LITERATURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15892, 11 October 1913, Page 14

LITERATURE.

Special Bwwjwa, and Gleanings from Various Sources.

THE BRAND OP CAIHE.* A COMMERCIALr: ISED HOTEL. Bjr -CoHSTanr Rbader. jri' one of thou delightful essays with which he used to chann his admirers ere he forsook the pleasant paths ol literature for the thorny \rays of politics, Mr Augustine Birrell went bo far as to "suppose one dreamt that there was one woebegone createre alive at this moment in thii. Britain of ours who found it . easy and even helpful to live for sis months at a time withoat reading a new novel by Jlr Hall Caine or Mr William Black." This conjunction is curious, and recalls the remark by Emily Rbead in "Milestones," that she hated William Black, the: author favoured by her father, but yearned for that time the synonym for everything improper. William Black was the popular novelist of that day, and had won fame with "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," thirteen years before Hall Caine blossomed fortji as a noveli6t- N \vith "The Shadow of a. Crime." To-day William Black is little more than a name, but Hall Caine remains—with an only rival, Marie Corelli—monarch of the field of commercialised fiction. Hall Caine attributes the commencement of his career as novelist to the early encouragement he received at the hands of Dante Gabrifcl Roegetti. He acoounts for the _ success he has achieved by the praise his early stories won from John Kuskin, Robert Buchanan, WilMe Collins, and R. D. Blackmore.:' It is a far cry from "The Shadow of a Crime" to "The Woman Thou Gav4t Me," and I can almost imagine the literary celebrities I have mentioned turning in their graves if they are at all able to realise their responsibility for the publication of this latest story with an allegedly "record" circulation. Hall Caine has boasted of his skill in taking "the simple incidents out of the Bible as foundations for modern novels." True to his tendency, his latest book bears for title a phrase from the third chapter of Genesis. It is eaey to understand, therefore, why a book with 6uch a title should illustrate the Fall of Man — in the person of the author—from his high "estate as novelist, and in which sense it may be said to bear the "Brand of Caine." - ,

Having explained my first headline, it may bo as well to justify the sub-heading. Hall Caine relates that he/was paid £100 for'.'-his first story as a serial, but when he'ica'me to publish the book all he could get' , was £75 for the copyright out and out., For his second book, "Son of Hager,'' he fared only a little better, and for. his third story, "The Deemster," v/hich 11 contained the work of a laborious year, plus the Manx lore, acquired during eighteen years of my youth," he received £150 in all. Since then, taking the earnings of plays and books together, Hall Caine thinks it is not improbable that as much mc-ney has come to him as ever came to anyone, not now living, who followed the profession of theipen. Bnt if Mr E. H. Lacon-Wateon is to be believed, this is an omder-state-ment of the case. In a letter from Londoni'which appeared in the Chicago Dial under date 20th August, Mr Watson writes: — , • About once a ytar one of the London newspapers opens its columns to the fascinating subject of authors' incomes, Usually this takes place on the publication of a novel by Miss Marie Corelli or : Mr Hall Caine—the two writers who are commonly regarded as the commercial heads of the great profession which they have adorned so long. The publication of. a new novel by Mr Caine or Miss Corelli is, of oourse, a .Literary : Event, likely ..in itself to stimulate discussion on literary subjects in general. "Literature as a Road to Wealth" accordingly appears in one of" tho cheaper morning papers, offering a text on which it may lie interesting to say a few words out of the fulness of personal experience. .It is calculated by the writer of the article that a moderately successful novelist in this country can make money at the rate of £10 per hour of his work-' ing time. A man of established reputation receives' 20 to 25 per cent, royalty on the published price of his book ; a sale of 10,000 copies would therefore bring in to the fortunate author of 3 six-shilling novel the reasonable sum of £750. Add to this another £500 for serial rights, and assume that the ordinary successful novel has a selling life of-10 years after publication, and the sum is worked up to quite a respectable figure. And then there are the drama tic rights, and (thongh they are not mentioned in the article) the kinematograph rights, to say nothing of translations. I forget into how many languages Mr Caine's latest work has been translated, but I think I counted 14, including Japanese and Yiddish. We come at last to the conclusion that Miss Corelli must have made £20,000 at leait from each of- her novels, and that Mr C'aine has certainly made much mora than this. Clearly, from tho commercial point of view, the career of a successful novelist, even if he restricts himself to the production of only one book a year, compares favourably with most of the learned professions.

