CHAPTER XIITHE POST-VICTORIAN AGE

The period covered by this chapter, thirty years in extent, begins with the decline of the Victorian tradition, and practically ends with the European War. It is a time of unrest, of a hardening of temper, of the decay of the larger Victorian ideals, and of the growth of a more critical, cynical, and analytic spirit. The period, one will find, is not very rich in literature of the highest class; and looking back over our literature, and studying the rise and fall of the literary impulse, the alternation of rich harvest with lean years, one is tempted to regard the post-Victorian age as an interval between two epochs, between the great Victorian age and another, still to be, that will be as truly great.

1. Decline of Poetry.For almost the first time in the history of English literature the poetical product must be relegated to a subordinate position. Much verse, some of great charm and considerable power, has been written, but very little of real outstanding literary importance. It is this decided decline in the poetical spirit that must make the period take an inferior place in our literary history. Even the Great War failed to produce a poet who might proclaim its ideals as Wordsworth did those of the French Revolution. One is reluctantly driven to conclude that the divine poetical impulse was not there.

2. The Domination of the Novel.Comparatively late in its appearance, the novel has now become the mostprominent of the literary forms. The output is enormous, the general level quite high, and the scope of its subject almost all-embracing. The growth of the popular press, including the cheap magazine specializing in the production of fiction, the cheapening of books and journals, the increasing use of shorthand and the typewriter, all combine to add to the torrent of fiction.

3. Modern “Realism.”The tendency of the time is to avoid sentiment, and to look upon life critically and even cynically. There is a supercilious attitude toward enthusiasm, which is banned as being “Victorian,” a word which has assumed a derogatory meaning. In the domain of fiction this feeling is the strongest. Victorian convention is anathema; all subjects are explored, and handled with a frankness that would have horrified the moralists of the earlier age. A particularly strong school of novelists is interested in social subjects, and is affected with the prevailing economic unrest.

4. Foreign Influences.In other countries the same tendency toward realism is apparent, and has helped the movement in England. In Europe there were two geniuses of international importance, and both of them were fired with revolutionary social ideals: Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), the Norse dramatist, and Leo Tolstoï (1828–1910), the Russian novelist. The influence of Ibsen went right to the roots of English drama, and the works of Tolstoï awoke English readers to the importance of Russian fiction, which is strongly realistic. French novelists of the realistic school, such as Émile Zola (1840–1902), had their share in the development of the English novel.

5. The Celtic Revival.The revival of Irish literature is of much interest. It began in the effort of a group of writers to preserve and reanimate Irish sentiment and (to a certain extent) the Irish language. It has affected all branches of literature: it has affected poetry, producing poems such as those of Mr. Yeats; it has created a type of drama, and a theater in which to act it; its dramatists include Mr. Synge, Lady Gregory, and (partly) Mr. Shaw;it has added a novelist of importance in George Moore; and it has a worthy example of a man of letters in George Russell, whosenom de plumeis “A. E.”

We shall deal with three outstanding novelists, each of whom is representative of a different class. We shall have space sufficient for a small number only of the other novelists.

1. His Life.Thomas Hardy was born (1840) in Dorsetshire, and after being educated locally finished his studies at King’s College, London. He adopted the profession of an architect, being specially interested in the architecture of early churches. Ambitious to achieve fame as an author, he began, as so many other literary aspirants have done, with poetry. In this branch of literature he met with scant recognition; so, when he was over thirty years old, he took to the writing of novels. These too had no popular success, though they did not go unpraised by discerning critics. Nevertheless, Hardy continued uninterruptedly to issue works of fiction, which gradually but surely brought him fame. He was enabled to abandon his profession as an architect and retire to his native Dorchester, where he lived the life of a literary recluse. Popular applause, which he had never courted, in the end came in full measure. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday the greatest literary figures of the day united to do him homage, and the King, with characteristic felicity, sent a message of gracious compliment. Some years previously (1910) he had received the Order of Merit, no inappropriate distinction.

2. His Poetry.As early as 1865, and thence onward, Mr. Hardy issued fugitive pieces of poetry, which were at length collected and published asWessex Poems(1898). Many of the poems, none of which is very long, are of the dramatic monologue type. The typical Hardy note is apparent in nearly all of them; a careful and measuredutterance, a stern eye for the tragedy of common things, and a somber submission to the dictates of an unkind fate. One or two of them are brighter, with a wry kind of humor, like the well-knownValenciennes. A second collection,Poems of the Past and Present(1901), has a deeper and more sardonic note, but the feeling of pitiful regret is still predominant. This is particularly so in the poems on the South African War.The Dead Drummer, a poem of this group, three brief stanzas in length, tells of Drummer Hodge slain and buried in the veld. The Hardy attitude is almost perfectly revealed in the last stanza:

Yet portion of that unknown plainWill Hodge for ever be;His homely northern breast and brainGrow up a southern tree;And strange-eyed constellations reignHis stars eternally.

Yet portion of that unknown plain

Will Hodge for ever be;

His homely northern breast and brain

Grow up a southern tree;

And strange-eyed constellations reign

His stars eternally.

InThe Dynasts, which was published in several parts between 1903 and 1908, we meet with Mr. Hardy’s most ambitious poetical effort. In scope the poem is vast, for it deals with the Napoleonic wars, with all Europe for its scene. In length it is prodigious, and before the reader has reached the end he is overwhelmed with the magnitude of it. In form it is dramatic, in the sense that Shelley’sPrometheus Unboundis dramatic; the scene shifts from point to point, the historical figures utter long monologues, and superhuman intelligences, such as Pity and the Spirit of the Years, add commentaries upon the activities of mankind. Above and behind all of it broods a sense of stern fatalism—the Immanent Will, as the author calls it; and in front of this enormous curtain of fate and futility even the figure of Napoleon is dwarfed and impotent.

