Books and Persons; Being Comments on a Past Epoch, 1908-1911

by Arnold Bennett

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  Chief among its characteristics--after its sincere religious worship ofmoney and financial success--I should put its intense self-consciousnessas a class. The world is a steamer in which it is travelling saloon.Occasionally it goes to look over from the promenade deck at the steerage.Its feelings towards the steerage are kindly. But the tone in which itsays "the steerage" cuts the steerage off from it more effectually thanmany bulkheads. You perceive also from that tone that it could never besurprised by anything that the steerage might do. Curious socialphenomenon, the steerage! In the saloon there runs a code, the onlypossible code, the final code; and it is observed. If it is not observed,the infraction causes pain, distress. Another marked characteristic is itsgigantic temperamental dullness, unresponsiveness to external suggestion,a lack of humour--in short, a heavy and half-honest stupidity: ultimateproduct of gross prosperity, too much exercise, too much sleep. Then Inotice a grim passion for the _status quo_. This is natural. Let thesepeople exclaim as they will against the structure of society, the lastthing they desire is to alter it. This passion shows itself in a naiveadmiration for everything that has survived its original usefulness, suchas sail-drill and uniforms. Its mirror of true manhood remains thatexcellent and appalling figure, the Brushwood Boy. The passion for the_status quo_ also shows itself in a general defensive, sullen hatred ofall ideas whatever. You cannot argue with these people. "Do you reallythink so?" they will politely murmur, when you have asserted your beliefthat the earth is round, or something like that. And their tone says:"Would you mind very much if we leave this painful subject? My feelings onit are too deep for utterance." Lastly, I am impressed by their attitudetowards the artist, which is mediaeval, or perhaps Roman. Blind to nearlyevery form of beauty, they scorn art, and scorning art they scorn artists.It was this class which, at inaugurations of public edifices, invented theterrible toast-formula, "The architect _and contractor_." And if epicswere inaugurated by banquet, this class would certainly propose the healthof the poet and printer, after the King and the publishers. Only sheerennui sometimes drives it to seek distraction in the artist's work. Itprefers the novelist among artists because the novel gives the longestsurcease from ennui at the least expenditure of money and effort.

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  It is inevitable that I shall be accused of exaggeration, cynicism, orprejudice: probably all three. Whenever one tells the truth in this islandof compromise, one is sure to be charged on these counts, and to be foundguilty. But I too am of the sporting race, and forty years have taught methat telling the truth is the most dangerous and most glorious of allforms of sport. Alpine climbing in winter is nothing to it. I like it. Iwill only add that I have been speaking of the solid _bloc_ of the caste;I admit the existence of a broad fringe of exceptions. And I trulysympathize with the _bloc_. I do not blame the _bloc_. I know that themembers of the _bloc_ are, like me, the result of evolutionary forces nowspent. My hostility to the _bloc_ is beyond my control, an evolutionaryforce gathering way. Upon my soul, I love the _bloc_. But when I sit amongit, clothed in correctness, and reflect that the _bloc_ maintains me andmine in a sort of comfort, because I divert its leisure, the humour of thesituation seems to me enormous.

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  [_11 Feb '09_]

