it is accepted by the actor as heartfelt praise. And you must have Devils, as well as Fairies, when it's in a Pantomime, as we all know. An unhappy author whom lack of material for copy has nearly qualified for Earlswood cannot go on for ever writing about good people. He must have a villain, please, sooner or later!

Nevertheless, some of my correspondents want to deprive me of this innocent luxury. Such an appeal as the following makes me feel that I may have to "leave the killing out, when all is done."

"Dear sir, can any 'success' that meets your latest story compensate for the pain, and—so personal have you made our relations to you—the humiliation so many of us feel?

"Why leave the heights—the sunny hill-slopes—where we met you as a wise, sweet older brother, and lingered long after your story was over, with stilled and strengthened hearts?

"I am sure none of us is happier, and none certainly is better for breathing the sickening air into which you have led us...."

Now, if I had published this story after a manifesto warning, cautioning, and earnestly entreating all readers who expected it to be Victorian and Suburban to keep their money in their pockets, I should not be feeling, as I do now, that the writer of the above letter had been entrapped into reading it under false pretences. I can only offer humble and heartfelt apology to the writers, English as well as American, of the many letters I have received, practically of the same tenor as the above.

But I am left in a dilemma. I cannot consider myself bound to make my next net volume exclusively Victorian, Suburban, kindly, gossipy, button-holy—I rather like that word—in the face of some very strong encouragements to have another go-in at Barts, or their equivalents, of evil dispositions, or, perhaps I should say, of Mediæval dispositions; for I am countenanced by many sporting chronologists in attaching a meaning to this word at war with my boyish understanding of it, which stopped the "moyen âge" at the Reformation. However, it doesn't matter; this is all in confidence. I cannot very well cite these encouragements. They form part of a most liberal and intelligent series of reviews—not unmixed praise by any means—which I am sticking at odd times in a big book, to which I shall have to allude more particularly presently. It is enough for us now that several of them speak of "An Affair of Dishonour" as its author's best production, so far. After that I must really be Mediæval, or Marry-come-up, or whatever one ought to call it, a little more. There is no way out.

A reviewer of an isolated and forcible genius also has a share in inducing me to try the same line again. I want to be reviewed by him, please, as often as possible. There is a healthy and bracing tone in his lightest word. Listen:

"A story-teller ought to be able to tell a story. There is a story in 'An Affair of Dishonour,' but I pity the reader who tries to excavate it. He must tie a wet towel round his head, and clench his teeth, and prepare to face hours of digging and scraping. And when he has excavated the story from the heavy clay of the style, he will ask why the author took so much trouble to bury it so deep in affectation... Mr. De Morgan tries to copy the language of the seventeenth century, but he copies it like a schoolboy.... To make the mess complete, the last chapter is taken from a manuscript.

"If Mr. De Morgan desired to imitate Esmond he ought to have stuck to the Esmond method. If he wished to tell a melodramatic story he ought to have told it plainly. The story is stale.... I suppose the rake is meant to be a Lovelace, and Lucinda a Clarissa Harlowe. The whole thing is artificial, there is no illusion, and the characters are all sticks. The battle is bad, and the duels are bad, and the dialogue is very bad. And how it bores one!"

Can you wonder that I look forward to being reviewed again by this gentleman? I shall feel an eager anticipation as I search among my press-cuttings, after the appearance of this present volume, for the name of his halfpenny journal. I can fancy his indignation at a picture that speaks—a completer mess even than the dragging in of a manuscript at the end of Lucinda! This was shocking—at least, it must have been, as otherwise this gentleman would have been talking nonsense.

But my button-holed readers must be expecting me to come to the point. It is this. "A Likely Story" is an honest, if a humble, attempt to satisfy all parties—except, indeed, the last party just cited, whom I should be sorry to satisfy. It combines on one canvas the story of a family incident that is purely Victorian—though, alas, the era came to an end so shortly afterwards—with another, of the Italian cinquecento, without making any further demand on human powers of belief than that a picture is made to talk. I have also introduced a very pretty suburb, Coombe, as the residence of the earliest Victorian aunt, to my thinking, that my pen is responsible for. I like this way of shifting the responsibility off my own shoulders.

However, it is fair to admit that the expedient of making the photographic copy talk, as well as the original, may outrage the sense of probability of some of my more matter-of-fact readers. I shall be sorry, because modification in a second edition will be difficult, if not impossible.

