George Meredith (article 3 november 1892)
George Meredith is an article published in The Daily Chronicle on 3 november 1892.
Report of a lecture given by Arthur Conan Doyle about The Genius and Writings of George Meredith of the Upper Norwood Literary and Scientific Society held on 2 november 1892.
George Meredith
A LECTURE BY MR. CONAN DOYLE.
A lecture was delivered last night at the Upper Norwood Literary and Scientific Society by Mr. A. Conan Doyle, the subject of the paper being the writings of Mr. George Meredith. The lecturer began by remarking that if statistics could be taken in the various free libraries of the kingdom to prove the comparative popularity of different novelists with the public, he thinks that it is quite certain that Mr. George Meredith would come out very low indeed. "If, on the other hand, a number of authors were convened to determine which of their fellow-craftsmen they considered the greatest and the most stimulating to their own minds, I am quite confident that Mr. Meredith would have a vast preponderance of votes."
Mr. Doyle then proceeded to inquire the reason of this divergence of opinion, and to seek for the "secret of Meredith" in his books.
MEREDITH'S PEDIGREE.
Mr. Conan Doyle proceeded to remark that from the days of Defoe the method of story-telling in England had been one of very gradual development, every man, even the greatest, standing on the shoulders of his predecessors. It was always possible to trace the main lines of an author's pedigree. Dickens was a Smollett, with less coarseness and more humour. Thackeray was a Fielding, with greater insight and refinement. They themselves became stepping-stones to others, and indeed so catching was Dickens's style, and his general view of life, that it is easier to mention those of contemporaries who were not affected by it than those who were. Meredith's pedigree, however, begins with himself. Alone of English authors he is not to be traced back to any foregoing influence. His presence is a perpetual puzzle like one of those ice boulders which lie alone in a rockless country. No one can say how he came to be. We only know that he is there, and that he promises to be an ever-increasing power in our literature.
MEREDITH AND WATER.
If Meredith neat has been too strong for the public taste, Meredith and water has been most popular. Stevenson's style, which has been so often and so justly admired, is a dilution of Meredith's. Let anyone read the German chapters in "Harry Richmond," and afterwards the German chapters in "Prince Otto," if he wishes to appreciate the relation between the two writers. And Stevenson's style has again been reproduced with more or less success by many others, all of whom owe their vitality to the little-read master. He is like a great unseen spring which supplies the brooks from which all men drink.
HIS PLACE IN LITERATURE.
In England during this century we have had three men of this class in different branches of letters — Carlyle in history, Browning in poetry, and Meredith in fiction — men whose extreme genius and energy were handicapped rather than helped by their originality of thought and expression. Of these two have already been universally admitted into the very first rank of English literature, and it is a safe prophecy to say that the third will also take his true place as the greatest writer of fiction of the latter Victorian era.
"RICHARD FEVEREL."
Mr. Conan Doyle then proceeded to review Mr. Meredith's writings in chronological order and to read extracts. Of "Richard Feverel," he said that it might take its place with "Vanity Fair" and "The Cloister and the Hearth" as one of the three best novels in modern English literature, adding that it is almost incredible, and must make younger authors very humble to think that nearly twenty years had passed before a second edition of his great masterpiece was published. What could Englishmen have been about to leave such a book in Paternoster-row for twenty years instead of having it upon the most select shelf of their libraries? The love-scenes were "the loveliest love-scenes in fiction. That is a sweeping thing to say, but I repeat it, that never has love been treated by an English writer so charmingly as by Meredith in 'Richard Feverel.' He has given new life to a subject I which has been so done to death and mangled in our novels that it has become a question with many whether it would not be better to omit it altogether. Here it is, as fresh as springtime, all girt round with the golden haze of youth; full, too, of youth's vague aspirations, of its tenderness, of its heroism." "Richard Feverel,"
the lecturer remarked, "furnishes us with one new type to English fiction in the youthful cynic Adrian Harley."
"THE EGOIST."
