New Grub Street, George Gissing [10 best books of all time TXT] 📗

by the ton from the printing-press? Just the men and women who ought to spend their leisure hours in open-air exercise; the people who earn their bread by sedentary pursuits, and who need to live as soon as they are free from the desk or the counter, not to moon over small print. Your Board schools, your popular press, your spread of education! Machinery for ruining the country, that’s what I call it.”

“You have done a good deal, I think, to counteract those influences in Wattleborough.”

“I hope so; and if only I had kept the use of my limbs I’d have done a good deal more. I have an idea of offering substantial prizes to men and women engaged in sedentary work who take an oath to abstain from all reading, and keep it for a certain number of years. There’s a good deal more need for that than for abstinence from strong liquor. If I could have had my way I would have revived prizefighting.”

His brother laughed with contemptuous impatience.

“You would doubtless like to see military conscription introduced into England?” said Jasper.

“Of course I should! You talk of civilising; there’s no such way of civilising the masses of the people as by fixed military service. Before mental training must come training of the body. Go about the Continent, and see the effect of military service on loutish peasants and the lowest classes of town population. Do you know why it isn’t even more successful? Because the damnable education movement interferes. If Germany would shut up her schools and universities for the next quarter of a century and go ahead like blazes with military training there’d be a nation such as the world has never seen. After that, they might begin a little book-teaching again⁠—say an hour and a half a day for everyone above nine years old. Do you suppose, Mr. Milvain, that society is going to be reformed by you people who write for money? Why, you are the very first class that will be swept from the face of the earth as soon as the reformation really begins!”

Alfred puffed at his cigarette. His thoughts were occupied with Mr. Fadge and The Study. He was considering whether he could aid in bringing public contempt upon that literary organ and its editor. Milvain listened to the elder man’s diatribe with much amusement.

“You, now,” pursued John, “what do you write about?”

“Nothing in particular. I make a salable page or two out of whatever strikes my fancy.”

“Exactly! You don’t even pretend that you’ve got anything to say. You live by inducing people to give themselves mental indigestion⁠—and bodily, too, for that matter.”

“Do you know, Mr. Yule, that you have suggested a capital idea to me? If I were to take up your views, I think it isn’t at all unlikely that I might make a good thing of writing against writing. It should be my literary specialty to rail against literature. The reading public should pay me for telling them that they oughtn’t to read. I must think it over.”

“Carlyle has anticipated you,” threw in Alfred.

“Yes, but in an antiquated way. I would base my polemic on the newest philosophy.”

He developed the idea facetiously, whilst John regarded him as he might have watched a performing monkey.

“There again! your new philosophy!” exclaimed the invalid. “Why, it isn’t even wholesome stuff, the kind of reading that most of you force on the public. Now there’s the man who has married one of my nieces⁠—poor lass! Reardon, his name is. You know him, I dare say. Just for curiosity I had a look at one of his books; it was called The Optimist. Of all the morbid trash I ever saw, that beat everything. I thought of writing him a letter, advising a couple of anti-bilious pills before bedtime for a few weeks.”

Jasper glanced at Alfred Yule, who wore a look of indifference.

“That man deserves penal servitude in my opinion,” pursued John. “I’m not sure that it isn’t my duty to offer him a couple of hundred a year on condition that he writes no more.”

Milvain, with a clear vision of his friend in London, burst into laughter. But at that point Alfred rose from his chair.

“Shall we rejoin the ladies?” he said, with a certain pedantry of phrase and manner which often characterised him.

“Think over your ways whilst you’re still young,” said John as he shook hands with his visitor.

“Your brother speaks quite seriously, I suppose?” Jasper remarked when he was in the garden with Alfred.

“I think so. It’s amusing now and then, but gets rather tiresome when you hear it often. By the by, you are not personally acquainted with Mr. Fadge?”

“I didn’t even know his name until you mentioned it.”

“The most malicious man in the literary world. There’s no uncharitableness in feeling a certain pleasure when he gets into a scrape. I could tell you incredible stories about him; but that kind of thing is probably as little to your taste as it is to mine.”

Miss Harrow and her companions, having caught sight of the pair, came towards them. Tea was to be brought out into the garden.

“So you can sit with us and smoke, if you like,” said Miss Harrow to Alfred. “You are never quite at your ease, I think, without a pipe.”

But the man of letters was too preoccupied for society. In a few minutes he begged that the ladies would excuse his withdrawing; he had two or three letters to write before post-time, which was early at Finden.

Jasper, relieved by the veteran’s departure, began at once to make himself very agreeable company. When he chose to lay aside the topic of his own difficulties and ambitions, he could converse with a spontaneous gaiety which readily won the goodwill of listeners. Naturally he addressed himself very often to Marian Yule, whose attention complimented him. She said little, and evidently was at no time a free talker, but the smile on her face indicated a mood of quiet enjoyment. When her