Things near & far Chapter 15: Part 15

It had some mysterious property in it, this little book, which caused good men to froth at the mouth, greatly to my delight. I have quoted a good many of the reviews in the Introduction to the Simpkin, Marshall edition: things like this: “We are afraid he only succeeds in being ridiculous. The book is, on the whole, the most acutely and intentionally disagreeable we have yet seen in English. We could say more, but refrain from doing so for fear of giving such a work advertisement.”--“Manchester Guardian.” “This book is gruesome, ghastly, and dull ... the majority of readers will turn from it in utter disgust.”--“Lady’s Pictorial.” “These tricks have also their ludicrous side.”--“Guardian.” And so forth. It is very well, but I cannot help saying, as an old craftsman and an old reviewer, that it might have been better. I have no fault to find with the technique of the “Guardian”; but the “Lady’s Pictorial” should have left out the “gruesome” and the “ghastly” and also, I am inclined to think, the “disgust.” There are readers who like the gruesome and the ghastly; there are readers whose curiosity is stimulated by the term “disgust.” I am afraid, for example, that if the account of legal proceedings, civil or criminal, is headed “Disgusting Details,” there are minds so prurient as to be rather attracted than repelled, and I am sure that the gentle scribe of the “Lady’s Pictorial” did not wish to paint my little book in attractive colours. And so with the “Manchester Guardian.” “Ridiculous” is admirable; but “acutely and intentionally disagreeable” is something of a signal set to attract those prurient readers whose existence I have regretted; and the last sentence says too much. Mr. Harry Quilter, something of a figure in those days, did better. He pointed out in an article in the “Contemporary Review”--also something of a figure in those days--that the only explanation he could give of such favourable notices as the book had received was that the author must have a great many friends engaged in journalism. I wrote a temperate letter to Mr. Quilter in which I said I was very sorry, but I didn’t know any journalists at all--which happened to be the truth. He wrote back to remind me, as he said, that there was “an Inmost Light to which you may yet be true”--“The Inmost Light” is the title of a tale which was included in the first edition of “The Great God Pan.” --One of the saddest books in the world is Mrs. Gaskell’s wonderful “Life of Charlotte Brontë.” But there is one tragi-comical touch. Poor valiant, simple, stricken Charlotte was being entertained in town by Mr. and Mrs. Smith. There was a dinner-party, given, I suppose, in her honour, and she writes to an old friend: “There were only seven gentlemen at dinner besides Mr. Smith, but of these five were critics--men more dreaded in the world of letters than you can conceive. I did not know how much their presence and conversation had excited me till they were gone, and the reaction commenced. When I had retired for the night, I wished to sleep--the effort to do so was vain. I could not close my eyes. Night passed; morning came, and I rose without having known a moment’s slumber.” Who were these terrible five? We do not know, and it is possible enough that if we heard their names we should not have heard of their names, though, likely enough, George Henry Lewes was one of them. It is odd and pathetic too to think that a great woman such as Charlotte Brontë should have allowed the brilliant repartees and tremendous reputation of George Henry Lewes to break her rest. And just before this passage there is another, as strange and as pathetic. A severe review of “Shirley” appeared in “The Times.” Mr. and Mrs. Smith kindly “mislaid” the paper. But Charlotte insisted on pressing the thorn to her bosom. She would see “The Times.” “Mrs. Smith took her work, and tried not to observe the countenance, which the other tried to hide between the huge sheets; but she could not help becoming aware of tears stealing down the face and dropping on the lap.” And all over a review, an unfavourable review! It is very strange, or, at least, it seems so to me, since, like Jim the nigger, I don’t never cry ska’sely over reviews, and I have always contrived to get my usual sleep. But I have left out one curious specimen of the “Great God Pan” reviews, a specimen which leads up to a curious passage. The “Westminster Review” said: “It is an incoherent nightmare of sex and the supposed horrible mysteries behind it, such as might conceivably possess a man who was given to a morbid brooding over these matters, but which would soon lead to insanity if unrestrained ... innocuous from its absurdity.” I was talking over old literary doings and the affairs of the ’nineties with a friend one day in the spring of 1921. My friend was asking me about my early books and their reception. I gave him a