The stories of Stevenson exhibit a double union, as admirable as it is rare. They exhibit the union of splendid material with the most delicate skill in language; and they exhibit the union of thrilling events with a remarkable power of psychological a.n.a.lysis. Every thoughtful reader has noticed these combinations; but we sometimes forget that Silver, Alan, Henry, and the Master are just as fine examples of character-portrayal as can be found in the works of Henry James. It is from this point of view that Stevenson is so vastly superior to Fenimore Cooper; just as in literary style he so far surpa.s.ses Scott. _Treasure Island_ is much better than _The Red Rover_ or _The Pirate_; its author actually beat Scott and Cooper at their own game. With the exception of _Henry Esmond_, Stevenson may perhaps be said to have written the best romances in the English language; the undoubted inferiority of any of his books to that masterpiece would make an interesting subject for reflexion.
The one thing in which Scott really excelled Stevenson was in the depiction of women. The latter has given us no Diana Vernon or Jeannie Deans. For the most part, Stevenson"s romances are Paradise before the creation of Eve. The snake is there, but not the woman. This extraordinary absence of s.e.x-interest is a notable feature, and many have been the reasons a.s.signed for it. If he had not tried at all, we should be safe in saying that, like a small boy, he felt that girls were in the way, and he did not want them mussing up his games. There is perhaps some truth in this; for the presence of a girl might have ruined _Treasure Island_, as it ruined the _Sea Wolf_. Her fuss and feathers bring in all sorts of bothersome problems to distract a novelist, bent on having a good time with pirates, murders, and hidden treasure.
Unfortunately for the complete satisfaction of this explanation, Stevenson wrote _Prince Otto_, and tried to draw a real woman. The result did not add anything to his fame, and, indeed, the whole book missed fire. He was unquestionably more successful in _David Balfour_, but, when all is said, the presence of women in a few of Stevenson"s romances is not so impressive as their absence in most. It is only in that unfinished work, _Weir of Hermiston_, which gave every promise of being one of the greatest novels in English literature, that he seemed to have reached full maturity of power in dealing with the master pa.s.sion. The best reason for Stevenson"s reserve on matters of s.e.x was probably his delicacy; he did not wish to represent this particular animal impulse with the same vivid reality he pictured avarice, ambition, courage, cowardice, and pride; and thus hampered by conscience, he thought it best in the main to omit it altogether. At least, this is the way he felt about it, as we may learn from the _Vailima Letters_:--
"This is a poison bad world for the romancer, this Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of it by not having any women in it at all." (February, 1892.)
"I am afraid my touch is a little broad in a love story; I can"t mean one thing and write another. As for women, I am no more in any fear of them; I can do a sort all right; age makes me less afraid of a petticoat, but I am a little in fear of grossness. However, this David Balfour"s love affair, that"s all right--might be read out to a mothers" meeting--or a daughters" meeting. The difficulty in a love yarn, which dwells at all on love, is the dwelling on one string; it is manifold, I grant, but the root fact is there unchanged, and the sentiment being very intense, and already very much handled in letters, positively calls for a little pawing and gracing. With a writer of my prosaic literalness and pertinency of point of view, this all shoves toward grossness--positively even towards the far more d.a.m.nable _closeness_. This has kept me off the sentiment hitherto, and now I am to try: Lord! Of course Meredith can do it, and so could Shakespeare; but with all my romance, I am a realist and a prosaist, and a most fanatical lover of plain physical sensations plainly and expressly rendered; hence my perils. To do love in the same spirit as I did (for instance) D.
Balfour"s fatigue in the heather; my dear sir, there were grossness--ready made! And hence, how to sugar?" (May, 1892.)
On the whole, I am inclined to think, that with the omission of the fragment, _Weir of Hermiston_, Stevenson"s best novel is his first--_Treasure Island_. He wrote this with peculiar zest; first of all, in spite of the playful dedication, to please himself; second, to see if the public appet.i.te for Romance could once more be stimulated. He never did anything later quite so off-hand, quite so spontaneous. His maturer books, brilliant as they are, lack the peculiar _brightness_ of _Treasure Island_. It has more unity than _The Master of Ballantrae_; and it has a greater group of characters than _Kidnapped_.
