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LETTERS TO THE PRESS (18)
Vizetelly and Zola
The Daily Chronicle (2 January, 1894 - p.3)
DEATH OF MR. HENRY VIZETELLY.
Mr. Henry Vizetelly died at Heatherlands, near Farnham, on New Year’s morning. In addition to his lately published work, “Glances Back Through Seventy Years,” he was the author of “The Story of the Diamond Necklace,” “Berlin under the New Empire,” and several important monographs on the wines of France, Spain, and Portugal, including a monumental “History of Champagne.” After a chequered career as newspaper proprietor, foreign correspondent, and publisher, his health broke down owing to the term of imprisonment he underwent for publishing Zola’s works, and he retired to Heatherlands, where he engaged in poultry farming.
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The Daily Chronicle (4 January, 1894 - p.3)
THE SCAPEGOAT.
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—In the year 1889 Mr. Henry Vizetelly was committed to prison for publishing “immoral” books, notably translations of the novels of Emile Zola. With the exception of myself and Mr. George Moore, no English writer protested against that outrage on the freedom of literature. The public Press approved the outrage, and more than one newspaper refused to insert my letters on the subject. Owing chiefly to his sufferings at the period, Mr. Vizetelly, a man long and honourably connected with literature, has just died.
In the year 1893, M. Emile Zola, the fons et origo of the said “immoral” books, visited England. He was rapturously received by the literary classes, and entertained with fulsome honours by the leading Pressmen of the metropolis, who had approved, openly or tacitly, the persecution of his English publisher. Thus, the chief offender escaped scot-free, while the poor scapegoat languished away and perished.
My opinions on the subject of the freedom of literature are well known. No one, however, sympathises less with the teachings of pessimistic fiction. “Personally,” as I have already written, in my letter asking for Mr. Vizitelly’s liberation, “I claim the right of free deliverance, free speech, free thought; and what I claim for myself I claim for every human being.” No good has ever come, or ever can come, from quasi-Providential interference with human liberty. But what a satire it is to be found in the circumstances to which I have alluded on the boasted liberality and intelligence of the writers and journalists of England! How the author of “Nana” must have smiled in his sleeve, knowing what had been said and written of the works by the very classes who thronged to welcome the writer!—I am, &c.,
Jan. 3. ROBERT BUCHANAN.
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The Dundee Evening Telegraph (4 January 1894 - p.3)
MR ROBERT BUCHANAN AND ZOLAISM.
Mr Robert Buchanan writes to the Daily Chronicle:—In the year 1889 Mr Henry Vizetelly was committed to prison for publishing “immoral” books, notably translations of the novels of Emile Zola. With the exception of myself and Mr G. Moore, no English writer protested against that outrage on the freedom of literature. The public press approved the outrage, and more than one newspaper refused to insert my letters on the subject. Owing chiefly to his sufferings at that period, Mr Vizetelly, a man long and honourably connected with literature, has just died. In the year 1893 M. Emile Zola, the fons et origo of the said “immoral” books, visited England. He was rapturously received by the literary classes, and entertained with fulsome honours by the leading pressmen of the metropolis, who had approved openly or tacitly the persecution of his English publisher. Thus the chief offender escaped scot free, while the poor scapegoat languished away and perished. My opinions on the subject of the freedom of literature are well known. No one, however, sympathises less with the teachings of the pessimistic fiction. “Personally,” as I have already written in my letter asking for Mr Vizetelly’s liberation, “I claim the right of free deliverance, free speech, free thought, and what I claim for myself I claim for every human being.” No good has ever come, or ever can come, from quasi providential interference with human liberty. But what a satire is to be found in the circumstances to which I have alluded on the boasted liberality and intelligence of the writers and journalists of England. How the author of “Nana” must have smiled in his sleeve knowing what had been said and written of the works by the very classes who thronged to welcome the writer.
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The Daily Chronicle (5 January, 1894 - p.3)
M. ZOLA AND THE JOURNALISTS.
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—Mr. Robert Buchanan has the same ground for stating that he and Mr. George Moore were the only English writers who protested against the prosecution of Mr. Henry Vizetelly as for the observation that M. Emile Zola was “entertained with fulsome honours by the leading Pressmen of the metropolis”—that is to say, none at all. As it is impossible for Mr. Buchanan, without such vast labour as he was not likely to undertake, to know all that is said on any subject by the English press, he cannot, I venture to think, really feel that he and Mr. Moore were against the world.
By “the Pressmen of the metropolis,” I presume that Mr. Buchanan means the representatives of journalism in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, for it was the Institute of Journalists which, fulsomely or otherwise, entertained M. Zola during his visit to England. But why “fulsome?” may I be permitted to ask. M. Zola took part in our conference; he received a vote of thanks at the conclusion of a very able paper which he had read; he attended, as the guest of the conference, the various festivities to which the members of the institute were invited; he was toasted, among other foreign visitors, at the annual dinner at the Crystal Palace, and he was, in general, treated as a person of distinction, as, I have no doubt, Mr. Buchanan will be treated should he ever become the guest of the same body, and should he on that occasion represent such a body of writers and journalists as was represented by M. Zola. This may have been fulsome, but at any rate it was rather less fulsome than Mr. Buchanan’s proclamation of his own singular virtues and enlightenment.
Persons with no particular information on the subject might suppose, after a perusal of Mr. Buchanan’s letter to you, that Mr. Vizetelly had been tried by a jury of journalists, or “Pressmen,” and sentenced by the Editor of the Times or The Daily Chronicle. Why should Emile Zola be less “rapturously” received by the literary classes in England because a City jury had condemned Mr. Vizetelly to imprisonment for publishing his works? The City verdict was not their verdict; and even had it received their approval, there were subsequent reasons why it should be revised. Since the publication of the works in connection with which Mr. Vizetelly was prosecuted, M. Zola has published three books, to which even a City jury could scarcely object, which are admittedly great achievements, and which have changed his relation to literature.
That M. Zola did not “smile in his sleeve” at the welcome given to him in England, but understood and appreciated it, has been proved in many ways. His entertainers know that he was sincerely and deeply gratified to find that the English people are not, as a whole, what the Vizetelly prosecution had led him to believe them to be.—I am, &c.,
The Savage Club, Jan. 4. AARON WATSON.
[Note:
Aaron Watson (1850-1926) was a journalist and a member of the Savage Club, about which he wrote a book. He also wrote a biography of Tennyson, and in 1925, A Newspaper Man’s Memories was published by Hutchinson.]
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The Daily Chronicle (6 January, 1894 - p.3)
M. ZOLA AND THE JOURNALISTS.
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—In very much the same spirit as that in which an average woman receives any adverse criticism on the sex generally, construing it into a personal imputation, Mr. Aaron Watson steps forward to traverse my remarks concerning M. Zola and the late Mr. Vizetelly. The journalists of England, he says, did not approve of Mr. Vizetelly’s prosecution. Really? Then why did they not say so? Why was it left for a discredited person like myself to champion the cause of the imprisoned publisher? If my memory serves me rightly, not a single protest came from any authoritative journal, and my letter to the Home Secretary was looked upon, by severe and virtuous Editors, as in very bad taste. In this connection it may be useful to quote a few words written by Mr. John Morley in his essay on “Compromise.” “It is only too easy to understand how a journal, existing for a day, should limit its view to the possibilities of the day. . . . . . It is easy, too, to understand the reaction of this intellectual timorousness upon the minds of ordinary readers, who have too little natural force and too little cultivation to be able to resist the narrowing and deadly effect of the daily iteration of poor shortsighted commonplaces.”
Be that as it may, Mr. Vizetelly was martyred in 1889 for publishing the works which procured M. Zola journalistic honours in 1893. Granted that the journalists of England sympathised with M. Zola all along, how are we to account for their lethargy at a period when his name, or that of his publisher, was a bye-word of reproach—when mud was thrown at him by every printer’s Devil. The explanation is simple. M. Zola outlived the persecution which killed his poor scapegoat. He was successful. He was chosen as the representative of the journalists of France. And the newspapers, which had not had a single good word to say for him when his works were labelled “execrable,” were filled with glorified accounts of the entertainments in his honour.
