<2Robertson Davies>2
<2A Voice From The Attic>2
                       <2Prologue>2

A VOICE, certainly--any book is a voice--but why from the
Attic?
  In this book I want to comment and digress on some
aspects of the world of books today, by no means always
seriously and certainly not with any desire to impose my
taste on anyone; rather, I expose my taste hoping that it may
provide diversion for the reader. I do this as one who has,
for twenty years, reviewed books for a living (or part of a
living, for I never found that it provided a whole one) and
as one who has given hard knocks as a reviewer and taken
them as an author. Because I am a Canadian, my outlook
may possess some novelty for readers in the United States,
for my country sees not only the greater part of the books
produced in yours, but those published in Great Britain as
well--not to speak of our own books. Canada is, I belleve,
the only country so blessed.
  Statesmen are fond of stressing Canada's role as a mediator
between the United States and Great Britain. Sometimes for
us in Canada it seems as though the United States and the
United Kingdom were cup and saucer, and Canada the
spoon, for we are in and out of both with the greatest free-
dom, and we are given most recognition when we are most
a nuisance. If, in these reflections, I seem not to be com-
mitted to either side, it is because I am a Canadian, and of
Canada one of our poets, Patrick Anderson, has said:
. . . I am one and none, pin and pine, snow and slow,
  America's attic . . .
--and that is why this is A Voice from the Attic.
                          3
          .I.
                <2A Call to the Clerisy>2


LAYMAN is a word which has gained a new and disquieting
currency in our language. For much of the five hundred
years or so that it has been in use it meant simply one who
worshipped, as opposed to a priest, who had knowledge of
the sacred mysteries. Then, by extension, it came to mean
the client or the patient, in his relation to the lawyer and
the physician. But nowadays the word is used loosely for
anybody who does not happen to know something, however
trivial, which somebody else knows, or thinks he knows.
The meat-eater is a layman to the butcher, and the seeker
for illumination is a layman to the candlestickmaker. Most
reprehensibly, the word is used among people who should
meet as equals in education and general knowledge, within
wide bounds. The layman is the nonexpert, the outsider;
the implication is still that the layman's opposite has not
merely special knowledge, but a secret and priestlike voca-
tion.
  It is particularly displeasing to hear professional critics
using the term "laylnan" to describe people who are ama-
teurs and patrons of those arts with which they are them-
selves professionally concerned. The fact that the critic gets
money for knowing something, and giving public expres-
sion to his opinion, does not entitle him to consider the
amateur, who may lie as well informed and as sensitive as
                          5
6

himself, an outsider. Admitting that there are triflers hang-
ing to the skirts of the arts it is generally true that we are all,
critics and amateurs alike, members of a group which meets
on a reasonably equal footing. The critics have their special
tastes and firm opinions and are, in some cases, more ex-
perienced and sensitive than any but the most devoted of
arnateurs. But they should never assume that it is so; they,
of all people, should know the humility which art imposes
and avoid the harlotry of a cheap professionalism.
   That is why I address this book, which is about reading
and writing, to the clerisy, knowing that many in that large
body will be my superiors, but not, for that reason, con-
temptuous of me, any more than I presume to dismiss those
who are not so widely read, or so particular in their tastes,
as I am.

   <2Defining the Clerisy>2

WHO ARE THE CLERISY? They are people who like to read
books.
   Are they trained in universities? Not necessarily so, for
the day has long passed when a university degree was a
guarantee of experience in the humanities, or of literacy be-
yond its barest meaning of being able, after a fashion, to
read and write.
   Are the clerisy critics and scholars, professionally engaged
in judging the merit of books? By no means, for there are
critics and scholars who are untouched by books, except as
raw material for their own purposes.
   Then does the clerisy mean all of the great body of people
who read? No; the name can only be applied with justice
                                                     7

to those within that body who read for pleasure and with
some pretension to taste.
   The use of a word so unusual, so out of fashion, can only
be excused on the ground that it has no familiar synonym.
The word is little known because what it describes has dis-
appeared, though I do not believe that it has gone forever.
The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idle-
ness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love
books, but do not live by books. As lately as a century ago
the clerisy had the power to decide the success or failure of
a book, and it could do so now. But the clerisy has been per-
suaded to abdicate its power by several groups, not them-
selves malign or consciously unfriendly to literature, which
are part of the social and business organization of our time.
These groups, though entrenched, are not impregnable; if
the clerisy would arouse itself, it could regain its sovereignty
in the world of letters. For it is to the clerisy, even yet, that
the authors, the publishers, and the booksellers make their
principal appeal.
   Has this group any sense of unity? It had, once, and this
book is written in the hope that it may regain it. This is a
call to the clerisy to wake up and assert itself.

   <2Reading a Private Art>2

LET ME REPEAT, this is a call, not a roar; it is an attempt to
arouse the clerisy, but not to incite it to violence or rancor-
ous controversy. Anything of the sort would be bound to
fail, for by its very nature the clerisy is not susceptible of
such appeals. Moral causes, good and bad, may shout in the
ears of men; aesthetic causes have lost the fight as soon as
8

they begin to be strident. Reading is my theme, and read-
ing is a private, interpretative art. Let us have no printed
shrieks about reading.
   In 1944 a book by B. H. Haggin was published, called
<1music for the Man Who Enjoys Hamlet;>1 some parts at least
of this book might be called <1Reading for the Man Who En->1
<1joys Music,>1 for I want to write about the actual business of
reading--the interpretative act of getting the words off the
page and into your head in the most effective way. It is not
the quickest way of reading, and for those who think that
speed is the greatest good, there are plenty of manuals on
how to read a book which profess to tell how to strip off the
husk and guzzle the milk, like a chimp attacking a coconut.
There are remedial reading courses for adults who are dis-
satisfied with their speed, which show you how to snatch up
clumps of words with your eyes, and how to bolt paragraphs
at a glance, so that a determined zealot can flip through
<1War and Peace>1 in five hours, and, like a boa constrictor,
gobble up all Plato in a week. But if you read for pleasure,
such gormandizing will not appeal to you. What musician
would hastily scan the pages of a sonata, and say that he had
experienced it? If he did so, he would be laughed at by the
others. Who among the clerisy would whisk through a poem,
eyes a-flicker, and say that he had read it?
   The answer to that last question must unfortunately be:
far too many. For reading is not respected as the art it is.

   <2Reading and Time>2

PERHAPS IT WOULD be more just to say that most people, the
clerisy included, are impatient of any pace of reading ex-
cept their fastest, and have small faith in their interpreta-
                                                      9

tive powers. They do not think of themselves as artists. But
unless they make some effort to match their interpretative
powers to the quality of what they would read, they are
abusing their faculty of appreciation. And if they do not
mean to make the most of their faculty of appreciation, why
are they reading? To kill time? But it is not time they are
killing; it is themselves.
   What is time? Let the philosophers and the physicists say
what they will, time for most of us is the fleeting instant we
call Now. Any enjoyment or profit we get from life, we get
Now; to kill Now is to abridge our own lives.
   Yet how many people there are who read as though some
prize awaited them when they turned the last page! They
do not wish <1to read>1 a book; they want <1to have read>1 it--no
matter how. The prize they seek is to have done with the
book in hand. And so, as they read, they are always straining
forward toward the goal of completion. Is it astonishing that
they experience so little on the way, and that while they
may be "great readers" quantitatively they are wretchedly
poor readers qualitatively, and that they reveal by the pov-
erty of their minds how ill-read they truly are?

   <2Ends and Means>2

DOUBTLESS there are philosophical terms for this attitude
of mind, of which hasty reading is one manifestation, but
here let us call it "end-gaining," for such people put <1ends>1
before <1means;>1 they value, not reading, but having read. In
this, as in so many things, the end-gainers make mischief
and spoil all they do; end-gaining is one of the curses of our
nervously tense, intellectually flabby civilization. In read-
ing, as in all arts, it is the means, and not the end, which
10
gives delight and brings the true reward. We laugh at tour-
ists who dash through the Uffizi, to say that they have
"done" it; we know that if they have any serious feeling
for pictures, fifteen minutes with one masterpiece would
far outweigh the pleasure of such dashes. But do we not
dash through books, to say that we have "done" them?

   <2The Decorums of Stupidity>2

NOT ALL RAPID READING is to be condemned. Much that is
badly written and grossly padded must be read rapidly and
nothing is lost thereby. Much of the reading that has to be
done in the way of business should be done as fast as it can
be understood. The ideal business document is an auditor's
report; a good one is finely edited. But the memoranda, the
public-relations pieces, the business magazines, need not de-
tain us. Every kind of prose has its own speed, and the ex-
perienced reader knows it as a musician knows Adagio from
Allegro. All of us have to read a great deal of stuff which
gives us no pleasure and little information, but which we
cannot wholly neglect; such reading belongs in that depart-
ment of life which Goldsmith called "the decorums of stu-
pidity." Books as works of art are no part of this duty-
reading.
   Books as works of art? Certainly; it is thus that their
writers intend them. But how are these works of art used?
   Suppose you hear of a piece of recorded music which you
think you might like. Let us say it is an opera of Benjamin
Britten's--<1The Turn of the Strew.>1 You buy it, and after
dinner you put it on your record player. The scene is one of
bustling domesticity: your wife is writing to her mother, on
the typewriter, and from time to time she appeals to you for
11

the spelling of a word; the older children are chattering
happily over a game, and the baby is building, and toppling,
towers of blocks. The records are long-playing ones, de-
signed for 33 revolutions of the turntable per minute; ah,
but you have taken a course in rapid listening, and you
pride yourself on the speed with which you can hear, so
you adjust your machine to play at 78 revolutions a minute.
And when you find your attention wandering from the mu-
sic, you skip the sound arrn rapidly from groove to groove
until you corne to a bit that appeals to you. But look--it is
eight o'clock, and if you are to get to your meeting on time,
Britten must be choked off. So you speed him up until a
musical pause arrives, and then you stop the machine, mark-
ing the place so that you can continue your appreciation of
<1The Turn of The Screw>1 when next you can spare a few
minutes for it.
   Ridiculous? Of course, but can you say that you have
never read a book in that fashion?
   One of the advantages of reading is that it can be done in
short spurts and under imperfect conditions. But how often
do we read in conditions which are merely decent, not to
speak of perfection? How often do we give a book a fair
chance to make its effect with us?

   <2Fiction and Feeling>2

SOME MAGAZINE EDITORS say the public no longer enjoys
fiction; it demands "informative" articles. But informative
writing requires less effort to assimilate than does fiction,
because good fiction asks the reader to feel. There is no rea-
son to suppose that people today feel less than their grand-
fathers, but there is good reason to think that they are less
12

able to read in a way which makes them feel. It is natural
for them to blame books rather than themselves, and to de-
mand fiction which is highly peppered, like a glutton whose
palate is defective.
   The clerisy at least want to feel. They have reached that
point of maturity where they know that thought and reason,
unless matched by feeling, are empty, delusive things. Fool-
ish people laugh at those readers a century ago who wept
over the novels of Dickens. Is it a sign of superior intellect
to read anything and everything unmoved, in a gray, unfeel-
ing Limbo? Happy Victorians! Perhaps their tears flowed
too readily. But some of Dickens's critics--by no means
men of trivial intellect--wept. If this should meet the eye
of any modern critic, let me ask him: When did you, sir, last
weep over a book? When did you last give a book a fair
chance to make you do so?
   Feeling is a condition of appreciation, and there can
never have been a time when people were so anxious as they
now are to have emotional experiences, or sought thern so
consciously. On the North American continent today sensual
experience is frankly acknowledged as one of the good
things of life. The popularity of "mood music" shows how
eagerly we seek to deepen the quality of our experience.
Any shop which sells phonograph records can supply long-
playing discs to accompany a dozen activities with suppos-
edly appropriate music. There is even one called, simply,
<1Music For--,>1 and the picture on the envelope--of female
hare feet, toes upward, bracketing a pair of male bare feet,
toes downward--makes plain <1what>1 it is music for. Every-
where there is evidence of this anxiety that no shade of
sensual enjoyment should be missed; the emphasis, indeed,
is on nursing sensual enjoyment to its uttermost power, and
                                                    13

advertising of all sorts reveals it. Do great numbers of peo-
ple feel that they are missing some of the joy of life? Who
can doubt it?
  Like all anxiety, this is end-gaining, and carries the seeds
of its own failure. Not ends, but rneans rnust be the concern
of those who seek satisfaction in the pleasures as well as the
obligations of life.

  <2The Means of Reading>2

AS THIS IS a book about reading, let us consider the means
of satisfactory reading. If we look after the means, we may
be confident that the ends will take care of themselves.
  It is a truism that we shall find nothing in books which
has no existence in ourselves.
      <1Bookes give not wisdom where none was before,>1
      <1But where some is, there reading makes it more>1
says Sir John Harington, Elizabethan epigrammatist (and,
blessed be his name, the inventor of the water closet) ; what
is true of wisdom is true also of feeling. We all have slum-
bering realms of sensibility which can lie coaxed into wake-
fulness by books. Aldous Huxley tells us that "writers in-
fluence their readers, preachers their auditors, but always,
at bottom, to be more themselves." But do they know what
they themselves are? Is not that what they are reading books
to find out?
  The best of novels are only scenarios, to be completed by
the reader's own experience. They do not give us feeling:
they draw out such feeling as we have. If fiction is going out
of fashion (which is said from time to time but which I
do not believe), it is not because fiction is any worse than it
14

was; apart from the pepper and curry fiction already re-
ferred to, the general level of it is probably better. But great
numbers of people find fault with fiction because they do
not give themselves a chance to respond to it.
  It is the way they read which is at fault. The great success
of Emlyn Williams in reading Dickens and Dylan Thomas
to large audiences shows us where the trouble lies. I have
seen Mr. Williams hold a large audience spellbound as he
read, in two and a half hours, an abridgment of Dickens's
<1Bleak House.>1 He had their undivided attention, and he
read with all the resources of a consummate actor. He and
his hearers were, for the evening, giving the best of them-
selves to <1Bleak House;>1 his audience was moved to curiosity,
to laughter, to horror, to tears, as audiences are not often
moved by plays.
  Sir John Gielgud rnoves audiences similarly by reading
Shakespeare. Thomas's <1Under Milk>1 Wood and Fry's <1The>1
<1Lady's Not For Burning>1 come to life on phonograph rec-
ords, and the catalogues of the large recording companies
contain many examples of recorded plays and excerpts from
books. Ah, you may say, but those are performances by ac-
tors. Yes, and if you want the best from reading, you must
learn to give the best performances of which you are capa-
ble, sitting soundless in your chair, with your book before
you. The gifts demanded of a good reader are less those of
the critic than of the actor. You must bestir yourself, and
above all you must cultivate the inward ear.

  <2An Age of the Eye>2

WE LIVE IN an age when the eye is feasted and the ear, if not
starved, is kept on short rations. Special merit is accorded to
                                                     15

the cartoon which makes its effect without a caption. In the
theater we expect a higher standard of scenic design, aided
by elaborate lighting, than playgoers have ever known. It is
not uncommon for a stage setting, it the rise of the curtain,
to be greeted with a round of applause. But how long is it
since you heard an actor applauded because he had deliv-
ered a fine speech particularly well? This calls attention to
our comparative indifference to fine speech; it is not alto-
gether lacking, but we do not insist upon it as we insist on
the gratification of the eye. But how do the books you read
reach your consciousness? By words which you hear, or pic-
tures which you see?
  Unless you have a visualizing type of mind, by words.
And how do those words reach you?
  Teachers of rapid reading are opposed to an inward
vocalizing of the words read, and some of them write about
it with the asperity of a Puritan divine condemning lace
ruffles. But so far as I can find out, they oppose it only be-
cause it decreases reading speed. They say it adds nothlng
to understanding. That may be, but we are concerned here
with something more subtle than simple understanding:
we are talking about reading for pleasure, for ernotional
and intellectual extension, for the exercise of the sensibili-
ties. For these things, some measure of vocalizing is indis-
pensable.
  In the Middle Ages readers spoke aloud the words they
read, and a temporary hoarseness or loss of voice was a suf-
ficient reason for a scholar to suspend his studies. In monas-
teries it was the custom for someone to read aloud during
meals, and this practice persists in many religious houses.
In universities a principal means of instruction was the lec-
ture--literally "a reading aloud"--in which the master
16

read to the undergraduates from a work of his own composi-
tion: the custom persists still, though many lectures are, in
effect, speeches and exhibitions of personality--not neces-
sarily the worse for that. Holy Writ was read aloud in
churches, and a point which was greatly emphasized during
the Reformation was that it should be read in a language
known to all the hearers and not only to the clerisy. The
reason for all this vocalizing of what was read was that it
might strike inward not only through the eye but through
the ear; even the most learned did not trust to the eye alone,
simply because they could read. "It is voicing things that
makes them real," says a modern novelist, Miss Ivy Comp-
ton-Burnett; it is a psychological truth neglected in our day.
  Neglected by readers, but not therefore unknown. Tele-
vision advertisers do not scorn the medieval aids of repeti-
tion and rhyme, assonance and rhythm, in selling their
goods. Whatever the content of their compositions, their
techniques derive from the anonymous composer of <1Beo->1
wulf, the unknown makers of folk song, and the originators
of such mnemonics as:
               <1Thirty days hath September>1
               <1April, June and November.>1
Our emphasis on the eye as the high road to the intellect is
a new thing, and we all use our ears readily when we are
asked to do so. Even when we do not desire it (as with ad-
vertising jingles) , what enters our consciousness through
the ear is likely to stick.
                                                     17


  <2The Inward Voice>2

CERTAINLY it is not my purpose to suggest that we should
return to all this reading aloud, creating in every library a
hubbub like that which one hears when walking through
the corridors of a conservatory of music. But are we not
foolish to give up that inward voice in which books can
speak to us? And in the pursuit of speed, of all things! What
has speed to do with literary appreciation? Speed, unless
some real, defensible good is achieved by it, is nothing but
end-gaining, which is the death of all enjoyment of the arts.
Not <1ends,>1 but <1means>1 bring delight and fulfillment to the
reader, and his means of reading is listening to the inward,
reading voice.
  What is that voice like? Its quality depends on your ear.
If you have a good ear and some talent for mimicry, you can
read to yourself in any voice, or as many voices as you please.
You have seen Sir Laurence Olivier's film of <1Richard III?>1
Very well, can you hear him again when you read the play?
If you can, and if you are a playgoer and a filmgoer, you
should be able to find voices for all the characters in the
books you read. James Agate, the English theater critic,
amused himself by casting the novels of Dickens, in which
he delighted, with the actors whom it was his professional
duty to watch; his favorite Mr. Dombey was Sir John Giel-
gud.
  This is a game, and a very good game, but it asks for a
good ear, and makes heavy imaginative demands upon the
reader. You may not be able to play it; perhaps you have
no desire to do so; it is not for all temperaments. Your taste
18

may be more austere. Besides, it only works with novels
and plays. What about reading history or poetry?
  The inner voice is of your own choosing, of your own de-
velopment. It may differ greatly from the voice in which
you speak. To read Trollope in the tones of Kansas, or
Joyce in the cadences of Alabama, is as barbarous as to read
<1Huck Finn>1 with a Yorkshire accent, or Edith Wharton in
the voice of Glasgow. One of the most dismaying experl--
ences of my college days was to hear the whole of <1Hamlet>1
read by a professor whose voice was strongly nasal, and
whose vocal range was well within one octave. Did he, I
wondered, read to himself in that voice? Or did he hear,
inside himself, a full, rich, copious, nobly modulated sound
unlike the dispirited drone which came out of his mouth?
There are, one presumes, utterly tone-deaf readers.

  <2Authors As Readers>2

BUT WHAT DOES literature mean to them? Good writing
sets its own tune, insists on its own cadence. joyce presents
a particularly interesting exarnple. Nothing of his, and <1Fin->1
<1negans Wake>1 least of all, can be read comfortably except in
the Joycean mode. There exists a phonograph record which
illustrates that rnode, with Joyce himself reading, but thou-
sands of readers have found it, or some part of it, without
the record: the mode arises from the page.
  The examples of authors are not always so happy. Re-
cordings of another Irish author, Sean O'Casey, also exist;
few could endure to hear a whole book in the O'Casey voice,
as exemplified there. But Joyce, a singer, was also a great
reader, and the musical allusions and echoes which abound
in his work (so strangely missed by those of his critics who
19

do not know the queer, second-rate nineteenth-century rep-
ertoire in which he delighted) give not only a special comic
or sardonic flavor to it, but dictate the rhythms of some of
his most expressive passages.
  Talk of the rhythms of prose may alarm some readers
who have trouble enough with the rhythms of poetry. But
poetic rhythm is the rhythm of song, whereas prose rhythm
is the rhythm of speech. Not always the speech of the streets
or of conversation, but speech rising to nobility, to proph-
ecy, to denunciation. It was Thomas Mann who contrasted
the rhythms of verse with "the finer and much less obvious
rhythmical laws of prose." Less obvious, but still to be cap-
tured by the attentive inward ear, and when so captured, to
give a new and splendid dimension to the pleasure of read-
ing.
  To some of my readers it may seem that I am advising
them to conjure up within themselves a host of dialect co-
medians, and that I want thern to read with the ernbarrass-
ing vehemence of old-fashioned elocutionists. Nothing could
be farther from my intention, and I know that many read-
ers are happiest with a low-keyed and antitheatrical ap-
proach to their pleasure. But I do urge them to approach
reading in a less passive and more interpretative spirit.

  <2Reader As Interpreter>2

INTERPRETATIVE, you will observe: not creative. The word
"creative Is used now so carelessly that its real meaning is
being rubbed away. The reader cannot create; that has
been done for him by the author. The reader can only in-
terpret, giving the author a fair chance to make hls impres-
sion. As Lord David Cecil makes plain in his essay <1The Fine>1
20

<1Art of Reading,>1 the reader allows the writer to act upon
him. "Every reader is a Lady of Shalott, who, secluded in
his secret chalnber, forgets the hours, as he sits watching
the endless procession of human thought and passion and
action, as it passes, motley and tumultuous, across the gleam-
ing mirror of literature." This cannot be done if the reader,
in his secret chamber, hears what he reads declaimed at the
speed and in the tones of a tobacco auctioneer.
  We would not dream of judging a piece of music which
we heard performed on an untuned and neglected piano by
a player not up to the work, long out of practice and ill-
taught. But we treat a piece of literature, too often, in a
comparable fashion. Good reading is the only test of good
writing. Can you read this at high speed, without inward
vocalizing, and make anything of it?

   Rest not in an Ovation, hut a Triumph over thy Passions.
   Let Anger walk hanging down the head; Let Malice go
   Manicled, and Envy fetter'd after thee. Behold within thee
   the long train of thy Trophies not without thee. Make the
   quarreling Lapithytes sleep, and Centaurs within lye
   quiet. Chain up the unruly Legion of the breast. Lead
   thine own captivity captive, and be <1Caesar>1 within thyself.

  You have no desire to read Sir Thomas Drowne, and do
not care what he has to say? Well, what about Mark Twain?

   It was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that
   ever was when they all come riding in, two and two, and
   gentleman and lady, side by side, the men just in their
   drawers and undershirts, and no shoes nor stirrups, and
   resting their hands on their thighs easy and comfortable--
   there must 'a' been twenty of them--and every lady with a
   lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking
                                                    21

  just like a gang of real sure-enough queens, and dressed in
  clothes that cost millions of dollars, and just littered with
  diamonds. It was a powerful fine sight; I never see any-
  thing so lovely. And then one by one they got up and
  stood, and went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and
  wavy and graceful, the men looking ever so tall and airy
  and straight, with their heads bobbing and skimming
  along, away up there under the tent-roof, and every lady's
  rose-leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips,
  and she looked like the most loveliest parasol.


     <2A Critical Instrument>2

THE SECOND of these passages is undoubtedly easier than
the first, but neither can be taken at a gallop. The difficult
Browne yields his secret, and his exquisite savor, when his
pace and tone have been discovered--so does Huck Finn.
The reader who has cultivated his appreciation of pace
and tone has at his cornrnand one of the rnost powerful of
critical instruments, and he will not be content with "those
hopelessly banal and enormous novels which are typed out
by the thumbs of tense mediocrities and called 'powerful'
and 'stark' by the reviewing hack"--to quote Vladimir
Nabokov, a modern novelist himself remarkable for the in-
dividuality of his pace and tone. Attentive, appreciative
reading quickly sorts good writing from bad; to the book-
gobbler no such discrimination is possible, for he reads so
quickly that he has no time in which to discover what is not
worth reading.
  This is not another evangelistic book, officiously seeking
to insure the literary salvation of its readers by exhorting
them to read nothing save "the best." The best, as every
22

true reader knows, is not always what one wants; there are
tirnes when one does not feel equal to the dernands of the
best. Indeed, one may without shame confess that for the
time being one is tired of the best. Very often one wants no
more than "a good read," to shut out the world while those
bruises heal which the world has given. But there are de-
grees in all things, and degree is vastly more important in
those realms which are not quite first rate than on the level
of "thebest."

  <2Critical he resy>2

NOR IS the exercise of judgment in reading to be confused
with the attitude of the journalistic or academic critic. Hls
special heresy is that his trade makes him an explainer,
rather than an experiencer, of literature. In this heresy he is
followed by rnany of those intellectuals who are not quite
intellectual enough, and who would rather be modish than
individual in their taste. All too often, to this type of mind,
explaining a thing robs it of value. Having discovered what
makes the clock go, it is no longer a matter of interest to
them that the clock can tell time.
  It is not necessary, in rejecting the critical-intellectual
heresy, to rush to another extreme. Nobody can say now-
adays, as Thomas a\ Kempis said in the fifteenth century:
"Take thou a book into thine hands as Simon the Just took
the child Jesus into his arms to carry Him and kiss Him.
And when thou hast finished reading, close the book and
give thanks for every word out of the mouth of God; be-
cause in the Lord's field thou hast found a hidden treasure."
But a decent book is in some measure a work of art and de-
serves to be treated as one. The reader should submit him-
                                                     23

self to it until it shows itself worthy of further submission
or of rejection. Readers should not be, as Yeats complained,
"sciolists and opinionated bitches." They should read as,
were they authors, they would wish to be read.
  Thomas a\ Kempis wrote as he did because in his day
printed books were rarities; most books were still copied by
hand, and the production of a single volume was too great a
labor to be undertaken except in the case of works of proven
value. (The books he knew were likely to be works of edifi-
cation, clothed in individual beauty, which ensured them of
a regard not wholly dependent on an objective critical esti-
mate of their contents.) The ability to read, also, was re-
stricted to a clerkly rninority. In our day books appear by
the score, every day; there is no limit to the number of
copies which can be made, and everybody can read them;
the analphabet is a rarity in our time.

  <2The Great Experiment>2

THIS UNCONTROLLED proliferation of books is one of the
consequences of an astounding experiment which has been
in progress in the English-speaking world for about a cen-
tury and a quarter---nothing less than an attempt to create
a complete literacy. The experiment was undertaken as part
of the dernocratic-philanthropic enthusiasm which goes
with modern idealism. There is plenty of evidence that
the early advocates of the experiment supposed that if ev-
erybody <1could>1 read, everybody <1would>1 read, and would fur-
thermore read the best books they could lay their hands on.
  Most English-speaking people today can read and write.
Great Britain asserts that inability to do so is negligible
within her confines; in the United States the latest available
24

figure shows a 2.7 illiteracy, and in Canada the figure is
3.79; in Australia it is 4.7, and in South Africa it is 2.34
among the white population. The illiterates are said to be
among the older people, and presumably the time is in sight
when illiteracy will have no statistical existence in the
English-speaking world. But although they can read, mil-
lions of these heirs of eighteenth-century idealism do not
read, and of those who read, there are great numbers whose
choice of books would make the injunction of Thomas a\
Kempis (supposing they were to act upon it) a gross blas-
phemy.

  <2Its Present State>2

WE NEED NoT despair because so many people, having been
taught---with what staggering cost in time and money, with
what wholesale creation of teachers and building of schools!
---to read, read nothing at all, or read trash. The experi-
ment is perhaps the most revolutionary in the history of
mankind, and far from being done, it is hardly begun. We
have reached the point where English-speaking adults can
all read, after a fashion; that is a cause for triumph. Only
mad romantics can ever have expected them all to read in
the same fashion.
  There is no democracy in the world of intellect, and no
democracy of taste. Great efforts have been made to pretend
that this is not so, but they have failed. The spread of lit-
eracy has emphasized what was apparent before. Teach
everybody to read, and they will read what appeals to them,
what accords with their experience and ideal of life. Their
wealth or poverty have little to do with the matter; the
man of means who reads rubbish, and the poor man who
                                                    25

exhausts the classics in his public library, are still among us.
Put in the latter throes of the great experiment the clerisy,
as an entity to be reckoned with in the population, has dis-
appeared. It is due for revival, because it is needed if the
future stages of the great experiment are to go in the right
direction.

  <2The Clerisy As It Was>2

A CENTURY AGO the reading population was much smaller
than it is today, and the clerisy was still a recognizable and
important element in it. The education of the clerisy was
on a plan which stressed study of the Greek and Latin clas-
sics almost to the exclusion of everything else; such an edu-
cation was narrow in matter, but very wide in scope; it de-
veloped taste and encouraged independent thought in
minds with any aptitude for such things. It had its ridicu-
lous side, and it developed certain snobberies. Dickens's
Dr. Blimber was one kind of Victorian schoolmaster, and
Mr. Curdle, who defined the dramatic unities as "a kind of
universal dove-tailedness with regard to place and time,"
typifies Dr. Blimber's duller pupils. But that classical cul-
ture---even on the Curdle level---gave a coherence to the
reading public.
  Classical culture was not the only one; there was a wide-
spread Biblical culture also, and it was a powerful shaper
of thought and expression. The Bible is a classical litera-
ture of history, poetry, drama, legend, and prophecy, which
used to be reasonably familiar to all educated people in the
great King James version. What if it were not understood
completely, as modern scholarship reckons completeness?
What if it were uncritically reverenced? It was understood
26
at least as well, and reverenced little more, than Homer or
Virgil. And it is characteristic of classics that their influence
is not dependent so much on critical understanding as on
love and familiarity. The Biblical culture of the nineteenth
century had its ridiculous side, as did the classical culture,
but both provided touchstones of taste to which a writer
could appeal, and which he could depend upon in his au-
dience.
  The last gasps of these cultures were to be heard within
the experience of middle-aged North Americans. School
reading books, thirty years ago, contained sinewy passages
from Shakespeare, Ben Jonson ("It is not growing like a
tree, In bulk, doth make man better be") , Sir Walter Scott,
Addison (well do I recall grappling with <1The Vision of>1
<1Mirzah>1 at the age of eleven) Sheridan, R. L. Stevenson,
Thomas Campbell (readers in the United States probably
missed this poet of British military might, but Canadian
children knew him well) , and of course Emerson, Longfel-
low, Mittier, and their New England congeners. There
was much rubbish in these "readers," too, but nineteenth-
century standards still set the tone for them, and set it high.
  But what sets the tone now? It is not my intention to de-
nounce modern education. If it is bad, it may be said that
all education is bad which is not self-education, and quite a
lot of self-education is going on today---some of it in our
schools, under the very noses of the teachers! The classical
culture has shrunk so that it has no appreciable influence:
the Biblical culture scarcely exists, and the writer or speaker
who draws a parallel or a quotation from the Bible today
will not be understood by any more people than if lie made
his allusion to something in Homer. Nothing has replaced
this culture rooted in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew classics.
THE COHERENT AUDIENCE                     27

The kind of education which could formerly be expected
in the clerisy has gone, and it is not likely to return.


  <2The Coherent Audience>2

THIS IS TRUE of the North American continent in a greater
degree than it is true of England. Though great changes are
at work in education there, the process is slower than it is
with us. Geography has some part in preserving the high
standard of literacy, and the coherence and self-conscious-
ness of the clerisy, in the British Isles. Population is dense
and the land area small; no educated man is far from some-
one else of much his own standard of education---a comfort
so completely forgotten by hundreds of thousands of people
in North America that it is hard to conceive what it must
mean. The tradition of a clerisy still exists in Britain. In
1958 the distinguished novelist C. P. Snow, writing in the
<1New Statesman,>1 could say this:
   It is the variety of experience of the (English) audience
   that gives it its authority, and so strengthens the writer's
   confidence. For example, Mr. Macmillan, Mr. Butler, Mr.
   Gaitskell are all deeply read men, interested in contem-
   porary work: so are a good sprinkling of other members of
   the House. That would also be true of a surprisingly high
   proportion of civil servants and miscellaneous administra-
   tive bosses.
     So our audience scatters itself through society, quite
   wide and quite deep. . . . In England, the society is so
   compact that we realize this is happening; we know, al-
   most in a personal sense, whom we are writing for. An
   American writer can't; he feels much more lost. Do Ameri-
   can politicians, civil servants, school teachers read as ours
28

  do? If they do, the writers do not feel their response. That,
  I think, is the one great creative stimulus we have, which
  is denied to them.
The result is that on this continent "the writers don't really
know whom they are writing for---apart fTom their fellow
writing scholars.


  <2Reviesers and Critics>2

THEIR fellow writing scholars---damnable tribel Yet it is
true that the place of the clerisy as the desired audience of
the writer has been taken by critics and reviewers, whose
power, without being absolute, is great, and whose influence
on writing is pernicious.
  Lambasting critics is easy but profitless entertainment.
They exist in great numbers because books drop from
the presses in great numbers, and some portion of this mon-
strous birth must be weighed and valued. Reading reviews
is an accepted way of keeping up with what is happening in
the world of books. Reviewers gain reputation less by the
justness of their criticism than by their own ability to write
well and entertainingly, and though this may sometimes
cause hardship to authors, it is inevitable. Reviewers them-
selves live and work under special strain. If they praise
much they appear to be simple fellows, too readily pleased,
for it is a widespread belief that a truly critical mind exists
in a constant state of high-toned irascibility. But blame al-
ways looks well. The eighteenth-century playwright knew
his business who made his critic say:
  Panegyric and praisel And what will that do with the
  publick? My who the devil will give money to be told
                                                    29
  that Mr. Such-a-one is a wiser or better man than himself?
  No, no; 'tis quite and clean out of nature. A good sousing
  satire, now, well powder'd with personal pepper, and
  season'd with the spirit of party; that demolishes a con-
  spicuous character, and sinks him below our own level;
  there, there we are pleas'd; there we chuckle and grin and
  toss the half-crowns on the counter.
The reviewer who does not heed this popular view of his
work may find himself reproached, as Arnold Bennett
was in his last years, with discovering a new genius every
week. The consequence is that reviewers often fall into a
state of mind which can be summed up in the phrase "but
on the other hand," doling out cautious praise tempered
with cautious blame, proving their impartiality to author,
publisher, and public alike. They have no time to be ap-
preciators or experiencers. Like most of us, they are end-
gainers, reading a book not for itself but as article-fodder,
and their own neat phrases pop into their heads as they scan
another man's prose. Most of them are too good-natured for
sousing satire, well powder'd with personal pepper; most
of them are too well balanced to shoot cannon at sparrows;
but in most of them the razor edge of appreciation has been
hacked and dulled by too much exercise on the firewood
which is, inevitably, what comes to them in most abundance.
  I am not clamoring for a revision of the reviewing system.
I do not see how, under present conditions, it can be re-
vised. I ask for a revival of the clerisy; the existence of a
more intelligently self-conscious and literate group in the
vast reading public would greatly case and elevate the re-
viewers' task. The clerisy would also effectively review the
reviewers.
30


                   <2Sciolists and Opinionated Bitches>2

BEYOND AND ADOVE the daily, weekly, and monthly review-
ers lie the university critics, who concern themselves not
with the daily black flux of the presses, but with trends,
with niceties not understanded of the base, and with all that
area of literature which Victorians called "Poesy and
Buzzem"---though Buzzem has come to be much more like
Brain, of a particularly juiceless and gritty sort.
  Their productions are varied in nature and value. At best
they are themselves contributions to literature, works which
can be read with delight, because in them minds of one rare
kind shed light upon minds of another rare kind. But in
their second-best rank, books of this academic sort are, of all
books, the easiest to write. They chew over what has already
been well chewed; they grapple with other scholars, seeking
to bear them down into the academic ooze; they explore the
vast caverns of the creator's spirit with no illumination
save the smoky and fitful rushlight of their own critical
intelligence.
  The gTeat sin of English writing of this kind is that it
feigns sensibility where sensibility plainly does not exist,
and pretends (often with remarkable skill) to knowledge
which it does not possess. How often we hear the hum (high
and fine, like the voice of a gnat) of the "survey" in such
wTiting. How easily come the judgments of these men and
women who have not read whole libraries of books, but
have "examined" <1(i.e.,>1 leafed over) and read about them!
Nobody can have read everything, but to pretend to have
read what one has, at best, skimmed, is a nasty dishonesty.
  The American fault in these academic works of the lesser


                                                         31

sort is more often simple ignorance. The writer knows his
subject, but he knows little else; he has no base of general
cultivation on which his expert knowledge may rest. He
may painstakingly bone up on the historical background of
his literary quarry, but he never gets the <1feel>1 of his period,
except in the clumsiest and most obvious fashion. Not long
ago an American scholar wrote a worthy but juiceless book
about Goldsmith in which he set forth all that goodwill and
dogged toil could assemble; but he knew so little of eight-
eenth-century England that he seemed baffled by the term
"a pair of stairs." In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
England stairs came in pairs, like scissors and trousers; the
"two-pair back" was the room at the rear, two flights up;
and a "three-pair back," so often mentioned with shame as
the abode of a ruined heroine or a distressed author, was
directly below the servants' quarters. How can a man have
any light to throw on Goldsmith who has so little of the feel
of Goldsmith's age and Goldsmith's vocabulary? To these
writers they are themselves the measure of all things, and
with honesty and goodwill they reshape great men in their
own image. They do not know enough to know that they
lack humility.

   <2The Doll's House>2

THOUGH THIS academic criticism is little read by people
who are not themselves, in some way or another, of the
literary world, it exerts a strong influence at second hand.
It sets the style. It says which authors in the past are most
worthy of the notice of the present, and while this is legiti-
mate and necessary within reason, we sometimes feel like
adults overhearing a quarrel among children as to which
32

dolls are to have places in the doll's house. No, Tennyson is
<1not>1 to have a chair in the best room! His stuffing has been
leaking out for years. And George Eliot is <1too>1 ugly---though
perhaps she need not still be hidden in the old dolls' box,
where she has been for so long. Browning? With his horrid
red face and loud, aggressive squeaker? Never!  But the
Dickens doll is back in favor, and seems to be made of better
stuff than we supposed. And the Thackeray doll is tolerable
once again. But if we are to keep the Virginia Woolf doll,
we mustn't let the Arnold Bennett doll have any affection at
all. Thus the doll game is played.
   There is an endless rummaging in the doll box, for the
need of the scholars for new or neglected material is un-
appeasable. But how badly the dolls wear! Of course the
Shakespeare doll and the Johnson doll will stand up to any
amount of rough play, but few of the others are really
durable. A. E. Housman, for instance, once such a popular
doll, was suddenly banished to the depths of the box, and
when he was fished up recently, for another look, it was
discovered that he had cherished a lifelong affection of an
intense sort for his university friend Moses Jackson. And
this, for reasons not wholly apparent to those not in the doll
game, so invalidated his poetry that he has gone back into
the box, perhaps forever. Yet other dolls with a similar
idiosyncracy, like the Wilde doll, are much cherished.
   The scholar's doll game influences the literary world in
some unexpected places. Who would think that it would
penetrate to a comic magazine? Yet <1The New Yorker,>1 in
1958, contained this:
   <1Jane Eyre>1 was written in 1841 by a spinster whose sophis-
   tication was largely the product of the parsonage in which
   she grew up. Her book was a success (Thackeray could
                                                          33

   hardly restrain his enthusiasm for it) , but by depraved
   modern standards it is not a very good novel.

It is not necessary in writing of this kind to explain why a
doll must be refused a place in the doll's house, and must
lie in the darkness of the dolls' box. That has been done by
the academic critics. The writer in more popular pages has
only to pity, and reject, and readers who have no firm
opinions of their own will acquiesce, lest their own sophisti-
cation and modernity be called in question. Thus the taste
of past years is rebuked, and the great dead are snubbed
across the Void.


   <2Dwindling Leisure>2

NOT ALL READERS are prepared, at all times, to make inde-
pendent judgments. But the failure of modern education to
equip them to do so even when they have the inclination
creates a serious gap in modern culture. The enormously
increased production of books, and the appearance of an
academic and journalistic junta of criticism, have robbed
the reading public of most of its ability to form its own
opinions.
   This robbery is not the result of a plot. No cabal of pro-
fessors and reviewers, meeting in secret, have vowed to cheat
the reading public of its rights. The reading public has itself
connived at the deprivation, and has helped to shove the
junta into power. The temper of the time is unfriendly to
independent literary judgment. We all lack leisure, for we
tend to work longer hours than any but the proletarians of
the past. And when we are not working at our jobs, the
modern craze for good causes threatens our dwindling
34
leisure; the once sweet voice of charity has risen to an im-
perious bellow. We pander to the ideal of Work as few
Victorians did; university students are eager for holiday
jobs, and few of them seem to know that in the beginning,
university vacations were made long so that students could
spend them in reading which would augment their formal
studies. Long toil and small leisure are part of the heavy
price we pay for our North American standard of living. It is
reputed to be the highest in the world, and so it should be,
for it is bought at an inordinate price.
   Part of that price has been the resignation of literary
taste, by the intelligent reading public, into the hands of
professionals, of experts, of an intelligentsia. I have no com-
plaint against the existence of an intelligenttsia; on the con-
trary, I favor it. But I do not favor a small, professional
intelligentsia because the very nature of an intelligentsia is
that it should be nonprofessional; belonging to it is not
something at which anybody works.

   <2Ignoring The Highbrows>2

NEVERTHELESS, we have a professional intelligentsia now,
and it has lost touch with most of the public. Not that
determinedly anti-intellectual public which decries one
presidential candidate because he is unmistakably liter-
ate, and worries about the chances of another because he
has a modest skill in playing the piano. The anti-intellectual
pose is one of the unforeseen results of our great experiment
in complete literacy. Everybody can be made to read and
write, but not everybody is going to like it. No, the public
with which the intelligentsia has so unhappily lost touch is
itself composed of intelligent humanists---a humanist be-
IGNORING THE HIGHBROWS                     35

ing, by E. M. Forster's definition, a person possessed of
curiosity, a free mind, a belief in good taste, and a belief in
the human race. The intelligentsia has lost touch with the
clerisy. As C. S. Lewis wrote in 1958 (in, curiously enough,
another comic magazine, <1Punch>1) , "the Intelligentsia
(scientists apart) are losing all touch with, and all influ-
ence over, nearly the whole human race. Our most esteemed
poets and critics are read by our most esteemed critics and
poets (who don't usually like them much) and nobody else
takes any notice. An increasing number of highly literate
people simply ignore what the 'Highbrows' are doing. It
says nothing to them. The Highbrows in return ignore and
insult them."
   What is to be done? My proposal is a revival of the clerisy.
And surely those who have read thus far will know by now
of what the clerisy consists.
   If it is to become a more vocal and coherent body on the
North American continent, the people who comprise it must
do a very difficult thing---a thing from which they now
shrink. They must accept the fact of their clerisy, and be
ready to assert it and defend it with good manners when the
need arises. This will expose them to some measure of dis-
like, and probably a good deal of ridicule. They will find
among their ranks many people in whose company they can
take no joy---the contentious, the cranks, the ax grinders,
the meanly ambitious---those pests who turn up in all large
groups, and who seem determined to bring shame upon the
cause they espouse. The clerisy must expect to be called
"intellectuals," a word which has been given both a comic
and a sinister connotation of late years.
36


   <2The Shame of Brains>2

WHAT IS SO DREADFUL about being an intellectual? A friend
of mine, a European, was engaged recently by a very impor-
tant United States company for an important job. He suited
all the bosses who interviewed him, and was at last passed
on to the high priest of personnel, for a final check. This
grandee elicited from my friend that he was keenly inter-
ested in music, pictures, theater, but knew nothing of sports;
he played no games, but he liked to go for walks, alone; he
read much, in English, French, and German; asked about
his hobby, he said "Entertaining." What did he do when he
entertained his friends? They talked. The personnel genius
was by now somewhat hostile and derisive. "I guess you're
what would be called an intellectual," said he. "Oh, no,"
said my friend. "I would not make any such claim for myself;
let us say, rather, that an intellectual is what I aspire to be."
This naked avowal was more than the personnel man could
cope with, and the interview ended.
   Why are so many people ashamed of having intelligence
and using it? There is nothing democratic about such an
attitude. To pretend to be less intelligent than one is de-
ceives nobody and begets dislike, for intelligence cannot be
hidden; like a cough, it will out, stifle it how you may. No
man has ever won commendation for standing at less than
his full height, either physically, morally, or intellectually.
If you are an intellectual, your best course is to relax and
enjoy it.
   This book is about literature (a few odd nooks and cor-
ners of it) , and it is only in matters relating to literature that
I may fittingly exhort my readers to assert themselves in
THE COZY BOOKMAN                               37

this particular way. My advice as to how they should do so
must take the form, chiefly, of prohibitions. No societies, no
clubs, associations, or gangs; no buttons, grips, or other
means of identification are possible or necessary. Curiosity,
the free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human
race are the marks of the clerisy, allied with a genuine love
of literature, not as a manifestation of fashion, not as a sub-
stitute for life, but as one of the greatest of the arts, existing
for the delight of mankind.

   <2The Cozy Bookman>2

   LOVE OF LITERATURE"---I know how these words may be
misunderstood. The "bookman," sunk deep in his leather
chair before the fire, his feet in old and comfortable slippers,
his friendly briar filled with the fragrant Nostalgia Mixture,
and a cherished volume (for "bookmen" are great cherish-
ers of volumes and never seem to read one which is not "well
worn") rises sickeningly before the eye. A pox, yea, a gleety
imposthume upon all these bookmen and their snug rituals!
They make the whole idea of reading nauseous to thousands
of decent people. They love literature only as a kind of
intellectual Turkish bath, to caress and lull them. They are
the narcissists of the reading world, and their cult belongs
in literary clubs dedicated to the Higher Jackassery.
   But truly to love literature, to regard it as one of the
necessary and occasionally noble aspects of a civilization, is
not to be a cozy bookman. It is to belong to the clerisy.
   What that means has already been set out in the first few
pages of this chapter. It only remains to say how the clerisy
can recapture the position in society and the world of letters
which it has lost.
38


   <2An Awakened Clerisy>2

OBVIOUSLY A REVIVED or awakened clerisy is not going to be
the one which fell asleep in the middle of the nineteenth
century. We are the spiritual great-great-grandchildren of
those people. Their world is not ours, nor have we their
classical education or their Biblical culture; we do not live
in a society so frankly class-conscious as theirs. Where they
had one new book to read, we have a thousand. Where they
had a splendid certainty of their own taste and learning---
one recalls the Victorian clergyman who replied to a young
lady who observed that his pronunciation of a particular
word did not agree with the dictionary: "My dear, diction-
aries exist to record the pronunciations of people of edu-
cation, like myself"---we defer to the opinions of journal-
istic critics who are, in their turn, reflections of academic
critics. We live in a world where bulk is often equated with
quality, and though we know that the best-seller is not
therefore the best book, we can be awed by impressive sales.
Nevertheless, we of the clerisy exist; we are not fools; we can
make our existence felt by authors, publishers, and critics
simply by recognizing that we exist as a class which cuts
across all classes, and by making our opinions better known,
verbally, in public, by correspondence, and by the other
means which present themselves in the course of daily life.
We are people to be reckoned with. Courteously but firmly
we must refuse the outsider role, the layman label, which
we have allowed the world of publishers and critics to foist
upon us. By our own sheepishness we incurred this loss of
our right; by our intelligence we shall reclaim it. We are not
                                                         39

ashamed to reverse the words of Nathaniel in <1Lovs La->1
<1bour's Lost:>1 we <1have>1 fed of the dainties that are bred in a
book; we <1have>1 eat paper and drunk ink; our intellect is re-
plenished.
                           .II.

                   <1Enjoying and Enduring>1


DOCTOR JOHNSON said that books were trash unless they
helped their readers "better to enjoy life or better to endure
it." He obviously had no prophetic vision of the number and
variety of books which our age would produce devoted to
these twin aims of enjoying and enduring.
   Were he with us now, the Doctor might have been asked
to provide an endorsement for Vernon Howard's <1Word>1
<1Power: Talk Your Way to Life Leadership,>1 a work which
"presents a program for becoming the kind of person you
want to be---by speaking like that person." Mr. Howard
assures us that "habits of speech do much toward making us
timid or courageous, energetic or tired, successful or unsuc-
cessful." Boswell occasionally tried to make himself like
Johnson by speaking like Johnson, but something appears to
have been lacking. Possibly it was Mr. Howard's book.
   Certainly there has never been a time before the present
when it was possible to buy or borrow a book which would
offer advice on virtually every problem of enjoying or en-
during with which life can confront puzzled humankind.
Because they rarely receive attention from critics of liter-
ature in general (being recommended in the main by spe-
cialists in the matter concerned) , it may be illuminating to
look at some of them here. Anything in the nature of a
comprehensive study would fill a larger book than this, and
SMILES ON SELF-HELP                              41

would be quite outside my ability, but a selection may be
attempted.
   The question is, where to begin? A glance in a single book-
shop window shows the vastness of the field. Here is <1Finding>1
<1and Using Your Magic Emotion Power,>1 and beside it <1Live>1
<1at Peace with Your Nerves;>1 at the back, on a little lectern, is
                         <1Emotional Problems of Living (Avoiding the Neurotic>1
<1Pattern)>1 , and in front are <1The Art of Living without>1
<1Tension,>1 and <1Heart Attack, New Hope, New knowledge,>1
<1New Life.>1 To complete the display, there is a book with
the provocative title <1On Shame and the Search for Identity>1
This is a catalogue of the contents of a bookseller's window
on Fifth Avenyc in 1958. These are stirring times for the
ambitious, the hypochondriac, and the unsure. But a be-
ginning must be made somewhere, and the historical ap-
proach offers its usual common-sense assistance.

   <2Smiles on Self--help>2

LET US BEGIN with Samuel Smiles, whose book <1Self-Help,>1
<1with Ullustrations of Character and Conduct>1 sold 258,000
copies in English between its publication in 1859 and the
author's death in 1904. This was a great sale for that period,
and Smiles's book may be called the father of the manifold
guides to enjoying and enduring which have followed. As
well as its English and American success, it was translated
into Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Italian,
Turkish, Arabic, Japanese, and (the <1Dictionary of National>1
<1Biography>1 adds with vague splendor) "the native tongues
of India.': After the book had outlived its early popularity,
it was regarded as a joke, but principally by people who had
not read it. It was no joke.
42

   Smiles was a successful man, whom Fortune seemed to
caress, but she laid upon him one ironical handicap. Is any of
us so completely just, or merely so sober-sided, that he can
take the name "Samuel Smiles" quite seriously? Especially
when it is attached to a book called <1Self-Help?>1 It is a name
which Dickens might have given to an idiot optimist, like
Mark Tapley, or one of his buoyant philanthropists, like the
Cheeryble Brothers. Sturdy Scot that he was, Smiles rose
triumphant above his name while he lived, and probably he
found nothing amusing in it. But it is a drawback now for
the very few who look into his book.
   Smiles was trained as a physician, gave up that profession
to be an editor, became a railway official, and, after the
success of <1Self-Help,>1 spent his time chiefly in social reform
and particularly in schemes for the education of working
men. It was in an address to a "mutual improvement society"
at Leeds in 1845 that the germ of <1Self-Help>1 showed itself.
Smiles was inspired by the careers of men who had risen
from humble beginnings to great estate through their own
efforts; his highest admiration was for engineers and in-
ventors, but success of any honorable sort won his commen-
dation:
   From the barber's shop came Jeremy Taylor, the most
   poetical of divines; Sir Richard Arkwright the inventor of
   the spinning jenny and founder of cotton manufacture;
   Lord Tenderden, one of the most distinguished of Lord
   Chief Justices: and Turner the greatest among landscape
   painters, while among distinguished carpenters we find
   the names of Inigo Jones the architect, Romney and Opie,
   the painters . . . Masons and bricklayers can boast of
   Ben Jonson, who worked at the building of Lincoln's
   Inn with a trowel in his hand and a book in his pocket.
                                                         43

The tone is familiar to anyone who has, in childhood, "sat
under" a Scottish Presbyterian minister; these muster rolls
of great names, resoundingly uttered without too searching
an examination of the real characters of the men or the real
nature of their achievement, are a favorite pulpit trick. All
those named rose from poverty and obscurity to favored
positions in the eyes of men, and that is what matters to
Smiles.
   Not that Smiles is a vulgar worshipper of vulgar success.
Character is what he admires, and it is the struggle rather
than the achievement which thrills him. Means, not ends, is
his concern. And the means he adjures his readers (whom he
doubtless pictured as worthy artisans, puzzling out his book
with a little difficulty by their cottage fires) to embrace are
perseverance and the strictest honesty. "Work," he writes---
and we can almost see the sweep of the Geneva gown as the
preacher's finger is upraised---"work is the appointed call-
ing of man on earth; the end for which his various faculties
were given; the element in which his nature is ordained to
develop itself, and in which his progressive advance towards
heaven is to lie." He practiced what he preached, and suf-
fered a stroke of paralysis, owing to overwork, when he was
fifty-nine; true to his own principles and courage, he re-
covered and continued to work, at a somewhat slower pace,
until his death at the age of ninety-two. Work; save; be un-
failingly honest; respect yourself and other men; success
will follow. That is the teaching of Samuel Smiles, and
hundreds of thousands of ambitious Englishmen and
Americans (not to speak of the Dutch, German, Danish,
Swedish, Spanish, Italian, Arabian, Japanese, and Indian
readers already alluded to) seized upon it eagerly. Not all
of them rose to positions of honor, accompanied by a hand-
44                        ENJOYING AND ENDURING

some competence. There is doubtless some law, economic or
perhaps psychological, which restricts the amount of success
possible in any one community in a given time. But what
Smiles offered was certainly not fairy gold; do what he say's
and your lot cannot help but improve, even if the great
prizes go to other men.

   <2Bennett's Crowded Hours>2

BY SMILES'S DEATH in 1904 his book had almost run its
course, but in 1908 Arnold Bennett published <1How to Live>1
<1on Twenty-four Hours a Day,>1 which gained immense popu-
larity and is still in print. It is in the Smiles vein of ex-
hortation, but its purpose is different: the Victorian book
sought to help its readers to get ahead in the world of af-
fairs, of money-making, of social prestige, but the Edwardian
book urged ambitious young men to make the most of their
leisure time. Bennett assumed---and was rebuked for as-
suming---that a lot of people are bored by their jobs, and
he tried to tell them how to make the sixteen hours away
from the job as interesting as possible. His own tempera-
ment was that of an artist, allied to a remarkable industry
and the canniness of the English Midlands. (He was also an
insomniac, which may have had more bearing on his sug-
gested program of life than he was willing to admit.) He
counseled young men to read, to listen to music, to look at
pictures. He was scornful of rest. "One of the chief things
which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties
are capable of continuous hard activity," he wrote: "they
do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change---not
rest, except in sleep."
   Henry Ford told Bennett that he had bought five hundred
                                                         45

copies of <1How to Live,>1 to be distributed among his manag-
ers. The book had the same appeal for industrialists as El-
bert Hubbard's <1A Message to Garcia.>1 These shrewd men
knew that he who slaves at his pleasure will not relax when
he is at his work. "Keep going, day in, day out," urged Ben-
nett, and his <1Journals>1 prove that he tried to take his own
medicine. Waste no time. Dominate your mind. Force it to
concentrate in the morning on the chapter of Epictetus you
read last night. Read seriously. Most people sleep them-
selves stupid. Weariness is an illusion, and disinclination is
the tempting of the fiend. It is all very inspiring and much
of it is true, even if it is not the whole truth.
   Doubtless thousands of people attempted, for a time, to
live in the strenuous fashion Bennett outlines. Has anyone
ever kept it up for a lifetime? Bennett could not do so, in-
dustrious and intellectually sinewy though he was. He died,
very tired indeed, at the comparatively early age of sixty-
four, and his <1Journals>1 tell us how far short he had fallen of
this forced pace for many years before that time. Perhaps
that is beside the point. His book was an inspiration to
hundreds of thousands of ambitious and discontented
young men, for it suggested a concrete program which
would help them to become better than they found them-
selves.

   <2Thinking for Everybody>2

       LET US NOT delay too long over these early examples of a
genre which has reached its greatest proliferation since
1945; but before we go on, it is interesting to glance briefly
at the first of these self-improvement books which was di-
rected at least in part toward female readers. It is <1The Art>1
46

<1of Thinking>1 by Ernest Dimnet, which appeared in 1929.
The writer paid women the compliment of assuming that
they would like to think better than they did. They re-
sponded enthusiastically, and his book sold well.
   It is a very good book, vastly more understanding of what
humanity is really like than Smiles's or Bennett's. Its tone is
quiet, and it recognizes fatigue and frailty not as triviali-
ties, but as the Hydras they are. It is a popular book in the
best sense; it offers its wisdom to anybody who can read,
but it promises no easy results. Furthermore, its tone is
aristocratic. How, then, did it achieve so great a success?
   Its author was a Frenchman, which is a very strong recom-
mendation with English-speaking readers.  Furthermore,
he was a cleric, which is always reassuring; to be taught
thinking by a priest could hardly lead to any of those mental
enormities with which the thought of lay philosophers so
reprehensibly abounds. But its greatest draw, I am inclined
to believe, is its title, which is a creation of genius. The art
of thinking! Is it, then, an art? We had always been inclined
to think of it as work. Art is, of course, elegant pastime. The
appeal of that title is enormous. A million clubwomen saw
themselves as a million Madame de Staels, ridding their
minds of the trivialities the Abbe/ so sternly dismisses, seeing
deeper into life, writing distinguished letters, diaries, <1Pen->1
<1se/es->1--in fact, thinking. The novelty of the idea made the
book a sensation; if persistence and a superior understand-
ing could have been given away with each copy, the world
might have been revolutionized.
FOR THE HYPOCHONDRIAC                       47


   <2For the Hjpochondriac>2

THIS IS NOT the sort of essay in which we want to pursue the
history of books about self-improvement, and the three ex-
amples given are enough to show that such books can be of
real value, written in sincerity by men of ability and good
literary repute. The sincerity of the writers of the books of
this character which now flood the market cannot be called
in question (because sincerity in this context means simply
believing what you say, and there is no limit to what people
can believe) , but their literary repute does not exist. This is
of significance because the crudity with which they are
written would make these books unendurable to a public
which looked for literary quality. But the public for such
books is not drawn from the clerisy. It consists of a very
large part of the population which may never read any
other sort of book, and which wants to be given answers to
two questions: How can I achieve better health? and How
can I achieve success?
   The health books appeal to the Eternal Hypochondriac,
and to the urge which burns in so many of us to play the
quack, if only to ourselves. In an age when public health has
never been better provided for, and medical men enjoy a
respect formerly reserved for the aristocracy and the clergy,
millions of people are unwell, or merely feel unwell, or are
in dread lest at some future time they may become unwell.
It would be interesting to know how many people who
read <1Heart Attack, New Hope, New knowledge, New Life>1
have never had a heart attack. How many people who have
diabetes and are under the care of a competent physician
nevertheless read books about how to live with diabetes?
48

Every piece of news about cancer research is eagerly read by
millions who have no cancer and probably never will have
it. Doubtless there is a good side to this precccupation with
health, but it is with health books that we are concerned at
the moment, and our concern is literary. Why not? Is it too
much to expect that a popular book about health should
be written with some regard for literary decency? Great phy-
sicians---the name of Sir William Osler Comes to mind, and
a score of others could be added to it---have not thought a
good style incompatible with good medicine. But Sir Wil-
liam regarded his membership in the clerisy as part of his
armory as a geat physician and a great teacher, for it raised
him above the level of a technician. A scientist, as a biologist
friend of mine says, is all the better for being an educated
person.

   <2Obesity Is Sin>2

AGAIN AND AGAIN we are assured on the authority of the in-
surance companies that fat is a killer, and perhaps a third
of the population of North America is struggling to get its
fat down. Books telling how this may be done are popular,
because the person who wants to reduce finds them a com-
fort; to read a new antifat book gives new hope; we rise
from the experience feeling a few pounds lighter. Ninety-
two popular books on dieting are in print at the time of writ-
ing. A theologian, or merely a literary critic, reading many
of these books quickly discovers their secret, which is an
evangelistic one; they first of all bring about a powerful
conviction of Sin, and then they offer Salvation.
   Sin is at. Perhaps it is Original Sin, to which you are born,
because your mother, who was unable to love you as much as
OBESITY IS SIN                                       49

she thought she should, crammed you with food as an Af-
fection Surrogate. Perhaps it is your own Sin, springing
from an unregenerate nature which expresses itself in
greed. You are insecure, and so you eat; you meet emotional
stress by stuffing yourself. And what a Hell awaits you!
Early death because of an overtaxed heart; or a lingering,
joyless existence, a prey to a degenerative disease. Deliver-
ance seems possible only at a frightful price. To offset the
evil wrought upon you by a single piece of pie, you must
walk thirty-five miles! To consume the energy provided by
a jelly sandwich, you must run at top speed for an hour! Al-
most weeping, you admit that you are a slob without will, a
glutton, a bad insurance risk, a creature found unworthy
of God's goodness.
   But now---Salvationl By means of little pictures of a
gnome called Mr. Fat-Prone, or whatever other name ap-
peals to the roguish fancy of the writer, your digestive
mechanism is explained to you, and the caloric theory of
weight reduction is set forth (unless the book happens to
favor another form of metabolic magic, and makes you eat
some kind of fat-burning diet). Do thus, says your savior,
and infallibly you will lose weight. You must. You cannot
help it. If you fail, you must be cheating. You snatch eagerly
at the Salvation which is offered, not precisely free but at the
seemingly trivial cost of eating what the expert calls an am-
ple and satisfying diet. Some books offer recipes created
and tested by the expert himself---recipes which are far, far
from the poems of the <1haute cuisine.>1 We understand why the
expert has no fat problem; his notions of food would seem
frugal to Robinson Crusoe. <1It Pays to Be Healthy,>1 says
Dr. Robert Collier Page---in what coin, one wonders, look-
ing over the diet sheet.
50


   <2Length of Days>2

HOW PAT the answer comes from another group of books in
the same category; the payment is in a lengthened life span.
<1Live Longer and Enjoy It!>1 shouts Dr. Peter Steincrohn in
one of his books, and <1Stop Killing Yourself!>1 in another. Dr.
Steincrohn has also written books explaining how to keep fit
without exercise, and how to master fear. He is not a man to
give way to doubt himself. "This book can be your first posi-
tive step toward a happier, fuller, longer life," he says, at
the opening of the first-named of his works, and proceeds to
reduce the method of gaining these blessings to a simple
and easily remembered formula. This is A.L.E. = H. & H.
---which, being interpreted, is "Awareness of your Life
Expectancy brings you the greatest promise of enjoying
Health and Happiness." Like Dr. Walter Alvarez, another
tireless writer about health, he makes us privy to many of
the confidences of the consulting room. We are impressed by
the high quality of their patients. Dr. Alvarez is happy in-
deed in the moral beauty of the people who make up his
practice, for it is rarely that he has a patient whom he does
not describe as "fine," and the worse their physical plight,
                                                         51

may be their lot, there is the large class of books for those
whose anxiety is about old age. Medical science is credited
with having added twenty years to our life expectancy since
the beginning of this century. Twenty more years to worry
about! Characteristic of many of the books designed for the
aging is <1The Best Years of Your Life>1 by Marie Beynon Ray.
Septuagenarians who have been looking forward to a few
years of sitting quietly in a chair will not need it, but those
who fear age may wish to follow her advice and involve them-
selves in a number of "activities"; the word is in quotation
marks because it is one of the witch-words of our time. It
seems to signify a variety of arts and skills, serious in them-
selves, when they are approached in a spirit which is not
serious. An "activity" is not really a hobby, for a hobby may
be something to which you have been drawn by strong per-
sonal inclination. No, an "activity" is something you would
never have dreamed of doing until---in old age, for instance
---you fall into the hands of some zealot who makes you do
it for its supposed therapeutic value.
   It does not occur to Mrs. Ray that an elderly person might
like to rest after a life of work. No, no, she cries; let them
paint, write, play instruments, take photographs, and collect
things, including languages.  Indomitably cheerful, she
goads the beldam and the grandsire on to unremitting
activity---no matter what, so long as they drag their old
bones out of the chimney corner and make a stir in the
world.
   Her best point is that education and mental development
need not come to a halt as age approaches; we can always
learn. But she makes no serious mention of the serenity and
peace of age, and many who are now tossing on the heavy
52

seas of middle life may tremble at the thought of a seniority
in which they will be compelled to collect orchids or learn
to play the trombone.
                    <1As a white candle>1
                     <1In a holy place,>1
                    <1So is the beauty>1
                     <1Of an aged face.>1

Thus writes the poet. But Mrs. Ray does not concur; she
wants the aged face to blaze with the charmless frenzy of a
naked electric bulb. The human predicament, under such
circumstances, must conclude not in a fading splendor, but
with a fizzle and a pop.
   It is not suggested that these books have no value. Their
coarse, fibrous prose, and their punching, driving style are
devoted to advice which ranges from the harmless to the
good and the valuable. There are fastidious readers who
cannot accept counsel which is pressed upon them in this
graceless fashion, but there are millions of others who gob-
ble it up. What sort of people must they be?
  They are people who believe in the Power of the Word.
They share with a great part of literate mankind the dream
of the Wondrous Book, the invaluable Vade Mecum, in
which the answer to their special question is to be found. The
rise of elementary literacy, discussed in our first chapter, has
put them in possession of the power to read, and has had a
part in sophisticating them to the point where they no longer
regard the Holy Bible as the one Miraculous Book, as their
parents and grandparents may have done. Their problems
have no kinship with those of Abraham and Jacob, but are
rooted in a world where all ills and discontents are sup-
posedly curable, and where there <1must>1 be a way of beating
                                                         53

arthritis, or heart disease, or simply old age. There must be
an anodyne for their Hydra-headed Anxiety. And so they
seek these books, and the books appear for a time to fulfill
their need. The sad part is that the books are so bad, con-
sidered as pieces of writing and thinking, and that those
who ask for bread are given a few ounces of wood pulp.

