Literature at Nurse or Circulating Morals

London: Vizetelly, 1 August 1885; 22 pages; 8,012 words

"They stand there, Respectable; and – what more? Dumb idols; with a skin of delusively-painted waxwork, inwardly empty, or full of rags and bran…. Such bounties, in this as in infinitely deeper matters, does Respectability shower down on us. Sad are thy doings, O Gig; sadder than those of Juggernaut's Car: that, with huge wheel, suddenly crushes asunder the bodies of men; thou in thy light-bobbing Long-acre springs, gradually winnowest away their souls!"

***

"One day the Mudie mountain, which seemed to stand strong like the other rock mountains, gave suddenly, as the icebergs do, a loud-sounding crack; suddenly, with huge clangour, shivered itself into ice dust; and sank, carrying much along with it."– Carlyle's Essays.

This paper should have been offered to The Nineteenth Century, but as, for purely commercial reasons, it would be impossible for any English magazine to print it, I give it to the public in pamphlet form.

In an article contributed to the Pall Mall Gazette last December, I called attention to the fact that English writers were subject to the censorship of a tradesman who, although doubtless an excellent citizen and a worthy father, was scarcely competent to decide the delicate and difficult artistic questions that authors in their struggles for new ideals might raise: questions that could and should be judged by time alone. I then proceeded to show how, to retain their power, the proprietors of the large circulating libraries exact that books shall be issued at extravagant prices, and be supplied to them at half the published rate, or even less, thus putting it out of the power of the general public to become purchasers, and effectually frustrating the right of the latter to choose for themselves.

The case, so far as I am individually concerned, stands thus: In 1883, I published a novel called "A Modern Lover."It met with the approval of the entire press; The Athenæum and The Spectator declared emphatically that it was not immoral; but Mr. Mudie told me that two ladies in the country had written to him to say that they disapproved of the book, and on that account he could not circulate it. I answered, “You are acting in defiance of the opinion of the press -- you are taking a high position indeed, and one from which you will probably be overthrown. I, at least, will have done with you; for I shall find a publisher willing to issue my next book at a purchasable price, and so enable me to appeal direct to the public."Mr. Mudie tried to wheedle, attempted to dissuade me from my rash resolution; he advised me to try another novel in three volumes. Fortunately I disregarded his suggestion, and my next book, “A Mummer's Wife,"was published at the price of six shillings. The result exceeded my expectations, for the book is now in its fourth edition. The press saw no immoral tendency in it, indeed The Athenæum said that it was "remarkably free from the elements of uncleanness."Therefore it is not with a failing but with a firm heart that I return to the fight – a fight which it is my incurable belief must be won if we are again to possess a literature worthy of the name. This view of the question may be regarded by some as quixotic, but I cannot forget that my first article on the subject awakened a polemic that lasted several weeks, giving rise to scores of articles and some hundreds of paragraphs. The Saturday Review wrote, "Michel Lévy saved France with cheap publications, who will save England?" Thus encouraged, I yield again to the temptation to speak upon a subject which on such high authority is admitted to be one of national importance. Nor do I write influenced by fear of loss or greed of gain. The "select” circulating libraries can no longer injure me; I am now free to write as I please, and whether they take or refuse my next novel is to me a matter of indifference. But there are others who are not in this position, who are still debutants, and whose artistic aspirations are being crushed beneath the wheels of these implacable Juggernauts. interest in the question is centred herein, and I should have confined myself to merely denouncing the irresponsible censorship exercised over literature if I did not hear almost daily that when "A Mummer's Wife "is asked for at Mudie's, and the assistants are pressed to say why the book cannot be obtained, they describe it as an immoral publication which the library would not be justified in circulating.

Being thus grossly attacked, it has occurred to me to examine the clothing of some of the dolls passed by our virtuous librarian as being decently attired, and to see for myself if there be not an exciting bit of bosom exhibited here and a naughty view of an ankle shown there; to assure myself, in fact, if all the frocks are modestly set as straight as the title Select Library would lead us to expect.

Perhaps of all moral theories, to do unto others as you would be done unto meets with the most unhesitating approval. Therefore my confrères, of whose works I am going to speak, will have nothing to complain of. I shall commence by indicating the main outlines of my story of “A Mummer's Wife,“ appending the passage that gained it refusal at Mudie's; then I shall tell the stories of three fashionable novels (all of which were, and no doubt still are, in circulation at Mudie's Select Library), appending extracts that will fairly set before the reader the kind of treatment adopted in each case. The public will thus be able to judge between Mr. Mudie and me.

