Chapter XII: The Post-Victorian Age (1)

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1890–1920)

The period covered by this chapter, thirty years in extent, begins with the decline of the Victorian tradition, and practically ends with the European War. It is a time of unrest, of a hardening of temper, of the decay of the larger Victorian ideals, and of the growth of a more critical, cynical, and analytic spirit. The period, one will find, is not very rich in literature of the highest class; and looking back over our literature, and studying the rise and fall of the literary impulse, the alternation of rich harvest with lean years, one is tempted to regard the post-Victorian age as an interval between two epochs, between the great Victorian age and another, still to be, that will be as truly great.

LITERARY FEATURES OF THE AGE

=1. Decline of Poetry.= For almost the first time in the history of English literature the poetical product must be relegated to a subordinate position. Much verse, some of great charm and considerable power, has been written, but very little of real outstanding literary importance. It is this decided decline in the poetical spirit that must make the period take an inferior place in our literary history. Even the Great War failed to produce a poet who might proclaim its ideals as Wordsworth did those of the French Revolution. One is reluctantly driven to conclude that the divine poetical impulse was not there.

=2. The Domination of the Novel.= Comparatively late in its appearance, the novel has now become the most prominent of the literary forms. The output is enormous, the general level quite high, and the scope of its subject almost all-embracing. The growth of the popular press, including the cheap magazine specializing in the production of fiction, the cheapening of books and journals, the increasing use of shorthand and the typewriter, all combine to add to the torrent of fiction.

=3. Modern “Realism.”= The tendency of the time is to avoid sentiment, and to look upon life critically and even cynically. There is a supercilious attitude toward enthusiasm, which is banned as being “Victorian,” a word which has assumed a derogatory meaning. In the domain of fiction this feeling is the strongest. Victorian convention is anathema; all subjects are explored, and handled with a frankness that would have horrified the moralists of the earlier age. A particularly strong school of novelists is interested in social subjects, and is affected with the prevailing economic unrest.

=4. Foreign Influences.= In other countries the same tendency toward realism is apparent, and has helped the movement in England. In Europe there were two geniuses of international importance, and both of them were fired with revolutionary social ideals: Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), the Norse dramatist, and Leo Tolstoï (1828–1910), the Russian novelist. The influence of Ibsen went right to the roots of English drama, and the works of Tolstoï awoke English readers to the importance of Russian fiction, which is strongly realistic. French novelists of the realistic school, such as Émile Zola (1840–1902), had their share in the development of the English novel.

=5. The Celtic Revival.= The revival of Irish literature is of much interest. It began in the effort of a group of writers to preserve and reanimate Irish sentiment and (to a certain extent) the Irish language. It has affected all branches of literature: it has affected poetry, producing poems such as those of Mr. Yeats; it has created a type of drama, and a theater in which to act it; its dramatists include Mr. Synge, Lady Gregory, and (partly) Mr. Shaw; it has added a novelist of importance in George Moore; and it has a worthy example of a man of letters in George Russell, whose _nom de plume_ is “A. E.”

THOMAS HARDY

We shall deal with three outstanding novelists, each of whom is representative of a different class. We shall have space sufficient for a small number only of the other novelists.

=1. His Life.= Thomas Hardy was born (1840) in Dorsetshire, and after being educated locally finished his studies at King’s College, London. He adopted the profession of an architect, being specially interested in the architecture of early churches. Ambitious to achieve fame as an author, he began, as so many other literary aspirants have done, with poetry. In this branch of literature he met with scant recognition; so, when he was over thirty years old, he took to the writing of novels. These too had no popular success, though they did not go unpraised by discerning critics. Nevertheless, Hardy continued uninterruptedly to issue works of fiction, which gradually but surely brought him fame. He was enabled to abandon his profession as an architect and retire to his native Dorchester, where he lived the life of a literary recluse. Popular applause, which he had never courted, in the end came in full measure. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday the greatest literary figures of the day united to do him homage, and the King, with characteristic felicity, sent a message of gracious compliment. Some years previously (1910) he had received the Order of Merit, no inappropriate distinction.

=2. His Poetry.= As early as 1865, and thence onward, Mr. Hardy issued fugitive pieces of poetry, which were at length collected and published as _Wessex Poems_ (1898). Many of the poems, none of which is very long, are of the dramatic monologue type. The typical Hardy note is apparent in nearly all of them; a careful and measured utterance, a stern eye for the tragedy of common things, and a somber submission to the dictates of an unkind fate. One or two of them are brighter, with a wry kind of humor, like the well-known _Valenciennes_. A second collection, _Poems of the Past and Present_ (1901), has a deeper and more sardonic note, but the feeling of pitiful regret is still predominant. This is particularly so in the poems on the South African War. _The Dead Drummer_, a poem of this group, three brief stanzas in length, tells of Drummer Hodge slain and buried in the veld. The Hardy attitude is almost perfectly revealed in the last stanza:

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely northern breast and brain
Grow up a southern tree;
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

In _The Dynasts_, which was published in several parts between 1903 and 1908, we meet with Mr. Hardy’s most ambitious poetical effort. In scope the poem is vast, for it deals with the Napoleonic wars, with all Europe for its scene. In length it is prodigious, and before the reader has reached the end he is overwhelmed with the magnitude of it. In form it is dramatic, in the sense that Shelley’s _Prometheus Unbound_ is dramatic; the scene shifts from point to point, the historical figures utter long monologues, and superhuman intelligences, such as Pity and the Spirit of the Years, add commentaries upon the activities of mankind. Above and behind all of it broods a sense of stern fatalism--the Immanent Will, as the author calls it; and in front of this enormous curtain of fate and futility even the figure of Napoleon is dwarfed and impotent.