Stevenson told this story in the first person, but, by a clever device, he avoided the chief difficulty of that method of narration. The speaker is not one of the princ.i.p.al characters in the story, though he shares in the most thrilling adventures. We thus have all the advantages of direct discourse, all the gain in reality--without a hint as to what will be the fate of the leading actors. Stevenson said, in one of the _Vailima Letters_, that first-person tales were more in accord with his temperament. The purely objective character of this novel is noteworthy, and entirely proper, coming from a perfectly normal boy. The _Essays_ show that Stevenson could be sufficiently introspective if he chose, and _Dr. Jekyll_ is really an introspective novel, differing in every way from _Treasure Island_. But here we have romantic adventures seen through the fresh eyes of boyhood, producing their unconscious reflex action on the soul of the narrator, who daily grows in courage and self-reliance by grappling with danger. In Henry James"s fine and penetrating essay on Stevenson, he says of this book, "What we see in it is not only the ideal fable, but the young reader himself and his state of mind: we seem to read it over his shoulder, with an arm around his neck." This particular remark has been much praised; but it seems in a way to half-apologise for a man"s interest in the story, and to explain it like an affectionate uncle"s sympathetic interest in a child"s game, who mainly enjoys the child"s enthusiasm. Now I venture to say that no one can any more outgrow _Treasure Island_ than he can outgrow _Robinson Crusoe_. The events in the story delight children; but it is a book that in mature years can be read and reread with ever increasing satisfaction and profit. No one needs to regret or to explain his interest in this novel; it is nothing to be sorry for, nor does it indicate a low order of literary taste. Many serious persons have felt somewhat alarmed by their pleasure in reading _Treasure Island_, and have hesitated to a.s.sign it a high place in fiction. Some have said that, after all, it is only a pirate story, differing from the Sleuths and Harkaways merely in being better written. But this is exactly the point, and a very important point, in criticism. In art, the subject is of comparatively little importance, whereas the treatment is the absolute distinguishing feature. To insist that there is little difference between _Treasure Island_ and any cheap tale of blood-and-thunder, is equivalent to saying that there is little difference between the Sistine Madonna and a cottage chromo of the Virgin.
Pew is a fearsome personage, and a notable example of the triumph of mind over the most serious of all physical disabilities. Theoretically, it seems strange that able-bodied individuals should be afraid of a man who is stone blind. But the appearance of Pew is enough to make anybody take to his heels. He is the very essence of authority and leadership.
The tap-tapping of his stick in the moonlight makes one"s blood run cold. We are apt to think of blind people as gentle, sweet, pure, and holy; made submissive and tender by misfortune, dependent on the kindness of others. Old Pew has lost his eyes, but not his nerve. To see so black-hearted and unscrupulous a villain, his sight taken away as it were by the hand of G.o.d, and yet intent only on desperate wickedness, upsets the moral order; he becomes an uncanny monstrosity; he takes on the hue of a supernatural fiend. John Silver has lost a leg, but he circ.u.mvents others by the speed of his mind; amazingly quick in perception, a most astute politician, arrested from no treachery or murder by any moral principle or touch of pity, he has the dark splendour of unflinching depravity. He is no Laodicean. He never lets I dare not wait upon I would. His course seems fickle and changeable, but he is really steering steadily by the compa.s.s of self-interest. He can be witty, affectionate, sympathetic, friendly, submissive, flattering, and also a devilish beast. He is the very chameleon of crime. Stevenson simply had not the heart to kill so consummate an artist in villainy. It was no mean achievement to create two heroes so sinister as Pew and Silver, while depriving one of his sight and the other of a leg. One wearies of the common run of romances, where the chief character is a man of colossal size and beautifully proportioned, so that his victories over various rascals are really only athletic records. In _Treasure Island_, the emphasis is laid in the right place, whence leadership comes; everybody is afraid of Long John, and n.o.body minds Ben Gunn, dead or alive.[14]
[14] It is interesting to remember that the crippled poet, W. E. Henley, was the original of Silver. Writing to Henley, May, 1883, Stevenson said, "I will now make a confession. It was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot John Silver."
