ke very good incomes; they often earn as
much as the red-nosed comedian with the baggy trousers and the battered
bowler. Thackeray, Washington Irving, Kingsley, and notably Dickens,
knew the value of journalism. Dickens was the most peculiar case, for it
is fairly clear that _Nicholas Nickleby_ helped to suppress the ragged
schools and that _Oliver Twist_ was instrumental in reforming workhouse
law; both works were immensely successful, but Dickens felt that he
wanted a platform where he could be always wholly serious: for this the
_Daily News_ was born in 1846. Likewise Mr Wells has written enormously
upon the war and economics; Mr Arnold Bennett has printed many political
articles; Mr Galsworthy has become more direct than a novelist can be
and written largely on cruelty to animals, prison reform, etc. It is the
only way in which we can be taken seriously. We must be solemn, a little
dull, patriotic or unpatriotic, socialistic or conservative; there is
only one thing we may not be, and that is creative and emotional.

It should be said in passing that even the press does not think much of
us. Articles on solid subjects by novelists are printed, well paid for,
sought after; it does a paper good to have an article on Imperial
Federation by Mr Kipling, or on Feminism by Mr Zangwill. The novelist
amounts to a poster; he is a blatant advertisement; he is a curiosity,
the man who makes the public say: 'I wonder what the _Daily_ ---- is up
to now.' Be assured that Mr Zangwill's views on Feminism do not command
the respectful treatment that is accorded a column leader in the
_Times_; he is too human; he sparkles too much; he has not the matchless
quality of those leaders which compels you to put on an extra stamp if
you have to send the paper through the post.

The newspapers court the novelist as the people of a small town court
the local rich man, but neither newspaper nor little town likes very
much the object of its courtship. Except when they pay us to express
them, the newspapers resent our having any views at all; the thought
behind is always: 'Why can't the fellows mind their own business, and go
on writing about love and all that sort of stuff?' During the war,
references to novelists who express their views have invariably been
sneering; it is assumed that because we are novelists we are unable to
comprehend tactics, politics, in fact any 'ics,' except perhaps the
entirely unimportant aesthetics. But the peculiarity