I agreed. "It makes life easier for
those of us with limited incomes."

The modern novel takes care, however, to avoid all doubt upon the
subject. Its personages, one and all, reside within the half-mile square
lying between Bond Street and the Park--a neighbourhood that would appear
to be somewhat densely populated. True, a year or two ago there appeared
a fairly successful novel the heroine of which resided in Onslow Gardens.
An eminent critic observed of it that: "It fell short only by a little
way of being a serious contribution to English literature." Consultation
with the keeper of the cabman's shelter at Hyde Park Corner suggested to
me that the "little way" the critic had in mind measures exactly eleven
hundred yards. When the nobility and gentry of the modern novel do leave
London they do not go into the provinces: to do that would be vulgar.
They make straight for "Barchester Towers," or what the Duke calls "his
little place up north"--localities, one presumes, suspended somewhere in
mid-air.

In every social circle exist great souls with yearnings towards higher
things. Even among the labouring classes one meets with naturally
refined natures, gentlemanly persons to whom the loom and the plough will
always appear low, whose natural desire is towards the dignities and
graces of the servants' hall. So in Grub Street we can always reckon
upon the superior writer whose temperament will prompt him to make
respectful study of his betters. A reasonable supply of high-class
novels might always have been depended upon; the trouble is that the
public now demands that all stories must be of the upper ten thousand.
Auld Robin Grey must be Sir Robert Grey, South African millionaire; and
Jamie, the youngest son of the old Earl, otherwise a cultured public can
take no interest in the ballad. A modern nursery rhymester to succeed
would have to write of Little Lord Jack and Lady Jill ascending one of
the many beautiful eminences belonging to the ancestral estates of their
parents, bearing between them, on a silver rod, an exquisitely painted
Sevres vase filled with ottar of roses.

I take up my fourpenny-halfpenny magazine. The heroine is a youthful
Duchess; her husband gambles with thousand-pound notes, with the result
that they are reduced to living on the first floor of the Carlton Hotel.
The villain is a Russian Prince. The Baronet of a simpler age has been
unable, poor fellow, to keep pace with the times. W