Satires of Circumstance(1914) is another collection of shorter pieces. The satires themselves, which occupy quite a small portion of the book, are almost brutal and rancorous in their choice and treatment of unhappy incidents.No doubt their author judges such a tone to be necessary in the production of satire. The effect is very impressive. For example, in the short piece calledIn the Cemeteryhe begins:

“You see those mothers squabbling there?”Remarks the man of the cemetery.“One says in tears, ‘’Tis mine lies here!’Another, ‘Nay, mine, you Pharisee!’Another, ‘How dare you move my flowersAnd put your own on this grave of ours!’But all their children were laid thereinAt different times, like sprats in a tin.”

“You see those mothers squabbling there?”

Remarks the man of the cemetery.

“One says in tears, ‘’Tis mine lies here!’

Another, ‘Nay, mine, you Pharisee!’

Another, ‘How dare you move my flowers

And put your own on this grave of ours!’

But all their children were laid therein

At different times, like sprats in a tin.”

And the cemetery man goes on to say that all the bodies had been removed to make room for a drain-pipe, and that the quarreling was taking place over the drain-pipe.

A further group of poems in this same volume is calledPoems of 1912–1913. In this group of poems, which are elegiac in nature, Mr. Hardy’s lyrical genius develops a late but splendid bloom. It is unique in our history for a poet over seventy years old to surpass all the efforts of his prime. In the depth of their emotion and the terse adequacy of their style they represent the consummation of his poetry. We quote briefly:

(1) I found her out thereOn a slope few see,That falls westwardlyTo the sharp-edged air,Where the ocean breaksOn the purple strand,And the hurricane shakesThe solid land.

(1) I found her out there

On a slope few see,

That falls westwardly

To the sharp-edged air,

Where the ocean breaks

On the purple strand,

And the hurricane shakes

The solid land.

(2) Nobody says: Ah, that is the placeWhere chanced, in the hollow of years ago,What none of the Three Towns cared to know—The birth of a little girl of grace—The sweetest the house saw, first or last;Yet it was soOn that day long past.Nobody thinks: There, there she layIn a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower,And listened, just after the bed time hour,To the stammering chimes that used to playThe quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tuneIn Saint Andrew’s towerNight, morn, and noon.*****Nay: one there is to whom these things,That nobody else’s mind calls back,Have a savour that scenes in being lack,And a presence more than the actual brings;To whom to-day is beneaped and stale,And its urgent clackBut a vapid tale.Places

(2) Nobody says: Ah, that is the place

Where chanced, in the hollow of years ago,

What none of the Three Towns cared to know—

The birth of a little girl of grace—

The sweetest the house saw, first or last;

Yet it was so

On that day long past.

Nobody thinks: There, there she layIn a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower,And listened, just after the bed time hour,To the stammering chimes that used to playThe quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tuneIn Saint Andrew’s towerNight, morn, and noon.

Nobody thinks: There, there she lay

In a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower,

And listened, just after the bed time hour,

To the stammering chimes that used to play

The quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tune

In Saint Andrew’s tower

Night, morn, and noon.

*****

Nay: one there is to whom these things,That nobody else’s mind calls back,Have a savour that scenes in being lack,And a presence more than the actual brings;To whom to-day is beneaped and stale,And its urgent clackBut a vapid tale.Places

Nay: one there is to whom these things,

That nobody else’s mind calls back,

Have a savour that scenes in being lack,

And a presence more than the actual brings;

To whom to-day is beneaped and stale,

And its urgent clack

But a vapid tale.

Places

3. His Novels.Mr. Hardy’s first novel,Desperate Remedies(1871), is, even as a first attempt, a little disappointing.Under the Greenwood Tree(1872) is an improvement, and in its sweet and faithful rendering of country life suggestsSilas Marner. Next appearedA Pair of Blue Eyes(1873), much more powerful, in which coincidences combine to produce a pitifully tragic conclusion. This is a fine specimen of the Hardy “pessimism.” By this time Mr. Hardy had matured his style and developed his views, and the succeeding novels display a masterly power that rarely deserts him:Far from the Madding Crowd(1874),The Hand of Ethelberta(1876),The Return of the Native(1878),The Trumpet-Major(1879),A Laodicean(1881),Two on a Tower(1882),The Mayor of Casterbridge(1885), andThe Woodlanders(1887). Then Mr. Hardy’s career as a novelist culminated in two novels which have already taken rank among the great books of the language:Tess of the d’Urbervilles(1891) andJude the Obscure(1894). The first is the story of a woman (“a pure woman,” the novelist calls her), of a noble line long decayed, who, as the victim of a malign and persistent destiny, commits murder and perishes on the scaffold; the second is the life-history of an obscure craftsman, fired by the noblest ideals, who struggles to attain to better things, but dies brokenand disappointed, like Job cursing the day he was born: drab and somber tales, lit by rare gleams of delicious humor and sentiment, and lifted to the level of great art by boundless insight and pity. After thisThe Well Beloved(1897) was of the nature of an anti-climax, and Mr. Hardy wrote no more novels.

4. Features of his Novels.(a)Their Literary Quality.Of the novelists of his time Mr. Hardy is the most assiduous in his attention to the practices of his great literary predecessors, such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Shelley. This, perhaps, gives his novels rather a heavy touch, so that he will never find a facile popularity; but he is never cheap and never tawdry, he builds broad and square, and his work will surely endure.

