Side Lights by James Runciman


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Page 4

James Runciman was a remarkably gifted man who died just about the
time when he ought to have been getting into harness for his life's
work. He had in him, more than most men, the materials out of which
an English Zola might have been made. And as we badly need an English
Zola, and have very few men out of whom such a genius could be
fashioned, I have not ceased to regret the death of the author of
this volume. For Zola is the supreme type in our day of the
novelist-journalist, the man who begins by getting up his facts at
first-hand with the care and the exhaustiveness of a first-rate
journalist, and who then works them up with the dramatic and literary
skill of a great novelist. Charles Reade was something of the kind in
his day; but he has left no successor.

James Runciman might have been such an one, if he had lived. He had
the tireless industry, the iron constitution, the journalist's keen
eye for facts, the novelist's inexhaustible fund of human sympathy. He
was a literary artist who could use his pen as a brush with brilliant
effect, and he had an amazing facility in turning out "copy." He had
lived to suffer, and felt all that he wrote. There was a marvellous
range in his interests. He had read much, he improvised magnificently,
and there was hardly anything that he could not have done if only--but,
alas! it is idle mooning in the land of Might-Have-Beens!

The collected essays included in this volume were contributed by Mr.
Runciman to the pages of _The Family Herald_. In the superfine
circles of the Sniffy, this fact is sufficient to condemn them unread.
For of all fools the most incorrigible is surely the conventional
critic who judges literary wares not by their intrinsic merit or
demerit, but by the periodical in which they first saw the light. The
same author may write in the same day two articles, putting his best
work and thought into each, but if he sends one to _The Saturday
Review_ and the other to _The Family Herald_, those who relish
and admire his writing in-the former would regard it as little less
than a _betise_ to suggest that the companion article in _The
Family Herald_ could be anything but miserable commonplace, which
no one with any reputation to lose in "literary circles" would venture
to read. The same arrogance of ignorance is observable in the
supercilious way in which many men speak of the articles appearing in
other penny miscellanies of popular literature. They richly deserve
the punishment which Mr. Runciman reminds us Sir Walter Scott
inflicted upon some blatant snobs who were praising Coleridge's poetry
in Coleridge's presence. "One gentleman had been extravagantly
extolling Coleridge, until many present felt a little uncomfortable.
Scott said, 'Well, I have lately read in a provincial paper some
verses which I think better than most of their sort.' He then recited
the lines 'Fire, Famine, and Slaughter' which are now so famous. The
eulogist of Coleridge refused to allow the verses any merit. To Scott
he addressed a series of questions--'Surely you must own that this is
bad?' 'Surely you cannot call this anything but poor?' At length
Coleridge quietly broke in, 'For Heaven's sake, leave Mr. Scott alone!
I wrote the poem'" (p. 39).

Such lessons are more needed now than ever. Only by stripes can the
vulgar pseudo-cultured be taught their folly.

The post of father-confessor and general director to the readers of
_The Family Herald_ which Mr. Runciman filled in succession to
Mr. Grant Allen is one which any student of human nature might envy.
There is no dissecting-room of the soul like the Confessional, where
the priest is quite impalpable and impersonal and the penitent secure
in the privacy of an anonymous communication. The ordinary man and
woman have just as much of the stuff of tragedy and comedy in their
lives as the Lord Tomnoddy or Lady Fitzboodle, and as there are many
more of them--thank Heaven!--than the lords and ladies, the masses
afford a far more fertile field for the psychological student of life
and character than the classes. They are, besides, much less
artificial. There are fewer apes and more men and women among people
who don't pay income tax than among those who do. As Director-General
of the Answers to Correspondents column of _The Family Herald_
Mr. Runciman was brought into more vitalising touch with the broad and
solid realities of the average life of the average human being, with
all its wretched pettiness and its pathetic anxieties, its carking
cares and its wild, irrational aspirations, than he would have been if
he had spent his nights in dining out in Mayfair and lounged all day
in the clubs of Pall Mall.

The essays which he contributed to _The Family Herald_ were therefore
adjusted to the note which every week was sounded by his innumerable
correspondents. He was in touch with his public. He did not write above
their heads. His contributions were eminently readable, bright,
sensible, and interesting. He always had something to say, and he said
it, as was his wont, crisply, deftly, and well. And through the chinks
and crevices of the smoothly written essay you catch every now and then
glimpses of the Northumbrian genius whose life burnt itself out at the
early age of thirty-nine.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 4th Jul 2025, 17:57