Few men are lucky enough to survive, as M. Zola has done, the apathy and hypocrisy of the literary, or quasi-literary, class, through the indifference of which so many of original men—Walt Whitman, James Thomson, Richard Jefferies, Herman Melville—have been permitted to suffer martyrdom. I know that the journalists of England are individually able and kindly men. But they jump like sheep after one another, and no sooner is a platitude or an impertinence printed in one newspaper than it is echoed, out of sheer carelessness, through the length and breadth of the land. Thus, when a great man like Whitman dies, the event is only thought worthy of a passing paragraph, but when the literary men of England erect in Westminster Abbey a tablet to the memory of an American flâneur and diner-out the newspapers flow over with enthusiasm.—I am, &c.,
Jan. 5. ROBERT BUCHANAN.
[It is hardly necessary for us to add that we dissociate ourselves entirely from Mr. Buchanan’s characterisation of the late James Russell Lowell.—ED. D. C.]
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Aberdeen Evening Express (6 January, 1894 - p.3)
“You English,” said Count Tolstoi to the “Chronicle’s” interviewer the other day, “have a terrible prevalence of hypocrisy and cant.” One instance of this is nailed to the counter by Mr Robert Buchanan, who, in a letter to the same journal, calls attention to a curious fact in connection with Mr Henry Vizetelly’s death. In 1889 Mr Vizetelly was sent to prison for publishing translations of Zola. In 1893 Zola himself was received and fêted. If there was no hypocrisy or cant anywhere about this, there was a remarkable sudden conversion.
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The Sheffield Evening Telegraph (6 January, 1894 - p.2)
CHIT-CHAT.
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BUCHANAN, LOWELL AND THE EDITOR.
Mr. Robert Buchanan, writing in the “London Chronicle” today, says when a great man like Whitman dies the event is only thought worthy of a passing paragraph, but when the literary men of England erect in Westminster Abbey a tablet to the memory of an American flaneur and diner-out the newspapers flow over with enthusiasm.—The editor of the “Chronicle” adds a foot-note asserting that “we dissociate ourselves entirely from Mr. Buchanan’s characterisation of the late James Russell Lowell.”
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The Daily Chronicle (8 January, 1894 - p.3)
M. ZOLA AND THE JOURNALISTS
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—In the interesting letter which you publish this morning, Mr. Buchanan appears to assume that because he was left “to champion the cause of the imprisoned publisher” (Mr. Vizetelly), the journalists of England one and all approved of that iniquitous prosecution. Mr. Buchanan takes too much for granted. “Mud was thrown at him (M. Zola or Mr. Vizetelly) by every Printer’s Devil,” he says—the assertion is too sweeping to be exact.
May I offer a word or personal explanation? As soon as I knew of the Vizetelly prosecution, and heard that Mr. Vizetelly was likely to plead guilty for lack of funds to defend the action, I offered, through the counsel for the defence, to pay all his expenses if he would fight the case. The pen is not the only way, I think Mr. Buchanan will allow, by which one can give proof of sympathy.
When Mr. Vizetelly, dreading the vulgar prejudices of an English jury, pleaded guilty, I refrained from further action, awaiting a more favourable opportunity to defend the cause of literary freedom. The campaign is only beginning, the first skirmishes are not decisive.
My real reason for writing to you is to draw attention to the public importance of the facts incidentally exposed by this case. In France, the artist and man of letters is supported by the organised opinion of his fellow, while the bourgeoisie is unorganised and comparatively innocuous—a helpless pululating mob. In England, on the other hand, grocerdom is organised in conventicle and church, and rancorously articulate, especially on those subjects with which it is wholly incompetent to deal, while the men of letters who have done something in their past of freedom for England’s honour are unorganised and powerless. The consequences of this state of things are manifest and pitiable. Thackeray, the greatest of English prose-writers, instead of taking life for his text boldly, was forced to accommodate his work to the futile instincts of the school-girl; Vizetelly was imprisoned for publishing books which have a place in French literature, and English novel-writers are at this moment debarred from holding “the mirror up to nature” by the antipathies, moral and commercial, of the tallow-chandlers, led on by the MacDougals, But will this condition of things he suffered to continue? Within the last quarter of a century the thinkers have won freedom in England. Those who remember the attacks made upon Charles Darwin thirty years ago can realise our indebtedness to him, and to Professor Huxley, the protagonists in the struggle against clerical intolerance. On this line the battle is over, the cheering even has died away. The question now is: When shall the man of letters win the freedom accorded to the thinker and the artist? He could win it at once with organisation. Is organisation impossible? Will Mr. Buchanan lend his powerful advocacy to this cause? But even if English men of letters are compelled to fight one after the other, the victory is nevertheless assured. Matthew Arnold gave the mot d’ordre:—
Charge once more, then, and be dumb,
Let the victors, when they come—
When the forts of Folly fall—
Find thy body by the wall.
Yours sincerely,
FRANK HARRIS.
The Fortnightly Review Office, 11, Henrietta-street, Covent-garden, W.C., Jan 6.
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The Daily Chronicle (9 January, 1894 - p.3)
MR. VIZETELLY AND LITERARY FREEDOM.
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—It is painful to me to take part at present in any controversy respecting the prosecution of my father, the late Henry Vizetelly, for issuing translations of M. Zola’s novels, still I feel that I cannot leave Mr. Frank Harris’s letter altogether unnoticed. It is quite true that such an offer as Mr. Harris refers to was made in his name to my father. However, although it may have emanated from Mr. Harris unreservedly, it was, when laid before my father, coupled with certain conditions concerning the selection of counsel which my father was not disposed to entertain. Moreover, funds for the defence were provided from the estate of Vizetelly and Co., and at that moment extraneous pecuniary assistance was not required.
It is true that the question of removing the case into the Court of Queen’s Bench was incidentally raised, in which event a considerable sum of money would have had to be expended, but this matter was never gone into, as the majority of my father’s advisers counselled him to let matters take their course at the Old Bailey.
As a matter of fact, my father did not plead guilty owing to any lack of means or to any objection of his own to a common jury; the collapse of his defence was brought about by an extraordinary combination of circumstances of which the public has so far known nothing. As detailed an account of the affair as can well be published will be given, however, in the final volume of my father’s reminiscences, the materials for which—covering the period between 1870 and 1894—were prepared by him prior to his last seizure. In accordance with his express desire, this concluding volume will now, be edited for the Press by me. Until it appears it would be as well, perhaps, for those interested in the controversy to suspend judgment.
In conclusion, I may say that although Mr. Harris’s offer was not accepted, it met with full appreciation from my father, my brothers and myself. And in the same way we were all grateful to Mr. Buchanan, Mr. George Moore, and the many other literary men and others, who from their several points of view, and according to the measure of their means, gave us proof of sympathy in one way or another at that time of trial.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Jan. 8. ERNEST A. VIZETELLY.
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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—Mr. Frank Harris hits the right nail on the head. What we lack in this matter of literary freedom is an organised opinion of artists and men of letters. We have to fight single-handed, one after the other, for the campaign is only beginning.
Still, there has been a very considerable advance in public opinion since the prosecution of Mr. Vizetelly—even Mr. Robert Buchanan and Mr. Frank Harris would, I suppose, admit that.
Now there is one excellent way in which the extent of this advance could be determined, and, at the same time, a decisive manifestation in favour of the cause of literary freedom achieved—namely, by fighting the same battle over again, but this time with the best weapons procurable.
Let us have a test case. let all those influential men of letters who expressed or felt indignation at the injustice done to Mr. Vizetelly combine to bring about the publication of an English translation of, say, “Nana” or “Au bonheur des Dames.”
And let it so be managed that the brunt of the prosecution, if there be one, is borne, not by a single unfortunate publisher, but by an organisation which includes every writer of eminence who has the cause of literary freedom at heart.—Sincerely yours,
HUBERT CRACKANTHORPE.
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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—There are other reasons than those to which he himself attaches weight why the public letters of Mr. Robert Buchanan should be looked upon “by severe and virtuous editors” as in very bad taste. If some of his letters on the Vizetelly case were rejected by the Press, and if others were the subject of adverse remark, one need not therefore hasten to conclude that the newspapers of Great Britain were determined to deny publicity to whatever convincing arguments might be used on Mr. Vizetelly’s side. There is a more simple and a more reasonable explanation. When severe and virtuous editors do publish what they feel compelled to disavow in a foot-note, and when what they publish is of the character of Mr. Buchanan’s reference to James Russell Lowell, one may feebly conjecture what that would be which they considered it judicious or necessary to suppress.