Against this, however, must be set the .statement, from' the same source, that there are barely ten novelists in Great Britain who earn more than £5000 a year from fiction alone; and not more than fifty living- British novelists who make an average annual income of £ICOO. The tebptation to a novelist who, like Hall Caine, stands commercially at the top of his profession, to make money rather •'than create literature, must be well nigh irresistible. Even his protests seem to witness to his ineffectual straggles against the commercial hall-mark. "Of all work," he writes in "My Story." "I think literary work is the last that ought to be measured against the money one gets for it. Much or little, the money has no relation to the expenditure of oneself, one's soul, which writing, if it, comes from the heart, requires'; the consciousness of having done a good piece of work is the reward to be reckoned on firet." Circumstances, however, alter cases, and these sentiments, admirable in the extreme at the time when his novels'brought him in only a few hundreds, scarcely ring true when a- single story will return the author £20,000 or £30,000. Such is the destructive power of wealth that the quality of the books has deteriorated in inverse ratio as the income- they earned lias swelled. The reasons, for this sad decline are cleverly analysed in an article in the Nation, entitled, "The Dpcay of the Book " Approaching in an attitude of melancholy the lists of announcements just issued by the various publishing houses, the writer of the article exclaims: "Surely we have fallen upon unhappy days when the season's literature comes to us a threat rather than a promise." He continues: —

As one survevs the vast family of' them that is daily born into the world, one begins to Tealise what must have been the feelings of the Old \voman who Lived in a Shoe, and had so many children she didn't know what to do. Perhaps we are in an even worse plight than she was, for we are not told that the great majority of her brood were bom mentally deficient, as is the case with our books. Her children had, apparently, no vices that called for more than a whipping:, oar books, on the other hand, have faults for which there > is no remedy but the lethal chamber. They are misshapen ineptitudes, without mind,. without mcrtals. Most of them have no more right to exist than our caudal appendices. . . . At the same time, we are convinced that the pessimist about contemporary literature is justified in his gloom. There is no doubt that the number of bad bonks issued nowadays is greater * "Tlie Woman Thou Gavesfc Mo," beingthe ftory of Mary O'Neill, written by Hall Caine. London: 'William Keinemann, (3s Sdl.

than it has ever been in the -world's history, and there « no doubt that the epidemic of badness has affected many authors viho, if not men of genius, are at least mea of considerable original talent. Twenty years ago there wero standards of good' -writing which h3ve since perished. Stevenson had just revived heroism in authorship, and had travelled in three continents-as a missionary of tbe rights of words. In his youth he had fought with wild authors at Edinburgh, and in his manhood ■ had rescued many an adjective' from the mouths of journalists. His labours ever style were as the labours of Hercules, and he reinforced his teaching by the example of a fine cheerful martyrdom. It, -was not long until scores of young disciples gathered round his banner, swearing that they, too, liaa heard the call of the literary spirit, and were willing to sacrifice themselves on the altars of perfection. . . , Students at the art 6chools and the universities proclaimed a new moral code, according to which pot-boiling (or commercial stylclessness) was a Avorse' sin than adultery or breaking the Sabbath. Never was there a time when money was so heroically announced to ,be dross among authors and artist's, We had even ballads glorifying the author who refused to write, not merely for money, but in order to support his wife and children. Even writers who have long since taken their place philosophically on the shelf of popular authors, discoursed in those days on style and construction. The difference in. the literary atmosphere ' between then and now may be expressed in a. sentence. Then the middling writers, envied the good writers their craftsmanship; now the good writers envy the middling writers their banking'account'. ' In its revolt against restheticism—a revolt to some extent justifiable—literature rushed straight into the arms of commercialism, and commercialism has been hugging it like a bear ever since,

