MY answer can only be a statement of opinion, which I make with much deference to the prejudices of my brethren. Whether it will be of interest to general readers I do not know; but the question I propose is in itself more or less vital as regards novel-writing. No one will deny that truism. Before going to work it is important to know what one means to do. I pretend, however, to no special gift for solving problems in general or this one in particular. To give “the result of one’s experience,” as the common phrase puts it, is by no means so easy as it sounds. An intelligent man mostly knows what he means by his own words, but it does not follow that he can convey that meaning to others. Almost all discussion and much misunderstanding may fairly be said to be based upon the difference between the definitions of common terms as understood by the two parties. In the exact sciences there is no such thing as discussion; there is the theorem and its demonstration, there is the problem and its solution, from which solution and demonstration there is no appeal. That is because, in mathematics, every word is defined before it is used and is almost meaningless until it has been defined.
It has been remarked by a very great authority concerning the affairs of men that “of making many books there is no end,” and to judge from appearances the statement is even more true to-day than when it was first made. Especially of making novels there is no end, in these times of latter-day literature. No doubt many wise and good persons and many excellent critics devoutly wish that there might be; but they are not at present strong enough to stand against us, the army of fiction-makers, because we are many, and most of us do not know how to do anything else, and have grown grey in doing this particular kind of work, and are dependent upon it for bread as well as butter; and lastly and chiefly, because we are heavily backed, as a body, by the capital of the publisher, of which we desire to obtain for ourselves as much as possible. Therefore novels will continue to be written, perhaps for a long time to come. There is a demand for them and there is profit in producing them. Who shall prevent us, authors and publishers, from continuing the production and supplying the demand?
This brings with it a first answer to the question, “What is a novel?” A novel is a marketable commodity, of the class collectively termed “luxuries,” as not contributing directly to the support of life or the maintenance of health. It is of the class “artistic luxuries” because it does not appeal to any of the three material senses—touch, taste, smell; and it is of the class “intellectual artistic luxuries,” because it is not judged by the superior senses—sight and hearing. The novel, therefore, is an intellectual artistic luxury—a definition which can be made to include a good deal, but which is, in reality, a closer one than it appears to be at first sight. No one, I think, will deny that it covers the three principal essentials of the novel as it should be, of a story or romance, which in itself and in the manner of telling it shall appeal to the intellect, shall satisfy the requirements of art, and shall be a luxury, in that it can be of no use to a man when he is at work, but may conduce to peace of mind and delectation during his hours of idleness. The point upon which people differ is the artistic one, and the fact that such differences of opinion exist makes it possible that two writers as widely separated as Mr. Henry James and Mr. Rider Haggard, for instance, find appreciative readers in the same year of the same century—a fact which the literary history of the future will find it hard to explain.
PROBABLY no one denies that the first object of the novel is to amuse and interest the reader. But it is often said that the novel should instruct as well as afford amusement, and the “novel-with-a-purpose” is the realisation of this idea. We might invent a better expression than that clumsy translation of the neat German “Tendenz-Roman.” Why not compound the words and call the odious thing a “purpose-novel”? The purpose-novel, then, proposes to serve two masters, besides procuring a reasonable amount of bread and butter for its writer and publisher. It proposes to escape from my definition of the novel in general and make itself an “intellectual moral lesson” instead of an “intellectual artistic luxury.” It constitutes a violation of the unwritten contract tacitly existing between writer and reader. So far as supply and demand are concerned, books in general and works of fiction in particular are commodities and subject to the same laws, statutory and traditional, as other articles of manufacture. A toy-dealer would not venture to sell real pistols to little boys as pop-guns, and a gun-maker who should try to sell the latter for army revolvers would get into trouble, even though he were able to prove that the toy was as expensive to manufacture as the real article, or more so, silver-mounted, chiselled, and lying in a Russia-leather case. I am not sure that the law might not support the purchaser in an action for damages if he discovered at a critical moment that his revolver was a plaything. It seems to me that there is a similar case in the matter of novels. A man buys what purports to be a work of fiction, a romance, a novel, a story of adventure, pays his money, takes his book home, prepares to enjoy it at his ease, and discovers that he has paid a dollar for somebody’s views on socialism, religion, or the divorce laws.
Such books are generally carefully suited with an attractive title. The binding is as frivolous as can be desired. The bookseller says it is “a work of great power,” and there is probably a sentimental dedication on the fly-leaf to a number of initials to which a romantic appearance is given by the introduction of a stray “St.” and a few hyphens. The buyer is possibly a conservative person, of lukewarm religious convictions, whose life is made “barren by marriage, or death, or division”—and who takes no sort of interest in the laws relating to divorce, in the invention of a new religion, or the position of the labour question. He has simply paid money, on the ordinary tacit contract between furnisher and purchaser, and he has been swindled, to use a very plain term for which a substitute does not occur to me. Or say that a man buys a seat in one of the regular theatres. He enters, takes his place, preparing to be amused, and the curtain goes up. The stage is set as a church, there is a pulpit before the prompter’s box, and the Right Reverend the Bishop of the Diocese is on the point of delivering a sermon. The man would be legally justified in demanding his money at the door, I fancy, and would probably do so, though he might admit that the Bishop was the most learned and edifying of preachers. There are indeed certain names and prefixes to names which suggest serious reading, independently of the words printed on the title-page of the book. If the Archbishop of Canterbury, or General Booth, or the Emperor William published a novel, for instance, the work might reasonably be expected to contain an exposition of personal views on some question of the day. But in ordinary cases the purpose-novel is a simple fraud, besides being a failure in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand.