The first number of The Bookman (October 1891), the
periodical of that name published in London, bore, as would all subsequent
numbers, the running head "I am a Bookman. James Russell
Lowell." It was founded by W. R. Nicoll, for many years its editor,
and is not to be confused with The Bookman, a Review of Books and
Life . . . published in New York by Dodd, Mead and Company.
The
London Bookman appeared without any editorial manifesto
but
with a prefatory list of contributors, the first number listing, among others,
J. M. Barrie, A. C. Benson, Oscar Browning, Thomas Hardy, Nicoll
himself, Walter Pater, A. T. Quiller-Couch ("Q"), and Lord Selborne.
Contributors to later volumes included W. B. Yeats, G. K. Chesterton,
Alfred
Noyes, Walter de la Mare, T. J. Wise, Katherine Tynan and a growing
number of academics. Some notice has been taken in author bibliographies
of the writings of these and other contributors, although many, especially
reviews and letters, have been neglected. A random check of a number of
the articles in
The Bookman reveals that the compilers of the
CBEL and of the
NCBEL have, for the most
part,
overlooked much that should have been noted, including some
letters.
The editor of The Bookman asked a number of
"representative authors, artists, and men and women eminent in English
public life" to favour him with a note of
(1) Any personal recollection they had of or connected with Dickens;
(2) whether their life or work owed anything to his influence; (3) their
personal opinion of the value of his novels; whether they considered his
humour appealed as strongly to readers of our time as of his own, and
which they would rank as the greatest of his books. (41:247)
Among those responding and whose replies were printed in the February
1912 number were Thomas Hardy and G. K. Chesterton. I quote them in
order of appearance.
In reply to your inquiries I regret to say that I have no information
to give that can be of much service to you. I did not know Dickens, though
when a young man in London I heard him read from his books in the
Hanover Square Rooms.
But as I was thinking more of verse than of prose at that time, I do
not know that my literary efforts owed much to his influence. No doubt
they owed something unconsciously, since everybody's did in those
days.
Your other questions I cannot answer. (41:247)
G. K. Chesterton's reply was described as "brief but emphatic."
(1) Personal recollection . . . —Nothing.
(2) Whether life or work owes anything to influence . . .
—Everything.
(3) Personal opinion of value of his novels—His novels have
long
been independent of anybody's personal opinion. I consider that his humour
appeals
more to readers of the present day. I think his
greatest
book is "Pickwick."
[1]
(41:255)
Hall Caine's autobiographical My Story (1968) has a
chapter on his friendship with John Ruskin and one on his friendship with
Wilkie Collins. He quotes no letters from Ruskin to him but he does quote
passages from letters of Collins to him. The first letter from Collins, from
which Caine quotes the last four paragraphs (20:319-320), is undated, but
the entire letter, dated March 15, 1888, is printed in full in volume twenty
(August 1901) as part of a long article on Caine by J. E. Hodder Williams
(20:138-146). This letter from London is of primary interest for its light on
Collins as a critic of the novel. He had received a copy of Hall Caine's
The Deemster
and thus had led him to compare it to Caine's
The Shadow of a
Crime. He wrote,
You have written a remarkable work of fiction—a great
advance on
"The Shadow of a Crime" (to my mind)—a powerful and pathetic
story,
the characters vividly conceived, and set in action with a master hand.
Within the limits of a letter, I cannot quote a tenth part of the passages
which have seized on my interest and admiration. As one example, among
many others which I should like to quote, let me mention the chapter that
describes the fishermen taking the dead body out to sea in the hope of
concealing the murder. The motives assigned to the men and the manner in
which they express themselves show a knowledge of human nature which
places you among the masters of our craft, and a superiority to temptations
to conventional treatment that no words of mine can praise too
highly.
He then looked forward to Caine's next book and had this advice for
him.
When you next take up your pen, will you consider a little whether
your tendency to dwell on what is grotesque and violent in human character
does not require some discipline? Look again at the "Deemster," and at
some of the qualities and modes of thought attributed to "Dan."
Again, your power as a writer sometimes misleads you, as I think,
into forgetting the value of contrast. The grand picture which your story
presents of terror and grief wants relief. Individually and collectively, there
is variety in the human lot. We are no more continuously neglected than we
are continuously happy. Next time, I want more of the humour which leaks
out so delightfully in old "Quilleash." More breaks of sunshine in your
splendid cloudy sky will be a truer picture of nature, and will certainly
enlarge the number of your admiring readers.
