the feverish cries of photographers taking photographs on the stage, we
discussed the plays of Tchehkoff and other things. He was one of the few
men in England who had ever heard of Tchehkoff's plays. When I asked him
in what edition he had obtained them, he replied that he had read them in
manuscript. I have little doubt that one day these plays will be performed
in England. St. John Hankin was an exceedingly good talker, rather
elaborate in the construction of his phrases, and occasionally dandiacal
in his choice of words. One does not arrive at his skill in conversation
without taking thought, and he must have devoted a lot of thought to the
art of talking. Hence he talked self-consciously, fully aware all the time
that talking was an art and himself an artist. Beneath the somewhat
finicking manner there was visible the intelligence that cared for neither
conventions nor traditions, nor for possible inconvenient results, but
solely for intellectual honesty amid conditions of intellectual freedom.




UNCLEAN BOOKS


[_8 July '09_]

The Rev. Dr. W.F. Barry, himself a novelist, has set about to belabour
novelists, and to enliven the end of a dull season, in a highly explosive
article concerning "the plague of unclean books, and especially of
dangerous fiction." He says: "I never leave my house to journey in any
direction, but I am forced to see, and solicited to buy, works flamingly
advertised of which the gospel is adultery and the apocalypse the right of
suicide." (No! I am not parodying Dr. Barry. I am quoting from his
article, which may be read in the _Bookman_. It ought to have appeared in
_Punch_.) One naturally asks oneself: "What is the geographical situation
of this house of Dr. Barry's, hemmed in by flaming and immoral
advertisements and by soliciting sellers of naughtiness?" Dr. Barry
probably expects to be taken seriously. But he will never be taken
seriously until he descends from purple generalities to the particular
naming of names. If he has the courage of his opinions, if he genuinely is
concerned for the future of this unfortunate island, he might name a dozen
or so of the "myriad volumes which deride self-control, scoff at the
God-like in man, deny the judgment, and by most potent illustration
declare that death ends all." For myself, I am unacquainted with them, and
nobody has ever solicited me to buy them. At least he might state _where_
one is solicited to buy these shockers. I would go thither at once, just
to see. In the course of his article, Dr. Barry lets slip a phrase about
"half-empty churches." Of course, these half-empty churches must be laid
on the back of somebody, and the novelist's back is always convenient.
Hence, no doubt, the article. Dr. Barry seeks for information. He asks:
"Will Christian fathers and mothers go on tolerating...," etc. etc. I can
oblige him. The answer is, "Yes. They will."




LOVE POETRY


[_16 Sep. '09_]


In every number up to August, I think, the summary of the _English Review_
began with "Modern Poetry," a proper and necessary formal recognition of
the supremacy of verse. But in the current issue "Modern Poetry" is put
after a "study" of the Chancellor of the Exchequer by Max Beerbohm. A
trifling change! editorially speaking, perhaps an unavoidable change! And
yet it is one of these nothings which are noticed by those who notice such
nothings. Among the poets, some of them fairly new discoveries, whom the
_English Review_ has printed is "J. Marjoram." I do not know what
individuality the name of J. Marjoram conceals, but it is certainly a
pseudonym. Some time ago J. Marjoram published a volume of verse entitled
"Repose" (Alston Rivers), and now Duckworth has published his "New Poems."
The volume is agreeable and provocative. It contains a poem called
"Afternoon Tea," which readers of the _English Review_ will remember. I do
not particularly care for "Afternoon Tea." I find the contrast between the
outcry of a deep passion and the chatter of the tea merely melodramatic,
instead of impressive. And I object to the idiom in which the passion is
expressed. For example:

_To prove I mean love, I'd burn in Hell._

Or:

_You touch the cup_
_With one slim finger.... I'll drink it up,_
_Though it be blood._

We are all quite certain that the lover would not willingly burn in Hell
to prove his love, and that if he drank blood he would be sick. The idiom
is outworn. That J. Marjoram should employ it is a sign, among others,
that he has not yet quite got over the "devout lover" stage in his mood
towards women. He makes a pin say: "She dropped me, pity my despair!"
which is in the worst tradition of _Westminster Gazette_ "Occ. Verse." He
is somewhat too much occupied with this attitudinization before women or
the memory of women. It has about as much to do with the reality of sexual
companionship as the Lord Mayor's procession has to do with the municipal
life of Greater London. Still, J. Marjoram is a genuine poet. In "Fantasy
of the Sick Bed," the principal poem in the book, there are some really
beautiful passages. I would say to him, and I would say to all young
poets, because I feel it deeply: Do not be afraid of your raw material,
especially in the relations between men and women. J. Marjoram well and
epigrammatically writes:

