Mrs. Humphrey Ward is in the field again. She is the female political and religious prophet of the nonconformist many-headed. She is to contribute an interminable, commonplace snob-novel, dealing with utterly superfluous English “society” and political life, to one of the American magazines for mature sucklings. It is bad enough to get this freak female in books.
It is a poor imitation of Anthony Trollope, and it is filled with the profound platitudes that have made the Ward nightmare a ludicrous libel and parody of George Eliot. Such is the taste of the serious minded women readers of our time, that this unendurably tiresome portrayer of merely snob life and snob philosophy is hailed as one of the geniuses of our age.
I hope I am a good Democrat here at home, but in following English politics in the newspapers I observe one intellectual characteristic of a Tory government which touches my admiration and enthusiasm, and inclines me to prefer the Tories to the Liberals. The Liberals, like the large army of “Reformers” we have with us in this country, are rather apt to appeal to the mawkish sentimentality of the unbalanced and short-sighted masses, and they encourage schemes for the reformation of human nature by Act of Parliament. The Tories are saner, broader and more tolerant of human failings that are in the nature of things incurable. Perhaps it is because they themselves do not pretend to be wholly incorruptible on the moral side that they have perception enough to recognize the fact, that folly and wickedness are the sole compensations of the lower orders for the hardships of existence. The Lord save the poor from the dispensation of the reformers and moralists! I am glad to note that Lord Salisbury has just turned down a deputation of fanatics on the liquor question with the curt remark that the subject did not attract the government after past experience, and, moreover, the government had other more important matters to attend to. It is time these Prohibition lunatics learned that free men will never relinquish their divine and human rights to go to the devil in their own way. And besides, liquor is not by any means the worst evil in this world.
It is time Americans arrived at maturity of judgment in intellectual matters, instead of complacently occupying a position of servile dependence upon English opinion. A declaration of Literary Independence is needed, and must soon be made by some bold spirits.
It is ridiculous to see the American cultivated public taking all its opinions in literary matters from the organs of British complacency and ancient prejudice. The London Times, an ancient bulwark of immovable Tory Know-nothingism, is regarded seriously on this side. Then there is the Saturday Review, a dirty gutter rag of imbecile impertinence, which diverts the naturäl “sports” and hobbledehoys of the British aristocracy. It is written in choice English superciliousness, by snobbish and half baked boys, for English country houses, where the coagulation of insular stupidity needs a whip and stable-boy familiarities to set any wits in motion. These astounding journals of civilization are taken seriously by the American reading public, and more especially by the critics, who will, with very few exceptions, dance to any jig that is played in London.
That the English “bag-men” of literature do not fail to take advantage of American credulity and servile deference to English opinion, which is as easily counterfeited as “public opinion” is here, is shown once more for the thousandth time, by a recent statement in The London Times. The English do not take any trouble to dissemble their contempt of everything American, and a good stirring spirit of retaliation in every department, including literature and criticism in this country, would increase John Bull’s friendliness and tolerance as much as Cleveland’s message on the Monroe doctrine did in one astonishing fortnight. We now learn the English love us! After all those scurrilous articles in their magazines!
The Times says: “Nothing but a boom in London will induce American publishers to boom an author in the States. There are very few literary journals in the United States, so that ours have a remarkable influence, and their verdict on a new work is eagerly scanned and, as a rule, accepted.”
Well, it is time the literary journals we have awoke to their duty and opportunity, and gave up singing to English piping, and took to thinking for themselves. They might also look around here, and learn something of their own writers. It is really worth while to encourage authorship in America. There is an abundance of talent here, and, when circumstances are favorable, real genius.
The howling of the critics and the frantic female moralists convinced me that I must read “Jude the Obscure,” which I might have postponed until I was less busy, and so finally have missed, as I have many good things—swept on with the tide of events and affairs. But when the frantic female moralist is stirred up in holy indignation, I know that there is something moving forward worthy of masculine consideration.