BOOKS OF THE DAY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 18066, 5 April 1919, Page 4

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

GEORGE MEREDITH. HTS LITE AND FRIENDS. For (reasons' which were no doubt sufficient to himself, hut which none the less reacted unfortunately upon his own reputation, George Meredith was of all the men of his time the most sensitive about personal publicity. Ho desired fame for liis w'orks, as any sincere artist must; but he deprecated with extreme acerbity any sort of curiosity about his private life, his parentage and his antecedents. The result was that, in an age when publicity was the gospel of the hour, Ins secrecy I>ecamo suspect. The inquisitive concluded that, if Meredith did not wish his private life discussed, there must be something in it that he was anxious to conceal. All sorts of wandering and ridiculoi.l3 rumours became current, and even after his death they left their trail upon his memory. It was high time, says the “ Daily Telegraph,” that an honest and authoritative biography should appear, and Mr S. M. Ellis is to be congratulated upon having the courage to take the task in hand and to carry it -through in a workmanlike and honourable fashion. Mr Ellis has many qualifications for the undertaking. He is ft relative of Meredith, thoroughly well-informed upon family affairs and efficiently furnished with letters and other material. He has the gifts of industry and accuracy, and, though he is more skilful in accumulating data than in moulding them into literary form, ho can claim a serviceable stylo and a transparent sincerity of expression. Ilis book may bo criticised as lacking charm, but it never fails in honesty and frankness. It is much the most informative hook yet published about Meredith, and seems likely to hold the field. At any rate, no one in future can discuss Meredith’s private life with knowledge until he has consulted Mr Ellis’s closely-packed pages. MEREDITH’S PRIVATE LTFE. It is indeed in reference to Meredith’s private life that the volume is most valuable; it clears up all sorts of uncertainties, and lets the light in upon many shadowy places. And wherever the light penetrates Meredith himself emerges with the greater credit and esteem. • There can be no longer, for instance, by any question about his parentage. He camo of an old-estab-lished race of naval outfitters at Portsmouth, under whoso roof Nelson’s Hardy had been a visitor, and whose professional excellence was vouched for in one of Captain Marrynt’s novels. George Meredith was a strange product of such a household, and ho grew up restless and out of sympathy with his surroundings. He was never an “easy” man to livo with. The ambition of nrt burnt in him too fiercely: and, when ho married, at the ago of twenty-one, a woman nine years his senior, ho mado a false start from which it took him years to recover. Thomas Love Peacock’s daughter was nlready a widow with a young child when Meredith mado her nis wife. If Mr Ellis is to ho trusted, the young people started with a strong physical attraction for one another, hut their intellectual and spiritual sympathy was ill-founded. The husband was soon concentrating all his affection upon his infant son, and it is small wonder that the wife sought consolation elsewhere. They parted, and Meredith for many years spoke and wrote hard things about women. They were half-vegetable and half-animal, he said; and he swept his life clear of'them. Tt was not until he was thirty-six that the great exponent of “ modern love ” really learnt, for himself what love could mean. His second wife, Marie Vullinmy, was twelve years Younger than himself, hut she brought him inspiration, devotion, and the formative influence of normal family life. Henceforth, though his career was not nnvexed bv material anxieties, it was blessed with peace at home and a worthy incentive to ambition. THE LONG DELAYS OF ART. Meredith always folt that his work was inadequately recognised by liis contemporaries, but it is interesting to noto how early it was appreciated by those whoso opinion was best worth having. Among his first reviewers were Georgo idiot, W. M. Rossetti. and Swinburne, and they did not hesitate to prophesy great things for him. His style, in prose, at any rate, was always unnecessarily involved, and could hardly expect popular recognition. But it is clear from some of liis earliest letters that this subtle form of expression was native to Meredith’s temperament. Ho saw everything in the form of metaphor and trope. Perhaps he was not creative in the highest sense, for he went to life for most of his leading characters. Mr Ellis presents a long army of the “originals” of t! ■ best known figures in tlio novels. Meredith’s own father was pilloried in “Evan Harrington,” and felt it very bitterly. Lady Duff Gordon, her daughter, Mrs Ross, Maurice FitzGerald, William Hardman, . Lady Hornby, Frederick Maxse, Leslie Stephen, Swinburne and many other of his friends made unmistakable appearance in his pages. The portraiture, of course, was not photographio, but it was sufficiently dotailed to justify the question whether the novelist is true to the highest canons of his art when he draws upon his intimate circle for the purposes of fiction. Certainly tlio example which Meredith set has been followed to dangerous lengtlis sinoe liis time. The sale of his books, though by no neaus insignificant, was inadequate to support the needs of a young family, and Meredith, supplemented liis income by acting as literary adviser to a firm of publishers. The revelations which Mr Ellis makes (with the assistance of Mr B. W. Matzl of Meredith’s “acceptances” and “ rejections ” as reader to Messrs Chapman aud Hall suggest that his literary judgment was too sensitive to soive well in tlio harness of commercialism. Ho refused many “best sellers,” among them “East Lynne ” and one of the early triumphs of Ouida; ho would have nothing to say to Samuel Butler’s “ Erewhon,” and lie turned down the first novel oil Mr Georgo Bernard Shaw. But then, says Mr Shaw himself, “ all my novels were refused everywhere. . . . The bettor I wrote the less chance I had.” On the other hand, Meredith was one of the first publishers’ advisers to give encouragement to Mr Thomas Hardy, to Georgo Giss. ing and to William Black, and of Sir Edwdn Arnold . (then unknown to fame) he wrote in his report on a volume of poems: “I should say this man would do something. He should wait until ho has composed a goein likely to catch the public ear.” ood advice, which was subsequently followed, when “The Light of Asia” took the town by storm- Meredith, it is clear, spared himself no pains in encouraging merit in a hopeful manuscript. He always preserved his anonymity as a “ reader,” hut ho granted private interviews to promising writers whose books lie was unable to accept, and many of them left that dark back room in Piccadilly with a wealth of advice in their memory, which was to bear good fruit in years to come.

