A Note on the Novel
THE term " novel " is now used to describe a thousand different things. Since its false start in the age of Elizabeth and its true start in the age of Charles II, this form of literature has been like the snowball which gathers snow as it rolls down hill. In this same manner does the novel gather to itself every variety, of motive, every description of purpose. Starting with amusement as its only intent, starting in an effort to beguile the dull hours, of dullish people in country houses with tales, of adventure, it has picked up every kind of moral and artistic aim. There are the novels of excitement which still continue ; short, sharp, machine-made books which while away the intolerable ennui of the hour's journey in the train ; there are other books, of a very ancient order, which have in reality displaced, and assumed the position of, the old ,senti- mental ballads—things turned out, I apprehend, for the ever- diminishing class of domestic servants. Melodrama, too, has been expelled from its original home in the theatre and installed between the pages of a book.
Yet, novels of the types we have described, low as is their order, will continue in a sense to fulfil the obligations of a novel. But, alas ! the more intelligent the writer, the more confused must he become in his conception of what a novel should be. Thus, with Mr. H. G. Wells it has replaced religious teaching and has deepened into a kind of scientific and political programme ; propaganda which his genius as a story-teller and his extraordinary gifts of humour and foresight make it easy for us to devour. Then there are other authors—Mr. James Joyce, for example, is one of them—who are-attempting to build up a new language for the use of future generations, generations unborn and likely to remain so ; others again, who are occupied with some philosophical or metaphysical aspect to the exclusion of all else, as Miss Gertrude Stein ; others, like Mrs. Virginia Woolf and Mr. E. M. Forster, who are concerned entirely with something vague—is it human relationships ?—but so subtly treated and written of in such quiet and exquisite language that we accept them as story- tellers.
This mixing of roles is extremely confusing to the novelist, and before leaving the subject of such diversity I• should like to examine the lowest class of this literature ; detective fiction, which in itself will show the infinite variety to which even one branch of novel-writing alone has attained. Nor is it possible to bar these novels of excitement from the realm of literature. Consider the different subdivisions : there are the machine-turned, smart novels, composed, like modern furniture, of metal and glass, of Mr. Edgar Wallace, books of such undeniable but misguided cleverness ; there is, at the highest point, such a book as appeared the other day, Malice Aforethought, in which the thrill and excitement are in the psychological interest, rather than in the events described ; there are the exquisite adventures of Sherlock Holmes, books which unite the delights of detective fiction with something of the quality of The Swiss Family Robinson in that, so to speak, if potatoes are wanted, potatoes, or a substitute for them, are immediately discovered ; there are the books, in the American detective style, where, so hurried is the life of that Continent, whole sentences must be read rather than words. By this I mean that each sentence is a cliche, and that just as the Chinese possess characters which express not words but whole sentences, so these books are expressed in a similar way; for the untrained brain can from the first assimilate the whole clichi it knows much more easily than it can receive one word it does not expect, and therefore advantage accrues to this method, in the extreme ease and swiftness with which even a father illiterate person can follow 'it, able to grasp without gonfusion the import of each sentence.
Then there are the masters, Stevenson or Edgar Allan Poe, who exhibit so many levels of interest beneath that of excite- inent ; one, let us say, in the actual fantastic interest of the plot ; one in the subtleties of their atmosphere, or the intri- raPies of their psychology. And how well these books hold their own ! Thus, the other day I re-read Dr. Jeykll and Mi. Ryde, astonished at the simplicity of its own language and the sureness of its touch. In the whole book only one thing could be found which at all dated it, and that was in the character of the person who was murdered : for the fact that he—I think his name was Sir Danvers Carew—was a Member of Parliament caused at the time more consternation than the brutality, even, of the crime itself, whereas in these days that it was a politician, rather than a more useful member of society, who had been done to death, would, I apprehend, relieve rather than deepen the general horror.
The cause of the decadence of the English novel, then, to-day resides as much in its merits as in its faults. Alas I the most perfect artists are often the most crotchety, con- vinced of some particular duty to the world whereas the first duty of every novelist is the plain one of being readable. It sounds a humble aim, but it is in truth a gift for which any writer must pray. That certain authors are read many years after their bodies have perished, is, first and foremost, because of this quality. By this I do not mean to signify a lack of obscurity ; many extremely obscure writers are eminently readable. Miss Gertrude Stein, for instance, without being easily intelligible is extremely readable ; that is, she is a born writer, and once the reader's eye has lit upon a word she has written he continues to be interested and therefore to read on, But after this, the chief aim of the novelist should be to illuminate personal experience. This, after all, is only my own conviction, and, as I have suggested, many authors are crotchety in respect of their personal convictions. But surely. a novelist should seek to identify himself to such a point with the reader that the reader responds, crying, " This is I ! How often have I experienced this, and now I understand it." But to do this is not as easy for an author as it sounds. Personal experience is not so universal as it is deemed, and even this effort to identify reader and author cannot succeed unless the whole novel is designed ; and that, alas ! is where the English; as a race fail as novelists. They are always writing outside the covers of their books ; adventures and ideas swarm out of the pages into the air. This love of detail, this wealth of imagination must be more disciplined, and yet not so severely as to trim these books of their character. One cannot impose; as Mr. George Moore has so interestingly attempted to do, a French form upon the English novel. The especial national flavour of the English novelist is to be discovered in his Gothic character ; and the Gothic Englishman, by his nature, must be free to build his pinnacles and indulge in his unnecessary, but picturesque, flying buttresses, but they must be con- structed within a disciplined system.
OSBERT SITWELL.
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