Saturday, December 25th., Cadogan Square, London.
This Xmas all right, though I did not have a good night before it. It was all organised by Dorothy, and she made it very successful. It was her first Christmas in charge of a household. I have no doubt that, if asked, she would say that it was success in spite of, rather than because of, me. I have acquired a reputation as a 'bah... humbug' sort of person, which I think is undeserved. It makes sense to me that there should be a festival mid-winter, to mark the turn of the seasons, but it is all the frenzied preparations and materiality which give me offence. I blame Dickens!
Another area in which I am misunderstood is in my tendency to question things. I don't like to take things for granted but when I pose a simple question it is often interpreted as my being negative. For example whilst we were out walking yesterday we saw an old lady standing by herself and seeming to be in need of help. I was on my way to offer assistance but a young man beat me to it. The lady thanked him but said she was quite all right, just taking a rest. It was suggested to me that this was an example of how kind people could be. I agreed but pointed out that even to offer help is not a selfless act, because the person offering gets a psychological reward; they feel themselves to be a good person. In my view there is no such thing as 'pure' altruism. I did not intend to minimise the action but was nevertheless condemned as a grumpy old detractor. Well, at least that is correct in part!
I have opened my presents. Some are consumable, which is good. Some are books, which is better. Some are puzzles, which suggests to me that there is a suspicion abroad that I am in need of mental stimulation to counteract the effects of ageing.
Showing posts with label Dickens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dickens. Show all posts
Tuesday, 25 December 2018
Wednesday, 24 January 2018
Idleness and dawdling
Wednesday, January 24th., Cadogan Sqaure, London.
I find that I am not yet out of the wood of my recent article on Balzac wherein I asserted that work did not kill people. Mr James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express, has emerged on a weekday with a most scandalous article about this. In calling the article scandalous I refer to its anti-work attitude, not to its personalities which are merely the product of Douglas's characteristic undisciplined didacticism, are innocuous and even touching. I have crossed swords with Douglas before. He it was who called for an immediate ban on "The Well of Loneliness" stating that "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of
prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body but moral poison
kills the soul." This was an act of stunt journalism, typical of the Sunday Express, which appalled many notable figures in the literary world, myself includud.
Douglas says that people are killed by work. He talks of 'work addicts' who work 'right around the clock', their arteries hardened, their blood pressure high, their heart muscles enfeebled. I have not met one. Nor had I lunatics in mind when I made my assertion. Douglas claims that Dickens died of work. He did not. Dickens, of a very histrionic temperament, had a passion for exhibiting himself, which passion, together with his passion for money, led him to give incessant readings. He continued to give readings even when his health was such that he had to be followed about by a doctor. It was addiction to readings and a scramble for money that killed him. Dickens could have done his work easily enough if he had kept his energy for his work. He didn't. Trollope worked harder than Dickens, and work did not kill Trollope.
If authors die too soon, the reason is that they have not learnt how to live. Few authors know how to treat their bodies sensibly. Witness the number of them who wake uip exhausted and cannot even begin to work until the afternoon: sure proof of an idiotic way of life. Balzac for example. For myself I have not worked in the evening for over a quarter of a century. Nor would I. Some will say that they await inspiration and must work when it is upon them. I say they are self-excusers and fundamentally disorganised.
Douglas's article is scandalous because it is an apology for idleness and dawdling, the sins of an age which exults in cocktails and bed at 2 a.m., after a wanton waste of four to six hours of eternity; an age whose great schools and universities frown on work. Mr Julian Hall in a recently published book endorses H G Wells' phrase about 'the waste of seriousness' at our ancient universities. Hall says that youth is sceptical and that "the sceptic has no sense of certain activities having more claim on him than others." A rather profound remark! There is a difference between work and play, and the latter is relatively unimportant, though not,it seems, to Mr James Douglas.
About the word 'motivate'. I used it last week and have been vituperated for using it by classical scholars, authors, journalists and members of the learned professions. They throw doubt on its authenticity and condemn it as ugly. It is not uglier than irritate, descrate, palpitate, procrastinate, or ipecacuanha. As for authenticity, I contend that it is a good English word, that has been in constant use for sixty years at least, that there is no alternative verb, and that I propose to go on using it. I will not guarantee not to use it next week.
I find that I am not yet out of the wood of my recent article on Balzac wherein I asserted that work did not kill people. Mr James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express, has emerged on a weekday with a most scandalous article about this. In calling the article scandalous I refer to its anti-work attitude, not to its personalities which are merely the product of Douglas's characteristic undisciplined didacticism, are innocuous and even touching. I have crossed swords with Douglas before. He it was who called for an immediate ban on "The Well of Loneliness" stating that "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of
prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body but moral poison
kills the soul." This was an act of stunt journalism, typical of the Sunday Express, which appalled many notable figures in the literary world, myself includud.Douglas says that people are killed by work. He talks of 'work addicts' who work 'right around the clock', their arteries hardened, their blood pressure high, their heart muscles enfeebled. I have not met one. Nor had I lunatics in mind when I made my assertion. Douglas claims that Dickens died of work. He did not. Dickens, of a very histrionic temperament, had a passion for exhibiting himself, which passion, together with his passion for money, led him to give incessant readings. He continued to give readings even when his health was such that he had to be followed about by a doctor. It was addiction to readings and a scramble for money that killed him. Dickens could have done his work easily enough if he had kept his energy for his work. He didn't. Trollope worked harder than Dickens, and work did not kill Trollope.
If authors die too soon, the reason is that they have not learnt how to live. Few authors know how to treat their bodies sensibly. Witness the number of them who wake uip exhausted and cannot even begin to work until the afternoon: sure proof of an idiotic way of life. Balzac for example. For myself I have not worked in the evening for over a quarter of a century. Nor would I. Some will say that they await inspiration and must work when it is upon them. I say they are self-excusers and fundamentally disorganised.
Douglas's article is scandalous because it is an apology for idleness and dawdling, the sins of an age which exults in cocktails and bed at 2 a.m., after a wanton waste of four to six hours of eternity; an age whose great schools and universities frown on work. Mr Julian Hall in a recently published book endorses H G Wells' phrase about 'the waste of seriousness' at our ancient universities. Hall says that youth is sceptical and that "the sceptic has no sense of certain activities having more claim on him than others." A rather profound remark! There is a difference between work and play, and the latter is relatively unimportant, though not,it seems, to Mr James Douglas.
About the word 'motivate'. I used it last week and have been vituperated for using it by classical scholars, authors, journalists and members of the learned professions. They throw doubt on its authenticity and condemn it as ugly. It is not uglier than irritate, descrate, palpitate, procrastinate, or ipecacuanha. As for authenticity, I contend that it is a good English word, that has been in constant use for sixty years at least, that there is no alternative verb, and that I propose to go on using it. I will not guarantee not to use it next week.
Wednesday, 10 January 2018
Death by coffee?
Wednesday, January 10th., Cadogan Square, London
Balzac is one of the most romantic figures in the history of fiction. To me possibly the most romantic of all. I should say that no novelist was ever so dominated by the demon of creative work as Balzac. It is generally believed that he died, at age 50, of work. But I doubt if work ever killed anybody. Balzac's death was due rather to his insane methods of work, and to excessive coffee. When other people went to bed, Balzac went to work. He worked all night and drank coffee all night. Apparently he once wrote 80 pages of a novel in a night. If he had known how to organise his energies he might just have well have written those pages in the daylight. At another period, when ill, defying his doctor, he worked 18 hours at a stretch.
Balzac however was incapable of organising his energy. In practical matters he was a perfect fool. His absurd business schemes were deservedly disastrous. He made quite a lot of money but was usually hard up. Seemingly, his dentist sent him to prison for an unpaid bill! He was always talking about francs; and his novels are full of francs; so are his letters. He wasted half a fortune on proof corrections, simply because he was always in a hurry.
