A Likely Story

by William De Morgan

  AN APOLOGY IN CONFIDENCE

  _The present writer has a weight upon his conscience. But he has nodesire to disburden himself at the expense of the future reader of hisworks. This is addressed solely to those whom he has acquired theright to apostrophize as "My readers"; and, indeed, properlyspeaking, only to such of them as were misled by a too generousappreciation of his first four novels, into purchasing his fifth. Forhe cannot free himself from a haunting sense that he was guilty ofa gross neglect in not giving them fuller warning that the said fifthvolume was not Early Victorian, either in style or substance._

  _It is well understood nowadays--and it is not for so humble anindividual as the P. W. aforesaid to call in question the judgmentsof everybody else--that each living author, whether he be painter orwriter, shall produce at suitable intervals, preferably of twelvemonths, a picture or volume on all fours with the work from hishand which has first attracted public attention. And theP. W. cannot conceal from himself that in publishing, without a solemnwarning addressed to possible purchasers, such a novel as his last("An Affair of Dishonour": Heinemann), he has run the risk ofincurring the execration or forgiveness--the upshot is the same--ofmany of his most tolerant and patient readers, to remain on goodterms with whom is, and always will be, his literary ambition._

  _For the "Affair" is certainly not an Early Victorian story inthe ordinary sense of the words. A certain latitude has beenclaimed by some critics in the choice of names for the periods treatedof in the other humble performances of its author; but so far nocommentator has called its epoch--that of Charles II.--"EarlyVictorian." It has been spoken of freely as sixteenth andeighteenth century; but that is immaterial. In fact, it is difficult toresist the conviction that in what may be called sporting chronology--asystem which seems to have a certain vogue of its own--so longas the writer says "century," one number does as well as anotherto make the sentence ring. The expression "Early Victorian,"however, is embarrassingly circumscribed in its meaning. Ifcannot be applied at random to any period whatever, withoutdanger of the Sciolist, or the Merest Tyro, going to the BritishMuseum and getting at Haydn's "Dictionary of Dates," andcatching you out. Still, it does not do to be too positive; seeing thatthe P. W. has here--and can show it you in the house--what seemsa description of the Restoration as "Pre-Cromwellian." Thereit is, before him, as he presently writes, on the shiniest paper thatever made an old fogy wish he had been born fifty years earlier._[#]

  [#] _I will be just and generous to this writer simultaneously. TheProtector was born in 1599. Pre-Cromwellian days were the sixteenthcentury, clearly. In the sixteenth century St. James's and Piccadillywould not be includable in residential quarters, because the latter wasnot born or thought of. If by Pre-Cromwellian this writer meansPre-Commonwealth, the inclusion of Piccadilly in the description of acountry girl's conception of swell London, written a hundred yearslater, when Piccadilly was "fait accompli," seems to me not unnatural.I am bound to say, however, that when I first read the passage(p. 181)--immediately after I had written it--I thought "those days" meantthe days of the story. Analysis of London topography would have beenout of place in treating of the cogitations of a country girl unfamiliarwith the metropolis._

  _To fulfil the conditions which literary usage appears to dictate,and to signalise his conformity with public opinion, there is nodoubt that the writer of "An Affair of Dishonour"--or, shall Idrop the thin veil adopted to avoid egotism, and say I myself--shouldhave made that work not only Early Victorian, but Suburban.For, as I understand, I am expected to be Suburban. This is lessdifficult, as suburbs do not depend on chroniclers, like periods, butremain to speak for themselves. One knows when one is beingSuburban. Among epochs one treads gingerly, like the skater onice that scarcely bears him. I may take as an instance a book Iwrote, called "Somehow Good," whose cradle, as it were, was theTwopenny Tube. The frequent reference to this story as an "EarlyVictorian" tale has impressed me that Early Victorianism is anabstract quality, which owes its fascination neither to its earliness,nor to its epoch. I am stating the case broadly, but as this isentirely between ourselves, very great niceties are hardly called for.We may leave the Sciolist, and the Merest Tyro, to fight aboutniceties. On the other hand, outside opinion, though a little vagueabout Early Victorianism, has not been inconsistent aboutSuburbanity. It has shrewdly identified, in my first four novels, theSuburban character of Tooting, Balham, Hampstead, Putney,Shepherd's Bush, and Wimbledon; and I now perceive that myreader was entitled to expect Clapham Junction or Peckham Bye,at least. Nothing would have pleased me better, when writing mylast book, than to supply the nearest practicable Carolean equivalent,had I seen more clearly how the land lay. However, it's done nowand can't be helped._