There are scenes in this story, presented with such dramatic power, and with such astonishing felicity of diction, that, once read, they can never pa.s.s from the reader"s mind. The expression in Silver"s face, as he talks with Tom in the marsh, first ingratiatingly friendly, then suspicious, then as implacable as malignant fate. The hurling of the crutch; the two terrific stabs of the knife. "I could hear him pant aloud as he struck the blows." The boy"s struggle on the schooner with Israel Hands; the awful moment in the little boat, while Flint"s gunner is training the "long nine" on her, and the pa.s.sengers can do nothing but await the result of the enemy"s skill; the death of the faithful old servant, Redruth, who said he thought somebody might read a prayer.
Much has been written in both prose and verse of the fascination of Stevenson"s personality. He was so different in different moods that no two of his friends have ever agreed as to what manner of man he really was. As he chose to express his genius mainly in objective romances, future generations will find in the majority of his works no hint as to the character of the author. From this point of view, compare for a moment _The Master of Ballantrae_ with _Joseph Vance_! But fortunately, Stevenson elected to write personal essays; and still more fortunately, hundreds of his most intimate letters are preserved in type. Some think that these _Letters_ form his greatest literary work, and that they will outlast his novels, plays, poems, and essays. For they will have a profound interest long after the last person who saw Stevenson on earth has pa.s.sed away. They are the revelation of a man even more interesting than any of the wonderful characters he created; they show that men like Philip Sidney were as possible in the nineteenth century as in the brilliant age of Elizabeth. The life of Stevenson has added immensely to our happiness and enjoyment of the world, and no literary figure in recent times had more radiance and wholesome charm. His optimism was based on a chronic experience of physical pain and weakness; to him it was a good world, and he made it distinctly better by his presence. He was a combination of the Bohemian and the Covenanter; he had all the graces of one, and the bed-rock moral earnestness of the other. "The world must return some day to the word "duty,"" said he, "and be done with the word "reward."" He was the incarnation of the happy union of virtue and vivacity.
X
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
It is high time that somebody spoke out his mind about Mrs. Humphry Ward. Her prodigious vogue is one of the most extraordinary literary phenomena of our day. A roar of approval greets the publication of every new novel from her active pen, and it is almost pathetic to contemplate the reverent awe of her army of worshippers when they behold the solemn announcement that she is "collecting material" for another masterpiece.
Even professional reviewers lose all sense of proportion when they discuss her books, and their so-called criticisms sound like publishers"
advertis.e.m.e.nts. Sceptics are warned to remain silent, lest they become unpleasantly conspicuous. When _Lady Rose"s Daughter_ appeared, the critic of a great metropolitan daily remarked that whoever did not immediately recognise the work as a masterpiece thereby proclaimed himself as a person incapable of judgement, taste, and appreciation.
This is a fair example of the att.i.tude taken by thousands of her readers, and it is this att.i.tude, rather than the value of her work, that we must, first of all, consider.
In the year 1905 an entirely respectable journal said of Mrs. Ward, "There is no more interesting and important figure in the literary world to-day." In comparing this superlative with the actual state of affairs, we find that we were asked to believe that Mrs. Ward was a literary personage not second in importance to Tolstoi, Ibsen, Bjornson, Heyse, Sudermann, Hauptmann, Anatole France, Jules Lemaitre, Rostand, Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling, and Mark Twain. At about the same time a work appeared intended as a text-book for the young, which declared Mrs. Ward to be "the greatest living writer of fiction in English literature," and misspelled her name--an excellent ill.u.s.tration of carelessness in adjectives with inaccuracy in facts. Over and over again we have heard the statement that the "mantle" of George Eliot has fallen on Mrs. Ward. Is it really true that her stories are equal in value to _Adam Bede_, _The Mill on the Floss_, and _Middlemarch_?