He must have been a very restless worker; probably an effect of the coffee. He once exclaimed: "This year I have killed two armchairs under me." Which means that he either couldn't sit still or the armchairs were acutely gimcrack. One thing is to Balzac's credit in the enterprise of daily existence - he never made his wife unhappy. Because he never lived with a wife. Had he done so he would undoubtedly have made her unhappy, but she would certainly have cured him of working excessively. This consequential result I can attest to from personal experience.
Balzac entirely changed the status of the novel. Nobody before him had ever written novels with the scope of his. And for 80 years afterwards nobody enlarged the scope further. And very few novelists have proved able to draw characters as completely, or as powerfully, as Balzac. Balzac created new characters as easily as Dickens, and far more completely. It appears that for him his characters achieved an independent existence - on his death bed he is alleged to have called out for the character Bianchon, a doctor, to be called to save him!
In recent years I have re-read much Balzac, and regret to say that some of it dates. But the best of his novels do not date. For instance "Cousin Bette", which I always held, and still hold, to be the finest of the lot. Never was achieved a better, more heroical, more ruthless, more touching portrait of a libertine than the portrait of Hulot in this masterpiece.
Balzac is one of the most romantic figures in the history of fiction. To me possibly the most romantic of all. I should say that no novelist was ever so dominated by the demon of creative work as Balzac. It is generally believed that he died, at age 50, of work. But I doubt if work ever killed anybody. Balzac's death was due rather to his insane methods of work, and to excessive coffee. When other people went to bed, Balzac went to work. He worked all night and drank coffee all night. Apparently he once wrote 80 pages of a novel in a night. If he had known how to organise his energies he might just have well have written those pages in the daylight. At another period, when ill, defying his doctor, he worked 18 hours at a stretch.
Balzac however was incapable of organising his energy. In practical matters he was a perfect fool. His absurd business schemes were deservedly disastrous. He made quite a lot of money but was usually hard up. Seemingly, his dentist sent him to prison for an unpaid bill! He was always talking about francs; and his novels are full of francs; so are his letters. He wasted half a fortune on proof corrections, simply because he was always in a hurry.He must have been a very restless worker; probably an effect of the coffee. He once exclaimed: "This year I have killed two armchairs under me." Which means that he either couldn't sit still or the armchairs were acutely gimcrack. One thing is to Balzac's credit in the enterprise of daily existence - he never made his wife unhappy. Because he never lived with a wife. Had he done so he would undoubtedly have made her unhappy, but she would certainly have cured him of working excessively. This consequential result I can attest to from personal experience.
Balzac entirely changed the status of the novel. Nobody before him had ever written novels with the scope of his. And for 80 years afterwards nobody enlarged the scope further. And very few novelists have proved able to draw characters as completely, or as powerfully, as Balzac. Balzac created new characters as easily as Dickens, and far more completely. It appears that for him his characters achieved an independent existence - on his death bed he is alleged to have called out for the character Bianchon, a doctor, to be called to save him!
In recent years I have re-read much Balzac, and regret to say that some of it dates. But the best of his novels do not date. For instance "Cousin Bette", which I always held, and still hold, to be the finest of the lot. Never was achieved a better, more heroical, more ruthless, more touching portrait of a libertine than the portrait of Hulot in this masterpiece.
Thursday, 5 October 2017
Defending Anna
Thursday, October 5th., Trinity Hall Farm,
I received a letter last week from George Sturt containing his impressions having read Anna of the Five Towns. I value his friendship and his opinion but felt it necessary to write back in rather harsh terms because his critique was just plain wrong. I have a suspicion that he is just the least bit jealous of the novel's reception.
He described the novel as a 'partial failure' and I had to comment that the partial failure was not in the novel but in himself. he said that the characters did not seem 'real' or 'intimate' to him but this is clearly at odds with the ompression of every other person, expert or inexpert who has taken the trouble to say anything at all to me about the book. The general view is that the characters are intensely real. I have been amazed at the extraordinary enthusiasm of people about the reality, the conviction, and the appeal of the book. What astounded me most was Sturt's remark that I refuse to be emotional and am 'unimpassioned'. The book is emotional and impassioned from beginning to end. I think Sturt is looking for something which will never be found in my fiction, or any first rate modern fiction - the Dickens or Thackeray grossness. I don't feel it necessary to have them weep and shout all over the place to prove my characters' emotional sensibilities.