               <2Right Thinking Means Success>2

IT IS WHEN we leave the realm of physical health and look
at the books which promise mental health---invariably
equated with success---that pity changes to disgust. The best
in this kind belong to that category of writing which is not
philosophy, or psychology, or religion, but a watery
draught in which the flavor of all three may be faintly
discerned. It used to be called Uplift; perhaps we might call
it Soulmanship. It is vaguely Emersonian in manner, but
has no more than a whiff of Emerson's good sense. A charac-
teristic example is <1The Mind Alive,>1 by Harry and Bonaro
Overstreet, with the subtitle "How to keep our Mental and
Emotional Level High: How to Live so that Life has Mean-
ing." It offers some advice which is good, but it takes a man
already wise to learn further wisdom from a book. People in
distress, or merely unhappy, need spiritual directors or psy-
chiatrists to cope with them. They want a human contact,
and they want to hear advice in a human voice. They need
praise and scoldings from someone whom they respect.
What are they to make of <1The Mind Alive,>1 with its chilly
goodwill and watered-down New England stoicism?
  We must pity the hungriness of heart which clamors for
reassurance and wisdom, but which shrinks from religion
and philosophy, either of which might, in different ways,
54

fill their need and soothe their sorrow. Our age has robbed
millions of the simplicity of ignorance, and has so far failed
to lift them to the simplicity of wisdom. Roaming the broad
purgatorial plains between these two states, they seize upon
books of mild inspiration. "Deeply and persistently, we have
come to realize, the individual seeks himself in and through
others," say the Overstreets in another of their books, <1The>1
<1Mind Goes Forth.>1 This is a half-truth, but for those to
whom it applies, inspirational books are of no use; they need
living teachers, whom they can hear and touch, and who
can keep them on what is, for them, the right track.

   <2Wishes in Overalls>2

THE TEACHING of such writers as the Overstreets seems
almost inspired when we drop to such works as <1Best Wishes>1
by Brownie Wise. The message of this writer (whose
chief recommendation seems to be that she was chosen by
the National Sales Executives as "Business Woman of
1957") is simply that you can have whatever you wish for; if
you don't get it, obviously it was not a "worthwhile wish"; if
you follow her technique, your wishes will "don overalls
and go to work for you." "Wishing with a purpose works a
magic all its own," she writes, in the rhythmic prose which
is her special gift, Something of its flavor is to be found in
this brief excerpt:
   Six hundred and twenty years before the birth of Christ,
   a man named Aesop set a goal and began to share his im-
   agination with his fellow man. Today, a man named
   Disney is continuing the ageless art of fantasy, sharpening
   the tools of inspiration of still another generation. . . .
   And we, the living one and all, share the wealth of in-
                                                         55
   spiring dividends. Of course there was a lot of fantasy in
   the tales they told. Yet can you recall a single fairy-tale
   without a moral, one in which the treasure was not actu-
   ally earned, in which some single character was not better
   off for what he learned? A child without faith in fantasy,
   finds it difficult to believe as a man.
   Brownie Wise says naively that wishing will make it so.
Countless other writers repeat her assertion, but the naivete/
is gone. They cloak their magic in the robes of pseudo
science. Dr. Hornell Hart, of Duke University, has devised
a system which he describes in <1Autoconditioning: The New>1
<1Way to a Successful Life;>1 his book is sold complete with a
device called a Mood-Meter, which is "a simple, scientific
way for measuring the degree of your happiness or unhap-
piness." Autoconditioning is self-hypnosis, or autosugges-
tion, and when you have mastered its technique, you will
experience "induced intuition," also called "getting-
hunches-to-order." With autoconditioning you will get rid
of tension, and "release almost unlimited reserves of
energy."
   The yearning to give this sort of voodoo the prestige of
science leads Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (a clergyman)
and Dr. Smiley Blanton (a psychiatrist) to assert, in <1The>1
<1Art of Real Happiness,>1 that "the pulpit behind which the
pastor stands is a sacred desk but it is also a laboratory
table," and the benefits they promise are rooted in "spirit-
ual laws as specific as the laws of physics and chemistry."
Their special advice is contained in some words attributed
to Captain Eddie Rickenbacker---"Think positively and
masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes
more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achieve-
ment and experience. This is the sure way to win victories
56
over inner defeat. It is the way a humble man meets life or
death."

   <2Scientific Weather Control>2

SUCH A COMBINATION of the humble with the masterful is
encountered also in <1Faith Is Power>1 by the Reverend Dr.
Daniel A. Poling, editor of <1The Christian Herald.>1 Gen-
eral Patton displayed it when he prayed for, and got, "battle
weather" for his Third Army on the Rhine. The General
ordered his Senior Chaplain to address a polite but firm
request to Almighty God to stop the rain which halted his
advance. The result, written by Colonel James O'Neil, goes
right to the point. God is asked to "restrain these immoder-
ate rains with which we have had to contend." (It is to be
supposed that the Divine Ear turned a little red at the
criticism implied in "immoderate" and "contend.") "Grant
us fair weather for battle," the prayer continued, so that
"we may advance from victory to victory and crush the
opposition and wickedness of our enemies. . . ." Could
Joshua or any other conqueror of the Old Testament have
put it up to God more sternly? This was masterful, positive
thinking indeed, and it was humble, as well, for General
Patton knew that he could not stop the rain unaided. It is
interesting to recall that the rain stopped. There will be
those who have prayed for or against rain, however, who
will have to decide whether their cause did not meet
Brownie Wise's test of being "worthwhile," or whether
the laws of prayer are a little less specific in their action
than Drs. Peale and Blanton say they are.
                                                         57


   <2Lifemanship and Wifemanship>2

COMPARED with the religious approach, the frankness of
Dale Carnegie is refreshing. When he is dealing in magic he
calls it magic; his "magic formula to stop worrying situ-
ations" (also called "eight words that can transform your
life" in <1How to Stop Worrying and Start Living)>1 is a quo-
tation from Marcus Aurelius---"Our life is what our
thoughts make it." This is admirable, until we discover
what Mr. Carnegie thinks we want to make of life. Over
and over again he stresses the magic of thought, but the kind
of thought he suggests can bring no satisfaction to any but
the narrow egoist, the go-getter, the me-first. Nobody can
find fault with legitimate ambition, but when the wealth
of the spiritual and intellectual life is reduced to a formula
for overcoming sales resistance, we protest.
   The Carnegie world outlook has been extended by Mrs.
Carnegie in a book called <1How to Help Your Husband>1
<1Get Ahead,>1 which is a manual of Wifemanship. Three ways
of making the husband popular are set forth: (a) make him
lovable to others by presenting him in contrived situations
where his heart will seem great; (b) display his talents by
paving the way for his funny stories, or whatever else the
poor brute seems to his wife to do well; (c) touch the chords
that bring out his best---whatever that may mean. Which of
us has not seen deluded women at these pitiable and trans-
parent devices? It is for this that Mrs. Carnegie urges wives
to "raise their standard of loving," and lift their EQ (en-
thusiasm quotient) . Respect for the dignity of the human
spirit forbids comment on this transcendently disgusting
book. It is enough to say that it was not thus that Portia
58

loved Brutus, or Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning. Could
love long survive the well-intentioned meddling which has
its genesis not in passion, respect, or shared interests, but in
a calculated inflation of the EQ? Would not some com-
pensating disillusion inevitably follow?
   Whether religious or secular in vocabulary, the lesson is
always the same. The clerical writers express a coarse,
strong, somewhat unspiritual, getting-ahead kind of re-
ligion. They seem quite content with the world as it is,
desiring a generalized decency rather than spirituality.
Their religion is a means of getting on in the world, and the
reader sometimes feels that if moderation and honesty
worked against success, moderation and honesty would
get short shrift. But of course honesty is the best policy; it is a
spiritual law as fixed as the laws of chemistry, and a score of
anecdotes can be adduced to prove it. It is astonishing to
read again and again in these books by parsons phrases
which suggest that religious faith is a type of investment.
They insist that it "pays dividends."
   The secular books say the same things, and not in a strik-
ingly different way. Great emphasis is laid on getting people
to like you, and this is not mentioned as a possible conse-
quence of good conduct, but as an end in itself. Being liked
is important because it is a way of achieving success. A
secret of gaining popularity, suggested seriously in one of
these manuals, was that of the man who repeatedly asked for
help in these words: "You're a lot smarter than I am, so I
come to you." We are told that this "made friends fast,"
and the progress of the petitioner was rapid. Presumably
the discovery of such a valuable secret entitled this man to
be called "creative," which is a favorite word of the inspira-
tional writers. Everybody must <1create,>1 but when the word is
                                                         59

examined in the context in which they use it, it seems to
mean nothing more than being ordinarily competent on the
job. Had the creator in question no sense of becoming a
hypocrite as his material success grew?
   Secrets of success are many, and it is interesting that
silence is frequently recommended as one of them. Sit in
silence for as little as fifteen minutes a day, and splendid
inspirations will surely come to you. Henry Ford, it ap-
pears, thought well of silence, and if we aspire to success,
what better model can we find than he whom no less a seer
than Ralph Waldo Trine called "inventor, poet and
prophet"?
   The emphasis is always on "success" in its meaning of
prosperity and good fortune, and the lesson of all these
books is that success can be compelled. Follow the directions
and it <1must>1 come. There would be nothing very harmful
about this if success were not so often equated with virtue,
and if success were not so nakedly touted as the best gift of
God. But that is the message of a majority of these books:
success is from God, and God can be cajoled or compelled to
give it to you. One need not be of a profoundly religious
nature to find this shocking.

   <2The Power of Dr. Peale>2

LET US EXAMINE in some detail the self-confessed "great
inspirational best-seller of our time," <1The Power of Posi->1
<1tive Thinking>1 by the Reverend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.
<1The Episcopal Review>1 says that "Dr. Peale combines the
deep strength of Christian faith with the insights of modern
science to produce a most helpful book for radiant living."
Well, let us see.
60

   Dr. Peale says of his book that "it makes no pretence to
literary excellence nor does it seek to demonstrate any un-
usual scholarship on my part." We may assume that Dr.
Peale has small regard for these qualities, for by the infalli-
ble technique of success which he demonstrates, they could
surely be easily acquired. Nevertheless, there is an occa-
sional squib of scholarship in the book, as when he says that
the word "pastor" derives from a word meaning "a cure of
souls"; those of us who thought it derived from the Latin
word for a shepherd will not be so cranky as to dismiss all of
the doctor's scholarship because of a slip that any busy,
successful man might overlook. And when he tells us of the
old lady who said to him "How daily life is!" we wish that we
knew such witty old ladies, for we have to read Jules La-
forgue to be told the same thing. But when he outlines his
"prayer formula" as (1) Prayerize (2) Picturize (3) Actu-
alize, we begin to ask if a certain reasonable fastidiousness
about the debauching of English may not also be among
God's gifts, and we wonder uneasily if the style may not be,
all too revealingly, the man himself.
   Is it stupid and unfair to deny value to the book solely
because we do not like the way in which it is written? Or is
the repulsion we feel in fact a valid and critical response?
"This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive," said Dr.
Johnson, who was under no compulsion to be consistent for,
in his day, guides to enjoying and enduring life were few,
and were rarely the work of the clergy. If Dr. Peale wishes
to direct his female readers to "God's beauty parlour"
(which is his way of saying that a quiet spirit improves the
looks), must we not let him know best how to appeal to his
audience? Are we justified in our cynicism about that mar-
velous store of anecdotes which he holds in common with
                                                         61

so many of his calling; may it not be characteristic of the suc-
cessful, positive thinker that the experience of many men,
and even of men long dead, is subsumed and reborn in him-
self?
   Strong faith is notoriously tonic in its effect. Dr. Peale
urges his readers to affirm ten times every day "I can do all
things through Christ which strengtheneth me." It would be
astonishing if such a belief, worked into the grain of a man,
did not give him more than ordinary self-confidence. If
Christ is with him (and he knows that this is so) , who dares
be against him? Any of us who have had to oppose men and
women who are so armed with faith know how quickly their
astonishment gives place to indignation. Those who truly
believe that Christ is with them are subject to a particularly
distressing form of mistaken identity. There must be times,
in the world of business, when two Peale-powered personali-
ties find themselves in opposition. Number One is deter-
mined to achieve success by selling Number Two a great
gross of nonmolting dust mops; Number Two is equally de-
termined not to have the mops. Both have affirmed an equal
number of times that he can do all things through Christ
which strengtheneth him. What happens? Theologians will
scratch their heads over this, and Immensity itself may feel a
tremor.
   But Dr. Peale has no misgiving. Hear his words:

   Where is the old-fashioned businessman who says that
   religion is theoretical and has no place in business? Today
   any successful and competent businessman will employ
   the latest and best-tested methods in production, distribu-
   tion and administration, and many are discovering that
   one of the greatest of all efficiency methods is prayer power.
62

   Prayer power is not always used for a narrow, personal ad-
vantage, of course. Dr. Peale is greatly attracted by the tech-
nique of his colleague in spiritual science, Dr. Frank Lau-
bach, who uses "flash prayers" which he "shoots" at people
in public places; often the people thus shot turn toward him
and smile. Says Dr. Peale, admiringly: "Dr. Laubach be-
lieves that he has often changed the entire atmosphere of a
car or bus full of people by the process of 'swishing love and
prayers all around the place.' "

   <2Who Approves Peale?>2

TO WHOM DOES spiritual help on this level make its appeal?
To troubled people who find their lives or their circum-
stances unsatisfactory, we assume. But such people vary
greatly, and to answer the question more carefully, we turn
to <1Social Class and Mental Illness>1 by August B. Hollings-
head and Frederick C. Redlich, where we find the people of
a supposedly typical United States community divided into
five classes, according to education, income, and prestige.
According to these researchers only 1 per cent of the psy-
chiatric patients from their community come from Class
One; 7 per cent come from Class Two; 13.7 per cent from
Class Three; 40.1 per cent from Class Four; and 38.2 per
cent from Class Five. Though as this last and lowest class
comprises only 17.7 per cent of the total population, it will
be seen that it provides by far the greatest number of psy-
chiatric cases numerically. The first three classes contain
virtually all of the neurotics, who do not require psychiatric
treatment but who are "disturbed personalities," and as the
two lowest classes are made up of people who read very lit-
tle, and who do not seek help from the printed word, we
                                                    63

may asume that self-help books are read by the upper
three classes. Of these it is probably Class Three which is
most impressed by autoconditioning, wishes in overalls, pos-
itive thinking, and other marvelous and easy ways to mental
health, and of course success.

  <2Self-help by Self-examination>2

IT WILL NOT BE amiss at this point to consider the compara-
tively small but valuable class of books which exist for those
whose aim is self-knowledge and self-exploration, rather
than magical formulas and monetary betterment. The de-
sire of these readers is not to bend the external world to
their will, but to live on better terms with themselves, and
they have no illusions about their ability to bribe Fate, or
to involve Christ in their struggle for worldly advancement.
  Three books must suffice, all of which deal in a different
way with the problem of self-analysis. The first is <1A Practical>1
<1Method of Self-Analysis>1 by E. Pickworth Farrow. The au-
thor's history is of interest; he was trained as a biologist and
has achieved distinction in the field of ecology. Following
the first Great War, he was troubled by neurosis, and under-
took psychoanalysis with two physicians, eventually quarrel-
ing with both of them. Being of a determined nature, he
decided to analyze himself, which he did to his own satisfac-
tion. Perhaps more significantly, he did so to the satisfac-
tion of Dr. Sigmund Freud, who consented to write a Fore-
word to his book. It is worth quoting in full, because of the
light it throws both on Farrow and on Freud:
  The author of this book is known to me as a man of strong
  and independent intelligence who, probably on account
  of a certain wilfulness of character, could not get on well
64

   with the two analysts with whom he experimented. He
   then had recourse to a consistent application of the process
   of self-analysis which I had once used myself in order to
   analyse my own dreams. His results deserve notice, espe-
   cially because of his special individual technique.
A less guarded recommendation from Freud comes by way
Professor A. G. Tansley of Cambridge, who reports that
when he discussed Farrow's technique of free-association
with the founder of psychoanalysis, he commented: <1"Ja,>1
<1tadellos">1 ("Yes, beyond reproach").
  Freud's caution in his Foreword is understandable. He
was willing to admit that he had analyzed himself, but he
was not prepared to suggest that anyone else attempt such a
feat, nor was he optimistic about the outcome of such an ex-
periment. When we read, in Dr. Ernest Jones's great biog-
raphy, of the struggle and agony which self-analysis cost
Freud, we understand his reluctance. He knew what was in-
volved, and he knew how uncommon were Farrow's sturdi-
ness of intellect and determination.
  These qualities of Farrow's appear on every page of his
book. He says frankly that he had little use for introspection
of any kind until a war neurosis drove him to seek relief by
what he believed to be the best method; having set out on
psychoanalysis, not even the despair of the analysts with
whom he quarreled would turn him from it. His triumph as
he tracks dowm each part of his trouble has the quality of a
man who has chased a burglar and given him a sound thrash-
ing. His industry is awesome. He records that after four hun-
dred and fifty solitary hours of self-analysis, he succeeded in
recalling a memory which he was able to confirm went back
to an incident in his sixth month of life.
  Those who are daunted by the strenuosity of Farrow will
                                                    65

find a gentler and more reassuring book in <1Self-Analysis>1 by
the late Dr. Karen Horney. Herself a distinguished ana-
lyst, she has not the sense of triumphing over that profession
which is observable in Farrow, and from her professional ex-
perience she knows how few people have Farrow's persist-
ence. Her belief in the possibility of self-analysis arose from
her observation that those of her patients who were sepa-
rated from her for a time returned to treatment with in-
sights and improvements which made it clear that they had
been carrying on the analytical work by themselves, whether
fully aware of it or not. If this were possible, what degree of
analysis lay within the power of the solitary worker?
  Dr. Horney has no easy optimism on this point. Success
depends upon the character of each worker, and on the prob-
lems they have to solve. She does not think that self-analysis
lies within everybody's power, because one of its first re-
quirements is a degree of honesty in examining one's own
recollections and processes of thought---an ability which is
not given to everybody and which varies widely in power
where it exists at all. Where it does exist, the slow and stren-
uous work involved in a self-analysis creates another hazard;
intellectual honesty and industry need not go hand in hand.
Her conclusion on the matter is this:

   On theoretical grounds, then, I see no stringent reason
   why self-analysis should not be feasible. Granted that
   many people are too deeply entangled in their own prob-
   lems to be able to analyze themselves; granted that self-
   analysis can never approximate the speed and accuracy of
   analytical treatment by an expert; granted that there are
   certain resistances that can be surmounted only with out-
   side help---still, all of this is no proof that in principle the
   job cannot be done.
66

  The spirit which informs this book is one of enviable wis-
dom and cultivation. The benefits it assumes the reader is
seeking from self-analysis are intellectual and spiritual ones;
the values which lie at its foundation are worthy of our ad-
miration. The reader feels that Dr. Horney has qualities
which he would greatly like to develop in himself. It is this
that marks the book off from the works of Dr. Peale and the
other advocates of easy self-improvement.
  Farrow, independent as his approach was, worked along
strict Freudian lines. Dr. Horney was also Freudian, al-
though some modifications of Freud's doctrines are observ-
able in <1Self-Analysis,>1 as in her other works. For the troubled
or the neurotic, their manuals may be best, but for those
who are intent on deepening their self-knowledge, but who
have no specific distress they wish to allay, the Jungian ap-
proach to self-analysis could be more congenial. It is worth
noting also that Dr. Jung's approach to the obscure places of
the mind by means of depth psychology seems to work better
for people who have passed the age of forty than the uncom-
promising Freudian method.
  A personal approach to self-knowledge by Dr. Jung's path
is described at length in <1Experiment in Depth>1 by P. W.
Martin. The process is no less long or difficult, but it is dif-
ferent in method. The end that is sought is the same---an
integated personality---but it is achieved by what Martin
  (taking a phrase from Arnold Toynbee) calls "the with-
drawal-and-return." The withdrawal is from the outer
world to the inner world of the psyche; the return is from
that realm, where a new way of life has been found.
  Like so much that is associated with Jung, this book is
written in terms which some people will dismiss as "mysti-
cal," and those who have no taste for the mystical, or who
                                                    67

fear it, had better leave Martin's book alone. The warning
he utters is even sterner than that given by Dr. Horney:
  The experiment in depth concerns everyone, but it is not
  for everyone to undertake. The way is dangerous. It de-
  mands of a man that he obey the injunction "Become
  what thou art"; and to this end leads him to his own en-
  counter. What he will find there, no one can know in ad-
  vance. This much, though, is reasonably certain. Whole-
  ness has to proceed against the heaviest of odds: the values,
  habit patterns, attitudes, laid down by earlier condition-
  ing in a society where the creative contact has been to a
  great extent lost. Individuation does not begin with a
<1  tabula rasa,>1 but with a personality more or less malformed.
Beyond lies the deep unconscious. Here, all is at the
  hazard. As Jung has said, there are those who go digging
  for an artesian well and come instead upon a volcano.
  Cumulated upon this uncertainty is the harsh fact that
  our knowledge of the other side of consciousness is still,
  for the most part, in the earliest stages of hypothesis. Much
  of it may be wide of the mark, some completely mistaken.
  It is not only that the beaten way does not as yet exist.
  Such track as there is may be deceptive. A man takes it at
  his peril. In making the experiment in depth there are
  bound to be casualties, casualties that could not reason-
  ably be foreseen. It is well to realize that one's own name
  may figure among them.
  Whether he wishes to try the experiment in depth on him-
self or not, the reader of Martin's book will be grateful for a
sympathetic but not uncritical exposition of Jung's depth-
psychology, which as a fascinating excursion into the vast
compost heap of myth and legend is surely one of the great
adventures in the history of the human mind. For those who
seek to understand literature (and perhaps through litera-
                                                    69

stitute for a cultured mind, or for delicate sensibility and in-
tuition, as some critics have supposed. Psychoanalysis is no
bigger than the man who is using it, even when he has a
good understanding of its theory and practice. Unfortu-
nately it is applied, in nine cases out of ten, by critics who
have not been analyzed and who have not otherwise trou-
bled to equip themselves for what they attempt.
  As for the creators, the writers, too many of them seem to
have read a little psychoanalytical literature, but have not
given the time and thought to the subject which it imperi-
ously demands. Anyone who has read what Sigmund Freud
and his principal followers actually wrote, and who has tried
to understand it, must marvel at the opinions attributed to
these men by critics and writers who plainly have not trou-
bled to inform themselves, and by the deductions they make
about the work of others. They have sought to make a half-
baked notion of Freudianism serve them in the place of the
observation and insight without which a writer is worthless.
How much better is the method of Frank O'Connor, who,
well knowing what psychoanalysis has to offer, sets it aside
and works from his own point of view, relying on what he
has seen and felt, rather than on what he has read. He has
grasped what Mann has so finely expressed---that psycho-
analysis corroborates and fills in what the artist knows in his
own way---or else he is no artist. For instance, in his fine
story <1My Oedipus Complex,>1 Mr. O'Connor brings to a small
boy in a poor district of Cork the problem which, in Freud,
appears in terms of myth and theory. O'Connor throws fully
as much light on Freud as Freud does on O'Connor, and the
great concept, far from being diminished, gains force from
the humorous reality of the tale. Except in his title,
O'Connor gives no hint that he has ever heard of Freud, and
70
the child's plight has the fresh and personal quality which
common experiences have when we meet them directly, and
not through the minds of others. To O'Connor the Oedipus
complex is an archetype; to lesser writers it is all too often a
stereotype.
  Critics and writers who try to make some measure of
Freudian psychology do service for personal insight narrow
their range and inhibit whatever talent and imagination
they may possess. Freud's writings, like psychoanalysis itself,
tend to emphasize and confirm whatever a man truly is; but
partly read and much misunderstood, they beget a barren
pessimism which is not a true, philosophic pessimism, and
which is good for nothing at all. It smears and effaces all
moral values, whereas a fuller knowledge of psychoanalysis
tends toward a deeper understanding and an enlargement of
moral values. The novels and poems which proceed from
writers in the grip of this barren pessimism are of the kind
which make narrow moralists fume, and use words like "de-
cadence"; the writers rejoice, because making narrow mor-
alists (who are usually frightened people) hop with rage is
a sign that they have hit a mark, and they do not understand
how poor and easy a mark it is. But when one sort of fool
vexes another sort of fool, the result is not necessarily a lit-
erary triumph, and need not signify that anybody on either
side has been saying anything of the least consequence. Such
controversies belong to the Higher Jackassery, and should
not be confused with the development of literature or the
human spirit.
  The matter of the influence of psychoanalysis in modern
literature will certainly come up again in later chapters,
but for the moment we must return to our books about
enjoying and enduring.
71
  <2The Industrious Apprentice Rejected>2

THEY HARP insistently upon success, and success is clearly de-
fined as getting ahead in business, including the parson busi-
ness. We may wonder if they are not written to satisfy a need
among readers which is little heeded by writers of fiction.
There are few books written nowadays about the Industri-
ous Apprentice who works hard and faithfully, marries his
master's daughter, and lives a contented life. Nevertheless,
the Industrious Apprentice still holds his place in the hu-
man heart. If fiction shows him to be a rascal, who gets his
fortune by tricky means, or a dull oaf whose soul is content
with money-grubbing, or a favorite of fortune who rides on
the crest of an economic wave, so much the worse for fiction.
Readers who want the Industrious Apprentice will look else-
where.
  Success, insofar as it appears in modern fiction, is given a
wry turn. A whole school of American writers, of whom
John P. Marquand was a distinguished example, have shown
that success is as much dust and ashes as inherited social and
economic position. The Angry Young Men of England think
poorly of it; John Wain, in <1The Contenders,>1 goes to some
pains to show that in business and the arts it is bought at an
inordinate price, and one of the great charms of Kingsley
Amis's <1Lucky Jim>1 is that the success of the hero is utterly
undeserved. In the novels of Jack Kerouac the "success" is
the hipster, whose aim in life is "getting his kicks" and who
regards conventional success as richly funny. Samuel Smiles,
if he were to return to earth today, would look in vain for
fiction which would support his own firm notions of the
goodness of success founded on desert.
72

  We cannot suppose that Smiles would approve of the self-
help books which offer success founded on religion, for he
would instantly spot them for what they are---delusive offer-
ers of success founded on craft. Get God on your side and
success is yours. God is not the rewarder of virtue, but the
Genie in the Bottle, who comes when you utter the magic
formula. We must deny that this is religion in any high
sense.

  <2God Not the Only Listener to Prayer>2

PERHAPS WE MAY deny that it is religion at all. Mystics have
often warned against powers which may be set at work by
means of prayer and which are not related to God, but
rather to the Devil. To speak of the Devil in our time is to
invite mockery; he is not in fashion. Therefore let us say
that there are powers which may be called to one's aid which
are not powers of the highest good, and that these powers
can be cajoled or bullied into giving us our own way. If
worldly success appears to a man to be the highest good,
rather than one among many pleasing and comfortable
things which belong to the second order of benefits, he is
likely to think that anything which gives him what he so
earnestly desires must needs be God. After all, has not St.
Thomas Aquinas said that it is legitimate to pray for any-
thing it is legitimate to desire? And if Dr. Peale can show us
how to pray for these things in a way which delivers the
goods, are we not ungrateful to say that the imitation of
Peale is not necessarily the Imitation of Christ?
  Yet if we look a little more carefully than the greedy man
who cannot conceive of a benefit greater than worldly suc-
cess, we find not a flaw but a vast chasm in any such argu-
                                                    73

ment. Prayer is petition, intercession, adoration, and con-
templation; great saints and mystics have agreed on this
definition. To stop short at petition is to pray only in a crip-
pled fashion. Further, such prayer encourages one of the
faults which is most reprehended by spiritual instructors---
turning to God without turning from Self. When that hap-
pens, the experts in these matters warn us, we should know
that God is not the only answerer of petitions. Where do the
other answers come from? The answer is an unfashionable
one.
  If this seems to be hitting too hard at a class of books
which most people consider harmless, let me call attention
to the style in which the books themselves are written. The
name of God is very freely used, and therefore the grounds
of argument have been chosen by the writers. But when
God comes into an argument, we are able to call upon the
authority of men and women whose intuitions and experi-
ence have won the admiration of deeply serious people for
many centuries, and they are not in agreement with these
apostles of God as a way to Success. That God may grant
worldly success is possible, they say; that He may approve
of it is also possible; but that He can be compelled to give it
by means of infallible formulas they utterly deny.
  The writers who offer God as an assistant in business are
in tune---no, not even with the Infinite as understood by
Ralph Waldo Trine---with an intensely materialistic con-
cept of religion which is common in our day. Whereas once
it was assumed that happiness and salvation were to be
sought, not in our environment, but in our attitude toward
our environment, it is now assumed that the environment is
of primary importance. Insofar as the individual's state of
mind is important, it is important as a means of influencing
74

his surroundings, and this comes close to magic. If a man
wishes to resort to magic in order to obtain the treasures of
this world, that is his own affair; but let him not be deluded
that what he is doing is necessarily pleasing to God or that
the rewards he gets are evidences of God's grace.
  Let him be very well aware that what he is dealing with is
the Kingdom of this World, and that although his Positive
Thinking, or whatever it may be, will doubtless develop
some of his powers which have hitherto been quiescent, he is
not engaged in a quest for God. Nor is he seeking to be sub-
sumed in anything greater than himself, which is the usual
desire of those who undertake a spiritual quest. If he wants
success (and there seems, on the face of it, to be little harm
in wanting to be solvent and comfortable) , let him be well
and truly aware of it. It is not self-help, as defined by Smiles
and his like, which disgusts; it is making a religion of it, and
equating success with virtue.
  This book has no pretension to being a work of theology,
and if some passages immediately foregoing appear to have
a theological flavor, it is because such a study as this de-
mands that the works under examination be related to
others of vastly greater value. Our purpose here is literary
criticism. These books of enjoying and enduring call for con-
sideration because they are so numerous and so popular, and
because they represent one element of what people in gen-
eral are reading, as opposed to what literary critics and lit-
erary enthusiasts are reading. If they have been condemned
harshly, it is because they cheat and bamboozle their read-
ers; they seem to offer gold, but it is fool's gold.
                                                    75


  <2The Literary Test>2

HOW CAN WE be so sure? By one literary test, at least. It may
be stated as a law of criticism that any book which has any-
thing of worth to say will impress a receptive reader by
the style in which it is written. This is not to say that it will
be written in a great style, or an easy and accomplished style,
but that it will be written in a style which compels attention
and impresses by its aptness. The quality of what is said in-
evitably influences the way in which it is said, however inex-
perienced the writer. It is the critic's task to be sensitive to
such writing, even when it at first repels by a superficial in-
eptitude. If you seek examples, read the outpourings of
some of the great religious enthusiasts of the Quaker per-
suasion; they have no art, but the worth of what they say can
be plainly felt, and gives digmity to their writing.
  Most of the books which fall into the class dealt with in
this chapter fail in this test: Smiles and Dimnet are the rare
exceptions among them; even Bennett has the air of a man
seeking to persuade others to believe something he wishes,
rather than believes, to be true.
  If this rule of criticism seems arbitrary as it stands, it may
be related to the elementary dictum of philosophy that "the
thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the
knower"---which is a grand way of saying that you cannot
pour more than a pint out of a pint pot. Nor, conversely, can
you pour more than a pint into the same pot when it is
empty. The pint-size writer finds pint-size readers. These
books of self-help can all be boiled down to the old Latin
maxim <1Volentem ducit, nolentem trahit,>1 which is as much
as to say that success will come to those who want it most,
76

and will avoid those who, for whatever reason, stand in their
own way.
  As for the striking numbers of books about enjoying and
enduring which are published now, and the great success of
some of them, they may be explained by recalling the reply
of King Charles the Second to one who asked him the reason
why vast crowds gathered to hear a certain preacher: "I sup-
pose his nonsense agrees with their nonsense," said the
Merry Monarch.
                        .III.

               <2Ovid Is Not Their Master>2


How many people are there who can honestly say that they
have no interest in love? How many have not enjoyed some
dream of success in love? One of the effects of increasing lit-
eracy has been to give love an importance it never enjoyed
before in human history. "Love is only one of many passioms
. . . it has no great influence on the sum of life," said Dr.
Johnson; if he were alive today, he could not be so certain.
The vastly extended realm of psychology, as well as popular
belief, would be against him. It is not surprising that in an
age when we have come to believe that virtually everything
can be learned from books, there should be so many books
which offer, not merely general advice, but plans and tech-
niques by which love may be won and held.
  The earliest of such books in the Western World, and one
which is still of great interest to those who read it under-
standingly, is the <1Ars amatoria,>1 or <1Art of Love,>1 by the
Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso; he wrote it, so far as
we know, about the year 2 B.C. Dr. S. G. Owen, in the <1En->1
<1cyclopaedia Britannica,>1 calls it "perhaps the most immoral
work ever written by a man of genius." Considered by
modern standards of morality, this sharp judgment may be
defended; Ovid has no place in his poem for that warm
reciprocal admiration which moralists today consider to be
a necessary accompaniment of a satisfactory sexual union;
                          77


78

nor does he assume, as moralists are apt to do, that a love
affair should be approached as though it were to last a life-
time. He wrote his poem to tell men and women how to at-
tract, how to please, and how to hold their lovers until they
wanted a change. The word <1"ars">1 in his title means "art,"
but in the sense of "technical instruction."
  He wrote very much as a man of the world and as a man
of taste. His work is as free of underbred leering and nudg-
ing as it is of moralizing; he wrote a poem and a textbook,
but not a work of pornography or edification. When he has
to speak of delicate matters, he writes frankly but sparely.
The tone of the poem is brilliant and witty, but it is not
heartless, and it does not lack passages of beauty and tender-
ness. The second and third books of the poem end with vir-
tually the same words: "emulate my precepts and write
upon the trophies of your conquests, <1Ovid was my master.">1
  As we read the books which are written for the guidance
of lovers in our time, we find that they have little to say
which Ovid did not say before them, and thus far he is in-
deed their master. But we may wish that he had been their
master in style, as well. It is not only his genius as a poet, but
his lack of vulgarity in thought and expression which dis-
tinguishes Ovid from all but a few of those who, since the at-
tempt to establish general literacy, have gone over the same
ground.

  <2Fosler the Phrenologist>2

TRACING the earliest of these books which may be called
"modern" is a task for the research scholar. It will be enough
for us here to look at one which enjoyed a very wide popu-
larity between its publication in 1870, and 1910. The name
                                                         79

on the cover is, discreetly, <1Science of Life,>1 but on the title
page the author is more specific, thus:
                   CREATIVE
                     AND
                SEXUALSCIENCE
                      OR
      MANHOOD, WOMANHOOD, AND THEIR
            MUTUAL INTERRELATIONS
      LOVE, ITS LAWS, POWER, ETC.
      Selection, or Mutual adaptation; Courtship,
      Married Life and Perfect Children
      Generation, Endowment, Paternity, Maternity,
      Bearing, Nursing and Rearing; Together with
          Puberty, Boyhood, Girlhood, etc., Sexual
          Impairments Restored, Male Vigor and
          Female Health and Beauty Perpetuated
             And Augmented, Etc.
                 As Taught By
                                 PHRENOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY
             BY PROF. O.S. FOWLER
      Practical Phrenologist and Lecturer; Founder of
      Fowler and Wells; Author of "Human Science,"
      "Sexual Science," "Self-Culture," "Love and
          Parentage," "Matrimony," "Offspring and
      Their Hereditary Endowment," "Maternity,"
           "Amativeness," Etc. Etc.
  Comprehensive as this title page seems to be, it neglects a
few of the valuable contents of the book, including instruc-
tions as to how to build a good rain-water cistern at a total
cost of $26.20. There are ten hundred and fifty-two pages in
all, and most of them are entertaining.
80

  The author, Orson Squire Fowler, was well known in his
day as a lecturer on phrenology. He was born in Cohocton,
N.Y., in 1809, graduated from Amherst in 1834. Presumably
it was at Amherst that his lifelong zeal for phrenology was
aroused, for he began practicing that species of divination in
1835 in New York City, and continued in it until his death
in 1887. Phrenology has passed out of favor, and is laughed
at by people who are not at all sure of what it was. But in its
time it was as seriously regarded as vocational guidance is
today, and many eminent people were among its supporters.
It may be assumed that it suited the tone of the time, and
by examining the Professor's book, we can learn much of
what that tone was.
  Anyone who undertakes to read Fowler's book must ac-
custom himself to the Professor's heaving, pulsing---perhaps
I may say tumescent---prose. It is impossible to give any no-
tion of this style without quoting, though it rebukes the
quoter, for nothing less than a few thousand words is ade-
quate. Here, however, is a flourish from the Preface:

     NATURE'S CREATIVE ordinances thus become the all-im-
   portant subject of human inquiry. To learn just <1what>1
<1   Parental>1 conditions confer superior and what inferior
   bodies and minds, what the most and best talents and
   virtues, and what particular <1kinds,>1 as well as what pre-
   clude and what promote physical diseases and sinful pro-
   clivities, should be the paramount study of all prospective
   parents, all students of Nature, and of man. Though all
   know that all parents transmit all their specialties, diseases
   included, to their issue, yet who has ever shown precisely
<1   what>1 parental conditions entail longevity or consumption,
   these constitutional excesses and those defects? And yet
   these <1ante->1natal causes affect all they say, do, and are a
                                                         81

   thousand-fold more than all <1post->1natal influences com-
   bined.
    ASTOUNDING that sensible marital candidates ignore,
   even taboo, this only <1rationale>1 of marriage! How cruelly
   recreant to self-interest and progenital welfarel
     MUST HUMANITY FOREVER IGNORE a subject thus infi-
   nitely eventful to all parents and children, communities
   and the racel
      No, thunders out this volume.
   The Professor tells his readers that he writes under an
IMPERIOUS MANDAMUS issued from the Supreme Court of
Truth, and has no patience with fopperies of composition
and the delights of rhetoric. Describing his own style, he
says: "Catering little to epicurean literary fastidiousness, it
presents its thoughts, principles, arguments, and facts as
clearly and forcibly, yet succinctly, as possible, seeking
mainly to be fully understood, reach the head, probe the
heart, and improve the <1life>1 of every reader, and adopts a
plain, straightforward, business-like style which exactly ex-
presses the meaning intended."
   An odd echo of Ovid, whom the Professor otherwise ig-
nores, occurs in this trumpetlike preface. "Its beneficiaries,"
he says of his book, "remember your <1benefactor.">1

               <2A Pioneer in Sex Instruction>2

WHAT ARE the benefactions bestowed by this book? It may
be said that for all its oddity and phrenological bias, it was
the nearest thing that most of its readers encountered to a
scientific explanation of sex. The Professor was a pioneer in
sexual instruction. In a footnote he tells us: "In 1841, I paid
in advance for the lecture-room of Rutger's Seminary, N.Y.,


82

for a lecture on marriage, and on entering was forewarned
that if I applied my subject to the production of fine chil-
dren, its gaslights would be turned off, and I imprisoned. I
<1dared>1 them, and have continued to dare their kindred till
to-day, as this book attests." Rhetorically haranguing some-
body called Sweet Sixteen, the Professor demands why she
incurs "toilet expenditures" in her "half-crazy efforts to get
married" but will not hear the lessons of eugenics? Sweet
Sixteen, who is just as accomplished a word-spinner as the
Professor, replies: "Because it is improper, immodest, im-
pure, corrupting, and prematurely provokes those passions
which should slumber till marriage." Quaint though this at-
titude seems now, it was unquestionably the prevalent one
in the nineteenth century, and it would be over-bold to say
that it will never return to favour, for the range of human
folly is infinite.
  It is necessary to remind oneself continually when reading
Fowler that he was a pioneer, at grips with ignorance and
prejudice on a scale now hard to imagine. His bumptious
egotism sets us against him, and wherever time has deflated
him, we are pleased. His ancestry led him to believe, on
phrenological grounds, that he would live to a great age, and
he records that "at over 68" he was "sprightly, works harder
than can well be told, and writes and reads this <1without>1
<1glasses.">1 He died at a mere seventy-eight, which must have
surprised him. He makes wild assertions, such as: "Dwarfi-
ness is hereditary. The exhibition of Tom Thumb, Com-
modore Nutt and their wives, and like diminutives, before
pregnant women, has produced many dwarfs." No field of
speculation is closed to him, and he drops such comments as
"Irishmen are irate, and perhaps were so named because
their irritable, excitable, impulsive ancestors were so ire-
                                                        83

ish." Brigham Young he regards as "very near being a pre-
mium male," and Daniel Webster is "the highest type of
manhood," a distinction he shares with George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, and John Hancock.

  <2Female Beauty Defined>2

FOWLER'S NOTIONS of female beauty are those of his time, but
he has his own way of describing his ideal. "A Prominent
Mons Veneris Desirable" is the heading of subsection 562,
and in 563 he tells us that "ovarian or groin fulness is very
beautifying." Like other right-thinkers of his time, he con-
demns tight-lacing and roars against mothers who urge their
daughters into extreme corsets, but he asserts that a small
waist--which in his day meant a very small waist indeed--is
natural, and a sign of health. Pads for the hips he rebukes
thus:
          PANIERS ARE A TOILET ABOMINATION.
  Besides making a great postal bag, which shakes around
  with every quick motion, it bunglingly imitates the form
  of her seat, the cleaving of the back at the bottom of the
  spine, the bulging out on each side of the seat, and--Sha,
  sha, fashionable ladies. You outrage taste to nausea. For
  shame!
But "men admire large female limbs with small feet," and
beauty at its highest is revealed in his countryman, Hiram
Powers's statue called "The Greek Slave."  This piece,
now in the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., was one
of the wonders of the American Section at the Great Exhibi-
tion of 1851, and was thus described by a contemporary ob-
server: "During the early Greek revolutions the captives
were exposed for sale in the Turkish Bazaar, under the
84

name of 'slaves.' The artist has delineated a young girl, de-
prived of her clothing, standing before the licentious gaze of
a wealthy Eastern barbarian. Her face expresses shame and
disgust at her ignominious position, while about her lip
hovers that contemptuous scorn which a woman can so well
show for her unmanly oppressor." This opinion is repeated
because the modern beholder may well miss any such look
on the ovine face of the Slave. She was much employed to
throw shame on tight lacers, or merely those whom Nature
had denied a good figure. Says Fowler: "To see at Presiden-
tial and other receptions ladies arrayed in the height of
style, showing their pipe-stem arms and deficient breasts,
looks utterly pitiable and mean. Go home, girls, and culti-
vate arm-muscle, and work with them bare. Your washing-
maids are your superiors. Help them Beaux, just see how
much better the arms of Una, Menken, and Powers's Greek
Slave, than those of Emily Regal." (Miss Regal, an actress of
the day, is shown in a bad line drawing as an example of
"The Faun, or Slim Female Figure," though to modern eyes
she seems positively strapping.)
  Another type of femininity condemned by Fowler is "Miss
Woman's Rights," pictured as a creature of minatory ex-
pression, whose pernicious opinions "antagonize the sexes
and hinder offspring."

  <2Platonic Love Man's Normal State>2

THE EXTREME freedom with which Fowler expresses opin-
ions on matters far from his professed subject, and his busy-
body airs, seem to have been characteristic of social reform-
ers in his day, and may have been expected. His ideas about
sexual behavior and marriage are those of North America in
                                                        85

his time. To love was to propose marriage; any other course
was dishonorable. Flirting imposed dangerous strains on the
nervous system. The mating period ordained by Nature lay
between the ages of nineteen and twenty-three. The vigi-
lance of a good mother over her daughters was "lynx-like."
Verbal proposals were permissible, but a letter was much to
be preferred because it could be kept for future reference.
Platonic love, even in marriage, was "man's normal state,"
and such love did not involve physical desire because it cre-
ated no semen in the male. Continence, except to beget
children, must be the rule of marriage, for "manifesting
passion begets a mutual commonness, a letting down in each
other's eyes."
  On the matter of continence Fowler seems to have been in
some confusion, for he insists that it is a necessary course not
only for purity, but because without it the world would "get
full"; nevertheless, he is agonized by the frequency of "fash-
ionable small families" among the wealthy.
   He believed, and passed on, the medieval notion that
spermatozoa contain all the human organs in miniature. He
condemned the marriage of cousins. He passes on a method
of controlling the sex of children, which he attributes to a
French veterinary, Professor Thury of Geneva; if a girl is
desired, conception must take place within three days of the
close of menstruation, but if it is delayed until the week fol-
lowing the seventh day after the close of menstruation, the
child will be a boy. <1The Lancet>1 is quoted in support of this
theory. On the questions of birthmarks and prenatal in-
fluences, his attitude can only be called superstitious.
86


  <2In Search of the Angel Child>2

FOWLER SPEAKS for his age in his highly colored and cruel
condemnations of masturbation; the nineteenth century
seems to have had a maggot on this subject. The acne of ado-
lescence is attributed to it, and so is adolescent self-con-
sciousness, manifesting itself in "a mawkish, shamed, repel-
lent look." All faults of complexion aroused suspicion, and
so did a bad breath. Prostitutes and men of evil life could be
distinguished by their disgusting smell. But the masturbator
was of all sexual offenders the most wretched. Fowler quotes
with approval from Adam Clarke's <1Commentary on Onan:>1
"The muscles become flaccid and feeble, the tone and natu-
ral action of the nerves relaxed and impeded, the under-
standing confused, the memory oblivious, the judgement
perverted, the will indeterminate and wholly without en-
ergy to resist; the eyes appear languishing and without ex-
pression, and the countenance vacant; <1appetite ceases,>1 for
the stomach is incapable of performing its proper office; <1nu->1
<1trition fails;>1 tremors, fears and terrors are generated; and
thus the wretched victim drags out a miserable existence,
till, <1superannuated,>1 even before he had time to arrive at
<1man's estate,>1 with a mind often debilitated even to a state of
idiotism, his worthless body tumbles into the grave, and his
guilty soul (guilty of self-murder) is hurried into the awful
presence of its Judge!" The book's anti-intellectual bias re-
veals itself in the comment that self-pollution is particularly
rife in the universities, and that "literary institutions" are its
hotbeds.
  Fowler's rule for sexual intercourse may be quoted as em-
bodying a widely held and admired nineteenth-century
                                                        87

ideal:  CONDUCT EVERY SEXUAL REPAST throughout pre-
cisely as if it were to originate an angel child for both to love
and nurture."
  Is there anything of value in Fowler's book? Yes, there is
enough to assure him of some stature as a pioneer of sexual
enlightenment. He describes the act of coition scientifically,
which was daring in a book intended for the general reader,
and he says that women like it and receive benefit from it,
which is extremely daring for 1870. The idea was widely
held then that women submitted themselves to the act of
procreation submissively, but with some disgust, and that
they could find no pleasure in it. A woman who did so was a
wanton, and it is observable that in the literature of the time
the character of the Good Prostitute always protests that she
hates her trade. Women endured sex in order that they
might have children. It was as mothers, not as lovers, that
decent women fulfilled themselves. If Fowler's admission
that women enjoy coitus in marriage seems to contradict
his certainty about Platonic Love, it is not the only contra-
diction in his thousand-odd pages.
  The conventional nineteenth-century attitude cannot be
reconciled with the stock comic figure of the amorous Old
Maid in the fiction and drama of the time. Unmarried
women were coarsely and cruelly taunted with their sup-
posed eagerness to get a man--any sort of man. Presumably
they wanted him for Platonic Love. There is no logic in
such popular attitudes. But most of the books to be consid-
ered in this chapter make it clear that whatever our society
professes to believe about sex, an earthy knowledge of what
it involves and how it works lies beneath the professions,
and is at odds with them.
88


  <2Dr.  Chevasse and Associates>2

FOWLER'S BOOK appeared in 1870. It is instructive to look at
a popular book which came out in the United States in
1880, but which was not of American authorship. It was, in
the main, the work of an English physician, Pye Henry
Chevasse, with "notes and additions by an eminent Ameri-
can author," and certain passages from French and German
writers. It is called <1Man's Strength and Woman's Beauty,>1
and as a scientific work it is a considerable advance on
Fowler. It has a sane discussion of the marriage of blood rel-
atives; it denies that the sex of a child can be determined
by any method; it suggests, gingerly, that masturbation need
not bring about madness and death; it is dubious about the
value to health and the spirit of complete continence within
marriage; it is sensible in the regimen it prescribes for preg-
nant women. But it is a book of its time, declaring on the
first page of its preface that it is not written "to feed the
prurient fancies of a vulgar mind"--which seems to exclude
any suggestion that sex is something other than a burden-
some religious duty.
  Dr. Chevasse and his unnamed collaborators warn con-
tinually against the dangers of a fashionable life, for it has-
tens puberty, and greatly increases the perils of the meno-
pause. It leads to light and trashy reading, which, as night
follows day, brings about menstrual disorders and a nasty
ailment called Leucorrhea, and may lead to "secret bad
habits." But true love makes a woman "almost an angel"
and will assist her to fulfill her destiny. "For man, love is an
end; for woman, but a means of becoming a mother, for the
young mother exists already in the heart of the young
                                                         89

maiden; to her eyes a sexual union is less the satisfaction of a
desire than the origin of a hope; for woman loves, long be-
fore its birth, the infant within her breast."

  <2How to Control Desire>2

IF SEXUAL DESIRE should, by some mischance, exist in both
parties, its remedy is set forth in an anecdote of a physician
named Zimmerman. One of his patients, a prince (ah, fash-
lonable life!) , complained: "I am worn out with exhaustion
from too frequent indulgence. Such is the transport of our
mutual love that we are gradually led to its consummation
on every occasion of our meeting. How can I exercise greater
self-control?" "Very easily," replied the physician: "simply
by repeating the Lord's Prayer before your dalliance is com-
menced."
  When sexual intercourse is regarded in such a light, and is
surrounded with so many restrictions, readers of a psycho-
logical turn of mind may not be surprised to find Dr. Che-
vasse enthusiastic in another direction. "No family ought to
be without a <1good>1 enema apparatus, to fly to in any emer-
gency." The cold-water enema is recommended as "bracing
and strengthening." No restriction or prayerful deterrent is
placed on the number of enemas except, presumably, that
imposed by satiety, which governs this pleasure, as all others.
  The works of Fowler and Chevasse have been given de-
tailed attention here because they illustrate how timidly the
new literacy of the nineteenth century approached a sub-
ject which was taboo. Fowler showed some courage, but he
was not a man who doubted current opinion in large mat-
ters, and he was innocent of scientific training. His chief con-
cern was with his bump-feeling, and hls Interest in sex
90

stemmed from it, for he wanted to get the right skulls to-
gether to breed a superior race of Americans; his notion of
superlorlty, if we judge by his book, would be in terms of
more and more maidenly girls, unlaced, full-groined, big-
limbed, and small-footed, uniting with youths of the Daniel
Webster type in a matrimony of Platonic abstinence, en-
livened by very occasional devout attempts to lure an angel
out of heaven and into the cradle. Dr. Chevasse was a
scientist in the sense that most medical men are scientists,
which is to say that his deeper prejudices about moral mat-
ters had been given the reinforcement of a conventionally
scientific training. Neither Fowler nor Chevasse had the
slightest notion of how to approach sexual matters in a truly
scientific spirit, or any desire to do so. Sexual deviation or
idiosyncrasy was either unknown to them or, more likely,
considered too horrible for discussion.

             <2Havelock Ellis a Man of Letters>2

IT IS AGAINST this background that we must understand the
sensation caused in 1897 when Havelock Ellis published the
first volume of his <1Studies in the Psychology of Sex,>1 which
dealt with sexual inversion. Ellis was not prosecuted him-
self, but a bookseller who sold his book was defendant in
<1Regina vs. Bedborough,>1 and Ellis left England for a time.
The continuation of his great work was assured by arrange-
ment with F. A. Davis of Philadelphia, a reputable medical
publisher who had brought out Krafft-Ebing, to publish the
subsequent five volumes in the U.S. It is interesting that in
matters relating to supposedly scandalous publication, Brlt-
ain and the United States are often at odds, each offering
consolation to authors from the other land who have been
GOOD BREEDING MEANS PASSIVITY            91

roughly used at home. There is no discernible principle of
free expression in these exchanges, and what will excite the
prosecutors in either country continues to be a mystery.
  Ellis was the first man of letters, and the first person with
the outlook and instincts of a gentleman, to write a book
about sex in English. He had the additional qualification
of a scientific training, for he had studied medicine for eight
years, not with a view to practice (he never practiced) , but
to satisfy his boundless and ever fresh curiosity about man-
kind. Scientists of sex were many, and some of them had
great reputations, but their writings reveal an ignorance of
life, a conventionality of outlook, and an inability to see
what was under their noses; when a man has become a great
figure in society as a physician, we must not be surprised if
he regards the laws of society as the laws of Nature--but we
need not respect him for it.

              <2Good Breeding Means Passivity>2

SUCH a sexual scientist was Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
professor of psychiatry and nervous diseases at the Univer-
sity of Vienna. His <1Psychopathia Sexualis>1 was a great pio-
neer work, though he made it clear in his preface that he
wished to "exclude the lay reader" and had thus written
some of his book in Latin. (There is a charming simplicity
in his supposition that only doctors know Latin.) But it was
a book of sexual pathology; as Ellis points out, it gives scant
attention to normal sexuality, and of what it has to say on
that subject, much is wrong. Consider these key passages
from the relevant chapter. "Woman . . . if physically and
mentally normal, and properly educated, has but little sen-
sual desire". . ."Woman is wooed for her favour. She re-
92

mains passive. Her sexual organization demands it, and the
dictates of good breeding come to her aid". . ."Man pri-
marily loves woman as his wife, and then as the mother of
his children; the first place in woman's heart belongs to the
father of her child, the second to him as husband". . ."The
wife accepts marital intercourse not so much as a sensual
gratification than as a proof of her husband's affectl-on."
This is not much better than Fowler or Chevasse, yet it is
the considered view of a nineteenth-century physician of the
highest repute, expressed in defiance of all that literature
and his practice might have taught him. For Krafft-Ebing,
normality was the set of beliefs according to which upper-
class Vienna imagined itself to live. This was indeed that
"sleep of the world" which Sigmund Freud said he gave
mortal offense by disturbing.
  Ellis had neither a reputation nor a medical practice to
consider when he decided to make an investigation of sexual
behavior the chief work of his life. He was seventeen, at-
tempting to earn his living as a schoolmaster at Sparkes
Creek, in the Australian bush, and his decision arose because
of the perplexities his own sexual development brought
him. That was in 1879, and the first volume of the <1Studies>1
did not appear until 1896. Through no doing of his, it was
the volume dealing with Sexual Inversion, and it was de-
scribed legally as "a wicked, bawdy and scandalous and ob-
scene book," intending "to vitiate and corrupt the morals of
the liege subjects of our Lady the Queen, to debauch and
poison the minds of divers of the liege subjects of our said
Lady the Queen, and to raise and create in them lustful de-
sires, and to bring the liege subjects into a state of wicked-
ness, lewdness and debauchery." It is no wonder that the es-
sentially pure-minded Ellis needed a holiday after a trial in
QUEENS, ELEPHANTS, AND CLERGYMEN       93

which Bedborough pleaded guilty, and was bound over
after a fearsome moral lecture from the judge, Sir Charles
Hall.

             <2Queens, Elephants, and Clergymen>2

THE <1Studies>1 were revolutionary because they marshaled a
vast amount of evidence from literature, books of travel,
folklore, and anthropology, and personal communication,
showed how it all held together, and put it forth without
moral judgments. Thus the behavior of a mythic Irish
Queen was adduced to throw light on the curious Saturday-
afternoon micturition contests of girls in an upper-class Eng-
lish school in the nineteenth century; thus homosexuality--
which has always cherished its intellectual and <1avant-garde>1
trappings--was discussed in terms of sailors and American
hobos, as well as in terms of Leonardo and Michelangelo,
and was shown to be common among such diverse creatures
as doves and elephants, as well as men; even the rooted no-
tion that women--except of the depraved sort--shrank from
sexual experience was questioned.  Perhaps the most
alarming of all Ellis's ideas was his insistence on the play
element in sexual relationships. Sex for funl The idea
which underlay three quarters of the dirty jokes of the nine-
teenth century seemed hideously indecent when Ellls pro-
pounded it in all sincerity to a society which considered it-
self, at highest, to be seeking to bring down angels from
Heaven.
  Much of the scandal of the book attached to the personal
communications which Ellis printed. These are autobio-
graphical accounts of sexual development and experience
written for him by people who had sought his help, and
94

who consented to their publication, with names suppressed.
Some of them are from clergymen, some from officers in the
services, some from teachers. Later writers on sexual sub-
jects have complained that taken as a whole, they do not
cover a very wide range of society or a very large number of
people. But they were the first things of their kind, and
they are excellent reading still. They have the ring of truth,
and some of them have the dull egotism of the sex fusser in
every line. They throw an extraordinary light on Victorian
life, and particularly upon the place of servants in the sexual
enlightenment of the middle and upper classes in England.
It was a great part of Ellis's genius that he was able to call
forth such documents. I have been told by friends who knew
him that his honesty and cleanness of heart were so appar-
ent, his understanding and compassion so great, and his ad-
vice so admirable, that he won confidence very readily.

     <2A Great Work>2

SINCE THE APPEARANCE of the <1Studies,>1 books about sex have
undergone radical change. Of course the <1Studies>1 were not
widely sold, for the firm of F. A. Davis made no attempt to
offer them except to medical men, lawyers, large libraries,
and the like. But they were very widely read. I first encoun-
tered them in the librarian's private room in a Canadian
university; they could not be taken away without his ap-
proval; yet they were read almost to tatters, for they satisfied
a curiosity which is universal.
  Furthermore, they satisfy it as no writer between Ovid
and Ellis tried to do, and as no writer, to my knowledge, has
done since; these are the writings of a man of letters who
was, incidentally, a man of science. These are books which
AFTER ELLIS                                         95

can be read with pleasure: most books about sex have to be
read for what is in them, while the critical, literary faculty is
kept on the chain. But in <1Studies in the Psychology of Sex>1
Havelock Ellis wrote the greatest work of literature which is
also a work of science in the English tongue, after Robert
Burton's <1Anatomy of Melancholy.>1 Like Ovid, he can write
of the most delicate matters without becoming mawkish or
sly; his dissertation on the play element in love-making is
masterly in its avoidance of those earth-bound ecstasies,
those asthmatic raptures which mar, for instance, even so
valuable a book as Van de Velde's <1Ideal Marriage.>1 And al-
ways there is the astonishment of his remarkable erudition.
However his successors may nibble at his conclusions, they
will not destroy him unless they can write like him. His
strengths are those of Ovid: he loved truth better than the
morality of his day, he had the instincts of a gentleman and
a man of cultivation, and he wrote as an artist.

  <2After Ellis>2

NOTHING IS TO BE gained from individual consideration of
the great number of books about sex and making love which
are now offered to the public. They sell steadily, and they
are great favorites with borrowers from public libraries.
Upon the whole, this may be considered one of the victories
of our general literacy. Ellis said: "The largest part of the
troubles of marriage and of the perils of sex is due merely
to ignorance and superstition." There are now many books
suited to every level of intelligence which will dispel ignor-
ance and superstition. If our age is not distinguished for a
greatly increased number of happy marriages and a more
intelligent approach to the problems of sex, we may surely
96

assert that <1some>1 forms of misery in the sexual realm are less
widespread than they used to be; and of the many people
who are unhappy, thousands have some idea of what lies
at the root of their unhappiness, and thus far they are better
off than their forefathers, who had none, or attributed their
distress to sin.
  "America appears to be the only country where love is a
national problem," wrote a French traveler, Raoul de
Roussy de Sales, in the <1Atlantic>1 in 1938. It might be nearer
the truth to say that America is the only country sufficiently
lacking in self-consciousness to admit it; the writings of psy-
chiatrists and social workers make it clear that love is a prob-
lem everywhere. But the United States tackles the problem
with characteristic zeal, discussing it in thousands of books
and magazine articles, some of them by people who know
what they are talking about. But it is clear that frank discus-
sion is not enough.
  One of the most interesting aspects of the studies of the
late Dr. Kinsey and his associates is the material they bring
forward to show that sexual habits vary greatly among peo-
ple of different standards of education--that it is, in fact, re-
lated to class. This is something many people knew already,
but most people are apt to deny. "Love levels all ranks," says
the Captain of the <1Pinafore>1 when he has suffered a sharp
demotion. "It does to a considerable extent, but it does not
level them as much as that," says the First Lord of the Ad-
miralty. In our day, statistics relating to levels of education
and levels of income are on the side of the First Lord. This
is not, of course, to say that the mating of two millionaire
Ph.D.'s necessarily results in bliss, whereas two loving share-
croppers cannot hope for it. It does not even mean that if a
millionaire Ph.D. chooses a beggar maid for his bride they
                                                        97

may not be happy. The permutations and combinations of
human misery are too complex for any such rules. But it
seems clear that as a general thing, people marry most hap-
pily with their own kind. The trouble lies in the fact that
people usually marry at an age where they do not really
know what their own kind is.
   In the resulting welter the marriage counselor appears as
a new figure in our complex society, and marriage counse-
lors often write books. I have read many of them, and
though I am perhaps too squeamish in such matters, I should
not like to take their advice, because they offer it in such
nasty prose. Not only do they like to reduce emotional prob-
lems to terms of charts and graphs, pictographs and tables,
but when they are forced to use language, they show a re-
grettable fondness for such phrases as "overly meticulous"
and "laughter--the best of all possible teen-tonics"; they
are likely to call marriage "a great, thrilling, creative adven-
ture"; they declare their intention to "make vivid the ap-
peal of marriage at its best." And if I am rebuked for con-
fusing tasteless expression with the quality of the advice
offered, I had better say here and now that I do not trust any
advice which is given in bad prose, and I think that matters
relating to sex demand taste above all things in their discus-
sion. Most of these books are badly written, and affect a seri-
ousness of tone which, because it is so obviously pompous
and false, arouses ribaldry in the reader. When a marriage
counselor says of a woman who is behaving badly that "the
deep fountains of her nature have never been unsealed," I
do not see why I should take such writing any more seriously
than I would if I met with it in a bad novel.
58


              <2Bliss with a Chemical Engineer>2

THAT SOME of the advice in these books is useful, and that
it is based on wide experience, is not denied. lf people need
a book to tell them that in marriage kindness and forbear-
ance are necessary, and that the sexual act is happier when it
is undertaken to give pleasure as well as to receive it, these
books are what they want. Possibly people so lacking in un-
derstanding of themselves and others do not mind being ad-
dressed in the coarse, grainy prose of the marriage counse-
lor. For others, there is much innocent joy to be derived
from such books.
  Consider, for instance, the "Happiness Rating According
to Husband's Occupation," which Richard O. Lang includes
in his <1Predicting Success or Failure in Marriage.>1 What girl
is not pleased to be warned against the dangers of marriage
with barbers, laborers, traveling salesmen (those amorists
of legend!) , musicians, and plumbers? What prudent girl
will not take heed and, dropping her fiddler or barber, en-
courage the approach of some electrical engineer, educa-
tional administrator, athletic coach, college professor, or
clergyman? Perhaps, if she is a lucky girl indeed, she may
land the very best risk of all--a chemical engineerl Why
chemical engineers have this strange power to give happi-
ness beyond other men is not explained; the fact is recorded,
and we are left to ponder on it.
  Compared with the marriage counselors, those who sim-
ply offer information about sex are better writers, and more
in control of their material. Many of them are physicians,
and they write in a bustling, consulting-room style which
conveys both information and a slight patronage of the pa-
BLISS WITH A CHEMICAL ENGINEER           99

tient. Only rarely do they follow Fowler or Chevasse by giv-
ing moral lectures; they are content to tell what they know,
and that is a combination of modern science with practical
experience. The differences among their books are differ-
ences of style, for the facts of sex do not allow of much indi-
vidual interpretation in their elementary form. The same
unpleasing charts of the sexual organs (the male, like plans
for a gravity water system; the female like the skull of an elk,
with vastly branching antlers), the same cycle of puberty,
maturity, and decline (with reassuring notes on the meno-
pause and the prostate) , the same brief description of pro-
creation (without a word to hint that it could be a pleas-
ure) , of gestation, and of parturition (with ample assurance
that it need not be a pain) --these are their inevitable con-
tents. There is so little variety here that if our concern is
literary, we may yearn for the spacious days of Fowler, and
his high-minded yearning to play the pimp between Daniel
Webster and Powers's Greek Slave. Fowler was a phrenol-
ogist and an ignoramus, but he had gusto; his book does not
reek, as these do, of iodoform.
  From this useful but undistinguished mass a few books
rise as being of special merit. Simply as a presentation of
fact, <1A Marriage Manual>1 by Drs. Hannah and Abraham
Stone manages to be at once comprehensive and brief, be-
cause of its question-and-answer form. Another work of de-
served popularity is <1Ideal Marriage>1 by Dr. T. H. Van de
Velde, which has appeared in twenty-three languages. Its
success lies in the fact that it is written, in the words of Dr.
Johnson Abraham's preface to the English edition, "soberly,
scientifically, completely, without a scintilla of erotlcism,
and yet with a sustained note of high idealism." The ideal-
ism is certainly there, and it is welcome; the flat, no-non-
100

sense approach of the consulting room is not for Dr. Van de
Velde; it is impossible to judge his style in an English trans-
lation, but it quite often aims--not always successfully--at
lyricism. I cannot quite agree with Dr. Abraham that there
is no "scintilla of eroticism" in what Van de Velde writes,
for to write of sexual union at its highest levels without
eroticism is to falsify one's subject and cheat the reader--
and that is what Van de Velde does not do. Precisely for this
reason he succeeds where most others fail. Where they are
afraid of eroticism, he accepts it as an integral part of the
kind of union he seeks to encourage because it is good.
Those writers who have set themselves the task of writing
about sex without eroticism are like dieticians who write
about food without once suggesting that eating is, among
other things, a pleasure.

