OBSCURITY TO FAME.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLI, Issue 9392, 14 December 1920, Page 5

OBSCURITY TO FAME.

LITERATURE'S GREAT MEN.

AN AUTHOR'S REMINISCENCES

. There is a cry now that .literature in England has come to a sort of dead pass ; that 'young men are not cominoon; and that we cannot see where the successors of the present writers -are to:be found, writes Sir Arthur Conan Uqyle m a-Sydney paper. That cry .has gone up m every age. I .lmveva very distinct recollection^ somewhere about 1885 or 1886, when I began to take a personal interest in the matter, and that cry, was Very loud indeed^' Ihackeray and Dickens and the great men of yore had passed, and nowhere could anyone see successors coming. Smaller men' were occupying the pages ; of the magazine and the bookstalls. 'Looking back now with that prophetic ■ knowledge which one gains on looking back,. one can realise that at ; that time there was a little boy running about in some station town in In- : dia_—- a , little, p. ecocious boy who was la^ perfect nui.__i.nce shoving amongst the soldiers ai_.d listening to and see-' ing everything, and no one dreamt of what was coming to'him oh some' future day. At* the same time a yduhg man came to. Southsea, where I was living, and commenced work serving behind a draper's Cbunter.' It is just possible thatv I was a little older than he, but I. often saw. him there—a -sallow, pale-faced fellOw in ill-health,, his face made all the paler by \ the' fact that in the-evenings, after work; he continued his studies instead,of taking" fresh- air.. .-•-.- ■■' . ■■'•-■

"A Lank Irishman." At the same., time tliere was a lank Irishman- wandering about in London, ill-kept, ill-clad, a poor man and a vegetarian. No' one took much notice of him. , At this time also there was a weaver's boy,v,who came from a Scottish ..village, and' began writing fugitive ; articles, first in Nottingham, and then he^was advised to go to London. How small they, all seemed at the time. But they were Rudyard Kipling H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw land Sir James Barrie. And so to-day«there are men in the land, some very insignificant, who., are fighting their way up, and who will worthily, and perhaps more than, worthily,? <be ■ fitted .to succeed those who have upheld the dignity and splendour of British literature in the present generation.' It seems to me that the people of those times were right in thinking that the great writers had gone. „. . ■■■

It seems to me that in 'Dickens, Thackeray, and in Sir Walter Scott the high standard of particular * forms of art was reached, and a standard which probably will. never be reached again. "These men are more than writers. They are recognised as more in the nature of old bards and seers and prophets of the tribe. Take a man like Kipling.. It isynot merely what he wrote. We look to himyfor the word of fire when we are in difficulties. He stands for Imperialism, and seems tp have made that senti-. ment. And so it is' not, Wells the waiter, _ but Wells the -the; Socialist, 'whose opinion. aty every crisis of national * affairs is. of value to the nation. ..- ,y

Bernard Shaw does not stand merely for plays; he says -ior Socialism and a ; broad ihternational view 'of • life, Gals*worthy ' was ; the great exponent of humanitarianism, a philosopher, a jnan who leads the. thought of the nation. So in the case of • all, the profession has taken a higher digfiity from, the fact that they-are not like Scott, supreme in one' department and absolutely, reactionary, as heywas, in all other lines of human thought. .They are, on their own lines, leaders of the race.

The Famous Oscar Wilde... One of the poor writers for whom I retain a kindly feeling is poor Oscar Wilde, who* should have been hurried to a consulting room and not to a gaol. I remember him very,well. On one occasion an American who was visiting London in order to secure cheap stories from the new writers, invited us to dinner with the intention of doing business afterwards. Wilde was one of the younger authors there, and I was also one of the company. The result of \ the dinner was that I wrote "The ■Sign of Four," and Wilde wrote "The Picture of,B/orian Grey." Wilde's conversation was .very delicate and peculiar. He had many stories and parables which were extraordinarily clever. On one occasion we were talking about Rochefoucauld's maxim that "The, good fortune of our friend is rather 'painful to us."'l hope that is a libel on Nature; ,But Wilde would illustrate this maxim by a parable. The parable was that the devil was walking across.the:plains of Palestine and came acrosss a 'holy Anchorite who was being tempted by a- number of little devils. But .tlje anchorite was too strong ; he would.not be tempted. The devil sat and watched for a while, but then he stepped in and told the young devils that they were not handling:.the. matter in a right fashion at all. With that the devil said to the Anchorite: "Your brother has been made Bishop of Alexandria." „ Then over the face of the Anchorite came a horrible scowl. The devil thereupon said to the little ones, "That is the kind of thing. I should recommend." It is an example of a very delicate kind of wit which is an example:of; Wilde.