I concluded by saying that, though it is a singular and surprising thing to become aware of, his taste in imaginative work is crude and unreliable. I don't believe he has any genuine critical standard. It may be that this will be the end of our friendship which would be a pity, but I just could not let things fester in my heart - I needed to defend Anna.
I received a letter last week from George Sturt containing his impressions having read Anna of the Five Towns. I value his friendship and his opinion but felt it necessary to write back in rather harsh terms because his critique was just plain wrong. I have a suspicion that he is just the least bit jealous of the novel's reception.
He described the novel as a 'partial failure' and I had to comment that the partial failure was not in the novel but in himself. he said that the characters did not seem 'real' or 'intimate' to him but this is clearly at odds with the ompression of every other person, expert or inexpert who has taken the trouble to say anything at all to me about the book. The general view is that the characters are intensely real. I have been amazed at the extraordinary enthusiasm of people about the reality, the conviction, and the appeal of the book. What astounded me most was Sturt's remark that I refuse to be emotional and am 'unimpassioned'. The book is emotional and impassioned from beginning to end. I think Sturt is looking for something which will never be found in my fiction, or any first rate modern fiction - the Dickens or Thackeray grossness. I don't feel it necessary to have them weep and shout all over the place to prove my characters' emotional sensibilities.
I concluded by saying that, though it is a singular and surprising thing to become aware of, his taste in imaginative work is crude and unreliable. I don't believe he has any genuine critical standard. It may be that this will be the end of our friendship which would be a pity, but I just could not let things fester in my heart - I needed to defend Anna.
Saturday, 1 March 2014
A significant purchase
Tuesday, March 1st., Rue de Calais, Paris.
I bought a new copy of "La Grande Encyclopedie", bound in cloth, 31 volumes for 290 francs, yesterday morning. It can be bought through Le Journal for about 400 francs. It seems a good thing and I read 'in' it yesterday. I found however nothing under the head of 'Cotgrave'; I wanted the date of the first edition of his dictionary. Schwob, on whom I called yesterday afternoon, praised it highly. He mentioned specially such articles as "Aristotle" by Boutroux, as being the very finest of their kind. I looked up this and it certainly impressed me. Brunetiere's article on "style" is admirable; also Remy de Gourmont's on "Aretino".
Schwob was in bed, and had been there for a month. We discussed the war, and Dickens. He stood up for Dickens, and said that, for style, the opening of "Hard Times" is one of the finest things in English. Of course I disagreed. He said that Dickens's ghost story "The Signalman", was plagiarised from something in Defoe's essay on apparitions, but much improved. He told me about the dinner to Edmund Gosse. Said Gosse was charming but pedantic.
For more on "The Signalman" see 'Uncanny things'
Schwob was in bed, and had been there for a month. We discussed the war, and Dickens. He stood up for Dickens, and said that, for style, the opening of "Hard Times" is one of the finest things in English. Of course I disagreed. He said that Dickens's ghost story "The Signalman", was plagiarised from something in Defoe's essay on apparitions, but much improved. He told me about the dinner to Edmund Gosse. Said Gosse was charming but pedantic.
For more on "The Signalman" see 'Uncanny things'
Thursday, 20 June 2013
Pickwick's Inn
Sunday, June 20th., Great White Horse Hotel, Ipswich.
With what reluctance one leaves the sea! Perhaps only a person born and raised in the middle of England can fully appreciate the pull which the sea can exert on an active imagination.
Ipswich is a closely-knit town, reminding one in its contours and large masses of the eighteenth-century parts of Bruges. Many of the streets were crudely decorated with the primary colours of flags, and the continual clashing of church bells indicated that this was the Day of Thanksgiving for the Queen's long reign.
Tonight we "lie" at the Great White Horse, Pickwick's inn, and by good fortune have been allotted the Pickwick bedroom, No. 36, an immense apartment, accommodating three, and labelled outside "Pickwick". On the walls an extremely bad oil painting of a Pickwick banquet. "A facsimile of this hotel was erected at the World's Fair, Chicago, as one of the celebrated old inns of this country." In many ways it has been modernised, but still keeps the air of the ancient hostelry.
