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Archibald Marshall, a Realistic Novelist
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Archibald Marshall
On a mellow day in the early autumn of the year 1900, I sat on an old wooden bench in the open air with an English gentleman, and listened to his conversation with a mixture of curiosity and reverence. The place was one of the fairest counties of England, the town on the other side of a screen of trees was Dorchester, and my seat-mate was Thomas Hardy. I remember his saying without any additional emphasis than the weight of the words, that the basis of every novel should be a story. In considering this remark, which came, not from a doctrinaire, but from a master of long and triumphant experience, I could not help thinking that what seems axiomatic is often belied by a majority of instances. Thus, we church-members would agree that religion must take the first place in our lives; yet a disinterested observer, who should begin at the other end of the proposition and examine our lives merely to discover what actually did take the first place therein, might conceivably miss the element of religion altogether. In the same way, while it would theoretically seem that every novel must be a story, an honest critic who should examine the total product of prose fiction for any given year in the twentieth century, might, in a large number of cases, easily fail to find any story at all.
As we look back over the history of the English novel, it would appear that every permanent work of fiction has been a great story. Robinson Crusoe, Clarissa, Tom Jones, Humphry Clinker, The Bride of Lammermoor, Pride and Prejudice, Esmond, David Copperfield, The Mill on the Floss, Richard Feverel, The Return of the Native, Treasure Island, The Last of the Mohicans, The Scarlet Letter, Huckleberry Finn, although they represent various shades of realism and romanticism, have all been primarily stories, in which we follow the fortunes of the chief actors with steady interest. These books owe their supremacy in fiction--at least, most of them do--to a combination of narrative, character, and style; every one of them, if given in colloquial paraphrase to a group of men around a camp-fire, would be rewarded with attention.
Sometimes the very thing that gives a drama or a novel immediate currency makes it smell of mortality; by taking advantage of some hotly-discussed social question, general interest is awakened; but when the question is obsolete, what becomes of the work of art? I shall not venture to make a prediction; but I think it is at least possible that some of the earlier plays of Ibsen, like The Pretenders, may outlast some of the later ones, like Ghosts; the later ones blaze with the flames of public debate, the earlier reflect the light of the stars.
Of all forms of literature, the novel has suffered most by its desertion of art for propaganda. It has been debased by its popularity. It lends itself so easily as a channel for political, social or religious oratory. Every theorist uses it as a megaphone. Although novels are as common as grasshoppers, good stories are scarce. Now this desertion of art for propaganda is founded on the fallacy that a work of pure fiction cannot stand or ought not to stand by itself, but should lean on politics, social reform, science, or theology for support. We do not insist on a thesis in sculpture or music or painting or poetry. There have been, indeed, many attempts to turn Pegasus into a cart-horse; and unfortunately the attempt is almost invariably successful.
I prefer novels that express the opinions of the characters in the story to those that express the opinions of the author. I do not mean that all novels ought to be impersonal; such a result, even when most ardently desired by the novelist, is impossible of achievement. The work of every true artist reflects his personality, and is, in a sense, subjective. Even the coldest novels betray their makers' sympathies, and the standpoint from which they regard the world. But there is a difference between having ideas and arguing a case. Women who have ideas are always more interesting than those who have only opinions.
Why is it that so many novelists write their best books early in their careers? Is it not sometimes because the original impelling artistic impulse becomes dulled in contact with society, and thoughts take the place of thought? The thorns of this world spring up and choke them. It is by no accident that The Mill on the Floss is a greater novel than Daniel Deronda.
The most enduring novels come from the silent depths in a writer's soul, not from the turbulent shallows. To live deeply is easier in a country where deep living has been done for centuries than in a country whose human history is brief. If we should really feel chagrined by America's native contribution to literature in comparison with that of Europe, we might justifiably console ourselves by comparing America with Australia. Surely one reason why the British today write novels rather better than the Americans, is because their roots go down deeper into the rich soil of the past. Men of genius are scarce in any locality, and I am not at this moment thinking of them; but I am constantly surprised at the large number of contemporary novels produced in Great Britain whose literary style bears the unmistakable stamp of distinction. There are leaders, whose names are known everywhere; there are men and women who might conceivably be leaders if they lived out of Europe. The best reason why many admirable twentieth century works of prose fiction in England fail to attract general attention is because the level of excellence is so high.