Now as to “A Mummer's Wife.”  Kate Ede is the wife of an asthmatic draper in Hanley. Attending her husband's sick-bed and selling reels of cotton over the little counter, her monotonous life flows unrelieved by hope, love, or despair. To make a few extra shillings a week the Edes let their front rooms, which are taken by Mr. Dick Lennox, the manager of an opera bouffe company on tour. He makes love to the draper's wife, seduces her, and she elopes with him. She travels about with the actors, and gradually becomes one of them; she walks among the chorus, speaks a few words, says a few verses, and is eventually developed into a heroine of comic opera. The life, therefore, that up to seven-and-twenty knew no excitement, no change of thought or place, now knows neither rest nor peace. Even marriage – for Dick Lennox marries her when Ralph Ede obtains his divorce – is unable to calm the alienation of the brain that so radical a change of life has produced, and after the birth of her baby she takes to drink, sinks lower and lower until death from dropsy and liver complaint in a cheap lodging saves her from becoming one of the street-walkers with whom she is in the habit of associating. That is my story; here is the passage objected to: –

At last she felt him moving like one about to awake, and a moment after she heard him say, “There’s Mr. Lennox at the door; he can't get in; he's kicking up an awful row. Do go down and open for him.”  

“Why don't you go yourself,“ she answered, starting into a sitting position.

“How am I to go? you don't want me to catch my death at that door?” Ralph replied angrily.

Kate did not answer, but quickly tying a petticoat about her, and wrapping herself in her dressing-gown, she went downstairs. It was quite dark and she had to feel her way along. At last, however, she found and pulled back the latch, but when the white gleam of moonlight entered she retreated timidly behind the door.

“I am sorry, “ said Dick, trying to see who was the concealed figure, “but I forgot my latch-key.”

 “It does not matter, “ said Kate.

”Oh, it is you, dear! I have been trying to get home all day, but couldn't. Why didn't you come down to the theatre?”  

“You know that I can't do as I like.”

“Well, never mind; don't be cross; give me a kiss.”

Kate shrunk back, but Dick took her in his arms. “You were in bed then?” he said, chuckling.

”Yes, but you must let me go.”  

“I should like never to let you go again.”  

“But you are leaving to-morrow.”  

“Not unless you wish me to, dear.”  

Kate did not stop to consider the impossibility of his fulfilling his promise, and, her heart beating, she went upstairs. On the first landing he stopped her, and laying his hand on her arm, said, “And would you be really be very glad if I were to stay with you?”  

“Oh, you know I would, Dick!”

They could not see each other. After a long silence she said, ”We must not stop talking here. Mrs. Ede sleeps, you know, in the room at the back of the work-room, and she might hear us.”  

“Then come into the sitting-room,“ said Dick, taking her hands and drawing her towards him

”Oh, I cannot!”

“I love you better than anyone in the world.”  

“No, no; why should you love me?”

Although she could not see his face she felt his breath on her neck. Strong arms were wound about her, she was carried forward, and the door was shut behind her.

Only the faintest gleam of starlight touched the wall next to the window; the darkness slept profoundly on the landing and staircase; and when the silence was again broken, a voice was heard saying, “Oh, you shouldn't have done this! What shall I tell my husband if he asks me where I've been?”  

“Say you have been talking to me about my bill, dear. I'll see you in the morning.”

The story of ”Nadine,“ by Mrs. Campbell Praed, runs as follows: – Nadine, a young girl of twenty, is staying in a fashionable country house. There she meets Dr. Bramwell and Colonel Halkett, a married man; the latter she admits into her bedroom in the dead of night; he dies there of heart disease, and, in her nightdress, she is seen dragging the corpse down the passage by Dr. Bramwell. Next morning the servant informs the house that he has found Colonel Halkett dead in his bed. Dr. Bramwell examines the body, says nothing of what he has seen overnight, and there the matter for the present ends. But Dr. Bramwell is hopelessly in love with Nadine, and he meets her a few weeks after at a great ball in London. She begs of him to take her out into the garden. There they talk of Colonel Halkett's death, and Dr. Bramwell begs of Nadine to say that she tried to repulse the colonel; she declines to do so.

Six months after they meet again in the same country house where Colonel Halkett died. Dr. Bramwell is brooding over his love in the dead of night, when he is startled by a knock at the door. It is Nadine. At a glance he sees that she is in labour; she begs of him to come to her room and deliver her of the child. Next morning a nurse is called in. Dr. Bramwell, for the sake of Nadine, tells a tissue of falsehoods; he declares that she is suffering from a severe shock to her nervous system, and that her safety depends on nobody being admitted to her room. As soon as she possibly can Nadine gets away, leaving the child with Dr. Bramwell, who adopts it.