These are only a few of tho many sidelights which Mr Ellis's biography throws upon a character of great complexity, but of an abiding and almost pathetic appeal. To Meredith literature war life itself, and Nature the supremo listener. He loved tho Surrey downs, the windy bill, the scent of now-turned earth, the breath of spring among the leaves. He loved oven more tho senso of youthful passion, of hope and ambition, of love thwarted but persistent, which constitute the scoot

of the soul. His own life was lived in constant communion with Nature, and an intense and concentrated sympathy with the suffering", enduring heart. He was a man, compounded of the qualities that best ennoble manhood, and render it perennially lovable. And ns a man, natural and true to nature, his memory is safe with posterity. HIGH PRICES FOR BOOKS. It was a vicar of Shiplake—the Rev Janies Granger—who in ,1709 began the practice of filling out histories and biographies with engravings, portraits and letters relevant to tlio theme. The Broadley library contained many examples of this method known as “grangerising,” and recently, at Sotheby’s, there was another notable illustration. ' Peter Cunningham’s ample edition of the letters of Horace Walpole is well known in nine volumes, but when supplemented with 1840 engravings of scenes and 2300 portraits of celebrities, it produced a long array of books, and when offered for auction realised £1750. Such a formidable collection would have even disturbed Walpole himself, although he was as prolific as Defoe. The volumes certainy do not fall under the head of “lounging books” which Walpole described as those “ that one takes u|p in the gout, low spirits, ennui, or when one is waiting for company —some novels, pay poetry, and old whimsical authors as Rabelais.” A “ Missale Parisionso” on vellum, printed about 1520 for Francis 1., with liis large coat of arms emblazoned at the beginning, formorly in Lord Vernon’s library, fetched £4BO (Quaritch), and a rare “ Boke of Comfort against Trybulacyon,” from tlio press of Wynkyn de Wordo, about 1500, £165.