DISCOVERIES
An Ethical Society might pass a winter's evening in this debate: Does it need more strength to endure failure or to bear success? The dangers upon either road stand out easily, for all but the actual wayfarer. By the one he may fall into the slough of Bitterness, whilst the other, far more pleasant as it draws him on, may lead to no more than the pitiable, luxurious cities of Arrogance and Meanness.
The problem certainly needs no elaboration in this place, since Hubert's path lay all too clearly towards failure. "I fear," wrote his publisher as an old friend, "it is no use concealing the fact that people do not want the book. There have as yet been no repeat orders from libraries or booksellers. We can only face the fact and hope to do better with the next. As you know, in my opinion the book was not up to your usual high level."
"Who wants his damned opinion?" growled Hubert out loud, though alone, and crumpled up the letter. Why, publishers weren't even critics!
As to these last, their unanimity for once was wonderful.
There are ingenious authors who amuse themselves by printing excerpts from reviews of their last novel, alternately conflicting, thuswise; "An able novel: Tooting Sentinel. Weak and formless: Times. An arresting piece of work, whoever by: Stafford News. An amateur affair: Standard;"—thinking in this manner to have blackened for evermore the ancient art of Criticism in any decent-minded person's eyes. They scarcely realise, poor injured souls, that the thing is an Art. Were it but a machine, it doubtless would attain the same result from each book, whether put before it by a Fleet Street expert or a Stafford tyro. Because it is an Art, however, and all Art is merely the expression of an individual emotion, it follows that each book must react on every critic in a different way. These notices, so pompous with The Times or Stafford News above them, are not worked out with prayer by the whole paper's staff; they stand for one opinion, no less—and no more—than the opinion of a woman-reader over the tea-tray. Opinions, moreover, vary; praise to God! How fresh and hopeful, what a message, seems this story to the un-read Staffordian; how stale and hopeless, what an ancient dish, it appears to him of Printing House Square, who has read more than he can hope ever to forget!
And yet beneath it all there is a principle. Bad Of Its Sort is bad, whatever sort one likes; which is all Plato's Ideas in a convenient nutshell.
And every one agreed that Was it Worth While? was bad of its sort. It tried to be something it was not, and what can be more shocking?
Hubert, then, had an admirable chance of showing what effect a failure, after some years of moderate success, had on his character; and took it to the full. As the reviews came in, he grew more and more violent. It was not many days before he countermanded all the extra papers, but his faithful Press-Cutters sent in the notices religiously and he could not help reading them. Helena would come down first (she always did) at breakfast time and hide the small green envelopes, which then arrived by the last post and were brought in at 9 p.m. by the complaisant Lily.
Then what a flow of words! Poor critics, publishers, and readers; what a set they were, how blind, how asinine, how spiteful! Sometimes he would at once go to his study and write a reply, which Helena did not in every case succeed in rescuing before it got into the pillar-box, though certainly her score was bigger.