I am entitled to regard Mr. Buchanan’s single remark concerning myself as an indication that he retired from the position originally assumed. I have, it seems, exhibited “the spirit of an average woman” in taking as a personal imputation what was in fact an adverse criticism of journalism at large. But I took nothing as a personal imputation. I wrote nothing from a personal point of view. I merely proved that Mr. Buchanan assailed journalists in general for faults which they had not committed, on grounds of which he could not feel assured, and with no better evidence than a lively feeling on his own part that he and Mr. George Moore alone among men who write had the courage or the honesty to say a word against the Zola prosecution. Mr. Buchanan sneers at me, treats my statements as if they had not been made, and then hurries up with much entirely irrelevant matter. It is ingenious in a way, no doubt, but that is the way of the average woman.
It is not the fact that such an event as Walt Whitman’s death was only thought worthy of a passing paragraph. It was the subject of almost as many leading articles as the death of one whom Mr. Buchanan, whose taste is not always approved by severe and virtuous editors, calls “an American flâneur and diner-out.” Genius can divine many things, but it cannot divine what appears in newspapers. Knowledge of this kind must needs be required by that dull, common method which is the only resource of plain men and average women. Oh, if we could all be just and helpful—to the right persons always, or to the oppressed and buffeted person at the appropriate moment—what a much more agreeable world this would be to live in! But Mr. Buchanan sets us so bad an example. He cannot resist the temptation to turn a morning’s walk into a scalp-hunt. Because he desires to say a good word for Mr. Vizetelly he must needs bring a mud-battery to bear on the English Press. For the poor purpose of giving an effective finish to three paragraphs of letter-writing he tramples most rudely and violently on the coffin of a dead poet. When Mr. Buchanan feels disposed to instruct his fellow-men as to their behaviour to each other—when “the apathy and hypocrisy of the literary, or quasi-literary class,” seem to him to call for energetic discourse and the use of strong language—let him remember his own sins, as some others do. Let him call to mind how Mr. Walter Hutcheson, of the St. Paul’s Magazine, was wont to slash about among his contemporaries; and then he may inquire of himself whether Walter Hutcheson and Robert Buchanan were not “two single gentlemen” turned out “of one.”—I am, &c.,
AARON WATSON.
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The Daily Chronicle (10 January, 1894 - p.3)
LITERARY FREEDOM.
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—While entirely agreeing with the remarks of Mr. Buchanan and with those of Mr. Harris on the inconsistency and injustice of fêting M. Zola to-day after haling his translator off to prison the day before, I cannot but enter a protest against the spirit of the greater part of Mr. Harris’s letter. There is an unpleasantly superior air about it. Mr. Harris may feel in a position to look down upon the mass of mankind, or as he chooses to call it “grocerdom,” but spite of his sneers the vast majority of the British reading public continues, and will, I have little doubt, continue, to entertain its strange prejudice in favour of a clean literature. It is still thankful for its Scott, for its Dickens, and likes Thackeray none the better for the shadow of unseen immorality that is too often present in his delineation of society that is seen. It still prefers to leave the microscopic examination of ulcers and putrefying sores to specialists, and declines altogether to have these things continually thrust under its nose. It still prefers a book that will not raise the blush to a modest cheek, and that has not to be read in a sneaking, surreptitious way.
“Let us have realism if you will,” it says, “but let it be a genuine wholesome realism, not the ‘inverted idealism’ that too often passes under that name.”
If after all authors have a hankering for what plain people call “indecency,” let them have it by all means,. but let them not grumble when “the tallow-chandlers,” on whom, after all—humiliating though it may be top have to confess as much—the majority of writers entirely subsist; let them not grumble when these men refuse to swallow their garbage or even to have it served up to them.—I am, Sir, yours obediently,
OUTIS
Jesus College, Cambridge, Jan. 8.
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The Daily Chronicle (11 January, 1894 - p.3)
LITERARY FREEDOM.
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—I am obliged to Mr. Frank Harris for reminding me that he, with characteristic enthusiasm and generosity, endeavoured to help Mr. Vizetelly in his battle with the Public Prosecutor. Such practical beneficence, I admit, far outweighs all written or spoken cackle on the subject. But the fact remains that English journalists en masse, explicitly or implicitly, approved the Vizetelly prosecution in 1889, and afterwards hailed with enthusiasm the Zola ovation in 1893. That was my contention, and it has not been disputed. A very serious question remains, opened up by the present correspondence, and on that question I should like to say a few words.
Quasi-providential suppression of literature, of the right of individual utterance, is one thing; quasi-critical dictation to literary men as to what they shall or shall not write is another. That bugbear of Mr. Harris, the bourgeoisie, would like to suppress all books which bring a blush to the cheek of the young person; but, on the other hand, the Critic up to Date, the Militant Editor, the Flamboyant Journalist, is, if not quite so uninstructed, even more aggressive. According to him, poor Thackeray was a sort of genius manqué, because he wrote books which the young person may safely read. According to him again, society is in a conspiracy to shut the mouths of literary men and to render their works emasculate. May I be permitted to say, with all respect to Mr. Harris, that such statements are mere moonshine? There is no power in England to prevent a man writing exactly as he pleases, if he has the courage and the strength. In the face of much recent literature, it is absurd to whine about prejudice and persecution. If there is a tyranny which is invading, if there is a bugbear which is driving poor literary men out of their wits, it is that of the Flamboyant Journalist, who is as imperially arrogant in his demand for Realism, Ugliness, and Dirt as the poor bourgeois is for cleanliness and good manners.
I have advocated again and again the right of perfect freedom of speech in literature. I hope that does not commit me to any sympathy with the Gospel according to the Yahoos. I have admitted the genius of M. Zola, and have approved its full and free manifestation. But that does not prevent me from believing and saying that Zolaism is an ugly, a corrupt, and an evil influence on literature generally, and that the whole series of the Rougon-Macquart is a monument of great genius misapplied. If human nature, even under the Empire, had been exactly as Zola paints it, it would have perished long ago of its own corruption. The man who wrote “La Terre,” “Germinal,” and “Pot-Bouille,” has not studied even the alphabet of human psychology; he is colour-blind to character, and his ears, which might have heard the still small voice of humanity, are stopped with ordure. So it is, so it will ever be, with the writer whose search is chiefly for the Execrable, whose experience of life is gained chiefly among the sewers.
Thus much by way of explaining that while demanding full freedom for M. Zola, I am in no sympathy with his methods. But Mr. Harris complains bitterly that English writers, from Thackeray downwards, have been paralysed by moral conventions. They would fain roll in the mud, but they dare not. They desire to paint Life as it is—i.e., as Mr. Harris conceives it—but they fear the persecuting eye of Mr. Coote. Well, that is not my impression. I think that Mr. Besant, for example, keeps his page clean because he himself is clean-minded, because his taste inclines to things pleasant rather than to things ugly. If authors are persecuted, tormented, pestered, it is not by the public, but by the Flamboyant Journalist, who cries, “Be real! be true! be dirty! or I will proclaim that you are sacrificing your birthright!” Poor Mr. Hardy, pricked on by the said Journalist, wrote “Tess of the d’Urbervilles.” The occasion was apt, the time ripe, and the book sold by thousands. Even the Times applauded. But those who knew and understood the true genius of Mr. Hardy, those who had read “The Woodlanders” and “The Return of the Native,” sat still and wondered. To them, I fancy, the book must have seemed the very quintessence of vulgarity, banality, ineptitude. Zola himself is a literary certainty, but Zola’s smutty finger smudged over the fair face of Mr. Hardy’s rustic Muse was a sight too sad for contemplation. Up yonder in the North, again, we have an even sorrier spectacle—the blinded Titan Björnson, who created “Sigurd Slembe,” urged on by the Critic up to Date, the Flamboyant Journalist, to write hole-and-corner comedies in the fumbling manner of Ibsen.
