There was once upon a time a charming young lady,possessed of much taste,who was asked by her anxious parent,the years passing and family expenditure not decreasing,which of the numerous and eligible young men then paying court to her she liked the best.She replied,that was her difficulty;she could not make up her mind which she liked the best.They were all so nice.She could not possibly select one to the exclusion of all the others.What she would have liked would have been to marry the lot;but that,she presumed,was impracticable.
I feel I resemble that young lady,not so much in charm and beauty as in indecision of mind,when the question is that of my favourite author or my favourite book.It is as if one were asked one's favourite food.There are times when one fancies an egg with one's tea.On other occasions one dreams of a kipper.To-day one clamours for lobsters.To-morrow one feels one never wishes to see a lobster again.One determines to settle down,for a time,to a diet of bread and milk and rice pudding.Asked suddenly to say whether I preferred ices to soup,or beef-steak to caviare,I should be completely nonplussed.
There may be readers who care for only one literary diet.I am a person of gross appetites,requiring many authors to satisfy me.
There are moods when the savage strength of the Bronte sisters is companionable to me.One rejoices in the unrelieved gloom of "Wuthering Heights,"as in the lowering skies of a stormy autumn.
Perhaps part of the marvel of the book comes from the knowledge that the authoress was a slight,delicate young girl.One wonders what her future work would have been,had she lived to gain a wider experience of life;or was it well for her fame that nature took the pen so soon from her hand?Her suppressed vehemence may have been better suited to those tangled Yorkshire byways than to the more open,cultivated fields of life.
There is not much similarity between the two books,yet when recalling Emily Bronte my thoughts always run on to Olive Schreiner.
Here,again,was a young girl with the voice of a strong man.Olive Schreiner,more fortunate,has lived;but I doubt if she will ever write a book that will remind us of her first."The Story of an African Farm"is not a work to be repeated.We have advanced in literature of late.I can well remember the storm of indignation with which the "African Farm"was received by Mrs.Grundy and her then numerous,but now happily diminishing,school.It was a book that was to be kept from the hands of every young man and woman.But the hands of the young men and women stretched out and grasped it,to their help.It is a curious idea,this of Mrs.Grundy's,that the young man and woman must never think--that all literature that does anything more than echo the conventions must be hidden away.
Then there are times when I love to gallop through history on Sir Walter's broomstick.At other hours it is pleasant to sit in converse with wise George Eliot.From her garden terrace I look down on Loamshire and its commonplace people;while in her quiet,deep voice she tells me of the hidden hearts that beat and throb beneath these velveteen jackets and lace falls.
Who can help loving Thackeray,wittiest,gentlest of men,in spite of the faint suspicion of snobbishness that clings to him?There is something pathetic in the good man's horror of this snobbishness,to which he himself was a victim.May it not have been an affectation,born unconsciously of self-consciousness?His heroes and heroines must needs be all fine folk,fit company for lady and gentlemen readers.To him the livery was too often the man.Under his stuffed calves even Jeames de la Pluche himself stood upon the legs of a man,but Thackeray could never see deeper than the silk stockings.
Thackeray lived and died in Clubland.One feels that the world was bounded for him by Temple Bar on the east and Park Lane on the west;but what there was good in Clubland he showed us,and for the sake of the great gentlemen and sweet ladies that his kindly eyes found in that narrow region,not too overpeopled with great gentlemen and sweet women,let us honour him.
"Tom Jones,""Peregrine Pickle,"and "Tristram Shandy"are books a man is the better for reading,if he read them wisely.They teach him that literature,to be a living force,must deal with all sides of life,and that little help comes to us from that silly pretence of ours that we are perfect in all things,leading perfect lives,that only the villain of the story ever deviates from the path of rectitude.
This is a point that needs to be considered by both the makers and the buyers of stories.If literature is to be regarded solely as the amusement of an idle hour,then the less relationship it has to life the better.Looking into a truthful mirror of nature we are compelled to think;and when thought comes in at the window self-satisfaction goes out by the door.Should a novel or play call us to ponder upon the problems of existence,or lure us from the dusty high road of the world,for a while,into the pleasant meadows of dreamland?If only the latter,then let our heroes and our heroines be not what men and women are,but what they should be.Let Angelina be always spotless and Edwin always true.Let virtue ever triumph over villainy in the last chapter;and let us assume that the marriage service answers all the questions of the Sphinx.
