Chapter VI: Part 6

The object of this essay is not primarily to attack a dignified and successful author; it is rather to enquire, in a proper spirit of humility, and with a full realisation of the danger incurred, whether or not the actual output justifies so enormous a reputation. For in some respects I believe the vogue of Mrs. Ward to be more unfortunate than the vogue of the late lamented Duchess, of Laura Jean Libbey, of Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, of Marie Corelli, and of Hall Caine. When we are asked to note that 300,000 copies of the latest novel by any of these have been sold before the book is published, there is no cause for alarm. We know perfectly well what that means. It is what is called a "business proposition"; it has nothing to do with literature. It simply proves that it is possible to make as splendid a fortune out of the trade of book-making, and by equally respectable methods, as is made in other legitimate avenues of business. But the case is quite different with Mrs. Ward. Whatever she is, she is not vulgar, sensational, or cheap; she has never made the least compromise with her moral ideals, nor has she ever attempted to play to the gallery. Her constituency is made up largely of serious-minded, highly respectable people, who live in good homes, who are fairly well read, and who ought to know the difference between ordinary and extraordinary literature. Her books have had a bad effect in blurring this distinction in the popular mind; for while she has never written a positively bad book,--with the possible exception of _Bessie Costrell_,--I feel confident that she has never written supremely well; that, compared with the great masters of fiction, she becomes immediately insignificant. If there ever was a successful writer whose work shows industry and talent rather than genius, that writer is Mrs. Ward. If there ever was a successful writer whose work is ordinary rather than extraordinary, it is Mrs. Ward.

To those of us who delight in getting some enjoyment even out of the most depressing facts, the growth of Mrs. Ward's reputation has its humorous aspect. The same individuals (mostly feminine) who in 1888 read _Robert Elsmere_ with dismay, who thought the sale of the work should be prohibited, and the copies already purchased removed from circulating libraries, are the very same ones who now worship what they once denounced. She was then regarded as a destroyer of Christian faith. Well, if she was Satan then, she is Satan still (one Western clergyman, in advocating at that time the suppression of the work, said he believed in hitting the devil right between the eyes). She has given no sign of recantation, or even of penitence. I remember one fond mother, who, fearful of the effect of the book on her daughter's growing mind, marked all the worst passages, and then told Alice she might read it, provided she skipped all the blazed places! That indicated not only a fine literary sense, but a remarkable knowledge of human nature. I wonder what the poor girl did when she came to the danger signals! And, as a matter of fact, how valuable or vital would a Christian faith be that could be destroyed by the perusal of _Robert Elsmere_? It is almost difficult now to bring to distinct recollection the tremendous excitement caused by Mrs. Ward's first successful novel, for it is a long time since I heard its name mentioned. The last public notice of it that I can recall was a large sign which appeared some fifteen years ago in a New Haven apothecary's window to the effect that one copy of _Robert Elsmere_ would be presented free to each purchaser of a cake of soap!

Although _Robert Elsmere_ was an immediate and prodigious success, and made it certain that whatever its author chose to write next would be eagerly bought, it is wholly untrue to say that her subsequent novels have depended in any way on _Elsmere_ for their reputation. There are many instances in professional literary careers where one immensely successful book--_Lorna Doone_, for example--has floated a long succession of works that could not of themselves stay above water; many an author has succeeded in attaching a life-preserver to literary children who cannot swim. Far otherwise is the case with Mrs. Ward. It is probable that over half the readers of _Diana Mallory_ have never seen a copy of _Robert Elsmere_, for which, incidentally, they are to be congratulated. But many of us can easily recollect with what intense eagerness the novel that followed that sensation was awaited. Every one wondered if it would be equally good; and many confidently predicted that she had shot her bolt. As a matter of fact, not only was _David Grieve_ a better novel than _Robert Elsmere_, but, in my judgement, it is the best book its author has ever written. Oscar Wilde said that _Robert Elsmere_ was _Literature and Dogma_ with the literature left out. Now, _David Grieve_ has no dogma at all, but in a certain sense it does belong to literature. It has some actual dynamic quality. The character of David, and its development in a strange environment, are well analysed; and altogether the best thing in the work, taken as a whole, is the perspective. It is a difficult thing to follow a character from childhood up, within the pages of one volume, and have anything like the proper perspective. It requires for one thing, hard, painstaking industry; but Mrs. Ward has never been afraid of work. She cannot be accused of laziness or carelessness. The ending of this book is, of course, weak, like the conclusion of all her books, for she has never learned the fine art of saying farewell, either to her characters or to the reader.

It was in the year 1894--a year made memorable by the appearance of _Trilby_, the _Prisoner of Zenda_, _The Jungle Book_, _Lord Ormont and his Aminta_, _Esther Waters_, and other notable novels--that Mrs. Ward greatly increased her reputation and widened her circle of readers by the publication of _Marcella_. Here she gave us a political-didactic-realistic novel, which she has continued to publish steadily ever since under different titles. It was gravely announced that this new book would deal with socialism and the labour question. Many readers, who felt that she had said the last word on agnosticism in _Elsmere_, now looked forward with reverent anticipation not only to the final solution of socialistic problems, but to some coherent arrangement of their own vague and confused ideas. Naturally, they got just what they deserved--a voluminous statement of various aspects of the problem, with no solution at all. It is curious how many persons suppose that their favourite author or orator has done something toward settling questions, when, as a matter of fact, all he has done is to _state_ them, and then state them again. This is especially true of philosophical and metaphysical difficulties. Think how eagerly readers took up Professor James's exceedingly clever book on Pragmatism, hoping at last to find rest in some definite principle. And if there ever was a blind alley in philosophy, it is Pragmatism--the very essence of agnosticism.