_Yet who despiseth Love_
_As little and incomplete_
_Learns by losing Love_
_How it was sweet!_

True. But, when applied to love with a capital L, and to dropped pins
despairing, a little sane realistic disdain will not be amiss,
particularly in this isle. I want to see the rise of a new school of love
poetry in England. And I believe I shall see it.




TROLLOPE'S METHODS


[_23 Sep. '09_]

I am reminded of Anthony Trollope and a recent article on him, in the
_Times_, which was somewhat below the high level of the _Times_ literary
criticism. Said the _Times_: "Anthony Trollope died in the December of
1882, and in the following year a fatal, perhaps an irreparable, blow to
his reputation was struck by the publication of his autobiography." The
conceit of a blow which in addition to being fatal is perhaps also
irreparable is diverting. But that is not my point. What the _Times_
objects to in the Autobiography is the revelation of the clock-work
methods by which Trollope wrote his novels. It appears that this horrid
secret ought to have been for ever concealed. "Fatal admission!" exclaims
the _Times_. Fatal fiddlesticks! Trollope said much more than the _Times_
quotes. He confessed that he wrote with a watch in front of him, and
obliged himself to produce 250 words every quarter of an hour. And what
then? How can the confession affect his reputation? His reputation rests
on the value of his novels, and not in the least on the manner in which he
chose to write them. And his reputation is secure. Moreover, there is no
reason why great literature should not be produced to time, with a watch
on the desk. Persons who chatter about the necessity of awaiting
inspirational hypersthenia don't know what the business of being an artist
is. They have only read about it sentimentally. The whole argument is
preposterous, and withal extraordinarily Victorian. And even assuming that
the truth _would_ deal a fatal blow, etc., is that a reason for hiding it?
Another strange sentence is this: "The wonder is, not that Trollope's
novels are 'readable,' but that, _being readable, they are yet_ so closely
packed with that true realism without which any picture of life is
lifeless." (My italics.) I ask myself what quality, in the opinion of the
_Times_ writer, chiefly makes for readableness.




CHESTERTON AND LUCAS


[_7 Oct. '09_]

Two books of essays on the same day from the same firm, "One Day and
Another," by E.V. Lucas, and "Tremendous Trifles," by G.K. Chesterton!
Messrs. Methuen put the volumes together and advertised them as being
"uniform in size and appearance." I do not know why. They are uniform
neither in size nor in appearance; but only in price, costing a crown
apiece. "Tremendous Trifles" has given me a wholesome shock. Its contents
are all reprinted from the _Daily News_. In some ways they are sheer and
rank journalism; they are often almost Harmsworthian in their unscrupulous
simplifying of the facts of a case, in their crude determination to
emphasize one fact at the expense of every other fact. Thus: "No one can
understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its
fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity." So there
you are! If you don't accept that you are damned; the Chesterton
guillotine has clicked on you. Perhaps I have lived in Paris more years
than Mr. Chesterton has lived in it months, but it has not yet happened to
me to understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of
its frivolity. Hence I am undone; I no longer exist! Again, of Brussels:
"It has none of the things which make good Frenchmen love Paris; it has
only the things which make unspeakable Englishmen love it." There are a
hundred things in Brussels that I love, and I find Brussels a very
agreeable city. Hence I am an unspeakable Englishman. Mr. Chesterton's
book is blotched with this particular form of curt arrogance as with a
skin complaint. Happily it is only a skin complaint. More serious than a
skin complaint is Mr. Chesterton's religious orthodoxy, which crops up at
intervals and colours the book. I merely voice the opinion of the
intelligent minority (or majority) of Mr. Chesterton's readers when I say
that his championship of Christian dogma sticks in my throat. In my
opinion, at this time of day it is absolutely impossible for a young man
with a first-class intellectual apparatus to accept any form of dogma, and
I am therefore forced to the conclusion that Mr. Chesterton has not got a
first-class intellectual apparatus. (With an older man, whose central
ideas were definitely formed at an earlier epoch, the case might be
different.) I will go further and say that it is impossible, in one's
private thoughts, to think of the accepter of dogma as an intellectual
equal. Not all Mr. Chesterton's immense cleverness and charm will ever
erase from the minds of his best readers this impression--caused by his
mistimed religious dogmatism--that there is something seriously deficient
in the very basis of his mind. And what his cleverness and charm cannot do
his arrogance and his effrontery assuredly will not do. And yet I said
that this book gave me a wholesome shock. Far from deteriorating, Mr.
Chesterton is improving. In spite of the awful tediousness of his
mannerism of antithetical epigram, he does occasionally write finer
epigrams than ever. His imagination is stronger, his fancy more delicate,
and his sense of beauty widened. There are things in this book that really
are very excellent indeed; things that, if they die, will die hard. For
example, the essay: "In Topsy Turvy Land." It is a book which, in the
main, strongly makes for righteousness. Its minor defects are scandalous,
in a literary sense; its central defect passes the comprehension; the book
is journalism, it is anything you like. But I can tell you that it is
literature, after all.

