literary pride

Irish Jesuit Province

Literary PrideAuthor(s): Thomas KellySource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 45, No. 527 (May, 1917), pp. 303-309Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20504796 .

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[ 303 ]

LITERARY PRIDE

By THOMAS KELLY.

A RNOLD BENNETT once wrote a book, entitled " Literary Taste : and how to Form it." It is a

fairly sensible book, written in a style which appeals to those who have some little notion of themselves as "literary" individuals. One of its main aims seem to have been to flatter the people likely to buy it by an intimate style, an assumption that they were thinkers, and more than ordinarily brainy folk. And it succeeded. The first batch of readers were pleased with the book, and they went and told their friends about it. Their friends- were pleased too, for the author addressed them in these familiar and flattering ways: " You do not approach the classics with gusto-anyhow, not with the same gusto as you would approach a new novel by a nlodern author who had taken

your fancy. . . . You peruse them with a sense of

duty, with a sense of ' improving yourself I . . . The

desire to be more truly literary persists in you. You feel that there is something wrong in you, but you cannot put your finger on the spot. . . . You reflect: 'According to what Matthew Arnold says, I ought to be perfectly mad about Wordsworth's Prelude. And why am I not? I do wish I could smack my lips over Wordsworth's Pre lude.' . . . Yes, I am convinced that in your dissatisfied, your diviner moments, you address yourself in these terms. I am convinced that I have diagnosed your symptoms." The readers of the books were convinced, too, you may realise, for it is somehow pleasant to a certain type of mind to be addressed as if on more than speaking terms with " Literature." And I'm sure the author was pleased, for his judicious mixture of flattery and friendly counsel has sold in paying numbers.

Personally, I dislike Arnold Bennett. For one thing because, in his journalistic somersaulting, he, on a certain occasion, made grave and unfounded charges against a body



304 THE IRISH MONTHLY

to which I belong, and, though given the opportunity, I never saw any evidence of his desire to make amends.

Then I have read his " Truth about an Author." Early

in that work he states that hle never wrote unless compelled to by the driving force of thoughts which clamoured for expression, by the need to give utterance to the images that surged through his brain-or words to that effect. And, before the close of the book he placed it on record that his only inspiration in writing was the prospect of getting paid for what he wrote. I do not mind a man contra

dicting himself, and I willingly concede to everyone the right to change his own mind; but when an author drags "Truth" into his title, and afterwards tries to force diamet rically opposite statements down my throat, I cannot feel unkind in my utter lack of sympathy for him.

All the same, I'm sorry that Arnold Bennett could not have written another book. It should have for title:

Literary Pride: and how to cure it." He'd have to be a Catholic to write it in the spirit in which it should be

written, but he has the style that could drive home to the mind which needs a little light on its queer corners every accusation, every exposure, every suggestion. And legion are those who would profit thereby in a mental as well as in a spiritual sense.

Pride-and more especially the literary species of it-has a good deal more of cowardice than of courage in its com position. And thus it comes that the people who suffer from what we call literary pride are not merely proud of their bookish knowledge, but swell at the thought of how

much better up in literature they are than their neighbours. They do not trouble to sing:

"Books should to one of these four ends conduce, For -wisdom, piety, delight or use."

Even if they do, they sing it in a very minor key-it would be such an awful catastrophe if anybody fastened on to the " piety " note, and claffed them about it ! For they

are nothing if not touchy, lest they be thought better than the next.

Chiefly do such folk display their pride in the careful way they guard against any display of their acquaintance with



LITERARY PRIDE 306

Catholic literature of any kind. Not so much do they mind admitting that they have read Monsignor Benson, or John Ayscough, or Canon Sheehan-" all the literary re viewers have spoken so well of them, you know "-but at the sound of the word " Catholic," or any indication thereof, in the title of a book or periodical, they pointedly look the other way, they really have no time for religious stories that are all very well for women and children. They have certainly no objection to Catholic literature, but the plain truth is that they are obsessed with the notion that the reading of works with an avowed Catholic flavour or setting is a sign of goody-goodiness, and they suffer much travail of spirit lest anyone should think them of the goody-goody type. If and when they do read such a work, they do so in a secretive fashion-their reputation for broadnded ness and strength of will being at stake among their circle of broadminded friends.

Recently I met such a type of individual. He really had no objection to Catholic periodicals, but thought they suffered a good deal by their avowed adherence and advocacy of Catholicity. "Now, if they were purely literary journals, vou know," he informed me, " they would do a lot better.

That's the worst of us in Ireland, we have no purely literary Monthly like some of the English ones." He happened at the moment to be reading one of the English "purely literary" periodicals, but where either the purity or the literature came in I failed to realise. The journal started off with an article, entitled: "Is Fashionable Dress possible with Present-day Economy? Miss So-and-So says it is." Miss So-and-So's claims to authorship, it appears, are based on the fact that in a certain theatrical perform ance her frocks were the prettiest and the- most expensive of any other actress in the piece. Hence, of course, she

must write an article for one of the magazines. Why, exactly, a lady who can utter the words which somebody else wrote, or who can attract a little -attention to herself on the stage, should thereby become qualified to write for the " literary " public I am unable to explain. And the gentleman who was troubled because so many Irish

monthlies made no effort to hide their Catholicity could 83




not satisfy my curiosity. " But if one of our Irish ones went in just for literary stuff, I'm sure it would mean a great increase in its circulation." I wanted to know why, but he felt unable to put his reason into words.