Ii
H. G. Wells is not the hero of this book. I am holding my roses for a figure that has not yet appeared upon my little stage. But the career of Mr. Wells, whose novels have almost every quality except charm, is interesting to contemplate. That he is a born novelist was clear to me so early as the year 1895, when one of his best stories appeared--_The Wheels of Chance_. Not long after came the novels of science and socialism that carried his name around the world; he was discussed in the salons of Paris and in the prisons of Siberia. His books were all busy, noisy, talkative, restless; they reflected in their almost truculent mental aggressiveness the mass of undigested and indigestible quasi-scientific fodder that perhaps disturbs more than it nourishes the twentieth century stomach; they made many readers fondly believe they were living the intellectual life. I mistakenly supposed he would keep up this squirrel-cage activity to the end of his days; for I mistakenly supposed in all this clatter he was incapable of hearing the voice of the spirit. I used to think that if all the world suddenly became religious except one man, that man would be H. G. Wells.
The war, which diverted the energies of so many quiet thinkers to matters of immediate and practical efficiency, produced a rather different effect upon this interesting man. He began to regard things that are temporal in relation to those of eternal import. He became converted--I have no hesitation in using the good old word--and while I can see no evidence of conviction of sin, for humility is not his most salient characteristic, he did come to believe and believes now, that religion ought to be the motive power of man. What direction his ideas may take in the future I cannot divine; but I am thankful for his conversion, if only for the reason that it inspired him to produce a masterpiece, Mr. Britling Sees It Through. This novel is not only far and away his best book, it is the ablest work of fiction about the war that I have read. But it owes its eminence not to its accurate reporting of the course of social history during the war, for after all, the much admired hockey-game is not much higher than major journalism, but rather to the profound sense of spiritual values which is the core of the book.
I regard it as unfortunate that Mr. Wells felt it necessary to follow up the triumph of this tale with a treatise on theology called God the Invisible King, and with a propagandist novel, called The Soul of a Bishop. For the last-named book illustrates all the faults of its species, as well as the cardinal sin against art. Mr. Britling Sees It Through is religious; The Soul of a Bishop is sectarian. And God the Invisible King, while it should be read with sympathy for its author's sincerity and newly-found idealism, has all the arrogance and cock-sureness of an old-fashioned theologian without the preliminary years of devoted learning that gave the old-fashioned one some right to a hearing, provided of course he could induce any one to listen to him. No orthodox evangelist has ever been more sure of God than Mr. Wells. The novel was properly named Mr. Britling Sees It Through; and we might with equal propriety name the treatise, Mr. Britling Sees Through It.
Strange and unfortunate that Mr. Wells should think that the religious element in Mr. Britling needed additional emphasis. A work of art founded on eternal verities will accomplish more for the cause of religion than any tract. Solely from the moral point of view, Anna Karenina is a more impressive book than most of its author's subsequent exhortations.
The Soul of a Bishop is not a realistic novel, for there is no real character in it. It is already on its way to limbo, along with Robert Elsmere and The Inside of the Cup. But it is an excellent illustration of the fate that awaits an artist when he sacrifices the truth of art for the enforcement of personal opinion. There was a time when the excitement over the question of trades-unions produced by Put Yourself in His Place was at fever heat; but that novel today is almost forgotten, while The Cloister and the Hearth will be read by generation after generation, simply because it is a great story.
Iii
In order to illustrate what I mean by a realistic novelist whose happiest effects are gained by writing good stories with real characters, I know of no better choice among contemporaries than Archibald Marshall. He is an artist of such dignity and refinement that only twice in his career has he written a novel that had for its main purpose something other than truth to life; in each of these two attempts the result was a failure.
I know how difficult it is to "recommend" novels to hungry readers, for I have written prescriptions to alleviate many kinds of mental trouble, yes, and physical ailments too; but how can I be sure that the remedy will in every "case" be effective? I know that Treasure Island cured me of an attack of tonsillitis and that Queed cured me of acute indigestion; a United States naval officer informed me that he recovered from jaundice simply by reading Pride and Prejudice. These are facts; but what assurance have I that other sufferers can try these prescriptions with reasonable hope? Yet I have no hesitancy in recommending Archibald Marshall to any group of men or women or to any individual of mature growth. One scholar of sixty years of age told me that these novels had given him a quite new zest in life; and I myself, who came upon them on one of the luckiest days of my existence, confidently affirm the same judgment. Of the numerous persons that I have induced to read these books, I have met with only one sceptic; this was a shrewd, sharp-minded woman of eighty, who declared with a hearty laugh that she found them insupportably tame. I understand this hostility, for when girls reach the age of eighty, they demand excitement.
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