Notes on novelists, with some other notes, by Henry James.

32

NOTES ON NOVELISTS

definitively ceased. The thing had run a part of its course, but
it had outrun the courage of editors and the curiosity of subscribers-that stout curiosity to which it had evidently in such
good faith been addressed. The chorus of contempt for the
ways of such people, their pusillanimity, their superficiality,
vulgarity, intellectual platitude, was the striking note on this
occasion; for the journal impugned had declined to proceed
and the serial, broken off, been obliged, if I am not mistaken, to
seek the hospitality of other columns, secured indeed with no
great difficulty. The composition so qualified for future fame
was none other, as I was later to learn, than " L'Assommoir ";
and my reminiscence has perhaps no greater point than in
connecting itself with a matter always dear to the critical spirit,
especially when the latter has not too completely elbowed out
the romantic-the matter of the " origins," the early consciousness, early steps, early tribulations, early obscurity, as so often
happens, of productions finally crowned by time.
Their greatness is for the most part a thing that has originally
begun so small; and this impression is particularly strong
when we have been in any degree present, so to speak, at the
birth. The course of the matter is apt to tend preponderantly
in that case to enrich our stores of irony. In the eventual conquest of consideration by an abused book we recognise, in
other terms, a drama of romantic interest, a drama often with
large comic no less than with fine pathetic interweavings. It
may of course be said in this particular connection that " L'Assommoir" had not been one of the literary things that creep
humbly into the world. Its " success " may be cited as almost
insolently prompt, and the fact remains true if the idea of success be restricted, after the inveterate fashion, to the idea of
circulation. What remains truer still, however, is that for the
critical spirit circulation mostly matters not the least little bit,
and it is of the success with which the history of Gervaise and
Coupeau nestles in that capacious bosom, even as the just man
sleeps in Abraham's, that I here speak. But it is a point I may
better refer to a moment hence.