_Satires of Circumstance_ (1914) is another collection of shorter pieces. The satires themselves, which occupy quite a small portion of the book, are almost brutal and rancorous in their choice and treatment of unhappy incidents. No doubt their author judges such a tone to be necessary in the production of satire. The effect is very impressive. For example, in the short piece called _In the Cemetery_ he begins:

“You see those mothers squabbling there?”
Remarks the man of the cemetery.
“One says in tears, ‘_’Tis mine lies here!_’
Another, ‘_Nay, mine, you Pharisee!_’
Another, ‘_How dare you move my flowers
And put your own on this grave of ours!_’
But all their children were laid therein
At different times, like sprats in a tin.”

And the cemetery man goes on to say that all the bodies had been removed to make room for a drain-pipe, and that the quarreling was taking place over the drain-pipe.

A further group of poems in this same volume is called _Poems of 1912–1913_. In this group of poems, which are elegiac in nature, Mr. Hardy’s lyrical genius develops a late but splendid bloom. It is unique in our history for a poet over seventy years old to surpass all the efforts of his prime. In the depth of their emotion and the terse adequacy of their style they represent the consummation of his poetry. We quote briefly:

(1) I found her out there
On a slope few see,
That falls westwardly
To the sharp-edged air,
Where the ocean breaks
On the purple strand,
And the hurricane shakes
The solid land.

(2) Nobody says: Ah, that is the place
Where chanced, in the hollow of years ago,
What none of the Three Towns cared to know--
The birth of a little girl of grace--
The sweetest the house saw, first or last;
Yet it was so
On that day long past.

Nobody thinks: There, there she lay
In a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower,
And listened, just after the bed time hour,
To the stammering chimes that used to play
The quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tune
In Saint Andrew’s tower
Night, morn, and noon.

* * * * *

Nay: one there is to whom these things,
That nobody else’s mind calls back,
Have a savour that scenes in being lack,
And a presence more than the actual brings;
To whom to-day is beneaped and stale,
And its urgent clack
But a vapid tale.
_Places_

=3. His Novels.= Mr. Hardy’s first novel, _Desperate Remedies_ (1871), is, even as a first attempt, a little disappointing. _Under the Greenwood Tree_ (1872) is an improvement, and in its sweet and faithful rendering of country life suggests _Silas Marner_. Next appeared _A Pair of Blue Eyes_ (1873), much more powerful, in which coincidences combine to produce a pitifully tragic conclusion. This is a fine specimen of the Hardy “pessimism.” By this time Mr. Hardy had matured his style and developed his views, and the succeeding novels display a masterly power that rarely deserts him: _Far from the Madding Crowd_ (1874), _The Hand of Ethelberta_ (1876), _The Return of the Native_ (1878), _The Trumpet-Major_ (1879), _A Laodicean_ (1881), _Two on a Tower_ (1882), _The Mayor of Casterbridge_ (1885), and _The Woodlanders_ (1887). Then Mr. Hardy’s career as a novelist culminated in two novels which have already taken rank among the great books of the language: _Tess of the d’Urbervilles_ (1891) and _Jude the Obscure_ (1894). The first is the story of a woman (“a pure woman,” the novelist calls her), of a noble line long decayed, who, as the victim of a malign and persistent destiny, commits murder and perishes on the scaffold; the second is the life-history of an obscure craftsman, fired by the noblest ideals, who struggles to attain to better things, but dies broken and disappointed, like Job cursing the day he was born: drab and somber tales, lit by rare gleams of delicious humor and sentiment, and lifted to the level of great art by boundless insight and pity. After this _The Well Beloved_ (1897) was of the nature of an anti-climax, and Mr. Hardy wrote no more novels.

=4. Features of his Novels.= (_a_) _Their Literary Quality._ Of the novelists of his time Mr. Hardy is the most assiduous in his attention to the practices of his great literary predecessors, such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Shelley. This, perhaps, gives his novels rather a heavy touch, so that he will never find a facile popularity; but he is never cheap and never tawdry, he builds broad and square, and his work will surely endure.

(_b_) _Their English Quality._ Like Chaucer and Shakespeare, Mr. Hardy, though he includes all humanity in his outlook, is profoundly and essentially English. His works embrace English folk and strike their roots deep into English soil. His most successful creations are those of peasants bred in his own native shire, or in the adjacent shires. Hence he has given us a notable gallery of men and women who are true to their breed and satisfying in their actuality. The scene of the majority of his novels is a section of England that he calls Wessex. This includes approximately all the south and west of England south of a line joining Oxford and Bristol. Within this boundary he moves with ease and precision, and there he finds adequate literary sustenance. From a man of the caliber of Mr. Hardy such parochialism hardly requires an apology, but if it does he has given it fully. We quote a passage in which he defends his practice, and which in addition provides a good specimen of his expository prose:

It has sometimes been conceived of novels that evolve their
action on a circumscribed scene--as do many (though not all) of
these--that they cannot be so inclusive in their exhibition of
human nature as novels wherein the scenes cover large extents
of country, in which events figure amid towns and cities,
even wander over the four quarters of the globe. I am not
concerned to argue this point further than to suggest that
the conception is an untrue one in respect of the elementary
passions. But I would state that the geographical limits of the
stage here trodden were not absolutely forced upon the writer
by circumstances; he forced them upon himself from judgment.
I considered that our magnificent heritage from the Greeks in
dramatic literature found sufficient room for a large proportion
of its action in an extent of their country not much larger
than the half-dozen counties here reunited under the old name
of Wessex, that the domestic emotions have throbbed in Wessex
nooks with as much intensity as in the palaces of Europe, and
that, anyhow, there was quite enough human nature in Wessex for
one man’s literary purpose. So far was I possessed by this idea
that I kept within the frontiers when it would have been easier
to overleap them and give more cosmopolitan features to the
narrative.
_General Preface to the Wessex Edition_

