THE OUTLOOK FOR ENGLISH FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 906, 27 August 1910, Page 9

THE OUTLOOK FOR ENGLISH FICTION.

One or the traditional blunders of criticism is.to lay down"a programmt of excellence for contemporary authors ■ to achieve, and to' fail to" recognise freely and generously .'the, excellence that exists before its eyes and tho pro-' mise of the .young, school at its doors. You cannot'expect ; a new movement to become' vigoroHs'.ahd strong, when its •; friends are languid 'and lukewarm in its praise-^-as-. ; tho;- London dramatic critics.'might: remember in reference to ilie struggle: for existence of the new ■ drama, i On the'whole, English fiction is in a healthy,state—what there is of it, that is to say—and the standard cf technical craftsmanship in the art is steadily rising. It is a good sign that the masters of the school of conventional romance and golden mediocrity form a less formidable phalanx than a decade or so ago,-whereas examples of a natural, fresh, and flexible manner of painting life are fairly common among our young writers. Of the great bulk of the novels produced, not one • in twonty, of course, possesses aesthetic 'interest or has value as a criticism of life. They are stories, genially on a psuedo-rcalistic basis, meant 'to amuse or edify the vast public that craves, in. art, a stimulant or a sermon. , Our concern is not with these, but with the three or four per cent ol novels that reveal original talent, firie- . ncss-of \insight, or imaginative lorw;. '•'-, To survey the.field,of fiction is to recognise the larao tracts in tho national life that arc either. virgin soil for the English' novelist or have not been till- ~\ ed in our. own time. , ; If wc tliijil; of the -braving activities of George Kliot Thackeray, Troilupo, how thoy ranged through tho wholo

terrain of middle-class professional and family life in town and country, w lind thai only separate- stretches and isolated plots are now under cultivation. The-iifo of tin; politicals, of the City, of the Government officials, of the clergy, of the lawyers, of tho doctors, of tho manufacturers—nobody -now seems ablo to knit those strands together in a broad, comprehensive vit-iv, or to determine their relation in tho social fabric of English life. Nobody <veil seems able to supply.a picture or Society as cosmopolitan in its horizons :-as Mr. Henry' James's "The Portrait of a Lady, ,, that admirable novel of London lifn of, thirty years ago.. Even in the field of country life, of the'social web-of tho country town and parish, no young novelist has appeared to emulate the ampler traditions of the .great Victorian novelists. Specialisation in a narrow' field, so characteristic . of . modern novelists, seems obligatory on anyone who a-ims at studying and reproducuig ;i particular environment and atmosphere, and ■ thus all our novels deal with the lifo of little '.'sets"- of people of like means and like tastes. The "schools of writing," too, are no longer distinct, but suffused in the body corporate. There is no Romantic school now in sight, and tho brave abortive effort of Stevenson, to found one is seen to be the expiring effort of that movement, despite the 1-losauuas of Mr. Henley arid his young men. . "Captain Margaret" and "Multitude,and Solitude,", indeed, are quick; with'the living fire of Romance, but Mr. Masefield has been careful.to feed the flame with the solid fuel of hard reality. -Imaginative realism of the school that unites the best French and Russian: methods-is seen in. Mr. Conrad's work, ;as .in . "The Secret Ageiit" and "A Sex of Six," , and in a somewhat different blend in Mr. Gals-, worthy"s fiction.- .In . ."Old Wives' Tales" -Mr.'.Arnold Bennett .has come nearest, perhaps,.to the methods of the French ,-•: Naturalists, but in, "The Glimpse," this ■ author : has. swerved aside, into the realm of fantasy. Tho latter-day impressionism of Mr. Henry James has found'lio followers,'if wo except ".'The Benefactor," by Mr. F. M: Hueffcr, the romanticism of whose historical novels is rather of v a pictorial Pre-Raphaelite order. MrJ H. G. Wells was surely called into being .to hybridise all the schools and rules of novel writing, and in "Tono Buugay" he has fused all the golden and silver and copper-methods--.into,-the most ductile amalgam. Mr..Maurice Hewlett and Mr.. Snaith/are, again, strange types-.of, cross-breeding .in the novelist's art,. "Open Country,", for example, by its not© 'of •• artificial comedy and fin-de siecle sentiment, displays ,the modern bizarreness .of so niucli of-the cosmopolitan art seen on the'walls of "The International." It is to. be remarked, that jour plutocratic society has as yet evolved no school of writers to flatter; its tastes and pursuits, as most aristocracies,, have.done in the past, though. whether our plutocracy ; is too indifferent to literature, or is not. sufficiently homogeneous to create this demand, ;is doubtful. . ;. ... ' '," .-.'■• .''Turning, from- treatment to '■ subject, we note that,- with.' two .or. three. 1 exceptions, our,'.novelists,/ almost-all of middle-class origin,. do not essay ■ to', depict, the'life of tlie,'governing class, oiv the one.hand, or of the working'class, on-the other, and do not even show the relations'of villadom to either. The world , of tho factory hand; of the artisan, of the minor, - of. the field labourer, of the-"sweated industries," is practically non-existent in fiction. The spirit of the. social reformer, of. Socialism, of-sympathy with the democracy, has inspired no group. It is for this reason that. the work of Mr. .H. G. Wells and Mr. John Galsworthy is of special-importance. •■ Mr.'; Galsworthy is the only man of talent who has made a serious attcnii'ii, in "Fraternitj'j" and "A- Commentary,", .to scale.'.the.,class harrier' which:, shuts ' off the' prosperous' middle-class' household from sight and sound and consciousnessFof'that ; vgreat underworld. ■-.'Whatever.be the measure ,of-Jiis: artistic, success", his plays , and liovels : aud sketches; owo. .mitcli of ithcir fercorand significance to' the fact that lus characters are seen :iu their natural Htmosphero against the horizon of class interests: Mr. H. G. Wells's , "Tono Bungay," with, amost ambitious sweep and scope of satiric power, has criticised, the whole bent arid purpose of the commercial' structure, of our society. Mr. Wells's social criticism is, wo may note, followed.'with:tlie , keenest attention in-an. ever-widening circle abroad, from' Moscow to -Ceylon. . The tendency. of our novelists to attack' bourgeois ideals'and standards, is certainly increasing and has been turned into fresh channels by .two of our most'interest-, ing young' writers, Mr. Stephen Reynolds and.Mr. E.' M. : Forster, the for.T'icr of whom, ■in "A Poor Man'sHouse," has .challenged the intellectual dictation of the "social reformer" and middle-class "expert," while the latter, in "A Room., with a 7iew," has neatly satirised'the-.Tartufferies.-pf culture. Mr. Marriott is also a force to be reckoned with by Grundy, whom he has. outmanoeuvred, in several, novels, jrith great tactical skill. Mr. Barry Pairij in. his delightful "The Exiles of Faloo," has dealt a -neat doubled-edgcd thrust at the- practical ethics'.both of'the'"lmperialist" and of the Liberal Nonconformist:. Mr. Hilj.'aire Belloc has attaoked. trenchantly, and perhaps over-vigorously, the party system in "A Change.in the Cabinet,"' and "Mr. Clutterbuck's Election;" Wo look for his return to the quieter and inore effective irony of his "Mr. Burden." Mr. H. N. Dickinson has shown great'ability in'a.political novel, "SirGuy and Lady Raiinard," and we have serious hopes that he will specialise. in this line of. social commentary, and accomplish .something .;remarkable. '.Mr. Arnold Bennett , , in his tales and novels of tho "Five Towns," has proved to us how badly we are -in need of the eyes and ears, of a great provincial novelist, of tho depth and poetic force of Thomas Hardy and "Mark Rutherford." The work of our women novelists in the last two years has somewhat fallen off in interest. "Miss Elizabeth Robins, Miss Sinclair, Sirs. Margaretj Woods, Mrs. Baynton, Mrs. Bone, Miss MacNaughten, and the author of "Maurice Guest," have not contributed much work of importance,' though others, and notably Miss "Underhill, in "The Column of Dust," have more than maintained their reputation. Recruits of great promise among the women include Miss Sheila Kaye Smith,. Miss Ethel Colburn Mayne, Miss Jacomb Hood, and Miss Elizabeth-. Martindale. Among the men the new writers of special brililiance are Mr. Sandcman, Prince Pierro Troubetsky, Mr. Maurice Drake, Mr. Bone, am!. Mr. .-Wedgwood.