Years pass. Nadine meets a Russian prince at Nice, marries him, and comes to live in England. Dr. Bramwell falls in love with Miss Blundell, a friend of Nadine's, whose mother will not accept him as a suitor for her daughter's hand on account of the mystery that hangs about the parentage of his ward – Nadine's child. Dr. Bramwell goes to Nadine, begs of her to use her influence with Mrs. Blundell (Mrs. Blundell owes Nadine money) to make her consent to his marriage with her daughter. But instead Nadine talks to Dr. Bramwell of their past, and ends by proposing to become his mistress. After some hesitation he declines: Nadine turns upon him fiercely, and refuses to assist him in his endeavours to marry Miss Blundell; she denies ever having borne a child, and challenges him to do his worst. Bramwell returns home dumbfounded; but that night Nadine comes to his house repentant, holding a written confession in her hand. This is sent to Mrs. Blundell, The doctor marries the girl, and Nadine goes off to Russia with her husband.

The first extract I give is from the chapter entitled ”In the Pavilion.” Bramwell has led Nadine away from the dancers; he shows her a ring in proof of what he saw in the house at Croxham. Nadine faints. He tries to reanimate the motionless form:: –

”Oh, Nadine,“ he murmured, “my love, my darling! you bade me be kind, and idiot-like, I have smitten you as though you were my enemy.” He pressed his lips to hers in a transport of passion. Never before had he so forgotten himself. She opened her eyes, and he saw in them something of the same blank horror as had transfixed her features during that momentary flash of moonlight in the corridor at Croxham.

Then when Nadine recovers consciousness,

“There is one solution, “he said hoarsely. ”I have repeated it to myself so often, that it has become borne in upon me as truth, and has comforted me in my despair. Nadine, let me speak as though I were your brother. Trust in my loyalty, my reverence. That night – listen – is not this how it was? He forced his way into your room. You repulsed him. In the excitement and agitation death struck him.”

Bramwell paused and waited breathlessly for her reply. None came. She sat motionless, her eyes bent downwards. In his agony he quitted her side and walked towards the door of the tent. Here he stood for several moments looking earnestly upon her, while there was still silence. At length the strain became unbearable, and he turned his face resolutely away from her. Aware of the movement, she seemed to interpret it as a sign of desertion. For a second the old defiance revived. She uplifted her head, her lips framed the words, “Go! think the worst of me that you choose; I can live without you.”

Then when Nadine comes to Bramwell's room to ask him to deliver her of her child: –

Bramwell gave her admission; and she stood in his presence white and almost as terror-stricken as upon the night to which his thoughts now involuntarily reverted. She was dressed in a loose cashmere robe that, clinging to her form, displayed its outlines clearly. In an instant his practised intelligence had grasped her imminent need. His worst horror confronted him. She had come to him for aid in the direst extremity which can befall a woman. He stood, almost as pale as she was, waiting for her to speak. Suddenly she divined that he knew her secret. A wave of crimson swept over her face. She advanced with drooped eyes, and said in an imperative whisper, “I want you to come at once to my room.” He bowed his head, and still without speaking followed her down the long dim corridor till they turned into the west wing. Here she paused, and motioned him to enter a room, the door of which stood partially open; then closed it behind them both and turned the key.

It being well known that I am no judge of such things, tell me, Mr. Mudie, if there be not in this doll just a little too much bosom showing, if there be not too much ankle appearing from under this skirt? Tell me, I beseech you.

The story of ”A Romance of the Nineteenth Century,“ by W. H. Mallock, runs as follows: –