  <2The Era of the Erotic Novel>2

IF OUR WRITERS of books of sex instruction are fearful of
eroticism, our novelists are not. Nor is their eroticism col-
ored by the nobility of emotion which impels Van de Velde.
Chevasse warned against fiction which might arouse passion
by describing it; Fowler linked novel reading with liquor
and tobacco in its ability to "inflame the Propensities." It is
amusing, but beside the point, to speculate on what they
would have thought about our age, when virtually every
novel, good and bad, deals with sex in some degree, and the
reader is often compelled to blunt his understanding if his
Propensities are not to exist in a perpetual state of incan-
descence. We live in the era of the Erotic Novel, and it is
part of our inheritance from the nineteenth century.
THE ERA OF THE EROTIC NOVEL              101

  The depth-psychologies of Freud, Jung, and Adler had
their beginnings in the latter part of the last century, though
they did not achieve their present wide acceptance until
after the First World War. How wide that acceptance is we
cannot understand unless we are continually alert to the
echoes, faint and distorted though these often are, which
reach us in the advertising and social gabble of our time, as
well as in every kind of writing. Much of the effect of this
great revolution is good, for it has compelled us to take note
of the huge place which love and sex occupy in the inner
lives of men, women, and children. We are still unable to
realize how great an emancipation it has been, for the work
of the depth-psychologist has but begun, and is continually
being extended and modified. But the brief survey of Fowler
and Chevasse at the beginning of this chapter recalls a little
of the immense blanket of humbug which has been lifted
from the human mind.
   Not that all our forbears were deluded. As Thomas Mann
made clear in the great speech he gave on Freud's eightieth
birthday in 1936, the depth-psychologists have discovered
little that is new; they have but given a scientific form to
what artists and poets have known for ages; they have codi-
fied and made coherent a vast store of poetic insight. The
novelists who were contemporary with Fowler knew how
many beans made five, but they were not free to say so
plainly, for fear of offending "the young person" about
whom Mr. Podsnap was so deeply concerned; her Propensi-
ties must nor, under any circumstances; be inflamed. Dick-
ens and Thackeray both regTetted this attitude, but they
bowed to it. Certain Victorian novelists--Surtees is a re-
markable example--got away with a surprising amount of
102

suggestion in their work. Trollope managed to say a good
deal about the sexual side of the lives of the young men
about town who appear in his novels.

   <2Victorian Psychologists>2

THESE NOVELISTS were admirable psychologists, so far as
public opinion and the dictation of the lending libraries
would permit. Trollope, who stands for Victorian insipidity
and dullness only in the minds of those who have not read
him, was in some respects the greatest of them all. His study
of a sluggish and unwilling middle-aged passion in the char-
acter of Nicholas Broune, the editor in <1The Way We Live>1
<1Now,>1 and of love in old age in the character of Sir Peregrine
Orme, in <1Orley Farm,>1 are of a brilliance which remains
undimmed when we compare them with anything written
since. The sense of obligation which makes Broune attempt
to begin an affair with Lady Carbury, the chivalry which
makes Sir Peregrine offer the shelter of his reputation to
Lady Mason, are sexual in a sense not comprehended by our
novelists of the grunt-and-puff school, but they are sexual all
the same. And Trollope was not alone, though he is remark-
able, in the possession of insight into sexual complexities.
An examination of <1Middlemarch>1 in this light is instructive;
does anyone pretend that George Eliot did not know how
much sexual incompatibility had to do with dividing Doro-
thea Brooke from Casaubon, or how much sexual passion
served to bind Tertius Lydgate to Rosamond Vincy? By no
means all of the Victorians were Fowlers, but they had to
breathe the same air as Fowler, and that makes a greater
difference than most of us can understand without some re-
flection.
DEPTH-PSYCHOLOGY AND REASON             103

  The Victorian novelists, at their best, triumphed astonish-
ingly over the restraints which were laid on them because
they knew people and expected some answering knowledge
in their readers: many modern novelists write as though
they knew no one but Sigmund Freud--and that imper-
fectly--and expected their readers to know nothing at all.

  <2Depth--psychology and Reason>2

THE RESPONSIBILITY for this state of affairs cannot be laid on
the depth-psychologists. Freud and Jung have repeatedly
made it clear that the purpose of their investigations is to
strengthen the dominance of reason over human behavior by
disciplining those hidden and ill-understood mental ener-
gies which defy or pervert reason. They have revolutionized
our notion of how the mind works, and they have turned up
fascinating material which no intelligent writer could be
expected to resist. They have been grossly misunderstood
and misinterpreted by the literary world. They have cast
new light on every phase of human behavior and emotion,
and in that light some acts and emotions have lost the pres-
tige which formerly attached to them; but they have never,
to my knowledge, denied the validity of reason as the great-
est civilizing influence in human life; in order that reason
may function at its best, a vast amount of material which is
contrary to reason and frequently inimical to it must be ex-
amined and understood.
  Modern fiction has entered into this task of examination
with enthusiasm, but has usually shirked the hard task of
pressing onward to understanding. The modern writer is
too often a Theseus so enamored of the grotesque appear-
ance and strange cavortings of the Minotaur that he has de-
104

cided to make his permanent abode in the Labyrinth, and to
accept the Minotaur's laws as his own.
  Novels which lay the discoveries of the depth-psycholo-
gists under tribute and make a disciplined use of their ma-
terial are among the finest written in our time. A notable
example is Thomas Mann's <1Felix Krull,>1 a novel of decidedly
erotic character in which the insights of psychology are con-
trolled by the reason and artistic discretion of the writer. A
very different work, but produced by the same union of in-
sight and reason, is A <1La Recherche du temps perdu,>1 of
Marcel Proust. Yet another example, superficially different
from these but one with them in genesis, is Joyce-s <1Ulysses.>1
The list could be extended many times, but these three
books serve as examples of works which could hardly have
been written without the discoveries of the new depth-psy-
chology, but which make those discoveries subordinate to
the insight and artistic control of the writers.
  Freud, Jung, and Adler continually stress the necessity to
be as intelligent as possible in all departments of living, and
their work is designed to support and strengthen intelli-
gence and reason where they exist. But great numbers of
writers who are gifted--sometimes greatly gifted--in their
ability to express themselves appear to be mistrustful of in-
telligence and reason as guides in art. They are so proud of
their ability to feel (or perhaps merely to simulate) the hot
pulsings of emotion and unreason that they have no wish to
go further, to make a synthesis of this material or to relate it
to a background of intelligence and reason.
  To do so would be to make their work, not moralistic, but
moral. To use such a word today is to court mockery, for we
are in revolt against so many false and cruel moralities, that
great numbers of people rashly assume that there is no true
SEX IN THE MODERN NOVEL                    105

morality. I am not a philosopher, and if I go too far into
this water I shall certainly drown. But I am a critic of writ-
ing, and I feel that what is wrong with scores of modern
novels which show literary quality, but which are repellent
and depressing to the spirit, is not that their writers have re-
jected a morality, but that they have one which is unexam-
ined, trivial, and lopsided. They have a base concept of life;
they bring immense gusto to their portrayals of what is per-
verse, shabby, and sordid, but they have no very clear notion
of what is Evil; the idea of Good is unattractive to them, and
when they have to deal with it, they do so in terms of the
sentimental, or the merely pathetic. Briefly, some of them
write very well, but they write from base minds which have
been unimproved by thought or instruction. They feel, but
they do not think. And the readers to whom they appeal arc
the products of our modern universal literacy, whose feeling
is confused and muddied by just such reading, and who have
been deluded that their mental processes are indeed a kind
of thought.
  To continue further in this direction would be outside
the purpose of this book, but if you wish to pursue the mat-
ter, a recent book by an American critic, Edmund Fuller,
called <1Man in Modern Fiction,>1 discusses it fully from the
Christian-Judaeo point of view.

  <2Sex in the Modern Novel>2

IT WOULD BE possible for a shy young man or woman to read
twenty modern books of sex instruction without finding out
any more than the mechanics of procreation. But twenty
novels would suffice to turn a virgin of either sex into an ac-
complished theoretical amorist. Indeed, we may wonder
106

whether the realities of sex would not seem tame to such a
reader. Every feeder cannot be a gourmet; sexual experi-
ence will not provide the riot of sensation for everyone
which the novels so elaborately describe. As the Welsh prov-
erb says, we must sing with what voices God gave us. Stu-
dents of our literature in future centuries may be surprised
at the extreme value we place on sexual prowess in our time,
and may draw the unflattering conclusion that we were both
wistful and doubtful about it.
  Not only heterosexual love, but homosexuality and aber-
ration appear frequently in modern fiction. And why not?
Art must be free to range over the whole of human experi-
ence, and if Faulkner writes of a perverted rape, or if Proust,
or Mann, or Angus Wilson write of homosexuality, who
wishes it otherwise? It is only where the element of art is
weak, and where these themes are treated with a sickly ro-
manticism which imagines itself to be realism, that our taste
rebels. There can be scant knowledge of a character in fic-
tion when the writer is only slightly acquainted with him-
self. It is in this writing, which proceeds from writers who
know little of themselves and less of other men, that we find
the grotesque sexual attitudes, the cult of what Fuller calls
the Yahoo Hero. It is significant that many of these books
are war books, or books about groups of men under stress, in
which we find that there is exaggerated sexual activity with
women who are described in terms of the uttermost con-
tempt, whereas the true sentiment, the real love, is reserved
for the "buddy," and is plainly homosexual.
  Plainly? Perhaps that is putting it too strongly. It does
not seem to be plain to the author, who fails to realize that
the morality of his Marines, or whatever they may be, is that
THE PROBLEM OF THE GOOD WOMAN        107

of the Theban Band. They are tough guys in battle, but they
are unfitted for any other kind of life.

              <2The Problem of the Good Woman>2

WHAT SORT of women do the tough guys encounter, in their
unreal world? Good women, sweethearts and wives, who are
good at sex; a woman who is not good at sex is certain to be
discarded, and she will have other unpleasing characteris-
tics, as well. Bad women, the Good Whores who have hearts
of gold, and whose charity puts to shame those virtuous
women who lack it. The Good Whores are often rich in
motherly qualities and, if they are bawdy-house keepers,
have a store of salty, hard-won wisdom. They are stereo-
types, quite as romantic as the Good Whores of Victorian
fiction, who melodramatically bewail their downfall.
  It is, of course, very difficult to draw a portrait of a good
and resolute virgin, and in evidence we may produce the
dim creatures who serve as heroines in the novels of J. R. R.
Tolkein, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams--three whom
Mr. Fuller praises for their mastery of the demonic element
in fiction. Demons these writers may understand: women,
no. It is a common complaint against the novels of con-
sciously moral writers--excellent as many of these are in
other respects--that their heroines are wooden. Such char-
acters are not women at all, but creatures embodying those
qualities their authors would like women to possess, and no
others. Their place in the story is that of an Ideal to be de-
fended, and a Prize which may eventually be won. Perhaps
the most striking single difference between Malory's <1Morte>1
<1d'Arthur>1 and Tennyson's <1Idylls of the king>1 is that Mal-
108

ory's women are all human beings, and that Tennyson's are,
in greater or less degree, prizes for good conduct. T. H.
White, in his fine modern treatment of the Arthurian story,
<1The Once and Future king,>1 again endows the Arthurian
women with recognizably human character.

   <2The Cult of the Meaningless>2

THE EMPHASIS on sex is probably no greater in modern life
than it was a century or more ago, when the Great Experi-
ment in universal literacy was begun. But it is different.
Sexual matters are discussed in literature which have never
previously been common knowledge. Undoubtedly, in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, millions of people
lived and died without ever knowing that such a thing as ho-
mosexuality existed; such knowledge was confined to the up-
per classes, whose education was classical, and to the lowest
class, whose poverty and ignorance stripped them of every
pretense. In a social sense, the present widespread enlight-
enment about sexual matters has probably done far more
good than harm. But in literature it has provided a great
number of writers with themes which they use extrava-
gantly, clothing them in a debased romanticism which does
duty for thought, for artistic synthesis, and for a reasonably
coherent morality.
  Whether or not they find their own lives meaningless,
they write as though they found life without meaning.
Whether their hero is the Angry Young Man of English
fiction, or the Holy Goof of Kerouac and the Beat Genera-
tion, he lives for the moment. It is not as though "Do what
thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" was a precept from
which splendid fiction could not be drawn; it is rather that
WHICH IS SEX?                                     109

what these small-time rebels choose to do is so trivial, so
cheap, and in the end, so dreary.

  <2Which Is Sex?>2

      SO WE HAVE in our bookshops and libraries two classes of
books which deal with sex so differently that it is hard to
realize that they are talking about the same thing. The
books of instruction are aimed at a world in which every-
body seems to want to live a complete and happy sexual life
within the framework of conventional morality. The books
of fiction seem to be addressed to a public which does not
believe this to be possible, or even, perhaps, desirable. The
books of instruction are written, in the main, without art,
and their authors feel so heavy a weight of moral responsi-
bility toward society that they succeed in taking the erotic
element out of sex. They describe it; they recommend it;
they <1say>1 that it is a source of pleasure, refreshment, and
fulfillment to mankind. But nothing they write supports
these assertions. The books of fiction, on the contrary, are
often strongly erotic in matter and treatment, and they are
written without the sense of moral responsibility which in-
hibits the instructors. For some of these writers sex seems
to be the greatest good in life (insofar as they relate their
work to any large concept of life) and a very poor good at
that.
  The books of instruction are written by men and women
who would certainly not acknowledge Ovid as their master,
even if they knew about him. The works of fiction are writ-
ten by novelists to whom Ovid's high-bred hedonism is, for
quite different reasons, meaningless. What they seek to
evoke is sensation, and Ovid is not a sensational poet. The
110

novelists tacitly declare themselves to be artists, though few
of them bring an artist's vision, selection, and distillation of
experience to this important aspect of their material.
  Yet both classes of books are widely popular. How can
we account for it?

  <2Divid ed Desire>2

CLEARLY BOTH of them satisfy a strong desire in the unl--
versally literate public of our time. The books of instruc-
tion are aimed at the Real, and the novels are aimed at the
Ideal. The former appeal to the reason, that self-doubting
guide to conduct, and the latter appeal to unreason, the
dark forces which the depth-psychologists have uncovered
and partly explored. A young couple approaching marriage
may, without any real contradiction, find great solace in
books of both sorts. They seriously desire to mate happily,
hygienically, eugenically, and wisely, meeting all the prob-
lems of the honeymoon, the Early Years (including that
shrewd budget upon which, as much as upon the marriage
bed, the counselors assure them that their happiness rests) ,
Middle Age, the Menopause, Waning Powers, and the
Sunset Years, in the prudent, moderate, thin-blooded spirit
of the books of instruction. But in their secret hearts they
may long for quite a different sort of life; for burning, dan-
gerous passion, for frequent change of partner, for variety of
experience even when it includes degradation and moral
squalor--for Life in the Large, in fact, with plentiful in-
flammation of the Propensities. Social man is pretty well
tamed by what we call civilization, until a war or a disaster
shatters the cellophane wrapping. But as the depth-psychol-
ogists tell us, there lies deep within him a memory of other
DIVIDED DESIRE 111

things--not necessarily better things, but wilder things
which he may not want in reality, but which he likes to in-
dulge in fantasy. The novelist wakens the memory of those
wilder things, and ministers to it. It is not a particularly dif-
ficult feat; any competent drummer with a tom-tom can do
as much.
  Art lies in understanding some part of the dark forces
and bringing them under the direction of reason. Great
novelists have done it, and so have many whom we do not
call great, but to whom we must not deny the name of artist.
If we are to quarrel with the writers of erotic novels, it
must be with that rather large group who merely beat the
tom-tom. They can strike the erotic rhythm, but they cannot
bring it into accord with any other. They are not without
defense, and when asked why they write of a world which
seems to hold nothing but sex and violence, their answers
often remind us of Captain Boyle's declaration at the end
of <1Juno and the Paycock-->1"The whole worl's in a terrible
state o' chassis!" A sufficiently valid attitude, if we wish to
share the Captain's ignorant imperceptiveness and his in-
tellectual degradation. But Ovid knew a chassis quite as
overwhelming as any of ours, and he accepted the artist's
obligation to find form and meaning even there.
112
  <2From  the   Well  of    the  Past>2


THERE is always something rather absurd about the past.
For us, who have fared on, the silhouette of Error is sharp
upon the past horizon. As we look back upon any period, its
fashions seem grotesque, its ideals shallow, for we know how
soon those ideals and those fashions were to perish, and how
rightly; nor can we feel a little of the fervour they did in-
spire." Thus, in 1894, Max Beerbohm wrote of the world of
1880; his opinion is, at best, an elegant half-truth. Of course,
if we are looking for the silhouette of Error, we are certain
to find it. However, if we really want to recover the flavor of
a past age, we must bring not only intelligence, but sym-
pathy and feeling to the task. The sense of absurdity may
well remain with us, but in an extended form; not the ab-
surdity of the past only, but of a great part of life itself, will
impress itself upon us. But more important than the ab-
surdity may be a sense of kinship with the past.
  Not, of course, that nonsense which finds expression in
such phrases as "You can't change human nature." You can;
you do. It is rather that some attention to the literature of a
past age will encourage and teach you to feel in the mode
of that age. Such an extension of sympathy has many justifi-
cations, but needs no excuse other than that it is pleasant-
Some stern critics call it "escape," and their choice of epi-
thet is significant; one seeks to escape from the intolerable,
                           112
NOT THE BEST, BUT THE MOST                113

the restrictive, the merely tiresome; however happy our lot,
we all at times find contemporaneity a prison and a bore.
As Christopher Fry's "holiday in a complete vacuum" is an
impossibility, a holiday in the past becomes the next best
thing. But what past, and how?

  <2Not the Best, But the Most>2

THE BEST THAT has been thought and said? Not if it is es-
cape we seek, for the best that has been thought and said has
of necessity some quality of modernity. No, if we want to get
away, we must look for that which has been thought and
said most, and most heeded, in the segment of the past
which is our choice. Therefore we shall probably turn to
fiction, and not the great fiction, but the popular fiction. In
what follows I want to talk about a handful of Victorian
books which provide the kind of escape which has no taint
of the cultural or the educational about it. They are books
which modern critics have, with one exception, ignored.
There is no virtue, no prestige, in reading them, unless they
happen to amuse you.
  They are all English books, and all Victorian. I have
chosen them only because I like them, and because the Vic-
torian age is the easiest one for the modern reader to escape
into. There are still a good many late Victorians walking
the earth, and all of them remember parents and earlier
forbears who belonged to an age without electricity, without
rapid transport, rapid dissemination of news, or general
literacy. The Victorians of a century ago were nearer in
feeling to the eighteenth, yes, and to the seventeenth cen-
tury than to our own; to have knowm them is to hold the
key to an even more remote past. An old friend of mine who
114

died recently at a great age was, in infancy, held on the knee
of an elderly godmother who had been, in her infancy, held
on the knee of yet another godmother who had been held on
the knee of Queen Anne, who died in 1714. Viewed unsym-
pathetically, this is nothing. a chance association-by-knees;
yet if we cherish life, and are not mere creatures of death
and sepulcher, deluded by the notion that only our own ex-
perience is real and our demise the end of the world, we see
in it a reminder that we are all beads on a string--separate
yet part of a unity. The past is only partly irrecoverable.
The clerisy should accord it at least as much courtesy as
they offer to the future.

  <2Henry Cockton>2

FIRST Is the most popular work of a forgotten novelist, <1Val->1
<1entine Vox the Ventriloquist,>1 by Henry Cockton, who was
born in 1807 and died of consumption in 1853. Little is
known about him, though we can make some guesses at his
character and the quality of his life from his books. <1Valen->1
<1tine Vox>1 was written when he was thirty-two, and appeared
in monthly numbers, the complete book being offered in
1840. It was a great success in its day; <1The Times>1 of London
said that it would keep the most melancholy reader in side-
shaking fits of laughter. It maintained a sort of life up to
the outbreak of the First World War, as a book for boys,
though I should be surprised if many boys read it all. It be-
longs to a genre not quite dead--the book in which a curi-
ously gifted hero passes through a series of adventures in
which he scores heavily at the expense of stupid or merely
conventional people. Patrick Dennis's Auntie Mame books
of our time have a kinship with <1Valentine Vox,>1 for Auntie
HENRY COCKTON                                  115

Mame is surely as prodigious in her zest for life as ever Val-
entine was in his power of "throwing his voice." As a boy, I
remember serials in <1Chums>1 (an English paper for school-
boys which is now extinct) in which a Terrible Trio--com-
prising a conjuror boy, a ventriloquist boy, and an India-
rubber boy--made life intolerable for everybody who was
so unfortunate as to come near them. It kept me in side-
shaking fits of laughter and stirred me to ill-fated excesses
of emulation, which a lack of talent and even of rubberiness
quickly subdued.
   The power of an accomplished Ventriloquist is well
   known to be unlimited. There is no scene in life in which
   that power is incapable of being developed; it gives its
   possessor a command over the actions, the feelings, the
   passions of men, while its efficacy in loading with ridicule
   every prejudice and every project of which the tendency is
   pernicious cannot fail to be perceived at a glance. The
   design of this work, although essentially humorous, is not,
   however, to excite peals of laughter alone; it has a far
   higher object in view, namely, that of removing social
   absurdities and abuses by means the most peculiarly at-
   tractive and pleasing.
Thus begins the preface of <1Valentine Vox;>1 it is a good ex-
ample of Cockton's style, which is ramshackle and ornate,
and of Cockton's thought, which is heavily moralistic. I am
going to be funny, he says, but only in order to instruct and
do good. Let us see how he gets on.
  The only other ventriloquist in fiction who touches Val-
entine in accomplishment is the monster Erik in Leroux's
<1Phantom of the Opera.>1 Erik could sing superbly in several
voices; Valentine could imitate musical instruments so well
that the conductor of an orchestra was deceived. But in the
116

main he confines himself to breaking up public meetings,
provoking fist fights, bringing ridicule on people who have
offended him, wasting other men's goods and money, caus-
ing unnecessary hard work and being a general nuisance.
Although he can "throw" his voice anywhere, he cannot
think of anything very amusing to say with it, and he de-
pends a great deal on groans (proceeding from locked or
inaccessible places) or "telling laughs," which spread dis-
may among the self-important. He uses his power to be a
punisher of petty wrongdoing, and an exposer of pretension,
but in spite of Cockton's brave assertion, he is not peculiarly
attractive or pleasing. The dull fact is that the fun of ven-
triloquism, even when stretched well beyond the limits of
credibility, is mild, and soon palls.
   What, then, gives the novel its interest? Its plot, which is
plainly dearer to Cockton's heart than Valentine's antics.

   <2The Private--asylum Abuse>2

COCKTON was an earnest reformer. His second novel was an
attack on the laws relating to bigamy. Another novel, of
which we shall hear shortly, was a protest against the laws
relating to adultery and divorce. <1Valentine Vox>1 attacks
the laws governing the maintenance of private asylums for
the insane. When Cockton wrote it, anybody in England
could be committed to a private asylum if certified insane
by two medical practitioners (which meant physician, sur-
geon, or apothecary) who might see him either together or
separately; anybody could keep such an asylum, and inspec-
tion was infrequent and cursory. Consequently, anyone who
wanted to get rid of a tiresome relative (perhaps to gain
access to his money) had but to bribe a couple of venal
THE PRIVATE-ASYLUM ABUSE                   117

apothecaries, and the deed was done; the commissioners
who inspected these madhouses had authority only within a
seven-mile radius of London, and madhouses beyond that
area were literally prisons, where little care and no treat-
ment was given the patients. Extraordinary as it seems, no-
body could visit the patients in these places except the per-
sons who had committed them; thus, once in a country asy-
lum, a man or woman was lost to the world, and those who
were not mad already quickly became so.
  The plot of <1Valentine Vox>1 is built upon this abuse. Valen-
tine goes to London to visit his guardian's eccentric old
friend Grimwood Goodman, who has made his fortune in
sperm oil, which was the superior machine lubricant of the
day. Goodman's brother Walter is fearful that the attractive
Valentine may become Grimwood's heir, so he sends two
physicians to his brother who enrage him with questions as
to whether he does not claim kinship with the Queen, and
are then prepared to certify that he is insane and violent.
Grimwood Goodman is soon afterward seized in the street,
and borne off to Dr. Holdem's private asylum. Here he is
ill-used and bullied, so that when an inspector calls, he is
unable to protest coherently against his imprisonment.
  Meanwhile, Valentine has distinguished himself by rescu-
ing a Mr. Raven and his lovely daughter Louise, who have
been so unfortunate as to fall off a pleasure craft in the
Thames; he becomes an intimate of their house, falls in
love with Louise, and is soon the friend of her cousin Fred
Llewellen, a Welshman who adds to the side-shaking nature
of the book by speaking in an elaborately transcribed
Welsh accent. Mr. Raven is a man of immense wealth, and
of a haughty, vaunting disposition.
  At last Valentine and his guardian, good Uncle John, dis-
118

cover where Goodman is, and rescue him from the mad-
house, with Whitely, a similarly wronged gentleman who
has befriended him there. It is then discovered that Whitely
had been committed to Dr. Holdem's by none other than
Raven, who had coveted his wife, his fortune, and his in-
fant child Louise; further, it proves that Llewellen is not
Louise's cousin, but her brother, thus explaining the strong
affection, not quite romantic love, which had so long united
them. Goodman, exhausted by his misfortunes, dies and
leaves everything to Valentine and Louise; Whitely does
not long survive their marriage. Raven, stricken with re-
morse, gives all he has to Valentine and Louise, and tries
to crawl back to respectability by proposing marriage to
Valentine's mother. But she will not have him, and this, we
are told, was "a death-blow," and "he never left the house
alive after that." The wicked Walter Goodman goes mad
and commits suicide.
   So Valentine and Louise are left with wealth and happi-
ness. "I scarcely know that we ought to receive this; and yet,
were we to return it, it would perhaps break his heart," says
Valentine of Raven's twenty thousand-pound wedding gift.

    The life and adventures of Valentine as a ventriloquist
  may be said to have ended with his marriage. He did--for
  the pure gratification of Louise, whom he continued to
  love with the most affectionate warmth--indulge occa-
  sionally in the development of his power; but as he found
  that in proportion as the strength of his assumed voice in-
  creased, that of his natural voice diminished, he on all
  other occasions contented himself with a relation of the
  various scenes which his peculiar faculty had enabled him
  to produce, and never failed to excite by such relation the
  most uproarious mirth.
VICTORIAN NOVEL AND THEATER             119

And so we leave him "glorying in acts of benevolence," with
all his dear ones about him, including Uncle John, "who
was always in a state of rapture," living "in the purest en-
joyment of health, wealth, honour and peace."

   <2Victorian Novel and Theater>2

WHERE DOES the pleasure lie in reading such a book as this?
Not in the fun of Valentine's ventriloquism, certainly. Not
in the cheap and quickly exhausted pleasure of mocking
the past. No, it lies in the state of prolonged and agreeable
wonderment that the book provokes; we are held by the
vitality which comes through the clumsy writing, and which
makes the book live, although it is so unlike anything we
recognize as life. This, we must conclude, is how great num-
bers of people in the second half of the nineteenth century
wished life to be. This is the farthest thing possible from
realism; rather it is what Carlyle called "phantasmagoria
and dream-grotto," which is what hundreds of thousands of
readers have always demanded from literature and from the
theater.
  The theater has put its mark on <1Valentine Vox;>1 these
rhetorical speeches, scenes of remorse, scenes of melodra-
matic confrontation, interspersed with scenes of farce, arise
from that vital, vulgar, unliterary theater which so much
influenced Dickens. It was an actor's theater, and it is aston-
ishing how many characters in Victorian novels seem to be
based upon actors rather than upon people observed at first
hand. A creature like Raven is not a man; he is a "heavy" in
melodrama, just as his daughter Louise is a "heroine," and
Valentine a "light comedian." Uncle John is the Good Old
Father of the melodramatic stage (a character which still


120

lives in catalogues of theatrical grease paints, in which a
brick shade is named "Ruddy Old Man") . Fred Llewellen
is a "dialect comedian," and thus through this book and
others of its kind we can assign the roles to the actors who
made up such stock companies as that of Vincent Crummles.
In Dickens the characters have independent vitality; in
Cockton, who might be called Dickens without genius, they
seem to be drawn from the stage rather than from life. They
are shadows of a shade.
  Why? Are we to leap to the shallow conclusion that our
forbears of a century ago knew less of human character than
we? No, we are only entitled to say that they saw it differ-
ently; they saw it in types, in gaudy colors, in what appear
to us to be caricatures, in what seems at times to be some
framework derived from the Jonsonian comedy of "hu-
mors." We see it through spectacles of Freudian depth-
psychology which are sometimes like microscopes in their
power to reveal the minute and the unsuspected, but which
also limit and cloud our vision. What they saw in color, we
see in monochrome detail.

           <2Unthinkable sithout Illustration>2

WAS THEIR VISION false? Does anyone dare to say so? Let us
say rather that when it was at less than its best, it was stagey,
just as ours, in any hands but those of a master, is apt to be
gloomily clinical. Stagey as they were, Victorian novels nev-
ertheless reflected something their readers accepted as life;
in 1840 a different social structure and a different idea of
democracy provided obvious variations of character which
apparently gave pleasure to the very large number of pec-
ple who were conscious of them; in our day general educa-
THE ERA OF "CRIM. CON."                     121

tion, as much as any other factor, has smoothed out such
variations, though they are still there for the keen eye to see.
  It is unnecessary to labor this point if we take heed of the
illustrations, without which a Victorian novel was unthink-
able. <1Valentine Vox>1 appeared in its earliest printings with
sixty plates by Thomas Onwhyn. For the modern reader
they set the stage, provide the actors and costumes, and give
the tone of the book. We may assume that they did so for its
earliest readers, or why would they have been provided?
No modern publisher would think of giving sixty illustra-
tions with a novel, and no public would want them, for we
feel with the characters we read about, but do not appear to
visualize them clearly. Indeed, the art of illustration is lost,
and modern artists, when they are appealed to for pictures
to accompany a book, "decorate" it rather than offer settings
and puppets.
  Yet we delude ourselves if we think we have gone beyond
the age of illustration. We still need pictures for books of an
earlier day, and the time is not far off when Scott Fitzgerald,
for instance, will have to be offered in illustrated editions
if new generations of readers are to understand the tone of
his books. Few characters in any novel are so well revealed
in the spirit that readers in a later time want no guide to
the trappings of his flesh.

  <2The Era of "Crim. Con.>2

THE CRUSADE against the iniquity of private madhouses,
which were, in effect, prisons. provides much of the vitality
of <1Valentine Vox>1. The novel was helpful in calling atten-
tion to this condition and arousing indignation against It,
but Cockton's reforming zeal was not always so successful.
122

The novel which followed, <1Sylvester Sound the Somnambu->1
<1list,>1 was cut on the same pattern; Sylvester does not know
that he walks in his sleep, rides horses to exhaustion, writes
love letters, covers chimney pots with sacks, and walks along
a parapet high above the street (so that a policeman is
moved to say: "I never saw a man in so perilous a posi-
tion") ; he even makes an effective speech in Parliament
while asleep, thus giving Cockton a hook for some of his
characteristic angry political satire; but the mainspring of
the book is the action for adultery which Sir Charles Julian
brings against his wife, from whose chamber he has seen
Sylvester (fast asleep) emerging. This action is, in fact,
taken for "criminal conversation" (the "crim. con." which
is referred to so mysteriously in many Victorian novels) , a
charge rendered obsolete by the Matrimonial Causes Act
of 1857; action on this charge was brought against the wife's
paramour for damages. It was an interesting alternative to
a duel. Whether the novel had anything to do with the sub-
sequent reform, I have been unable to determine, but as
complaint against crim. con. cases was widespread, it would
be vain to attribute too much influence to it. Certainly
<1Sylvester Sound>1 is a decidedly inferior piece of work to
<1Valentine Vox.>1

  <2Suppers and Somnambulism>2

NEVERTHELESS, it contains a good deal of matter which is of
interest to the reader who seeks escape to the past. The very
cause of Sylvester's somnambulism, which was diagnosed
as "eating suppers," recalls an era, strange to us, when din-
ner might be eaten any time between half-past three and
seven, and when those who dined early took another meal of
LONDON LOW LIFE                             123

game, meat pie, deviled bones, mutton chops, or something
of the kind, washed down with champagne and sherry or
some other fortified wine, at about midnight. Around such
suppers there hung a guilt which we are now at a loss to
understand; we see that they might cause somnambulism
without knowing why they were reprehensible on moral
grounds. Apparently they were associated with fast women;
the great courtesans of the time were famous for them, and
their custom was copied by fast night-houses; it is at such a
supper on a grand scale that Violetta Vale/ry appears as host-
ess in the first act of <1La Traviata.>1 Marriage put the closure
on Valentine's ventriloquism; marriage finishes Sylvester's
suppers and his somnambulism.

  <2London Los Life>2

IN <1Sylvester,>1 even more than in <1Valentine,>1 Cockton shows
his extensive knowledge of London's sordid life. Not all of
it was criminal, or even especially low; Cockton had a jour-
nalist's eye for the variety of mankind.
  Much of the interest of Victorian novelists, great and
small, lies in their descriptions of low life which, for all
their greater freedom of expression and their cult of real-
ism, modern novelists have not bettered. Indeed, except for
a greater frankness in giving sexual detail, the moderns
have added nothing to it. Contrary to a widely held belief,
the Victorians did not hold themselves aloof from the poor
and the wretched any more than we do; like us, they got
most of their knowledge of social conditions from the press
and from novels; unlike us, they often had human wretched-
ness thrust under their noses by the sight of unhappy crea-
tures in the streets. We do not recognize how much public-
124

health legislation and organized charity have done to
sweeten our imaginations.

             <2A Digression on Henry Mayhew>2

THIS SEEMS to be the logical point to digress from our dis-
cussion of Cockton to take some account of the greatest sin-
gle source of our knowledge of low life in Cockton's day.
It is a four-volume work by Henry Mayhew, published from
1851 to 1865, called <1London Labour and London Poor.>1 It
is said to be the first sociological study of its kind ever at-
tempted.
  Mayhew was born, like Dickens, in 1812, and outlived
him by seventeen years, dying in 1887. He was a journalist,
playwright, and humorist, and in company with Mark
Lemon he founded <1Punch>1 in 1841. But we would not re-
member him today if he had not also been a sociologist of
extraordinary curiosity and industry. If anyone imagines
that <1The New Yorker>1 invented the Roving Reporter and
the Profile, let them consider Mayhew's claim; he was doing
that sort of work, and doing it superlatively well, a century
ago. The full four volumes of his study are not easy to come
by, but an admirable series of extracts called <1Mayhew's Lon->1
<1don, London's Underworld,>1 and <1Mayhew's Characters>1 ap-
peared under the editorship of Peter Quennell in 1951.
  Mayhew is the perfect journalist--an able writer, curious,
busy, and objective. His writing is free of cant, even on sub-
jects which made some of his contemporaries brim with it.
Compare Mayhew on prostitution in London, including his
verbatim reports of what street women told him, with what
Dickens has to say about Martha in <1David Copperfeld.>1
Dickens knew the truth, undoubtedly, but he writes what
A DIGRESSION ON HENRY MAYHEW          125

his readers wished to believe: a girl who has lost her virtue
is beyond redemption, she loathes herself, she contemplates
suicide, and she is extremely likely to die of a disease which
can only be diagnosed as Ingrowing Remorse.
  Mayhew, on the contrary, reports that in 1857 the popu-
lation of London was roughly one million persons, of whom
fifty thousand were prostitutes by profession; servants, mil-
liners, makers of artificial flowers, and other girls earning
small wages and occasionally prostituting themselves were
not included in this reckoning. Of these girls he judged that
the majority took to their profession because they were lazy,
stupid, or because they liked it. Remorse gnawed them far
less than resentment of the police and moral reformers.
  Dickens frequently represents the very poor as eager for a
measure of respectability and religious instruction. Mayhew
reports that the destitute and the poor street traders cared
nothing for religion and regarded marriage as an unneces-
sary preliminary to domestic life. The costers and the street
traders in general lived in reasonably monogamous concu-
binage with the women of their choice, acknowledged their
children and brought them up with kindness, according to
their lights. They were almost entirely analphabetic, but
they were far from stupid, and in politics they were Chart-
ists--that is to say, socialists--to a man. Toryism and the
more practical Reform doctrines did not belong to their
level, but a cut above them, among the poor tradesmen of
the lower middle class.
  In his introduction to <1Bleak House>1 Dickens says: "I have
purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of familiar things."
A study of Mayhew shows how romantic was his attitude to-
ward criminals. Evil as Bill Sikes is, and contemptible as
Noah Claypole is, they are creatures of romance when we
126

measure them beside the rough facts of the London under-
world known to Mayhew. Tom All Alone's, the ruinous
rookery inhabited by squatters, is darkly hinted at in <1Bleak>1
<1House,>1 but Mayhew takes us inside a dozen such places,
tells us what the inhabitants wore, where and how they
slept, what they ate, and how they passed their leisure time.
It is nasty but fascinating reading. The trades they plied!
His description of the Scaldrum Dodge--an imposture by
means of which a beggar might outfit himself with a loathe-
some and alms-compelling sore--of the Choking Dodge,
and the arts of the professional writers of begging letters
are better than anything of the sort in Dickens; they recall
Defoe at his best.
  It is the low life, however, rather than the criminal life,
which presents us with the most amazing facts. Queen Vic-
toria, it appears, had both a Rat Catcher and a Bug Catcher,
working under royal warrant. They were not often needed
for direct attendance upon the Royal Household, though
the Bug Catcher once captured a single bedbug in the cham-
ber of Princess Charlotte, with her fascinated assistance.
  Less exalted persons, but respectable insofar as honest
work makes a man respectable, were the Pure-Finders.
"Pure" was the name given to dog's excrement, which was
used in the tanning and preparation of fine leathers for
glove-making and bookbinding; in London in 1851, there
were between two and three hundred men and women who
fared forth every day with buckets to collect this valued sub-
stance from the pavements. None used shovels, though a few
of the more fastidious wore a glove on the working hand. A
full bucket of the best pure--the limey as opposed to the
sticky--fetched a shilling at the tannery. A pure-finder did
not consider himself at a social disadvantage beside, say, a
INCONSISTENCY OF JULIA                     127

doll's-eye maker, or a crossing sweeper, and might fittingly
think himself the moral superior of a vendor of obscene
snuff boxes (imported from France and sold chiefly to "fast"
young men).
  The pages of Mayhew are a huge peepshow of Victorian
London as it really was, and not as the novelists of the day
were compelled by convention to represent it. It is not too
much to say that the general reader who delights in Dickens,
Thackeray, Surtees, Trollope, Cockton, Lever--yes, and
perhaps also George Eliot--cannot squeeze the fullest
flavor from his favorites unless he has some knowledge of
Mayhew. He primes the pump of our creative imagination.
To him, therefore, our homage and our thanks. He was
not a novelist, but a sociological journalist. Yet after a pe-
rusal of his masterly pages, we come to the novelists who
were his contemporaries fresher, better informed, and ca-
pable of a deeper understanding, a richer enjoyment.

  <2Inconsistency of Julia>2

IN <1Sylvester Sound>1 Cockton makes one of those sudden
changes in an important character which are of such fre-
quent occurrence in Victorian novels, and surprising until
we recall that they were written for publication in monthly
numbers. Even Dickens and Thackeray were hasty work-
men by the standards of modern writers, who make Flau-
bert their model and toil over their manuscripts, trying to
get rid of anything which might look like an inconsistency.
But when a "number" had left the author's hands, nothing
could recall it, and if his story changed its nature in writing
(as stories are so apt to do) , he had to cobble it up as best
he could. It is well known that when the original of Miss
128

Mowcher, in <1Copperfield,>1 complained to Dickens of the in-
justice of his portrait of her, he repented and made amends;
but he could not rewrite, and so the somewhat sinister
dwarf of the earliest appearance inexplicably becomes a
lovable dwarf later. Thus, also, Julia Smart, the beautiful
barmaid in <1Sylvester Sound,>1 who collects rings from infat-
uated medical students and is described as a "decoy-duck"
for her employer, becomes a good girl of superior mental
attainments very shortly afterward, falls in love with Syl-
vester, and when he cannot love her in return (inequality
of station) , sinks into a consumption and dies thus:
                 "Sylvester," he heard her say, "I soon shall be no more.
  I feel that every hope of my recovery has fled: the only hope
  I cherish still is, that we may meet in heaven! God forever
  bless you! I die happy, Sylvester--quite happy now that
  you are near me! Pray for me, Sylvester--pray for me.
  Angels of light are waiting now to bear our prayers to
  heaven!"
 Sylvester, who was deeply affected, knelt and prayed
  with fervour: her mother also knelt and prayed--and
  Julia ceased to breathe.
  A conventional and almost perfunctory Victorian death-
bed scene--but what is it doing in a comic novel? And what
about the deaths of Grimwood, Whitely, and Raven in <1Val->1
<1entine Vox?>1 In the novels of the great Victorians such inci-
dents are introduced with art; in Cockton they are plainly a
means of getting rid of inconvenient people. But apparently
his public, which was a large one, was ready to accept them,
as it accepted and made much of death in life itself.
GUSTO FOR DEATH                             129


  <2Gusto for Death>2

DEATH OCCURS today on the same general principle which
governed it a century ago; for every living creature there
is a death apiece. But our novelists do not approach the
theme with the gusto which marks the Victorians. Birth is
still popular in novels; an experienced reader becomes
quite a theoretical midwife. Is it because we know a little
more about the physiological processes of death, and thus
cannot be led to believe in rhetorical deathbed farewells,
followed by immediate expiry, as was the case with Julia
Smart? Or did Victorians really die differently? There are
plenty of people living who recall the eagerness with which
the "last words" of the dying used to be seized upon and
widely repeated. The human spirit is remarkably accom-
modating; have "last words" ceased to be coherent and
memorable simply because they have gone out of fashion?
Have deathbed scenes ceased to hold the imagination be-
cause so many of them take place in hospitals, which are
demonstrably unsuited to poignant intimacies? Does the
presence of physicians and nurses, professionals in death,
who cannot for their own sakes encourage drama, inhiblt
the dying and the bereft alike?
  The most likely explanation seems to be that Victorians
regarded death psychologically and theologically; we con-
sider it to be almost entirely a clinical, final affair. In novels,
at least, Victorians died when their lives were at an end--
which is to say when their taking off was most significant
and affecting both to themselves and their survivors; they
died in the certainty of an afterlife upon which, as with
Tulia, and such characters as Eva St. Clair in <1Uncle Tom's>1
130

<1Cabin,>1 they offered anticipatory comment, sometimes of a
prophetic nature. What about ourselves? Physicians of a
psychosomatic turn of mind think that some people at least
choose their time of death, but few characters in novels do
so. As for an afterlife, there has been a decline in the general
acceptance of it as a certainty, and though a few rationalists
may be pleased, to many people this has added a new terror
to death. We are reluctant, in the main, to consider the dis-
appearance of ourselves and consequently of all we feel and
know. Every man's death is, literally, the end of a world if
he dies without hope. We have exchanged Gone Elsewhere
for Cone Nowhere, and as novel readers, it gives us no
pleasure to dwell on it. If there must be a death in one of
our novels, we prefer that it have the least possible emo-
tional charge.
  So also with the Dying Child, so popular in the fiction
of a century ago. We can have little experience of the eva-
nescent, frail charm which childhood had for the Victorians,
who lost so many of their large families; modern medical
science has made our children hearty and durable; any good
pediatrician would have little Paul Dombey out of that
wheelchair in a couple of weeks, taking swimming lessons in
the wild waves instead of bothering his head to know what
they were saying. In reality no parent would exchange the
young roarer of today for the pathetic little Paul of yester-
day; in the novel, happily, we can have the best of both
worlds, and may even look sourly upon our young when
we lift our eyes from the page, because their rude health
does not dispose them to be imaginative.
A VICTORIAN PROPOSAL                       131


     <2A Victorian Proposal>2

IF THE WRITERS and readers of a century ago were less
queasy about death than we, it must be said that we far out-
reach them in our appetite for sex. There seems to be no
end to the varieties of sexual involvement in which we can
interest ourselves, and no limit to the amount of more or
less lubricious detail we will accept in describing them. Not
so the Victorians, and if we laugh at them for it, they may be
laughing somewhere at us because we lack their gusto for
death. The great psychologists of the era wrote perceptively
of the relations between men and women, and what is be-
tween the lines is as masterly as what is on the page. But less
gifted novelists approached the theme as though to handle
it with tongs. Cockton shows the style very well. Valentine
Vox, in his crusade against human folly, makes an excursion
backstage at a theater, where several gentlemen, all de-
scribed as old, are trying to make assignations with the danc-
ing girls. Like the fine boy he is, Val "throws" his voice into
the ears of some of these graybeards, saying "Wait for me,
love, in the hall!"; he then goes to the hall and watches the
scene of their disappointment "without being by any means
satisfied that its tendency was to promote the cause of virtue
or to cultivate those feelings which bind man to man." Even
the most ardent escaper-into-the-past finds it hard to admire
Valentine unreservedly, as Cockton plainly expects us to do.
  What of Valentine's own pure passion? Although the
women in Cockton's books are not well realized, he has
taken some pains to give Louise Raven a character; she is
haughty and capricious, and aware of her desirability as a
beautiful girl and an heiress. Furthermore, she has no
132

mother (and thus, by Victorian standards, no well-inten-
tioned jailer) , so that she is easier to talk to alone than were
most wealthy girls of her time. It is interesting that as soon
as they become engaged, Valentine sends for his own mother,
who becomes in an instant Louise's cherished confidante,
and takes on the necessary jailer's duties.
  Before this came about, the important scene of the pro-
posal had to be dealt with Cockton gives us a full-dress
treatment, requiring about twenty-five hundred words. Val-
entine and Louise are taking a walk, and, having got rid of
Fred Llewellen, who insists on being with them, the great
moment approaches. Louise knows that a proposal is com-
ing, but must pretend otherwise. Valentine "felt very droll,
and thought himself very stupid." They sit. Louise plays
with the fringe of her Lilliputian parasol, and he wrings
the necks of his waistcoat buttons with his watch guard. He
says he is thinking of something. Of what? Of <1the day.>1 Lou-
ise pretends not to understand, so he takes her hand and
calls her a rogue; he means the day on which they are both
to be made happy. Are they not happy now, counters Louise.
When this pretty subterfuge has been disposed of, she is
pressed by her lover to express a preference between May
and June. She really cannot. She does not know how to give
her answer. Valentine begs leave to teach her to say yes.
She will not until her father says yes first. And if Mr. Raven
says yes, shall they be made happy in June? She will not re-
ply, because Valentine "is a very teasing creature," and she
will have nothing more to say on the subject.
  Mr. Raven, of course, says yes with great vehemence. He
declines to disguise from Valentine how much he admires
him; he knows Louise to be a good girl and all that a man
could desire in a wife; he blesses them extravagantly. Yes,
                                                   133

the adulterer and child-and-fortune stealer blesses them as
sonorously as if he were the saintly Whitely, or the rapturous
Uncle John.
  That is ail there is to it. No doubts, no discussion of ear-
lier affairs, no to-ing and fro-ing, no physical experiment be-
yond a kiss, none of the complex voodoo which is thought
necessary in even the most perfunctory modern novel to clap
two ninnies together.

             <2A Victorian Vies of Marriage>2

IF THE VICTORIANS seem to us reluctant to write of the rela-
tions of men and women before marriage in anything but
the most namby-pamby strain, they amply make up for it by
their realistic treatment of the married state itself. And
again, If we want to find the characteristic tone of the age,
we are wiser to go to the popular rather than to the great.
Thackeray and Trollope wrote revealingly of marriage, but
we may question if they ever aroused such enthusiastic re-
sponse as Douglas Jerrold, a capable but lesser man, with
<1The Curtain Lectures of Mrs. Caudle.>1 This work appeared
in serial form in <1Punch>1 before it was published as a book in
1846. Thackeray reviewed it favorably in the <1Morning>1
<1Chronicle;>1 presumably he was sincere, though his associa-
tion with <1Punch,>1 to which Jerrold was also a popular con-
tributor, may have had some influence on him. Dog does
not eat dog, even among book reviewers. But it is surprising
to us that the well-bred Thackeray could recommend a book
so coarse and repulsive in tone.
  Jerrold was by no means an inconsiderable writer; he was
a good and successful journalist, and one of the best known
of the practical, carpentering, slapdash playwrights of the
134

day. The theater for which he did much of his best work
was the Royal Cobourg, later the Royal Victoria, and now
famous as the Old Vic. In his time he passed for a satirist,
and his wit was described by his publisher, in advertise-
ments, as "acrid."
  A curtain lecture, it is necessary to tell most modern read-
ers, is a character analysis given by a wife to her husband
when they are shut up for the night behind the curtains of
the Victorian double bed. The book comprises thirty-six
elaborate scoldings. We are to imagine the long-suffering
Job Caudle, a well-doing small tradesman, burying his head
in the pillows while Mrs. Caudle hectors him because he
has lent five pounds to a friend; because he smells of tobacco;
because he has joined a convivial club called the Skylarks;
because he has lent the family umbrella; because he has
joined the Masons; because he does not want Mrs. C.'s
mother to live with them; because he has had a party when
she was from home (the invitation was decorated with a
design of a punch bowl, and the motto "When the Cat's
Away the Mice Will Play"). Caudle has transgressed be-
cause he has bowed to a girl in the street; he has been neg-
lectful in failing to find a rich godfather for Dear Baby; he
has forgotten their wedding anniversary; he will not con-
centrate on their annual holiday; he has shown unmanly
cruelty by refusing to smuggle stockings back from France
for his wife; he will not buy a cottage in the country, and
keep a small carriage; he has flirted with the maid; he will
not reveal what is in his will. There is much reporting of
what Chalkpit the milkman is doing, and the splendor in
which he keeps Mrs. Chalkpit. Mrs. Caudle is consumed
with jealousy of Miss Prettyman, daughter of a neighbor,
with whom Caudle is suspected of flirting, and she takes
                                                    135

pains to let Miss Prettyman know that Job dyes his whiskers.
And--Victorian touch--when at last Mrs. Caudle dies be-
cause she has disregarded her husband's advice, and ven-
tured into the rain in thin shoes, she dies nagging, warning
that Miss Prettyman must not be the second Mrs. C. with
"the key to the caddy." These are Mrs. Caudle's "last
words"; compare them with those of Little Nell, or Colonel
Newcome:
"Mother, you see, knows all your little ways; and you
  wouldn't get another wife to study you and pet you up as
  I've done--a second wife never does; it isn't likely she
  should. And after all, we've been very happy. It hasn't
  been my fault, if we've ever had a word or two, for you
  couldn't help now and then being aggravating; nobody
  can help their tempers always--especially men. Still we've
  been very happy, haven't we, Caudle?
"Good night. Yes--this cold does tear me to pieces; but
  for all that, it isn't the shoes. God bless you, Caudle; no--
  it's <1not>1 the shoes. I won't say it's the key-hole; but again I
  say, it's not the shoes. God bless you once more--But
  never say it's the shoes."
  The comic death scene is no rarity in the novels of the
Victorians, and in this respect they show a sturdier spirit
than we. Birth and death were equally facts, capable of
comic or tragic consideration. What was not a fact, to be
considered at all, was the ordinary give and take of sex. But
the <1Caudle Lectures>1 are characteristic of a large body of
their writing about marriage, and if we read between the
lines in these accounts of tireless nagging, of "crim. con.,"
of desertions, of husbands "gandermooning" (seeking the
company of light women when their wives were "lying in,"
as they so often were), we can form a pretty fair notion of
136

the kind of society which sat on the top of the rubbish heap
so carefully described by Mayhew. It was no better and no
worse than our own, perhaps, but in many important re-
spects it was different, for the pretenses, the areas of shame,
the conception of affection and of what was permissible be-
tween the sexes at varying periods of their relation were far
from our own.
  Popular music is one of many keys with which we can un-
lock some of the secrets of a past era. The kind of song Job
Caudle and his friends sang at the party when the cat was
away was probably along these lines:
          Oh, I met her on a steamer
             As I journeyed to Cremorne;
          A crinoline and a pork-pie hat
            Her figure did adorn;
          Our glances met, she smiled at me,
            Then, as if unawares,
          My arm it slipped around her waist
            While on the cabin stairs.
          I ask'd her if she'd go with me
           She said "Yes, if I'd let her";
          'Twas just as good as going home,
        Yes, as good, <1and a good deal better.>1
  Who was she, who was thus encountered on the steamer?
A milliner, a maker of artificial flowers, an actress from one
of the "minor" theaters (perhaps a less fortunate sister of
Miss Lucy Glitters of Astley's, who appears in Mr. <1Sponge's>1
<1Sporting Tour>1 and whom we shall meet shortly) , or simply
a maidservant whose mistress was temporarily from home?
THE GREATEST PLAGUE OF LIFE              137


  <2The Greatest Plague of Life>2

IF SHE WERE a maidservant, we should be hardhearted in-
deed if we grudged her any sort of adventure which came
her way. Not that domestic service was necessarily hard, for
even in a modest household two or three servants might be
kept--a nurse, a cook, a housemaid, and possibly also a
"rough girl"--but the terms of employment involved much
monotony. The Victorians, no less than ourselves, strove to
make real the manifestly impossible; they wanted to keep
in their houses as many people as they could afford to make
their life comfortable, and they wanted these people to be
without fault, without idiosyncrasy, and without personal
desires. There was no regular "time off"; holidays had to be
secured by special permission from mistress, and we know
that the holiday was usually granted with many a sigh, and
many a murmur about the inconvenience of it. Many serv-
ants had no holiday by right, except the middle Sunday of
Lent, called Mothering Sunday, when custom permitted
them to go home to see their families, if they lived within
reach. Otherwise their holiday time came when the family
went away on its own vacation, which in a rich household
might be for weeks and even months. It was then that the
maids might--if the butler or housekeeper failed in the
moral supervision they were expected to give--be found on
the steamer going to Cremorne.
  There were good employers and happy servants; Vic-
torian novels suggest that many of these were found in the
country, where a remnant of feudal feeling remained, and
where there were fewer people attempting to suggest eight-
servant grandeur on a three-servant income. But in London
138

there were a great many "new people" who were not used to
as much service as they demanded, and who had a most un-
genteel objection to the petty thievery which servants had
considered to be their right for hundreds of years. These
"new people" felt no shame at seeing a joint of meat appear
on their table twice, whereas servants knew that it was be-
neath the dignity of gentlefolk to face such a thing; the "new
people" did not know that gentlefolk had new candles in
every stick every day, and objected to the lively trade in long
candle ends which was part of cook's perquisites. The war
between these mean, ungenteel "new people" and their
servants was unending, and upon the whole it tended to be
a draw, with honors even.
  What it all meant we may learn from a little book written
by Horatio and Augustus Mayhew, brothers of Henry,
called The <1Greatest Plague of Life, or the Adventures of a>1
<1Lady in Search of a Good Servant>1 by "One Who Has Been
Almost Worried To Death." It is valued now chiefly be-
cause its twelve illustrations are in George Cruikshank's best
manner, but the letterpress is instructive. Servants were
fallible: some of them were Irish, which was apparently not
to be borne; they all broke china and blamed it on the cat;
many of them drank, and filled up the bottles with cold tea;
some of them wasted their time reading; some neglected
Dear Baby for soldiers or young tradesmen when they took
the little darling out for a walk; some of them were insolent
by nature, and most of them became insolent when suffi-
ciently snubbed and goaded; furthermore, they had unsuit-
able passions, and attracted "followers" who ate and drank
everything in the larder. (It is not surprising that many of
these followers were soldiers, for in those days these men
were not supplied by the army with food between midday
                                                    139

and breakfast the following morning; household servants
possessed the one unfailing charm-food.) It was a lifelong
battle, and if mistress was a greenhorn when she mar-
ried, and engaged her first Irish drunk under the impression
that she was a tender virgin from Cornwall, she was an old
campaigner by the time ten years had elapsed. To us today
much of the interest of <1The Greatest Plague>1 lies in its por-
trait of the mistress; her innocent belief that angels could
be found to work for eight or ten pounds a year (lodgings
and clothing found) is an interesting footnote to any con-
sideration of Victorian idealism.

   <2The Comic Valet>2

IT WOULD BE unfair to quit the subject of Victorian service
without some mention of another aspect of it which recurs
again and again in the fiction of the time, and sufficiently
often in memoirs and biography to assure us that it was a
reality. It is the Comic Valet. The concept is as old as Chris-
tendom, and may fitly be called an archetype. Many of us
feel the want of an intelligent, cheerful, resourceful subor-
dinate, who can be depended upon in all crises; a few fortu-
nate souls achieve the reality in one way or another. Such an
appendage to the hero of a novel is obviously invaluable.
Don Quixote is not himself without Sancho; Don Juan is
nowhere without I.eporello; Pickwick was but a shadow un-
til he found Sam Weller. The last overt example of this re-
lationship in modern literature is that of Jeeves and Bertie
Wooster. The Comic Valet has gone underground for a
time, cropping up disguised perhaps as the Invaluable Leg-
Man who works for the Great Detective, but we are not de-
ceived. The Comic Valet cannot die, and he is not simply a
140

creature of fiction. He is a yearning deep in the human
heart, and occasionally he manifests himself in the flesh as a
secretary, or a devoted son; I have even known him to ap-
pear disguised as a wife. In the fiction of the Victorians he
was simply a body-servant.
  Examples are to be found in most of the writers who dealt
with the wealthier classes, though Trollope does not make
much of the type. There is a shadow side to the relationship;
an occasional wicked Steerforth has his sinister Littimer,
but in the main the Comic Valet is a funny man. Charles
Lever, in his Irish novels, has drawn a gallery of them which
has done more than is usually acknowledged to create the
type of the witty, resourceful, drunken but essentially
"good" Irish rogue--a type which continues in literature
through Slipper in <1Adventures of an Irish R.M.>1 to a variety
of unworthy modern examples. It is worth noting that this
particular sort of Irishman seems to have appeared only to
English writers; the Irish write of their rogues in quite a
different way. This is not to say that he had no existence;
only that an Englishman sees a Celt in a light wholly un-
like that in which another Celt sees him.
  For an example, however, let us again avoid the beaten
paths, and look for our Comic Valet in a really unexpected
place, in a novel by George Payne Rainsford James. This
extraordinary man is said to have written over one hundred
books, and the British Museum Catalogue lists sixty-seven.
During one period of eighteen years he produced a book
every nine months. Nor were they slight productions; <1Philip>1
<1Augustus,>1 which contains four hundred and twenty octavo
pages, was written in less than seven weeks. James was a
highly educated man and a voracious reader, and most of his
books were either histories or novels with a historical set-
                                                    141

ting. Like many men of unusual industry (Trollope is a
great example of the type) , he wrote too much for his repu-
tation. He was popular, but not popular enough to be de-
livered from the drudgery of hasty work, and he was much
mocked by critics, other writers, and persons who pretended
to taste. Usually his work was dismissed as flimsy and melo-
dramatic, though it was admitted that he wrote a good sort
of prose. Thackeray was one of his chief detractors, and in
his series <1Novels by eminent Hands>1 one of the best of his
parodies is Barbazure, which is Bluebeard as James might
have written it; it is as deadly and as unfair--and as funny--
as only a great parody can be. Lovers of <1The Rose and The>1
<1Ring>1 will recall also that some of its mock-heroic passages
are introduced with the words---'Had I the pen of a G. P. R.
James." The extraordinary thing is that James recognized
the justice of Thackeray's criticism, and made appropri-
ate alterations in his style; whatever his stature as a writer,
he must have been a man of uncommon evenness of temper,
and a most unliterary lack of variety.
  Readers have been content to take it from Thackeray
that James was a figure of fun. I should have been one of
them if I had not happened to run across a novel which he
published anonymously (l do not know why) in Dublin in
1843; it is called The <1Commissioner, or De Lunatico In->1
<1quirendo,>1 and the bookseller recommended it only because
it contains twenty-seven plates by Phiz (Hablot Knight
Browne), the famous comic illustrator. It seems to me to be
quite as gcod as Lever at his best. The story begins on the
Moon, whence the Chevalier de Lunatico is dispatched to
Earth "with full powers to claim, and send back all deserters
from the lunar sphere"--all lunatics, in fact. This sounds
unpromising, but it is handled with a dispatch, a delicacy
142

of humor, and an avoidance of ostentatious fantasy, which
is engaging. The Chevalier sits down on a moonbeam, slides
quickly to earth, and becomes engaged at once in a pica-
resque romance.
  To enjoy <1The Commissioner>1 it is not necessary to put
one's critical faculty to sleep; it is only necessary to ask the
usual questions--what has James tried to do, has he done it
well, and is it worth doing? He has tried to amuse his reader
with a lively tale; he has done it with unobtrusive but
thoroughly professional skill; so far as I am concerned, this
is excuse enough for a novel. The plot is complex, and is as-
sembled on the principle which served the Victorians so
well--the style which resembles the composition of a <1na->1
<1pole/on>1--a layer of melodrama and a layer of farce, and so on
until the right thickness is reached. As a stylist, in this book
at least, James is free from the fustian which afflicted so
many of his contemporaries, and which becomes pathologi-
cal in such a writer as Cockton; there is about his prose some
hint of the familiar, easy, yet elegant style of Goldsmith. His
melodrama is well done, if you are prepared to accept melo-
drama; when the dissolute young Fitzurse is killed at his
wedding feast by the lunatic father of a girl whom he has
seduced, I at least was surprised, and there is enough
strength in the writing to make the scene horrible. It may
interest students of obloquy to learn that in this book, al-
though "D--n" is always so spelled, Fitzurse is called a son
of a bitch--a phrase which I cannot trace in Dickens or
Thackeray, or indeed in any other Victorian known to me.
There can have been nothing inadvertent in such a choice
of epithet, for James is extremely careful in his use of
words, and employs them expertly for comic effect. As an
example of this, we may consider the scene in which the
THE COMIC VALET                              143

disingenuous Mr. Darius, who claims to have lived among
cannibals in New Zealand, dilates to Fitzurse upon the
pleasure of eating roast boy. They have passed a child on
the road, and Darius replies, in answer to a question as to
what he did with his own adopted son:
     "Oh, sir, we ate him, we ate him," said Mr. Darius
   calmy: "the chiefs and I had a great feast, a sort of fare-
   well dinner; and as there was no fresh meat, you know, I
   thought I'd give them a treat. He was as nice a boy as ever
   I ate in my life. I've got his head now in pickle--a sort of
   tender memorial to him. I look at it very often--but I'm
   afraid it's too salt to be good eating now. A very nice-
   looking boy indeed," he continued, standing up in his
   stirrups and looking after the child. "Now do you think
   people in this country would fancy there was anything
   wrong in it if one were to take a griskin out of a boy like
   that?"
Dickens himself could not have improved on "griskin" at
that particular point.
  But it was to consider James's version of a Comic Valet
that we made this digression. The young man is called Joey
Pike, and he is no relation to Sam Weller, though when this
book was written, six years after <1Pickwick,>1 there were many
weary imitations of Sam to be found in novels. Joey is partly
acquainted with French and Italian, phrases of which he
uses very freely in his conversation. He is so elegant in man-
ner, and so fresh of complexion, that he is able to disguise
himself as a French maid. He is not only funny, he is in-
telligent; he busies himself on behalf of his master in the
best Comic Valet tradition, and he helps to solve at least
two of the mysteries which support the plot. In the end he
falls heir to a fortune--not a large one, but one hundred
144

pounds a year, which would be large enough--and we leave
him about to set out in life, grown to man's estate and ready
to continue his adventurous career.
  He is useful in managing the machinery of the book, but
we never feel that he has been introduced for that purpose;
he is one of the best characters drawn by James, who is so
obviously an experienced hand at writing novels that this
cannot be sheer luck. He is a skillful realization of the
Comic Valet archetype: many of the characters which recur
in Victorian novels are archetypal, and this explains why,
though they often seem far-fetched when looked at from the
standpoint of "realism," they carry a conviction to the heart
of the reader which bypasses the photographic conception of
what is real. An archetype must never be confused with a
stereotype; if the Comic Valet character, in the hands of a
skilled novelist, convinces us, we may be sure it is because
such comic valets, however disguised, existed (and still ex-
ist) in the actual world.