(b)Their English Quality.Like Chaucer and Shakespeare, Mr. Hardy, though he includes all humanity in his outlook, is profoundly and essentially English. His works embrace English folk and strike their roots deep into English soil. His most successful creations are those of peasants bred in his own native shire, or in the adjacent shires. Hence he has given us a notable gallery of men and women who are true to their breed and satisfying in their actuality. The scene of the majority of his novels is a section of England that he calls Wessex. This includes approximately all the south and west of England south of a line joining Oxford and Bristol. Within this boundary he moves with ease and precision, and there he finds adequate literary sustenance. From a man of the caliber of Mr. Hardy such parochialism hardly requires an apology, but if it does he has given it fully. We quote a passage in which he defends his practice, and which in addition provides a good specimen of his expository prose:

It has sometimes been conceived of novels that evolve their action on a circumscribed scene—as do many (though not all) of these—that they cannot be so inclusive in their exhibition of human nature as novels wherein the scenes cover large extents of country, in which events figure amid towns and cities, even wander over the four quarters of the globe. I am not concernedto argue this point further than to suggest that the conception is an untrue one in respect of the elementary passions. But I would state that the geographical limits of the stage here trodden were not absolutely forced upon the writer by circumstances; he forced them upon himself from judgment. I considered that our magnificent heritage from the Greeks in dramatic literature found sufficient room for a large proportion of its action in an extent of their country not much larger than the half-dozen counties here reunited under the old name of Wessex, that the domestic emotions have throbbed in Wessex nooks with as much intensity as in the palaces of Europe, and that, anyhow, there was quite enough human nature in Wessex for one man’s literary purpose. So far was I possessed by this idea that I kept within the frontiers when it would have been easier to overleap them and give more cosmopolitan features to the narrative.General Preface to the Wessex Edition

General Preface to the Wessex Edition

(c)Their Pessimism.It cannot be denied that the novels are somewhat oppressive in the gloom of their atmosphere. As a novelist Mr. Hardy seems to conceive mankind as overlooked by a deliberately freakish and malignant Fate. His characters are consistently unfortunate when they deserve it least. In places, as in the case of Tess, he appears to bear down the scales, throwing against them the weight of repeated unhappy coincidences. Such a dismal method would in the end be repulsive to the reader’s sense of pity and justice if Mr. Hardy did not add to it a certain largeness and detachment of view and a somber but sympathetic clarity of vision that make the reader’s objections seem paltry and spiritless.

(d)Their Humor and Pathos.In many places, as in the rustic scenes ofThe Mayor of Casterbridge, the novels have a delicacy and acuteness of humor that strongly resembles that of George Eliot. At other times the humor is hard and heavy, as it is in his satires; at others, again, it has an odd grotesqueness. A short poetical extract will illustrate the last type:

That night your great guns, unawares,Shook all our coffins as we lay,And broke the chancel window-squares.We thought it was the Judgment-dayAnd sat upright. While drearisomeArose the howl of wakened hounds:The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,The worms drew back into the mounds.Channel Firing

That night your great guns, unawares,

Shook all our coffins as we lay,

And broke the chancel window-squares.

We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome

Arose the howl of wakened hounds:

The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,

The worms drew back into the mounds.

Channel Firing

His pathos is deep, sure, and strong, never degenerating into mawkishness or sentimentality. The conclusion ofTess of the d’Urbervillesis a pattern of the dignified expression of sorrow:

Upon the cornice of the tower a tall staff was fixed. Their eyes were riveted on it. A few minutes after the hour had struck something moved slowly up the staff, and extended itself upon the breeze. It was a black flag.“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d’Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on.

“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d’Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on.

(e)His Style.Like many other great novelists, Mr. Hardy has no outstanding tricks of style. The general impression given is one of immense strength and dignity. His vocabulary is copious, but handled with scholarly care and accuracy. He is apt in phrase and pithy in expression, and in moments of emotion his prose moves with a strong rhythmic beauty. In his poetry the style may sometimes be crabbed and unorthodox, but only to suit a definite satiric purpose. We may sum up by saying that in his style, as in all the other constituents of his writing, he is always the sane and catholic artist.

1. His Life.“Joseph Conrad” is the pen-name ofTeodor Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski, who was born in the south of Poland in 1857. His father was implicated in the Nationalist plots of the Poles, and the son shared some of his father’s wanderings and exile. For a time the boy waseducated at Cracow, but very soon an obstinate love of the sea manifested itself; and in 1874, in spite of all obstacles, he shipped as a seaman at Marseilles. His earliest seafaring was done in the Mediterranean. In 1878 he satisfied a lifelong desire by visiting England and making his first practical acquaintance with the English language. He had long wished to sail under the English flag, and for the remainder of his career he continued to do so. Till 1894 he led the life of a deep-sea sailor, rising from the position of an ordinary seaman to that of a master-mariner in the Mercantile Marine. Bad health, partly occasioned by a voyage up the Congo, stopped his seafaring; and then his first novel was accepted by a London publisher. Henceforth he was able to devote himself to writing novels, for his books, after a moderate beginning, have brought him a rapidly widening circle of readers.

2. His Novels.Mr. Conrad’s first novel,Almayer’s Folly, was begun about 1889 and not finished till 1894, when it was published. In some respects the novel is immature, for it is halting in plot, and there is a tendency to fumble in the handling of some of the characters; but the power and originality of the work are unquestionable. The scene is that of an Eastern river, fatally beautiful, haunted with disease, death, and the destinies of mysterious men. The principal characters are wild and diabolical, of strange race and stranger desires. Over the whole of the book hangs the glamour of a style quite new to English prose: rich and exotic as a tropical blossom, subtly pervasive and powerful, languorous and debilitating, but most fascinating. The book is typical of the remainder of Mr. Conrad’s novels; he was to improve upon it; but only in degree, not in substance. We have space to mention only the more important of his later works:An Outcast of the Islands(1896), a kind of sequel to the first book;The Nigger of the Narcissus(1898), a brighter tale, full of the glory of the deep seas;Lord Jim(1900), an astonishing story, detailed with microscopic care, of a broken sailor who “makes good”;Youth(1902), perhaps Mr. Conrad’smasterpiece—briefer, more direct, and instinct with the beauty of romantic youth;Nostromo(1903), a tale of South American politics and treasure-hunting;The Secret Agent(1907), in which the novelist leaves his favorite Eastern scenes for the grimmer purlieus of London;’Twixt Land and Sea(1912), three short stories, containing some of his best work;Chance(1914);Within the Tides(1915);Victory(1915);The Shadow Line(1917);The Arrow of Gold(1919), in which the interest shifts to Spain and the Carlist plotters; andThe Rescue(1920). In addition there are several other volumes of short stories; two volumes of memories and impressions, extremely valuable as specimens of the Conrad manner, calledThe Mirror of the Sea(1906) andSome Reminiscences(1912); and two volumes written in collaboration with Ford Madox Hueffer,The Inheritors(1901) andRomance(1903).

