LITERARY LIFE IN LONDON.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 11287, 4 August 1898, Page 1

LITERARY LIFE IN LONDON.

The literary profession in London, like the literary profession everywhere, ig not confined by any narrow bounds. AuJ yet it has certain traits peculinr („ ivi vS eif. In the North American Ho view for June Mr William H. Rideing gives us an American view of these. There is very little esprit de corpa (he says), very little pride in one another, in the profession. The poet may be' adored as a poet, but he is apt to be laughed at as a man ; and should a novelist enter the domain of public affairs, either in the House or elsewhere, it is regarded as a vain" dream, if not as an impertinence. The profession has in Sir Walter Besant probably its only out-and-out champion — a champion who uncompromisingly demands that' the public and the State shall recognise and honour ; but when, at a dinner given to him in London, he, contending for the point with the strenuonsness of unescapable conviction, insisted that so long as rank and titles prevailed in England literary men should have their share equally with doctors, lawyers, and men of science, th 9 litorary men who heard him smiled as at one whose flattery goes a little too far.

So various is literary life in London, so interwoven with other kinds of life, high and low, that it is not easy to either locate it or define it in any arbitrary way. Fleet- strcfet has scores of little clubs meeting- in taverns, whe/e all the talk is literary shop -talk, and where there are police court reporters who write novels and sub.editors who write verse. Thej would have to be reckoned with in a survey of literary life in London ; and so, too, the Vagabonds' Club, which gives big dinners in King's Hall, and has a field marshal! for its- preßideut, and invites all sorts of literary ladies to its feasts — ladies who write religious stories of home and heaven, and ladies who, write very wicked stories of earth and hell, and cross their legs and smoke cigarettes with their coffee — aye, and'ev'en drink whisky and sodaT Then there is the fascinating little club which, in, summer abides under the chestnuts and beeches of the park, and on sunny mornings you may see groups of "literary people there — perhaps "the eminent publisher "of fin' de' Biecles works, whose motto might be, "What can I do to shock yon ?'' and some of his antbors ladies of course, who are dressed in the smartest gowns and come in stylish carriages. The Omar Khayyam Glub meeting at pleasant country inns in summer time represents some of the best and most distinguished elements of literary life, and the dinners of the"Punch" staff * could not be omitted from any survey that had any claim to completeness. Td see the literary nun of modern times in all his variety one must look also into many of the older and larger clubs, like tlie Athonjeura, the Reform, the Garrick, and the Saville. There is nothing esoteric in the business of literature ; it is as universal as the gypsies aud the Jews. All kinds of men and women enter it, the prince for a new glory and the beggars for the penny which other devices have failed to procure. • There is a glint of magnifi ■ cence in thedpenness of a republic like this, where there ate no restrictions on age/ or sex, or condition, and yet from its nature there is no brotherhood in it, no trade-unionism, or even the possibility of effective combination ; equality pi opportunity is nullified as in no other profession by , inequality of equipment, I believe that in no other centre do the wages of literature range between such extremes as in London. Authors who are unknown , or little known in America are better off than those of a similar class in London, who are often paid a little more than a typewriter would receive for the mere work of copying. These are the compilers of books and articles of information, the writers of stories of adventure for boys, and the editors of popular editions of the classics, whom we ina^ find by the do^en delving in the twilight of the British Museum reading-ropm, and munching dry biscuits for luncheon as they bend over their beggarly tasks.

Nor are the rewards of creative and imaginative woik any better' off if the author lacks notoriety and fails , to hit the papular taste. Even when an author is widely known and. has. a name familiar on every, bookstall in Englishspeaking countries, a large revenue does not always follow. Names need not be mentioned, but, we all remember one author, who ja few years ago appliei for a pension on tha English civil list. She had ; written over 50 novels, some of which are still in, demand, and all of which. in their day had been printed and reprinted in England, Canada, the United States, and Australia by the thousands. Yet Bhe was able' to show that during her entire literary career her income from this .source had not averaged £800 a year* ,