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 ^
 
 STONES FROM A 
 GLASS HOUSE
 
 STONES FROM 
 A GLASS HOUSE 
 
 BY 
 
 JANE HELEN FINDLATER 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the STORY OF A MOTHER," " THE GREEN 
 GRAVES OF BALGOWRIE," ETC. 
 
 Hoiition 
 JAMES NISBET & CO., LIMITED 
 
 21 BERNERS STREET 
 
 1904
 
 Printed by Ballantvne, Hanson &> Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press
 
 TO 
 
 WALTER BLAIKIE 
 
 KIND FRIEND AND 
 HELPER
 
 The Author desires to acknowledge the kind 
 permission to reprint these articles, granted by 
 the Editor of the '■'■National Review" (Nos. 
 I, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, lO), the Editor of the 
 " Cornhill Magazine " {No. 7), and the Editor 
 of the " Atlantic Monthly" {No. 4). 
 
 VI
 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 " Those who live in glass houses should not throw 
 stonesP — Old Proverb. 
 
 Some one somewhere has said that pro- 
 verbs are the concentrated wisdom of the 
 ages. But even the wisdom of many 
 generations may, in certain cases, be ques- 
 tioned ; and the writer ventures to assert 
 that dwellers in glass houses are, by their 
 very residence there, privileged to throw 
 a few stones. 
 
 In plainer words : the writer of fiction 
 surely knows more than ,the mere reader 
 of it, about the merits or defects of a 
 story. To have attempted to write fiction 
 is to know its difficulties ; and a realisation 
 of these gives at once more leniency and 
 more severity to criticism. The novelist 
 will always judge technical faults severely ; 
 because he knows that it is generally pos- 
 sible to avoid such blemishes by care and 
 skill. But he will always be more merciful 
 than the novel reader in judging faults 
 of conception, knowing, as every writer 
 
 vii 

 
 Preface 
 
 does, that this is a matter over which 
 the writer has very little control. For 
 the reader will often say, " How stupid 
 of Mr. A. to make such a mistake in 
 the end of his book " ; or, " Why did 
 Mrs. B. not change that tiresome bit in her 
 book ? it spoilt all the rest " ; not knowing 
 that Mr. A. or Mrs. B. were quite as fully 
 aware of the weak bits in their work as 
 their readers were ; but that they were 
 powerless to change them. This, readers 
 can never be expected to understand. 
 
 The novelist has a further excuse for 
 writing about novels — that no one can 
 write of them with the same deep in- 
 terest. The reader reads each book for 
 its intrinsic interest or value ; the novelist 
 reads it as forming part of a literary 
 movement. This is the reason why you 
 may hear the novelist speak of "a poor 
 novel," or even of "a wretched novel," 
 but you will never hear from his lips that 
 hateful phrase "only a novel," because he 
 knows that rightly used the novel is a 
 great form for the expression of great 
 thoughts. The form has, indeed, been more 
 abused than any other, probably from its 
 apparent simplicity ; but this is no reason 
 why it should be spoken of with contempt. 
 
 viii
 
 Preface 
 
 "Your books are so successful I think / 
 must begin to write," is a remark con- 
 stantly made to authors by unliterary people 
 who imagine that the Art of Fiction is 
 mere child's play. 
 
 The causes, developments, and ten- 
 dencies of a literary movement are often 
 more interesting to study than the in- 
 dividual books that embody it. For this 
 reason the author has tried in these articles 
 to treat some of our present day fiction 
 in a synthetic manner, so as to show the 
 cause, development, and tendencies of each 
 group of books. By studying fiction in 
 this way it may be seen how much each 
 writer owes to his predecessors, and ad- 
 miration of the individual writer is at 
 once increased and diminished by this 
 knowledge. The consideration that no 
 absolutely new ideas can be found in 
 any author, however great he may be, 
 checks undue admiration ; it is realised 
 that other men, his predecessors, have 
 been gradually evolving these ideas which 
 in the fulness of time have found this 
 spokesman, and wanting him, would as 
 surely have found another. But along 
 with this realisation of the author's in- 
 debtedness to the past, comes a fuller 
 
 ix
 
 Preface 
 
 understanding of his personal gifts — of 
 that individual note which belongs to 
 each great writer and is his alone, not a 
 legacy from other minds. It is this 
 individual note which makes us imagine 
 that we find new ideas in certain books 
 — where the ideas are really venerably 
 old, only so recast by passing through the 
 medium of a great mind that the old 
 appears the new. This wonderful re- 
 casting process is the very hall-mark of 
 genius ; no second-class talent can bring 
 forth the well-worn ideas all bright and 
 burnished, and wearing what seems an 
 entirely new face. 
 
 In reading the work of others, questions 
 like these constantly suggest themselves 
 to one who writes, and this twofold in- 
 terest in books must be the author's 
 excuse for this little essay in criticism. 
 
 JANE H. FINDLATER. 
 Torquay, Jcmuary 1904. 
 
 X
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. Great War Novels . 
 II. On Religious Novels 
 
 III. The Slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 IV. The Scot of Fiction 
 V. O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 VI. The Art of Narration 
 VII. George Borrow 
 VIII. "As Compared with Excellence' 
 IX. Modern Tragedy 
 X. "The Other Grace" 
 XI. Walt Whitman 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 • 33 
 
 • 65 
 
 • 89 
 
 III 
 
 . 138 
 
 • 155 
 
 • 177 
 
 206 
 
 • 236 
 
 • 251 
 
 XI
 
 STONES FROM A GLASS 
 HOUSE 
 
 GREAT WAR NOVELS 
 
 To rouse new, fresh delight, a book (I 
 speak of novels) must be about one of 
 the old perennial interests of the race. 
 Side-issues, however cleverly they may 
 be treated, are only of ephemeral value : 
 there are no new themes worth writine 
 about, and there never will be. The 
 writer who does not wish to land himself 
 in a literary cnl de sac must just trudge 
 humbly along the old thoroughfares where 
 the pavements are worn and trodden by 
 the feet of other pilgrims now gone before 
 to their Eternal City — that City which no
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 by-way ever yet led up to. Life and 
 Love, Death, Religion, Wealth, Want, 
 and War are among the primal topics 
 which have unending, ever-new interest 
 for the world : no culture is needed that a 
 man may consider any one of these sub- 
 jects. You may be sure he has seen 
 something of one or other of them. And 
 what he has seen he will rejoice to recog- 
 nise ; what he has felt he will thrill to feel 
 again ; what he knows nothing of he 
 will wish to have related to him. The 
 author who handles these subjects, even 
 indifferently, is sure of his audience — but 
 to the author who handles them nobly all 
 the centuries attend. 
 
 Of these primal topics, War — one of 
 the most primal among them — has been 
 the least written about by the novelists. 
 
 Now, this statement may seem at first 
 sight to be entirely false, for half the 
 heroes of fiction are warriors ; but this is 
 just where the difference comes in — the
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 Warrior and not the War is the subject of 
 these books, which, instead of being the 
 record of some great international struggle 
 where thousands of men played their in- 
 significant parts, are merely the stories 
 of individuals in whose lives war was an 
 episode, or a background. 
 
 Books which attain to the rank of classic 
 War Novels, however, always treat of the 
 War as greater than the Man, instead of 
 the Man as being greater than the War ; 
 and in them the romantic is never allowed 
 to overweigh the historical interest. The 
 true War Novel is the modern epic ; hence 
 its scarcity — epics not being written every 
 day. The whole trend of recent fiction is 
 against the epic style of narration. The 
 present craze for quickly-developed plots, 
 where the interest is kept at boiling-point 
 from the first page, forbids the stately 
 development of subject which marks the 
 great War Novel, and makes its repeti- 
 tions, marchings, and counter-marchings 
 
 3
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 only a weariness to the majority of readers. 
 They will not see that panoramic effects 
 can only be got by painting on a large 
 canvas, and would like to have the events 
 of the Thirty Years' War compressed for 
 them within the trivial limits of that out- 
 come of modernity — "the 6s. novel." 
 Until this taste for essence of events is 
 conquered, we cannot look for anything 
 like a great new War Novel. When a 
 historical subject is fairly grappled, there 
 is too much to say about it for it to be 
 said in few words ; to give any idea of the 
 confusions and distractions of a great 
 national crisis, the ordinary novel limit 
 simply does not suffice, and the effort at 
 undue condensation results in thousands 
 of semi-historical books, where war is only 
 employed as an effective background to 
 throw the foreground figures into relief. 
 
 Such books, however effective, however 
 stirring, cannot properly be termed War 
 Novels, and any one who compares them 
 
 4
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 with the great models will quickly see 
 where the difference lies. 
 
 The genuine War Novel is not really 
 about men and women ; these play a subor- 
 dinate part in it ; a nation is the hero we 
 follow, a mourning wasted land is the 
 heroine we grieve over ; the impersonal 
 assumes personality for us — we hold our 
 breath over the fate of armies, not of 
 individuals. 
 
 It may be objected that a clever his- 
 torian can do this for us, and that history 
 is not the novelist's province. But just as 
 the painter is to the photographer, so is 
 the novelist to the historian. His province 
 is not to detail the facts of scenes and 
 events, but to give an impression of these 
 as seen through the medium of his imagi- 
 nation. If this is powerful enough, he 
 will be able to have a dozen different lipfhts 
 upon the war he describes ; for he will see 
 it through the eyes of a dozen different 
 imaginary characters ; what we want in a 
 
 5
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 War Novel is not every detail of each 
 campaign, but the Idea of war, and this 
 only an imaginative writer can give us. 
 We can get details anywhere — the Idea 
 eludes all but the subtlest writers. 
 
 Thus you will see that all the ordinary 
 talents of the novelist are required in addi- 
 tion to the faculty I have noted above : 
 that of informing the impersonal with per- 
 sonality, making the fate of the striving 
 nations more to the reader than the fate 
 of any hero or heroine. 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that 
 the heroes of War Novels may be stocks 
 and stones, or their stories wearisome be- 
 cause a larger interest overshadows them ; 
 quite the contrary — they must be creatures 
 of extreme vitality to stand the test of the 
 counter-interest. And this has been the 
 weak point of innumerable "historical" 
 romances : the writers have trusted to the 
 thrill of the historical story to carry them 
 through, and have allowed their characters
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 to be wooden and tiresome. This is the 
 case in the majority of tales founded on 
 the Mutiny or the French Revolution — 
 the characters are sketchy, the writers 
 having trusted too far to the interest of 
 their setting. 
 
 But instead of showing how books ought 
 not to have been written — which is but a 
 thankless task — how much more delightful 
 it is to show how they have been written 
 by masters of the craft. It is a pity that 
 we have to go to the literature of other 
 countries for our examples ; the epic of 
 English war has yet to be written — in 
 novel form. Poland, Russia, and France 
 each have produced a great War Novel, 
 and each writer approaches his subject in 
 an entirely different manner. 
 
 To read Sienkiewicz, Tolstoi, and Zola 
 together, is to get a pleasant sense of the 
 eternal freshness of the creative minds ; 
 all three are "modern" in the sense of 
 belonging to our generation of authors ; 
 
 7
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 but while Tolstoi and Zola are also modern 
 in spirit, Sienkiewicz writes with the spirit 
 of the Ancients. 
 
 This is the reason why Sienkiewicz's 
 War Novels With Fire mid Sword and 
 The Dehige will never be so popular 
 as Tolstoi's War and Peace, or Zola's 
 La Debacle. 
 
 For the spirit of the Ancients — the epic 
 note — is pre-eminently impersonal, and, 
 therefore, unpopular. The epic writer is 
 a mere narrator whose personality never 
 obtrudes itself upon the reader ; he has 
 no desire whatever to air his own griefs 
 or write of his experiences, for what he 
 has to write of are the experiences of the 
 whole world of men, not merely of him- 
 self He must, indeed, lose sight of him- 
 self to attain this epic rank, and look with 
 such an impartial eye beyond his own 
 circle, that his range of vision becomes 
 practically illimitable. What he must be 
 
 able to describe is, not the world as it 
 
 8
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 appears to him, bzit as he can wiagine it 
 appearing to vien entirely different from 
 himself in every thought of their hearts. 
 This is a task for which gigantic imagina- 
 tive gifts are required. Almost any edu- 
 cated man or woman can write down what 
 they have themselves passed through, and 
 to this fact we owe the hundreds of auto- 
 biographical novels which appear every 
 year — the work of clever people it may 
 be, interesting as human documents, yet 
 quite undeserving of the title of "ima- 
 ginative " work. But a wholly different 
 range of talent is required when the author 
 has to leave experience behind his back, 
 and adventure into the unknown of other 
 men's experiences. The presence or ab- 
 sence of the autobiographical element in a 
 book may, indeed, be taken as a pretty 
 fair test of its literary rank. 
 
 Now one might quite as well search for 
 the personality of Homer in the Iliad, as 
 for the personality of Sienkiewicz in The 
 
 9
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Deluzc and With Fire and Sword. This 
 lack of the personal element will always 
 be resented by the modern reader ; but 
 there is another and more powerful reason 
 for the unpopularity of Sienkiewicz when 
 compared with Tolstoi and Zola — he has 
 not the emotion of the one nor the realism 
 of the other. 
 
 The emotional description of war is 
 what most readers want when they de- 
 cide to read about it at all. They would 
 like to know "what it feels like" to fight, 
 whether the near presence of death appals 
 even brave men, and so on — and all this 
 Tolstoi can tell them ; while yet another 
 class wish to read of more tangible things 
 than emotions. They would like to hear 
 something about the agony of wounds, 
 the convulsions of violent deaths, the 
 horrors of captivity ; to such, Zola's en- 
 sanguined pages will afford very real 
 
 enjoyment — here is the realist triumphant, 
 
 lo
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 up to the elbows in gore, ready with every 
 detail of each dripping campaign ! 
 
 In this way our authors divide naturally 
 into three distinct schools — the Epic, the 
 Emotional, and the Realistic. I should 
 now like to try to describe their curiously 
 different methods of presentment a little 
 more in detail. 
 
 The Epic, as represented by Sienkie- 
 wicz, must have the first consideration. 
 
 The Delude — that colossal book — is the 
 history of the Polish wars with Sweden in 
 the seventeenth century. Endless wars 
 — "battles of the warrior with confused 
 noise and garments rolled in blood " — 
 a record this of nameless fights in un- 
 known wildernesses, of struggles, torments, 
 treacheries, and unspeakable valour. "It 
 is written in no book," he says, "how 
 many battles the armies, the nobles, and 
 the people of the Commonwealth fought 
 with the enemy. They fought in forests, 
 
 in fields, in villages, in hamlets, in towns ; 
 
 1 1
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 they fought in Prussia, in Mazovia, in 
 Great Poland, in Little Poland, in Russia, 
 in Lithuania, in Trend ; they fought with- 
 out resting in the day and the night. 
 Every clod of earth was drenched in 
 blood. The names of the knights, their 
 glorious deeds, their great devotion per- 
 ished from the memory, for the chronicler 
 did not write them down and the lute 
 did not celebrate them!" The Deluge 
 chronicles some of them however, and it 
 is an extraordinary tribute to the skill of 
 Sienkiewicz that he has been able to make 
 all these hundreds of nameless fights a 
 matter of absorbing interest to his readers. 
 This, I think, comes from his wonderful 
 faculty of giving a personality to the im- 
 personal. 
 
 Poland stands before us as we read, 
 not a mere " country on the map of 
 Europe," but wasted, harried, betrayed ; a 
 tragic mother of the gallant sons who 
 rush to death for her sake. We follow 
 
 12
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 the story of these long and weary troubles 
 as we might trace the sufferings of a 
 woman dear and unhappy. Sienkiewicz 
 writes of his country's grief with such 
 magnetic sympathy that our one wish as 
 we read is that her woes should be ended. 
 Now the heroes who are (in the story) 
 to work out Poland's salvation, become to 
 us dearly - loved and honoured friends, 
 yet we are so fired with the writer's 
 patriotism that we would rather that every 
 hero in the book found his grave if by 
 the sacrifice Poland were delivered ; the 
 cause, in short, matters to us, not the 
 men ; they are dear to us just because 
 they are patriots ; the interest of the book 
 stands or falls on the country's success or 
 defeat. It must not be supposed that 
 Sienkiewicz fails to create interesting 
 characters ; on the contrary, so splendid 
 are his creations, that it is little short of 
 an unkindness to have presented them for 
 the admiration of dwellers in an effete age. 
 
 13
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Kmita, the principal hero, is a compound 
 of blood and bone and fire, a resistless 
 foe, an equally resistless lover — the pro- 
 duct of a bygone age, with all its virtues 
 and most of its faults. He is the type 
 of the primitive fighter, untouched by 
 speculations on death or futurity as he 
 faces danger, professing and believing a 
 simple creed ; a creature belonging to the 
 unquestioning "age of Faith." See him 
 as he starts on his great exploit : — 
 
 "The thought of bursting the gigantic 
 gun delighted him to the bottom of his 
 soul . . . and at times pure laughter 
 seized him. As he had himself said, he 
 felt no emotion of fear, no unquiet. It 
 did not even enter his head to what an 
 awful danger he was exposing himself; 
 he went on as a schoolboy goes to an orchard 
 to make havoc a^nong apples^ 
 
 Or, again, at the siege of Yasna Gora, 
 he laughs at the trembling monks : — 
 
 14
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 " On a sudden, Kmita stretched out 
 his hand and cried ' See, see, you have 
 an experiment.' 
 
 "'Jesus! Mary! Joseph!' cried the 
 young brother at the sight of the coming 
 bomb. The bomb fell on the square that 
 moment, and, snarling and rushing along, 
 began to bound on the pavement, dragging 
 behind a small blue smoke ; turned once 
 more, and rolling to the foot of the wall 
 on which they were sitting fell into a 
 pile of wet sand, which it scattered high 
 to the battlement, and, losing its power, 
 remained without motion. Luckily, it 
 had fallen with the fuse up ; but the sul- 
 phur was not quenched, for the smoke 
 rose at once. 
 
 "'To the ground! on your faces!' 
 frightened voices began to shout. But 
 Kmita at the same moment sprang to 
 the pile of sand, with a lightning move- 
 ment of his hand caught the fuse, plucked 
 it, pulled it out, and raising his hand 
 with the burning sulphur, cried : ' Rise 
 up, it is just as if you had pulled the 
 
 15
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 teeth out of a dog ; it could not kill a fly- 
 now.' 
 
 " When he had said this, he kicked the 
 bomb. Those present grew numb at the 
 sight of this deed, which surpassed human 
 daring. . . . Kmita laughed so heartily 
 that his teeth glittei^ed!' 
 
 The book is full of such exploits, all 
 of them carried out in the same spirit of 
 gay bravery. The other warriors in The 
 Deluge are of this heroic breed also, and 
 carry out their feats of arms with equal 
 gallantry. None of them ever speculate 
 about eternity, or have introspective mo- 
 ments of any kind whatever. F'or them, 
 heaven and hell lay, without a shadow 
 of doubt, just beyond the grave, so what 
 was the need of speculating about futurity ? 
 Their simple creed, of course, made for 
 bravery (your questioning fighter is not 
 the best), and there is in these soldiers a 
 delicious mixture of savagery and religion. 
 
 We read of Kmita that, "when in the 
 
 i6
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 evening he was repeating his Litany in 
 
 peace by the blaze of burning villages, and 
 
 the screams of the murdered interrupted 
 
 the tally of his prayers, he began again 
 
 from the beginning, so as not to burden 
 
 his soul with the sin of inattention to the 
 
 service of God." This is the sort of hero 
 
 we have to do with in these books. It 
 
 is interesting to contrast such passages 
 
 with some from Tolstoi, who glories in 
 
 the introspective man. I shall quote some 
 
 of his more characteristic passages later. 
 
 The Sienkiewicz heroes are equally 
 
 splendid in love as in war. Wherever 
 
 our author approaches the tender passion, 
 
 it is in the purely idyllic fashion ; and in 
 
 a barbarous age, in a savage country, 
 
 these warriors are very Bayards — the 
 
 brutalities of modern fiction are unknown 
 
 In his pages, yet the excessive virility of 
 
 the characterisation never suffers for a 
 
 moment from this fact. Sienkiewicz has 
 
 a tradition of love which he upholds 
 
 \^ B
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 unflinchingly — hot as flame and white as 
 snow are these idyllic love stories ; a 
 combination not often found in fiction, 
 whatever may be the case in real life. 
 
 For books which treat of savage war- 
 fare, there is in The Deluge and With 
 Fire and Sword a marked avoidance of 
 the barbarous realism which the times 
 might seem to suggest. It is not Sienkie- 
 wicz's method to gloat on the horrible or 
 the noisome elements in life. What is 
 absolutely necessary to say he says ; the 
 unnecessary horror is decently veiled and 
 passed by. To this fact I think his work 
 owes much of the classic note, which is its 
 characteristic. Beauty in one form or 
 another must always be the subject of all 
 the greatest art, and in losing sight of this 
 primary truth how many have erred ! 
 You may get powerful work, amusing 
 work, clever work on the lines of ugliness ; 
 but the greatest of all is never found 
 
 divorced from beauty. This principle has 
 
 i8
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 been grasped by Sienkiewicz from the 
 first page of his books to the last. There 
 may be in them much tale of bloodshed 
 and carnage and torture, but a golden 
 thread runs through and through the 
 dark web — the splendid will and courage 
 of man glorify the whole blood-sodden 
 record, and love is triumphant to the 
 close. 
 
 But I am, perhaps, writing at too great 
 length about Sienkiewicz, and must re- 
 member how much remains to be said 
 about the other two great authors, his 
 rivals. I have, however, sinned with de- 
 liberation, because it seems to me that 
 these books attain to a level of o-reatness 
 much higher than that attained to by 
 either Tolstoi or Zola. There is an all- 
 round sanity in them which is wholly 
 wanting in Zola's terrible depictions of 
 war ; and a virility which is missing in 
 Tolstoi's beautiful, mystical presenta- 
 tions. The books are, in fact, unique, 
 
 19
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 and opening them for the first time we 
 exclaim — 
 
 " Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
 When a new planet swims into his ken ; 
 
 Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes 
 He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
 
 Looked at each other with a wild surmise, 
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 
 
 We find in Tolstoi the great Emotional 
 exponent of war. War and Peace is not 
 so much a description of war as a de- 
 scription of what men feel when engaged 
 in it. Tolstoi has the wonderful faculty of 
 catching and expressing those vague sen- 
 sations, half thoughts, half emotions, which 
 drift across the mind, and by this system 
 of analysis we are made to enter so en- 
 tirely into the feelings of every character 
 in the book, that we seem to be identified 
 with each of them for a time. The 
 thoughts of each soldier while he is fight- 
 ing, or as he lies wounded, or as he dies, 
 
 20
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 are faithfully written down for us here, so 
 that we get an impression of a fact that 
 we are apt to forget — the continuousness 
 of thought, even through the most awful 
 moments of life. These random, dis- 
 tracted thoughts of the heart at times of 
 fearful crisis are conveyed with marvel- 
 lous art — always, the reader thinks, that 
 through the mouthpiece of each character 
 he is on the brink of receiving some 
 answer to the unanswerable questions of 
 life. Facing death — staring at it — surely 
 this soldier will be able to see an inch 
 beyond the veil ? When Prince Andre 
 lies wounded on the field wonderful 
 thoughts visit him as he gazes up into 
 the sky : — 
 
 " What peace ! what rest ! " he thought. 
 " It was not so just now when I was 
 running- — we were all running and shout- 
 ing ; it was not so when those two 
 scared creatures were struggling for the 
 ramrod — the clouds were not floating then 
 
 21
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 in that infinite space! How is it that I 
 never noticed these infinite depths before ? 
 How glad I am to have seen them now — 
 at last. Everything is a hollow delusion 
 excepting that — thank God for this peace, 
 this silent rest ! " And, later, when Andre 
 is carried past Napoleon, he thinks on and 
 on in the same strain : " What, after all, 
 were the interests, pride, elation of Napo- 
 leon — what was the hero himself when 
 compared with that glorious heaven of 
 justice and mercy which his soul had felt 
 and apprehended ? To him everything 
 seemed sordid, petty ; so unlike those 
 stern and solemn thoughts that had been 
 borne in upon him by his utter exhaustion 
 and expectation of death. Even with his 
 eyes fixed on the Emperor he was reflect- 
 ing on the insignificance of life, of which 
 no one knew the aim or end — the still 
 greater insignificance of death, whose 
 purpose is inscrutably hidden Jrom the 
 living y 
 
 This is different indeed from Kmita 
 
 22
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 "seized with pure laughter" at the time 
 of his greatest peril ! Yet Tolstoi's heroes 
 are no cowards, only introspective men — 
 men of this century, written about by a 
 man perhaps more introspective than 
 themselves. For there is a good deal 
 of the personal note in Tolstoi — his own 
 opinions, not the opinions of his characters, 
 his own sensations, not the sensations of 
 other men, are described for us ; and in 
 this way a certain sameness creeps into 
 the story, for the characters have so many 
 sensations and thoughts in common — 
 beautiful as these may be. Every man 
 in the book is speculating, questioning, 
 drifting to and fro on a sea of doubts, 
 and never coming to anchorage ; the 
 analysis is really of one mind, not of 
 many as it professes to be. But it is 
 not, after all, with men that Tolstoi is 
 concerned here, so much as with the 
 consideration of war as a phenomenon. 
 What is this scourge of God that is 
 
 23
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 laid so heavily on the bleeding lands ? 
 What does it mean ? How is it to be 
 accounted for? Tolstoi has very definite 
 views on the subject. We are far too 
 apt, says he, to assign trivial causes for 
 great historical events — we say that 
 certain kings or certain generals brought 
 about certain wars, carried them through 
 successfully or disastrously, and so on. 
 Whereas men had nothing to do with 
 it. Here is Tolstoi's position : — 
 
 "To say" (for instance) "that Napoleon 
 sacrificed the army voluntarily or by sheer 
 incapacity is just as false as it is to say 
 that he led his troops to Moscow by the 
 vigour of his will or the brilliancy of his 
 genius. In either case his personal action 
 had no more influence than that of the 
 meanest private, it had to bow to certain 
 laws of which the outcome was the re- 
 sultant fact. . . . The greater the number, 
 the greater the strength, says military 
 
 science, consequently great battalions 
 
 24
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 always win the day. But in defending 
 such a proposition, miHtary science is in 
 the same kind of error as a theory of 
 physics would be which, being based on 
 the relation of force to mass, should 
 regard the first as bearing a direct ratio 
 to the second. But force is the product 
 of the mass multiplied by velocity. And 
 in war the force of the troops is also the 
 product of the mass, hit the inultiplier -is 
 an unknown quantily. Military science 
 does vaguely admit the existence of an 
 unknown quantity, and tries to find it in 
 the mathematical precision of the plans 
 adopted, in the mode of arming the men, 
 or more frequently in the genius of the 
 leader. But the results attributable to 
 this multiplier still do not agree with the 
 historical facts ; to discover this unknown 
 X we have only to give up once for all 
 the hero-worship which leads us to ascribe 
 extravagant importance to the measures 
 taken by Commanders-in-Chief. This x 
 is the spirit of the men ; their greater or 
 less eagerness to fight, to face danger — 
 
 25
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 it is quite irrespective of the genius of 
 generals. ..." 
 
 But Tolstoi does not take into considera- 
 tion in this much-reasoned theory the effect 
 which the despised generals may have or 
 may not have upon the all-important spirit 
 of the troops. His theory deepens, how- 
 ever, into a much more mystical stage 
 than this, and he takes up what, after all, 
 is a more reasonable position : — 
 
 " The drama at last was ended. The 
 Actor (Napoleon) was bidden to take off 
 his finery, to wipe the paint from his 
 face ; he was wanted no more. The 
 Manager of the Great Drama having 
 allowed him to end his part, and stripped 
 the Actor, now displayed him as he really 
 was. ' Look at him, see what you have 
 been believing in all the while ! Now do 
 you not see that it was 7iot he but I tJiat 
 moved the world?' And still, blinded by 
 the mighty movement, men were long 
 
 before they understood this." 
 
 26
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 You will see from these extracts how 
 entirely different Tolstoi and Sienkiewicz 
 are in their outlook on war. To the one it 
 is a great phenomenon having a mystical 
 source — a sort of writing on the wall of 
 Time which all men may read and see 
 there the helpless littleness of the creature 
 under the great hand of God ; while to 
 the other war does not appear as a 
 phenomenon in the least, but as the 
 stirring yet everyday work of those who 
 are called to fight. To Sienkiewicz war 
 involves no problem. 
 
 Both of these contentions being quite 
 tenable, it is interesting to find that Zola has 
 constructed a third theory of what war is. 
 
 I must leave my readers to judge for 
 themselves which of the three is the most 
 sane and reasonable. No doubt when a 
 dozen other War Novelists have arisen 
 each will bring out another theory, for, 
 said Pilate, "What is truth?" 
 
 27
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 If you will have realism, there can be 
 no doubt that La Ddbacle takes a first 
 place as the great realistic War Novel. 
 
 As a mere describer Zola stands alone 
 — he can describe anything so as to bring 
 it vividly before the fancy of his readers. 
 This wonderful gift has been brought to 
 bear upon the subject of war, and a re- 
 markable book is the result of it. To 
 name La Debacle a novel would be quite 
 absurd ; but that it is a War Novel 
 is undoubted. Hero or heroine there is 
 none in the book, for the characters are 
 the merest shadows bearing names ; but 
 France is the heroine, a people the hero, 
 their fall and fate the plot, the interest, 
 the whole — the book is steeped in pas- 
 sionate patriotism : more than this, La 
 Debacle treats of the whole Idea of war 
 — Zola's idea of it — and as such must 
 be of interest. What this idea is, I shall 
 
 show later ; in the meantime, let me note 
 
 28
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 the secret of Zola's popularity as a War 
 Novelist. 
 
 It cannot be (in England) his patriotism; 
 there is no plot to interest any one, neither 
 is the characterisation sufficiently clever to 
 attract many readers ; any history book 
 will give with equal veracity the story of 
 this campaign ; but Zola alone, perhaps, 
 among living writers, could have written 
 of its appearances. The history of a 
 campaign is one thing, and a description 
 of it is quite another. To put it quite 
 plainly, the unvarnished horrors of La 
 Debacle account for its popularity. 
 
 At first sight one is tempted to exclaim, 
 " What an imagination the man must 
 have!" till, on closer inspection, one sees 
 that the book is only a mass of collected 
 facts curiously untouched by imagination. 
 On the emotional side lies Zola's weak- 
 ness — too constant and close observation 
 of the mechanical details of outside things 
 
 has weakened his insight into what- lies 
 
 29
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 below the surface. In La Debacle the 
 exterior of warfare is reproduced with 
 photographic accuracy, but its spirit is 
 entirely missed. This is where the want 
 of sympathetic imagination comes in. No 
 thrilling guess at what war means to other 
 men has ever swept through the heart of 
 this man, who is an observer and de- 
 scriber of what he himself notices on the 
 crowded surface of a swarming world — 
 and only that. He describes brilliantly 
 his own idea of war, but cannot imagine 
 any one else having any other idea of it. 
 His position is accurately summed up in 
 the words of one of his characters, who 
 is said to have " a vision of what war 
 really was — an atrocious vital struggle, 
 which man should accept only with a 
 grave and resigned heart, as he would 
 some fatal law." This is the idea which 
 Zola carries out all through La Debacle y 
 and puts into the mouth of each of his 
 
 characters. Now, to the majority of 
 
 30
 
 Great War Novels 
 
 soldiers, war is the most splendid and 
 delightful event in their lives : they see 
 nothing "atrocious" in it, and will even 
 speak of it as the best of fun — there is 
 little or nothing of the "grave and re- 
 signed heart " about them. An imagi- 
 native author, able to conceive of characters 
 wholly different from himself, must have 
 put some of this spirit into some of his 
 creations, whatever his private views upon 
 the subject might be. 
 
 The whole romance of war is absent 
 from this great and terrible book ; the 
 iron hand of the realist does not permit 
 of romance. That it is the history of a 
 great catastrophe does not explain this 
 entirely ; no troops worthy the name — far 
 less the great, if ill-fated army of France — 
 ever went out to war in the sodden spirit 
 of Zola's soldiers. Such a set of grumbling 
 cravens would never have gone to death 
 as these men did in the tragic fields of 
 Sedan. For men will not die for nothing 
 
 31
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 — the great, romantic Spirit of War was 
 there, though Zola does not admit the 
 fact. "The letter killeth — the Spirit 
 giveth life " ; La Debacle is a brilliant de- 
 scription of " the letter " of War ; but 
 the life that should animate the clay is 
 wanting. 
 