Ralph Vernon, a young man half philosopher, half poet, is living at Nice. There he meets Miss Walters, who had been seduced a year or two before by Colonel Stapleton. The colonel has been away in Palestine, but he has returned to Europe, and when the story opens he also is staying at Nice. The grossness of the lines on which their sensual intercourse has been conducted is easily imagined when we are told that the colonel has generally in his pocket a collection of obscene photographs, which he shows to his acquaintances, and which he sends to Miss Walters, who in turn shows them to the religious sensualist, Mr. Vernon. The latter falls hopelessly in love with Miss Walters. He wastes his time in talking religion, and she reflects, “Were you all a man ought to be you would be able to love in a more human way than you do.” Vernon, however, is unable to do this, and Miss Walters goes to see the colonel in a very pretty room which he has taken for the purpose in the Hotel Victoria. Meanwhile Vernon strives to console himself with a depraved married woman called Mrs. Crane. But the memory of Miss Walters haunts him, and, after indulging in much kissing, he resists temptation. Then, in the last chapter, all meet at a masquerade ball. Miss Walters takes Vernon away into the garden; she tells him that the colonel “has recovered all,” and dies of heart disease in his arms. He, not knowing that she is dead, runs to dip his handkerchief in a fountain, but at that moment the colonel, singing a comic song, passes down the pathway, and Vernon (who is in the costume of a Spanish pedlar) seizes him by the throat; the colonel, fancying he is attacked by some vagrant, pulls out a revolver and shoots his assailant dead.

Here are a few extracts from one of the different love scenes between Vernon and Miss Walters: –  

The temptation was too much for Vernon. He put his hand on her shoulder, and let it slip down to her waist. She made no struggle; he felt her yield to his touch; and, still holding her, he led her back to her seat.

“You are looking beautiful to-day,” he murmured.

“I'm glad of that,” she said. ”I should like your last impressions to be nice of me. Don't you admire my rose too?”

It was in her button-hole, and Vernon stooped forward to smell it. As he was slowly drawing back, her breath stirred his hair. He raised his eyes, and his lips were close to hers. Neither of them spoke: they each drew a breath sharply: in another instant the outer world was dark to them, and their whole universe was nothing but a single kiss…. Her lips parted a little, a flush stole over her cheek, she opened her arms as if to call him to herself, and at last, in a breathless whisper, she said ”Come!” She saw that he did not stir, and she moved her head imperiously. “Come!” she repeated, “come closer. I want you here. There is something I wish to tell you.”

He did as she commanded; he moved quite close to her, and in another instant her fair arms were round him, pressing him to her breathing bosom. Her lips were close to his ear. “My own one,” she said, “I love you;” and still holding him, and almost in the same breath, “you must pay me,” she said, “for having told you that. Kiss me – kiss me on the mouth, and say that you love me too.” … At last her arms released him, and the two exchanged glances. ”Tell me,” she murmured, “are you happy now?”  

“Yes, and no,” he said; and there was then a long silence. “Cynthia, even yet you have not answered my question.”  

“What question?” she said.” Do you mean if I love goodness? Oh, if I do not yet (and she pressed his hand to her lips), you shall teach me to. You shall teach me everything. You shall do exactly what you will with me.”

Notwithstanding, Vernon's love could not be sufficiently humanized, and at the end of the scene Colonel Stapleton is announced. This is how his arrival is led up to: –

”My memory is still full of the past; no magic can alter that; and if you went from me, and made a vacuum in my present, the past would probably rush in and fill it up.”  

“Listen to me,” said Vernon, with a sudden coldness in his voice. “Let us suppose I am very fond of the smell of eau-de cologne. Do you think that if I had none left in my bottle, I should dip my pocket-handkerchief in the next drain as a substitute?”  

“I think you would be very silly if you did,” she said, her voice growing cold also.

“Then would you not be equally or even more silly, if, on losing a comrade in the search of the thing you loved, you were to try to console yourself by seeking the thing you hated?”

“Only, the worst of it is, you see,” she said with a slight laugh, “that the things that would console me are not things I hate. If it were so, I should not be what I am. When drunkards have not got wine they will drink stuff out of the next spirit lamp.”  

“What then is it? you are a complete mystery to me. If I only knew the truth, I could be of so much more help to you.”

”Don't ask me,” she said; “why harp upon this one subject? Is there any use in trying to stir up all the dregs of my nature? In all conscience I have told you enough already. Do you know,” she went on with a smile of expiring tenderness, “you must be, I think, a very innocent-minded person, or you would have understood it pretty well by this time.”

Soon after the servant announces that the colonel is in the drawing-room: –

”Tell him,” she said, “that I am coming up immediately. I will be with him in a few minutes.” She waited till the man (the servant) was out of sight, and then she rose to go.”Good morning, Mr. Vernon,” she said coldly as she swept past him [her still unhumanized lover]. “I suppose I shall hardly see you again to-day – or, indeed, for some time to come – as we may possibly go to-morrow.”

