A FALLACY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22824, 7 March 1936, Page 27

A FALLACY

THAT GENIUS MUST STARVE

By Donald Coyvie

The announcement that Rudyard Kipling's estate will probably exceed £760,000, a record for an author, must have surprised some people, especially those who had been brought up in the fallacious belief that literary genius and financial success are hopelessly incompatible. The fact is, of course, that the greatest writers —which ie to say, the writers whose works have exercised the greatest universal appeal and endured the longest—have invariably made money. Literary enthusiasts who themselves have failed to produce the best work have naturally encouraged the art for art's sake theory; and their ire has been aroused by the knowledge that writers of mediocre best-sellers have amassed fortunes, whereas some unfortunate master-workers, such as Chatterton, George Douglas Brown, and Mary Webb have died disgruntled and penniless. But a study of literary history shows that most eminent authors have not lacked tangible recognition, and, provided they have lived sensibly, have ended their days in comparative affluence.

The greatest literary genius our race has yet produced, William Shakespeare, may be adduced first in a list of the most eminent and comfortable British authors. He fled from Stratford a penniless vagabond, but returned in the prime of life a wealthy man. His gains in the, triple capacity of actor, author and sharer of the general profits of the Globe Theatre had been so substantial that he was enabled to throw down his pen, purchase the habit of. a country gentleman, and write no more.

Blind Milton died worth no less than £ISOO after he had been infirm and out of the public favour for years. Since this poet is often cited as an example by the art for art's sake coterie, it may be as well to examine the exact facts of his misfortune. I find that Milton made money as a young man and as Latin Secretary to Cromwell's Council of State, but lost it with the Restoration. Then he was paid £5 for " Paradise Lost," and promised another £5 if 1300 copies were sold. Now that is not bad at all. I doubt if many publishers, offered " Paradise Lost" to-day, would be so generous. They would probably make the poet pay the expenses of publication himself.

I have not been able to discover how much money Daniel Defoe left behind him, but I know his earnings as a political journalist were considerable, and that he made £IOOO out of " Robinson Crusoe." Perhaps that does not seem a great deal of money, but it was the equivalent of about £3OOO in modern currency, which, possibly, is more than "Robinson Crusoe" would make its author if published In London to-day. John Dryden, I understand, received 60 guineas from Jacob Tonson for 1440 lines of hia translation of Ovid, which might not be adequate pay from the trades union viewpoint, but, converted Into modern currency, is reasonably good. Overlooking Goldsmith's spendthrift habits, the pundits make much of the fact that he had to write " The Vicar of Wakefield" to discharge an urgent debt, but generally omit to mention that ho received £250 for his "History of Greece " and 800 guineas for his "Animated Nature." These works were haetily executed, and it is very doubtful if they were worth so much. For " Tom Jones " Henry Fielding received £7OO, and Smollett, Richardson, and Sterne were equally well rewarded for their literary pains. Hannah More is eaid to have made £30,000 by her pen. The popular opinion of Burns is that he was driven bv lack of financial recognition into an early grave, but perhaps it is not generally realised that 2800 copies of the second edition of his Kilmarnock poems were subscribed for in Edinburgh within a comparatively short time, and that if the poet had been a more typical Scot he could have lived quite comfortably upon the proceeds of his genius. Very soon, indeed, a compatriot of Burns's was to demonstrate exactly how much a canny body could make out of great writing when earnestly resolved upon it. Sir Walter Scott made so much money out of his poems and novels that he was able to set himself up as a wealthy nobleman. Then, faced by the bankruptcy of his publisher partner, Ballantyne, he grimly earned no less than £70,000 during four yenrs' effort to pay off his shnre of the debt. Scott's popularity, be it noted, was in no sense the result of his "writing down" to a public. He might have been the Kipling of his age, but he was scarcely the Hall Caine. He wrote for all time, and yet ho made a fortune in his own time. Eleven fat editions of Lord Macaulay's " History of England" were sold on the publication of the first volume. William Makepeace Thackeray began life with an inherited fortune, lost it, then made another by writing books that are still read. Charles Dickens, who began life with nothing at all, died worth £93,000. Tennyson established a county family and a peerage on the proceeds of his verse, while W. S. Gilbert made a substantial fortune out of poking fun at his contemporaries. Publicity has been given in recent years to the posthumous estates of modern authors. Thomas Hardy left £91,000, and John Galsworthy £BB,OOO. Arnold Bennett, Sir Arthur Conar. Doyle and W. J. Locke left £40,000, £30,000, and £24,000 respectively, while Lytton Srrachey left only £SOOO, Robert Bridges £OOOO, and D. H. Lawrence about £2500. Commenting upon these figures a year or two ago, the Daily Telegraph found them disappointing, and remarked that " playwrights, novelists, poets and authors generally do ..ot greatly benefit the Exchequer through death duties."

This may be so. The British inland revenue may find brewers and armament manufacturers a more fruitful source of unexpected income than eminent authors. But the fact docs not alter my opinion that literary genius, even in these times, is bound to make a reasonably comfortable living for itself provided that it is absolute and undefilcd. D. H. Lawrence possessed genius, but, like Goldsmith, Coleridge nnd, say, Katherine Mansfield, possessed other qualities that prevented him from expressing more than a fragment of that genius.

I expect to be misunderstood and told that I have been playing with words. Who am I to exalt Dickens above Coleridge and Keats or Scott above Burns and Chatterton ? The " eminent" authors of every age are naturally those who have succeeded in (he worldly sense. I am accused of begging the question. To escape from the difficulties of my position, then, I shall briefly state my theory again. Genius need not necessarily starve, and, in fact, does not always starve, because the world is always ready to appreciate genius provided it has the opportunity. I admit that genius only too often has an innate aversion to providing proper opportunities for the world to appreciate. And finally I must concede that, despite most of our best writers have made fortunes, the rewards of literature are ridiculously poor compared with the rewards of other professions. Genius, I know, could starve on £2O a week.