  <2The Cynic in the Pink Coat>2

BEFORE BRINGING these remarks to an end, I want to write
of one more author, not well known on this continent, who
was a minor master and deserves more attention than he
gets. He is Robert Smith Surtees. His name is known, and
booksellers do a briskish business in complete sets of his
novels because they are illustrated with lively hunting prints
which appeal strongly to a certain kind of sentimentality.
Who can resist so many red coats? For some reason Surtees
is one of the darlings of those printers who bring out lavish
sets of standard works, and several editions, all fairly ex-
pensive, are to be bought. But does anybody read them?
THE CYNIC IN THE PINK COAT               145

Perhaps I mix with the wrong people, but I meet few who
have ever done more with Surtees than look at the pictures
by Alken, Leech, and Browne.
  He eminently deserves to be read by the particular sort
of escapist to whom this chapter is addressed. He carries us
into a different, wonderful world which is--a change this,
among these Victorian books--realistic in that every line
plainly has its roots deep in personal experience, no flights
of fancy are attempted, and there is little caricature, save in
recording instances when Nature has caricatured herself.
  Surtees wrote sporting novels, about people whose chief
concern was with country life, fishing, pheasant shooting,
racing, and, above all, fox hunting. He knew all about sport
himself, but he is not the dupe of sport or sportsmen; the
cold and calculating eye which Ring Lardner brought to
baseball was not unlike the disenchanted gaze which Surtees
bent on the hunting field. He is that oddity, a thoroughly
intelligent sportsman; like others of his rare kind, he is will-
ing to forego the pleasures of excluding the nonsportsman,
in order to tell him what sport is really like. The least horsey
reader becomes vicariously horsey with Surtees, not because
his enthusiasm is whipped up with any Yoicks, Tally-ho
nonsense in the writing, but because it is so good and true
that an air of authority rises from the page. Surtees glves us
all his knowledge, so that we find ourselves despising the
greenhorns in the field who override the hounds; we admire
the sensible caution of the old gentlemen who look for a gap
in a hedge instead of leaping over it to probable death; we
deplore the chicanery of the huntsman who keeps a wily old
fox or two for release when he cannot find a fresh one. We
have no right to these fopperies of the field, but Surtees sets
us free to try them on, as it might be to try on his pink coat.
146

  This is uncommonly good-natured of an author who has
the reputation of being a cynic. But cynicism, like all attl--
tudes of mind, receives as much color from the man who as-
sumes it as it gives to him. Surtees's cynicism is not of the
mean, denigratory, life-diminishing order, but is rather a
matter-of-factness, a clarity of vision and a detestation of
cant.
  These qualities may be said to have been bred in him.
He came of a good county family of Durham, and suc-
ceeded his father as squire of Hamsterley Hall; but before
that he had been qualified as a solicitor. Thus he was not
impressed by gentry, and some early experiences in the
shifts and uncertainties of business life made him watchful.
Though, as a young lawyer, he wrote for money, he later
wrote simply because he liked it. He was admired for his
horsemanship.
  All of his novels have their particular charms, but since
the late Joyce Cary declared that <1Mr. Sponge's Sporting>1
<1Tour>1 is a neglected minor masterpiece, it has enjoyed a
small new popularity, and we may as well consider it.
Briefly, it is the story of Mr. "Soapey" Sponge, a man with
enough money to live without working, but not enough to
be indifferent to more. Sponge is an expert fox hunter, and
he decides to turn his sport to account, so he hires two hand-
some but vicious horses, Hercules and Multum in Parvo,
from a dealer named Buckram, on the understanding that
he will hunt them, and sell them if he can, keeping part of
the sale price for his trouble. For a generation which has
forgotten about horses, it is perhaps necessary to explain
that the deception here lies in the fact that Sponge, an ex-
pert rider, can manage these horses and make them seem
spirited rather than incorrigible, but that they are likely to
                                                    147

prove killers to the purchaser. With these two handsome,
evil brutes, and one of Buckram's grooms to watch both the
horses and Sponge, he sets out on a tour of the lesser hunts,
looking for buyers.
  The technique, of course, is for Sponge to pretend that
his mounts are merely two of a fine stable, and to ride them
in the showiest way possible; he finds dupes enough, who
covet his horses and persuade him, though pretending re-
luctance, to sell. At least one of the buyers is glad to pay him
to take Hercules back.
  As a picture of rural England in the forties the book is
reminiscent of Gogol's picture of rural Russia in <1Dead Souls.>1
Sponge meets and imposes on a remarkable group of oddi-
ties, but none is so odd that he fails to carry conviction. Lord
Scamperdale and his understrapper Jack Spraggon are first-
rate creations, and the Hard Hat Hunt which they com-
mand is a fine portrait of what fox hunting must really have
been like in all but the wealthiest and most aristocratic
areas. Another shrewd portrait is of Mr. Jawleyford of Jaw-
leyford Court, a country connoisseur with a very vague no-
tlon of sport, but with a gallery of portraits and statues,
principally of himself. The maneuverings of his daughters
Emily and Amelia, who believe Sponge to be wealthy, and
"do the agreeable" in an attempt to enchant him, form an
excellent realistic contrast to the falsely romantic nonsense
of Louise Raven in <1Valentine Vox.>1 The book is full of
good minor characters, like Mr. Jogglebury Crowdy, who
believes that he is ensuring the future fortune of his chil-
dren by carving the heads of the Kings and Queens of Eng-
land on a series of walking sticks; and the rural editor who
writes articles for two papers, quarreling with himself, is an
interesting anticipation of the chief plot in C. E. Montague's
148

A <1Hind Let Loose.>1 Sir Harry Scattercash and the theatrical
riffraff who join him in playing at being county gentry add
another example to the many pictures of theatrical folk
which turn up so often in Victorian novels. But the char-
acter which holds it all together and gives the book weight
is Sponge himself, the self-assured, hard-bitten gentleman
crook, whose favorite reading in his leisure hours is <1Moggs>1
<110,000 Cab Fares--which he is memorizing.>1


  <2The Author in the Middle>2

DOES IT SOUND dreadful to you? Do you shrink from these
people with their elaborately comic names? Do you groan in
spirit at the thought of four hundred pages, so much of
which is about fox hunting? I can but say--give it a try. For
Surtees was a novelist of uncommon abilities, and Surtees
stands dead in the middle of this book.
  He makes no bones about it. He was anything but un-
sophisticated in his character, but the convention (so dear
to one school of modern criticism) which demands that a
writer should conceal himself, should pretend that he does
not exist, was unknown to him, as it was to most of his con-
temporaries. He is in the thick of the book because he knows
very well that he is the best thing it has to offer, and that
his knowledge and his insight are the marrow of it. "We
fancy we hear our fair friends exclaim . . ." he says, with-
out a hint of shame, and proceeds to put his fair friends at
ease. He even brings in his illustrator, as at the opening of
chapter four:

  We trust our opening chapters, aided by our friend
Leech's pencil, will have enabled our readers to embody
THE AUTHOR IN THE MIDDLE                149
   such a Sponge in their mind's eye as will assist them in
   following us through the course of his peregrinations. We
   do not profess to have drawn such a portrait as will raise
   the same sort of Sponge in the minds of all, but we trust
   we have given such a general outline of style, and indica-
   tion of character, as an ordinary knowledge of the world
   will enable them to imagine a good, pushing, free-and-easy
   sort of man, wishing to be a gentleman without knowing
   how.

And was Surtees wrong? He believes in his method, and he
makes it work. He never pretends to deceive us into accept-
ing his tale as reality in the photographic sense; he frankly
calls upon his reader's creative imagination. He will provide
the material for that imagination to feed on, and he will
guarantee its authenticity. The Muggeridge Hunt failed for
exactly eighty pounds; he knows why, and he says so. He
gives us the speed of a hunt--"four miles in twenty minutes;
pretty good going anywhere, except upon paper, where they
always go unnaturally fast"--in such a way that exaggerated
accounts of hunting, such as Lever's, are rebuked. And al-
ways there is a wonderful vivacity--not a rattling, breath-
less style, but a true vivacity--and a compression of descrip-
tion which makes us feel that we are being given the cream
of the story, and that not a single word less could convey it.
   Nobody has ever pretended that Surtees goes very deep
into human nature, but like every writer who carries con-
viction to his reader, he goes deeper than at first appears.
And where do we find the depths he stirs? Not so much in
his characters, as in ourselves. What Surtees has to say carries
conviction, not because it is precisely like any sort of life
which we have experienced, but because it finds Its answer
in that "ordinary knowledge of the world" to which he re-
150

fers in the passage quoted above. Surtees sounds his string,
and we provide both echo and overtones; that is no trivial
feat for any writer.
   His characters, even the most improbably named, are
never flat. He possesses that faculty of impersonation which
is one of the best gifts a novelist can claim. When he writes
about a man, he becomes that man, while retaining his
watchful, chronicler's identity as well. The late Sinclair
Lewis had the same faculty, and in our day Joyce Cary,
Pamela Hansford Johnson, Angus Wilson, and Peter De
Vries--to name only a few--have used it with excellent ef-
fect. It is comparable to the art by which an actor is both
himself and another man while he is on the stage. And, as a
way of presenting a character to the reader, is not this
method of impersonation, in a writer who has the gift for
it, fully as good as the method of building the character up
"from within," leaving us with some acquaintance with his
soul, but possibly ignorant of his appearance, habits, and
tricks of speech? The strength and also the danger of this
method of creating character by impersonation is that it may
lead to caricature, and taste and discipline are needed to
keep caricature in check. Surtees has taste and discipline to
a degree not always found among his contemporaries, who
delighted in caricature and could not check their exuber-
ance; Dickens comes at once to mind. Yet even Dickens's
extremest caricatures have an abounding life, for they are
the performances, on paper, of a very great actor--great as
clown and grotesque, as well as comedian and figure of melo-
drama.
   Surtees gives us Sponge at full length, and in the round.
He is a crook, but he is never more dishonest than is neces-
sary to get what he wants, and there is an engaging absence
THE IMAGE OF SOAPEY'S SOUL                151

of real hardness in his character. When he sees Lucy Glitters
ride magnificently in the hunting field (she learned her rid-
ing at Astley=s Royal Amphitheatre, and was therefore a
circus queen of a sort) , he cannot resist her, and, forgetting
his plan of marrying a fortune, marries her instead. He de-
cides that between them they will somehow manage to
"make tongue and buckle meet." So, having won a steeple-
chase (by accident, for he was to receive a consideration for
losing it) , he and Lucy set up a bookmaker's establishment
in Jermyn Street, called The Sponge Cigar and Betting
Rooms, "whose richness neither pen nor pencil can do jus-
tice to." Sponge is a rascal, but he is also enough of a fool
and enough of a man to be somewhat redeemed in our eyes.

   <2The Image of Soapey's Soul>2

LUCY GLITTERS is a first-rate heroine, if we qualify that term
to mean first-rate in relation to her hero. She is pretty, lively,
and intelligent, and without being seriously inhibited by
virtue, she has standards from which she will not depart. If,
as some deeply serious critics have maintained, the heroine
of a romance is the Image of the Soul of the Hero--in C. G.
Jung's terminology, his Anima--we have found the secret
of Lucy's charm, for she is demonstrably the Image of the
Soul of Soapey Sponge, and he wins her hand when he is
truest to himself. It is this suitability, this congruity of char-
acter, which makes <1Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour>1 an inte-
grated novel, in spite of its rambling, picaresque form.
   It is true of the Victorian novels considered in this chap
ter, and perhaps of all novels which impress us with a sense
of their artistic completeness, that the Heroine is the Image
of the Hero's Soul; she represents what he wants in life and
152

what he considers good. To recall this from time to time
throws an interesting light on much novel writing which
seems murky. In <1Valentine Vox,>1 for instance, it is hard for
us to like Valentine wholeheartedly, and when we examine
the character of Louise Raven, our distaste is clarified. She
is his Good Conduct Prize, and she is the Image of his Soul.
And what sort of girl is Louise? Cockton has tried to give
her the conventional virtues of a well-bred young lady of
her time, but again and again, in small but significant ways,
she reveals herself as a twister. Not a twister in a very seri-
ous sense, perhaps, but when she is Mrs. Caudle's age,
Louise will be a thoroughly disagreeable woman. Cockton
was never able to draw a truly lovable woman, and this,
taken with the strange and tortured themes he chose for his
books, and the persistent miasma of paranoid grievance
which hangs about them, tells us something of him, though
his biography is almost entirely a mystery. What the sore
spot was, let some psychoanalytical critic explain, if he thinks
it worth his trouble.

             <2A New Vision of the Present>2

IN WHAT HAS GONE before, it may seem to some readers that
I have raked over a handful of forgotten, or almost forgot-
ten, books of the past century, attributing to them a facti-
tious significance by reading into them what is not there.
If that is what you think, I have failed indeed, for what I
have sought to do is to suggest a method of reading the nov-
els of a past time in such a way as to recover their flavor.
Not their first flavor, for nothing will make us into the peo-
ple who picked up one of these books a few days after it
had left the press. But I think that we do these old books
                                                    153

great injustice if we bring them nothing but the spirit of
Max Beerbohm, looking for absurdity, and determined to
feel no fervor. The flavor we may find in them is perhaps
even nearer to the author's hopes than that which was en-
joyed by his first readers; they saw him through contempo-
rary spectacles, which are as likely as not to have a tinge of
green in them; people then and people now very often take
up a tale of contemporary life with a slight, unrecognized
prejudice against it because it may show the life about
them in a way which is not agreeable to the reader. We tend
to have set and narrow notions about our own times.
   Although I have suggested a reading of old novels as a
means of escape and a rest from the present, I have not said
that this is all that such reading will bring with it. If it is
true, as the Jungians maintain, that much of the past, re-
moter even than our personal memory, lives on in the
psyche, do we not do well to explore and cultivate this sense
of the past, with a view to enriching our understanding of
the present?
   If we find Victorian literature shallow, it is quite possible
that we are shallow ourselves, the prisoners of a single age
and a single set of literary attitudes. Old novels, it is true,
lack the relentless and usually humorless introspection
which marks so much modern writing; but because we
would not choose completely to relinquish our own attitude,
are we therefore to slight all others? In this chapter I have
purposely dwelt (except in the case of <1Sponge)>1 on books
which are forgotten but which were once thought to have
considerable merit. They provide their own mirror of life,
their own satisfactory commentary, and to comprehend
them, or others like them, is to add a dimension to our
own understanding, and find a different way of looking at
154

our own time. To read a few novels written a century or
more ago is not to drop our bucket very far into that deep
Well of Time from which we may, if we choose, drink
deeply. Nevertheless, it is a beginning, and wisdom is no
more likely to be confined to the remote, the primordial
past, than to the age in which we live. To sup the waters of
even a century past may bring a change of vision which is
greatly revealing.
             . V .
<1Making the Best of Second Best>1


OF WHAT use is a University education to a young man un-
less he comes under the influence of instructors who can
astonish him? He needs to be aroused to awareness, not
merely of knowledge, but of modes of thinking whose exist-
ence he has never suspected. As I sit to write about the
pleasure of reading plays, I recall two instances from my
days at a Canadian university when I was greatly astonished.
   The first of these experiences was provided by a pro-
fessor of, I believe, chemistry who said to me: "I have read
everything in English drama worth reading." He was a
Dane who read easily in several languages, and he left me
gaping. I had read a good deal of English drama at that
time myself--enough to know that it would be many years
before I could make any considerable dint in it, without
troubling other literatures. But I understand now what he
meant. He had read most of Shakespeare and a play each of
a few other Jacobean dramatists; he had read the best of the
Restoration playwrights; he had read Goldsmith and Sheri-
dan; he knew the early Shaw. He had, in fact, read most of
the English plays which are endurable to a man who, in
his heart, dislikes the theater. And that was "all that was
worth reading"--for him.
   The other professor who astonished me, and continued to
astonish me for a whole university year, was a specialist in
                         155
156

Shakespeare. He contrived to assure us that Shakespeare's
bounty was as boundless as the sea, while at the same time
making it clear that Shakespeare had not many secrets from
him. He pumped us full of A. C. Bradley, but his real
critical love was Georg Gottfried Gervinus. After some
struggles I found myself resistant to the genius of Gervinus;
I simply could not get on with him at all, so I began to in-
trude into my essays quotations from Harley Granville-
Barker. I received a warning; Granville-Barker was super-
ficially enlightening, but upon the whole the opinions of
theater people about Shakespeare were to be regarded with
suspicion, and if I persisted in the path of Shakespeare
scholarship, I would undoubtedly one day discover that the
Bard was most fully to be appreciated in the study.
   I was politely rebellious. I cared nothing for the study,
and wanted the Bard in the theater. My mentor was patient
but not understanding; he introduced me to his own great
enthusiasm, which was the Closet Drama.
   Oh, the Closet Dramal Dreariest of literature, most sec-
ond hand and fusty of experience! Oh, theater without
theater, without action, without emotion except on the
most falsely aspiring and gaseous level of the human spirit,
without a touch of anything unexpected, dished up in five-
act eternities of ennuil Better anything at all in the live
theater--better the grossest melodrama, in which the one-
eyed Chinaman appears through the trap door and cuts the
throat of the butler; better the smuttiest burlesque in which
the comedian, seeing afar a beautiful girl, spits into the
front of his baggy pants to cool his lust--than the Closet
Dramal
   But, as you see, I was astonished at the university. I was
astonished to find that there were educated, admirable
                                                    157

people who did not really like the theater; they liked an
intellectual distillation from the theater, called the drama.
I believe that I was born with a passion for the theater, but
in my time I have been a dissembler; in order to get the
coveted degrees or (real baseness, this) to gain favor with
people whom I temporarily believed knew better about
such things than myself, I have pretended to love the drama
only. But now that time has sowed a grizzle on my case, and
I have a black gown, and a red gown, and a rainbow variety
of hoods, I need pretend no longer. The drama and the
theater are indissoluble, and drama removed from the
theater is to me as are those tobaccos and coffee substitutes
which are guaranteed to contain no harsh irritants, no tarry
residues, no drugs--wholesome, doubtless, but not the real
thing.
   This is not intended as aggressive lowbrowism. I shall
not go on to assert that I would rather see <1Ladies' Night in>1
<1the Turkish Bath>1 in the theater than read <1On Baile's Strand>1
at home. I greedily choose to do both. But I cannot be
blinded to the fact that <1Ladies' Night>1 would be intolerable
reading, and that <1On Baile's Strand>1 in the theater (per-
formed, as it usually is, by university groups and other
solemn but not theatrically serious people) is a weariness.
There is a way of having most of the best of both worlds.
   That way is, as you will have guessed, by reading plays. I
have read plays avidly since boyhood, and have had count-
less hours of pleasure from it. Not the full pleasure of the
theater at its best, certainly, or a pleasure easily comparable
with reading books which are intended only to be read, but
a different sort of pleasure which I think is there for any-
body who wants it. It has never occurred to me, when pick-
ing up a play, to wonder whether it is worth reading, for that
158

is quite the wrong approach; I read it simply because, if the
opportunity presented itself, and I had unlimited time and
money, I should go to see it performed. I am curious to know
why it was produced in the first place, what pleasures and
surprises it affords, what it is about. If it is old, I want to
know what amused its first audiences; if it is new, I want to
experience it without having to wait for a visit to New York,
or London, or the rare chance of a touring company, or a
glimmer of its quality peeping through the murk of an
amateur production. I never think of it as a book, but as a
play which I must perform, however inadequately, for my-
self. My production is a second best, but it is far, far better
than nothing. And nothing, in the case of an old or obscure
play, is the inescapable alternative. I am grateful to my old
friend who admired the Closet Drama because he drove
me to investigate the pleasures of play-reading more care-
fully, on my own account.
   Let us agree, then, that reading plays can be a great
pleasure, if we do not concentrate solemnly on the "worth-
while," the "significant," and plump always for "drama" as
opposed to "theater."

   <2Drama vs.  Theater>2

VERY ROUGHLY, the drama may be called that part of theat-
rical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual dis-
cussion; what is left is theater. Drama is immensely durable;
after a thousand critical disputes, it is still there, undi-
minished, ready for the next wranglers. Theater is magical
and evanescent; examine it closely and it turns into tricks of
lighting, or the grace of a particular gesture, or the tone of a
voice--and these are not its substance, but the rubbish
                                                    159

which is left when magic has departed. Theater is the re-
sponse, the echo, which drama awakens within us when we
see It on the stage. I protest against the use of the word
"theater" as a synonym for what is disingenuous or un-
worthy of intellectual consideration; when people say that
<1Cyrano de Bergerac>1 is "good theater," meaning to patronize
it, I am sorry for them; they have lost their feeling for
magic, or perhaps they never had any. There are rewarding
realms of feeling which do not lie within the confines of
what is intellectually sturdy, and to be unable to experience
them is to be the poorer. Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello,
Beckett, and lonesco need no help or recommendation; but
there are other playwrights and groups of plays which need
a friend to speak up for them.
   When Bernard Shaw was fighting his great fight on behalf
of the plays of Ibsen (and also the kind of plays which he
liked, could write, and felt disposed to write) , he asserted
that he was fighting for drama; it was not until later that
we appreciated the great Norwegian's mastery of theater.
It was not until very much later that anybody noticed the
splendid flashes of theater in the plays of Shaw. He roared
against the kind of plays which were presented by Sir
Henry Irving, which were all theater, with virtually nothing
in them of drama in the sense that we have been using the
word here. Irving played Shakespeare just as he played The
<1Bells, The Corsican Brothers,>1 and The <1Lyons Mail;>1 that is
to say, he used every play in which he appeared for the exhi-
bition of his own extraordinary theatrical personality. The
proof of his greatness is the delight he gave, during his long
career, to hundreds of thousands of playgoers, not all of
whom can have been deluded and tasteless fools. Indeed,
if you are curious to know what it was that Irving brought to
160

the theater, it is finely conveyed in the obituary essay Max
Beerbohm (by no means a naive critic) wrote about him,
called <1The Knight from Nowhere.>1 Shaw demanded drama,
and perhaps thought he wanted nothing else: Irving was all
theater and considered talk of drama mere literary fal-lals.
If people wanted thought, he would provide them with a
splendid illusion of thought; that was his art.
   There is much to be said for Irving's attitude toward the
theater, though not if we regard it as being primarily an
extension of literature. To him the book of the play was a
scaffold upon which he would hang a complex and delicate
illusion. If the scaffold were rough, what of it? Such is the
nature of scaffolds. Sometimes, in the modern theater, we
long for something of Irving's quality; actors who can fill
out a play, let alone create a splendid personal fantasia
upon it, are not found every day. Indeed, the theater of our
time discourages them. The magician, where he is to be
found, is called the director.
   Great plays mingle drama with theater most subtly; if, in
lesser plays, one or other element must go, it had better be
drama, which is the "literary" sister of the two.

   <2Plays As Literature>2

ARE PLAYS to be considered "literature," in the sense in
which poetry, novels, and <1belles lettres>1 are "literature"? In
answering, we must give proper weight to the fact that most
good playwrights have been eager to have it so; Shakespeare,
because he had sold the scripts of his plays outright,
is the only playwright of the first eminence who appears not
to have cared whether his plays were published. Somehow
the idea seems to have taken hold of the public that the
                                                    161

publication of plays for readers was little known until
Bernard Shaw made it his practice. Every library possesses
shelves of books which give the lie to this preposterous
notion. It is possible to assemble a large private library of
plays alone, all published before 1850. I make no pre-
tense to owning an impressive collection, but I have quite an
assembly of folios, quartos, octavos, and duodecimos, all
attesting to the desire of playwrights to give their work the
dignity of print, and, one must assume, the desire of a con-
siderable number of people to read what they have written.
   Some playwrights were eager to be regarded as poets.
They wrote their tragedies in blank verse, and they en-
couraged the notion that a play is in reality a substantial
poem, capable of being acted. This pretense has never had
very happy results, and it is set at naught by the eighteenth
and early nineteenth-century custom of publishing plays in
the form in which they were acted in the theaters--usually
Covent Garden and Drury Lane, as these were the "patent"
theaters, under royal protection. Readers appear to have
wanted the text of what they could see on the stage, and such
texts are the real Closet Drama--a substitute for, or a re-
minder of, a stage performance. The Closet Drama so much
admired by my fastidious mentor was a hermaphrodite,
neither play nor poem, composed by men with no theatrical
flair for readers with no theatrical taste; such interest as it
possessed was pathological.

   <2The Next Best Thing>2

IN DISCUSSING the reading of plays, it may be well to insist
once again on the distinction between drama and theater.
The lover of drama needs no help from me; he has been am-
162

ply provided for by scholarly writers who excel in finely
balanced theory and the uttermost nicety of judgment,
quite divorced from the rough-and-tumble of actual per-
formance. It is the reader who wants some approximation
of theatrical excitement who needs a helping hand, and
words of encouragement. He needs to be assured that he is
not wasting his time reading plays which make small appeal
to the austere lovers of drama, and drama only. Often it is
the nearest thing to the true pleasure of theater-going that
is available to him. We do not all live conveniently near to
the few centers where plays are offered, and even if we do,
a lifetime may pass without a single production of a play
which could give us great delight. You live in New York?
You can get to Broadway without too much inconvenience?
You have enough money to be able to go to the theater every
week if you choose? Lucky youl But how many plays by
Congreve have you had a chance to see during the past ten
years? How many of Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Otway? You don't
care about them? How do you know? They moved men and
women to laughter and tears in their own day; how do you
know that they might not do the same for you? Let us not
equate the unknown with the not-worth-knowing.
   If, as is very possible, you live at a great distance from a
theater capital, your need is even greater. You are in no
position to scorn a second best, which is certainly better than
nothing at all, and can be very good in its own way.
   You can train yourself to read plays so that they will give
you keen enjoyment. The directions are few. First, you
must give the play a fair chance; it is not a novel, and it
should not be read in scraps; try to complete it in an evening.
Second, always read it in a theatrical framework; it was
written for the stage, and you must, to the best of your
                                                    163

ability, visualize it as a stage production. This takes some
doing, for you may not have a strong theatrical imagi-
nation. When a play is well performed in the theater, a
crowd of experts have all worked to give you pleasure; you
will not at first trial provide in your mind a director, a
designer, and a cast of talented actors. Do not be disap-
pointed if your early attempts seem a little heavy. If you
persist, the art will come, in a sufficient measure, for it is a
law of the imagination that the more you want, the more it
will provide. Persist, and the reading of plays can become a
splendid private indulgence.
   Let me warn you, as a rule, against play-reading groups.
The sheer physical technique required to make a reading
aloud a pleasure is not to be found among people who try it
only occasionally, and who have not made a study of the
text. Play readings are, as a general thing, prolonged
butcheries. Read plays to yourself, bringing all the imagi-
nation, feeling, and wit that you possess to bear upon the
feat. Be a Gielgud in your own bosom, and do not encourage
your friend, the lawyer, to read the role of Hamlet aloud in
his courtroom voice.
   Above all, read a great many plays, both for the pleasure
it will give you and for the mastery that can be gained only in
that way. The imaginative skill which you pick up in the
reading of a dozen trivial comedies will bear fruit when
you attempt a great one; much of the disappointment which
undergraduates feel when they first read great plays arises
slmply from the fact that they do not know how to go about
it; such texts demand the most expert work of the most
gifted actors and directors to give them life on the stage;
why expect them to leap into brilliance at the behest of an
unexercised imagination?
164

   Read much, and do not expect every play to be a perfect
experience when you read it, any more than you do when
you go to the theater. In this department of reading more
than in any other, catholicity and bulk are the secrets of
pleasure.

   <1Making a Start>1

WHERE to begin? If play reading is new to you, do not take
up some heavy collection of lesser Elizabethans, or a com-
pilation of the noble Greeks, for you will almost certainly lay
it down within an hour. In time your taste may turn to these
things, but not yet. If you are an experienced reader of
novels, and if the suggestion made in the previous chapter
about the pleasure of escaping into the not too distant past
made some appeal to you, it may be applied to this kind of
reading, also. What you will find in the plays of the
nineteenth century is rarely drama, in the sense in which
serious scholars use that word. But neither, I submit, is it
quite such trash as some hasty judges have said. It is what
amused vast numbers of people who were no less intelligent
than ourselves, and whose notions of sophistication, though
different from ours, were no less exacting. For them the
theater provided all of what is now divided among the stage,
the screen, television, and even wrestling; it was popular
entertainment and not, as it is now, somewhat specialized in
its appeal.
   Where will you find it? Collections of the plays which
held the stage in nineteenth-century England are many,
and most large libraries have some of them. Within every-
body's reach is an admirable collection of ten, made by
George Rowell, called <1Nineteenth Century Plays>1 and pub-
                                                    165

lished in The World's Classics. The American theater of
that period is splendidly served by the twenty volumes of
<1America's Lost Plays,>1 under the general editorship of Bar-
rett H. Clark. In a volume called <1S.R.O.,>1 compiled by
Bennett Cerf, may be found <1Uncle Tom's Cabin,>1 The <1Old>1
<1Homestead,>1 and The <1Two Orphans.>1 But it is out of the
question to give even a short list here; the collections are
too numerous; if you want them, librarians and second-hand
booksellers will help you find them. I have a considerable
number of such compilations, and paid no extravagant prices
for them, though I must warn you that if the infection
strikes deeply inward, you will spend a great deal of time in
search of curiosities. As a suggestion, some remarkable old
stand-bys of the theater are to be found, fossil-like, im-
bedded in the full catalogues of the big play publishers, like
Samuel French.
   Because the life of a good play is long, and because you do
not want to trouble about the neatness of "period" which
pleases the scholar, you are certain to run across some plays
which were popular in the nineteenth century and were, in
fact, written in the eighteenth. A farce like Garrick's <1Miss>1
<1in Her Teens,>1 though written in 1747, was a favorite for a
century because it gave excellent opportunities to an in-
genue. The same is true of Townley's <1High Life below>1
<1Stairs>1 (1752), which had life and point for as long as people
kept footmen, and footmen tended to drink their master's
wine. <1Venice Preserv'd>1 (1681) appears in several nine-
teenth-century compilations because it held the stage in a
much-hacked version, and so does Charles Macklin's <1The>1
<1Man of the World>1 (1781) because the leading role of Sir
Pertinax Macsycophant was a favorite with many lead-
ing actors. (It is of interest that Macklin, who lived to be a
166

hundred, wrote this play and starred in it himself when he
was eighty-four; he detested Scotsmen, and in this part, and
also in Sir Archy McSarcasm in his other great success <1Love>1
<1a\ la Mode,>1 he gave them rough treatment.)  Edward
Moore's <1The Gamester>1 (1753) had two excellent lead-
ing parts in it, and was a recurrent favorite, as was also <1The>1
<1Stranger,>1 translated by Benjamin Thompson from the
German of Kotzebue, "the German Shakespeare" (1761-
1819) ; the part of the morose Stranger (called Count Wald-
bourg) was a gift to a leading actor who was strong in the
"heavy" line, and Sarah Bernhardt (1845-1923) distin-
guished herself in Baron d'Ange's translation, in the role of
Mrs. Clarkson (which part was called Mrs. Haller in the
English version). The concluding scene may well be the
first of many in which children reconcile estranged parents.
These facts are mentioned to show that such plays, quite un-
known now, nevertheless had a long life, the reason for
which can be discovered by a sympathetic reading.
   Some of them would play well today, not as curiosities, but
as valid entertainment. Not perhaps Pocock's <1The Miller>1
<1and His Men,>1 or M. G. Lewis's <1The Castle Spectre,>1 but
such a sturdy farce, for instance, as James Kenney's <1Raising>1
<1the Wind,>1 written in 1803 and played by Irving as late as
1879. It is still fresh because the neatness and point of its
dialogue derive from the eighteenth rather than the nine-
teenth century, and are thus paradoxically nearer to modern
taste than the rhetoric of the later age.
   At first the lack of what we now consider psychological
truth in these plays may offend you. Their conclusions are of
the arbitrary sort mocked by that good critic C. E. Montague
(1867-1928) when he wrote of "the happy ending dear to
the lover of the 'wholesome' play:  that known causes
                                                    167

should not have their known effects; above all, that in last
acts any leopards which gain the playgoer's regard should
be left rigged out in snowy, curly lamb's wool, and nice
Ethiopians go off at the end as blondes with straight, tow-
coloured hair."  But Montague wanted drama--serious,
meaty stuff--and the Victorians relished theater. Theater
is not realistic in a vulgar, wide-awake fashion: it is realistic
as dreams are realistic; it deals in hidden dreads, and it
satisfies hidden, primal wishes. And if that is not psycho-
logical truth, what is?

   <2Telling Situations>2

ANY PLAY which has survived in print, we may be sure, had
a considerable popularity. There were literally hundreds of
pieces which never emerged from manuscript. The panic
necessity for new material which is the bugbear of tele-
vision would not have astonished the resident playwright of
a popular melodrama theater in the nineteenth century.
These men were retained to provide new plays at need and
in a hurry. They translated, they stole from the successes of
other theaters, they pillaged popular novelists (for there
was no law to prevent it), and occasionally, driven to it by
sheer desperation, they wrote something original.
   One of the best of their kind was Douglas Jerrold, whom
we have already met as the creator of Mrs. Caudle. At
twenty-two, in 1825, he was house dramatist at the Royal
Cobourg Theatre, later to be known as the Old Vic. It was
Jerrold who, testifying before a Royal Commission, defined
melodrama as "a play having a great many telling situations
with a physical rather than a mental appeal." He was him-
self a master of situation, and he appears at his best in
168

<1Black Ey'd Susan>1 (1829) ; it was written for a favorite
player of the day, Thomas Potter Cooke, who had been
stage manager at the Cobourg and also, like Jerrold, had
spent his boyhood in the navy. Because Jerrold had been ill-
used by the Cobourg manager, Davidge, this mighty success
was lost to that theater and appeared at its rival, the Surrey,
where it played for the then phenomenal run of four hun-
dred consecutive performances.
   <1Black Ey'd Susan>1 abounds in telling situations, but none
excelled the parting of William, the sailor hero, and Susan,
his devoted wife, when William is condemned to death for
striking his superior officer--in defense of Susan's honor, it
need hardly be said. Here is the speech:
<1  William:>1 Susan--you know the old aspen that grows near
  to the church porch;--you and I, when children, almost
  before we could speak plainly, have sat and watched, and
  wondered at its shaking leaves.--I grew up, and that tree
  seemed to me a friend that loved me. Beneath its bows our
  little arms were locked together--beneath its boughs, I
  took the last kiss of your white lip when hard fortune
  made me turn sailor. I cut from the tree this little branch
   <1(produces it)>1 ; many a summer's day aboard, I've lain in
  the top and looked at these few leaves, until I saw green
  meadows in a salt sea, and heard the bleating of the sheep.
  When I am dead, Susan, let me be laid under that tree--
  let me--
A Scottish critic commended Cooke for "nothing overdone;
no bad bye-play . . . a power of suggesting emotional stress
without the suspicion of a whine." We may presume that it
was thus he played the scene which culminates in the speech
above. There is nothing much in the speech itself to move
an audience; it was the situation, combined with the acting,
                                                    169

which did the trick, and made this scene a byword for pathos.
   So much so, indeed, that it had a curious corrollary in
1872, when the young Henry Irving was consolidating his
London triumph in <1The Bells,>1 under the management of an
American impresario, Colonel Hezekiah Linthicum Bate-
man. (Would any playwright dare to put an American on
the stage with such a name?) The play which was being
molded to fit the rising tragedian was <1Charles the First>1 by
William Gorman Wills. The playwright wanted to finish
his piece with Charles's denunciation of the traitor Moray
after the battle of Naseby; Bateman and Irving wanted one
more "telling situation." But what? One night, at supper
with Irving and Wills, the Colonel cried: "I've got it! The
parting of William and Susanl" Irving, who had played
often in the old melodrama, knew at once what he was talk-
ing about. "Exactly!" said he, and explained to Wills what
was wanted.
   The result was a final scene in Wills's play in which the
doomed King, on the morning of his execution, bids fare-
well to his children, concealing from them the purpose of his
departure, and at last takes leave of his Queen in these
words:

      Oh, my loved solace on my thorny road,
      Sweet clue in all my labyrinth of sorrow,
      What shall I leave to thee?
      To thee I do consign my memory!
      Oh, banish not my name from off thy lips
      Because it pains awhile in naming it.
      Harsh grief doth pass in time into far music;
      Red-eyed Regret that waiteth on thy steps
      Will daily grow a gentle, dear companion,
      And hold sweet converse with thee of thy dead.
170
      I fear me I may sometime fade from thee,
                       <1(Queen presses to him)>1
      That when the heart expelleth grey-stoled grief
      I live no longer in thy memory:
      Oh! keep my place in it forever green.
      All hung with the <1imortelles>1 of thy love;
      That sweet abiding in thine inner thought
      I long for more than sculptured monument
      Or proudest record 'mong the tombs of Kings.
    <1(Soldiers enter, drawing up on either side of>1
     <1door. Bell tolls. Whilst the Queen seems to>1
  <1stiffen in grief, Charles kneels, kisses her, and>1
          <1goes to door.)>1
      KING <1(mournfully)>1 Remember!

Irving was greatly praised for the beauty he brought to this
culminating speech of a deeply pathetic scene; no critic
appears to have thought of the parting of William and
Susan, though if Shaw had been present, he might have
done so. It may be pointed out that neither in <1Black Ey'd>1
<1Susan>1 nor in <1Charles I>1 can this "telling situation" be dis-
missed as having merely a "physical" appeal, if by that word
"superficial" or "factitious" is implied. The parting from
the woman he loves of a man who is going to his death
must touch all but the stoniest hearts, if it is presented
with artistic sincerity.
  It was the crude handling of such situations, and the
brusque way in which all the most popular were crowded
into a single play which gave melodrama its bad name.
There are plenty of people living now, who are by no means
Methuselahs, who have seen some of these old melodramas
and romantic dramas acted by players who retained the best
                                                    171

sort of nineteenth-century sincerity and still, and who will
attest that they were powerful and moving. They called to
qualities in the human spirit--chivalry and renunciation, to
name two--which are out of favor at present but which we
would be wrong to think of as banished forever. lndeed, if
we give ourselves up to some of these nineteenth-century
plays as we read them, we may be astonished and pleased at
the unsuspected qualities they can awaken in us. To ex-
perience deep feeling only in the fashionable modes of our
time is to limit ourselves foolishly and to ensure that as the
years pass, we shall ourselves become back numbers--for
nothing changes so quickly as mere fashion.

             <2An Evening at Covent Garden>2

WHAT WAS the theater like for which these plays were
written? It was generous to a degree which astonishes us
now. Consider, as a typical evening, the entertainment of-
fered at Covent Garden on Thursday, November 8, 1832.
The doors opened at six, and the performance began at half-
past with an orchestral overture. The thrifty people who
had paid a shilling for the gallery or two shillings for the pit
(which was where the orchestra seats are in a modern
house) would be in their places in good time, and so would
many of those who had paid four shillings to sit in a box;
boxes in those days formed a series of semicircles right
around the theater, and were the best seats because they
afforded some degree of privacy and the comfort of a mova-
ble chair. The boxes on the evening we have chosen
would be filled early, because the first play is <1The Hunch->1
<1back>1 by Sheridan Knowles, and the author himself plays the
172

leading role of Master Walter; the leading lady is Miss
Ellen Tree, later Mrs. Charles Kean and highly regarded in
America.
  <1The Hunchback>1 became a great favorite of the nine-
teenth-century repertoire, but in 1832 it was still in its first
year of fame. Knowles was not a particularly good actor; he
never succeeded in ridding himself of his Irish accent, and
the audiences of that day were as critical of speech as audl--
ences in our time are not. He was a successful playwright be-
cause he understood telling situations, and could wrap them
up in a species of Jacobethan blank verse which actors liked
and audiences accepted much as they now accept the verse of
some of our own poetical playwrights--with uncomplaining
meekness, and occasional bursts of gratitude when the fog
lifts.
  Knowles also had a sense of the power of myths which
marks him as an unusual man. The <1Hunchback>1 is the story
of the beautiful and accomplished Julia, who has been
brought up by the deformed agent of the Earl of Rochdale;
this strange, testy, but wise and good man brings to her
Sir Thomas Clifford, a young nobleman with an elaborate
sense of honor; they love, and are betrothed; but love and
the prospect of being a lady turns Julia's head, and when she
learns that Clifford has lost all his fortune and estate, she
behaves foolishly.
  The cat-and-mouse complications of the plot do not lend
themselves to compression; let it be said, then, that Julia
agrees in pique to marry a titled oaf, and Clifford suffers
with the uttermost nobility. But at last the plot is resolved,
for it proves that Master Walter, the hunchback, is the
rightful Earl of Rochdale, and also Julia's father; he had
173

concealed this latter fact in order to spare her the ignominy
of having to acknowledge a cripple; he is able to make her
rich and marry her to Clifford, and has the coolness to de-
scribe the agony of the young people, which he has himself
contrived, in the main, as "wholesome, though severe"I
This is not the nonsense that so bald a narration suggests.
The theme of the proud girl who rejects the worthy but
penniless suitor is a good one, and another nineteenth-
century favorite, The <1Lady of Lyons>1 by Bulwer Lytton, ex-
ploits it most successfully. The suffering of such a girl is
pleasing to an audience, perhaps because there is a special
satisfaction in seeing a beautiful woman undergo humili-
ation. One need not be a student of Jung to recognize in the
deformed Master Walter one of those ambiguous monsters
from fairytale--wise, seemingly unkind, unpredictable, ex-
tremely powerful--who tries the soul of hero and heroine
so that in the end his bounty may fall upon them more
sweetly. The late George Arliss earned his greatest fame in
a series of roles all based on this archetypal figure. The three
leading parts in <1The Hunchback>1 are full of meat for robust
players; they are the stuff of myth and fairytale, and in the
theater these elements never die.
A criticism of Knowles's plays which appeared in The
A <1thenaeum>1 in 1847 is of interest. "The <1heart>1 which Mr.
Knowles puts into his work lays hold of the hearts of his
public; and this is his secret. . . . In fine, counting Burns at
the head of the Uneducated Poets (an epithet as we have
often said, to which the freest meaning must be allowed) we
think that Mr. Sheridan Knowles will keep his place in the
annals of the British Theatre as the King of Uneducated
Dramatists." This estimate, so well meant and so strangely
174

expressed, must have pleased Knowles and his publishers,
for they put it at the beginning of his <1Dramatic Works>1
(1856).
  <1The Hunchback,>1 we may assume, kept the audience busy
until close to nine o'clock, at which halfway period in the
evening a great many people would enter the theater, having
paid half-price. They would be, in all likelihood, young
clerks who had been kept at work until eight or so. Only
their masters, who dined at half-past four, or five, could
come to the early part of the evening. What remained for
them to see? Nothing less than a huge masque, written by
Knowles and stage-managed by Farley, who specialized in
such spectacles, to do honor to Sir Walter Scott, whose death
on September 21 was one of the great events of the year.
This pageantlike affair "in Honour of the Genius of the
Minstrel of the North" was called <1The Vision of the Bard,>1
and anybody who has had any experience of such theatrical
tributes to genius will have small difficulty In imagining
the course it took. Opening with a view of Sir Walter's
burial place in Dryburgh Abbey, the Bard himself appears
(Knowles, naturally) accompanied by actresses represent-
ing Fancy, the Genius of Scotland, the Genius of England,
and the Genius of Ireland, as well as the Spirit of the
Mountains (who may perhaps have done double duty as
the Genius of Wales and the Isle of Man, not otherwise
represented) and Immortality.
  The Bard then has a vision, in which he beholds elaborate
tableaux from the principal works of Sir Walter--nine of
them, all told--and the masque concludes with "A Jubilee,
supposed to be given at Abbotsford in commemoration of
Scotia's Minstrel, at which the Various Characters in his
Dramatic Works are assembled, in Honour of his Mem-
                                                  175

oryl" The masque appears to have been mounted with
picturesque splendor, and included about fifty principal
characters, as well as supernumeraries. Doubtless it made
use of the elaborate scenic effects for which Farley was cele-
brated; let no one suppose that a well-equipped theater of
that time was incapable of elaboration, and very probably of
beauty, in this department.
  Nor was the evening finished when <1The Vision of the>1
<1Bard>1 was concluded. There followed "a new military spec-
tacle, in two acts, founded on an incident in the early life of
John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, called <1His First>1
<1Campaign!">1 and it is worthy of note that the overture and
incidental music were the work of Adolphe Adam, remem-
bered as the composer of the still vital <1Giselle.>1 The piece
contained a ball, and two principal dancers, male and fe-
male, are listed among the cast. We can guess that it was
weighted heavily on the side of spectacle, for the pageant
master Farley is named as director. As the cast is pretty
evenly divided among English, French, and Dutch, we may
assume that there was some hearty national fun; the role of
"Mrs. Branagan, an Irish Sutler," is played by Mr. Mitchell,
and is contrasted with "Gertrude, a Flemish Sutler," played
by Miss H. Cawse. The role of "Charley Rowley, an English
Drummer," is played by Miss Poole, who, we know from
other playbills, specialized in these male roles, which were
called "breeches parts."
  So there it was--a five-act romantic play, an elaborate
masque, and a spectacle with music and dancing, all given
in one evening for a shilling, from half past six to mid-
night, if you were frugal, hardy, and gluttonous for enter-
tainment. Nor is this ample provision in any way extraor-
dinary; it was the custom of the time. The following year,
176

at the Royal Victoria, we find that on December 18 Knowles
played <1Macbeth,>1 which was followed by an Interlude called
<1A Day in Paris,>1 in which a Mrs. Selby played five dif-
ferent parts, including a "breeches" one. The evening con-
cluded with the popular romantic drama <1The Miller and>1
<1His Men,>1 which culminates in a spectacular explosion. It is
observable that Knowles, the leading man of the theater,
played in the tragedy only, but such a "utility" actor as
Mr. Selby was expected to play Ross in <1Macbeth,>1 a sup-
porting part to his wife in the interlude, and the important
role of Grindoff, the miller, in the melodrama--a heavy
evening's work. A Miss Forster played the Gentlewoman in
the tragedy, a servant in the interlude, and the thoroughly
wretched part of Lauretta in the melodrama. Modern actors
do not know how easily they get their money.
  The Victorian theater was a place where dreams come
true, as they now do in movies of the sort which critics
despise. It was often ridiculous, shallow, and slapdash, but
we miss a special sort of pleasure if we permit ourselves to
despise it. Its audiences were ready to applaud wholesale
"poetic justice" and ample heroics because that is what they
wanted life to be like; the theater gave them the Ideal, and
they could be certain that life would rub their noses in the
Real. Behind these superficially ludicrous plots rises a world
of fairytale and myth from which people have long drawn
strength. The Victorian theater held the mirror up to na-
ture, by reflecting not external realities, but rather those
inner desires which such realism snubs and thwarts. The
present fashion is to assume that the more painful a thing
is, the more true it must be. Let me repeat, there is primal
truth in dreams, though dreams need a skillful interpreter.
                                                   177


  <2Truth in Melodrama>2

A THEATER which offered so much was chronically in need of
new work of all kinds, and playwrights were many. Most of
them were capable hacks, who could cobble up a play to
suit any circumstances and any group of actors. They did not
rank highly as men of letters; it was well past the middle of
the century before their names were put on the playbills.
They had to deal with rough-and-tumble production, very
often, and had no time for subtleties. A famous story is told
of Ducrow, great horseman and contriver of the circus spec-
tacles at Astley's Theatre, which specialized in them.
Addressing a playwright with too lofty notions of his calling,
he said: "Cut the cackle and come to the 'osses. I'Il show you
how to cut it. You say 'Yield thee, Englishman!' Then you
(indicating another actor) answer 'Never!' Then you say
'Obstinate Englishman, you die.' Then you both fights.
There, that settles the matter; the audience will understand
you a deal better, and the poor 'osses won't catch cold while
you're jawing." Much Victorian melodrama was arranged
on those lines, and it is whispered that they are not entirely
unknown in the modern theater.
  We must face the fact, also, that what seems stagey to us
was acceptably lifelike to our great-grandfathers. No-
body would think at once of Thomas Hardy if asked to
name a contriver of crude melodrama, but what is more
startling, considered in cold blood, than the plot of his much
praised <1Tess of the d'Urbervilles?>1 A simple, beautiful coun-
try girl is seduced by a flashy villain, complete with silky
black mustache, whose first words to her are: "Well, my
Beauty, what can I do for you?" and who later gloats "Ha-
178

ha-ha! . . . What a crumby girl!" She has a child, which she
christens Sorrow before it dies. She falls in love with a
clergyman's son, and after great inner debate, she writes a
letter in which she tells him of her earlier affair--but by a
trick of fate he does not get the letter. Therefore she has to
tell him on her wedding night, and he--with a callousness
which makes us detest him--throws her over. When, after
she has borne degradation and hardship, her seducer ap-
pears again and tempts her back to him, the husband
returns, and she, betrayed a second time, kills the seducer,
and is hanged. The power of this book cannot be judged
from a pre/cis of its plot.
  Time, however, teaches us a thing or two. One of its
lessons is that the plots of melodrama are shopworn for the
excellent reason that they contain deep truths; they have
been rubbed thin by trashy writers who have understood
them superficially and in terms of "telling situations," but
for the masters they are still the very fabric of life itself.
Anybody who has lived for forty years in the world and kept
his eyes open knows that girls are very often seduced, not
because they are stupid, but because they are trusting, and
that the men who seduce them are often, like Alec d'Urber-
ville, less wicked than emotionally unstable. Prigs like
Angel Clare are by no means uncommon, though nowadays
they have a different line of fashionable scruple. And a train
of unhappy events, once set in motion, is virtually impossible
to check. Coincidences like Tess's lost letter can be paral-
leled in life by coincidences quite as extraordinary, and
others which no dramatist would dare to use. Not all
people, but certainly some people, live curiously fated
lives, in which they seem doomed to carry out actions which
bear no relationship to ordinary probability, and are dic-
                                                  179

tated by necessities which have nothing to do with common
sense. Melodrama stirs us, and stirred our forefathers, be-
cause we sense its basic truth. Twaddle as we may about free
will, some of us are bound to live in a context of farce, some
in comedy, some in proletarian realism, some in melo-
drama, and a few--unhappy wretches--in tragedy.
  Freud thought that the power of <1Oedipus Rex>1 lay in the
universal, unacknowledged fantasy which it showed to us in
dramatic form. Is not this true, in varying degrees, of all
plays? And which of us has not a buried dream of himself as
the hero, the heroine--perhaps even the villain--in
melodrama?

  <2Drawing-room Theater>2

TO RETURN to the Victorian theater, it is possible to achieve
a convenient bird's-eye view of its range by looking at the
plays which were performed by amateurs. Do not suppose
that amateur theater was a trifling matter until the Little
Theatre movement overcame it in this century. I have at
hand a book which will allow us to skip quickly through the
range of Victorian amateur drama; it is called <1Drawing->1
<1Room Plays and Parlour Pantomimes,>1 and though it is rare,
it is not valuable. Nevertheless, I would not part with my
copy for any money, because it is one of those secret doors
through which it is possible to slip, quickly and unobserved,
into a delightful aspect of the past. It was published in 1870
and its editor and compiler was Clement Scott, the drama
critic. His purpose, he explains in the preface, is to satisfy a
need which is felt everywhere for short plays which can be
quickly rehearsed and performed at house partles, espe-
cially at Christmas. As we read, we recall those chapters so
180

common in Victorian novels, in which a house party pre-
sents a play and invites the neighbors to see it.
  The plays, designed for what the Victorians facetiously
called Theatre Royal, Back Drawing-Room were written
for Scott's collection by some of the ablest playwrights of his
day. E. L. Blanchard, editor of <1Punch>1 and a tireless con-
cocter of pantomimes, was one of them, and W. S. Gilbert
was another; Palgrave Simpson, Tom Hood, J. C. Brough--
their names are familiar to students of Victorian drama, and
this book gives us an excellent capsule study of what their
public liked. Be in no doubt that in another century a col-
lection of modern plays will read quite as strangely.
   Blanchard leads off with an "Induction" which, he ex-
-plains, may be found useful "to take the place of an oc-
casional Prologue at Private Theatricals, and can easily be
modified to suit the circumstances." The scene is the Fac-
tory of Fun in the World of Waggery, and the characters
have names like Joketta, Witticisma, Punarena, and Whim-
wag. Their fun is all of the punning variety. It has been as-
serted by solemn scholars that the unappeasable appetite
for puns which the Victorians evinced during the second
part of the nineteenth century was the dawn of a literary
theater, the pun being essentially a literary device. It may
be so. In Blanchard's prologue we also find many concealed
quotations from Shakespeare, another Victorian enthusi-
asm, from which we must conclude that they were better
acquainted with the Bard's works than could be assumed of
a modern audience.
  Not only puns and Shakespearean allusions, but extended
parodies were very dear to the Victorians. It is doubtful if
there is any modern play so widely and well known that a
parody of it would appeal to a chance audience, but in this
                                                        181

collection there is a parody of that Victorian favorite <1Ingo->1
<1mar, or the Noble Savage>1 by E. F. J. von Munch-Belling-
hausen, translated by Maria Lovell--a drama considered as
profound in its day as are the works of Eugene O'Neill or
Tennessee Williams now. It is remembered, if at all, by a
couplet:
   Two souls with but a single thought,
   Two hearts that beat as one.

lt is, very briefly, about a German barbarian living in an
early but vague period of history who is domesticated by a
Grecian maiden called Parthenia. We are prevented from
appreciating R. Reece's parody of it at its full value because
Time has so remorselessly caused <1Ingomar>1 to become the
best possible parody of itself. But we can raise a faint.
smile when we see that the noble Greeks bear such names as
Sillias and Squintus, and that Ingomar's barbarian com-
panions are called Tagragides and Bobtailos. A <1very>1 faint
smile.
   Parodying Shakespeare always amuses some people, even
when not well done. In this collection we read <1Katherine>1
<1and Petruchio, or the Shaming of the True,>1 with an odd
sensation of having heard it all before--and so we have, in
<1Kiss Me, Kate.>1 Age cannot wither Shakespeare, but it stales
his parodists with astonishing rapidity.
   Not all the plays are comic in intention. House-party
theatricals would want sentiment, and this collection of plays
provides it, hot and strong, in a domestic scene called The
<1Pet-Lamb>1 by Clement Scott himself. He had always a lean-
ing toward the tender, which sometimes degenerated
into self-indulgent sentimentality; Ibsen and all the "new
drama" of his time were repugnant to him; we get a whiff
182

of his quality in <1The Pet-Lamb.>1 A kindly farmer comes to
the assistance of a poor dressmaker and her sick child. This
child, Bertie, is desperately sick of a fever, but eloquent and
wise beyond his years, and with a hearty relish of his own
pathos. The modern dramatist may envy his Victorian
brother the ease with which he could meet the problem of
Antecedent Knowledge; it was only necessary for a character
to say "Surely you recall . . ." or "You will not yet have
learned . . ." and then to go off into twenty or thirty lines
of flat-footed exposition of the plot. Happy daysl How long
has it been since a dramatist dared to introduce that in-
fallable tear-jerker, a sick child, into his work? The organ-
ized charities of our day have claimed all the brave little
Berties for their own, and they have transferred their pa-
thetic appeals from the stage to the advertisement pages.
   More subtle than <1The Pet-Lamb>1 is <1Fireside Diplomacy,>1
in which a lady conquers--perhaps "smothers" would be a
better word--her restless husband by loving attention and
submission. When he is tempted to go out to a party with
some male friends (with a possible visit to Cremorne
Gardens, haunt of loose women, afterward) , she prepares
him a supper--one of those suppers which sent Sylvester
Sound prowling on the parapets, and small wonder. The
midnight snack she offers comprises a lobster rissole, a
roasted chicken, and a lemon pudding, to be consumed
before retiring to the connubial couch. It works, for as the
curtain falls, the husband, delighted with these pretty at-
tentions, is embracing his wife.
   I should greatly like to see <1Fireside Diplomacy>1 performed
on the same evening as <1The Girls of the Period,>1 from the
same collection; this latter is a saucy farce in which two
pretty girls dress the brother of one of them in female cloth-
DRAWING-ROOM THEATER                      183

ing, so that an elderly French Count woos him by mistake.
Apparently there was much concern in the sixties that the
glrls of the period were approaching life with unbecoming
levity. Certainly these girls play a naughty trick on their
uncle and guardian.  It is interesting, by the way, how
many girls in Victorian plays have uncles instead of fathers.
Presumably the tricking of a father on the stage would be
contrary to public morality, and an uncle was an acceptable
surrogate for the family tyrant. Dr. Freud came just in time.
   Perhaps the most characteristically Victorian piece in
Scott's collection is Tom Hood's <1Harlequin Little Red Rid->1
<1ing-Hood,>1 a parlor pantomime written to be performed by
children, and a quagmire of puns. Even the cast of charac-
ters contains such things as this:
   JACK, the woodcutter, who rescues Red Riding-Hood
          from the Wolf, quite by axey-dent.
   DAME MARGERY, mother of Littie Red Riding-Hood,
                          a crusty role, and very ill-bread.
The story of the fairytale is acted out with the uttermost ex-
action of facetiousness, and then, in a Transformation Scene
(which the directions explain is very simple to contrive, but
which sounds as though it might tax the full resources of the
Metropolitan Opera) , the characters are turned into Harle-
quin, Clown, Pantaloon, Columbine, and all those other
traditional figures through whom the Victorian Christmas
pantomime kept its connection with the Old Italian Com-
edy of the seventeenth century.
   A short example of the dialogue in this piece will be of
interest, for it conveys exactly the quality of a kind of enter-
tainment, the English pantomime, which is now on its last
legs, but which was then at its zenith:
184
   <1Interior of Grandmother's cottage. On the right hand,>1
<1   close to the wing, a bed with a dummy in it in a large>1
<1   night-cap. Wolf is heard knocking.>1
   GRANNY <1(spoken from the wings close to the bed)>1
              Who's there?
   WOLF <1(Imitating>1 R.R.H.) Your little grandchild, Granny
          dear.
   GRANNY: That child has got a shocking cold, that's
              clear.
   Some carelessness--she's got her feet wet through
   With running in the rain or heavy dew,
   Perhaps without her bonnet, and of course,
   The little donkey is a little hoarse.
   Her words she used not croakingly to utter.--
   What do you want?
   WOLF: I've brought your cake and butter,
   But can't come in, the door my strength defies.
   GRANNY:  Pull at the bobbin and the latch will
              rise.
                        <1Enter>1 WOLF
   GRANNY: How are you, little darling?
   WOLF: Darling! Pooh!
   You didn't bolt your door, so I'Il bolt you!
   GRANNY: O, mercy! murder! what is this I see?
   Some frightful spectre must the monster be!
   WOLF: Don't make a noise, for you're a hopeless hobble
           in;
   I'm not a ghost, but soon shall be a-gobble-in!
<1   (Wolf Rings himself on the bed; shrieks and growls are>1
<1   heard. The dummy is removed without the audience be->1
<1   ing able to see it, as WOLF is in front of it.)>1
   WOLF <1(coming down)>1 I've finished her ere she could
           angry be with me.
   I didn't give her time to disagree with me.
VICTORIAN SHAKESPEARE                       185

And so on. That children should ever have performed this
complicated piece seems extraordinary now, but beyond a
doubt they did so, and I for one wish that I might--like
Scrooge visiting the scene of Christmas Past--have seen it-
   It is likely that more than one of these plays was acted at a
time, if the country-house party took its amateur theatricals
seriously, for the amateurs were as lavish as the profession-
als. When Dickens entertained in this way, not only did he
and his friends perform The <1Frozen Deep,>1 written by the
host and his friend Wilkie Collins, but added to it <1Uncle>1
<1John,>1 a farce. There was a half-hour interval between the
two, during which the guests were given a supper and the
program concludes: "Carriages May Be Ordered At Half-
Past Eleven."

   <2Victorian Shakespeare>2

ANY ACCOUNT of Shakespearean production in the Victorian
age is outside the range of this chapter. It may be men-
tioned, however, that Charles Kean (1811--67) , the second
son of the great tragedian Edmund Kean (1787--1833), was
the first actor to attempt Shakespearean productions which
were designed and presented with regard for historical truth
in costume and setting. He approached this task with more
scholarship than taste, and with an utter lack of humor
which led him to overdo it. He caused some of his prompt-
books to be published, with copious notes to justify his ar-
chaeological display; they also reveal how drastically the
plays were hacked to make time for the scene changes, and
to throw the principal roles into undue prominence. Even
on the playbills--still, in his day, large single sheets, rather
than booklets in the modern style--he lectured and over-
186

bore his audience. The playbill for <1Macbeth>1 carried a ha-
rangue in which he justified the scenery and dressing of the
piece by reference to Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, Strabo,
Xiphilin, Snorre, Du Cange, and the Eyrbiggia Saga. He
was under the delusion that he was helping the ignorant
Shakespeare by giving his plays the highest historical au-
thenticity the scholarship of the day allowed. To his chagrin
the comedy theaters of the day parodied the pedantry of his
playbills.
   We owe something to Charles Kean and to his wife, Ellen
Tree, for the seriousness of their approach to Shakespeare,
but the debt is not so great as they themselves believed. In
our own time imagination has once again taken control of
Shakespearean presentation. But the imagination of our day
has been chastened by that long era of heavy, archaeological
production; by means of the Keans, we passed from the age
when every actor supplied his own costumes, production was
a hodge-podge, and acting could drop to the level of the
King and the Duke in <1Huckleberry Finn,>1 to a time when ar-
tists assist--and occasionally dominate--the scene.
   But Shakespeare cannot be neglected in any consideration
of what exists to be read about the theater. Those who want
a long view of what the best actors of the past did in the
plays they valued most will find it in the three volumes of
<1Shakespeare on the Stage>1 by the American critic William
Winter; they are out of fashion now, but they contain a vast
amount of that "fine, confused feeding" which theater en-
thusiasts love, and enough time has elapsed for us to find
Winter's pompous style and heavy moralizing entertaining
--in moderate doses. A modern approach to the same ma-
terial is in Arthur Colby Sprague's <1Shakespeare and the>1 Ac-
<1tors>1 and <1Shakespearean Players and Performances.>1 And there
                                                        187

this discussion must stop, for any fuller consideration of the
books about Shakespeare in his many phases will run on for
unprofitable pages, and will end with a reference to such
oddities as <1Shakespeare's knowledge of Chest Diseases,>1
which was a chairman's address to the American Medical
Association in 1950, and a reprint of which I cherish.