*       *       *       *       *

If you desire a book entirely free from the exasperating faults of Mr.
Chesterton's you will turn to Mr. Lucas's. But Mr. Lucas, too, is a highly
mysterious man. On the surface he might be mistaken for a mere cricket
enthusiast. Dig down, and you will come, with not too much difficulty, to
the simple man of letters. Dig further, and, with somewhat more
difficulty, you will come to an agreeably ironic critic of human foibles.
Try to dig still further, and you will probably encounter rock. Only here
and there in his two novels does Mr. Lucas allow us to glimpse a certain
powerful and sardonic harshness in him, indicative of a mind that has seen
the world and irrevocably judged it in most of its manifestations. I could
believe that Mr. Lucas is an ardent politician, who, however, would not
deign to mention his passionately held views save with a pencil on a
ballot-paper--if then! It could not have been without intention that he
put first in this new book an essay describing the manufacture of a
professional criminal. Most of the other essays are exceedingly light in
texture. They leave no loophole for criticism, for their accomplishment is
always at least as high as their ambition. They are serenely well done.
Immanent in the book is the calm assurance of a man perfectly aware that
it will be a passing hard task to get change out of _him_! And even when
some one does get change out of him, honour is always saved. In describing
a certain over of his own bowling, Mr. Lucas says: "I was conscious of a
twinge as I saw his swift glance round the field. He then hit my first
ball clean out of it; from my second he made two; from my third another
two; the fourth and fifth wanted playing; and the sixth he hit over my
head among some distant haymakers." You see, the fourth and fifth wanted
playing.




OFFICIAL RECOGNITION OF POETRY

[_14 Oct. '09_]

I did not go to Paris to witness the fêtes in celebration of the fiftieth
anniversary of Victor Hugo's "La Légende des Siècles," but I happened to
be in Paris while they were afoot. I might have seen one of Hugo's dramas
at the Théâtre Français, but I avoided this experience, my admiration for
Hugo being tempered after the manner of M. André Gide's. M. Gide, asked
with a number of other authors to say who was still the greatest modern
French poet, replied: "Victor Hugo--alas!" So I chose Brieux instead of
Hugo, and saw "La Robe Rouge" at the Français. Brieux is now not only an
Academician, but one of the stars of the Français. A bad sign! A bad play,
studded with good things, like all Brieux's plays. (The importance
attached to Brieux by certain of the elect in England is absurd. Bernard
Shaw could simply eat him up--for he belongs to the vegetable kingdom.) A
thoroughly bad performance, studded with fine acting! A great popular
success! Whenever I go to the Français I tremble at the prospect of a
national theatre in England. The Français is hopeless--corrupt, feeble,
tedious, reactionary, fraudulent, and the laughing-stock of artists.
However, we have not got a national theatre yet.