(_c_) _Their Pessimism._ It cannot be denied that the novels are somewhat oppressive in the gloom of their atmosphere. As a novelist Mr. Hardy seems to conceive mankind as overlooked by a deliberately freakish and malignant Fate. His characters are consistently unfortunate when they deserve it least. In places, as in the case of Tess, he appears to bear down the scales, throwing against them the weight of repeated unhappy coincidences. Such a dismal method would in the end be repulsive to the reader’s sense of pity and justice if Mr. Hardy did not add to it a certain largeness and detachment of view and a somber but sympathetic clarity of vision that make the reader’s objections seem paltry and spiritless.

(_d_) _Their Humor and Pathos._ In many places, as in the rustic scenes of _The Mayor of Casterbridge_, the novels have a delicacy and acuteness of humor that strongly resembles that of George Eliot. At other times the humor is hard and heavy, as it is in his satires; at others, again, it has an odd grotesqueness. A short poetical extract will illustrate the last type:

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares.
We thought it was the Judgment-day
And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds.
_Channel Firing_

His pathos is deep, sure, and strong, never degenerating into mawkishness or sentimentality. The conclusion of _Tess of the d’Urbervilles_ is a pattern of the dignified expression of sorrow:

Upon the cornice of the tower a tall staff was fixed. Their eyes
were riveted on it. A few minutes after the hour had struck
something moved slowly up the staff, and extended itself upon
the breeze. It was a black flag.

“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals,
in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And
the d’Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs
unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to
the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time,
absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As
soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and
went on.

(_e_) _His Style._ Like many other great novelists, Mr. Hardy has no outstanding tricks of style. The general impression given is one of immense strength and dignity. His vocabulary is copious, but handled with scholarly care and accuracy. He is apt in phrase and pithy in expression, and in moments of emotion his prose moves with a strong rhythmic beauty. In his poetry the style may sometimes be crabbed and unorthodox, but only to suit a definite satiric purpose. We may sum up by saying that in his style, as in all the other constituents of his writing, he is always the sane and catholic artist.

JOSEPH CONRAD (1857–1924)

=1. His Life.= “Joseph Conrad” is the pen-name of =Teodor Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski=, who was born in the south of Poland in 1857. His father was implicated in the Nationalist plots of the Poles, and the son shared some of his father’s wanderings and exile. For a time the boy was educated at Cracow, but very soon an obstinate love of the sea manifested itself; and in 1874, in spite of all obstacles, he shipped as a seaman at Marseilles. His earliest seafaring was done in the Mediterranean. In 1878 he satisfied a lifelong desire by visiting England and making his first practical acquaintance with the English language. He had long wished to sail under the English flag, and for the remainder of his career he continued to do so. Till 1894 he led the life of a deep-sea sailor, rising from the position of an ordinary seaman to that of a master-mariner in the Mercantile Marine. Bad health, partly occasioned by a voyage up the Congo, stopped his seafaring; and then his first novel was accepted by a London publisher. Henceforth he was able to devote himself to writing novels, for his books, after a moderate beginning, have brought him a rapidly widening circle of readers.

=2. His Novels.= Mr. Conrad’s first novel, _Almayer’s Folly_, was begun about 1889 and not finished till 1894, when it was published. In some respects the novel is immature, for it is halting in plot, and there is a tendency to fumble in the handling of some of the characters; but the power and originality of the work are unquestionable. The scene is that of an Eastern river, fatally beautiful, haunted with disease, death, and the destinies of mysterious men. The principal characters are wild and diabolical, of strange race and stranger desires. Over the whole of the book hangs the glamour of a style quite new to English prose: rich and exotic as a tropical blossom, subtly pervasive and powerful, languorous and debilitating, but most fascinating. The book is typical of the remainder of Mr. Conrad’s novels; he was to improve upon it; but only in degree, not in substance. We have space to mention only the more important of his later works: _An Outcast of the Islands_ (1896), a kind of sequel to the first book; _The Nigger of the Narcissus_ (1898), a brighter tale, full of the glory of the deep seas; _Lord Jim_ (1900), an astonishing story, detailed with microscopic care, of a broken sailor who “makes good”; _Youth_ (1902), perhaps Mr. Conrad’s masterpiece--briefer, more direct, and instinct with the beauty of romantic youth; _Nostromo_ (1903), a tale of South American politics and treasure-hunting; _The Secret Agent_ (1907), in which the novelist leaves his favorite Eastern scenes for the grimmer purlieus of London; _’Twixt Land and Sea_ (1912), three short stories, containing some of his best work; _Chance_ (1914); _Within the Tides_ (1915); _Victory_ (1915); _The Shadow Line_ (1917); _The Arrow of Gold_ (1919), in which the interest shifts to Spain and the Carlist plotters; and _The Rescue_ (1920). In addition there are several other volumes of short stories; two volumes of memories and impressions, extremely valuable as specimens of the Conrad manner, called _The Mirror of the Sea_ (1906) and _Some Reminiscences_ (1912); and two volumes written in collaboration with Ford Madox Hueffer, _The Inheritors_ (1901) and _Romance_ (1903).