 • • • B • 
 
 Why have we no War Novelist in our 
 literature who can rank along with these 
 three great men, Sienkiewicz, Tolstoi, and 
 Zola.-* England surely has had wars 
 enough, and writers enough — but the two 
 have not joined, as it were. If Shake- 
 speare had lived nowadays Henry the 
 Fifth would have been a novel, no doubt 
 — but then Shakespeare does not live 
 nowadays. What can we say, then, but 
 "Come, O Breath, and breathe on us" 
 that the great War Novelist may arise ! 
 
 32
 
 ON RELIGIOUS NOVELS 
 
 A NEW cure for old griefs : the physician 
 who has this to offer will never want for 
 patients. 
 
 The readers of religious novels — like 
 those persons who will not try well-known 
 remedies yet are glad to experiment with 
 every newly advertised drug — these 
 readers are ever on the watch for fresh 
 faiths. Oppressed with a thousand sor- 
 rows as old as Time, they still crowd for- 
 ward, with strange optimism, to try the 
 new recipes for joy. I think that here we 
 have the real reason for the extraordinary 
 popularity of "religious" fiction ; it is one 
 more cure for the ills of a world which has 
 "ailed from the first." Not an abstract 
 love of truth, not even a deep interest in 
 theology, is at the root of this demand for 
 
 33 c
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 religious fiction — but the intensely per- 
 sonal question, " Will these books help 
 me to be happier?" 
 
 There can be no doubt that the majority 
 of mankind like to be led by some guide 
 or other. Independent judgment on any 
 subject is an exceedingly rare thing to 
 meet with ; and this is especially the 
 case in matters of religion. We either 
 do not wish to be troubled to decide 
 for ourselves, or, perhaps, we feel an in- 
 capacity to do so satisfactorily. Be that 
 as it may, the fact remains that most of us 
 have accepted the views of other people 
 about religion and named them our beliefs. 
 The whole machinery of churches, clergy, 
 priests, is a standing proof of this fact. 
 W^e want guides, men better qualified than 
 ourselves to deal with the mysteries of 
 religion, to decide for us what we are to 
 believe. There is something pathetic in 
 this universal confession of weakness : we 
 cannot even make our own way straight 
 
 34
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 to our gods : some one must be there to 
 point out the road to us. When once it 
 is recognised that the great majority of 
 people are led, and that only a small 
 minority think for themselves, the ques- 
 tion of who the oruides are becomes one 
 of great importance. Looking back over 
 "the past's tremendous disarray," we can 
 only wonder and sorrow over the curious 
 credulity of man, who has followed blind 
 guides unquestioningly all the ages through, 
 and is following them still, though not 
 quite so unquestioningly. The tremen- 
 dous ascendency of the clergy which pre- 
 vailed in other days is now a thing of the 
 past : they influence still, but they domi- 
 nate no longer. We may believe their 
 teachings if we wish to, but it is not now 
 a choice between orthodoxy and the stake. 
 There is, however, a danger of another 
 sort ahead ; for as the influence of the 
 clergy has decreased the influence of the 
 Press has increased, so that the dominion 
 
 35
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 has only been transferred to fresh hands, 
 instead of being done away with. Thou- 
 sands — tens of thousands — of people, who 
 in former days would have been staunch 
 Churchmen, repeating their creed like par- 
 rots, entirely unquestioning of its truth or 
 falsity, have now as blindly taken their 
 creeds from books of various kinds, from 
 newspapers and popular magazines. Such 
 persons will tell you that they "have 
 ceased to believe in the Church " ; but in 
 nine cases out of ten they have taken up 
 their attitude quite unthinkingly, and from 
 stupidity rather than from deep intellectual 
 causes. They have simply read and read 
 again all manner of attacks and criticisms 
 on Churches and clergymen, until they 
 came to accept these criticisms as truth 
 without examining their claims with any 
 seriousness. Thinkinor clever men attack 
 the creeds and dogmas, and unthinking, 
 stupid men at once find their whole faith 
 
 undermined and profess to have lost it. 
 
 36
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 How often we hear it said that "thinking 
 men have stopped going to church" — the 
 fact being that fully more unthinking men 
 have done so, and with far more dangerous 
 results. For the one is in no danger from 
 throwing over what we may call "the 
 church habit " — he will continue to think 
 about God and eternity whether he goes 
 to church or stays out of it ; but the 
 other, in renouncing the church habit, very 
 often renounces along with it all but the 
 most fleeting thoughts of holiness, unless 
 he is supplied with some new spiritual 
 influence. 
 
 It is here that the true province of the 
 religious novel is found. Strange as it 
 seems, there are many thousands of men 
 and women ready and willing to have re- 
 vised creeds supplied to them ready-made, 
 complete in red boards, at 6s. ! For such 
 persons the religious novel supplies a long- 
 felt want and has the most distinct uses. 
 Better any creed than none at all ; and as 
 
 17
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 the man who is content to accept his creed 
 at the hand of the first author he reads is 
 manifestly unfit to reason things out for 
 himself, it is very easy to see what a re- 
 sponsibility rests with the new creed- 
 makers. For creed-makers they all wish 
 to be after they have done with being 
 creed-breakers. 
 
 The thorough-going religious novel — 
 and by this term I do not mean to describe 
 books of a religious tendency, but those 
 which deal plainly with some definite re- 
 ligious problem — must always conform to 
 one stereotyped form. It must, that is to 
 say, be divided into two parts, the destruc- 
 tive and the constructive. For before the 
 hero, or heroine, attains to a new faith, 
 he or she must have passed through a 
 period of unrest and scepticism ; this must 
 be described in the first part of the book, 
 while the second must go on to the con- 
 struction of the new faith on the ruins of 
 the old, and this must form the other half 
 
 38
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 of the story. Plot and character are apt 
 to be falsified by a stereotyped method of 
 this sort which cannot be avoided ; the 
 characters are bound to act up to what is 
 expected of them, and this, in most cases, 
 brings an exasperating improbability into 
 the plot. This limitation of method is 
 the reason why the majority of religious 
 novels have to be relegated to the second 
 rank of literature. When "purpose" 
 comes in too boldly at the door, art is 
 apt to fly out of the window ; but, after 
 all, if authors wish to be teachers they 
 probably are not ambitious to be artists, 
 the one province being entirely apart from 
 the other. 
 
 But to return to our subject. We have 
 seen that a large class of the community 
 is turning for help just now to religious 
 novels : also that this class is not by any 
 means the most intelligent among us. 
 There are, however, other readers for this 
 sort of fiction whose intelligence must not 
 
 39
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 be thus called in question — I mean very 
 young people, and the half- educated class. 
 The ladder of doubt, which generally 
 leads up to some higher ground than that 
 which it rests upon — has to be painfully 
 climbed by most intelligent young crea- 
 tures between the ages of fifteen and 
 twenty. Let no one speak lightly of 
 these struggles, as of some childish com- 
 plaint we have all to pass through ; for 
 this growth of the soul is a critical process 
 of far-reaching importance. There is no 
 light acceptance here of the first creed 
 that comes to hand : in a very agony of 
 scepticism the straining young intellect 
 will reject every argument or theory of 
 the Universe which is offered to it by the 
 orthodox, well-known guides. For it is a 
 characteristic of youth that it must always 
 be in a state of revolt from authority when 
 in its period of growth ; a necessity seems 
 
 to be laid upon it to reject every dogma it 
 
 40
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 has been brought up to beHeve, and to 
 turn to new guides. 
 
 The influence of religious novels on 
 such readers is often very profound, and 
 very helpful for a time. Later on they 
 may outgrow these teachers, but in the 
 "present distress" they afford comfort 
 and guidance. They see all their doubts 
 and despairs reflected here, and take 
 courage — others have passed the lions, 
 the House Beautiful may yet be ahead, 
 and the Delectable Mountains may be 
 gained at last. But the benefit of reli- 
 gious fiction to half-educated readers is 
 much more questionable. The book 
 which may comfort the doubter may 
 easily torment the man who has never 
 begun to doubt. He is presented in an 
 easy, readable form with a sort of digest 
 of modern thought, more or less con- 
 vincingly put. These ideas are hopelessly 
 at variance with the creeds of his child- 
 hood, yet time and opportunity both fail 
 
 41
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 him to examine into their truth or false- 
 hood. Such are the inevitable and melan- 
 choly results of cheap education and cheap 
 culture — one more illustration of the truth 
 that "a little learning is a dangerous 
 thing." 
 
 Now to meet this hunger for help and 
 truth and guidance, which is such a real 
 want just now, only a few really good 
 religious novels have ever been written. 
 You might count them on your fingers. 
 The number of indifferently good ones is 
 countless, while of sorry trash there is no 
 end at all. But in making this assertion 
 I would wish you again to remember that 
 I do not write of books of a religious 
 tendency, but of those which deal with 
 some definite dogmatic problem. Let us 
 see what the best of these books have to 
 teach — the others do not concern us. 
 
 The doubts of the children are seldom 
 
 those that perplexed their Withers. It is 
 
 true that they have each the same scheme 
 
 42
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 of things to puzzle over ; but each genera- 
 tion stumbles over some new stone on the 
 old path. The fathers perhaps find their 
 difficulty in predestination. The sons will 
 find theirs in miracles, and the grandsons 
 theirs in the inspiration of Scripture — it is 
 an endless chain. But I think if you 
 examine the principal religious novels, you 
 will find that they have followed, to a 
 great extent, what is the general course of 
 doubt as it rises, grows, and takes posses- 
 sion of the human mind. That is to 
 say, the phases of doubt which succeed 
 each other more or less quickly in the 
 individual, have been slowly worked out 
 during a period of many years by a 
 succession of authors. Let me illustrate 
 my meaning by examples. 
 
 What may be termed the first innocent 
 difficulties of most young thinkers about 
 religion rise from an inability to reconcile 
 the justice and omnipotence of God with 
 the origin of evil, or the conception of a 
 
 43
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 loving God with the theory of an after- 
 state of punishment. Now this earliest 
 stage of doubt has its spokesman in 
 George McDonald, one of the pioneers of 
 religious fiction. 
 
 The writer (who is not yet grey-headed) 
 can still remember the time when Robert 
 Falconer was considered a book of al- 
 most atheistic tendency. Yet the doc- 
 trines which Robert Falconer was written 
 to destroy, are only those of eternal 
 punishment and predestination — old woes 
 of the soul on its heavenward journey, 
 which one seldom hears mentioned nowa- 
 days except as a subject of (exceedingly 
 unsuitable) jest. But at the time when 
 Robert Falconer was written these doc- 
 trines were so universally held that a 
 clever writer like George McDonald 
 thought it worth his while to devote his 
 talents to the task of combating them. 
 He found in these questions an in- 
 spiration which he never found again in 
 
 44
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 any of his later work. "Is God indeed 
 Love ? " is the question of questions with 
 George McDonald, and his hero Robert is 
 puzzling over this from the first page to 
 the last. His cry of, "I dinna care for 
 God to love me, gin He doesna love ilka 
 body," has been the cry of most generous 
 young hearts at one time in their ex- 
 perience. Robert, of course, under the 
 care of his stern old Calvinistic grand- 
 mother has to pass through the period of 
 revolt — the destructive part of the book 
 has to be set down ; but this is so artisti- 
 cally done that the artificiality of the 
 method never appears : we do not think 
 about machinery — we are only interested 
 in the very human difficulties of poor 
 Robert. The second — constructive — half 
 of the book is less convincing, because by 
 this time we begin to perceive the method, 
 and have become aware that it is clearly 
 necessary for Robert, at this point, to 
 begin reconstructing his scheme of things. 
 
 45
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Still, the probability of the story and of 
 the characterisation does not flag— to the 
 last Robert is a real human being to us, 
 not a puppet created to give expression to 
 certain views. And this shows the more 
 admirable skill, because the book is cram 
 full of views — arguments they scarcely 
 deserve to be called. George McDonald 
 takes up the unanswerable ground that 
 religious truths must be felt, and are 
 beyond the reach of proof, and be- 
 yond the influence of argument. This 
 position is one too seldom taken up by 
 the polemical novelist of to-day, yet it 
 is, I think, the reason why Robert Fal- 
 coner stands the test of time as it does ; 
 "arguments," "proofs," "demonstrations 
 of science," and so forth, are terribly apt 
 to become out of date, or to be overturned 
 by some newer proof or discovery ; but 
 the emotional proof is little likely to be 
 superseded. Job's argument is still the 
 
 best: — "I know that my Redeemer liveth." 
 
 46
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 There is a passage in Robert Fal- 
 coner which exhibits pretty clearly the 
 point that public thought had arrived at 
 at the time the book was written. It is 
 this : — " Robert's mother had taught him 
 to look up — that there was a God. He 
 would put it to the test. Not that he 
 doubted yet ; but he doubted whether 
 there was a hearing God. But was not 
 that worse ^ It was, I think. For it 
 is of far more consequence what kind of 
 a God, tka?t whether a God at all^ I 
 doubt if this sentence could have been 
 penned in the Twentieth Century. Since 
 the days of Robert Falconer doubt has 
 become far more widely diffused and far 
 more despairing. Thousands in these 
 present evil days would reverse George 
 McDonald's sentence, saying : " It is of 
 far more consequence whether there be 
 a God at all, than of what kind He is"; 
 but this view of things was yet a great 
 way off on the literary horizon. 
 
 47
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 The remarkable productions of Mark 
 
 Rutherford seem to me to follow the 
 
 writings of George McDonald by natural 
 
 sequence. For they are the evangel of 
 
 agnosticism, that constant refuge of ques- 
 
 * 
 tioners. 
 
 The nightmare quality of Mark Ruth- 
 erford and Mark Rutherford' s Deliver- 
 ance, together with the beautiful style in 
 which they are written, single out these 
 books from all other religious novels. 
 They are, in truth, more autobiographies 
 than novels, though they conform strictly 
 to the limitations of the received method 
 for religious fiction ; the two books tell, 
 that is to say, of the destruction of Mark 
 Rutherford's faith and of the building up 
 again of something — one can scarcely call 
 it by the cheerful name of faith — by which 
 he lived and died. I have said that these 
 books have a nightmare quality, and the 
 expression is no exaggeration. To use 
 
 Mark Rutherford's own words, the books 
 
 48
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 tell of " blind wanderings in a world of 
 black fog haunted by apparitions." A 
 sordid, weary world, too — a world of petty 
 tradesmen, who are degraded by their 
 trades and live disgusting, ignoble lives. 
 Rutherford has that fatal type of mind 
 which can never be happy, because he 
 sickens at his own appointed world. He 
 cannot adopt the sensible view that in 
 every class there are fine men who lead 
 honourable lives ; he sees nothing but the 
 seamy side of everything. The narrow- 
 ness of the men he is brought in con- 
 tact with, instead of amusing him, nearly 
 maddens him, and things go from bad to 
 worse. All this, and Rutherford's decline 
 from orthodox Christianity, are recorded 
 in the Autobiography; the Deliverance 
 is the sequel to the Autobiography. 
 Rutherford has come to the most con- 
 clusive of conclusions by this time : — 
 
 " No theory of the world is possible. 
 
 49 D
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 The storm, the rain slowly rotting the 
 harvests, children sickening in cellars, are 
 obvious ; but equally obvious are an even- 
 ing in June, the delight of men and women 
 in each other, in music, and in the exer- 
 cise of thought. There can surely be no 
 question that the sum of satisfaction is 
 increasing ... as the earth from which 
 we sprang is being worked out of the race, 
 and a higher type is being developed. I 
 may observe, too, that though it is usually 
 supposed, it is erroneously supposed, that 
 it is pure doubt that disturbs or depresses 
 us. Simple suspense is, in fact, very rare, 
 for there are few persons so constituted as 
 to be able to remain in it. It is dog- 
 matism under the cloak of doubt which 
 pulls us down. It is the dogmatism of 
 death, for instance, which we have to 
 avoid. The open grave is dogmatic, and 
 we say, ' That man is gone ' — but it is as 
 much a transgression of the limits of cer- 
 titude as if we were to say, * He is an 
 angel in bliss.' The proper attitude, the 
 attitude enjoined by the severest exercise 
 
 50
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 of reason, is, ' I do not know'' ; and in this 
 there is an element of hope, now rising, 
 now falling, but always sufficient to pre- 
 vent that feeling of blank despair which we 
 must feel if we consider it as settled that 
 when we lie down under the grass there is 
 an absolute end." 
 
 I have mentioned the Mark Ruthe7'- 
 ford series because it forms a link in 
 the chain of religious novels, beginning 
 with George McDonald ; also because by 
 their great literary excellence they stand 
 alone among their kind. But these books 
 will never be devoured by the "aver- 
 age reader," and for this reason, Mark 
 Rutherford cannot be spoken of as one 
 of the popular guides. He is, indeed, 
 caviare to the general: the "average 
 reader " finds himself quickly out of his 
 depth here ; the young reader, thank God, 
 knows little of the direful experiences 
 recorded in these sombre pages. The 
 rootless intellectual difficulties of youth are 
 
 51
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 almost entirely theoretical, and cannot be 
 named in the same breath with the heart- 
 sickening doubts of later life. The man 
 who, through the extremity of his own 
 suffering, has caught a glimpse of the suf- 
 fering of the whole world, does not doubt 
 for himself alone. He sees his own grief 
 reflected in a million other lives, and the 
 chances are that he doubts in consequence 
 of that insight — doubts of the reported 
 loving God, the merciful Father, the 
 sharer of man's griefs — doubts of His 
 power who does not stem this frightful 
 torrent of human misery — doubts, finally, 
 if any Eye watches over man's pitiful 
 journey. 
 
 In the case of the individual, reaction 
 often follows after agnosticism. And fol- 
 lowing this rule, " Mark Rutherford's " 
 books were followed by those of a reac- 
 tionist — Mrs. Humphry Ward. She is 
 not content with "the attitude enjoined 
 
 by the severest exercise of reason " — she 
 
 52
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 is quite convinced that we know enough 
 to guide ourselves, whatever our theoreti- 
 cal difficulties may be. That terribly 
 talked-about book, Robert Elsmere, is 
 the outcome of this belief, As all the 
 world knows, Robert Elsmere deals with 
 the question of the divinity of Christ. 
 Robert reaches the crisis of his soul's 
 experience when he confesses : " Every 
 human soul in which the voice of God 
 makes itself felt enjoys equally with Jesus 
 of Nazareth the divine Sonship — and 
 miracles do not happen." 
 
 Theologians and thinkers had been 
 arguing over this question of the miracle 
 of miracles for a very long time ; but at 
 the publication of Robert Elsmere all the 
 world began to argue about it. I do not 
 believe that one half the people who 
 professed to find here an expression of 
 their own difficulties had hitherto given 
 the matter an hour's honest thought. The 
 story was arrestingly told, and a new creed 
 
 53
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 has attractions, and off went the proverbial 
 sheep after each other to form a Robert 
 Elsmere brotherhood on the spot — so 
 much for such readers. 
 
 But among young readers, who are 
 generally untrained thinkers, the influence 
 of Robert Elsmere was much deeper. 
 They found here, not only an expression 
 of their doubts, but a satisfactory and 
 well-reasoned solution of how — the mira- 
 culous element beins" excluded from the 
 Gospels — they might yet remain the rule 
 for holy living. Mrs. Ward writes strictly 
 within rules : thus far her doubter goes, 
 and no farther ; the difficulty she tries to 
 meet is this of the miraculous element in 
 the Gospel, and this alone — thus indi- 
 cating one other phase of doubt, a step 
 more advanced than that of George 
 McDonald. 
 
 As I said before, very few people care 
 about abstract truth, but they all care 
 about their individual happiness. In 
 
 54
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 Robert Elsmere a great many people 
 found a recipe for happiness, and this was 
 one of the secrets of the book's popularity. 
 It was no new gospel in one way, indeed — 
 just the well-known, little-regarded truism 
 that we must live for others ; but it was 
 presented in a new light — life for others 
 was to be our religion, instead of being 
 the outcome of our religfion. No doubt 
 this view of things brought comfort to 
 many a heart : there is no comfort at all 
 to be compared with that which comes 
 from practical work after one has been 
 worrying over theoretical difficulties for a 
 long time. If you cannot accept the 
 miraculous element in the Gospel story 
 Robert Elsmere taught, accept its prac- 
 tical teaching, and you will see greater 
 works done in yourself — the miracle of a 
 readjusted life brought into line for the 
 purposes of God for all mankind. There 
 is something about the solemn, thorough- 
 going manner of Robert Elsmere which 
 
 55
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 convinces the reader that the author is 
 entirely sincere in her conviction that here 
 lies the road to righteousness. 
 
 Whatever the book may or may not be, 
 it is a very thorough bit of work on its 
 own lines, and the question it discusses 
 has been systematically thought out. It 
 is therefore worthy of the attention it 
 received. But it is the painful duty of 
 one who chronicles the rise of religious 
 fiction to notice the extraordinary popu- 
 larity of the works of Edna Lyall : this 
 lady rushes in where angels fear to tread. 
 She grapples with the question of the 
 existence of law before that of primordial 
 cells : of where, in the evolutionary chain, 
 the soul came in : she attempts, in short, 
 to solve the insoluble, to answer the un- 
 answerable, to know the unknowable. 
 And the result ? Well, the result is 
 exactly what might be expected. That 
 such manifest ineptitude should have met 
 
 with so much admiration is a sign of the 
 
 56
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 times to be carefully noted. Solomon 
 himself could not have answered these 
 questions — the British public, in tens of 
 thousands, accepts the dictum of Miss 
 Edna Lyall upon them, and seems quite 
 satisfied of its validity. It is a pity for a 
 nation to be priest-ridden, to accept its 
 beliefs too childishly from the hands of 
 even a learned class of men ; but it is a 
 much greater pity for a nation to give 
 itself over into the hands of novelists for 
 religious instruction. That the works of 
 Edna Lyall are well intentioned, and that 
 their influence is meant to be elevating 
 and wholesome, cannot be questioned ; it 
 is the inadequacy of means to the end 
 which annoys one in reading these books 
 and a host of others, their followers, which 
 shall be nameless. The mysteries of God, 
 the unspeakable riddles of life and being — 
 how can these be dealt with in the happy- 
 go-lucky three -volume style, so fatally 
 fluent, so pathetically self-confident ? " To 
 
 57
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 plough with a light harrow," as the old 
 saying goes, in the dark fields of our 
 awful, inexplicable world is surely a grave 
 blunder. And any author who seriously 
 proposes to settle the riddles of the uni- 
 verse by a work of fiction — or, for that 
 matter, by a work not of fiction — has most 
 evidently scratched only the surface of his 
 subject. This class of religious novel 
 all comes under the reactionist heading : 
 written in the determination that a way 
 is to be found out of the doubts which 
 modern inquiry has raised, they purport 
 to reconcile science and religion. Pro- 
 ducts merely of a phase in the progress 
 of thought, their nature is necessarily 
 ephemeral. But in their weakness lies 
 their strength. Just because these books 
 attempt the impossible they are eagerly 
 read on all hands, and their readers fondly 
 imagine that they have here a real solution 
 of their difficulties — an argued solution 
 they will tell you — not the emotional 
 
 58
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 appeal of George McDonald, nor the 
 practical refuge of Mrs. Humphry Ward, 
 not the melancholy incertitude of " Mark 
 Rutherford," but a distinctly argued case, 
 in scientific terms, which neatly and accu- 
 rately meets every difficulty and over- 
 comes it. I have said before, this is what 
 most people want. 
 
 For those who desire to go into the 
 question of Churches — Protestant versus 
 Catholic — there is a veritable literature of 
 fiction. But as only the novel of dogmatic 
 tendency comes within the scope of this 
 article, these cannot be noticed, though 
 there are many excellent novels with this 
 purpose. 
 
 There remains, however, a further, an 
 ultimate stage of doubt, which, occurring 
 as it does in the individual, is bound to 
 be reproduced in literature, which is the 
 synthetic reflection of thousands of indi- 
 vidual minds. The Increasi?ig Purpose, by 
 John Lane Allen, gives a picture of doubt 
 
 59
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 which has reached the point of entire 
 scepticism : — 
 
 " Do you not beUeve in God ? " asked 
 the Professor. " Ah — that question! which 
 shuts the gates of consciousness upon us 
 when we enter sleep, and sits close outside 
 of our eyelids as we waken ; which was 
 framed in us ere we were born, which 
 comes fullest to life in us as life itself ebbs 
 fastest. That question which exacts of 
 the Finite to affirm whether it apprehends 
 the Infinite — that prodding of the evening 
 midge for its opinion of the Polar Star ! " 
 
 The story of this doubter's doubts is 
 told in such beautiful lano^uagfe that the 
 book deserves to live, quite apart from 
 the conclusions arrived at in the second, 
 the constructive, half of it. For these 
 conclusions can hardly be called satis- 
 factory : — 
 
 " Science, science ! There is the fresh 
 path for the faith of the race. For the 
 
 60
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 race henceforth must get its idea of God, 
 and build its reHgion to Him, from its 
 knowledge of the laws of His universe. 
 A million million years from now ! Where 
 will our dark theological dogmas be in 
 that radiant time ? The Creator of life 
 in all life must be studied, and in the 
 study of science least wrangling, least 
 tyranny, least bigotry, no persecution. 
 Our religion will more and more be what 
 our science is, and some day they will be 
 the same." 
 
 The reign of law — and beautifully, elo- 
 quently expressed. But the one tremen- 
 dous defect lurks here : the wayfaring 
 man, if a fool, would err therein. More 
 than that, the miserable man will not 
 be comforted thus. There is in Mark 
 Rutherford a very ridiculous example of 
 what I mean. A description is given 
 there of the way in which Rutherford 
 tried to reconcile a miserable man to life. 
 The man was a waiter in a cheap restau- 
 rant, and was underfed, underpaid, and 
 
 6i
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 overworked. He had a drunken wife who 
 made his home wretched. To soothe 
 these tragically sordid miseries Rutherford 
 tells the man of the reign of law, the ulti- 
 mate triumph of science: "We tried to 
 soothe him in every way," Rutherford 
 adds naively, when recounting this at- 
 tempt at comfort. To " soothe " a hungry 
 man, who has a drunken wife, by descrip- 
 tions of the ultimate triumph of law and 
 order is manifestly absurd. This incon- 
 gruity must appear to any one who 
 seriously tries to salve the ills and woes 
 of life by any such considerations. These 
 lofty counsels might (perhaps) afford some 
 comfort to a Socrates under the trial of 
 a Xantippe — the average man is more 
 likely to be provoked than soothed by 
 them. 
 
 When you consider that each one of the 
 authors whose books I have considered, is 
 only the leader of his or her own especial 
 
 band of imitators, some idea may be ob- 
 
 62
 
 On Religious Novels 
 
 tained of the ramifications of religious 
 fiction. Not a doubt but has its special 
 pleader : not a new faith but has its pro- 
 phet. And the newer the faith, the poorer 
 the book that is produced by it. One has 
 some patience with the old classic doubter, 
 with his genuine scruples ; but the new- 
 comers who quickly renounce their child- 
 hood's faith, and with the utmost agility 
 replace it by means of electricity or vege- 
 tarianism, theosophy or Christian science, 
 cannot hold our sympathies. It is illiberal 
 and perhaps unfair to say that the new 
 is never true ; but for the purposes of 
 serious fiction it is a safe rule to keep to 
 the old paths. No brand-new ideas can 
 be the right material for building a book of. 
 The sifting, testing processes of time are 
 needed to make ideas into usable book- 
 stuff, just as wood needs seasoning before 
 it can make a seaworthy craft. The 
 shrinkage of ideas has to be allowed for : 
 — what seems to fill the public mind and 
 
 62
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 dominate knowledge one year, may have 
 shrunk into insignificance before twelve 
 more months have run. This view of 
 things, if practically adhered to, leaves 
 rather a small field for the religious 
 novelist of the future. "The stories have 
 all been told " — an eminent authority tells 
 us ; certainly the doubts have all been 
 expressed. Perhaps a truce may be called 
 now — it is time — but the War of Opinions 
 will still go on. 
 
 64
 
 THE SLUM MOVEMENT IN 
 FICTION 
 
 Those who watch the Hterary firmament 
 had begun to think that the stars of slum 
 literature were set never to rise again, 
 when behold ! new stars, one, two, and 
 three, make their appearance in the 
 heavens, all of them twinkling brightly, 
 and doubtless the forerunners of many 
 yet to come. 
 
 The truth, is that it is no easy matter to 
 say where any literary movement has its 
 end, because it is always going on into 
 fresh forms just as the public gets tired of 
 the well-worn ones, and we recognise old 
 friends with new faces at every turn. 
 Books have, in fact, a very distinct evo- 
 lutionary history in most cases, and spor- 
 adic appearances are infrequent in the 
 
 world of letters. 
 
 65 E
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Now, while it would show quite wicked 
 pride to pretend to an exhaustive know- 
 ledge of Slum Literature — its appearance 
 and its evolution — I have watched its later 
 developments with so much attention that 
 perhaps my observations upon these may- 
 have some interest for readers who have 
 neither time nor inclination to cope with 
 the scores of novels which represent the 
 movement. It is no light thing to hear 
 even the half that the novelists have to 
 say upon any subject. I do not pretend 
 to have heard more than a third of their 
 much speaking. 
 
 Many authors, many modes of presen- 
 tation ; but, in spite of this, it is easy to 
 arrange our authors into distinct " schools," 
 each writing from their own standpoint. 
 The slum and the slum-dweller, then, may 
 be, and have been, treated in (at least) 
 five different ways : — 
 
 1. As a moral lesson. 
 
 2. As a social problem. 
 
 66
 
 slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 3. As an object of pity and terror. 
 
 4. As a gladiatorial show. 
 
 5. As an amusing study. 
 
 The first of these divisions belongs now 
 to a bygone age ; the second and third 
 merge into each other ; the fourth has not 
 very many exponents ; the fifth is the 
 latest evolution of the whole movement. 
 
 " I saw no reason, when I wrote this 
 book," says the author of Oliver Twist, 
 " why the dregs of life shotild not serve the 
 purpose of a moral as well as the froth 
 and cream ... it seemed to me that to 
 draw a knot of such associates in crime as 
 really did exist, to paint them in all their 
 deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all 
 the squalid misery of their lives ; to show 
 them as they really were, for ever skulk- 
 ing uneasily through the dirtiest paths of 
 life, with the great, black, ghastly gallows 
 closing up their prospect ; turn them where 
 they might, it appeared to me that to do 
 this would be to attempt something which 
 
 67
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 was needed, and which might be of ser- 
 vice to society." 
 
 With these words Dickens prefaced his 
 great excursion into Slum-land; in that 
 decent age when an author still thought that 
 he owed his readers some apology for 
 introducing them into low society. These 
 days are long gone by indeed ; quite another 
 race of authors has come up to write about 
 the "dregs of life," and another race of 
 readers, too, for that matter, one of whose 
 characteristics is that it cannot bear the 
 very mention of a moral. 
 
 Be that as it may, Dickens, the first 
 
 modern exponent of slum-life, wrote of it 
 
 as a moralist, or professed to do so. The 
 
 earlier Victorian era was given over to 
 
 curious illusions about many things, and 
 
 was not fond of calling a spade a spade. 
 
 We find it difficult to believe that Dickens 
 
 really thought primarily about the moral 
 
 of Oliver Twist, whatever he said. He 
 
 68
 
 slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 was far too great an artist to do anything 
 of the kind ; but the Victorian convention 
 was strong upon him, he must fib a Httle 
 about his work for decency's sake. In 
 reality, surely, his artist's eye had caught 
 sight, in one ecstatic moment, of the dra- 
 matic possibilities that lurked in the " knot 
 of associates in crime," and he must be at 
 them with his pen straightway. Still, he 
 finds an apology necessary, and makes it : 
 " I cannot see why the dregs of life should 
 not serve as a moral," &c. Ah, what a 
 free hand Dickens had had in these pre- 
 sent evil days ! No apologising, no dis- 
 guising of his eagerness for his subject. 
 I wonder sometimes that a skeleton hand, 
 grasping a ghostly pen, has not appeared 
 to write upon the walls — well, perhaps 
 just the best slum-story of them all. 
 