Now, _Marcella_, as a document, is both radical and reactionary. There is an immense amount of radical talk; but the heroine's schemes fail, the Labour party is torn by dissension, Wharton proves to be a scoundrel, and the rebel Marcella marries a respectable nobleman. There is not a single page in the book, with all its wilderness of words, that can be said to be in any sense a serious contribution to the greatest of all purely political problems. And, as a work of art, it is painfully limited; but since it has the same virtues and defects of all her subsequent literary output, we may consider what these virtues and defects are.

In the first place, Mrs. Ward is totally lacking in one almost fundamental quality of the great novelist--a keen sense of humour. Who are the English novelists of the first class? They are Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Scott, Jane Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Stevenson, and perhaps Hardy. Every one of these shows humour enough and to spare, with the single exception of Richardson, and he atoned for the deficiency by a terrible intensity that has seldom, if ever, been equalled in English fiction. Now, the absence of humour in a book is not only a positive loss to the reader, in that it robs him of the fun which is an essential part of the true history of any human life, and thereby makes the history to that extent inaccurate and unreal, but the writer who has no humour seldom gets the right point of view. There is infinitely more in the temperament of the humorist than mere laughter. Just as the poet sees life through the medium of a splendid imagination, so the humorist has the almost infallible guide of sympathy. The humorist sees life in a large, tolerant, kindly way; he knows that life is a tragi-comedy, and he makes the reader feel it in that fashion.

Again, the lack of humour in a writer destroys the sense of proportion. The humorist sees the salient points--the merely serious writer gives us a mass of details. In looking back over the thousands of pages of fiction that Mrs. Ward has published, how few great scenes stand out bright in the memory! The principle of selection--so important a part of all true art--is conspicuous only by its absence. This is one reason for the sameness of her books. All that we can remember is an immense number of social functions and an immense amount of political gossip--a long, sad level of mediocrity. This perhaps helps to explain why German fiction is so markedly inferior to the French. The German, in his scientific endeavour to get in the whole of life, gives us a mass of unrelated detail. A French writer by a few phrases makes us see a character more clearly than a German presents him after many painful pages of wearisome description.

Mrs. Ward is not too much in earnest in following her ideals of art; no one can be. But she is too sadly serious. There is a mental tension in her books, like the tension of overwork and mental exhaustion, like the tension of overwrought nerves; her books are, in fact, filled with tired and overworked men and women, jaded and gone stale. How many of her characters seem to need a change--what they want is rest and sleep! Many of them ought to be in a sanatorium.

Her books are devoid of charm. One does not have to compare her with the great masters to feel this deficiency; it would not be fair to compare her with Thackeray. But if we select among all the novelists of real distinction the one whom, perhaps, she most closely approaches,--Anthony Trollope,--the enormous distance between _Diana Mallory_ and _Framley Parsonage_ is instantly manifest. We think of Trollope with a glow of reminiscent delight; but although Trollope and Mrs. Ward talk endlessly on much the same range of subject-matter, how far apart they really are! Mrs. Ward's books are crammed with politicians and clergymen, who keep the patient reader informed on modern aspects of political and religious thought; but the difficulty is that they substitute phrases for ideas. Mrs. Ward knows all the political and religious cant of the day; she is familiar with the catch-words that divide men into hostile camps; but in all these dreary pages of serious conversation there is no real illumination. She completely lacks the art that Trollope possessed, of making ordinary people attractive. But to find out the real distance that separates her productions from literature, one should read, let us say, _The Marriage of William Ashe_ and then take up _Pride and Prejudice_. The novels of Mrs. Ward bear about the same relation to first-class fiction that maps and atlases bear to great paintings.

This lack of charm that I always feel in reading Mrs. Ward's books (and I have read them all) is owing not merely to the lack of humour. It is partly due to what seems to be an almost total absence of freshness, spontaneity, and originality. Mrs. Ward works like a well-trained and high-class graduate student, who is engaged in the preparation of a doctor's thesis. Her discussions of socialism, her scenes in the House of Commons and on the Terrace, her excursions to Italy, her references to political history, her remarks on the army, her disquisitions on theology, her pictures of campaign riots, her studies of defective drainage, her representations of the labouring classes,--all these are "worked up" in a scholarly and scientific manner; there is the modern passion for accuracy, there is the German completeness of detail,--there is, in fact, everything except the breath of life. She works in the descriptive manner, from the outside in--not in the inspired manner which goes with imagination, sympathy, and genius. She is not only a student, she is a journalist; she is a special correspondent on politics and theology; but she is not a creative writer. For she has the critical, not the creative, temperament.