If I do not succeed in pleasing both sections of my Public, I am at least certain of the approval of a very large number of readers who have found my previous productions too long. The foregoing is even less than the 100,000 words which seem to recommend themselves as the right length, per se, for a net volume. A slump from a quarter to a twentieth of a million words marks a powerful self-restraint on the part of my "cacoethes scribendi"—an essay towards conformity which seems to me to deserve recognition. I do not understand that anyone has, so far, propounded the doctrine that a story cannot be too short. If that were so the author would save himself a world of trouble by emulating the example of the unknown author of the shortest work of its kind on record—the biography of St. James the Less. But perhaps I am mistaken in supposing that Jackaminory and the Apostle were one and the same personage.

I am personally more interested in the length of reviews than of books, in connexion with the volume mentioned just now, in which I am collecting my press-cuttings. The page of this volume is fourteen inches by eight, and three reviews thirteen inches long exactly cover it, leaving a little space for the name of the journal and the date. It is too small to accommodate more than three normal press columns in the width. So that a review thirteen inches long is from my point of view the most suitable for my books. Of course, twenty-six and thirty-nine inches are equally acceptable. The difficulty only begins when accommodation of fractions becomes necessary. I account that review ill-written which perplexes me with the need for such accommodation.

I am prepared to accept six shilling volumes of 100,000 words, with reviews thirteen inches long, as the true and perfect image of Literature indeed.

Man, male and female, is a reading animal: or, what is perhaps more to the purpose, believes himself one. He may be divided into two classes—the Studious Reader and the General Reader. The former never skims books. If he dips into them at all he takes long dips, and when he comes out, leaves a bookmark in to show where he was or which was his machine. He goes steadily and earnestly through the last, last, last word of Scientific thought—say, for instance, "An Essay towards a fuller Analysis of the Correlation between Force, Matter and Motion, with especial reference to their relations in Polydimensional Space"—and wants to just finish a marginal note upon it in pencil when the dinner-gong gets a rumble. He knits his brows and jumps and snorts when he peruses a powerful criticism, with antitheses and things. He very often thinks he will buy that book, only he must just glance at it again before he sends the order. Nevertheless, his relations with Fiction lack cordiality. They do not go, on his part, beyond picking up the last net volume from the drawing-room table, reading the title aloud, and putting it down again. And he only does this because it's there, and looks new. He wouldn't complain if no Fiction came into the house at all.

Not so the General Reader. His theory of Literature is entirely different. Broadly speaking, it is this: that books are meant to be read, up to a certain point; but that, as soon as that point is reached, it is desirable that they should be returned to Mudie's or the "Times," and something else got, with a little less prosywozying in it; and bounceable young women who ought to know better, but don't; and detectives if possible, and motors and aeroplanes anyhow. The exact definition of this point is difficult, but it lies somewhere about the region in which the General Reader gets bored to death, and can't stand this dam rot any longer. It does not matter to him that he may be the loser by his abrupt decisions; if anything, he takes an unnatural pleasure in straining the capacity of his Circulating Library to the full extent of its contract. He has paid his subscription, and may change whenever he likes. That's the bargain, and no humbugging!

So he goes on slap-dashing about, shuttle-cocking back every new delivery, saying "Pish!" over this and "Tush!" about that; writing short comments on margins such as, "Vieux jeu!" or "No Woman would"; only occasionally going carefully through a book to find the chapter that reviewer-fellow said was quite unfit for the girls to read, because one really ought to keep an eye on what comes into the house nowadays. His decisions can, however, scarcely be accepted as unfailing guides to a just discrimination of literary merit, as those who know him are never tired of insisting on his inattentive habits, his paroxysms of electric suddenness in action, and, above all, his insatiable thirst for something new. As for me, I am like Charles Lamb, when he was told there was a gentleman in the room who admired "Paradise Regained." I should like to feel his bumps.

Nevertheless, he is a personage for whom Authors have a great and natural respect. He is so numerous! And just think what fun it would be if each of him bought a copy of each of one's immortal works! Consequently, I wish to consult his liking, and am prepared—within reason—to defer to his opinion of what length a book ought to be. It is no doubt quite otherwise with those Authors who may be said to belong to the school of Inspirationalism—really one feels quite Modern, writing such a word—who claim for each of their stories the position or character of a sneeze—an automatic action which its victim, perpetrator, executant, interpreter, proprietor, promoter, parent, mover, seconder—or whatever we choose to call him—has absolutely no control over.

But I am wandering away from the point of this apology, which is really to say "peccavi," and, please, I won't do so any more. So far, that is, as is practicable. If I drop into a prehistoric problem-novel, by way of a change, or have a try at an autobiography of Queen Nilocris—just possibilities at random—I will do what I can to head off readers who want one sort only, and know which it is.

As for the foregoing story, it is just as Victorian as it is anything else, though not, perhaps, Early enough to give entire satisfaction. One can't expect everything, in this imperfect world. To my thinking the shortness of the story should cover a multitude of sins.

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS GUILDFORD