(c) 1947, Times NewspapersDialstone Lane (Century Library)<br->Widecombe Fair (Century Library)<br->The Unbearable Barrington (Century Library)<br->The

Green Child (Century Library)<br->The Hole in the Wall (Century Library)<br->The History of Mr Polly (Century Library)Doc ref: TLS-1947-0628             Date: June 28, 1947

322

Schubert A Documentary Biography OTIO ERICH DEUTSCH

Translated by ERIC BLOM

:;;~~~cr~J:h;~~~gn~~d ~h~be~~~';; ~~~g;;~{ul:~~ h~~b~lf~~r.'lln~~~; volume moro than J,200 documents of Schubert's life and work. with an elaboratceommentury after each. Over tsO other cntrie. comptete the biographical record.

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THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT SATURDAY JUNE 28 1947

THE EDWARDIAN NOVEL

LITERARY reputations fluctuate, turesque had crossed the Atlantic. not only bec!luse authors are all And a small galaxy of men whose the time finding their own level, early 'life or young manhood had been

but because they arc apt to lose spent in what Arthur Morrison called touch with the thought and feeling ' .. mean streets "-men such as Pell

of their age. This loss of touch, which ~~~:;s~d~~u~~~ ~~dWM~ris~~ at the time seems important, may himself-'had brought taste, colour mcan little to later generations, who and sometimes humour into that close do their own thinking and feeling; study of urban types which is alone, but if it happens at a crucial point in for some reason, called rea'lism. The literary history it can be fatal. Then disillusions of the Boer War, which indeed good books slip into limbo discredited Toryism, Victor·ianism and remain there for ever, unless, and Imperialism, also dismissed the Jike those of Emily Eden or heroic and the aristocratic as ideals, Gcorgiana Fullerton, they attract the and exalted In their stead the cult of attention of students. We who have the little, long-suffering <;itizen. known three wars in fifty years have But disillusion was not yet pessi­noticed many casualties. It will take mism. It was countered in those days another fifty years, perhaps, to show by relief at the coming of a new whether some of them were more · aerated age of emancipation from than unlucky; but among the causes flannel petticoats, Mrs. Grundy and of l.o~s we must c<?unt the outrageous .. the skirts of happy chance," and by obllVlons of war-t!me and the abrupt confideoce in the immediate coming changes of fashlO.n caused by a of liberty, equality and fraternity for broken rhythm of life. all. In retrospect H. G. Wells's books

11 will be interesting to see whether secm over-simple, and, py com pari­Mr. Siegfried Sassoon's forthcoming son with ourselves, the Edwardians, study will revive interest in Meredith's who knew nothing of Marx, Freud, work. We hope it will do so ; for in Bergson and total war, were un­spite of an exhausting style Meredith sophisticated. They believed gener­gave t~e. novel dramatic structure and aJly in progress, and particularly in the brdhance of old comedy, both of liberalism. Their novelists left the which, if intclligently observed by express discussion of ideas to others. the novC?lists of to-morr~w, could They were amused and touched by restore lIfe to a cra~t Whl.ch, pros- what was simple, common and inno­.perously self-defenslve sIDce t~e cent; and if the influence of Dickens days .of Jan: Austen, seems (0 be In was still strong with some the influ­reactIon agamst Itsel f. ence in chief was a discovery that

Hardy's twilight as a novelist was whereas the poor people of the cities delayed by his Edwardian fame as a had previously been portrayed, with poet. He, too, however, passed at some indignation, by Kingsley, death into a period of belittlement, Disraeli, Mark Rutherford and and the very kinship with the Eliza- Gissing as oppressed toilers they bethan tragic poets which should have werc in fact, when seen close at hand, made his greatness plain to all was ruthless comedians. Reform Bills found as melodramatic as his un- and Education Acts had done their scientific fatalism. He is fortunatelY work ; novelists were being recruited being rediscovered by critics who can from the people ; and the urban poor see through limitations of manner, had become important. and this may !telp to :e~enerate the Not a ll these rising talents were novel of the nmeteen-slxtles. equal; and the most copious among

These were the two grand survivors them, Zangwill, suffered all too soon of Victorianism. Others were George from an exhaustion of interest in his Moore, G issing and Henry James. copiousness and his Jewish drama/is All three had impressed their contem- personae. Pett Ridge's suburban poraries, the first with Gallic realism, comedy grew mechanical. Pugh's the second with powerful, humourless Cockney vein gave out and he took to narratives which would have been sensationalism. Jacobs, an artist finer if Gissing had not soiled and whose unwinking acquaintance with sentimentalized them by self-pity, the the real was deliciously expressed 'by third with dramatic subtilizations of dry under-statement of the pre­simple temperaments in conflict. posterous, remained in one spot aU Gissing wasat the end of his strength, his life. What he did, he did per­a dying man. As early as 1895 James fectly; but he left the larger world despaired of his future in an age when to others. Wells, newly arrived from " a neW generation, that I know not, small shops, and the author, in 19()(), and mainly prize not, has taken uni- of Love alld Mr. LelYisham, rcmained ~~~ITI CnS:S8~~;~e -tndw~s ~a~ ~~! almost for life a master of suburban thr<lne that Moore escaped from the comedy; but instead of Jacobs's pas­then deadly charge of being " ugly," sive enjoyment of that comedy he and became, with Ave, a .. char- had the ever-restless energy of a pro­acter." Once a .. character," he was phet, and went from home-bred fun naturally secure of fame. to sociology in a twinkling.

