CHAPTER XII FICTION

After much patient thinking, the English have come to the conclusion that there is but one branch of literary art, and that its name is Fiction. And by fiction the English really mean the six-shilling novel. I do not think it is too much to say, that since the six-shilling novel was first thrust upon our delighted attention it has never brought within its covers six shillings' worth of reading. The high priest and the high priestess who serve to the right and left of the altar of six-shillingism are, as every one knows, Mr. Hall Caine and Miss Marie Corelli. Each of them wears a golden ephod, with a breastplate of jewels arranged to spell out the magic figures, One Hundred[Pg 114] Thousand. All the other priests of the Tabernacle look with awe and envy upon these two, because the other priests' breastplates have hard work to spell out fifty thousand, and some of them do not even achieve one thousand five hundred. Burnt-offerings of Caine and Corelli therefore fill the place with savour. A pair of sorrier writers never was on sea or land. Everybody knows it, nobody denies it, and nobody seems sad about it. The six-shilling novel is an established English institution. Caine and Corelli are its prop and stay, and the rest do their best to keep in the running and pick up the minor money-bags.

The perusal of six-shilling fiction is practically a sort of mania. It has seized in its grip the fairest England has to show, particularly matrons, the younger women, and stockbrokers. For the Englishwoman the daily round would lose its saltness did she not have handy the newest six-shilling novel by Mr. Caine, Miss Corelli, or the next literary bawler in the market-place. There are shops[Pg 115] called "libraries," to which the Englishwoman repairs for her supplies of literary pabulum. Here the six-shilling novel has a great time. Strapped together in sixes, or packed in boxes of dozens, it is handed forth to the carriages of its fair devourers, and taken right away to its repose in the cultured homes of Bayswater and Kensington. From morning till night many Englishwomen do little but read this precious stuff. What they get out of it amounts in the long run to hysteria and an?mia. It brings about a general deadening of the mind and a general jaggedness of the emotions, coupled with an utter incapacity to take any save an exaggerated view of the facts of life. Discontent, disillusionment, ennui, boredom, ill-temper, a sharp tongue, and a cynical spirit are other symptoms which the six-shilling novel is prone to evoke. The habit is worse than opium or haschisch or tea cigarettes. It is just the devil, and that is all you need say about it. The persons employed in the opium traffic are supposed to[Pg 116] be very wicked. To my mind, the persons employed in the fiction traffic are as wicked as wicked can be. When the foul disease began first to make its ravages obvious, there were not wanting persons who would have checked it and provided remedies for it. These persons squeaked somewhat, and nothing more has been heard of them. So the thing goes on unrestrained, and even applauded by press and pulpit alike; and the Englishwoman has become a confirmed, inveterate, and incurable fiction-reader. If a man have an enemy to whom he would do an abiding injury, let him persuade that enemy to obtain the six more popular six-shilling novels of the moment, and read them through. If the man's enemy sticks to his bargain—at which, however, he will probably shy in the middle of the second volume—the chances are that he gets up from that reading a broken and spiritless man. His brain will be as saggy as a sponge full of treacle, and his vision as unreliable as that of the alcoholist who always saw two[Pg 117] cabs, and invariably got into the one that was not there.

Seriously, however, what is there about this English fiction—or, for that matter, about Scottish fiction—that men and women should buy it and devour it to the exclusion of all other literary fare? It is ill-written, it is not original, it is not like life, it is not beautiful, it is not inspiring, it does not touch the profound emotions, it means nothing, and it ends nowhere. The reason of its popularity is, that it appeals to an indolent habit of mind, and, as a general rule, is calculated to excite the passions, and particularly to open up questions which experience has shown to be best left alone. In nine cases out of ten, where a popular work of fiction is concerned, it is always possible to put one's finger on the chapter or passages on which its popularity is based; and in nine cases out of ten that chapter or those passages have to do with sexual matters. The questions which arise out of the relation of man and woman are no doubt vitally important and most[Pg 118] interesting; but that they should be discussed in an unscientific, irresponsible, and catch-penny way by everybody who can trail a pen is something of a scandal. If an author can succeed in inventing a sexual situation which could not by any possible chance exist for a moment in real life, or if he can put a glow and a gloss on the tritenesses of love and lust, his success as a fictionist is to all intents and purposes assured. What is sometimes spoken of as wholesome fiction scarcely exists—anyway, nobody reads it. It is the carefully constructed book about sex that sells and is read. Such a book need not be flagrant, as was once thought to be the case; it can be "a work of art"—a thing of veiled suggestion, delicate, unobjectionable, and seemingly meet to be read.

