Dean' was refused, so I went down to the publishers to try and find
out. I saw the reader himself, and an awfully nice fellow he is,
too. In reply to my question, he said the objection to the book was
that it dealt with a wife leaving her husband. I stared at him in
amazement. 'But, great Scott!' I said, 'that's a good old-fashioned
theme enough. It's as old as the hills. It's the subject of--' and I
gave him a list of about a dozen eminent novels. 'Yes,' he admitted.
'But they are not written in the same way.' 'Is there anything
coarse or low in the writing?' 'Oh, no! I should not say that!'
'Well, what is the matter with it, then?' 'The thing is too much
brought before you. Of course, in these books you have mentioned the
wife runs away, but it does not make much impression. You have put
it all so forcibly, and given the characters and episode so much
life, and driven the idea of her infidelity so far home to one,
that, well, it becomes a different thing--one realises it.' 'Oh,
then you admit the immoral theme and the language to be
unobjectionable, and the book would have been accepted by the
British public provided only it had been less well written?' 'Yes, I
suppose it comes to that.' And then I caught his eye, and we both
laughed. He is a clever fellow himself, I should think, and the
ludicrousness of the idea tickled him as much as it did me. I came
away. His admission was quite the truth. It is the British way to
take the second-rate in every art and scout the best. Write a book
poorly and feebly, and it passes. Write the same thing powerfully
and well, and the cry is--It's improper! It's just the same thing in
painting. Paint a nude woman snowy white, without a shade or a
shadow, and looking altogether as no mortal woman ever did look, and
the picture will be hung at the Academy, and people will say, 'How
charming! So artistic!' But paint a woman with a glow on her neck
and bosom, and the warm blood running in her arms, dare to make her