  I continue my notes on the great, stolid, comfortable class which formsthe backbone of the novel-reading public. The best novelists do not findtheir material in this class. Thomas Hardy never. H.G. Wells, almostnever; now and then he glances at it ironically, in an episodic manner.Hale White (Mark Rutherford), never. Rudyard Kipling, rarely; when hetouches it, the reason is usually because it happens to embrace themilitary caste, and the result is usually such mawkish stories as "Williamthe Conqueror" and "The Brushwood Boy." J.M. Barrie, never. W.W. Jacobs,never. Murray Gilchrist, never. Joseph Conrad, never. Leonard Merrick,very slightly. George Moore, in a "Drama in Muslin," wrote a masterpieceabout it twenty years ago; "Vain Fortune" is also good; but for a longtime it had ceased to interest the artist in him, and his very finest workignores it. George Meredith was writing greatly about it thirty years ago.Henry James, with the chill detachment of an outlander, fingers theartistic and cosmopolitan fringe of it. In a rank lower than these we haveWilliam de Morgan and John Galsworthy. The former does not seem to beinspired by it. As for John Galsworthy, the quality in him which maypossibly vitiate his right to be considered a major artist is preciselyhis fierce animosity to this class. Major artists are seldom so cruellyhostile to anything whatever as John Galsworthy is to this class. He doesin fiction what John Sargent does in paint; and their inimical observationof their subjects will gravely prejudice both of them in the eyes ofposterity. I think I have mentioned all the novelists who have impressedthemselves at once on the public and genuinely on the handful of personswhose taste is severe and sure. There may be, there are, other novelistsalive whose work will end by satisfying the tests of the handful. Whetherany of these others deal mainly with the superior stolid comfortable, Icannot certainly say; but I think not. I am ready to assert that in quitemodern English fiction there exists no large and impartial picture of thesuperior stolid comfortable which could give pleasure to a reader oftaste. Rather hard on the class that alone has made novel-writing aprofession in which a man can earn a reasonable livelihood!

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  The explanation of this state of affairs is obscure. True, thatdistinguished artists are very seldom born into the class. But such anexplanation would be extremely inadequate. Artists often move creativelywith ease far beyond the boundaries of their native class. Thomas Hardy isnot a peasant, nor was Stendhal a marquis. I could not, with any sort ofconfidence, offer an explanation. I am, however, convinced that only asupreme artist could now handle successfully the material presented by theclass in question. The material itself lacks interest, lacks essentialvitality, lacks both moral and spectacular beauty. It powerfully repelsthe searcher after beauty and energy. It may be in a decay. One cannoteasily recall a great work of art of which the subject is decadence.

  The backbone of the novel-reading public is excessively difficult toplease, and rarely capable of enthusiasm. Listen to Mudie subscribers onthe topic of fiction, and you will scarcely ever hear the accent ofunmixed pleasure. It is surprising how even favourites are maltreated inconversation. Some of the most successful favourites seem to be hated, andto be read under protest. The general form of approval is a doubtful"Ye-es!" with a whole tail of unspoken "buts" lying behind it.Occasionally you catch the ecstatic note, "Oh! _Yes_; a _sweet_ book!" Or,with masculine curtness: "Fine book, that!" (For example, "The Hill," byHorace Annesley Vachell!) It is in the light of such infrequentexclamations that you may judge the tepid reluctance of other praise. Thereason of all this is twofold; partly in the book, and partly in thereader. The backbone dislikes the raising of any question which it deemsto have been decided: a peculiarity which at once puts it in opposition toall fine work, and to nearly all passable second-rate work. It alsodislikes being confronted with anything that it considers "unpleasant,"that is to say, interesting. It has a genuine horror of the truth neat. Itquite honestly asks "to be taken out of itself," unaware that to be takenout of itself is the very last thing it really desires. What it wants isto be confirmed in itself. Its religion is the _status quo_. Thedifficulties of the enterprise of not offending it either in subject ortreatment are, perhaps, already sufficiently apparent. But incomparablythe greatest obstacle to pleasing it lies in the positive fact that itprefers not to be pleased. It undoubtedly objects to the very sensationswhich an artist aims to give. If I have heard once, I have heard fiftytimes resentful remarks similar to: "I'm not going to read any more boshby _him_! Why, I simply couldn't put the thing down!" It is profoundlyhostile to art, and the empire of art. It will not willingly yield. Itsattitude to the magic spell is its attitude to the dentist's gas-bag. Thisis the most singular trait that I have d
iscovered in the backbone.