There is a single sentence in tliis same article which explains a great deal in connection with the writing, the publishing, and the advertising of "The Woman Thou Gavest Me." This sentence runs: "Of the writers the chief sin is that they write down to a public of imagined rather than real baseness." Of this sin Hall Caine has certainly been guilty. He has apparently assumed that in order to attain once more a "record" circulation—he missed fire with his last, book, "The White Prophet"—it was advisable to make a story compounded of certain savoury elements, to wit, the Ne Temere controversy, the White Slave Traffic agitation, and the report of the Divorce Law Commission, and to offer it to the public as a part solution of the marriage problem. Having well stirred this delectable compound by means of judicious serialising, what more easy than to raise a controversy with the Censorship of the Libraries'. Association in London and commence a discussion in the newspapers on the morality and propriety of the novel? The appeal on of the author to the wives and mothers of England was a master stroke in . modern, advertising; whilst the denunciation of the novel by Father Vaughan as a travesty of conventual life constituted the crowning of this campaign of "boom." The public curiosity having thus been excited, the rush of readers goes on, and the circulation is correspondingly'inflated. The merit of the story -matters little; the book is in the air and everybody will want to read it, no matter what anyone .may say to the contrary. To clear* my conscience, I shall put down in black and white tlje impression the whole incident has left upon my mind.

In the first place the book bored me, and I greatly object to being bored a book. The story is far too long, drawn out to the verge of weariness; it is both stagey and sentimental; crudely melodramatic to the point of clap-trap; its situations are absurd in their unreality. And as an offered solution ?f the marriage problem it is a screaming farce. Someone —I forget whether Lamb or Hazlitt or Coleridge—is responsible for the dictum that whenever a new novel appears it is time ,to read an old one. And the only good I have derived from an . impatient perusal of "The' Woman Thou Gavest Me" has been a fierce desire to bury myself in the. immortal pages' of Richardson, Fielding,- Sterne, and Smollett, i those fathers of English fiction. Hall Caine adopts that most difficult of all styles to make effective, the autobiographical ;■ but how. poorly do Mary O'Neill's meanderings and maunderings compare with the crisp short sentences of Pamela's., letters in Samuel Richardson's -renowned romance. After reading the opening; chapters of the new novel, in which Hail Caine describes the birth of. Mary, I instinctively turned to tho first book oL-Tristram ' Shandy, where Laurence Sterne recounts the circumstances attending the ushering into the world of his famous hero. Once more Hall Caine is seen to terrible Jdisadvantage. If I am to read descriptions of the plain facts 6f human life, around and over which modern delicacy usually desires to draw a judicious veil, I would far rather the fresh-air outspokenness of those old eighteenth century masters than tho exotic unwbolesoinencss of the modern school represented by Victoria Cross, Eleanor Glyn, Do]f Wyelarde, Hubert Wales, Horace C. Newte, and the rest, with whom Hall Caine in his latest effort claims close affinity.

Nor have the most striking situations that Hall Caine puts into "the Woman Thou Gavest Me" the merit of originality. They are direct plagiarisms,. and of the' wonst type. The only apology that can be successfully put forward on behalf of the plagiarist is that he improves what he borrows. flail Caine lias borrowed from Bjornson's "Mary," the great scene between Joi'gen and the heroine so beauti| fully and delicately told; by the great Norwegian genius,'in whose hands exception can scarcely be taken to the incident. When applied by Hall Caine to Mary O'Neill and Martin Conrad, the delicacy is lost, a certain coaicene.-6 intrudes; the genius has gone and its place is taken by dreadful melodrama of the most hysterical sort. Hall Caine's honeymoon scene—-the portion of the book to which the greatest exception has been taken— is a direct adaptation from Sudermann's 'Song, of Songs.' v The curious in these matters may like to compare chapter xiii in "The Song of Songs" (the .American translation) with the thirty-third and four following chapters, of "The Woman Thou Gavest Me" to be convinced, was, of the daring deliberateness of me plagiarism. Sudermann, with a stroke of genius, compresses the account of the honeymoon experiences of Lilly and the Colonel into four short pages, and, allowance being made for the frank realism favoured by German writers, the description is well done. Hall Caine strings out the honeymoon experiences of Marv O'Neill and Lord Raa over five chapters with mych sickly sentiment and unnecessary detail. The irony of the whole matter can best be appreciated in view of the following fact: When John Lane was about to publish in England the American translation of the "Song of Songs," he was notified by the police that a prosecution would follow. But Hall Coine has conquered all censorship and is flooding the world with copies otitis novel in fourteen or fifteen different languages.

