[XXV]
To Hugh Pontrex, Villa Rosa, Mentone.
91b Harley Street, W.,
October 3, 1910.
My dear Hugh,
When you write and ask me to tell you what books I read during my illness I can see an ancient accusation of yours peering at me behind the question—as though you had visibly added that, except when indisposed, I never read books at all. And if it weren't that I too find other people's reading so interesting, though less informing perhaps than their pictures, I might possibly stand upon my dignity, and decline to supply you with an answer. And in any case, now that I come to reflect a little, this will be rather a difficult thing to do. For having got me at a disadvantage, you see, I could no longer pick and choose, as is my wont when the health within me is rude and exacting. I could no longer demand haughtily of a book that it must make me read it, or remain within its covers for ever unread. My defences were down, and I had perforce to roll over, hands up, for anything in the shape of book with which Accident and Mudie had happened to endow my house. And as a result I read half a dozen novels that, as the Americans say, left me cold, although I must needs give them the credit of having whiled away the time. Moreover, before dismissing them thus unkindly, I must remember that they were each the work of somebody's hand and brain, and the hard work too—at any rate so far as the hand was concerned—as anyone who has tried to put eighty thousand words of even unimaginative English upon paper would surely bear witness. Some of it too, one could see, was the rather tired work of minds that should really have been (perhaps only too willingly) lying fallow of production. And I think that I noticed this particularly in an altogether unimportant little volume called "Daisy's Aunt" by Mr. E. F. Benson, that may well stand for a sorrowful example. It's true that it was merely a two-shilling story; but even so, it was surely an unworthy one. And yet, I suppose, there is a public that likes to devour these descriptions of very ordinary London drawing-rooms and very usual Thames-side bungalows—that would fain listen to even the weariest repetitions of the somewhat annoying slang of the "oh you heavenly person" type that for the moment is being affected by Mr. Benson's "quite nice people." And having thus found, or created, such a public, and designed the precise bait that it requires, I suppose that one is justified in hooking, as often as may be, one's share of their two-shilling pieces. But alas for the artist in Mr. Benson, in whose books there have been passages good enough of their kind to have made, perhaps, three or four pieces of real literature that few, I suppose, would have bought, but that some, at any rate, would have liked to keep upon their shelves. And yet again, who is to say that Mr. Benson (as representing not a few) has not after all chosen his better way? For if his popularity has been costly, it is at any rate of a clean and healthy sort, and one that may well, perhaps, be substituting itself for vogues unworthier and less wholesome.
They form an interesting study, these three brothers, not merely in heredity of talent, but because, as it seems to me, they stand very high in that small but growing band of really able writers, who possess also the knack of a popular appeal. The sons of a religious, scholarly, and discreet father, who himself had the power of attracting both attention and success, these qualities, with no suspicion of a more wayward genius, have descended upon them in very generous measure. The social sense, the faculty of choosing the right friends, and a gift for getting them on paper; the high purpose, clerically moulded; the gentle inward warring of trained intellect and instinctive orthodoxy; to each has fallen a share of his father's mantle, wherewith to make himself a garment. And the mental pabulum that they provide is just what is wanted by a large number of active, intelligent men and women to whom genius is at all times unsympathetic; and by the yet greater company—including most of us, I suppose—to whom its strongest appeal is a matter of mood and place. Every generation seems to provide itself with such writers, and as a rule rewards them well; and while, no doubt, it is genius alone that survives, with a light that can never remain hidden, the others, by their more instant and transient appeal, do yeoman work, and are gathered honourably to their fathers. For we may not always be tuned to the tang of Stevenson or the burr of Dr. John Brown. But we are seldom incapable of sitting with enjoyment at some College Window, or allowing the lesser voices to prepare us for those that are mightier than they.
And never, perhaps, has a generation possessed so many of these. Never certainly has their level of eloquence been so high. Hichens and Locke and Anthony Hope, Phillpotts, Marriott, Munro, and Wells, with Hewlett and de Morgan a little nearer, perhaps, to the stars, and a score of others close upon their heels—how sound and various is their artistry, and how consistent, as a whole, is the quality of their output. For this, one thinks, must be the besetting danger of all these skilled professionals—to avoid, on the one hand, the Scylla of over-repetition (to which most of the monthly magazines were long ago safely anchored) and on the other, the more dangerous Charybdis of a too venturesome novelty. Upon the first (and still confining oneself to the more considerable writers) Mr. Benson, the essayist, for example, would seem, more nearly than many, to be in danger of foundering. While upon the second I can think of Conan Doyle as having bumped as badly as most writers of an equal eminence. For while there is no man who can spin a better yarn for a dull journey (even if he has never given us a Brushwood Boy), his particular talent is about as at home among the delicate domesticities of his "Duet with an Occasional Chorus" as would be some genial pugilist with the "Pot-pourri of a Surrey Garden." And yet, while one could pile up examples of sad wreckage upon both these rocks, the wonder, after all, is that there is really so little of it.
Mr. Benson, no doubt, will put up his helm in time; and Sir Arthur has been wise enough, as far as I know, to avoid any further emulation of Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Mitford. But it is, perhaps, to Mrs. Humphry Ward that one naturally seems to turn for a demonstration of the completely median course—so rigidly median indeed, in its lofty mediocrity, that I am sometimes at a loss to account for her very great popularity even among (as the critics have called it) the circulating-library public. For though she has a gift, and a very considerable one, for bringing together the materials—a little machine-made, perhaps—of dramatic incident, one may search her books in vain for a single thrill that they have produced; while of humour they contain not a semblance. Indeed they form, as it seems to me, a long series of admirably well-laid fires, for which only the matches are wanting. As Dr. Brown would have said, she is the Maker, not the Mother, of her books. And I think hers must be the twentieth-century triumph of the college-bred lady inspector.
It's strange how increasingly one misses, when it is absent, this underlying sense of humour; so much so indeed that one perceives it more and more to be a sine qua non of all towering and durable achievement. Given Meredith's humour, how Hardy, with his first-hand observation, his extraordinary detachment, and the beautiful lucidity of his English, would have loomed above the creator of Sir Willoughby. With humour for its lightning, how Tess would have stricken us to the heart. And how poor a substitute for it is irony, howsoever its subjects may deserve it. To withstand the years it must, no doubt, surround itself with the stronger qualities—depth and simplicity and desire—or Barrie, least of the Immortals, would be among their giants; and Jacobs would be knocking at their door. But that Olympus demands it let all testify who have tried to love Sordello, or watched Jude fade ever deeper into his obscurity, or read again, a generation later, the rhapsodies of Inglesant and Elsmere. There are a few exceptions of course, chiefly, I think, in the sphere of the short story, the mere conte, and among the poets, of whom perhaps Wordsworth is the one that springs most readily to the mind. By the way, I saw a discussion (a rather unkindly one) in one of the magazines, a year or two ago, as to the worst line in reputable poetry, and I am rather afraid that last Sunday I discovered it, and that Wordsworth must be regarded as its sponsor. Here it is, and one grain of humour would surely have made it impossible.
Spade! with which Wilkinson has tilled his land.