The monotonous sameness of her books, which has been mentioned above, is largely owing to the sameness of her characters. She changes the frames, but not the portraits. First of all, in almost any of her books we are sure to meet the studious, intellectual young man. He always has a special library on some particular subject, with the books all annotated. One wearies of this perpetual character's perpetual library, crowded, as it always is, with the latest French and German monographs. Her heroes smell of books and dusty dissertations, and the conversations of these heroes are plentifully lacking in native wit and originality--they are the mere echoes of their reading. Let us pass in review a few of these serious students--Robert Elsmere, Langham, Aldous Reyburn (who changes into Lord Maxwell, but who remains a prig), the melancholy Helbeck, the insufferable Manisty, Jacob Delafield, William Ashe, Oliver Marsham--all, all essentially the same, tiresome, dull, heavy men--what a pity they were not intended as satires! Second, as a foil to this man, we have the Byronic, clever, romantic, sentimental, insincere man--who always degenerates or dies in a manner that exalts the dull and superior virtues of his antagonist. Such a man is Wharton, or Sir George Tressady, or Captain Warkworth, or Cliffe--they have different names in different novels, but they are the same character. Curiously enough, the only convincing men that appear in her pages are _old_ men--men like Lord Maxwell or Sir James Chide. In portraying this type she achieves success.

What shall we say of her heroines? They have the same suspicious resemblance so characteristic of her heroes; they are represented as physically beautiful, intensely eager for morality and justice, with an extraordinary fund of information, and an almost insane desire to impart it. Her heroine is likely to be or to become a power in politics; even at a tender age she rules society by the brilliancy of her conversation; in a crowded drawing-room the Prime Minister hangs upon her words; diplomats are amazed at her intimate knowledge of foreign relations, and of the resources of the British Empire; and she can entertain a whole ring of statesmen and publicists by giving to each exactly the right word at the right moment. Men who are making history come to her not only for inspiration but for guidance, for she can discourse fluently on all phases of the troublesome labour question. And yet, if we may judge of this marvellous creature not by the attitude of the other characters in the book, but by the actual words that fall from her lips, we are reminded of the woman whom Herbert Spencer's friends selected as his potential spouse. They shut him up with her, and awaited the result with eagerness, for they told him she had a great mind; but on emerging from the trial interview Spencer remarked that she would not do at all: "The young lady is, in my opinion, too highly intellectual; or, I should rather say--morbidly intellectual. A small brain in a state of intense activity." Was there ever a better formula for Mrs. Ward's constantly recurring heroine? Now, as a foil to Marcella, Diana Mallory, and the others, Mrs. Ward gives us the frivolous, mischief-making, would-be brilliant, and actually vulgar woman, who makes much trouble for the heroine and ultimately more for herself--the wife of Sir George Tressady, the young upstart in _Diana Mallory_, and all the rest of them. By the introduction of these characters there is an attempt to lend colour to the dull pages of the novels. These women are at heart adventuresses, but they are apt to lack the courage of their convictions; instead of being brilliant and terrible,--like the great adventuresses of fiction,--they are as dull in sin as their antagonists are dull in virtue. Mrs. Ward cannot make them real; compare any one of them with Thackeray's Beatrix or with Becky Sharp--to say nothing of the long list of sinister women in French and Russian fiction.

There are no "supreme moments" in Mrs. Ward's books; no great dramatic situations; she has tried hard to manage this, for she has had repeatedly one eye on the stage. When _The Marriage of William Ashe_ and _Lady Rose's Daughter_ appeared, one could almost feel the strain for dramatic effect. It was as though she had realised that her previous books were treatises rather than novels, and had gathered all her energies together to make a severe effort for real drama. But, unfortunately, the scholarly and critical temperament is not primarily adapted for dramatic masterpieces. In the endeavour to recall thrilling scenes in her novels, scenes that brand themselves for ever on the memory, one has only to compare her works with such stories as _Far From the Madding Crowd_ or _The Return of the Native_, and her painful deficiency is immediately apparent.

In view of what I believe to be the standard mediocrity of her novels, how shall we account for their enormous vogue? The fact is, whether we like it or not, that she is one of the most widely read of all living novelists. Well, in the first place, she is absolutely respectable and safe. It is assuredly to her credit that she has never stooped for popularity. She has never descended to melodrama, clap-trap, or indecency. She is never spectacular and declamatory like Marie Corelli, and she is never morally offensive like some popular writers who might be mentioned. She writes for a certain class of readers whom she thoroughly understands: they are the readers who abhor both vulgarity and pruriency, and who like to enter vicariously, as they certainly do in her novels, into the best English society. In her social functions her readers can have the pleasure of meeting prime ministers, lords, and all the dwellers in Mayfair, and they know that nothing will be said that is shocking or improper. Her books can safely be recommended to young people, and they reflect the current movement of English thought as well as could be done by a standard English review. She has a well-furnished and highly developed intellect; she is deeply read; she makes her readers think that they are thinking. She tries to make up for artistic deficiencies by an immense amount of information. Fifty years ago it is probable that she would not have written novels at all, but rather thoughtful and intellectual critical essays, for which her mind is admirably fitted. She unconsciously chose the novel simply because the novel has been, during the last thirty years, the chief channel of literary expression. But in spite of her popularity, it should never be forgotten that the novel is an art-form, not a medium for doctrinaires.

Then, with her sure hand on the pulse of the public, she is always intensely modern, intensely contemporary; again like a well-trained journalist. She knows exactly what Society is talking about, for she emphatically belongs to it. This is once more a reason why so many people believe that she holds the key to great problems of social life, and that her next book will give the solution. Many hoped that her novel on America, carefully worked up during her visit here, would give the final word on American social life. Both England and the United States were to find out what the word "American" really means.