lurid account of the castigations which I had received on account of “The Great God Pan.” “Why,” said I, “the ‘Westminster’ practically told me that if I didn’t take care I should end up in a lunatic asylum.” “Well,” replied the man, meaning to be funny, “haven’t you? I understood you were at Carmelite House?” “No,” I returned, also meaning to be funny, “I haven’t. All the lunatic asylums that I’ve heard of have been managed by a _doctor_.” * * * * * During the latter part of my stay in the country (1891–93) I wrote two books. I have forgotten the names of both of them. They were very bad, and I tore them up, with the exception of one episode--to put it mildly, not a very good story--which appears in “The Three Impostors” under the title of “The Novel of the Dark Valley.” And it was in the early spring of 1894 that I set about the writing of the said “Three Impostors,” a book which testifies to the vast respect I entertained for the fantastic, “New Arabian Nights” manner of R. L. Stevenson, to those curious researches in the by-ways of London which I have described already, and also, I hope, to a certain originality of experiment in the tale of terror, as exemplified in the stories of the Professor who was taken by the fairies, and of the young student of law who swallowed the White Powder. And when I had finished, with a sort of recognition that I had squeezed this particular orange to death, I remember saying to my old friend A. E. Waite: “I shall never give anybody a White Powder again.” And then I was immediately called on to do that very thing which I had vowed I would not do. I actually got an “order,” and--this shews that I was a mere intruder, not a true craftsman--I have rarely been so miserable, miserable that is, as a man of letters, in my life. It was like this. As I have remarked, “The Great God Pan” had made a storm in a Tiny Tot’s teacup. And about the same time, a young gentleman named H. G. Wells had made a very real, and a most deserved sensation with a book called “The Time Machine”; a book indeed. And a new weekly paper was projected by Mr. Raven Hill and Mr. Girdlestone, a paper that was to be called “The Unicorn.” And both Mr. Wells and myself were asked to contribute; I was to do a series of horror stories. I won’t deny that I swelled a little and was cheered and elated by the fact of my being asked to write by anybody; nay, I really tried my best to feel important and puffed up. And then I set about writing that series of tales of horror. I was not puffed up for long. As I say, I had realised that for me the Stevensonian manner was ended. And now I was to begin all over again; to recook that cabbage which was already boiled to death! I wrote four stories in a kind of agony, my pen shrieking “rubbish!” at me with every stroke. I remember literally sobbing in a kind of hysteria of despair with my head on my hands; and this shews that there are some men who cannot be helped. The only thing that got me through at all was an endeavour to transplant the manner of Apuleius into English soil; but the four tales were sorry things when all was said. I was glad when “The Unicorn” ceased to exist after two or three numbers, before a single one of those tales of mine had appeared in it. Mr. Wells had one story in “The Unicorn,” “The Cone,” which he reprinted in the collection called “The Country of the Blind.” Such was the affair, and I think it explains the irritation which I have always experienced when I have been asked to write a continuation of “The Three Impostors,” or something in the manner of “The Three Impostors.” I knew that all this was done and ended; that, for me, the vein was worked out and exhausted: utterly. I shall always recur to the metaphor of the white road that you see from afar climbing over the hill into unconjectured regions. For me that is literature; the journey of discovery; the finding of a new world. When once I have toiled painfully up that long road, and have stood on the other side of the dark wood, and have looked upon the land beyond; then all the joy, all the delight and thrill and wonder are over for me. Columbus could not discover America twice. I never can say to myself: “Look here! Let’s pretend that we’ve never been this way before, that we don’t know in the least what’s beyond that turn of the road, that anything may happen beyond that pine tree.” It won’t do. And that is one reason why I beg my bread in my sixtieth year. For, all that I have written on this matter is, doubtless, very fine; but we must confess that when it is a case of literature being exchanged for the money of the publisher--and the public--the affair becomes a commercial one. And, in business, you buy a brand. Let me try to imagine it! I am a wealthy man, and I have found and my guests have found that last hamper of Champagne admirable. I go to my wine merchant and order another hamper of the same vintage. Nay, he has not got it;