  _Broadly speaking, then, non-Victorianity and defective Suburbanityseem to be responsible for my slump in conformity. And,though I have to go to America for distinct proofs of it, I am obligedto recognise suggestions of the same critical decision nearer home.The first three of the following American reviews appeared atintervals in the same journal, showing how deeply the writer hadtaken my delinquency to heart:_

  "_Probably written years ago, and found in an old desk._"

  "_A totally uncharacteristic and thoroughly disappointing 'historicalromance._'"

  "'_A perfectly good cat,' that I have found in the literary ash-pan.... differs from everything that has cometo us previously from the author's pen,as lifeless clay differs from living spirit._"

  "_Wherein lies the superiority of fiction that can give us nothing betterthan this?_"

  "_It is not, in itself, worth reading ... being an unpleasant, unexciting,and unoriginal experiment in historical romance ... leaving us disappointedof what we hoped for, and unedified by what we get._"

  "_The ghosts of 'David Copperfield' and 'Joseph Vance,' 'Alice-for-Short,'and the 'Little Marchioness,' may together weep pale spirit tears, or noblyrepress them, in the hope that 'It Never can Happen Again._'"

  "_We can but hope for a return from this invented matter and artificialstyle to an unabashed Victorianism, from which it should appear the authoris trying to escape._"

  _There is something spirited in a selection of quotations whichbegins and ends with such different conjectures as to the genesis oftheir subject. There can be no doubt about the earnestness of thehope expressed in the last one, for it is confirmed in the same wordsby more than one American journal_.[#]

  [#] The force of the unanimity of two or three American papers growsless when their reader perceives the verbal identity of the articlethroughout--and that their writers are not only unanimous, but unicorporeal.Numbers are impressive, but when they play fast and loose with pluralityin this way, all their edge is taken off.

  _Another accusation against me is that I have given up nicepeople, and only write about nasty ones. Is this true? I myselfthought Lucinda a nice enough girl, particularly when she wasfishing in the sea for the phosphorescence. All the same, thefollowing seemed to me quite a just comment, and very well worded:"There must have been something of Phaedra in Lucinda for herto act as she did, unless we are to revert to the belief in a banefulAphrodite no human will can resist." Something of Phaedra--butstill, I submit, not much, for Sir Oliver was passionately urgent;while Hippolytus--to borrow a phrase from Mrs. Steptoe, a quarterwhere I have unlimited credit--didn't want to any such a thing._

  _Every book has a right to an assumption intrinsically improbable,to make the story go. What a flat tragedy Hamlet would have beenwithout its fundamental ghost! And my "quidlibet audendi"is a small presumption compared with my giant namesake's. Ofcourse, I have no right to the comparison unless you grant likerights to tittlebat and leviathan. "Semper fiat aequa potestas,"for both. Indeed, the dwarf needs artificial latitude more than thegiant._

  _In my capacity of tittlebat in an estuary of Leviathan's greatsea--or, should I not rather say, a sandhopper on its coast?--Ihave assumed that this baneful Aphrodite no human will can resisthad possession of Lucinda; who w
as, and continued to be, a verynice girl for all that. Phaedra was not nice, because of the attitudeof Hippolytus, as sketched by Mrs. Steptoe; and even more becauseof the fibs she told when she found the young man blind to theattractions of his stepmother. Lucinda was not a bit the less nicebecause she was swept away by, absorbed into, crushed under, apassion of which she only knew that it was the reverse of hate, andof which few of us know much more. Indeed, all male persuasionsget so very mixed, owing to the Nature of Things, that they arealmost a negligible factor in the solution of the problem. Now andagain, however, it is hinted at by thoughtful male persons--Shakespeareand Browning, and the like. Read this, for instance:_