The object of this essay is not primarily to attack a dignified and successful author; it is rather to enquire, in a proper spirit of humility, and with a full realisation of the danger incurred, whether or not the actual output justifies so enormous a reputation. For in some respects I believe the vogue of Mrs. Ward to be more unfortunate than the vogue of the late lamented d.u.c.h.ess, of Laura Jean Libbey, of Mrs. E.
D. E. N. Southworth, of Marie Corelli, and of Hall Caine. When we are asked to note that 300,000 copies of the latest novel by any of these have been sold before the book is published, there is no cause for alarm. We know perfectly well what that means. It is what is called a "business proposition"; it has nothing to do with literature. It simply proves that it is possible to make as splendid a fortune out of the trade of book-making, and by equally respectable methods, as is made in other legitimate avenues of business. But the case is quite different with Mrs. Ward. Whatever she is, she is not vulgar, sensational, or cheap; she has never made the least compromise with her moral ideals, nor has she ever attempted to play to the gallery. Her const.i.tuency is made up largely of serious-minded, highly respectable people, who live in good homes, who are fairly well read, and who ought to know the difference between ordinary and extraordinary literature. Her books have had a bad effect in blurring this distinction in the popular mind; for while she has never written a positively bad book,--with the possible exception of _Bessie Costrell_,--I feel confident that she has never written supremely well; that, compared with the great masters of fiction, she becomes immediately insignificant. If there ever was a successful writer whose work shows industry and talent rather than genius, that writer is Mrs. Ward. If there ever was a successful writer whose work is ordinary rather than extraordinary, it is Mrs. Ward.
To those of us who delight in getting some enjoyment even out of the most depressing facts, the growth of Mrs. Ward"s reputation has its humorous aspect. The same individuals (mostly feminine) who in 1888 read _Robert Elsmere_ with dismay, who thought the sale of the work should be prohibited, and the copies already purchased removed from circulating libraries, are the very same ones who now worship what they once denounced. She was then regarded as a destroyer of Christian faith.
Well, if she was Satan then, she is Satan still (one Western clergyman, in advocating at that time the suppression of the work, said he believed in hitting the devil right between the eyes). She has given no sign of recantation, or even of penitence. I remember one fond mother, who, fearful of the effect of the book on her daughter"s growing mind, marked all the worst pa.s.sages, and then told Alice she might read it, provided she skipped all the blazed places! That indicated not only a fine literary sense, but a remarkable knowledge of human nature. I wonder what the poor girl did when she came to the danger signals! And, as a matter of fact, how valuable or vital would a Christian faith be that could be destroyed by the perusal of _Robert Elsmere_? It is almost difficult now to bring to distinct recollection the tremendous excitement caused by Mrs. Ward"s first successful novel, for it is a long time since I heard its name mentioned. The last public notice of it that I can recall was a large sign which appeared some fifteen years ago in a New Haven apothecary"s window to the effect that one copy of _Robert Elsmere_ would be presented free to each purchaser of a cake of soap!
Although _Robert Elsmere_ was an immediate and prodigious success, and made it certain that whatever its author chose to write next would be eagerly bought, it is wholly untrue to say that her subsequent novels have depended in any way on _Elsmere_ for their reputation. There are many instances in professional literary careers where one immensely successful book--_Lorna Doone_, for example--has floated a long succession of works that could not of themselves stay above water; many an author has succeeded in attaching a life-preserver to literary children who cannot swim. Far otherwise is the case with Mrs. Ward. It is probable that over half the readers of _Diana Mallory_ have never seen a copy of _Robert Elsmere_, for which, incidentally, they are to be congratulated. But many of us can easily recollect with what intense eagerness the novel that followed that sensation was awaited. Every one wondered if it would be equally good; and many confidently predicted that she had shot her bolt. As a matter of fact, not only was _David Grieve_ a better novel than _Robert Elsmere_, but, in my judgement, it is the best book its author has ever written. Oscar Wilde said that _Robert Elsmere_ was _Literature and Dogma_ with the literature left out. Now, _David Grieve_ has no dogma at all, but in a certain sense it does belong to literature. It has some actual dynamic quality. The character of David, and its development in a strange environment, are well a.n.a.lysed; and altogether the best thing in the work, taken as a whole, is the perspective. It is a difficult thing to follow a character from childhood up, within the pages of one volume, and have anything like the proper perspective. It requires for one thing, hard, painstaking industry; but Mrs. Ward has never been afraid of work. She cannot be accused of laziness or carelessness. The ending of this book is, of course, weak, like the conclusion of all her books, for she has never learned the fine art of saying farewell, either to her characters or to the reader.
