"HILL-TOP NOVELS" AND THE MORALITY OF ART.
WE are much indebted to Mr. Grant Allen. While we were casting about for a phrase by which to designate a class of novels which are becoming a momentous feature in
the literature of the clay, he has recognised the want, and met it. Mr. Grant Allen's latest novel, "The British Barbarians," bears, in addition to its proper title, the generic or family name of "A Hill-Top Novel ; "and in a preface, which will be remembered for some time as an astonishing impertinence of literature, Mr. Grant Allen explains what he means by this generic title, and how he is going to use it in future. "This," he says, "is a Hill-Top Novel," and a Hill-Top Novel "is one which raises a protest in favour of purity." That is Mr. Grant Allen's account of the matter. But we, who have read "The British Barbarians" with sorrow and amazement, are constrained by our sense of truth, and our duty to the public, to say quite plainly that we find in it no protest in favour of purity, but a skit advocating free-love, suicide, adultery, and all sorts of offences against law, morality, religion and common- sense. This is not the first book Mr. Grant Allen has written of which such things may be said ; nor is Mr. Grant Allen the only author who produces books of this kind. The novels which, in the name of purity, aim blow after blow at all the safeguards of purity, are unhappily very numerous. They make the class for which we were wanting a common name, and we are glad to escape the responsibility of coining one that might have given offence, by adopting that which Mr. Grant Allen has invented. Not that "Hill-Top Novel" com- mends itself by any intrinsic fitness as a description of a class of books which are all more or less unclean, and many of them exceedingly dull. Like Mr. Grant Allen himself, we had heretofore associations of fresh and wholesome exhilaration with the hill-tops, and we should have preferred to connect these associations with a set of books making for moral health. But a little more thinking brings us round to a point of view from which we understand Mr. Grant Allen's choice of the phrase. Mountain air, after all, does but refresh and invigorate the body ; there is no direct moral or spiritual virtue in it,—it merely quickens the animal spirits in man and beast. Young people picnicking in high places have often been observed to grow uproarious and talk nonsense; and you may find a steady old family pony that has trudged at an exas- peratingly sober pace along the lanes in the valley, go suddenly mad as he sniffs the higher air of a moorland tor, and kick and rear and plunge till shafts and splashboard fly in shivers at his heels. Some intoxication of this sort was evidently in Mr. Grant Allen's mind when he wrote his mar- vellous preface, took down a volume of Herbert Spencer from his shelf, opened it at random, consulted its series, and found permission, if not commandment, to fling his wildest fancies broadcast upon the world, and let them do all the good or all the mischief they are capable of. It is but just to say that Mr. Grant Allen's "Hill-Top Novel" is anything but dull. It is wild, nonsensical, and, in our judgment, immoral. But it is buoyant with animal spirits and the air of the hill-tops. It must not, however, be expected that all writers of the " Hill-Top " school will have this buoyancy and these exhilarating animal spirits. Nor could we consent for a moment to the restriction of the title to novels written by Mr. Grant Allen. It must be extended to the whole class of kindred compositions ; it must cover "The Heavenly Twine," "Daughters of Dan aus," "Tess of the D'Urber- villes," "Jude the Obscure," and all the other strange books which are written with a purpose, though not a purpose we can consent to call moral, unless "moral" and "immoral" are henceforth to be accounted synonymous terms.
