My Contemporaries In Fiction

Contemporaries In Fiction, by
David Christie Murray

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Title: My Contemporaries In Fiction
Author: David Christie Murray
Release Date: August 1, 2007 [EBook #22203]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CONTEMPORARIES IN FICTION ***

Produced by David Widger

MY CONTEMPORARIES IN FICTION
By David Christie Murray
LONDON

CHATTO & WINDUS
1897

CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTORY
MY CONTEMPORARIES IN FICTION
I.—FIRST, THE CRITICS, AND THEN A WORD ON DICKENS
II.—CHARLES READE
III.—ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
IV.—LIVING MASTERS—MEREDITH AND HALL CAINE
V.—LIVING MASTERS—RUDYARD KIPLING
VI.—UNDER FRENCH ENCOURAGEMENT—THOMAS HARDY
VII.—UNDER FRENCH ENCOURAGEMENT—GEORGE MOORE
VIII.—MR. S. R. CROCKETT—IAN MACLAREN
IX.—DR. MACDONALD AND MR. J. M. BARRIE
X.—THE PROBLEM SEEKERS—SEA CAPTAIN AND LAND
CAPTAIN
XI.—MISS MARIE CORELLI
XII.—THE AMERICANS
XIII.—THE YOUNG ROMANCERS

INTRODUCTORY
When these essays were originally printed (they appeared
simultaneously in many newspapers), I expected to make some enemies.
So far, I have been most agreeably disappointed in that regard; but I
can affirm that they have made me many friends, and that I have had
encouragement enough from fellow craftsmen, from professional critics,
and from casual readers at home, in the colonies, and the United States
to bolster up the courage of the most timorous man that ever held a pen.
As a set-off against all this, I have received one very noble and
dignified rebuke from a Contemporary in Fiction, whom the world
holds in high honour, who regrets that I am not engaged in creative
work--in lieu of this--and pleads that 'authorship should be allowed the
distinction of an exemption from rank and title.' With genuine respect I
venture to urge that this is an impossible aspiration, and in spite of the
lofty sanction which the writer's name must lend to his opinion, I have
been unable to surrender the belief that the work done in these pages is
alike honourable and useful. It is, as will be seen, in the nature of a
crusade against puffery and hysteria. It is not meant to instruct the
instructed, and it makes no pretence to be infallible, but it is issued in
its present form in the belief that it will (in some degree) aid the
average reader in the formation of just opinions on contemporary art,
and in the hope that it may (in some degree) impose a check on certain
interested or over-enthusiastic people.

MY CONTEMPORARIES IN FICTION

I.--FIRST, THE CRITICS, AND THEN A WORD ON DICKENS
The critics of to-day are suffering from a sort of epidemic of kindness.
They have accustomed themselves to the administration of praise in
unmeasured doses. They are not, taking them in the mass, critics any
longer, but merely professional admirers. They have ceased to be useful
to the public, and are becoming dangerous to the interests of letters. In
their over-friendly eyes every painstaking apprentice in the art of

fiction is a master, and hysterical schoolgirls, who have spent their
brief day in the acquisition of ignorance, are reviewed as if they were
so many Elizabeth Barrett Brownings or George Eliots. One of the
most curious and instructive things in this regard is the use which the
modern critic makes of Sir Walter Scott. Sir Walter is set up as a sort of
first standard for the aspirant in the art of fiction to excel. Let the
question be asked, with as much gravity as is possible: What is the use
of a critic who gravely assures us that Mr. S. R. Crockett 'has rivalled,
if not surpassed, Sir Walter'? The statement is, of course, most
lamentably and ludicrously absurd, but it is made more than once, or
twice, or thrice, and it is quoted and advertised. It is not Mr. Crockett's
fault that he is set on this ridiculous eminence, and his name is not cited
here with any grain of malice. He has his fellow-sufferers. Other
gentlemen who have 'rivalled, if not surpassed, Sir Walter,' are Dr.
Conan Doyle, Mr. J. M. Barrie, Mr. Ian Maclaren, and Mr. Stanley
Weyman. No person whose judgment is worth a straw can read the
writings of these accomplished workmen without respect and pleasure.
But it is no more true that they rival Sir Walter than it is true that they
are twelve feet high, or that any one of them believes in his own private
mind the egregious announcement of the reviewer. The one great
sufferer by this craze for setting men of middling stature side by side
with Scott is our beautiful