Part 4 (2/2)
n.o.body can blame him; he was not in business to fight battles of this kind, and I suppose that few British juries would have supported him.
They would, more likely, have given the case against him first and tried to get hold of a private copy of the book after, presumably to read on Sunday afternoons. The interesting part of the business is that the accusation remained anonymous, that the police did not a.s.sociate itself with it, but came humbly, helmet in hand, to convey the displeasure of some secret somebody with some secret something in the book. And there you are! That is all you need to snuff out the quite good work of a novelist with a quite good European reputation.
Once upon a time, I thought I might myself have a taste of the purity medicine. In 1910 I had ready for publication a novel called _A Bed of Roses_. I placed it with Messrs Alston Rivers, Ltd., whose standard of respectability was beyond attachment. They read the book without, so far as I remember, any ill effects; at least I saw no signs of corruption in the managing director and the secretary; the maidenly reserve of the lady shorthand-typist seemed unblemished. But some horrid internal convulsion must have suddenly occurred in the firm; they must have lost their nerve; or perhaps my corrupting influence was gradual and progressive; at any rate, they suddenly sent the book to their legal adviser, who wired back that it would almost certainly be prosecuted. So the contract was not signed, and if I had not, in those days, been an enthusiastic young man who longed to be prosecuted, I might never have published the book at all; the moral pressure might have been enough to keep it down. But I offered it to many publishers, all of whom rejected it, at the same time asking whether some milder spring might not be struck from the rock of my imagination, until I came across Mr Frank Palmer, who was a brave man. I offered him that book, cropped of about seventy pages, which I thought so true to life that I realised they must cause offence. He accepted it. Those were beautiful times, and I knew an exquisite day when I decided to chance the prosecution. I remember the bang of the MS. as it dropped into the post box; garbling an old song, I thought: 'Good-bye, good-bye, ye lovely young girls, we're off to Botany Bay.'
The police treated me very scurvily; they took no notice at all. The book was banned by all libraries owing to its alleged hectic qualities, and in due course achieved a moderate measure of scandalous success. I tell this story to show that had I been a sweet and shrinking soul, that if Mr Palmer had not shared in my audacity, the book would not have been published. We should not have been stopped, but we should have been frightened off, and this, I say, is the force that keeps down sincere novels, deep down in the muddy depths of their authors' imagination.
Now and then a publisher dares, and dares too far. Such is the case of _The Rainbow_, by Mr D. H. Lawrence, where the usual methods of Puritan terrorism were applied, where the publisher was taken into court, and made to eat humble pie, knowing that if he refused he must drink hemlock. Certainly _The Rainbow_ was a bad book, for it was an ill-written book, a book of hatred and desire ... but many of us are people of hatred and desire, and I submit that there is no freedom when a minority of one in a nation of fifty millions is hampered in the expression of his feelings. More than one opinion has been held by one man and is now the belief of all the world. The beliefs of to-morrow will be slain if we suppress to-day the opinion of one. I would surrender all the rupees and virgins of Bengal for the sake of the atom of truth which may, in another age, build up immortal understanding in the heart of man.
All this has frightened publishers, so that they will now take no risks, and even the shy sincerity of English writers is turned away. The public subserve the Puritans, little mean people whom Mr Wells ideally nicknamed 'Key-hole,' or 'Snuffles,' little people who form 'watch committees' or 'vigilance societies'; who easily discover the obscene because it hangs like a film before their eyes, little people who keep the window shut. The police must obey, or be called corrupt; the courts are ready to apply the law severely rather than leniently, for who shall play devil's advocate at the Old Bailey? No wonder the publishers are frightened; the combination of their timidity, of truculent Puritanism and of a reluctantly vigilant police makes it almost impossible to _publish_ a sincere work.
One result is that we are deprived of translations of foreign novels, some of which are of the first rank. There is _Le Journal d'une Femme de Chambre_; there is _Aphrodite_, the work of M. Pierre Louys, who is an artist in his way; there is Mr Boylesve's delicate, inwrought _La Lecon d'Amour dans un Parc_; there is the Parisian mischief of M. Prevost's _Lettres de Femmes_, the elegance of M. Henri de Regnier. _Sanin_ got through, how I do not know; I have not read the translation, and it may very well be that it escaped only after the translator had thickly coated it with the soapsuds of English virtue.