Mrs. Ward is an exceedingly talented, scholarly, and thoughtful woman, of lofty aims and actuated only by noble motives; she is hungry for intellectual food, reading both old texts and the daily papers with avidity. She has a highly trained, sensitive, critical mind,--but she is destitute of the divine spark of genius. Her books are the books of to-day, not of to-morrow; for while the political and religious questions of to-day are of temporary interest, the themes of the world's great novels are what Richardson called "love and nonsense, men and women"--and these are eternal.

XI

RUDYARD KIPLING

Mr. Rudyard Kipling is in the anomalous and fortunate position of having enjoyed a prodigious reputation for twenty years, and being still a young man. Few writers in the world to-day are better known than he; and it is to be hoped and expected that he has before him over thirty years of active production. He has not yet attained the age of forty-five; but his numerous stories, novels, and poems have reached the unquestioned dignity of "works," and in uniform binding they make on my library shelves a formidable and gallant display. Foreigners read them in their own tongues; critical essays in various languages are steadily accumulating; and he has received the honour of being himself the hero of a strange French novel.[15] His popularity with the general mass of readers has been sufficient to satisfy the wildest dreams of an author's ambition; and his fame is, in a way, officially sanctioned by the receipt of honorary degrees from McGill University, from Durham, from Oxford, and from Cambridge; and in 1907 he was given the Nobel Prize, with the ratifying applause of the whole world. There is no indication that either the shouts of the mob or the hoods of Doctorates have turned his head; he remains to-day what he always has been--a hard, conscientious workman, trying to do his best every time.

[15] A curious and ironical book, _Dingley_, by Tharaud.

Although Mr. Kipling is British to the core, there is nothing insular about his experience; he is as much-travelled as Ulysses.

"For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known: cities of men,
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all."

Born in India, educated at an English school, circumnavigator of the globe, he is equally at home in the snows of the Canadian Rockies, or in the fierce heat east of Suez; in the fogs of the Channel, or under the Southern Cross at Capetown. Nor is he a mere sojourner on the earth: he has lived for years in his own house, in England, in Vermont, and in India, and has had abundant opportunity to compare the climate of Brattleboro with that of Bombay.

A born journalist and reporter, his publications first saw the light in ephemeral Indian sheets. In the late eighties he began to amuse himself with the composition of squibs of verse, which he printed in the local newspaper; these became popular, and were cited and sung with enthusiasm. Emboldened by this first taste of success, he put together a little volume bound like a Government report; he then sent around reply post-cards for cash orders, in the fashion already made famous by Walt Whitman. It is needless to say that copies of this book command a fancy price to-day. He immediately contracted what Holmes used to call "lead-poisoning," and the sight of his work in type made a literary career certain. He produced volume after volume, in both prose and verse, with amazing rapidity, and his fame overflowed the world. A London periodical prophesied in 1888, "The book gives hope of a new literary star of no mean magnitude rising in the East." The amount and excellence of his output may be judged when we remember that in the three years from 1886 to 1889 he published _Departmental Ditties_, _Plain Tales from the Hills_, _Soldiers Three_, _In Black and White_, _The Story of the Gadsbys_, _The Man Who Would Be King_, _The Phantom 'Rickshaw_, _Wee Willie Winkie_, and other narratives.

The originality, freshness, and power of all this work made Europe stare and gasp. For some years he had as much notoriety as reputation. We used to hear of the Kipling "craze," the Kipling "boom," the Kipling "fad," and Kipling clubs sprang up like mushrooms. It was difficult to read him in cool blood, because he was discussed pro and con with so much passion. He was fashionable, in the manner of ping-pong; and there were not wanting pessimistic prophets who looked upon him as a comet rather than a fixed star. So late as 1895 a well-known American journal said of him: "Rudyard Kipling is supposed to be the cleverest man now handling the pen. The magazines accept everything he writes, and pay him fabulous prices. Kipling is now printing a series of Jungle Stories that are so weak and foolish that we have never been able to read them. They are not fables: they are stories of animals talking, and they are pointless, so far as the average reader is able to judge. We have asked a good many magazine editors about Kipling's Jungle Stories; they all express the same astonishment that the magazine editors accept them. Kipling will soon be dropped by the magazine editors; they will inevitably discover that his stories are not admired by the people. Robert Louis Stevenson died just in time to save him from the same fate."

Many honestly believed that Mr. Kipling could write only in flashes; that he was incapable of producing a complete novel. His answer to this was _The Light that Failed_, which, although he made the mistake of giving it a reversible ending, indicated that his own lamp had yet sufficient oil. In 1895 he added immensely to the solidity of his fame by printing _The Brushwood Boy_, the scenes of which he announced previously would be laid in "England, India, and the world of dreams." Here he temporarily forsook the land of mysterious horror for the land of mysterious beauty, and many were grateful, and said so. In 1896 the appearance of _The Seven Seas_ proved beyond cavil that he was something more than a music-hall rimester--that he was really among the English poets. The very next year _The Recessional_ stirred the religious consciousness of the whole English-speaking race. And although much of his subsequent career seems to be a nullification of the sentiment of that poem, it will remain imperishable when the absent-minded beggars and the flannelled fools have reached the oblivion they so richly deserve.