*       *       *       *       *

Immediately after its unveiling I gazed in the garden of the Palais Royal
at Rodin's statue of Victor Hugo. I thought it rather fine, shadowed on
the north and on the south by two famous serpentine trees. Hugo, in a
state of nudity, reclines meditating on a pile of rocks. The likeness is
good, but you would not guess from the statue that for many years Hugo
travelled daily on the top of the Clichy-Odéon omnibus and was never
recognized by the public. Heaven knows what he is meditating about!
Perhaps about that gushing biography of himself which apparently he penned
with his own hand and published under another name! For he was a weird
admixture of qualities--like most of us. I could not help meditating,
myself, upon the really extraordinary differences between France and
England. Imagine a nude statue of Tennyson in St. James's Park! You
cannot! But, assuming that some creative wit had contrived to get a nude
statue of Tennyson into St. James's Park, imagine the enormous shindy that
would occur, the horror-stricken Press of London, the deep pain and
resentment of a mighty race! And can you conceive London officially
devoting a week to the recognition of the fact that fifty years had
elapsed since the publication of a work of poetic genius! Yet I think we
know quite as much about poetry in England as they do in France. Still
less conceivable is the participation of an English Government in such an
anniversary. In Paris last Thursday a French Minister stood in front of
the Hugo statue and thus began: "The Government of the Republic could not
allow the fiftieth anniversary of the 'Legend of the Centuries' to be
celebrated without associating itself with the events." My fancy views Mr.
Herbert John Gladstone--yes, him!--standing discreetly in front of an
indiscreet marble Wordsworth and asserting that the British Government had
no intention of being left out of the national rejoicings about the
immortality of "The Prelude"! A spectacle that surely Americans would pay
to see! On Sunday, at the Français, Hugo was being declaimed from one
o'clock in the afternoon till midnight, with only an hour's interval. And
it rained violently nearly all the time.




ARTISTS AND CRITICS


[_21 Oct. '09_]

There is a one-sided feud between artists and critics. When a number of
artists are gathered together you will soon in the conversation come upon
signs of that feud. I admit that the general attitude of artists to
critics is unfair. They expect from critics an imaginative comprehension
which in the nature of the case only a creative artist can possess. On the
other hand, a creative artist cannot do the work of a critic because he
has neither the time nor the inclination to master the necessary critical
apparatus. Hence critical work seldom or never satisfies the artist, and
the artist's ideal of what critical work ought to be is an impossible
dream. I find confirmation of my view in other arts than my own. The
critical work of Mr. Bernhard Berenson, for instance, seems to me
wonderful and satisfying. But when I mention Mr. Berenson to a painter I
invariably discover that that painter's secret attitude towards Mr.
Berenson is--well, aristocratic. The finest, and the only first-rate,
criticism is produced when, by an exceptional accident, a creative artist
of balanced and powerful temperament is moved to deal exhaustively with a
subject. Among standard critical works the one that has most impressed me
is Lessing's "Laocoon"--at any rate the literary parts of it. Here (I have
joyously said to myself) is somebody who knows what he is talking about!
Here is some one who has _been there_.




RUDYARD KIPLING

[_4 Nov. '09_]

After a long period of abstention from Rudyard Kipling, I have just read
"Actions and Reactions." It has induced gloom in me; yet a modified gloom.
Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since "Plain Tales from the
Hills" delighted first Anglo-Indian, and then English society. There was
nothing of permanent value in that book, and in my extremest youth I never
imagined otherwise. But "The Story of the Gadsbys" impressed me. So did
"Barrack-room Ballads." So did pieces of "Soldiers Three." So did "Life's
Handicap" and "Many Inventions." So did "The Jungle Book," despite its
wild natural history. And I remember my eagerness for the publication of
"The Seven Seas." I remember going early in the morning to Denny's
bookshop to buy it. I remember the crimson piles of it in every bookshop
in London. And I remember that I perused it, gulped it down, with deep
joy. And I remember the personal anxiety which I felt when Kipling lay
very dangerously ill in New York. For a fortnight, then, Kipling's
temperature was the most important news of the day. I remember giving a
party with a programme of music, in that fortnight, and I began the
proceedings by reading aloud the programme, and at the end of the
programme instead of "God Save the Queen," I read, "God Save Kipling," and
everybody cheered. "Stalky and Co." cooled me, and "Kim" chilled me. At
intervals, since, Kipling's astounding political manifestations, chiefly
in verse, have shocked and angered me. As time has elapsed it has become
more and more clear that his output was sharply divided into two parts by
his visit to New York, and that the second half is inferior in quantity,
in quality, in everything, to the first. It has been too plain now for
years that he is against progress, that he is the shrill champion of
things that are rightly doomed, that his vogue among the hordes of the
respectable was due to political reasons, and that he retains his
authority over the said hordes because he is the bard of their prejudices
and of their clayey ideals. A democrat of ten times Kipling's gift and
power could never have charmed and held the governing classes as Kipling
has done. Nevertheless, I for one cannot, except in anger, go back on a
genuine admiration. I cannot forget a benefit. If in quick resentment I
have ever written of Kipling with less than the respect which is
eternally due to an artist who has once excited in the heart a generous
and beautiful emotion, and has remained honest, I regret it. And this is
to be said: at his worst Kipling is an honest and painstaking artist. No
work of his but has obviously been lingered over with a craftsman's
devotion! He has never spoken when he had nothing to say--though probably
no artist was ever more seductively tempted by publishers and editors to
do so. And he has done more than shun notoriety--Miss Marie Corelli does
that--he has succeeded in avoiding it.

