Sir
Roger—What have we here?
Giles—There is everything under the sun set down
with some show of reason; they run atilt at the world,
and treat men and manners as familiar as an old hat.
Sir Roger—Think you they protest too much? I like
a matter disposed bravely, but—
Giles—Methinks they have a genial tongue. Will
you hear them?
Sir Roger—Well, an’ it be not too long I’ll
have some sack, and you read on.
—
Old Play.
The
Wakabees of the Arabian Nedjed, who are to the general
body of Islam what the Puritans were to the Church of
England, maintain that, next to blaspheming the name
of God, smoking and drinking “the shameful,”
as they define tobacco and wine, are the two deadliest
and unpardonable sins. To me the most touching passage
in Francis Palgrave’s story of his journey through
Central Arabia is that in which he describes how in
the Wakabee City of Bereidek he and his companion, Barakat-es-Shamee,
the Syrian, being overcome by the sinful desire of tobacco,
made their way out through a neglected fissure in the
city wall, and creeping down into a tall field of Indian
corn, indulged themselves for a blissful hour in silent
and surreptitious fumigation. We notice that the Wakabee
is not confined to Central Arabia but is getting quite
common in almost every land; wherever we go we meet
the Wakabee, who stares and makes faces at our pipe,
plainly indicating by his manner and expression that
he regards us as a beast. I always make it a point to
agree with the Wakabee. Assuming an expression full
of hypocrisy I admit that tobacco is a deleterious weed.
I admit that it injures the digestion, that it weakens
the will power, that it causes a man to waste valuable
time that might be more meritoriously employed in boxing
or doing hurt to his fellow-creatures, and that it is
a lamentable waste of money ($5 or $6 a year, perhaps,
if he is a moderate smoker of plain tobacco). All this
I admit, and then when he is gone, I adjust myself comfortably
and fill another pipe. If a man talks about tobacco
he will find himself forever rehearsing its praise and
blame, in violent strophe and antistrophe, just as Charles
Lamb did; but on the whole I think that the smoker of
moderate—perhaps I should say very moderate—tobacco
find the injury not so great after all as the benefit.
What doe the Wakabee say, I wonder, to the spectacle
of the immortal Alfred Tennyson sitting for hours with
a long clay pipe between his teeth, puffing the smoke
“straight out from the lips,” and patiently
evolving, let us say, the “Charge of the Light
Brigade.” I find tobacco very conducive to prolonged
meditation. It allays the disturbance that the mind
is in, owing to the competition of too many subjects
of thought. Out of the condition almost approaching
reverie, which it produces, the subject which is actually
most momentous gradually emerges; and at the end of
a little time we find ourselves pursuing some single
line of steady and effective thought. This result, as
it seems to me, is not wholly due to the influence of
tobacco as a stimulant, but is largely caused by the
sort of gentle occupation that the act of smoking affords—an
occupation not pronounced enough to draw the mind’s
attention, yet sufficiently an occupation to keep the
nerves at rest. The practice of knitting with those
women who have attained such skill in the art that they
are wholly unconscious of the movement of the fingers
and progress of the work has the same effect of allaying
the nervous and distracting energies of the body, and
composing the mind to thought. I have sometimes obtained
a similar result from fishing—especially on a
tepid and motionless summer day and in waters, where,
as I subsequently ascertained, there were hardly any
fish.
L.
We
hear a great deal said about the (so-called) influence
of our universities, of which we have many, in the different
Provinces. Now I do not want to say anything derogatory
to these institutions, but I would like to put a question
if it be not too pertinent. What are these colleges
doing on behalf of the national life? To be direct,
what are they doing for the national literature? Have
they ever in the slightest way shown that they recognize
such a growth in the land? My simple statement is they
have not. It is a disgrace to Canada to say that our
young men have to go over to the “much-abused
neighboring republic” to win recognition in the
higher pursuits, while our universities are utterly
callous in the matter. To say the least there is something
radically wrong. We will never have a true nationality
while this miserable condition of things lasts. And
those who desire to build up Canada’s future as
an independent nation may see too late the folly of
ignoring her rising men, while our universities are
being stocked with old country professors and tutors
who can have no real interest in or knowledge of our
nationality and literature. This kind of thing has gone
on too long. The older Canadians may think the younger
men are fools, but the result must be that in a shorter
time than most dream we either must take the position
in our land that is due to us, or else we will go where
we can at least get fair play and a chance to develop.