 But we are all the slaves of our genera- 
 tion for good or evil ; and Dickens had to 
 write of the slums as they were conceived 
 
 of in his day — decently, with restraint, 
 
 69
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 leaving the greater part unsaid, and point- 
 iJig a moral. Have you read Oliver lately? 
 or do you remember him distinctly enough 
 to establish comparisons between him 
 and his grandchildren of the "nineties"? 
 Such comparisons are laughable enough. 
 How the whole presentation of low life 
 has been turned round about since the 
 publication of Oliver Twist ! And to 
 notice particulars first, how the speech 
 differs. Every one knows, of course, that 
 the dialect of Dickens' London was not 
 the dialect of ours. But, making all 
 allowance for this fact, we can scarcely 
 forbear a smile when we read the gram- 
 matical periods of Nance: — "Thank 
 Heaven upon your knees, dear lady (cries 
 Nance in one of those admirably com- 
 posed exclamatory passages), that you had 
 friends to care for you and keep you in 
 your childhood, and that you were never 
 in the midst of cold and hunger and riot 
 
 and drunkenness, and — and something 
 
 70
 
 slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 worse than all — as I have been from my 
 cradle. I may use the word, for the alley 
 and the gutter were mine, as they will be 
 my deathbed!" Now (I know nothing 
 of Cockney dialect but what the novelists 
 have taught me) the lady would be ex- 
 claiming more to this effect : — 
 
 " Thank yer bloomin' stars, lydie, as 
 you 'ad pals a-lookin' arter yer wen you 
 was a bloomin' kid, an' wa'nt clemmed 
 with 'unger an' goin' on the booze, an' 
 maybe street-walkin', like I've been since 
 I was a kid," &c., &c., &c. 
 
 The difference in this respect is cer- 
 tainly sufficiently laughable ; yet it may 
 be a matter of question whether the 
 realistic method really conveys its im- 
 pression much more vividly than the 
 Victorian method. Dialect may be — has 
 been — carried too far, and trusted to too 
 much. For dialect, be it never so accu- 
 rately done, will not convey character 
 one whit ; and Nance, with all her fine 
 
 71
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 speeches, stands the test of time as a 
 character better than most of the realisti- 
 cally treated figure-heads of modern books. 
 But it is not in detail so much as in 
 purpose that the difference lies. As I 
 have said, Dickens from the outset is 
 moralising ; and that is what no modern 
 author would dare to do for a moment — 
 because no one would read his books if 
 he did. The awful retribution of sin, the 
 hard way of the transgressor, is not what 
 we wish to hear about just now, whatever 
 the public of earlier days liked. It is 
 much more to our taste to read of the 
 triumph of the transgressor and the total 
 defeat of innocency by inexorable fate. 
 If any "modern" had undertaken to 
 write Oliver Twist's memoirs, the story 
 would have put on quite another com- 
 plexion ; Oliver would never have been 
 allowed to extricate himself from the 
 snares of Fagin, but would have gone 
 
 deeper and deeper into the meshes, spite 
 
 72
 
 slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 of youth, and endeavour after good, and 
 mother's prayers, and everything else ; 
 for nowadays we must be "relentless," 
 come what may. The Moral, in fact 
 (using the expression in its Victorian 
 sense), is extinct ; we recognise the use- 
 lessness of asserting that " good always 
 triumphs " in the end, or of denying that 
 the wicked are often much more pros- 
 perous than the righteous ; so we have 
 stopped writing stories to that effect, and 
 the pendulum has of course swung too 
 far in the opposite direction. Still, the 
 public taste holds firmly to the old con- 
 vention, as you may see exemplified at 
 the theatre any and every night. The 
 villain is always hissed ; the audience has 
 nothing but applause when the virtuous 
 hero is successful ; it is only in our books 
 that we reverse this law of taste. 
 
 Now morality and religion should go 
 hand in hand, yet it is a curious fact that 
 where religion is brought into slum-books, 
 
 71
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 all literary value leaves them ; while, as 
 we have seen in Oliver Twist, the high- 
 est literary standard has been reached 
 when the moral is insisted upon. Im- 
 possible to account for this fact, I can 
 only mention it and call to your remem- 
 brance a host of half- forgotten story 
 books, the favourites of our childhood. 
 Poor relations these of the slum novel : 
 Christy s Old Orgafi, Froggie s Little 
 Brother, &c., &c., &c. How sorely we 
 all wept over these tales in the impres- 
 sionable days of youth ! We thought 
 that death was the saddest thing in the 
 world then, and the pages of these books 
 were positively starred with deathbed 
 scenes of a very pious nature. Alas, 
 between literature and life we have 
 become so callous now that we read dry- 
 eyed of sorrows far more bitter. 
 
 Yet, radically and ridiculously apart 
 as these humble stories were from the 
 realistic slum-books of the present day, 
 
 74
 
 slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 they were links in the evolutionary chain 
 none the less. In them the modern 
 spirit of pity was beginning to make 
 itself felt, as distinct from Dickens' atti- 
 tude to the " dregs of society." In these 
 tender pages we learned a great deal 
 about the sufferings of the poor — in a 
 refined, unrealistic fashion. We were en- 
 courao'ed to wonder what we could do 
 to assuage these sufferings, and the sad 
 victims of poverty and crime were no 
 longer pointed out as beacons — after the 
 Dickens fashion. 
 
 But these trembling efforts at slum 
 literature were suddenly pushed aside by 
 a vigorous hand, and the whole school 
 of social reformers sprang into being with 
 Alton Locke. What a long reign they 
 have had to be sure — they are reigning 
 still. Surely every unwholesome trade 
 has had its novel ; every grievance of the 
 toilers its special pleader in fiction. All 
 honour to the reformers, and long may 
 
 75
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 they blossom and bear fruit. What 
 Kingsley began Besant went on into, and 
 a host of smaller writers, well-intentioned 
 but nameless, followed hard upon their 
 masters. Year after year the public re- 
 turn with apparently unsated appetite to 
 the novel of social reform ; and it is a 
 healthy sign that this should be the case. 
 Once more we have the old problem 
 dished up in 5 John Street, that curiously 
 popular book of the day. There is 
 much that is true in this book, but not 
 much that is new. Doubtless the horrors 
 of yet one more unwholesome trade are 
 shown up here in a very dramatic way ; 
 but the cure which the author announces 
 for this and all kindred ills is such an old 
 one that it seems rather unnecessary to 
 write a novel in illustration of it. " What- 
 soever ye would that men should do to 
 you, do you even so to them likewise," 
 was said once for all many hundred years 
 
 ago ; but the public greet it as quite a 
 
 76
 
 slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 new doctrine, and 5 John Street sells 
 at an amazing rate. This interest in 
 books which treat of social reform is 
 certainly more healthy than the rush that 
 was made for the two other classes of slum 
 literature I have mentioned — i.e. (i) the 
 school of pity and terror, and (2) the 
 school of brutality. 
 
 The demand for the first of these is, I 
 hope, explained by the fact that the writers 
 of this school have wTitten so admirably. 
 
 It was in 1890 that Gissing brought 
 out that extraordinary book The Nether 
 World. This man would seem to have 
 been in hell. Other men crawl to the 
 edges of the pit and look over at the poor 
 devils that writhe in its flames — he has 
 come up out of it, and now, like the man 
 of the parable, would testify to his brethren 
 lest they too enter that place of torment. 
 As no one else has ever done — I would 
 almost venture to prophesy as no one else 
 will ever do — Gissing writes the tragedy 
 
 77
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 of Want. It is not written with brutality, 
 and that is why it is so terrible and un- 
 deniable. This bald incisiveness beggars 
 the vulgar exaggeration of other writers, 
 who by overstating their case deprive it 
 of effect. As we read we know that every 
 word is true — this is hunger, and heaven 
 help the hungry — this despair indeed 
 — not the glib despair which novelists 
 deal in by the page, but that mortal 
 disease of the mind which is past all cure. 
 Gissing has no gospel of hope to offer his 
 readers. " Work as you will," he says, 
 " there is no chance of a new and better 
 world until the old be utterly destroyed." 
 The "lower orders" are, to his seeing, 
 one huge tragedy: ''A Great Review of 
 the People. Since man came into being, did 
 the world ever exhibit a sadder spectacle f " 
 he inquires. There is no more awful fate, 
 by his showing, than life in the East End. 
 He writes of travelling "across miles of a 
 city of the damned, such as thought never 
 
 78
 
 slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 conceived before this age of ours ; stop- 
 ping at stations which it crushes the heart 
 to think should be the destination of any 
 mortal," and in this key of almost insane 
 depression The Nether World continues 
 from its first page to its last — a terrible 
 book ; but one that is deserving of more 
 fame than it ever got. 
 
 This was in 1890. In 1892-93 Kipling 
 published his first (and last?) slum story, 
 Badalia Herodsfoot, and the school of pity 
 was fairly ushered in. Because, where 
 Kipling goes it is safe to say that many 
 follow. I do not mean to say that a man 
 as clever as Arthur Morrison copies from 
 any one — it is only another instance of 
 the provoking fact that where one clever 
 mind strikes out an idea for itself another 
 is almost certain to be strikinof out the 
 same idea at the same moment — it is a 
 sort of mental contagion which has to be 
 reckoned with in literary matters. How- 
 ever that may be, Kipling published 
 
 79
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Badalia Herodsfoot in 1893, and Arthur 
 Morrison published Tales of Mean Streets 
 in 1894, and the same spirit and temper ran 
 through them both — humanity at its lowest 
 social ebb, yet exhibiting brilliant, wan- 
 dering lights of soul. We are well versed 
 in the types now, after several years' in- 
 struction in them — they came as a surprise 
 to us in 1894. Henceforward Arthur 
 Morrison became the most prominent ex- 
 ponent of the School of Pity. His Child 
 of the Jago continued the tradition at 
 its best, and exhibited the " relentless " 
 modern method very plainly. For here 
 is the story of a boy of originally good, 
 tender instincts, who, like Oliver Twist, 
 is in traininor for a thief Does innocence 
 triumph here? Is there a measure of 
 hope and comfort at the close? Impos- 
 sible. Dicky Perrot — the "Oliver" of 
 our day — has never a Chance from the 
 cradle to the grave, and the grave has 
 
 to swallow him up at the end, because 
 
 80
 
 slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 it is probably the only way left for the 
 author to take with his character. It is 
 a book of searching interest and great 
 power, of horrible detail, but withal of 
 deepest pity. We all read the books of 
 Arthur Morrison, and shuddered over 
 them ; some people were apparently read- 
 ing them without the shudder, for in 1897 
 appeared yet another recruit to the ranks 
 of slum literature, who, in slang phrase, 
 seemed to be determined to "go one 
 better" than his predecessors. The brutal 
 school had appeared. " The vituperative 
 vernacular of the nether world," says George 
 Gissing, "has never yet been exhibited 
 by typography, and i)resumably never will 
 be'' — but this prophecy was too sanguine ; 
 some years later Mr. Gissing would not 
 have been so sure about what typography 
 might be called upon to produce. There 
 is practically now no limit to what may 
 be done in this way — unless, indeed, we 
 
 are forced to start a censor of novels as 
 
 81 F
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 well as of plays. Liza of Lambeth 
 saw the light in 1897. It is a story of 
 brutal frankness and sickening import, 
 and has, alas, too surely set a fashion for 
 this sort of thing. We are spared nothing : 
 the reek of the streets ; the effluvia of 
 unwashed humanity ; but worse than all 
 these outside things is the hopeless moral 
 atmosphere in which the characters move. 
 There are no wandering lights here, the 
 moral darkness is unpierced by so much 
 as a ray of brightness. Nor does the 
 author seem to write in any spirit of pity, 
 or with any love for the creatures he 
 has made. With a stolid indifference he 
 chronicles their hopeless sufferings ; with- 
 out apparent disgust he details the loath- 
 some vices which degrade them ; the 
 whole thing is so gratuitous. Why all 
 these horrors .-* Why all this filth ? Such 
 recitals cannot even be defended from the 
 point of view of art, setting aside any 
 
 question of morality — and, books being 
 
 82
 
 slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 primarily supposed to be works of art, 
 this should be the deepest condemnation 
 that can be passed upon any work. Now 
 this brutal — gratuitously brutal — class of 
 book stands accused by its entire lack of 
 light and shade, its continual overstrain. 
 Such work is like a man who shouts at 
 the pitch of his voice and calls the noise 
 he produces music ; or like the daubs of 
 colour a child covers his paper with, call- 
 ing it a picture. All intelligence leaves 
 any so-called art when it is without light 
 and shade, and where intelligence is left 
 out art ceases to exist. It is perhaps only 
 fair to admit that inartistic as such work 
 may be, it has a horrid power of its own. 
 This is the very reason, however, why it 
 should be swept away root and branch. 
 It is exactly the same thing in a lesser 
 degree for us to sit down deliberately to 
 read these books, as it was for the much- 
 blamed crowds of sightseers to flock to 
 the bull-fights at Boulogne. The same 
 
 83
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 love of "a new shiver" is the explanation 
 of our interest in these horrors — or, per- 
 haps, the aboriginal thirst for blood and 
 violence which is said to lurk in every 
 one of us. 
 
 I have remarked that these pictures of 
 slum-life are inartistic — we might still 
 consider it a painful duty to read them 
 if they were true. For it is, no doubt, 
 a good thing to know how half the world 
 lives. But this is just where these books 
 fail. Life in the slums has its joys quite 
 as surely, if not as evidently, as life in 
 palaces, and it is ridiculous to suppose 
 that it has not. 
 
 This was a fact which was working ob- 
 scurely in the writings of Arthur Morrison. 
 The Child of the Jago scarcely admits 
 the joys of slum-life, but it gives a fair 
 idea of its pleasurable, if savage, excite- 
 ments — the ecstasy of Dicky Perrot's 
 absorption in the prize-fight, the lust of 
 
 battle, the gratulation of successful thiev- 
 
 84
 
 slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 ing — all these dubious joys are freely 
 admitted. 
 
 But it remained for yet newer recruits 
 to the slum-writers to discover what I 
 venture to say is more nearly the ultimate 
 truth about slum-dwellers, and to describe 
 this. ' Mord 'Emly and The Hooligan 
 Nights both give voice to this new dis- 
 covery, and with admirable art, that is 
 quite without exaggeration, show the wild 
 joys and excitements of slum-life. It is 
 no unthinking optimist, but a shrewd 
 observer of human nature, who describes 
 the desperate gloom of 'Mord 'Emly 
 when she finds herself in the respectable 
 suburban kitchen, far from the gay life of 
 her native slum. None of us can do any- 
 thing but sympathise with her when she 
 makes her wild "break" for liberty and 
 returns, like a homing pigeon, to the 
 haunts of childhood. What else would 
 she do ? Where else would she be } 
 And, after all, 'Mord can hold up her 
 
 85
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 head with the best of us, though she 
 does hve in the "nether world" and 
 dearly loves a street fight. There comes 
 the truth ; every slum-dweller is not 
 entirely depraved, or desperately miser- 
 able—and Mr. Pett Ridge, by boldly 
 breaking away from the tragic convention 
 of the slums, has come into a new king- 
 dom. But, as I have already pointed out, 
 no man reigns long alone in any literary 
 kingdom ; and Mr. Clarence Rooke has 
 entered into possession along with Mr. 
 Pett Ridge. And, again, following pre- 
 cedent, the former exaoraerates in The 
 Hooligan Nights the joys of slum - life 
 till we are fain to ask, "Who would now 
 be honest ? " For, by his showing, 
 " Youncr Alf," the Hooliran, has a much 
 better time of it than honester men. 
 There is little to deplore in Alf's lot : 
 not much want ; no dulness ; plenty of 
 excitement ; no hard work. And, withal, 
 
 Alf is such an engaging young man. We 
 
 ^86
 
 slum Movement in Fiction 
 
 hope he will burgle our house if it is to be 
 burgled, for we would scarcely mind his 
 doing so, and certainly would meet him 
 quite unconcernedly at dead of night. 
 Indeed, we wish Alf all joy in his 
 profession. 
 
 To my way of thinking, these later 
 contributions to slum literature are pro- 
 bably more near the truth in their picture 
 of slum-life than any of their predecessors, 
 yet it may be seriously questioned whether 
 all attempts in this sort are not vain? The 
 difference between the educated and the 
 uneducated is as great, Dr. Johnson said, 
 as that between the living and the dead — 
 a statement which may be an exaggera- 
 tion, but which, coming from such an 
 authority as it does, should be carefully 
 considered by those who try to write the 
 histories of the uneducated classes. The 
 gulf is indeed one which it is curiously 
 difficult to bridge over. We may believe 
 as firmly as we like that we are brothers 
 
 87
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 or sisters "under our skin," yet remain 
 in heathen ignorance all the while of the 
 real truth about each other. What we 
 mutually see must always be only the 
 surface of things, and anything beyond 
 that no more than clever conjecture. Let 
 us say, then, that the probabilities seem to 
 be with the latest contributors! They 
 avoid successfully the weak points where 
 their predecessors have broken down, are 
 not too moral, or too boring about reform ; 
 or too hopelessly tragical, or too des- 
 perately brutal ; they take, in fact, the 
 middle road of proverb with good results. 
 
 88
 
 THE SCOT OF FICTION 
 
 Untravelled people, who cannot move 
 about the world much, get a dangerous 
 number of ideas of other lands and nations 
 out of novels. Considered as guide-books, 
 it is true that a good deal of reliable in- 
 formation may be got out of modern 
 novels, because the craze for so-called 
 local colour, of which we hear so much 
 just now, fosters habits of accurate obser- 
 vation and description in the writers of 
 the day. But in the matter of national 
 character-drawing fiction still leaves a 
 great deal to be desired. There can be 
 no doubt that novelists are tempted to 
 fall into ruts of character-drawing, so that 
 with long practice types of Scotch, Irish, 
 Cornish, or American character can be 
 
 produced to order, as a pudding is com- 
 
 89
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 pounded from a recipe. It cannot be 
 denied that there are such things as racial 
 characteristics, and this fact is a terrible 
 snare to some authors. It is so much 
 easier to use the accepted types, for 
 instance, of Scotch or Irish character, 
 than to invent or to be at the trouble of 
 observing new and hitherto undescribed 
 characters. Moreover, the general public 
 will, in nine cases out of ten, admire the 
 stereotyped bit of character-drawing more 
 than the newly-observed one — and why, 
 the poor author asks, should the public 
 not get what they like ? 
 
 I have noticed that some nations seem 
 to lend themselves more easily to this sort 
 of conventional treatment than others, just 
 as certain faces lend themselves to carica- 
 ture ; and to follow out the simile, it is of 
 course those nations with pronounced 
 features of character that suffer most in 
 this way. Take as an instance of this 
 
 the "New England type": there must 
 
 90
 
 The Scot of Fiction 
 
 be in that wide dominion many thousands 
 of different types of character, but the 
 "type" of fiction is always the same: — 
 an austere old maid, heroic, epigrammatic, 
 frugal, and sorrowful, who seems to sit 
 eternally sewing rag carpets except when 
 she is going to " meetin' " ; we all know 
 her and her like now, and look for her 
 appearance in every New England story 
 as we look for flowers in May. We get 
 the idea that New England is peopled 
 solely with maiden ladies ; till we wonder 
 how the race is continued at all ! This 
 insistence upon racial characteristics points 
 to very shallow observation in the authors 
 who practise it ; any one can notice these 
 surface similarities, but to find fresh soil it 
 is necessary to pierce down deep below 
 the surface and discover the eternally and 
 curiously individual mind of each man or 
 woman. 
 
 For this very reason, as I have noticed 
 above, stereotyped pictures of character 
 
 91
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 are far more popular than fresher ones : 
 the public like to find in books what they 
 have observed themselves, and for one 
 man who sees below surface similarities, 
 there are twenty who see nothing else. 
 
 Among conventional types, none has 
 been more thoroughly established in the 
 popular mind than the so-called " Scotch 
 character" — and this not only, or indeed 
 so much, in Scotland as all over the world. 
 To many Englishmen there is but one 
 Scotsman — the fictitious Scot — the Scot 
 of fiction. He is a peculiarly odious per- 
 son : grim, unmannerly, over - religious, 
 hypocritical, grasping, coarse, and miserly 
 — a being to be shunned and feared alike. 
 This phenomenal and fictitious Scot has 
 also a conventional life-story which, with a 
 few variations, has been described over 
 and over again in fiction. He generally 
 begins life as an intelligent herd-boy ; then 
 he has to go to school, so that that awful 
 
 stock figure the Dominie may "walk on." 
 
 92
 
 The Scot of Fiction 
 
 (A Scotch story without a dominie is 
 extremely rare — I can remember eight 
 dominies of curious similarity as I write.) 
 
 From the village school the herd-hero 
 migrates to London with strange insis- 
 tency. Before doing so, however, he must 
 have fallen in love with the laird's daugh- 
 ter : this is a necessary part of the con- 
 struction of the tale in every case. Arrived 
 in London, the extraordinary career of this 
 prodigy begins : the woolsack looms ahead; 
 he maintains in the meantime all the fruofal 
 habits learned at home, always grudging 
 even a sixpence for his own use, but habit- 
 ually posting his weekly savings to his 
 saintly mother. (Those Scottish mothers !) 
 Struggles and parsimony are of course 
 always in fiction crowned by success, what- 
 ever may be the case in fact ; so we very 
 speedily find our hero returning rich and 
 distinguished to his native land and village 
 to marry the laird's daughter, rescue the 
 dominie from drink and despair, and fold 
 
 93
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 the sainted mother to his heart in an 
 ecstasy of fihal devotion. Throughout this 
 career the Scot of fiction keeps up the 
 habit of church attendance in Babylon the 
 great, and enters upon long discussions, in 
 season and out, of predestination and 
 election. 
 
 This is the generally received idea of 
 the typical Scot : his career and his char- 
 acter, which from the days of Gait 
 downward has been repeated with many 
 variations ; the aspiring, miserly, dutiful, 
 religious, argumentative hero has in fact 
 become a convention. It is a great pity 
 that this should be the case. For though 
 there is a degree of plausibility in this kind 
 of characterisation, it is essentially shallow. 
 A certain number of Scotsmen may seem 
 to conform to this type ; but the similarity 
 is only on the surface, as a more careful 
 study of human nature would soon show. 
 In the classical Scotch novelists, Scott and 
 Ferrier, you will never find stock figures of 
 
 94
 
 The Scot of Fiction 
 
 typical Scotsmen ; each portrait is that 
 of an individual ; whereas the Scot of 
 modern fiction is apt to be like a compo- 
 site photograph where the features of half- 
 a-dozen men are jumbled together to form 
 one face. Scott's most brilliant charac- 
 ters, such as Dominie Sampson (how far 
 from the typical dominie !) — poor Peter 
 Peebles, Cuddie Headrigg, or Dandie 
 Dinmont, are such perfect portraits of 
 individuals, that they might find their re- 
 presentatives in any nation. Their qua- 
 lities are common to the whole human 
 species, not only to the natives of North 
 Britain. The same may be said of Miss 
 Terrier's brilliant caricatures — Lady 
 Maclauchlan, Mrs. Major Wadell, and 
 Miss Pratt have their counterpart in 
 many lands. 
 
 The forerunner of the modern school of 
 Scotch writers was Gait — a sinner above 
 the common in the over-emphasis of racial 
 characteristics. There is no doubt that 
 
 95
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Gait's novels have gone far to establish 
 the unpleasant popular idea of the Scot- 
 tish character. He is very unfair to his 
 countrymen : all his vital characters — 
 those that make his books — are singularly 
 unlovely. Those that are meant to be 
 good are very vulgar ; those that are bad 
 are not credited with one redeeming 
 quality. Gait has in fact set himself un- 
 flinchingly to the depiction of all the racial 
 faults. Greed, coarseness, meanness, are 
 his constant themes. The unpleasant 
 characteristic of "nearness" he empha- 
 sises to an altogether unnecessary extent. 
 His men and women are all misers: one 
 would gather from these books that no 
 Scotsman ever spent a penny ungrudg- 
 ingly, or even a halfpenny ; that he grasps 
 by fair means or foul from his nearest and 
 dearest, and goes down into the grave 
 clutching the money bags still. 
 
 This is an entirely untrue and exag- 
 gerated picture of Scotch character ; yet 
 
 96
 
 The Scot of Fiction 
 
 it has influenced the best modern writers. 
 The behef in Scotch meanness has deep- 
 ened into such a convention that any 
 writer professing to write a "Scotch" 
 story without making his hero mean, 
 would be jeered at as no true portrayer of 
 the national character. Stevenson — of all 
 the school of modern Scotch novelists the 
 least prone to "stock" characterisation — 
 could not resist the convention, and must 
 make David Balfour grudge his sixpences. 
 Now, I do not deny that our nation is 
 fond of a bargain, but to call it a nation of 
 misers is unjust. Moreover, the heroic 
 side of the national frugality might just as 
 well be shown, and with far more truth 
 and justice. For one miser in Scotland 
 there are fifty men whose frugality is 
 infinitely noble ; and it is well to remem- 
 ber the historic pathos that underlies the 
 racial frugality. Poverty was our poor 
 Scotland's burden for many centuries, and 
 if her men and women are careful now, it is 
 
 97 G
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 from an instinct inherited through genera- 
 tions of half-starved ancestors whose heroic 
 struggles never kept the wolf at any great 
 distance from the door. 
 
 The next convention which is firmly 
 established in the popular imagination, 
 and fostered by the novelists, is the pre- 
 destination and election jest. In "Scotch" 
 novels few Scotsmen speak many words 
 without bringing in some doctrinal allu- 
 sion, as : " Gin ye had cuttit yersel' wi' 
 yer ain razor, wad effectual callin , think 
 ye, be the first word in yer mouth ?" 
 (Lilac Sunbonnet, p. 68) ; or : " Ye ken 
 verra weel that we're a' here on proba- 
 tion, and that few are chosen — just a 
 handfzc hej'e an there" said Milton. 
 " Ve7'ra comfortin for the Jiandfti ^ said 
 Jamie" [The Days of Aiild La7ig Syne, 
 p. 322). Now this is a perfectly false 
 and ridiculous misrepresentation. You 
 may travel from one end of Scotland 
 
 to another and never hear predestination 
 
 98
 
 The Scot of Fiction 
 
 or election mentioned, yet conventions die 
 so hard, that nothing will convince your 
 average Englishman of this, and he will 
 support his belief by pointing to certain 
 novels, the work of Scotsmen, who agree 
 in depicting their fellow-countrymen after 
 this fashion. This convention probably 
 had its origin in the fact that Scotch 
 people undoubtedly find theological ques- 
 tions more interesting than do their 
 English neighbours. This being the 
 case, it was easier, for purposes of fiction, 
 to epitomise this interest into these 
 two great questions of predestination 
 and election, just as a designer will 
 for purposes of decoration exaggerate 
 some one characteristic of a flower at 
 the expense of all its other attributes. 
 An effective design is produced in this 
 way, but it is not the true picture of the 
 flower by any manner of means ; and in 
 the same way the typical Scot, who is 
 always talking about election, makes an 
 
 99
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 effective figure in fiction, yet is very far 
 removed from the real Scot of fiesh and 
 blood, who is too intelligent to be puzzling 
 himself at this time of day over bygone 
 questions of this kind. He is more likely 
 to be "exercised" over the Higher Criti- 
 cism or theories of Inspiration, for he is 
 nothing if not progressive ; if he has 
 doubts at all, be sure they will be doubts 
 of the modern kind. 
 
 How little this very marked character- 
 istic of Scottish character has been in- 
 sisted upon, we have only to glance over 
 some "Kailyard" novels to see: the old 
 doubts, the old difficulties, the old beliefs, 
 are everywhere spoken of — of the newer 
 thought, the constant spirit of inquiry, un- 
 resting, out-going, progressive, we never 
 hear. Yet the latter is the true picture of 
 modern Scotland, the former is the most 
 outworn convention — a picture perhaps 
 of a bygone generation, but certainly not 
 of the men of these days. 
 
 lOO
 
 The Scot of Fiction 
 
 Among modern writers Gait has a true 
 follower in the late George Douglas, 
 author of that remarkable book, The 
 Hotise with the Green Shutters. Mr- 
 Douglas follows Gait in his unsparing 
 exposure of the national faults of the 
 Scottish people. All the most hideous 
 characteristics of the race are hauled out 
 into the lio-ht and exhibited with brutal 
 callousness. " Hateful and hating one 
 another " might have been the motto of this 
 horridly clever book. It seems to have 
 been specially written to exhibit the sin of 
 Spitefulness almost merging into Hate : — 
 
 "For many reasons intimate to the 
 Scotch character," says Mr. Douglas, 
 "envious scandal is rampant in petty 
 towns such as Barbie. To go back 
 to the beginning, the Scot, as pundits 
 will tell you, is an individualist. His 
 religion alone is enough to make him so. 
 For it is a scheme of personal salvation 
 significantly described by the Rev. Mr. 
 
 lOI
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Struthers of Barbie. ' At the Day of 
 Judgment, my friends,' said Mr. Struthers, 
 'at the Day of Judgment every herring 
 must hang by his own tail.' Self-depen- 
 dence was never more lucidly expressed. 
 History, climate, social conditions and 
 the national beverage have all combined 
 to make the Scot an individualist, fighting 
 for his own hand. The better for him if 
 it be so ; from that he gets the grit that 
 tells. From their individualism, however, 
 comes inevitably a keen spirit of com- 
 petition (the more so because Scotch 
 democracy gives fine chances to compete), 
 and from their keen spirit of competition 
 comes, inevitably again, an envious be- 
 littlement of rivals. If a man's success 
 offends your individuality, to say every- 
 thino- you cmi against Jimt is a recognised 
 weapon of the fight. It takes him down a 
 bit, and (inversely) elevates his rival." 
 
 What an indictment is this ! And the 
 author from beginning to end of his book 
 has the same accusation to make. The 
 
 I02
 
 The Scot of Fiction 
 
 village gossips of Barbie collect to watch 
 the drunkenness of one of their number : 
 •' He was drtmk ; but not as drunk as they 
 had hopedr Or again : — 
 
 "A pretended sympathy, from behind 
 the veil of which you probe a man's anguish 
 at your ease, is a favourite weapon of human 
 beasts anxious to wound. The Deacon 
 longed to try it on Gourlay. Never a 
 man went forth, bowed down with recent 
 shame, wounded and wincing from the 
 public gaze, but that old rogue hirpled up 
 to him and lisped with false smoothness, 
 'Thirce me, neebur, I'm thorry for ye! 
 Thith ith a terrible affair ! It'th on every- 
 body'th tongue. But ye have my thym- 
 pathy, neebur, ye have tha-at ' — and, all the 
 while, the shifty eyes above the lying mouth 
 would peer and probe, to see if the soul 
 within the other was writhing at his 
 words." 
 
 The book has all the qualities of a 
 
 •the 
 103 
 
 savaee caricature — the unmistakable like
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 ness, coupled with hideous distortion. 
 For it cannot be denied that some of the 
 " Barbie " characteristics may be found in 
 many Scotsmen ; but that they are as 
 universal as Mr. Douglas would make us 
 believe, is a libel not on Scotland only 
 but on human nature. 
 
 It is almost ridiculous to turn, by way 
 of contrast, to Mr. Barries Window in 
 Thrums. Thrums is indeed the anti- 
 thesis of Barbie to an extent that falsifies 
 the one picture or the other as we choose 
 to accept them ; they cannot both be true. 
 In Mr. Barrie's village, the natives are so 
 linked together in love and fellowship 
 that, like Christian in the Pilgrims 
 Progress, they seem "as it were in 
 heaven before they came at it." If one 
 author gives too great prominence to the 
 national failings, the other may justly be 
 accused of ignoring too entirely the dark 
 side of Scottish village life. Dear as Mr. 
 
 Barrie's books must always be to Scotch 
 
 104
 
 The Scot of Fiction 
 
 readers, this fact is undeniable. There is 
 little or no mention made of the drunken- 
 ness which is the national disgrace, of the 
 unchastity which is making the agricultural 
 districts of Scotland a byword, of the dirt 
 which is all too noticeable on every side. 
 These outstanding faults of our nation are 
 little dwelt upon by the newer story- 
 tellers, of whom Mr. Barrie is chief. The 
 cottages are all trim and clean, the women 
 wear spotless mutches, the husbands sit in 
 the ingle-neuk reading the Bible, the 
 ploughmen chastely court the " out- field " 
 workers with honourable marriage full in 
 view. 
 
