A Writer's Notebook (86 page)

These are a few of the notes I made when I intended to write a novel about the people of Bermondsey
.

I got into conversation the other day with a French officer, and of course we talked of the collapse of France.
“Et dire que nous avons été battus par des imbéciles,”
he said. His remark dismayed me. The French seem incapable of understanding that if they have been so shamefully defeated, it is not in spite of the Germans being stupid, but because on the contrary they are clever. Because the French were well-educated, good and witty talkers they were silly enough to think that they alone were intelligent. Their self-conceit, which led them to despise everything that wasn't French, made them the most insular people in Europe. When they were in a mess they really believed that a
bon mot
could get them out of it. But when something goes wrong with your car it isn't a sound knowledge of the classics or a neat quip that'll make it go right; you want a mechanic for that, and in such a juncture his intelligence is the only one that counts, yours is stupidity. Was it so witless of the Germans to make themselves familiar with the methods of modern warfare and to provide themselves with modern armaments? Wasn't there cleverness in their organisation of the
war machine so that it should function with efficiency? Didn't they show acumen when they informed themselves accurately on conditions in France so that they were able to take advantage of its disunity, unpreparedness and emotional instability? No, it isn't the Germans who were imbeciles in this war, it's the French; but what hope can one cherish for the restoration of France when the French, overcome by such a catastrophe, still entertain so inept a vanity? The Allies can talk till they're blue in the face of the necessity of restoring France to her place as one of the great powers; they will never succeed till the French learn to look the truth in the face and see themselves as they are. And the first thing they must learn is not humility, that can do them no good, but common-sense.

New York. H. G. has been here. He was looking old, tired and shrivelled. He was as perky as he has always been, but with something of an effort. His lectures were a failure. People could not hear what he said and didn't want to listen to what they could hear. They left in droves. He was hurt and disappointed. He couldn't understand why they were impatient with him for saying very much the same sort of thing as he had been saying for the last thirty years. The river has flowed on and left him high and dry on the bank. The writer has his little hour (if he's lucky), but an hour is soon past. After all, he's had it and he ought to be satisfied. It's only reasonable that others should have their turn. One would have thought it would be enough for H. G. to reflect on the great influence he had on a whole generation and how much he did to alter the climate of opinion. But he has always been too busy to be anything of a philosopher.

She feels in a terrifyingly commonplace way the most obvious emotions not only with sincerity, but with an almost unbelievable assurance that no one has ever felt them before. The ingenuousness of this middle-aged woman of the world is so ridiculous that it is not absurd but touching. She is as clever as she can stick, and so stupid that you could beat her.

One fusses about style. One tries to write better. One takes pains to be simple, clear and succinct. One aims at rhythm and balance. One reads a sentence aloud to see that it sounds well. One sweats one's guts out. The fact remains that the four greatest novelists the world has ever known, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoi and Dostoievsky, wrote their respective languages very indifferently. It proves that if you can tell stories, create character, devise incidents, and if you have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write. All the same it's better to write well than ill.

Sentimentality is only sentiment that rubs you up the wrong way.

The world has always been a place of turmoil. There have been short periods of peace and plenty, but they are exceptional, and because some of us have lived in such a period—the later years of the nineteenth century, the first decade of the twentieth—we have no right to look upon such a state as normal. Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward: that is normal, and we may just as well accept the fact. If we do, we can regard it with that mingling of resignation and humour which is probably our best defence.

Why is it that when you hear a young man talking arrant nonsense with assurance, being dogmatic and intolerant, you
are angry and point out to him his foolishness and ignorance? Do you forget that at his age you were just as silly, dogmatic, arrogant and conceited? And when I say
you
of course I mean
I
.

He would be astounded if you told him he was a crook. He honestly looks upon a fifty-fifty proposition as seventy-five for himself and twenty-five for the other fellow.

Fundamentally man is not a rational animal. It is this that makes fiction so difficult to write; for the reader, or the spectator of a play, demands, at all events today, that he should behave as if he were. We feel dissatisfied when the persons of a story do not act from motives that we accept as sufficient. We expect their behaviour to be rational, and if it isn't we say: “But people don't act like that.” Our demand for probability grows more and more stringent. We balk at coincidence and accident. We expect the characters that are presented to us invariably to behave like themselves.

The behaviour of the persons in
Othello
, of Othello himself principally, but to a less extent of almost everyone in the play, is wildly irrational. The critics have turned themselves inside out to show that it isn't. In vain. They would have done better to accept it as a grand example of the fundamental irrationality of man. I am quite ready to believe that contemporary theatre-goers saw nothing improbable in the behaviour of any of the characters.