WRITERS AND READERS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3808, 14 September 1936, Page 3

WRITERS AND READERS

W. E. HENLEY. The “National Observer,” under the editorship of W. E. Henley, was the most brilliant literary weekly in England of the nineties of Queen Victoria’s reign. Its contributors during its brief existence included many young men who were destined to become notable authors. Among .them were R. L. Stevenson, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, J. M. Barrie, W. B. Yeats, Andrew Lang, Arthur Morrison, G. S. Street and G. W. Stevens. Kipling’s “Barrack Room Ballads” appeared in its pages week by week for a period of five months. His satirical poem Cleared, commenting on the report of the Parnell Commission, appeared in it when the “National Obseiraer” was the “Scots Observer,” before its headquarters were transferred from Edinburgh to London m 1891. Kipling had previously offered Cleared to Frank Harris, who was editing the “Fortnightly Review.” Harris was pleased with it, and had it set up in type for inclusion in the “Fortnightly,” but his courage oozed out when contemplating the fact that the poem was bound to offend a great many people, and he sent it back to Kipling (who was then a young man of 24, and known only as the author of “Plain Tales from the Hills,” “Departmental Ditties,”) Kipling sent Cleared to the “Times,” but the “Times” had enough trouble on its hands over the Parnell Commission, and the poem went back to Kipling by return post. When Henley read Cleared he was so pleased with it that he published it in the “Scots Observer” as the first leading article. It was in the “ Scots Observer ” that Stevenson’s Open Letter to Dr Hyde in defence of Father Damien was first published. “I knew I was writing a libel,” said Stevenson afterwards, concerning this letter. “I thought he would bring an action; I made sure I would be ruined; I asked leave of my gallant family, and the sense that I was signing away all I possessed kept me up to high-water mark.”

The “Scots Observer” was financed by a wealthy Scot named Fitzroy Bell who was anxious that Scotland should have a high-class weekly conducted on the lines of the “Saturday Review” which would stimulate in Scotland interest in the higher branches of literature, music, painting and other arts. The first number appeared on 24th November, 1888, under the editorship of Nicol Dunn, but Fitzroy Sell immediately came to the conclusion that Dunn was not the best man for the job. He went to London to obtain an editor, and as the result of inquiries was recommended Henley, Whom he engaged. Two years later the office of the paper was transffeiTed to London, and its name was changed to the “National Observer.” But despite its brilliant staff of contributors and its energetic attacks on Mr Gladstone in its political leaders, it di<l not prosper. Mr Kennedy Williamson reveals in his book on Henley published in 1930 that the circulation of the “National Observer” never reached a thousand copies. Fitzroy Bell sank £20,000 in it during the five years it was in existence, and then decided that it could never be made to pay. A PROVOCATIVE CRITIC. The “National Observer” was beloved by the intelligentsia of the ’nineties, and its influence on literary taste was far greater than that of literary papers with comparatively large circulations. Henley was a good editor, and la provocative literary critic. He collected round him a brilliant saff of contributors, and some of the best things written at that period appeared first in its pages. After Henley’s death George Meredith wrote of him: —“As a critic he had the rare combination of enthusiasm and wakeful judgment. Pretentiousness felt his whip smartly, the accepted imbecile had to bear the weight of his epigrams. But merit under a cloud or just emerging, he sparkled on or lifted to the public view. He was one of the main supports of good literature in our time.” But Mr Bernard Shaw, who as a young man contributed articles on music to the “Scots Observer,” has not a high opinion of Henley as a critic. In a letter written in 1930 to Mr Kennedy Williamson, which the latter quotes in his book on Henley, Mr Shaw wrote: “Henley knew many interesting people, and was something of a hero to some of them when young; but in himself he was a tragic example of the combination of imposing powers of expression, with nothing important to express except a certain enthusiasm for literature which was not very critical.” Mr Shaw mentions in his letter that Henley, who hated Wagner’s music, used to insert in Shaw’’s signed articles on music which were published in “Scots Observer,” passages of abuse of Wagner, although he knew that Shaw admired Wagner.

After relinquishing the editorship of the “National Observer” shortly before it ceased publication, Henley was associated with a new venture called the “New Review,” which was financed by William Heinemann, the publisher. A first serial instalment of H. G. Well’s “The Time Machine,” appeared in the first number, and Joseph Conrad’s “The Nigger of the Narcissus” also appeared in it as a serial. As a reviewer Henley invented a style of criticism which made his work particularly readable. For instance, he described the male char-