In 1897 he tried his hand for the second time at a complete novel, _Captains Courageous_, and the result might safely be called a success. The moral of this story will be worth a word or two later on. The next year an important volume came from his pen, _The Day's Work_--important because it is in this volume that the new Kipling is first plainly seen, and the mechanical engineer takes the place of the literary artist. Such curiosities as _The Ship that Found Herself_, _The Bridge-Builders_, _.007_, became anything but curiosities in his later work. This collection was sadly marred by the inclusion of such wretched stuff as _My Sunday at Home_, and _An Error in the Fourth Dimension_; but it was glorified by one of the most exquisitely tender and beautiful of all Mr. Kipling's tales, _William the Conqueror_. And it should not be forgotten that the author saw fit to close this volume with the previously printed and universally popular _Brushwood Boy_. Then, at the very height of his ten years' fame, Mr. Kipling came closer to death than almost any other individual has safely done. As he lay sick with pneumonia in New York, the American people, whom he has so frequently ridiculed, were more generally and profoundly affected than they have been at the bedside of a dying President. The year 1899 marked the great physical crisis of his life, and seems also to indicate a turning-point in his literary career.

Whatever may be thought of the relative merits of Mr. Kipling's early and later style, it is fortunate for him that the two decades of composition were not transposed. We all read the early work because we could not help it; we read his twentieth-century compositions because he wrote them. It is lucky that the _Plain Tales from the Hills_ preceded _Puck of Pook's Hill_, and that _The Light that Failed_ came before _Stalky and Co._ Whether these later productions could have got into print without the tremendous prestige of their author's name, is a question that has all the fascination and all the insolubility of speculative philosophy. The suddenness of his early popularity may be perhaps partly accounted for by the fact that he was working a new field. The two authors who have most influenced Mr. Kipling's style are both Americans--Bret Harte and Mark Twain; and the analogy between the sudden fame of Harte and the sudden fame of Mr. Kipling is too obvious to escape notice. Bret Harte found in California ore of a different kind than his maddened contemporaries sought; his early tales had all the charm of something new and strange. What Bret Harte made out of California Mr. Kipling made out of India; at the beginning he was a "sectional writer," who, with the instinct of genius, made his literary opportunity out of his environment. The material was at hand, the time was ripe, and the man was on the spot. It was the strong "local colour" in these powerful Indian tales that captivated readers--who, in far-away centres of culture and comfort, delighted to read of primitive passions in savage surroundings. We had all the rest and change of air that we could have obtained in a journey to the Orient, without any of the expense, discomfort, and peril.

But after the spell of the wizard's imagination has left us, we cannot help asking, after the manner of the small boy, Is it true? Are these pictures of English and native life in India faithful reflexions of fact? Can we depend on Mr. Kipling for India, as we can depend (let us say) on Daudet for a picture of the _Rue de la Paix_? Now it is a notable fact that local colour seems most genuine to those who are unable to verify it. It is a melancholy truth that the community portrayed by a novelist not only almost invariably deny the likeness of the portrait, but that they emphatically resent the liberty taken. Stories of college life are laughed to scorn by the young gentlemen described therein, no matter how fine the local colour may seem to outsiders. The same is true of social strata in society, of provincial towns, and Heaven only knows what the Slums would say to their depiction in novels, if only the Slums could read. One reason for this is that a novel or a short story must have a beginning and an end, and some kind of a plot; whereas life has no such thing, nor anything remotely resembling it. When honest people see their daily lives, made up of thousands of unrelated incidents, served up to remote readers in the form of an orderly progression of events, leading up to a proper climax, the whole thing seems monstrously unreal and untrue. "Why, we are not in the least like that!" they cry. And I have purposely omitted the factor of exaggeration, absolutely essential to the realistic novelist or playwright.

In a notice of the _Plain Tales from the Hills_, the London _Saturday Review_ remarked, "Mr. Kipling knows and appreciates the English in India." But it is more interesting and profitable to see how his stories were regarded in the country he described. In the _Calcutta Times_, for 14 September, 1895, there was a long editorial which is valuable, at any rate, for the point of view. After mentioning the _Plain Tales_, _Soldiers Three_, _Barrack-room Ballads_, etc., the _Times_ critic said:--

"Except in a few instances which might easily be numbered on the
fingers of one hand, nothing in the books we have named is at all
likely to live or deserves to live.... It will probably be answered
that this sweeping condemnation is not of much value against the
emphatic approval of the British public and the aforesaid chorus of
critics in praise of the new Genius.... And the English critics
have this to plead in excuse of their hyperbolical appreciation of
the Stronger Dickens, that his first work came to them fathered
with responsible guarantee from men who should have known better,
that it was in the way of a revelation of Anglo-Indian society,
a-letting in the light of truth on places which had been very dark
indeed.