  "_But, please you, wonder I would put My cheek beneath that lady's foot; Rather than trample under mine The laurels of the Florentine, And you shall see how the Devil spends A fire God gave for other ends._

  "_I tell you, I stride up and down This garret, crowned with Love's best crown, And feasted with Love's perfect feast To think I kill for her at least Body and soul and peace and fame, Alike youth's end and manhood's aim._"

  /tb

  _Perhaps you will say that no ladylike, well-brought-up girl, everfeels so explosive. About a Man too--the idea! But for my part,I don't see that Browning's chap need have been a nasty chap.Nevertheless, my sense of the proprieties--which is keen--compelsme to admit that if I had a daughter, and she were to go on like that,I should feel it my duty to point out to her that if she continued todo so, she would run the risk of being taken for a suffragette, orsomething. I might get no farther, because I word things badly._

  _Lucinda, you see, might have gone on like that about Oliver;only no doubt the memory of old precepts hung about her, and actedas I trust my remonstrance would have done in the case of myhypothetical daughter. Anyhow, I do think that the time-honouredusage which keeps girls as ignorant of life as possible, so that theyshall be docile when a judicious Hymen offers them a marriagewith a suitable parti, ought at least, as a set-off, to gohand-in-hand with leniency towards this ignorance when it betrays itspossessor into an indiscretion she has no means of gauging thedangers of. For my belief is that the wickedness of her actionseemed purely academical to Lucinda. And Oliver knew how tomanage cases of this sort, bless you!_

  _As for him, I readily admit that he was not nice, but I take thetestimonials to his nastiness as complimentary. When an Italianaudience pelts Iago with rotten eggs, it is accepted by the actor asheartfelt praise. And you must have Devils, as well as Fairies,when it's in a Pantomime, as we all know. An unhappy authorwhom lack of material for copy has nearly qualified for Earlswoodcannot go on for ever writing about good people. He must have avillain, please, sooner or later!_

  _Nevertheless, some of my correspondents want to deprive me ofthis innocent luxury. Such an appeal as the following makes mefeel that I may have to "leave the killing out, when all is done._"

  "_Dear sir, can any 'success' that meets your latest story compensatefor the pain, and--so personal have you made our relations to you--thehumiliation so many of us feel?_

  "_Why leave the heights--the sunny hill-slopes--where we met youas a wise, sweet older brother, and lingered long after your story wasover, with stilled and strengthened hearts?_

  "_I am sure none of us is happier, and none certainly is better forbreathing the sickening air into which you have led us...._"

  Now, if I had published this story after a manifesto warning,cautioning, and earnestly entreating all readers who expected it tobe Victorian and Suburban to keep their money in their pockets,I should not be feeling, as I do now, that the writer of the aboveletter had been entrapped into reading it under false pretences. Ican only offer humble and heartfelt apology to the writers, Englishas well as American, of _the many letters I have received, practicallyof the same tenor as the above_.

  _But I am left in a dilemma. I cannot consider myself boundto make my next net volume exclusively Victorian, Suburban,kindly, gossipy, button-holy--I rather like that word--in the faceof some very strong encouragements to have another go-in at Barts,or their equivalents, of evil dispositions, or, perhaps I should say,of Mediaeval dispositions; for I am countenanced by many sportingchronologists in attaching a meaning to this word at war withmy boyish understanding of it, which stopped the "moyen age" atthe Reformation. However, it doesn't matter; this is all inconfidence. I cannot very well cite these encouragements. They formpart of a most liberal and intelligent series of reviews--notunmixed praise by any means--which I am sticking at odd times ina big book, to which I shall have to allude more particularly presently.It is enough for us now that several of them speak of "An Affairof Dishonour" as its author's best production, so far. After thatI must really be Mediaeval, or Marry-come-up, or whatever oneought to call it, a little more. There is no way out._

