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!

My statement

Monday, January 16th., St. Dunstan's Chambers, London.

A Russian proverb: "If everyone washed his own doorstep, how clean the town would be!" This made me smile and is increasingly subtle the more one thinks about it.

Looking through some short stories in old volumes of a weekly paper today, I was astonished at the old-fashioned air of them. Mediocre work must age very rapidly. These tales appeared in 1893, and they were positively antique. On the other hand there are stories which defy ageing, remaining fresh to the reader whenever their genesis. What is the difference? Craft.

Several people who should know better have cast missiles at me recently for troubling with sensational serials. But why should I not write a sensational serial if I so desire? Exciting fiction is as much a form of art as any other sort of fiction. In fact I finished a serial last night and I may say, quite without prejudice, that it seems to me to be very good - ingenious, full of trepidations, and eloquent; those who begin it will finish it. There is talk of 'pot boiling', a pejorative term if ever there was one. Snobbish. William Morris says that he does not want art for the few any more than he wants education for the few, or freedom for the few. I do not want literature for the few. In my opinion there are two sorts of books: well written ones, and poorly written ones.

Then there is the question of making a living. I have no intention of sitting here all my life editing a female paper, or any paper. In fact I have now had as much of editing as I want. My desire is to be moving on and I shall not remain at Woman a moment longer than I can help. But if I leave journalism I must find something else, amd that something else is fiction. It dawns upon me that fiction is my forte. But if I continue to turn out psychological treatises like "A Man from the North", I might earn some sort of reputation, but I should not, most emphatically, earn a livelihood. Therefore I must do, to begin with, the kind of fiction that will sell. And as long as my fiction is well written I shall not be ashamed of it.

Confidences

Friday, January 4th., Trinity Hall Farm, Hockliffe, Bedfordshire.

As we drove through Battlesden Park on a misty moist morning yesterday, Kennerley and Tertia in front, and Sharpe and I cramped and pinched behind, I had a sense of a constantly unrolling panorama of large rounded meadows, studded with immense bare cedars, also of a formal and balanced shape; bulls and sheep, all of fine breeds, wandered vaguely about; sometimes a house; often a gate to be opened, and Spot gallivanting tirelessly around the trap; in one distant clump of trees we saw a rook perched on an invisible twig on the top of a high elm; in the mist he seemed enormous, an incredible motionless fowl; at length he sretched his wings slowly, sank gently forward, and beat heavily away into the distance. Everything was a vague green and dark grey in the fog - everything except the red hips and the staring white of Spot's coat. 

On the way home we called for a dead snipe that had been given to us: the first snipe that I had ever seen; I was naively astonished at its small proportions, and the impossible length of its thin bill. 

In the afternoon Tertia began, at my request, to teach me to bake. I have very few practical skills but felt I could take to baking, and do it well. Here it seems very appropriate, in the same way that it would be appropriate to tend a vegetable garden, or shoot game. I enjoyed it and produced a very creditable mincemeat tart which was much admired at supper. There is a a real satisfaction in making things well. I expect William Morris tried his hand at baking. Tertia and I had quite a talk whilst alone in the kitchen. It seemed conducive to confidences. I told her about some of my experiences and misadventures in Paris and she confessed that she was not a virgin; it seems that she and Willie Boulton had anticipated their conjugal state. She said she didn't regret doing so, and was just glad that there had been no consequence. She is quite 'over' Willie's tragic death now, and has hopes of the relationship with Kennerley.

Musings

Tuesday, July 23rd., Les Sablons, Fontainebleau.

I began to see yesterday how my 'fine writing' and illuminating must develop. I saw that I could only advance with any hope of continuing by uniting utility with beauty; that I must not therefore make fine manuscripts for the sake of making them, but rather in connection with my own work; also that I must form a natural hand that could be written quickly. These principles having been arrived at, I began to practise a little. It occurs to me that in this respect, if no other, I am in tune with Morris's 'Arts and Crafts' movement.
See also, 'Finishing Clayhanger' - June 23rd., http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/finishing-clayhanger.html

Marguerite and I went for a short walk in the forest last night. The moon was nearly full and very bright. But the effect was disappointing. I have noticed this before. To be at its best moonlight wants to be seen over a large flat landscape or on water. There is very little in the tree-tracery business - silhouetted against the moon, etc.

Yesterday I walked along by the Seine again in the morning, and constructed the short story which is ordered for delivery by the end of the month. In the afternoon I seemed to do nothing but oddments of high unimportance.

Finishing Clayhanger

Thursday, June 23rd., Villa des Nefliers, Fontainebleau.

I have just (3 p.m.) finished "Clayhanger" one week in advance of time. 160,800 words. For the last few days it has monopolised me. But quite contrary to my general practice towards the end of a novel I have kept in magnificent health.

I was thinking about William Morris, and, looking back in this journal to October 3rd., 1896, I see that I wrote "William Morris died". That is all!

Water House, Walthamstow

I wish I had made the opportunity when I lived in London to make his acquaintance, or at least to attend one of the socialist meetings at which he was a speaker. I have visited Water House in Walthamstow, where he lived from 1848 to 1856, and Red House in Bexleyheath which he had built, and where he went to live when he married Jane Burden. Remarkable to me, as I think now, is the scope of his activity: a talented artist and designer; no mean poet; bibliophile; businessman; author; public speaker .... The time he spent in Iceland seems to have been particularly significant for him.

As for socialism, I can't help but wonder how the 'figures' of socialism like Morris, the Webbs, Shaw and Wells, reconcile their beliefs with their lifestyle. Obviously if they gave away all their wealth it would be the merest drop in the ocean and would make no practical difference to the generality of class inequality; but still?