Well, the neophyte may say, it does not particularly matter to me whether you are pleased to call my book a book or not; so long as I can please the public, and thereby make sure of receiving a handsome cheque from the publishers, I shall be satisfied. To such a reply no rejoinder can be made, save a warning that successes of the kind alluded to have been achieved under heavy handicap penalties. They prove no more than that, as a good horse will occasionally win a race, although he be badly ridden, so a large section of the novel-reading public will tolerate inartistic work and slipshod English for the sake of a good story. And, since you are supposed to be beginning, why should you wish to carry extra weight, or imagine that you are able to do so? It is not given to everybody—alas! it is by no means given to everybody—to conceive a really good and original plot; yet some among us, whose pretensions to excel in that direction are as scanty as need be, may contrive to give pleasure, may to a certain extent please ourselves with our handling of the vocation for which we believe that we are best fitted, may even pocket the cheques which we have earned without feeling that we have robbed anybody.
Infinite variety of the Novel
In other words, novels do not give pleasure or meet with acceptance simply and solely by virtue of their subject-matter. The novel, at least so far as England, which is the great novel-producing country, is concerned, may be regarded as a sort of literary omnibus—a vehicle adapted for the carrying of all manner of incongruous freights, heavy and light. Descriptions of every grade of contemporary society have their places in it; descriptions of scenery and very little else have a right of entry; history is not excluded: its springs are even strong enough to bear the weight of amateur theology and psychical research. Perhaps, strictly speaking, this ought not to be so; but it is so, and if, after so many years of laxity, we were to go in for strict rules and principles, we should be all the poorer for our pedantic exactitude. According to Tennyson, England is a desirable land in which to reside, because it is
“The land where, girt by friends or foes,
A man may speak the thing he will;”
and so the English novel affords a fine, broad field for a man to stretch his limbs in, the sole condition of admittance into it being that he should do so with some approach to grace and symmetry.
The average Reader
It shall not be asserted or pretended that the average reader consciously exacts these things, that he is conscious of having them when he has secured them, or of resenting their absence when he has been defrauded of them. But when he tosses a book across the room, with his accustomed cruelly concise criticism that it is “bosh” or “rot,” the above-mentioned species of resentment is, in most cases, what he unconsciously feels. We ourselves, from the moment that we cease to be average writers, become average readers, and are no whit less unmerciful than the rest of the would. We are not going to be bored by anybody, if we can help it. Possibly, from being in the trade, we may know a little better than those who are not in the trade why we are bored; but that does not soften our hearts, nor are we likely to purchase a second work by an author who has bored us once. Therefore it is worth while to conciliate us, and to consider how this may best be done.
The value of Style
Doubtless, as has been admitted all along, there are more methods than one of capturing and retaining the public ear; but this brief paper professes to deal only with one—that of style. The beginner, we will take it for granted, wants to have a style of his own, wants to make the most that he can of his mother-tongue, wants to clothe his thoughts in readable language, wants above all to send them forth with the stamp of his individuality upon them. And he is confronted at starting by the annoying discovery that he is unable to do this. How is he to do it?