=3. Features of his Novels.= (_a_) _Their Exotic Quality._ Just as Mr. Hardy is probably the most English of the greater novelists, so Mr. Conrad is, in no disparaging sense of the term, the most un-English. No other novelist can so well convey the charm and repulsiveness of alien regions. The impression is borne upon the reader through every constituent of the novels. The setting, in the best examples, is among tropical islands, or upon the deep seas. The characters are men and women thoroughly in tune with the scene: nautical people, generally of mixed or alien breed--Danish, Malay, or Italian. Even when Mr. Conrad introduces English scenes and people in some fashion they always succeed in conveying the impression of being un-English.

(_b_) The _style_ of the books, moreover, adds to the prevailing feeling. It is haunting and beautiful, sumptuous in detail, delicate in rhythm, but curiously and decidedly exotic.

A brief extract cannot do justice to the style of Mr. Conrad, but we shall quote two passages in illustration. The first shows his prose in its less happy mood: somewhat mechanical and cumbrous in its imagery, and forced and overloaded with epithet. The second is much better. Here every word is necessary and appropriate, the rhythm is free, and the music sweet and persuasive.

(1) Shaw tried to speak. He swallowed great mouthfuls of tepid
water which the wind drove down his throat. The brig seemed
to sail through undulating waves that passed swishing between
the masts and swept over the decks with the fierce rush and
noise of a cataract. From every spar and every rope a ragged
sheet of water streamed flicking to leeward. The overpowering
deluge seemed to last for an age; became unbearable--and, all
at once, stopped. In a couple of minutes the shower had run its
length over the brig and now could be seen like a straight grey
wall, going away into the night under the fierce whispering
of dissolving clouds. The wind eased. To the northward, low
down in the darkness, three stars appeared in a row, leaping
in and out between the crests of the waves like the distant
heads of swimmers in a running surf; and the retreating edge of
the cloud, perfectly straight from east to west, slipped along
the dome of the sky like an immense hemispheric iron shutter
pivoting down smoothly as if operated by some mighty engine. An
inspiring and penetrating freshness flowed together with the
shimmer of light through the augmented glory of the heaven, a
glory exalted, undimmed, and strangely startling as if a new
universe had been created during the short flight of the stormy
cloud. It was a return to life, a return to space; the earth
coming out from under a pall to take its place in the renewed
and immense scintillation of the universe.

The brig, her yards slightly checked in, ran with an easy motion
under the topsails, jib, and driver, pushing contemptuously
aside the turbulent crowd of noisy and agitated waves. As the
craft went swiftly ahead she unrolled behind her over the uneasy
darkness of the sea a broad ribbon of seething foam shot with
wispy gleams of dark discs escaping from under the rudder.
Far away astern, at the end of a line no thicker than a black
thread, which dipped now and then in its long curve in the
bursting froth, a toy-like object could be made out, elongated
and dark, racing after the brig over the snowy whiteness of her
wake.
_The Rescue_

(2) The _Narcissus_, left alone, heading south, seemed to stand
resplendent and still upon the restless sea, under the moving
sun. Flakes of foam swept past her sides; the water struck her
with flashing blows; the land glided away, slowly fading; a few
birds screamed on motionless wings over the swaying mastheads.
But soon the land disappeared, the birds went away; and to the
west the pointed sail of an Arab dhow running for Bombay rose
triangular and upright above the sharp edge of the horizon,
lingered, and vanished like an illusion. Then the ship’s wake,
long and straight, stretched itself out through a day of immense
solitude. The setting sun, burning on the level of the water,
flamed crimson below the blackness of heavy rainclouds. The
sunset squall, coming up from behind, dissolved itself into the
short deluge of a hissing shower. It left the ship glistening
from trucks to water-line, and with darkened sails. She ran
easily before a fair monsoon, with her decks cleared for the
night; and, moving along with her, was heard the sustained and
monotonous swishing of the waves, mingled with the low whispers
of men mustered aft for the setting of watches; the short plaint
of some block aloft; or, now and then, a loud sigh of wind.
_The Nigger of the Narcissus_

(_c_) _Their Graphic Power._ The strongest appeal of Mr. Conrad’s novels is to the eye and the ear. His pictures of seafaring life and of life connected with the sea have never been surpassed. Their veracity and beauty are due to his personal acquaintance with the subject; to a scrupulous and artistic selection of detail, often of the technical kind that the sailor loves; and, once more, to the charm of the expression. In addition, his faculty of graphic description is often revealed in the deft manner in which he can outline some personality that flits across the pages of a story:

He held up his head in the glare of the lamp--a head vigorously
modelled into deep shadows and shining lights--a head powerful
and misshapen with a tormented and flattened face--a face
pathetic and brutal: the tragic, the mysterious, the repulsive
mask of the nigger’s soul.
_The Nigger of the Narcissus_

(_d_) _Their Narrative Method._ Mr. Conrad has evolved a narrative method of his own, which, while it is usually successful in his own hands, would probably be disastrous in hands less careful and adroit. The method is, first, indirect. The author’s favorite device is to create some character (a Captain Marlow often appears for this purpose) who relates the story, or part of the story, in his own words. Often another story crops up in the original story, adding complications, with, as can be seen in _Lord Jim_, results that are a little bewildering. Secondly, the greatest attention is given to details. The motives and impressions of the characters are discussed and analyzed, and their trivial actions faithfully recorded. Moreover, Mr. Conrad delights in leading his characters into morasses of doubt and hesitation. He may be called the novelist of doubt and hesitation, so skilled is he in the elaborate suggestion of such emotions. Consequently many a Conrad story, like one of his ships, is becalmed in its career, and stirs uneasily without making much progress. Hence he who runs must not read Conrad. This author demands a reader who is patient and wary, and who follows the course of the narrative very carefully, for he has a troublesome habit of inserting important matter in the midst of less essential details. If the reader will but observe these cautions, he will be led, deviously perhaps, but none the less certainly, into many regions of delightful romance.