Small as their chances may be it is a pity that the publishers do not adventure. It is true that Mr Vizetelly went to jail for publis.h.i.+ng translations of Zola's novels, but when we are told by Mr George Moore that Mr W. T. Stead confided to him that the Vigilance Society considered the prosecution of _Madame Bovary_, it seems necessary again to test the law. For you will observe that in all the cases quoted the publisher has not allowed himself to be committed for trial; he has chosen the prudent and humble course of apologising and withdrawing the book, and one wonders what would happen if just once, supported by a common fund, a publisher were to face the Puritans, let the case go for trial, test the law. One wonders what the result might not be in the hands of, for instance, Sir John Simon. He might win a glorious victory for English letters; he might do away with much of the muckraking which is keeping English letters in subjection because n.o.body dares drag it out for public exposure and combat. Until that happens Puritan influence is more potent than a score of convictions, for no publisher knows what he may do and what he may not; prosecution is as effective in threat as in action, and I hope that if ever this struggle comes it will be over some book of mine.
Let it be clear that no blame attaches to the publisher; he does not trade under the name 'Galahad & Co.'; he knows that even defeated Puritans would attempt to avenge their downfall, and malignantly pursue all the works he issued in every munic.i.p.al library. But still it is a pity that no publisher will face them; half a dozen of our best known publishers are knights: perhaps one day one of them will put on his armour.
This secret terrorism is a national calamity, for it procures the sterilisation of the English novel. It was always so, for there is not complete sincerity in _Tom Jones_, or in _A Mummer's Wife_, even as the word sincerity is understood in England, and there is little nowadays.
We have to-day a certain number of fairly courageous novelists whose works are alluded to in other chapters, but they are not completely sincere. If they were they would not be concerned with censors.h.i.+ps; they would not be published at all. I do not suggest that they wish to be insincere, but they cannot help it. Their insincerity, I suspect, as exemplified by the avoidance of certain details, arises from the necessity of that avoidance; it arises also from the habit of concealment and evasion which a stupefied public, led by a neurotic faction, has imposed upon them.
Our novelists openly discuss every feature of social life, politics, religion, but they cast over s.e.x a thick veil of ellipse and metaphor.
Thus Mr Onions suggests, but dares not name, the disease a character contracts; Mr Lawrence leaves in some doubt the actual deeds of his _Trespa.s.ser_, while 'H. H. Richardson' leaves to our conjectures the habits of Schilsky. (So do I, you see; if I were to say exactly what I mean it would never do.)
It may be said that all this is not insincerity, and that there is no need to dwell upon what the respectable call the unwholesome, the unhealthy, the unnecessary, but I think we must accept that the bowdlerising to which a novelist subjects his own work results in lopsidedness. If a novelist were to develop his characters evenly the three hundred page novel might extend to five hundred; the additional two hundred pages would be made up entirely of the s.e.x preoccupations of the characters, their adventures and attempts at satisfaction. There would be as many scenes in the bedroom as in the drawing-room, probably more, given that human beings spend more time in the former than in the latter apartment. There would be abundant detail, detail that would bring out an intimacy of contact, a completeness of mutual understanding which does not generally come about when characters meet at breakfast or on the golf course. The additional pages would offer pictures of the s.e.x side of the characters, and thus would compel them to come alive; at present they often fail to come alive because they develop only on, say, five sides out of six.
No character in a modern English novel has been fully developed.
Sometimes, as in the case of Mendel, of Jude the Obscure, of Mark Lennan, of Gyp Fiorsen, one has the impression that they are fully developed because the book mainly describes their s.e.x adventures, but one could write a thousand pages about s.e.x adventures and have done nothing but produce sentimental atmosphere. A hundred kisses do not make one kiss, and there is more truth in one page of _Madame Bovary_, than in the shackled works of Mr Hardy. It is not his fault, it is a case of ... if England but knew ... and, therefore, if Hardy but could. Our literary characters are lopsided because their ordinary traits are fully portrayed, a.n.a.lysed with extraordinary minuteness, while their s.e.x life is cloaked, minimised, or left out. Therefore, as the ordinary man does indulge his s.e.xual proclivities, as a large proportion of his thoughts run on s.e.x, if he is a live man, the characters in modern novels are false. They are megacephalous and emasculate. If their religious views, their political opinions, their sporting tastes were whittled down as cruelly as their s.e.xual tendencies, then the characters would become balanced; they would be dwarfs, but they would be true; if all the characteristics of men were as faintly suggested in them as their s.e.xual traits, the persons that figure in novels would simulate reality.