One does not wonder that those who like "Hill-Top" Morality should praise up the " Hill-Top " Novels. Nor does one wonder much, seeing how timid most mortals are, and what august names in literature and art have taken the new ideas under their patronage, that of those who do not go with the New Morality, few have had the courage to call the books openly by all the bad names they deserve. But one does wonder very much indeed that in an age when the great doctrine of "art for art's sake" dominates the critical world, nobody has had the presence of mind to point out that these books with their perverse didacticism are quite as great sinners against the non-moral standard of literature as the old-fashioned goody tale with its inartistic enforcement of time-honoured truth and morality. For our own part we have never given in our adhesion to the tenets of the new school of criticism. We confess ourselves unable to attach intelligible meaning to the formula "art for art's sake," or to the phrase " non-moral " when applied to the actions and
passions of beings capable of morality. We can no more imagine an artist indifferent to the moral beauty or ugliness of the thing he paints, than to its physical beauty or ugliness. Neither can we believe that the morality of an action is a matter of intrinsic unimportance in art. But of course we have been told very often that these things are so. When ideas of this kind captivate public opinion, the only safe course for individuals who are not captivated, is to lie low till the tyranny is overpast. It is impossible to argue with a man who is possessed with the idea of the non-morality of art, be- cause he is always a man who either does not know what morality means, or who knows it and dislikes it very much. In the one case he will confuse himself and you by using " morality " and "beauty" as interchangeable terms, and get out of every hobble by admitting that it is quite possible that his work may have what you call a moral in it, because apparently you call moral what he calls beautiful ; but that his choice of the moral theme was certainly not directed by any moral predilection. In the other case, he will point out to you that what you call the immorality of his work, is only his realism. He has painted or described ugly scenes and vicious passions because his observation has shown him these things. He takes no responsibility for them. He has not invented them ; he neither likes nor dislikes them. Liking and disliking are attitudes of the moralist ; he is no moralist, only an artist. If in his portrayal of vicious passions he has offended your susceptibilities, that is not his fault, bat yonrs. 'Ake Capnlet's man in the streets of Verona, he "bites his thumb." But Montagu's men have no right to say he bites his thumb at them,—he means nothing. You cannot argue with such a man with any reasonable hope of putting him in the wrong. But let him alone, and he will soon put himself in the wrong.
And this is what we are delighted to observe that the new school of fiction is beginning to do. First and foremost there is Mr. Hardy, whom we had been taught to look upon as the English master of realism, the fearless artist who painted human nature not as curates and old maids and Sunday- school teachers like to fancy it, but as it really is,—that is to say, as Mr. Hardy is pleased to think, or to think that he thinks, it really is,—the men mostly ready to follow spiritual and intellectual ideals, provided they are not tempted out of the way by the women ; the women always ready to tempt them, and never satisfied till they have dragged them down to the level of beasts. "It is not my fault," Mr. Hardy has always seemed to say, "that man is largely animal and woman animal altogether, unless she is nothing at all,—that is to say, what the newest fashion in fiction calls sexless. It is not my fault, and I do not particularly admire the arrange. rnent. But so it is, and as it is so, let us have no more nonsense about the elevating influence of woman and the holy state of matrimony. Women do not elevate men; they lower them, and love and marriage cripple their careers and complete their ruin." This view of life, presented with a good deal of power, and illustrated with a beautiful and humorous accom- paniment of fine scenery and rustic character, has won for Mr. Hardy a very high reputation among contemporary novelists. None the less, it has offended the taste of a good many people, whose literary judgment has not yet parted company with either their moral or their common sense. We have not all believed that the world was as ugly as Mr. Hardy showed it ; nor have we liked Mr. Hardy the better for persisting in showing it so. However, Mr. Hardy went on for a long time "biting his thumb," ostensibly for his own artistic delecta- tion, and nobody was allowed to say that he bit it in malice at them or the beliefs they held sacred. Bat this could not go on for ever, and it did not. In Mr. Hardy's last novel of mark, "Tess of the D'Urbervilles " (" Jude the Obscure" is too deplorable a falling-off from Mr. Hardy's former achievements to be reckoned with at all), there were in- dications of a moral temper far removed from the calm indifference of the realistic artist. There was a challenge to all the powers of respectability in the very title of the book, and a defiant sneer at the Divine Providence Mr. Hardy does not believe in, running through all its chapters. " Tess " was as unmistakably a novel with a purpose, and not a piece of "art for art's sake," as the most hackneyed Sunday- school story of boys overtaken by sudden judgment in the act of stealing apples or breaking bounds. It was a story with very powerful scenes in it, and its purpose was a thoroughly
unpleasant if not immoral one. But the inartistic purpose was there, and in case the development of the plot should fail to make that purpose as plain as it should be to the reader, Mr,. Hardy went continually out of his way—just as all the didactic novelists do—to emphasise and enforce his moral by all sorts of artistically illegitimate means, such as side-flings at Providence and Society, and elaborate analyses and demon- strations of matters that would have been much better left alone. And now, as if it was not enough that Mr. Hardy should have unwittingly betrayed himself by indulgence in sneers and sarcasms, Mr. Grant Allen comes forward like an enfant terrible, and lets the eat quite out of the bag. He unblushingly announces that whenever he writes a novel to please himself, it is a novel with a purpose ; tells us exactly what the purpose is ; claims Mr. Hardy as an ally ; and makes the ideal personage in his new book say that every girl ought to read "Tess" as a part of her education in "Hill-Top" morality.