HERBERT GEORGE WELLS

=1. His Life.= Mr. Wells was born in Kent in the year 1866. His early education was private, and later he studied at London University. Here he finally graduated in science, zoology and kindred subjects being his special choice. But he had his living to earn while he carried on his studies, and the experiences of these early years are reflected in his novels. Teaching, lecturing, and journalistic work followed; but literature was not long in exercising its fascination, and an early measure of success was soon his portion. Henceforth he devoted himself to the writing of books, which command a wide public both in England and America.

=2. His Works.= For the literary historian the books of Mr. Wells provide an interesting study, as, in the course of their production, they register a clear development of manner. The books themselves are so numerous that here we can mention only the more important among them.

As was only to be expected, Mr. Wells began by utilizing his scientific training as an adjunct to his story-telling. His first efforts in fiction were a series of scientific romances, extremely ingenious in their mingling of fact and fiction, rapidly and felicitously narrated, and casting shrewd side-glances at many social problems. The best of this class were _The Time Machine_ (1895), _The Invisible Man_ (1897), and _The Food of the Gods_ (1904). The second stage of the novelist’s career (slightly overlapping the first stage) was represented by a series of genuine novels, which reveal considerable talent in the manipulating of plot, a faculty, amounting to positive genius, for depicting ordinary people with zest, accuracy, and humor, and a clear and flexible style admirably in keeping with his subject. _Love and Mr. Lewisham_ (1900), _Kipps_ (1905), and _The History of Mr. Polly_ (1910) were representative of this group. In the third stage problems of modern society, social, religious, political, and commercial, which had all along strongly attracted the attention of Mr. Wells, elbowed themselves into the midst of the fictitious material, claiming an equal place. Of such a nature were _Tono-Bungay_ (1909), which is almost an epical treatment of modern commercialism, _Ann Veronica_ (1909), concerning a modern love-affair, and _The New Machiavelli_ (1911), on contemporary politics. In the fourth stage the discursive and dogmatic elements take the principal place, subordinating the fictitious portions, as can be seen in _Boon_ (1915), an extraordinary book, crammed with excellent lively literary criticism, but chaotic, splenetic, and irresponsible; _Mr. Britling Sees It Through_ (1916), a book treating of the Great War, with an able beginning, but a hazy and unsatisfactory conclusion; and _Joan and Peter_ (1918), also dealing partly with the War, but much concerned with educational matters. A collection of short stories, _The Country of the Blind_ (1911), contains, along with much that is scamped and trashy, some first-rate work, notably in the tale that gives the title to the book.

In addition to his numerous works of fiction Mr. Wells has written books that are almost entirely pamphlets, expressing his ideas on social and other problems; _The Island of Doctor Moreau_ (1896), _A Modern Utopia_ (1905), and _New Worlds for Old_ (1908) are only a few out of many. He has also, with much hardihood and considerable success, given the world _The Outline of History_ (1920), a work that antagonized the pedants and charmed and instructed the ordinary intelligent man.

=3. Features of his Novels.= (_a_) _Their “Modern” Quality._ Possessed of an eager and inquiring mind, of great energy, and of a wide public ready to give ear to his opinions, Mr. Wells has come more and more to use the novel as a means of voicing his hopes, his criticisms, and his fears. Such a course must in the end bring about the decay of his novels as works of art. It is possible, indeed, that his later works will rapidly fall into oblivion, as did the later novels of George Eliot, who pursued a course in some respects similar to that of Mr. Wells. No one, however, can question the force and vivacity of his expressed opinions, and the eager reception that awaits them in many quarters. To many of his time he is the sage and prophet, as Carlyle, in his own fashion, was to the Victorian age; and as the need for Carlyle passed away with the problems that he handled, so, perhaps, will the need for the pen of Mr. Wells. It is possible that _Kipps_ will be widely read when such works as _The Soul of a Bishop_ have been entirely forgotten.

(_b_) _Their Literary Quality._ In addition to his intellectual gifts, Mr. Wells possesses an imagination of great power and grasp. This appears all through his works, being perhaps most prominent in the earlier romances, such as _The First Men in the Moon_, and in the earlier novels. In the novels the strength of Mr. Wells’s imagination becomes a positive drawback when it leads to overproduction, which in its turn brings a certain mechanical quality in the plot and in the central characters. His descriptions, however, alike of homely English scenes and of the most fantastic and barbarous regions, are brilliantly dashing and real. Like Dickens, he excels in the creation of ordinary folks, of the type of tradesmen and clerks, upon whom he expends a wealth of observation and humorous comment.

(_c_) _Their Humor._ Freshness and abundance are the outstanding qualities of Mr. Wells’s humor. Sometimes he is almost juvenile in his high spirits. In its more sober moments the humor is the urbane acceptance of men’s little weaknesses, somewhat patronizing perhaps, but sharply scrutinizing and faithfully recording. In other moods it is satirical, and then it is swift and destructive. In its more reckless phase it passes into jeering and irreverent laughter. The humor of Mr. Wells is a powerful weapon, and he is somewhat careless in his handling of it.

