cold, suspicious, and forbidding. I became bored by the excessive complaisance that had once tickled and flattered me. (Nevertheless, after I had ceased to be an editor I missed it; involuntarily I continued to expect it.) The situation of the editor of a ladies’ paper is piquantly complicated, in this respect, by the fact that some women, not many—but a few, have an extraordinary belief in, and make unscrupulous use of, their feminine fascinations. The art of being “nice to editors” is diligently practised by these few; often, I know, with brilliant results. Sometimes I have sat in my office, with the charmer opposite, and sardonically reflected: “You think I am revolving round your little finger, madam, but you were never more mistaken in your life.” And yet, breathes there the man with soul so uniformly cold that once or twice in such circumstances the woman was not right after all? I cannot tell. The whole subject, the subject of that strange, disturbing, distracting, emotional atmosphere of femininity which surrounds the male in command of a group of more or less talented women, is of a supreme delicacy. It could only be treated safely in a novel— one of the novels which it is my fixed intention never to write. This I know and affirm, that the average woman-journalist is the most loyal, earnest, and teachable person under the sun. I begin to feel sentimental when I think of her astounding earnestness, even in grasping the live coal of English syntax. Syntax, bane of writing-women, I have spent scores of ineffectual hours in trying to inoculate the ungrammatical sex against your terrors! And how seriously they frowned, and how seriously I talked; and all the while the eternal mystery of the origin and destiny of all life lay thick and unnoticed about us!
These syntax-sittings led indirectly to a new development of my activities. One day a man called on me with a letter of introduction. He was a colonial of literary tastes. I asked in what manner I might serve him.
“I want to know whether you would care to teach me journalism,” he said.
“Teach you journalism!” I echoed, wondering by what unperceived alchemy I myself, but yesterday a tyro, had been metamorphosed into a professor of the most comprehensive of all crafts.
“I am told you are the best person to come to,” he said.
“Why not?” I thought. “Why shouldn’t I?” I have never refused work when the pay has been good. I named a fee that might have frightened him, but it did not. And so it fell out that I taught journalism to him, and to others, for a year or two. This vocation suited me; I had an aptitude for it’; and my fame spread abroad. Some of the greatest experts in London complimented me on my methods and my results. Other and more ambitious schemes, however, induced me to abandon this lucrative field, which was threatening to grow tiresome.
XI
I come now to a question only less delicate than that of the conflict of sexes in journalism—the question of reviewing, which, however, I shall treat with more freedom. If I have an aptitude for anything at all in letters, it is for criticism. Whenever I read a work of imagination, I am instantly filled with ideas concerning it; I form definite views about its merit or demerit, and having formed them, I hold those views with strong conviction. Denial of them rouses me; I must thump the table in support of them; I must compel people to believe that what I say is true; I cannot argue without getting serious in spite of myself. In literature, but in nothing else, I am a propagandist; I am not content to keep my opinion and let others keep theirs. To have a worthless book in my house (save in the way of business), to know that any friend of mine is enjoying it, actually distresses me. That book must go, the pretensions of that book must be exposed, if I am to enjoy peace of mind. Some may suspect that I am guilty here of the affectation of a pose. Really it is not so. I often say to myself, after the heat of an argument, a denunciation, or a defence: “What does it matter, fool? The great mundane movement will continue, the terrestrial ball will roll on.” But will it? Something must matter, after all, or the mundane movement emphatically would not continue. And the triumph of a good book, and the ignominy of a bad book, matter to me.
The criticism of imaginative prose literature, which is my speciality, is an overcrowded and not very remunerative field of activity. Every intelligent mediocrity in Fleet Street thinks he can appraise a novel, and most of them, judging from the papers, seem to make the attempt. And so quite naturally the pay is as a rule contemptible. To enter this field, therefore, with the intention of tilling it to a profitable fiscal harvest is an enterprise in the nature of a forlorn hope. I undertook it in innocence and high spirits, from a profound instinct. I had something to say. Of late years I have come to the conclusion that the chief characteristic of all bad reviewing is the absence of genuine conviction, of a message, of a clear doctrine; the incompetent reviewer has to invent his opinions.
I succeeded at first by dint of ignoring one of the elementary laws of journalism, to wit, that editors do not accept reviews from casual outsiders. I wrote a short review of a French work and sent it to The Illustrated London News, always distinguished for its sound literary criticism. Any expert would have told me that I was wasting labour and postage. Nevertheless, the review was accepted, printed, and handsomely paid for. I then sent a review of a new edition of Edward Carpenter’s Towards Democracy to an evening paper, and this, too, achieved publicity. After that, for some months, I made no progress. And then I had the chance of a literary causerie in a weekly paper: eight hundred words a week, thirty pounds a year. I wrote a sample article—and I well remember the incredible pains I took to show that Mrs. Lynn Linton’s In Haste and at Leisure was thoroughly bad— but my article was too “literary.” The editor with thirty pounds a year to spend on literary criticism went in search of a confection less austere than mine. But I was not baulked for long. The literary column of my own paper (of which I was then only assistant-editor) was presented to me on my assurance that I could liven it up: seven hundred words a week, at twelve and sixpence. The stuff that I wrote was entirely unsuited to the taste of our public; but it attracted attention from the seats of the mighty, and it also attracted—final triumph of the despised reviewer!—publishers’ advertisements. I wrote this column every week for some years. And I got another one to do, by asking for it. Then I selected some of my best and wittiest reviews, and sent them to the editor of a well-known organ of culture with a note suggesting that my pen ought to add to the charms of his paper. An editor of sagacity and perspicacity, he admitted the soundness of my suggestion without cavil, and the result was mutually satisfactory. At the present time1 I am continually refusing critical work. I reckon that on an average I review a book and a fraction of a book every day of my life, Sundays included.
“Then,” says the man in the street inevitably, “you must spend a very large part of each day in reading new books.” Not so. I fit my reviewing into the odd unoccupied corners of my time, the main portions of which are given to the manufacture of novels, plays, short stories, and longer literary essays. I am an author of several sorts. I have various strings to my bow. And I know my business. I write half a million words a year. That is not excessive; but it is passable industry, and nowadays I make a point of not working too hard. The half-million words contain one or two books, one or two plays, and numerous trifles not connected with literary criticism; only about a hundred and fifty thousand words are left for reviewing.
The sense of justice of the man in the street is revolted. “You do not read through all the books that you pretend to criticize?” he hints. I have never known a reviewer to answer this insinuation straightforwardly in print, but I will answer it: No, I do not.
And the man in the street says, shocked: “You are unjust.”
And I reply: “Not at all. I am merely an expert.”
The performances of the expert in any craft will surprise and amaze the inexpert. Come with me into my study and I will surprise and amaze you. Have I been handling novels for bread