It was in the year 1894--a year made memorable by the appearance of _Trilby_, the _Prisoner of Zenda_, _The Jungle Book_, _Lord Ormont and his Aminta_, _Esther Waters_, and other notable novels--that Mrs. Ward greatly increased her reputation and widened her circle of readers by the publication of _Marcella_. Here she gave us a political-didactic-realistic novel, which she has continued to publish steadily ever since under different t.i.tles. It was gravely announced that this new book would deal with socialism and the labour question.
Many readers, who felt that she had said the last word on agnosticism in _Elsmere_, now looked forward with reverent antic.i.p.ation not only to the final solution of socialistic problems, but to some coherent arrangement of their own vague and confused ideas. Naturally, they got just what they deserved--a voluminous statement of various aspects of the problem, with no solution at all. It is curious how many persons suppose that their favourite author or orator has done something toward settling questions, when, as a matter of fact, all he has done is to _state_ them, and then state them again. This is especially true of philosophical and metaphysical difficulties. Think how eagerly readers took up Professor James"s exceedingly clever book on Pragmatism, hoping at last to find rest in some definite principle. And if there ever was a blind alley in philosophy, it is Pragmatism--the very essence of agnosticism.
Now, _Marcella_, as a doc.u.ment, is both radical and reactionary. There is an immense amount of radical talk; but the heroine"s schemes fail, the Labour party is torn by dissension, Wharton proves to be a scoundrel, and the rebel Marcella marries a respectable n.o.bleman. There is not a single page in the book, with all its wilderness of words, that can be said to be in any sense a serious contribution to the greatest of all purely political problems. And, as a work of art, it is painfully limited; but since it has the same virtues and defects of all her subsequent literary output, we may consider what these virtues and defects are.
In the first place, Mrs. Ward is totally lacking in one almost fundamental quality of the great novelist--a keen sense of humour. Who are the English novelists of the first cla.s.s? They are Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Scott, Jane Austen, d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Stevenson, and perhaps Hardy. Every one of these shows humour enough and to spare, with the single exception of Richardson, and he atoned for the deficiency by a terrible intensity that has seldom, if ever, been equalled in English fiction. Now, the absence of humour in a book is not only a positive loss to the reader, in that it robs him of the fun which is an essential part of the true history of any human life, and thereby makes the history to that extent inaccurate and unreal, but the writer who has no humour seldom gets the right point of view. There is infinitely more in the temperament of the humorist than mere laughter. Just as the poet sees life through the medium of a splendid imagination, so the humorist has the almost infallible guide of sympathy. The humorist sees life in a large, tolerant, kindly way; he knows that life is a tragi-comedy, and he makes the reader feel it in that fashion.
Again, the lack of humour in a writer destroys the sense of proportion.
The humorist sees the salient points--the merely serious writer gives us a ma.s.s of details. In looking back over the thousands of pages of fiction that Mrs. Ward has published, how few great scenes stand out bright in the memory! The principle of selection--so important a part of all true art--is conspicuous only by its absence. This is one reason for the sameness of her books. All that we can remember is an immense number of social functions and an immense amount of political gossip--a long, sad level of mediocrity. This perhaps helps to explain why German fiction is so markedly inferior to the French. The German, in his scientific endeavour to get in the whole of life, gives us a ma.s.s of unrelated detail. A French writer by a few phrases makes us see a character more clearly than a German presents him after many painful pages of wearisome description.