He closed by assuring Caine that he had not yet written his best book.
Caine quotes fragments from what would appear to be two more letters
from Collins, the first being an invitation for Caine to visit him: "If you
don't object to a room without a carpet or a curtain, I can declare myself
still possessed of a table and two chairs, pen and ink, and brandy and
water, and I should be delighted to see you" (20:320-321). The second
fragment is actually the second paragraph of the March 15, 1888, letter
(20:334-335). The letter from Ruskin (20:140-141) is known; there is no
edition of Collins's letters.
The October 1892 number prints two more letters from Wilkie
Collins in a piece titled "An Interview with Mr. A. P. Watt" (3:20). Watt
was a prominent literary agent the walls of whose office "on the first floor
of 2 Paternoster Square" were covered with photographs of his clients.
Among these was one of "the late Wilkie Collins, and beside it the
following note— a codicil which was found after his death attached
to his
will":
I desire that my friend and literary representative, Mr. W. P. Watt,
of 2, Paternoster Square, may act as my Literary Executor, and that his
advice may be accepted as representing my literary interests and wishes in
regard to the copyrights of my books which may remain to be sold after my
death by my other executors. WILKIE COLLINS.
Watt commented,
Wilkie and I were the best of friends since the time I first met him,
about 1880, until the day of his death. As his health began to fail he felt
less and less able to do
all the work for which he had commissions, and I had some rather delicate
negotiations with some of his publishers to keep things going smoothly. He
was always so profuse in his thanks, however, that it was a real pleasure
to do him a service of any kind. I remember a very amusing letter I had
from him about the time of the Sackville incident in the U.S.A.
The answering letter concludes the part about Collins in the
interview.
83, Wimpole Street, W.
13th Nov., 1888.
MY DEAR WATT,—My best thanks for your letter and the
enclosures. You have achieved a masterly success with our proprietors. If
I could spare you as a friend (which I cannot possibly do), I should
recommend the Government to send you to the United States
as
diplomatic representative in the place of Lord Sackville.—Ever
yours.
WILKIE COLLINS.
Kenneth Robinson, in Wilkie Collins. A Biography (1952),
acknowledges that "The Executors of the late Alexander Pollock Watt, who
was the first literary agent and Wilkie Collins' literary executor have given
me permission to publish Collins' letters in this biography; and the present
partners in the firm of A. P. Watt & Son have allowed me to read a
number of his other letters" (p. [9]). Although Robinson refers to the
preservation of Collins's letters to Watt and mentions Collins's appointing
Watt as his literary executor, he does not quote the codicil or the letter (pp.
299-300).
The first volume of The Bookman (Dec. 1891)
contained
an article titled "The State Recognition of Authors" (pp. 97-98), the first
two sentences of which read, "In the recent controversy between Mr.
Besant and the Spectator as to the desirability of titles and
distinctions being conferred by the State on eminent men of letters, the
voices of those most directly interested in the matter, with the exception of
Mr. Besant, have not been kind. For this reason we asked a few
distinguished literary and scientific men to express their opinions on the
subject." There were replies from F. Max Müller, John Tyndall,
Selborne, Walter Lecky, and Thomas Hardy. Hardy wrote,
Sir,—I dare say it would be very interesting that literature
should
be honoured by the State. But I don't see how it could be satisfactorily
done. The highest flights of the pen are often, indeed mostly, the excursions
and revelations of souls unreconciled to life; while the natural tendency of
a government would be to encourage acquiescence in life as it is. However,
I have not thought much about the matter. (p. 98)
Only F. Max Müller thought the suggestion a good one, since honors
and distinctions were accorded literary men in Germany.
Hardy figured prominently in the second volume, as Nicoll, the
editor, reported on a recent conversation someone had had with Hardy. He
was asked "why he gave 'Tess' so sad an ending."
"For the simple reason," he replied, "that I could not help myself. I
hate the optimistic grin which ends a story happily, merely to suit
conventional ideas. It raises a far greater horror in me than the honest
sadness that comes after tragedy. Many people wrote to me begging to end
it well. One old gentleman of eighty implored me to reconcile Tess and
Angel. But I could not. They would never have lived happily.
Angel was far too fastidious and particular. He would inevitably have
thrown her fall in her face. But indeed I had little or nothing to do with it.
When I got to the middle of the story, the characters took their fates into
their own hands, and I literally had no power."
