T. B.

Ashfield,
settle,
Aug. 27, 1904.

Dear Herbert,—­You ask me to send you out some novels, and you have put me in a difficulty.  It seems hardly worth while sending out books which will just be read once or twice in a lazy mood and then thrown aside; yet I can find no others.  It seems to me that our novelists are at the present moment affected by the same wave which seems to be passing over the whole of our national life; we have in every department a large number of almost first-rate people, men of talent and ability; but very few geniuses, very few people of undisputed pre-eminence.  In literature this is particularly the case; poets, historians, essayists, dramatists, novelists; there are so many that reach a high level of accomplishment, and do excellent work; but there are no giants, or they are very small ones.  Personally, I do not read a great many novels; and I find myself tending to revert again and again to my old favourites.

Of course there are some conspicuous novelists.  There is George Meredith, though he has now almost ceased to write; to speak candidly, though I recognise his genius, his creative power, his noble and subtle conception of character, yet I do not feel the reality of his books; or rather I feel that the reality is there, but disguised from me by a veil—­a dim and rich veil, it is true—­ which is hung between me and the scene.  The veil is George Meredith’s personality.  I confess that it is a dignified personality enough, the spirit of a grand seigneur.  But I feel in reading his books as if I were staying with a magnificent person in a stately house; but that, when I wanted to go about and look at things for myself, my host, with splendid urbanity, insisted on accompanying me, pointed out objects that interested himself, and translated the remarks of the guests and the other people who appeared upon the scene into his own peculiar diction.  The characters do not talk as I think they would have talked, but as George Meredith would have talked under the given circumstances.  There is no repose about his books; there is a sense not only of intellectual but actually of moral effort about reading them; and further, I do not like the style; it is highly mannerised, and permeated, so to speak, with a kind of rich perfume, a perfume which stupefies rather than enlivens.  Even when the characters are making what are evidently to them perfectly natural and straightforward remarks, I do not feel sure what they mean; and I suffer from paroxysms of rage as I read, because I feel that I cannot get at what is there without a mental agility which seems to me unnecessarily fatiguing.  A novel ought to be like a walk; George Meredith makes it into an obstacle race.