Then Vernon returns home in a state verging on stupor. He, however, writes to her, and begs of her to meet him again at the same place. She consents, and this time, it must be admitted, lost not a moment, and made every possible effort to humanize him to her satisfaction. He was about to speak, but she did not give him time: –

“Come,” she said, “am I not looking well to-night? Why don't you kiss me and tell me how soft and pretty I am? Isn't that what you say generally when you talk to girls like me? By the way, I have found a word that will at least describe what I might have been, had circumstances only favoured me, an hetaira [in English, a prostitute]. If I had lived in Athens I should have performed that part capitally. I was made for a life of pleasure, I think, if – , if – .” She stopped abruptly for a moment, and then broke out once more, “If only there were not something in me that had made all my pleasure a hell.”

But notwithstanding all this encouragement, Vernon lapses into religious talk – sermonings of all kinds – and in despair at not being able to make him understand her, she takes him up to the house, and shows him the obscene photographs. He is terribly shocked, and confesses his folly in “wishing her to become an innocent girl again.”

“Amongst the highest saints in heaven,” he says, “there will be faces deeply scarred by the battle. You are right, very likely, that there is no way back to Eden; but – I am not a great quoter of texts, yet I still remember this one – ”We all die in Adam, but we may all live in Christ.”

She asks him if he really believes what he says, and being assured that he does, in front of the obscene photographs that have fallen on the floor she kneels down and murmurs “Our Father;” he, staring at the stars and palm-trees, “wondered if prayer meant anything?”

After this scene the lovers are separated for some time, but Miss Walters sends her picture to Vernon; on looking at it he declares: ”If she will not be God's she must and shall be mine!” She, while contemplating herself in the glass, said to herself, with her heart full of Vernon, “My body at least is worthy of your acceptance.” But at that moment the servant brought her a telegram from the colonel, announcing his arrival by the next train: –

“Come,” said he, “what on earth is the matter with you? You shouldn't treat me in this way, for I can only stay ten minutes. I have come over with some lawyer's papers for Molly Crane to sign, and in another half-hour I shall have to start for Nice again. I heard you were in the garden, so I couldn't help having one try at finding you.”

The news that the Colonel was going gave Miss Walters great relief, and brought a smile to her face that was perhaps more cordial than she meant it to be, for the Colonel took her by the chin and turned her face towards him. At his touch, however, she started back abruptly, though the smile did not desert her.

“Remember, Jack,” she said, “I'm going to have no more of your nonsense. We are too old, both of us, for that kind of thing.”  

“I'm not,” said the Colonel, “though I believe at this moment, I'm in too great a hurry for it. However, I shall be back here to have another look at our Molly in a couple of days. I've engaged a room, a first-rate one, at the Hotel Victoria. Such a view from it, I can tell you! You must come,” he went on, fixing his gleaming eyes on her, “and see it yourself one of these days, little cross vindictive minx that you are!”

It being well known that I am no judge of such things, tell me, Mr. Mudie, if there be not in this doll just a little too much bosom showing, if there be not just a little too much ankle appearing from under this skirt? Tell me, I beseech you. 

The story of “Foxglove Manor,” by Robert Buchanan, reeks of the pulpit and the alcove. The hero is a young parson who uses religion for the purpose of seducing his congregation – he, in fact, uses it very much in the same way as Colonel Stapleton did the obscene photographs. When he has ruined Miss Edith Dove he deserts her for Mrs. Haldane, who, after much kissing and tying of pocket-handkerchiefs round swollen ankles, is saved from him by the machinations of her husband, a great scientist. On leaving Mrs. Haldane, the Rev. Mr. Santley muses to the following effect: –

”I love this woman. In her heart she loves me. Her superior spiritual endowments are mystically alive to those I myself possess. Her husband is a clod, an unbeliever, with no spiritual promptings. In his sardonic presence, her aspirations are chilled, frozen at the fountain-head, whereas in mine, all the sweetness and the power of her nature are aroused, though with a certain irritation. If I persist, she must yield to the slow moral mesmerism of my passion, and eventually fall. Is this necessarily evil? Am I of set purpose sinning? Is it not possible that even a breach of the moral law might under certain conditions lead us both to a higher religious place – yes, even to a deeper and intenser consciousness of God?”

And again –

”What is sin? Surely it is better than moral stagnation, which is death. There are certain deflections from duty which, like the side stroke of a bird's wing, may waft us higher. In the arms of this woman I should surely be nearer God than crawling alone on the bare path of duty, loving nothing, hoping nothing, becoming nothing. What is it that Goethe says of the Eternal Feminine which leads us ever upwards and onwards? Which was the highest, Faust before he loved Marguerite, or Faust after he passed out of the shadow of his sin into the sphere of empirial and daring passion? I believe in God, I love this woman. Out of that belief, and that love, shall I not become a living soul?”