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  Why, then, does the backbone put itself to the trouble of reading currentfiction? The answer is that it does so, not with any artistic, spiritual,moral, or informative purpose, but simply in order to pass time. Lately,one hears, it has been neglecting fiction in favour of books of memoirs,often scandalous, and historical compilations, for the most partscandalous sexually. That it should tire of the fiction offered to it isnot surprising, seeing that it so seldom gets the fiction of its dreams.The supply of good, workmanlike fiction is much larger to-day than ever itwas in the past. The same is to be said of the supply of genuinelydistinguished fiction. But the supply of fiction which really appeals tothe backbone of the fiction-reading public is far below the demand. Thebackbone grumbles, but it continues to hire the offensive stuff, becauseit cannot obtain sufficient of the inoffensive--and time hangs so heavy!The caprice for grape-nut history and memoirs cannot endure, for it ispartially a pose. Besides, the material will run short. After all,Napoleon only had a hundred and three mistresses, and we are already atMademoiselle Georges. The backbone, always loyal to its old beliefs, willreturn to fiction with a new gusto, and the cycle of events willrecommence.

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  But it is well for novelists to remember that, in the present phase ofsociety and mechanical conditions of the literary market theirprofessional existence depends on the fact that the dullest class inEngland takes to novels merely as a refuge from its own dullness. Andwhile it is certain that no novelist of real value really pleases thatclass, it is equally certain that without its support (willing orunwilling--usually the latter) no novelist could live by his pen. Removethe superior stolid comfortable, and the circulating libraries wouldexpire. And exactly when the circulating libraries breathed their lastsigh the publishers of fiction would sympathetically give up the ghost. Ifyou happen to be a literary artist, it makes you think--the reflectionthat when you dine you eat the bread unwillingly furnished by the enemiesof art and of progress!

  THE POTENTIAL PUBLIC

  [_18 Feb. '09_]

  I want to dig a little deeper through the strata of the public. Below theactual fiction-reading public which I have described there is a muchvaster potential public. It exists in London, and it exists also in theprovinces. I will describe it as I have found it in the industrialmidlands and north. Should the picture seem black, let me say that mypicture of a similar public in London would be even blacker. In allessential qualities I consider the lower middle-class which regards, say,Manchester as its centre, to be superior to the lower middle-class whichregards Charing Cross as its centre.

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  All around Manchester there are groups of municipalities which lie soclose to one another that each group makes one town. Take a medium groupcomprising a quarter of a million inhabitants, with units ranging fromsixty down to sixteen thousand. I am not going to darken my picture with abackground of the manual workers, the immense majority of whom never readanything that costs more than a penny--unless it be "Gale's Special." Iwill deal only with the comparatively enlightened crust--employers,clerks, officials, and professional men, and their families--which hasformed on the top of the mass, with an average income of possibly twohundred per annum per family. This crust is the elite of the group. Itrepresents its highest culture, and in bulk it is the "lower middle-class"of Tory journalism. In London some of the glitter of the class above it isrubbed on to it by contact. One is apt to think that because there arebookshops in the Strand and large circulating libraries in Oxford Street,and these thoroughfares are thronged with the lower middle-class,therefore the lower middle-class buys or hires books. In my industrialgroup the institutions and machinery perfected by the upper class foritself do not exist at all, and one may watch the lower without danger ofbeing led to false conclusions by the accidental propinquity of phenomenathat have really nothing whatever to do with it.

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  Now in my group of a quarter of a million souls there is not a single shopdevoted wholly or principally to the sale of books. Not one. You mightdiscover a shop specializing in elephants or radium; but a real bookshopdoes not exist. In a town of forty thousand inhabitants there will be acouple of stationers, whose chief pride is that they are "steam printers"or lithographers. Enter their shops, and you will see a few books.Tennyson in gilt. Volumes of the Temple Classics or Everyman. Hymn-books,Bibles. The latest cheap Shakespeare. Of new books no example except thebrothers Hocking. The stationer will tell you that there is no demand forbooks; but that he can procure anything you specially want by return ofpost. He will also tell you that on the whole he makes no profit out ofbooks; what trifle he captures on his meagre sales he loses on booksunsold. He may inform you that his rival has entirely ceased to stockbooks of any sort, and that he alone stands for letters in the midst offorty thousand people. In a town of sixty thousand there will be alargeish stationer's with a small separate book department. Contentssimilar to the other shop, with a fair selection of cheap reprints, andhalf a dozen of the most notorious new novels, such as novels by MarieCorelli, Max Pemberton, Mrs. Humphry Ward. That is all. Both the shopsdescribed will have two or three regular book-buying clients, not morethan ten in a total of a hundred thousand. These ten are book-lovers.They follow the book lists. They buy to the limit of their purses. And inthe cult of literature they keep themselves quite apart from the societyof the town, despising it. The town is simply aware that they are "greatreaders."

