The Academy, 9 September 1911, P. 322. 


The Remarkable Hero 

     The time is not distant beyond the memory of living men when 
the hero of a typical novel had to be, if not a person of title, 
at any rate a man of tolerable family. If, in the days of his 
affluence, he did not possess a valet, or if when leaving home 
under a cloud be could not bestow his last sovereign on a head 
gardener, be was not likely to have many admirers. The 
snobbishness of those days was not greater than the snobbishness 
of these, but it was far simpler and more straightforward. It 
demanded quite honestly, on behalf of the middle-class reader, to 
mix with its social betters. No doubt it was perfectly right; if 
a man cannot choose his company even in novels things are in a 
bad way. But, however that may be, the distinction of the hero of 
that time was on the side of birth and breeding. He might be 
compelled by circumstances to associate with coal- heavers, but 
even when his coat was shiny at the elbows the cabmen called him 
"My lord." When be told the landlady of his humble lodging that 
he had come into a marquisate and forty thousand a year, she 
always reminded him that she bad known him at the first for a 
"real gent." His brains might be of feeble quality--indeed they 
usually were--but his manners were of the best. He might not know 
how to counter the most childish plot, but he invariably knew 
what to do with his hands in a drawing-room, a problem which has 
puzzled more people than ever troubled about the riddles of life 
and death. 
     In these days, however, good breeding is usually left as a 
minor perquisite to the villain. The hero may, as far as his 
social position is concerned, be anybody. He may drop his 
aspirates, he may be a boor, he may be ignorant of the most 
elementary rules of polite behaviour. Common honesty is not in 
the least a necessity to him. If he is fiendishly ugly, his 
adventures are the more piquant. He may even be deformed, and his 
Life will sell in tens of thousands. He may squint, he may be 
club-footed he may wear ready-made clothes, he may smoke in 
church, he may shoot foxes, he may browbeat women and patronise 
old men, he may do any of those forbidden things, for doing the 
least of which we would cut our dearest friends, and yet he may 
charm voracious multitudes. We care nothing for his clothes, nor 
his manners nor his antecedents nor his actions; in these 
respects we are all-tolerant. But there is one quality which we 
demand in him: he must be a remarkable person. It matters very 
little in what his fate lies, whether in art, finance, sport, 
politics, exploration, swindling, or throat-cutting, but his 
intellect must be of the cast of great men. 
     The superficial reason is not very far to seek. Satirised 
out his old, honest, matter-of-fact reverence for rank and 
wealth, the commonplace reader has to satisfy his inborn humility 
looking up to an intellectual superior. Forbidden to act the 
flunkey to the aristocrat, he allows himself to adore the prima 
donna, the brilliant statesman, the swaggering freebooter, the 
subtle master of intrigue. As he can no longer delight in the 
conversation of a duke, he accepts instead the conversation an 
eminent house-breaker. And seeing that, however slight his 
knowledge of aristocratic circles might have been, his 
acquaintance with men of genius is even slighter--he is seldom 
able detect the fraud which is so often played upon him. He may 
have a shrewd conception of how a duke would behave in a given 
situation, but a man of genius is above laws, and his actions are 
therefore incalculable. So the reader takes, with shut eyes and 
open mouth, whatever the journeyman novelist cares to offer him 
in the way of inspired heroes. He is unaware that the great 
detective whom he so much admires is as unlike a possible great 
detective as he is unlike a Patagonian anteater; these mysterious 
and incomprehensible actions pass not, as they should, for the 
well-meaning, but rather futile, efforts of an uninspired writer 
to simulate inspiration, but for the unfathomable deeds of a 
demigod. The more extraordinary they are, the more convinced is 
the reader of his hero's genuineness. In the result, one reads of 
a great realistic author who studies his situations by kidnapping 
people, and forcing them to act for him; one finds a great thief 
who lives, surrounded by objets d'art, in a castle in the middle 
of a sea-girt rock; one finds a great poet who, by way of seeking 
inspiration, wanders like a mad-man over the face of the earth 
for several months, then, returning home, scribbles for four days 
without stopping, and finally falls dead over his completed 
masterpiece. The convenience for a second-rate author of a public 
which accepts such creations may easily be estimated. If 
extravagane be a sign of genius, then it is infinitely easier to 
portray genius than mediocrity. The man in the street is quite 
capable of judging his kind, but to judge the weird antics of an 
inspired soul he has only the unreliable experience of 
nightmares. He can but devour and hold out his innocent hands for 
more. So the curious fashion grows, until the remarkable becomes 
more common than the commonplace; an amusing development enough, 
if one does not pause to reflect how swiftly this highly-seasoned 
fare can destroy any lingering taste for the products of a 
restrained and disciplined art.