What will the critical students of, say, two generations ahead, make of the fact that in the spring of 1894 the newspapers of London treated the appearance of a new novel by Mr. E. F. Benson as an event of striking importance in the world of books? The thought that death will rid us of the responsibility for that awkward explanation lends an almost welcome aspect to the grave....
That The Rubicon is the worst-written, falsest and emptiest of the decade, it would be, perhaps, too much to say. In these days of elastic publishing standards and moneyed amateurs, many queer things are done, and Mr. Benson’s work is a shade better than the poorest of the stuff which would-be novelists pay for the privilege of seeing in print.... A certain interest attaches, no doubt, to the demonstration which it affords that a young gentleman of university training can meet the female amateurs on their own ground, and be every whit as maudlin and absurd as they know how to be. But the sisterhood have an advantage over him in the fact that they can spell.... There are a score of glaring grammatical errors, to say nothing of the clumsiness and incompetency which mark three sentences out of five throughout the book. Bad workmanship might be put aside as the fault of inexperience, if the young man had an actual story to tell ... but there is nothing of that sort here.... The heroine is from time to time led over to as near [sic] the danger line of decency as the libraries will permit. She is made to utter several suggestive speeches, and once or twice quite skirts the frontier of the salacious....”
(5) The World. (Length unknown: I cannot find the second half of it.)
“But, alas! Eva Hayes in The Rubicon is quite as vulgar, quite as blatant in the bad taste she is pleased to exhibit on every occasion, as her predecessor Dodo, and is dull beyond description into the bargain. From beginning to end of the two volumes there is not one spark or gleam of humour, or sign of true observation and knowledge of humanity.”
(6) The (late) St. James’s Budget. (Six columns.)
“Another Unbirched Heroine.
It might have been supposed that the son of an Archbishop was hardly the sort of person to shine in this kind of literature, but Mr. Benson has taught us better than that. Yet our thanks are due to him for one thing: his book consists of only two volumes; it might have been in three....
How they Mate in the ‘Hupper Suckles.’ ...
Languour, Cigarettes and Blasphemies....
We conclude this enthusiastic appreciation of Mr. Benson with the bold avowal that we regard The Rubicon as almost truly perfect of its kind, and probably unsurpassable. Any one of Shakespeare’s most remarkable gifts may be found, perhaps, in equal measure in the writings of some minor author; but none ever had such a union of so many as he. So it is with Mr. Benson. A school-girl’s idea of ‘plot,’ a nursery-governess’s knowledge of the world; a gentleman’s ‘gentleman’s’ views of high life; an undergraduate’s sense of style and store of learning; a society paragraphist’s fine feeling and good taste; a man-milliner’s notion of creating character: of each of these you may find plenty of evidence in the novels of the day; but nowhere else—unless it be in Dodo—will they all be found welded into one harmonious unity as they are here!...”
Here is but the most random plucking of these blossoms, but what a nosegay! The flower from Vanity Fair grew of course from the same root as that from the St. James’s Budget, and this is interesting as showing the excellent co-ordination between these different attacks. As a Press-campaign on an infinitesimal scale, I give the foregoing as a classical example. No book, however bad, could possibly have called forth, in itself, so combined an onslaught: every gun in Grub Street was primed and ready and sighted not on The Rubicon at all, but on the author of Dodo. But herein is shown the inexpediency of using up all your ammunition at once, on so insignificant a target. It was clear that if the respectable journals of London made so vigorous an offensive, that offensive had to be final, and the war to be won. Still more clear was it that, if this was not a preconcerted, malicious and murderous campaign not on a particular book, but on an individual, the entire columns of the London Press must henceforth be completely devoted to crushing inferior novels. The Rubicon was but one of this innumerable company: if the Press had determined to crush inferior novels, it was clear that for a considerable time there would be no room in its columns for politics, or sport or foreign news or anything else whatever. Not even for advertisements, unless we regard such attacks as being unpaid advertisements....