But after all, the really interesting question is not whether the novel with a purpose generally is, or ever can be, a great work of art, but whether it is possible for a novel to be a work of art and not have a sound moral at the heart of it. And this consideration brings us to a part of our subject about which it is not altogether easy, though it is particu- larly necessary, to be explicit. All who believe in a Divine Creator of the universe, must of necessity believe that the moral and spiritual laws of the universe are expressed in whole or in part in every episode of man's life. But yet there is no more characteristic sign of our times, than the reluctance of those who believe in God to take their stand boldly upon their faith and all that it involves, in questions of art. The cultivated believer in God feels himself bound (by what un- written law of courtesy we know not) to defer to the agnostic dogmatist the moment he sets his foot within the capricious circle drawn by the art student and the art critic. And yet what more preposterous theory could be advanced than that which assumes that while it is a sin against art to paint in- correctly phenomena which are the outcome of the physical laws made by the Creator of the universe, it is no sin against art to treat arbitrarily the things of conduct and happiness which depend upon the spiritual and moral laws of the same Creator ? To see life in its truth and its entirety, is to see all these laws in their operation ; and to paint life as it is shaped by them for go3d or ill, is the obvious duty of the artist, especially if he aims at realism. But because the moral tale done to order has often succeeded in being dis- mally inartistic, the idea has got abroad—even among religious people — that there is some deep-seated and ineradicable hostility between the beauty and truth of art, and the beauty and truth of morality ; and that to hold and confess the opposite opinion is to announce oneself a fubsy Philistine. Whereas the truth.of the matter really is that these inartistic moral tales are inartistic only because the writers of them lack some or all of the gifts that make an artist. It is possible to be very zealous for morality, and yet have no imagination, no insight, and no style. This is a truth that no one is ashamed to utter. Why, then, should we be ashamed to say also that it is quite impossible to write a great poem or a great novel without a clear and true perception of the moral and spiritual laws of God as manifested in the life of the world he has created ? Or why should we be afraid to say of a writer like Mr. Hardy that, though he has great gifts of imagination and insight, yet inasmuch as he is blind to an immense number of exceedingly important, in- teresting, and beautiful phenomena of the moral and spiritual world, he is incapable of writing a great novel which shall be at once true to the facts of life and to the requirements of art? But to pass judgment upon Mr. Hardy's art and its limitations is not so much our object at this moment as to record our conviction that behind and above all the conflicting opinions formed upon any human transaction, there is a. truth known absolutely to God, if to none else; and that it is this truth that the artist has to see—not necessarily to under- stand all the history of it—but to see, and having seen, to celebrate it in painting, poetry, or song, so that thousands who only dimly suspected the truth before shall feel sure of it henceforth, and sure also that there is beauty in the truth. Being, as we are, certain that there is a moral in everything that happens, and that the moral is of God's meaning, we cannot pretend to think it immaterial whether the artist believes or does not believe in God. And yet, remembering that three of the most convincing presentments of the inspiring force and beauty of Christian character to which the literature of the last thirty years has given shape— Dinah in "Adam Bede," Turgenev's Lisa, and the Roman soldier in Mr. Pater's Marina "—have proceeded from writers who avowed themselves agnostic; remembering these things, we are glad to recognise that even intellectual unbelief, so long as it does not paralyse the instincts of modesty, reverence, and tender human affection, need not close the avenues of the spirit to that kind of revelation which makes the testimony of the artist a thing independent of, though not antagonistic to, the testimony of the moralist. Before the mystery of why, in our day, some of those who see best the beauty of the lives that God inspires are yet unable to believe in the inspiring God, the wisest of us can only be silent. But in the face of those who, having themselves cast away all reverence, and all humility, and all wisdom, ask us t3 receive their testimony to the hideousness of life, to keep silence would be to surrender without a protest all the holy places of our hearts. We know not in what name such a surrender could be asked with a show of reason. But surely in none could it be made with more manifest unreason than in the joint names of Mr. Hardy's decadent realism and the headlong folly of Mr. Grant Allen's "Hill-Top" Novels.
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