------------------
"Besides," went on Mr. Hardy, "don't you see by her violent death
poor Tess makes some reparation for her sins, and so justice is satisfied.
I can assure you many of my feminine readers feel that very
strongly."
------------------
"Don't some people find fault with you for calling Tess a
pure woman?" "Well, perhaps they do. I consider that she
was
to all intents and purposes a pure woman till her last fall. Then she was as
a mere corpse drifting in the water to her end—an absolutely
irresponsible being. No," went on Mr. Hardy in reply to a remark, "I hate
word-painting. I never try to do it; all I endeavour is to give
an
impression of a scene as it strikes me. For instance,
Stonehenge
I describe exactly as I saw it on that sad day, when I decided Tess must
die—can I ever forget the misery of that day? There was the
lowering
sky, and the wind booming past the great temple of the Druids; I always go
to a place first before attempting to describe it. I went purposely to
Winchester that I might know what to say when I described Angel Clare
and her sister climbing up the hill to see the black flag run up that was to
announce the doom of Tess."
------------------
"Are many of your characters from life, Mr. Hardy?" "Oh yes,
almost all of them. I knew those three dairy maids as a boy well. The old
clergyman was a much-loved vicar in this very neighborhood. Bathsheba
Everdene in 'Far from the Madding Crowd' was my own aunt. Now and
again real people with their own names walk into my pages. Do you
remember Admiral Hardy in 'The Trumpet Major'? Well, there he is;" and
Mr. Hardy pointed to the portrait of a handsome old naval officer that hung
upon the wall; "that is Sir Thomas Hardy in whose arms Nelson died; he
was a relation of mine. Then 'Shepherd Oak' I knew well when I was a
boy." "And you find these simple country people interesting to write
about?" "Why, certainly I do. They have far more sentiment and romance
than the class above them, which has a struggle ever going on within its
ranks for petty social superiority. If you live among these people you will
find after a time that variety takes the place of monotony. The people begin
to
differentiate themselves as in a chemical process. They become beings of
many minds, infinite in difference; some happy, many serene, a few
depressed, one here and there bright even to genius; some stupid, others
wanton, others austere; some mutely Miltonic, some potentially
Cromwellian. The men strong heroic souls; the girls dainty heroines.
Remember, as I have said, they, or many of them, are the representatives
of a magnificent antiquity." (p. 6)
Here, better than any second-hand or more remote account, are Hardy's
ipsissima verba, as reported by Nicoll.
A "Symposium on the Republication of Newspaper Articles" designed
to elicit replies "on the desirability of seeking a more permanent audience
for journalistic work" prompted a reply from Andrew Lang, surely one of
the most prolific journalists of his time.
Dear Sir,
—I do not think I can enter into the subject of my own
performances. But some things are written with the purpose of publishing
them in book shape, yet are first used in a serial, just as a novel runs
through a magazine. The serial form is a mere accident. I doubt whether
essays written as journalistic work pure and simple are often worth
reprinting. The distinction between the two sorts is obvious and essential,
and specimens of both kinds may be found in the final collection, for
example, of Thackeray's writings.—Faithfully yours,
A. Lang. (12:65)
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, not yet knighted, to be sure, contributed
a number of pieces over the years. He contributed an appreciation of J. M.
Barrie to the first volume of the Bookman (1:169, 171) and
reviewed Barrie's novel The Little White Bird ten years later
(23:49-51). One of the pieces in the first number of volume two (April
1892) was "A Talk With Mr. Quiller-Couch—'Q'" (14-15; quoted
below). When the Scots scholar-critic, biographer, and editor of Sir Walter
Scott's poetry Walter Minto died, "Q" was one of those asked to contribute
an obituary notice to the Bookman (4:13). In addition he
wrote
a number of other reviews: Vol. 21, E. A. Bennet, Fame and
Fiction . . . (21-22); Letters of John Richard Green,
ed.
Leslie Stephen (85-86); Augustine Birrell, Miscellanies (95);
Patrick Walker, Six Saints of the Covenant . . . (138-139);
Irving Bacheller, D'ri and I . . . (140-141); G. K.
Chesterton,
The Defendant
(168-169). Vol. 22, The Victorian Anthology, ed. M. E.
Grant
Duff (19-20); Margaretta Byrde, The Searchers (99-100);
William Watson, Coronation Ode . . . (130-137); Charles G.