*       *       *       *       *

The first story, and the best, in "Actions and Reactions" is entitled "An
Habitation Enforced," and it displays the amused but genuine awe of a
couple of decent rich Americans confronted by the sæcular wonders of the
English land system. It depends for its sharp point on a terrific
coincidence, as do many of Kipling's tales, for instance, "The Man Who
Was"--the mere chance that these Americans should tumble upon the very
ground and estate that had belonged to the English ancestors of one of
them. It is written in a curiously tortured idiom, largely borrowed from
the Bible, and all the characters are continually given to verbal
smartness or peculiarity of one kind or another. The characters are not
individualized. Each is a type, smoothed out by sentimental handling into
something meant to be sympathetic. Moreover, the real difficulties of the
narrative are consistently, though I believe unconsciously, shirked. The
result, if speciously pretty, is not a bit convincing. But the gravest,
and the entirely fatal fault, is the painting of the English land system.
To read this story one could never guess that the English land system is
not absolutely ideal, that tenants and hereditary owners do not live
always in a delightful patriarchal relation, content. There are no shadows
whatever. The English land system is perfect, and no accusation could
possibly be breathed against it. And the worst is that for Kipling the
English land system probably _is_ perfect. He is incapable of perceiving
that it can be otherwise. He would not desire it to be otherwise. His
sentimentalization of it is gross--there is no other word--and at bottom
the story is as wildly untrue to life as the most arrant Sunday-school
prize ever published by the Religious Tract Society. Let it be admitted
that the romantic, fine side of the English land system is rendered with
distinction and effectiveness; and that the puzzled, unwilling admiration
of the Americans is well done, though less well than in a somewhat similar
earlier story, "An Error in the Fourth Dimension."

*       *       *       *       *

An example of another familiar aspect of Kipling is "With the Night Mail."
This is a story of 2000 A.D., and describes the crossing of the Atlantic
by the aerial mail. It is a glittering essay in the sham-technical; and
real imagination, together with a tremendous play of fancy, is shown in
the invention of illustrative detail. But the whole effort is centred on
the mechanics of the affair. Human evolution has stood stock-still save in
the department of engineering. The men are exactly the same semi-divine
civil service men that sit equal with British military and naval officers
on the highest throne in the kingdom of Kipling's esteem. Nothing
interests him but the mechanics and the bureaucratic organization and the
_esprit de corps_. Nor does he conceive that the current psychology of
ruling and managing the earth will ever be modified. His simplicity, his
naïveté, his enthusiasms, his prejudices, his blindness, and his vanities
are those of Stalky. And, after all, even the effect he aims at is not
got. It is nearly got, but never quite. There is a tireless effort, but
the effort is too plain and fatigues the reader, forcing him to share it.
A thin powder of dullness lies everywhere.