acters in George Eliot’s novels as “governesses in revolt,” and “heroes of the divided skirt.” Silas Marner he described as “a good perplexed old maid who has had a disappointment,” and Tito as “an improper female in breeches.” He summarised George Eliot as an “apotheosis of pupil-teach-ery,” and as another George Sands “plus science and minus sex.” The essay on Robert Burns, which Henley contributed to the centenary edition of Burns’s works, edited by himself in collaboration with T. F. Henderson aroused indignation among the fervid admirers of Scotland’s national bard. There was no real lack of appreciation of Burns’s genius in this essay—although the essayist declared that Burns is “the poet of the uncritical”—but in describing the life of the poet he laid stress on Burns’s immorality and drunkenness to such an extent that the evidence on which he relied to support these charges wias described by some of the poet’s admirers as his own forgeries. Most of the references in Scottish papers to Henley’s essays included vigorous abuse of the essayist, but Sir Robertson Nicoll scored one good point in reviewing the essay in the “British Weekly.” “Mr Henley’s essay is not upon Burns the man or Burns the poet, but Burns the rake,” wrote Claudius Clear—the penname used by Robbertson Nicoll. “But Mr Henley has done his best with the side of Burns he understands.” A BROKEN FRIENDSHIP. But the indignation aroused in Scotland by Henley’s essay on Burns was a storm in a teia cup compared with the world-wide condemnation of his article on R. L. Stevenson, which was published in the “Pall Mall Magazine” of December, 1901, seven years after Stevenson’s death at Samoa. Stevenson and Henley first met at Edinburgh in 1875, when Henley, who was fifteen months older than Stevenson, was in his 26th year. Henley, who was the son of a Gloucester bookseller, suffered from tuberculosis, which crippled him when he was a boy of twelve. One foot was amputated, end years later, when the doctors told him it would be necessary to amputate the other foot in order to save his life, he went to the Edinburgh infirmary for treatment by Professor Lister (afterwards Lord Lister). He spent twenty months in the infirmary, and the leg was saved. While in the infirmary he was visited by Leslie Stephen, editor of the “Cornhill Magazine,” to which he had sent some contributions. Leslie Stephen brought another young contributor, R. L. Stevenson, to see the invalid, and the two became staunch friends. This friendship lasted for more than ten years, and when in London the two collaborated in writing plays. Two of the four plays they wrote were produced at West End theatres, but neither was a commercial success. The other two were submitted to almost every theatrical manager in London without avail.

Mirs Stevenson drsliked Henley, and that feeling was reciprocated, with the result that the friendship between t he two men became strained at times. The final break came over a fairy story which a cousin of Stevenson, Mjis Katherine de Miattos, had written. Henley thought highly of this story, but it went the round of the London magazines and was declined i y them all. Mrs Stevenson wrote a story in which some of the incidents in Mrs de Matto’s story were used. When it was published Henley wrote to Stevenson a “private and conf identical” letter in which he stated he had lead Mrs Stevenson’s story with “considerable amazement,” and claimed that the story was really the work of Katherine de Mattos. Stevenson replied in a furious temper to Henley’s: ‘ grave and abominable accusation,” and declared that the offence was aggravated by a request for secrecy. He demanded “a proper retraction.” Henley replied that he was “heart-brok-en” at Stevenson’s letter, and did not know whether to laugh or cry at it. He tried to make light of the incident that was the cause of the trouble between them, but he made no retraction of the charge against Mrs Stevenson, and that brought their friendship to an end. Stevenson died at Samoa on 4th De - cember, 1894, and seven years later his official biography written by Graham Balfour w r as published. Stevenson had named Henry James as his literary executor, but when Mrs Stevenson asked him to write her husband's biography he declined, pleading ill health and lack of leisure. When Graham Balfour’s life of Stevenson appeared, Henley was persuaded by the editor of the “Pall Mall Magazine” to contribute an article on Stevenson, based on his personal knowledge of him. Reluctantly Henley consented. When the article appeared it created indignation and astonishment everywhere, and it was generally condemned as a gross betrayal of friendship. A LITERARY ASSASSIN. In the course of this article Henley wrote:—.“l do not love the Shorter Catechist in 'anybody, and I loved it less in Stevenson than anywhere that I have ever found it. He makes ideals for himself with a resolute regard for his own salvation, and is all too apt to daffin the rest of the world for declining to live up to them . . . Stevenson was what the French call personnel.: He was incessantly and passionately interested in Stevenson. He could not be in the same room with a mirror but he must invite its confidence every time he passed it. He was never so much in earnest, never so well pleased, as when he wrote

about himself .... His gift of selfpersausion was scarce second to Gladstone’s .... No better hisfrion ever lived. But in the South Seas the mask got set and the “lines” became a little stereotyped .... Mr Balfour’s book is an essay in that kind of make believe in which Stevenson did all his life rejoice ... It is R.L.S. as he may have wanted to be; but not as he was.”

For some t'ime before his death Stevenson had been one of the most popular novelists in England and America, and he was the subject of much fulsome uncritical admiration in the newpapeys. Stress was laid on the fact that although he knew he was suffering from a fatal disease, he resolutely went on with his work. Henley, in his article in the “Pall Mall Magazine,” sneered at the “crawling astonishment” of those people who belauded Stevenson for continuing to work while the shadow of death was over’ him, and he pointed out that “a consumptive seamstress does the same, with no appeals to heaven, and not so much as >a paragraph in the evening papers. That a man writes well at death’s door, is no reason for making him a hero, for there is as much virtue in making a shirt or finishing a gross of match-boxes in the very act of mortality, as there is in polishing a verse or completing a chapter in a novel,” continued Henley. “Nay, the seamstress is more praiseworthy, since unlike the author, she is not doing the thing she likes best in life.”

After the article was published, Henley was described as “a literary assassin,” who had tried to murder the reputation of a man who had been his closest friend for years. In defence of Henley it was said that the article was intended to counteract the fulsome warship of Stevenson by people who had made him a “seraph in chocolate.” But admirers of Stevenson declared the motive behind the article was paltry jealousy of the world-wide fame Stevenson had won. Those who knew Henley acquit him of harbouring jealousy. He retained a high admiration for Stevenson’s best work after he had lost all admiration for him as a man. There can be little doubt that Henley thought the truth ought to be told about Stevenson the man, but whether he was justified in presenting to the public such a portrait of a man with whom he had been O’ teiins of close friendship, is a matter on which opinions will differ.