Mrs. Ward is not too much in earnest in following her ideals of art; no one can be. But she is too sadly serious. There is a mental tension in her books, like the tension of overwork and mental exhaustion, like the tension of overwrought nerves; her books are, in fact, filled with tired and overworked men and women, jaded and gone stale. How many of her characters seem to need a change--what they want is rest and sleep! Many of them ought to be in a sanatorium.
Her books are devoid of charm. One does not have to compare her with the great masters to feel this deficiency; it would not be fair to compare her with Thackeray. But if we select among all the novelists of real distinction the one whom, perhaps, she most closely approaches,--Anthony Trollope,--the enormous distance between _Diana Mallory_ and _Framley Parsonage_ is instantly manifest. We think of Trollope with a glow of reminiscent delight; but although Trollope and Mrs. Ward talk endlessly on much the same range of subject-matter, how far apart they really are!
Mrs. Ward"s books are crammed with politicians and clergymen, who keep the patient reader informed on modern aspects of political and religious thought; but the difficulty is that they subst.i.tute phrases for ideas.
Mrs. Ward knows all the political and religious cant of the day; she is familiar with the catch-words that divide men into hostile camps; but in all these dreary pages of serious conversation there is no real illumination. She completely lacks the art that Trollope possessed, of making ordinary people attractive. But to find out the real distance that separates her productions from literature, one should read, let us say, _The Marriage of William Ashe_ and then take up _Pride and Prejudice_. The novels of Mrs. Ward bear about the same relation to first-cla.s.s fiction that maps and atlases bear to great paintings.
This lack of charm that I always feel in reading Mrs. Ward"s books (and I have read them all) is owing not merely to the lack of humour. It is partly due to what seems to be an almost total absence of freshness, spontaneity, and originality. Mrs. Ward works like a well-trained and high-cla.s.s graduate student, who is engaged in the preparation of a doctor"s thesis. Her discussions of socialism, her scenes in the House of Commons and on the Terrace, her excursions to Italy, her references to political history, her remarks on the army, her disquisitions on theology, her pictures of campaign riots, her studies of defective drainage, her representations of the labouring cla.s.ses,--all these are "worked up" in a scholarly and scientific manner; there is the modern pa.s.sion for accuracy, there is the German completeness of detail,--there is, in fact, everything except the breath of life. She works in the descriptive manner, from the outside in--not in the inspired manner which goes with imagination, sympathy, and genius. She is not only a student, she is a journalist; she is a special correspondent on politics and theology; but she is not a creative writer. For she has the critical, not the creative, temperament.
The monotonous sameness of her books, which has been mentioned above, is largely owing to the sameness of her characters. She changes the frames, but not the portraits. First of all, in almost any of her books we are sure to meet the studious, intellectual young man. He always has a special library on some particular subject, with the books all annotated. One wearies of this perpetual character"s perpetual library, crowded, as it always is, with the latest French and German monographs.
Her heroes smell of books and dusty dissertations, and the conversations of these heroes are plentifully lacking in native wit and originality--they are the mere echoes of their reading. Let us pa.s.s in review a few of these serious students--Robert Elsmere, Langham, Aldous Reyburn (who changes into Lord Maxwell, but who remains a prig), the melancholy Helbeck, the insufferable Manisty, Jacob Delafield, William Ashe, Oliver Marsham--all, all essentially the same, tiresome, dull, heavy men--what a pity they were not intended as satires! Second, as a foil to this man, we have the Byronic, clever, romantic, sentimental, insincere man--who always degenerates or dies in a manner that exalts the dull and superior virtues of his antagonist. Such a man is Wharton, or Sir George Tressady, or Captain Warkworth, or Cliffe--they have different names in different novels, but they are the same character.
Curiously enough, the only convincing men that appear in her pages are _old_ men--men like Lord Maxwell or Sir James Chide. In portraying this type she achieves success.