The upshot of this matter is very simple. The real enemies of literature are not the bourgeoisie, but the Advanced Critics, the gentlemen who adopt their own likes and dislikes as the measure of human capacity, and who ask an author to follow, not his own bent, but theirs. The Militant Editor, the Flamboyant Journalist, who has done nothing himself, but who vociferously shouts directions to all literary pilgrims, is fast becoming a public nuisance. Literary men would do well to go on quietly in their own way, and to let the critical Busybody shout himself hoarse. In this connection one may be permitted to quote the famous edict of Friedrich the Great respecting everlasting punishment: “Let those who believe in eternal damnation be eternally damned, as they hope and believe.” Paraphrase: “Let those who believe in universal Filth remain universally filthy, as is their hearts’ desire. “ But let them enjoy themselves in their own fashion, without talking blatant rubbish about the suppression of literature, without abusing inoffensive authors for following a different bent. Some of us believe that, when all is said and done, the best books, the greatest books, are the purest. Why not leave us in peace to our simple diet, without “nagging” us to feast constantly on the putrescent roe of the sturgeon?—I am, &c.,
Jan. 9. ROBERT BUCHANAN.
P.S.—My description, in a former letter, of the late James Russell Lowell as “a flâneur and a diner-out” has aroused much journalistic wrath. I am assured that the writer in question was a great poet and critic. I should rather describe him as a cultivated English gentleman who happened to be born in America. That, of course, is a mere matter of opinion, and Lowell was a most agreeable writer; but I decline to accept him as representing in any sense the country which has produced Whitman, Thoreau, Herman Melville, Whittier, and Mark Twain.—R.B.
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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—Mr. Frank Harris, in his letter in your paper, calls Mr. MacDougal, and every man who would give the law any censorship over the music-hall, a grocer, a tallow-chandler, and so forth, to his heart’s content; and he mixes this music-hall matter with the grave question of the freedom of literature to deal with the whole of life. What is the connection? If there is any connection, it is one seriously compromising the literary question, or, at any rate, throwing serious suspicion upon the views and intentions in its regard of Mr. Frank Harris and his friends. For what does the unchecked music-hall achieve or intend? What but the further enkindling of the commonest of all common fires. And when did those fires need enkindling? Mr. Frank Harris and those who use the same sarcasms ready-made—I am weary to loathing of that inevitable word bourgeois—have succeeded in making the puzzle-headed think that their commonplace passions are something to be proud of. “Let the clerks and shopboys and schoolboys see and hear more and more and more,” they seem to say. If tallow-chandlers and grocers have taken part in urging a censorship, it is doubtless that most of them are fathers, and midway in their dull careers have been visited with the dignity of love for their schoolboys. So much for the music hall. The literary question ought to be entirely apart. Literature has suffered from our illiberal ideas of respectability.—I am, Sir, sincerely yours,
Jan. 10. ESSAYIST.
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The Daily Chronicle (12 January, 1894 - p.3)
LITERARY FREEDOM.
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—Certain important facts concerning the Vizetelly prosecution have been overlooked by your correspondents.
1. That an exceedingly indecent pamphlet, entitled “The Confessional Unmasked,” was printed and published with the approval of the Vigilance Committee. It was owing to several articles in Truth that this detestable pamphlet was withdrawn from sale at the street corner.
2. That Captain Verney, a prominent member of the Vigilance Association, a zealous advocate for the prosecution of Mr. Vizetelly for publishing translations of Zola’s works, was himself prosecuted for laying elaborate schemes for the seduction of a young girl, and suffered a year’s imprisonment for that offence.
I will do no more than allude to the atrocious Leamington case: two lady members of the said association sought by threats to induce a little girl to confess crimes which she afterwards had to admit she did not know the meaning of, in order to procure a conviction against a little boy of fifteen; and a passing reference to the various railway-carriage episodes which have been proved against the purity party will suffice for the purpose of this letter.
Many reasons prevent me from agreeing with Mr. Crackanthorpe’s suggestion for the republication of the translations of “Nana” and “Au Bonheur des Dames.” Surely a better choice could be made. Madame Bovary” was included in the list of books which the Vigilance Association determined to proceed against. When I wrote to Mr. Stead pointing out that one of the world’s masterpieces was indicated as indecent literature, he wrote to say that he had written to Mr. Coote expostulating, and that in consequence the charge against Flaubert’s masterpiece had been withdrawn. But Mr. Stead was misinformed on this point. The charge against “Madame Bovary” was never withdrawn—it was merely adjourned by the magistrate. I am, yours truly,
GEORGE MOORE
Jan. 11.
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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—Will you allow me to say, in regard to the question of “Literary Freedom,” that I thoroughly agree with “Outis” in his remarks in The Daily Chronicle to-day I am an admirer of Robert Buchanan, and in general agreement with his frank advocacy of a large tolerance in literary matters, but Mr. Harris’s cheap sneers at a large section of our fellow-countrymen must be repugnant to every right-thinking person. I know that the spirit in which he regards the matter at issue is too common a one among the class he represents, that of the littérateur, but God forbid that the opinions of that class—or, rather, of a certain section of it—should prevail in our country! I say so, though I am a writer myself. There is too ready a tendency, when the wholesome and cleanly does not “catch on,” for the novelist to venture on the questionable. I was myself, not long ago, offered a good price if I would write a novel with a little dirt in it, and I know others who have had similar offers. “Filth” is the only term that fittingly designates such literature as Zola’s, and I think parents and guardians ought to be warned against it. I have reason to know of what I speak, for I have seen the pernicious influence of Zola’s works in more than one instance. I could tell you of a young fellow who cursed the day when he was induced to read them. The advocates of this description of literature will tell us also that Zola’s works are valuable because they inculcate deep truths in heredity. I deny that they do. The whole science of heredity is as yet in its infancy, and Zola’s deductions are spurious from beginning to end. Anyone who has read or studied anything of heredity will soon perceive that. I am not in favour of gagging or prosecution; but in the case of writings like these I would have the public warned against them as against a pestilent sore. You, Sir, have done good service through the columns of your paper in advancing the cause of right thought and progress, and you could not better add to your account in that respect than by forming a committee of good representative men and women, getting them to read carefully all Zola’s works, and then giving their opinion as to whether there is one good or admirable feature in them from beginning to end. I enclose my card, but for obvious reasons withhold my name from publication.—I am, yours obediently,
TRISTRAM.
Heaton Moor, Jan. 10.
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The Daily Chronicle (13 January, 1894 - p.3)
LITERARY FREEDOM.
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—Kindly permit me to correct some mistakes in Mr. George Moore’s letter in your issue of to-day.
1. The statement that “The Confessional Unmasked” was printed and published with the approval of the National Vigilance Association is without foundation.
2. Captain Verney was never a member of the association, or in the remotest way connected with it.
3, As to Mr. George Moore’s Leamington case. hr clearly does not know the true facts, and consequently his statement is not reliable. It is utterly false that threats were used to induce the girl to “confess crimes.” The facts were not gone into before the magistrates. The boy’s father claimed compensation. I investigated the facts on the spot, and compensation was absolutely refused, the association being ready to meet any proceedings. None were taken.
4. Mr. Moore’s point about “Madame Bovary” appears to me to be a quibble. The case was adjourned sine die, and not proceeded with.—Yours faithfully,
WM. ALEX. COOTE,
Secretary.
National Vigilance Association,
267, Strand, W.C., Jan. 12.
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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—As a woman I feel it due to my sex to protest against Mr. Buchanan’s view of such realistic studies of character as that of “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Mr. Hardy himself gives as a sub-title to his book this phrase, “A study of a pure woman.” And to any woman who has not lived in a convent or in a puritanical atmosphere, the treatment of “Tess” by the two men who profess to love her must appear brutal. Surely, if Mr. Buchanan wished to trace what he is pleased to call “the smutty finger of M. Zola, smudged over the fair face of Mr. Hardy’s rustic muse,” he should have looked on the faces of the d’Urberville cousin and Angel Clare, where he would have seen not M. Zola’s smutty finger, nor Mr. Hardy’s smudgy touch, but the impress of a natural cruel selfishness, against which Tess, brave, sublimely innocent and phenomenally pure in heart, struggled, as so many noble women of her type are struggling every day in real life, and must continue to struggle until the social condition of things is altered, and woman is recognised as a being of like humanity (though of finer fabric) to man.