It should ,be remembered .that for WeUs was the most typical and a large paTt of the Edwardian age the most influential novelist of the most popular novelists in t.hese islands Edwardian age, until with TOllo­were M'rs. Humphry Ward, Hall BlllIgay and The New Machiavelli he Caine and Marie Corelli. A new book had said everything he had to say, He

by anyone of them reached, on publi- ~~r~i~jU~i~~s?i~~~I~~Pi~a~h~th~ cation, a sale of 100,000 copies. And caJled " idecrs" but in the matter of although K/m, Tommy alld Grizel, content and form. He wrote too the widely read romantic histories of much, for too long, and his eclipse Maurice Hewlett, and the senti- preceded his death. Except for Mr. mental-satirical tales of Ellen Thorny- Polly, his work is now underrated, croft Fowler enjoyed immense largely because of the topicality which triumphs, no authors challenged a caused it to be so popular when it triumvirate of whom Mrs. Ward was first written. But time will make

~~~ni~::rni~~hcl~t~~~~ :a~~f~~~d~! its own selection among bis books. receive respect from influential What of the other Edwardian rcviewers. HalI Caine, formerly ex- novelists, standing outside the most tolled by Gladstone and Edmund ~~~fi~~~y ~fo~~s re~{iz!h~oj~1~a?t Gosse, bad 'been caricatured (or per- within little more than a year at the haps had caricatured himself) into beginning of the reign werc published absurdity. And Mrs. Ward, Caine (besides Love alld Mr. Lew/sham and and Marie Corelli were bulls for the the notable successes of Barrie, Mrs. critical ribaldry of those who Jed a Humphry Ward, Marie Corelli and newer fashion. Hall Caine) such books as Conrad's

The ne:-yer fash ion, all unbeknown, Lord lim, Henry James's The had been set while Queen Victoria Sacred Foun/ and III Ihe Cage, stilllivcd, and beforc the outbreak of Moore's Sisler T eresa, Lucas Malet's the Boer War. It was influenced by Sir Richard Calmady and The Ga/e­certain facts, of whic.h one was that less Border, Maugham's The Hero, whife the circulating libraries were Frank Norris's The Octopus, Dreiser's still, as they are to-day, the main Sisler Carrie and Kipling's Kim? commercial support of British How many know that in the same novelists, the th ree-volume novel had fifteen or sixteen months we had the gone for ever. The Stevensonian pic- first or second novels of John Gals­

TilE CmrrURY LIBRAl"' : H . G . WElLS: Tire Hisrory oj Mr. Polly. Introduction byV.S. PRITCHETT. ARTHUR MORRISON: The Hole ill I/.e Wall . Introduction by V . S. PRITCHETT. W. W . JACOBS: Diffistolle Lalle. Introduction by HENRY REED.. HERBERT Ruo: Tire Oreell • Child. Introduction by GRAHAME GREENE. SAKI (H. H. MUNRO) : Tho Ullb.nrablo Barrillgloll . Introduction by EVELYN WAUGH. E DEN PHILLPOrrs: Widecombe Fair. Introduction by L. A. G . STRONO. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 6s. each.

worthy, May Sinclair and Charles Marriott? Or John Oliver Hobbes's Roberl Orallge and The Serious Wooillg, Anthony Hope's political comedy Quisallle, Arthur Morrison's 9wlllillg Murrell, Robert Hichcns's Tongues 0/ COllsciellce and The Prophel 0/ Berkeley Square. Edith Wharton's A Gill from Ihe Grave and Crucial Installces, Jacobs's A Masler of Craft, Zangwill's The Moll/Ie of Elijah, Hewlett'S Richard Yea alld Nay, and twenty or thirty

more books which made a stir in thcir day and might do the same in ours? Merely to name these books is to illus­trate the variety of Edwardian talent. If by naming them we also indicate the impermanence of fame, that is another lesson for those who are interested in the novel as a craft. The books are ccrtainly out of print. How many of them will ever be reprinted?

Even as they were published, the normal processes of change were active. We hear nothing now, and have long heard nothing, of .. Zack," E. L. Voynich, Richard O. Prowse, 'M,rs. Alfred Sidgwick, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Elizabeth Robins and that admirnble New England writer Mary E. Wilkins. Before 1914 they had yielded 10 the assault of the newer schools, and in particular of the school which moved on from mean streets to streets less mean though equally climate-stained in Hanley and Stanhope Gate. The great names of those days, with Conrad, whose much-debated Nos/ramo belongs to 1904, were Wells, Bennett and Gals­worthy. I~ did not matter that May Sinclair had rocked the novel-reading world in 1904 with The Divine Fire, that William de Morgan had carried it away in 1906 with Joseph Vallce, or that W. B. Maxwell had arrived in 1905 and 1906 with Viviell and The Guarded Flame. There were four great novelists only; and three of them derived from the realistic movement which. began in the eighties with A MummeJ;!s Wife (Arnold Bennett avowed his debt to that book) and proceeded by way of Es/her Walers to the more genial Cockneyisms of the next decade.