*       *       *       *       *

When I had read these stories, I took out "Life's Handicap," and tasted
again the flavour of "On Greenhow Hill," which I have always considered to
be among the very best of Kipling's stories. It would be too much to say
that I liked it as well as ever. I did not. Time has staled it. The
author's constitutional sentimentality has corroded it in parts. But it is
still a very impressive and a fundamentally true thing. It was done in the
rich flush of power, long before its creator had even suspected his hidden
weaknesses, long before his implacable limitations had begun to compel him
to imitate himself. It was done in the days when he could throw off
exquisite jewels like this, to deck the tale:

_To Love's low voice she lent a careless ear;_
_Her band within his rosy fingers lay,_
_A chilling weight. She would, not turn or hear;_
_But with averted, face went on her way._
_But when pale Death, all featureless and grim,_
_Lifted his bony hand, and beckoning_
_Held out his cypress-wreath, she followed him,_
_And Love was left forlorn and wondering,_
_That she who for his bidding would not stay,_
_At Death's first whisper rose and went away_.




CENSORSHIP BY THE LIBRARIES

[_23 Dec '09_]

The immediate origin of the new attempt by the libraries to exercise a
censorship over books, and particularly over novels, is quite accidental
and silly. A woman socially prominent in the governing classes of this
realm has a daughter. The daughter obtained and read a certain book from
the circulating library. (Naturally the family is one of those that are
too rich to buy books; it can only hire.) The mother chanced to see the
book, and considered it to be highly improper. (I have not read the book,
but I should say that it is probably not improper at all; merely a
trivial, foolish book.) The woman went direct to an extremely exalted
member of the Cabinet, being a friend of his; and she kicked up a
tremendous storm and dust. The result was that "certain machinery" was set
in motion, and "certain representations" were made to the libraries;
indeed, the libraries were given to understand that unless they did
something themselves "certain steps" would be taken. It was all very vague
and impressive, and it brought recent agitations to a head. Hence the
manifesto of the libraries, in which they announce that all books must be
submitted in advance to a committee of hiring experts, and that the
submitted books will be divided into three classes. The first class will
be absolutely banned; the circulation of the second will be prevented so
far as it can be prevented without the ban absolute; and the circulation
of the third will be permitted without restrictions.

*       *       *       *       *

Of course, that even the suggestion of a censorship should spring from
such a personal and trifling cause is very scandalous. But I am fairly
sure that it might happen under any Government and under any form of
Government. All Governments must consist of individual members, and all
individual members have friends. Most of them are acquainted with women,
and with absurd women, who will utilize the acquaintanceship with all
their might for their own personal ends. And exceedingly few members of
any Government whatsoever would have the courage to tell a well-dressed
and arrogant woman to go to the devil, even when that answer happened to
be the sole correct answer to an impertinence. Wellington merely damned
the portly darlings, but then Wellington, though preposterous as a
politician, was a great man.

*       *       *       *       *

The menacing letter from the Libraries was received by the Publishers on
the very day of their Council meeting. This may or may not have been
accidental, but at any rate it put the Publishers at a disadvantage. The
Council meetings of the Publishers' Association, being dominated by
knights and other mandarins, are apt to be formal and majestic in
character. You can't blurt out whatever comes into your head at a Council
meeting of the Publishers' Association. And nearly everybody is afraid of
everybody else. No one had had time to think the matter over, much less to
decide whether surrender or defiance would pay best or look best.
Consequently the reply sent to the Libraries was a masterpiece of
futility. The mildly surprising thing is that, in the Council itself,
there was a strong pro-Library party. Among this party were Messrs.
Hutchinson and Mr. Heinemann. Messrs. Hutchinson, it is well known, have
consistently for many years tried to publish only novels for "family
reading." It is an ambition, like another. And one may admit that Messrs.
Hutchinson have fairly well succeeded in it. Mr. Heinemann issues as much
really high-class literature as any publisher in London, but if his policy
has had a "family and young lady" tendency, that tendency has escaped me.
He has published books (some of them admirable works, and some not) which
a committee of hiring experts would have rejected with unanimous
enthusiasm. It is needless to particularize. Why Mr. Heinemann should have
supported the Libraries in the private deliberations of the Publishers I
cannot imagine. But that is the fault of my imagination. I have an immense
confidence in Mr. Heinemann's business acumen and instinct for
self-preservation.