Realists in fiction are at present in the same position with regard to their art as are Anarchists with regard to their aims, and it is not the realists’ nor the Anarchists’ fault that their methods are necessarily violent and distasteful to the lovers of peace and loveliness.
“Civilisaion is rotten, society is corrupt,” cry they.
“No! no!” retort civilisation and society, “we are pure, we are clean, it is you who put your dirty fingers upon us and besmirch us.”
The realist in fiction exposes the sore for the physician to heal. The Anarchist proclaims the universal need of inherent obedience to natural law, and condemns by the voice of dynamite the artificial conditions which usurp those at which he is aiming. Zola, Hardy, and all realists—like Ravachol and Vaillant, are bomb-throwers; and they are unable to help the destruction of much that is lovely in their efforts to rebuild and reconstruct more that is still lovelier. There are Pharisees to-day who build streets of whited sepulchres, and to them is the rebuke applicable. “Woe unto you, Pharisees, hypocrites!” Is it M. Zola’s fault that the streets are full of dirt and garbage?
Mr. Buchanan will answer, “No, but he should walk on the other side, nose in air and tell us only of blue sky and fleecy clouds, and song birds and butterflies, and leave the dirt and the garbage to the vultures and scavengers who are paid to remove it.” Obviously those who stay at home and do not walk abroad will agree with Mr. Buchanan, and will, when they condescend to go out at all, elect to drive rapidly through the mud and deny that it existed. But there are to-day men and women of fearless purity and courage who care more for the cleansing of their cities than for the cleanliness of their own shoes, who affirm boldly that humanity should not suffer the dirt and garbage to exist, and who know perfectly well that only by forcing attention to it can it be removed. Mr. Buchanan says the cry of the realist is “be dirty,” forgetting that what the realist is crying all the time is “You are dirty, be clean!”
Great evils require drastic remedies. If such men and women did not exist as are portrayed by MM. Zola and Hardy, who would care to read about them? May we not hope for the time to come when such studies will bring, not a blush of shame to our cheeks so much as a happy smile to our lips, confident as we shall have become that the conditions of “Tess,” “Nana,” and such-like, are as impossible as those which to-day we laugh at in the ogres and bad fairies of modern pantomime. In anticipation of such a hope, then, shall we not honour those to whom its realisation will be due, and endeavour, as far as it lies in our power individually, to assist and encourage them, by living in accordance with the natural law of Beauty, Harmony, Love and Justice? In that bright future to which we look there will then be no need for a “Zola” to write books like “Nana” or “Pot-bouilli,” for as a realist he will not be doing realistic work; no scope for the destructive methods of Anarchism, for where there is universal love, there is the complete fulfilment of the law.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
37, Chelsea-gardens, Jan. 12. DOROTHY LEIGHTON.
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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—I gather from Mr. Buchanan’s letter in your issue of the 11th inst. (though he says he is in favour of “literary freedom”) that he believes the journalist who is realistic is also “ugly” and “dirty”: that he who is “real,” is “true,” is also “dirty” in literature! If this is the case, our whole social system must be thoroughly rotten. If we paint men and women of to-day in their true colours, if we write of them as the “really” are, then, according to Mr. Buchanan, we fill our books, our journals with “ugliness” and “filth.” Suppose this to be the case, suppose our lives to be full of sinfulness and dirt, how does Mr. Buchanan propose purifying us? By hiding all that is ugly and dirty from our sight—by telling us pretty little fairy tales, by making us believe that black is white, that darkness is light, and therefore really leading deeper into the mire. Doubtless Mr. Buchanan’s intentions are good enough, but I humbly venture to think he goes the wrong way to “cleanse the gutters of society,” to make freedom of literature a synonym with purity of literature. I ask, if as healthy, pure-minded, cleanly person was given a room tom live in which was thick with dust and cobwebs, was unwashed, dirty, and evil smelling, how would he set about improving the state of that room, so that it should cease to be offensive to him? It would save a great amount of trouble if he simply drew down the blinds, closed the shutters, and hid the daylight, so that the dust should not be seen; if he threw a little perfume on the floor, and lit a delicately-shaded lamp which would cat a rosy glow on the walls and ceiling, and turn the cobwebs and dust into glittering tracery. This would be very easy and simple. What matter if the dust increase, the cobwebs spread? He will not “see” it. It is sufficient.
I think we are all dwelling in a room of that kind, where softly-shaded lamps are lit, and sweet perfumes cast about by Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Clement Scott, and their confreres. They tell us to live in this room and to drink of the river Lethe before our time: to beware of daylight. The sunshine, the pure air is dangerous. And so if any one is venturesome enough to open the tightly-closed shutter and let daylight and fresh air stream into the room and stir the dust, a great hubbub occurs, the offender is removed from his fellows, the shutters closed, and the sunshine locked out. When will the majority of people learn that dirt is not removed by being hidden, that artificial light cannot be as healthy as sunshine? Like Prometheus, Mr. Buchanan means well, and let him beware, lest the “fairies” he manufactures draw down the wrath of the “gods,” and be the means of “spreading evils over all the earth”!—I am, &c.,
Jan. 12. ARTHUR G. T. APPLIN.
[Note:
I found the following information about Arthur G. T. Applin, oddly enough, on the local Spyders from Burslem site:
“Arthur G. T. Applin. An actor and a ‘name’ in the theatre world, as a writer he seems to have been prolific and with a wide range. An early writer for Mills and Boon, with Chorus Girls (1906) and The Stage Door (1909), but his well-reviewed town novels such as Shop Girls (real-life shop-girls of the 1910s) appears to have upped the tone considerably and somewhat evaded ‘the M&B formula’. Later produced countryside books such as Philandering Angler (memoirs of fishing and philandering), popular mysteries such as Blackthorn Farm, and even The Stories of the Russian Ballet. His later reviews in the 1920s and 30s emphasise his ability churn out swift-paced pulp-ish page-turners, with romantic settings ranging from racecourse to desert.”
There’s also a photo at the National Portrait Gallery.]
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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—Much can be forgiven to Mr. Robert Buchanan. We can afford to be indulgent to his idiosyncracies, remembering the amount of good work he has done. But when he characterises “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” as “the very quintessence of vulgarity, banality, ineptitude,” one is tempted to suggest that a limit should at any rate be placed to Mr. Buchanan’s literary freedom. Fortunately, however, for Mr. Hardy’s reputation—were it at all in danger from the savage attacks of a brother novelist—this particular onslaught is so obviously impelled by the very insanity of irresponsible criticism as to clean miss its point. It is a mere blind insult, doing harm only to its perpetrator. When Mr. Buchanan can produce a novel one-twentieth the beauty of “Tess” the world will be the richer for it.—Yours faithfully,
Pinner, Jan. 11. ERNEST E. WILLIAMS.
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The Leeds Times (13 January, 1894 - p.4)
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ZOLA.
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Not so very long ago COUNT TOLSTOI told an interviewer that in spite of our many excellencies we English were much given to cant and hypocrisy. This trait in our character may or may not be peculiar to us, but that it goes a very long way to stultify the credit due for good intentions we have no doubt whatever. That literary Philistine, MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN, has drawn attention to the death, due to his confinement in prison, of MR. HENRY VIZETELLY, and, very properly, he points out that while ZOLA was feted in England by English pressmen, his English publisher was sent to prison for the publication in England of his works. Here MR. BUCHANAN hits the right nail on the head. It is unfortunately true that the journalists who recently feted the Apostle of French Naturalism had no word to say for good, where they said anything at all, of M. ZOLA at the time MR. VIZETELLY was placed upon his trial at the Old Bailey. The inconsistency, to employ no harsher term, cannot be defended or excused; at the same time we deny the right of the Institute of Journalists to speak as the voice of the English Press. When MR. BUCHANAN, however, goes on to claim “liberty” for the literary man, and when he construes liberty as license, we venture, despite even the booming of ZOLA by the Institute, to protest that the cankerous books of this artist in literary filth should be made impossible in this country. So long as it is illegal and punishable in England to exhibit an indecent picture, so long should it remain illegal and punishable to print and publish an indecent book. There may be pearls at the bottom of what TENNYSON calls “the troughs of ZOLAISM,” if we can only find them. But we have nothing to do with motive. Everything bad contains, no doubt, some good, and it is conceivable that no bad is so unutterably bad but that it might be worse. But those who read ZOLA read him not for what he thinks, or for what he is supposed to teach, but for what he says, and it is exactly what he says that tends to corrupt. It is certainly not an absolute necessity for a novelist of the Natural School to take pains in describing in detail everything one sees in life, or paint into the picture all the colours which vice reveals to the eyes of those who would see them. An outline is one thing; a lurid picture, foul as the subject which it treats, is surely another. Because we allow OUIDA to sit on our doorstep, that is surely no reason why we should permit ZOLA to deposit bucket after bucket of sewerage there.