Later on in the book we find a meeting between our libidinous clergyman and his victim Miss Edith Dove, described as follows –

”She wore a light dress of some soft material, a straw hat, a country cloak, and gloves of Paris kid – a civilized nymph, as you perceive! To complete her modern appearance she carried a closed parasol and a roll which looked like music... And the satyr? Ah! I knew him at a glance, despite the elegant modern boots used to disguise the cloven foot. He wore black broadcloth and snowy linen, too, and a broad-brimmed clerical hat. His face was seraphically pale, but I saw (or fancied I saw), the twinkle of the hairy ears of the ignoble, sensual, nymph-compelling, naiad-pursuing breed.”

In the third volume, in a chapter entitled “And lo! within her something leapt,” the result of the love encounter is made known to the reader.

She arose shivering; and at that very instant there came to her a warning, an omen full of nameless terror. It seemed to her as if faces were flashing before her eyes, voices shrieking in her ears; her heart leapt, her head went round, and at the same moment she felt her whole being miraculously thrilled by the quickening of a new life within her own. With a loud moan, she fainted away upon the floor. When she returned to consciousness, she was lying nearly naked by the bedside and the moonlight was flooding the little room.

Now a writer like myself, whom you had proved to be no better than he should be, might be said to be capable of comparing a clergyman of the Church of England to a satyr, of even calling him “the snake of the parish,” but you, Mr. Mudie, Methodist or Baptist, I forget which you are, how can you allow such a book in your Select Library? Two old ladies in the country wrote to you about my “Modern Lover,” and you suppressed it; but did not one of the thousands of young ladies in the many thousand parsonages you supply with light literature write to tell you that papa was not “the snake of the parish,” and your great friend the British Matron, did she never drop you a line on the subject? Tell me, I beseech you.

I say your great friend, my dear Mr. Mudie, because I wish to distinguish between you, for latterly your identities have got so curiously interwoven that it would need a critical insight that few – I may say none – possess, to separate you. Indeed on this subject many different opinions are afloat. Some hold that being the custodian of the national virtue you have by right adopted the now well-known signature as your nom de plume, others insist that the lady in question is your better half (by that is it meant the better half of your nature or the worthy lady who bears your name?), others insist that you yourself are the veritable British Matron. How so strange a belief could have obtained credence I cannot think, nor will I undertake to say if it be your personal appearance, or the constant communication you seem to be in with this mysterious female, or the singularly obtrusive way you both have of forcing your moral and religious beliefs upon the public that has led to this vexatious confusion of sex. It is, however, certain that you are popularly believed to be an old woman; and assuming you to be the British Matron I would suggest, should this pamphlet cause you any annoyance, that you write to The Times proving that the books I have quoted from are harmless, and differ nowise from your ordinary circulating corals whereon young ladies are supposed to cut their flirtation teeth. The British Matron has the public by the ear, and her evidence on the subject of impure literature will be as greedily listened to as were her views on painting from the nude. But although I am willing to laugh at you, Mr. Mudie, to speak candidly, I hate you; and I love and am proud of my hate of you. It is the best thing about me. I hate you because you dare question the sacred right of the artist to obey the impulses of his temperament; I hate you because you are the great purveyor of the worthless, the false and the commonplace; I hate you because you are a fetter about the ankles of those who would press forward towards the light of truth; I hate you because you feel not the spirit of scientific inquiry that is bearing our age along; I hate you because you pander to the intellectual sloth of to-day; I hate you because you would mould all ideas to fit the narrow limits in which your own turn; I hate you because you impede the free development of our literature. And now that I have told you what I think of you, I will resume my examination of the ware you have in stock.

Without in the least degree attempting to make an exhaustive list of the books which to my surprise this most virtuous literary tradesman consents to circulate, I may venture to call attention to “Puck,” by Ouida. This is the history of a courtezan through whose arms, in the course of the narrative, innumerable lovers pass.”Moths,” by the same author, tells how a dissolute adventuress sells to her lover the pure white body and soul of her daughter, and how in the end Vera, disgraced and degraded by her ignoble husband, goes off to live with the tenor with whom she fell in love at the beginning of the story. In a book I opened the other day at haphazard, “Phillida,” by Florence Marryat, I find a young lady proposing to a young parson to be his mistress. It is true that the feelings that prompt her are not analysed, but does the cause of morals gain I wonder by this slightness of treatment?