(_d_) _His Style._ The clearness and rapidity of Mr. Wells’s style has undoubtedly led to a lack of taste and balance and (in the mind of the reader) to a sense of improvisation. In its more careless passages it conveys the impression of a brilliant but shallow loquacity. The style, nevertheless, has some great and positive virtues: an instant command of epithet, a vivid pictorial quality, and sometimes a rich suggestiveness of romance. As an example of this last quality, the love-passages in _The Country of the Blind_ are idyllically beautiful.

The two brief extracts that follow illustrate two different aspects of his style. The first is a picture of a tropical scene, the style resembling in some respects that of Mr. Conrad. It lacks the intimate detail of Mr. Conrad’s descriptions, but it is much less labored. The second is an example of the pictorial narrative power that is Mr. Wells’s chief claim to literary greatness:

(1) Here and there strange blossoms woke the dank intensities
of green with a trumpet-call of colour. Things crept among the
jungle and peeped and dashed back rustling into stillness.
Always in the sluggishly drifting, opaque water were eddyings
and stirrings; little rushes of bubbles came chuckling up
lightheartedly from this or that submerged conflict and
tragedy; now and again were crocodiles like a stranded fleet of
logs basking in the sun. Still it was by day, a dreary stillness
broken only by insect sounds and the creaking and flapping of
our progress, by the calling of the soundings and the captain’s
confused shouts; but in the night as we lay moored to a clump
of trees the darkness brought a thousand swampy things to life,
and out of the forest came screamings and howlings, screamings
and yells that made us glad to be afloat. And once we saw
between the tree stems long blazing fires. We passed two or
three villages landward, and brown-black women and children came
and stared at us and gesticulated, and once a man came out in a
boat from a creek and hailed us in an unknown tongue; and so at
last we came to a great open place, a broad lake rimmed with a
desolation of mud and bleached refuse and dead trees, free from
crocodiles or water birds or sight or sound of any living thing,
and saw far off, even as Nasmyth had described, the ruins of
the deserted station and hard by two little heaps of buff-hued
rubbish under a great rib of rock. The forest receded. The land
to the right of us fell away and became barren, and far off
across a notch in its backbone was surf and the sea.
_Tono-Bungay_

(2) There was a fumbling at the latch of the front door.

“’Ere’s my lord,” said Mrs Coombes. “Went out like a lion and
comes back like a lamb, I’ll lay.”

Something fell over in the shop: a chair, it sounded like.
Then there was a sound as of some complicated step exercise in
the passage. Then the door opened and Coombes appeared. But
it was Coombes transfigured. The immaculate collar had been
torn carelessly from his throat. His carefully brushed silk
hat, half-full of a crush of fungi, was under one arm; his
coat was inside out, and his waistcoat adorned with bunches of
yellow-blossomed furze. These little eccentricities of Sunday
costume, however, were quite overshadowed by the change in his
face; it was livid white, his eyes were unnaturally large and
bright, and his pale blue lips were drawn back in a cheerless
grin. “Merry!” he said. He had stopped dancing to open the door.
“Rational ’njoyment. Dance.” He made three fantastic steps into
the room and stood bowing.

“Jim!” shrieked Mrs Coombes, and Mr Clarence sat petrified, with
a drooping lower jaw.

“Tea,” said Mr Coombes. “Jol’ thing, tea. Tose-stools, too.
Brosher.”

“He’s drunk,” said Jennie in a weak voice. Never before had she
seen this intense pallor in a drunken man, or such shining,
dilated eyes.
_The Purple Pileus_

OTHER NOVELISTS

=1. George Gissing (1857–1903)= was born at Wakefield, and concluded his education at Owens College, Manchester. He took to literature, but with little success, and for years lived in dire poverty. In time his books met with a somewhat wider acceptance, though they were never popular; and his scholarship and the high quality of his literary criticism always commanded respect. He died in the Pyrenees, whither failing health had compelled him to go.

His novels are almost entirely devoted to the lives of the poorer classes: _Workers of the Dawn_ (1880), _The Unclassed_ (1884), _Demos_ (1889), _Grub Street_ (1891), and _The Odd Women_ (1893) are only a selection from his books. His _Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_ (1903) is partly autobiographical, and is an excellent example of his style. He handles his subjects with a depressing fidelity that will always restrict his novels to a narrow circle of readers. He lacks Mr. Hardy’s Elizabethan largeness of vision, and will not rank as a really great writer, but he deserves honorable mention as a novelist who in poverty and distress would not bow the knee to false gods, who steadily kept in view the highest ideals, and who died true to his literary faith.

=2. George Moore=, born in Mayo in the year 1857, is the son of a landowner in that county. He was educated at Oscott, and then for some years studied art in Paris. During those years he imbibed that passion for French art and French fiction that was never to leave him. As an artist he had no success; but as a novelist, after a moderate beginning, he has won the admiration of an important section of the reading public. He is a man of varied but unstable enthusiasms, which are reflected in his novels. In the course of time he was caught up in the Celtic Revival, which he valiantly served with his pen, though he was not backward in candid criticism of it.

Mr. Moore began authorship with two volumes of verse, the first of which was _Flowers of Passion_ (1878). Neither of them was of any great merit. He started his career as a novelist as disciple of the great French realist Zola, publishing in this manner _A Mummer’s Wife_ (1884). This novel, a squalid tale unrelieved by any bright touches, followed the example of Zola with much audacity, and shocked the more staid opinion in England. Other stories of the same kind followed, the more noteworthy being _A Drama in Muslin_ (1886) and _The Confessions of a Young Man_ (1888). His more mature works, though they never lacked frankness, were rather more restrained in manner; characteristic specimens were _Esther Waters_ (1894) and _Sister Teresa_ (1901). Subsequently he wrote some attractive books of reminiscence, of which the best is _Hail and Farewell_, published in three volumes between the years 1911 and 1914.

