The Soul of a Bishop is not a realistic novel, for there is no real character in it. It is already on its way to limbo, along with Robert Elsmere and The Inside of the Cup. But it is an excellent illustration of the fate that awaits an artist when he sacrifices the truth of art for the enforcement of personal opinion. There was a time when the excitement over the question of trades-unions produced by Put Yourself in His Place was at fever heat; but that novel today is almost forgotten, while The Cloister and the Hearth will be read by generation after generation, simply because it is a great story.
III
In order to illustrate what I mean by a realistic novelist whose happiest effects are gained by writing good stories with real characters, I know of no better choice among contemporaries than Archibald Marshall. He is an artist of such dignity and refinement that only twice in his career has he written a novel that had for its main purpose something other than truth to life; in each of these two attempts the result was a failure.
I know how difficult it is to "recommend" novels to hungry readers, for I have written prescriptions to alleviate many kinds of mental trouble, yes, and physical ailments too; but how can I be sure that the remedy will in every "case" be effective? I know that Treasure Island cured me of an attack of tonsillitis and that Queed cured me of acute indigestion; a United States naval officer informed me that he recovered from jaundice simply by reading Pride and Prejudice. These are facts; but what assurance have I that other sufferers can try these prescriptions with reasonable hope? Yet I have no hesitancy in recommending Archibald Marshall to any group of men or women or to any individual of mature growth. One scholar of sixty years of age told me that these novels had given him a quite new zest in life; and I myself, who came upon them on one of the luckiest days of my existence, confidently affirm the same judgment. Of the numerous persons that I have induced to read these books, I have met with only one sceptic; this was a shrewd, sharp-minded woman of eighty, who declared with a hearty laugh that she found them insupportably tame. I understand this hostility, for when girls reach the age of eighty, they demand excitement.
Those who are familiar with Mr. Marshall's work and life will easily discover therein echoes of his own experience. He is an Englishman by birth and descent, familiar with both town and country. He was born on the sixth of September, 1866, and received in his home life and preliminary training plenty of material which appeared later in the novels. His father came from the city, like the father in Abington Abbey; he himself was graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, like the son of Peter Binney; it was intended but not destined that he should follow his father's business career, and he worked in a city office like the son of Armitage Brown; he went to Australia like the hero's sister in Many Junes; he made three visits to America, but fortunately has not yet written an American novel; he studied theology with the intention of becoming a clergyman in the Church of England, like so many young men in his stories; in despair at finding a publisher for his work, he became a publisher himself, and issued his second novel, The House of Merrilees, which had as much success as it deserved; he tried journalism before and during the war; he lived in two small Sussex towns with literary associations, Winchelsea and Rye, in the latter from 1908 to 1913; then until 1917 his home was in Switzerland; he has now gone back to the scene of his university days, Cambridge.
In 1902 he was married and lived for some time in Beaulieu (pronounced Bewly) in the New Forest, faithfully portrayed in Exton Manor. He spent three happy years there planning and making a garden, like the young man in The Old Order Changeth. Although his novels are filled with hunting and shooting, he is not much of a sportsman himself, being content only to observe. He loves the atmosphere of sport rather than sport. His favourite recreations are walking, reading, painting, and piano-playing, and the outdoor flavour of his books may in part be accounted for by the fact that much of his writing is done in the open air.
Like many another successful man of letters, his first step was a false start; for in 1899 he produced a novel called Peter Binney, Undergraduate, which has never been republished in America, and perhaps never will be. This is a topsy-turvy book, where an ignorant father insists on entering Cambridge with his son; and after many weary months of coaching, succeeds in getting his name on the books. The son is a steady-headed, unassuming boy, immensely popular with his mates; the father, determined to recapture his lost youth, disgraces his son and the college by riotous living, and is finally expelled. The only good things in the book are the excellent pictures of May Week and some snap-shots at college customs; but the object of the author is so evident and he has twisted reality so harshly in order to accomplish it, that we have merely a work of distortion.
For six years our novelist remained silent; and he never returned to the method of reversed dynamics until the year 1915, when he published Upsidonia, another failure. Once again his purpose is all too clear; possibly irritated by the exaltation of slum stories and the depreciation of the characters of the well-to-do often insisted upon in such works, he wrote a satire in the manner of Erewhon, and called it a novel. Here poverty and dirt are regarded as the highest virtues, and the possession of wealth looked upon as the sure and swift road to social ostracism. There is not a gleam of the author's true skill in this book, mainly because he is so bent on arguing his case that exaggeration triumphs rather too grossly over verisimilitude. He is, of course, trying to write nonsense; a mark that some authors have hit with deliberate aim, while perhaps more have attained the same result with less conscious intention. Now Mr. Marshall cannot write nonsense even when he tries; and failure in such an effort is particularly depressing. He is at his best when his art is restrained and delicate; in Upsidonia he drops the engraving-tool and wields a meat-axe. Let us do with Peter Binney and with Upsidonia what every other reader has done; let us try to forget them, remembering only that two failures in fifteen books is not a high proportion.