'A Terrible Thing, Time, Nevertheless'

“With all his gifts, he had of imagination not one spark. Fancy and wit he had in his earlier work; and grace he never lost; but for the rest he had only an immense quantity of that ‘cleverness’ which to the creative artist is of all qualities the most repellent.” 

Let’s thank Max Beerbohm who, like an entomologist identifying a previously unknown species of mosquito, renders the definitive description of a familiar literary type. The merely clever writer, skating across the surface of life, lives for immediate gratification. The reader snorts in appreciation and shares the gag with his spouse, who smiles politely. Beerbohm is writing in 1928 about a once-prominent critic and collector of fairy tales, Andrew Lang, who died in 1912. Today, a clever writer is Billy Collins or many associated with The New Yorker. None is evil, nor was Lang, but the satisfactions they offer, if any, are fleeting.  

 

In “A Very Critical Gentleman,” published in the June 1928 issue of Vanity Fair, Beerbohm describes his two meetings with Lang. The first, at Edward Gosse’s house in 1896, occurred shortly after he published his first book, The Works of Max Beerbohm. With Lang safely dead, Beerbohm, on most occasions an almost courtly gentleman (except when writing about Rudyard Kipling), assumes a harsher tone. He makes Lang’s voice sound like Elmer Fudd: “‘Ve-wy amusing,” he faintly added.” Here is a very Beerbohmian put-down:

 

“I have heard from people who knew him intimately that he was a really kind man. He may even have had the wish to please. But it is certain that one had to know him intimately before his wish could, in regard to oneself, be gratified.”

 

Beerbohm approaches true nastiness in judging Lang as a critic: “For Browning and Meredith and Swinburne, for Henry James, for Bernard Shaw, for any spirit that was new or vital in current work, he had at best a chilly tolerance. Himself remote by nature, he could enjoy masterpieces only at a distance: their proximity jarred him. He loved ‘Mr. Thackeray,’ but he loved Jane Austen more: she was further off. And Homer he loved most of all, because Homer was further off than anyone.”

 

Beerbohm’s portrait of Lang – as usual, when dealing with a sufficiently complex or conflicted character, one adapted to Beerbohm’s elastic sense of irony – is both clinical and amusing. The essayist reflexively includes himself in any sardonic summation while making a larger point – in this case, about the relationship between critics and writers. Beerbohm often deploys a tone that is difficult to precisely identify. It mingles disapproval, tact, wistfulness and an indeterminate quantity of irony. Here is his conclusion to the Lang remembrance: “A terrible thing, Time, nevertheless.”