  _A reviewer of an isolated and forcible genius also has a share ininducing me to try the same line again. I want to be reviewed byhim, please, as often as possible. There is a healthy and bracingtone in his lightest word. Listen:_

  "_A story-teller ought to be able to tell a story. There is a story in'An Affair of Dishonour,' but I pity the reader who tries to excavateit. He must tie a wet towel round his head, and clench his teeth, andprepare to face hours of digging and scraping. And when he hasexcavated the story from the heavy clay of the style, he will ask whythe author took so much trouble to bury it so deep in affectation...Mr. De Morgan tries to copy the language of the seventeenth century,but he copies it like a schoolboy.... To make the mess complete, thelast chapter is taken from a manuscript._

  "_If Mr. De Morgan desired to imitate Esmond he ought to havestuck to the Esmond method. If he wished to tell a melodramatic storyhe ought to have told it plainly. The story is stale.... I supposethe rake is meant to be a Lovelace, and Lucinda a Clarissa Harlowe.The whole thing is artificial, there is no illusion, and the characters areall sticks. The battle is bad, and the duels are bad, and the dialogueis very bad. And how it bores one!_"

  _Can you wonder that I look forward to being reviewed again bythis gentleman? I shall feel an eager anticipation as I searchamong my press-cuttings, after the appearance of this presentvolume, for the name of his halfpenny journal. I can fancy hisindignation at a picture that speaks--a completer mess even thanthe dragging in of a manuscript at the end of Lucinda! This wasshocking--at least, it must have been, as otherwise this gentlemanwould have been talking nonsense._

  _But my button-holed readers must be expecting me to come to thepoint. It is this. "A Likely Story" is an honest, if a humble,attempt to satisfy all parties--except, indeed, the last party justcited, whom I should be sorry to satisfy. It combines on onecanvas the story of a family incident that is purely Victorian--though,alas, the era came to an end so shortly afterwards--withanother, of the Italian cinquecento, without making any furtherdemand on human powers of belief than that a picture is made totalk. I have also introduced a very pretty suburb, Coombe, as theresidence of the earliest Victorian aunt, to my thinking, that mypen is responsible for. I like this way of shifting theresponsibility off my own shoulders._

  _However, it is fair to admit that the expedient of making thephotographic copy talk, as well as the original, may outrage thesense of probability of some of my more matter-of-fact readers. Ishall be sorry, because modification in a second edition will bedifficult, if not impossible._

  _If I do not succeed in pleasing both sections of my Public, I amat least certain of the approval of a very large number of readerswho have found my previous productions too long. The foregoingis even less than the 100,000 words which seem to recommendthemselves as the right length, per se, for a net volume. A slumpfrom a quarter to a twentieth of a million words marks a powerfulself-restraint on the part of my "cacoethes scribendi"--an essaytowards conformity which seems to me to deserve recognition. Ido not understand that anyone has, so far, propounded the doctrinethat a story cannot be too short. If that were so the author wouldsave himself a world of trouble by e
mulating the example of theunknown author of the shortest work of its kind on record--thebiography of St. James the Less. But perhaps I am mistaken insupposing that Jackaminory and the Apostle were one and the samepersonage._

  _I am personally more interested in the length of reviews than ofbooks, in connexion with the volume mentioned just now, in whichI am collecting my press-cuttings. The page of this volume isfourteen inches by eight, and three reviews thirteen inches longexactly cover it, leaving a little space for the name of the journaland the date. It is too small to accommodate more than threenormal press columns in the width. So that a review thirteeninches long is from my point of view the most suitable for my books.Of course, twenty-six and thirty-nine inches are equally acceptable.The difficulty only begins when accommodation of fractions becomesnecessary. I account that review ill-written which perplexesme with the need for such accommodation._