Harper, The Holy Road . . . (207-208). Vol. 23, Austin
Dobson, Side-Walk Studies (60-61); fourteen novels (94-96);
Sidney Lee, Queen Victoria (152-153). Vol. 24, Emile Zola,
Truth (20-22); Elsworth Lawson, From the Unvarying
Star (66); Joseph Conrad, Typhoon and Other Stories
(108-109).
I have insisted, so far privately, on the importance of reviews, and
take this as one opportunity to explain my reasons, if, indeed, reasons be
needed. While some bibliographers and fewer biographers list all or some
of the reviews of their authors, most do not (the Soho bibliographies for the
most part being exceptions). F. Brittain, for example, lists some of Q's
reviews in his biography but overlooks those written for The
Bookman—among others.[2]
One reads the essay on J. M. Barrie in volume one and the review of
The Little White Bird in volume twenty-three with keener
appreciation of Q's words when one knows the relationship between the two
men. Barrie was on the staff of The Speaker when Q was
assistant editor; Q dedicated his novel Ia to him; Barrie spent
much of his honeymoon in Fowey and "spent many happy hours at The
Haven" (Q's home in Fowey); the two contemplated collaborating on a
play; and, to summarize,
although more could be mentioned, in 1903 Barrie wrote, "I think it is the
truth to say that in these 40 years I have met no man who has meant as
much to me," and in 1909, "On the whole I've cared for you more than any
other of our calling" (Brittain, pp. 19, 31, 33, 42, and 45). Although there
was some constraint in their later relationship, Q could write to a friend on
Barrie's death, "For all that, our affection held, unstrained, to the end. A
few months before his death he dined with us at Queen Anne's Mansions
and talked away till past midnight—loth to go then, as he told us,
rather
wistfully" (Brittain, p. 141). But Q could be objective about the weaknesses
in Barrie's work in the early essay, though in the review, ten years later,
he outdid himself in praise of The Little White Bird.
The review of Zola's Truth
(Verité) is
important in that in it Q expresses some of his most dearly-held beliefs. As
prelude, however, I should point out that Q had reviewed Zola's
Lá Debâcle in The Speaker for
September
23, 1892 (reprinted in Adventures in Criticism [1925], pp.
107-111). There he had written that the novel stifled him as did Zola's later
books (p. 108). Q was Church of England and a Liberal, an active one,
Brittain writing of his "life-long fidelity to Liberalism" (p. 51). One of Q's
Cambridge lectures, "Tradition and Orthodoxy," published in 1934 as one
of the essays in The Poet as Citizen and Other Papers, was
in
reply to T. S. Eliot's who had used the phrase, "a society like ours,
worm-eaten with Liberalism." Q wrote that what Eliot meant by Liberalism
was "anything which questions dogma: which dogma, to be right dogma,
is the priestly utterance of a particular branch of a historically fissiparous
Church"
(quoted in Brittain, pp. 141-142). Thus, when one goes back to the Zola
review in The Bookman, thirty-one years before the
publication
of the volume in which the lecture was printed, one sees, retrospectively,
how very strongly Q felt. Indeed, I believe the relevant part of the Zola
review is the strongest statement, couched in the strongest language, Q ever
made on the subject. The review, as with others of his reviews, is material
for biographers, and, of course, for bibliographers. Q's mention of his
lifting "a humble voice at the time of the Rennes trial" of Alfred Dreyfus
would not be known from Brittain's biography, and the locus of his remarks
remains to be discovered.
E. A. Bennet's Fame and Fiction. An Enquiry into Certain
Popularities (1901), reviewed by Q, had a chapter on "Mr. J. M.
Barrie" in which Bennet wrote, among other statements, that "when we
return to the best parts of 'A Window in Thrums,' we are apt to remark
that we care not whether Mr. Barrie is a literary artist or not, he is an
undefined. Something that we enjoy." Q, who had quoted this statement,
wrote that Bennet's "shrewdness" had deserted him in the chapter on
Barrie, adding that "the business of the critic is to define these undefined
somethings, and to expound the pleasure which he has had the capacity to
feel" (21:21). Given what I have already written above about Q and Barrie,
one can understand Q's reservations about Bennet's chapter on Barrie. One
of Q's associates on The Speaker, the periodical of which he
was assistant editor, was Augustine Birrell, whom he disliked. "'That man
takes himself much too seriously and nothing else seriously enough' he
once wrote to Wemyss Reid; but at another time he described Birrell as
'representing Fife [for which he was MP] as it ought to be
represented—by wind'" (Brittain, p. 19). Despite his dislike of the
man,
Q praised the volume of essays, Miscellanies, in his review
of
it, writing of the "enjoyment" afforded by "this wise and witty volume"
(21:95). William Watson was another of Q's associates on The
Speaker, and Q's review of Watson's Coronation ode
is
laudatory with but one flaw noted, an "untrue" conceit (22:130-131).