It is not for me to put forward any opinion of my own. I have spoken of and quoted only from the works of writers longer and better known to the public than I am. They do not need defence against the Philistine charge of immorality, and it would be ridiculous for me – ostracised as I am by the founder and president of our English Academy, the Select Circulating Library – to accuse them, or even to hint that they have offended against the Mudie code more deeply than myself. I therefore say nothing. I cast no stone. All I seek is to prove how absurd and how futile is the censorship which a mere tradesman assumes to exercise over the literature of the nineteenth century, and how he overrules the decisions of the entire English press.

Were I indeed the only writer who has suffered from this odious tyranny the subject might well be permitted to drop. Many cases might be brought forward, but I will not look further than last month. I am informed on good authority that on being written to repeatedly for a book called “Leicester,” Mr. Mudie sent back word to the Athenæum Club that he did not keep naturalistic literature – that he did not consider it ”proper.” And thus an interesting, if not a very successful, literary experiment is stamped out of sight, and the strange paradox of a tradesman dictating to the bishops of England what is proper and improper for them to read is insolently thrust upon us. However the matter has been brought before the committee of the club, and the advisability of withdrawing the subscription from this too virtuous library is under consideration.

It has been and will be again advanced that it is impossible to force a man to buy goods if he does not choose to do so: but with every privilege comes a duty. Mr. Mudie possesses a monopoly, and he cannot be allowed to use that monopoly to the detriment of all interests but his own. But even if this were not so, it is no less my right to point out to the public, that the character for strength, virility, and purpose, which our literature has always held, the old literary tradition coming down to us through a long line of glorious ancestors, is being gradually obliterated to suit the commercial views of a narrow-minded tradesman. Instead of being allowed to fight, with and amid, the thoughts and aspirations of men, literature is now rocked to an ignoble rest in the motherly arms of the librarian. That of which he approves is fed with gold; that from which he turns the breast dies like a vagrant's child; while in and out of his voluminous skirts run a motley and monstrous progeny, a callow, a whining, a puking brood of bastard bantlings, a race of Aztecs that disgrace the intelligence of the English nation. Into this nursery none can enter except in baby clothes; and the task of discriminating between a divided skirt and a pair of trousers is performed by the librarian. Deftly his fingers lift skirt and under- skirt, and if the examination prove satisfactory the sometimes decently attired dolls are packed in tin-cornered boxes, and scattered through every drawing-room in the kingdom, to be in rocking-chairs fingered and fondled by the “young person” until she longs for some newer fashion in literary frills and furbelows. Mudie is the law we labour after; the suffrage of young women we are supposed to gain: the paradise of the English novelist is in the school-room: he is read there or nowhere. And yet it is certain that never in any age or country have writers been asked to write under such restricted conditions; if the same test by which modern writers are judged were applied to their forefathers, three-fourths of the contents of our libraries would have to be condemned as immoral publications. Now of the value of conventional innocence I don't pretend to judge, but I cannot help thinking that the cultivation of this curiosity is likely to run the nation into literary losses of some magnitude.

It will be said that genius triumphs over circumstances, but I am not sure that this is absolutely the case; and turning to Mr. Mathew Arnold, I find that he is of the same opinion. He says, “but it must have the atmosphere, it must find itself in the order of ideas, to work freely, and this is not so easy to command. This is why the great creative epochs in literature are so rare because for the creation of a master work of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment; the creative has for its happy exercise appointed elements, and those elements are not in its own control.” I agree with Mr. Mathew Arnold. Genius is a natural production, just as are chickweed and roses; under certain conditions it matures; under others it dies; and the deplorable dearth of talent among the novelists of to -day is owing to the action of the circulating library, which for the last thirty years has been staying the current of ideas, and quietly opposing the development of fresh thought. The poetry, the history, the biographies written in our time will live because they represent the best ideas of our time; but no novel written within the last ten years will live through a generation, because no writer pretends to deal with the moral and religious feeling of his day; and without that no writer will, no writer ever has been able to, invest his work with sufficient vitality to resist twenty years of criticism. When a book is bought it is read because the reader hopes to find an expression of ideas of the existence of which he is already dimly conscious. A literature produced to meet such hopes must of necessity be at once national and pregnant with the thought of the epoch in which it is written. Books, on the contrary, that are sent by the librarian to be returned in a few days, are glanced at with indifference, at most with the vapid curiosity with which we examine the landscape of a strange country seen through a railway-carriage window. The bond of sympathy that should exist between reader and writer is broken – a bond as sacred and as intimate as that which unites the tree to the earth – and those who do not live in communion with the thought of their age are enabled to sell their characterless trash; and a writer who is well known can command as large a sale for a bad book as a good one. The struggle for existence, therefore, no longer exists; the librarian rules the roost; he crows, and every chanticleer pitches his note in the same key. He, not the ladies and gentlemen who place their names on the title-pages, is the author of modern English fiction. He models it, fashions it to suit his purpose, and the artistic individualities of his employés count for as little as that of the makers of the pill-boxes in which are sold certain well-known and mildly purgative medicines. And in accordance with his wishes English fiction now consists of either a sentimental misunderstanding, which is happily cleared up in the end, or of singular escapes over the edges of precipices, and miraculous recoveries of one or more of the senses of which the hero was deprived, until the time has come for the author to bring his tale to a close. The novel of observation, of analysis, exists no longer among us. Why? Because the librarian does not feel as safe in circulating a study of life and manners as a tale concerning a lost will.