  _I am prepared to accept six shilling volumes of 100,000 words,with reviews thirteen inches long, as the true and perfect image ofLiterature indeed._

  _Man, male and female, is a reading animal: or, what is perhapsmore to the purpose, believes himself one. He may be divided intotwo classes--the Studious Reader and the General Reader. Theformer never skims books. If he dips into them at all he takes longdips, and when he comes out, leaves a bookmark in to show wherehe was or which was his machine. He goes steadily and earnestlythrough the last, last, last word of Scientific thought--say, forinstance, "An Essay towards a fuller Analysis of the Correlationbetween Force, Matter and Motion, with especial reference to theirrelations in Polydimensional Space"--and wants to just finisha marginal note upon it in pencil when the dinner-gong gets arumble. He knits his brows and jumps and snorts when he perusesa powerful criticism, with antitheses and things. He very oftenthinks he will buy that book, only he must just glance at it againbefore he sends the order. Nevertheless, his relations with Fictionlack cordiality. They do not go, on his part, beyond picking upthe last net volume from the drawing-room table, reading the titlealoud, and putting it down again. And he only does this becauseit's there, and looks new. He wouldn't complain if no Fictioncame into the house at all._

  _Not so the General Reader. His theory of Literature is entirelydifferent. Broadly speaking, it is this: that books are meant tobe read, up to a certain point; but that, as soon as that point isreached, it is desirable that they should be returned to Mudie's orthe "Times," and something else got, with a little less prosywozyingin it; and bounceable young women who ought to know better, butdon't; and detectives if possible, and motors and aeroplanesanyhow. The exact definition of this point is difficult, but it liessomewhere about the region in which the General Reader gets bored todeath, and can't stand this dam rot any longer. It does not matterto him that he may be the loser by his abrupt decisions; if anything,he takes an unnatural pleasure in straining the capacity of hisCirculating Library to the full extent of its contract. He has paidhis subscription, and may change whenever he likes. That's thebargain, and no humbugging!_

  _So he goes on slap-dashing about, shuttle-cocking back everynew delivery, saying "Pish!" over this and "Tush!" about that;writing short comments on margins such as, "Vieux jeu!" or "NoWoman would"; only occasionally going carefully through abook to find the chapter that reviewer-fellow said was quite unfit forthe girls to read, because one really ought to keep an eye on whatcomes into the house nowadays. His decisions can, however,scarcely be accepted as unfailing guides to a just discriminationof literary merit, as those who know him are never tired ofinsisting on his inattentive habits, his paroxysms of electricsuddenness in action, and, above all, his insatiable thirst forsomething new. As for me, I am like Charles Lamb, when he was toldthere was a gentleman in the room who admired "ParadiseRegained." I should like to feel his bumps._

  _Nevertheless, he is a personage for whom Authors have a greatand natural respect. He is so numerous! And just think whatfun it would be if each of him bought a copy of each of one'simmortal works! Consequently, I wish to consult his liking, and amprepared--within reason--to defer to his opinion of what length abook ought to be. It is no doubt quite otherwise with those Authorswho may be said to belong to the school of Inspirationalism--reallyone feels quite Modern, writing such a word--who claim for each oftheir stories the position or character of a sneeze--an automaticaction which its victim, perpetrator, executant, interpreter,proprietor, promoter, parent, mover, seconder--or whatever we chooseto call him--has absolutely no control over._

  _But I am wandering away from the point of this apology, whichis really to say "peccavi," and, please, I won't do so any more.So far, that is, as is practicable. If I drop into a prehistoricproblem-novel, by way of a change, or have a try at an autobiographyof Queen Nilocris--just possibilities at random--I will dowhat I can to head off readers who want one sort only, and knowwhich it is._

  _As for the foregoing story, it is just as Victorian as it is anythingelse, though not, perhaps, Early enough to give entire satisfaction.One can't expect everything, in this imperfect world. To mythinking the shortness of the story should cover a multitude of sins._

  BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS GUILDFORD