It was at the door of this overgrown tavern that the London coach stopped, at the same hour every evening; and it was from this same London coach that Mr. Pickwick, Sam Weller, and Mr. Peter Magnus dismounted, on the particular evening to which this chapter of our history bears reference… ‘Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Chapter 22.
With what reluctance one leaves the sea! Perhaps only a person born and raised in the middle of England can fully appreciate the pull which the sea can exert on an active imagination.
Ipswich is a closely-knit town, reminding one in its contours and large masses of the eighteenth-century parts of Bruges. Many of the streets were crudely decorated with the primary colours of flags, and the continual clashing of church bells indicated that this was the Day of Thanksgiving for the Queen's long reign.
‘… In the main street of Ipswich, on the left-hand side of the way, a short distance after you have passed through the open space fronting the Town Hall, stands an inn known far and wide by the appellation of the Great White Horse, rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some rampacious animal with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an insane cart-horse, which is elevated above the principal door. The Great White Horse is famous in the neighbourhood, in the same degree as a prize ox, or a county-paper-chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig-for its enormous size. Never was such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof, as are collected together between the four walls of the Great White Horse at Ipswich.
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Uncanny things
Sunday, November 28th., London.
Talking about things uncanny, Webster said that the weirdest thing of all was the vibrating cry of the snipe on the moors at night - a cry which you hear, faint and wavering, in the distance, and which the next second has shot past your ears in the darkness. This bird is also called the bog-bleater; Webster said that its cry had been termed "the wail of a lost soul", and that the name was justified. There is nothing more horribly scaring, and the awfulness of it cannot be conceived by those who have not heard it. He described it effectively as "the last cry on earth", and related how, as a child, he had been lost all night on the Westmorland moors; his terror of the invisible snipes shooting across the waste with their awful cries; and his terror of stepping into a bog.
Then he told me of his sole experience of ghosts. On a hill near Milnthorpe is a ruined cottage, said to be haunted. A man and his wife had lived there, and one night the man, being called away, gave a gun into his wife's hands for her protection and told her to shoot anything that appeared. Before he had proceeded far, he recollected that he had left something behind him, and returning to his cottage was shot by his wife. Hence the ghost.
It seems that Webster was walking late in a dark lane near the ruin - a lane with a dreadful reputation for spirits - when he saw a sombre figure in front of him. It advanced to within a few paces of him, and then grew large and wide, till it towered above him. Then it collapsed and Webster was standing in the middle of it. At last it edged away from him, face upwards, with a curious backward motion on hands and feet. As soon as it had moved, Webster turned and ran two miles to the nearest humanity ... He was a child, and thinks now the appearance was merely a subjective hallucination, but at the time nothing could have been more real to him.
Webster related these stories with extraordinary graphic effectiveness. As he spoke of the terrors of the bog-bleater and his night on the moor, I had one of those periodical glimpses which are vouchsafed to me occasionally, of the vast crowd of wonderful sensations and experiences that a dweller in towns, like myself, is debarred from .... A night on the moors, alone, with the snipe winging and crying about one .... The townsman can scarcely imagine it!
All this leads me to think of ghost stories, but I hardly think I have the sort of imagination to produce one effectively. My particular favourite is Dickens' "The Signalman". I cannot read it without a chill passing along my spine, my breathing becoming shallow and my heart starting to race! Dickens was a master of atmosphere and excels himself in this short story.