 The modern convention of " tender- 
 ness," too, may be justly called in ques- 
 tion. Your true Scotsman will do his 
 duty to the death for the most unworthy 
 parents ; but he will not exhibit much 
 tenderness in the process. I scarcely like 
 to quote Mr. Barrie in a seeming spirit 
 of derision, because his books are de- 
 
 105
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Hghtful ; but to show the difference in his 
 views of the filial relationships from that 
 held by Scott, note the following extracts. 
 Says Mr. Barrie : — 
 
 " Jamie's eyes were fixed on the elbow 
 of the brae, where he would come in sight 
 of his mother's window. Many, many a 
 time I know the lad had prayed God for 
 still another sight of the window with his 
 mother at it. So we came to the corner 
 . . . and before Jamie was the house of 
 his childhood, and his mother's window, 
 and the fond anxious face of his mother 
 herself. My eyes are dull, and I did not 
 see her, but suddenly Jamie cried out, ' My 
 mother ! ' and Leeby and I were left 
 behind. When I reached the kitchen 
 Jess was crying, and her sons arms were 
 round her neck." 
 
 In Old Mortality we find the mother 
 
 and son of the elder novelist's fancy — or 
 
 perhaps it would be better to say, of his 
 
 observation : — 
 
 1 06
 
 The Scot of Fiction 
 
 "As soon as Cuddie thought her lady- 
 ship fairly out of hearing, he bounced up 
 in his nest. ' The foul fiend fa ye, that 
 I sud say sae,' he cried out to his mother, 
 ' for a lang - to7igued clavering wife, as 
 my faither, honest man, aye ca'ed ye ! 
 Couldna ye let the leddy alane wi' yer 
 whiggery ? And I was e'en as great a 
 gomeril to let ye persuade me to lie here 
 amang the blankets. . . .' 
 
 " ' Oh, my bairn . . .' began Mause. 
 
 "'Weel, mither,' said Cuddie, inter- 
 rupting her, 'what need ye maM sae 
 7nuckLe din aboot it.''' 
 
 Here the true observer of Scottish 
 
 manners and characteristics speaks. The 
 
 average Scot is nothing if not uncivil — 
 
 he is uncivil even when he means to be 
 
 respectful ; it is part of the independence 
 
 of his character. The modern writers 
 
 are far too merciful in their depictions 
 
 of "manners." I fear the unsuspecting 
 
 traveller who crosses the Border for the 
 
 107
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 first time expecting to meet with the 
 
 civilities described in modern fiction, will 
 
 receive a shock ! 
 
 The time is ripe for a new Scotch 
 
 novelist who will write of Scotsmen as 
 
 they are, and not as they are supposed 
 
 to be : the typical Scot we have had 
 
 enough of and to spare. But of course 
 
 the question rises, "What bit of Scotland 
 
 may the new novelist write about ? " for 
 
 our country is already pretty well laid 
 
 out after the fashion of gold land, in 
 
 "claims," to each of which the owner alone 
 
 has rights. All land north of Inverness, 
 
 for instance, has been appropriated by 
 
 William Black ; Argyle and the Isles are 
 
 the exclusive property of Mr. Neil Munro 
 
 and Miss Fiona Macleod ; Ayrshire must 
 
 be at once renounced to the classic Gait 
 
 and Mr. George Douglas ; Galloway 
 
 seems a wide country, but the stalwart 
 
 Mr. Crockett would certainly defend his 
 
 "claim" by right of might ! The Lothians 
 
 io8
 
 The Scot of Fiction 
 
 are holy ground, Scott and Stevenson 
 surely reign alone there. In Forfarshire 
 Mr. Barrie is king, and Perthshire owns 
 no other lord than " Ian Maclaren." 
 Aberdeenshire was long ago exploited by 
 Mr. William Alexander. 
 
 The novelist of the future, then, will 
 need to confine his efforts within a narrow 
 radius. I think (but may be mistaken) 
 that some small tract of country between 
 Banff and Elgin does not belong to any 
 one in especial. 
 
 But the Scottish people remain. 
 Thousands of men and women each as 
 different from the other as black is from 
 white, with all the vigour, the intellec- 
 tuality, the nerve of their race ; with its 
 vices too ; a strenuous people, capable of 
 anything. This should be an inspiring 
 thought to the story-teller. He need not 
 limit his Scotsman's story to hard proba- 
 bilities, for there is that in the composition 
 
 of the race which makes every man and 
 
 109
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 woman of them capable of extraordinary- 
 possibilities and even impossibilities — a 
 sort of outward-going force, not to be 
 reckoned with or held in check, not to 
 be contained either, be it said, in all the 
 pages of all the novelists put together. 
 
 I lO
 
 O TEMPORA! O MORES! 
 
 The newly published Life of Charlotte 
 Yonge is not an exciting book, yet it is, 
 from one point of view, extremely in- 
 teresting- and suoforestive. It is the life 
 of one of the most popular authoresses 
 of the nineteenth century — an authoress 
 whose name has become the proverbial 
 "household word " in most British homes, 
 and whose influence over millions of 
 readers has been far-reaching and en- 
 during. 
 
 Yet, on the face of them, these novels 
 by Charlotte Yonge are merely simple 
 tales for young people, of more or less 
 domestic interest and of unvarying moral 
 purpose. Such stories published just 
 now would receive scant notice even from 
 young readers, and none at all from those 
 
 1 1 1
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 older and more critical in taste. What, 
 then, has been the secret of Miss Yonge's 
 popularity, and what accounts for the 
 influence she had, and still to some extent 
 has, over her readers ? 
 
 Miss Yonge had the felicity, granted 
 to only a few writers in each generation, 
 to create a type. There is a tendency 
 in human nature to run always to one 
 extreme or another ; you will find either 
 a very bad or a very good type of hero 
 the favourite of each generation — there 
 is no place found in public favour for 
 the real man of real life who is neither 
 one thing nor the other. Types, in fact, of 
 necessity, and before they become such, 
 must be extreme instances of the charac- 
 teristics which they embody. Whether 
 Charlotte Yonge had consciously grasped 
 this fact we shall never know ; sufficient 
 to see that she acted upon it, and in 
 Sir Guy Morville, the hero of the 
 Heir of Redclyjfe, created a type of the 
 
 I 12
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 good hero which, in popularity, outran all 
 competitors. Just as Charlotte Bronte, 
 years before, had fascinated the world by 
 a wicked hero, and created the " Rochester 
 type," so Charlotte Yonge made " Mor- 
 villism " the fashion of the hour. Half 
 the youth of England were modelling 
 themselves on Sir Guy a few years after 
 the publication of the Heir of Redclyffe. 
 "The enthusiasm about Charlotte Yonge 
 among the undergraduates of Oxford in 
 1865 was surprising," we are told, and 
 we hear of regiments where every officer 
 had his copy of the famous novel. The 
 pre-Raphaelite brethren — Rossetti, Wil- 
 liam Morris, and Burne-Jones — " took 
 Sir Guy as their model " (a model which 
 they followed afar off by all accounts) ; 
 in fact, the popularity of the book in the 
 most unlikely quarters was extraordinary. 
 Now, how is it possible to account 
 for this sudden fever of interest in -the 
 Heir oj Redely ffe? Had the book 
 
 113 H
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 really sufficient merit to account for its 
 popularity ? There are several answers 
 to these questions ; the book which at- 
 tains wide popularity has not of necessity 
 great merit ; but it has, inevitably, some- 
 thiiig in it which appeals to human nature 
 — something universal. To detect this 
 vital spark in a book is to discover the 
 secret of its popularity — not always a very 
 easy matter. The great mass of ' ' popular " 
 authors appeal to the lower side of our 
 universal nature ; they know that, roughly 
 speaking, every one is interested in murders, 
 hairbreadth escapes, adventures of every 
 kind, so they select these as their subjects. 
 Another and quite as numerous class ac- 
 knowledge the universal note that is to be 
 found in divorces, adulteries, rivalries, 
 every manifestation of passion ; these 
 themes always secure their audience. But 
 it remains for more subtle minds to dis- 
 cover subjects which are at once universal 
 
 in their interest and yet unhackneyed. 
 
 114
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 Far be it from me to name Charlotte 
 Yonge "subtle"; yet in justice to the 
 Heir of Redely f^e it must be acknowledged 
 that she has made this very discovery 
 — has found a hero who appeals to a 
 huge audience as being a hero, and yet 
 does not make his appeal through any of 
 the lower and more obvious channels. To 
 have done this is something of an achi'^ve- 
 ment, and proves Miss Yonge to have 
 had a higher order of literary faculty and 
 perception than she is generally credited 
 with nowadays. Yet the secret was an 
 exceedingly simple one ; merely the old 
 truth of the eternal attractiveness of virtue. 
 This was not a new discovery ; to take 
 the greatest instance of all : who has ever 
 tried to deny the extraordinary attrac- 
 tiveness of the character of Christ, or 
 the power which the story has had, and 
 always will have, even over those who 
 do not regard it as a divine revelation. 
 Simple as this great principle is, Miss 
 
 115
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Yonge showed true literary intuition in 
 applying it to popular uses ; she realised 
 that the great mass of mankind worship 
 that perfection which they feel it impossible 
 to attain to in their own lives, and she 
 drew a character accordingly — she popu- 
 larised virtue. It is impossible to repress 
 a smile when we consider the many per- 
 fections and the few studied imperfections 
 of Sir Guy Morville, the hero of the Heir 
 of Redely ffe, and the question puzzles us 
 continually, " How does such an impossible 
 character still claim our interest and cre- 
 dence ? " For Sir Guy is, in truth, an ideal 
 rather than a real creation. His virtues 
 are almost touchingly ridiculous. When 
 he goes to Oxford he excels himself : — 
 
 "It was first proposed that Deloraine 
 
 (his horse) should go with him, but Guy 
 
 bethouo^ht himself that Oxford would be 
 
 a place of temptation for William (his 
 
 groom), and resolved to leave them both 
 
 at Holywell." (!) 
 
 ii6
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 
 At Oxford his own recreations must 
 have been as innocent as those he desired 
 for William, for they were limited to music 
 and walking : — 
 
 " The last, he said, might engross him in 
 the same way, but he thought there were 
 higher ends for music, which made it come 
 under Mrs. Edmondstone's rule of a thing 
 to be used guardedly, not disused." 
 
 Such temperance in pleasure at eighteen 
 is almost painful. But the same conscience 
 pursues him through life. To counter- 
 balance these virtues Miss Yonge had 
 to introduce at least one fault into her 
 hero's character, so we are told that he had 
 a temper of terrific violence, though the 
 only indication we have of it is " a flashing 
 eye " and a disposition to fly to the piano 
 and play the "Harmonious Blacksmith" 
 whenever his feelings became too fiery 
 to be trusted. It is all ridiculous and im- 
 possible and unreal ; and yet the char- 
 
 117
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 acter of Guy Morville remains attractive, 
 lovable, admirable throughout — ^just be- 
 cause it is an effort to describe perfection, 
 the thing we all long after and worship 
 in spite of ourselves ! 
 
 If, then— as it undeniably is — this wor- 
 ship of perfection is an instinct of our 
 nature, it is curious that, from time to time 
 in the world's history, the popular type of 
 hero should have been so far removed 
 from perfection. I have noticed the type 
 of Rochester hero and his popularity 
 as an instance of this, while in real life 
 neroes we may take Byron as another 
 example that vice may run virtue very 
 close, and even, for the time being, may 
 win the race. 
 
 We seem to have come to one of these 
 
 stages in the history of thought at present ; 
 
 the "good" hero has gone suddenly and 
 
 completely out of fashion. When I say 
 
 this, I do not assert that a vicious hero is 
 
 in fashion at present ; but that mere "good- 
 
 ii8
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 ness " is at a discount, and the want of this 
 
 quahty is, at present, no disqualification 
 
 for herodom — granted always that the 
 
 character has enough of strength to 
 
 justify his own existence. This is the 
 
 first and greatest essential in the making 
 
 of the modern hero, and it is a sign of the 
 
 times that this should be the case. For it 
 
 is not altogether strength as a splendid 
 
 characteristic that is admired, but strength 
 
 as a means to an end, strength as the road 
 
 to success — that most worshipped idol of 
 
 the twentieth century. This is a fact that 
 
 may be read between the lines of nine out 
 
 of ten novels of the day — the hero is the 
 
 successful man, and the successful man is 
 
 the one who has managed to wring from 
 
 Fortune's grudging hand — by any means — 
 
 those things which are popularly named 
 
 her gifts : wealth, fame, popularity. Fol- 
 
 lowinof this rule, the millionaire hero at 
 
 present carries all before him. The type 
 
 is rapidly becoming stereotyped, and this 
 
 119
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 richly gilded idol bids fair to be worshipped 
 for many days to come. He is always 
 self-made, the clever carver-out of his own 
 destinies ; generally rough, blatant, un- 
 scrupulous, but always and under all cir- 
 cumstances forceful and masterful. Let 
 us select at random a few descriptions of 
 this favourite type ; they will be found to 
 be curiously alike in their main character- 
 istics. Each hero, you will observe, is a 
 man of affairs — of large pecuniary affairs. 
 The type was first ably drawn by Mr. 
 Anthony Hope in The God in the Car, 
 some ten years ago ; since then African 
 empire-makers and millionaires have ap- 
 peared in countless numbers. This was 
 the original embryo : — 
 
 " Ruston's first five years of adult life 
 had been spent on a stool in a coal mer- 
 chant's office, and the second five some- 
 where in Africa. He came before the 
 public offering in one closed hand a new 
 
 I20
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 empire, asking with the other opened hand 
 for three milHon pounds." 
 
 The Company Promoter is thus dis- 
 cussed : — 
 
 " ' Gentlemaii ! Well, everybody's a gen- 
 tleman now, so I suppose Ruston's one.' 
 
 " ' I call him an unmannerly brute. . . . 
 Such an ugly mug as he s got, too ; but they 
 say it's full of character' 
 
 '"Character! I should think so — enough 
 to hang him on sight.' " 
 
 Keep in mind this description, and ob- 
 serve how little it has varied after ten years 
 of use in the mill of fiction : — 
 
 ' ' Karl Altham was a plain man, though 
 impressive — a man about forty-five, his 
 grey thick hair crowning a strong, clean- 
 shaven, mobile face. He did not look like 
 a gentleman, but he had a personality — he 
 stood out from the ruck of men as some- 
 thing bigger, stronger, more important 
 than his fellows." 
 
 121
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 The first employment of Karl Altham 
 had been winkle-selling ; but when the 
 story opens he is a multi-millionaire of im- 
 mense importance in American affairs. — 
 (Pigs in Clover, by Frank Danby.) 
 
 Or again, we find in Moth and Rust 
 another of the same — a Mr. Van Brunt, 
 who has " a property in Africa larger than 
 England" — he is, of course, aged forty, 
 tall, powerfully built, clean shaven : — 
 
 " You would never say Van Brunt was 
 a gentleman, but you would never say he 
 wasn't. He seems apart from all class. 
 He is himself r 
 
 Van Brunt began his career in a dry- 
 goods store as a variation from winkle- 
 selling or coal-selling ! 
 
 The strange similarity of these de- 
 scriptions shows what a hold this type 
 has taken upon the imagination of our 
 day ; it seems impossible for some authors 
 to avoid describing it. Sir Guy with his 
 
 122
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 conscience, his solicitude for the welfare 
 of William, and his well-controlled temper, 
 has disappeared from the ranks of heroes 
 (for the time being), and this strong, un- 
 scrupulous, successful African gentleman 
 has full possession of the field. This 
 seems at first sight rather a sad fact, and 
 one which does not say much for the good 
 taste of our generation. But perhaps this 
 is not altogether the case. The truth 
 seems to be that our generation have not 
 ceased to worship perfection in the least, 
 but they have begun to worship another 
 side of it from that which the admirers of 
 Sir Guy admired : progress, energy, force, 
 strength of purpose — these have become 
 cardinal virtues with the youth of our day 
 — have, in short, become synonymous with 
 virtue. The man who is unprogressive, 
 lethargic, weak of will, purposeless, can 
 never be virtuous in their eyes whatever 
 
 other moral qualities he may possess ; so 
 
 123
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 it follows that the forceful, successful man 
 must become their hero. 
 
 Miss Yonge was not, however, content 
 to create a type of hero all her own ; she 
 also created a heroine, and so impressed 
 this type upon the mind of the Young 
 England of the day, that she must have 
 helped to mould the characters of thousands 
 of girls into the same grooves. 
 
 The long and extraordinarily prolix 
 
 series of novels which came from her pen 
 
 are the very apotheosis of domesticity — 
 
 in them the domestic woman reigns 
 
 supreme. Miss Yonge's attitude to life 
 
 (as we see it reflected here) is much that 
 
 of a butterfly hovering over a dunghill : — 
 
 It cannot alight on anything foul, but flits 
 
 off to settle on the flowers instead. The 
 
 realities of life are curiously glossed over 
 
 in these books, which seem to have been 
 
 to a great extent a picture of their author's 
 
 life. Poverty, shame, anxiety, disaster — 
 
 all the sinister shapes that dog the foot- 
 
 124
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 steps of mankind through the long journey 
 — these seem to have been the merest 
 names to Charlotte Yonge. We find no 
 record of them in the tranquil pages of 
 her life. Disease and death all must know 
 sooner or later, but of other and far graver 
 sorrows we hear nothing. Her existence 
 was calm, sheltered, uneventful, narrow — 
 led in one peaceful Church of England 
 groove, far from the anxious and struggling 
 world where most men and women live. 
 The books which had their genesis in such 
 an atmosphere could scarcely have been 
 other than they are : the characters in 
 these books are born in a good position 
 in life, they live and die in it ; if shame 
 and calamity overtake them, be sure that 
 the passages which describe these circum- 
 stances will not ring true. For Miss Yonge 
 had read and heard of the shipwrecks of 
 life, but she had never gone through them 
 — she was only truly at home and happy 
 
 and at her best when she wrote of good, 
 
 125
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 happy people living blameless and sheltered 
 lives. 
 
 It is in creating this sort of domestic 
 atmosphere that Miss Yonge is unrivalled. 
 Nor is she likely soon to find a rival, for 
 the conditions of life have altered so con- 
 siderably of late years that novels of " home 
 life " have virtually disappeared, along with 
 the homes that used to inspire them : Miss 
 Yonge dearly loved for subject that now 
 almost obsolete institution ''a family circle,'' 
 i.e. father, mother, eight or even eleven 
 children ; such a household was her special 
 province. Where do we find the family 
 circle now ? To begin with, the parents 
 are no more those of Miss Yonge's fond 
 fancy — quite different fathers and mothers 
 adorn the family circles of our day, to judge 
 from fiction ; some extracts may illustrate 
 the difference better than anything else : — 
 
 "'It will be natural, Margaret' — says 
 Mrs. May, the mother in the Daisy 
 Chain — 'it will be natural by-and-by 
 
 126
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 that you should love some one else better 
 than me, and if I cared for being first, 
 what should I do then ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh, mamma ! — but ! ' said Margaret, 
 ^ you are always sure of papa! " 
 
 A healthful state of matters this, indeed 
 — to be always sure of papa ; but our 
 generation is not quite so confident about 
 papa, and the dark thought will sometimes 
 obtrude itself, "Are we even quite sure of 
 mamma nowadays ? " 
 
 Kipling scholars will scarcely need to 
 be reminded of the opening scene of the 
 Gadsbys as a modern instance : — 
 
 " Beaver [rapping' at door~\. Captain 
 Sahib has come. 
 
 '•MissD. What! Captain Sahib ! and 
 I'm only half dressed ! Well, I shan't 
 bother. 
 
 " Miss T. [calmly]. You needn't. It 
 
 isrUt for us. That's Captain Gadsby. 
 
 He is going for a ride with mamma. 
 
 He generally comes five days out of seven!^ 
 
 127
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 What has brought about this revolution 
 in mothers ? Those of Miss Yonge's day- 
 were much more Hkely in the natural 
 course of things to be rivals of their 
 daughters, for they were mothers at a far 
 earlier age than is generally the case at 
 present, when women more often marry 
 at forty than at seventeen. Yet such was 
 not the case. With marriage and mater- 
 nity Miss Yonge's heroines abandoned all 
 pretensions to youth : — 
 
 "'In my best days' — says Violet, the 
 heroine of Heartsease — ' I was not up 
 to Emma ; and now, between cares and 
 children, I grow more dull every day.' , 
 
 " * Your best days ! Why, how old are 
 you ? ' 
 
 " * Almost twenty-two,' said Violet ; ' but 
 I have been married nearly six years. / 
 am come into the heat and glare of middle 
 life. 
 
 > >> 
 
 Early marriages were perhaps the ex- 
 planation of the bygone domestic mother, 
 
 128
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 and the late unions of the present day- 
 may explain the modern mother and her 
 foibles — had she, like poor Violet, begun 
 "cares and children" at seventeen, she 
 might indeed feel herself in the heat 
 and glare of middle life a little sooner 
 than she seems to do just now. As it 
 is, she marries late and is more able to 
 face or to evade the worries of maternity, 
 and in consequence retains her youthful- 
 ness of spirit much longer. Be this as 
 it may, the fact remains for all to read 
 that " the new mother " is not the same 
 as the old. Moreover, as we explore the 
 various members of one of Miss Yonge's 
 famous "family circles," we perceive that 
 the new daughter is also strangely different 
 from her sister of forty years ago. The 
 tender passion as it was understood, or at 
 least described, by Miss Yonge, is far 
 other than it would appear to be at 
 present among the sons and daughters of 
 
 our day. As an instance of the bygone 
 
 129 I
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 style of thing, may I quote from the 
 Heir of Redclyffe a passage which de- 
 scribes Amy and Guy, their feehngs and 
 their intercourse, during their engage- 
 ment : — 
 
 " It was a time of tranquil, serene hap- 
 piness. It was like the lovely weather, 
 only to be met with in the spring, and 
 then but rarely, when the sky is cloudless 
 and intensely blue. . . . Such days as 
 these shone on Guy and Amy, looking 
 little to the future, or if they did so at all, 
 with a grave, peaceful awe, reposing in 
 the present and resuming old habits — 
 singing, reading, gardening, walking as of 
 old, and that intercourse with each other 
 that was so much more than ever before. 
 It was more, but it was not quite the 
 same ; for Guy was a very chivalrous 
 lover ; the polish and courtesy that sat so 
 well on his frank, truthful manners, were 
 even more remarkable in his courtship. 
 His ways with Amy had less of easy 
 familiarity than in the time of their 
 
 130
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 brother- and -sister-like intimacy, so that 
 a stranger might have imagined her 
 wooed, not won. It was as if he hardly 
 dared to believe that she could really be 
 his own, and treated her with a sort of 
 reverential love and gentleness, while she 
 looked up to him with ever-increasing 
 honour. . . . When alone with Amy he 
 was generally very grave, often silent and 
 meditative, or else their talk was deep and 
 
 serious." 
 
 So much for lovers of the old school. 
 Let us take a modern couple as a foil, 
 and the reader shall judge if things have 
 altered for the better or no — whether the 
 "tender passion" has more worthy ex- 
 ponents just now. I quote from a novel 
 named Mrs. Craddock, which has received 
 considerable attention of late : — 
 
 " He sat down, and a certain pleasant 
 odour of the farmyard was wafted over 
 Bertha, a mingled perfume of strong 
 tobacco, of cattle and horses ; she did 
 
 131
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 not understand why it made her heart 
 beat, but she inhaled it vohiptuously and 
 her eyes glittered. . . . When he bade 
 her good - bye and shook hands she 
 blushed again ; she was extraordinarily 
 troubled, and, as with his rising the 
 strong masculine odour of the country- 
 side reached her nostrils, her head 
 whirled. . . . Above all he was manly, 
 and the pleasing thought passed through 
 Bertha that his strength must be quite 
 herculean. She barely concealed her 
 admiration. . . . 'Shut your eyes,' she 
 whispered, and she kissed the closed 
 lids ; she passed her lips slowly over 
 his lips, and the soft contact made her 
 shudder and laugh ; she buried her face 
 in his clothes, inhaling there masterful 
 scents of the countryside. . . . She knew 
 not how to show the iimnensity of her 
 passion!^ 
 
 This is Bertha's first love : but she is a 
 
 woman of volatile affections, for ere the 
 
 book ends we have another description of 
 
 132
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 an even more erotic nature — the object of 
 this passion being a Rugby schoolboy : — 
 
 "She flung her arms round his neck 
 and pressed her lips to his ; she did not 
 try to hide her passion now ; she clasped 
 him to her heart and their very souls (?) 
 flew to their lips and mingled. This kiss 
 was rapture, madness, it was an ecstasy 
 beyond description, their senses were 
 powerless to contain their pleasure. 
 Bertha felt herself about to die ; in the 
 bliss, in the agony, her spirit failed and 
 she tottered — he pressed her more closely 
 to him." 
 
 We may indeed trace the curious differ- 
 ence between Amy and Bertha a little 
 further ; for, by a strange coincidence, 
 we find both these ladies in the closing 
 pages of the two books which record their 
 fortunes, occupied in the same manner, 
 i.e., gazing at the mortal remains of their 
 husbands. But though there is a simi- 
 larity in the situation, you will notice that 
 
 133
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 there is a wide divergence in sentiment 
 between the heroines. Amy, the older- 
 established heroine, shall have the prece- 
 dence in quotation : — 
 
 " Amy indulged herself with one brief 
 visit to the room where all her cares and 
 duties had lately centred. A look — a 
 thought — a prayer. The beauteous ex- 
 pression tJiere fixed was a help, as it had 
 ever been in life, and she went back again 
 cheered and sustained. She had no time 
 to herself except the few moments that 
 she allowed herself now and then to spend 
 in gazing at the dear face that was still 
 her comfort and joy. . . . She entered 
 the little room where that which was 
 mortal lay, with its face bright with the 
 impress of immortality. 
 
 " * Is he not beautiful } ' she said, with a 
 smile like his own. 
 
 " ' My dear, you ought not to be here,' 
 said Mrs. Edmonstone, trying to lead her 
 away. 
 
 " ' If you would let me say iny prayers 
 liere,' said Amy." 
 
 134
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 This is how Amy comported herself; let 
 us hear Bertha's views of bereavement : — 
 
 " After his death Bertha was appalled 
 by the regret which she felt rising within 
 her. Oh, she could not risk the possi- 
 bility of grief; her only chance of peace 
 was to destroy everything that might recall 
 him. She stood in front of the corpse 
 and looked. The impression of the 
 young man passed away, and she saw him, 
 as in truth he was, stout, red-faced, with 
 the venules of his cheeks standing out 
 distinctly in a purple network. . . . The 
 hands which had once delighted her by 
 their strength, now were repellent in their 
 coarseness. For a long time their touch 
 had disgusted her — this was the image 
 Bertha wished to impress on her mind.'' 
 
 It may be objected that Bertha is not 
 so much a typical modern heroine as a 
 sort of freak — that in every generation 
 women of this kind may be found. But I 
 am sorry to say that Bertha is already a 
 
 135
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 type in fiction. It would be easy to 
 adduce half-a-dozen authors — popular all 
 of them — whose heroines differ from 
 Bertha in name only. We have not far 
 to look for the reason of this change in 
 heroines — it is the old story of the swing 
 of the pendulum — the rebound which is a 
 law of nature. If Miss Yonge and her 
 generation avoided the realities of life, 
 our authors of to-day emphasise them in a 
 quite unnecessary manner, and the one 
 picture is fully more untrue than the 
 other. It is not possible to take a 
 charitable view of this development in 
 heroines : the masterful hero may be 
 regarded as only another manifestation of 
 the ideal ; but by no stretch of charity 
 can the courtesan heroine be viewed in 
 this favourable light. The "oldest pro- 
 fession in the world" certainly furnishes 
 the novelist with many an effective sub- 
 ject ; but it seems a pity for the idea to 
 
 get abroad that every woman is at heart 
 
 136
 
 O Tempora ! O Mores ! 
 
 a rake, or worse. This, without mincing 
 matters, is just what is being taught us on 
 all sides at present. The return to nature, 
 to "reality," is being overdone: in this 
 attempt to analyse the primitive instincts 
 of woman, many of her most inborn 
 characteristics are entirely ignored — for 
 bad as the world is, it would be even 
 worse if faithfulness, purity, and modesty 
 were not unchangeable instincts with the 
 larger proportion of women. 
 
 We need then, indeed, a return to 
 nature — to the whole of human nature 
 instead of one side of it — a return, in fact, 
 to some of those simple, undeniable 
 goodnesses which form such a large part 
 of life, and are as truly real, and more 
 so, than half the primordial instincts we 
 hear so much about just now. 
 
 137
 
 THE ART OF NARRATION 
 
 Those few persons who study literature — 
 who read, that is to say, not altogether for 
 the story of a story, or for the knowledge 
 contained in books of research or of criti- 
 cism, but take an interest in the form as 
 well as the matter of a book — those persons 
 are always asking themselves questions : 
 " The form is changing — why ? " " Is the 
 new form better or worse than the old 
 one?" "What has caused the change ? " 
 " Where will the change lead to ? " and so 
 on, and so on. 
 
 It is in the art of narration that change 
 of form shows more than in any other 
 branch of literature. And by the art of 
 narration I do not mean only story-telling 
 in its usual sense, but also all descriptive 
 
 writing. For fiction may perish, as the 
 
 138
 
 The Art of Narration 
 
 prophets tell us that it will ; but while 
 the world goes round, descriptive writing, 
 in one form or another, must ever remain 
 with us. Some one gifted with this art 
 of narration will always be wanted to 
 describe to other people what they either 
 have not seen or could not see for them- 
 selves. Now, surely the art has changed 
 its form very materially in our day, and I 
 wish to inquire into this change ; to try to 
 account for it ; and to plead for the new 
 methods of the art. 
 
 The change is from prolixity to brevity ; 
 from colourless detail to vivid outline ; from 
 long words to short ones. " Skip descrip- 
 tions " used to be a sort of unwritten law 
 with readers — but descriptions are now 
 condensed into a few exquisitely chosen 
 words which are wedged into the narra- 
 tive, and can no more be skipped in read- 
 ing it than the currants in a cake can be 
 omitted in the eating. The diffuse, ready- 
 made, conventionally-adjectived " descrip- 
 
 139
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 tion" of the Victorian era has absolutely 
 disappeared among writers who take any 
 literary rank at all. Far more pains are 
 bestowed on a few words of modern de- 
 scription than went to a whole page of 
 so-called descriptive writing in those days. 
 Then it was the reader who had the hardest 
 work to do, not the writer — for what can 
 be a greater mental effort than trying to 
 realise to oneself any scene which is de- 
 scribed indistinctly ? 
 
 The reader of former days was constantly 
 expected to use his imagination, instead 
 of having the picture painted for him so 
 vividly that it required no effort on his part 
 to visualise it. 
 
 You will see what I mean if you contrast 
 
 a descriptive passage from Scott with one 
 
 from any good modern writer. To gain 
 
 any impression of the country which Scott 
 
 is describing, a reader would need to close 
 
 his eyes and think long and carefully : — 
 
 140
 
 The Art of Narration 
 
 " The Cheviots rose before me in frown- 
 ing majesty ; not, indeed, with the sublime 
 variety of rock and cliff which characterises 
 mountains of the primary class, but huge, 
 round-headed, and clothed with a dark robe 
 of russet, gaining by their extent and 
 desolate appearance an influence upon the 
 imagination which possessed a character 
 of its own." 
 
 Here the reader who is called upon to 
 image the frowning majesty of the Cheviots 
 finds himself, before he has fairly visualised 
 this, confronted with the staggering ques- 
 tion : " What are the characteristics of 
 mountains of the primary class ? " True, 
 the author supplies the answer, that " a 
 sublime variety of rock and cliff" is their 
 characteristic ; but the reader keeps ran- 
 sacking his brain none the less for half- 
 remembered bits of information about 
 " rocks of the primary class," while his eye 
 goes on reading down the page of the 
 
 "huge, round-headed" mountains, and he 
 
 141
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 wonders what the character of that " in- 
 fluence" might be, which he is told they 
 "exercised upon the imagination." 
 
 Or let us take another example — because 
 it is impious to find fault with Scott — and 
 Gait shall furnish the text this time : — 
 
 " The year was waning into autumn, and 
 the sun setting in all that effulgence of 
 glory with which, in a serene evening, he 
 commonly at that season terminates his 
 daily course behind the distant mountains 
 of Dumbartonshire and Argyle. A thin 
 mist, partaking more of the lacy character 
 of a haze than the texture of a vapour, 
 spreading from the river, softened the 
 nearer features of the view ; while the dis- 
 tant were glowing in the golden blaze of 
 the western skies, and the outlines of the 
 city on the left appeared gilded with a 
 brighter light," &c., &c., &c. 
 