C.
You
can always tell a gentleman by the manner in which he
addresses his servant. If a man is not a gentleman he
will either address him as if he were the dirt under
his feet or he will treat him with a coarse familiarity
equally offensive. So deeply are we affected by the
democratic spirit that to the thoughtful and sensitive
mind of our time and country the very relation of master
and servant seems unjust and unnatural, and consequently
in the most delicate type of character you will find
this relation characterized by a hesitating and almost
shamefaced courtesy.
L.
Now
and again we meet a self-opinionated being who condemns
all fiction as trash and beneath the notice of the choice
elect. This being is generally found to be engrossed
in some particular occupation or study which gives him
no time for personal expansion. His condition is very
similar to that of the young girl, when asked did Angelina
Maria get time to read. “No, she don’t,
Angelina Maria’s a good girl, she don’t
waste no time on sich things, she’s too took-up
with her studies.” There is also an extremely
narrow class in religion which condemns all novels as
“abominations of the evil one.” This class,
in its sect-prejudice, is unanswerable to any law but
its own egotistic ignorance. But to the first, the “too
took-up with their studies” class, we would say
that it may be possible for a man to fill himself up
to the brim with histories and biographies, as a cistern
is filled with rain water, and yet for him to be only
a narrow, attenuated soul after all, utterly devoid
of any knowledge of or sympathy with the great world
of humanity about him.
The man who
claims to know, understand and love history and yet
condemns Scott, Bulwer, Thackeray, Dickens, Hawthorne,
Eliot, Kingsley, Cooper, Lever, etc., as light-reading
or silly fiction or evil abomination is either a fool
or a hypocrite, and no language is too strong to express
contempt for him or his kind. We have, sad to say, too
much of this class in Canada today, where literary culture
and a broad human knowledge is terribly needed to soften
and annul the bigotry and narrowness we see around us.
C.
In
another place I have referred to the lack of interest
in the national literature in our universities and colleges.
Now, all intellectual men will admit that this is a
grave condition of things, to say the least. We all
know that the ideal university ought to be the centre
of the best culture and aspirations of the growing national
life, and it is to them that we look for the coming
thought and inspiration that is to make or mar the future.
It is true of all great foreign seats of learning. How
about Canada? I would like to ask some of our most ardent
patriots—some of those who are so sure of our
“certain glorious future”—do they
know how many professors of literature and history three
are in our many colleges who are deeply imbued with
the national spirit; who are truly Canadians in birth,
hope, sympathy and education? If we have not been merely
playing at nation-building this is a grave and all-important
question, and will go far towards solving the much-bemoaned
question—the Canadian contempt and lack of feeling
for a Canadian literature and nationality. The younger
Canadians who have been born on Canadian soil will be
put off no longer with indifference or contempt. Even
the most ardent believer in the unity of the empire
must admit that we are no longer mere colonists. Canada
for the Canadians must be the first thing now, or else
we must reluctantly admit that we have no country at
all; and God help the young Canadian who has to bitterly
admit that without any fault of his own he is “a
man without a country.”
C.
In
this age of instantaneous and universal communication
literary reputations spring up and spread with bewildering
rapidity. Just now comes to us the fame of Maurice Maeterlinck,
a very young Belgian poet, who was suddenly and enthusiastically
hailed a short time ago by the literary press of Paris
as “the Belgian Shakespeare.” One of his
short plays has just been translated and brought out
in a London theatre, but it appears with only indifferent
success. This young writer is the author of a volume
of poems, described to be rather absurdly imitative
of Walt Whitman, a tragedy and two short plays. The
latter are said to be the chief evidences of his genius,
and the power of the author consists in a knack of giving
startling reality to tragic situations by touches of
extreme simplicity and naturalness.