*       *       *       *       *

The Publishers, if they chose, could kill the censorship movement at once
by politely declining to submit their books to the censorship. If only the
three big fiction firms concerted to do this, the Libraries would be
compelled to withdraw their project. But the Publishers will not do this;
not even three of them will do it. The only argument against a censorship
is that it is extremely harmful to original literature of permanent value;
and such an argument does not make any very powerful appeal to
publishers. What most publishers want is to earn as much money as
possible with as little fuss as possible. Again, the Authors' Society
might kill the censorship conspiracy by declining to allow its members to
sign any agreement with publishers which did not contain a clause
forbidding the publisher to submit the book to the committee of hiring
experts. A dozen leading novelists could command the situation. But the
Authors' Society will do nothing effective. The official reply of the
Authors' Society was as feeble as that of the Publishers. I repeat that
the only argument against a censorship is that it is extremely harmful to
original literature of permanent value; such an argument does not make any
very powerful appeal to authors. What most authors want is to earn as much
money as possible with as little fuss as possible. Besides, the great
money-makers among authors--the authors of weight with publishers and
libraries--have nothing to fear from any censorship. They censor
themselves. They take the most particular care not to write anything
original, courageous, or true, because these qualities alienate more
subscribers than they please. I am not a pessimist nor a cynic, but I
enjoy contemplating the real facts of a case.

All the forces would seem to be in favour of the establishment of a
censorship. (And by a censorship I mean such a censorship as would judge
books by a code which, if it was applied to them, would excommunicate the
Bible, Shakespeare, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Swift, Shelley,
Rossetti, Meredith, Hardy, and George Moore. "The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel" would never, as a new work, pass a library censorship. Nor would
"Jude the Obscure," nor half a dozen of Hardy's other books; nor would
most of George Moore.) Nevertheless I am not very much perturbed. There
are three tremendous forces against the establishment of a genuine
censorship, and I think that they will triumph. The first is that
mysterious nullifying force by which such movements usually do fizzle out.
The second force against it lies in the fact that the movement is not
genuinely based on public opinion. And the third is that there is a great
deal of money to be made out of merely silly mawkish books which a genuine
censorship would ban with serious, original work. For such books a strong
demand exists among people otherwise strictly respectable, far stronger
than the feeling against such books. The demand will have its way. A few
serious and obstinate authors will perhaps suffer for a while. But then we
often do suffer. We don't seem to mind. No one could guess, for instance,
from the sweet Christian kindliness of my general tone towards Mr. Jesse
Boot's library that Mr. Jesse Boot had been guilty of banning some of my
work which I love most. But it is so. I suppose we don't mind, because in
the end, dead or alive, we come out on top.

*       *       *       *       *

[_30 Dec. '09_]

I imagined that I had said the last word on this subject, and hence I
intended to say no more. But it appears that I was mistaken. It appears,
from a somewhat truculent letter which I have received from a
correspondent, that I have not yet even touched the fringe of the subject.
Parts of this correspondent's letter are fairly printable. He says: "You
look at the matter from quite the wrong point of view. There is only one
point of view, and that is the subscribers'. The Libraries don't exist for
authors, but for us (he is a subscriber to Mudie's). We pay, and the
Libraries are for our convenience. They are not for the furtherance of
English literature, or whatever you call it. What I say is, if I order a
book from a Library I ought to be able to get it, unless it has been
confiscated by the police. I didn't pay my subscription in order to have
my choice of books limited to such books as some frock-coated personage in
Oxford Street thought good for me. I've spent about forty years in
learning to know what I like in literature, and I don't want anybody to
teach me. I'm not a young girl, I'm a middle-aged man; but I don't see why
I should be handicapped by that. And if I am to be handicapped I'm going
to chuck Mudie's. I've already written them a very rude letter about Mr.
de Morgan's "It Never Can Happen Again." I wanted that book. They told me
they didn't supply it. And when I made a row they wrote me a soothing
letter nearly as long as the Epistle to the Ephesians explaining why they
didn't supply it. Something about two volumes and half a sovereign.... I
don't know, and I don't care. I don't care whether a book's in one volume
or in a hundred volumes. If I want it, and if I've paid for the right to
have it, I've got to have it, or I've got to have my money back. They
mumbled something in their letter about having received many complaints
from other subscribers about novels being in two volumes. But what do I
care about other subscribers?"