What shall we say of her heroines? They have the same suspicious resemblance so characteristic of her heroes; they are represented as physically beautiful, intensely eager for morality and justice, with an extraordinary fund of information, and an almost insane desire to impart it. Her heroine is likely to be or to become a power in politics; even at a tender age she rules society by the brilliancy of her conversation; in a crowded drawing-room the Prime Minister hangs upon her words; diplomats are amazed at her intimate knowledge of foreign relations, and of the resources of the British Empire; and she can entertain a whole ring of statesmen and publicists by giving to each exactly the right word at the right moment. Men who are making history come to her not only for inspiration but for guidance, for she can discourse fluently on all phases of the troublesome labour question. And yet, if we may judge of this marvellous creature not by the att.i.tude of the other characters in the book, but by the actual words that fall from her lips, we are reminded of the woman whom Herbert Spencer"s friends selected as his potential spouse. They shut him up with her, and awaited the result with eagerness, for they told him she had a great mind; but on emerging from the trial interview Spencer remarked that she would not do at all: "The young lady is, in my opinion, too highly intellectual; or, I should rather say--morbidly intellectual. A small brain in a state of intense activity." Was there ever a better formula for Mrs. Ward"s constantly recurring heroine? Now, as a foil to Marcella, Diana Mallory, and the others, Mrs. Ward gives us the frivolous, mischief-making, would-be brilliant, and actually vulgar woman, who makes much trouble for the heroine and ultimately more for herself--the wife of Sir George Tressady, the young upstart in _Diana Mallory_, and all the rest of them. By the introduction of these characters there is an attempt to lend colour to the dull pages of the novels. These women are at heart adventuresses, but they are apt to lack the courage of their convictions; instead of being brilliant and terrible,--like the great adventuresses of fiction,--they are as dull in sin as their antagonists are dull in virtue. Mrs. Ward cannot make them real; compare any one of them with Thackeray"s Beatrix or with Becky Sharp--to say nothing of the long list of sinister women in French and Russian fiction.
There are no "supreme moments" in Mrs. Ward"s books; no great dramatic situations; she has tried hard to manage this, for she has had repeatedly one eye on the stage. When _The Marriage of William Ashe_ and _Lady Rose"s Daughter_ appeared, one could almost feel the strain for dramatic effect. It was as though she had realised that her previous books were treatises rather than novels, and had gathered all her energies together to make a severe effort for real drama. But, unfortunately, the scholarly and critical temperament is not primarily adapted for dramatic masterpieces. In the endeavour to recall thrilling scenes in her novels, scenes that brand themselves for ever on the memory, one has only to compare her works with such stories as _Far From the Madding Crowd_ or _The Return of the Native_, and her painful deficiency is immediately apparent.
In view of what I believe to be the standard mediocrity of her novels, how shall we account for their enormous vogue? The fact is, whether we like it or not, that she is one of the most widely read of all living novelists. Well, in the first place, she is absolutely respectable and safe. It is a.s.suredly to her credit that she has never stooped for popularity. She has never descended to melodrama, clap-trap, or indecency. She is never spectacular and declamatory like Marie Corelli, and she is never morally offensive like some popular writers who might be mentioned. She writes for a certain cla.s.s of readers whom she thoroughly understands: they are the readers who abhor both vulgarity and pruriency, and who like to enter vicariously, as they certainly do in her novels, into the best English society. In her social functions her readers can have the pleasure of meeting prime ministers, lords, and all the dwellers in Mayfair, and they know that nothing will be said that is shocking or improper. Her books can safely be recommended to young people, and they reflect the current movement of English thought as well as could be done by a standard English review. She has a well-furnished and highly developed intellect; she is deeply read; she makes her readers think that they are thinking. She tries to make up for artistic deficiencies by an immense amount of information. Fifty years ago it is probable that she would not have written novels at all, but rather thoughtful and intellectual critical essays, for which her mind is admirably fitted. She unconsciously chose the novel simply because the novel has been, during the last thirty years, the chief channel of literary expression. But in spite of her popularity, it should never be forgotten that the novel is an art-form, not a medium for doctrinaires.