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  Another agency for the radiation of light in the average town firstmentioned is the Municipal Free Library. The yearly sum spent on it isentirely inadequate to keep it up to date. A fraction of its activity isbeneficial, as much to the artisan as to members of the crust. But thechief result of the penny-in-the-pound rate is to supply women old andyoung with outmoded, viciously respectable, viciously sentimental fiction.A few new novels get into the Library every year. They must, however, be"innocuous," that is to say, devoid of original ideas. This, of course, isinevitable in an institution presided over by a committee which hasinfinitely less personal interest in books than in politics or the priceof coal. No Municipal Library can hope to be nearer than twenty-five yearsto date. Go into the average good home of the crust, in the quietude of"after-tea," and you will see a youthful miss sitting over something byCharlotte M. Yonge or Charles Kingsley. And that something is repulsivelyfoul, greasy, sticky, black. Remember that it reaches from thirty to ahundred such good homes every year. Can you wonder that it should carrydeposits of jam, egg, butter, coffee, and personal dirt? You cannot. Butyou are entitled to wonder why the Municipal Sanitary Inspector does notinspect it and order it to be destroyed.... That youthful miss intorpidity over that palimpsest of filth is what the Free Library has toshow as the justification of its existence. I know what I am talkingabout.

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  A third agency is the book-pedlar. There are firms of publishers who neveradvertise in any literary weekly or any daily, who never publish anythingnew, and who may possibly be unknown to Simpkins themselves. They issuebadly printed, badly bound, showy editions of the eternal Scott and theeternal Dickens, in many glittering volumes with scores of blearedillustrations, and they will sell them up and down the provinces by meansof respectably dressed "commission agents," at prices much in excess oftheir value, to an ingenuous, ignorant public that has never heard ofDent and Routledge. The books are found in houses where the sole functionof literature is to flatter the eye. The ability of these subterraneanfirms to dispose of deplorable editions to persons who do not want them isin itself a sharp criticism of the commercial organization of the morerespectable trade.

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  Let it not be supposed that my group is utterly cut off from the newestdevelopments in imaginative prose literature. No! What t
he bookseller, thebook-pedlar, and the Free Library have failed to do, has been accomplishedby Mr. Jesse Boot, incidentally benefactor of the British provinces andthe brain of a large firm of chemists and druggists with branches inscores, hundreds, of towns. He has several branches in my group. Eachbranch has a circulating library, patronized by the class which has onlyheard of Mudie, and has not heard of the Grosvenor. Mr. Jesse Boot has hadthe singular and beautiful idea of advertising his wares by lending booksto customers and non-customers at a loss of ten thousand a year. Hissystem is simplicity and it is cheapness. He is generous. If you desire abook which he has not got in stock he will buy it and lend it to you fortwopence. Thus in the towns of my group the effulgent centre of culture isthe chemist's shop. The sole point of contact with living literature isthe chemist's shop. A wonderful world, this England! Two things haveprincipally struck me about Mr. Jesse Boot's [Now Sir Jesse Boot] clients.One is that they are usually women, and the other is that they hire theirbooks at haphazard, nearly in the dark, with no previous knowledge of whatis good and what is bad.

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  It is to be added that the tremendous supply of sevenpenny bound volumesof modern fiction, and of shilling bound volumes of modern belles-lettres(issued by Nelsons and others), is producing a demand in my group, is, infact, making book-buyers where previously there were no book-buyers. Thesetomes now rival the works of the brothers Hocking in the stationer's shop.Their standard is decidedly above the average, owing largely to the factthat the guide-in-chief of Messrs. Nelsons happens to be a genuine man ofletters. I am told that Messrs. Nelsons alone sell twenty thousand volumesa week. Yet even they have but scratched the crust. The crust is stillonly the raw material of a new book public.