   <2Shakespeare Novels>2

IF A SHORT vagary may be permitted, I should like to sug-
gest that readers on the lookout for curiosities might search
for and taste some of the plays and novels which have been
written about Shakespeare or which include him among the
characters. The yearning to make Shakespeare, the man,
real seems to have bitten some writers as badly as the yearn-
ing to make him historically respectable afflicted Charles
Kean. There are a few world figures of overmastering mag-
netism whom concocters of fiction cannot leave alone; Christ
and Napoleon are easily the foremost among them, but
Shakespeare holds a high place. I have at hand a volume of
seven hundred and ninety-nine pages, comprising a three-
part novel about Shakespeare, published in the United
States early in the nineteenth century. It appeared in Eng-
land first, that being the home of the author, Robert Folke-
stone Williams, about whom I can discover nothing beyond
his name. This first paragraph from the preface gives its
theme and the style in which the whole vast work is under-
taken:
    Methinks an apology is necessary for adventuring on a
  subject of the extreme difficulty essayed in these volumes;
  but the cause of my entering on so notable ambitious a
  task, will perhaps hold me excused in some measure; for
188
   this was it; I had noted with exceeding sorrowfulness, and
   a becoming indignation, divers small biographers, mud-
   dle-headed commentators, and insolent cyclopaedia scrib-
   blers, with as scarce a commodity of truth as of wit, gar-
   nishing their silly conceits of the noblest heart and brain
   that ever labored for universal humanity, with a prodigal
   store of all manner of despicable vileness, and wretched
   impudent folly; and having had much deep study, and
   moreover, being possessed of a very boundless love of the
   subject, I thought I would strive, as far as lay within the
   compass of my humble ability, to put to shame these piti-
   ful traducers, and set up before the world a statue of this
   High Priest of Nature, as he ought to be entitled, as like as
   might be unto the wondrous admirableness of his natural
   gifts.
   In other words, "I'Il tell you what Shakespeare was like!"
The three volumes, <1The Youth of Shakespeare>1 (1839),
<1Shakespeare and His Friends>1 (1838), and <1The Secret Pas->1
<1sion>1 (1844), provide a prolonged wallow in pseudo Eliza-
bethanism, Folkestone Williams having enjoyed himself
thoroughly in creating a background which would produce
the god of his idolatry. He provides much comedy to show us
how Shakespeare came by his jokes; he presents prototypes
of some of the Shakespearean characters; he shows us Shake-
speare reading <1The Merry Wives of Windsor>1 to Queen Eliz-
abeth ". . . the queen once or twice did put up her fan and
giggled very prettily . . . ," and pleading with Elizabeth
on behalf of his friend Sir Walter Raleigh, and Raleigh's be-
loved, Bessie Throckmorton; he revels in long, static scenes
in which Cotton, Raleigh, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, and
many others sing songs and recite verses, all of Williams's
own composition and all running to many stanzas.
   Perhaps the most striking scenes in his book are those
                                                        189

which open and close it. At the beginning we are told how
the denizens of fairyland met on the banks of the Avon on
the night of Shakespeare's birth, that Oberon and Titania
might discuss the impending wonder in thumping iambics.
(This is followed immediately by a long comic monologue
from Gammer Lambswool, the midwife--fantasy alternat-
ing with comedy, very Shakespearean.) And at the end of
the book, when Shakespeare is dead, the fairies return,
wrapped in black mourning cloaks, and sing a Requiem, of
which this is the final verse:
       Farewell, then, each loved bud and flow'r
          Farewell the verdant mead,
       The fragrant air, the secret bow'r,
         Soft fern and towering reed.
       Bearing, in solemn rite we come,
       Our honoured SHAKESPEARE to his HOME.
  Yet another attempt to enter into the mind of Shake-
speare which the connoisseur of curiosities should not miss
is The <1Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines>1 by Mary Cowden
Clarke. She and her husband, Charles, were able and assidu-
ous students of Shakespeare, and her <1Complete Concord->1
<1ance>1 to the plays (1845) is invaluable. But in the <1Girlhood>1
(1850-2, in three volumes) she enthusiastically followed
that will-o-the-wisp which leads so many Shakespearean
scholars into the quagmire--the fantasy of being Shake-
speare himself, and of creating, and occasionally correcting
and improving, in his vein.
  The most recent Shakespeare novel to come my way is
The <1Dark Lady,>1 written by Cothburn Madison O'Neal,
Professor of English at Arlington State College, in Texas.
It is about a girl named Rosaline de Vere, eighteen at the
beginning of the book, who makes her living in disguise as
190

a boy player in the same company of actors as William
Shakespeare; she calls herself Ross Allen. Rosaline is a
gifted writer, but because the temper of the time does not
permit of female playwrights, she uses Shakespeare as her
agent, and he sells her work, representing it as his own, and
taking an agent's fee. She writes all of the plays which we
attribute to Shakespeare (taking an uncommonly short time
to do it), she has an affair and a secret marriage with the
Earl of Southampton, and she gets herself interestingly in-
volved in Elizabethan and Jacobean politics.
  When the book appeared, a few reviewers found this
plot incredible; they accused Professor O'Neal of having too
little art to persuade them to suspend their disbelief in his
assertion that Shakespeare was a precocious girl. Perhaps
this was because they knew that the life of literary people is
usually devoid of exciting external incident. But of course
the heroine of a historical novel must not lead a dull life,
and so Professor O'Neal has made the writing of the greatest
plays in all literature an incidental part of Rosaline's
crowded existence; she is busy with the far more interesting
pursuit of love. On page eighty-nine of the first edition, her
creator maneuvers her into a sweater, causing the Earl of
Southampton to exclaim "Hey, that's no disguise!"--an al-
lusion to the rich amplitude of her bust. And it may be that
it is as a sweater girl that Rosaline is most convincing.
  The scholarship behind the novel should not be slighted.
Professor O'Neal has obviously read several of the plays of
Shakespeare, and he seems to have made a special study of
the <1Sonnets,>1 which he presents as an ingenious love diary,
part of which is written by Rosaline, part by Southampton,
and two (the bad ones with all the "Will" puns in them) by
Shakespeare himself. The poet is a minor character, a good-
                                                       191

hearted chap, but severely limited. "Face it; you are ade-
quate in bit parts, and you make a handsome king," says his
fellow actor, Richard Burbage. Shakespeare faces it, and is a
kindly agent for Rosaline.
  The dialogue is of interest, as revealing how far the po-
etry of the Elizabethans soared above the daily speech even
of the most cultivated among them. When Rosaline con-
fronts her father, the Earl of Oxford, and tells him that her
revelations might bring shame upon his house, that Eliza-
bethan nobleman and poet replies: "My, my. So they
would." When her lover is disturbed, the She-Shakespeare
rallies him with "Now, Hal, don't get upset." We are told
of the Earl of Essex, by one of his mistresses: "He has a lot
of girls worried." This colloquialism unquestionably brings
the characters very near to our own time.
  Not that psychological insight is lacking. Savor this de-
scription of Rosaline's emotions upon completing <1Hamlet:>1
   When she had finished, she sat perfectly quiet for nearly
   an hour, reviewing her play in its totality. She still was not
   sure of her future decisions, but she did know more about
   herself than she had ever known before. She wondered if
   other readers would feel the same, find themselves in
<1   Hamlet,>1 perhaps reject suicide as he had done, or maybe
   put off their personal problems until it was too late. Of
   one thing Rosaline was sure: after she had written <1Hamlet>1
   and read it through, she herself would never be quite the
   same again.
The more we know of Rosaline, the more we marvel that so
lively a girl could be persuaded to sit still for nearly an hour,
even after finishing <1Hamlet.>1
  But the psychological insights of the novel are many. Our
relief is great when Southampton, having fallen in love with
192

Rosaline when he believed that she was really a boy, and
having kissed her ("she responded, open-mouthed, with all
the pent-up passion that had been rising in her awakening
body"), feels his manhood revolted by what he has done,
and strikes her, while wiping his lips; this incident reassures
us about Southampton, and doubles our pleasure when the
seeming boy cups his hand around her firm bare breast,
thereby spilling the beans and speeding the plot. We may
contrast this with the scene in which Queen Elizabeth, an
unsanitary old party and very much down on ambitious
women, scratches herself under the breast, and a later scene
where King James I says some hard things about women,
being himself of imperfect masculinity. It is in such scenes
as these that a novelist can take us right into the heart of his-
tory and reveal the artist's superiority to mere outward rank.
But the pleasures of this novel are so many that it would be
impossible to record them all here, and we must pass on.

  <2Puzzle of Published Criticism>2

ON, to a kind of reading which has come greatly into favor
during the past fifty years and which, both in its relation to
the theater and in itself, presents a puzzle. I mean pub-
lished theater criticism. Not criticism of drama, which is as
old as Aristotle, and is an honored branch of the criticism of
poetry, but criticism of specific productions of plays, and
often of plays of slight merit. Every year a few such books
appear, and are obviously bought and read. Publishers
sometimes say that they do not pay, but they go on bringing
them out, and it is always significant when publishers pro-
duce books on which they expect to lose money; it is an in-
dication that they think that such books are in real, if small,
                                                       193

demand, and that they give distinction to their annual lists.
  These books of theater criticism now exist in formidable
numbers. By far the greatest number of them are compara-
tively modern, for the profession of theater critic is a mod-
ern one--as modern as newspapers, to give it the benefit of
every doubt. It is amusing that the critics themselves, having
risen to extraordinary eminence in the world of the theater,
and possessing immense power (especially in the United
States), seek to extend their history backward. It has always
been so; whenever a new god rises to power, it is the job of
those who worship him to provide evidence that he has al-
ways existed. James Agate, eminent as a critic, brought out
an anthology, <1The English Dramatic Critics>1 (1932), ac-
knowledging his debt to an American scholar, Professor
Charles Harold Gray; he sweeps theater criticism back to
1660 (though his first example is dated 1664), but we ob-
serve that of the three hundred and sixty-four pages of the
pocket edition, it takes only eighty-two to bring us to Leigh
Hunt, writing in 1807, and really copious theater criticism
does not begin for another fifty years. For a century, then,
men have been hired to comment on theater performances,
and for the last fifty years they have sought to give life and
authority to their work by publishing it in books.
  What kind of men are they? Superficially they appear to
be of all kinds, and some of them--Max Beerbohm is a
notable example--profess to have little liking for the the-
ater. This must be taken with a grain of salt. They may not
like the theater, but they all seem to be fascinated by it,
which is a different thing. They all seem to like the power
they wield, and they would be more than human if they did
not recognize that they are envied, and that there are hun-
dreds of young men who hanker for their excellent seats,
194

their prestige, and their freedom to say what they please
with an insouciance denied most other journalists by the
laws of libel, not to mention those of good taste. To com-
ment freely upon, and even perhaps to jeer it, another man's
face; to appraise boldly and publicly a woman's figure and
attractions; to dismiss as worthless the efforts of a score or
more of artists, musicians, designers, choreographers--not
to speak of writers--and ill of this in the name of Duty--
this is work given to few, and sometimes it may be uncom-
fortable work. Would they do it if they truly did not like it?
  What leads a man to become a theater critic? A psycho-
analyst once suggested to me that a psychoanalytical investi-
gation of criticism might be greatly enlightening. Where
are the wellsprings of this branch of letters, which has be-
come a profession during the past half-century, and asserts
its importance so vigorously? Criticism of all kinds flourishes
in our day as it has never done before, and especially in the
realm of literary criticism there are those who boldly insist
that their work is "creative." The familiar justifications of
criticism need not be rehearsed here; connoisseurship based
on practiced taste, guardianship of high standards in art,
education of a less experienced public--we know then all,
and we admit them all, but do we find them a full and suffi-
cient explanation? Some of the very best of their kind have
been most conscious of the pitfalls of their trade. Hear Er-
nest Newman, great music critic: "The really dangerous
people are the practitioners of the amusing trades of criti-
cism, who can somehow or other persuade themselves that
they are not ordinary rule-of-thumb workmen, but priests
inspired direct from the oracle's mouth." Of course all crit-
ics deny any such delusion of inspiration when taxed with
it, but it is only in the grossest cases of the messianic delu-
                                                       195

sion that the patient brazenly declares himself to be the
Messiah; usually he just behaves as if that were the case, and
perhaps not even the critic knows what goes on in his mind
when he is bent over his typewriter.
  Our concern, however, is what they publish for us to read.
If we go through much of their stuff, we quickly find that
the critics fall into two groups. There are those who take the
celebratory line, who write best about what best pleases
them; of this type James Agate (1878-1947) was a fine ex-
ample. He did not consider himself a first-rate judge of
plays, but he successfully asserted his claim to be regarded as
a great connoisseur of acting, and his many books of col-
lected criticism burn with a splendid and infectious enthusi-
asm. These celebratory critics usually concentrate on play-
ers, rather than plays. The other large division of critics may
be called judicial, and their best writing is usually about
what they have not liked. They very often write at length
about the play, dismissing the actors with a word or two.
This group is much more numerous than the former, and
includes some great names: Shaw was a judicial critic, and so
was Max Beerbohm; George Jean Nathan also belongs in
this group, and the remarkabe nine volumes called <1Theatre>1
<1Book of the Year-->1which covers Broadway from 1942 to
1951--is in total effect one long howl of despair and disdain.
These men are subdued by the good, and put in their best
form by what is bad. It is a curious cast of mind, but we
should not attach undue importance to it; we all find it
easier to be eloquent and amusing about what has dis-
pleased us, though we do not all make professional capital
of it.
   Where criticism really disgusts is not in the work of these
remarkable men, but in the journeymen of criticism. Among
196

these the celebratory attitude is scarcely to be found, for to
be pleased is, to little minds, to appear uncritical; the judi-
cial line, in their hands, tends to become carping and denun-
ciatory, so that the theater critic has become, to a great part
of the public, an amusing common scold. It is these journey-
men workers who bring to the theater Shaw's scorn without
Shaw's moral indignation, and Beerbohm's ennui without
Beerbohm's delicacy of perception. At their basest such men
are mischievous parasites on an art; at best they come under
the censure of Peter Ustinov, who says: "All arts are inhib-
ited, in our day, by those who know too much and feel too
little; it is inhuman to judge everything alongside perfec-
tion."
  "Who know too much and feel too little"--yes, but we
would not wish a critic to feel much and know little. All
criticism is introspection, said Wilde; we do not long value
the introspection of bleeding hearts uncontrolled by cool
heads. Yet it is this necessary intellectuality of the critic
which makes him, in the end, such an unsympathetic figure.
"Nobody has ever erected a statue to a critic," said Sibelius
to a young composer. The critic must be reconciled to his
necessary, ambiguous role, and however much he may
caper, joke, and posture for us in his writings, we are un-
likely to forget that he is a man who may, at any moment,
tread heavily upon our dreams--unworthy dreams, foolish
dreams, stupid dreams, sometimes--but still dreams. The
critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between play-
wrights, actors, and audiences--a figure dreaded, and occa-
sionally comic, but never welcome, never loved.
  As they feel too little themselves, they encourage us to feel
too little, also, without giving us any compensatory acuity of
taste. Therefore, if our pleasure lies in reading which is re-
DRAMATIC IMAGINATION                        197

lated to the theater, we should take care to read at least a
few of the celebratory critics, and Agate's anthology, already
mentioned and cheap to buy, will soon show you who they
are. Unfortunately, so far as I know, no American counter-
part exists, though George Oppenheimer's <1The Passionate>1
<1Playgoer>1 (1958) contains a section of criticism. Celebratory
criticism is wonderfully stimulating to read. And, to be just,
so is the best of the judicial criticism, as well. Criticism of
music may be good, and sober. So may criticism of pictures.
But a theater critic, at his best, always tries to rival the ac-
tors; he may not be conscious of what he is doing, but he is
always trying to give a show, and the richness of his vocabu-
lary and the gemmy incrustations of his imagery reveal it.
Their writing ranges from the illumination of Shaw and the
elegance of C. E. Montague to the uproarious and anarchic
prose of George Jean Nathan, but always it is on the
baroque, rather than the chaste, side.

  <2Dramatic Imagination>2

SUCH READING, however, should ideally be balanced by much
reading of plays, and, as I hope I have already made plain,
not solely of those plays which are of assured "literary"
value. We shall not develop dramatic imagination by feed-
ing solely on what literary critics think best, for many of
them have no dramatic imagination at all. Indeed, it is a
rare quality; theatrical producers would pay princely sala-
ries to anyone who could, infallibly, say what plays in manu-
script would be successful on the stage. But producers have
no such insight; directors have it but fitfully, as witness some
of the things they toil to put on the stage; actors are quite
capable of rehearsing a play earnestly without much knowl-
198

edge of whether it is good or bad. A cultivated taste in
literature is no guide, for the vice of the literary mind is ex-
cessive subtlety, just as that of the theatrical mind is trivial
profusion. So when we read plays, old and new, that have
been presented on the stage, we must bring, so far as we can,
a theatrical rather than a literary judgment to bear on them.
Even when we tackle a piece so strange to modern taste as
Dion Boucicault's <1The Colleen Bawn>1 (1860), or so much in
advance of modern taste as Samuel Beckett's <1End Game,>1 we
must try to imagine it and feel it in stage terms. And it is
here that reading the good critics will help us, for they tell
us what has been done, and how it has been done, and what
the quality of theatrical excitement is like.
  The theater, more than other arts, is afflicted by the fool-
ish notion that what is contemporaneous is necessarily best.
The latest, the newest, is demonstrably superior, for is it not
the most recent thing we have thought of? Obviously the ac-
tors of the past must, at the greatest pitch, have been some-
what funny, for is it not a fact that we alone possess the magi-
cal secret of presenting life on the stage in a really artistic
fashion? Part of the price the theater pays for being forever
young is this youthful notion that the past is quite done
with, and that we shall never drift toward the past our-
selves. The newest comedian is the funniest; the last trage-
dian to arise is the most poignant; the most recent mode in
production and mounting is the most expressive ever. Those
who think otherwise are incapable of contemporaneity, and
must be discounted. But would it not be a good thing for the
theater if more of us who make up its audiences became less
narrowly contemporaneous in our tastes and sympathies?
If we know something, sense something imaginatively, of
the theater of the past, and if we equip ourselves by reading
                                                       199

much of the theater of the present, shall we not have some
influence on the theater of our time? Why do we not try?
  The theater is ever changing, and a century from now it
will be as different from that which we now possess as is that
Covent Garden where we considered <1The Hunchback,>1 in
1832. It may very well be the theater of which some of us
dream, in which masterpieces which do not suit large audi-
ences, or which are for special tastes, or which are not mas-
terpieces at all but delightful bits of tinsel out of the prop-
erty basket of the past, are to be commanded at will.
  Is this fanciful? Well, what would Charles Kean have
thought of a form of theater--a shadow theater, admittedly
--which allowed <1Henry V>1 to be performed in a boundless
landscape, with scores of real horses? Great things can hap-
pen in a century. We may yet have all sorts of plays, most
feelingly presented, merely by pushing a button. Uneco-
nomic? It would have been uneconomic a century ago to
make musical performances of curiosities such as concerti
for the glass harmonica, or sets of madrigals, available in
everybody's living room. But we have them now. Thus we
may hope that our grandchildren may see <1The Miller and>1
<1His Men>1 or <1The Castle Spectre,>1 the poetic tragedies of
Yeats, or even Henry James's interesting failure Guy <1Dom->1
<1ville,>1 if it should be their pleasure to do so.
  Meanwhile we are not without resource, for we can read
any play we choose, and give it a respectable kind of life in
our imagination. It is not the theater of today, but it may be
a preparation for a vastly richer theater in the future. If we
cultivate and feed the dramatic imagination, we shall speed
the time when cultivated and catholic taste is not thwarted
by the lunatic economics of a theater which is increasingly
clumsy and ill-suited to our needs.
                          . VI .

                   <2The hue and Cry after>2

                       <2a Good Laugh>2


  A FELLOW GOING into the dark held out both his arms to
  defend his face; coming against the door which stood out-
  right, he ran his nose against the edge thereof; whereupon
  he cryed out, <1heyday, what a Pox, my nose was short>1
<1  enough just now, and is it in so short a time grown longer>1
<1  than my Arms?>1 (1686)
  A RICH old Miser finding himself very ill sent for a Parson
  to administer the last Consolation of the Church to him:
  Whilst the Ceremony was performing old <1Gripewell>1 falls
  into a Fit; on his Recovery the Doctor offered the Chalice
  to him; <1Indeed,>1 crys he, <1I can't afford to lend you above>1
<1  twenty Shillings upon't, I can't upon my>1 Word. (1739)
  WHY is a chrysalis like a hot roll?--Because it's the grub
  that makes the butter fly. (1860)
  THE ANATOMY of Kissing: bus--a kiss; rebus--kiss her
  again; omnibus--kiss all the girls in the room; blunder-
  bus--kissing your mother-in-law; syllabus--two girls kiss-
  ing each other. (1900)
  Well, reader, have you laughed yet? All of the above have
been considered very laughable in their time. Or do you like
contemporary jokes only, like this one, which a sixteen-year-
old girl tells me is the rage at her boarding school: A motor-
                            200
                                                        201

ist stopped beside a car which was in the ditch, and was sur-
prised to see that its owner had four kittens hitched to the
grille with string. "You can't think those kittens will pull
your car out!" said he. "Why not," said the man; "I've got a
whip, haven't I?"
  Is there any theory of humor which covers all of these
jokes? If there is, I do not know it. Yet I have wasted a good
deal of time reading learned essays by men whom the world
has admired as philosophers and psychologists, who have at-
tempted to explain what humor was, and why people liked
it. They have exerted themselves to track the cause of
laughter down, to stuff and mount it. None of them, to my
knowledge, has bothered to consider why people want to
laugh, and seek laughter eagerly--almost pitiably.

  <2Laughter Need lot Mean Humor>2

CERTAINLY it is not my intention to attempt yet another the-
ory of humor. I am happy to accept the fact that most peo-
ple laugh sometimes, and that there are millions who are
almost feverish in their search for what they call "a good
laugh"--a benefit which they seem to value much as neu-
rotically constipated people value a movement of the bow-
els. I accept also the fact that no single class of joke will
make everybody laugh. And finally I am not prepared to be-
lieve that readiness to laugh is necessarily evidence of a sense
of humor, whatever that may be. My feeling about the sense
of humor is comparable to that of the depth-psychologist
about the Unconscious--I have some empirical knowl-
edge of it, and I have made some attempts to explore it, but
I am not able to offer a comprehensive definition of it. What
little I know of it suggests that it is not something which a
202       HUE AND CRY AFTER A GOOD LAUGH

Man possesses, but rather something which possesses him; it
is constantly in operation, it has a dark as well as a light as-
pect, and its function is by no means that of keeping its pos-
sessor in fits of chuckles; it is daemonic in character, and,
like a daemon, it is most resfected by those who best know
it. Like a daemon, also, it resents all attempts to put it in
chains, and the biographies of many humorists give evidence
of the vengeance which the daemon wreaks upon those who
set it to drudgery.
  Later in this chapter we shall discuss a few men who have
had a sense of humor. They are not so many as might be
supposed. Great numbers of people claim this gift--for they
believe it to be a gift and not something as ambiguous as the
three wishes in a fairytale--but it may safely be asserted
that those who casually lay claim to a sense of humor are un-
likely to have any such thing. They are much more likely to
be people who enjoy a good laugh. Let us examine some of
these good laughs.
  We need not go about it with the thoroughness of the re-
search scholar who must return from his quest bearing the
lifeless carcass of popular fun, in order to claim a doctorate
as his reward. We need not rake those thousands of collec-
tions and anthologies of jokes and funny pieces which so
often seem to belong to the pathology of humor, and which
are only acceptable to the gluttonous appetite of a boy who
is just discovering that laughter may be associated with read-
ing. A handful of books will do for us.

  <2Good King Charles's Golden Days>2

THE FIRST COMES to hand for no better reason than that I
have cherished a copy of it for twenty-five years, having
                                                       203

bought it in a junk shop when I was an undergraduate. But
it is a good representative of the popular jokebooks of the
seventeenth century, and its name is <1Nugae Venales, or a>1
<1Complaisant Companion, Being new Jests, Domestic and>1
<1foreign Bulls, Rhodomontados, Pleasant Novels, Lyes and>1
<1Improbabilities;>1 it was printed in London in 1686. In his
preface the compiler, John Head, frankly confesses that it is
a selection from earlier works to which he has added some
translations from the French. We may take it, then, as rep-
resenting the ordinary wit of the Restoration, fo Charles Il
died the year before it appeared. It is an example of that
kind of book, common until this century, which made its
appearance in the capital, and thence found its way to the
provinces, where it might do duty for several generations to
give the local squire a reputation as a man who knew a few
good stories. In <1She Stoops to Conquer,>1 ninety years later,
we meet Squire Hardcastle, whose conversational stock-in-
trade was a reminiscence of Prince Eugene, and whose wit
was one story about "Old Grouse in the gun-room"; there is
plenty of Prince Eugene and Old Grouse in <1Nugae Venales.>1
  As so often before in this book, I must warn the reader,
and myself still more, against the easy trick of making fun of
these old jestbooks because they are not precisely to modern
taste; to do that would be to commit ourselves to what Is
merely contemporaneous, which is a pitiful slavery, un-
worthy of anyone who pretends to any taste in literature,
however humble, or understanding of life, however small.
What we must constantly keep in mind is that all of these
jokes were at one time thought funny; <1Nugae Venales>1 was a
popular work which ran through several editions, and when
these are found now, they are in that smeared, tattered con-
dition which tells of a book which has been cherished, car-
204

ried in the pocket, and almost read to pieces. What are
these jokes of 1676--86?
  They do not lend themselves to quotation here, for to our
ears they are either gross or flat. Here is one which is char-
acteristic of many, though more delicate than most:
  A LADY sent her servant to the Play-house to know what
  play was acted that day, the fellow asking the question, he
  was answered go tell your Lady <1'Tis Pitty She is a Whore,>1
  the fellow misunderstanding and thinking this was spoke
  of his Lady and not the Play, replyed, <1'tis Pity such a par->1
<1  cel of Rogues, Rascals, and idle Sons of Whores should be>1
<1  suffered to abuse honest Women after this manner.>1
Not that jokes of this general type are unknown now. I recall
the widely quoted objection which was raised by a cele-
brated English actress to the title of a play which was suc-
cessful in London shortly before the Second World War:
"But my dear, who can possibly bring herself to tell any-
body 'I'm going to <1We At The Crossroads'?">1
  Another from Head's collection:
  MR. CHURCH another time was telling his friend that his
  wife was with child, and withall, so big, that he could not
  choose but wonder every time he lookt upon her; <1you>1
<1  need not wonder>1 (said his friend) <1doe you not know your>1
<1  Wife hath a Church in her belly?>1
  We need not continue, to quote the one called <1Upon a>1
<1Close Stool>1 or the one called <1On a Fart.>1 Anybody who has
lived in a country district before the general acceptance of
radio and television can reconstruct the atmosphere of Nu-
<1gae Venales.>1 Cuckoldry, maidenheads, excrement--these
have long been the staples of those hearty men and women
GOOD KING CHARLES'S GOLDEN DAYS       205

who love a good laugh. Here is one which, we may presume,
passed as fashionable repartee:
  A GALLANT standing in a maze, a Lady askt him what he
  was thinking on? he said of nothing; what do you think on
  said she when you think on nothing, <1faith,>1 says he, <1then>1
<1  I think on you and the inconstancy of your Sex.>1
This is the matter, though not the manner, of the Restora-
tion dramatists. But at least one of the rustic jokes sounds
like a condensation of a chapter from Erskine Caldwell:
  A LANDLORD askt his Tenant how many children she had;
  three said she; two of them, <1Will>1 and <1Tom,>1 are pretty
  Boys, but Diggory is a great loggerheadly Lout, and in
  troth Landlord, <1methinks he looketh as like you as if he>1
<1  was spit out of your mouth.>1
  It is common to complain of the brutality of some of our
ancestors' fun, though if we think about the jokes of our own
time, we may find them equally harsh. But ours are in the
fashion of our time, and theirs are not. Here is an example
from Head which I like, but which some readers may find
distasteful:
  A FELLOW and a wench taken together one evening suspi-
  tiously in a pound together, were by the Constable com-
  mitted, and the next morning brought before a justice;
  but they standing both obstinately in their innocence the
  Justice called the Wench aside, and promised her faith-
  fully, if she would confess the fact as guilty, she should go
  unpunished for that time. By his subtle insinuation she
  confessed the truth, whereupon the Justice commended
  her, and sent the fellow to prison: at length as she was
  taking her leave thinking her self at liberty, the Justice
206

  called her back, and askt her what the fellow had given
  her for her consent she told him (as it pleased his Wor-
  ship) he had given her half a crown. Truly woman, said
  the Justice, that doth not please my Worship; <1for though>1
<1  for thy fornication I have acquitted thee, yet for thy ex->1
<1  tortion I must of force commit thee, for taking half a>1
<1  crown in the Pound;>1 and sent her to the house of correc-
  tion to bear her friend company.
  We do not make a humorous specialty of the Bull nowa-
days; as Head explains in his preface, a Bull is a remark
which gores and murders sense. Here is one:
  PRYTHEE said one, why dost thou weir one of thy Stockens
  the wrong side outwards? <1O>1 (said he) it hath a hole on the
  other side.
Nevertheless, we should be wrong to think that the Bull is
unknown in our time. Frequently it appears as a mixed
metaphor, as in an editorial I read recently which purported
to see the fine Italian hand of the Bank of Canada upsetting
the apple cart of the stock market. And it is only a few weeks
ago that a civic official assured me that a public body was
trying to thrust a lame duck (in the form of a police chief)
down the public's throat. The Bull is surely due for a revival
of popularity.
  We do not recognize the Rhodomontado as such, though
the style is familiar:
   I SWEAR, Villain if I come to thee I will give thee such a
   blow with this battoon, it shall drive thee so far within
   the Earth, that there shall nothing remain of thee above
   it, but thy right hand to put off thy Hat when thou shalt
   see me pass that way.
   IF I COME to thee, with my Foot I will kick thee so high
   into the Air, that hadst thou with thee ten Cart-load of
                                                       207

  bread, thou should'st be in greater fear of starving than
  falling.
  A type of joke now virtually unknown except among the
very learned (and I confess I have heard very few examples
there) is the Latin pun, or classical allusion. Head provides
a curious example, because the joke is really in English, and
puns upon the Latin sounds, without reference to the Latin
meaning.
  A RICE-FOOL being brought to the Table, the Guests
  doubted what it was; one wittily said <1Per risum multum>1
<1  poteris cognoscere Stullum.>1
Even those who know Latin in its modern pronunciation
may miss that one, so perhaps it should be explained that
<1"risum">1 would have been pronounced --ricem," and the
proverb means: By his excessive laughter thou art able to
know the fool. Possibly it is necessary to explain that "fool"
also means a messy pudding, still to be encountered in Eng-
land.

  <2The Original Joe Miller>2

MORE TYPICAL of the Latin joke is this one, from the first
edition of toe <1Miller's JESTS or the WIT'S Vade-Mecum:>1
  A LADY coming into a Room hastily, with her <1Mantua,>1
  brush'd down a <1Cremona>1 fiddle, that lay on a chair, and
  broke it, upon which a Gentleman that was present burst
  into this Exclamation from <1Virgil:>1
    <1Mantua vae miserae nimium Vicina Cremona.>1 (Ah mis-
   <1erable>1 Mantua <1too near a Neighbour to>1 Cremona.)
We can imagine that this gentlemen's reputation was much
augmented by his happy inspiration. He was lucky to live
208

when he did; a few years ago I had to answer some searching
questions to a Customs official about a book which I had
wlth me, printed in Latin, and which the official suspected
to be Russian; it was a jestbook, as a matter of fact, and I
was so foolish as to say so, forgetting that a Latin joke is as
strange to the modern imagination as a unlcorn or an am-
phisbaena.
  The Joe Miller whose name lingers on as a synonym for
old and unfunny jokes lived from 1684 to 1738, and was a
very good actor, famous in his day as a low comedian and a
popular companion, counting Hogarth as one of his most in-
timate friends. He was illiterate, and "his principal object
in marrying was to have a wife who was able to read his parts
to him"; he must have been a quick study and she must
have been a good wife, for he occasionally acted two brand-
new parts on two successive days. But though he was funny
on the stage, Joe seems not to have been a great joker off it,
but rather one of those pleasing eccentrics who are the butt
of other men's jokes, and upon whom jokes of a particular
type are fathered. The jokebook which bears his name did
not appear until after his death, and owed nothing to him;
it was compiled by the playwright John Mottley, who used
the pseudonym of Elijah Jenkins, for a publisher named T.
Read. It was a hack job, and the jokes were chiefly cribbed
from earlier collections. But it has become the most famous
of all jestbooks; there were at least ten editions in the eight-
eenth century, and the number of jokes was increased in
each one until the original two hundred and forty-seven had
risen to more than five hundred; editions of Joe Miller were
many in the United States, and a New York version of
1865 contains twelve hundred and eighty-six jokes. A litho-
graphed facsimile of the original was published in London
THE ORIGINAL JOE MILLER                      209

in 1861, and was advertised as "for connoisseurs"--perhaps
to distinguish it from a <1Family Joe Miller.>1 The original
would not be regarded today as a family book, for the well-
worn themes of fornication, killing dogs, breaking wind,
having one's ears cropped for theft, anti-Papist jokes, and
jokes about cuckoldry comprise the bulk of the fun.
  Yet it ill becomes us to be self-righteous in our criticism of
Joe. Have we not our own vein of sadistic jokes, and jokes in
which the uttermost realms of sexual perversity are ex-
plored? To each age its own notion of "a good laugh."
  A few of the jokes in joe are no worse than those we hear
from the television wits, but the technique of joking has
changed with the times. Consider, for instance, Number 201
from the original Joe:

  A PERSON enquired what become of <1such a One! Oh! dear,>1
  says one of the Company, <1poor Fellow he dy'd insolvent>1
<1  and was buried by the Parish: Died insolvent>1 crys another,
<1  that's a Lie, for he died in England, I'm sure I was at his>1
<1  Burying.>1

This trick of going on after the point has been made is com-
mon in the book, and suggests that in the eighteenth century
they got them later and enjoyed them longer. This is a
humor more robust, less nervous, but also slower moving
than our own.
  Nowadays we do not much relish anecdotes about histori-
cal characters and people long dead, such as Joe's Number
215:
<1  Apelles,>1 the famous Painter, having drawn the Picture of
<1  Alexander>1 the Great on Horseback, brought it and pre-
  sented it to that Prince, but he not bestowing the Praise
  on it, which so excellent a piece deserv'd, <1Apelles>1 desired a
210
  living Horse might be brought; who mov'd by Nature fell
  a prancing and neighing, as tho' it had actually been his
  living Fellow-Creature; whereupon <1Apelles>1 told <1Alexan->1
<1  der, his Horse understood Painting better than himself.>1
  The fashion in comic nationalities has changed with time.
Joe has no jokes about Scots or Jews, but he has several about
the Irish; in the eighteenth centruy the English had the no-
tion that the Irish were stupid, an opinion which they re-
versed sharply a hundred years later, taking the line that all
Irishmen, whatever the evidence to the contrary, were re-
splendent wits. Put in Joe's day the Welsh were thought
very funny; I never hear jokes about Welshmen today, ex-
cept among the Welsh. But to our ancestors, Welshmen
were always good for a laugh, for they were thought to speak
oddly (according to Joe a Welshman always said "hur"
when he meant himself, and a century later Cockton, in
<1Valentine Vox>1, makes his funny Welshman speak in this
way; actually what Welshmen used to say was something a
little thicker in sound than the "Ah" which Americans of
the Deep South are supposed to say when they mean "I"),
they had terrible tempers, and they were mad on genealogy.
Our age has seen the utter decay of the funny Welshman,
and the rise to a rivalry in eminence of the Witty Irishman
and the Pawky Scot; the Welsh, after all, had only Lloyd
George, whereas the Scots had Harry Lauder, and irresisti-
bly droll Irishmen are legion.
  Some of Joe's jokes live. Consider good old durable Num-
ber 72, which used to appear in a game called Literary
Conundrums when I was a boy:
  A GENTLEMAN eating some Mutton that was very tough,
  said, it put him in mind of an old <1English>1 Poet: Being
  asked who that was; <1Chau-cer,>1 replied he.
                                                        211

And Number 57 has been told of countless celebrated men,
including Wilkes:
   POOR <1Joe Miller>1 happening one day to be caught by some
   of his Friends in a familiar Posture with a Cook Wench,
   almost as ugly as <1Kate Cl--ve,>1 was very much rallied by
   them for the Oddness of his Fancy. Why look ye, said he,
   Gentlemen, altho' I am not a very young Fellow, I have a
   good Constitution, and am not, I thank Heaven, reduced
   yet to <1Beauty>1 or <1Brandy>1 to whet my Appetite.
Joe appears more than once as the hero of these rib-binders,
as in Number 4, which is typical of a lot of eighteenth-cen-
tury fun:
   JOE MILLER, sitting one Day in the Window at the <1Sun->1
<1   Tavern>1 in <1Clare-Street,>1 a Fish Woman and her Maid pass-
   ing by, the Woman cry'd, <1Buy my Soals; buy my Maids:>1
   All you wicked old Creature, cry'd honest Joe, <1What are>1
<1   you not content to sell your own Soul but you must sell>1
<1   your Maid's too?>1
Inlanders may like to know that "Maid" was an old name
for skate and shad.
  Let us beware of a superior weariness in examining these
few jokes from the original 247; it is their form rather than
their substance which makes them different from the kind
of thing we read and hear every day. The great wit of the
eighteenth century has come down to us as brilliant as when
it was new. But Joe's jokes are not the golden guineas, they
are the coppers of that age--so much more common and so
much in general use. Joe puts us in communion, not with
Johnson and Goldsmith, but with Squire Hardcastle, and
with the people who frequented the Exchange, the taverns,
and the alleys of his time.
212


  <2heyday of the Pun>2

THE PRINTED JOKES of the nineteenth century were not so
bawdy as these. It was the century of the riddle and the
conundrum. In mid-century appeared a book called <1Puni->1
<1ana,>1 advertised as "An Awfully Jolly Book for Parties." Ex-
ample:
  WHY is a wide-awake hat so called?--Because it never had
  a nap and never wants one.
Families in which tradition is strong often cherish a few of
these, which come down from generation to generation.
Here is one which has lived in good health in Australia, and
which (from internal evidence, as the scholars like to say)
cannot be much less than a century old:
  A FATHER, a mother and their Child tumbled down on a
  walk, and each broke a knee; where did they go for re-
  pairs?--The Father went to Africa where the Knee-grows,
  the Mother to Ireland, where the She-knees are, and of
  course the Child went to the butcher for a Kid-knee.
We should not reject this sort of thing without giving serious
thought to the present fad for jokes about the Little Moron.
(Why did the Little Indian Moron sleep with his head to-
ward the campfire?--To keep his wigwam.)
  Do these Victorian puns cost you a groan, reader? If so,
can you say why? Hear what Max Beerbohm, a critic prob-
ably as fastidious as yourself; has to say on this matter. "A
good pun, properly used, is one of the best bells in the jest-
er's cap. Why its tinkles should be received, in all places
and on all occasions, with groans of mock despair, I have
never been able to understand." Let us remember that one
                                                       213

of the most deservingly admired wits of our time, Ogden
Nash, has used the pun so ingeniously as to give it virtually
a new dimension.
  Jestbooks of the nineteenth century were many. One re-
markable compilation may keep our attention for a mo-
ment, because it originated neither in the United States nor
in Britain, but in Australia, and was the work of that inde-
fatigable bookseller, E. W. Cole of Melbourne (1832-
1918). <1Cole's Fun Doctor,>1 in the two volumes in my posses-
sion, contains seven hundred and ninety-one closely printed
pages of jokes of all sorts. lts index of subjects is extensive,
containing themes for fun which have, for one reason or an-
other, disappeared today, such as Women's Rights, Mor-
mons, Servants, Bicycling, Princes, Bustles or Improvers,
and Men and Women with Tails. Funny Sermons (a sepa-
rate section from Funny Negro Theology) are offered on
such texts as "They shall gnaw a file, and flee unto the moun-
tains of Hepsidam, whar the lion roareth and the wang-
doodle mourneth for its first-born"; this text comes from
"second Chronik-ills." It contains such typically nineteenth-
century descendants of the classical or Latin joke as:

                     Boyibus kissibus
                     Sweet girliorum
                     Girlibus likibus
                     Wanti somorum

And it is rich in those question-and-answer jokes which are
still the staple of newspaper joke columns:
  <1Literary Matron:>1 What does Shakespeare mean by his fre-
  quent use of the phrase "Go to"?
  <1Matter-of-fact Husband:>1 Well, perhaps he thought it
  wouldn't be polite or proper to finish the sentence.
214

  For the present, that is sufficient about the "good laugh."
Only a curmudgeon is utterly indifferent to it; only those to
whom laughter is the most serious thing in the world attach
great value to it (as in the case of the film called <1The Perfect>1
<1Furlough,>1 which advertised "287 certified laughs") . But has
it anything to do with a sense of humor? It is possible to
"get" all the jokes in a television program, or even to laugh
the two hundred and eighty-seven laughs of the funny film,
wlthout ever initiating a joke or experiencing laughter
which has not been provoked by something external to one-
self. A sense of humor, surely, is something which permits its
possessor to perceive jokes which are wholly or partly per-
sonal; a man who has this much admired sense ought occa-
sionally to laugh--perhaps inwardly--when others are not
laughing. What is he otherwise but the creature of the joke-
smith?

  <2Hitard?s Theme>2

CHILDREN sometimes demand to know who invents jokes,
and often their elders think this question naive. But the
children are right; somebody must, at some time, think of
and set in motion all jokes, even those which are so old that
they seem to have groped their way upward from that Uni-
versal Unconscious of which Dr. Carl Jung thinks we all
partake, and where the memory of the race lies hidden. Em-
broidery upon a joke and variations upon the Ur-Joke are
simple compared with the invention of a new joke.
  It may perhaps have been Hitard, court jester to Edmund
Ironside, who in the eleventh century conceived a joke
which, if Hitard had been able to set it down, might have
                                                        215

run thus (l translate from Norman French into the English
of a later period) :
  SAYS John-a-Nokes to John-a-Stile, "Who was yon beaute-
  ous damsel I saw ye with yestre'en?"
  "Nay, by St. Dunstan," cries he, "that was no beauteous
  damsel, but mine own ill-favoured dame!"
The joke having been started on its long career, it no doubt
served many a jester, so far divided as Muckle John at the
court of King Charles I, and Blind Harry the Minstrel,
groping the narrow tracks of the Scottish Highlands. Un-
doubtedly it came to America with the Pilgrims, and was
suppressed. Perhaps it was among some laughter-loving In-
dian tribe that it was preserved, in the form of pictographs,
in its most familiar form:
  WHO WAS that lady I seen you out with last night?
  That was no lady, that was my wifel
Unquestionably it served <1Punch>1 as the dialogue accompany-
ing some exquisitely drawn illustration:
   OLD GENTLEMAN <1(enquiring his way at the door, and con->1
<1   fronted by Mrs Emily, aged four, and temporarily a fugi->1
<1   tive from the nursery)>1 : May I speak to the lady of the
   house, my dear?
   EMILY <1(gravely)>1 : No lady here; only Mummy.
       <1(Collapse of Old Gentleman.)>1
The jokesmiths have worked many variations upon Hitard's
Theme (as we may call it). Such as:
  TWO MUSICIANS meet.
  "Whose was the piccolo I seen you out with last night?"
  "That was no piccolo; that was my fife!"
216

It has appeared as a cartoon, of the fashionable one-line cap-
tion variety. An Eskimo woman is shown standing in an at-
titude of menace over her prone spouse, who has a hang-
over. She says: "Who was that lady I thawed you out with
last night?"
  Hitard's Theme has yet to appear in The New <1Yorker>1 as
one of its celebrated series of Letters from Colored Maids,
but there is plenty of time.

  <2True Hum or Uncontrollable>2

THE SENSE OF HUMOR, as opposed to the mere ability to see
the point of a formal joke and laugh at it, cannot be disso-
ciated from the rest of a man's personality. The fun of a bit-
ter man, or a mean man, or a cruel man, is his sense of hu-
mor, true enough, but it is not something which we covet; a
man's sense of humor is as clearly indicative of what he is as
his grief, or his capacity to love. A great sense of humor can
only exist in company with other elements of greatness.
  Nor is a sense of humor something which can be turned on
and off at the main. Many people believe that some subjects
arc humorous and others not. Aristotle, in his <1Rhetoric,>1
quotes Gorgias Leontinus, whoever he may have been, very
pointedly on this subject. "Humour is the only test of grav-
ity and gravity of humour, for a subject which will not bear
raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious
examination is false wit." In short, there is a time and place
for jokes on every subject. But there are so many of these
supposedly forbidden themes that much public joke-making
is confined to a handful of subjects which vary from age to
age--cuckoldry, excrement, and Latin puns in the eight-
eenth century; cheese, mothers-in-law, and onions in the
                                                       217

nineteenth; these are fixed stars in the firmament of me-
chanical humor. But a sense of humor is not a thing which
we can control completely; many people, in painful situa-
tions, have been overcome by a sense of the ridiculous, as
was Bernard Shaw at his mother's funeral; sincere grief can-
not utterly quell it. A man with a sense of humor may never-
theless be deeply serious in his attitude toward life. Stephen
Leacock, writing of his imminent death, was serious, yet he
wrote without losing his sense of humor, which was in that
instance evidence of his courage. Such a man is no mere
joker; his sense of humor is a glory which he carries with
him to the end.
  It is this uncontrollable quality which shocks people who
have very little sense of humor of their own, and as a usual
thing they reserve their highest admiration for people who
are demonstrably and reliably serious--which frequently
means merely solemn. Perhaps this is because humor is a
thing of intellect rather than emotion, and people in gen-
eral are more impressed by emotion than by intellect. And
can we say that they are wrong? The deepest feelings of
mankind are not humorous, and although Freud has shown
the Unconscious to be pranksome and witty in a manner
which suggests James Joyce, it is remorselessly serious in its
effects. Humor is a civilizing element in the jungle of the
mind, and civilizing elements never enjoy a complete or
prolonged popularity.

  <1Pitfall of Humorous Writing>1

  GRIEVE and the world grieves with you; laugh, and you
laugh alone," writes Sean O'Casey, who ought to know. But
like so many striking sayings, it is a fruitful half-truth, rather
218

than a law. Everybody can share in grief, and grief can be
feigned; but laughter can only be shared by those who are of
like mind. It is precisely in this that the pitfall lurks for the
comic writer; he understandably wants as many people as
possible to be of like mind with himself, and so, when he
writes his funny piece, he is greatly tempted to throw in a
few onions and a mother-in-law to swell his audience. He
may begin with a true sense of humor, strong and individ-
ual, and from this his early work springs; his audience is
made, and his task is to keep it and, if he can, to increase it.
This will certainly be a struggle, and unless he is a resolute
man, he will adulterate his humor with mechanical fun. It
may be some time before his defeat is perceptible, for the
applause is mounting; but then the fashion changes, and
when jokes about onions give way to jokes about flogging
kittens, he is a back number.
  Such defeat is everywhere to be observed. Which of us has
not seen the newspaper man who is given a column of his
own, and who sets out happily to fill it with accounts of his
domestic adventures. His wife is pressed into service as a
comic character--a Fluffy Pinhead, or an Amusing Nagger;
his children likewise are coined in his mint, and appear as
knowing little creatures who see through him and have
slight regard for his opinion. He himself stars as an inept
carpenter, a fellow who cannot replace a fuse, a buffoon who
attempts to paper his own walls. For a while the columnist is
delighted with what he can do, and he may be funny enough
in his hand-me-down clown suit. But unless he can change
to something else, he will find that what seemed an inex-
haustible freedom has become a slavery, for this masochistic
self-mockery is extremely difficult to maintain at a high
PITFALL OF HUMOROUS WRITING              219

level, and in time only those who like mechanical fun will
read him.
  Although this cult of the Columnist as Fool is common in
North America, it has had a long day in England, too, where
it was until recently associated with Gentility. For a quarter-
century between the wars <1Punch>1 was full of this sort of
thing; its readers could not get enough of the Genteel Hu-
morists. A. A. Milne was probably the best of them, and be-
cause it was his true vein, and because he was a fine crafts-
man, he was very good. But his imitators--how shudder-
somely awful they were! They all wrote about their Aunt
Agatha, and her cats, and their bloody little whimsical chil-
dren, and quarrels with their deaf gardener about whether
to plant the garden with erysipelas or night-blooming hys-
terectomy, and how amusingly ignorant the lower classes
were, and how laughably eccentric and vulgar anybody was
who had more money than themselves; they wrote in an
ecstasy of middle-class refinement; they gave the impression
that they ate without evacuating, and reproduced their kind
without intercourse; their sense of humor found vent in an
epicene titter. Yet two generations seemed to find pleasure
in the work of these comical capons.
  The masochistic vein, in which the writer is the butt of
his own fun, is easy for the mechanical humorist, and it is a
trap for the lighthearted writer who is not really a humorist
at all. But in the hands of a man of genuine abilities, it can
be very funny. Consider the work of an Irishman, Patrick
Campbell, whose work is not well known in the United
States. He is a masochist, but he is subtle, and he draws
blood other than his own. One of his best stories is a tale of
his own boyhood; he is trying to learn ventriloquism, and is
220

discovered by a cruel schoolmaster who makes him demon-
strate before a class of howling schoolboys for twenty-five
minutes. This is very, very funny; it also chills the heart
with horror at the cruelty of the master, and gives the reader
that terrible, unmistakable shiver which we feel when we re-
call and relive past humiliations. A writer who can do this
is, of course, very far from our newspaper columnist, the
Clown of the Suburbs; he is an artist, who bares his heart
and bids us laugh; we do laugh, but we bleed a little at the
same time.

  <2The Scholarly Humorist>2

THE ANTITHESIS of this masochistic humor is--no, not sadis-
tic humor, but scholarly humor; the masochistic humorist is
right in the middle of what he writes, but the scholar stands
well to one side. This is a kind of humor which is never a
drug on the market, for scholarly humorists are few. ln the
United States the finest in this kind today is certainly Morris
Bishop; in England I think the palm must go to Daniel
George, whose real name is D. G. Bunting.
  Real scholars, as opposed to mere pedants, are often im-
mensely jolly men, fond of broad jokes, and fond of narrow
and involved jokes--but not at all fond of lead-footed, obvi-
ous "good laughs." In his book <1Lonely Pleasures>1 Daniel
George gathers together his essays on a wide range of curi-
ous subjects. He is a deeply and curiously learned man, and
one of the few critics of our time whose good opinion is a
great compliment. One receives the impression from his
writings that he makes it his plan to read any book whatever
that no one else can bear to read. He seeks dated books of
travel, moribund theology, discredited science, and out-
                                                       221

moded poets, and from them he culls the little gems which
he has published in two wonderful anthologies, called Al-
<1Phabetical Order>1 and <1A Peck of Troubles.>1 His essays are not
intended primarily to make you laugh; Daniel George does
not crack jokes. Rather, the climate of his mind is so salu-
brious, so invigorating, that dull thoughts and heavy cares
are dispelled by contact with it.
  And is not this the true end of scholarship? It is to make
us wise, of course, but what is the use of being wise if we are
not sometimes merry? The merriment of wise men is not
the uninformed, gross fun of ignorant men, but it has more
kinship with that than with the pinched, frightened fun of
those who are neither learned nor ignorant, gentle nor sim-
ple, bond nor free. The idea that a wise man must be solemn
is bred and preserved among people who have no idea of
what wisdom is, and can only respect whatever makes them
feel inferior. Daniel George can tell you what wisdom is,
ad what scholarship does to a man who is well suited to it.

  <2Humor a Dangerous Profession>2

IT Is the uncontrollable quality of humor which makes it so
dangerous as a profession. Robert Graves says, very justly,
that the poet who seeks to live by poetry will certainly lose
his gift, and the White Goddess will cease to smile upon him
because she does not permit her lovers to count on her fa-
vors; that is why Graves earns his living as a writer of novels,
and takes whatever comes to him through his poetry as luck
money. I like his way of expressing this belief, and believe
in it myself, but if it is too rich for your taste, let it be said
that poetic inspiration cannot be forced, or compelled to
flow tidily in the most profitable channels. This is true of
222

humor, also. The man who sits down at his desk, saying "I
shall have been funny to the extent of 1500 words before
lunchtime," will shortly find himself grasping in despera-
tion at mothers-in-law and onions. He will become the vic-
tim of a formula. Even so original and, at his best, brilliant a
wit as S. J. Perelman cannot escape this professional hazard
from time to time. It is one of the most striking elements in
the career of James Thurber that he has been able, so far as
I know, to avoid anything mechanical or forced; it is also
observable that Thurber's output has not been large, which
suggests great restraint on his part, for the demand that a
humorist produce funny pieces is both pressing and flatter-
ing.

  <2Career of a Popular Humorist>2

IT MAY NOT BE out of place here to consider the career of a
humorist of great gifts who yielded to this demand. The late
Stephen Leacock (1869--1944) was one of the most popular
humorists of his time, and an examination of his work shows
that he was, at his best, worthy of the admiration which was
lavished on him. His humor was plenteous and bountiful,
flowing in the greatest tradition, not of wit, not of irony or
sarcasm, but of true and deep humor, the full and joyous
recognition of the Comic Spirit at work in life. If a name
must be attached to it, we may perhaps call it nonsense, that
sudden upward flight from sobriety and fact which delights
and illuminates. The word which occurs over and over again
in contemporary references to his work and descriptions of
his public lectures is "fun." It is a word which is somewhat
out of favor at present, for in our nervous age fun is not well
understood or valued. But the quality with which Leacock
CAREER OF A POPULAR HUMORIST            223

delighted his readers and convulsed his hearers--call it non-
sense or fun--resists any accurate analysis.
  He knew it very well. Consider this passage:
     Once I might have taken my pen in hand to write about
  humour with the confident air of the acknowledged pro
  fessional. But that time is past. Such claim as I had has
  been taken from me. In fact, I stand unmasked. An Eng-
  lish reviewer writing in a literary journal, the very name
  of which is enough to put contradiction to sleep, has said
  of my writing, "What is there, after all, in Professor Lea-
  cock's humour but a rather ingenious mixture of hyper-
  bole and myosis?" The man was right. How he stumbled
  upon this trade secret, I do not know. But I am willing to
  admit, since the truth is out, that it has been my custom in
  preparing an article of a humorous nature, to go down to
  the cellar and mix up half a gallon of myosis with a pint
  of hyperbole. If I want to give the article a decided literary
  flavour, I find it well to put in about half a pint of paresis.
  The whole thing is amazingly simple.

Thus lightly he turns aside the comment of a critical jackass.
On another occasion he offered this advice on writing-
"Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur
to you. The jotting is simplicity itself--it is the occurring
which is difficult."
  Oh, that he had left it at thatl But in one of his worst
books--the one called <1How>1 To <1Write-->1he includes two em-
barrassing chapters on how to write humor. He could no
more tell anybody else how to write humor than Jupiter
could tell them how to turn into a bull or a swan, and for the
same reason--it was his special gift, his godhead, not sus-
ceptible of analysis or explanation, and not communicable
to anybody who wanted to be like him.
224

  Leacock's first humorous book was <1Literary Lapses,>1 which
was published in 1910, when he was forty; he wrote fifty-
seven books altogether, and though a few of these were
works on political economy (the subject of which he was
professor at McGill University in Montreal from 1908 to
1936), most of them were books of what he called "funny
pieces." He was proud of this huge output--proud as only a
Canadian who has also been a farmer can be of antlike in-
dustry for its own sake. All his life long he got up at five
o'clock in the morning, to work. He declared proudly in
<1Who's Who>1 that he published at least one book every year
from 1906 to 1936. That his work became mechanical and
stale and that there was sometimes an hysterically forced
note in his fun were less to him than that he wrote a funny
book every year. In <1Arcadian Adventures among the Idle>1
<1Rich>1 and <1Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy>1 he mocked
industrialists who did not know how to relax, but he was
quite as much under the compulsion to work, to produce, as
they. He did it because it made money, of course, but also
because he had an addicted public which would buy any
book which had his name on it, and which seemed never to
tire of fun which was in his vein, whether of the first
sprightly running, or of the mere dregs. Every popular
humorist has these uncritical readers; they are attracted to
a writer by the special quality of his work, and they want
that special thing repeated, even when it has grown forced
or stale. To such readers nothing is more baffling than a
writer who insists on trying something new, who experi-
ments or improves. Is the writer to be blamed if he obliges
them?
  Not by me. There are critics who sit in judgment upon a
writer's life, sagely putting a finger on the point where he
                                                       225

went wrong, was false to himself, let popularity and the
flattery of publishers and public lead him from the strait
path. Let such critics look to their own careers, if they have
indeed careers to look to. It would certainly be better if a
writer like Leacock knew always what was best to do and
what would look best in the eyes of posterity, but such un-
natural foresight cannot be required of any man.
   <2Humorist's Climacteric>2
NEVERTHELESS, we may observe that in writers more fortu-
nate or more sagacious than Leacock, who have won at least
a part of their reputation as humorists, there occurs a devel-
opment which is of great interest; at some point in middle
age the brilliant and often nervous quality which distin-
guished the humor of their early work gives place to a hu-
mor of a different nature; the source of the writer's humor
seems to have changed, and what he draws from this new
well is of a fuller flavor. If this change does not take place,
the humorist may lose his power and his faith in himself, as
It appears that the late Robert Benchley did; with the hu-
man instinct to see a natural law in a personal misfortune,
he said that few humorists kept their touch after fifty. He
was partly right; few of them keep the same touch. P. G.
Wodehouse is an example of a man who has maintained vir-
tually the same style and quality of humor through a long
working life; furthermore, he seems well aware of what he
has done and how he has done it. But less conscious crafts-
men who are greater artists seem, if they are lucky, to ap-
proach and pass a climacteric in middle life which leaves
them changed for the better, though it rarely leaves them
humorists pure and simple. After this crisis, it is evident that
226
humor is an important aspect of their work, but not the
wholeof it.
  Why this should be so I cannot pretend to explain, except
in such generalities as that experience of life deepens per-
ception. An interesting observation on this topic is that of
the philosopher, fashionable at present. So%ren Kierkegaard,
who writes:

    The more one suffers the more, I believe, one has a
  sense for the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering
  that one acquires true authority in the use of the comic,
  and authority which by one word transforms as by magic
  the reasonable creature one calls man into a caricature.

Complementary to his is Thurber's remark that "humour is
a kind of emotional chaos, told about quietly and calmly in
retrospect." Emotional chaos is not pleasant; distillation of
that chaos afterward may perhaps be pleasant in some of its
aspects, and undoubtedly gives pleasure to others.
  In considering works of humor, or partly of humor, it is
often possible to distinguish the works of men over forty
from those of their juniors by this increased emotional qual-
ity alone. It is this which distinguishes Goldsmith's <1She>1
<1Stoops to Conquer,>1 written when he was forty-three, from
Congreve's <1The Way of the World,>1 written when he was
thirty; both are masterpieces, but one is unmistakably a mas-
terpiece of maturity. Similarly, we are not surprised to find
that <1The Canterbury Tales>1 is the work of one who was, for
his time, an old man, any more than we are surprised that
Thomas Mann's last book and finest work of humor, <1Felix>1
<1Krull,>1 was completed in his late seventies, although he be-
gan it in his comparative youth. This quality of maturity
shows itself in humorous books of such widely differing
GROWTH IN WAUGH AND HUXLEY           227

kinds as <1Gulliver's Travels,>1 which Swift wrote when he was
fifty-nine, and The <1Wind in the Willows,>1 written by Ken-
neth Grahame when he was forty-nine.
   The change may be observed in the work of many writers
of the first rank. The Mark Twain who wrote The <1Inno->1
<1cents A broad>1 at thirty-four was not the man who wrote
<1Huckleberry Finn>1 at forty-nine. Nor was the Dickens who
astonished the English-speaking world with <1Pickwick>1 at
twenty-four the same Dickens who turned the corner with
<1Bleak House,>1 written when he was forty, and was in the
main stream of his later development at forty-eight, when
he wrote <1Great Expectations.>1 It is not increased knowledge
of life alone--what Kierkegaard characteristically calls suf-
fering but what may more moderately be called distillation
of experience--which brings about this change; it is an al-
teration in the writer's attitude toward himself which shows
in his means of expression and the themes he chooses.

   <2Growth in Waugh and Huxley>2

A LIVING WRITER in whom this change is plainly marked is
Evelyn Waugh, who was acclaimed as a brilliant humorist
when he produced <1Decline and Fall>1 when he was twenty-
five. But it should have been evident in his succeeding works
that he was not a humorist and nothing else; no humorist of
any consequence is ever merely funny. Yet there were read-
ers who were taken by surprise when, in <1Brideshead Revis->1
<1ited,>1 Waugh produced a deeply serious book, in which there
were fine humorous passages; he was forty-two when it ap-
peared, and the time for a change was at hand. His subse-
quent work has been increasingly serious, and never more so
than in The <1Loved One,>1 written when he was forty-five. Hu-
228

mor in Waugh is a mode of expression rather than a cast of
mind.
  Even more might this be said of Aldous Huxley, who was
thought very funny when, at twenty-seven, he published
<1Crome Yellow;>1 his reputation as a brilliant wit was in-
creased by every subsequent book until <1Eyeless in Gaza,>1
written when he was forty-two. Many of his novels since that
time have been enlivened by a wit which is undimmed, but
which is not the most striking characteristic of his style or
his thought; but readers who could not stay the course have
fallen away from him, and there are people so foolish as to
underestimate his later quality as a philosopher because he
was once a humorist--or seemed so to people who must
label and ticket authors.

              <2Tragedy Rises to Balance Comedy>2

WHY DOES this change take place? Perhaps a clue is af-
forded by the theory put forward by Sigmund Freud in <1Wit>1
<1and Its Relation to the Unconscious.>1 This is anything but an
easy book to read, for it suffers greatly by translation into
English, and it is apt to overwhelm us with that ennui which
is inseparable from books which try to explain why things
are funny. But it makes two points which are relevant here.
The first is that humor is a way of giving expression to
things which would be intolerable if they were said directly-
"Out of my great sorrows I make my little songs," wrote
Heinrich Heine; the humorist might say with equal truth:
"Out of my great disenchantments I make my little jokes."
The second point made by Freud is that the humorist's ob-
ject is to strip away, momentarily, the heavy intellectual and
moral trappings of adult life, including so many things that
TRAGEDY RISES TO BALANCE COMEDY       229

we regard is virtues, and to set us free again in that happy
condition which we enjoyed in the morning of life, when
everything came to us freshly; when we did not have to
make allowances for the limitations or misfortunes of
others; when we dared to call a thing or a person stupid if
they seemed stupid to us; when we lived gloriously in the
moment, without thought for the past or consideration for
the future; when we were, indeed, as the lilies of the field. I
said above that humor was daemonic; this is how its dae-
monism works. As the tragic writer rids us of what is petty
and ignoble in our nature, so also the humorist rids us of
what is cautious, calculating, and priggish--about half of
our social conscience, indeed- Both of them permit us, in
blessed moments of revelation, to soar above the common
level of our lives.
  Why, then, if the gift is so great, does the humorist seem
to abandon it, or relegate it to an inferior place, in middle
age? The answer is that he does not do so; rather, he bal-
ances it against another quality which has arisen in him and
demands expression, and that quality is a sense of tragedy.
This second quality, this late-comer, is not sufficiently pow-
erful to alter the quality of his work absolutely, but it gives
it a background of feeling which is sufficient to turn the bril-
liantly humorous young man into the richly but fitfully hu-
morous middle-aged one.
   It is not necessary to dwell at length on the nature of this
difference, for it appears clearly enough in literature. One
of the most brilliantly and coruscatingly funny books in Eng-
lish is James Joyce's <1Ulysses,>1 which was published when its
author was forty, but which had occupied him for many
years before that. There are so many things to be said about
<1Ulysses>1 that it is sometimes forgotten that it is a great com-
230

edy. Nevertheless, it is the great comedy of a young man.
Whether the kind of change which I have been describing
here is evident in <1Finnegans Wake,>1 completed when he was
fifty-six, I do not feel qualified to say. If we seek a great
comedy to contrast with <1Ulysses,>1 let us turn to <1Don Quixote>1,
which Cervantes wrote when he was fifty-eight. This is the
comedy of a man past that climacteric which brings humor
to its fullest ripening. A sense of tragedy, a sense of the
evanescence and dreamlike quality of life, and a sense of the
imminence of death may all be found in the work of young
men, though not often in their works of humor; but in the
comedy of older men these things are to be heard, not ag-
gressively, but as a continuing pedal point, supporting the
other harmony, whatever it may be.

