the "spade" ideal in fiction
this has been summarized once for all in his description of what mr. w. l. george calls a "sincere" novel: "there would be as many scenes in the bedroom as in the drawing-room, probably more, given that human beings spend more time in the former than the latter apartment."
there is nothing sincere in that definition except its nasty flavour; the lust it suggests. the actual effect, if not the intention, is a quick shock to our natural instincts.
any possible value it might appear to possess at first sight, as a serious argument, has been lost by the insincere reason given. mr. george himself is far too good an artist not to know that real life is not measured by length of hours. crises are, nearly always, swift. too often, a character is lost or won in a moment; we grow old in a night; gain the happiness of a lifetime by the right word. [25]how many a man is bound to "spend more time" over his ledger than beside his lady!
this weak reasoning gives the realists away. they are so set on the letter of truth as to deny its spirit. aiming at exact photographic reproduction of life, they lose all sense of proportion and real values, hiding the wood in the trees. whether or not the material facts be true, the reality is false, the proportions misplaced, the picture out of focus.
in practice, moreover, they do select no less arbitrarily than the romantic victorians. in their view, "one can only get at most women's minds through their bodies."
but mr. george has only expressed one reason for his contention; even if that be seriously intended. the argument really means that, often, if not always, the most vital moments of our life are spent in the bedroom; a half-truth more dangerous and misleading than a lie.
what the word "bedroom" in this sentence honestly stands for is obviously something quite real; but it does not reveal or test character, and can never in any way complete a true picture of life. the accidents of expression are not truth itself.
in a recent drama of temperament called [26]enter madame, the author's mere instinct for stage-effects has, as it were by accident, provided an illustration that proves our point. the hero of this spontaneous and light-hearted drama is attracted by two women of whom one largely appeals to his passions (though not his lust); and the other appears to possess what modernists would call the "tame" comforting qualities of a "good" wife. he chooses passion in the end, following his love off the stage, into a bedroom. in this scene we have the whole truth; no added sincerity in the presentment, no shade of character the most minute, would have been added by opening that door. the emotional decision was the reality.
to the realist the play would probably seem a square fight between wife and mistress—with the inevitable result!
but, in actual fact, almost every detail went to confound the new morality. the passionate woman was the hero's wife, whom he had just divorced—to achieve domesticity. she did not exclusively depend upon the physical appeal; though it was used to bring him back. they had a thousand other, more subtle, points of sympathy and mutual attraction, despite the exasperating petty irritations [27]of life, which she would not allow to wreck their love. on the other hand, it was not any fixed aversion to marriage, any weakness in the bond itself, that caused her rival's failure. she simply was not, when—as it were—put to the test, his spiritual mate. for him, she was the wrong woman.
most certainly this play was not inspired by any conscious theories on life or art. a straightforward, workmanlike picture of everyday people; its very lack of intention made it the more convincing. the author had no axe to grind.
as in life, we saw that the best feelings of an ordinary decent sort of man are expressed, as his ultimate happiness is secured, by 'putting up with his wife's tantrums for love of her dear self.' that is, by some kind of self-control about the small things of life for the sake of the big; an instinctive knowledge of values or sense of proportion; mutual accommodation, and self-expression in self-sacrifice. he would not rush away from her for a change or new experience, to that placid domesticity which, because he had missed it, he—for a moment—supposed would prove ideal.
nevertheless, it is absolutely clear that his [28]decision does not establish the superiority of passion-storms over carpet slippers. he chose between two women, not between two modes of life: a matter of temperament, and the man's individual, permanent feeling. though married, he had not—as he too hastily imagined—fallen "out of" love.
life is distorted to-day by the orgy of crude passion in most second-rate fiction, of which mr. evan morgan's trial by ordeal is an extreme case. unfortunately such novelists have the smart air of being absolutely at home all over the world, without really knowing their way about anywhere.
the leading lady of this brightly variegated human manure-heap is a "vampire, like a sea-breeze, like the noise of a waterfall at night"; her familiar ally is a discreet "sort of lady dressmaker, whose sons, numbering almost equally with her lovers, had forced her to take to a genteel trade." it is a picture of life among "bolsters with the temperaments of wood-lice; . . . among talented women, gifted women, immoral women."
here miss hazell o'neill "netted a half-blind poet, whom she took out and dusted on bright days and holidays." him she ultimately left, as part of her luggage, to a landlady [29]in jersey; and proceeded to "smash a sculptor with his own statue."
caught at last by "romance," falling in love with a man who wondered—"would she be more trouble than she was worth"; this determined young woman "leapt up and began undressing . . . plunged into the water"; so that "the momentary glance he had of her naked beauty, the excitement, overcame him."
the hero, in his "first affair" with "the daughter of a very respectable god-fearing parson," carefully taught her the new ideals of "free love, free conscience, free everything . . . hoping himself to reap the fruit of his labours." submitting, however, to the "ceremonial" of marriage, he was caught in his own trap. she was now "enlightened," and "dreading suddenly the binding nature of the service," ran away, at the eleventh hour, with another man.
afterwards "she came back ill, very ill, and he left her to sink or swim." such is the chivalry of free love; that ultimately drove her to become "a horrible, decadent, drug-maniac."
of his "spiritual" union with another, we read: "both were exhausted, the emotions [30]of the soul had overpowered them, they fell fainting against the cool grey stone, and there, like a burning picture of all the romances there have been since the beginning of time, they leant in the twilight."
by all means call a spade a spade; but do not imagine that all life is spades. to insist upon bedroom scenes in fiction or drama, and all the nakedness of phrase such a conception of art implies, does, and must, often suggest the sly and coarse innuendo. it is the same with all excess of emphasis on physical detail. when mr. d. h. lawrence dwells on the feverish symptoms (mainly skin-deep) of his lovers, describes their breasts and loins, he is—actually—playing with the obscene.
the reticence we demand is not based on any pretence that our bodies are unclean, on any conventional association between mere words and thoughts.
a nude painting may be supremely, spiritually, beautiful: it may be lewd: but it is not, as many would now declare, more real because of its nudity.
can we honestly say that the increasing undress on stage or in daily life provokes more deep, true and sincere feeling, reveals more of a girl's or a woman's real and best [31]self? we know it does not. it distracts our thoughts from the woman herself to memories of purely animal and gross experience, tempts us to lower depths. it matters not, in the book or in the play, that innocence prevail. i have heard men, for example, when the curtain fell at the sign of the cross, chuckling over the public attack on a girl's body (though it failed), with gay plans for vile conquests.
obviously, there can be no fixed verbal rule. to say that no writer may use certain words or describe certain actions and things; no playwright may paint certain scenes; would be to "speak as a fool." each case must be determined by its inner spiritual truth.
in one sense our selection of phrase must be a matter of taste and good feeling; in another, it comes from our artistic instinct. what i maintain, and have tried to show, is that modern novels are, too often, both poisonous and untrue to life because their choice of words and, indeed, their whole picture of life, is dominated by a false view: that, if only your figures are naked they must be true, that our bodies cannot lie. in angry revolt against the half-truths of the [32]past, they snatch at the other half and swear it is the whole.
let the writer be sure that he cares only for truth; and loyalty to his vision will give him the right, clean thoughts and words.
let the reader trust to his own natural instincts. almost certainly, if a phrase or thought either shock or suggest the unclean, it is itself—as then used—unclean, false to life and nature; and also bad art. if you are told that the first slight shock, prick of the conscience, impulse to shrink away, is false hypocrisy, do not believe it.
nearly always the most inexperienced youth feels straight. once the poison is drunk and you have let yourself go with the injected delirium, you will have lost the power to see and feel for yourself.