To analyze, you must have a subject; a religious or sensual passion is as necessary to the realistic novelist as a disease to the physician. The dissection of a healthy subject would not, as a rule, prove interesting, and if the right to probe and comment on humanity's frailties be granted, what becomes of the pretty schoolroom, with its piano tinkling away at the”Maiden's Prayer,” and the water-colour drawings representing mill-wheels and Welsh castles? The British mamma is determined that her daughter shall know nothing of life until she is married; at all events, that if she should learn anything, there should be no proof of her knowledge lying about the place – a book would be a proof; consequently the English novel is made so that it will fit in with the “Maiden's Prayer” and the water-mill. And as we are a thoroughly practical nation, the work is done thoroughly; root and branch are swept away, and we begin on a fresh basis, just as if Shakespeare and Ben Jonson had never existed. A novelist may say, “I do not wish to enter into those pretty schoolrooms. I agree with you, my book is not fit reading for young girls; but does this prove that I have written an immoral book?” The librarian answers, “I cater for the masses, and the masses are young unmarried women who are supposed to know but one side of life. I cannot therefore take your book.” And so it comes to pass that English literature is sacrificed on the altar of Hymen.

But let me not be misunderstood. I would not have it supposed that I am of opinion that literature can be glorified in the Temples of Venus. Were the freedom of speech I ask for to lead to this, we should have done no more than to have substituted one evil for another. There is a middle course, and I think it is this – to write as grown-up men and women talk of life's passions and duties. On one hand there must be no giggling over stories whispered in the corners of rooms; on the other, there must be no mock moral squeamishness about speaking of vice. We must write as our poems, our histories, our biographies are written, and give up once and for ever asking that most silly of all silly questions, “Can my daughter of eighteen read this book?” Let us renounce the effort to reconcile those two irreconcilable things – art and young girls. That these young people should be provided with a literature suited to their age and taste, no artist will deny; all I ask is that some means may be devised by which the novelist will be allowed to describe the moral and religious feeling of his day as he perceives it to exist, and to be forced no longer to write with a view of helping parents and guardians to bring up their charges in all the traditional beliefs.

It is doubtless a terrible thing to advocate the breaking down of the thirty-one and sixpenny safeguards, and to place it in the power of a young girl to buy an immoral book if she chooses to do so; but I am afraid it cannot be helped. Important an element as she undoubtedly is in our sociological system, still we must not lose sight of everything but her; and that the nineteenth century should possess a literature characteristic of its nervous, passionate life, I hold is as desirable, and would be as far-reaching in its effects, as the biggest franchise bill ever planned. But even for the alarmed mother I have a word of consolation. For should her daughter, when our novels are sold for half-a-crown in a paper cover, become possessed of one written by a member of the school to which I have the honour to belong, I will vouch that no unfortunate results are the consequence of the reading. The close analysis of a passion has no attraction for the young girl. When she is seduced through the influence of a novel, it is by a romantic story, the action of which is laid outside the limits of her experience. A pair of lovers – such as Paul and Virginia – separated by cruel fate, whose lives are apparently nothing but a long cry of yearning and fidelity, who seem to live, as it were, independent of the struggle for life, is the book that more often than any other leads to sin; it teaches the reader to look to a false ideal, and gives her – for men have ceased to read novels in England – erroneous and superficial notions of the value of life and love.

All these evils are inherent in the “select” circulating library, but when in addition it sets up a censorship and suppresses works of which it does not approve, it is time to appeal to the public to put an end to such dictatorship, in a very practical way, by withdrawing its support from any library that refuses to supply the books it desires to read.

GEORGE MOORE.