Then, with her sure hand on the pulse of the public, she is always intensely modern, intensely contemporary; again like a well-trained journalist. She knows exactly what Society is talking about, for she emphatically belongs to it. This is once more a reason why so many people believe that she holds the key to great problems of social life, and that her next book will give the solution. Many hoped that her novel on America, carefully worked up during her visit here, would give the final word on American social life. Both England and the United States were to find out what the word "American" really means.
Mrs. Ward is an exceedingly talented, scholarly, and thoughtful woman, of lofty aims and actuated only by n.o.ble motives; she is hungry for intellectual food, reading both old texts and the daily papers with avidity. She has a highly trained, sensitive, critical mind,--but she is dest.i.tute of the divine spark of genius. Her books are the books of to-day, not of to-morrow; for while the political and religious questions of to-day are of temporary interest, the themes of the world"s great novels are what Richardson called "love and nonsense, men and women"--and these are eternal.
XI
RUDYARD KIPLING
Mr. Rudyard Kipling is in the anomalous and fortunate position of having enjoyed a prodigious reputation for twenty years, and being still a young man. Few writers in the world to-day are better known than he; and it is to be hoped and expected that he has before him over thirty years of active production. He has not yet attained the age of forty-five; but his numerous stories, novels, and poems have reached the unquestioned dignity of "works," and in uniform binding they make on my library shelves a formidable and gallant display. Foreigners read them in their own tongues; critical essays in various languages are steadily acc.u.mulating; and he has received the honour of being himself the hero of a strange French novel.[15] His popularity with the general ma.s.s of readers has been sufficient to satisfy the wildest dreams of an author"s ambition; and his fame is, in a way, officially sanctioned by the receipt of honorary degrees from McGill University, from Durham, from Oxford, and from Cambridge; and in 1907 he was given the n.o.bel Prize, with the ratifying applause of the whole world. There is no indication that either the shouts of the mob or the hoods of Doctorates have turned his head; he remains to-day what he always has been--a hard, conscientious workman, trying to do his best every time.
[15] A curious and ironical book, _Dingley_, by Tharaud.
Although Mr. Kipling is British to the core, there is nothing insular about his experience; he is as much-travelled as Ulysses.
"For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known: cities of men, And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour"d of them all."
Born in India, educated at an English school, circ.u.mnavigator of the globe, he is equally at home in the snows of the Canadian Rockies, or in the fierce heat east of Suez; in the fogs of the Channel, or under the Southern Cross at Capetown. Nor is he a mere sojourner on the earth: he has lived for years in his own house, in England, in Vermont, and in India, and has had abundant opportunity to compare the climate of Brattleboro with that of Bombay.
A born journalist and reporter, his publications first saw the light in ephemeral Indian sheets. In the late eighties he began to amuse himself with the composition of squibs of verse, which he printed in the local newspaper; these became popular, and were cited and sung with enthusiasm. Emboldened by this first taste of success, he put together a little volume bound like a Government report; he then sent around reply post-cards for cash orders, in the fashion already made famous by Walt Whitman. It is needless to say that copies of this book command a fancy price to-day. He immediately contracted what Holmes used to call "lead-poisoning," and the sight of his work in type made a literary career certain. He produced volume after volume, in both prose and verse, with amazing rapidity, and his fame overflowed the world. A London periodical prophesied in 1888, "The book gives hope of a new literary star of no mean magnitude rising in the East." The amount and excellence of his output may be judged when we remember that in the three years from 1886 to 1889 he published _Departmental Ditties_, _Plain Tales from the Hills_, _Soldiers Three_, _In Black and White_, _The Story of the Gadsbys_, _The Man Who Would Be King_, _The Phantom "Rickshaw_, _Wee Willie Winkie_, and other narratives.
The originality, freshness, and power of all this work made Europe stare and gasp. For some years he had as much notoriety as reputation. We used to hear of the Kipling "craze," the Kipling "boom," the Kipling "fad,"