"Now the average English critic knows very little of the
intricacies of social life in India, and in the enthusiasm which
Mrs. Hauksbee and kindred creations inspired he accepted too
readily as true types what are, in fact, caricatures, or distorted
presentments, of some of the more poisonous social characteristics
to be found in Anglo-Indian as well as in every other civilised
society.... Do not let us be understood as recklessly running down
Kipling and all his works.... He possesses in a high degree the
power of describing a certain class of emotions, and the flights of
his imagination in some directions are extremely bold and original.
In such tales, for instance, as 'The Man who would be a King'
(_sic_) and 'The Ride of Morrowby Jukes' (_sic_) there are
qualities of the imagination which equal, if they do not surpass,
anything in the same line with which we are acquainted.... The
capital charge, in the opinion of many, the head and front of his
offending, is that he has traduced a whole society, and has spread
libels broadcast. Anglo-Indian society may in some respects be
below the average level of the best society in the Western world,
where the rush and stir of life and the collision of intellects
combine to keep the atmosphere clearer and more bracing than in
this land of tennis, office boxes, frontier wars, and enervation.
But as far as it falls below what many would wish it to be, so far
it rises above the description of it which now passes current at
home under the sanction of Kipling's name.... For whether Kipling
is treating of Indian subjects pure and simple, of Anglo-Indian
subjects, or is attempting a Western theme, the personality of the
writer is pervasive and intrusive everywhere, with all its
limitations of vision and information, as well as with its eternal
panoply of cheap smartness and spiced vulgarity.... Smartness is
always first with him, and Truth may shift for herself."

Although the writer of the above article is somewhat blinded by prejudice and wrath, it is, nevertheless, interesting testimony from the particular section of our planet which Mr. Kipling was at that time supposed to know best. And out in San Francisco they are still talking of Mr. Kipling's visit there, and the "abominable libel" of California life and customs he chose to publish in _From Sea to Sea_.

Apart from Mr. Kipling's good fortune in having fresh material to deal with, the success of his early work lay chiefly in its dominant quality--Force. For the last thirty years, the world has been full of literary experts, professional story-writers, to whom the pen is a means of livelihood. Our magazines are crowded with tales which are well written, and nothing else. They say nothing, because their writers have nothing to say. The impression left on the mind by the great majority of handsomely bound novels is like that of a man who beholds his natural face in a glass. The thing we miss is the thing we unconsciously demand--Vitality. In the rare instances where vitality is the ground-quality, readers forgive all kinds of excrescences and defects, as they did twenty years ago in Mr. Kipling, and later, for example, in Jack London. The original vigour and strength of Mr. Kipling's stories were to the jaded reader a keen, refreshing breeze; like Marlowe in Elizabethan days he seemed a towering, robust, masculine personality, who had at his command an inexhaustible supply of material absolutely new. This undoubted vigour was naturally unaccompanied by moderation and good taste; Mr. Kipling's sins against artistic proportion and the law of subtle suggestion were black indeed. He simply had no reserve. In _The Man Who Would Be King_, which I have always regarded as his masterpiece, the subject was so big that no reserve in handling it was necessary. The whole thing was an inspiration, of imagination all compact. But in many other instances his style was altogether too loud for his subject. One wearies of eternal fortissimo. Many of his tales should have been printed throughout in italics. In examples of this nature, which are all too frequent in the "Complete Works" of Mr. Kipling, the tragedy becomes melodrama; the humour becomes buffoonery; the picturesque becomes bizarre; the terrible becomes horrible; and vulgarity reigns supreme.

He is far better in depicting action than in portraying character. This is one reason why his short stories are better than his novels. In _The Light that Failed_, with all its merits, he never realised the character of Maisie; but in his tales of violent action, we feel the vividness of the scene, time and again. His work here is effective, because Mr. Kipling has an acute sense of the value of words, just as a great musician has a correct ear for the value of pitch. When one takes the trouble to analyse his style in his most striking passages, it all comes down to skill in the use of the specific word--the word that makes the picture clear, sometimes intolerably clear. Look at the nouns and adjectives in this selection from _The Drums of the Fore and Aft_:

"They then selected their men, and slew them with deep gasps and
short hacking coughs, and groanings of leather belts against
strained bodies, and realised for the first time that an Afghan
attacked is far less formidable than an Afghan attacking; which
fact old soldiers might have told them.

"But they had no old soldiers in their ranks."

There are two defects in Mr. Kipling's earlier work that might perhaps be classed as moral deficiencies. One is the almost ever present coarseness, which the author mistook for vigour. Now the tendency to coarseness is inseparable from force, and needs to be held in check. Coarseness is the inevitable excrescence of superabundant vitality, just as effeminacy is the danger limit of delicacy and refinement. Swift and Rabelais had the coarseness of a robust English sailor; at their worst they are simply abominable, just as Tennyson at his worst is effeminate and silly. Mr. Kipling has that natural delight in coarseness that all strong natures have, whether they are willing to admit it or not. A large proportion of his scenes of humour are devoted to drunkenness: "gloriously drunk" is a favourite phrase with him. The time may come when this sort of humour will be obsolete. We laugh at drunkenness, as the Elizabethans laughed at insanity, but we are only somewhat nearer real civilisation than they. At any rate, even those who delight in scenes of intoxication must find the theme rather overworked in Mr. Kipling. This same defect in him leads to indulgence in his passion for ghastly detail. This is where he ceases to be a man of letters, and becomes downright journalistic. It is easier to excite momentary attention by physical horror than by any other device; and Mr. Kipling is determined to leave nothing to the imagination. Many instances might be cited; we need only recall the gouging out of a man's eye in _The Light that Failed_, and the human brains on the boot in _Badalia Herodsfoot_.

