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THE SPECTATOR, January 18, 1890, pp. 84-85
A COMMENTARY IN AN EASY-CHAIR :
DISCUSSIONS ON LITERATURE—CANDOUR IN FICTION—THE
MORALS OF ENGLISH SOCIETY—MR. GLADSTONE
AND THE LAST TWO HUNDRED YEARS.
I WONDER whether the discussion of purely literary subjects
has really the interest for the general public which it is
supposed to have, or if other people besides those who are in
some way mixed up with the pursuits of the literary profession
feel any actual interest in such questions as that of Candour
in Fiction, Success in Fiction, the means of getting on as a
Novelist, and so forth—which are subjects upon which their
entertainers in the lighter branches of literature are so
continually endeavouring to enlighten them. There is
nothing at least like repetition for impressing the popular
mind, and subjects of this sort are easy to descant upon.
When a man is so kind as to tell us how he works at
his trade—as M. Daudet [1] does, for instance—how he is helped
by his charming wife, and how his delightful little boy carries
the sheets from one to the other, the public, which loves a
virtuous domestic interior even in France, where there is no
fear of that Young Person whom British novelists fear yet
cherish—is enchanted. They like to see the industry going on.
They also like to see how nails are made, and other kinds of
manufacture. Perhaps it is not necessary to demand higher
motives. But it is curious to see the persistence with which
English writers return to the attack, and endeavour to represent the one point of originality in English fiction, which
distinguishes it in the world, as its weakness. Even Mr.
Besant [2], who is by way of taking the side of purity, supports
it rather upon the argument that nothing else will pay, than on
any higher. And a very fine thing it is to be said for us, if it
is true, that nothing else will pay. I remember, however, on
the other band, to have heard not so many years ago of a poor
lady who has written a great many books, some of them of
the character which enlightened persons call "risky," and who
declared in her own defence that she did this because nothing
else would pay. So that even in this particular, opinions
differ. I should like to know, however, what Mr. Hardy, for
instance, would like to write that would outdo the grotesque
indecency of the turning-point of a story of his which be
calls "Two on a Tower[3]." The expedient by which his heroine
secures a father for her child is certainly as free as anything
in French fiction, if it were not so irresistibly comic by reason
of the desperate British snatch at propriety with which that
freedom is combined. But I do not know where our novelists
are to get the nastiness which they are so anxious to bring
into our books. In ordinary life, they tell us, people do not
commit murder or forge wills, but do break the Seventh Commandment. It may be so, in the froth of society. That it is
so on the broader level of English life, I do not believe.
It occurred to me lately to have a good many conversations with a very intelligent and brilliant Frenchwoman upon this subject. She began, needless to say, by a strenuous protest against the supposition that French novels gave any sort of real representation of French life,—an opinion which I have always held, partly because I have no belief in the possibility of universal corruption, and partly because domestic life in France has, as it happens, always appeared to me in a very attractive light. But in an uncontroversial moment, when she was thinking of no theory, my friend began to comment upon the behaviour of certain friends of hers in Paris, one of whom displayed a capacity to prendre son parti which kept her home intact, and procured her the approbation of all who knew her; while another, unable to reach this height of virtue, could not prendre son parti at all, but took her troubles badly, and made her home miserable. It need scarcely he added that the misfortunes to which these ladies could and could not make up their minds were the infidelities of their husbands, and that the brave woman who did prendre son parti (to the general approbation) was by far the most deeply injured of the two. The expediency of making up one's mind to one's fate in this way was so strongly urged by the eloquent talker, as to show what a very real and urgent matter it was, according to her knowledge and experience. But I confess that the gravity of this startling view was neutralised to me by the fact that there sat by my side listening, an English lady, of very enlightened views indeed, exceedingly removed from that ideal of the British Matron against whom our novelists are so bitter; and that the absolute and ludicrous absurdity of the supposition that this charming young woman should ever have to prendre son parti, so overwhelmed my sense of the ridiculous, that it was with difficulty I could listen with gravity to the impassioned plea for the forbearing wife which was being carried on. My English friend was deeply interested in the troubles of those poor ladies who had to prendre leur parti, far too much to contrast their position with her own. She for her part is not. I am sure, quite clear which is her John and which is herself in the one soul into which life and love has welded them, or which are his thoughts and which hers in their common stock; and as for the possibility that one time or other it should fall to her lot to prendre son parti!—I repeat, it was so extremely ludicrous that my consternation over the other revelation was lost in the agitation of a laugh that dared not come.
I replied to my French friend that the house in which we
talked was on the edge of a little community of intelligent and
highly educated people, chiefly in the prime of youth, or at
least of life—some thirty or forty married pairs, well off, lively,
pleasure -loving, in their way—full of life and activity: (I may
explain that it was close to one of the great Public Schools of
England), and that in the course of twenty years during which
I had known that community, there had not arisen one case in
which a wife had been called upon to prendre son parti, or
in which any scandal, or ghost of a scandal, had arisen.
Mademoiselle d'A— responded as a woman of politeness
would. She could not refuse to believe what I told her; "but
if I said so in France, they would laugh in my nose," she added, with a phraseology charmingly literal. Well! Mrs.