In his later books Mr. Moore’s style is delightfully sweet and clear. The earlier books, in which he followed his model with a devoted fidelity, are devoid of the ornaments of style. In humor he is often whimsical and charming, though his wit seldom lacks the sharp touch of satire.

=3. Rudyard Kipling= was born (1865) at Bombay, where his father was an official. He was educated in Devonshire, and wished to join the Army, a project that had to be abandoned. Returning to India, he joined the editorial staff of the Lahore _Civil and Military Gazette_ and of _The Pioneer_. For these journals he began writing short stories, which very soon attracted an attention that became worldwide. After some years’ residence in the United States, Mr. Kipling settled in England. For a time his popularity was immense, and received international recognition in the award of the Nobel Prize for literature (1907). Passing years have dimmed his brightness, and recently his voice has fallen nearly silent.

Mr. Kipling first became known as a writer of short stories, and it is upon the short story that his fame will probably rest. As the writer of such a type of fiction he is very well equipped: he has a genius for terse narrative, a swift eye for dramatic incident and detail, a capacity for touching off men’s characters, and a style which, though it may be cocksure and jerky, is none the less attractive and intensely individual. _Plain Tales from the Hills_ (1887) and _Soldiers Three_ (1888) are among the most enjoyable of the volumes of short stories. In his longer tales he is less at his ease. _The Light that Failed_ (1891) is not a great success; but _Kim_ (1901), a kind of picaresque Indian tale, is crammed with a rich abundance of observation and description. The two _Jungle Books_ (1894 and 1895) are among the most delightful of books written for children.

As a poet of Army life and of British Imperialism Mr. Kipling was long a notable figure. The climax came during the South African War of 1899–1902; after that the patriotic poem began to suffer eclipse. A good deal of Mr. Kipling’s poetry is brazen and commonplace, but it rarely lacks energy and picturesqueness. In such pieces as _Mandalay_, however, he touches the deeper springs of humanity, and becomes a real poet; and in _The Recessional_ (1897), a short poem that in essence expresses the negation of all his usual teachings, he has attained to poetical greatness.

=4. Arnold Bennett=, whose full name is Enoch Arnold Bennett, was born in North Staffordshire in 1867. He was educated at Newcastle, and studied for the law, which he later forsook for journalism (1893). He was on the staff of _Woman_ till 1900, when his books claimed all his time.

Mr. Bennett’s most notable contribution to the novel is a group of interrelated stories dealing with his native Staffordshire. These stories, very full in detail, are realistic presentations of the squalid life of the pottery district; the personages introduced are commonplace, and the style, though it does not lack vivacity and humor, is studiously subdued. _Anna of the Five Towns_ (1902), _The Old Wives’ Tale_ (1908), _Clayhanger_ (1910), _Hilda Lessways_ (1911), and _These Twain_ (1916) represent this group. _The Card_ (1911) is lighter and more humorous; and _The Pretty Lady_ (1918), rather unequal, contains some telling reflections upon modern society.

Like Mr. Hardy, Mr. Bennett has essayed to render with artistic completeness the life of one section of England; unlike Mr. Hardy, however, he tends to become swamped with detail, so that he fails to give his works unity and singleness of purpose. In addition, his style has a certain aridity and a lack of flavor and attraction. On the other hand, he writes with clearness and care, his humor is reticent but keenly penetrating, and his character-drawing able and realistic.

=5. Compton Mackenzie= may be taken as the latest type of novelist who will claim our attention. Born at West Hartlepool in 1883, he was the son of Mr. Edward Compton, the well-known actor. He was educated at St. Paul’s School and at Oxford, and then became associated with literature and the stage. He served in the South African War, and in the Great War he was with the Naval Division in the Dardanelles.

After publishing _Poems_ (1907), Mr. Mackenzie produced _The Passionate Elopement_ (1911), a novel of much promise, that was realized in _Carnival_ (1912), a story dealing partly with theatrical life, and revealing much shrewd insight and satirical humor. Like Thackeray and Mr. Bennett, Mr. Mackenzie developed the novel series, introducing the same people into several successive stories. _Sinister Street_ (1914), _Guy and Pauline_ (1915), _Sylvia Scarlett_ (1918), and _Sylvia and Michael_ (1919), are more or less closely interrelated in theme. _Poor Relations_ (1919) revealed a rich and somewhat unexpected vein of light comedy, which Mr. Mackenzie did not improve upon in _Rich Relatives_ (1921). Much of Mr. Mackenzie’s work is of unnecessary length, and much of it, in comformity with the modern manner, is laboriously and somewhat unpleasantly detailed in its revelation of personal and social relations; but his writing is seldom lacking in competence; it has ease, versatility, and a certain cool urbanity; and at its best it reaches a high level.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

=1. His Life.= Mr. Shaw, born in Dublin in 1856, is the son of a retired civil servant. His early education was received in Dublin, and at the age of fifteen he was earning his living as a clerk. Coming to London (1876), he tried novel-writing as an alternative to clerking, but with no success at all. He was one of the first members (1884) of the Fabian Society, and took a vigorous part in its socialistic work. A witty and voluble speaker, not without moments of real eloquence, he was much in demand as a lecturer. In 1885 he began his connection with journalism, and was successively on the staff of several London papers, writing on music, painting, and the drama. In music he was a strong advocate of Wagner. The dramatic works of the great Norwegian Ibsen were for long his pet subject. During the years 1895–98 his dramatic articles in _The Saturday Review_ attracted much attention owing to the freshness of their opinions and the vitality of their style. About this time he started to write and produce plays of his own; and with them he began his long verbal contest with the British public over their failure to appreciate the merit of his work. In the end, owing partly to his own voluble persistence, but chiefly to the virtues inherent in his dramas, he won the day; so that a new play by Mr. Shaw, if indeed it does not command a wide acceptance of its views, is at least received as a powerful and stimulating addition to the dramatic literature of our time.