3. Features of his Novels.(a)Their Exotic Quality.Just as Mr. Hardy is probably the most English of the greater novelists, so Mr. Conrad is, in no disparaging sense of the term, the most un-English. No other novelist can so well convey the charm and repulsiveness of alien regions. The impression is borne upon the reader through every constituent of the novels. The setting, in the best examples, is among tropical islands, or upon the deep seas. The characters are men and women thoroughly in tune with the scene: nautical people, generally of mixed or alien breed—Danish, Malay, or Italian. Even when Mr. Conrad introduces English scenes and people in some fashion they always succeed in conveying the impression of being un-English.

(b) Thestyleof the books, moreover, adds to the prevailing feeling. It is haunting and beautiful, sumptuous in detail, delicate in rhythm, but curiously and decidedly exotic.

A brief extract cannot do justice to the style of Mr. Conrad, but we shall quote two passages in illustration. The first shows his prose in its less happy mood: somewhat mechanical and cumbrous in its imagery, and forcedand overloaded with epithet. The second is much better. Here every word is necessary and appropriate, the rhythm is free, and the music sweet and persuasive.

(1) Shaw tried to speak. He swallowed great mouthfuls of tepid water which the wind drove down his throat. The brig seemed to sail through undulating waves that passed swishing between the masts and swept over the decks with the fierce rush and noise of a cataract. From every spar and every rope a ragged sheet of water streamed flicking to leeward. The overpowering deluge seemed to last for an age; became unbearable—and, all at once, stopped. In a couple of minutes the shower had run its length over the brig and now could be seen like a straight grey wall, going away into the night under the fierce whispering of dissolving clouds. The wind eased. To the northward, low down in the darkness, three stars appeared in a row, leaping in and out between the crests of the waves like the distant heads of swimmers in a running surf; and the retreating edge of the cloud, perfectly straight from east to west, slipped along the dome of the sky like an immense hemispheric iron shutter pivoting down smoothly as if operated by some mighty engine. An inspiring and penetrating freshness flowed together with the shimmer of light through the augmented glory of the heaven, a glory exalted, undimmed, and strangely startling as if a new universe had been created during the short flight of the stormy cloud. It was a return to life, a return to space; the earth coming out from under a pall to take its place in the renewed and immense scintillation of the universe.The brig, her yards slightly checked in, ran with an easy motion under the topsails, jib, and driver, pushing contemptuously aside the turbulent crowd of noisy and agitated waves. As the craft went swiftly ahead she unrolled behind her over the uneasy darkness of the sea a broad ribbon of seething foam shot with wispy gleams of dark discs escaping from under the rudder. Far away astern, at the end of a line no thicker than a black thread, which dipped now and then in its long curve in the bursting froth, a toy-like object could be made out, elongated and dark, racing after the brig over the snowy whiteness of her wake.The Rescue

The brig, her yards slightly checked in, ran with an easy motion under the topsails, jib, and driver, pushing contemptuously aside the turbulent crowd of noisy and agitated waves. As the craft went swiftly ahead she unrolled behind her over the uneasy darkness of the sea a broad ribbon of seething foam shot with wispy gleams of dark discs escaping from under the rudder. Far away astern, at the end of a line no thicker than a black thread, which dipped now and then in its long curve in the bursting froth, a toy-like object could be made out, elongated and dark, racing after the brig over the snowy whiteness of her wake.

The Rescue

(2) TheNarcissus, left alone, heading south, seemed to stand resplendent and still upon the restless sea, under the moving sun. Flakes of foam swept past her sides; the water struck her with flashing blows; the land glided away, slowly fading; a few birds screamed on motionless wings over the swaying mastheads.But soon the land disappeared, the birds went away; and to the west the pointed sail of an Arab dhow running for Bombay rose triangular and upright above the sharp edge of the horizon, lingered, and vanished like an illusion. Then the ship’s wake, long and straight, stretched itself out through a day of immense solitude. The setting sun, burning on the level of the water, flamed crimson below the blackness of heavy rainclouds. The sunset squall, coming up from behind, dissolved itself into the short deluge of a hissing shower. It left the ship glistening from trucks to water-line, and with darkened sails. She ran easily before a fair monsoon, with her decks cleared for the night; and, moving along with her, was heard the sustained and monotonous swishing of the waves, mingled with the low whispers of men mustered aft for the setting of watches; the short plaint of some block aloft; or, now and then, a loud sigh of wind.The Nigger of the Narcissus

The Nigger of the Narcissus

(c)Their Graphic Power.The strongest appeal of Mr. Conrad’s novels is to the eye and the ear. His pictures of seafaring life and of life connected with the sea have never been surpassed. Their veracity and beauty are due to his personal acquaintance with the subject; to a scrupulous and artistic selection of detail, often of the technical kind that the sailor loves; and, once more, to the charm of the expression. In addition, his faculty of graphic description is often revealed in the deft manner in which he can outline some personality that flits across the pages of a story:

He held up his head in the glare of the lamp—a head vigorously modelled into deep shadows and shining lights—a head powerful and misshapen with a tormented and flattened face—a face pathetic and brutal: the tragic, the mysterious, the repulsive mask of the nigger’s soul.The Nigger of the Narcissus

The Nigger of the Narcissus

(d)Their Narrative Method.Mr. Conrad has evolved a narrative method of his own, which, while it is usually successful in his own hands, would probably be disastrous in hands less careful and adroit. The method is, first, indirect. The author’s favorite device is to create some character (a Captain Marlow often appears for this purpose)who relates the story, or part of the story, in his own words. Often another story crops up in the original story, adding complications, with, as can be seen inLord Jim, results that are a little bewildering. Secondly, the greatest attention is given to details. The motives and impressions of the characters are discussed and analyzed, and their trivial actions faithfully recorded. Moreover, Mr. Conrad delights in leading his characters into morasses of doubt and hesitation. He may be called the novelist of doubt and hesitation, so skilled is he in the elaborate suggestion of such emotions. Consequently many a Conrad story, like one of his ships, is becalmed in its career, and stirs uneasily without making much progress. Hence he who runs must not read Conrad. This author demands a reader who is patient and wary, and who follows the course of the narrative very carefully, for he has a troublesome habit of inserting important matter in the midst of less essential details. If the reader will but observe these cautions, he will be led, deviously perhaps, but none the less certainly, into many regions of delightful romance.

