Bad!

Thursday, January 6th., Cadogan Square, London.

I bought "Treasure Island" yesterday, as I had lately heard such praise of it. All I remember of my first reading, many years ago, is that I liked it. I read a lot of it yesterday afternoon and a little more this morning. All I can say is that I thought it wasn't so bad. I have a soft spot for a rollicking good story, like Haggard's early stuff for example. Sometimes you just want to be carried away by the story, not caring about obvious gaps in the plot or inconsistent characterisation. Whatever you say about Stevenson, he did know how to tell a story. And think of the influence he has had with this book on how people think. Ask anybody what they think of when they think of pirates and they will say things like: "peg-leg", "parrot", "buried treasure", "pieces of eight".

Of course the moral and artistic value of any particular book published now is unknowable to us. Posterity alone will judge our books. I hope it will judge mine favourably. We can however immediately judge the value of our books considered as physical objects. And this consideration has importance. Most books, and especially most novels, are bad examples of the art and craft of making books. They are badly set-up from bad founts of type in a badly designed page, printed on bad paper, badly bound, and enveloped in bad dust covers. They offend the eye of taste; they offend an honest partiality for sound workmanship, and when you have read them they look as misshapen as if they had been thrown down in Piccadilly and run over by a motor bus. I think I may be turning into William Morris in my old age!