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. . .
PITH AND POINT.
. . .
HER ACCOMMODATING MAJESTY.
Referring to the article in the leader columns of this journal, it is proposed that a number of literary men, Messrs. Frank Harris, Ernest Vizetelly, Crackenthorpe, Robert Buchanan, and Moore, should combine for the purpose of defying Mrs. Grundy and a jury by publishing a translation either of “Nana” or “Au Bonheur des Dames.” I would like to see these brave advocates of literary liberty try it on. Her Majesty’s prisons can accommodate all classes.
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The Daily Chronicle (15 January, 1894 - p.3)
LITERARY FREEDOM.
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—I think I proved long ago that I have no sympathy with Mr. Coote, or with any other Deputy Providence superintending public morals. I am, indeed, from the standpoint I have taken throughout, a frankly “immoral” person, as opposed to all individuals who label themselves “moral.” I decline to regulate my life and thought by any narrow standard; I decline to be superintended, either by the Prurient Prosecutor or the Flamboyant Journalist. It is not I, but Mr. Coote and Mr. or Mrs. Harris, who wish to set limits to Literary Freedom. But I claim the right, as an English citizen, to express my opinion, and my opinion is that there is far more danger to Literary Freedom in the teachings of those writers who call themselves “emancipated,” and who clamour for universal self-exposure, than in all the Vigilance Committees ever organised for the protection of society.
I described the Leader of the Realistic Movement long ago as “a dreary and dismal gentleman, whose mind is solely exercised on questions of moral drainage and social sewerage.” What I objected to in him was not his immorality, which I failed to discover, but his morality. Zola is, in fact, an over-nice person with over-nasty ideas, rigidly truthful according to his lights, scrupulously honest, but au fond a Calvinistic dullard, because his method is pornographic. Do your correspondents really fancy that dirty object-lessons in Vice are the supreme business of Literature? It may be so, but that was not the question raised by my letter. My question was whether or not the Flamboyant Journalist was right when he raved about the suppression of literature, when he averred in good set terms that the drains had not been opened half enough. I answered that question in the negative. I pointed out that the Gospel of Dirt was being preached almost universally, and that, after all, sexual mania and sensual hysteria were abnormal, not normal, in human life.
I will admit quite frankly to Mr. Applin that I do prefer the fairy tale to the instructive parables of pessimistic Mr. Gradgrinds. I am glad that the great story-tellers, from Homer to Shakespeare, and from Shakespeare to Charles Dickens, have held their noses in the air, instead of keeping them in the mud. It is better, when all is said and done, to paint everything white than to paint everything black. The man who sees beauty and loveliness in the world, who believes in human nature, who discovers to what nobility and enthusiasm it is capable, is better worth listening to than the man who is eternally contemplating the baser portions of his own organism and exposing his neighbour’s moral nakedness. For après? We know from sad experience all about the meaner functions of existence; we know well how akin we all are to Caliban, and to the Brutes. What we like to be told of, what is far more interesting to us, is evidence of our kinship to the Angels. O, but the dingy pessimist avers, there are no Angels here or yonder. Is that so sure? At any rate, there is Fairyland, just as real, just as substantial as any Fogland; and Dorothy Leighton will find real women there—Antigone, Penelope, Beatrice, Imogen, Juliet, Laura Pendennis, and a thousand more.
This brings me, by instant transition, to the heart of the whole matter. The secret of modern literary decadence and gloom is the New Womanhood Invading—the half-emancipated bit still inept and ignorant Femininity venturing into the regions of thought once occupied and held by mighty Men. The New Womanhood would fain be very wise, but it only succeeds in being very foolish. The old leaven sticks to it. It is morbidly curious, eagerly sympathetic, pertly intelligent, temperamentally hysterical, and incapable of humour. It fidgets over petty moral problems, and fumbles about intellectual trifles, and calls this fidgetting and fumbling by the blessed word—Mesopotamia, or Emancipation. It repeats the old fallacy that Woman is the Slave of Man, although it knows right well that Man has been, ever since civilization began, the Slave of Woman, And now the New Womanhood, as prurient as Mr. Coote, calls to its aid all writers in whom, whatever their actual sex may be, the feminine qualities predominate; so that everywhere in Literature nowadays we find, instead of great thoughts and noble aspirations, and faith in the destiny of Humanity, only the mean phenomena of a suburban villa—the rinsing of teacups, the opening of dustbins, the odour of bad drains, the banalities of the bedchamber, and the washing of dirty linen.
I am not blind to the value of object-lessons in domestic conduct, and of instructive stories, in the manner of “Sandford and Merton,” on the relations between the sexes. I welcome them in their place, as I welcome all attempts to improve our social condition, but I have never regarded them, as serious contributions to literature. M. Zola and Herr Ibsen, ever anxious to “improve the occasion,” interest me about as much, or as little, as my old friend Mr. Barlow. But they, unlike him, have one unpleasant characteristic—their insistence on indecent and immodest details. They are so severely moral that they are shocked at every innocent and natural function, and in their zeal to warn us against aberrations from the path of duty they picture human nature as almost diabolic. They do for Literature, in fact, what a London newspaper did some years ago for Journalism—they tear open the cesspools, and poison the air, under the plea that they are working for the public good. If your readers desire to realise how delicately and deftly a true artist can deal with a sexual theme, let them turn to the “Ghetto Tragedies” of Mr. Zangwill, and read that infinitely pathetic sketch describing a Jewish divorce. We know by experience how Zola would have treated such a subject, how he would have searched out its filthiness and hideousness, until the impression created was one of simple horror against humanity. A young English writer of genius, taught reticence and reverence in the best school of English fiction, spiritualises the subject into perfect pity.
But is there nothing in life, after all, but the problems of concubinage and the aberrations of sexual hysteria? Do men and women grow either better or wiser by examining, ad nauseam their own moral secretions? Is Literary Freedom only another name for unlimited Immodesty? Were the heights of moral emancipation reached when street-boys and milliners were exulting in the details of the Armstrong case? These questions, I think, are easily answered, and the answers, I believe, will establish my contention—that object-lessons in the Unclean, however virtuously intended, can never be the sole, or even the serious, business of Art or Literature.—I am, &c.,
Jan. 14. ROBERT BUCHANAN.
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The Yorkshire Evening Post (15 January, 1894 - p.3)
THE NEW WOMANHOOD.
Says Mr. Robert Buchanan:—The secret of modern literary decadence and gloom is the New Womanhood Invading—the half-emancipated but still inept and ignorant Femininity venturing into the regions of thought once occupied and held by mighty Men. The New Womanhood would fain be very wise, but it only succeeds in being very foolish. The old leaven sticks to it. It is morbidly curious, eagerly sympathetic, pertly intelligent, temperamentally hysterical, and incapable of humour. It fidgets over petty moral problems, and fumbles about intellectual trifles, and calls this fidgetting and fumbling by the blessed word Mesopotamia, or Emancipation. It repeats the old fallacy that Woman is the Slave of Man, although it knows right well that Man has been, ever since civilization began, the Slave of Woman.