1. His Life.Mr. Wells was born in Kent in the year 1866. His early education was private, and later he studied at London University. Here he finally graduated in science, zoology and kindred subjects being his special choice. But he had his living to earn while he carried on his studies, and the experiences of these early years are reflected in his novels. Teaching, lecturing, and journalistic work followed; but literature was not long in exercising its fascination, and an early measure of success was soon his portion. Henceforth he devoted himself to the writing of books, which command a wide public both in England and America.

2. His Works.For the literary historian the books of Mr. Wells provide an interesting study, as, in the course of their production, they register a clear development ofmanner. The books themselves are so numerous that here we can mention only the more important among them.

As was only to be expected, Mr. Wells began by utilizing his scientific training as an adjunct to his story-telling. His first efforts in fiction were a series of scientific romances, extremely ingenious in their mingling of fact and fiction, rapidly and felicitously narrated, and casting shrewd side-glances at many social problems. The best of this class wereThe Time Machine(1895),The Invisible Man(1897), andThe Food of the Gods(1904). The second stage of the novelist’s career (slightly overlapping the first stage) was represented by a series of genuine novels, which reveal considerable talent in the manipulating of plot, a faculty, amounting to positive genius, for depicting ordinary people with zest, accuracy, and humor, and a clear and flexible style admirably in keeping with his subject.Love and Mr. Lewisham(1900),Kipps(1905), andThe History of Mr. Polly(1910) were representative of this group. In the third stage problems of modern society, social, religious, political, and commercial, which had all along strongly attracted the attention of Mr. Wells, elbowed themselves into the midst of the fictitious material, claiming an equal place. Of such a nature wereTono-Bungay(1909), which is almost an epical treatment of modern commercialism,Ann Veronica(1909), concerning a modern love-affair, andThe New Machiavelli(1911), on contemporary politics. In the fourth stage the discursive and dogmatic elements take the principal place, subordinating the fictitious portions, as can be seen inBoon(1915), an extraordinary book, crammed with excellent lively literary criticism, but chaotic, splenetic, and irresponsible;Mr. Britling Sees It Through(1916), a book treating of the Great War, with an able beginning, but a hazy and unsatisfactory conclusion; andJoan and Peter(1918), also dealing partly with the War, but much concerned with educational matters. A collection of short stories,The Country of the Blind(1911), contains, along with much that is scamped and trashy, some first-ratework, notably in the tale that gives the title to the book.

In addition to his numerous works of fiction Mr. Wells has written books that are almost entirely pamphlets, expressing his ideas on social and other problems;The Island of Doctor Moreau(1896),A Modern Utopia(1905), andNew Worlds for Old(1908) are only a few out of many. He has also, with much hardihood and considerable success, given the worldThe Outline of History(1920), a work that antagonized the pedants and charmed and instructed the ordinary intelligent man.

3. Features of his Novels.(a)Their “Modern” Quality.Possessed of an eager and inquiring mind, of great energy, and of a wide public ready to give ear to his opinions, Mr. Wells has come more and more to use the novel as a means of voicing his hopes, his criticisms, and his fears. Such a course must in the end bring about the decay of his novels as works of art. It is possible, indeed, that his later works will rapidly fall into oblivion, as did the later novels of George Eliot, who pursued a course in some respects similar to that of Mr. Wells. No one, however, can question the force and vivacity of his expressed opinions, and the eager reception that awaits them in many quarters. To many of his time he is the sage and prophet, as Carlyle, in his own fashion, was to the Victorian age; and as the need for Carlyle passed away with the problems that he handled, so, perhaps, will the need for the pen of Mr. Wells. It is possible thatKippswill be widely read when such works asThe Soul of a Bishophave been entirely forgotten.

(b)Their Literary Quality.In addition to his intellectual gifts, Mr. Wells possesses an imagination of great power and grasp. This appears all through his works, being perhaps most prominent in the earlier romances, such asThe First Men in the Moon, and in the earlier novels. In the novels the strength of Mr. Wells’s imagination becomes a positive drawback when it leads to overproduction, which in its turn brings a certain mechanical quality in the plot and in the central characters. Hisdescriptions, however, alike of homely English scenes and of the most fantastic and barbarous regions, are brilliantly dashing and real. Like Dickens, he excels in the creation of ordinary folks, of the type of tradesmen and clerks, upon whom he expends a wealth of observation and humorous comment.

(c)Their Humor.Freshness and abundance are the outstanding qualities of Mr. Wells’s humor. Sometimes he is almost juvenile in his high spirits. In its more sober moments the humor is the urbane acceptance of men’s little weaknesses, somewhat patronizing perhaps, but sharply scrutinizing and faithfully recording. In other moods it is satirical, and then it is swift and destructive. In its more reckless phase it passes into jeering and irreverent laughter. The humor of Mr. Wells is a powerful weapon, and he is somewhat careless in his handling of it.

(d)His Style.The clearness and rapidity of Mr. Wells’s style has undoubtedly led to a lack of taste and balance and (in the mind of the reader) to a sense of improvisation. In its more careless passages it conveys the impression of a brilliant but shallow loquacity. The style, nevertheless, has some great and positive virtues: an instant command of epithet, a vivid pictorial quality, and sometimes a rich suggestiveness of romance. As an example of this last quality, the love-passages inThe Country of the Blindare idyllically beautiful.