Having said my say arid cleared my conscience, 1 am satisfied. Hall Caine pronounced his own doom when in "My Story" he writes: "There is only one writer who can really injure any author, and that writer is himself. If his work is bad it will die of the seeds of dissolution it carries within it, but if it is good it will live." By writing and publishing "The Woman Thou fSavest Me," Hall Caine has/ unless I am much mistaken, ruined his reputation us a novelist beyond repair. I have tw> high an opinion of the average level of literary taste and appreciation to believe that the reading public will, rest satisfied with maukish melodrama, unredeemed by a touch of genius, even though the story may be written by a skilful

hand and be well seasoned with sex subjects. I venture to predict that a 'large proportion of those who buy the book will be frankly disappointed; that many will .share my boredom, and that, as soon as curiosity is satisfied, the story, will -be forgotten. Nor do I think it. will enjoy the dignity of a resurrection, even as,a severi[knny reprint. These are hard things to say, but the author of "The Bondman ' and "The Christian" has shown tha.t he is capable of better things, and it is a thousand pities that in his la.ter years he should have so completely commercialised his talent. As moTal of the. "'hole matter and in conclusion of my criticism I append an appropriate extract iioni Arnold Bennett's article on "Writing ■'Novels," which appeared in the English Review ior June last

The one important attribute in the equipment of the novelist—the attribute which indeed by itself practically suffices, and the absence of which renders futile all other attributes —is fineness of mind. A great novelist must have great qualities of mind. His mind must be sympathetic, quickly fesponsive, courageous, honest, humorous, tender, just, merciful He must be. able to conceive the ideal without losing sight of the fact that it is a human world we live in. Above all, his mind must be permeated and controlled dv common sense. His mind, in a word, must hive the quality of being noble. TJnless Ijis mind is all this, he will never at the ultimate bal' be reckoned supreme. That' which counts on every page and all the time is the very texture' of his mind—the glass through which he sees things. livery other attribute is secondary, and is dispensable. Fielding lives unequalled among English novelists, because the broad nobility of his mind is unequalled. He is read with unreserved enthusiasm, because the reader feels himself nt each paragraph to be in close contact with a glorious personality. And no advance in technique among later novelists can possibly imperil his position, He will take second place when .1 more noble mind, a more superb common sense happens to,wield the narrative pen, and not before. ..."

It may be asked filially, " What of the actual process of handling the raw material dug out of existence, and of' the artist's self—the process of transmuting life into art?" There is no process—that' is to say, there is no conscious The convention chosen by an artist is his illusion of the truth. Consciously the artist, only omits, selects, arranges; but let him beware of being false to his illusion, for then the process becomes conscious and cad. This is' sentimentality, which is the seed of death in his work. Every artist is tempted' to sentimentalise or to be cynical— practically the same thing. And when he falls to the 'temptation the reader whispers in his hear!/, be it only for one instant, "That is'not true to life." And in turn the reader's illusion of reality is impaired. Readers arei divided into two classes—'the enemies and the. friends of the artist. The former, a legion; admire for a fortnight <-r a year. Tliey hate an uncompromising struggle for the truth. They positively like the artist to fall to temptation If he {alls they exclaim. "How sweet!" The latter are capable of savouring the fine unpleasantness 'of the struggle for truth. And when they whisper in their hearts, "That is not true to life," they are ashamed for the artist. They are few, very few, but a vigorous clan. It is they who confer immortality.