One has hesitation in asserting that such books ought not to be written or ought not to be circulated. It is difficult to justify any attitude of intolerance in such a matter; yet the fact remains that the maids and matrons of England, together with the men[Pg 119] who have the leisure and sufficient lack of brains to read fiction, are being stuffed season by season and year by year with about the most undesirable kind of sexual philosophy that could well be placed before them. Of any Englishwoman of the leisured class above the age of sixteen years it may be said, as was said of the late Professor Jowett in a different sense, "What I don't know isn't knowledge." And the instructor in all cases is a fictionist. If a man took his notion of business, or politics, or art, out of six-shilling novels, he would be set down for a fool. Yet most Englishwomen get their view of love and the married relation from these extraordinary works, and it is taken for granted that nobody is a penny the worse. For my own part, I should incline to the opinion that the only persons who are a penny, not to say six shillings, the worse, are the English middle and upper classes as a body.

Much has been said in derision of what the English call the Kailyard school of fiction—[Pg 120]Kailyard fiction being, I need scarcely say, a brand of fiction written by Scotsmen usually in Scotland, and sold in the English and the American markets. Everybody of taste and judgment cheerfully admits that Kailyarders are not persons of genius. For the delectation of the Southerner they have made a Scotland of their own, the which, however, is not Scotland. They have made a Scottish sentiment, a Scottish point of view, a Scottish humour, a Scottish pathos, and even a Scottish dialect, which may be reckoned quite doubtful. At the same time, one looks in vain to the Kailyarders for anything that is worse than slobber—anything really noxious and dreadful, that is to say. One might read Kailyard for ever and a day without coming to great moral grief. Indeed, I would point out that, on the whole, the Kailyard system of ethics partakes somewhat of the character of the system of ethics which used to be unfolded in the melodrama of our grandfathers' days. Virtue rewarded, vice punished, is the moral upshot of it.[Pg 121] And in any case, and let it be as bad and as meretricious and as greatly to be deprecated as one will, we must always remember that the Kailyard book is a work invented and manufactured, not for Scotsmen, but for the Anglo-Saxon—the Englishman and his offshoots.

Some months back a considerable hubbub arose in English literary circles because M. Jules Verne had been saying to an interviewer, at Amiens of all places in the world! that the novel as a form of literary expression was doomed, and would gradually die out of popular favour. It is safe to say that, in the eyes of sundry critics of pretty well every nationality, the novel has been doomed any time this last fifty years. Yet the novel comes up smiling every time. Since it was reduced in price to six shillings in England it has undoubtedly deteriorated, not only as a piece of writing, but also in the matter of ethical intention. So long as it remains the prey of some of its latter-day exploiters, so long will it continue to deteriorate. So long[Pg 122] as the English mind continues to be feeble and unwholesome, and to yearn for artificial thrills and undesirable emotions, so long will English fiction continue to be of its present decadent quality. As the capitalist says, it is all a question of supply and demand. The great aim of writers of fiction, or at any rate of ninety-nine per cent. of them, is to produce an article that will sell. You must turn out what the public want, and they will assuredly buy it. The knack of hitting the public taste looks easy to acquire, and the fictionist strives after it with all his might. Many are called to make fortunes out of novel-writing: few are chosen. But nobody can examine the work of those few without perceiving that for weal or woe—principally for woe—they know their business.

Of course, it goes without saying that a very considerable amount of fiction is published in England which is just as mild and just as innocuous as tinned milk. To this puling variety of fiction, however, the English do not appear to be very greatly drawn.[Pg 123] It crops up with great regularity every publishing season, it is solemnly reviewed in the critical journals, and it even stands shoulder by shoulder with stronger meat in the bookshops. But the fact remains that it does not sell; to see "Second Edition" on it is the rarest occurrence. In fine, the English will have their fiction spiced, and highly spiced, or not at all. Mealy mouthed writers, over-reticent, over-blushful, over-austere writers, they do not want; neither have they any admiration for a writer who is plagued with a feeling for style, and who may be reckoned an artist in the collocation of words. Their much-vaunted Meredith has never had the sale of a Crockett or a Barrie or a Hocking, or, for that matter, of a J.K. Jerome. The English have little or no literary taste, little or no literary acumen, and they expect their fictionists to give them anything and everything save what is edifying.