The two brief extracts that follow illustrate two different aspects of his style. The first is a picture of a tropical scene, the style resembling in some respects that of Mr. Conrad. It lacks the intimate detail of Mr. Conrad’s descriptions, but it is much less labored. The second is an example of the pictorial narrative power that is Mr. Wells’s chief claim to literary greatness:

(1) Here and there strange blossoms woke the dank intensities of green with a trumpet-call of colour. Things crept among the jungle and peeped and dashed back rustling into stillness. Always in the sluggishly drifting, opaque water were eddyings and stirrings; little rushes of bubbles came chuckling up lightheartedlyfrom this or that submerged conflict and tragedy; now and again were crocodiles like a stranded fleet of logs basking in the sun. Still it was by day, a dreary stillness broken only by insect sounds and the creaking and flapping of our progress, by the calling of the soundings and the captain’s confused shouts; but in the night as we lay moored to a clump of trees the darkness brought a thousand swampy things to life, and out of the forest came screamings and howlings, screamings and yells that made us glad to be afloat. And once we saw between the tree stems long blazing fires. We passed two or three villages landward, and brown-black women and children came and stared at us and gesticulated, and once a man came out in a boat from a creek and hailed us in an unknown tongue; and so at last we came to a great open place, a broad lake rimmed with a desolation of mud and bleached refuse and dead trees, free from crocodiles or water birds or sight or sound of any living thing, and saw far off, even as Nasmyth had described, the ruins of the deserted station and hard by two little heaps of buff-hued rubbish under a great rib of rock. The forest receded. The land to the right of us fell away and became barren, and far off across a notch in its backbone was surf and the sea.Tono-Bungay

Tono-Bungay

(2) There was a fumbling at the latch of the front door.“’Ere’s my lord,” said Mrs Coombes. “Went out like a lion and comes back like a lamb, I’ll lay.”Something fell over in the shop: a chair, it sounded like. Then there was a sound as of some complicated step exercise in the passage. Then the door opened and Coombes appeared. But it was Coombes transfigured. The immaculate collar had been torn carelessly from his throat. His carefully brushed silk hat, half-full of a crush of fungi, was under one arm; his coat was inside out, and his waistcoat adorned with bunches of yellow-blossomed furze. These little eccentricities of Sunday costume, however, were quite overshadowed by the change in his face; it was livid white, his eyes were unnaturally large and bright, and his pale blue lips were drawn back in a cheerless grin. “Merry!” he said. He had stopped dancing to open the door. “Rational ’njoyment. Dance.” He made three fantastic steps into the room and stood bowing.“Jim!” shrieked Mrs Coombes, and Mr Clarence sat petrified, with a drooping lower jaw.“Tea,” said Mr Coombes. “Jol’ thing, tea. Tose-stools, too. Brosher.”“He’s drunk,” said Jennie in a weak voice. Never before had she seen this intense pallor in a drunken man, or such shining, dilated eyes.The Purple Pileus

(2) There was a fumbling at the latch of the front door.

“’Ere’s my lord,” said Mrs Coombes. “Went out like a lion and comes back like a lamb, I’ll lay.”

Something fell over in the shop: a chair, it sounded like. Then there was a sound as of some complicated step exercise in the passage. Then the door opened and Coombes appeared. But it was Coombes transfigured. The immaculate collar had been torn carelessly from his throat. His carefully brushed silk hat, half-full of a crush of fungi, was under one arm; his coat was inside out, and his waistcoat adorned with bunches of yellow-blossomed furze. These little eccentricities of Sunday costume, however, were quite overshadowed by the change in his face; it was livid white, his eyes were unnaturally large and bright, and his pale blue lips were drawn back in a cheerless grin. “Merry!” he said. He had stopped dancing to open the door. “Rational ’njoyment. Dance.” He made three fantastic steps into the room and stood bowing.

“Jim!” shrieked Mrs Coombes, and Mr Clarence sat petrified, with a drooping lower jaw.

“Tea,” said Mr Coombes. “Jol’ thing, tea. Tose-stools, too. Brosher.”

“He’s drunk,” said Jennie in a weak voice. Never before had she seen this intense pallor in a drunken man, or such shining, dilated eyes.

The Purple Pileus

1. George Gissing (1857–1903)was born at Wakefield, and concluded his education at Owens College, Manchester. He took to literature, but with little success, and for years lived in dire poverty. In time his books met with a somewhat wider acceptance, though they were never popular; and his scholarship and the high quality of his literary criticism always commanded respect. He died in the Pyrenees, whither failing health had compelled him to go.

His novels are almost entirely devoted to the lives of the poorer classes:Workers of the Dawn(1880),The Unclassed(1884),Demos(1889),Grub Street(1891), andThe Odd Women(1893) are only a selection from his books. HisPrivate Papers of Henry Ryecroft(1903) is partly autobiographical, and is an excellent example of his style. He handles his subjects with a depressing fidelity that will always restrict his novels to a narrow circle of readers. He lacks Mr. Hardy’s Elizabethan largeness of vision, and will not rank as a really great writer, but he deserves honorable mention as a novelist who in poverty and distress would not bow the knee to false gods, who steadily kept in view the highest ideals, and who died true to his literary faith.

2. George Moore, born in Mayo in the year 1857, is the son of a landowner in that county. He was educated at Oscott, and then for some years studied art in Paris. During those years he imbibed that passion for French art and French fiction that was never to leave him. As an artist he had no success; but as a novelist, after a moderate beginning, he has won the admiration of an important section of the reading public. He is a man of varied but unstable enthusiasms, which are reflected in his novels. In the course of time he was caught up in the Celtic Revival, which he valiantly served with his pen, though he was not backward in candid criticism of it.