=2. His Novels.= Mr. Shaw began his career as an author by writing four novels which were rejected by every publisher in London, and subsequently saw the light in obscure periodicals of socialistic sympathies. The best of the four are _The Irrational Knot_ (1880) and _Cashel Byron’s Profession_ (1882). He republished the books in 1901, calling them “Novels of my Nonage.” To readers acquainted with the later writings of Mr. Shaw there are several familiar features plainly to be seen: the straight, clean thrust of the style, the bold and dramatic portraiture of the characters, and the irreverent mishandling of treasured institutions. There is even the note typical of the earliest plays--a curious frigidity and barrenness of emotion, as if the novelist had made a vow to cut sentiment clean out of his books. The crude socialism preached in the stories probably scared the publishers; for, though they by no means represent even the average of Mr. Shaw’s work, they are always readable and often amusing.

=3. His Plays.= As a playwright Mr. Shaw began as a disciple of Ibsen. In his early attempts he succeeded in reproducing the cold and intellectual realism of the great Norwegian, but he quite failed to catch the humane and intensely romantic idealism that lies deep within the heart of the Ibsen plays. _Widowers’ Houses_ (1885), a didactic play on the subject of slum-property, was a discouraging beginning to his play-writing. It was hard and repulsive in sentiment; it lacked the later Shavian high spirits and verbal acrobatics; and it appealed only to a small circle of enthusiasts. _The Philanderer_ (1893) was much lighter and more attractive, though it did not lack harsher touches, almost callous in their nonchalance; it showed, however, the beginning of that mastery of the technique of the stage that was henceforth to distinguish nearly all Mr. Shaw’s plays. _Mrs. Warren’s Profession_ (1893), grimmer and abler, was refused a license by the censor of plays; and then with _Arms and the Man_ (1894) Mr. Shaw had his first successful bout with the British public. In the play the satiric intention was obvious, for the “glories” of war were freely ridiculed; but the satire was so overlaid with a briskness of action, with a rocketing interchange of witticisms, and with an almost reckless display of high spirits that both the general public and the cautious critics were taken by storm. From this point Mr. Shaw never looked back, and his plays appeared in a steady procession. We can mention only the more important of them: _Candida_ (1894), an attempt at the romantic sentimental comedy, only too rare with Mr. Shaw; _You Never Can Tell_ (1896), purely and hilariously comic, and masterly from beginning to end; _Cæsar and Cleopatra_ (1898), quaintly serio-comic, but picturesque and brilliant; _Man and Superman_ (1903), containing many of its author’s opinions expressed with startling audacity, but too long and voluble; _John Bull’s Other Island_ (1904), on the Irish question; _The Doctor’s Dilemma_ (1906), very censorious on the medical profession; and _Androcles and the Lion_ (1912). At this point the War intervened, and the effects of it on Mr. Shaw’s acutely sensitive mind, along with the pressure of increasing years, can be seen in the style of the later plays. One can detect a certain waning strength. The energy and gayety are still visible, but they appear fitfully; the high scorn is apt to degenerate into querulousness; and there is a hardening of temper, for which the dramatist tries to atone by fits of puerile burlesque. _Heartbreak House_ (1917) is abrupt and even savage in places; and _Back to Methuselah_ (1920), in spite of its infinity of range and the brilliance of disconnected passages, is heavy with the weight of mortality.

We have still to mention Mr. Shaw’s prefaces, which are remarkable features of his plays. As the plays successively appeared, the prefaces increased in length, till they began to rival in importance the plays themselves. Each of them is a tractate on some question that for the time engrossed the attention of the playwright. For example, the preface to _Cæsar and Cleopatra_ deals in Shavian fashion with Shakespeare, that to _Androcles and the Lion_ with early Christianity, and that to _Back to Methuselah_ with what he calls Creative Evolution. The prefaces are diffuse, paradoxical, and egotistical; but they are brilliant and incisive, and they represent the best of Mr. Shaw’s non-dramatic prose.

=4. Features of his Plays.= (_a_) _Their Wit._ The distinction between wit and humor is commonly expressed by saying that humor appeals to the emotions, whereas wit touches only the intellect: humor deals with incidents and actions, wit with words and phrases. Mr. Shaw ranks among the greatest wits in the language. He delights in the quick cut and thrust of verbal sword-play, in the clever distortion of a phrase, and in the brilliant paradoxical sally of the intellect. It is this wittiness that has given him his commanding position in foreign countries. It is not that Mr. Shaw is inhumanly devoid of emotion and sympathy, but he is afraid of such emotions, and often deliberately stifles them. In _Candida_ he attains to a high level of delicate sentimentality, but in _How He lied to Her Husband_ he jeers at the admirers of his own handiwork. In his later plays he wearies a little over this exuberant play of wit. In _Back to Methuselah_, for example, perhaps the most attractive feature is a mood of sere romantic melancholy.