___
[Note: Buchanan’s letter was also the subject of an article in the feminist magazine, Shafts, which was mentioned in Lyssa Randolph’s 2001 PhD thesis, ‘The New Woman and the New Science: Feminist Writing 1880-1900’:
‘In an article in Shafts of 1894, ‘Mr Buchanan’s appeals for “Literary Freedom”’, the writer “X”, attacks Buchanan's claim that “the secret of modern literary decadence and gloom is the New Womanhood invading”. The writer defends the purpose novel when she states unequivocally that “there is room for literature as an art, plenty of room, more than room also, a need for literature which confronts human life and its woes — chiefly due to sexual relation — as it is and as they are, and which will not be silenced.” Buchanan had argued that the recent feminisation of literature — which he associates with naturalism — had stripped literature of its dignity and nobility: “everywhere in Literature nowadays we find, instead of great thoughts and noble aspirations and faith in the destiny of Humanity only the mean phenomena of a suburban villa — the rinsing of tea-cups, the opening of dust-bins [...] and the washing of dirty linen.” Playfully extending Buchanan's metaphors of feminine domesticity to describe the aims of a more realistic fiction, “X” insists that the “‘opening of the dust-bins’ has been the prelude to clearing them out, and the ‘washing of the linen’ a hygienic and wholesome necessity”. She historicises his evocation of the greatness of the Elizabethan age and its masculine literature and points up its barbarities: “religious free thinkers burnt alive in market places or imprisoned in dungeons; lunatics chained up like wild animals and scored with the lash”. Debunking a myth of a golden era her feminist critique firmly locates literature as part of a misogynist culture — citing for example women’s silencing and lack of legal rights in the sixteenth century.’
I have now (January,2026) found the original article and thought it best to add it here.]
Shafts (February 1894 - pp.206-207)
Mr. Buchanan’s Appeals for “Literary Freedom.”
IT is a very common mental condition to remain blind to all sides of a question but the one which makes special and personal appeal to us. Such is evidently Mr. Buchanan’s state, but notwithstanding that this is very patent to all who have read his recent letters in the Daily Chronicle, we should not have meddled with his opinions were they not characterised by the old offensive references to womanhood generally, as well as by extraordinary misconceptions with regard to the subject with which he essays to deal.
Mr. Buchanan wants to “free” literature from all association with reforms. He does not say so, but that is the plain intention of his efforts. He does not mind immorality, or what he calls “dirt,” so long as it is merely incidental and picturesque, but attention must not be directed to it as a thing to be got rid of, its causes must not be inquired into, and, in fact, Mr. Buchanan subscribes generally to the feeling of that large section of society which considers that “anything may be done but nothing must be talked about,” or that, worse still, if vice may be the subject of jokes on the stage and in literature, it must be entirely ignored as a serious matter for “mending or ending” in books. He quarrels with Ibsen, Björnsen, Dorothy Leighton, and no doubt Sarah Grand, confounds them with Zola, and says that “the secret of modern literary decadence and gloom is the New Womanhood Invading—the half-emancipated but still inept and ignorant Femininity—venturing into the regions of thought once occupied and held by mighty Men.” “The New Womanhood.”. . . is “morbidly curious” * . . . and “incapable of humour”. . . “It repeats the old fallacy that Woman is the Slave of Man, although it knows well that Man has been, ever since civilisation began, the Slave of Woman”. . . It is “prurient”—and “calls to its aid all writers in whom, whatever their actual sex may be, the feminine qualities predominate; so that everywhere in Literature now a days we find, instead of great thoughts and noble aspirations and faith in the destiny of Humanity, only the mean phenomena of a suburban villa—the rinsing of tea-cups, the opening of dust-bins. . . and the washing of dirty linen. . . I am glad that the great story-tellers, from Homer to Shakespeare, and from Shakespeare to Charles Dickens, have had their noses in the air, instead of keeping them in the mud.” (The italics are ours.)
*The time was when it was said that this or that book was “unfit for girls and women to read”; we think it is proper for women to become acquainted with anything that men may have written about them, so that what is vile may be denounced; and we also think that what is unfit for a woman to read is unfit for a respectable man to write. We have a shrewd suspicion that Mr. Buchanan is aware that women are not so “ignorant” as of yore, and that their knowledge is bearing the fruit of unpalatable medicines for the Old School of Men.
Let us examine these positions for a few moments, and see whether they are frothy words, or real facts.
In the first place Mr. Buchanan says in effect that modern women-writers choose one set of subjects only, for their themes, that relating to social reforms. Mrs. Browning, Jean Ingelow, George Eliot, Mrs. Gaskell, Mrs. Thackeray-Ritchie, and a host of others, prove the absurdity of such generalising. Of humour, Cranford, by Mrs. Gaskell, exhibits some of the most exquisite touches ever given in the English language, and all these women-writers are moreover absolutely clean, a characteristic which is conspicuously wanting in the majority of the “great story-tellers” both before and after Shakespeare’s time. We could furnish a long list of writers, ancient and modern, who were not only guileless of any attempt at reform, but who were unable to tell their “stories” or write their essays, without embellishing them with jests so foul, that were they collected in a single volume as specimens of masculine “humour,” no firm would be bold enough to publish it. And Shakespeare’s name would not be excluded from this entertaining selection.
In the second place, while this incessant reference to indecencies has died out in our English literature, the century which has been distinguished for social reforms has naturally and inevitably produced a school of writers which has dealt with the facts of life as they are with a view to change them for the better. The “opening of the dust bins” has been the prelude to clearing them out, and the “washing of the linen,” a hygienic and wholesome necessity. When that business has been done, many a pen will enlist in the service of telling stories for pure art’s sake, and sketching the humorous side of life, rather than the tragic, and because “great thoughts” will be more materialised than is the case now. The poet of our century, Tennyson, was one of those who dealt with the “Femininity” Mr. Buchanan affects to despise, and in which he at least beheld divinity. And there has been no purer writer than our Laureate. His “Princess Ida” was cast in a nobler mould than any of Shakespeare’s “heroines,” and the “Princess” voices many a noble thought and aspiration, and recognition of free Womanhood. In vain will you search his pages for the vile jest which has defiled the dramatists of past centuries and many another author. “Great thoughts” mingled with obscenities and contemptuous references to womanhood are like the grins of skulls—smiles from the midst of corruption.
But, what in truth was going on in the halcyon days of Elizabeth’s time and onwards, when the “mighty men” of literature had it all their own way, and woman was still mute because the “blue-stocking” was regarded with horror? We see bloody heads stuck upon Temple Bar; religious freethinkers burnt alive in market-places or imprisoned in dungeons; lunatics chained up like wild animals and scored with the lash; jails filled with a horde of persons as “dangerous as tigers” and as ignorant as babes; we note highway robberies, although men were hanged for stealing sheep; the persecution of dissenters, and the prosecution of “heretics” and “infidels”; and a condition of marriage in which women were the legal chattels of their husbands and possessed neither property nor children, combined with a totally uneducated and incapable womanhood. Meanwhile people were praising the cleverness of “Mr. Shakespeare,” who ignored these little horrors, and had his “nose in the air,” and later were reading Clarissa, Tom Jones and a variety of other productions in which immorality and indecency were prominent, but which from Mr. Buchanan’s point of view are “saved” from “femininity.”
Finally, we cannot help smiling over the one feeble and perhaps unintentional joke in Mr. Buchanan’s letter—viz., that ever since civilisation began “man has been the slave of woman.” If he had said that man had been the slave of his senses, it would have been nearer the mark, for his “enslavement” simply resolved itself into a great eagerness to do anything to gratify his passions, the objects of which his “laws,” religious interpretations, and regulations generally provided should be left as much as possible at his mercy. Now and then a famous beauty among women, having many admirers, would hold sway over the men while her good looks lasted, but the majority of the women took a back-seat in the drama of human life and were hedged round with moral or literal seraglio-walls. The higher note of free and equal companionship was never struck; the prostitute was ever in the street; the wife was ever the chattel in fact or idea; the man was ever voicing in his “stories” and his “philosophies” his unceasing sexual desires, and his contempt for the “mere woman.” A thousand quibbles will never blind us to the hard facts, and the Christ of two thousand years ago, in the face of the world around Him, was sad and earnest enough—no “humour” is recorded in the Gospels, nor are those pages given to the telling of fairy tales. There is room for literature as an art, plenty of room; and we welcome it as such; and there is room, more than room also, a need, for literature which confronts human life and its woes—chiefly due to sexual relations—as it is and as they are, and which will not be silenced, because woman who has chiefly suffered through this “enslavement”—let it be her own or man’s to his senses—refuses to be cajoled by empty phrases any longer, and is beginning to call things by plain names, and to see things pretty much as they are. Women do not mean to look on any longer while men compose “great thoughts” besprinkled with ugly jokes; they mean to get “noble aspirations” lived out, and to live them out themselves, because they “have faith in the destiny of Humanity,” which does not comprise man alone, but Woman and Man. It is regrettable to see a man who has both genius and moral sense exhibit an impatience so puerile with regard to reformatory books which have done and are doing an excellent work in educating many through the avenues of tales and dramas to think on subjects which might otherwise have failed to appeal to them. It is the cry of the child who is being awakened from a dream which pleases him, but has no reality—of the art-lover who fancies a pretty picture may serve to hide the purgatories in which countless numbers of his fellows live. These dreams, these child-days are passing away, for let who will wring his hands—full-grown Womanhood, Manhood, await us, and are our birthright. Noble ideals must be lived, and to make this possible we need the thunders of Ibsen as well as the light zephyrs of Wordsworth and Mrs. Hemans.