I do not know how many interviews Q granted, and hence reprint this
one from the Bookman, especially as here one gets his
off-the-cuff remarks
about a number of authors. I omit the first two paragraphs and begin with
Q's answer to the question of how he would justify the existence of a critic.
"Well," he replied, with a smile, "the only justification for his
existence is that criticism is a branch of the art of enjoyment. He tells the
people what they are to enjoy. But it is not therefore necessary to
blackguard a man. No, I don't think it is possible to 'train' critics; we
cannot establish a 'critical' college, or hold 'critical' exams. for
professional critics. The question is not Does he find
enjoyment
in his work? so much as Do other people enjoy it? 'The proof of the
pudding is in the eating.' Howells starts with a priori notions
about truth being the first necessity for art, and then in this
notion he condemns writers. Now, I maintain that you can't stick to the
dead level of truth. The artist sees simply or melodramatically according as
he has simplicity or melodrama in the back of his eye. Jane Austen is true,
and Charles Reade is true, and yet there is no similarity between 'Pride and
Prejudice' and 'The Cloister and the Hearth.' There is
room for all. The test of an artist's truth is his strength."
Blathwayt then asked what the general trend in English fiction was today.
"Well," was the reply, "we are beginning to see the truth of realism.
There is more representation of life, and less presentation.
All
this involves an attitude of humility towards nature and the great facts of
life. Take Hardy, for instance. See how true he is. In one of his books he
tells us he knows what kind of tree it is he is walking under at night,
merely by the sound the wind makes rustling through the leaves. There is
an indication of humble study of nature. Look at that picture of Alfred
Parsons," continued Mr. Couch, for I may mention that at the moment we
were seated in Mr. Parsons' studio, "look at that picture of Parsons, and
see how true it is to nature. Look at those trees, the sunlight on that upland,
the massing of those clouds on the horizon. That is nature. Hardy and
Parsons are wonderfully alike in that respect. But still, whilst you must
represent, you can't get rid of presentation, as
Howells urges must be done. A writer cannot get away
from himself. I believe myself in no general statement. Each man brings
forth his own work, and the critics must find this out."
Do men or women most respond to the spirit of the age? Q said it was
decidedly men.
Take Meredith, for instance. No man, or woman either, has made us
so thoroughly understand women as he has done, and that is
the
great test of a novelist. Tolstoi's 'War and Peace' is the biggest novel ever
written as yet. But Meredith is the greatest amongst the English writers. He
is so far ahead in his ideas of women and what they want."
And when Blathwayt confessed he couldn't understand Meredith, Q replied
"Well," he said, "as a matter of fact, I think only one or two artists
can really understand him. These advanced views of his have really
retarded him more than the difficulties of his style. Hardy and Meredith
understand women better than any one else, though both Henry James and
Howells are very careful students of women also."
The rest of the interview was largely about Q's own books. Q confessed he
attached real value only to
Noughts and Crosses, which led
him
to consideration of the supposed wane of the vogue of the novel.
"Look at 'Our Conquerors,' 'The Scapegoat,' 'Tess,' 'The Little
Minister.' It is wonderful. And quite as remarkable it is to notice the
manner in which we are
getting out of the old conventional groove. To transplant a bad French
convention and to defy Mudie, as a year or two ago people were inclined
to do, is not good art, nor is it realism. But to produce splendid originality
and a clean, healthy realism is to promulgate a new gospel. The outlook is
very bright."
The interview, one of many Blathwayt conducted, evidently made but little
impression on him for there is no mention of Q in the chapter "Some
people I have met" in his autobiography,
Through Life and Round
the
World, the Story of My Life (1917).
The relevance of reviews for a more complete understanding of the
reviewer's critical opinions, as well as the possible addition of new or
complementary biographical information, can be seen in the reviews Q
wrote for the London Bookman. Should one resurrect all the
reviews Q wrote for the periodicals, one would have a large body of
material upon which to call. Q was a most prolific writer, but those of his
reviews which have been forgotten, whatever their number and extent,
should be added to his bibliography and studied for whatever light they may
throw upon him as man and critic.