One of. tiio most serious obstacles to' the growth and propagation of fine aesthetic standards in fiction undoubtedly 'lies in the discoiiragement of the sketch and short story by the public at large, and by the publishers and newspaper editors in particular, and Mr. Cuniiinghame Graham represents only a small school of writers who can record an episode, a travel impression, an incident, or an aspect, in a brilliant sketch of emotional sincerity. Though we cannot expect the consummate mastery of a Maupassant or the subtle genius of a Tchokov in the, handling of a talo to be appreciated by a magazine reader, it is a thousand pities that only tho coarser forms of the art should be in popular demand. "The English Review," which has published admirable specimens of a dozen of our most accomplished writers, shows that it -is the demand, not the supply, that is at fault. The short study is to the novel what tho sketch is to the studio picture, an artistic form of infinite snggestivencss, one which catches and records aspects and appearances, moodG and atmospheres which exist by and in themselves, and often defy treatment or utilisation in a more complex art structure. .Modern fiction to-day is too exclusively concorned with domestic! middle-class life and fooling, too little with the life of

the street, the workshop, the factory, the. dockyard, the law courts, the hospital, the bni-rncks, the market place, the iields. The life of tlie democracy, and of the nation, is full of perception, character, and feeling; which finds no expression in middle-class "culture" and art. The best thing for -English lictiou would bo if two score of our cleverest writers could lie cut loose from their desks and sent into the national highways and byways to make character studies of lifo as it met their eyes. The feeble grasp of character and atrophied sense of beauty that are characteristic of the Royal Academy standards'of art are the products of the divorce the nation as a whole has pronounced between life and art. And there lies the characteristic drift of the modern* English novel. —"The Nation."