   <2The Many Faces of Humor>2

NOT ALL, or even most, discussion of humor can be carried
on at the level of Don <1Quixote>1 and <1Ulysses,>1 for there are
legions of people who do not care for either of them, and
these people also insist that they appreciate humor, and so
they do. There are countless grades and classifications of
humor, and we had better agree to allow that name to what-
ever makes people laugh, or smile, whether we like it our-
selves or not. There are people who like the fun of the tele-
vision comics, though the mechanics of its contrivance are
often cynically obvious. They are the same sort of people
who, a century or more ago, provided happy readers for such
remorseless jokesmiths as Theodore Hook and Thomas
Hood. And what are we to say of a man like Sidney Smith
(1771--1845) , who was perhaps the greatest wit of his time,
and whose mind seemed to move in an atmosphere of the
SNOBBERY AND HUMOR                          231

most delightful and high-hearted humor? Yet Smith was en-
tirely serious in his attitude toward life, and devoted him-
self to the cause of political and social reform as tirelessly as
if he had been the most lugubrious of killjoys. There is rea-
son to think that he might have achieved his ends more
surely if he had not been incapable of dullness; his wit was
at once his joy and his handicap. What are we to say about
those people, frequently of blameless life, whose favorite
humor is heavily spiced with indecency? Their fun is not
pornography (it is interesting that pornography is rarely
cast in a humorous mold) , but most of it never sees print.
The six volumes of D'Urfey's <1Pills to Purge Melancholy>1
seem chiefly to be aimed at them, and much farce, old and
contemporary, is for their enjoyment. They are the people
who cannot contain themselves when an old maid on the
stage says: "I've asked the Vicar to help me with my inner
tube." Most of their humorous currency harks back to <1Nu->1
<1gae Venales>1 or Joe Miller, and has a submerged, but vigor-
ous, life.

  <2Snobbery and Humor>2

WHAT ARE WE to say about Snob humor? <1The Diary of a No->1
<1body>1 by George and Weedon Grossmith (1892) is unques-
tionably a very funny book; its revelation of the triviality
and timidity of Mr. Pooter is managed with great skill; Mr.
Pooter is not mocked, he is revealed. We feel superior to
him, but we do not scorn him. The touch is gentler, but no
less sure, than that of Arthur Kober in his stories about
Bella Gross and her family which have appeared in <1The>1
<1New Yorker.>1 Does anyone think that the Pooters or the
Grosses are inadmissible subjects for humor? But if we
232

want to consider a genuine and, in my opinion, inexcusible
instance of snob humor, we must give some attention to the
career of Amanda Ros.
  The facts of her life, briefly, are that she was born Anna
Margaret McKittrick, at Ballynahinch, County Down, in
1860; for a short time she was a schoolmistress, until she
married Andrew Ross, the stationmaster at Larne, in 1887.
She lived at Larne for the remainder of her days, and wrote
several books, of which <1Irene Iddesleigh, Delina Delaney,>1
and <1Poems of Puncture>1 were published at her own expense.
They achieved some success with a small but influential
group of people who appreciated their peculiar badness,
and before the First Great War there was something of a
cult for her work among the smart set in London. After
the war the Nonesuch Press brought out a splendid edition
of <1Irene Iddesleigh; Delina Delaney>1 appeared in Chatto
and Windus's famous Phoenix Library; and Aldous Huxley
wrote an essay, <1Euphues Redivivus,>1 which called attention
to her extraordinary style. She now called herself Amanda
Ros, as being more aristrocratic than her name in its original
form. She engaged in a lifelong controversy with her critics,
showing herself to be an unusually vigorous and abusive
fighter; she died in 1939.
  Why all this fuss about a bad writer? Well--she was a bad
writer of genius. She was not negatively bad, in the sense
that she was dull, or inexpressive, or trite, or lacking in in-
spiration; she was exuberantly, voluptuously bad--her bad-
ness was supereminent and supererogatory; if it is really
true that extremes meet, she was so bad that she was good.
Her books are funny, and to some people they are exqui-
sitely and refreshingly funny.
  A biography of her called <1O Rare Amanda>1 was written in
                                                       233

1954 by Jack Loudan. In it he makes this judgment, from
which I strongly dissent: "Amanda is the most perfect in-
strument for measuring the sense of humour. Alert and
quick-witted people accept her at once: those whom she
leaves entirely unmoved are invariably dull and unimagi-
native. She is for people who do not always expect reason,
who are ready to enter her world without disputation, and
to accept her magnificent incongruities." I object to this sort
of criticism which says, in effect, that if you do not enjoy
Amanda Ros wholeheartedly, you have a dullard's sense of
humor; that is critical bullying.
  Bad writing, however extraordinary, is only amuslng up
to a point. To enjoy it further, simply because it is bad,
seems to me like an unpleasant kind of snobbery. Prolonged
displays of ineptitude are embarrassing to sensitive peo-
ple; the off-key singer, the grammarless orator--after a short
time we cease to smile and begin to sweat. I can only read
two or three pages of Amanda Ros before I am so ashamed
for her that I cannot go on. This is not, I think, an unusual
condition of mind, and I do not believe that it is incompati-
ble with a literate creature's sense of humor. Does it really
show such a very keen sense of fun to enjoy the spectacle of
a woman making a fool of herself, in print or otherwise?
  The game of baiting Amanda Ros began when Barry
Pain, a critic and humorist now virtually forgotten, wrote a
review of <1Irene Iddesleigh>1 in 1898 called <1"The Book of the>1
<1Century";>1 it is a labored piece of work, heavy-handed and
cruel. For a popular reviewer to mock an inept book by a
professional writer may be a duty, and even an agreeable
duty; but need he go out of his way to poke snobbish fun at
a foolish woman whose vanity has led her to pay for the
printing of a silly novel? What Amanda thought about it
234

may be read in her reply, which is published as a preface to
the 1935 edition of <1Delina Delaney.>1 It is a transport of
galumphing sarcasm; it shows her at her most conceited and
most inept; if she had been hurt and had retired into silence,
Pain's act would have been unkind enough, but she trum-
pets and tramples like an enraged elephant, and the critic
and author put on an unedifying show.
  Pain's review called attention to <1Irene Iddesleigh>1 and
<1Delina Delaney,>1 which followed it in 1898. Copies of these
books were not easy to obtain, but people got hold of them,
and even copied long passages by hand. Amanda became a
literary craze among a select group, which included a num-
ber of literary people, a few politicians, and some society
leaders. They met to read her work aloud; it was a mark of
distinction to be able to quote her long, tortured sentences.
People of name wrote to her, some of them so civilly that
she mistook their interest for serious appreciation, and be-
came extremely vain because of it. And it must be said that
some things that were said and written about her, such as
Huxley's essay already mentioned, were not malicious but
sprang from a genuine interest in the pathology of prose.
Nevertheless, it was not a kindly form of snobbery which
led so many people who should have known better to
make sport of this crazed Irishwoman.
  I use the word "crazed" in its primary sense. Although in
most respects Amanda Ros was sane enough, and could be
amiable when she chose, she showed unmistakable signs of
madness in relation to her work; in the mealymouthed
phrase of modern psychiatry, she was a "disturbed person-
ality." She had delusions of grandeur, and when annoyed,
she was abusive and foul-mouthed. Every editor, of maga-
zine or newspaper, has had experience of the type; at best
                                                       235

they are nuisances and at worst they are alarming lunatics.
   But when all this has been said, an element remains in
Amanda's work which compels attention. It is Irish prose,
diseased. There are times when we read Joyce, or Brendan
Behan, or more particularly Sean O'Casey, when another
voice seems to cut in, like an interfering station on the ra-
dio; it is the voice of Amanda. I yield to no one in my ad-
miration for the specifically Irish lyric style of writing at its
best, but it readily becomes a mannerism, and degenerates
into a word-sodden howl. It slithers greasily from simile to
simile; it throws up adjectives in ragged, messy heaps; it
piles on the agony until the effect is first comic and then In-
tolerable. It strains for effect; it flings words into incongru-
ous and distasteful unions; it drivels and it mumbles and it
breaks into sudden, unmannerly screams. It is the sort of
thing Joyce has caricatured superbly in the Nausicaa pas-
sages in <1Ulysses,>1 and which O'Casey slips into in the worst
passages of his autobiography. But it is Amanda's accus-
tomed and best manner; she can do it all the time. Unques-
tionably, bad writing on this level commands respect and
curioslty, and Amanda stands as a perpetual warning to all
writers with even a sixteenth part of Irish blood in their
veins.
   But funny? It was snobbery more than a sense of humor
which made a cult of the cracked old Swan of Ballynahinch.

  <2Humor Short--winded>2

                 AMANDA'S WORKS were full-length novels, and they were
funny, to the people who found them funny at all, by in-
advertence. Many a writer might envy Amanda's power
to be amusing for so long a stretch; the problem of writing
236

a comic novel is, among other things, a matter of length. So
many of their kind collapse when they are two-thirds com-
pleted, and sometimes the efforts of the despairing writer to
keep up interest to the end are pitifully apparent. Undoubt-
edly it is much more difficult to sustain the comic tone for
the length of a book than it is to produce a romance, or a
book of modestly tragic quality. It is this difficulty which
accounts for the frequency, and also for the popularity, of
those comic books which are novels only in the broadest
sense, being in fact collections of short stories in which the
same characters appear.
  Such a book may be extremely unsophisticated, like
<1Peck's Bad Boy>1, or it can be the book in which a generation
finds its ideal of sophistication mirrored, like <1Chronicles of>1
<1Clovis.>1 George Wilbur Peck must have been a remarkable
man, for he is one of the very few people with an openly
confessed sense of humor ever to make a mark in politics; at
the peak of his career he was Governor of Wisconsin. <1Peck's>1
<1Bad Boy and His Pa>1 (1883) was familiar and popular until
well after the first Great War; it concerns the Bad Boy,
who harasses his Pa with a variety of practical jokes, such as
putting ants in his liver pad, writing him "mash notes" in a
female hand, getting him arrested, causing him to fall into
the cistern, and hiding a deck of cards in the handkerchief
which Pa will certainly flourish at the prayer meeting.
There are frequent allusions to the drollery of rheumatism,
of Limburger cheese, of sewer gas, and of being kicked in
"the bosom of the pants." It enjoyed the kind of popu-
larity which later attached itself to Chic Sale's little book
<1The Specialist;>1 in figty years it may be hard to believe that
millions of people laughed so much at a string of anecdotes
about building privies.
                                                        237

   Humor of this kind, and of all kinds, constantly refur-
bishes and renews itself, appearing in the form most con-
genial to the age. Doubtless that is why the <1Chronicles of>1
<1Clovis,>1 which was so much appreciated from its appearance
in 1911 until, perhaps, 1925, is so little read today; that kind
of fastidious and elegant approach to life has little to say to
us at present, though the delicacy of the craftsmanship could
bring these stories back into favor at some future time. But
we may doubt if anything will restore popularity to H. H.
Munro's best venture into the novel form, The <1Unbear->1
<1able Bassington,>1 for it suffers from the failure of vitality
which is the characteristic disease of the comic novel under-
taken on this high level.

  <2Failure on the Highest Level>2

FAILURE OF THIS kind is too common to be a matter for re-
proach; regret, rather, is what we feel. Consider the striking
example of <1Zuleika Dobson,>1 which also appeared in 1911;
in it Max Beerbohm has tried to write a gently satiric novel
about Oxford, which he has enlivened with all the wit and
elegance of style which were his. He began it in the nineties,
then let it lie fallow for twelve or thirteen years, so there
can be no pretense that he let it out of his hands before he
had done his best with it. It has a brilliant beginning--so
good that at each rereading I pluck up new hope--but it
goes badly to pieces in the middle, and even the fine ending
cannot redeem it. It is a daring book; no author who was
looking for easy popularity would choose mass suicide as his
theme; Beerbohm is not one of those who think that certain
subjects must be untouched by comedy. Further, although
the English like to be rallied on their snobbery, it was cou-
238
rageous to make the whole undergraduate body of Oxford
commit suicide because the example was set by a Duke. The
book is full of splendid scenes, of which my own favorite is
Zuleika's banal performance as a conjuror and the success
which her beauty and charm win for this dreadful entertain-
ment. The style is masterly, for it is unceasingly witty with-
out blinding the reader by a display of fireworks--candle-
light on fine silver is rather the effect. But all these splendid
and enviable qualities cannot make it a good novel which we
can read without some weariness. Would not many writers
think themselves lucky to fail so splendidly? No: nobody but
a fool wants to fail when he sets to work to write a novel,
and it is the hope that he may succeed where others--in so
many ways his betters--have failed that keeps him going.
   It is not the delicacy of the workmanship which robs
<1Zuleika Dobson>1 of a sufficient vitality to sustain the whole
novel; there is plenty of steel in everything Beerbohm
wrote. A more robust approach would not have saved it, any
more than it saved <1Cold Comfort Farm>1 (1932), Stella Gib-
bons's satire on novels of the Gloomy Pastoral School. It is
very entertaining for its first hundred pages; the impact of
matter-of-fact, brisk, clear-headed young Flora Poste upon
the brooding, guilt-ridden, passion-torn Starkadders of Cold
Comfort Farm is extremely funny; good phrases and fine
strokes of satiric invention abound; but the book cannot con-
tinue in this high strain, the plot has to be resolved by
some unsatisfactory wrenches, and we finish it with gratl--
tude, but not with the satisfaction which comes from a first-
rate invention thoroughly carried out. What we remember
are the successful passages, not the whole.
                                                       239


     <2A Neglected Masterpiece>2

AN UNDESERVEDLY neglected novel which is satiric in man-
ner, and which carries its satiric intention triumphantly for
its full length, gaining rather than losing strength as it pro-
gresses, is Osbert Sitwell's <1Before the Bombardment>1 (1926).
It is not pitched in the high key of <1Zuleika Dobson,>1 and
it does not achieve its effects by extravagance, as does <1Cold>1
<1Comfort Farm:>1 the author has found precisely the tone and
the method for carrying out his intention, and the result
is a minor masterpiece. Why, then, is it not more widely
known? Why is it so seldom referred to when these things
are discussed? I think it may be because of the subject, which
is little understood by the generality of readers; people will
happily read novels which deal with unfamiliar matter in
terms of romance, but to appreciate a satire, most of us
wish to have encountered the subject at first hand, or in some
nonsatirical piece of writing.
  <1Before the Bombardment>1 is a study of that almost forgot-
ten creature, the Paid Companion. Miss Teresa Bramley is
a clergyman's daughter who, finding herself alone in the
world and with very small means, takes a position as Com-
panion to Miss Cecilia Collier-Floodgaye, who lives in a ho-
tel in the seaside resort of Newborough. She is oppressed,
because the nature of her position implies some oppression,
but in no gross or farcical sense: she is also an oppressor,
because she is of a somewhat superior social position to her
employer, and she has delicate means for making this su-
periority apparent. There are inevitable jealousies between
the two ladies, for when the companion seeks friends other
than the woman she is paid to befriend, she is guilty of a
240

special sort of disloyalty; similarly, the companion feels
both a professional and an emotional tie with her employer,
and seeks to defend her from the unsuitable or unworthy
people who wish to know her on a wholly personal, nonpro-
fessional level. There arises, inevitably, the question of
Miss Collier-Floodgaye's will, and the extent to which Miss
Bramley may hope to figure in it. There are connections of
the employer, in whose eyes Miss Bramley of course appears
as a designing woman, wielding that vague but dreadful
power, "undue influence." The comedy is worked out with
delicacy, but not with that frail delicacy which means lack
of vitality. And although the intention of the novel is satiric,
the satire is not so heavily pressed home that the terrible
pathos of the situation is falsified or mocked. The truth
which lies beneath the artificiality is never denied or dis-
torted.
  It is here that we are able to put a finger on the quality
which divides the successful comic novel from the brilliant
failure; there is an inevitable artificiality about such a work,
as indeed there must be about any work of imagination; but
in the realm of the intentionally comic the artificiality is
more obvious than in novels of romantic or tragic theme. In
the comic novel the artifficiality can be such a joy to the
craftsman and such a release to the wit, that he is tempted
to sacrifice truth. Truth in a comic novel need not mean a
dreary adherence to such trite and timid philosophies as:
         There is so much good in the worst of us
         And so much bad in the best of us
         That it hardly behooves any of us
         To talk about the rest of us
That kind of thinking is for the sentimental funnyman, and
finds its expression in such deservedly forgotten work as that
A NEGLECTED MASTERPIECE                    241

of J. K. Jerome. But the comic writer, no less than the tragic
writer, must bear in mind our common humanity, and re-
late his work to it as it appears in his own experience. It is
the lack of this quality in <1Zuleika Dobson>1 and <1Chronicles>1
<1of Clovis>1 which robs them, for all their brilliance in execu-
tion, of the highest achlevement.
  It is no accident that the best novels of one of the most
inventive and successful alnong American humorists, Peter
De Vries, are related in the first person. A writer may choose
this method of narration for many reasons, and nobody be-
lieves that the "I" of the story is the "I" of the writer; nev-
ertheless, a man who is writing in the first person even of a
creature of his own invention has a potent force at work
upon him which prevents his work from escaping into the
realm of the inhumanly clever. Mr. De Vries produces ex-
cellent comic effects by his revelation of his central char-
acter, his narrator, in several aspects--as he sees himself, as
he hopes the world sees him, as he discovers, to his dismay,
that the world actually <1does>1 see him. His narrator--in <1The>1
<1Tunnel of Love,>1 in <1Comfort Me with Apples,>1 in The
<1Mackerel Plaza,>1 and in The <1Tents of Wickedness-->1is a
man of lively intelligence, scornful of his achievement,
doubtful of his effectuality with women, and given to fan-
tasy; the complexity of this invention serves the author well,
for he is able to present both his principal character and his
story on several levels. They are obviously accepted on sev-
eral levels, as well, for his admirers range from people who
like "a good laugh" and nothing else--people who see De
Vries as a successor to Thorne Smith as a purveyor of their
favorite kind of fiction--to people who find an image of
themselves and a comment on an aspect of modern life in
these complex entertainments. They are constructed with
242

ample but unobtrusive craftsmanship, they do not suffer
from the sags which are the characteristic faults of comic
novels, and they are amply sustained by that essential hu-
manity which alone seems to be able to keep such novels
from falling apart, and from being remembered in terms
of incidents and phrases, rather than as unities.

   <2By Lo Possessed>2

THE DEVICE of narration in the first person is used with re-
markable effect in the most discussed comic novel of our
time, <1Lolita>1 by Vladimir Nabokov. Is it comic? I think it is.
People who hold that some subjects cannot, under any cir-
cumstances or however treated, yield comedy think other-
wise.
  The book is about a theme which does not seem, on the
face of it, comic; the narrator is a man whose sexual appe-
tite is confined to girls of between nine and fourteen. He is
not a monster or an indiscriminate ravisher; he is desper-
ately in love with his Lolita; Humbert Humbert is a man
in the grip of a demon. His obsession, though not rare, is
one upon which society frowns--the same society, of course,
which permits the frankest exploitation of "little girl" ap-
peal in fashion and advertising.
  Books about men gripped by sexual mania are common;
incest, homosexuality, satyriasis, and what not are always
cropping up in novels, which, clumsy though they may be
from the literary point of view, are often greeted with sol-
emn commendation for their frankness. The attitude of such
authors reminds me of the story about the little boy who
burst into his mother's living room when she was entertain-
ing the parson at tea, eagerly exclaiming: "Hey, Ma! We
                                                       243

caught a toad, and we bashed him and squashed him and
put him through the lawn mower till"--at this point spy-
ing the parson--"until God called him Home." Their nov-
els are liberal of gaudy incident and sickening clinical de-
tail, but these writers are careful to let us know that they
abhor what they record. This trick of construction is called
"sincerity," and is much praised by critics and readers who
want to eat their nasty cake and have it too. I honor Vladimir
Nabokov because he will not play this crooked-minded trick
on the simple, and has written <1Lolita>1 as a comic novel.
  Why not? The line between tragedy and comedy is thin,
as we have already observed, and as many a bad perform-
ance of a stage tragedy proves. So thin is it that some writers
of special insight--Chekov, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and
Joyce Cary (whom we shall discuss in more detail shortly)
--have made that borderline their special realm. What
comedy of great stature lacks a root in tragedy? <1Othello>1 and
<1The Merry Wives of Windsor>1 have a common theme; <1Don>1
<1Quixote>1, the comedy, draws hotter tears than <1Faust,>1 the
tragedy. The difference between comedy and tragedy is less
often one of theme than of the prevailing color of the writ-
er'smind.
  Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those
who feel, says Horace Walpole, but it is not quite true.
Nabokov feels for his ridiculous, obsessed pursuer of little
girls, and he makes us feel, too. Humbert Humbert is a
man of intellect and sensibility in the grip of a mania which
he knows to be reprehensible, but which he cannot help; lie
is also the toy of those ridiculous, farcical elements in life of
Which we are all a prey, but of which we are usually happily
unconscious. His plight is comic, and it is as comedy that it
is presented. The victimization of Humbert is not cruelly
244

displayed; there is great understanding and pity in this
novel.
  If the Lolita whom Humbert Humbert pursues, and for
whom he makes a scoundrel, a doormat, and a fool of him-
self had been an innocent child, debauched by a grown man,
we might well have shuddered. Before the war the late
Stephen Haggard wrote a novel about the reciprocated love
of a man for a charming girl-child, and although it was done
with some skill and much tenderness, it made my flesh
creep. But Lolita is not innocent. She is a shrill little gold-
digger who has already, at twelve, lost her virginity to a
thirteen-year-old tough whose mother runs a girl's camp; it
was not a seduction, but a cooperative activity, in the best
summer-camp tradition. When Humbert Humbert at last
gets Lolita to himself, it is she who seduces him. Incredible?
Ask any candid magistrate.
  Who is the victim in this relationship? Lolita, who grudg-
ingly exchanges what she does not value for unlimited ice
cream, sight-seeing, and travel, or Humbert Humbert, who
exchanges money, time, and self-respect for the favors of
his darling? Lolita makes him toe the mark by threats of
exposure and prison; Humbert keeps her somewhat in
check by counterthreats that if he goes to jail, she goes to re-
form school. From one point of view, she is victim, and he a
monster: but with equal truth she is the exploiter, and he
the slave. The comedy of their situation lies in the fact that
according to convention (and the law is, and must be, con-
ventional) he is grossly culpable and she a legal "infant,"
unaware of the nature of her actions; but their situation is
so unconventional that we must pity Humbert, enthralled
to her body and soul, whereas she regards him with neither
                                                       245

affection nor distaste. Humbert is a madman, but his mad-
ness is of that unmercifully incomplete kind which creates
deep wretchedness, as well as hilarious comedy.
  Nabokov writes with style, and style--as distinguished
from verbal and syntactical foppery, which is sometimes
mistaken for it--gives a dimension to a book which can be
disquieting when exercised on such a theme as this. Many
authors, on the North American continent, write as if they
were apprentice blacksmiths making their first horseshoe;
the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather
apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this ap-
peals to those who equate sincerity with sweating inepti-
tude. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a
fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no
fuss, and the finished product had better be kept away from
children. Like the late Bernard Shaw, he writes as if every
reader were as intelligent as himself, and this is disquieting
to some intellects. Nevertheless, that is the real sincerity,
not to be confused with the fake sincerity which springs
from clumsy craftsmanship and a shared loutishness be-
tween writer and reader. Virtuosity, so much admired in
some of the other arts, is at present unfashionable in litera-
ture. Can it be that those who feared the book and banned
it felt that something horrifying--something far beyond the
anthropoidal simplicities of <1Peyton Place-->1lurked beneath
that gleaming surface?
  What lurks there is nothing worse than the spirit of com-
edy, but as has already been suggested, that can be quite bad
enough. This is the daemonic comedy which is so terrible to
those who regard humor as, essentially, something which
hurts nobody's feelings, a gentle sweetener of life's cup. The


246

humor which whistles up the skirts of Mrs. Grundy like an
icy breeze, and blows the judge's robe right across his eyes,
is not for them.
  Some critics, who were eager to show their liberality of
spirit by lallygagging over a once banned work, have called
<1Lolita>1 a great book. lt is sufficient to say that it is a book of
unique quality. There will long be people who will find it
very funny; the plain fact that it is not for all readers has
nothing to do with the matter, and is, rather, evidence of
the originality of its comedy.

   <2The Greatness of Cary>2

TELLING A STORY in the first person is not a formula for suc-
cess in writing comic novels, but it serves the true comic
novelist well, despite the often discussed handicaps inherent
in the method. One of the few really great comic novels to
be written in this century, <1The Horse's Mouth>1 by the late
Joyce Cary (1944) , is cast in this form. It was interesting to
observe that the film which was made from this book in
1958 was compelled to leave out virtually everything which
makes the book great, but there was quite enough comic
incident and comic character left to make a film well above
the ordinary level. The story of the novel is sufficient but of
minor importance; an elderly painter, Gulley Jimson, is so
obsessed with the problems of his art that he subordinates
every other feeling and obligation to it; he is literally a
man possessed, and from this central fact springs everything
that happens to him. In the novel it is this demoniacal pos-
session which is always foremost, and we see his misfortunes,
his friendships, the scrapes in which he involves other peo-
ple, always as minor matters. In the film these incidents had
THE GREATNESS OF CARY                       247

to be brought into sharper definition, and the character of
Gulley, though still the most important, lost stature.
   The novel is a triumph of impersonation, and it is part of
an even greater triumph, a trilogy <1(Herself Surprised,>1
1941, and <1To Be a Pilgrim,>1 1942) concerning the relation-
ship of three people; each book tells part of the story as it
appeared to the narrator, with differences of emphasis and
point of view which make them seem to be three stories,
though in fact they are one. The trilogy is a triumphant ex-
position of the truth that we are all, unwittingly, playing
supporting roles in each other's personal dramas. The tragic
sense of life, the human predicament, the "sense of other-
ness"--all the sable generalities which are brought out to
justify works which are aiming at tragedy and which so
often succeed only in arriving at gloom--are all apparent
in Cary's trilogy, but in its totality it is seen through a tem-
perament which is serene, distinguished, and courageous,
and so it emerges as great comedy.
   Much of this comedy is based on a truth which other writ-
ers have found tragic--the isolation and essential loneli-
ness of human life. The three principals in the trilogy are
all, at the end, alone. Mrs. Sara Monday of <1Herself Sur->1
<1prised>1 is last met with in prison, where she has gone because
she pilfered from her employer, whose mistress she also was.
Not he but his relatives discovered and disgraced her. She is
astonished to discover, after the court proceedings, that she
is what the world calls a criminal, for nothing that she did
seemed to her wrong, or malicious, or contrary to the pity
she felt for Mr. Wilcher, who was so pathetic and who
treated her so well. Her memoir is written in short chap-
ters, in a sweet, countrified vocabulary, and with occasional
passages which recall her favorite author, Charlotte M.
248

Yonge. She did not think of her peculations as serious . . .
"it was a case of little by little". . . and she blames "my
flesh" for her sexual involvement with Wilcher and with
Jimson. It is between the lines and in the other books that
we discover what a conniver and a temptress she has been.
She sees herself still as a country girl with a special, appeal-
ing, fresh beauty, who "could not refuse any pleasure." She
does not recognize the portrait of her which the judge gives
in his summing up of her case.
  So also with poor old Wilcher, whom we meet in <1To Be a>1
<1Pilgrim>1 as an old man, bemused by what has happened
to his life, which seems so much at odds with all his Inten-
tions. He is invalidish and in the care of his twenty-six-year-
old niece, Ann, who is a doctor and an unsympathetic girl
whose intellect has developed at the cost of her emotions.
To her, Wilcher is a man whose mind is going and who has
been caught indecently exposing himself; this fact, which is
uppermost in her mind, is a triviality to Wilcher, and in the
light of what we learn about him, we see how trivial it
really is. The role of elderly "care" is forced upon him by
his juniors, whose values in life are so different from his
own, and whom he cannot reach in conversation. The fail-
ure, as he sees it, is all with them, but we know better. When
we leave him, he is being murdered psychologically, in his
best interests, and by what passes with Ann for kindness.
  When we consider the trilogy we are struck by the fact
that Gulley Jimson, though vital to the lives of both Sara
Monday and Wilcher, has only the vaguest recollection of
them. Sara is to him little more than a woman who unjustly
acquired some of his pictures, which he wants to get back
and sell in order to paint more. Jimson has a recurrent sense
HUNTING THE UNICORN                         249

of persecution. Of Wilcher he remembers little and cares
less.
  We leave them, Sara in prison (but, with her usual luck,
selling her memoirs to a newspaper) , Wilcher a prisoner of
his chilly niece, and Jimson dying, having been hurt when a
mural collapses. In the long years behind them these three
worlds have met but never mingled.
   Related thus, we hardly find this theme comic. But are
there comic themes, or only comic writers--men whose qual-
ity of mind and means of expression are comic, without
thereby being any less compassionate or understanding or
profound than the writers of tragedy? When we have fin-
ished a great comic creation, like Cary's trilogy, we feel a
lightening of the spirit, a reaffirmation of the splendor and
sacredness of life, no less than that which follows our read-
ing of a great work of tragedy. It is a long way from a good
laugh; it is a glory in the breast.

  <2Hunting the Unicorn>2

AT THE BEGINNING of this discussion I disclaimed any inten-
tion of formulating yet another theory about humor. If
there is a theory which will cover everything from the "good
laugh" (which is so much a mechanical and conditioned re-
sponse to the mere idea of a joke that an audience in a tele-
vision studio can be induced to roar merely by holding up a
placard which suggests that a joke has been made) to the
subtlety of Joyce Cary's comic trilogy, it will have to be dis-
covered by somebody else. I cannot believe that it is an
entity separable from the rest of human character; surely it
is an aspect of some minds, varying in degree and quality
250

with the composition of those minds. It may be, as some
psychologists say, the result of a special quality of tension
between the Conscious and the Unconscious; but suppose
this is so--this precious tension cannot be cultivated or
brought into being simply because we have a theory about
its nature. As Sean O'Casey suggests, there seems to be fat
more human identity in grief than in mirth, and this in its
turn should make it clear to us that mirth is something other
than the antithesis of grief.
  It is not even as though we could count on any stability
in our own sense of humor. There are many of us who can
guffaw at a funny story, at a limerick, or at a pun (What
was Joan of Arc made of?---She was Maid of Orleans) and
still be moved to quite another kind of pleasure by, for in-
stance, such a novel as <1Anglo-Saxon Attitudes>1 by Angus Wil-
son, or one of the superb rhapsodies of word-play which are
called novels by that too little recognized comic genius,
Gwyn Thomas--<1Now Lead Us Home, No Frost on my>1
<1Frolic,>1 to name but two. In our teens we roll about in glee
at some modern equivalent of <1Peck's Bad Boy;>1 in our twen-
ties we think that the farthest reach of sophisticated humor
is to be found in the harshly ironic comedies of Miss Ivy
Compton-Burnett; when we are in middle age, it may well
be the Cary trilogy which delights us; in our sixties we may
turn to Dickens, or <1Don Quixote,>1 or even the brutalities
and buffooneries of Smollett; and in old age, what is it we
seize upon to beguile the long nights?--it may perhaps even
be <1Peck's Bad Boy>1 again. The search for the sense of humor
is as fruitless and as enduring as the hunt for the unicorn;
the really wise man-knows that the unicorn, being no reality
but a life-enhancing myth, must never be hunted, and may
                                                       251

only be glimpsed by the well-disposed and the lucky; it can-
not be captured, and it is encountered only by indirection.
He who insists on hunting the unicorn will certainly dis-
cover, when at last he is sure that the fabulous creature is in
his net, that he has snared a laughing jackass.
                          .VII.

  <1In  Pursuit  0f    Pornography>1


IT IS with reluctance that I begin this chapter with some
comment on book collecting, for I do not know how I shall
avoid the many pitfalls which lie in the path of all who ap-
proach that subject. Hobbyists are likely to be bores to those
who do not share their madness, and I am not writing this
for other collectors, nor am I trying to make converts. But it
is a plain fact that anyone who has ten books on a shelf
which he has bought and kept because he likes them is a
collector on the humblest level, and his books are, in a spe-
cial sense, a reflection of himself. It is of collections of books
as reflections of their owners that I wish to write. But the
temptation to wallow and disport myself in the purple
prose of the doting collector is strong, and it will need all
my vigilance to resist it.
  The trouble is that books have always been what the
jargon of the sociologist calls "status-lenders." Books are
likely to lay bare unsuspected foolishness, even in people
who do not read them. "It's an education just to look at all
those books," said a man who came to hang curtains in my
library; he was sincere, he was awed, he wished to pay trib-
ute to something which he believed to be good, and he also
wanted to show that, though not a reader himself, he was a
fellow of fine feelings. "Books are my husband's one vice,"
said a woman to me, pleased as Punch--as she might well
                           252
BOOKS FOR PRESTIGE                             253

have been had her statement been true. "Why don't you read
a book?" say parents to their troublesome children, as who
might say: "Why don't you take a tranquilizer?" There are
great numbers of people to whom the act of reading a book
--any sort of book--is wondrous; they speak of the reader
in the tone of warm approbation which they use otherwise
when referring to pregnant women, or the newly dead. And
how often do we meet the man who prefaces his remarks
with: "I was reading a book last night . . ." in the too loud,
overenunciated fashion of one who might be saying: "I keep
a hippogryph in my basement." Reading confers status.

                    <2Books for Prestige>2

HOW MUCH MORE, then, does the acquirement of rare
books add to the prestige of the collectorl They need not be
very rare; a shelf of first editions of the better sort of modern
novelist is quite enough, though it is even better to have
some books by reputable dead authors, preferably bound
in leather. What matter if the edges be trimmed so that the
margins are destroyed, and the binding a tasteless horror?
Plenty of people will be impressed.
  Another collector, a little higher up the ladder, will not
be impressed, however, and it is at this point that the real
dog fight for status begins. He takes down the first edition
of <1Vanity Fair,>1 for which his host paid $130 at Ladrone's in
New York, and remarks brusquely that two of the plates are
substitutions, and that the trimming and rebinding have
robbed it of all bibliographical interest. "A good reading
copy, of course--if that's all you want," he says, and leaves
his host a prey to rage and envy, demoted to the ranks of
those who collect books merely to read.
254

   Thus it goes, up and up the ladder until those dizzy
heights are reached where rich collectors vie for Gutenbergs
or First Folios, and where a single note from Lewis Carroll
saying "In my heart of hearts I have always detested that
little prig <1Alice">1 can command a sum equivalent to the
annual salary of a union executive.
   The world of book collectors is a curious mingling of
dreamy charm, poison-fanged competition, and snobbery. It
reveals itself in the books they write. How winning they are
as they confess their lifelong passion for the gentle Elia
(they mean Charles Lamb) or Miss Austen (they mean
Jane, but they are so courtly that they cannot bring them-
selves to use her first name) . How polysyllabically rude they
become when writing of Samuel Johnson, and when they
tackle Gibbon, how their prose squirms and undulates as
they struggle to catch the rhythm of his splendid music!
But behind all this posthumous courtship of the literary
great we are conscious of another and very different spirit;
it is that of the junkman with his wretched cart and his
gloomy howl of "any ol' rags, any ol' bones, any ol' bottles?"
They write gleefully of their "finds"--meaning books which
they have acquired for ridiculously less than their value to
collectors. Nobody would grudge them the reward of ex-
pert knowledge and long searching if only they were less
unctuous about it, if only they could refrain from rubbing
their hands in print. But always in these books the haggling,
overreaching sharper is at war with the self-honoring book-
lover, and the struggle is a disquieting one to the noncol-
lector, who wishes that they would come down flatly on one
side or the other.
   The collector, however, must haggle, must boast, must
croon over his treasures, because it is his nature. And a very
COLLECTING CONDEMNED                       255

peculiar nature, too. Time and again booklovers have writ-
ten of their libraries as harems and of themselves as sultans,
holding captive the beauties who exist for their pleasure
alone. It is not in the least inappropriate that Casanova
ended his days as librarian to Count Waldstein at Dux; he,
who knew every art of seduction, thus became guardian of
another man's zenana. The eroticism, snobbery, and shame-
less greed of book collectors can be shocking if we are so
naive as to suppose, like my decorator, that books are, in
their influence, solely educative--which is usually taken by
simple minds to mean emasculating.

   <2Collecting Condemned>2

DOUBTLESS it was this mania of collectors which drove Ed-
mund Wilson to write in 1926, when the trade in rare books
was at one of its occasional peaks: "There is no special vir-
tue in first editions: one would usually prefer to read a later
one in which the printing is up to date, the paper has not
faded and the author has corrected the errors. All this trade
is as deeply boring to people who are interested in litera-
ture as it seems to be fascinating to those others who, in-
capable of literary culture, try to buy the distinction of let-
ters by paying unusual prices for bibliographical rarities.
. . . It may be necessary for a critic or a student--unless he
has within reach a large library--to accumulate a consider-
able number of books; but it is doubtful whether any first-
rate man of letters has ever gone in for collecting books ex-
cept on some special subject in which he might happen to be
interested . . . it is easier for a camel to pass through the
eye of a needle than for a collector of first editions to enter
the Kingdom of Literature."
256

   Disgust has forced Mr. Wilson to take an extreme posi-
tion, and I do not think that what he says is true. There <1is>1
a speclal virtue in first editions; they are the form in which
the author first saw his work, the form in which it was ac-
claimed or neglected by his contemporaries, the form very
often with the best claim to be considered authentic. To
prefer a modern reprint, unless for some very good reason,
is bibliographical puritanism, and like all unnecessary aus-
terity, it suggests that its professor is making a virtue of his
lack of taste. There are also people, no doubt, who like the
meals served on airplanes, eaten out of compartmented
trays with plastic knives and forks; such people might assert
that their victuals are as nutritious as those served on china
and silver, but we should not be likely to heed them to the
extent of providing our houses with such nasty things; we
eat for pleasure as well as to stoke our fires. We read for
pleasure, too, and the desires of hand and eye, though in-
ferior to those of the mind, ask for some occasional gratifi-
cation. First editions, old editions, and handsome books
are aesthetically gratifying.

     <2A Plea for Private Libraries>2

IT IS NOT necessary to be a lunatic collector, either, to object
to the suggestion of Mr. Wilson--one in which Bernard
Shaw also concurred--that the existence of a public library
makes a private one unnecessary. If we admire a book, we
like to own it, and we like to have it at hand whenever we
want it. Furthermore, there is about public books a public
feel, and even a public smell, which some people dislike.
Strive as they may, librarians cannot keep books from being
marked and dirtied by some of their borrowers. It has long
                                                       257

been so, and one of the oldest books in praise of collecting
bears witness to it. I speak of the <1Philobiblon>1 of the good
Bishop Richard de Bury, written in 1345, from which this
passage comes:
    You may happen to see some headstrong youth lazily
  lounging over his studies, and when the winter's frost is
  sharp, his nose running from the nipping cold drips down,
  nor does he think of wiping it with his pocket-handker-
  chief until he has bedewed the book before him with the
  ugly moisture. Would that he had before him no book, but
  a cobber's apron! His nails are stuffed with fetid filth as
  black as jet, with which he marks any passage that pleases
  him. He distributes a multitude of straws, which he inserts
  to stick out in different places, so that the halm may re-
  mind him of what his memory cannot retain. These straws,
  because the book has no stomach to digest them, and no
  one takes them out, first distend the book from its wonted
  closing, and at length, being carelessly abandoned to obliv-
  ion, go to decay. He does not fear to eat fruit or cheese
  over an open book, or carelessly to carry a cup to and from
  his mouth; and because he has no wallet at hand he drops
  into books the fragments that arc left. Continually chat-
  tering, he is never weary of disputing with his compan-
  ions, and while he alleges a crowd of senseless arguments,
  he wets the book lying half open on his lap with sputter-
  ing showers. Aye, and then hastily folding his arms he
  leans forward on the book, and by a brief spell of study he
  invites a prolonged nap; and then, by way of mending the
  wrinkles, he folds back the margin of the leaves, to the no
  small injury of the book. Now the rain is over and gone,
  and the flowers have appeared in our land. Then the
  scholar we are speaking of, a neglecter rather than an
  inspecter of books, will stuff his volume with violets, and
  primroses, with roses and quatrefoil. Then hewill use his
258
  wet and perspiring hands to turn over the volumes; then
  he will thump the white vellum with gloves covered with
  all kinds of dust, and with his finger clad in long-used
  leather will hunt line by line through the page; then at
  the sting of the biting flea the sacred book is flung aside,
  and is hardly shut for another month, until it is so full of
  dust that has found its way within, that it resists the effort
  to close it.

  The Bishop was no book miser, but the founder of a great
library, and the passage above comes from the chapter
which tells how he wants his books to be used. He is also
severe against those who write opinions of their own in
margins. His complaints have a modern ring because the
faults he abuses persist. Flowers, straws, and unpleasing
stains are to be found in public-library books to this day,
and I have more than once found a used pipe cleaner in
their pages. Librarians say, very properly, that they would
rather have books read to pieces than preserved untouched,
and we must all, when we need many books, use public
collections. But if we truly love books, or indeed if we
merely like and respect them, we shall want as many as we
can get for our private possession.
  Mr. Wilson's protest, however, is against the nonsensical
side of book collecting, which is a very prominent side. To
me, at any rate, there is a perversity in collecting books
without meaning to read them, and it is maddening to meet
people who regard books as a form of decoration or a sub-
stitute for insulation; I once knew a young woman who
would own a book only if it had a white binding, and quite
recently I heard a man say that a wall of books was the best
firebreak a house could have because they burn so slowly.
  The moderate collector is likely to be a booklover of mod-
259
per Ralte Vm Aeans; he values what books can say to him too much
to overvalue their age, their rarity, or their appearance, and
because he has no money for such pomps, the temptations of
books too valuable to be read (and perhaps unreadable)
do not torture him. But he may still have a fine library, and
to people who know something of books, it will be a partial
index to his character.

<2Private--Press Books>2

BOOKS NEED NOT be old or particularly rare to have beauty
and value. Modern craftsmen can produce them, and if you
want to know how and why, <1The Gregynog Press>1 by
Thomas Jones gives an account of one of the finest private
presses of our time. Perhaps the most famous of the private
presses was that which Horace Walpole directed for his own
pleasure at Strawberry Hill from 1757; the books and pam-
phlets he produced are rare enough and fine enough to have
been worth forgery after his death. He purposely created
rarities; of <1Hieroglyphic Tales,>1 for instance, which he pro-
duced in 1785, there were only six copies. But it was in the
nineteenth century that private presses began to flourish;
there were great presses before that time, such as those of
Aldus Manutius and Louis Elzevir, but these men were
themselves commercial printers, and not, as were the pri-
vate presses of our own day and the last century, attempting
to produce books which commercial printers could not, for
economic reasons, attempt.
The names of the private presses are familiar to lovers of
books. Kelmscott, Ashdene, Doves, Golden Cockerel, Corvi-
nus, Eragny, Fanfrolico, Gregynog, Nonesuch, Cuala,
Grabhorn--they are well represented in the catalogues of
260

sellers of fine books. They are not extremely rare, but they
are rare enough; the handsome Nonesuch editions of the
Restoration dramatists--Rochester, Otway, Congreve, Far-
quhar, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Dryden--run from 900
to 1,350 copies each, and the Nonesuch Milton is confined
to 1,450 copies in two volumes and 90 copies with the two
volumes bound as one, printed on a special paper. The
Golden Cockerel edition of Colley Cibber's <1Autobiography>1
runs to 450 copies; <1Covent Garden Drollery,>1 from the For-
tune Press, 575 copies; the Gregynog <1Elia and the Last Es->1
<1says of Elia,>1 260 copies. To own any of these books is to
have a thing of beauty, and the prices, though not trifling,
are very much below the millionaire level.
  Not all books in this category are equally worthy of the
collector's attention. About the directors and workers of
the private presses there was necessarily a strong individ-
uality, which sometimes became eccentricity, and fashion-
able books were brought out which are merely ugly now.
Some presses were long on taste but short on craftsman-
ship, and their books do not stand up well. An example is
<1The Paintings of D. H. Lawrence>1 brought out by the Man-
drake Press in 1929 in an edition of 510 copies. The quality
of reproduction of the paintings is poor, and the pretentious
binding is hardly likely to last a century. The book appeals,
however, to the pious zeal of Lawrentians, and if they have
luck and twenty pounds, they can get one of the 510 copies;
presumably it would suffer the usual sea change before it
appeared in a New York shop, and would cost more than the
equivalent--say sixty dollars--there.
  Another fault of many private presses, in my eyes, at least,
was that they were more interested in books as objects to
be prized than as volumes to be read, and they chose to
PRIVATE PRESSES CRUDELY IMITATED       261

bring out in handsome form books which very few people
care about. If one wanted to read the <1Idyls of Theocritus,>1
<1Bion and Moschus,>1 would one choose to do so in the prose
translation of Andrew Lang? The Riccardi Press thought
so. Does someone pine for fourteen poems by James Elroy
Flecker, at eighteen guineas? Darantie\re of Dijon thought
they did. Do you famish for <1The Parlement of Pratlers>1 by
John Eliot? The Fanfrolico Press thought that at least six
hundred and twenty-five bibliophiles were aching for it. I
cannot escape a disagreeable impression that these books
were chosen because someone thought he could do a pretty
job with them, rather than because the books were wanted
for themselves.

             <2Private Presses Crudely Imitated>2

THE PRIVATE PRESSES had other unfortunate consequences.
In the books produced under the influence of Elbert Hub-
bard we see what Kelmscott mannerism can sink to when
not controlled by Kelmscott taste. Thick paper, queer type,
lavish ornament, and ragged edges will not make a fine
book, though they will make a book odd enough to impress
people who know nothing of books and perhaps do not
greatly like them. The assurance given in a fancy colophon
that the object has been "done into a printed book by the
handicraftsmen of the Roycroft Shops at East Aurora" does
not make up for the fact that the thing is inconvenient to
read and that the binding creates the same disagreeable
feeling in the hand as wearing cheap sue\de gloves. Any
booklover would much rather have a decent job done by a
commercial printer. The only justification of the private
presses is that they can design books of unusual beauty and
262

make them at least as well as the trade publishers; if they
fail in this they should give up. Hubbard cheapened the
craft he thought to elevate.
  The snobbery attaching to the products of private presses
has given rise at various times during the past fifty years to
clubs or associations which produce and distribute sup-
posedly fine hooks. They have existed in the United States,
and at least one exists in England now. Their books are of
uneven merit (as indeed were those of the private presses),
but they have always some confession of economy about
them, of pinching and corner-cutting. The gold on the bind-
ings is not good enough, and it comes off in powder after a
time; the books do not open well; the illustrations--usu-
ally called "decorations," for it is beneath the dignity of
artists to Illustrate any more--may be four scratchy etchings
which bear no relation to the text, or woodcuts of a deter-
mined and self-conscious naivete. About them is an air of
not being quite first rate, either as commercial books made
by a decent publisher, or yet as examples of fine printing;
sometimes they are refined to the point of being epicene,
and if they are meant to be robust--as when a novel by
Fielding or Defoe is offered--they exhibit the false and ex-
cessive manliness of the tough homosexual. They are not
honest books.

  <2The Inscrutable Portrait>2

WHEN I WRITE of a collection of books as a portrait of its
owner I must hasten to make several qualifications. The
idea was first suggested to my mind many years ago, when a
university lecturer solemnly assured the class of which I was
a member that it was so. He was urging us to become buy-
                                                       263

ers of books, and he was eager that we should spend our
money only on good books. He spoke exultantly of the joys
of collecting a library as an extension of one's personality.
I took him at his word then, but during the intervening
years I have seen so many collections of books which did not
seem to square with what I knew about their owners that I
cannot think of his dictum now without overtones of trav-
esty. There was a time when I fancied myself capable of
studying a man's books as I might study his portrait, but I
have dismissed such prideful nonsense long since. There is
no art to find the mind's construction in the books, as Shake-
speare would doubtless have written if he had thought of it.
  What are we told by the presence of those pretentious,
unreadable, complete sets of Balzac and Daudet, which were
sold in the early years of this century to people who had
never heard of Balzac or Daudet, but who were persuaded
by book-agents that they needed such cultivated trappings?
Showy but tasteless in binding, and illustrated with dingy
engravings "guarded" by bits of tissue, they still turn up at
country auctions in Canada--pathetic witnesses of man's
desire to be learned without taking the trouble to learn.
  What are we told by the rich man's collection, glowing
with bibliographical rarities? Perhaps only that he has a
long purse and a good advisor, but we must beware of hasty
conclusions. Edmund Wilson's strictures on the collector are
too severe; a man is not precluded from taste and literary
enthusiasm merely because he is rich; that belief is to be
classed with the foolish notion that the real lovers of opera
are all to be found in the cheapest seats; it is naive and un-
charitable to dislike the rich merely because they are rich.
The wealthy collector may be a mere hobbyist, or he may be
of the strain of Richard de Bury. And if, as sometimes hap-
264
pens, he is both, with the courtier to the dead, the rag-and-
bone man, and the benefactor of mankind all mingled in
one creature, we must be shrewd indeed to read his por-
trait in his books.

  <2Hidden Books>2

NOR SHOULD WE attempt to do so unless we have seen <1all>1 his
books--not only those which are on the shelves, but those
which are locked in his desk, or hidden behind the shelves,
or tucked beneath the winter underwear in his bureau.
Even collectors on a modest scale have something of this
sort--a surreptitious <1Lady Chatterley>1 purchased years ago
on a visit to Paris, a <1Ulysses>1 bought before it became legal
and still smelling a little of brimstone, or a <1Tropic of Capri->1
<1corn>1 concealed from the children or even perhaps from that
guardian of the purity of the hearth, The Wife. What a
man considers indecent is an important clue to his char-
acter, and although there are exceptions, it has been my
experience that book collectors have strange opinions on
this subject, and few of them lack a book or two which they
think they should conceal.
  Books are status lenders, but they are something much
older and stranger; they retain a quality of magic for peo-
ple who are deeply concerned with them, as well as for those
who know little about them. Books are often burned; as I
write this the fires are cooling in Fort William, Ontario,
where all local copies of <1Lady Chatterley's Lover>1 were
thrown into the flames at the urgency of a female mayor.
But when did we last hear of a picture being burned? What
angry mayor has recently smashed a statue? It is the hated
book which alone suffers the fate of the witch. The fearful
HIDDEN BOOKS                                    265

are ready to declare that the young will be perverted by
suggestive books, but they rarely turn their attention to the
contents of art galleries. Books are thought to have a power
not granted to other works of art, not only by the simple
but by the learned. Among collectors the possession of a
few volumes of doubtful character seems to be a fearful yet
irresistible necessity.
   It is when we discover what these volumes are that we
gape and pop our eyes. A man once favored me with a sight
of his unholy treasure, which proved to be a first edition of
Cabell's <1Jurgen;>1 perhaps tactlessly I told him that it could
be bought half a mile away, in a very good bookshop, with
illustrations <1a\ la>1 Beardsley; the information made no im-
pression on his belief that it was a dreadful yet beautiful
book, which must be kept at all costs from the eyes of his
womenfolk. Another collector, a wealthy Canadian, ap-
pealed to his bookseller in despair; his physician had
warned him that he might die suddenly, and locked in his
desk was a copy of Cleland's <1Fanny Hill, or the Memoirs of>1
<1a Woman of Pleasure;>1 he had paid $100 for it (though it
was a modern reprint and of no bibliographical interest),
and the notion that his lubricity might be exposed to his
daughters after his death was pushing him toward the heart
attack he feared. From <1Jurgen>1 to <1Fanny Hill>1 is a far cry,
and between are all sorts of books which apparently sensible
people consider heinous.
   A concept of obscenity appears to be as necessary to one's
view of life as a concept of purity. If we seek to encompass
all that we can of the spectrum of human intellect and feel-
ing, we cannot confine ourselves to the reds and oranges;
we must know the violets and indigos as well. Which is the
wiser course--to attempt to suppress a large part of what
266

occupies the human mind, or to examine and cultivate
everything in the mind that can be reached? "Vice loses half
its evil by losing all its grossness," said Edmund Burke.
Book collectors who are, as I have said above, usually men
of strong and mingled emotions offer evidence to support
Burke's opinion.

  <2My Search for Pornography>2

SIMPLE pornography has little appeal for them. When I
undertook the writing of this book and planned the present
chapter, I attempted to find out something about the trade
in pornography, but without much success. I asked a good
many booksellers about it, and sometimes my reception
was amusing; a few of them thought that I had disguised
myself as a pedant in order to gratify the literary passions
of a voluptuary, and our conversation proceeded, on their
side with "strange <1o|eillades>1 and most speaking looks" and on
mine with mounting embarrassment; they had heard of
pornographic books, ha ha, but they never dealt in them--
no, never. They had heard of collectors who sought out
pornographic books, but they got them in New York, or in
London, or in Brussels, or obtained them from Japan--the
market was anywhere, it appeared, except where I hap-
pened to be. Other booksellers were less jocose and more
helpful. One, in an English university city, had handled
three large collections of pornography in a lifetime of book-
selling.
  What he told me about these collections was interesting
and pathetic. The mania for completeness had possessed
the collectors; if they heard of an item in Port Said, they
                                                       267

must have it; if a little book of pictures was popular among
sailors in Cape Town, they must' include an example in
the collection. The result was that when the collections
were disposed of, there were a few hundred volumes which
might be considered salable, and thousands of pamphlets,
booklets, and broadsides which could only be burned; no-
body, however eager for pornography, could bother with so
much repetitious, ill-printed, crudely illustrated trash. One
of these collectors was a clergyman of the Church of Eng-
land who spent all his fortune on his accumulation; his
heirs were lucky to get two or three hundred pounds out of
a large library which had cost many thousands.
  Another bookseller told me that the pornographic mar-
ket was a closed and special one, with its own scale of prices.
This information complemented what I had been told be-
fore about the avidity of collectors in this realm; they have
a compulsion toward completeness, and as they seem rarely
to be the kind of people who can, or will, go to the places
where the cheapest pornography is retailed, they must de-
pend on agents. All pornography, it appears, costs more
than any other sort of publication in relation to the ex-
pense of producing it; nevertheless, some of it sells quite
cheaply in, for example, the ports of the Near East. But by
the time these chapbooks or pamphlets have been pur-
chased by agents and sent to buyers in Britain or North
America, the original price has been multiplied by five,
by ten, perhaps by a hundred. And the collector, to satisfy
his mania for completeness, pays.
  Several booksellers spoke with admiration of the books--
perhaps pornography is not the right word for them--of
erotic content which are produced in Japan; I was told that
268

they are often of great beauty and delicacy of illustration.
The Western market for them seems to be Brussels, with
Amsterdam a close rival.
  Commercial booksellers, either of new books or collec-
tor's books, have no connection with the pornographic mar-
ket. Some of those to whom I spoke tried to help me by
producing volumes which they considered, for one reason
or another, fell within the forbidden category. One was the
book of D. H. Lawrence's paintings already described; be-
cause the original exhibition of these pictures was closed
by the police in 1929, the book could not be freely offered
for sale. There is not a picture in it which appears to me to
be pornographic, if it is admitted that the nude human
body is a permissible subject for a painter. Another book-
seller showed me some French copies of Rabelais and Bau-
delaire, illustrated by modern French artists; on his shelves
were many books with equally lively illustrations, but they
were not French, and thus were free of suspicion. He also
showed me a copy of <1The Golden Asse,>1 with illustrations
much milder in tone than those in the Bodley Head lim-
ited edition of 1923, which sells without hindrance.
  A number of helpful booksellers urged me to make my-
self known at the British Museum, which has the second
largest collection of erotica and pornography in the world,
the only superior one being in the library of the Vatlcan.
But they mistook my purpose; I did not want to examine
pornography, I wanted to find out how the trade in it works,
and in this I failed. Had I been a more dedicated scholar, I
suppose I would have taken greater pains. I would have
disguised myself as a sailor, a dissolute parson, or a gander-
mooner, and lurked in the places where such people congre-
gate, waiting to be approached. Adolescents, I was told,
                                                       269

bought pornography of a particular kind, and I might have
tried to impose myself upon a shady bookseller as a wanton
adolescent--the half-baked in pursuit of the wholly raw.
But I had no confidence in my ability to assume any of
these characters convincingly, or yet to pass myself off as a
jaded worldling to whom the costly erotica of Japan might
be offered. Neither was I successful in discovering a Fred
Hankey to assist me.

              <2Don Quichotte or Dirty Hankey?>2

FREDERICK HANKEY took pains to surround himself with
mystery, and facts about him are not easily come by. He
was an Englishman of good family who lived in Paris in the
middle decades of the nineteenth century, devoting his en-
ergies to the collection of pornographic books, pictures, and
images. His austerity and dedication to his work was com-
mended by several of his distinguished clients, and in par-
ticular by Richard Monckton Milnes, (1809--85) Baron
Houghton, politician and poet, best remembered as the ear-
liest biographer of Keats. Milnes's library at Fryston (which
he sometimes called "Aphrodisiopolis") contained six prin-
cipal sections, including English poetry, studies of the
French Revolution, theology, magic and witchcraft, crime
and punishment, and erotica; Hankey supplied the erotica,
and it was at Milnes's house that Swinburne made his ac-
quaintance with the works of the Marquis de Sade. The
collection was open to Milnes's guests, and many of them
made ample use of it. Richard Burton, translator of <1Arabian>1
<1Nights,>1 was an amateur of erotica and a guest at Fryston at
one time; he referred to the Paris buyer as "poor old
Hankey." But to other people Frederick Hankey was a sin-
270

ister figure; it was the Goncourts who named him <1"le Don>1
<1Quichotte des obsce\nes.">1
  Hankey and Burton exemplify two opposed attitudes to-
ward erotica. To Burton it was a subject for study, a part of
the comedy of life, but it was not an obsession and it had no
mystical overtones. To Hankey it was a reason for being, a
support for his own ruling passion (which was Sadism),
and probably the source of the deepest emotions of which
he was capable. Burton's own great translation and edition
of <1Arabian Nights>1 gained the reputation of a pornographic
book principally because of one section of the Terminal Es-
say in which he discusses the Arab attitude toward sex; he
was a fearless man and unaccommodating toward the
prudery of society in his time. He paid heavily for his frank-
ness, for it was at least as hard a century ago as it is now for
people of conventional mind to recognize that a man can be
interested in the vagaries of sexual behavior without wish-
ing to practice them himself.
  Milnes's library included most of the classics of erotica;
some books were included under that heading which do not
seem to modern taste to belong there. Voltaire's <1La Pucelle>1
is not a very dreadful book, and Choderlos de Laclos's <1Les>1
<1Liasons dangereuses>1 enjoys a special regard nowadays for its
psychological insight. Aretino's <1Sonnetti Lussuriosi>1 are
certainly erotic, but the famous engravings which gave rise
to them are so little pornographic that one of them is repro-
duced in Dr. Richard Lewinsohn's A <1History of Sexual>1
<1Customs.>1 Milnes had the works of Sade, of course, who was
a novelty in England in the nineteenth century, and whose
influence on Swinburne and Rossetti is described in a letter
which the former wrote to Milnes after a reading of <1Justine.>1
"I really thought I must have died or split open and choked
                                                       271

with laughing. . . . I literally doubled up and fell down
with laughter. . . . I read it out and the auditors rolled
and roared . . . screams of laughter." It is a pity we cannot
hear that laughter. Was it hysterical? Was it caused simply
by the Marquis's rather odd sense of drollery? Or was some
of it snob laughter, the amusement of sensitive but not no-
tably mature Englishmen enjoying a book which added to
the pleasure of being outrageous the tickle of being out-
rageous in French?
  It is extraordinary to what a degree French culture has
dominated some aspects of English literary taste. lt cannot
very successfully be argued that there is an intellectual sym-
pathy between the two nations. But for more than a century
Englishmen of cultivation have felt it necessary to have at
least a nodding acquaintance with French literature, al-
though there has been no corresponding impulse to know
anything at all about what was doing in Germany or Italy.
When Thomas Mann died, several English critics admitted
without a blush that they knew little of his work and found
it unsympathetic; there was some suggestion that he was a
rude American enthusiasm, rather than one of the masters
of our time. But not to be acquainted with what is happen-
ing in literary France is to feel disgraced, and in the pecking
order of literary criticism a Frenchman can humiliate an
Englishman just as readily as an Englishman can humiliate
an American, and an American a Canadian. One of Canada's
most serious literary needs at present is some lesser nation
to domineer over and shame by displays of superior taste.
  This is not said to belittle French culture, even if it lay in
the power of any words of mine to do so. It is said, rather, to
suggest that for Swinburne and Rossetti at least some of the
pleasure of Sade lay in the snobbery of being smutty in the
272

tongue which they so much admired and to which they at-
tributed exquisite nuance and piquancy.
  To those who admire French literature but are not be-
glamored by it the romances of Sade can become a bore. We
read of the Duke of Blangis in the ecstasy of love that "hor-
rible shrieks and dreadful oaths escaped his heaving breast;
flames seemed to dart from his eyes; he frothed at the
mouth; he whinnied . . ." and we feel that the Duke must
have been a tiresome lover for any woman of taste. The se-
lection published by the Grove Press in 1953, with Simone
de Beauvoir's essay, gives us a taste of Sade, and there are
many for whom a taste is enough. He is sometimes very en-
tertaining, even though we do not roll on the floor and fear
that we may split, like Swinburne. But it is overstrained,
without achieving the kind of magnitude we find in tragedy
or comedy of the first order, and in the end it proves wea-
risome.