 Here not only the construction of the 
 
 sentence is slovenly to a degree, but the 
 
 whole manner of relation is intolerably 
 
 142
 
 The Art of Narration 
 
 tedious. It is a typical description of that 
 era when authors either could not describe 
 or would not orive themselves the trouble 
 to do so. Just read alongside of Gait's 
 wearisome wordiness a line or two from 
 Kipling : — 
 
 " The animal delight of that roaring day 
 of sun and wind will live long in our 
 memory — the rifted purple flank of Lack- 
 awee, the long vista of the lough darkening 
 as the shadows fell ; the smell of a new 
 country, and the tearing wind that brought 
 down mysterious voices of men from some- 
 where high above us." 
 
 Or, to take another " modern instance," 
 can words go farther than this from 
 Stevenson : — 
 
 " On this particular Sunday there was 
 no doubt but that the Spring had come 
 at last. It was warm, with a latent shiver 
 in the air that made the warmth only 
 the more welcome. The shallows of the 
 stream glittered and tinkled among bunches 
 
 143
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 of primroses. Vagrant scents of the earth 
 arrested Archie by the way with moments 
 of ethereal intoxication. The grey, 
 quakerish dale was still only awakened in 
 places and patches from the sobriety of its 
 winter colouring ; and he wondered at its 
 beauty ; an essential beauty of the old 
 earth it seemed to him . . . and when he 
 had taken his place on a boulder, near 
 some fairy falls, and shaded by a whip of 
 a tree that was already radiant with new 
 leaves, it still more surprised him that he 
 should find nothing to write ... he 
 lingered yet a while in the kirkyard. A 
 tuft of primroses was blooming hard by 
 the leg of an old black table tombstone, 
 and he stopped to contemplate the random 
 apologue. They stood forth on the cold 
 earth with a trenchancy of contrast ; and 
 he was struck with a sense of incomplete- 
 ness in the day . . . the chill there was 
 in the warmth, the gross black clods about 
 the opening primroses, the damp, earthy 
 smell that was everywhere intermingled 
 
 with the scents." 
 
 144
 
 The Art of Narration 
 
 These examples of modern description 
 are typical of the new movement at its 
 best ; they exhibit all the virtues of the 
 school and none of its vices ; but, to be 
 quite impartial, I must point out what 
 these vices are. The first, and most 
 marked, is the over-use of onomatopoetic 
 words. 
 
 Now, there is no doubt that the use of 
 a description is to convey its impression 
 vividly, and to this end there is perhaps 
 no cheaper method than the use of words 
 which express themselves. Starting from 
 this basis, repudiating the much used verb, 
 adjective, and adverb of literature, some 
 writers have quite run away with the 
 method, so to speak, and have succeeded 
 in going off the rails of " literature" — of 
 classicality — in consequence of this bolt 
 into unknown paths. Description must be 
 vivid, they say, no matter how the effect is 
 obtained. The results of this departure 
 are rather startling. I quote at random 
 
 145 K
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 from a very typical book of this class — 
 The Red Badge of Courage : — 
 
 " His canteen banged rhythmically and 
 his haversack bobbed softly — he wriggled 
 in his jacket — the purple darkness was 
 filled with men ^\\q jabbered — he felt the 
 swash of the water — his knees wobbled — 
 the ground was cluttered with men — a 
 spatter of musketry — the fire dwindled to 
 a vindictive popping — the man was blubber- 
 ing — another man grunted — the guns 
 squatted in a row like savage chiefs — they 
 argued with abrupt violence, it was a 
 grim pow-wow." 
 
 It is all ridiculously effective, expressive, 
 
 convincing ; but too uncouth by far to be 
 
 admitted to the high places of literature. 
 
 There is a very practical working test for 
 
 language, i.e., to ask whether any other 
 
 word could have expressed the intended 
 
 meaning as well ; and this test has not 
 
 always been applied here. Many more 
 
 shapely words would have expressed the 
 
 146
 
 The Art of Narration 
 
 meaning admirably without giving offence 
 to the ear, and yet without conveying any 
 impression of primness — that bugbear of 
 modern writers. 
 
 Another vice of the less practised fol- 
 lowers of the new school is a total want of 
 all construction in their sentences. Be- 
 cause prolixity and over-elaborated phras- 
 ing were the snares of bygone writers, 
 that is no reason why we should cut up 
 our sentences into four or five words : — 
 Nothing is easier. The method is simple. 
 It presents no difficulties. It is distinct. 
 It appeals to many. It is new. There- 
 fore it pleases. For a time. But not 
 permanently. Men of intelligence yawn. 
 The trick is too readily seen through. It 
 is like an infant's reader : " My cat is 
 called Tom. Do you like cats ? No, I 
 like dogs. I like both cats and dogs," 
 &c., &c. 
 
 But this is enough of fault-finding ; and 
 every new movement must go through 
 
 147
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 some ridiculous phases of growth ; and in- 
 stead of laughing at these we must acknow- 
 ledo^e the benefit that the movement has 
 been in the main. Just look at Kipling's 
 language — the masterly way in which he 
 employs words old and new indifferently, 
 but always the best word. Try to substi- 
 tute any other for one chosen by him, and 
 you will quickly recognise his art : — 
 
 "A boat came nosing carefully through 
 the fog." "Over that pock-marked 
 ground the regiment must pass." " Beau- 
 tiful ladies who watched the regiment in 
 church were wont to speak of Lew as 
 an angel. They did not hear his vitriolic 
 comments on their morals and manners 
 as he walked back to barracks." 
 
 What an advance there is here from the 
 days when only well-known words were 
 employed — " a shady grove," " a handsome 
 youth," "a graceful girl," "a lofty mountain," 
 " a rapid stream," — the noun and the adjec- 
 tive were then as inevitably coupled together 
 
 148
 
 The Art of Narration 
 
 as B follows A in the alphabet ; no one 
 thought of altering the arrangement. The 
 change is sure also to be a lasting good, 
 because it is the outcome of thought, not 
 of fashion — no man, even if he catch up 
 mannerisms of style quickly, can produce 
 fresh adjectives by imitation ; this is a bit 
 of work that must always come straight 
 from the author's own brain. 
 
 The second great change which I notice 
 in the better class of descriptive writing is 
 that it is almost entirely done by simile. 
 The power of mere words is, when all 
 is said and done, very limited. You may 
 choose your words never so cleverly, but 
 if you trust to words alone you will not get 
 half the effect that can be gained by one 
 good simile. As an example of well-chosen 
 simile, let us quote Kipling once again : — 
 
 " The low-browed battleships slugged 
 their bluff noses into the surge and rose 
 dripping like half - tide rocks." "The 
 weather was glorious — a blazing sun, and 
 
 149
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 a light swell to which the cruisers rolled 
 lazily, as hounds roll on the grass at a 
 cheeky 
 
 This is an example of simile made use 
 of in short, unelaborated description. But it 
 is to Thomas Hardy, who must surely stand 
 out as the very prince of all our modern 
 descriptive writers, that we must look for 
 examples of the constant and elaborate 
 use of simile as a method of heightening 
 effects. He never even attempts to de- 
 scribe without it; having apparently gauged 
 the value of mere words to convey impres- 
 sions. He seems to consider that our im- 
 aginations always need the crutch of simile, 
 and that we can only be made to realise 
 something that we have not seen by the help 
 of something that we have seen. Let me 
 give you two examples of his word-pictures, 
 which are much more exhaustive and quite 
 as unconventional as anything in Kipling, 
 yet, by reason of the travail shown in them, 
 
 greater incomparably. The elaboration 
 
 150
 
 The Art of Narration 
 
 without tediousness in the following de- 
 scription is a marvel of workmanship. 
 And notice the constant use which is made 
 of simile : — 
 
 "They could then see the faint summer 
 fogs in layers, woolly level, and appareyitly 
 no thicker than counterpanes, spread about 
 the meadows in detached remnants of 
 small extent. On the grey moisture of 
 the grass were marks where the cows had 
 lain through the night — dark green islands 
 of dry herbage the size of their carcases in 
 the general sea of dew ... or perhaps 
 the summer fog was more general, and 
 the meadows lay like a white sea, out of 
 which the scattered trees rose like danger- 
 ous rocks. Birds would soar through it 
 into the upper radiance and hang on the 
 wing, sunning themselves, or alight on the 
 wet rails subdividing the meads, which 
 now shone like glass rods. Minute dia- 
 monds of moisture from the mist hung, 
 too, upon Tess's eyelashes, and drops upon 
 her hair, like seed pearls!' 
 
 151
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Or again : — 
 
 "There had not been such a winter for 
 years. It came on in stealthy and mea- 
 sured glides, like the moves of a chess-player. 
 One morning the few lonely trees and the 
 thorns of the hedgerow appeared as if they 
 had put off a vegetable for an animal in- 
 tegument. Every twig was covered with 
 a white nap, as of fur grown from the rind 
 during the night, giving it four times its 
 usual dimensions ; the whole bush or the 
 ir&Q forming a staring sketch in white lines 
 on the mournful grey of the sky and hori- 
 zon. Cobwebs revealed their presence on 
 sheds and walls where none had ever been 
 observed till brought out into visibility by 
 the crystallising atmosphere — hanging like 
 loops of white worsted from salient points 
 of the outhouses, posts, and gates." 
 
 Description can go no farther. And 
 here are all the best qualities of the new 
 school of writers grouped together — vivid- 
 ness, minuteness without prolixity (for who 
 
 would wish one detail omitted }), free use 
 
 152
 
 The Art of Narration 
 
 of words wherever derived, and with it all 
 exquisite selection. 
 
 Now, I have given enough of examples 
 to prove that the change in descriptive 
 writing is really accomplished ; but it is 
 more difficult to say exactly what has 
 caused the change. 
 
 I am inclined to think that though it is 
 in part a literary movement, it owes a great 
 deal to another cause. There is a well- 
 known saying that " the demand creates 
 the supply," which may give us some clue 
 to all this change. This is an impatient, 
 nervous generation — over - busy, over- 
 stimulated ; and unless a writer can write 
 a description which interests the reader in 
 spite of himself , he had better not write at 
 all. The author who appeals to an over- 
 worked, nervous reader is one who conveys 
 his meaning almost instantaneously to the 
 reader's mind without effort on his part. 
 This is what really good descriptive 
 writers can do : it is what the best writers 
 
 153
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 of the new school do. Perhaps the inher- 
 ent love of novelty that there is in all of 
 us is also an element in the new move- 
 ment. We would rather have any change 
 than none, and style has to come under 
 this law as surely as every other art ; but, 
 as I have pointed out, this word-revolu- 
 tion is one which has been brought about 
 thinkingly, so it is likely to prove a per- 
 manent one, not a mere rebellion against 
 the powers that be. 
 
 Some critics are a little apt to assert 
 that nothing new can be classic ; which is 
 just as foolish as it is to say that every- 
 thing old is classic. It remains with the 
 younger men of the new school to show 
 that their work may take as high rank, for 
 all its newness, as the great work of long 
 ago. And this not only in spite of its re- 
 volutionary tendencies, but by reason of 
 them. 
 
 154
 
 GEORGE BORROW 
 
 There has been of late a great rising 
 again from the shelves of George Borrow. 
 Every magazine has its article upon him, 
 and the tardy publisher at last begins to 
 advertise the much-needed " new and com- 
 plete" edition of George Borrow's works. 
 All this is consequent upon the publication 
 of Dr. Knapp's Life of Borrow — the first 
 authentic life of the man which has ap- 
 peared since his death in 1881. 
 
 Now it is more than fifty years since 
 the Borrow books were published — time 
 enough, surely, for a reputation to be 
 made ; time enough even for it to be 
 made and forgotten and made over again ; 
 and this is a good deal what has happened 
 to Borrow's reputation in these fifty years. 
 The Bible in Spain, and Lavengro, and 
 
 155
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Romany Rye created an immense sensa- 
 tion in their day, yet it is a surprising fact 
 that even among people who profess an 
 interest in books and are well read in 
 modern literature there is a large class 
 who only know Borrow by name. "Oh 
 yes, he wrote about gipsies," is the usual 
 uninterested answer such people give when 
 asked if they know anything about him. 
 Indeed, a vague impression exists in some 
 quarters that Borrow was a sort of lay 
 evangelist, who went about scattering 
 Bibles among the gipsies, and then wrote 
 an account of their conversions. The 
 Bible in Spain was perhaps the most 
 ill-advised title that a well-written book 
 ever laboured under, giving as it does 
 the idea that the book is a prolonged 
 tract. 
 
 But the new Life, and the interest that 
 it has created, will surely send readers to 
 the books themselves to get all their false 
 
 impressions put to rights ; after reading 
 
 156
 
 George Borrow 
 
 them is the time to read the Life, and not 
 till then. This provokingly exhaustive 
 Life tells us exactly what we do not wish 
 to know ; and it has reticences which the 
 true admirer of Borrow feels to be almost 
 an insult. We open it, full of interest, 
 confident that we shall find here the solu- 
 tion of a great many puzzles : and we do 
 not find it. Dr. Knapp tells his readers 
 at once as much and as little as it is pos- 
 sible to tell them. That is to say, he 
 gives aggravatingly precise dates and lists 
 of dry-as-dust details, while he tells us 
 nothing at all about the real George 
 Borrow. Does any one care to have a 
 list of all the boys who were at school 
 with Borrow at Norwich ; or to have a 
 dated list of everything he ever penned, 
 known or unknown ; or to be presented 
 with a facsimile of the first advertisement 
 of Romany Rye ? Such trivialities are 
 purely teasing in a biography, which 
 should be plainly what it is — nothing 
 
 157
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 more or less than a story. The biog- 
 rapher who makes his hero a hero is 
 the successful writer of lives ; and no one 
 who cannot do this should essay the task. 
 Nor should the real biographer resent as 
 curiosity the reader's wish to know the 
 truth about the man he reads of; unless 
 the truth is told in a life it had better not 
 be written, and to suppress facts just 
 because they do not reflect credit upon 
 the subject of them is necessarily to falsify 
 the whole character-sketch. Dr. Knapp 
 perhaps does not actually suppress, but 
 he draws a curtain down with great deter- 
 mination every here and there, always just 
 as the scene is getting interesting. Could 
 there be a surer way than this of bungling 
 a biography ? — to tell every unnecessary 
 detail and omit every vital fact. 
 
 However, one must "take what one 
 gets and be thankful," as the old proverb 
 says, in the way of biography, that least 
 
 understood of all the perplexing paths of 
 
 158
 
 George Borrow 
 
 literature. For the generally received 
 idea is that any one can write a life if 
 given the facts, and until that grievous 
 mistake is corrected, we must just read 
 dull lives of clever men with patience, 
 waiting for the clever men to rise who 
 will be able to write even the lives of dull 
 ones amusingly. 
 
 Dr. Knapp's object then, in spite of his 
 worship of George Borrow, seems to have 
 been to make him entirely prosaic in the 
 eyes of his readers. There is not a hint 
 even of interest or of romance in these 
 two great volumes. And this is the life 
 of George Borrow, the prince of adven- 
 turers, whose books read like a long fairy 
 tale written for grown-up people ! All 
 the burning questions which we have on 
 our lips after reading the Borrow books 
 remain unanswered when we have finished 
 the Life: "What did he do in 'the veiled 
 period ' — those mysterious seven years 
 that are omitted from the Life f " 
 
 159
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 " Who was Isopel Berners ? " " Did he 
 ever meet her again?" "Was Borrow 
 mad ? " ** Was he a humbug, or did he 
 really take an interest in the Bible So- 
 ciety?" "Was he happily married to his 
 elderly wife, or did he marry for money ? " 
 All these facts may be too sacred for 
 publication, but if they are, then the 
 man's whole life was unsuited for a pro- 
 fane public to investigate into, and the 
 Life should never have been pub- 
 lished. 
 
 I am confident, however, that Borrow's 
 admirers who first read all his books and 
 then read his Life will form their own 
 (perhaps mistaken) theories upon his life. 
 They will know well enough whether 
 he ever met Isopel Berners again ; and 
 whether he was happily married ; and 
 whether he was mad ; and what he did 
 in the "veiled period." And it is certain 
 that these theories, one and all, will be 
 
 quite different from the suggestions which 
 
 i6o
 
 George Borrow 
 
 are thrown out in the Life by discreet 
 Dr. Knapp. 
 
 But I have been writing all this time 
 as if all my readers had read Borrow's 
 life and his books ; while the chances are 
 that many of them have read neither, 
 and therefore are quite in the dark about 
 them both. For the enlightenment of 
 people in this enviable state of darkness 
 — enviable because they have such plea- 
 sures in store — I must give some details 
 of Borrow's life, and explain why it de- 
 served to be written and why his books 
 should be read and remembered. 
 
 George Borrow was born at East Dere- 
 ham in 1803. He was the son of a 
 recruiting officer, and when quite a child 
 was taken by his parents all over Eng- 
 land, Scotland, and Ireland, never settling 
 down for any length of time in one place ; 
 at last he was sent to complete his very 
 desultory education at a school in Norwich, 
 
 and finally was articled to a solicitor of that 
 
 161 L
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 town in 1819. But the boy's real talent 
 
 was for languages, not for law ; he learnt 
 
 "any language in six weeks," as his boast 
 
 was ; so early in life he began to dabble 
 
 in translation, turning off English versions 
 
 of Danish and Welsh poems, which did 
 
 not prove very saleable. Then, after the 
 
 traditional way of clever youth, Borrow 
 
 went up to London, and lived there 
 
 " from hand to mouth," doing hack work 
 
 for a publisher, till he started suddenly 
 
 off on those travels through England 
 
 which are described in Lavengro, the 
 
 most delightful of all his books. Having 
 
 starved and struggled long enough in 
 
 towns, he resolved that he would starve 
 
 in the wide green country now, and not 
 
 struggle after a livelihood or fame any 
 
 longer. So through the dear English 
 
 lanes he travelled, picking up an existence 
 
 somehow, and falling in (by his own 
 
 account) with extraordinary adventures. 
 
 Lavengro tells us all these stories, and as 
 
 162
 
 George Borrow 
 
 we read it we are lifted into an atmos- 
 phere of sudden romance. The lanes are 
 peopled not with the work-a-day men and 
 women of our world, but by a race of 
 beings unlike any we have ever met. 
 We find them speculating on curious 
 themes in strange language, and it would 
 appear that every wayfarer Borrow met 
 had some odd contribution to make either 
 to his knowledge or to his philosophy. 
 Borrow is always asking questions ; it is 
 his " method " of character-sketching ; and 
 by the time he has cross-examined his 
 witness, there he stands before the reader 
 more distinctly drawn by his own replies 
 than if Borrow had spent a page of de- 
 scription upon him : — 
 
 " * What is your opinion of death, Mr. 
 Petolengro?' said I, as I sat down beside 
 the gipsy. 
 
 " * My opinion of death, brother, is 
 much the same as that in the old song 
 of Pharaoh, which I have heard my 
 
 163
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 grandam sing : " When a man dies he 
 is cast into the earth, and his wife and 
 child sorrow over him . . . and if he is 
 quite alone in the world, why, then he 
 is cast into the earth and there is an end 
 of the matter." ' 
 
 "'And do you think that is the end 
 of a man ? ' 
 
 " ' There's an end of him, brother, more's 
 the pity.' 
 
 " ' Why do you say so ? ' 
 
 " ' Life is sweet, brother.' 
 
 " ' Do you think so?' 
 
 "'Think so! There's night and day, 
 brother, both sweet things ; sun, moon, 
 and stars, brother, all sweet things ; there's 
 likewise a wind on the heath. Life is 
 very sweet, brother ; who would wish to 
 die?' 
 
 " ' I would wish to die.' 
 
 " ' You talk like a Gorgio, which is the 
 same as talking like a fool — wish to die, 
 indeed ! A Romany chal would wish to 
 live for ever ! ' 
 
 " ' In sickness, Jasper ? ' 
 
 164
 
 George Borrow 
 
 " ' There's the sun and stars, brother.' 
 
 " ' In blindness, Jasper ? ' 
 
 " ' There's the wind on the heath, bro- 
 ther; if I only feel that, I would gladly live 
 for ever. Dosta, we'll now go to the tents 
 and put on the gloves ; and I'll try to 
 make you feel what a sweet thing it is to 
 be alive, brother ! ' " 
 
 You may search literature through for 
 the like of this matchless dialogue, which 
 in half a page sums up the character of 
 both speakers — the anxious, foreboding, 
 melancholy questioner ; the merry answerer 
 with his pagan creed and joie de vivre. 
 Borrow is always sketching this Peto- 
 lengro for us, always by the same method 
 of question and answer that is so quaintly 
 effective : — 
 
 " ' . . . We are not miserable, brother,' 
 says Petolengro. 
 
 " ' Well, then, you ought to be, jasper ; 
 have you an inch of ground of your own .'* 
 Are you of the least use } Are you not 
 
 165
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 spoken ill of by everybody ? What's a 
 gipsy ? ' ^ 
 
 " ' What's the bird noising yonder, 
 brother ? ' 
 
 " ' The bird ? Oh, that's the cuckoo 
 tolling ; but what has the cuckoo to do 
 with the matter ? ' 
 
 " 'We'll see, brother; what's the cuckoo?' 
 
 " * What is it ? You know as much 
 about it as myself, Jasper.' 
 
 " ' Isn't it a kind of roguish, chaffing 
 bird, brother ? ' 
 
 " ' I believe it is, Jasper,' 
 
 " ' Nobody knows whence it comes, 
 brother ? ' 
 
 "' I believe not, Jasper.' 
 
 " 'Very poor, brother, not a nest of its 
 own ?' 
 
 " ' So they say, Jasper.' 
 
 "'With every person's bad word, 
 brother ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes, Jasper, every person is mock- 
 ing it.' 
 
 " ' Tolerably merry, brother ? ' 
 
 " 'Yes, tolerably merry, Jasper.' 
 
 i66
 
 George Borrow 
 
 " * No use at all, brother ? ' 
 
 " ' None whatever, Jasper.' 
 
 " ' You would be glad to get rid of the 
 cuckoos, brother?' 
 
 " ' Why, not exactly, Jasper ; the cuckoo 
 is a pleasant, funny bird, and its presence 
 and voice give a great charm to the green 
 trees and fields. No, I can't say I wish 
 exactly to get rid of the cuckoo.' 
 
 " ' Well, brother, what's a Romany chal ? ' 
 
 " ' You must answer that question your- 
 self, Jasper.' 
 
 "'A roguish, chaffing fellow, ain't he, 
 brother ? ' 
 
 " ' Ay, ay, Jasper.' 
 
 " ' No use at all, brother ? ' 
 
 " ' I see what you're after, Jasper.' "... 
 
 So the pages run, in their audacious 
 
 newness of method that is Borrow's own 
 
 invention, and his alone ; it is happily 
 
 impossible to copy, for how tired we 
 
 should get of indifferently done Borrow ! 
 
 He does not confine himself, however, to 
 
 two or three principal characters in his 
 
 167
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 books ; there are hundreds of tiny char- 
 acter-sketches dropped in, as it were, in 
 spite of himself: — 
 
 " I met the other day an old man who 
 asked me to drink. ' I am not thirsty,' 
 said 1, 'and will not drink with you.' 
 
 " ' Yes, you will,' said the old man, ' for 
 I am this day one hundred years old ; and 
 you will never again have an opportunity 
 of drinking the health of a man on his 
 hundredth birthday.' 
 
 " So I broke my word and drank. 
 
 " * Yours is a wonderful age,' said I. 
 
 " ' It is a long time to look back upon,' 
 said the old man ; ' yet, upon the whole, I 
 am not sorry to have lived it all.' 
 
 "'How have you passed your time?' 
 said I. 
 
 "'As well as I could,' said the old 
 man ; ' always enjoying a good thing 
 when it came honestly within my reach — 
 not forgetting to thank God for putting 
 it there.' 
 
 " ' I suppose you were fond of a glass 
 
 of good ale when you were young ? ' 
 
 i68
 
 George Borrow 
 
 " ' Yes,' said the old man, * I was ; and 
 so, thank God, I am still,' and he drank 
 off a glass of ale." 
 
 This is the sort of thing the books are 
 full of, though Petolengro, Isopel Berners, 
 Mrs. Heme, and the Flaming Tinman are 
 the principal characters that are woven 
 into a sort of plot through Lavengro and 
 Roma7iy Rye. Isopel is the heroine, so 
 to speak, of these books (which are not 
 novels, though they have a hero and 
 heroine). Borrow being always his own 
 hero. Isopel appears suddenly in Laven- 
 gro — comes driving her donkey-cart into 
 the dingle where Borrow had camped, and 
 there she sees him through his fight with 
 the Flaming Tinman, and then she pitches 
 her tent beside him, and we are aware 
 that the heroine has come upon the stage 
 at last. But Isopel drifts out of the book 
 just as she came into it, and even Dr. 
 Knapp cannot reveal to us why she came 
 
 and why she went, and whether she and 
 
 169
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Borrow ever met again. The Life assures 
 us that every line Borrow wrote was auto- 
 biographical, and that all his characters 
 are drawn strictly from life. Well, they 
 may be ; but they have a curiously con- 
 venient way of expressing Borrow's own 
 peculiar prejudices, as, for instance, his 
 unaccountable hatred against Sir Walter 
 Scott. It is not likely that two different 
 wayfarers ("the man in black" and the 
 Hungarian) should have expressed Bor- 
 row's views on this particular subject as 
 they did. 
 
 I am inclined to think that Borrow often 
 invented a character just for the purpose 
 of airing some of his pet ideas through the 
 mouthpiece of a new personage, else, as I 
 have said, their views would not have so 
 often agreed with his own. Lavengro and 
 Romany Rye were written long after the 
 wanderings were over, when Borrow's 
 views on all subjects had been formed, 
 
 and he expresses them frequently in these 
 
 170
 
 George Borrow 
 
 books ; indeed, it is one of the uses of the 
 Life that after reading it one is able so 
 easily to pick out which are Borrow's views 
 in his writings and which are the genuine 
 utterances of his characters. Borrow's 
 views are, alas ! just what one should 
 skip in Lavengro and Romany Rye : rail- 
 ings against Popery, railings against Sir 
 Walter Scott, railings against publishers 
 and critics — these are the spots upon his 
 feast of charity. 
 
 It was at the end of the wanderings 
 which are described in Lavengro that 
 Borrow started on his continental jour- 
 neyings, and got his appointment at St. 
 Petersburg to translate the Bible into 
 Mandschu-Tartar. This occupied his 
 energies for several years, from 1830 to 
 about 1834-35, when he was engaged by 
 the Bible Society as their agent for dis- 
 tributing Bibles in Spain. It may be 
 extremely uncharitable to say so, but the 
 
 Bible Society surely engaged a curiously 
 
 171
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 unsuitable agent for their work ! What is 
 termed "the missionary spirit" was not 
 exactly characteristic of George Borrow. 
 The Bible in Spain tells all about what he 
 did on those travels for Protestantism ; 
 but good reading as the book is, and 
 ardent as its author appears to be in the 
 cause he has espoused, there is an un- 
 deniable ring of falsity through the book. 
 The whole enterprise was manifestly 
 undertaken by Borrow purely in the 
 spirit of adventure and to make a living 
 for himself; while it was demanded of 
 the Bible Society's agent that, in his 
 reports, zeal for the Protestant faith alone 
 should seem to have been his aim when 
 he began the work. So, like everything 
 written to order, The Bible in Spai7i fails 
 in spontaneity. The adventures, indeed, 
 are written with gusto, and there are 
 enough of them to carry off the woeful 
 cant which fills in between scene and 
 
 scene ; but throughout Borrow was pur- 
 
 172
 
 George Borrow 
 
 sued by the idea that he was writing for 
 the Bible Society, and was ever artist in 
 direr strait? There is something ex- 
 quisitely ridiculous in the whole situa- 
 tion — the plight of Borrow, the plight of 
 the Bible Society — it is hard to say which 
 of the two must have been more be- 
 wildered. The story goes that ''there 
 always was a large atte^idance in the 
 Society's rooms " on the days when 
 Borrow's letters were to be read, and 
 one can believe it. But story does not re- 
 late whether, in Spain, Borrow sat puzzling 
 over how to dish up his adventures with 
 the proper seasoning of zeal, and, I dare 
 say, wrote many a line "with his tongue 
 in his cheek," as the vulgar saying goes. 
 Now, this may be doing Borrow an in- 
 justice, but it is certainly the impression 
 which one gets in reading The Bible in 
 Spain, and to read between the lines is 
 often the best way of getting the truth 
 out of a book. Nothing, it is true, could 
 
 173
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 outdo Borrow's hatred of Popery, and he 
 rushed at this part of his mission with 
 a perfect fury of zeal ; but a hatred of 
 Roman Catholicism is quite a different 
 matter from the love of righteousness, 
 which alone can justify "missions" of any 
 kind whatever ; and the distribution of 
 Bibles should surely be undertaken out of 
 a spirit of love, not out of a spirit of 
 hatred ! All this, however, did not seem 
 to strike the reading public, and The Bible 
 in Spain remains to this day far the most 
 popular of Borrow's books. Perhaps the 
 religiosity of its phrases actually pleased a 
 large section of the public ; more probably 
 the truth is that the class of readers who 
 "sell a book" are just those who are in- 
 capable of appreciating the best things of 
 literature, and positively prefer the second 
 best in art. Laven<rro has never reached 
 the same popularity as The Bible in Spain, 
 and it never will, just because it is much 
 better literature. 
 
 174
 
 George Borrow 
 
 The last years of Borrows life are sad 
 to read of. Though his money difficulties 
 were at an end after he married and his 
 books became successful, he seemed to 
 create troubles for himself in a curious 
 way. He was always rushing into con- 
 troversies with his critics and quarrels 
 with his friends in the most unnecessary 
 manner. A gloom and disquiet hang over 
 these last years ; we lay down the Life, 
 wishing that we had not been told about 
 them, and agreeing with Herrick that the 
 poet's poetry should be his pillar. We 
 prefer to forget now that Borrow ever lived 
 to be a quarrelsome, egotistical old man, 
 vain of very shallow acquirements which 
 he immensely overestimated as immortal 
 contributions to the science of philology ; 
 and try to think of him as the romantic 
 wanderer with a "winning tongue" that 
 charmed men's secrets out of them, with 
 gallant bearing and dauntless courage, and 
 all the manly virtues rolled together. 
 
 175
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Happily this is the picture that the books 
 conjure up when the Life is not at hand 
 for reference, so it will remain as the per- 
 manent portrait in the days to come. All 
 poor Borrow's philology (they say) has 
 been superseded by the more exact and 
 scientific methods of this drearily precise 
 generation ; some one else has written 
 much more reliable "facts" about gipsies, 
 quite unadorned by imagination and en- 
 tirely true ; his translations from many 
 tongues are unread, and I doubt if all the 
 Bibles he strewed so industriously over the 
 Spanish Peninsula did very much against 
 the Faith he hated ; but when the chaff of 
 his life's work is winnowed away there 
 remains a goodly quantity of wheat upon 
 the threshing-floor. Three delightful 
 books at least remain, which will charm 
 many and many a generation of readers — 
 as solid a contribution to literature this, as 
 most writers can hope to make, 
 
 176
 
 "AS COMPARED WITH 
 EXCELLENCE" 
 
 The present state of book-reviewing is 
 
 extremely unsatisfactory. Never, in the 
 
 history of literature, have books received 
 
 so much attention at the hands of critics 
 
 as they do just now ; yet, with it all, 
 
 neither the public nor the authors have 
 
 reason to be satisfied with the results of 
 
 all this so-called critical writing. It is 
 
 hard to say which suffer most — the authors 
 
 who are injured by injudicious reviewing, 
 
 or the public which is taught to read the 
 
 wrong books ; but one thing is certain, 
 
 that both are grievously sinned against. 
 
