Confessions of a Book-Lover

by Maurice Francis Egan

Standing on the ladder, unhappily a rather shaky ladder, to put back "With the Immortals" on the shelf, I pass Wells's great novel of "Marriage," which I would clutch to read again, if I had not already begun this Letter of James—written to his wife:

I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: "This is the real me!" And afterwards, considering the circumstances in which the man is placed, and noting how some of them are fitted to evoke this attitude, whilst others do not call for it, an outside observer may be able to prophesy where the man may fail, where succeed, where be happy and where miserable. Now as well as I can describe it, this characteristic attitude in me always involves an element of active tension, of holding my own, as it were, and trusting outward things to perform their part so as to make it a full harmony, but without any guaranty that they will. Make it a guaranty—and the attitude immediately becomes to my consciousness stagnant and stingless. Take away the guaranty, and I feel (provided I am überhaupt in vigorous condition) a sort of deep enthusiastic bliss, of bitter willingness to do and suffer anything, which translates itself physically by a kind of stinging pain inside my breast-bone (don't smile at this—it is to me an essential element of the

whole thing!), and which, although it is a mere mood or emotion to which I can give no form in words, authenticates itself to me as the deepest principle of all active and theoretic determination which I possess....

Personal expression is, after all, what we long for in literature. Cardinal Newman tells us, I think, in his "Idea of a University," that it is the very essence of literature. Scientia is truth, or conclusions stated as truths which stand irrespective of the personality of the speaker or writer. But literature, to be literature, must be personal. It is good literature when it is expressed plastically, and in accordance with a good usage of its time. A reader like myself does not, perhaps, trouble himself sufficiently with the philosophy of William James as represented in these "Letters." One has a languid interest in knowing what he thought of Bergson and Nietzsche or even of Hegel; but for the constant reader his detachment or attachment to Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas is not nearly so important as his personal impressions of both the little things and the big things of our contemporary life. Whether you are pragmatic or not, you must, if you are at all in love with life, become a Jamesonian after you have read the "Letters"!

And his son, Mr. Henry James, who, we may hope, may resemble his father in time, has arranged them so well, and kept himself so tactfully in the background, that you feel, too, that whether young Henry is a pragmatist or not, he is a most understanding human being. The only way to read these "Letters" is to dip into them here and there, as the only way to make a good salad is to pour the vinegar on drop by drop. To use an oriental metaphor, the oil of appreciation is stimulated by the acid of wit, the salt of wisdom, and the pepper of humour. Frankly, since I discovered William James as a human being I have begun to read him for the same reason that I read Pepys—for pure enjoyment!

A friend of mine, feeling that I had taken the "Letters of William James" too frivolously, told me that I ought to go to Mr. Wells to counteract my mediæval philosophy and too cheerful view of life. Just as if I had not struggled with Mr. Wells, and irritated myself into a temperature in trying to get through his latest preachments! I am not quite sure what I said of Mr. Wells, but I find, in an article by Mr. Desmond MacCarthy in the "New Statesman," just what I ought to have said.

This doctrine of the inspired priesthood of authors is exaggerated and dangerous. Neither has it, you see, prevented him from writing "The Wonderful Visit." Artists should feel, and if necessary be told, that they are on their honour to do their best. That will do. If they flatter themselves that they are messengers from the Father of Light whenever they put pen to paper, they are apt to take any emotional hubble-bubble in themselves as a sign that the Spirit has been brooding upon the waters, and pour out; though a short time afterwards they may let loose a spate flowing in a quite different direction. Sincerity of the moment is not sincerity; those who have watched England's prime minister know that.

William James helped me to wash the bad taste of Mr. Wells's god out of my mouth. It seems remarkable that such a distinguished man of talent—if he were dead, one would be justified in saying a man of genius—should not have been able to invent a more attractive and potent Deity. Voltaire, while making no definition, did better than that; but Voltaire was a much cleverer man than Wells, and he had an education such as no modern writer has. When Mr. Wells preaches, he becomes a bore. Who, except the empty-minded, or those who, like the Athenians, are always seeking new things, can take Mr. Wells's dogmatisms seriously? Is it not in one of his "Sermones" that Horace

tells us that the merchant wants to be a sailor and the sailor a merchant? Does he not begin with—Qui fit, Mæcenas? But Horace says nothing of the authors of fiction—Stevenson calls them very lightly "filles de joie,"—who insist on being boldly and brutally theologians and philosophers. Horace might have invented a better god than Wells; but he had too much good taste and too much knowledge of man in the world to attempt it.