To come back to Arnold Bennett. Writing in his book of Taste, he says to the reader, more in the professorial than in the intimate fashion: " Yet something within you continually forces you to exhibit for the Classics an enthu siasm which you do not sincerely feel. You even try to persuade yourself that you are enjoying a book, when the next moment you drop it in the middle and forget to resume it. You occasionally buy Classical works, and do not read them at all; you practically decide that it is enough to possess them, and that the mere possession of them gives you a cachet." Now, if the author had been qualified to

write that handbook on the curing of the literary pride with which so many Catholics are affected, he would probably have put the above somewhat in this strain: " You some times try to persuade yourself that a book or a periodical is good or at least interesting, when the next moment the truth flashes on you that you merely read it because some body else told you he had read it, and that it was awfully clever-but just a shade risky. You occasionally-very occasionally-buy Catholic periodicals, but you do not read them, pretending that they are too good for your taste, but that they suit the wife all right. And you know all the time that the wife is a bit cleverer than yourself." But the sentences which come immediately after the ones I have quoted from Arnold Bennett could be let stand for the book that remains to be written, for they are : " The

truth is, you are a sham. And your soul is a sea of uneasy

remorse." They are almost too true for our text on " Literary Pride"; but if people who pretend that they admire the Classics are well aware of their sham qualities, surely those who wilfully neglect Catholic works for reasons of second-hand pride must feel that their pretence to broad minded culture is the veriest mirage imaginable. And they must be well aware of the wedding of culture and Catholicity from early ages.

Bennett has one theory which I should like to mention.



LITERARY PRIDE 307

lie sumns it up: " Into the business of forininig literary taste faithi enters." He did not mean " Faith " as w e

uinderstand it, but in olle way hiis maxinm is admilrable. l'or

he urges that, as the novice in literature is not (1ulalified(

to select for himself, he absoluitely nust be gutilded. by those

who have gone before himi. He cannot afftord to pick and

choose, for the odds are ten to one that the bo)k whlielh

he will select is one whose perusal does mnore lhariii tilhan

good-just as a child, if given free cloice, will start lhis

dinner witlh the sweets. And our author has a little to

say on the insidiousness of the undesirable volumne: " Bad

books, by flattering youi, by caressing, 1y appealing to the

weak or the base in you, wvill often persuade youi what fine

and splendid books thiey are." In otlher words, your sense

of literary pride perceives merits in the work whicih is

base, just because the author flatters you to the extent of assumiing that youi are well-versed in tunpleasant pathways of kniowledge, or in the details of the semi-diabolical.

We are not concerlned witlh those who are proud of their

ability in

Quoting odes, and jewels five-words-long That on the scattered forefinger of all Time

Sparkle for ever."

They are in a different category, for it is comparatively easy to understand them. And tlley do nobody-not even themselves-much harimi. But there is somethincg despic able abotut the type of mind which raves about what Elia called "Books whiclh are no books .... thinigs in books' clotlling." Because acquaintance with the banned, the esoteric is regarded as a token of up-to-dateness by a

species of literary poseurs, there are many willing to boast of their perusal of doubtful tomes. They even speak as if the reading had given a claim to assumptions of culture,

forgetful of Ruskin's balanced statements in " Sesanle and Lilies." Among them are: "You might read all the books in the British Museum, and remain an utterly 'illiterate' person, and an uneducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book with real accuracy, you are for ever

more in some measure an educated person." But it is




not sufficient for many folk to be thought educated these days, they must be up-to-date as well. And to be up-to date you must be able to read what you like-or rather

what other people say they have read. The great drawback, I have been informed, to many of

the stories appearing in Irish periodicals is that they have a religious flavour. Drawback, explain the apologists, in the sense that more people would read them if that element of religion were left out. Now and again I read a story in a "popular" Monthly, and the manner by which the "interest is sustained" is not a little surprising. I have just read the "star" story in a magazine of wide circulation. It was written by one, whose stories I always thought had for their chief theme more or less innocent and silly so-called love. But I found I was wrong. The story opened with the wife and mother of a sick child going off for a moon light motor jaunt with Young Scatterbrain. Her husband

makes a sort of weak-kneed protest, but she ridicules his interference. By and by his wife's sister-who is nursing the sick child, of course-comes into the room, and through pages of slushy sentimentality we are shown the "souls" of the pair, and informed that each loves the other. The hours go by, and the wife does not return, but instead she sends a note by messenger saying she has gone off for good

with Young Scatterbrain. Then the other pair agree to make one another happy for ever and a day, and we have

what is known nowadays as a happy ending. Happy ending, indeed !

That style of story is "

smart." It is popular, just

because it has the flavour of the illicit,- because it is sup

posed to portray the way they do things in "high society." And the victims of literary pride think it a fine yarn,

because it is regarded as a good exposition of the theory

that people don't, fall interestingly in love till bound by the marriage tie to somebody else. It has been stated that

some people, and more especially young people, do not think a thing worth believing unless it seems difficult of belief, and it might be added that many readers do not think a love story worth persuLal unless there is a spice of the forbidden about it. Which explains why the novel



LITERARY PRIDE

devouring section of humanity is not on the highest intel lectual plane-their interest is centred in "plots" and their appendages, as apart from the subtleties of character-draw ing, the niceties of dialogue, and so on. For some palates enjoy the wholesome flavour of decent food, but others cannot do so unless their appetites are provQked by the stinging aid of a cheap and nasty sauce.

Sings Cowper:

"K nowledge is proud that he has learned so much;

Wisdom is humble that he knows no more."

But what would he have said of that species of "know ledge-pride " which pretends ignorance of what is "ultra good " ? I would almost wager that he would agree that

one who assu-mes fear lest he be thought better than he is, is assuredly much worse than he kmows.



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