 Criticism, from being practised by the 
 
 few and competent, has become a trade 
 
 carried on by the many and singularly 
 
 unfit. Every paper, however obscure, has 
 
 177 M
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 its "literary" column, and Heaven alone 
 knows who the writers of these columns 
 are — they are frequently much more illiter- 
 ate than their readers. But it is not the 
 decline of criticism as an art that is the 
 deplorable feature of the case — for even 
 the best and highest criticism is, after all, 
 uncreative work such as the world can do 
 without — it is more the disastrous effects 
 of all this loose, fatuous criticism that we 
 regret. These effects, as I have said 
 above, are traceable both in the writers 
 and in their public ; and the first and most 
 glaring defect in modern criticism is its 
 tendency to over-praise. To spoil our 
 authors by injudicious praise is quite as 
 bad as, if not worse than, crushing or 
 trying to crush them by over-severity ; in 
 either case the goose that lays golden eggs 
 for a greedy public may be killed ; there 
 is, however, a refinement of cruelty in the 
 modern method of author-murder decidedly 
 
 reminiscent of the butt of Malmsey. In 
 
 178
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 past times we heard a great deal of the 
 old slashing reviews (the historic review 
 which " killed Keats " being an obvious 
 example) ; but few people, perhaps, take 
 into sober consideration how many budding 
 Keats have been killed by kindness — a 
 fully quicker form of murder than the 
 older method. Let any careful observer 
 of the literary history of the last ten or 
 fifteen years search back in his memory 
 and see if he cannot remember a score of 
 authors who have come by their literary 
 death in this way. We all know the steps 
 of this tragedy : the first clever book, re- 
 ceived with an outburst of intemperate 
 praise, from critics whose trade it is to 
 over-praise — then the quickly growing 
 " boom " in this particular author's books ; 
 the more and more slovenly work appear- 
 ing year by year, the unpruned style con- 
 firming in all its vices till what was at first 
 a mere accident becomes a vicious man- 
 nerism — and then cometh the end. For 
 
 179
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 swift is the descent into the literary Aver- 
 nus. Is it too much to say that many and 
 many of these pitiful disasters are caused 
 only by indiscreet criticism — or, rather, 
 want of criticism ? 
 
 The moment that hundreds of critics tell 
 a young writer that he has practically 
 nothing to learn, that his art is perfect, his 
 style mature, and so on, he will in nine 
 cases out of ten believe their pleasant 
 voices ; he stops all effort, trusts to this 
 "genius" with which he finds himself 
 credited on every side, and dashes on down 
 that steep path which it is all but impos- 
 sible to reascend. You will say that the 
 man is a fool who believes all the pleasant 
 things that are said about him ; but human 
 nature being what it is man will always be- 
 lieve smooth prophecies, and can scarcely 
 be blamed for doing so. The blame in 
 such cases rests entirely with the false pro- 
 phets, and it is at their hands that the blood 
 
 of the author will be required. 
 
 i8o
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 If great kindliness of heart, a dread of 
 hurting others, a desire to encourage talent 
 — if these were the springs of such criticism 
 it would be more possible to condone it. 
 But it is scarcely possible to believe that 
 this is the case, and the sordid reasons for 
 fatuous reviews must be plainly stated. In 
 the first place it may be cynically observed 
 that the majority of present-day reviewers 
 bear ever in mind the Scriptural truth, The 
 merciful shall obtain mercy — most of them 
 write books themselves, and wish to be 
 "done by" as they "do unto others." 
 Therefore it behovesthem to praise the work 
 of their fellow book-and-review-writers, be 
 that work what it may — their own time is 
 coming, their own bread and butter may de- 
 pend upon it — and what do truth and art 
 matter where it is a question of bread and 
 butter ? (Alas, too true !) 
 
 This is not, therefore, so bad as that 
 
 purely commercial side of reviewing which 
 
 makes the critic review a first book from 
 
 i8i
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 a promising author with his eye, so to 
 speak, upon the second book from the 
 same pen. Let me explain, for the benefit 
 of the innocent, the full working of this 
 scheme. 
 
 The real merit of a book has, unfortu- 
 nately, comparatively little to do with its 
 selling properties — the really important 
 thing is that an author's name should be 
 well known. Once a name is established, 
 the publisher is sure of getting a certain 
 number of thousands of copies of each 
 book sold, no matter what trash it may be. 
 Obviously, then, the first duty of conscien- 
 tious tradesmen in books is to get up a 
 boom about the author he wishes to sell. 
 
 Now, of course, no amount of praise 
 
 will ever do this unless the book has some 
 
 intrinsic merit to recommend it ; so the 
 
 critics and the publishers must select for 
 
 their victim a promising author. If this 
 
 be done, and the book has sufficient merit 
 
 to justify some of the praise bestowed upon 
 
 182
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 it, the boom should be easy to work. The 
 first book having been so widely written 
 about, the second by the same author re- 
 ceives even more attention from the public, 
 and after this the mysterious "name" is 
 made and sales are assured — for a term of 
 years — till the public get tired of so much 
 of the same fare and will have no more 
 of it. 
 
 This is no new accusation against critics 
 and publishers — readers of Macaulay will 
 remember his delicious tirade on this sub- 
 ject in 1830 : — 
 
 " It is time [he writes] to make a stand 
 against this new trickery. The puffing of 
 books is now so shamelessly and so suc- 
 cessfully carried on that it is the duty of 
 all who are anxious for the purity of the 
 national taste to join in discountenancing 
 the practice. All the pens that were ever 
 employed in magnifying Bish's lucky office, 
 Packwood's razor strops, and Rowland's 
 Kalydor seem to have taken service with 
 
 183
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 the poets and novelists of this generation. 
 ... A butcher of the higher class disdains 
 to ticket his meat ; we expect some reserve, 
 some decent pride in our hatter and our 
 bootmaker. But no artifice by which 
 notoriety can be obtained is thought too 
 abject for a man of letters. It is amusing 
 to think over the history of most of the 
 publications which have had a run during 
 the last four years — the publisher is often 
 the publisher of some periodical work. In 
 this the first flourish of trumpets is sounded 
 — the peal is then echoed by all the other 
 periodical works over v/hich the publisher 
 or the author, or the author's coterie, may 
 have any influence. At present we too 
 often see a writer attempting to obtain 
 literary fame as Shakespeare's usurper 
 obtains sovereignty. The publisher plays 
 Buckingham to the author's Richard. 
 Some few creatures of the conspiracy are 
 dexterously disposed here and there in the 
 crowd. It is the business of these hirelino^s 
 to throw up their caps and clap their hands 
 and utter their ' vivas' " 
 
 184
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 This plain speaking on Macaulay's part 
 did as much good as plain speaking gene- 
 rally does. Seventy years have passed 
 since these words were written, and yet 
 the same system goes on — certain periodi- 
 cals praise, and will always praise, all the 
 publications of certain houses ; there seems 
 to be an occult connection between them 
 which cannot be denied. Even from a 
 commercial point of view this system is a 
 mistake ; for the simple reason that it 
 generally, in time, ruins the authors which 
 it attempts to establish. One of the great 
 objects of those who get up a boom in the 
 work of any special writer, is to get the 
 unfortunate man to repeat himself as much 
 
 as possible: "When will Mr. give 
 
 us another idyll of shire .-* " "We 
 
 hope it will not be long before Mrs. 
 
 paints another picture of life in her 
 
 village — we want more country-folk of the 
 
 type of Jess and Jem," &c. " Miss 
 
 is at her best in depicting London society, 
 
 185
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 we look forward eagerly to her next." . . . 
 And so on. 
 
 Why all this eagerness for similarity ? 
 Are the critics aware that self-repetition 
 is a fault — that variety of range, diversity 
 of subject, freshness of treatment, are the 
 very blood and bones of live literature ? 
 It would seem that they are not, if we 
 may judge by their strenuous appeals to 
 authors to stick, each man, to the "vein " 
 in which he has made his first success. 
 Of course, these appeals fall upon a deaf 
 ear where the writer is strong enough to 
 be uninfluenced by his first reviews ; but 
 the point I am arguing just now is the 
 case of the young author, and the case of 
 the author talented, perhaps, but with- 
 out genius. A sad list might be made 
 out of what Stevenson called " pretty 
 reputations " which have been ruined by 
 the attempt to repeat a success. The 
 history of literature produces few examples 
 
 of successfully repeated success — the vast 
 
 i86
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 majority of attempts in this kind being 
 dismal failures. Of course, it is natural 
 that we should wish more from an author 
 who has delighted us ; but we should re- 
 cognise that we do not want the identical 
 characters dished up a second time, but 
 new characters — the newer the better, and 
 treated as freshly as may be, the only 
 sameness required being the describing 
 mind. Let us by all means encourage 
 our favourite writers by wanting more 
 from them, but not "more of the same" 
 — remembering the sadly wise Persian 
 proverb, " No man can bathe in the same 
 river twice." 
 
 Diversity of subject is, alas ! the last 
 quality that the tradesmen of literature 
 wish, because it is similarity that sells — 
 for a few years. " Why do you suppose 
 my second book did not please the public 
 as well as my first?" asked a discouraged 
 young novelist of a wise friend. 
 
 " Because it was not exactly the same," 
 
 187
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 was the reply. " Your first was about a 
 drunken mother and two sons ; so the 
 public would have liked your next to be 
 about a drunken father and two daughters." 
 It may be objected here that it is hard 
 if the public may not get what they like ; 
 but the fact of the matter is that the public 
 will like almost anything they are told to 
 like. And this is where the immense 
 responsibility of reviewing comes in. So 
 widespread is the influence of the press 
 just now, that I suppose not one person in 
 a thousand chooses his own books without 
 having heard of them through some news- 
 paper or magazine. This is quite natural, 
 and, in the present state of the book- 
 world, reviews form an indispensable 
 bridge between the writer and the reader. 
 But this only makes it more necessary 
 that reviews should be trustworthy, for 
 if the blind lead the blind we know that 
 
 both will fall into the ditch. There is no 
 
 i88
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 ditch the public is more apt to fall into 
 than this of the boomed book. 
 
 " One reads about it everywhere " is the 
 reason commonly given for getting certain 
 books ; and few readers take the trouble to 
 inquire why they see this special book 
 noticed everywhere — they simply take the 
 assurance of excellence upon trust, their 
 taste is formed for them by the consensus 
 of opinion. " There must be something in 
 it," one has often heard the bewildered 
 yet trusting reader exclaim. " There 
 must be something in it, all the reviews 
 praise it." At first, perhaps, a struggle 
 goes on in the mind of the more intelli- 
 gent reader : he questions whether the 
 book is really as fine as it is said to be ; 
 then the iteration of its praises takes 
 effect as iteration generally does, and he 
 comes to believe in merits which native 
 sense would have led him to disclaim. 
 
 This great, childish, trusting public is 
 
 the principal sufferer from unwise review- 
 
 189
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 ing. They read mainly the reviews in 
 daily papers and in the cheaper maga- 
 zines, and these, for obvious reasons, are 
 the organs which publish the most igno- 
 rant and fatuous notices of books. For 
 the old-established reviews and magazines 
 do not sin after this manner to anything 
 like the same extent as their cheaper 
 brethren. 
 
 The uneducated public have a profound 
 respect for anything in print. The re- 
 viewer is to them a sort of Jove, and at 
 his nod they obey, spending their time and 
 their money on the books he recommends. 
 
 One evening some months ago I tra- 
 velled out to the suburbs of London in a 
 crowded third-class carriage. Two me- 
 chanics sat beside me, elderly, tired-out 
 looking men, black with work. The 
 moment they got into the train they 
 began to speak about books — those few 
 books they managed to gulp in the spare 
 
 moments going to and from their work. 
 
 190
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 Books seemed to be their glimpse into 
 Paradise, the way they mentioned the 
 titles of each work was something to hear. 
 But ah ! the books they mentioned ! 
 
 " What are you studying now, Jake ? " 
 
 said one. " / am mastering by " 
 
 (naming one of the most popular and 
 most trashy books of the day). 
 
 The other replied with such pitiful pride 
 that I could have wept for him : " Oh, I 
 
 am studying by ." His choice 
 
 was, if possible, worse than that of his 
 companion. Till the train stopped they 
 both sat reading away at their worthless 
 books as earnestly as if their salvation 
 depended upon it. 
 
 The reviewers who teach an ignorant 
 public to reverence such trash are as 
 guilty as the quacks who persuade their 
 victims to buy worthless drugs — perhaps 
 more guilty. Here were two men, intelli- 
 gent, thirsty for mental stimulus, and in- 
 stead of reading Scott, Dickens, Thackeray 
 
 191
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 — aye, or Kipling or Thomas Hardy — 
 
 they were spending all their poor leisure 
 
 on books which could supply them with 
 
 neither help, instruction, nor amusement ; 
 
 the newspapers had told them that these 
 
 were marvels of literature, therefore they 
 
 read them and thought, or tried to think, 
 
 that they enjoyed them — that was all. 
 
 It is a deplorable state of matters if 
 
 these reviewers are more or less suborned 
 
 to write what they do not honestly believe 
 
 about books ; but it is perhaps fully more 
 
 deplorable if they do believe what they 
 
 write — if, in short, they are as incapable as 
 
 they seem to be of knowing a good book 
 
 from a bad one. Dr. Johnson in one of 
 
 his inimitable sentences gave what might 
 
 serve as a touchstone for all criticism. 
 
 When asked his opinion upon a book of 
 
 verses by a young poetess, he replied : 
 
 " For a young lady's verses good enough 
 
 — as compared with excellence, nothing." 
 
 Could criticism be at once fairer or 
 
 192
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 more searching? He gives the young 
 lady her due of praise, yet keeps steadily 
 before him her entire failure when com- 
 pared with the classics. This " compari- 
 son with excellence " is not enough 
 practised in our generation. It is indeed 
 the fairest, most genuine test by which to 
 try every new-comer in the field of litera- 
 ture. You will perhaps say that it is 
 too searching a test — that modern books 
 cannot stand comparison with classics and 
 live ; but this is not the case. The best 
 modern books stand the test perfectly, it 
 is only the second best that fall before 
 it. And this is exactly where the uses 
 of comparison come in — to help us to dis- 
 tinguish between the first and the second 
 rate in art. There should be, in fact, a 
 standard of art in the mind of every real 
 critic by which we can measure the stature 
 of each applicant for fame. If, for in- 
 stance, the enthusiastic first critics of the 
 *' Kailyard " school of Scottish fiction had, 
 
 193 N
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 before writing their reviews, read over a 
 few of the incomparable cottage scenes in 
 The Antiquary, these would surely have 
 suggested searching comparisons between 
 the old and the new schools of Scottish 
 fiction, and a few of the superlatives would 
 have been erased from the reviews. Or 
 if, again, the eulogists of the new pseudo- 
 historical romances had taken half-an- 
 hour of Es7nond, before composing their 
 eulogies, they would surely have gained 
 an almost painful insight int(3 all that the 
 new historical writers are not. 
 
 But this wholesome system of compari- 
 son has gone quite out of fashion just now 
 — in the mind of our modern reviewers no 
 distinctions of literary rank seem to exist. 
 Now the majority of our novel writers are 
 only society entertainers of greater or less 
 ability ; quite an honourable calling if recog- 
 nised for what it is and followed frankly 
 for what it can "bring in." But it is a 
 
 •confusion of terms to speak of such men 
 
 194
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 and women as belonging to the same 
 profession as Fielding, Scott, Thackeray, 
 or Jane Austen. The reviewers, however, 
 if we may judge from the expressions 
 they employ to describe each new book, 
 decide to ignore this great and fixed gulf 
 which separates the artist from the trades- 
 man. I select at random from a pub- 
 lisher's advertisement some criticisms upon 
 a new historical novel ; this is what the 
 reviewers have to say about it : " It is 
 sublime — there is nothing else like it in 
 liter ature^ "It is one of the greatest 
 historical novels that has ever been written 
 . . . one of the greatest historical novels 
 of the world." I have not read the work 
 in question ; but, without undue scepti- 
 cism, I fancy it would be possible to find 
 its counterpart in literature. Eulogies of 
 this kind defeat their own end, and are 
 quite enough to make intelligent people 
 decide not to read the book ; moreover, 
 no self-respecting author could bear to see 
 
 195
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 his work written about in this way, for he 
 must know that it can only bring down 
 ridicule upon it. Moderate praise, tem- 
 perate adjectives, a degree of fault-finding, 
 and a sympathetic appreciation for what is 
 attempted as well as what is accomplished, 
 these are the signs of the true critic. 
 
 The question of fault-finding is, of 
 course, a delicate one ; but there can never 
 be anything like a school of criticism with- 
 out it. To their fearless system of fault- 
 finding the Edinburgh Review critics owed 
 their fame. 
 
 "Jeffrey's reviews [says a writer in the 
 North British Revieiv] were all parts of a 
 great and gradually matured system of 
 criticism, and the object aimed at in by far 
 the greatest proportion of the essays, was 
 not so much to produce a pleasing or 
 attractive or interesting piece of writing, 
 as to enforce great principles of thought, 
 to scourge error and bigotry and dulness, 
 to instil into the public mind a just sense 
 
 196
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 of the essential requisites of taste and 
 truth in Hterature, and to dispense and 
 wear away by constant energy that crust 
 of false sentiment which obscured and 
 nearly extinguished the genius of this 
 country at the commencement of the 
 eighteenth century." 
 
 This was indeed a huge undertaking — 
 to cure a diseased public taste and teach it 
 new standards of truth and beauty. But 
 Jeffrey set himself to the task unflinch- 
 ingly. His system of criticism was 
 terribly severe — hence its fame. But he 
 could praise quite as heartily as he could 
 censure. If you will glance over his 
 reviews of the Waverley Novels, for 
 instance, you will be struck at once by the 
 fearless way in which he mixes praise and 
 blame. No modern critic would dare to 
 point out their faults to any of our popular 
 novelists as Jeffrey points out the faults of 
 The Monastery and The Abbot to Sir 
 
 Walter : — 
 
 197
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 " They are certainly the least meritorious 
 of the whole series [he says], and while 
 they are decidedly worse than the other 
 works of the same author, we are not sure 
 we can say, as we have done of his other 
 failures [how calm !], that they are better 
 than those of any other recent writer of 
 fiction. So conspiaious^ indeed, was their 
 inferiority, that we at one time appre- 
 hended that we should have been called 
 upon to interfere and admonish the author 
 of the hazard to which he was exposing 
 his fame. But as he has since redeemed 
 that slip we shall pass it over lightly, and 
 merely mention one or two things that 
 still live in our remembrance. . . . The 
 euphuist, Sir Piercie Shapton, is a mere 
 nuisajice thro2ighout, nor can we remember 
 any incident in an unsuccessful farce more 
 utterly absurd and pitiable than the re- 
 membrance of tailorship that is supposed 
 to be conjured up in the mind of this 
 chivalrous person, by the presentment of 
 the fairy's bodkin to his eyes." 
 
 In the same way Jeffrey chastises Gait : 
 
 198
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 " His next publication is undoubtedly 
 the worst of the whole — we allude to the 
 thing (!) called The Steamboat, which has 
 really no merit at all . . . with the excep- 
 tion of some trash about the Coronation 
 which nobody, of course, could ever look 
 at three months after the thing itself was 
 over ; it consists of a series of vulgar 
 stories, with little either of probability or 
 originality to recommend them," &c. 
 
 I have quoted these two examples of 
 
 Jeffrey's criticism because they were both 
 
 directed against popular authors of the 
 
 day, and therefore exhibit the fearless, 
 
 impersonal attitude which the reviewer 
 
 then took up compared with the attitude 
 
 of the modern critic towards the favourites 
 
 of the hour. If a writer is popular just 
 
 now, it is not too much to say that he may 
 
 write (and publish) what he chooses, 
 
 secure of receiving nothing but praise for 
 
 it. This is not criticism in the real sense 
 
 of the word ; and I believe that every 
 
 199
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 good writer, if asked his opinion, would 
 vote in favour of more truly critical 
 reviewing. For the true critic is the 
 author's best friend. To ask for this kind 
 of criticism is not to ask for vindictive, 
 slashing reviews, but for more grave con- 
 sideration, more helpful suggestion. Re- 
 viewers have two snares laid ready for 
 their unwary feet : they are apt either to 
 hail some new-comer who is not a genius 
 as if he were one ; or they entirely fail to 
 discern genius when they encounter it. 
 Needless to say that the former is our 
 specially modern snare, while the latter 
 was that of the older school of reviewers. 
 
 Jeffrey, a sound, impartial critic in most 
 cases, could not do justice to such an en- 
 tirely new writer as Wordsworth, and his 
 name will be associated for all time with 
 the fatal dictum, " This will never do," 
 with which he prefaced the review of The 
 Excursion. New greatness is, of course, 
 
 difficult to judge, because it conforms to 
 
 200
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 no standards and seems to glory in defy- 
 ing all known rules of art, making new 
 rules for itself. But this cannot excuse 
 any man who named himself a critic for 
 committing such a mistake as Jeffrey 
 made in his reviews of Wordsworth. It 
 is true that he asserted " Nobody can be 
 more disposed to do justice to Mr. Words- 
 worth's great powers than we are," but 
 with the same breath he held up Words- 
 worth's whole poetical system to ridicule. 
 Ridicule of an elaborate, slow-going kind 
 was a great weapon in those days. The 
 Excursion is analysed canto by canto, 
 almost line by line, with sarcastic com- 
 ments added. The whole spirit of the 
 great poem in this way eluded the critic, 
 only the letter remained. It seemed im- 
 possible to Jeffrey to ignore the weak 
 points of these poems ; he must emphasise 
 them so much that their far greater 
 beauties were obscured in the process. 
 
 20I
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 The White Doe of Rylstone was the sub- 
 ject of his peculiar ridicule : — 
 
 " This we think," he says, " has the merit 
 of being the worst poem we ever saw printed 
 in a quarto volume. ... It seems to con- 
 sist of a happy union of all the faults, 
 without any of the beauties, which be- 
 long to his school of poetry. ... In the 
 Lyrical Ballads Mr, Wordsworth was ex- 
 hibited, on the whole, in a very pretty 
 deliration ; but in the poem before us he 
 appears in a state of low and maudlin 
 imbecility, which would not have misbe- 
 come Martin Silence himself, at the close 
 of a social day." 
 
 Yet this severe critic is roused to en- 
 thusiasm by the poems of Thomas Camp- 
 bell : "There are but two noble sorts of 
 poetry, the pathetic and the sublime ; and 
 we think he has given very extraordinary 
 proofs of his talents for both," he says. 
 For Felicia Hemans he has only praise. 
 
 There is "the very spirit of poetry " in the 
 
 202
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 " bright and vague picturings " of one 
 poem and "a fine and stately solemnity" 
 in another. " There would be no end," 
 he admits, "to our extracts if we were to 
 yield to the temptation of noting down 
 every beautiful passage which arrests us 
 here." 
 
 These extracts from the critical studies 
 of Jeffrey exhibit very clearly this diffi- 
 culty, which all reviewers labour under, 
 of appreciating the entirely new manifesta- 
 tions of genius. Poor forgotten Campbell 
 and Felicia Hemans were in Jeffirey's day 
 new writers, but not new thinkers — they 
 expressed the same thoughts that all the 
 other poets of their kind were used to 
 express, in the same sort of language — 
 therefore they were admired. But Words- 
 worth appeared, a writer who had broken 
 fresh ground in the fields of thought and 
 expression. Both his ideas and the form 
 in which he expressed them were entirely 
 
 novel — he had parted company from the 
 
 203
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 past and all its traditions. There was no 
 one to compare him with, and Jeffrey, 
 bewildered by this, went astray in his 
 criticism of the new poet. 
 
 Now, it may be objected, that it is just 
 at this crucial point — the right of judging 
 oS. new greatness — that the system of " com- 
 parison with excellence " breaks down, 
 because such greatness owes its existence 
 to its divorce from those past models that 
 you would compare it with. But this is 
 not the case. It is always possible to 
 compare the scope of a new writer with 
 that of his predecessors, however widely 
 separated the form in which he finds ex- 
 pression may be from the models of other 
 days. Does he touch life at as many 
 points as they did.'' Is he as true to 
 nature as they were? It is on these 
 things and not on the perpetually chang- 
 ing element of form that a writer's claim 
 to greatness must eventually rest. And 
 
 until the critics realise this, that a book 
 
 204
 
 As Compared with Excellence 
 
 with small ideas cannot be great, and that 
 greatness must be sought for in the con- 
 stitution of a book, its essential ideas, not 
 till then will reviewingf be other than 
 it is. 
 
 205
 
 MODERN TRAGEDY 
 
 The average reader will always tell the 
 librarian of his circulating library that he 
 wishes a book with a happy ending ; he 
 will, in extreme cases, even return every 
 volume which cannot be recommended as 
 "coming right in the end" with the em- 
 phatic remark that he never reads unhappy 
 books. The fact is that he likes, and quite 
 rightly, to read a description of what life 
 should be, rather than of what it really is ; 
 he resents the more truthful picture. 
 
 But literature worthy of the name can- 
 not be made to order ; and the best writers 
 are no more affected by the protests of 
 thousands of averatje readers than the in- 
 coming tide might be. The author who 
 deliberately caters for his audience must 
 
 be content to be classed as a tradesman 
 
 206
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 only, and must renounce the title of 
 author without a murmur. 
 
 So it follows that in spite of the de- 
 mand for cheerful books, the bias of 
 literature is towards tragedy. This can 
 be easily accounted for. Books — again 
 let me add worthy of the name — are 
 written by men who think, and to 
 thoughtful men life must always seem 
 very sad — hence the sad books. 
 
 By a sort of apostolic succession, the 
 literature of tragedy which began long 
 ago with the first story-tellers has de- 
 scended to our own times, changing in 
 form from generation to generation, yet 
 keeping its distinctive note unmistakably 
 through every phase of treatment. For 
 the great tragic subjects cannot alter — 
 man's fate, man's struggles, man's doom ; 
 these, the very roots of tragedy, can suffer 
 no change. 
 
 But true as this is, it is curious to 
 
 notice how differently the old subjects 
 
 207
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 are handled by each generation. I say 
 
 generation instead of writer, because the 
 
 writer is only the utterer of the thought 
 
 of his times ; he is formed by it, and gives 
 
 synthetic expression to the conclusions of 
 
 thousands of other men who have thoughts 
 
 but no words. Now from time to time 
 
 curious waves of change pass over the 
 
 thought of men. These waves of change 
 
 seem sudden to the careless onlooker, but 
 
 are really the result of very slow processes. 
 
 After what we may call a "thought wave" 
 
 has washed over a generation, it will be 
 
 found to be viewing, from an entirely new 
 
 standpoint, the identical problems which 
 
 exercised the preceding generation. The 
 
 problems of life which form the subject of 
 
 all tragedies cannot, as I have said, alter ; 
 
 but our way of viewing them may suffer 
 
 extraordinary changes. I wish, if possible, 
 
 to show the differences in our modern 
 
 view of tragedy. 
 
 And first of all, what is tragedy ? 
 
 208
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 It is (says the dictionary) ''a species of 
 drama m which the action and language 
 are elevated and the catastrophe sad." But 
 for the purpose of this article it may be 
 very simply defined as a presentation, 
 whether in the form of drama or novel, 
 of the dark, unexplainable side of human 
 things. 
 
 Every son of Adam has, at one time 
 or another, questioned the cause or the 
 meaning of his own sorrows ; but before 
 the tragic sense which produces a great 
 tragic writer can arise, this questioning 
 spirit must be turned away from a man's 
 individual miseries and focussed on the 
 woes of the world. For to attain to the 
 first rank of tragic writers it is not enough 
 that a man should suffer and then repro- 
 duce in literature his own torments ; but it 
 is absolutely necessary that he should have 
 so entered into the sorrows of the race, as 
 to be able to create types of each grief 
 
 which he writes about. You will quickly 
 
 209 o
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 see that no one individual experience can 
 ever be universal enough to include the 
 griefs of the whole world, yet that insight 
 may supply the lacking knowledge. This 
 insight for grief not his own is the very 
 hall-mark of tragic writing — it is the 
 tragic sense, and is the possession only 
 of the best writers. Shakespeare, for in- 
 stance, has so much of the tragic insight 
 that he can write as convincingly of Lady 
 Macbeth's remorse as if he had himself 
 committed murder and shuddered over 
 his guilt. 
 
 The possession of this tragic sense, 
 then, opens the eyes of certain men in 
 each generation to see more clearly than 
 their fellows the grievous side of exist- 
 ence, and this clearness of vision leads 
 them to all manner of questionings. It is 
 in the answering of these that ancient 
 and modern tragedy first sharply divide, 
 for the main contention of ancient tra- 
 gedy was that the ills of life were sent 
 
 2IO
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 us from the gods, while the great object 
 of modern tragedy is to show that these 
 evils are the inevitable outcome of natural 
 laws, and that thus we are very often the 
 authors of our own miseries. Examples 
 of the old and new methods will perhaps 
 make this point more clear. 
 
 As a typical instance of the ancient 
 tragic method, let us take the world- 
 known tragedy of CEdipus. It is, as all 
 men know, the story of a cursed race. A 
 curse rested on this house ; it was pro- 
 phesied that CEdipus was to kill his father, 
 and though, to falsify the prediction, the 
 boy is separated from his parents and 
 grows up a stranger to them he cannot 
 escape his fate. So he meets his father 
 all unawares, fights with him and kills 
 him. Then farther to fulfil his dark 
 destiny, CEdipus returns to his kingdom, 
 meets his mother Jocasta without know- 
 ing who she is, marries her and becomes 
 the father of her children. Then the 
 
 21 I
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 curse is fulfilled, but it descends with the 
 same relentless force upon the innocent 
 children of the unnatural marriage — their 
 tragic lives and deaths are chronicled in 
 the other plays of the series. 
 
 Now what is the meaning of all this 
 ghastly story? It is to present the great 
 riddle of the Universe in dramatic form • 
 the undeniable, horrible fact that a curse, 
 a fate, a destiny — what you will, rests 
 on men ; that a tremendous Power, not 
 themselves, is always either warring 
 against them or working for them. And 
 what, according to Sophocles, is Destiny 
 — this moulder of men's lives? It is the 
 will of God — or rather, in the speech of 
 these times, of the gods. 
 
 Behind this mystery he cannot pene- 
 trate : why the gods turn men to destruc- 
 tion he does not know, unless it be "for 
 guilt of old." There is a note of uncer- 
 tainty even in this explanation when 
 CEdipus speaks of-- 
 
 21 2
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 " Sad calamities 
 Which I poor wretch against my will endured, 
 For thus it pleased the gods, incensed, perhaps, 
 Against my father's house for guilt of old." 
 
 It seems Indeed, as Dronke points out. 
 that Sophocles wishes only to exhibit this 
 profound mystery of divine overruling in 
 the affairs of men without making any 
 attempt to explain it. Darkness is all 
 around man's path by his showing: — 
 
 " Ah, race of mortal men 
 How as a thing of naught 
 I count ye, though ye live ! 
 For who is there of men 
 That more of blessing knows, 
 Than just a little while 
 To seem to prosper well 
 And having seemed to fall ? 
 With thee as pattern given, 
 Thy destiny, even thine, ill-fated CEdipus, 
 I count naught human blest." 
 
 Oedipus is to Sophocles typic of the 
 human race : — 
 
 " Search where thou wilt, thou ne'er shalt find a man 
 With strength to 'scape when God shall lead him 
 on," 
 
 213
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 he says, and the whole meaning of the 
 tragedy is to be found in these words. 
 The puzzle is, to discover why God leads 
 man as he does into darkness and not into 
 light. If you wish to illustrate anything, 
 you will always do so more forcibly by 
 taking an extreme instance for your illus- 
 tration ; and Sophocles acted on this 
 principle when he chose the story of 
 QEdipus as an illustration of the terrible 
 workings of that power which we name 
 Destiny. 
 
 By a series of all but impossible con- 
 tingencies, the characters of the play are 
 brought into the desired situation — than 
 which nothing more ghastly could be 
 imagined. This is the method uniformly 
 followed in ancient tragedy. The old 
 plays are full of these violent, frightful 
 situations, undreamed of by modern 
 writers. No weak concession is made 
 here to the happy ending preference of 
 
 readers — for wlicn in the hands of master 
 
 2 14
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 writers, readers must learn to take what 
 
 is given them. With that inspiration for 
 
 the truth of art which we seem almost to 
 
 have lost just now, the older tragic writers 
 
 recognised that genuine tragedy must 
 
 beofin as it is to end, and end as it had 
 
 begun. The modern trick of trying to let 
 
 a ray of light in upon the scene at the end 
 
 was unknown with them. Their plots are 
 
 ghastly beyond description — a cataclysm 
 
 of horrors gathered round the doomed 
 
 man who is to illustrate the dark ways 
 
 of Fate— he is made to marry his own 
 
 mother, eat his own children, or some 
 
 such horrible impossibility. But to create 
 
 these situations it is necessary that the 
 
 writer should make a personality of 
 
 Destiny ; that he should, as it were, see 
 
 this power deliberately moving the pawns 
 
 on the chessboard of life at its will. This 
 
 is what the old writers wrote to prove ; 
 
 and it is exactly what the modern mind 
 
 hesitates to admit. For two quite im- 
 
 215
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 personal powers are now supposed to be 
 the arbiters of our poor fortunes — these 
 are Circumstance and Heredity. With 
 these impersonal powers there can be 
 no possibility of intervention, and their 
 conviction has robbed many of our modern 
 tragedies of much dramatic flavour. In 
 the older drama there was always at least 
 the possibility that Destiny might be 
 appeased — that man might struggle and 
 supplicate, perhaps even wring from this 
 power that moved the world some miti- 
 gation of his agonies. But to pray to 
 Circumstance would indeed be futile, and 
 to entreat the great ghost Heredity vainer 
 still — so the modern drama looks for no 
 surprises. We are, in fact, becoming too 
 great slaves to probability, with a corre- 
 sponding loss on the dramatic side. 
 
