A Novelist on Novels

by Walter Lionel George

Briefly, the bulk of the works of Thackeray, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot. 'Barry Lyndon' twice, and Trollope never. Here, at last, the solid curriculum, but only, you will observe, when a little of the mud of the magazines had been cleaned off. Rather more verse too, beginning with Tennyson and Henley, passing on to Rossetti and perhaps to Swinburne. Verse, however, should not be pressed. But I think I should propose modern plays of the lighter kind, Mr Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara and John Bull's Other Island, for instance. One could pass by degrees to the less obvious plays of Mr Shaw, certainly to those of St John Hankin, and perhaps to The Madras House. I think also a start might be made on foreign works, but these would develop mainly in the

Fourth Period

Good translations being available, I would suggest notably:—

Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
Resurrection (Tolstoi)
Fathers and Children (Turgenev)
Various short stories of Tchekoff.

And then, if the subject seemed to enjoy these works,

L'Education Sentimentale (Flaubert)
Le Rouge et le Noir (Stendhal)
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoievsky)

Mark this well, if the subject seemed to enjoy them. If there is any strain, any boredom, there is lack of continuity, and a chance of losing the subject's interest altogether. I think the motto should be 'Don't press'; that is accepted when it comes to golf; why has it never been accepted when it affects man? This period would, I think, end with the lighter plays of Shakespeare, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Taming of the Shrew, and perhaps Hamlet. I think modern essays should also come in via Mr E. V. Lucas, Mr Belloc, and Mr Street; also I would suggest Synge's travels in Wicklow, Connemara, and the Arran Islands; this would counteract the excessive fictional quality of the foregoing.

Fifth Period

I submit that, by that time, if the subject had a good average mind, he would be prepared by habit to read older works related with the best modern works. The essays of Mr Lucas would prepare him for the works of Lamb; those of Mr Belloc, for the essays of Carlyle and Bacon. Thus would I lead back to the heavier Victorian novels, to the older ones of Fielding and Sterne. If any taste for plays has been developed by Shakespeare, it might be turned to Marlowe, Congreve, and Sheridan. The drift of my argument is: read the easiest first; do not strain; do not try to 'improve your mind,' but try to enjoy yourself. Than books there is no better company, but it is no use approaching them as dour pedagogues. Proceed as a snob climbing the social ladder, namely, know the best people in the neighbourhood, then the best people they know. The end is not that of snobbery, but an eternal treasure.

I think that my subject, if capable of developing taste, would find his way to the easier classic works, such as Carlyle's French Revolution, Boswell's Life of Johnson, perhaps even to Wesley's Journal. But at that stage the subject would have to be dismissed to live or die. Enough would have been done to lead him away from boredom, from dull solemnity and false training, to purify his taste and make it of some use. The day is light and the past is dark; all eyes can see the day and find it splendid, but eyes that would pierce the darkness of the past must grow familiar with lighter mists; to every man the life of the world about him is that man's youth, while old age is ill to apprehend.