<http://www.spookyisles.com/2012/06/charles-dickens-the-signalman/>
Virginia Woolf is a very different sort of writer and I have today reviewed "A Room of One's Own" in the Evening Standard. I have often been informed by the elect that a feud exists between Virginia Woolf and myself, and I dare say that she has received the same tidings. Possibly she and I are the only two lettered persons unaware of this feud. True, she has written a book about me and a mythical Mrs. Brown. But I have not read the book (I don't know why). True, I always said, until she wrote To The Lighthouse that she had not written a good novel. But I have said the same of lots of my novelist friends. True, she is the queen of the high-brows; and I am a low-brow. But it takes all sorts of brows to make a world, and without a large admixture of low-brows even Bloomsbury would be uninhabitable. One thing I have said of her: she can write. A Room of One's Own is a further demonstration of this truth. However, she suggests that five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door are the essential prerequisites to writing fiction or poetry. I beg to state that I have myself written long and formidable novels in bedrooms whose doors certainly had no locks, and in the full dreadful knowledge that I had not five hundred a year of my own - nor fifty. And I beg to state further that from the moment when I obtained possession of both money and a lockable door all the high-brows in London conspired together to assert that I could no longer write.
Talking about things uncanny, Webster said that the weirdest thing of all was the vibrating cry of the snipe on the moors at night - a cry which you hear, faint and wavering, in the distance, and which the next second has shot past your ears in the darkness. This bird is also called the bog-bleater; Webster said that its cry had been termed "the wail of a lost soul", and that the name was justified. There is nothing more horribly scaring, and the awfulness of it cannot be conceived by those who have not heard it. He described it effectively as "the last cry on earth", and related how, as a child, he had been lost all night on the Westmorland moors; his terror of the invisible snipes shooting across the waste with their awful cries; and his terror of stepping into a bog.
Then he told me of his sole experience of ghosts. On a hill near Milnthorpe is a ruined cottage, said to be haunted. A man and his wife had lived there, and one night the man, being called away, gave a gun into his wife's hands for her protection and told her to shoot anything that appeared. Before he had proceeded far, he recollected that he had left something behind him, and returning to his cottage was shot by his wife. Hence the ghost.
It seems that Webster was walking late in a dark lane near the ruin - a lane with a dreadful reputation for spirits - when he saw a sombre figure in front of him. It advanced to within a few paces of him, and then grew large and wide, till it towered above him. Then it collapsed and Webster was standing in the middle of it. At last it edged away from him, face upwards, with a curious backward motion on hands and feet. As soon as it had moved, Webster turned and ran two miles to the nearest humanity ... He was a child, and thinks now the appearance was merely a subjective hallucination, but at the time nothing could have been more real to him.
Webster related these stories with extraordinary graphic effectiveness. As he spoke of the terrors of the bog-bleater and his night on the moor, I had one of those periodical glimpses which are vouchsafed to me occasionally, of the vast crowd of wonderful sensations and experiences that a dweller in towns, like myself, is debarred from .... A night on the moors, alone, with the snipe winging and crying about one .... The townsman can scarcely imagine it!
All this leads me to think of ghost stories, but I hardly think I have the sort of imagination to produce one effectively. My particular favourite is Dickens' "The Signalman". I cannot read it without a chill passing along my spine, my breathing becoming shallow and my heart starting to race! Dickens was a master of atmosphere and excels himself in this short story.
<http://www.spookyisles.com/2012/06/charles-dickens-the-signalman/>
Virginia Woolf is a very different sort of writer and I have today reviewed "A Room of One's Own" in the Evening Standard. I have often been informed by the elect that a feud exists between Virginia Woolf and myself, and I dare say that she has received the same tidings. Possibly she and I are the only two lettered persons unaware of this feud. True, she has written a book about me and a mythical Mrs. Brown. But I have not read the book (I don't know why). True, I always said, until she wrote To The Lighthouse that she had not written a good novel. But I have said the same of lots of my novelist friends. True, she is the queen of the high-brows; and I am a low-brow. But it takes all sorts of brows to make a world, and without a large admixture of low-brows even Bloomsbury would be uninhabitable. One thing I have said of her: she can write. A Room of One's Own is a further demonstration of this truth. However, she suggests that five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door are the essential prerequisites to writing fiction or poetry. I beg to state that I have myself written long and formidable novels in bedrooms whose doors certainly had no locks, and in the full dreadful knowledge that I had not five hundred a year of my own - nor fifty. And I beg to state further that from the moment when I obtained possession of both money and a lockable door all the high-brows in London conspired together to assert that I could no longer write.
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