Walter George - A Novelist on Novels

Even in our own profession of authorship the novelist is an object of disdain. We are less than the economists, the historians, the political writers: we amuse while they teach; they bore, and as they bore it is assumed that they educate, dullness always having been the sorry companion of education. Evidence is easily found; there exists a useful, short encyclopædia called Books That Count . It contains the names of about 4000 authors, out of whom only sixty-three are novelists. Divines whose sermons do not fetch a penny at the second-hand bookseller's, promoters of economic theories long disproved, partisan historians, mendacious travellers … they crowd out of the 'books that count' the pale sixty-three novelists, all that is left of the large assembly that gave us Tom Jones and The Way of All Flesh . This attitude we observe in most reference books. We observe it, for instance, in the well-known Who's Who Year Book , which, amazing as it seems, contains no list of authors. The book contains a list of professors, including those of dental surgery, a list of past Presidents of the Oxford Union, a list of owners of Derby winners, but not a list of authors. The editors of this popular reference book know what the public wants; apparently the public wants to know that Mr Arthur H. King is General Manager of the Commercial Bank of London Ltd. … but the public does not want to know that Mr Anatole France is a great man. The only evidence of notice is a list of our pseudonyms. It matters that Mr Richard Le Gallienne should write under the name of 'Logroller,' for that is odd. Mr Le Gallienne, being an author, is a curiosity; it matters to nobody that he is a man.

What is the area of a novelist's reputation? How far do the ripples extend when he casts a novel into the whirlpool of life? It is difficult to say, but few novelists were ever so well known to the people as were in their time such minor figures as Bradlaugh and Dr Grace, nor is there a novelist to-day whose fame can vie with that of, say, Mr Roosevelt. It is strange to think that Dickens himself could not in his own day create as much stir as, say, Lord Salisbury. He lacked political flavour; he was merely one of the latter day prophets who lack the unique advertisement of being stoned. It will be said that such an instance is taken from the masses of the world, most of whom do not read novels, while all are affected by the politician, but in those circles that support literature the same phenomenon appears; the novel may be known; the novelist is not. The novel is not respected and, indeed, one often hears a woman, at a big lending library, ask for 'three of the latest novels.' New novels! Why not new potatoes? She takes the books away calmly, without looking at the titles or the names. She is quite satisfied; sometimes she does not care much whether or not she has read those novels before, for she does not remember them. They go in at one ear and come out at the other presumably, as a judge said, because there is nothing to stop them.

It is undeniable that the great mass of readers forget either names or titles; many forget both. Some of the more educated remember the author and ask their library for 'something by E. M. Dell,' because she writes such sweet, pretty books, a definition where slander subtly blends with veracity. But, in most cases, nothing remains of either author or title except a hazy impression; the reader is not quite sure whether the book she liked so much is Fraternity or the Corsican Brothers . She will know that it had something to do with family, and that the author's name began with 'G' … unless it was 'S'. It cannot be otherwise, so long as novels are read in the way they are read, that is to say, if they are taken as drugs. Generally, novels are read to dull the mind, and many succeed, ruining the chances of those whose intent is not morphean, which fulfil the true function of art, viz., to inflame. The object of a novel is not to send the reader to sleep, not to make him oblivious of time on a railway journey; it is meant to show character, to stimulate observation, to make life vivid, and as life is most vivid when it is most unpleasant, the novel that is worth reading is naturally set aside. For such novels stir the brain too much to let it go to sleep. Those novels are judged in the same way as the baser kind, and that is, perhaps, why the novel itself stands so low. It does stand low, at least in England, for it is almost impossible to sell it. Inquiries made of publishers show that they expect to sell to the circulating libraries seventy to seventy-five per cent. of the copies printed. To sell to a circulating library is not selling; it is lending at one remove; it means that a single copy bought by a library is read by anything between twenty and a hundred people. Sometimes it is read by more, for a copy bought by Mudie's is sold off when the subscribers no longer ask for it. It goes to a town of the size of, say Winchester. Discarded after a year or so by the subscribers it may be sold off for a penny or twopence, with one thrown into the dozen for luck, and arrive with its cover hanging on in a way that is a testimonial to the binder, with its pages marked with thumbs, stained with tears, or, as the case may be, with soup, at some small stationer's shop in a little market town, to go out on hire at a penny a week, until it no longer holds together, and goes to its eternal rest in the pulping machine. On the way, nobody has bought it except to let it out, as the padrone sends out the pretty Italian boys with an organ and a monkey. The public have not bought the book to read and to love. The twenty-five or thirty per cent. actually sold have been disposed of as birthday or Christmas presents, because one has to give something, and because one makes more effect with a well-bound book costing six shillings than with six shillings' worth of chocolates. Literature has been given its royalty on the bread of shame. Yet, impossible as the novel finds it to tear its shilling from the public, the theatre easily wheedles it into paying a guinea or more for two stalls. It seems strange that two people will pay a guinea to see Three Weeks on the boards, yet would never dream of giving four and sixpence for Miss Elinor Glyn's book. That is because theatre seats must be paid for, while books can be borrowed. It goes so far that novelists are continually asked 'where one can get their books,' meaning 'where they can be borrowed'; often they are asked to lend a copy, while no one begs a ride from a cabman.

In England, the public of the novel is almost exclusively feminine. Few men read novels, and a great many nothing at all except the newspaper. They say that they are too busy, which is absurd when one reflects how busy is the average woman. The truth is that they are slack and ignorant. They have some historic reason to despise the novel, for it is quite true that in the nineteenth century, with a few exceptions, such as Thackeray, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dickens, Scott, George Eliot, the three volume novel was trash. It dealt, generally, with some rhetorical Polish hero, a high-born English maiden, cruel parents, and Italian skies. Right up to 1885 that sort of thing used to arrive every morning outside Mudie's in a truck, but if it still arrives at Mudie's in a truck it should not be forgotten that other novels arrive. That is what the men do not know. If they read at all you will find them solemnly taking in The Reminiscences of Mr Justice X. Y. Z. or Shooting Gazelle in Bulbulland , Political Economics , or Economic Politics , (it means much the same either way up). All that sort of thing, that frozen, dried-up, elderly waggishness, that shallow pomp, is mentally murderous. Sometimes men do read novels, mostly detective stories, sporting or very sentimental tales. When observed, they apologise and say something about resting the brain. That means that they do not respect the books they read, which is base; it is like keeping low company, where one can yawn and put one's boots on the sofa. Now, no company is low unless you think it is. As soon as you realise that and stay, you yourself grow naturalised to it. Likewise, if you read a book without fellowship and respect for its author, you are outraging it. But mankind is stupid, and it would not matter very much that a few men should read novels in that shamefaced and patronising way if they were not so open about it. If they do not apologise, they boast that they never read a novel; they imply superiority. Their feminine equivalent is the serious-minded girl, who improves her mind with a book like Vicious Viscounts of Venice ; if she reads novels at all she holds that like good wine they improve with keeping, and must be at least fifty years old. By that time the frivolous author may have redeemed his sins.