  <2Pornographic Tedium>2

INDEED, boredom is the effect of any prolonged application
to erotic writing, and the most ingenious literary art is
hardly able to keep ennui at bay. Boredom is inherent in
the very nature of the subject. Sex is not a bore, but books
about sex can be. The climax of such books is, necessarily,
the same, and repetition lessens impact. Consider such an
admired classic of erotica as <1Le Sofa,>1 by Crebillon <1fis.>1 It is
a beautifully written book and, as Bonamy Dobre/e points
out, it has the characteristic of the best French erotic books
in that it deals with the body but never forgets the soul. In
it a courtier named Amanzei diverts his Sultan, a grandson
                                                       273

of Scheherazade, with the story of his adventures; his spirit
was for a time confined by Brahma in a sofa, from which he
could only escape if a couple rendered to each other the first
fruits of mutual affection, using his sofa self as a bed. This
is an admirable beginning, but we know at once how it
must end, and all the entertainment lies in the deferment
of the completion. Every skill is brought to the narrative,
but it is possible to feel that the book is too fine-drawn. In
William Blake's phrase, one can be connoisseured to death
by this sort of thing.
   It might be said that any long work in the erotic or por-
nographic line invites failure. The sturdy favorites are such
brief things as The <1Bride's Letter,>1 which persistent tradi-
tion attrlbutes to Byron, and Mark Twain's <1Conversation>1
<1at the Social Fireside as It Was in Ye Time of Ye Tudors.>1
This last work was solemnly produced by a New York book-
seller when I asked him about pornography, bound up in
baby-blue morocco with The <1Old Backhouse>1 by James
Whitcomb Riley and <1When Willie Wet the Bed>1 By Eugene
Field; such is one interpretation of the bookseller's term
"erotica" on Fifth Avenue.
  Again and again I asked myself, as I trudged about look-
ing for some clue to the origin and distribution of pornog-
raphy, why anybody troubled with a secret trade when so
much was plainly for sale which was demonstrably erotica.
The trade in pictures--moving, still, colored, and in mono-
chrome--is understandable, for these things are not ordi-
narily obtainable; but a secret trade in pornographic books
--was such a thing really necessary?
274


  <2What Is Obscenity?>2

I STRUGGLED, as must everyone who concerns himself with
this matter, with the question of nomenclature. When does
what booksellers call "erotica" become pornography? Why
does the use of common words for sexual acts and objects in
<1Lady Chatterley's Lover>1 disgust people who apparently feel
no repugnance from novels far less serious in tone, which
describe the same things in frivolous euphemisms? But I
was no more able to decide these matters than most people
who think about them, and was compelled to turn to the
professional moralists for definitions.
  Those among them who are honest admit the great diffi-
culty of defining what is obscene and separating it from what
may have literary value. Only Havelock Ellis makes the ob-
vious point that obscenity is a type of pleasure which man-
kind has always wanted, and which mankind has always
somehow contrived to get, and which mankind may need
for the good of its soul. Some degree of earthiness is greatly
to be preferred to a wincing daintiness, and the enantio-
dromia which operates in human affairs will see that we get
obscenity, whether we like it or not; we are wise, then, to
choose rather than to be forced to accept what fate brings.
An international Conference at Geneva, to discuss the sup-
pression of the circulation and traffic in pornography, at-
tempted a definition of obscenity but could not arrive at
one, recognizing that emotion and also fashion play so great
a part in any idea of the obscene that no single definition
can be valid, even in all parts of the western world, at any
given time. Levels of education and income also exert an
influence. As the old painter Northcote so wisely said to
                                                       275

Hazlitt, concerning some supposed offensive matter in a
stage play: "The common people sought for refinement as a
<1treat;>1 people in high life were fond of grossness and rib-
aldry as a relief to their overstrained affectation of gentil-
ity." Often when discussions of public morality are in prog-
ress, we receive the impression that refinement is still sought
as a treat by some of the disputants, and that the form the
treat takes is a particular kind of prestige, or status. Erotic
literature is a species of erotic play, and as the investigations
of Dr. Kinsey and his associates have shown us, erotic play is
disapproved by people below the college level of education,
as a general thing. Reformers and self-appointed civic cen-
sors very often belong to the group which does not care for
erotic play in private, and is shocked by erotic literature,
which is not so private. In any public discussion of this mat-
ter somebody's liberty is certain to be abridged, and zealous
morality usually wins--for a time.
  Even where liberality of thought on this subject would
be expected, there are oddities of opinion. D. H. Lawrence,
for instance, expressed a high regard for the <1Decameron>1
and would allow it free circulation, but he had strong reser-
vations about <1Jane Eyre,>1 and thought that presentation of
Wagner's <1Tristan und Isolde>1 should be restricted because
of its powerful eroticism. If Lawrence finds offense in <1Jane>1
<1Eyre,>1 we can have no quarrel with those people who have, at
various times, wanted to ban <1Madame Bovary, Trilby,>1
<1Nana, Leaves of Grass,>1 and Cellini's <1Autobiography.>1
  The best, because the frankest, definition of obscenity I
found was in <1Catholic Viewpoint on Censorship>1 by Harold
C. Gardiner, S. J. It consists, says Father Gardiner, "in the
intrinsic tendency or bent of the work to arouse sexual pas-
sion, or, to put it more concretely, the motions of the genital
276

apparatus which are preparatory to the complete act of
sexual union." He adds the qualification that this does not
apply to abnormal people, who might be sexually aroused
by references to shoes, the hair of the head, the ear, and all
the rest of the curious catalogue of the fetishists.
  Father Gardiner deserves our thanks for saying unequiv-
ocally what he means, but his definition still leaves the mat-
ter of obscenity in doubt. Those who find that a book af-
fects them in the way he describes should, he says, put it
aside. This recalls a friend of mine, by no means of lewd
mind, the son of a Presbyterian minister, who told me that
the first book to stir him in the manner described in Father
Gardiner's definition was <1Quo Vadis,>1 which he read when
he was twelve. This book still enjoys a reputation as a novel
of Christian moral force, though it is written in a manner
far from the namby-pamby and ignorant style of some later
examples of the genre. What was it that aroused sexual feel-
ing in my friend? It was not, as you might suppose, the scene
in which the slave girl Eunice presses her white body to the
statue of her master, Petronius, and kisses the cold marble;
that seems to me to be an erotic scene, but a young reader
might miss its significance. No, what troubled him was this
passage: "Nigidea, stripping herself to the waist, dropped
her drunken childlike head on the breast of Lucan, who,
drunk in like degree, fell to blowing the golden powder
from her hair, and raising his eyes with immense delight."
The description of Nero's homosexual attraction toward
the Greek youth, Pythagoras, which is part of the same
scene, was not even noticed by this reader at twelve. Here
we have a moral puzzle: should he have put the book aside,
banishing the vision of the half-naked Nigidea, to return
                                                       277

to it when he was sixteen and might have understood the
passion of Nero, or until he was twenty-five and could have
sensed the perversity of Eunice? And what importance are
we to give to the fact that Henryk Sienkiewicz drew the
dark side of Roman degeneracy with all his considerable
skill in order to throw Christian virtue into greater relief?
All definitions of obscenity run quickly upon such rocks as
these because the supposedly obscene book is only obscene
if it provokes a lewd response in the reader. What legisla-
tion or definition is possible in a matter so subjective? As
Father Gardiner suggests, a reader may feel a book to be
obscene for himself, but he is on shaky ground as soon as he
asserts that it is, therefore, obscene reading for anyone else.

  <2Thrill Of the Forbidden>2

WHAT IF THE READER feels the enjoyment of obscenity to be
his right and a legitimate pleasure? Such readers are not,
however, all of those who buy the kind of book which is to
be found in so many of the lesser bookshops in Great Brit-
ain and the continent. (If I seem to neglect the United
States in this discussion, it is because bookshops of the small,
unfashionable, hidden kind which are so common in Europe
are not common there; bookselling in the United States
seems to be a less complex and perhaps less interesting form
of business than it is in older lands.) Many buyers of books
which could be classed as obscene appear to count the thrill
of the forbidden or the morally questionable as part of their
pleasure.  The dubious bookshops of London offer the
strangest assortment, to suit as many tastes as possible. Some
works of Aristotle jostle a novel by Jean-Paul Sartre; the
278
novels of Paul de Kock, which I would have thought un-
readable, still have their public; I was amused to see Ed-
mund Wilson's <1Memoirs of Hecate County>1 in a window
between Balzac's <1Contes drolatiques>1 and that dull compila-
tion, <1The Heptameron;>1 nearby were two favorites of such
shops--<1History of Capital Punishment>1 and <1History of the>1
<1Torture Chamber,>1 both by George Ryley Scott. In such
shops a few years ago a novel was being offered which had
as its theme a supposed homosexual relation among the
Twelve Apostles and their Master; this is in a very old por-
nographic tradition, where a strong whiff of blasphemy is
used to give extra zest to indecency.
  To me, the books which describe acts of cruelty are es-
pecially repugnant, for they seem to be aimed at a taste
which has nothing to do with ribaldry or legitimate sexual
appetite. One old favorite in this realm is <1A History of the>1
<1Rod in All Countries>1 by the Reverend William M. Cooper,
B.A. It describes every kind of flogging, from that which
might kill a sailor or a Russian serf to the whipping of high-
bred Fnglish girls in boarding schools; it is extraordinary
that a man should be able to write five hundred and thirty
pages on such a theme, but Mr. Cooper never seems to flag,
and his style is one in which an unconvincing disapproval is
mingled with grisly jocosity. He speaks of the "romantic
and comic side" of flogging, and he is fond of the word
"curious" in the sense which dictionaries now mark as ar-
chaic. His book is designed to please those who get a thrill
out of reading about flogging. They must surely be an odd
lot, and as one who went to a school where caning was the
regular punishment for serious misdemeanor, I can only
marvel at them.
PRURIENT AND PORNOGRAPHIC               279


   <2Prurient and Pornographic>2

AS FOR blasphemy, it is harder to achieve than might be
supposed, but apparently many people are content with
something less--a mingling of religious prejudice and
prurient detail. An old favorite in this class is <1Awful Dis->1
<1closures of Maria Monk, or the Hidden Secrets of a Nun's>1
<1Life in a Convent Exposed,>1 which was first published in
New York in 1836. When I asked a bookseller in Leeds how
it sold today, he replied: "One of our steadiest; we reckon a
gross a month. It sells mostly to mill girls; they hand me a
shilling and take the book. They're ashamed to name it,
but they all read it." The <1Awful Disclosures>1 is to be found
in all the lesser bookshops in the large towns of England,
though I have been told it is harder to come by in the
United States, and I have never seen it on sale there. It is of
interest to the student of literature as an example of the
pathology of romanticism; it is intended to produce the
same sensations as M. G. Lewis's Gothic novel <1The Monk,>1
but it is designed for a puritanical and ignorant readership,
and thus is presented as a true tale. It is axiomatic that if a
thing is supposed to be true, it can be immeasurably more
lurid and crude than if it is labeled as fiction.
  Maria Monk was a girl who appeared in New York in
1835 and ingratiated herself with two clergymen who pub-
lished a paper called <1The Protestant Vindicator,>1 the Rev-
erend George Rourne and the Reverend W. C. Brownlee;
she said that she had escaped from the Ho*tel Dieu nunnery
in Montreal, and that the child she was shortly to bear had
been fathered in that institution by a priest. She told hair-
280

raising tales of wicked goings-on in the nunnery, of infanti-
cide on a large scale, of subterranean passages, of the mur-
der of insubordinate nuns. She dictated her revelations to
one Theodore Dwight, and as neither of them was blessed
with any skill as a writer, the book is without form, style, or
climax. When Bishop Lartigue of Montreal granted per-
mission to a committee to inspect the nunnery, the impos-
ture was exposed, but the fight continued for some time; it
had reached the point where mere truth was powerless to
quell bigotry, and facts had less appeal than malignant
fantasy. Maria Monk appears to have been a paranoid
young person, and after her notoriety, she disappeared until
her death on Welfare Island in 1849; she had been living as
a prostitute for some time. But her book enjoys a popularity
which better authors might envy, and I think it is because it
combines sexual misdeeds with a religious atmosphere in a
way which very simple readers can comprehend.
  <1Maria Monk>1 deserves, in my opinion, to be classed as
pornography, for although it is not so extravagant in sexual
detail as many books which are not so called, there is about
it a low and disgusting atmosphere, and an obvious determi-
nation to appeal to base passions which the author knows to
be base, which is calculatedly pornographic. Not all por-
nography is so. Consider, for instance, what is one of the
most popular of all pornographic novels, <1Fanny Hill.>1

  <2Fanny Hill and Male Vanity>2

ITS AUTHOR was John Cleland, who published it in 1750,
when he was forty-one. Cleland was the son of a talented
soldier and poet, and he received an excellent education,
which fitted him for the consular service; but he could not
FANNY HILL AND MALE VANITY               281

get on as a consul, nor yet as an official of the East India Com-
pany, and when he was down on his luck, he wrote his
famous novel and sold it to Griffiths the bookseller for
twenty guineas; Griffiths is reported to have made a profit
of ten thousand pounds on it. The book attracted the un-
favorable attention of the Privy Council, who summoned
Cleland and, after a rebuke, gave him a yearly pension of
one hundred pounds in order that he might be able to make
better use of his talents. Whether he did so or not is a matter
of individual opinion; he became a journalist, a playwright,
and at last a philologist, a scholarly profession for which he
was pitifully ill-equipped.
  <1Fanny Hill>1 is not a classic for nothing. It is a porno-
graphic book because it sets out determinedly to excite the
passions of its readers; in the phrase of Fowler the Phrenol-
ogist, it is calculated to Inflame the Propensities. The story
is simple, and is told in letters. Fanny is a lovely country girl
of fifteen who goes to London when her parents die. She falls
into bad company and is debauched, but she finds a lover
named Charles, from whom she is separated by the ma-
lignity of fate. During this separation Fanny engages in
every sort of sexual misbehavior that Cleland could think of,
and he was, as I have said, a man of education and talent.
Put at last Charles returns, the lovers are united, and Fanny
settles down in happy domesticity. What merry evenings she
and her Charles must have had, talking over old times by
the fireside!
  Two things about <1Fanny Hill>1 deserve attention. The first
is that it is written in a simple, graceful prose, which has not
a coarse word in it, and which is so charmingly turned that
we can forgive the heroine anything; a girl who wrote so
could not be really bad. Truly, this is an instance where vice
loses half its evil by losing all its grossness. The other point
to be noted is that it is the work of a man, although it pur-
ports to be told by a girl, and from time to time we catch a
glimpse of an inordinate male vanity in the amorous de-
scriptions. Fanny describes her Charles, not as a girl might
speak of the man she loves, but as a very vain man might
wish to be spoken of. The ecstasies which Fanny experiences
in the arms of some of the magnificently endowed men she
meets are not convincingly those of a girl; they are those of
a man worshipping the glory of man. They describe the ef-
fect a man might wish to have on a woman. Psychologically
there is much for reflection in <1Fanny Hill,>1 and women,
when they read it--for they do read it--must smile at a
man's extravagant notion of the pleasure he can give.
  The book is as different from <1Maria Monk>1 as daylight is
from dark. The one presents real evil and corruption, not
in its story, but in the mind that lies behind the story;
when Maria died, she was a ruin not only in body but in
spirit. <1Fanny Hill,>1 frankly sexual in its matter, is so candid
and healthy in its revelation of the mind behind the story
that we cannot seriously condemn it. To adapt a Victorian
phrase to a Georgian book, we laugh and think that it is
only pretty Fanny's way!

  <2Purpose of Pornography>2

WHY DO READERS want pornographic and obscene books,
ask the moralists, expecting, as is their wont, that every
decent and responsible person will agree that only perverse
minds could harbor such a taste. The answer is plain: such
books deal with one of the subjects, like war and religion,
about which mankind can never hear enough. Taste governs
                                                        283

our choice of such books, as it does in all literature; the man
who likes <1Mademoiselle de Maupin>1 is not usually the man
who delights in <1Eskimo Nell.>1 The public for <1Lady Chat->1
<1terley>1 is not the same as for Mark Twain's <1Domestic Con->1
<1versation,>1 though both use the same forbidden words; the
one is the novel of a philosopher and the other is unmis-
takably the diversion of a river pilot.  Nor does the
outhouse humor of Eugene Field or James Whitcomb Riley
appeal to readers whose interest is sexual rather than ex-
cremental; no Freudian needs to be told why. These
works, of whatever category, supply an element which is
lacking in the lives of most men and women. The demand-
ing and inexorable tension of modern life, especially in
North America, and the countless duties which are imposed
by getting a living and maintaining the type of domesticity
now fashionable, do not bring the satisfaction of some of the
heart's deepest desires. These desires are not necessarily
reprehensible, but they are at odds with much of our demo-
cratic slavery. Our modern way of life has not created the
need for erotica, but it has perhaps increased it, and has
made possible such a phenomenon as the publication, by a
reputable house, of A <1Treasury of Ribaldry,>1 edited by a
respected man of letters, Louis Untermeyer, and sold freely
in all bookshops. Ribaldry and erotica are safety valves
for people who feel the weight of modern life heavily upon
them; those whose ideal of civilized man approximates to
the ox or the gelding, toiling to drag the blow, do not ap-
prove, and this is not the place to try to persuade them that
their attitude is a dangerous one for the future of civilization.
  Erotic books feed a part of that fantasy life without which
man cannot exist. Contrary to the belief of the fearful, this
fantasy life rarely has any manifestation in the outer world;
284

it is a private realm of gratification, where its possessor is
supreme and where he enjoys those sweets which real life
has denied him--including forbidden sweets. Those who
starve the fantasy life in the name of morality do so at their
peril; reading has for the past century been the principal
ministrant to it, offering, in Carlyle's phrase, "Phantasma-
goria and dream-grotto" which enlarges life in directions
where external and daily living cannot approach. The
fantasy life is not an end in itself, but a long road by which
we travel toward the deepest truth about ourselves; to close
that road is to deny much of the best life has to give.
  It is recognition of this need in modern life which has
brought so much liberty to the modern novel--liberty
which may well be temporary and which, certainly, some
writers have abused. The filthier a modern novel is, the
better it sells, cry the moralists. This is not quite true; it is
only a part of a much wider truth. And why does it never
occur to the moralists to ask thetnselves why there should be
such a need today for the kind of book which they call filthy,
and which critics untroubled by their preoccupation describe
very differently?
  Those who complain about erotic books should confine
themselves to A <1madis de Gaule,>1 that old romance whose
author, when a man and a woman are left together, writes:
"And nothing shall be here related; for these and suchlike
things which are conformable neither to good conscience
nor nature, man ought in reason lightly to pass over,
holding them in slight esteem as they deserve." For the
majority of readers the touchstone is one of taste; if an
author offends you, do not read him. Put it will not occur to
any true booklover, I think, to take another man's book
from him.
BOOKS ARE FOR READING                        285

   My search for the sources of pornographic publishing was
not altogether a failure, for I discovered where a good deal
of it came from, in a general sort of way. What really as-
tonished me was that so many of the books which form the
backbone of the lists of the pornographic houses were clas-
sics which could be bought anywhere, legitimately and at a
fair dealer's price. There are, of course, a few great rarities,
most of them illustrated books, but the unaccustomed buyer,
unless he has a very long purse, will not be able to get them.
The market in such things is a special and artificial one, and
certainly I received the impression that secrecy and con-
demnation formed part of its charm for the initiates.

   <2Books Are for Reading>2

AS I SAID at the beginning, if you have ten books which you
have acquired because you truly want them, you are a col-
lector and your library is in some degree a portrait of you.
But few people with the book mania reckon their books in
tens; they count them in hundreds and thousands. If you
read a great deal you will almost certainly want some books
which are out of the ordinary, because of their rarity or
beauty. It is at this point that I beg you to be careful. You
will be tempted to think of books as objects, not to be read,
but to be possessed for show, and when that happens, you
are easy prey to those booksellers who deal in harlot
volumes, tricked out in pretty skins (which will not last
because the leather is not well prepared) and bedizened
with gold ornament which resembles nothing so much as
the gold paint that used to be daubed on steam-heating
coils. All the arts of the horse dealer will be exercised to
make old books which are of slight value look like treasures.
286

And if you fall for this trash, you will at last have an accumu-
lation which looks like the background for one of those
advertisement pictures in which a model is impersonating
an advertising man's notion of a gentleman and a scholar
drinking Somebody's whisky. It will not be a library at all,
but an adjunct of that pompous buffoonery which is called,
by its dupes, "gracious living." You will be surrounded by a
bad stage setting, and its effect will be to turn you into a bad
actor. You will have committed the great sin of our time,
which is to put ends before means, and striving and com-
petition will become more important to you than reading.
Be ambitious, rather, to be able to say as a reader what
Hilaire Belloc said as a writer:
       When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
       "His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."
                         . VIII .

                 <1Spelunking on Parnassus>1


IF THIS were a book about writing, it would be almost ob-
ligatory to end it with a chapter called <1The Writer Today,>1
or perhaps The <1Writers Position.>1 But it is principally a
book about reading, and the reader of today is not often so
self-conscious as to ask himself whether he is different from
the reader of yesterday. As for his position, he is not aware
that he has one. His modesty is to be praised, and perhaps I
should not tamper with it. For twenty-five hundred years
the writer was similarly innocent. When Ovid was exiled to
Tomi by Augustus, he did not think that the writer's po-
sition had deteriorated; he simply thought he had been
kicked out. When the plague closed the theaters, Shake-
speare did not prate about the writer's position; he thought
business was bad. But in the past century critics and literary
journalists have made the writer a present of this mysterious
Position, and writers who (in William Faulkner's phrase)
enjoy being writers have taken a simple delight in it. It asks
nothing of the mind or the creative powers; it is a form of
class-consciousness. Those who love not the art in themselves
but themselves in art are pleased with such gauds.
  The reader has as yet no Position, and God forbid that I
should put it into his head that he needs one. The only result
would be organization and hubbub of a sort which could do
nothing but discourage the clerisy, who, as I hope I have
                           287
288                    SPELUNKING ON PARNASSUS

made clear, cannot exercise their influence by gang meth-
ods. But in this final chapter I want to discuss several things
which concern both writer and reader. The process will not
be a dignified ascent of Parnassus, but an exploration of
some of its caves. Such ill-lit and sometimes dangerous
scrambling through the bowels of mountains used to be
called spelaeology, but of late it has become a sport more
cheerfully called spelunking. I propose to do some spelunk-
ing on Parnassus. Where shall we begin?

  <2Rebellion against Mediocrity>2

LET US TURN again to the clerisy. If this description applies,
as I have said, to people who read with some degree of
seriousness but who are not personally engaged in the
production or criticism of writing, can the clerisy be con-
sidered to have any existence? Is it anything more than a
flattering name for the vast disorganization of middlebrows?
And even though it can be shown that it existed once, can it
ever again be an influence in North American life?
   It exists, but is not conscious of its power. If it had to ex-
press the taste of its majority, and if that taste were de-
termined by ballot, probably it would emerge most of the
time as upper-middlebrow. But no such necessity weighs
upon the clerisy; freedom and individuality of taste are
among its distinguishing marks. Its power is not that of the
pressure group, the national organization with covens of
zealots in every city of twenty-five thousand or over, engaged
in formal discussions and the passing of resolutions. The
clerisy does not nag its elected representatives or send ur-
gent telegrams to its government. It is an element which
exists, only as individual men and women, in every part of
                                                       289

the population, and its action is that of a leaven. It is a leaven
which has often in the past, and may once again, leaven the
whole lump. Acting simply as individuals, the clerisy could
be influential if it chose to assert itself in the rebellion al-
ready well begun by a number of serious American thinkers
against the lumpishness, the dowdy triviality, the shoddy
<1expertise,>1 and the lack of foundation which bedevils so much
of North American education.
  This rebellion, the campaign of which has been set forth
in Jacques Barzun's <1The House of Intellect,>1 to name but
one important book, has dwelt on the dark side of North
American intellectual life. Doubtless such emphasis on
what is wrong is necessary if we are to be aroused to put it
right. But there is a danger in concentrating on what is
wrong. It tempts us toward a luxury of despair; the people
of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in
history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their un-
worthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so; let us
not wallow in a deliciously frightening sense of intellectual
inadequacy and then pass on to some new and more fashion-
able mortification. That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.
We must avoid the temptation to regard our conviction of
sin as an end in itself, and not as a preliminary and a means
to redemption. Are things really so black as they are
painted?

             <2Do the Other--directed Enjoy It?>2

A WIDELY READ and much discussed book was published in
1950 by a professor of social science at the College of the
University of Chicago, and two associates, called <1The>1
<1Lonely Crowd;>1 it was a study of the changing American
290

character. Its range and implications are wide, but what
has stuck in public consciousness is its concept of the "other-
directed person." Professor Riesman and his colleagues
took pains to define their concept, which was by no means so
alarming as the sense in which it is how popularly used. The
"other-directed person" has come to mean the man or
woman who is influenced in the important and unimportant
things of life by the attitudes of his "peer-group"--the peo-
ple of his own age and status--more than by any personal
sense of morality or responsibility. In <1The Lonely Crowd>1 it
is made clear that the "other-directed person" is emerging,
and at the time of writing was to be found only in a few big
cities. The authors have taken pains to write of him as neu-
trally as possible, saying only what he is, rather than what
he may become or what he may do to society. Put such is the
desire to be in the swim, even when the water is dirty and the
current is going in the wrong direction, that the notion of
the "other-directed person" has achieved a continental
popularity, and it is almost a matter of civic pride for every
modest settlement to claim a few, just as it must have its de-
linquents. There are fashions in anxiety and even in deg-
radation.
  The other-directed person undoubtedly exists; he has
always existed, in some degree, but nobody has thought
him sufficiently numerous or significant to arouse disquiet.
In less nervously democratic ages the other-directed person
was recognized as second rate and unworthy of much notice.
Is he utterly sunk in his other-directedness? Does he really
like being other-directed?  If so, why are books about
notably inner-directed persons--Clarence Day's father, and
Auntie Mame, to name but two--so popular? Maybe the
other-directed person would like to be inner-directed but
                                                       291

does not know how. What accounts for the success of a series
of movies about an inner-directed and awesomely intellec-
tual man called Mr. Belvedere, who shamed and rasped all
the good, simple folk with whom he came in contact? In
those movies not merely was Mr. Belvedere endured by the
people around him; they were convinced that he was really
a "good guy." If intelligent, self-determined individualists
can be popular heroes in books and on the screen, who
doubts that a great many Americans really admire them?
They may not admire them to the point of wishing to be
wholly like them, but they acknowledge their existence and
their value.
  Gloom always confers prestige on the gloomy. Lashing
the follies of the time, and prophesying woe are impres-
slve pursuits that appeal to our North American masochism.
It is immeasurably more difficult to hold the balance truly,
and it is the hardest thing of all to avoid underestimating
the intelligence of other people. I do not suggest that
Jacques Barzun or David Riesman do so; their attitudes have
been clearly stated. But the people who seize upon their
ideas, without troubling to understand them fully or to
make them their own, are apt to underestimate the intelli-
gence of others, and to exaggerate threats which are too
often projections of their own anxiety and sense of insuf-
ficiency.

  <2Is the Gloom justified?>2

THE DISMAY which is so often expressed about the low es-
tate of reading on this continent may well be such an ex-
aggeration, such an underestimation. Statistics are fre-
quently offered on this subject. One "survey" says that only
292

seventeen per cent of people in the United States and
eighteen per cent in Canada are reading books at any given
time; the same "survey" says that in England fifty-five per
cent are so occupied. It is easy to feel humiliation when we
are told that Denmark has seven times as many bookshops
<1Per capita>1 of population as the United States--but the
humiliation does not seem to call into being more bookshops,
or better ones. In 1958, it appears, a nonesuch called the
Average American read only seven books. Paul Blanshard
says that buying books is "almost a monopoly of the cultural
upper ten per cent of the population."
   Well, what about it? This is a matter on which statistics
are of little use. Would the statistically minded be happier
if the seventeen per cent who are reading were to be raised
to England's fifty-five per cent by a greater consumption of
the billion comic books which are printed on this continent
yearly? Or by a few more millions added to the twenty
million copies of the works of Mickey Spillane which are
said to be now in circulation? Statistics on reading are of no
value unless we know what is being read.
  Over half a billion books in hard covers are produced
on this continent every year, and at least a quarter of a
billion paperbacks. By no means all of this huge pro-
duction is trash, and among the paperbacks which must be
considered the reading of the young and the people
with small incomes, the standard is often very high. A pa-
perback edition of <1Shakespeare's Tragedies>1 has sold over a
million copies, and a <1Pocket Book of Verse>1 edited by M. E.
Speare has sold more than two million. The paperback
section of a good bookshop presents a splendid array of
classics, and comparatively new books which have proven
IS THE GLOOM JUSTIFIED?                      293

their worth, at low prices; a young reader could be fully
literate without ever buying a book in hard cover. The
great experiment of universal education is advancing, and
although some of its effects, as Mr. Barzun so trenchantly
describes them, are shocking and dispiriting, a greater part
of the population is certainly reading today than was the
case, proportionately, a century ago, and there is evidence
that they are reading more good books.
   (What is a good book, says the sophist, smiling like a
wolf trap. Any book is a good book which feeds the mind
something which may enlarge it, or move it to action. A
book is good in relation to its reader.)
  It is not the purpose of the present work to grapple yet
again with the problem of modern education, or to agonize
about the other-directed person. Anybody who has been
taught to read at all may feel moved to teach himself to
read well. Other-directed persons may, if the clerisy will
wake up, find themselves directed by "others" who read
books. The revolution in communications which is so inter-
estingly described by Marshall McLuhan cuts two ways; if
reading is now on a level with film or television, and if those
who set greatest value on reading must realize it, is it not
also true that those who chiefly value film and television
may come to be interested in reading? The mere con-
venience of reading as a form of entertainment and instruc-
tion gives it an advantage over the other two.
  Let us deny ourselves the eerie delights of despair about
the shortcomings of others, and get on with our own read-
ing. It is a personal art, and one which we shall spread
most rapidly and effectively by doing it ourselves. The first
task of the clerisy is not to belabor others to read more, but
294

to improve their own performance. The influence which
the clerisy can exert will come by doing, not by exhorting
others to do.

  <2An Elite Exists>2

THIS SORT of argument, I realize, will arouse in some people
another of the fears in which the anxiety of our time evinces
itself--the fear of an elite. There is, of course, an intellec-
tual elite at work in the world of letters now, and it is princi-
pally composed of academic critics. So far as I can see, there
is nothing much wrong with it except that it is too small,
and too professionally narrow in its concerns. If it can be
expanded by the addition of a million or two of the clerl-sy,
literature and criticism will both benefit. There are a hun-
dred elite groups of one sort and another at work in North
America today, and without them much necessary work
would never be done. It is only when democracy is in the
grip of reversed peristalsis that it fears that an elite will rob
the Common Man of his presumably God-ordained rights
in matters relating to art and letters. The Common Man
does not care the toss of a button for such cobwebs. The
growth and spread of intellect cannot do a country anything
but good, and the Common Man, who is not a fool, knows
it.
  This book did set out, however, to consider some aspects
of writing in the light of the North American world as it is
now, after a century of the move toward general literacy. It
may be, as Peter De Vries says, that "if there is any one
major cause for the spread of mass illiteracy it's the fact that
everybody can read and write." It could also be that the
other-directed person is merely a glossier version of that
FORTUNATE TIME FOR WRITERS              295

section of the populace which used to be called weak-
minded. Need we dread it if we are ourselves reasonably
strong-mlnded? But whatever the truth of the matter, writ-
ing and the writer have obviously been influenced by the
growth of literacy, and it is of interest to look at some of the
ways in which this influence has been exerted.

  <2Fortunate Time for Writers>2

THE WRITERS CHANCES of having his work published are
better today than they have ever been. Nobody knows this
better than the book reviewer. It is said by Paul Blanshard
in <1The Right to Read>1 that seventy-five per cent of the books
published today get no reviewing attention; even the small
number of publications which do nothing else cannot hope
to consider more than a few of the books which reach them.
What are literary editors to do? Only their wildly variable
best. lt has been suggested by one influential American pub-
lisher that books should be graded like eggs, and that pub
lishing houses should not offer as First Class what they well
know to be Fifth. But of course publishers cannot agree
about standards for grading, and even if they could, writers
would shriek like mandrakes uprooted if their work were
sent into the world marked anything less than Strictly Fresh.
  Anything which is not ridiculously incompetent has a
chance of being published. Part of the reason is economic;
publishers must bring out a certain number of books in
order to operate efficiently, and when good books cannot be
had, books which are less than good get their chance.
  There has been a remarkable increase in journalistic
books, which deal with immediately important aspects of
politics, or record some new feat of exploration. They
296

have their popularity, if any, within a few months and die.
Similarly, there has been a rise in the production of books
of the type discussed in the chapter called <1Enjoying and>1
<1Enduring,>1 which offer new hope for the fat, or the arth-
ritic, or the heartsore. Some of the writers of such books must
do well out of them, for they sell in large numbers, and a
really valuable one, like Dr. Edmund Jacobson's <1You Must>1
<1Relax,>1 may hold the market for twenty-five years and run
through several editions.

  <2Amateur Autobiographers>2

THEN THERE ARE the amateurs, usually people who have
lived the greater part of a life of some distinction and want
to tell about it. They have been politicians, and they are
greatly concerned about keeping the record (where is this
potent "record" about which politicians feel so much con-
cern?)  straight, which means favorable to themselves. Or
they have been great physicians, or sportsmen, or generals
who have fought the enemy with their swords and now
want to fight their colleagues with the mightier pen. Or they
have been actors, or singers, or society hostesses whose
recollections are a welter of great names and wilted witti-
cisms. Some are the work of ghosts, and as even with the best
ghosts, we see through them. But most of them are the al-
most unaided work of people who have no true skill in
writing.
  This is not to say that they are all bad or ill-written
books. Some are hopeless, of course--the depressing prod-
ucts of trivial minds. But many are the work of people who
have a talent which they have not troubled to cultivate or
AMATEUR A UTOBIOGRAPHERS                 297

refine, and though their books are readable, they are disap-
pointing. Most of them have a good story to tell, and a few
have some grace of expression, but they do not know how
to shape a book. Like amateur paintings, their work often
has a surface charm but lacks enduring interest; it is not
talent that is lacking so much as professional skill, practice,
and application.
   Their commonest fault is that they are short-winded; they
begin well, but they cannot stay the course. The early chap-
ters of their books are often excellent. Scores of them be-
gin their books with descriptions of childhood which make
us catch our breath again and again with their felicity and
sympathy and humor, but as soon as maturity and fame have
been reached, the books trail off into catalogues of names,
experiences dully and cautiously described, and reticences
which irritate the reader, however desirable they may seem
to the writer.
   Does the fault lie in the pattern of life itself? Are we so
much more perceptive and individual as children? Do we,
when once we have hit our stride in life and found our
niche (or our rut), become such dull dogs? I, for one, do
not believe it. It is not the material, but the writer's lack of
skill which is responsible for these disappointments. When
we write of childhood, memory does the work of selection
for us; we recall vividly what we experienced vividly. But
when we write of our adult life, the desire to appear be-
fore the world in a favorable light warps our judgment and
censors our expression. Not only do we want to show our-
selves to what we believe to be best advantage; we also want
to avoid hurting feelings, reheating old quarrels--in short,
reliving our lives in imagination and recording them with
298

art. In these amateur autobiographies the adult chapters
suffer from a lack of courage and a lack of honesty; to be
blunt, they have no artistic integrity.
  Honest autobiography is, of course, hard work. Some
readers will recall the uproar that greeted H. G. Wells's
<1experiment in Autobiography>1 in 1934; here was a book in
which the writer did not exhibit himself as his own hero,
was not invariably kind about his contemporaries, and
made sharp judgments on his parents. Perhaps no other book
by Wells aroused so much disapproval and tongue click-
ing. Rut the book is still full of interest, for it was written
by a man who knew how to keep up the pace of his story
from first to last. Is anyone so foolish as to imagine that it
was written without pain? Wells's life was a struggle from
the beginning; he told us of the struggle when he might
have wrapped himself in a cloak of success and given a dull
record of his triumphs.
  The difference between the amateur autobiographer and
the professional man of letters is that the former is con-
cerned with self-approval, the latter with self-revelation.
The artist's is likely to be disquieting, but it has a chance of
being a masterpiece. The work of the amateur will be, at
best, a pleasantly diverting and occasionally informative
book.
  Scores of such pleasantly diverting books are published
every season. It was two hundred and fifty years ago that
John Arbuthnot said that biography had added a new terror
to death: we may say that during the past century auto-
biography has added a new and undemanding pastime to
old age.
298

art. In these amateur autobiographies the adult chapters
suffer from a lack of courage and a lack of honesty; to be
blunt, they have no artistic integrity.
  Honest autobiography is, of course, hard work. Some
readers will recall the uproar that greeted H. G. Wells's
<1Experiment in Autobiography>1 in 1934; here was a book in
which the writer did not exhibit himself as his own hero,
was not invariably kind about his contemporaries, and
made sharp judgments on his parents. Perhaps no other book
by Wells aroused so much disapproval and tongue click-
ing. But the book is still full of interest, for it was written
by a man who knew how to keep up the pace of his story
from first to last. Is anyone so foolish as to imagine that it
was written without pain? Wells's life was a struggle from
the beginning; he told us of the struggle when he might
have wrapped himself in a cloak of success and given a dull
record of his triumphs.
  The difference between the amateur autobiographer and
the professional man of letters is that the former is con-
cerned with self-approval, the latter with self-revelation.
The artist's is likely to be disquieting, but it has a chance of
being a masterpiece. The work of the amateur will be, at
best, a pleasantly diverting and occasionally informative
book.
  Scores of such pleasantly diverting books are published
every season. It was two hundred and fifty years ago that
John Arbuthnot said that biography had added a new terror
to death: we may say that during the past century auto-
biography has added a new and undemanding pastime to
old age.
THE KINGDOM OF THIS WORLD                299


   <2The Kingdom of This World>2

THERE HAS BEEN a great increase in writing which is in-
tended only to entertain. That "only" needs amplification,
for all writers seek to entertain in some measure. Those of
whom I speak here are the writers who aim at large audi-
ences, upon whom they lay no burdens. Somerset Maugham
is an obvious and good example; for perhaps forty years he
has been one of the most popular and wealthiest of living
writers. He has most notably achieved the desire of the
writer of entertainment; he has a kingdom of this world.
But during the past ten or fifteen years there has been a
strong move to give him a crown of a different sort; it has
been asserted quite widely that he is an important figure in
the literature of our time.
   Mr. Maugham has never made any claim to this sort of
celebrity on his own behalf. He calls himself a teller of tales,
and he has suggested here and there that he thinks he tells
tales pretty well. But he has never claimed to be a phi-
losopher, or a poet, or a prophet, or anything of that sort. It
is his admirers who have made the great claims, and they
have done their idol harm thereby.
   Like millions of other people, I have had pleasure from
Mr. Maugham's work, and I cannot be ungrateful to any-
one who has given me pleasure, even if that pleasure is
not very strong or lasting. I have no wish to join those critics
who contemptuously brush Maugham aside, because I have
enjoyed almost everything he has written--the first time I
read it. But I do not want to read his things again.
   I have tried, with the nine novels which are included in
the three-volume collection. Until then I had passively ac-
300

cepted the popular judgment that Maugham is a master in
the manipulation of plot. Of the nine only one, <1Theatre>1,
was new to me; the others I was re-reading. I enjoyed <1Thea->1
<1tre,>1 thin though it is, and thought the plot deftly handled.
But the others, which were twice-told tales to me, seemed
full of obvious devices, unjustified changes of attitude on the
part of the characters, and the Long Arm of Coincidence
had the sinuous virtuosity of an elephant's trunk. The
writer says, over and over again, that you can never tell
what people will do next, and that humankind is full of sur-
prises. True, but the artist must not imitate life too closely
in this respect; Fate may push people around like checkers,
so that common men become kings when they reach the
other side of the board, but the artist must be more circum-
spect. Mr. Maugham is a masterly conjuror, but we can only
be deceived once.
   As a writer solely of entertainment lie is admirable, and
he has put his talent to shrewd and completely honorable
commercial use. He never skimps on craftsmanship. He
made one move toward greatness in 1915. with <1Of Human>1
<1Bondage;>1 there he speaks from his heart, and his study of
the ignominy and bitterness of misplaced love is a fine one.
Elsewhere he is the teller of tales, speaking from his clever,
cool head.
   What of his celebrated cynicism--that quality which
seems to provoke such agreeably contradictory thrills of at-
traction and repulsion in innocent minds? Maugham is no
more cynical than most people who have seen much of life
and met a wide range of people, but he has taken care to ex-
press his well-controlled enthusiasm for mankind in a very
amusing fashion. He has nothing of the savage indignation
of the real cynic; rather, lie is worldly wise. The cynical
                                                        301

writer may finish his outbursts in tears, for he is angry and
grieved that humanity will not meet his high demands. We
find no tears in Maugham.
   Indeed, we never find any very strong emotion in
Maugham or any wisdom which would cause surprise at
a bridge table or a dinner party. He is the lower-middle-
brow's ideal of a man of intellect. A great writer must give
us either Great feeling from the heart or great wisdom from
the head. If lie can manage it, we like the great writer to give
us a style of individual quality to which we can respond.
Maugham is curiously without individuality of style; has
anyone ever been able to parody him?
   It is tempting to say that if Maugham had wished to do so,
he could have developed the promise of <1Liza of Lambeth>1
and the exciting partial fulfillment we find in <1Of Human>1
<1Bondage>1 into true greatness. But it is not for readers to talk
so foolishly. Maugham has deliberately chosen to be a teller
of tales, and in that character he must be judged. I do not
feel that he merits the adulation of his immoderate ad-
mirers, nor can I agree that he deserves the ferocious
cudgeling that Edmund Wilson gives him in <1The Apothe->1
<1osis of Somerset Maugham,>1 where lie is summed up as "a
half-trashy novelist, who writes badly, but is patronized by
half-serious readers, who do not care about writing." I
feel, rather, that he his deserved precisely whit life has
given him. His is a kingdom of this world, not of the life-
moderately-everlasting which awaits the great writer; we
know that he has enjoyed his commercial success very much,
and which of us who has enjoyed his work would grudge him
what he has fairly won?
302


   <2Writers and Money>2

MAUGHAM HAS LIVED long and well as a professional writer;
he has done no other work. This makes him a rarity and an
object of envy to thousands of writers who cannot make
tongue and buckle meet on what they get for their best en-
deavor. There is always discussion in literary magazines
about whether a writer should try to live solely by his writ-
ing. Robert Graves insists that a poet who seeks to make
money from his poetry will lose any gift he has. Mr. Graves
writes novels in order to provide for himself and his large
family; in his judgment the White Goddess has nothing to do
with prose narrative. But there are writers who take novels
just as seriously and even religiously as Mr. Graves takes
poetry, and presumably for them the priestly rule is dif-
ferent. The late Thomas Mann held in awe a deity fully as
potent as the White Goddess--it may indeed have been
She, in one of her aspects--and he regarded prose and narra-
tive as more demanding than verse and the expression of
lyrical feeling. Mann lived on what he earned as a writer
without finding it necessary to compromise with his prin-
ciples, which were stern.
   This is a book for readers, not writers, and no discussion of
the economics of writing has any place here except as it
may illuminate the life of the writer in a way which will
benefit the reader. But writers enjoy talking about money;
correspondence and articles discussing their wants are com-
mon in the literary journals. Some of them frankly want a
pension without strings; some want money for travel or for
a year or two in which to invite their souls. Some, like the
English poet Roy Fuller, think that it does a writer no harm
302


   <2Writers and Money>2

MAUGHAM HAS LIVED long and well as a professional writer;
he has done no other work. This makes him a rarity and an
object of envy to thousands of writers who cannot make
tongue and buckle meet on what they get for their best en-
deavor. There is always discussion in literary magazines
about whether a writer should try to live solely by his writ-
ing. Robert Graves insists that a poet who seeks to make
money from his poetry will lose any gift he has. Mr. Graves
writes novels in order to provide for himself and his large
family; in his judgment the White Goddess has nothing to do
with prose narrative. But there are writers who take novels
just as seriously and even religiously as Mr. Graves takes
poetry, and presumably for them the priestly rule is dif-
ferent. The late Thomas Mann held in awe a deity fully as
potent as the White Goddess--it may indeed have been
She, in one of her aspects--and he regarded prose and narra-
tive as more demanding than verse and the expression of
lyrical feeling. Mann lived on what he earned as a writer
without finding it necessary to compromise with his prin-
ciples, which were stern.
   This is a book for readers, not writers, and no discussion of
the economics of writing has any place here except as it
may illuminate the life of the writer in a way which will
benefit the reader. But writers enjoy talking about money;
correspondence and articles discussing their wants are com-
mon in the literary journals. Some of them frankly want a
pension without strings; some want money for travel or for
a year or two in which to invite their souls. Some, like the
English poet Roy Fuller, think that it does a writer no harm
                                                        303

to have a regular job which keeps him in touch with non-
literary people and the world about him, and he points out
that the writer who does nothing but write too often be-
comes dependent on his childhood memories, and writes
chiefly of the adventures (sometimes dull) of his soul
(sometimes of modest growth) . Thornton Wilder thinks
military service useful to the young writer because it puts
him in intimate contact with nonartists--not "real people,"
as is sometimes asserted (as though artists were less real
than others), but people who are temperamentally unlike
himself, and of a more numerous group.
   There can be no agreement about how a writer should
live and get his money, and these matters are really un-
important; it is only what is written that matters. If, in order
to write, A must forgo all regularity of life, all domesticity
and even decency, he is neither more admirable nor repre-
hensible than B, who finds routine work and the pressure of
a full program congenial to his creative work; Verlaine
must be himself and so must Trollope. But there will al-
ways be people who think that if they live like Verlaine they
may perhaps write like Verlaine, or that a civil-service mind
and an accurate watch may make them a Trollope; the faith
in imitative and sympathetic magic persists not only in the
breasts of savages but among the weaker-minded artists of
every sort.
   The later Victorians and Edwardians had a notion--
founded upon a few real people, of whom Rudyard Kipling
was one--that a writer was a man who lived comfortably on
his earnings, usually in a pleasant house in the country,
where he enjoyed a degree of luxury, and the standing of a
gentleman. Time and taxation killed the possibility of such
a creature; Bernard Shaw was perhaps the last man to live
 304

 such a life, and he had to be a millionaire in sterling, with
 a rich wife, to afford it. Yet the charming, old-fashioned
 picture persists among many people, not a few of whom are
 ambitious authors. The idea of possessing the means and
 the milieu for a life devoted entirely to imaginative creation
 is extremely attractive, especially to the story-telling sort of
 talent. To sit at one's desk, puffing at one's favorite briar,
 while dashing off a rattling yarn of adventure--the picture
is as absurd as those film biographies of painters and com-
posers.

   <2Nothing But Masterpieces?>2

ONE PHASE of the reality, for those who can stand it, may be
examined in George Gissing's painful novel New <1Grub>1
<1Street.>1 Most writers today can recognize some of their
colleagues among its characters. It is full of bitterness, and
the low key in which it is written, rebuking any thought
that the writer might have exaggerated his picture to gain
effect, gives fearful poignancy to such sentences as that
which, for instance, begins chapter eight:
 Of the acquaintances Yu!e hail retained from his earlier
   years several were in the well-defined category of men with
   unpresentable wives.
I should hesitate to recommend <1New Grub Street>1 to a writer,
but no time traveler who cares to sniff the lingering stench of
boiled cabbage in the suburban kennels of nineteenth-
century authors should miss it. The Failure of, for instance,
Alfred Yule in this book is more poignant than the failure
of Willie Loman in <1Death of a Salesman>1 because Yule once
had high aspirations. A drunken Priest is a more pathetic
creature than a drunken barber, and Yule had a vocation.
                                                   305

   Gissing's novel is a reminder that we have looked briefly
at the popularizers, the amateurs, and the entertainment
authors, but have not yet given any consideration to the
group which deserves our most serious attention; his hero,
Edwin Reardon, is an author who strives with all the fervor
which is in him to convey to his readers his profoundest
thoughts and feelings about the most important matters
within his comprehension. He fails, he dies of poverty and
heartbreak; all that he touches turns to ruin. But his sin-
cerity is complete, and his determination to hold back noth-
ing in his service to literature is a splendid and awesome
example of the egotism of the artist. Virtually all the writing
that is done which is of any importance as literature is done
by Reardons of one sort or another. They are not often such
gloomy, ill-fated creatures as he; some of them pretend to a
frivolity which deceives simple readers and simpleton
critics. But they are all striving to write a masterpiece. As
Cyril Connolly says: "The more books we read the sooner
we perceive that the true function of a writer is to produce a
masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence."
   Splendid simplifications like this are a tonic to the mind.
We think of the vast accumulations of books in the Library
of Congress and the British Museum, and wag our heads in
solemn approval. How cleansing, from tlme to tlme, to rise
above the clouds to the mountain peak and breathe its cold,
thin air! But--nothing but masterpieces? The great libraries
magically shrunk to two or three shelves upon which we
recognize perhaps a quarter of Shakespeare's total bulk,
standing beside a much reduced <1Bible,>1 the <1Divine Comedy,>1
and a daunting array of such things as <1The Lusiads>1 of
Camoens, perhaps <1War and Peace,>1 and the sonnets of
Petrarch? No, no; we are not worthy of a literature com-
306
posed only of masterpieces. None of us lives at the master-
piece level all of the time, and many people never scramble
up to it at all. And thus we are made to recognize that all
talk of masterpieces is relative, and that the true function
of a writer is to produce his own masterpiece. And the
reader--let the critics pra e as they may about his "true
function"--will read what chimes with his taste and his
needs.
   This is not to assert that standards of criticism are worth-
less, and that one book is as good as another if it happens to
strike the responsive chord in a reader who has happened on
it at the right moment. It is only to say that within the very
large confines of that literature which judicious readers and
critics have admired in some degree over the ages, there are
many sorts of masterpieces, and that their worth must be
estimated relatively as well as absolutely.
   All that we can safely say here about masterpieces is
that it is most improbable that one will be written by a hack,
or an amateur, or by a writer whose primary aim is mass
entertainment. Whatever their theme and manner, be they
masterpieces of wit, of realism, of fantasy, or perhaps of those
dark writings in which we recognize, long afterward, that
some astonishing insight or prophecy has been concealed,
only writers more or less of the Reardon stamp will bring
them forth. Let us consider what it is that these writers do.

   <2The Ogre of the Nursery>2

TO USE A PHRASE which would have suited Samuel Smiles,
they give the best that is in them to writing. And what is the
best that is in them? The psychoanalytical bent of critical
thought in our time has taught us that the sources of many
                                                   307

kinds of effort can look strange to eyes which see flowers but
not the manure in which they are nourished. Those who
want to examine one psychoanalytical theory about why
writers write will find it in The <1Writer and Psychoanalysis>1
by Dr. Edmund Bergler, who has had a number of writers
as patients. Authors are attempting to solve an inner conflict
through the sublimatory medium of writing, says he, and it
has been his invariable experience that the conflict is that of
a psychic masochist at war with his Mother Image. This
alarming image is not his real mother, or his mother as she
appears in his Oedipus complex, but is rather "that giant
ogre of the nursery, the pre-Oedipal mother." We need not
examine this concept in detail, but it is of interest that in
Dr. Bergler's opinion this inner tension results in the ag-
gressive and rebellious nature which is common to writers.
Not, it need hardly be said, that aggression and rebellion
necessarily manifest themselves in an obvious fashion; they
may be confined to a deep level of the writer's work. But they
are there. This cast of mind also, in Dr. Berglep's view,
makes writers what he calls "injustice-collectors," people
who have a strongly developed sense of grievance, which
again need not appear in obvious ways. It must be empha-
sized that this is by no means the whole of Dr. Bergler's
theory, which is extensive and technical. His book has been
attacked as if it were intended to explain writers away as
victims of an unresolved mental quirk. It does not and could
not do anything of the sort. It confines itself to presenting a
pattern of mental structure which has appeared in thirty-six
writers under analysis, and which Dr. Bergler believes may
be common to them all.
   It does not explain writers away because it does not take
account of the vast differences in achievement which divide
308

them. Though they may all be, in their psychic depths,
struggling with the hobgoblin of the pre-Oedipal mother,
what comes to the surface exhibits the most extraordinary
differences of quality, ranging from mediocrity to genius.
Nor can this difference in quality be traced to any cause. It is
true now, and may remain true for generatlons to come, as
Freud said in his consideration of Dostoevski: "Unfortu-
nately, psychoanalysis must lay down its arms before the
problem of the artist." Dr. Bergler thinks he has discovered
why writers write; only that fuzzy word "talent" and the
now discredited "genius" carry any hint of why some write
immeasurably better than others. The secret remains a se-
cret.
   Nevertheless, what Dr. Bergler has to say emphasizes
what critics have known for centuries: there is something
about writers which makes them not like other men, and
which can make them difficult and even downright objec-
tionable. Many of them control this element in their nature,
confining it to their work; in others it creeps like a stain
through the whole fabric of their lives. This quality his
been examined by Edmund Wilson in <1The Wound and the>1
<1Bow,>1 and his opinions, though different from those of Dr.
Bergler, are no more complimentary to the literary brother-
hood. As a pattern of the quality which he finds in several
authors--Dickens and Kipling are his principal exemplars
--he takes the myth of Philoctetes, the archer with the mi-
raculous bow who could not miss his mark; but Philcctetes
had been bitten by a snake, and in his foot was a suppurating
wound, the stench of which made him so intolerable that his
companions left him to die on the island of Lemnos; how-
ever, they had to have him in order to win the Trojan War,
                                                   309

and were forced to seek him. If they wanted the magic of the
bow, they had to put up with the stench of the wound. The
literary artist, says Mr. Wilson, is a Philoctetes. Publishers,
agents, critics, and other putatively normal people who have
to deal with authors have shown a ready acceptance of Mr.
Wilson's theory which shows that it crystallizes something
long thought, but not previously so well expressed. And
truly, where would <1they>1 be without Philoctetes?

   <2What Writers Think about It>2

WHAT DO AUTHORS think about this theorizing on the deep
sources of their work? Generally speaking, they have taken
it with mildness, and the greater their ability, the less their
inclination to throw themselves into such unprofitable bat-
tles. They are interested in writing, not in discovering why
they write. As William Faulkner says, the writer has su-
preme vanity. He does not want to be influenced or taken
apart; he does not want the officious help of people who can-
not, as he knows intuitively, be anything but nuisances to
him. The writer may be a little afraid of the critic, and in
particular the young, zealous critic with his shiny, humming
intellect and his sometimes astonishingly coarse and ele-
mentary feelings, but he knows that this clever creature is
powerless to help him. E. M. Forster says of such critics:
"They want us to be so much better informed than we are.
If critics could only have a course on writers' <1not>1 thinking
things out . . ." The writer is vain in the sense that he is
determined to go it alone; he is humble in his recognition
that he cannot play the clever critics' game of pulling things
apart, for he knows that if <1he>1 pulls something of his own
310
apart, he will never get it together again; whereas, of course,
if a critic pulls a piece of writing apart, it heals as quickly as
Its own vitality dictates.
   Do writers not care, then, what critics think? Some of
them care very much, and are wounded by unfavorable ap-
praisals of their work. The tendency to collect grievances, of
which Dr. Bergler writes, leads many authors to resent cer-
tain critics with an intensity which would flatter the critics if
they knew of it. But even more than the distaste of the most
sensitive writer for the most sneering critic is the determina-
tion of the author to do his work in his own way, which has
no kinship with the critical atmosphere of intellect.
   The admirable series of interviews with writers which
was done for <1The Paris Review,>1 and published under the
title <1Writers at Work>1 (1958), gives testimony over and over
again of this independence of the writer's creative faculty,
which Faulkner calls supreme vanity. Does Dr. Bergler or
Edmund Wilson think the writer neurotic? William Styron
says: "The good writing of any age has always been the
product of <1somebody's>1 neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull
literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of
happy chuckleheads." Asked to comment on work in prog-
ress, Angus Wilson replied: "Fiction writing is a kind of
magic, and I don't care to talk about a novel I'm doing be-
cause if I communicate the magic spell, even in an abbrevi-
ated form, it loses force for me"--which is the kind of talk
that does not sit well with critics who do not regard a writer
as a magician, but rather as a man who needs to be told what
he has said. This magical, or priestly, function of the writer
is wryly expressed by Georges Simenon: "Writing is con-
sidered a profession, and I don't think it is a profession. I
think that everyone who does not need to be a writer, who


WHAT WRITERS THINK ABOUT IT             311

thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else.
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I
don't think an artist can ever be happy . . . because, first, I
think that if a man has the urge to be an artist, it is because
he needs to find himself. Every writer tries to find himself
through his characters, through all his writing." A vocation
of unhappiness--the phrase would please Dr. Bergler. And
again, Faulkner: "The good artist believes that nobody is
good enough to give him advice . . . No matter how much
he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him."
  The points upon which the sixteen writers interviewed
were in agreement were few, but important. Each was con-
vinced that the particular form in which he worked was at
once the most difficult and the most satisfactory. All were
agreed that writing is a kind of magic, though Angus Wilson
was the only one actually to use the word. They were agreed
that a writer must shake off the trivialities of external living
in order to sound his creative depths, and although they all
mistrusted elaborate schemes, scenarios, plans, and theses,
all had ways of reaching those depths which are, in appear-
ance and perhaps in reality, magical. Each calls up his dae-
mon in his special way.
  Not all were so willing to admit that writing is a physically
demanding function as Simenon, who writes six books a year
and has an examination by his physician before and after
each of them; writing excites and exhausts him to a degTee
which may be dangerous. Nor were many so exacting about
writing conditions as Truman Capote, who cannot work
anywhere but in bed. But most of the sixteen had prefer-
ences for kinds and colors of paper, hours of work, and spe-
cial conditions favorable to a writing mood. A surprising
number of them, in this clacking typewriter age, write by
312

hand, and most of them write legibly and even elegantly.
William Faulkner's manuscript is as handsome as those of
Edmund Blunden or Fr. Rolfe. None among them liked
to write for long hours.

   <2Gushers and Tricklers>2

AS WORKERS they might be divided into gushers and trick-
lers. Thurber is a gusher; for one story which was 20,000
words when finished, he wrote a total of 240,000, and fifteen
different versions. It is interesting that the torrential Thur-
ber is the one who talked most about that dread of all writ-
ers--drying up. (This ailment, called "writer's block," is
discussed at length by Dr. Bergler in his book already men-
tioned; curing this frightening malady is one of his special-
ties.) Frank O'Connor is also a gusher; he rewrites some of
his stories even after they have been published. The trick-
lers may be represented by William Styron, who says: "I
can't turn out slews of stuff each day. I wish I could. I seem
to have some neurotic need to perfect each paragraph--each
sentence, even,--as I go along." Dorothy Parker, also a trick-
ler, says: "I can't write five words but I change sevenl" The
industry of the gushers commands respect; Joyce Cary,
Frank O'Connor, and Capote--we see them writing and re-
vising, rejecting pages by the handful, and finally piecing
their work together from the mass. But the tricklers have an
agony of their own; they cannot continue until the last line
written is as right as they can make it. Both methods seem to
take about an equal amount of time.
   All agree on the willfulness of the material which asks to
be written, and the likelihood of a story that began with one
end in mind being finished with something quite different.
                                                       313

This willfulness is a sign of the vitality of the writer's in-
spiration, and is not to be thwarted. To make a neat plan
and write to it has never been the practice of the Reardons.
Henry James's elaborate scenarios may look like neat plans
to the casual eye, but they are in fact drafts--something very
different. The scheme, the chart that is beloved of some
teachers of "creative writing," is rejected by all of these.
William Styron's comments on creative-writing courses are
of interest--"a ruinous business, a waste of paper and time."
(Perhaps in fairness we should quote a remark in contradic-
tion of this opinion, made by James Jones not to <1The Paris>1
<1Review>1 but to David Ray, referring to his own tutor in writ-
ing, who is Mrs. Lowney Handy of Marshall, Illinois: "She
could take any knucklehead and teach him to write.")
  These sixteen are at one in their attitude toward critics;
they are not actively hostile, but they resent being mauled
by schematizers, symbol-sniffers, and those who patronize
each "fresh new talent" and try to establish its "influences"
before pushing it into a "school." Faulkner speaks for all.
"The artist doesn't have time to listen to critics. The ones
who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want
to write don't have time to read the reviews. The critic too
is trying to say 'Kilroy was here.' His function is not di-
rected toward the artist himself. The artist is a cut above the
critic, for the artist is writing something which will move
the critic. The critic is writing something which will move
every-body but the artist." Regarding that last word, he says:
"An artist is a creature driven by demons." Thornton
Wilder also has a wise word. "The important thing is that
you make sure that neither the favourable nor the unfa-
vourable critics move into your head and take part in the
composition of your next work."
314

   About conditions of living, the writers vary greatly. Two
or three point out that there is no reason why a millionaire
should not write well, as, indeed, a few millionaires have
done. All condemn the romantic notion that poverty is good
for an author. They are cold toward patrons. "The good
writer never applies to a foundation," says Faulkner, mean-
ing. of course, the author or the playwright. These writers
do not consider scholars, critics, and such riffraff as writers
in any serious sense; they are to the Reardons what fleas are
to a dog, or sores to the leper saint.
  Their social habits are various. Thornton Wilder warns
against a limited acquaintance, but Angus Wilson confesses
to a distaste for simple, nai%ve people. Some warn against the
pseudo-literary fad of seeking low company, dear to a few
authors in every generation who boast of their familiarity
with ruffians and women of ill fame. Several of them warn
against hiving with other writers, and we are reminded of
Dr. Johnson's comment that the reciprocal civility of au-
thors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.
  This series of interviews has been given extended atten-
tion here because it bears out, in evidence gathered from
American, English, and French authors, the general charac-
ter of the author as described by Dr. Bergler, and as revealed
by Gissing in the character of Edwin Reardon. Superficially
different, authors who are not journalists, hacks, amateurs,
or commercial entertainers belong in this deeply serious,
but not therefore solemn, category.
  The writer is concerned with life, the critic with writing.
As Ibsen says, living is a fight with the dark forces, the
bogeys within, and to write is to sit in judgment upon one's
inmost self. If the true writer, the Reardon, the man whom
Simenon describes as inescapably committed to the search
LUST TO BE CREATIVE                           315

for himself, is a writer because he has the psychic structure
which Dr. Bergler describes, or something like it, we must
beware of criticism which ventures too far in its attempts to
explain him, to give him a helping hand, to put him on the
right track. There is a trend to that sort of criticism at pres-
ent, among the younger men who do not know what the old
hands of criticism know. Sometimes this trend is given the
odd name of creative criticism. It flourishes around univer-
sities, like the damp, pest-harboring ivy which it so much re-
sembles, and it provides for its practitioners a wreath which
proclaims a double honor--that of being both critical and
creative at the same time.

  <2Lust to Be Creative>2

THE YEARNING to be creative seems to possess more people
in our day than ever before. Peter De Vries in <1The Tunnel>1
<1of Love>1 has brilliantly caricatured an editor who sets out
on an adulterous path for which he has no talent and small
appetite, in order to show that he can be as immoral as any
of the creative men with whom his work associates him. Life
has not given him the bow, but he is trying to fake the
wound.
  Surely it is a fine thing to be a critic? We need not agree
with Dr. Bergler, who says that a critic is, in most instances,
an inhibited writer who is filled unconsciously with undi-
gested anger against writers; we need not follow him in his
assertion that these critics have a predilection for medi-
ocrity, because the sterile can forgive the mediocre more
easily than the talented. We need not--unless we wish to
accept the doctor's theory about the psychic genesis of the
true writer's urge to write. But even then we may be per-
316

mitted to postulate a talent for criticism, which is by no
means the same thing as a talent for creation. It is the critics
who want to have both honey and jam on their bread who
trouble us.
  The yearning of the uncreative to create is, of course, as
old as literature, and is by no means confined to it. Mules of
all kinds hanker pitifully for parenthood. Dictionaries of
music contain amusing accounts of ingenious machines
which were designed to enable people who were not com-
posers to write music. We have all seen those canvases care-
fully marked out with lines and numbers to assist people
who are not painters to paint. Magazines and papers fre-
quently contain advertisements offering to teach people who
are not writers to write. Sometimes ingenious methods of in-
ducing creation in those in whom it has not shown itself are
carried to extraordinary lengths.

