Books and Persons by Arnold Bennett (top 10 books of all time TXT) 📖

to tolerate in the criticisms of Mr. A.B. Walkley, were demonstrations of the fact that he was a genuine writer. What he lacked was creative energy. He could interest but he could not powerfully grip you. His most precious quality--particularly precious in England--was his calm intellectual curiosity, his perfect absence of fear at the logical consequences of an argument. He would follow an argument anywhere. He was not one, of those wretched poltroons who say: "But if I admit _x_ to be true, I am doing away with the incentive to righteousness. _Therefore_ I shall not admit _x_ to be true." There are thousands of these highly educated poltroons between St. Stephen's, Westminster, and Aberystwith University, and St. John Hankin was their foe.

* * * * *


The last time I conversed with him was at the dress rehearsal of a comedy. Between the sloppy sounds of charwomen washing the floor of the pit and 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