“But I cannot feel that such themes are legitimate in a work of fiction—a work of art,” protested Smith; “especially,” he went on, “when they are treated so mercilessly—with so much—so much——”
“So much truth,” Jones interposed in a tone of superiority and triumph. “You will have to admit, I am sure, that there isn’t a false note in the whole story; it has the ring of relentless truth from the first page to the last. Do you mean to say that you shrink from the truth—that you don’t prefer truth always to prevail?”
Smith squirmed a trifle, but held his ground. “I am not at all sure that, in a work of fiction (and a work of fiction should be a work of art), absolute truth should be sought for. I see the difference between art and science. Why should one endeavor to be the other?” he inquired.
“But a novel purports to be a picture of life.”
“Yes, exactly—a picture; and a picture isn’t life itself; it is, or ought to be, after all, a picture,” said Smith, momentarily triumphant in turn. “The human body, for instance, has been painted and sculptured from the beginning of civilization, and, indeed, before it, but even to-day, with all our modern passion for fact or verity or whatever you choose to call it, even the most realistic of sculptors and painters has a tendency to grope toward beauty of form, to portray human beings without clothes more as they ought to look rather than as they actually do. This, it seems to me, is the wonderful privilege and function of art. It should embellish life, not perpetuate its ugliness. Toward the writing of novels I feel much the same. There are entire sides of life that do not strike me as a proper field of exploitation in a tale, a narrative, a novel.”
“But what is a poor, unhappy man of talent to do?” exclaimed Jones. “Here is Wells. He has observed with microscopic fidelity a young girl whose character, habit of thought, conception of life, her attitude toward the entire universe, in short, has developed and been formed in an epoch grotesquely different from that in which her father and aunt received their indelible impressions. The result is a domestic tragedy. It interested Wells; he sees all around it; it strikes him as being of immense value in the history of human shift and change; he wants to record it; he does so with the marvelous vividness and truthfulness of which he almost alone is at present master, and then you go and call him offensive and objectionable and a lot of other things. What do you want a man like that to do? Ought he to observe and reflect merely for his own instruction, and then when he puts pen to paper, perpetrate a new series of the ‘Elsie Books’ or ‘Dottie Dimple’?”
“Now, of course, you have become extreme and unfair,” objected Smith. “I need hardly say that even during my earliest years I couldn’t endure the ‘Dottie Dimple’ and ‘Elsie’ tendencies of fiction. Besides, you know perfectly well the sort of books I enjoy. You know that, strangely enough, I revel in both Thackeray and Dickens. I have read ‘Middlemarch’ six times and hope to read it many times more. I can always re-read the Brontës and Mrs. Gaskell and Meredith and Hardy. Howells has rarely failed me. Henry James used to charm and enchant me and he still always interests me even when I have to work hard to translate him. But what’s the use of naming any others? The list is sufficiently comprehensive to show that I am not narrow-minded.”
“The list is admirable as far as it goes,” Jones agreed; “I have but one fault to find with it, which is that you have read this and several other books by Wells with interest, and yet you will not accept him and enroll his name. The man is important in the world of letters; if he were not, you and I could not possibly spend so much time in talking about him. Tacitly you admit this. Why do you refuse to admit it positively? It makes me feel that you are not quite keeping in step with your epoch, your age, your time, your period. This is a marvelous age, and aren’t you rather deliberately falling behind it? By the way, where does Balzac come in? You haven’t mentioned Balzac.”
“I have read nearly everything of Balzac with sincere interest,” Smith admitted. “He is a literary wonder, a giant; sometimes he seems to me to be a kind of intellectual monster.”
“Yet Balzac was anything but squeamish in his choice of subject or his fashion of treating it. He, too, had his microscope. He stuck the end of it in his eye and looked at life and wrote accounts of his investigations. Surely they cannot always have pleased you!”