Lynn Linton and Mr. Hardy would probably find the condition
of the poor ladies who were compelled to prendre leur parti much the most dramatic—not to speak of the captivating
studies, on the other hand, of the ladies who gave them that
parti to take. A story-teller, loving strong effects may be
excused for finding the honest life tame; but this is not the
influence of the Young Person or the British Matron: it is the
level of English life.
I must add a delightful example of this wholesome and
fragrant existence in the little inadvertent speech of another
(female) member of a similar community, who was describing
the ways of thinking and feeling of a friend known to us both,
whose sense of duty to her husband and children struck this
gentle critic with a little chill in the midst of her approval.
To require to think of so grave a motive seemed strange to my
companion. "Why," she said, "I have been married a dozen
years, and I never once thought of my duty!" Was there ever
a more perfect gospel of true and spotless domestic life? I am
thankful to think that this highest unconscious poetry is at
the same time the commonplace of existence in the great mass
of that higher middle class in whom both fiction and biography
find their chief subjects, and in many of the highest, and also
many of the lower strata. The scum and the froth now as ever
come uppermost, and lay their unsavoury deposit out upon the
surface, which our novelists would like, it appears, to rake
together, and serve up—in locked bookcases. It appears to
me that the idea of mature men and women retiring to their
private apartments, and opening their secret cupboards in
order to read nasty stories, is about the most noisome suggestion I have ever heard. The Young Person, Mrs. Lynn
Linton advises, should be left free to the society of Jane
Austen, Walter Scott, and a few other proper writers. Happy
Young Person! She will have much the best of it. I would
rather spend my leisure hours with her than with her middle-aged uncle, reading Zola or Guy de Maupassant in the sacred
seclusion of the smoking-room at the club: or with her elderly
aunt who keeps the drawer locked in which her yellow-backed novels [4] live. As for Balzac, does not the English
novelist of the day know that in France that great romancer
is out of date?—assommant, as a French critic informed me
not long ago?
Certainly these are strange things to be said of English literature. And when the veteran of many fights, the master of every subject under heaven, takes a hand at this too delightful (as it seems) subject of easy remark, even his erudition seems to fail him. Mr. Gladstone as a reviewer of novels may be left to the docile public which still takes his advice on that subject at least; but when he begins to talk of literary history, he must keep to his facts a little—which are things possibly not indispensable in politics, but strongly clamant in historical questions. Last week, no further gone, from the height of that universal chairmanship of things in general which he has assumed, Mr. Gladstone was good enough to tell us that for two hundred years before Wordsworth there was a blank in poetical literature. Rash was the statement as ever man made, and easy to be disposed of, as are now, alas! many of the statements of Mr. Gladstone. We recommend to him a brief biographical dictionary by Mr. Hole, which we have found of great use when about to commit ourselves on such subjects. There he will find that a not unknown person called John Milton flourished within his two hundred years, that another named John Dryden, and a certain Alexander Pope, and towards the end William Cowper and Robert Burns lived and died within their round. Not inconsiderable names perhaps, and making, indeed, something of "a blank" when they are withdrawn. But I hope that Mr. Gladstone will reconsider his sweeping decision, and allow them to remain.
NOTES
[1] M. Daudet: French writer, 1840-1897. Oliphant is referring to a passage in Daudet's autobiographical collection, Trente Ans de Paris, published in 1888. He writes: "Aux deux bouts de l'immense pièce, ma table longue, le petit bureau de ma femme,
et courant, passant la copie de l'un à l'autre, mon fils aîné, carabin maintenant, alors un
bambin aux èpaisses boucles blondes tombant sur son petit tablier noir pour l'encre
de ses premiers bâtons. Un des meilleurs souvenirs de ma vie d'écrivain." Daudet, Alphonse, Trente Ans de Paris, Paris: C. Marpon et E. Flammarion, 1888, p. 315. Digital copy available at Gallica, bibliotèque numérique de la Bibliotèque nationale de France. [back]
[2] Mr Besant: Writer and antiquarian (1836-1901). He also had an important role in the establishment of the Society of Authors in 1884. Read more at Wikipedia and Notable Names Database (NNDB). [back]
[3] Two on a Tower: Published in 1882, the novel tells the story of Viviette, Lady Constantine. After being deserted by her aristocratic husband she meets an astronomer nine years her senior, and secretly marries him when she learns of her husband's death. Ashamed of the difference in age and social status she will never let the world know of their union, and eventually gives up on her young husband for his own sake. Not long after she finds out she is pregnant, and terrified by the prospect of shame and social isolation, she is persuaded by her brother to marry the Bishop of Melchester. [back]
[4]: yellow-backed novels: Also called "penny dreadfuls" or "dime novels" (in America), the term refers rather broadly to cheap paperback literature of a highly sensational nature. They took after the often condemned French yellow-backed novels, and they covered a wide range of subjects and genres. Read more at Gaslight, The House of Beadle & Adams and its Dime and Nickel Novels: The Story of a Vanished Literature by Albert Johannsen at House of Beadle & Adams Online, and Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls. [back]
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