The other moral defect in this early work was its world-weary cynicism, which was simply foolish in so young a writer. His treatment of women, for example, compares unfavourably with that shown in the frankest tales of Bret Harte. His attitude toward women in these youthful books has been well described as "disillusioned gallantry." The author continually gives the reader a "knowing wink," which, after a time, gets on one's nerves. These books, after all, were probably not meant for women to read, and perhaps no one was more surprised than Mr. Kipling himself at the rapturous exclamations of the thousands of his feminine adorers. A woman rejoicing in the perusal of these Indian tales seems as much out of place as she does in the office of a cheap country hotel, reeking with the fumes of whiskey and stale tobacco, and adorned with men who spit with astonishing accuracy into distant receptacles.

Mr. Kipling doubtless knows more about his own faults than any of the critics; and if after one has read _The Light that Failed_ for the sake of the story, one rereads it attentively as an _Apologia Pro Vita Sua_, one will be surprised to see how many ideas about his art he has put into the mouth of Dick. "Under any circumstances, remember, four-fifths of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble for its own sake." "One must do something always. You hang your canvas up in a palm-tree and let the parrots criticise." "If we sit down quietly to work out notions that are sent to us, we may or we may not do something that isn't bad. A great deal depends on being master of the bricks and mortar of the trade. But the instant we begin to think about success and the effect of our work--to play with one eye on the gallery--we lose power and touch and everything else.... I was told that all the world was interested in my work, and everybody at Kami's talked turpentine, and I honestly believed that the world needed elevating and influencing, and all manner of impertinences, by my brushes. By Jove, I actually believed that!... And when it's done it's such a tiny thing, and the world's so big, and all but a millionth part of it doesn't care."

Fortunately, four-fifths of Kipling's work isn't bad. We are safe in ascribing genius to the man who wrote _The Phantom 'Rickshaw_, _The Strange Ride_, _The Man Who Would Be King_, _William the Conqueror_, _The Brushwood Boy_, and _The Jungle Book_. These, and many other tales, to say nothing of his poetry, constitute an astounding achievement for a writer under thirty-five.

But the Kipling of the last ten years is an Imperialist and a Mechanic, rather than a literary man. We need not classify _Stalky and Co._, except to say that it is probably the worst novel ever written by a man of genius. It is on a false pitch throughout, and the most rasping book of recent times. The only good things in it are the quotations from Browning. The Jingo in Mr. Kipling was released by the outbreak of the South African War, and the author of _The Recessional_ forgot everything he had prayed God to remember. He became the voice of the British Empire, and the man who had always ridiculed Americans for bunkum oratory, out-screamed us all. In this imperialistic verse and prose there is not much literature, but there is a great deal of noise, which has occasionally deceived the public; just as an orator is sure of a round of applause if his peroration is shouted at the top of his voice. His recent book, _Puck of Pook's Hill_, is written against the grain; painful effort has supplied the place of the old inspiration, and the simplicity of true art is conspicuous by its absence. Of this volume, _The Athenaeum_, in general friendly to Kipling, remarks: "In his new part--the missionary of empire--Mr. Kipling is living the strenuous life. He has frankly abandoned story-telling, and is using his complete and powerful armory in the interest of patriotic zeal." On the other hand, Mr. Owen Wister, whose opinion is valuable, thinks _Puck_ "the highest plane that he has ever reached"--a judgement that I record with respect, though to me it is incomprehensible.

Kipling the Mechanic is less useful than an encyclopaedia, and not any more interesting. A comic paper describes him as "now a technical expert; at one time a popular writer. This young man was born in India, came to his promise in America, and lost himself in England. His _Plain Tales of the Hills_ (_sic_) has been succeeded by _Enigmatical Expositions from the Dark Valleys_.... Mr. Kipling has declared that the Americans have never forgiven him for not dying in their country. On the contrary, they have never forgiven him for not having written anything better since he was here than he did before. But while there's Kipling, there's hope." It is to be earnestly hoped that he will cease describing the machinery of automobiles, ships, locomotives, and flying air-vessels, and once more look in his heart and write. His worst enemy is himself. He seems to be in terror lest he should say something ordinary and commonplace. He has been so praised for his originality and powerful imagination, that his later books give one the impression of a man writing in the sweat of his face, with the grim determination to make every sentence a literary event. Such a tale as _Wireless_ shows that the zeal for originality has eaten him up. One can feel on every page the straining for effect, and it is as exhausting to read as it is to watch a wrestling-match, and not nearly so entertaining. If Mr. Kipling goes on in the vein of these later years, he may ultimately survive his reputation, as many a good man has done before him. I should think even now, when the author of _Puck of Pook's Hill_ turns over the pages of _The Man Who Would Be King_, he would say with Swift, "Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!"