Mr. Buchanan has only himself to thank for inspiring a renewed determination on the part of thinking women to resist the offensive observations with regard to Woman which form the shame of by far the larger portion of those who are considered the great writers of the past, and which form a part of his letters also. The provocation to incisive comments in return is once again on the side of men. Are these “great thoughts,” and “noble aspirations,” and large sympathies? We leave sensible folks to decide. For our part we think he appeals against the very thing he is helping to create.
X.
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The Daily Chronicle (16 January, 1894 - p.3)
LITERARY FREEDOM.
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—Mr. Coote denies that “The Confessional Unmasked” was printed and published with the approval of the National Vigilance Association. Under his correction, I will only reply that the printer and publisher of “The Confessional Unmasked” was the printer and publisher employed by the National Vigilance Association for the printing and publishing of its propaganda. Why, therefore, if there was no connection, did they not prosecute their own printer when they were prosecuting Mr. Vizetelly? Further, why did they not contradict the charge when it was first made by Mr. Labouchere in Truth?
Mr. Coote denies that Captain Verney was ever a member of the National Vigilance Association. At the time of the trial it was stated in the newspapers that he was. However, Mr. Coote’s denial merely concerns Captain Verney’s official connection with the movement: his unofficial connection was sufficiently intimate, as all the world knows, to justify anyone in receiving the impression that he was actually and officially a member of the association.
Mr. Coote says that my statements regarding the Leamington case cannot be relied on. He says: “It is utterly false that threats were used to make the girl confess crimes. The facts were not gone into before the magistrates.”
Here is the report of the case:—
The Magistrates’ Clerk, addressing the girl, said: “I am going to read to you the information, and, when I have read it, I shall ask you if it is correct, and if you knew the meaning of it at the time that it was read.” The magistrates’ clerk then read the information, which alleged that the offence named was perpetrated on March 17, and asked the girl, “Is that information true?”
The Girl: No, sir.
Mr. Maw (instructed by the London Vigilance Association): She told me she swore it under a mistake, and under a
misapprehension of the terms.
The Magistrates’ Clerk: I ask that question because the girl has been to me this morning, and stated that she was not coming into court; but I advised her strongly to come and appear to the information. This young girl assures me—I think I may state it in open court because I think it necessary that this matter should be thoroughly exposed—she assures me, and is ready to swear it if necessary, that she is a nursegirl in a situation in Leamington, and that a woman called upon her a little time ago and said that Mrs. ——, who resides in ——, wanted to see her. She went up to see Mrs. ——. Is that correct, girl?
The Girl: Yes, sir.
The Magistrates’ Clerk: She went up to her, and Mrs. —— shut her up in a room by herself alone with her, and said, “Now, I want to ask you a few questions, and if you don’t tell the truth you’ll be sent to gaol.” And then she asked you if you knew —— —— , didn’t she?
The Girl: Yes.
The Magistrates’ Clerk: And you said yes?
The Girl: Yes.
The Magistrates’ Clerk: And she asked you other names, and you said you did know them?
The Girl: No.
The Magistrates’ Clerk: I think she asked you a few other names as well?
The Girl: Yes; she asked me if I knew —— —— , and I said “Yes.”
The Magistrates’ Clerk: And you said you did know them?
The Girl: Yes
The Magistrates’ Clerk: You only meant that you knew them as acquaintances?
The Girl: Yes.
The Magistrates’ Clerk: Now, girl, is it true that this young fellow ever had connection with you?
The Girl: No, sir.
“In this case,” said the counsel for the defence, “I am instructed that not only was this girl taken clandestinely from her employment to the house of Mrs. —— , but that that lady had her in a room to herself for upwards of one hour, and took down question and answer, asking the girl questions which she did not understand—that she took down herself the answers “Yes” or “No” as they were given, and made the girl sign the document; and that occurred, not only once, but on another occasion, when she was taken to the house of a person named —— , in —— , where the girl underwent the same treatment. Miss —— also took down her statement in writing, and the girl at this moment knows no more than the man in the moon what she signed.”
Mr. Maw: Under the circumstances, and the girl having evidently misunderstood the meaning of the terms, the summons must be dismissed, as nothing else can be done.
What does Mr. Coote mean? He says the case was not gone into before the magistrates! What does Mr. Coote mean? He says that threats were not used! “Now I want to ask you a few questions, and if you don’t tell the truth you’ll be sent to gaol."
This at least is a clear question: Does Mr. Coote think his lady vigilants were acting rightly in taking clandestinely an innocent girl from her employment, plying her with filthy questions, and inducing her to sign a paper which might have got a boy of fifteen sent to prison for a couple of years?
Mr. Coote says that my point about “Madame Bovary” seems to him to be a quibble. “The case,” he says, “was adjourned sine die, and not proceeded with.” An accusation of quibbling from Mr. Coote is amusing. The National Vigilance Association drew up a list of books which they believed could be prosecuted as indecent literature. They obtained a conviction on the book that headed the list—“La Terre” in the first trial, and on “La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret” in the second trial. When Mr. Vizetelly was in prison there was no one to proceed against; besides, the books indicated were to all intents and purposes unsaleable. That Mr. Coote should have learnt through the medium of Mr. Stead that “Madame Bovary” is not indecent literature is a matter on which we must congratulate ourselves. But as public memory is short, I will take this opportunity of mentioning that the list of books considered by Mr. Coote to be indecent included several volumes by Maupassant and Bourget; if my memory does not betray me, a volume by Goncourt was on this list, “Germinie Lacerteux,” I think; and on a previous occasion the National Vigilance Association took out a summons against another publisher for selling “The Heptaméron,” a collection of stories written 300 years ago by Margaret of Navarre. It is true that the summons was dismissed, the magistrate holding that the destruction of classical literature could not be permitted to the vigilants. Boccaccio was also proceeded against—unsuccessfully, it is true; also a dealer was summoned for selling photographs of pictures that had been exhibited in the Paris Salon. Had that prosecution been successful the National Gallery would probably have been the next victim—I am, Sir, yours truly,
GEORGE MOORE.
Jan 13.
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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.
SIR,—Would it mot be better if Mr. Buchanan, instead of indulging in that catholic power of abuse which shows him to be by no means free from the linguistic amenities of the “average woman”—or literary man—were to deal honestly and impersonally with the great question which he has raised?
The plain fact is that where we have all gone wrong nowadays is that we have mixed up Arty and Science. Or, to put it otherwise, Science has swallowed up Art. Art is a form of enjoyment; but we are all too busy in the search for truth—or something that goes by that name—to enjoy anything. And so we have folding-doors between our dissecting rooms and picture galleries, and we use our novels to help us discover fresh theologies, fresh social philosophies, and new bacilli.
And all this is as if a doctor, after he had discovered a new germ, were to innoculate himself with it for pure amusement. We play with disease—we make disease a subject, not of analysis, but contemplation—and then we are surprised to find ourselves diseased also.
And yet it is written that man shall know evil only to fight it, and not to enjoy it, and that if he enjoys it he shall pay the price. The dyer’s hand is still subdued to that in which it works.
What is most surprising is that all this development is claimed as a growth of Art. The fact is, of course, that we have been captured by the scientific spirit, and Realism is the sign-manual of our captivity. This new form of art is merely a surrender to science. M. Zola is a Positivist of genius, who has taken to telling stories after the manner of Maria Edgeworth. And yet, when science and art are mixed up it is fated that both shall be ...
[The rest of the letter is damaged and this picture will have to suffice.]
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