IT IS PROBABLY generally agreed, I think—and what I think to-day Manchester thinks to-morrow—that something has got to be done to restore vigour and vitality to literary criticism. There was a time, not so long ago, when reviewers were reviewers. They lived on raw meat and spoke their minds, and an author who published a book did so at his own risk. If he got by without severe contusions of his self-respect, he knew that he must be pretty good. And if the reception of his first novel left him feeling as if he had been drawn through a wringer or forcibly unclothed in public, that was an excellent thing for his art. It put him on his toes. If he had the stuff, he persevered. If he hadn’t, he gave it up.
To-day the question Have you read any good books lately? is one which it is impossible to answer.
There are no good books nowadays—only superb books, astounding books, genuine masterpieces, books which we are not ashamed to say brought tears to our eyes.
Some people (who ought to be ashamed of themselves) say that the reason for this tidal wave of sweetness and amiability is the fact that reviewers to-day are all novelists themselves. Old Bill, they claim, who does the literary page of The Scrutineer, is not going to jump on Old Joe’s Sundered Souls when he knows that his own Storm over Brixton is coming out next week and that Joe runs the book column of The Spokesman.
This, of course, is not so.
Nobody who really knows novelists and their flaming integrity would believe it for a moment. It is with genuine surprise that William, having added Sundered Souls to the list of the world’s masterpieces, finds that Joseph, a week later, has done the same by Storm over Brixton. An odd coincidence, he feels.
No, the root of the whole trouble is that critics to-day, with the exception of a few of the younger set who have a sort of unpleasant downy growth alongside the ears, are all clean-shaven.
Whether the great critics were bitter because they had beards or grew beards because they were bitter is beside the point. The fact remains that all the great literary rows you read about were between bearded men, whiskered men, critics who looked like bursting horsehair sofas, and novelists who had forgotten to shave for years. The Edinburgh reviewers were beavers to a man.
The connection between whiskers and caustic criticism is not hard to see.
There is probably nothing which so soothes a man and puts him in a frame of mind to see only good in everything as a nice, clean shave. He feels his smooth, pink cheeks, and the milk of human kindness begins to gurgle within him.
What a day! he says, as he looks out of the window. What a kipper! he says, as he starts his breakfast. And, if he is a literary critic, What a book! he feels as he takes up the latest ghastly effort of some author who ought to be selling coals instead of writing novels.
But let a man omit to shave, even for a single day, and mark the result. He feels hot and scrubby. Within twelve hours his outlook has become jaundiced and captious.
If his interests lie in the direction of politics, he goes out and throws a bomb at someone. If he is an employer of labour, he starts a lockout. If he is a critic, he sits down to write his criticism with the determination that by the time has finished reading it the author will know he has been in a fight.
You have only to look about you to appreciate the truth of this. All whiskered things are testy and short-tempered—pumas, wild cats, Bernard Shaw, and—in the mating season—shrimps. Would Ben Jonson have knifed a man on account of some literary disagreement if he had not been bearded to the eyebrows? Can you imagine a nation of spruce, clean-shaven Bolsheviks, smelling of bay rum?
There is only one thing to be done. We must go back to whiskers. And there must be no half-measures.
It is not enough for a critic to have a beard like Frank Swinnerton’s, which, though technically a beard, is not bushy enough to sour the natural kindliness of his disposition. We must have the old Assyrian stuff, the sort of beards Hebrew minor prophets wore—great, cascading, spade-shaped things such as the great Victorians grew—whether under glass or not has never been ascertained.
I realise that I shall suffer myself from the change. There will be no more of those eulogies for my work like “Another Wodehouse” or “8 by 10½, 315 pp.” which I have been pasting into my scrapbook for so many years. But I am prepared to sacrifice myself for the sake of literature, and I know that a sudden ebullition of whiskers among critics would raise the whole standard of writing.
A young author would think twice before starting his introspective novel of adolescence if he knew that quite probably it would be handed over for review to somebody who looked like W. G. Grace at the age of eighteen.
Nervous women would stop writing altogether, and what a break that would be for the reading public. The only novelists who would carry on would be a small, select group of tough eggs who had the stuff.
And it is useless for the critics to protest their inability to fall in with the idea. It is perfectly easy to grow whiskers. There is a whiskered all-in wrestler in America—Hairy Dean. He did it. Are our star reviewers going to tell me that they are inferior in will power and determination to an all-in wrestler?
Tush!