*       *       *       *       *

And he continues, after a deviation into forceful abuse: "I don't want to
force novels in two volumes down the throats of other subscribers. I don't
want to force anything down their throats. They aren't obliged to take
what they don't want. There are lots of books circulated by Mudie's that I
strongly object to--books that make me furious--as regards both moral and
physical heaviness and tediousness and general tommy-rot. But do I write
and complain, and ask Mudie's to withdraw such books altogether? If Mudie
came along with a pistol and two volumes by Hall Caine, and said to me,
'Look here, I'll make you have these,' then perhaps I might begin to
murmur gently. But he doesn't. I'll say this for Mudie; he doesn't force
you to take particular books. You can always leave what you don't want.
All these people who are (alleged to be) crying out for a
censorship--they're merely idle! If they really want a censorship they
ought to exercise it themselves. Robinson has a daughter, and he is
shocked at the idea of her picking up a silly sham-erotic novel by a
member of the aristocracy, or a first-rate beautiful thing by George
Moore.... Am I then to be deprived of the chance of studying the inane
psychology of the ruling classes or of enjoying the work of a great
artist? Be d----d to Robinson's daughter! I don't care a bilberry for
either her or her innocence. I'm not going to be responsible for
Robinson's daughter. Let Robinson, if he is such a fool as to suppose that
daughters can be spoiled by bad books or good books--let him look after
her himself! Let him establish his confounded censorship at his front
door, or at his drawing-room door. Let him do his own work. Nothing but
idleness--that's what's the matter with him! The whole project that
Robinson suggests is simply monstrous. He might just as well say that
because his daughter has a weak digestion and an unruly appetite for rich
cakes, therefore all the cake shops in London must be shut up. Let him
keep her out of cake shops. All I want is freedom. I don't mean to defend
my tastes or to apologize for them. If I wish to hire a certain book,
that's enough. I must have it--until the police step in. There can only be
one censorship, and that is by the police. A Library is a commercial
concern, and I won't look at it from any other point of view. I have no
interest at the present moment in your notions about the future of
literature, and the livelihood of serious artists, and so on. All that's
absolutely beside the point. The sole point is that I am ready to let
other people have what they want, and I claim that I've the right to have
what I want. The whole thing is simple rot, and there's no other word for
it."




1910




CENSORSHIP BY THE LIBRARIES


[_13 Jan. '10_]

A number of people have been good enough to explain to me that the project
of the Circulating Libraries Censorship (now partially "in being") did not
originally concern itself with novels, and that, in the first place, it
was directed against books of more or less scandalous memoirs. Of this I
was well aware. But in writing about the matter I expressly tried to
centre its interest on the novel, because the novel is the only important
part of the affair. For a year past I have been inveighing against the
increasing taste for feeble naughtiness concerning king's mistresses and
all that sort of tedious person. And I have remarked on the growing
frequency of such words as "fair," "frail," "lover," "enchantress," etc.,
in the supposed-to-be-alluring titles of books of historical immorality.
(I presume that these volumes are called for by the respectable, as the
_cocotte_ calls for a _crème de menthe_ at a fashionable seaside hotel on
a winter Sunday afternoon.) Apparently the circulating libraries also have
noticed the growing frequency of such words in their lists. But what they
have noticed with more genuine alarm is the growing prices which clever
publishers have been putting on such books. It has not escaped the
observation of clever publishers that the demand by library subscribers
for such books is a very real demand, and clever publishers therefore
thought that they might make a little bit extra in this connexion by
charging high for volumes brief but scandalous. The libraries thought
otherwise. Hence, in truth, the attempted censorship. The now famous moral
crusade of the libraries would certainly not have occurred had not the
libraries perceived, in the moral pressure which was exercised upon them
from lofty regions, the chance of effecting economies. And there is not a
circulating library that does not feel an authentic need of economies.

*       *       *       *       *

I should have objected to a censorship even of scandalized history, for no
censorship ever cured a population of bad taste. But naturally the
libraries could not stop at memoirs. They had, in order to be consistent
and to talk big about morality, to include novels in their scheme of
scavenging. At this point the libraries pass from futile foolishness to
active viciousness, and so encounter the opposition of persons like
myself, whose business it is to keep an eye on things.

*       *       *       *       *

I can tell a true tale about one of the three great circulating libraries.
A certain man of taste was directing the education in literature of a
certain woman. The time came when the woman had to study Balzac. The man