The Selected Works of Arnold Bennett: Essays, Personal Development Books & Articles - Arnold Bennett

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pride, but he had not done enough. The curtain had risen on the first act of the drama of life, but the action, the intrigue, the passion seemed to hesitate and halt. Was this the artistic and creative life, this daily round? Was this the reality of that which I had dreamed? Where was the sense of romance, the consciousness of felicity? I felt that I had slipped into a groove which wore deeper every day. It seemed to me that I was fettered and tied down. I had grown weary of journalism. The necessity of being at a certain place at a certain hour on so many days of the week grew irksome to me; I regarded it as invasive of my rights as a freeborn Englishman, as shameful and scarcely tolerable. Was I a horse that I should be ridden on the curb by a Board of Directors? I objected to the theory of proprietors. The occasional conferences with the Board, though conducted with all the ritual of an extreme punctilio, were an indignity. The suave requests of the chairman: “Will you kindly tell us—?” And my defensive replies, and then the dismissal: “Thank you, Mr.—, I think we need trouble you no further this morning.” And my exit, irritated by the thought that I was about to be discussed with the freedom that Boards in conclave permit themselves. It was as bad as being bullied by London University at an examination. I longed to tell this Board, with whom I was so amicable on unofficial occasions, that they were using a razor to cut firewood. I longed to tell them that the nursing of their excellent and precious organ was seriously interfering with the composition of great works and the manufacture of a dazzling reputation. I longed to point out to them that the time would come when they would mention to their friends with elaborate casualness and covert pride that they had once employed me, the unique me, at a salary measurable in hundreds.

      Further, I was ill-pleased with literary London. “You have a literary life here,” an American editor once said to me. “There is a literary circle, an atmosphere. . . . We have no such thing in New York.” I answered that no doubt we had; but I spoke without enthusiasm. I suppose that if any one “moved in literary circles,” I did, then. Yet I derived small satisfaction from my inclusion within those circumferences. To me there was a lack of ozone in the atmosphere which the American editor found so invigorating. Be it understood that when I say “literary circles,” I do not in the least mean genteel Bohemia, the world of informal At-Homes that are all formality, where the little lions growl on their chains in a row against a drawing-room wall, and the hostess congratulates herself that every single captive in the salon has “done something Such polite racketing, such discreet orgies of the higher intellectuality, may suit the elegant triflers, the authors of monographs on Velasquez, golf, Dante, asparagus, royalties, ping-pong, and Empire; but the business men who write from ten to fifty thousand words a week without chattering about it, have no use for the literary menagerie. I lived among the real business men—and even so I was dissatisfied. I believe too that they were dissatisfied, most of them. There is an infection in the air of London, a zymotic influence which is the mysterious cause of unnaturalness, pose, affectation, artificiality, moral neuritis, and satiety. One loses grasp of the essentials in an undue preoccupation with the vacuities which society has invented. The distractions are too multiform. One never gets a chance to talk common sense with one’s soul.

      Thirdly, the rate at which I was making headway did not please me. My reputation was growing, but only like a coral-reef. Many people had an eye on me, as on one for whom the future held big things. Many people took care to read almost all that I wrote. But my name had no significance for the general public. The mention of my name would have brought no recognizing smile to the average person who is “fond of reading.” I wanted to do something large, arresting, and decisive. And I saw no chance of doing this. I had too many irons in the fire. I was frittering myself away in a multitude of diverse activities of the pen.

      I pondered upon these considerations for a long while. I saw only one way out, and, at last, circumstances appearing to conspire to lead me into that way, I wrote a letter to my Board of Directors and resigned my editorial post. I had decided to abandon London, that delectable paradise of my youthful desires. A To-let notice flourished suddenly in my front-garden, and my world became aware that I was going to desert it. The majority thought me rash and unwise, and predicted an ignominious return to Fleet Street. But the minority upheld my resolution. I reached down a map of England, and said that I must live on a certain mainline at a certain minimum distance from London. This fixed the neighbourhood of my future home. The next thing was to find that home, and with the aid of friends and a bicycle I soon found it. One fine wet day I stole out of London in a new quest of romance. No one seemed to be fundamentally disturbed over my exodus. I remarked to myself: “Either you are a far-seeing and bold fellow, or you are a fool. Time will show which.” And that night I slept, or failed to sleep, in a house that was half a mile from the next house, three miles from a station, and three miles from a town. I had left the haunts of men with a vengeance, and incidentally I had left a regular income.

      I ran over the list of our foremost writers: they nearly all lived in the country.

      XVI

       Table of Contents

      When I had settled down into the landscape, bought my live - stock, studied manuals on horses, riding, driving, hunting, dogs, poultry, and wild flowers, learnt to distinguish between wheat and barley and between a six-year-old and an aged screw, shot a sparrow on the fence only to find it was a redbreast, drunk the cherry-brandy of the Elizabethan inn, played in the village cricket team, and ceased to feel selfconscious in riding-breeches, I perceived with absolute certainty that I had made no error; I knew that, come poverty or the riches of Indian short stories, I should never again live permanently in London. I expanded, and in my expansion I felt rather sorry for Londoners. I perceived, too, that the country possessed commercial advantages which I had failed to appreciate before. When you live two and a half miles from a railway you can cut a dash on an income which in London spells omnibus instead of cab. For myself I have a profound belief in the efficacy of cutting a dash. You invite an influential friend down for the week-end. You meet him at the station with a nice little grey mare in a phaeton, and an unimpeachable Dalmatian running behind. The turn-out is nothing alone, but the pedigree printed in the pinkiness of that dog’s chaps and in the exiguity of his tail, spotted to the last inch, would give tone to a coster’s cart. You see that your influential friend wishes to comment, but as you gather up the reins you carefully begin to talk about the weather and prices per thousand. You rush him home in twelve minutes, skimming gate-posts. On Monday morning, purposely running it fine, you hurry him into a dog-cart behind a brown cob fresh from a pottle of beans, and you whirl him back to the station in ten minutes, uphill half the way. You fling him into the train, with ten seconds to spare. “This is how we do it in these parts,” your studiously nonchalant face says to him. He thinks. In a few hours Fleet Street becomes aware that young So-and-so, who lately buried himself in the country, is alive and lusty. Your stock rises. You go up one. You extort respect. You are ticketed in the retentive brains of literary shahs as a success. And you still have the dog left for another day.

      In the country there is plenty of space and plenty of time, and no damnable fixed relation between these two; in other words, a particular hour does not imply a particular spot for you, and this is something to an author. I found my days succeeding each other with a leisurely and adorable monotony. I lingered over breakfast like a lord, perusing the previous evening’s papers with as much gusto as though they were hot from the Press. I looked sideways at my work, with a non-committal air, as if saying: “I may do you or I may not. I shall see how I feel.” I went out for a walk, followed by dogs less spectacular than the Dalmatian, to collect ideas. I had nothing to think about but my own direct productiveness. I stopped to examine the progress of trees, to discuss meteorology with road-menders, to wonder why lambs always waggled their tails during the act of taking sustenance. All was calmness, serenity. The embryo of the article or the chapter faintly adumbrated itself in my mind, assumed a form. One idea, then another; then an altercation with the dogs, ending in castigation, disillusion, and pessimism for them. Suddenly I exclaimed: “I think I’ve got enough to go on with!” And I turned back homewards. I reached my study and sat down. From my windows I beheld a magnificent panorama of hills. Now the contemplation of hills is uplifting to the soul; it leads to inspiration and induces nobility of character, but it has a tendency to interfere with actual

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