   <2The Handy Method>2

UNDOUBTEDLY the most famous experiment of this kind in
our day is that of Mrs. Lowney Handy. She has a colony
where those who wish to be writers may live if they satisfy
her requirements, and where they submit themselves to her
tutelage. This consists in part of copying, for many hours
each day, books which she believes to be good models; the
purpose of this copying is that the apprentices (as they are
called) may absorb and make their own a body of literature
by a method that drives it deeply, but not critically, into
their minds. Let those who are quick to scorn this method
reflect that it is a mechanical intensification of the one used
by Robert Louis Stevenson to teach himself to write. In due
THE HANDY METHOD                            317

time writing begins to bubble in the apprentices, and what
they write is scrutinized by Mrs. Handy.
  Mrs. Handy must be accounted fortunate in her first pu-
pil, James Jones, whose popular and financially successful
first novel, <1From Here to Eternity,>1 was written in this way.
Mr. Jones's later book, <1Some Came Running,>1 contained
1,266 pages and 700,000 words, and weighed two pounds,
eleven ounces; longer than <1War and Peace,>1 and nearly twice
the length of <1Gone with the Wind,>1 it came within 70,000
words of the length of the <1Bible>1 and is the longest novel ever
published. What libraries Mr. Jones must have copied be-
fore bringing it forthl Edwin Daly, Gerald Tesch, and
Tom T. Chamales are also writers who have achieved pub-
lication and some popular success by the Handy Method.
Inevitably there are malcontents who assert that they can de-
tect in the work of Mrs. Handy's pupils the influence of the
writers whom they have so toilsomely ingurgitated. There
are others who have suggested that Mr. Jones needs recharg-
ing, perhaps with a new group of influences. My only pur-
pose here is to call attention to a remarkable experiment,
conducted with a rigor that reflects the greatest credit on the
fortitude of everyone concerned, and which again presses
home the only rule that can be applied to the study of litera-
ture--that there are no absolute rules. Whether the writing
produced by Mrs. Handy's discipline is the result of stimu-
lation or simulation is for the acute critics to decide, and so
far most of them have shown a painful indecision. Whether
Mrs. Handy is able to provide at an advanced stage in the
psychic developlnent of her pupils a satisfactory approxima-
tion of the fearsome pre-Oedipal mother is a matter upon
which probably only Dr. Bergler could pronounce.
318


   <2La Litterature Engage/e>2

TIME AND AGAIN I am forced to the conclusion that if we
want intelligent comment about writing and the tempera-
ment of writers, we are more likely to get it from writers
themselves than from critics. Writers have shown themselves
patient in answering questions about their work and their
private lives and attitudes. Consider, for instance, the ques-
tion of the writer's contribution to the political and social
problems of his day--what the people who believe in it call
<1la litte/rature engage/e;>1 should the writer be involved in po-
litical and social movements, and should these in turn find a
place in his writing? Since the thirties this question has re-
peatedly appeared and faded like the Cheshire Cat. Nine
English writers, young and prominent, were questioned on
this matter by <1The London Magazine>1 in 1957. Not one of
them plumped for participation and propaganda, which is
what <1la litte/rature engage/e>1 can so easily become. Maurice
Cranston said: <1"Lilte/rature engage/e>1 is the literature of en-
lightenment, as well as of commitment, of judgement as well
as perception." "The writer's only artistic duty is to find a
subject suited to his talent," said D. J. Enright, protesting
against the notion that the writer is morally obligated to en-
gage himself in the social and political issues of his time.
Roy Fuller said: "The writer's work . . . is to transform
the political and social world into the moral world." Wil-
liam Golding said: "I am fully engaged in the human di-
lemma but see it as far more fundamental than a complex of
taxes and astronomy." Philip Larkin said: "Good social and
political literature can exist only if it originates in the im-
agination, and it will do that only if the imagination finds
                                                        319

the subject exciting, and not because the intellect thinks it
important." Stephen Spender said: "It is surely just as im-
portant to try to be outside one's epoch, as to be of it." And
Colin Wilson, with an echo of Cyril Connolly, said: "A
writer's first commitment is to great poetry and art: in other
words, to produce a masterpiece." No quotations are given
here from the answers of John Osborne and John Wain, not
because they disagreed with the others, or because their re-
plies were not cogent, but because no short extract readily
presents itself. These nine writers may safely be said to rep-
resent at least one powerful body of opinion on the fuzzy
subject of <1la litte/rature engage/e,>1 and as they were not
chosen as known opponents of it (indeed, the questions
asked suggested somewhat too nakedly that support for <1lit->1
<1te/rature engage/e>1 was expected) , their unanimity is striking.
So, also, is their attitude toward their art, so much more
serious than that of the anonymous questioner.
  The true <1litte/rature engage/e>1 of our time is, of course, the
vast literature of enjoying and enduring which we examined
at length in Chapter Two, and the literature of sex instruc-
tion in Chapter Three, as well as the journalistic literature
referred to earlier in this chapter. Exhortation on political
and social problems abounds. What could be directed more
shrewdly toward the heart's desire of millions of North
Americans than <1How I Turned>1 $1,000 <1into a Million in>1
<1Real Estate--in My Spare Time>1 by William Nickerson? In
1958 it was selling for a time at the rate of 10,000 copies a
week. It is sheer romanticism to suppose that only books
dealing with unpopular contemporary problems deserve the
stylish description of <1la litte/rature engage/e;>1 these are high-
brow enthusiasms--the realities in this realm are the books
which tell you how to make a million, how to get a better
320

job, how to forget that man is mortal, how to bully the Pow-
ers of Darkness (God or Anybody Who Will Listen) to
boost your business.
  It must not be supposed that the real writers, the Rear-
dons, the men perpetually on trial before their inner tribu-
nal, the men in unceasing battle with a ferocious pre-Oedi-
pal mother, neglect matters of contemporary importance.
When these are inevitable themes for them--what Samuel
Butler speaks of as the books which will not let an author
alone and demand to be written--they write about them,
and write well. Nor should it be assumed from the some-
what staid tone of the writers who have been quoted that
they are neglectful of experiment. True, they do not exper-
iment as much as some critics would like. Critics like experi-
ment because they weary of attempts to create masterpieces
on conventional lines; they feel, understandably, that a new
form or an unconventional approach might yield interest-
ing, if not revolutionary, results.

  <2Experiment and the Antinovel>2

COMPARATIVELY FEW writers, however, are truly experi-
mental in a large sense. They are still leaning heavily on
the revolution in material brought about by Freud and his
followers, and the revolution in manner which stems chiefly
from James Joyce. Small variations on these basic themes
content them. There is always plenty of room for experi-
ment, and one realm which has not been explored seriously
in our time is the verse narrative.
  This is the more astonishing when we reflect upon how
many of the good modern novelists are also poets. Some of
them--the names of Frederic Prokosch and Lawrence Dur-
EXPERIMENT AND THE ANTINOVEL          321

rell come to mind--have drawn on their poetic powers to
enlarge their narrative scope. But what has been done in
this realm which can be called daring? What, for instance,
attempts to follow where Browning led in <1The Ring and the>1
<1Book>1--one of the most remarkable psychological novels in
English, and one of the most neglected great poems? The
public taste which once rose so eagerly to the verse romances
of Sir Walter Scott, and which gave Byron's <1The Corsair>1 a
sale of 10,000 copies on the day of its publication, is not
dead; it is asleep, and rouses easily, as the success of Benet's
<1John Brown's Body>1 in 1927 plainly showed. Are the breadth
of theme or the depth of penetration demanded by verse
narrative uncongenial to the poets of our time? Do they lack
the gusto and variety and sustained energy which such com-
position demands? If experiment in form is wanted, here is
a realm in which it can be tried, and the possibilities of ad-
venture are boundless.
  Another sort of literature which has been little explored
and which promises rich experiment is the film scenario.
Tennessee Williams's <1Baby Doll>1 has appeared in this form,
and so has Dylan Thomas's <1The Doctor and the Devils;>1 both
are excellent reading. Is it always necessary that an actual
filming should be in prospect for a writer to take this form
and use it? Has it not qualities of its own which make it in-
teresting, without reference to actual realization on the
screen? In making this suggestion, I certainly do not wish for
a Closet Cinema to partner in dowdiness the Victorian
Closet Drama, but rather a new attack on narrative which
would jettison some of the machinery of the novel. Miss Ivy
Compton-Burnett has perfected for her own use a type of
novel which is virtually dialogue, with connective tissue lit-
tle more extended than stage directions. The scenario offers
322

the chance of an equally incisive medium, employed on a
broader scale.
  A widely discussed experimenter of our time is Samuel
Beckett, whose recognition has been slow in coming. The
material he chooses is not of the kind which attracts the
great mass of readers and keeps at bay many of the timid
among the clerisy. The interior monologue of an old man on
his deathbed <1(Malone Dies)>1 or the anxieties of a decrepit
fat woman who is married to a blind curmudgeon whose
ambition is to kill a child (<1All That Fall>1) do not, on the face
of it, engage our fancy. But when we have read them, they
linger in the mind, not merely because they are extraordi-
nary and rather nasty, but because they have taken us be-
hind the scenes of life and have shown us some aspects of it
in a thoroughly unaccustomed light.
  Consider his novel <1Molloy.>1 It has been extravagantly
praised. M. Jean Blanzat, writing in <1Le Figaro Litte/raire,>1
says it is one of the most profound investigations ever writ-
ten of the disaster of man's destruction. From the first page
we are engulfed in confusion and mystery, from which we
pluck scraps of communication which after a time assemble
into a ghost of narrative. Molloy is an old man, filthy,
ragged, and diseased, who is wandering about the outskirts
of a city, searching for his mother. He lacks most of the emo-
tions which hold mankind together, and such relationships
as he has with people, including his mother, are either vio-
lent or indecent. He is suffering from a failure of his legs
which at last reduces him to dragging his body through the
dirt with his hands. He encounters a man who kills him.
   After this point the story becomes the inner monologue
of Jacques Moran, a detective who is given orders--why and
by whom we are not told--to track down Molloy. Moran is
                                                        323

a cruel man who tortures his son with purgatives, and puts
on a fantastic dress which includes a huge straw hat with an
elastic under the chin, for his chase. He too has trouble with
his legs--the "torso-man" whose limbs are failing is a favor-
ite character of Beckett's--and one of his knees makes walk-
ing almost impossible. Moran's degradation and sense of loss
and failure grow as he pursues his victim. At last he meets a
man and kills him without knowing who he is. The man
was Molloy.
  No place to go for a laugh, you might say, echoing the
schoolboy's comment on the works of Matthew Arnold. But
baffling and occasionally maddening as <1Molloy>1 is, a laugh is
precisely what you do get, from time to time. In this welter
of lunatic despair--despair gone far beyond such emotions
as sadness or regret--there are humorous flashes worthy of
Joyce himself. The atmosphere is nihilist, but not boring or
depressing. On the contrary, it leaves me, for one, with a
sense of exhilaration and clearer vision which convinces me
that <1Molloy>1 and Beckett's other books and plays are true
works of art of an unusual kind. But they are not for Nice
Nelly; the exhilaration and the fresh vision are bought at
the cost of a steep descent into squalor, and abandonment
or reversal of all the ordinary values.
  This is not caprice; it is the turning inside out of the Clas-
sical novel. An English critic, Miss Christine Brooke-Rose,
calls Beckett's works antinovels and antiplays; she likens
them to <1Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, Les Faux mon->1
<1nayeurs,>1 and <1The Skin of Our Teeth.>1 The comparison, and
especially with <1Tristram Shandy,>1 I find enlightening and
helpful. In that extraordinary and delightful work the life
of the hero has not passed beyond infancy when, at the end
of the eighth volume, the conclusion is reached; as a life of
324

Tristram Shandy it is nothing, but considered from any
other point of view it is rich fare. In the works of Beckett
every positive becomes a negative, and everything subsides
to pointlessness and oblivion; he that is down need fear no
fall, he that is low, no pride. That it should be stimulating is
superficially strange, but I mean later to return to this point.

  <2Dangers in the Avant--garde>2

IT IS BY NO MEANS easy to distinguish between a valid and a
durable literary attitude, such as that exhibited by Beckett,
and the quickly fading enthusiasms of the <1avant-garde.>1
Within the past few years we have seen the rise and fall of
the Angry Young Men in Britain, and the sun is setting on
the Beat Generation of the United States. In both these in-
stances the enthusiasm and the name came from outside the
group concerned, and the writers comprising these two co-
teries were unified less by common aims and sympathies
than forced together by foolish adulation and foolish attack.
In the March 1958-issue of the <1London Magazine>1 its editor,
John Lehmann, confessed to embarrassment at having to tell
French inquirers that Kingsley Amis was of Britain's <1avant->1
<1garde;>1 Mr. Lehmann did not think Mr. Amis sufficiently
ahead of the crowd. Mr. Amis's opinion on the matter was
not recorded, which was a pity. He, as much as any writer
today, has been the victim of a label and an association
which he did not seek, but did not resist with sufficient force.
In consequence, his books which have followed <1Lucky jim>1
(1954) have been scrutinized for new evidence of Angry
Young Manhood, and the decline observable in <1That Uncer->1
<1tain Feeling>1 (1955) and even more marked in <1I Like It>1
<1Here>1 (1958) is due at least in part to this pressure to keep
                                                       325

up an attitude. Mr. Amis never was very angry; on the con-
trary, he was good-natured. But he has been trapped in an
attitude. In <1I Like It Here>1 his fancy is exhausted, and he is
brought down to the level of bladder and toilet fun, and
does not scorn to employ even so jejune a device as a con-
fusion of "word" with "turd." Any tiresome duty or work
he classifies as "bum"--a word of titillating obscenity in
some areas of English society; there are whole bum se-
quences in this unhappy book, and he extends his exquisite
device by such variants as "buttocks" and "nates." He puts
the crown on this drollery by a daring use of "shit." The
anti-intellectualism which was amusing in <1Lucky Jim>1 has
dropped to the point whcre he describes that exquisite
poem <1The Dream of the Rood>1 as "a piece of orang-utan's
toilet requisite." To be wittily scatalogical is one thing; this
sort of writing, which might be called <1l'e/sprit de la chaise->1
<1perce/e,>1 is quite another. But is Amis wholly to blame? He
was labeled as soon as he raised his head, and he cannot wash
the label off. And now Mr. Lehmann thinks seriously of
drumming him out of the <1avant-garde.>1 How much better if
the critical press gang had never dragged him into it!
  Technical experiment as well as attitude can mark the
<1avant-garde>1 writer, and can trap him just as surely. Great
interest is fittingly aroused by Alain Robbe-Grillet's desire
for a prose cleansed of "the myth of depth of meaning in ob-
jects"; as displayed in his own novels, <1Le Voyeur>1 and <1La>1
<1Jalousie,>1 this results in a kind of antihumanism. He is in re-
volt against an anthropomorphic attitude toward objects
which demonstrably have no human feeling; he would, for
instance, deplore any reference to a <1pitiless>1 storm, or a <1smil->1
<1ing>1 sun. He will not admit that it is valid writing to say that
a village <1crouches>1 in its place; it is situated there, and noth-
326

ing more. All of which is reasonable enough, and good writ-
ers have always taken pains to avoid cheap effects which
arise when this style of description is abused. But matter is
vastly more important than manner in writing, and it will
be interesting to see if M. Robbe-Grillet can maintain this
sort of abstinence for long. Matter dictates manner; to work
the other way about is to do violence to the writer's inspira-
tion, for it subordinates his creative to his critical faculty.
Every writer is critical of his work after he has written it,
but he is on unsteady ground when he puts himself to work
to demonstrate a critical theory. He may do it once or twice,
but it will be strange if he bases his career on it.
   These matters of labels, of theories, of the strength or
weakness of the <1avant-garde>1 are properly the concern of
critics, rather than the clerisy in general. Reading for pleas-
ure, they are concerned with effects, not causes. Are they,
therefore, unconcerned about the development of litera-
ture? By no means, but they will not follow that develop
ment far unless it produces some pleasure for them. Pleas-
ure is not mere tickling of the senses, a good laugh or a good
cry; standards of which even the self-conscious and specifi-
cally literary reader may not be fully aware have to be satis-
fied if any book or group of books is going to enjoy a success
on a generous scale. The reader must be satisified; a fine
style, a lively plot, interesting characters are of little avail if
the book does not persuade the reader that the writer has
been honest with him, and such honesty demands a sincere
revelation of the writer's mind and heart.
PUZZLE OF THE BEST-SELLER                   327


  <2Puzzle of the Best--seller>2

MINDS AND HEARTS exist on many levels. A glance at the best-
seller lists since the beginning of the present century shows
us that a bewildering variety of authors, with minds and
hearts of every sort, have appealed to great numbers of read-
ers. There is only one common denominator in these books,
and it is that the writer has held back nothing that he was
able to give; he has striven to make the most direct impact
possible on his readers.
   It is empty cynicism to say that the greatest success will re-
sult when the writer with a cabbage head and the heart of a
sheep calls to readers similarly equipped. If that were all,
literature would not be an art, and literary success would
be predictable and contemptible. The great successes of the
nineteenth century rebuke such a superficial judgment;
Dickens, Thackeray, Melville, Hawthorne, and Tolstoy
were all best-sellers by the modern standard, and they can-
not be brushed aside. In our own century we must set
against the success of Florence Barclay's <1The Rosary>1 the suc-
cess of <1The House of Mirth>1 by Edith Wharton. If <1Pollyanna>1
charmed multitudes with its easy optimism, <1Main Street>1 as-
tonished equal numbers by showing what too often lies be-
hind such optimism. If we scorn the sentimentality of <1If>1
<1Winter Comes,>1 let us recall that Conrad's <1The Arrow of>1
Gold found as much favor. In 1922 Sinclair Lewis's fool-
killer <1Babbitt>1 sold hugely, and so did Louis He/mon's spare,
delicate idyll <1Maria Chapdelaine.>1 If Will Durant's <1The>1
<1Story of Philosophy>1 is scorned as a piece of easy populariz-
ing (which I think would be an injustice) , the scorners may
ask themselves what it was that made Shaw's <1Intelligent>1
328

<1Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism>1 a best-seller?
<1Sorrell and Son>1 may have enchanted the cabbage heads in
1926, but was it the same cabbage heads who bought <1elmer>1
<1Gantry>1 in 1927? There is no way of juggling the best-seller
lists to prove anything about public taste. The success of the
books named here can only be accounted for in the broadest
possible terms; they yielded up the author's meaning with
full sincerity, and they found great numbers of readers to
respond to what the authors had to give.
  Sincerity must not be understood sentimentally; <1Queen>1
<1Victoria>1 by Lytton Strachey, which was a best-seller in 1922,
is sincere in the sense that It conveys its writer's intention
single-mindedly, not simple-mindedly. Shaw's <1Saint Joan,>1
one of the few plays ever to achieve the sale of a best-seller
in its book form, is likewise sincere, but it is not the sincerity
of the stage confectioners whose pieces win tribute as
"warmly human" because they do violence to every law of
reason and probability. <1Good-Bye, Mr. Chips>1 is one man's
sincerity, and <1The Bridge of San Luis Rey>1 is another's;
both were best-sellers. Isak Dinesen's <1Seven Gothic Tales,>1
an extremely sophisticated production, and <1The Education>1
<1of Henry Adams,>1 another, both won popular favor; <1The>1
Four <1Horsemen of the Apocalypse>1 and <1Magnificent Obses->1
<1sion>1 were their contemporaries, and found their readers,
too. There is sincerity in all of them; it is not sincerity of
the same kind, but it is the sincerity of writers who meant
what they wrote.
  The year 1936 brought forth a remarkable group of best-
sellers, of which the leader in numbers was <1Gone with the>1
<1Wind>1 by Margaret Mitchell. Its companions were <1The Last>1
<1Puritan>1 by George Santayana, <1Sparkenbroke>1 by Charles
Morgan, <1The Thinking Reed>1 by Rebecca West, and <1Eyeless>1
                                                       329

<1in Gaza>1 by Aldous Huxley. One of the most popular tales of
adventure in the history of publishing, and four philosophi-
cal novels of unusual distinction! Distinguished and, by the
standards which the highbrow usually chooses to apply to
the middlebrow, not easy to read. Yet they were read, just
as, more recently, By <1Love Possessed, Dr. Zhivago,>1 and <1Lo->1
<1lita>1 have been read. Certainly it was not that they were
"readable" in the sense in which that word is usually em-
ployed--implying that they slither rapidly and pleasurably
beneath the half-attentive eye. Readable, rather, because
they established themselves as worthy to be read, and worth
taking some trouble to read.
  The quality which seems to me to be common to all of
these best-selling books--that of intellectual, emotional, and
artistic sincerity--is not, of course, a guarantee of lasting
worth. As we look at the list of best-sellers from 1895 to
1900 in Alice Payne Hackett's authoritative compilation, it
is like an elephant's graveyard. Who knows now that there
was once a best-selling novelist named Winston Churchill?
Who reads Sir Gilbert Parker? Did anyone ever really read
Theodore Watts-Dunton's <1Aylwin?>1 Indeed they did--best-
sellers all. <1Trilly>1 still has readers, though everything about
it save the inexplicable charm of its heroine has faded. <1Sen->1
<1timental Tommy,>1 one of Barrie's greatest successes, is read
by a few. Of them all only Stephen Crane's <1The Red Badge>1
<1of Courage>1 has taken its place among the books which we
feel that we ought to read, some time, and some place.

  <2Neglected Works of Quality>2

IS THERE ANYONE who reads much who can look over a list of
the best-sellers of the past without wondering why these
330

books succeeded, when others of equal and sometimes supe-
rior merit came and went with little public acknowledg-
ment? Why did a public which seems always ready for an-
other novel of historical adventure permit Salvador de Ma-
dariaga's <1The Heart of Jade>1 to slip by it so easily? Why,
when carefully wrought novels of philosophic tone are being
discussed, is L H. Myers's The <1Root and the Flower>1 so sel-
dom mentioned? What happened to those readers who de-
clare themselves to be on the watch for originality when
Mervyn Peake's two extraordinary imaginative creations,
<1Titus Groan>1 and <1Gormenghast,>1 made their appearance?
Has <1Titus Alone>1 fared better? Why did Alejo Carpentier's
The <1kingdom of This World>1 and The <1Lost Steps>1 not reach
a wider public, which many of the most perceptive critics
sought on their behalf? Why does the American public, al-
ways hospitable to a humorist of merit, know virtually noth-
ing of Gwyn Thomas, who is, in his special realm, one of the
wittiest writers living? How do we account for the respect-
ful ignoring of John Cowper Powys, and for the fact that
while she lived, Virginia Woolf was delighted when the sale
of one of her books reached 5,000? Inevitably, when thou-
sands of new books appear in England and the United States,
not to speak of the rest of the English-speaking world, every
year, many must escape notice, but how can great merit be
slighted? There are doubtless a variety of answers, but one
of them is certainly that the clerisy is not alert, not self-con-
scious, and unready to make known its enthusiasm for any-
thing which does not appear on the best-seller lists. These
lists appear to dominate the attention, and perhaps also the
taste, of people who ought to have independent judgments
and make them known. Another reason is put testily by an
                                                         331

English critic, James Agate. "There appear to be certain
literary ponds at which the horse-minded reading public
just will not drink, even if you shove them into the water up
to the neck."
  We may laugh at the past, when Browning circles, read-
ing clubs, and literary gatherings in provincial centers took
themselves seriously, but they did have opinions of some
sort. We seem now to be content with the domination of a
handful of literary supplements to the national newspapers,
and a few magazines which carry book reviews of the better
kind. These publications are in their turn dominated, to a
considerable degree, by the fashions of academic criticism.
And thus we arrive at a condition where a highbrow public
reads what even higher brows tell it must be read, and a
much larger middlebrow public reads the best-sellers and
virtually nothing else. If these constitute, as Mr. Blanshard
supposes, about ten per cent of the population, and if we as-
sume that forty per cent of the public never read anything at
all, there must be fifty per cent or so which reads pocket
books, reprints of best-sellers, books of sham philosophy and
fake religion, and makes Mickey Spillane the best-read au-
thor of the day, and <1In His Steps>1 by Charles Monroe Shel-
don the all-time best-seller of American publishing.
  Surely we can do a little better than that? To read only
what the people we admire and fear (what David Riesman
would call our peer group) read, be these peers highbrows
or middlebrows, is to be other-directed indeed. And, as I
have already said, other-directed appears to be nothing
more than a sociological term for weak-minded. Surely if we
possess the curiosity, the free mind, the belief in good taste,
and the belief in the human race which characterize the hu-
332

manist, we can choose the books we read on personal
grounds, without experiencing unsettling sensations of ec-
centrlcity?

     <2A Best--seller Considered>2

BEFORE LEAVING best-sellers, let us take a look at one of them
to see what a prime example of the species is like. <1The Robe>1
by the late Lloyd C. Douglas will serve us well, for it has
many of the characteristics which have set the highbrow
against this class of fiction. Its theme is religious. It is over-
written. It has sold considerably more than two million
copies.
  The objection to a religious theme is valid to criticism of
the book because such a choice immediately gives the writer
an advantage which is, aesthetically considered, irrelevant.
Much bad art hides behind Christianity, for to criticize it on
purely artistic grounds is to seem callous toward its inspira-
tion; the Sistine Chapel and the fifty-cent chromo, the
<1St. Matthew Passion>1 and Moody and Sankey's hymns, <1Pil->1
<1grim's Progress>1 and <1The Robe>1--to millions of people these
seem more alike than unlike. To write about Christ is to
disarm criticism and leave the way open for excesses which
would not otherwise be tolerated.
  As for being overwritten, it is a blemish only to the critic
of technique. "I love those great still books," wrote Alfred,
Lord Tennyson, to his son Hallam; "I wish there were a
great novel in hundreds of volumes that I might go on and
on." Hundreds of thousands of readers share this view.
When they have found something they like, they do not
want it to end. Those who succumb to the atmosphere of
<1The Robe>1 like to wallow in it. Why not?
                                                       333

  Overwritten it may be, but it exhibits remarkable tech-
nical skill. Lloyd C. Douglas was a Lutheran Dumas; there
is no trick of sensational fiction which he had not at his fin-
gers' ends. He makes no attempt to recreate the atmosphere
of Imperial Rome in the time of Tibenus; he desires
merely to display certain aspects of it so that he may take
his twentieth-century American Protestant reader right
into the middle of Rome and invite him to criticize and be
outraged. The reader is, by identification with all the good
characters, able to despise the might of Rome, to cheek
Pontius Pilate, to sneer at the doting Augustus and pimple-
picking, spoiled-brat Tiberius, his successor; the reader is
invited to apply his twentieth-century Christian standards of
womanly conduct to Salome, who tells dirty stories (we are
not permitted to hear them) , and to revel in his knowledge
that this rotten empire will undoubtedly decline and fall. It
is no trifling matter to do what Mr. Douglas does, and give
his reader the sensation of one bravely asserting the ethic of
the First Lutheran Church of Middletown in the face of so
much splendor and strength.
  The lines between Good and Bad are firm; there is none
of that confusing gray which must have made the early days
of Christianity such a puzzling time for those who had to
live through it and make their decisions in the light of what
they actually knew. The Good Romans are good in every
respect, save that they lack The Faith, and that is vouchsafed
them at last. They are good in that they are exactly like
twentieth-century Y.M.C.A. leaders; brought up with slav-
ery, they know it is bad; brought up in the pride of Roman
citizenship, they nevertheless know that Rome is doomed;
patricians by birth, they are intensely democratic.
  The Bad Romans drink heavily, grab at pure girls, and do
334

not believe in their gods. They too know that the Empire is
on the skids, though they do not know that it will take an-
other five hundred years to kill it, and we sometimes wonder
if the author knows it, either.
  Like Dumas in his attack and his ability to implicate us in
the sweep of great events, Mr. Douglas is also like Dumas
in his inability to create lifelike characters. His young Ro-
mans call their father "the pater" (producing an oddly Eng-
lish Victorian effect), but otherwise they are as flat as char-
acters in a television serial. They are often elaborately col-
loquial. "Take it easy," a Roman girl of patrician birth may
say to a slave, and to her brother: "You're pretty dumb."
Lucia, sister to the hero Marcellus, is fifteen, and has at-
tracted the gummy eye of a Bad Roman; the author takes
great pains to let us know that she is a girl of many moods,
for she never deigns simply to speak, but drawls, snaps,
shouts, and even barks; she does everything, in fact, except
convince. Marcellus himself is a stick. The Apostles, when
they appear, are like actors in a bad pageant, bearded and
wigged and sadly underrehearsed. Even Peter, called The
Big Fisherman in an attempt to give him individuality,
comes to nothing. Mr. Douglas may have felt an under-
standable and creditable reluctance to put any strongly per-
sonal thoughts into the mouths of historical persons whom
he revered, but the upshot is that his great personages seem
strangely bereft.
   Lack of convincing characters does not harm the book as
much as might be supposed, for behind these waxwork
dummies is Mr. Douglas's conception of Jesus, which, if sen-
timental, is powerful and deeply felt. This conception mani-
fests itself by some passages of description, put in the mouths
of the Apostles, but chiefly through the Robe itself, which is
ANOTHER VIEW OF ANCIENT ROME          335

the garment discarded by Christ on Golgotha and won by
Marcellus in a game of dice. The Robe is magical; the un-
worthy are awed by it, and Marcellus is for a time driven al-
most to madness by it; the worthy derive a supernatural
strength from it; it is a touchstone of virtue, for only the
good can hold it. Narrative power of a considerable order
comes to Mr. Douglas's aid when he writes of the Robe. He
cannot write about romance, and his love scenes are chilled
by puritanism; the Dumas in him can maneuver a girl into
a boy's costume, but the Lutheran parson does not then
know what to do with her. He cannot conceive of a type of
young manhood superior to an American basketball hero,
or of mature manhood which does not suggest an inferior
character actor in a Hollywood Bible movie. He makes his
characters despise slavery, though he uses at least one slave
in the old tradition of the Comic Valet, making him relin-
quish his chance of freedom to stay with his master. But he
does know how to manage his great moments with the Robe,
and it gives power to his book which commands respect from
the honest critic, and may awaken the envy of many a more
sophisticated and thoughtful author. In what is most vital to
his book, the work is sometimes crude, but always strong.

               <2Another Vies of Ancient Rome>2

COMPARE <1The Robe>1 with Robert Graves's <1King Jesus,>1
which appeared in 1946, and was reprinted in 1959, after
being unavailable for years. Graves is among the finest his-
torical novelists of our day, and there has never been so good
a group of historical novelists as are writing at present. He
will have nothing to do with the sentimental notion that
people in the remote past were precisely like ourselves, ex-
336

cept for superficial differences of dress and custom; he knows
as well as any man living how different was the color of a
Roman mind from anything we are acquainted with today.
He will have nothing to do with cardboard characters or
Hollywood fancy dress. In this book he presents us with the
welter of religious belief and superstition in the Roman
world of the first century A.D., and he makes real the tangle
of doctrine and dispute which was the preoccupation of the
Jewish world. A sense of the past rises from his pages which is
the result not only of wide scholarship but also of original
thought and deep reflection. More, the book is poetic in con-
cept; what it says about the life of Jesus may be startling and
repugnant to orthodoxy, but it is illuminating, also. We are
held by the fact that the writer has dared to think originally
and postulate daringly on a subject where original thought
is almost impossible. We may reject what Graves presents
as a reconstruction of the life of Jesus (though there are
passages of such beauty that the most orthodox will let them
go with regret), but we shall never accept twaddle about
Jesus again; there is intellectual and moral and spiritual
sinew in Graves's book which makes the best-seller seem vul-
gar and naive, and a poetic splendor which awes, rather
than flatters, the mind. It is not a book for those who like
their religion to be snug. One might have hoped it was for
the clerisy, but they failed it.

  <2Pleasures of Identification>2

ALTHOUGH Graves s book awes us, it does not deny us one of
the legitimate pleasures of novel-reading--a pleasure which
<1The Robe>1 offers so amply on a very different level--the
pleasure of identification. To discuss this pleasure ade-
                                                        337

quately would require some space, and Dr. Morris Bishop
has put it with so much wit and concision in verse that the
best and most economical plan is to reproduce what he has
tosayhere.
          When, in my effervescent youth,
             I first read "David Copperfield,"
          I felt the demonstrated truth
             That I had found my proper field.
          As David, simple, galiant, proud,
             Affronted each catastrophe,
          Involuntarily I vowed,
             "That's me!"
          In Sherlock Holmes and Rastignac
             Much of myself was realized;
          In Cyrano de Bergerac
             I found myself idealized.
          Where dauntless hardihood defied
             The wrong in doughty derring-do,
          I periodically cried,
             "That's me too!"
          The lads of Bennett, Wells, and Co.
             Confronted many a thwarting thing,
          But well-intentioned, fumbling, slow,
             They tried to do the sporting thing;
          And some would nurse a carking shame,
             Hiding the smart from other men.
          They often caused me to exclaim,
             "That's me again!"
          The fiction of the present day
             I view with some dubiety;
          The hero is a castaway,
             A misfit to society,
338
          A  drunkard or a mental case,
             A pervert or a debauchee.
          I  murnur with a sour grimace,
             "Where's Me?"
  This pleasure of identification must never be under-
valued, either by writer or reader. In youth, as Dr. Bishop
says, we are especially prone to it. (The Dramatic Publish-
ing Co. of Chicago, which specializes in plays for high-school
groups, is well aware of this, and offers pieces in which
young amateurs can be their favorite television stars; ver-
sions of <1Our Miss Brooks, I Love Lucy, Meet Corliss Archer,>1
<1December Bride,>1 and <1Father knows Best>1 are to be had from
them. Simple stage plays based on popular movies are in-
cluded: <1Rebel without a Cause>1 (be James Dean) and <1Gen->1
<1tlemen Prefer Blondes>1 (be Marilyn Monroe) are on the
list, and so is <1The Robe,>1 based on the film, not the book. Be-
cause identification on this level is frank and nai%ve, let us
not suppose that it is, in origin, different from what boys and
girls with more literary discrimination practice when they
read the books of their choice.)
  Not that this pleasure is confined to those under twenty. I
once knew a group of undergraduates whose pleasure it was
to assume, each for a day, the character and outlook of some
favorite character in Proust, maintaining the pose until
some other enthusiast identified them. I could never see that
it did them anything but good, sharpening their wits and
very often improving their manners. Hero worship has
value in relation to the hero chosen, and I would rather
know people who read in order to add something to their
emotional or intellectual store than for the crabbed pleasure
of tearing books to pieces. To be always in the coldly critical
vein is to diminish one's own pleasure and perhaps to do
WHERE     ARE YOU?                                 339

oneself permanent harm. Arnold Bennett and Aldous Hux-
ley, for instance, are two writers who have of late years been
much buffeted by the younger critics and the undergradu-
ates who follow their lead; such criticism is only safe if we
bear in mind how much sheer talent it takes to rise to the
level of either of these writers, and how much enjoyment
they have given to people who are by no means undiscrimi-
nating fools.

  <2Where Are You?>2

THE PLEASURE of identification is likely to change its char-
acter, however, as the reader acquires years and experience.
He no longer wants to be the hero, or the villain, or the gen-
ius in every book he reads. He may become interested in
the many novels of our time which have neither a hero, nor
an antihero, but a collection of characters more or less baf-
fled and defeated by life, with whom nobody in his senses
would wish to be associated for long. Yet his pleasure in
reading is great. What is he doing? He is identifying him-
self with the author.
  This is not new, of course. The successful reader of
Henry James, for instance, has long enjoyed, legitimately
and admirably, sharing the sensibility and insight of the
master. Readers of Dostoevski or Thomas Mann are pro-
jecting themselves imaginatively into the characters of those
writers, rather than into the men and women they write
about. In <1King Jesus>1 we share the speculative scope, the
poetic sweep, and the far-ranging scholarship of Graves, and
in that way we penetrate his book. If we want to act one part,
rather than all the parts and the role of interpreter as well,
we shall find more pleasure in <1The Robe.>1
340

   Identification with the author is not new, but never be-
fore have so many novels called upon this power and re-
quited it so miserably as at present. Among people who care
about sophistication, it is understood that it is unsophisti-
cated to want to play hero; the modish reader is he who
wants to play author, partaking of the creator's character.
But the authors, while they seem to invite this sort of re-
sponse, appear also to resent it, and they make the identifi-
cation gritty and unrewarding. As Roy Fuller says:
             The treason of the clerks is when
             They make a fetish of the pen,
             Forget that art has duties to--
             As well as to the "I"--the "You,"
             And that its source must always be
             What presses most, most constantly.
If the author cannot find it in his heart to welcome his
reader, he should at least refrain from rebuffing, snubbing,
and bamboozling the wretch. He must not retreat into com-
plexities of feeling so personal and incommunicable that the
reader feels like somebody in the presence of a man having a
fit, and who stands powerless to help or comprehend, yet
forbidden by decency to go. This is artistic bullying of a
kind that literature has never needed before, and which it
stands to gain nothing from now.

   <2Charms of Romantic Despair>2

YET WE MUST beware of finding fault with the younger mod-
ern novelists merely because they write of "what presses
most." The clerisy are under an obligation to try to under-
stand, and to try to discover why what presses most is so
often a form of philosophical and moral defeatism; it is not
                                                        341

nihilism, which is very much more difficult to achieve than is
supposed by people who use the word loosely to mean the
reverse of popular opinion; it is defeatism and despair. If
this is what presses most with so many talented writers,
why is it so?
  Before we can arrive at any answer, however tentative, we
must try to decide how much of this defeatism and despair is
romantic posturing. Because historians of literature talk
about and teach the Romantic movement as a revolt against
the classicism loosely associated with the eighteenth century,
we are sometimes blinded to the fact that it persists as the
most widespread and still the most popular influence in
American literature today. The reason is unflattering. Ro-
manticism asserts the supremacy of individual feeling over
discipline, learning, or thought. Anybody can feel, and if his
feelings are powerful, his discipline bad, his learning small,
and his thought trivial, who is to blame him for making his
feeling the measure of all things?
   The Romantic attitude is not a possession of individual
writers; it is something which, on the North American con-
tinent at least, envelops the whole of society, coloring not
only the present, but the popular idea of the past and the
popular conception of the future. lt is inevitably distorting
to all ideas which are uncongenial to it, with the result that
discipline is confused with harshness, learning is confused
with personality development, and thought, if it inclines
toward scepticism, is confused with cynicism. With conti-
nents, as with individuals, a preoccupation with feeling
tends to isolate the feeler in his own warm, caressing bath of
ill-examined sensation. Is it surprising if many of the writ-
ers who live in such an atmosphere write in a manner suit-
able to it? Only if they are exceptionally "inner-directed," to
342

use the expression which Mr. Riesman contrasts with
"other-directed," can they do otherwise. Not only must such
a writer be inner-directed; he must also have been given, or
have acquired for himself, an education and an attitude un-
usual in his surroundings.
   The contrast to romanticism is, of course, classicism,
which has its own diseases. Adopted by masses of people, it
inevitably becomes a thing of schemes, of rigid rules, of in-
fallible tests, and evokes a great deal of writing which is cor-
rect by the rules, but narrow and arid by every test of com-
mon sense. It is just as easy to be a classic fool as to be a
romantic fool; intellectual abandonment to the prevailing
tide is all that is wanted.
   Yet in our romantic age an undercurrent of yearning for
the classic approach is to be felt, and sometimes, as in the
great welcome given to James Gould Cozzens's <1By Love Pos->1
<1sessed,>1 it declares itself loudly. The characters were shown
in a framework which did no violence to the idea of order
possessed by most readers. They were observed by the au-
thor with understanding and sympathy, but he did not seem
to be wholly committed to them; their psychology was dis
played to explain what they did, but not to excuse or justify
their actions. The story was offered as a thing complete in
itself, yet related to a vast and perhaps very different world
surrounding it. Passion was shown to the reader, but he was
invited to observe it and not to join the dance. The result
was a degree of acclaim for the book which no one could
have predicted; even that American equivalent of a Roman
official triumph--the picture of the author on the cover of
<1Time>1--was not withheld, and semidivine status was ac-
corded to Mr. Cozzens for several months, by which time
this small piece of classic rock appeared to have been sub-
THE YAHOO HERO                                 343

sumed in the romantic sludge. The response of critics in
England was one of astonishment; far more than their usual
resistance to a book which had been a great success in Amer-
ica was shown; they could not understand what all the fuss
was about. The reason was that the attitude displayed by
Mr. Cozzens is far more familiar in English fiction than in
American; there is a tradition of classicism there which has
never been entirely submerged, and, perhaps more impor-
tat and significant for the writing of fiction, a classical re-
straint in the expression of romantic feeling.

   <2The Yahoo Hero>2

IN 1958 a sharp attack was launched on the romanticism of
much popular American writing by Edmund Fuller, in <1Man>1
<1In Modern Fiction;>1 what gave this book more impact than
much criticism along roughly similar lines was Mr. Fuller's
intellectual Christianity and his Judaeo-Christian concept
of Man as a being with freedom of choice, responsible to the
God who created him. This is a classic point of view, and
its application to a large body of fiction which is romantic in
character produced some brisk and revealing criticism. Spe-
cifically, it revealed the sentimentality of the writers he at-
tacked; sentimentality is among the commonest diseases of
romanticism. Mr. Fuller's concept of Man is neither sup
ported nor contradicted by the modern novelists whose work
he examined; it is by-passed in favor of a notion (concept is
too definite a word) of man as a derelict and irresponsible
creature existing in a world where no moral values apply.
  Mr. Fuller was not attacking such writers as Camus,
whose idea of the absurdity of man's fate is conditioned by
hope and courage; the true Existentialist asserts the great-
344

ness of man. Rather he is gunning for a body of American
novelists of whom James Jones and Norman Mailer are but
two, who have exalted what he calls "the Yahoo-hero"--a
coarse-fibered vulgarian, grotesque in his thinking, and im-
mature in his attitude toward life, who lives for the kicks he
can get out of it. He particularly attacks the sentimental at-
titude which their creators take toward characters who are
demonstrably criminal, representing them as victims of a
society much worse than they; this leads to the sentimen-
tality which exalts the genial rapist, and finds in the keeper
of a bawdy house a philosopher and perhaps a saint. This
squalid outlook is the shadow side of the general sentimen-
tality of our time. It is possible to applaud what Mr. Fuller
has said without agreeing in every detail. For myself, I think
that the writers he attacks write as they do in fullest sincer-
ity. Several of them are men of undoubted literary gifts and
they are writing of "What presses most." Are they immature
in intellect? If so, they call to a corresponding immaturity
in a large body of readers. Their chief defect seems to be
that they are desperately badly educated; potentially pow-
erful intelligences have been given nothing to feed on, and
they operate in a society where most people are as deprived
as themselves. They and their readers have intellectual and
spiritual rickets. This will undoubtedly appear to many
readers to be intellectual snobbery, which is as unsympa-
thetic and out-of-fashion in North American literary circles
as Mr. Fuller's religious conviction. But well-educated peo-
ple could not think or write so sentimentally. Sentimental-
ism is the philosophy of boobs.
THE ECHO IN THE CAVE                         345


   <2The Echo in the Cave>2

REGRETRABLY, it is perfectly possible to be an effective
writer and a boob as well; writers are not, by definition, in-
tellectual or even specially literate. But in past ages and in
other lands, the boob writer has found it hard to impose
upon a public in which a clerisy was aware of his deficiency.
Writers do not have to be mature in their attitudes if there
is a majority of immature readers upon whom they can im-
pose, and plenty of self-doubting intellectuals who are pre-
pared to accept as a genius any man who asserts loudly that
life is a swindle, and God and morality are fakes. Such gut-
less twaddle finds an echo in the great cave of emptiness and
self-pity which so many people carry in their hearts. But
because it echoes gloomily within us, need it be truth?
  Belief in God and a good education are not enough to
produce a good novel; only talent can do that, and where
talent exists, it may produce the novel without either of the
other aids. Belief in the Devil could provide some writing of
interest, but the Devil is as unfashionable now as his Al-
mighty Father. To be out of fashion, of course, is not to be
any less potent. The sentimental pseudo realism against
which Mr. Fuller inveighs so ably is the Devil's gluepot,
sweetened to catch some very foolish flies. It bears no rela-
tion to realism as it is practiced by, for instance, Frank
O'Connor. The true realist is he who believes in both God
and the Devil, and is prepared to attempt, with humility, to
sort out some corner of the extraordinary tangle of their
works which is our world. He cannot rely on his feelings
alone; he must use his intellect. But at present the American
novel suffers from the insularity and bigotry of the deter-
346

mined romantic, who asserts the despair and disintegration
of man as dogmatically as the doctrine of Pollyanna was ever
asserted by the Glad Girl.
   Though critics may bow to art, and I am its own true
     lover,
 It is not art, but heart, which wins the wide world over.
Thus Ella Wheeler Wilcox. How truly, and yet how para-
doxically, she sings of the fate of the modern American
novel. Heart--not the high heart or the stout heart, but
rather the heart bowed down by weight of woe--is in con-
trol, and Head is nowhere at all. Neither writer nor reader
thinks highly of Head. Do not despise Mrs. Wilcox. She
was a happy creature, and happiness often gives an effect of
shallowness. Yet her hope was no more shallow than is the
despair of the creators of the Yahoo hero; both moods seem
to be the outcome of minds ill-adapted to the accommoda-
tion of more than one strong idea.
  Will it long be thus? Are we to look forward to another
decade or more of novels dealing with such romantic de-
lights as rape, homosexuality, Lesbianism, incest, and the
furies of fighting men? Must we face more writing in which
<1frottage, cunnilinctus, fellatio,>1 and the other classically
named specialities of the bawdy house are rendered in terms
of prose? How long will the novelist go on--in the words
used by Byron against Keats--"viciously soliciting his own
imagination"? Modern poets, at their best, have for some
time abandoned this wallowing, but that is no reason to as-
sume that the novelists will follow their example. The
poets, after all, count their readers by scores, the novelists by
thousands, and they fill different needs.
MORE CONFUSION TO COME                    347


   <2More Confusion to Come>2

IF THE NOVEL should change within the coming decade, how-
ever, I do not think that it will change in a way which the
people who are always hoping for a return to the past will
like. The direction of its extravagance may alter, and the
tone and vccabulary of the writing may alter, but the ex-
travagance will persist, and may seem even more outrageous
to the timid. It may well be another fifty years before we
have any clear idea what is happening in the world of let-
ters.
  We must never forget that the world of letters is but one
part, and by no means a dominant part, of the very much
larger world. The chaos of that world, political, economic,
moral, and ideological, is plainly apparent. Is it a purposeful
chaos? Such a question is, at least in part, ridiculous, for it is
always our custom, when we reconsider the past, to attribute
purpose to it. After all, has it not resulted in ourselves?
And what nobler purpose could any welter of events, how-
ever seemingly chaotic and costly, have than that? We may
be sure that the world in 2020 will find purpose in our pres-
ent chaos. But what do we know and what can we deduce as
we journey toward that time?
  When I said that the world of letters was not dominant, I
did not mean to imply therefore that it was insignificant.
Like all art, it reflects what is and foreshadows what is to be;
it does not influence events directly or obviously. The con-
fusion which bewilders so many people who look at litera-
ture as something separate from the rest of life is apparent
in the plastic arts, and in music, as well. It is apparent in re-
ligion, and Arnold Toynbee has told us that advances and
348

clarifications are in progress in the religions we know, and
will manifest themselves strikingly. The vast body of the de-
vout, of course, do not read Toynbee, and the time is not
propitious for him to roam the world in a goatskin, prophe-
sying. But can we read what he says without some powerful
intimation that we are listening to a prophet as authentic as
any?
   Outcries against modern painting and sculpture are heard
everywhere, and every sort of explanation has been offered
for its vagaries. It is subjective; it sometimes arouses feelings
of dread; it seems to mirror chaos. Not possessing the clarity
of foresight given to the characters in <1The Robe,>1 we are un-
able to say with certainty that this chaos portends the disin-
tegration of our present civilization, but we have our fears.
The intensely disturbing quality which so many people find
in this art cannot be dismissed simply as annoyance that
painters have foresworn simple representation. These pic-
tures, these images, these contorted forms speak directly of
things which lie below the level of consciousness, and in
those who are afraid of what lies there--afraid, that is to
say, of all but a small part of what comprises their minds--
such revelation gives rise to sensations so disturbing that
they can only meet them with indignation and rejection.
But unless these painters and sculptors are wry jokers, en-
gaged in a vast plot to hoodwink the world--unless, that is
to say, they are something that their kind have never been
before in the history of art--they are performing their usual
mighty task of giving form to what lies deep in the time in
which they live. Is it chaos and disintegration or the unfa-
miliar face of the future which confronts us in these works?
Do they show us the future as it matures in the womb of the
present?
                                                        349

   In literature such evidences of chaos are not so easy to
identify, though in the work of Samuel Beckett, already al-
luded to, chaos and disintegration are directly presented,
and it may be that in this, Beckett is ahead of his time. We
need not suppose that the macabre world of his plays and
novels is a literal presentation of the world of the future, any
more than the novels of Sade were a literal prediction of the
romantic world of the nineteenth century. But the attitude
from which Beckett's works are written--an attitude in
which all that is conventional is rejected, and all values
turned upside-down--may be prophetic. We may see much
more writing akin to his within the next twenty years, and
as he has derived from Joyce, so may others derive from him.
The failure of literature to offer anything upon which we
can fasten, finding in it a reflection of what is deepest in our
time, is partly owing to the nature of literature itself; it
has become a form of entertainment during a period when
the plastic arts have moved out of that category. It has be-
come commercial as it never was before, with a resultant
obscuring of its true purposes. And it is true also that liter-
ature rests upon a foundation of general acceptance, and is
dependent on the civilization in which it is produced, as
painting and sculpture are not; the painter may find a sym-
pathetic buyer for his single picture, but the writer must
find at least a few hundred buyers for his book, or his career
is at an end. The popular nature of literature has led it to
reflect the chaos of our time--the chaos which lies beneath
the surface--but in a muddied fashion, because the writer
does not want his reader to suspect what he himself only half
knows.
350


     <2A Millenary Parallel>2

THESE ARE gloomy reflections, and hard-headed readers may
think them hare-brained. Let me at once provide them with
further evidence of hare-brainedness. We are approaching
a millennium; the year 2000 draws on apace. The last time
mankind had this experience a chaos comparable to our own
was observable in many parts of the world; monsters and
portents were reported from all quarters of the globe. We
need not believe in these monsters and portents as actuali-
ties any more than we need believe the reports of flying
saucers today; what is significant is that men yielded to an
inner compulsion to fancy such things, and in this sense
they were artistic creations rooted in fear much as are the
pictures and images which we have been discussing. Jour-
neys to Jerusalem were undertaken, for it was amply clear
to the best minds of the time that Christ was going to reap-
pear there when the millennium was completed, and con-
duct the Last Judgment, preparatory to the end of the
world. We have our own dread of the world coming to an
end, though the nearest thing we have yet produced to com-
pare with a Last Judgment is a series of Summit Meetings.
Such reflections as these, in the words of Dr. C. G. Jung,
"come perilously close to those turbid fantasies which be-
cloud the minds of world-improvers and other interpreters
of "signs and portents.' " I advance them not as a millenar-
ian, but simply as one who thinks that historical parallels
should neither be exaggerated nor ignored. I refer the curi-
ous to Dr. Jung's remarkable little book on <1Flying Saucers,>1
and also to his <1The Undiscovered Self.>1
  This book was not undertaken to explain the world--only
A MILLENARY PARALLEL                        351

to make some comment on literature as it has developed
during the past century. But to divorce literature wholly
from the world in which it is produced is absurd; it is, in-
deed, to deny that literature is anything more than a form of
entertainment which may, in the hands of finical writers and
critics, be lifted to the status of a minor art. But there is
nothing minor about it, and when it truly mirrors any part
of the soul of the time, it is revelatory and prophetic as noth-
ing else can be in quite the same way.
  Is it revelatory and prophetic now? Some of it unques-
tionably is so, but the task of sifting valid prophecy and rev-
elation from the mass of what is meant only for entertain-
ment, from what is timid, what is purblind, what confuses
ignorant romanticism with clear-eyed disillusion, what fears
chaos and can discern no hope in it--this is work for which
few of our literary critics are fitted, and we must turn to a
Toynbee or a Jung for a hint at the answer we seek. The
best among our writers are doing their accustomed work of
mirroring what is deep in the spirit of our time; if chaos ap-
pears in those mirrors, we must have faith that in the future,
as always in the past, that chaos will slowly reveal itself as a
new aspect of order. And so great is the change in the direc-
tion that civilization is taking that we cannot reasonably ex-
pect this new order to be welcome or familiar to everyone;
the world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory fu-
ture is, in fact, a return to an idealized past.
  It is for the clerisy to show themselves more alert, more
courageous, and better prepared, so that when the first shafts
of the dawn appear in our present night, they will know
them for what they are.
                         <2Epilogue>2

MY BOOK shall end as it began--with a call to the clerisy to
take themselves more seriously as readers. Yet I have re-
peatedly said in these pages that they should not attempt to
assert themselves as a group, or claim attention by concerted
action. Why? Is this a paradox? It is not. This is an age of
groups, clubs, associations, and whatnot; most members of
the clerisy belong to enough of these already. It is within the
groups to which they already belong that they can best assert
the values of the humanist--curiosity, the free mind, belief
in good taste, and belief in the human race. The advocates
of these values must be everywhere. In the end, it is upon
the quality of individuals that all group movements depend;
let the clerisy make it their task to leaven the groups, taking
to them all they have acquired in their hours of literary soli-
tude. For them, in a time when the individual has lost sl-g-
nificance (despite loud assertions to the contrary) , an
informed, rational, and intellectually adventurous individu-
ality must take precedence over all else. In their seeming
disunion lies their real strength.


                            352
                <2An Informal Bibliographical>2

                           <2Note>2


ANY BIBLIOGRAPHICAL information from my hand must nec-
essarily be informal, for I have never been an adept at the
exact, scientific description of books. Indeed, one of the
shameful moments of my university life was when, on a
bibliography examination, <1viva voce>1 before Oxford's archi-
vist, I was so foolish as to describe a book as "chunky," when
I should have called it a "thick octavo." When next I pre-
sented myself for that examination, I knew better, but my
heart was never in bibliography. What follows is some in-
formation about the books mentioned in <1A Voice from the>1
<1Attic>1 which are not easily come by, or which may not be
familiar to booksellers. I can promise no more.
  In Chapter One, <1The Fine Art of Reading>1 by Lord David
Cecil was published in England by Constable in 1957. The
passage quoted from Sir Thomas Browne may be found in
his <1Christian Morals,>1 Part One, section 2, and I particularly
recommend this splendid, baroque book to those who be-
lieve that morality is necessarily austere. If anyone should
be curious about Dr. Blimber, he appears in Dickens's <1Dom->1
<1bey and Son,>1 and Mr. Curdle is to be found in Chapter xxiv
of <1Nicholas Nickleby.>1 The poem by Ben Jonson, "It is not
growing like a tree," is the first verse of his <1Ode to Sir Lu->1
<1cius Cary and Sir H. Morison;>1 Addison's "The Vision of
                            353
344

Mirzah" is in number 159 of <1The Spectator;>1 Thomas Camp
bell (1777-1844) is still remembered for "Hohenlinden,"
"Mariners of England," and "The Battle of the Baltic"; he
is of curious interest to American scholars because of his
long poem, written in 1809, called "Gertrude of Wyoming"
--meaning the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. The pas-
sage on "panegyric and praise" comes from Samuel Foote's
comedy <1The Patron,>1 where it is spoken by Mr. Puff. Those
who wish to read all of what Sir Nathaniel says in <1Love's>1
<1Labour's Lost>1 will find the speech in Act IV, scene 2.
  In Chapter Two, Samuel Smiles's <1Self Help>1 is mentioned
as being published in 1859, and there were many subse-
quent editions; the latest was a centenary edition, pub-
lished in London by John Murray, with an introductory
essay by Professor Asa Briggs, who discusses the book sym-
pathetically. Arnold Bennett's <1How to Live on Twenty->1
<1four Hours a Day>1 has gone through several editions since
1908; if you wish to learn how Bennett practiced what he
preached, read his <1Journals;>1 in full they run to over a mil-
lion words, but an excellent condensation, made by Frank
Swinnerton, is number 999 in Penguin Books. <1The Art of>1
<1Thinking>1 by Ernest Dimnet passed through several edi-
tions, and a particularly convenient one is that which
Jonathan Cape included in the Travellers' Library in 1931.
The poem "As a white candle . . ." which is quoted, is
called "The Old Woman," by Joseph Campbell. <1Social Class>1
<1and Mental Illness>1 by A. B. Hallingshead and F. C. Redlich
was published by John Wiley and Sons, New York, in 1958.
Of the three books on self-analysis mentioned, <1Experiment>1
<1in Depth>1 by P. W. Martin (Routledge and Kegan Paul,
London, 1945) and <1Self-Analysis>1 by Karen Horney (W. W.
Norton, New York, 1942) are not hard to find, but A <1Prac->1
                                                        355

<1tical Method of Self-Analysis>1 by E. Pickworth Farrow is
more elusive; George Allen and Unwin, London, published
it in 1942, and International Universities Press, New York,
in 1948; a good second-hand book dealer can find a copy,
given time. <1The Anatomy of Melancholy>1 by Robert Burton,
frequently referred to, is to be found in many editions, but
there is much to be said for that of Holbrook Jackson in
Everyman's Library (Dent) because it translates the Latin
passages.
  Few of the books in Chapter Three offer any difficulties.
Ovid's <1Ars amatoria>1 has frequently been translated, Have-
lock Ellis's <1Studies in the Psychology of Sex>1 is available in
the Random House two-volume edition of 1936, and Van de
Velde's <1Ideal Marriage>1 (1928) and A <1Marriage Manual>1 by
Drs. Abraham and Hannah Stone (1936) can be bought
anywhere. Professor Fowler's <1Science of Life>1 is not so easily
found. He appears to have published it himself in 1870; my
copy was published by the Physical Culture Publishing Co.
New York. <1Man's Strength and Woman's Beauty>1 by Dr.
P. H. Chevasse was published in the United States by Jones
Brothers and Co. of Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Chicago
in 1880. Krafft-Ebing's <1Psychopathia Sexualis>1 was published
in English by Rebman of London and New York in 1899,
translated by the publisher.
  First editions of the books mentioned in Chapter Four
will be found in large libraries; second-hand booksellers
sometimes offer copies. <1Valentine Vox>1 ran through many
editions, but the first, with sixty illustrations by T. On-
whyn, was published by Routledge in 1844; it is not easy
to find in good condition. Nor is <1Sylvester Sound;>1 I have
not been able to get a first edition, and have had to be con-
tent with the book in Routledge's Sixpenny Series, without
356

pictures. The <1Curtain Lectures of Mrs. Caudle>1 was first
published in 1846 (after appearing serially in <1Punch)>1 by
Bradbury and Agnew; it is finely illustrated by Charles
Keene. Bradbury and Agnew also brought out <1Mr. Sponge's>1
<1Sporting Tour>1 in 1852; the illustrations by John Leech are
part of its charm, and if you are buying a copy, be sure you
get one in which not only the colored plates, but also the
charmingly drawn initial letters and tailpieces are included.
<1The Commissioner>1 by G. P. R. James is hard to find; it was
published in Dublin in 1843 by Curry, and has twenty-eight
fine illustrations by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne, 1815--
82). <1The Greatest Plague of Life>1 by the Mayhew brothers
is valued for its illustrations by George Cruikshank; David
Bogue published it in 1847, and though it may take some
time, it can be found both in the first edition and in the
six original monthly parts. Modern books which provide a
background for this sort of reading are <1Mayhew's London,>1
<1London's Undeworld,>1 and <1Mayhew's Characters>1 edited by
Peter Quennell and published in London by William Kim-
ber in 1950--I; they contain illustrations from Mayhew's
original work. If you arc curious to know what sort of song
Job Caudle sang at the party when his wife was away--in-
deed, what songs the Victorians sang during convivial eve-
nings of all kinds--you will find the subject pleasantly ex-
plored in <1Victorian Song, or from Dive to Drawing Room>1
by Maurice B. Willson Disher, published by Phoenix
House, London, 1955.
  Nineteenth-century plays, in their earliest editions, are
not easily come by, for they were fragile and were usually
bought, not for reading, but for use in the theater, where
they were given hard wear. A good modern collection is
<1Nineteenth Century Plays>1 edited by George Rowell and
357

published by the Oxford University Press in its World's
Classics series, number 533; <1Black Ey'd Susan>1 is in it, and
also The <1Bells.>1 For American plays of the same period,
<1S.R.O.>1 edited by Bennett Cerf and Van H. Cartmell, pub-
lished by Doubleday Doran in 1944, is very useful. There
is also, of course, the twenty-volume series of <1America's Lost>1
<1Plays>1 produced by Princeton University Press, and there is
a single volume extract from this vast compilation, called
<1Favourite American Plays of the Nineteenth Century,>1 also
by Princeton. The <1Dramatic Works>1 of Sheridan Knowles
were published in London in 1856, by Routledge, in two
volumes. Wills's <1Charles I>1 was published, somewhat more
durably than most plays, by Blackwood in 1873, and may
still be found. Clement Scott's <1Drawing Room Plays and>1
<1Parlour Pantomimes>1 was brought out in 1870 by Stanley
Rivers and Co., a firm which described itself as "publishers
of Scientific Amusements and Pastimes of Society"; it is now
rare. William Winter's three volumes of <1Shakespeare on the>1
<1Stage>1 were published by Moffat Yard and Co. in 1911, 1915,
and 1916 respectively. A. C. Sprague's useful books, <1Shake->1
<1speare and the Actors>1 and <1Shakespearean Players and Per->1
<1formances,>1 were produced by the Harvard University Press
in 1944 and 1953. The anthology called The <1English Dra->1
<1matic Critics>1 by James Agate now appears in the Hill and
Wang paperback series called Dramabooks. Anyone who is
curious to read Guy <1Domville>1--a play which has been dis-
proportionately condemned--will find it in The <1Complete>1
<1Plays of Henry James>1 edited by Leon Edel and printed in
London by Rupert Hart-Davis in 1949.
   Old jestbooks are as hard to find as old plays; they were
literally worn out, and the copies which have been spared
to us are usually much thumbed. <1Nugae Venales,>1 in the
348

1686 edition, is very rare, and if you should imagine you see
it advertised in a bookseller's catalogue, look carefully to
be sure that it is not, in fact, the Latin jestbook of the same
name which appeared in 1689. My <1Nugae Venales>1 has sev-
eral MS pages of stupefying jokes (probably from the eight-
eenth century, if we may judge by the handwriting) which
have been added by some thrifty owner. The original <1Joe>1
<1Miller>1 is not very rare; the first edition contains seventy
pages and 247 jokes, and was published by T. Read, Dog-
well Court, White Fryars. I cannot date <1Puniana,>1 but it
was expanded and republished by John Camden Hotten in
1873; it is not easy to find; writing of it, the <1Saturday Re->1
<1view>1 said: "We should suggest that, to a dull person desirous
to get credit with the young holiday people, it would be a
good policy to invest in the book, and dole it out by install-
ments"; it contained "nearly 3,000 of the best riddles and
10,000 most outrageous Puns"; probably the young holiday
people wore out most of the copies. <1Cole's Fun Doctor,>1 in
two volumes, is usually much worn when found; my copies
were published by McClelland and Goodchild of Toronto,
in 1913, but the original editions date from the 'nineties.
Daniel George's books are all easily available and are all
published by Jonathan Cape, London. Sigmund Freud's
<1Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious>1 was published by
Moffat Yard in New York, and Kegan Paul in London, the
translator being A. A. Brill. Osbert Sitwell's <1Before the>1
<1Bombardment>1 was published by Duckworth, London, in
1926, and has since been reprinted; for a time it was avail-
able in the Penguin Books, number 162.
  For obvious reasons, the books of dubious character
which are mentioned in Chapter Seven do not lend them-
selves to bibliographical identification. To people who did
                                                        359

not read Latin, Richard de Bury's <1Philobiblon>1 was un-
known until 1888, when E. C. Thomas produced a fine
translation which was, however, printed in a small edition;
in 1902 it was given wide circulation in a series called The
King's Classics, edited by Israel Gollancz. The history of
The <1Gregynog Press>1 by Thomas Jones was published by
the Oxford Press in 1954. <1Fanny Hill>1 is now published in a
neat edition at a moderate price by Olympia Press, Paris;
early editions can be very expensive. Cre/billon's <1Le Sofa>1
is readily available, and in 1951 the Folio Society of London
brought out a new and excellent translation by Bonamy
Dobre/e. <1The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk>1 is now
published by the Camden Publishing Co. of Islington, in
London; the pictures are the same crude cuts that adorned
the early American editions, and seem to have been made
for use with some other book. Mark Twain's <1Fireside Con->1
<1versation>1 can be found in a variety of reprints, without too
much difficulty. <1A History of the Rod in All Countries>1 by
the Reverend William Cooper M.A. appeared about 1873,
but is hard to date accurately; the publisher was John Cam-
den Hotten; the <1Daily Telegraph>1 declared the book to be
"very readable," containing "much matter for reflection,
and not a little amusement"; what would it say today? My
copy, a bookplate tells me, used to be in the library of the
Society of the Sacred Mission, a Church of England monas-
tery at Kelham in Nottinghamshire. For reflection, one
wonders, or amusement?
  The books mentioned in Chapter Eight are all com-
paratively easy to find, but it may spare you some search-
ing to know that George Gissing's <1New Grub Street>1 can be
had in the Oxford Press's World's Classics, number 566,
and that <1Writers At Work>1 was published by Viking Press
360

in 1958. Dr. Edmund Bergler's <1The Writer and Psycho->1
<1analysis>1 was published by Brunner, New York, in 1954. The
<1Heart of Jade>1 by Salvador de Madariaga was brought out by
Creative Age, New York, in 1944; Harcourt Brace pub-
lished The <1Root and the Flower>1 in one volume in 1947;
the two works of Alejo Carpentier were published by
Knopf; Mervyn Peake's <1Titus Groan>1 books were all pub-
lished in London by Eyre and Spottiswood, the first volume
having been published in the United States by Reynal and
Hitchcock.
  The books mentioned as best-sellers in this chapter are
so identified in Alice Payne Hackett's <1Sixty Years of Best>1
<1Sellers>1 1895--1955, published by R. R. Bowker Company,
N.Y., 1956. There a best-seller is defined as a book which
has sold over a million copies. The books mentioned which
appeared before 1895 are vouched for by Miss Hackett as
having attained this sale, though in some cases their success
was not immediate.
  The poem by Dr. Morris Bishop which is quoted is from
his collection, <1A Bowl of Bishop,>1 published by Dial, New
York, in 1954; I am grateful to Dr. Bishop for his permis-
sion to quote it.