His latest collection of tales, with the significant title, _Actions and Reactions_, is a particularly welcome volume to those of us who prefer the nineteenth century Kipling to the twentieth. To be sure, the story _With the Night Mail_, shows the new mechanical cleverness rather than the old inspiration; it is both ingenious and ephemeral, and should have remained within the covers of the magazine where it first appeared. Furthermore, _A Deal in Cotton_, _The Puzzler_, and _Little Foxes_ are neither clever nor literary; they are merely irritating, and remind us of a book we would gladly forget, called _Traffics and Discoveries_. But the first narrative in this new volume, with the caption, _An Habitation Enforced_, is one of the most subtle, charming, and altogether delightful things that Mr. Kipling has ever given us; nor has he ever brought English and American people in conjunction with so much charity and good feeling. I do not think he has previously shown greater psychological power than in this beautiful story. In the second tale, _Garm--A Hostage_, Mr. Kipling joins the ranks of the dog worshippers; the exploits of this astonishing canine will please all dog-owners, and many others as well. Naturally he has to exaggerate; instead of making his four-footed hero merely intelligent, he makes him noble in reason, infinite in faculty, in apprehension like a god, the paragon of animals. But it is a brilliant piece of work. The last story, _The House Surgeon_, takes us into the world of spirit, whither Mr. Kipling has successfully conducted his readers before. This mysterious domain seems to have a constantly increasing attraction for modern realistic writers, and has enormously enlarged the stock of material for contemporary novelists. The field is the world, yes; but the world is bigger than it used to be, bigger than any boundaries indicated by maps or globes. It would be interesting to speculate just what the influence of all these transcendental excursions will be on modern fiction as an educational force. Mr. Kipling apparently writes with sincere conviction, and in a powerfully impressive manner. The poetic interludes in this volume, like those in _Puck of Pook's Hill_, show that the author's skill in verse has not in the least abated; the lines on _The Power of the Dog_ are simply irresistible. It is safe to say that _Actions and Reactions_ will react favourably on all unprejudiced readers; and for this relief much thanks. If one wishes to observe the difference between the inspired and the ingenious Mr. Kipling, one has only to read this collection straight through.[16]

[16] I have not discussed a new collection of Mr. Kipling's stories, called _Abaft the Funnel_, consisting of reprints of early fugitive pieces; because there is not the slightest indication that this book is in any way authorised, or that its publication has the approval of the man who wrote it. Perhaps an authorised edition of it may now become necessary.

Like almost all Anglo-Saxon writers, Mr. Kipling is a moralist, and his gospel is Work. He believes in the strenuous life as a cure-all. He apparently does not agree with Goethe that To Be is greater than To Do. The moral of _Captains Courageous_ is the same moral contained in the ingenious bee-hive story. The unpardonable sin is Idleness. But although Work is good for humanity, it is rather limited as an ideal, and we cannot rate Mr. Kipling very high as a spiritual teacher. God is not always in the wind, or in the earthquake, or in the fire. The day-dreams of men like Stevenson and Thackeray sometimes bear more fruit than the furious energy of Mr. Kipling.

But the consuming ambition of this man, and his honest desire to do his best, will, let us hope, spare him the humiliation of being beaten by his own past. After all, Genius is the rarest article in the world, and one who undoubtedly has it is far more likely to reach the top of the hill than he is to take the road to Danger, which leads into a great wood; or the road to Destruction, which leads into a wide field, full of dark mountains.

XII

"LORNA DOONE"

The air of Devon and Somerset is full of literary germs. The best advice a London hack could give to a Gigadibs would be _Go west, young man_. The essential thing is to establish a residence south of Bristol, grow old along with Wessex, and inhale the atmosphere. Thousands of reverent pilgrims, on foot, on bicycle, and in automobile, are yearly following the tragic trails of Mr. Hardy's heroines; to a constantly increasing circle of interested observers, Mr. Eden Phillpotts is making the topography of Devon clearer than an ordnance map; if Mrs. Willcocks writes a few more novels like _The Wingless Victory_ and _A Man of Genius_, we shall soon all be talking about her--just wait and see; and in the summer season, when soft is the sun, the tops of coaches in North Devon and Somerset are packed with excited Americans, carrying Lornas instead of Baedekers. To the book-loving tourists, every inch of this territory is holy ground.

Yet the author of our favourite romance was not by birth a Wessex man. Mr. Richard D. Blackmore (for, like the creator of _Robinson Crusoe_, his name is not nearly so well known as his work) first "saw the light" in Berkshire, the year being 1825. But he was exposed to the Wessex germs at the critical period of boyhood, actually going to Blundell's School at Tiverton, a small town in the heart of Devonshire, fourteen miles north of Exeter, at the union of Exe and Lowman rivers. To this same school he sent John Ridd, as we learn in the second paragraph of the novel:--

"John Ridd, the elder, churchwarden, and overseer, being a great
admirer of learning, and well able to write his name, sent me, his
only son, to be schooled at Tiverton, in the County of Devon. For
the chief boast of that ancient town (next to its woolen staple) is
a worthy grammar-school, the largest in the west of England,
founded and handsomely endowed in the year 1604 by Master Peter
Blundell, of that same place, clothier."

From this institution young Blackmore proceeded to Exeter College, Oxford, where he laid the foundations of his English style by taking high rank in the classics. Like many potential poets and novelists, he studied law, and was called to the bar in 1852. But he cared little for the dusty purlieus of the Middle Temple, and not at all for city life: his father was a country parson, as it is the fashion for English fathers of men of letters to be, and the young man loved the peace and quiet of rural scenery. He finally made a home at Teddington, in Middlesex, and devoted himself to the avocation of fruit-growing. On this subject he became an authority, and his articles on gardening were widely read. Here he died in January, 1900.