Mr. Moore began authorship with two volumes of verse, the first of which wasFlowers of Passion(1878). Neither of them was of any great merit. He started his career asa novelist as disciple of the great French realist Zola, publishing in this mannerA Mummer’s Wife(1884). This novel, a squalid tale unrelieved by any bright touches, followed the example of Zola with much audacity, and shocked the more staid opinion in England. Other stories of the same kind followed, the more noteworthy beingA Drama in Muslin(1886) andThe Confessions of a Young Man(1888). His more mature works, though they never lacked frankness, were rather more restrained in manner; characteristic specimens wereEsther Waters(1894) andSister Teresa(1901). Subsequently he wrote some attractive books of reminiscence, of which the best isHail and Farewell, published in three volumes between the years 1911 and 1914.

In his later books Mr. Moore’s style is delightfully sweet and clear. The earlier books, in which he followed his model with a devoted fidelity, are devoid of the ornaments of style. In humor he is often whimsical and charming, though his wit seldom lacks the sharp touch of satire.

3. Rudyard Kiplingwas born (1865) at Bombay, where his father was an official. He was educated in Devonshire, and wished to join the Army, a project that had to be abandoned. Returning to India, he joined the editorial staff of the LahoreCivil and Military Gazetteand ofThe Pioneer. For these journals he began writing short stories, which very soon attracted an attention that became worldwide. After some years’ residence in the United States, Mr. Kipling settled in England. For a time his popularity was immense, and received international recognition in the award of the Nobel Prize for literature (1907). Passing years have dimmed his brightness, and recently his voice has fallen nearly silent.

Mr. Kipling first became known as a writer of short stories, and it is upon the short story that his fame will probably rest. As the writer of such a type of fiction he is very well equipped: he has a genius for terse narrative, a swift eye for dramatic incident and detail, a capacity for touching off men’s characters, and a style which, thoughit may be cocksure and jerky, is none the less attractive and intensely individual.Plain Tales from the Hills(1887) andSoldiers Three(1888) are among the most enjoyable of the volumes of short stories. In his longer tales he is less at his ease.The Light that Failed(1891) is not a great success; butKim(1901), a kind of picaresque Indian tale, is crammed with a rich abundance of observation and description. The twoJungle Books(1894 and 1895) are among the most delightful of books written for children.

As a poet of Army life and of British Imperialism Mr. Kipling was long a notable figure. The climax came during the South African War of 1899–1902; after that the patriotic poem began to suffer eclipse. A good deal of Mr. Kipling’s poetry is brazen and commonplace, but it rarely lacks energy and picturesqueness. In such pieces asMandalay, however, he touches the deeper springs of humanity, and becomes a real poet; and inThe Recessional(1897), a short poem that in essence expresses the negation of all his usual teachings, he has attained to poetical greatness.

4. Arnold Bennett, whose full name is Enoch Arnold Bennett, was born in North Staffordshire in 1867. He was educated at Newcastle, and studied for the law, which he later forsook for journalism (1893). He was on the staff ofWomantill 1900, when his books claimed all his time.

Mr. Bennett’s most notable contribution to the novel is a group of interrelated stories dealing with his native Staffordshire. These stories, very full in detail, are realistic presentations of the squalid life of the pottery district; the personages introduced are commonplace, and the style, though it does not lack vivacity and humor, is studiously subdued.Anna of the Five Towns(1902),The Old Wives’ Tale(1908),Clayhanger(1910),Hilda Lessways(1911), andThese Twain(1916) represent this group.The Card(1911) is lighter and more humorous; andThe Pretty Lady(1918), rather unequal, contains some telling reflections upon modern society.

Like Mr. Hardy, Mr. Bennett has essayed to render withartistic completeness the life of one section of England; unlike Mr. Hardy, however, he tends to become swamped with detail, so that he fails to give his works unity and singleness of purpose. In addition, his style has a certain aridity and a lack of flavor and attraction. On the other hand, he writes with clearness and care, his humor is reticent but keenly penetrating, and his character-drawing able and realistic.

5. Compton Mackenziemay be taken as the latest type of novelist who will claim our attention. Born at West Hartlepool in 1883, he was the son of Mr. Edward Compton, the well-known actor. He was educated at St. Paul’s School and at Oxford, and then became associated with literature and the stage. He served in the South African War, and in the Great War he was with the Naval Division in the Dardanelles.

After publishingPoems(1907), Mr. Mackenzie producedThe Passionate Elopement(1911), a novel of much promise, that was realized inCarnival(1912), a story dealing partly with theatrical life, and revealing much shrewd insight and satirical humor. Like Thackeray and Mr. Bennett, Mr. Mackenzie developed the novel series, introducing the same people into several successive stories.Sinister Street(1914),Guy and Pauline(1915),Sylvia Scarlett(1918), andSylvia and Michael(1919), are more or less closely interrelated in theme.Poor Relations(1919) revealed a rich and somewhat unexpected vein of light comedy, which Mr. Mackenzie did not improve upon inRich Relatives(1921). Much of Mr. Mackenzie’s work is of unnecessary length, and much of it, in comformity with the modern manner, is laboriously and somewhat unpleasantly detailed in its revelation of personal and social relations; but his writing is seldom lacking in competence; it has ease, versatility, and a certain cool urbanity; and at its best it reaches a high level.

1. His Life.Mr. Shaw, born in Dublin in 1856, is the son of a retired civil servant. His early education was received in Dublin, and at the age of fifteen he was earning his living as a clerk. Coming to London (1876), he tried novel-writing as an alternative to clerking, but with no success at all. He was one of the first members (1884) of the Fabian Society, and took a vigorous part in its socialistic work. A witty and voluble speaker, not without moments of real eloquence, he was much in demand as a lecturer. In 1885 he began his connection with journalism, and was successively on the staff of several London papers, writing on music, painting, and the drama. In music he was a strong advocate of Wagner. The dramatic works of the great Norwegian Ibsen were for long his pet subject. During the years 1895–98 his dramatic articles inThe Saturday Reviewattracted much attention owing to the freshness of their opinions and the vitality of their style. About this time he started to write and produce plays of his own; and with them he began his long verbal contest with the British public over their failure to appreciate the merit of his work. In the end, owing partly to his own voluble persistence, but chiefly to the virtues inherent in his dramas, he won the day; so that a new play by Mr. Shaw, if indeed it does not command a wide acceptance of its views, is at least received as a powerful and stimulating addition to the dramatic literature of our time.