They would not be reality, but they would be less untrue than they are to-day. This, however, is merely theory, for it is impossible to apply to the novel the paradox that insincerity in everything being better than insincerity in one thing it is desirable to be insincere throughout. The paradox cannot be applied, because then a novel of ideas could not be written; shrouded religious doubt, shy socialism, suggested anarchism, would reduce the length by nine tenths, make of the novel a short story. It would be perfectly balanced and perfectly insincere; aesthetically sound, it would satisfy n.o.body. We should be compelled to pad it out with murder, theft, and arson, which, as everybody knows, are perfectly moral things to write about.
It is a cruel position for the English novel. The novelist may discuss anything but the main pre-occupation of life. If he describes the City clerk he may dilate upon City swindles, but he must select warily from among the City clerk's loves. The novelist knows these loves, records them in his mind, speaks of them freely, but he does not write them down. If he did, his publisher would go to jail. For this reason there is no completely sincere writing. The novelist is put into the witness box, but he is not sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; he is sworn to tell the truth, but not the whole truth.
He is not perjured, but he is muzzled.
Obviously this is an unhealthy state, for the spirit of a people is in its books, and I suspect that it does a people no good if its preoccupation find no outlet; it develops inhibitions, while its Puritan masters develop phobias. The cloaking of the truth makes neither modesty nor mock modesty; it makes impurity. There is no market for p.o.r.nography, for p.o.r.nography makes no converts who were not already converted. I believe that the purity propaganda creates much of the evil that lives; I charge advertising reformers with minds full of hate, bishops full of wind, and bourgeois full of fear, with having exercised through the pulpit and the platform a more stimulating effect upon youth, and with having given it more unhealthy information about white slavery, secret cinemas, and disorderly houses than it could ever have gained from all the books that were ever printed in Amsterdam. I once went to a meeting for men only, and came out with two entirely new brands of vice; a bishop held up to me the luridities of secret cinemas, and did everything for me except to give me the address. But he filled my mind with cinemas. One could multiply these instances indefinitely. I do not think that we should cover things up; we had enough of that during the mid-Victorian period, when respectability was at its height, and when women, in bodice and bustle, did their best to make respectability difficult; no, we do not want things covered up, but we do want them advertised. I believe that as good coin drives out bad the Puritans would find a greater safety and the world a greater freedom in allowing good literature to vie with evil; the good would inevitably win; no immoral literature is good; all bad literature dies. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England and France produced the vilest p.o.r.nography we know. Those centuries also produced Moliere and Fielding.
Well, to-day, you can buy Moliere and Fielding everywhere, but the p.o.r.nography of those centuries is dead, and you can find it nowhere except in a really good West End club.
It may be argued that the English are not, as a nation, interested in s.e.x, that they do not discuss it and that they do not think about it. If this were true, then a novelist would be sincere if he devoted nine tenths of his novel to business and play and no more than a tenth to s.e.x. But it is not true. The English, particularly English women, speak a great deal about s.e.x and, as they are certainly shy of the subject, they must devote to it a great deal of thought which they never put into words. If anybody doubts this, let him play eavesdropper in a club, a public house, or an office, listen to men, their views, their stories; let him especially discover how many 'humorous' tales are based on s.e.x.
And let him discreetly ascertain the topics young women discuss when no men are present; some, like Elsie Lindtner, are frank enough to tell.
In their private lives the English do not talk of s.e.x as they would like to, but they do talk, and more openly every day. Yet their s.e.x preoccupations are not reflected in the novels which purport to reflect their lives; conversation is over-s.e.xed, the novel is under-s.e.xed, therefore untrue, therefore insincere. For this there is no immediate remedy. Neither the Society of Authors, nor a combine of publishers, nor a 'Liberty Library' can shake the combination of fears which actuates persecution. The law should certainly be tested, just as it was tested in France by the prosecution of Flaubert in 1857, but we know perfectly well that even a victory for sincerity would do no more than carry us a little nearer to our goal. The law is a trifle compared with public feeling, and public feeling is a trifle beside the emotions the public is told it ought to feel. We had best reconcile ourselves to the inevitable, admit that we cannot be sincere because the police dare not allow it, and acquit the libraries of this one sin, that they killed in English literature a sincerity which was not there.
Three Comic Giants
1. TARTARIN
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