 As a perhaps rather glaring instance of 
 modern tragic methods which are directly 
 opposed to the ancient tradition, Ibsen's 
 
 Ghosts may be selected. Here is the plot: — 
 
 2 i6
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 Oswald, the hero, comes home in bad 
 health to his mother's house. In the 
 first act the reader has been told that 
 Oswald's father has led a dissipated life, 
 but Mrs. Aveling has always concealed 
 this fact from her son. The boy returns 
 to tell his mother the terrible verdict of 
 a doctor who attended him when he was 
 ill — his constitution is hereditarily tainted 
 and he will go from bad to worse. He 
 has decided that should his former symp- 
 toms return he must end his life, and he 
 explains this to his mother in a scene of 
 horrible power. 
 
 " O. ' You must come to the rescue, 
 
 mother.' 
 Mrs. A. 'I!' 
 
 O. ' Who is nearer to it than you ? ' 
 Mrs. A. 'I, your mother ! ' 
 O. ' For that very reason.' 
 Afrs. A. ' I who gave you life.' 
 O. '■ I 7iever asked yo2i for life. And 
 
 what sort of a life have yon giveii 
 
 217
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 me ? I won't have it, you shall 
 take it back.' " 
 
 The poor mother is in despair — she 
 
 sees the truth of his words, yet shrinks 
 
 from the act which he urges. The play 
 
 ends at the moment when Mrs. Aveling 
 
 has to make her decision. Oswald is, as 
 
 the doctors prophesied, stricken at last. 
 
 His wits gone, he sits stupidly in his chair 
 
 begging for " the Sun, the Sun." The 
 
 reader is left in doubt as to whether Mrs. 
 
 Avelinof does or does not kill her afflicted 
 
 child. Well, here is tragedy indeed, of 
 
 the most piercing quality ; but you will 
 
 notice the extremely modern note which 
 
 is struck throughout. This is no tragedy 
 
 of God's making : it is the work of man. 
 
 The whole mechanism of the tragedy is 
 
 dissected before us : " This is how misery 
 
 is manufactured," Ibsen seems to say, and 
 
 with professional calm he exhibits the 
 
 process to us. There is no veiled figure 
 
 218
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 of Destiny in the background here, no 
 pressure of circumstance ; the whole situa- 
 tion is quite easily and plainly accounted 
 for by the gross selfishness of the parents 
 who thought only of their own gratification 
 and forgot the child who might have to 
 bear the burden of inherited diseases. 
 What in olden time would have been 
 attributed to the gods is now entirely 
 attributed to man, y^schylus in the 
 Agamemnon asks : — 
 
 " What with mortal man 
 Is wrought apart from Zeus, 
 What of all this is not by God decreed V 
 
 And Ibsen would boldly answer, " Much 
 of it." He has little patience for the man 
 who would (so to speak) make God respon- 
 sible for his sins. 
 
 Ibsen is, in short, more of a moralist 
 than an artist. Certain ideas possess him 
 like a mania — the inevitablertess of charac- 
 ter, man's incapacity to escape from him- 
 self, and the huge burdens laid upon the 
 
 219
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 innocent by the guilty. These ideas have 
 not only taken possession of Ibsen, but of 
 our whole generation, and too much brood- 
 ing over them had produced another very 
 marked development among our writers, 
 i.e. the over-estimation of heredity as a 
 factor in tragedy. 
 
 " Here," they say, " we have at last dis- 
 covered the very root of tragedy." And 
 this discovery has done a great deal to 
 ruin their art. In their eagerness for 
 truth they have siicrificed truth itself and 
 art along with it. For, as Huxley said, 
 " In ultimate analysis everything is in- 
 comprehensible " : you may, that is to say, 
 be the cause of your child's temperament, 
 but what caused your own, and that of 
 your father, and his father — and so on ad 
 infinitum f You may force the inquiry 
 back and back till it ends always in the 
 utter incomprehensibility of first causes. 
 Character, in short, is something quite 
 beyond explanation, except in a very 
 
 220
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 limited sense. Its real mystery is un- 
 assailable. 
 
 And by trying to do away with this 
 mystery and "explain" everything, 
 modern tragic writers have degraded 
 their art more than they have any idea 
 of. This failure of the modern method 
 may be illustrated very fairly by trying 
 to apply it to any of the Shakespearian 
 tragedies. Thus : Try to trace the mad- 
 ness of Lear to natural causes ; analyse 
 the unnatural natures of his two eldest 
 daughters, trace it to a species of "alien- 
 ism," inherited perhaps from Lear himself, 
 whose mental condition must always have 
 been unsound or it would not have broken 
 down even under all the weight of his 
 troubles. Conjecture how Cordelia came 
 by her more normal mental equipment, 
 trace it to a sounder physique, or show 
 how she inherited it from a normal 
 mother, or speculate as to whether she 
 was a reversion to some far-off ancestor ; 
 
 221
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 account, in fact, for the whole tissue and 
 being of the great tragedy, and where is 
 it? It has disappeared altogether, and 
 only a laughable travesty of the alienist's 
 note-book remains. 
 
 The same process may be applied to 
 any of Shakespeare's plays with the same 
 dire result. Trick up the sublime ardours 
 of Antony and Cleopatra in modern dress, 
 and you have only a study of the erotic 
 temperament in woman, together with an 
 analysis of the frailty of man more or 
 less disgusting. The whole spectacular 
 splendour of life is destroyed by these 
 analytical methods ; just as (to use a 
 hackneyed but good metaphor) you 
 destroy the beauty of a flower by picking 
 it to pieces. It is true that the botanist 
 knows more about the flower after this 
 process of destruction ; but for purposes 
 of beauty we all prefer our rose entire. A 
 great play, or novel, should not be a con- 
 tribution to Science, but to Art, and in 
 
 222
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 forgetting this truth how many have 
 erred ! But unfortunately the scientific 
 spirit is creeping more and more into our 
 literature, — it is so much in the air just 
 now that apparently writers have to inhale 
 it like the influenza microbe. Everything 
 must be analysed — the ingredients of 
 character like the components of our food 
 — accounted for, explained, either by 
 Heredity or Circumstance. 
 
 The tragedy of Circumstance has its 
 ablest exponent in Mr. Thomas Hardy. 
 Unlike Novalis, who held that Character 
 was Fate, Mr. Hardy seems to maintain 
 that Circumstance is Fate. This is the 
 answer he gives to the old agonised 
 questions — the same questions that tor- 
 mented Sophocles and ^schylus, and will 
 torment all thinking men till the world 
 ends. 
 
 Tess of the U Urbervilles 2.nA Jude the 
 
 Obscure are both studies in Destiny — 
 
 tremendous arraignments of the "well- 
 
 223
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 judged plan of things and their ill-judged 
 execution." Every one knows the story of 
 Tess. She is the sport of Circumstance 
 from her cradle to the gallows on which 
 she ends her life ; time and again the 
 moment comes for some Unseen inter- 
 vention, and nothing intervenes ; at each 
 crisis of her story Circumstance hounds 
 her forward to destruction. When she is 
 betrayed by D'Urberville there is no Eye 
 to pity, no Hand to save. 
 
 "Where was Tess's guardian angel."*" 
 our author asks. "Where was Pro- 
 vidence ? Perhaps, like that other god 
 of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he 
 was talking, or he was pursuing, or he 
 was in a journey, or peradventure he was 
 sleeping and was not to be awaked." 
 
 And again he defines his view of 
 things : — 
 
 " Nature does not often say, ' See ! ' to 
 her poor creature at a time when seeing 
 can lead to happy doing ; or reply, 
 
 224
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 ' Here ! ' to the body's cry of ' Where ? ' 
 till the hide-and-seek has become an irk- 
 some outworn game. We may wonder 
 whether at the acme and summit of the 
 human progress these anachronisms will 
 become corrected by a finer intuition, a 
 closer interaction of the social machinery 
 than that which now jolts us round and 
 along ; but such co77ipleteness is not to be 
 prophesied or conceived as possible.'' 
 
 We are, in short, says Mr. Thomas 
 Hardy, caught all of us in the wheels of 
 the clumsy machine of Circumstance, to 
 be "jolted around and along" at its un- 
 intelliofent will. This seems to be the 
 peculiar problem which Mr. Hardy has set 
 himself to solve, or rather to illustrate — 
 that thinking, reasoning creatures should 
 be made the sport of unreasoning laws. 
 He has worked out one aspect of the 
 problem in Jiide the Obscure. 
 
 Jude is a man of bright intelligence and 
 
 keen sensitiveness. Born a working man, 
 
 225 p
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 he has all the ambitions of a scholar, 
 but this is not where the tragedy comes 
 in. Poor Jude is the predestined fool of 
 his passions as well as of his circum- 
 stances. He marries, miserably, the first 
 woman who attracts him, and the story 
 of their degraded intercourse is meant to 
 typify the whole tragedy of sex. 
 
 He meets, too late, his true love, Sue 
 Bridehead, and there follows on this all 
 the matrimonial confusions which have 
 made the book a by-word. Jude and 
 Arabella, and Sue and Sue's husband, 
 become almost laughably mixed up in the 
 plot, till it emerges again into unmistak- 
 able tragedy at the close. The author 
 has never lost sight of the end, though 
 the reader may have done so, and he has 
 been working up to the climax like all 
 good writers. Jude has been divorced 
 from Arabella, and married to Sue by this 
 
 time, and they have two children ; they 
 
 226
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 have also living with them Jude's child by 
 his former marriage with Arabella. 
 
 " The boy's face expressed the whole 
 tale of his situation. On that little shape 
 had converged all the inauspiciousness 
 and shadow which had darkened the first 
 union of Jude, and all the accidents, mis- 
 takes, fears and errors of the last. He 
 was their nodal point, their focus, their 
 expression in a single term. For the 
 rashness of these parents he had groaned ; 
 for their ill-assortment he had quaked ; for 
 their misfortune he had died." 
 
 Oppressed by the thought that " there 
 are too menny of us," the boy hangs him- 
 self and the other two children, and thus 
 rounds off as it were the misfortune of his 
 existence. But Jude's miseries have still 
 to culminate. Sue leaves him, in a fit 
 of frantic repentance after the death of 
 her children, and he is once more en- 
 snared by the gross Arabella. Stupid 
 
 227
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 with grief and fuddled with drink, he 
 returns to her, and at the same time 
 renounces the will to live. He is dead 
 before death, crushed by the pressure of 
 laws which he cannot understand or fight 
 against — great primal laws which urged 
 him on and then left him to destruction. 
 When at last the curtain falls on Jude as 
 he lies stark under the sheet, " straight as 
 an arrow, the thumping that had gone on 
 in his breast for nigh thirty years stopped 
 at last," we feel tragedy could not go 
 much further. The book gives expres- 
 sion to the despairing thought of a whole 
 doubting generation, which hesitates to 
 name life a boon. The Accuser stands 
 forth, and challenges with no uncertain 
 voice, who dares and can to answer his 
 charges. Look, he seems to say, at this 
 man, this creature of a few unhappy years 
 — with his aspirations of a God and his 
 instincts of a beast ! If an Individual 
 
 Power made this ill -contrived toy, such 
 
 228
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 a Power must be either foolish or merci- 
 less ; if impersonal Forces alone were at 
 work, how shall we regard the process ? 
 — as an ugly joke to be laughed at with 
 a wry face, or a calamity to be faced as 
 best we may and endured as long as we 
 will ? 
 
 It is not difficult to make out which of 
 these views Mr, Hardy inclines to, and his 
 influence may be traced through the great 
 mass of modern tragical fiction — man the 
 sport of Circumstance, the fool of his own 
 nature ; these themes are worked out with 
 every possible variation by hundreds of 
 minor writers who have the mistaken idea 
 that by handling a big problem they write 
 a big book. They would do well to content 
 themselves with smaller questions and leave 
 Mr. Hardy to grapple alone with these 
 weighty matters. These tragedies of Cir- 
 cumstance are peculiarly depressing to 
 consider ; because, as I have pointed out, 
 
 there is no possibility of intervention 
 
 229
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 between a man and his fate if there is no 
 deity save Circumstance behind things — 
 if, in fact, Circumstance is Fate. As good 
 examples of this view of life, the novels of 
 Mr. George Gissing may be considered. 
 It is impossible to find more deadly depres- 
 sing books ; circumstance, /r(?^^(^/(? circum- 
 stance, is to him everything. No matter 
 what a man is, he will be overborne by the 
 force of Circumstance and moulded to its 
 shape. It matters more to a man, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Gissing, whether he is born 
 rich or poor than whether he is born wise 
 or foolish, good or bad. The gallant old 
 tales of man the conqueror, wresting from 
 a life the most inauspicious all the gifts of 
 fortune — these traditions of a credulous 
 age are swept away like cobwebs by Mr. 
 Gissing. Life and Circumstance are here 
 the conquerors of man, who lies passive 
 under their blows. What is to become of 
 us if we adopt this view of life ? Surely a 
 
 larger, saner outlook is possible, and we 
 
 230
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 may see that a power greater than itself is 
 behind Circumstance. 
 
 All the different tragedies — ancient and 
 modern alike — which we have considered, 
 have involved a problem ; but there is 
 another form of tragedy, and that the 
 highest, which involves no question but is 
 content simply to express the darkest side 
 of human affairs. This is the Shake- 
 spearian method. The agonised question- 
 ing of man's destiny so characteristic of 
 ancient tragedy is absent here ; God is 
 not, so to speak, called to account for the 
 sorry happenings of life. Neither is Cir- 
 cumstance omnipotent, nor Heredity, after 
 the modern tradition. But the characters, 
 without any intervention of the author or 
 any explanations of any kind, explain 
 themselves and their situation. The result 
 of this simplicity of method is the con- 
 summate, matchless tragic note never 
 struck before or since by any other writer. 
 
 An illusion of reality is produced by it 
 
 231
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 which can never be attained to by our 
 modern scientific methods which research 
 into character for generations back, and 
 show each man the product of his 
 conditions. 
 
 By none of these methods, but by the 
 exercise of a tragic sense the most perfect 
 possible, Shakespeare produced his incom- 
 parable tragedies. Certain of his scenes 
 stab one to the heart exactly as the sight 
 or hearing of such a scene in real life 
 would do ; and this because, rejecting the 
 ancient tragic tradition which depended 
 for its effectiveness upon situation alone, 
 Shakespeare's tragic sense unerringly 
 recognised that the passions of humanity 
 were the beginning and end of the tragedies 
 of the world : — 
 
 "In tragic life, God wot, 
 No villain need be — 
 Passions spin the plot," 
 
 as George Meredith puts it. That is to 
 
 say, a life may be one long tragedy, and 
 
 232
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 yet have no tragic "situations" in the 
 ancient sense. It is true that Shake- 
 speare's tragedies always have a tragic 
 plot, but you will notice that the -blot is not, 
 as in ancient tragedy, the meaning of the 
 play: it is quite subordinate to the 
 characters. Shakespeare does not wish 
 to tell a tragic story — he wishes to describe 
 men and women at a crisis of emotion. 
 Here the old and new join hands instead 
 of parting company. Nothing is more 
 congenial to the modern tragic writer than 
 the description of tragedies of character. 
 The fear is that nowadays this vein will 
 be overworked. Shakespeare chose the 
 great passions of the human heart for his 
 character studies : Remorse — Cruelty — 
 Ambition — Love or Hate ; but some of 
 our modern writers find the minor passions 
 quite worthy of study. In this kind are 
 the tender little tragedies of Jane Barlow 
 and Mary Wilkins — chronicles for tiny 
 griefs — petty sorrows — -pitiful little disap- 
 
 233
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 pointments — calamities of mice. These 
 tales seem to exhibit the morbid sensi- 
 tiveness of the modern mind, which 
 makes so much out of little — sees tragedy 
 everywhere. 
 
 The tragic sense, in fact, seems to be 
 wearing rather thin with the lapse of the 
 centuries, and there is a want of the 
 old robustness of view among us. Like 
 a river lost among sands, the stream 
 of literature is being broken up into 
 thousands of rivulets and is losing the 
 force of a current. Instead of one or 
 two great writers who can, by giving 
 their opinions, really contribute to public 
 thought, we have crowds of minor authors 
 whose opinions are of no weight, all con- 
 fusing public thought by their strife of 
 words. Each has his own tiny tragic 
 vein — the tragedy of want, or of in- 
 temperance, or disease, or lunacy — their 
 numbers are endless : great subjects all 
 of them, if greatly handled ; but that is 
 
 234
 
 Modern Tragedy 
 
 seldom done. The tragedies of drunken- 
 ness alone would stock a library ; but 
 where is the epic among them all ? It is 
 seldom that one opens a modern novel 
 without coming across some painful de- 
 scription of mania in its many forms — yet 
 again, where is the classic among them ? 
 One cannot help wondering why this 
 should be the case ; why, when a whole 
 generation of writers is evidently keenly 
 alive to the tragic side of life, there should 
 yet be no great tragic writers among them 
 — saving always Mr. Thomas Hardy. 
 
 Is there enough oi acknowledged mystery 
 in our modern work .? Enough of the 
 great, vague, infinite background which 
 you find in ancient and Shakespearian 
 tragedy — a background of the unexplained, 
 the unknowable — the never to be explained 
 or known on this side the grave } 
 
 235
 
 "THE OTHER GRACE" 
 
 " Add but the other grace — be good — 
 Why want what the angels vaunt." — Browning. 
 
 Fashions in clothes : fashions in manners : 
 
 fashions in speech, and fashions in heroines: 
 
 the law finds no exception. 
 
 The general idea of how a book comes 
 
 to be written is, that the author is possessed 
 
 by certain characters and incidents and has 
 
 no rest until he has described them ; it 
 
 would be better for literature if it were so. 
 
 But only to the past masters in the craft 
 
 belongs this glory of creation ; the great 
 
 mass of writers do not create — have, that 
 
 is to say, no independent conception of 
 
 their characters ; they merely wait until 
 
 the masters have clearly created a new 
 
 type, then they take possession of that 
 
 type whatever it may be, dress it up anew, 
 
 236
 
 "The Other Grace" 
 
 place it in fresh surroundings, and try to 
 pass it off as a novel creation of their 
 own. 
 
 The masters have indeed, in this way, a 
 good deal to answer for; just as the High 
 Priest of Fashion is answerable for a good 
 deal when he thoughtlessly sends every 
 woman in Europe into crinoline or large 
 sleeves, as the case may be. A Zola, for 
 instance, or a Hardy, astonishes the world 
 with a splendid, if brutal, bit of work. 
 The public fancy is fascinated by the 
 type. " We must paint life as we see it, 
 nothing like life I passion ! virility ! " cries 
 every literary dabbler ; and forthwith 
 begins to try this style of painting. " We 
 can all do it, nothing easier \" they say — 
 and it is astonishing how long they take 
 to tire of these attempts. Long after the 
 reading public has become completely 
 sated with a certain class of book, these imi- 
 tative writers are persistently producing it, 
 seized apparently with a curious blindness, 
 
 237
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 which keeps them from seeing that they 
 are doing the thing that has been done 
 perhaps a hundred times already. At last, 
 however, there comes a breathing space. 
 What will they be at next? asks the 
 anxious reader, scanning the literary hori- 
 zon for a sail, so to speak. Perhaps it is 
 a Stevenson this time who comes like 
 Hopeful to give a hand out of the Slough 
 of Despond. His style is lucid, his types 
 are clearly defined — again " nothing easier,'' 
 is the cry. In a trice the imitators are 
 tricked out in doublet and hose to follow 
 their leader, and the historical romance 
 runs merrily on its way. Then, just as 
 something new is wanted, comes — let us 
 say, a Barrie. Ah, what fresh fields, what 
 pastures new ! But they are not long 
 uninvaded. "Whence came their feet 
 into my field and why?" he might rather 
 appropriately inquire, for the green fields 
 are getting all trodden and tashed nowa- 
 days. It is so easy to write about old 
 
 238
 
 ^'The Other Grace" 
 
 mothers, and dominies, and ingle-neuks 
 and the Shorter Catechism ! One might 
 multiply examples indefinitely. I have 
 merely chosen these at random to illus- 
 trate what every intelligent reader must 
 have noticed — that there is fashion in 
 books, as in so many other things. 
 
 The master-minds are responsible for 
 the type of hero or heroine which is for 
 the nonce to reign in public favour ; and 
 it is a curious fact that since first novels 
 began to be written, heroines have been 
 divided into far more marked types than 
 heroes. I do not pretend to account for 
 this fact ; but I think that it is one. The 
 earlier novelists bestowed all their powers 
 of characterisation upon their male charac- 
 ters : there was plenty of individuality in 
 them ; but they seemed to be contented 
 with one fixed type of heroine — the then 
 ideal of woman — and added her as a sort 
 of stage property to every book. Fielding, 
 in Sophia Western, describes the type 
 
 239
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 which reigned triumphantly for many a 
 day : — 
 
 " I never heard anything of pertness, or 
 what is called repartee, out of her mouth ; 
 no pretence to wit, much less to that kind 
 of wisdom the affectation of which in a 
 young woman is as absurd as any of the 
 affectations of an ape. No dictatorial 
 sentiments, no judicial opinions, no pro- 
 found criticisms. Whenever I have seen 
 her in the company of men she hath been 
 all attention, with the modesty of a learner, 
 not the forwardness of a teacher. ... I 
 once, to try her only, desired her opinion 
 on a point which was controverted be- 
 tween Mr. Thawckum and Mr. Square. 
 To which she answered, ' You will pardon 
 me. I am sure you cannot in earnest 
 think me capable of deciding any point in 
 which such gentlemen disagree.'" 
 
 Such was Sophia : and she may be re- 
 cognised in almost every one of Scott's 
 
 heroines, and survives even in Thackeray's 
 
 240
 
 "The Other Grace'* 
 
 Amelia Sedley — the "gentle creature" 
 who "took her opinions from those who 
 surrounded her, such fidelity being much 
 too humble-minded to think for itself." 
 
 But the Sophias and Amelias of the past 
 are indeed dead and done with now, and a 
 new type of heroine has arisen and now 
 rules despotically over the whole world of 
 fiction. The new type may be divided 
 into two classes of favourites : the Outcast 
 woman, and those whom, for want of a 
 better name, I shall call the Sirens ; and 
 everywhere we read of "pure women," 
 whose special claim to that title seems to 
 be their lack of purity. 
 
 The sad fact is that " good women," in 
 the plain Saxon meaning of the words, are 
 gone out of fashion — in books at least — 
 and until the tide of public opinion turns, 
 we must submit to the reign of her suc- 
 cessor as best we may. 
 
 This statement that good women have 
 
 gone out of fashion will probably be re- 
 
 241 Q
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 ceived by many people with a shriek of 
 protest ; for it is quite one of the worst 
 features of the Siren that she masquerades 
 as an angel. 
 
 The idea has got abroad that, provided 
 the heart is pure, the intention harmless, 
 nothing is wrong, and the Siren is con- 
 tinually acting in the most unprincipled 
 way with the best intentions in the world. 
 But let us examine these two types of 
 modern heroines more closely. 
 
 Two famous heroines of the Outcast 
 order — Tess and Trilby — belong to a type 
 now crystallised in the public imagination. 
 And to exhibit the nobility that lies in 
 every one, however degraded, is now the 
 favourite motif of the day. Heaven for- 
 bid we should deny the possibility of such 
 good ; but the thing may be carried a 
 little too far, and it is coming to this now- 
 adays, that such women are depicted as 
 being capable of more generous action, 
 
 more heroic impulse than their worthier 
 
 243
 
 "The Other Grace" 
 
 sisters. The worst of the whole business 
 is that no one can breathe a word against 
 this new moraHty but the word Pharisee 
 is whispered, and that dubious legend of 
 Christ and the Magdalene adduced for 
 argument. Moreover, so great is the cry 
 for charity just now, that it would be 
 considered woeful harshness in any writer 
 to describe a woman of scandalous ante- 
 cedents without dowering her with such 
 traits of nobility and generosity as wipe 
 out the stain of sin, and melt the reader to 
 tears of sympathy. We are becoming too 
 lax altogether : the stern old rule " hate 
 the sin and love the sinner " is beine for- 
 gotten, and we are asked to condone the 
 sin till there remains no more hatred of 
 it, nor any looking for of judgment upon 
 it. Charity is a lovely grace ; but senti- 
 mentality is a weak vice. Let us take 
 care that the one does not lapse into the 
 other. There may be here and there in 
 the curious annals of the human race a 
 
 243
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Tess or a Trilby — but the most charitable 
 must admit that they are exceptions, and 
 only prove the rule that a bad life is a 
 tolerably clear proof of a bad heart. This 
 is a fact there is very little use in denying, 
 though for the purposes of making interest- 
 ing character-studies the novelists are fond 
 of doing so. 
 
 These heroines of avowedly bad char- 
 acter yet redeemed by traits of nobility 
 are, however, less dangerous favourites 
 for the public fancy than the all-conquering 
 Siren ; for the good reason that they are 
 such manifest creations of the imagination 
 that very few people set much store by 
 them — they like to read about them and 
 wonder if they are possible characters, but 
 they are doubtful, and possibly disapprov- 
 ing all the time. The Siren, on the con- 
 trary, seems to have fairly possessed the 
 British imagination — it is scarcely possible 
 to open a novel in which she does not 
 
 appear. The Siren is a creature of wild 
 
 244
 
 "The Other Grace" 
 
 unrestrained passions, desperate, unscrupu- 
 lous, emotional yet heartless, incapable of 
 sound judgment or of self-control, and 
 quite without all womanly feeling. She 
 is, in fact, a most repulsive character, yet 
 we are asked to find her irresistible, a 
 very Queen of Hearts to whom the whole 
 male creation bend the knee in wonder 
 and admiration. Now, no one doubts the 
 reality of this character : who has not met 
 a Siren ? — they are all too common. But 
 the curious thing is why we should be 
 asked to admire her? Her morality is 
 of such a hopelessly involved order — sub- 
 mitting as it does to none of the recog- 
 nised moral codes — that we follow her 
 devious relations with the sterner sex in 
 disgusted perplexity. She has always 
 (alas for him !) a husband, for the un- 
 mated heroine is as extinct as the Dodo ; 
 then she is involved in intricate connec- 
 tions with some other woman's husband ; 
 
 there is also the man who should have 
 
 245
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 been her husband, and there is always 
 the husband of her soul, sometimes even 
 the second husband — a very carnival of 
 husbands — till we are fain to ask the 
 Sadducee's question, Whose zvife shall she 
 be at the Resurrection, &c. &c. &c. ? 
 
 This is the creature round whose char- 
 acter a myth as unsubstantial as vapour 
 is being raised just now. Only she, we 
 are told, can "taste the colour of life" — 
 less ardent natures are poor, and of neces- 
 sity lead lives of foolish emptiness ; only 
 the passionate Siren is capable of the 
 greater heroisms : passion holds the field ; 
 and the woman who does not exhibit this 
 eminently feminine grace is not held to 
 be worth writing about. There is no 
 doubt that the Siren makes an effective 
 figure in fiction ; but what of the truth of 
 the presentation ? A fire of straw throws 
 out a prodigious glare, yet who would 
 " watch a winter's night '* beside it .'* 
 
 None of the authors who with such 
 
 246
 
 "The Other Grace" 
 
 enthralling art have painted these pictures 
 of outcast women — take Tess and Trilby 
 once again as instances — none of them 
 ever continued the picture. Their hero- 
 ines were invariably doomed to death, 
 because the art-insight capable of limning 
 a Tess or a Trilby at the white-heat 
 of passion knew too well to try to paint 
 the impossible — Tess or Trilby trudg- 
 ing through life with the object of her 
 ardours. 
 
 But, perhaps because her history has 
 not often been recorded by masters of the 
 craft, the Siren is not handled with this 
 consistency. She is the darling of the 
 scribbler, for her type is now so clearly 
 defined that she is very easy to manage. 
 She is shown to us in all her fervour, 
 living at a white-heat as great as ever 
 Tess or Trilby went through ; but instead 
 of being consistently killed off, we are 
 actually asked to believe that she lives 
 
 on after the story closes. Imagination 
 
 247
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 does not conjure up a very pleasant pic- 
 ture of the Siren's later years. She would, 
 unless we are much mistaken, exhibit 
 none of the charms of old age ; try to 
 fancy her at threescore and ten, her beauty 
 (which is always described as of the 
 "alluring" type) gone; her many lovers 
 grown cold in consequence ; left alone 
 with all her exotic passions burnt out, 
 and her heart like a heap of ashes. Im- 
 possible that in her long pilgrimage she 
 has gained the respect of any human 
 being ; she has no female friends, for the 
 good reason that she thought no woman 
 worth making friends with in the days 
 of her youth ; the husband she long ago 
 deserted for another man, not unnaturally 
 has nothing to do with her now, while 
 the "other man" has also proved faith- 
 less ; the children she neglected can 
 scarcely be blamed for neglecting her in 
 their turn ; and the curiously unexacting 
 
 Deity whom she was supposed to worship, 
 
 248
 
 "The Other Grace" 
 
 has vanished long ago into that Hmbo 
 where the False Gods dwell. 
 
 This would be the inevitable age follow- 
 ing upon a youth such as the Siren is 
 supposed to lead. For we are not always 
 young, and the lust of the eyes and the 
 pride of life pass away like a dream, and 
 with them there passes away every quality 
 upon which this modern heroine depends 
 for her charm. It is extraordinary if all 
 the accumulated experience of all the 
 centuries has taught us no more than this, 
 and if we can possibly bring ourselves to 
 accept this exotic erotic creature as a 
 heroic type of all that woman should be 
 — if, indeed, we can bring ourselves to 
 imagine that she has any heroic qualities 
 whatever. No heroine, in the brave old 
 significance of the word, was ever made 
 of this stuff: which of us in age or weak- 
 ness would lean on this broken reed ? 
 
 I am no stickler for subject — let who 
 
 will write about what he pleases, however 
 
 249
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 unpleasant, so long as he writes truly ; 
 and the Siren, a type all too common in 
 life, might well be common in books also, 
 if she were only described as what she 
 is, instead of as what she is not. In art, 
 a ** study " is valuable only as it is truthful ; 
 and something of the same holds good in 
 literature. But there is one study often 
 set to beginners in art — to paint white 
 objects against a white background, and 
 the tyro is clever indeed who gives them 
 form and substance and yet retains the 
 whiteness : white souls too are hard to 
 paint, but will some clever painters not 
 essay the task for very love of its diffi- 
 culty ? 
 
 250
 
 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 "Camerado," says Walt Whitman in his 
 envoi to Leaves of Grass, "this is no 
 book — who touches this touches a man " ; 
 and would-be students of the remarkable 
 utterances known to fame as the poems of 
 Walt Whitman should remember this, the 
 author's own estimate of his book. " Most 
 of the great poets are impersonal," he said 
 again when questioned about his writings. 
 " I am personal ; they portray their endless 
 characters, events, passions, love-plots, but 
 seldom or never mention themselves. In 
 my poems all concentrates in, radiates 
 from, revolves round myself. I have but 
 one central figure, the general human per- 
 sonality typified in myselfi Only I am 
 sure my book inevitably necessitates that 
 the reader transpose him or herself into 
 
 251
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 that central position, and become the actor, 
 experiencer, himself or herself, of every 
 page, every aspiration, every line." 
 
 Thus in Whitman's poems one must look 
 both for the portrait of the man himself, 
 and for his portrait of Man in the abstract 
 as he conceived of him — "the general 
 human personality" that Whitman saw 
 "typified in himself" — and in neither in- 
 stance will the portrait be uninteresting. 
 
 Here is a huge personality — repulsive 
 in some aspects, lovable in others ; and 
 it is bared to us with a frankness of pre- 
 sentment that cannot fail to hold our 
 attention. We may not be able to dis- 
 cern his charm — we may see only his 
 horrid attributes, but we have met in these 
 three hundred and eighty pages which 
 make up Leaves of Grass a new character 
 of extraordinary force. 
 
 Only a proper understanding of this 
 character will make us understand the 
 
 poems, and only a real knowledge of the 
 
 252
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 poems will make us form a true estimate of 
 the character ; so the two are one and indi- 
 visible and must be studied together. 
 
