did not publish this particular book of mine. I cannot remember if it was offered to him. But I know that it was offered to sundry other publishers before at last it found a sponsor. There was no wild competition for it, and there was no excitement in the press when it appeared. On the other hand, there was a great deal of excitement among my friends. The book divided my friends into two camps. A few were extraordinarily enthusiastic and delighted. But the majority were shocked. Some—and among these the most intimate and beloved — were so shocked that they could not bear to speak to me about the book, and to this day have never mentioned it to me. Frankly, I was startled. I suppose the book was too true. Many fine souls can only take the truth in very small doses, when it is the truth about some one or something they love. One of my friends —nevertheless a realistic novelist of high rank—declined to credit that I had been painting myself; he insisted on treating the central character as fictional, while admitting that the events described were factual.
The reviews varied from the flaccid indifferent to the ferocious. No other book of mine ever had such a bad press, or anything like such a bad press. Why respectable and dignified organs should have been embittered by the publication of a work whose veracity cannot be impugned, I have never been quite able to understand; for I attacked no financial interests; I did not attack any interest; I merely destroyed a few illusions and make-believes. Yet such organs as The Athenceum and Blackwood's were majestically and virulently cross with the anonymous author. In its most sulphuric days Blackwoods, though probably less suave, could scarcely have been more subtly inimical. Its remarks upon me will almost bear comparison with its notorious attack, by the same well-known hand, on Mr. Bernard Shaw. I had, of course, certain opportunities for adjusting the balance between myself and the well-known hand, which opportunities I did not entirely neglect. Also I was convinced that the time had arrived for avowing the authorship, and I immediately included the book in the official list of my publications. Till then the dark secret had only once been divulged in the press—by Sir W. Robertson Nicoll. But this journalist, whose interest in the literary life is probably unsurpassed, refrained from any criticism.
I have purposely forgotten the number of copies sold. It was the smallest in my experience of infinitesimal numbers. In due season the publishers—to my regret, and conceivably now to theirs— “remaindered” the poor red-and-green volume. And The Times Book Club, having apparently become possessed of a large stock of the work, offered it, with my name, but without my authority, at a really low price. I think the first bargain was fivepence, but later sixpence was demanded. As The Times Book Club steadily continued to advertise the book, I suppose that at sixpence it must have had quite a vogue. At any rate it has been quoted from with more freedom than any other book of mine, and has indeed obviously formed the basis of dozens of articles — especially in the United States—of which the writers have omitted to offer me any share in their remuneration. I have myself bought copies of it at as high as a shilling apiece, as a speculation. And now here, after about a dozen years, is a new edition, reproducing word for word the original text in all its ingenuous self-complacency.
ARNOLD BENNETT
I
I who now reside permanently on that curious fourth-dimensional planet which we call the literary world; I, who follow the incredible parasitic trade of talking about what people have done, who am a sort of public weighing-machine upon which bookish wares must halt before passing from the factory to the consumer; I, who habitually think in articles, who exist by phrases; I, who seize life at the pen’s point and callously wrest from it the material which I torture into confections styled essays, short stories, novels, and plays; who perceive in passion chiefly a theme, and in tragedy chiefly a “situation”; who am so morbidly avaricious of beauty that I insist on finding it where even it is not; I, in short, who have been victimized to the last degree by a literary temperament, and glory in my victimhood, am going to trace as well as I can the phenomena of the development of that idiosyncrasy from its inception to such maturity as it has attained. To explain it, to explain it away, I shall make no attempt; I know that I cannot. I lived for a quarter of a century without guessing that I came under the category of Max Nordau’s polysyllabic accusations; the trifling foolish mental discipline which stands to my credit was obtained in science schools, examination rooms, and law offices. I grew into a good man of business; and my knowledge of affairs, my faculty for the nice conduct of negotiations, my skill in suggesting an escape from a dilemma, were often employed to serve the many artists among whom, by a sheer and highly improbable accident, I was thrown. While sincerely admiring and appreciating these people, in another way I condescended to them as beings apart and peculiar, and unable to take care of themselves on the asphalt of cities; I felt towards them as a policeman at a crossing feels towards pedestrians. Proud of my hard, cool head, I used to twit them upon the disadvantages of possessing an artistic temperament. Then, one day, one of them retorted: “You’ve got it as badly as any of us, if you only knew it.” I laughed tolerantly at the remark, but it was like a thunderclap in my ears, a sudden and disconcerting revelation. Was I, too, an artist? I lay awake at night asking myself this question. Something hitherto dormant stirred mysteriously in me; something apparently foreign awoke in my hard, cool head, and a duality henceforth existed there. On a certain memorable day I saw tears in the eyes of a woman as she read some verses which, with journalistic versatility, I had written to the order of a musical composer. I walked straight out into the street, my heart beating like a horrid metronome. Am I an artist? I demanded; and the egotist replied: Can you doubt it?
From that moment I tacitly assumed a quite new set of possibilities, and deliberately ordered the old ruse self to exploit the self just born. And so, by encouragement and fostering, by intuition and imitation, and perhaps affectation, I gradually became the thing I am, the djinn that performs tricks with some emotions, a pen, and paper. And now, having shadowed forth the tale, as Browning did in the prologue to The Ring and the Book, I will proceed to amplify it.
Let this old woe step on the stage again!
Act itself o’er anew for men to judge.
II
My dealings with literature go back, I suppose, some thirty and three years. We came together thus, literature and I. It was in a kitchen at midday, and I was waiting for my dinner, hungry and clean, in a tartan frock with a pinafore over it. I had washed my own face, and dried it, and I remember that my eyes smarted with lingering soap, and my skin was drawn by the evaporation of moisture on a cold day. I held in my hand a single leaf which had escaped from a printed book. How it came into that chubby fist I cannot recall. The reminiscence begins with it already there. I gazed hard at the paper, and pretended with all my powers to be completely absorbed in its contents; I pretended to ignore some one who was rattling saucepans at the kitchen range. On my left a very long and mysterious passage led to a pawnshop all full of black bundles. I heard my brother crying at the other end of the passage, and his noisy naughtiness offended me. For myself, I felt excessively “good” with my paper; never since have I been so filled with the sense of perfect righteousness. Here was I, clean, quiet, sedate, studious; and there was my brother, the illiterate young Hooligan, disturbing the sacrosanct shop, and—what was worse—ignorant of his inferiority to me. Disgusted with him, I passed through the kitchen into another shop on the right, still conning the page with soapy, smarting eyes. At this point the light of memory is switched off. The printed matter, which sprang out of nothingness, vanishes back into the same.
I could not read, I could not distinguish one letter from another. I only knew that the signs and wonders constituted print, and I played at reading with intense earnestness. I actually felt learned, serious, wise, and competently superior, something like George Meredith’s “Dr.