Galsworthy's rcalism was middle class and slightly anxious, the pro­duct of a sensitive man whose humanitarianism affected his judg­ment. Bennett's was Midland, humorous, very minute and entirely free from moral indignation. Wells's had the merry indulgence of Dickens towards all who were in the smallest degree gro!esque; but was packed with a curious personal defensiveness as wcll as the strong bias of one who,

. though apparently' never ~ware of his own genius, believed in his mes­sage for mankind. In conjunction and in common with other excep: tional writers in allied crafts, they made the Edwardian age rich in liberal sentiment and acquaintance w!th current. knowledge. They were shll outstandmg men in 1914 and after 1918; but by 1918 they were regarded by the very latest comers to literature as slightly antediluvian. Realism had come, temporarily, to its cnd as a fashion ; the orange, in Henry James's ph~se, h~d been squeezed ; the war, havrng killed all the reputations, could hardly spare those so lately tri­umphant. So passed the Edwardian novel.

We have had another war since then. We have only one leading Edwardian with us to-day, and Mr. Maugham's eminence as a novelist is purely Georgian (0/ Humall BOlld­age was published in 1915). It is therefore natural that some of our younger and more cnterprising students of hunlan nature, having lived through other and nearer reputations, which also are in temporary eclipse, should feel free to cast their eyes and minds back over a period of which they feel no jealousy. The Edwardians are destined for revival.

That they are to have it, most intelligently selected and prefaced, is shown by a new and excellent series produced under the general title of The Century Library. And here it should be mentioned that the record of British publishers in preserving (not embalming) the books of yestcr­day and the day or days before yesterday is truly admirable. Until scarcity of paper and labour im­posed hopeless limitations on pub­lishing activity, they did not willingly let any book with a minimum of critical suffrage pass into total neglect, and they are to be praised for a great service to living literature. Whether, however, authors who in this year of grace gnash their teeth evcry time they see a royally state­ment and notice that some other of their books has followed the rest out of print will altogether relish a series which profits them only by cxample is doubtful. They must try to be generous; for The Century Library is an act of justice, and deserves well of all who love the novel. Besides, it is not a revivalist effort only. In addition to writers who have gone, its list shows that it is mindful of the

work of authors like Mr. Herbert Reaa and Mr. ' Evelyn Waugh, still rather young and very active.

The library's first three books, Tlte Hls/ory of MI'. Polly, The Hole III /lte Wall, by Arthur Morrison, and Dlul­s/olle Lalle, by W. W. Jacobs, are all vintage Edwardian works of fiction which show how very good the obJec­tive tale can be. Not one of the three books holds the smallest pretentious­ness. Mr. Polly may have its senti· mentalities, and even its snobberies ; but the greater part of it is Wells at his best. Tlte H.ole ill Ihe Wall, care· ful rather than creative, may be less than the masterpiece acclaimed by Mr. Pritchett in his able preface; but it is interesting. And Dials/olle Lalle is as delightful now as it was forty· three years ago. The volumes to follow, which include works by Henry James, W. B. Maxwell and Rhoda Broughton, a truly Edwardian Victorian who has been far too long neglected, open pleasant prospects.

It is an encouraging sign of the times, moreover, that editors still on the competitive side of middle-age should show such admirable apprecia. tion of the Edwardians, whose sanity and candour in the presentation of life were uncluttered by the self. consciousness of a later period. Mr. Pritchett excusably does not, in pre­facing Tlte Hole ill lite Wall, say much about Arthur Morrison's detec­tive stories, which are less than excel­lent; yet he might have mentioned that those detective stories have a moral for novelists of to-day. So has Mr. Henry Reed's quotation of a brief account by Jacobs of his methods of work. "I first of all," said Jacobs, .. assemble a few sheets of paper, a bottle of ink, some pens and a blotting-pad." He then, one gathers, racked his brains until prompted by his naive formula, they yielded a story. Sometimes it was a good story. How simple! But not quite as simple as Mr. Reed assumes when he thinks Jaco bs would have been mystified by Mr. Pritchett. The truth is that the Edwardians were professional writers. They had no priggishness. Entertainment, in their eyes, was not " escape" but a legiti­mate activity of the human spirit. And because they first entertained theDl­selves they entertained others. They still entertain others.

HOLLIS & CARTER

Two Minds with but a sillgle t!tought

CHRISTOPHER HOLLlS, M.P.

THE RISE AND FALL OF -THE EX-SOCIALIST

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THE RISE OF THE SPANISH AMERICAN

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