 Although a large number of people read 
 at the present time, it is really a very un- 
 common thing to find an author studied 
 in a serious way. We read after an easy 
 fashion, singling out for praise or for blame 
 short passages from books and letting the 
 author stand or fall by these. We look, in 
 fact, to the particular, not to the general ; 
 and few of us can give any reasonable ac- 
 count of why we admire such or such an 
 author. Yet to grasp the central idea of 
 a book is surely the only intelligent way 
 in which to read it : to find out what made 
 the writer write his book, should be the 
 aim of every reader. 
 
 Now Walt Whitman has suffered more 
 serious misconceptions from idle and casual 
 readers than almost any other author. 
 His poems are picked at in detail, quoted 
 piecemeal, and made easy fun of just be- 
 
 253
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 cause very few people take pains to find 
 
 out what they are really about. There is 
 
 nothing easier than to make fun of these 
 
 poems (" pieces," as Whitman himself 
 
 called them), and it takes close study to 
 
 understand or to appreciate them. For 
 
 the artist's gift of making his meaning 
 
 quite unmistakable has been denied to 
 
 our author ; he always has an idea in 
 
 everything that he writes, yet to get at 
 
 what that idea is, is often exceedingly 
 
 difficult just from his contempt of the mere 
 
 technicalities of art. But it is not for 
 
 lovely verses or pleasing rhymes that we 
 
 are to look here, but for Ideas — and these 
 
 we shall find in plenty if we take the 
 
 trouble to search for them. 
 
 Leaves of Grass, Whitman's volume of 
 
 poems, is not a random collection of verse ; 
 
 it is a book of structural design, a planned 
 
 and connected series of poems to illustrate 
 
 certain theories. The first edition of this 
 
 remarkable book appeared in 1855, but for 
 
 254
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 eight years before this date the poems had 
 been planned, and it took Whitman nearly 
 thirty years to perfect his conception in the 
 final edition of 1881. In this time much 
 was rewritten, much destroyed altogether, 
 yet the main conception remained unaltered 
 from the first. 
 
 " My underlying purpose in these poems 
 was religious," Whitman says — a state- 
 ment which will surprise the casual reader 
 mightily. For at first sight these poems 
 seem to be of the earth earthy, and to deal 
 not at all with the things of the soul ; how 
 then does their author profess to write " re- 
 ligiously " ? I think the best way to show 
 this is to let him speak for himself, as he 
 does in hundreds of lines. The essentially 
 spiritual nature of matter is the main idea 
 which runs through and through Leaves of 
 Grass. This is the key to the cypher of 
 Whitman : this is his religion ; or perhaps, 
 more truly, it is the foundation upon which 
 his religion is built : — 
 
 255
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 "I will not make a poem" (he says), 
 
 " or the least part of a poem, but 
 
 has reference to the soul, 
 Because, having looked at the universe, 
 
 I find there is no one, nor any 
 
 particle of one, 
 But has reference to the soul. 
 / wilt make the poeins of materials, 
 For I think they are the most spiritiial 
 
 poems!' 
 
 And again he says : — 
 
 " Strange and hard that paradox true I 
 
 give, 
 Objects gross and the unseen soul are 
 
 one. 
 
 Utterances like these throw a flash of 
 
 light over the whole of the book ; this 
 
 then is the meaning of the apparently 
 
 meaningless lists and enumerations that fill 
 
 up the pages! His eye can rest on no 
 
 object, let it be never so unsightly or foul, 
 
 but he must sing its praise because he sees 
 
 "the soul" in it. No wonder that his 
 
 256
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 muse is prolific ! He does not need to 
 wait for "inspiration": everything is an 
 inspiration, and must be sung about 
 straightway. Hence Whitman's method 
 — so pecuHarly his own — of running on 
 for pages at a time in this sort of vein : — 
 
 " House-building, measuring, sawing the 
 boards, 
 
 Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-mak- 
 ing, 
 
 Coopering, tin-roofing, shingle-dressing, 
 
 Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, 
 flagging of side- walks by flaggers, 
 
 The pump, the pile-driver, the derrick, 
 the coal-kiln," &c. &c. &c. 
 
 All these enumerations are really meant 
 to make Whitman's meaning plain to his 
 reader, though they have in nine cases out 
 of ten the opposite effect. He will not 
 credit his reader with intelligence enough 
 to see that the word " all " necessarily in- 
 cludes everything, and so to emphasise 
 
 257 R
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 his theory he goes into ridiculous detail of 
 what he means "all " to include. 
 
 I will not pretend to deny that one 
 must laugh at this method of Whit- 
 man's, nor to assert that a better method 
 might not have been found. What must 
 be said for it is that it is his own, and 
 that it seems to express the man's rugged, 
 uncompromising nature better than any 
 more polished method could have done. 
 
 If you can only keep steadily in mind 
 that what Whitman is wishing to preach 
 to you is the Spirit tmder lying 77taterialSj 
 his whole writings will at once become 
 plain to you, and you will see how each 
 of his doctrines have a connection with 
 the other. In this way: Because of the 
 Spirit that underlies all material things 
 humanity is sacred, and because humanity 
 is sacred it has great potentialities ; there- 
 fore self-fulfilment is a supreme virtue ; 
 and in self-fulfilment lies the great hope 
 
 of the Ideal Democracy — also in the 
 
 258
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 spiritual nature of man Whitman bases 
 his hopes for immortality. These, then, 
 are the main ideas to be searched for : — 
 (i) The Spirit underlying all materials. 
 
 (2) The potentialities of our nature. 
 
 (3) Self- fulfilment. 
 
 (4) Democratic ideals. 
 
 (5) The good end of all. 
 
 The possibilities dormant in every 
 human being are sung by Whitman with 
 a force and conviction that carry us along 
 with the singer : — 
 
 " The man's body is sacred and the 
 woman's body is sacred, 
 
 No matter who it is, it is sacred. Is it the 
 meanest one in the labourers' gang ? 
 
 Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants 
 just landed on the wharf ? 
 
 Each one belongs here or anywhere, just 
 as much as the well-off, just as much 
 as you, 
 
 Each has his or her place in the pro- 
 cession. 
 
 259
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 A man's body at auction (for before the 
 
 war I often go to the slave market 
 
 to watch the sale). 
 I help the auctioneer — the sloven does 
 
 not half know his business ! 
 Gentlemen, look on this wonder ! 
 Whatever the bids of the bidder they 
 
 cannot be high enough for it, 
 For it the globe lay preparing quintil- 
 
 lions of years without one animal or 
 
 plant, 
 
 In this head the all-baffling brain, 
 In it and below it the making of heroes, 
 This is not only one man, this the father 
 of those who shall be fathers in their 
 turns, 
 In him the start of populous states and 
 rich republics, of him countless im- 
 mortal lives . . . 
 How do you know who shall come 
 from his offspring through the 
 centuries ? " 
 
 Aofain and again we have this lesson 
 
 repeated to us in different words : — 
 
 260
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 " We consider bibles and religions divine. 
 
 I do not say they are not divine, 
 / say they have grown out of you, and 
 
 may grow out of you still, 
 It is not they who give the life, it is you 
 
 who give the life. 
 Leaves are not more shed from the 
 
 trees, or trees from the earth, than 
 
 they are shed out of you." 
 
 Here we have Whitman at his best 
 — ridiculous no longer, but the preacher 
 of a robust and inspiring creed which we 
 would all be well to take to heart. I call 
 Whitman's creed "robust" because it is 
 reasoned out, and is the logical outcome 
 of hib belief in the spiritual nature of the 
 universe ; it is not the rootless optimism 
 which vaguely sees good in every one 
 without having any sufficient reason for 
 doing so. He sees good in every person 
 because he thinks all the universe is 
 good : — 
 
 " I am myself just as much evil as good, 
 
 261
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 and my nation is — and I say there 
 is in fact no evil (or if there is I say 
 it is just as important to you, to the 
 land, or to me, as anything else). . . . 
 
 I will show that there is no imper- 
 fection in the present, and can be 
 none in the future, 
 
 And I will show that whatever happens 
 to anybody, it may be turned to 
 beautiful results, 
 
 And I will show that nothing can happen 
 more beautiful than death, 
 
 And I will thread through my poems 
 that time and events are compact. 
 
 And that all the things of the universe 
 are perfect miracles, each as pro- 
 found as any." 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 " Why should I wish to see God better 
 
 than this day ? 
 I see something of God each hour of 
 
 the twenty-four, and each moment 
 
 then, 
 In the faces of men and women I see God, 
 
 and in my own face in the glass, 
 262
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 I find letters from God dropt in the 
 
 streets, and every one is signed by 
 
 God's name, 
 And I leave them where they are, for 
 
 I know that wheresoe'er I go. 
 Others will punctually come for ever 
 
 and ever." 
 
 Seeing God (or good) in all things, 
 Whitman scarcely admits evil as a real 
 existence ; for " it is important^' he argues, 
 and what is "important" cannot rightly be 
 named evil. Every man, however seem- 
 ingly vile, " has his part in the procession " ; 
 we must accept life as a whole, not seek- 
 ing to find fault with any part of it. 
 
 Pursuing this doctrine Whitman launches 
 out upon a dangerous voyage and comes 
 to shipwreck. In that section of Leaves of 
 Grass which he names "Childrenof Adam," 
 the attempt is made to show in detail that 
 nothing is common or unclean. These 
 unfortunate chants instead of accomplish- 
 ing their end have defeated it, but they 
 
 263
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 remain as extraordinary human documents. 
 That a man should be found to sing these 
 songs out of an honest and good heart, as 
 Whitman certainly sang them, is a curious 
 freak of individuality. It is as though a 
 man should assert his right to walk among 
 his fellows naked and unashamed. To 
 call Whitman impure, obscene, and many 
 other ugly words, is to misunderstand him 
 altogether ; he is only asserting the creed 
 he believes to the uttermost, with no 
 thought or caring for the opinion of the 
 world. He will show a stupid public that 
 " every creature of God is good," and 
 should be accepted with thanksgiving. 
 Here the strong self-poised individuality 
 of the man appears. At the first appear- 
 ance of Leaves of Grass such a tempest 
 of popular abuse fell upon Whitman as 
 would have silenced almost any other man 
 for ever. Not the style of the book, but 
 the morals of its author were attacked 
 
 with extraordinary bitterness. And what 
 
 264
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 does the author do? "I went off," he 
 says, "to the east end of Long Island 
 and spent the late summer there — the 
 happiest of my life — then came back to 
 New York with the confirmed resolution, 
 from which I never afterwards wavered, 
 to go on with my poetic enterprise in my 
 own way, and finish it as well as I could ! " 
 Later, when he was offered favourable 
 terms for another edition of his book if 
 he would consent to leave out a few Hnes 
 from two of the pieces, he refused to do 
 so. " I dare not do it," he said ; " I dare 
 not leave out or alter what is so genuine, 
 so indispensable, so lofty, so pure." 
 
 With something of the spirit of a fanatic 
 he pursued his way, heedless of either 
 public opinion or the remonstrances of 
 friends. Even the advice of Emerson — 
 at that time the very god of American 
 idolatry — was disregarded. " For some- 
 thing like two hours," we are told, Emer- 
 son argued with him on the subject of those 
 
 265
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 verses collectively known as Children of 
 Adam. Whitman tells the story of this in- 
 terview in the Critic for December 1881 : — 
 
 " Up and down this breadth of Beacon 
 Street, between these same old elms, I 
 walked for two hours of a bright, sharp 
 February midday twenty-one years ago, 
 with Emerson, then in his prime, keen, 
 physically and morally magnetic, armed at 
 every point, and, when he chose, wielding 
 the emotional just as well as the intellec- 
 tual. During these two hours he was the 
 talker, and I the listener. It was an argu- 
 ment, statement, reconnoitring, review, 
 attack, and pressing home (like any army 
 corps in order, artillery, cavalry, infantry) 
 of all that could be said against the part 
 (and main part) in the construction of my 
 poems. Children of Adam. More pre- 
 cious than gold to me that dissertation (I 
 only wish I had it now verbatim). It 
 afforded me ever after this strange and 
 paradoxical lesson : each point of Emer- 
 son's statement was unanswerable, no 
 
 judge's charge ever more complete or 
 
 266
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 convincing — I could never hear the points 
 better put — and then / felt down in my 
 soul the clear and unmistakable conviction 
 to disobey all, and pursue my own way. 
 ' What have you to say then to such 
 things?' said Emerson, pausing in con- 
 clusion. ' Only that while I can't answer 
 them at all, I feel more settled than ever 
 to adhere to my own theory and exemplify 
 it,' was my candid reply. Whereupon we 
 went and had a good dinner at the Ameri- 
 can House. . . ." 
 
 And there can be no doubt that Whit- 
 man had the right of the matter. The 
 author who will change the whole concep- 
 tion of his book to suit the taste of any 
 other man is a poor creature, and does not 
 deserve to be remembered by posterity ; 
 and Whitman was man enough, and artist 
 enough, to trust his own inspiration. 
 
 Sincere admirers of Whitman's poems 
 
 must always regret that by the publication 
 
 of Children of Adam he brought his other 
 
 267
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 and nobler poems into discredit, yet they 
 must also recognise that Whitman had no 
 other course open to him. He had con- 
 ceived the idea of the book as a whole, 
 and to leave out this section would have 
 been to maim it. The pity is that the 
 conception included as much as it did. 
 The reader must be referred to the ori- 
 ginal here, for, unfortunately, Children of 
 Adam cannot be quoted. It is, as Thoreau 
 wrote in a severe yet appreciative letter 
 — " It is as if the beasts spoke." These 
 utterances, however, must be read by any 
 one who wishes to understand either 
 Whitman or his philosophy. Here his 
 theories are pushed to their utmost con- 
 clusion, with the result that he will pro- 
 bably be misunderstood as long as he is 
 remembered at all. The reading public 
 have a fatal, though perhaps natural, way 
 of fastening upon and remembering the 
 weak or the nasty bits of a book. Children 
 
 of Adam, undeniably Whitman's weak 
 
 268
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 spot, will always be quoted against him. 
 Those who admire our author in spite of 
 his aberrations from sane taste, must 
 accept this portion of his book for what 
 it is worth — a human document far more 
 valuable from its frankness of self-reve- 
 lation than for the doctrines which it 
 professes to teach. 
 
 But the special interest which attaches 
 to this section of Leaves of Grass is the 
 fact that the whole after-tragedy of Whit- 
 man's life was involved in his determina- 
 tion to publish these verses. Poetry is 
 never a lucrative trade ; but in Whitman's 
 case his poems had more than a negative 
 influence on his career. After the close 
 of the war, in which he had, as a helper 
 to the wounded, played such a splendid 
 part, Whitman was appointed to a clerk- 
 ship in the Department of the Interior, 
 but he had only held this position for a 
 short time when he received his dismissal 
 
 "because he was the author of Leaves of 
 
 269
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Grass." Another appointment was ob- 
 tained for him before very long, so the 
 material loss was not so great as it seemed 
 to be at first ; but the slur upon his moral 
 fame remained, and the case roused such 
 discussion for and against the poems that 
 Whitman found himself involved in unen- 
 viable notoriety. The questionable por- 
 tions of the book were canvassed and 
 quoted to the detriment of all that was 
 noble and beautiful in it, and new readers 
 were found for it just because they were 
 curious to read such mysteriously objec- 
 tionable verses. With far too much of 
 the partisan spirit Whitman's few genuine 
 admirers rushed to his defence. That 
 turgid bit of pamphleteering, "The Good 
 Grey Poet" of Mr. D. O'Connor, is a case 
 in point ; the hot-headed author has no 
 words bad enough for Whitman's detrac- 
 tors, none good enough for Whitman him- 
 self — "Shakespeare, Homer, yEschylus, 
 
 Dante, Isaiah — his place is beside these 
 
 270
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 bards of the last ascent, the brothers of 
 the radiant summit." Now, over-praise 
 is fully more injurious to an author's repu- 
 tation than over-blame, and to place 
 Whitman on the radiant summit with 
 Shakespeare and Isaiah is only to call 
 down ridicule upon him ; so between 
 friends and foes it went hard with poor 
 Whitman and his Leaves of Grass about 
 the year 1865. Still new editions of the 
 unfortunate book kept struggling out in 
 an intermittent way, and always in unex- 
 purgated form, that testified to the author's 
 inflexible determination to publish what 
 he himself approved. Each " edition," so 
 called, was really an expansion of the 
 former edition, and contained some new 
 section of the poet's first conception. The 
 various editions up to 1882, when the 
 book was really completed, cover a period 
 of nearly thirty years, and the story of the 
 book is the story of its author. He was 
 
 so identified with his work that he seemed 
 
 271
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 to have no life apart from it, for all his 
 experiences to him were embodiments of 
 theories. The earlier and the mid-period 
 poems are one long chant of the joy of 
 existence : — 
 
 "Beginning my studies the first step 
 
 pleased me so much, 
 The mere fact consciousness, these 
 
 forms, the power of motion, 
 The least insect or animal, the senses, 
 
 eyesight, love. 
 The first step I say awed me and 
 
 pleased me so much, 
 I have hardly gone and hardly wished 
 
 to go any further, 
 But stop and loiter all the time to sing 
 
 it in ecstatic songs." 
 
 This is only the prelude to his ecstasies. 
 
 " Each moment and whatever happens 
 
 thrills me with joy,'' he says further, and 
 
 then following his own curious method, 
 
 he will go on to explain all the different 
 
 things — whether experiences of mind or of 
 
 272
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 body — that cause his joy. All these reci- 
 tations are peculiarly " Whitmanish," if 
 one may coin a word : they are the very 
 essence of his art such as it is, and in them 
 he exemplifies his great theory of Demo- 
 cratic art. In plain words, his theory 
 amounts to this, that the true artist of the 
 future must not go far afield for his sub- 
 jects ; or as he puts it : — 
 
 " The hourly routine of your own or any 
 man's life, the shop, yard, store, or 
 factory, 
 
 These show all near you by day and 
 night — workman ! whoever you are, 
 your daily life ! 
 
 In that and them the heft of the heaviest 
 — in that and them far more than 
 you estimated (and far less also), 
 
 In them realities for you and me, in 
 them poems for you and me, ... in 
 them all themes, hints, possibilities. 
 
 I do not affirm that what you see be- 
 yond is futile, 
 
 I do not advise you to stop, 
 
 273 s
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 I do not say leadings you thought great 
 
 are not great, 
 But I say that none lead to greater than 
 
 these lead to. 
 Will you seek afar off? You surely 
 
 come back at last, 
 In things best known to you finding 
 
 the best, or as good as the best, 
 In folks nearest to you finding the 
 
 sweetest, strongest, lovingest, . . . 
 The popular tastes and eniploymients 
 
 taking precedence hi poe7nsy 
 
 Whitman becomes very amusing in his 
 enthusiastic preaching of this'doctrine ; for 
 not only does he contend that the home- 
 liest themes are the best, but he finds a 
 good deal to say against other and more 
 classic subjects : — 
 
 " Come, muse " (he cries), " migrate from 
 
 Greece and Ionia, 
 Cross out, please, those immensely 
 
 overpaid accounts, 
 That matter of Troy and Achilles' 
 
 2/4
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 wrath, and Eneas', Odysseus' 
 wanderings, 
 
 Placard ' Removed ' and ' To Let ' on 
 the rocks of your snowy Parnassus, 
 
 Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice 
 high on Jaffa's gate and on Mount 
 Moriah, 
 
 The same on the walls of your Ger- 
 man, French, and Spanish castles, 
 and Italian collections. 
 
 For know a fresher, busier sphere, a 
 wide, untried domain awaits, de- 
 mands you ! " 
 
 He then tells us (by the old enumerat- 
 ing method) of the places now deserted 
 by the muse : of the vanished traditions 
 of Romance — the Crusaders streams of 
 shadowy midnight troops sped with the 
 sunrise, Arthur vanished with his knights 
 — dissolved like an exhalation — ''passed! 
 passed ! for us for ever passed that once so 
 mighty world, now void, inanimate, phan- 
 tom world,'' and breaks out into an ecs- 
 
 275
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 tatic vision of the future pathway of the 
 muse (!) : — 
 
 " I say I see, my friends, if you do not, 
 the illustrious emigre 
 
 Making directly for this rendezvous, 
 vigorously clearing a path for her- 
 self through the confusion, 
 
 By thud of machinery and shrill steam- 
 whistle undismayed. 
 
 Bluffed not a bit by drain-pipes, gaso- 
 meters, artificial fertilisers, 
 
 Sfnilmg and pleased zvith palpable in- 
 tent to stay, 
 
 She's here, installed a7nid the kitchen 
 ware ! " 
 
 This is just the same doctrine which 
 Kipling sang thirty years later when he 
 assured us that " Romance brought up the 
 9.15" (train); and there are elements of 
 great truth in the doctrine. It is in fact 
 wholesome fare for those who can assimi- 
 late it — some of us cannot do so ; and 
 
 without any question it is well to be able 
 
 276
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 to take this view of things in a world that 
 becomes yearly uglier and uglier. 
 
 Mr. Symonds, in his illuminating study 
 of Walt Whitman, remarks that "there 
 is a danger lest the solution of this 
 problem should suffer from being ap- 
 proached too consciously," and the truth 
 of this prophecy, written some eight or 
 ten years ago, must be apparent to all 
 careful readers of modern fiction. There 
 is far too much conscious struggle after 
 ** simplicity " of theme, " primitive " sub- 
 ject, and so on — too much " installing of 
 the muse among the kitchen ware " in 
 fact ; as if the selection of simple subjects 
 will ever produce simplicity of treatment 
 when the author himself has the com- 
 plex, introspective, self-conscious modern 
 mind. 
 
 But I wander from my point. Whit- 
 man was not self-conscious in his selection 
 of subject. To him these present-day 
 
 matters were the subjects of subjects ; 
 
 277
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 most genuine he was in his announcement 
 of their wonder and beauty. If you con- 
 sider that many of these poems were 
 written forty-five years ago, you will be 
 surprised at the modernity of them ; for 
 we are inclined to consider this theory 
 of the beauty of ugliness as entirely a 
 doctrine of our own day. In this, as in 
 many other respects. Whitman was be- 
 fore his time ; there can be no doubt 
 that Leaves of Grass would have been 
 received more calmly nowadays than it 
 was in 1853 ; its beauties would have 
 been more quickly appreciated, and its 
 blemishes would not have created such 
 an uproar. Whitman himself wrote : — 
 
 "You who celebrate bygones, 
 
 Who have explored the outward, the 
 
 surfaces of the races, the life that 
 
 has exhibited itself, 
 Who have treated of man as the 
 
 creature of politics, aggregates, 
 
 rulers, and priests ; 
 278
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treat- 
 ing of him as he is in himself in 
 his own rights, 
 
 Pressing the pulse of the life that has 
 seldom exhibited itself (the great 
 pride of man in himself), 
 
 Chanter of Personality, out lining what 
 is yet to be, I project the history 
 of the Future^ 
 
 These lines define a large section of 
 Whitman's poems : " the projecting of the 
 Future " — the future, that is to say, of 
 the Ideal Democracy, as well as of the 
 Ideal Man who is to form it. 
 
 Those poems which are devoted to this 
 
 subject are necessarily the least interesting 
 
 of all Whitman's work to English readers: 
 
 there is a narrowness of aim in them; they 
 
 only appeal to the units of a Republic — 
 
 they chant too exclusively the chants of 
 
 America. It was, however, with his whole 
 
 soul that Whitman "projected the history" 
 
 of America's future, and described his 
 
 279
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 ideal of what each man and woman was to 
 be. He sings of a giant race : great men 
 and women, living much in the open, 
 far from what he calls a " puny and 
 pious existence." No doubt he dreams 
 a splendid dream, but whether it is one 
 that is likely to be fulfilled is a question 
 for American prophets to answer. 
 
 To our English ideas all Whitman's 
 Democratic ideals are wanting in "atmos- 
 phere." We have so steeped ourselves 
 in the traditions of the past that any 
 theory of either Art or Life which ignores 
 these seems bleak to us — wanting in what 
 painters call " atmosphere." We cannot 
 give a whole-hearted admiration here. 
 The past — its great things, its illustrious 
 names, its world - old stories — seems to 
 us far more sacred than the tawdry 
 present. We worship our past ; and 
 always will — while America worships her 
 future. 
 
 And now we come to a new section of 
 
 280
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 the Whitman poems, and one which marks 
 a distinct era in our author's mental de- 
 velopment. At the outbreak of the war 
 Whitman volunteered as a sort of amateur 
 nurse ; his experiences in this capacity 
 are embodied in Drum Taps. When he 
 deals with " the red business," as he calls 
 it, no one can be finer than Whitman : 
 something of the confusion and terror and 
 roughness of warfare hurtles through his 
 pages — something too of the pity of it — 
 the thrill and the splendour. There drops 
 away from his work now almost all that 
 was objectionable before, sensual-seeming 
 or blatant, and a new note sounds through 
 it. This changed note is infinitely touch- 
 ing when we understand the meaning of 
 it. Three years of toil in the field- 
 hospitals had broken down Whitman's 
 strength, and in the prime of life he 
 found himself hopelessly shattered in 
 health. One little disheartened song 
 
 tells us a whole piteous story of per- 
 
 281
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 sonal suffering, if we read between the 
 lines : — 
 
 " Year that trembled and reeled beneath 
 me, 
 
 Your summer wind was warm enough, 
 yet the air I breathed froze me, 
 
 A thick gloom fell through the sun- 
 shine and darkened me, 
 
 * Must I change my trmmpha7it songs ? ' 
 I said to myself, 
 
 ' Must I indeed learn to chant the cold 
 dirges of the baffled and sullen 
 hymns of defeat ? ' " 
 
 Some premonition of the dark future 
 surely ran through this poem, which seems 
 to have been written at the close of the 
 war, and after Whitman's first serious 
 illness. And henceforward " the triumph- 
 ant songs " are indeed changed : a spirit 
 of gentleness, humility, resignation, and 
 yet of steady hopefulness and serenity 
 breathes through the verses. They are 
 
 not the " hymns of defeat," but of victory. 
 
 282
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 Between the years 1873 ^^ ^^75 Whit- 
 man's hfe was often despaired of. He 
 hung between life and death, but at last 
 made a partial recovery. "It was said 
 by one of his friends " (says Dr. Maurice 
 Bucke in his Life of Whitman) " that 
 in that combination of illness, poverty, 
 and old age, Whitman has been more 
 grand than in the full vigour of his man- 
 hood. For along with illness, pain, and 
 the burden of age, he soon had to bear 
 poverty also. A little while after he 
 became incapacitated by illness he was 
 discharged from his Government clerk- 
 ship, and everything like an income 
 entirely ceased. As to the profits of 
 Leaves of Grass they had never been 
 much, and now two men in succession, 
 in whose hands the sale of the book on 
 commission had been placed, took advan- 
 tage of his helplessness to embezzle the 
 amounts due, so that, although I hardly 
 
 ever heard him speak of them, I know that 
 
 283
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 during these four years Walt Whitman had 
 to bear the imminent prospect of death, 
 great pain at times, poverty, his poetic 
 enterprise a failure, and the face of the 
 public either clouded in contempt or 
 turned away with indifference. If a man 
 can go through such a trial as this without 
 despair or misanthropy, if he can main- 
 tain a good heart, can preserve absolute 
 self-respect, and as absolutely the respect, 
 love, and admiration of the few who 
 thoroughly know him — then he has given 
 proofs, I should say, of personal heroism 
 of the first order. ... It was perhaps 
 needed that Walt Whitman should afford 
 such proofs : at all events he afforded 
 them." 
 
 Such a testimony as this is scarcely 
 needed by those who read the last sections 
 of Leaves of Grass attentively. The 
 author has so evidently come out on to a 
 higher plane of feeling ; the whole con- 
 ception of things is spiritualised. Under 
 
 284
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 the transparent disguise of a " Prayer of 
 Columbus," we have really the prayer of 
 Walt Whitman — sent up to heaven in his 
 age and weakness, a grander utterance far 
 than the songs of his lusty youth : — 
 
 "One effort more, my altar this bleak 
 
 sand ; 
 That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted 
 With ray of light, steady, ineffable, 
 
 vouchsafed by Thee. 
 . . . For that, O God, be it my latest 
 
 word, here on my knees, 
 Old, poor, and paralysed, I thank Thee. 
 
 My terminus near, 
 
 The clouds already closing in upon 
 
 me, 
 The voyage balked, the course disputed, 
 
 lost, 
 I yield my ships to Thee. 
 
 My hands, my limbs grow nerveless, 
 My brain feels racked, bewildered ; 
 Let the old timbers part, I will not part, 
 
 285
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 I will cling fast to Thee, O God, 
 
 though the waves buffet me, 
 Thee, Thee at least I know. 
 
 And these things I see suddenly ; what 
 
 mean they ? 
 As if some miracle, some hand divine 
 
 unsealed my eyes ; 
 Shadowy, vast shapes smile through the 
 
 air and sky, 
 And on the distant waves sail countless 
 
 ships, 
 And anthems in new tongues I hear 
 
 saluting me ! " 
 
 Those who make a great profession of 
 
 any faith are often put to the proof, and it 
 
 seemed as if after Whitman's arrogant 
 
 profession of optimism he was to be tested 
 
 by the most searching of all tests — that of 
 
 bodily pain and weakness. Long years 
 
 ago, in the heyday of youth and strength, 
 
 he made the boast : — 
 
 286
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 " My foothold is tenon d and mortis d in 
 
 granite, 
 I laugh at what you call dissolution^ 
 And I know the amplitude of time." 
 
 Now, the world-old history of Job is 
 re-enacted, and we seem once more to 
 hear the Adversary saying, " Skin for skin, 
 yea, all that a man hath will he give for 
 his life ; but put forth Thine hand now 
 and touch his bone and his flesh and he 
 will curse Thee to Thy face." But though 
 a new note of dejection — the inevitable 
 result of lessened vitality — is heard every 
 here and there in Whitman's later verse, 
 his old faith in the ultimate good remains 
 unwavering. 
 
 Very touching are these verses that 
 
 speak of the sojourn in Doubting Castle ; 
 
 for example, ''Yet, yet, ye dozvncast hours!' 
 
 These and other random lines tell their 
 
 own story. Always the idea of "defeat" 
 
 appears and reappears, as if Whitman's 
 
 287
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 whole conception of life was of a great 
 struggle in which he had been worsted. 
 Yet even in this the old optimism 
 triumphs, and he asserts : — 
 
 " Did we think victory great? 
 So it is ; but now it seems to me, when it 
 cannot be helped, that defeat is great, 
 And death and dismay are great." 
 
 Old and ill and poor and unpopular, 
 with the ideas which he had thought to 
 convert the whole American nation with 
 made into a matter for ridicule. Whitman, 
 thouofh he seems to own himself ''de- 
 feated" in his life's purpose, still clings 
 to his belief that everything is well- 
 ordered and sure. 
 
 "I do not doubt," he says, "that what- 
 ever can possibly happen anywhere at 
 any time, is provided for in the inherence 
 of things. 
 
 " I do not think that Life provides for 
 all and for Time and Space, but I believe 
 Heavenly Death provides for all." 
 
 288
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 So the old boast made in his strength 
 was tested in his weakness. He laughed 
 at dissolution, for it meant to him not the 
 end, the breaking up of life, but the brave 
 answer to every question, the ultimate 
 victory : — 
 
 " Come, lovely and soothing death, 
 Undulate round the world, serenely 
 
 arriving, arriving. 
 In the day, in the night, to all, to 
 
 each, 
 Sooner or later, delicate death. 
 
 Praised be the fathomless universe, 
 For life, for joy, and for objects and 
 
 knowledge curious, 
 And for love, sweet love — but praise 1 
 
 praise ! praise ! 
 For the sure encircling arms of cool 
 
 enfolding death. 
 
 Dark mother, always gliding near 
 
 with soft feet, 
 Have none chanted for thee a chant of 
 
 fullest welcome ? 
 
 289 T
 
 Stones from a Glass House 
 
 Then I chant it for thee — I glorify thee 
 above all, 
 
 I bring thee a song that when those 
 must indeed come, come unfalter- 
 ingly. 
 
 Approach, strong deliveress, 
 
 When it is so — when thou hast taken 
 
 them I joyously sing the dead. 
 Lost in the loving floating ocean of 
 
 thee, 
 Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O 
 
 death." 
 
 Thus Whitman "died and was buried," 
 but his poems remain — a strange memorial 
 of a strange personality. 
 
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