L.
Amongst
the many good gifts for which we have to thank the enterprising
publishing house of Roberts Bros., Boston, we must count
the edition of the novels of George Meredith. In this
sentence I have written myself an enthusiast, and if
in the one I am now writing I could emphasise the statement
I would do so. And yet, I trust I admire with temperance
and prudence and have not been rendered uncritical and
undiscerning by the great and supreme excellencies of
my favorite. I can see his faults; but some of them
I won’t admit, out of human perversity, I suppose,
and from a desire to show a bold front to those who
want it to frighten the hosts of readers who would be
delighted by his genius and benefited by his wisdom.
It must be said, I think, that this author is prejudged
with a hasty and unjust finding. Our peculiar method
of reading, which is to read everything that we can
lay our hands on written about a book, and leave the
book itself alone, has operated disastrously for George
Meredith’s fame. At present he exists in the minds
of many persons solely by reason of the confusion of
thought which arises when they think of Owen Meredith;
they never can remember which one wrote “Lucile.”
Now, this is unfortunate, because George Meredith is
a living force, a genius of incomparable power and energy;
and the author of “Lucile” is a sentimental
poet of limited range. It is unnecessary to press the
antithesis further; it would be an injustice to both
writers. But these are mere generalities; the purpose
of this writing is to deal with only one of George Meredith’s
novels, not in every sense the greatest, but in some
respects at least the equal of any fiction he has ever
given us. I have chosen “Harry Richmond,”
or as the full title goes “The Adventures of Harry
Richmond,” for this first review because, although
it is not the first in order of publication, it is one
which will, I think, attract most readers. But it admirers
may be won for “Sandra Belloni” and “Diana
of the Correways,” who would have been repelled
by “Evan Harrington” or “The Egoist.”
“Harry Richmond” is more than any other
book of Meredith’s full of stir, robust force,
and genial human interest. It is so rapid, so full of
charm, so crowded with life, so brim full of a humor
that it is by turns pathetic and beneficently satirical,
and it is done with such command, such virile force
and completeness. The very opening chapter has an authority
which demands attention; from this picture we cannot
escape: the strokes are cut too trenchantly; the image
of old Squire Beltham struck off in these first pages
follows us to the end of the book. Awakened at night
by the visit of his hated son-in-law, he calls out to
his steward, “Hand me my breeches; I can’t
think out of my breeches.” It is the same old
man who lashes this same son-in-law in the inn at the
watering place with a tongue too honest to be ice about
his words and a heart too impetuous to soften them.
Squire Beltham is a success, and where shall we point
to the failure? To have created Roy Richmond would have
been possible for George Meredith alone of all novelists;
and, not only has he done this, but he has created Dorothy
Beltham and Janet Ilchester; the host of his minor characters
exist with the distinctness of one’s own acquaintances,
but his great men and women are one’s personal
friends. I need not say his boys are one’s personal
friends. If George Meredith is supreme in anything it
is in this. Let anyone who wants to live over again
his boyish days read the first fifteen chapters of “Harry
Richmond”; when he has finished them he will have
regained his youth and will have read one of the raciest
narratives in the language. Capt. Welsh comes in by
the way, and Heriot and Julia, and Harry’s friend
Temple; and the effect is so lively, the whole relation
moves with such a rush and play of fancy. Surely here
at least George Meredith is the ideal writer. And very
often afterwards is he the ideal writer; far more often
than one would suppose to hear those wise ones talk
who allow the occasional vagaries of a man of genius
to overtop his ever-present excellencies. But have I
gained a reader anywhere for “Harry Richmond”?
That is what I set out to do. If I have succeeded in
making only one reader my time will not have been lost,
and I will only consider that I have discharged a little
of the debt of pleasure and profit I owe this splendid
novel.
S.
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