2. His Novels.Mr. Shaw began his career as an author by writing four novels which were rejected by every publisher in London, and subsequently saw the light in obscure periodicals of socialistic sympathies. The best of the four areThe Irrational Knot(1880) andCashel Byron’s Profession(1882). He republished the books in 1901, calling them “Novels of my Nonage.” To readers acquainted with the later writings of Mr. Shaw there are several familiar features plainly to be seen: the straight,clean thrust of the style, the bold and dramatic portraiture of the characters, and the irreverent mishandling of treasured institutions. There is even the note typical of the earliest plays—a curious frigidity and barrenness of emotion, as if the novelist had made a vow to cut sentiment clean out of his books. The crude socialism preached in the stories probably scared the publishers; for, though they by no means represent even the average of Mr. Shaw’s work, they are always readable and often amusing.

3. His Plays.As a playwright Mr. Shaw began as a disciple of Ibsen. In his early attempts he succeeded in reproducing the cold and intellectual realism of the great Norwegian, but he quite failed to catch the humane and intensely romantic idealism that lies deep within the heart of the Ibsen plays.Widowers’ Houses(1885), a didactic play on the subject of slum-property, was a discouraging beginning to his play-writing. It was hard and repulsive in sentiment; it lacked the later Shavian high spirits and verbal acrobatics; and it appealed only to a small circle of enthusiasts.The Philanderer(1893) was much lighter and more attractive, though it did not lack harsher touches, almost callous in their nonchalance; it showed, however, the beginning of that mastery of the technique of the stage that was henceforth to distinguish nearly all Mr. Shaw’s plays.Mrs. Warren’s Profession(1893), grimmer and abler, was refused a license by the censor of plays; and then withArms and the Man(1894) Mr. Shaw had his first successful bout with the British public. In the play the satiric intention was obvious, for the “glories” of war were freely ridiculed; but the satire was so overlaid with a briskness of action, with a rocketing interchange of witticisms, and with an almost reckless display of high spirits that both the general public and the cautious critics were taken by storm. From this point Mr. Shaw never looked back, and his plays appeared in a steady procession. We can mention only the more important of them:Candida(1894), an attempt at the romantic sentimental comedy, only too rare with Mr. Shaw;You Never Can Tell(1896),purely and hilariously comic, and masterly from beginning to end;Cæsar and Cleopatra(1898), quaintly serio-comic, but picturesque and brilliant;Man and Superman(1903), containing many of its author’s opinions expressed with startling audacity, but too long and voluble;John Bull’s Other Island(1904), on the Irish question;The Doctor’s Dilemma(1906), very censorious on the medical profession; andAndrocles and the Lion(1912). At this point the War intervened, and the effects of it on Mr. Shaw’s acutely sensitive mind, along with the pressure of increasing years, can be seen in the style of the later plays. One can detect a certain waning strength. The energy and gayety are still visible, but they appear fitfully; the high scorn is apt to degenerate into querulousness; and there is a hardening of temper, for which the dramatist tries to atone by fits of puerile burlesque.Heartbreak House(1917) is abrupt and even savage in places; andBack to Methuselah(1920), in spite of its infinity of range and the brilliance of disconnected passages, is heavy with the weight of mortality.

We have still to mention Mr. Shaw’s prefaces, which are remarkable features of his plays. As the plays successively appeared, the prefaces increased in length, till they began to rival in importance the plays themselves. Each of them is a tractate on some question that for the time engrossed the attention of the playwright. For example, the preface toCæsar and Cleopatradeals in Shavian fashion with Shakespeare, that toAndrocles and the Lionwith early Christianity, and that toBack to Methuselahwith what he calls Creative Evolution. The prefaces are diffuse, paradoxical, and egotistical; but they are brilliant and incisive, and they represent the best of Mr. Shaw’s non-dramatic prose.

4. Features of his Plays.(a)Their Wit.The distinction between wit and humor is commonly expressed by saying that humor appeals to the emotions, whereas wit touches only the intellect: humor deals with incidents and actions, wit with words and phrases. Mr. Shaw ranksamong the greatest wits in the language. He delights in the quick cut and thrust of verbal sword-play, in the clever distortion of a phrase, and in the brilliant paradoxical sally of the intellect. It is this wittiness that has given him his commanding position in foreign countries. It is not that Mr. Shaw is inhumanly devoid of emotion and sympathy, but he is afraid of such emotions, and often deliberately stifles them. InCandidahe attains to a high level of delicate sentimentality, but inHow He lied to Her Husbandhe jeers at the admirers of his own handiwork. In his later plays he wearies a little over this exuberant play of wit. InBack to Methuselah, for example, perhaps the most attractive feature is a mood of sere romantic melancholy.

(b)His Contribution to the Drama.Mr. Shaw’s long experience as a dramatic critic taught him at least what he was to avoid. When he began his career as a dramatist the theater was given up to the production of frivolous and even immoral pieces. Mr. Shaw vitalized this stuffy atmosphere, gave to play-writing a strong and vigorous tone, and added to it a spirit of broad comedy. From the purely formal point of view, he employed all the devices of stagecraft to give his plays an attractive and realistic setting. As regards the literary side of his plays, he marks in his work a great increase in the importance given to the stage-directions. Like Ibsen, he elaborates this feature of his plays till on the printed page they are almost as important as the dialogue. He is reverting to the precepts of Aristotle, who maintained that the drama is an affair ofaction, not of speech. Consequently Mr. Shaw’s plays often read like an interesting hybrid between the novel and the drama. We add an extract to illustrate this combination of speech and action:

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