In "The Egoist" the story is entirely subordinate to the character-drawing of the central figure, Sir Willoughby Patterne. It is a ruthless dissection of human nature, exposing to its last fibre the selfishness which lies at the root of the average man. We may trust that we are not all Sir Willoughby Patternes, but there are few of us who must not acknowledge that we have something of him in our composition. There are passages in that book which must set a man examining his conscience if he has one. The baronet is to all appearances a quite model man, handsome, intelligent, cultivated, and even generous. Yet we see as we follow his development that no leper could be more revolting, and all on account of that taint of self which hangs round every action. And yet he is never exaggerated. We feel that we have met the man again and again. We have had many a side glance at him as he passed through life, though very likely we have never seen him in his entirety as in Meredith's pages.
MEREDITH'S FAULTS.
The lecturer went on to say that it would be disingenuous not to allow that there are faults to be balanced against the virtues. Homer nods sometimes, and Mr. Meredith is sometimes dull. To paraphrase one of his own sayings, when a clever man is dull he is worse than the dullest man. As a critic expressed it, he erects a zareba round his story which the reader has to force. It is a very thick husk which has to be cracked sometimes before the kernel can be got at. There is Meredith's chief fault. Even when he is at his best we read him principally from the intellectual pleasure of his style and thought, and not from a keen interest in his story. There is none of that throb of human life which keeps the readers of Charles Reade out of their beds into the small hours. You feel the presence of an immense intellect all the time, but you are inclined to doubt whether he has chosen the correct medium for its expression. He is a heaven-born writer, but he is not a heaven-born story-teller. In the age of Shakespeare he would have been a great dramatist. Had he lived with Queen Anne he would have rivalled Addison as an essayist. You feel that he has taken to the novel as the mode of expression which was most in vogue in his era, but that another medium might have been as effective for showing his powers. No one can feel this with Reade or Scott.
A MONOTONY OF SPARKLE.
And then another very serious and obvious flaw which is more apparent in his later work, is that all the characters must be the mouthpieces of his wit. A monotony of sparkle may become more trying than a monotony of dullness, and is certainly more removed from life. Goldsmith's remark would apply him that all his little fishes speak like whales. It is the reverse of the usual fault of the novelist, whose would-be whales speak like very little fishes indeed. Every character fires off epigram and aphorism until the mind is stunned with it. Repartee clatters on retort like a sword on a shield. It is the fault of a great genius, but it is none the less an artistic flaw.
HIS PHRASE-MAKING.
Much has been said of his phrase-making, but then how few are the failures beside the successes, and how it has stimulated our appreciation of the effects which may be got out of the English language. The old similes which would have come so readily to our pens have become impossible when we see how contemptuously Mr. Meredith has tossed them aside. "A writer," he says of himself, "who is not servile, and has insight, must coin from his own mint." Things can no longer be as red as a rose, or as swift as lightning, or as strong as a lion. The universe is broad, and a million of analogies surround us on every side. Why should we eternally use those which are long outworn? Mr. Meredith at least will have none of them. For every time that in phrase-making he misses his target there are a hundred bulls. It is his ambition to strike an impression in a word or two into the reader's mind, and how often he does so! He says himself, "The art of the pen is to arouse the inward vision, instead of labouring with a drop-scene brush as if it were to the eye, because our flying minds cannot contain a protracted description. That is why the poets who spring imagination with a word or phrase paint lasting pictures. The Shakespearean, the Dantesque, are in a line — two at most."
THE MEREDITHIAN WOMAN.
The lecturer concluded by saying that he should have liked to speak of Meredith's treatment of women, the point in his writings which he himself considers most vital. He thought it enough to say that the Meredithian woman is the extreme pole from the Byronic woman — strong, robust of mind end body, with rude health and an excellent appetite. He remarked, in conclusion, that while each is free to form his own likes and dislikes in literature, there are still apart from all individual caprice, certain rules which tell us that though solid work may for a time be neglected, it will still outlive all other as certainly as the column of stone would survive the most gaudily painted lath and plaster.
