W . B. MAXWELL (1866-1938)
Described by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as “the greatest of British novelists” William Babington Maxwell, fourth child of novelist, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and publisher, John Maxwell, is largely forgotten and none of his 40 novels or books of short stories is now in print.
His early life was much influenced by his mother and the literary circles that gathered around her and he describes with awe in his autobiography his conversations with Henry James, George Moore, Bulwer Lytton, Oscar Wilde and other distinguished authors of the period. His childhood seems to have been particularly happy and carefree and although he never refers to the irregular marital situation of his parents, elements of it recur later in many of his novels.
He trained as an artist but never pursued this career, and spent his twenties managing an annual called “The Mistletoe Bough” and acting as secretary to his mother. His life appeared unsettled and unfocused during this period and his main preoccupations seemed to be hunting and socialising. His autobiography records an endless list of society events which he attended and reflects his almost excessive interest in the aristocracy. His creation, Wyke Bond (in “And Mr. Wyke Bond”), seems to speak for Maxwell himself when he describes the upper classes as “the best people in the literal meaning of the phrase ….[who] ought to be placed on high and to rule us - both to rule us and to be looked up to as an example”.
He began writing fiction in 1901 at the age of 35, his first success coming in 1904 with the publication of “The Ragged Messenger”. This was followed by “Vivien”, “The Guarded Flame” and a succession of novels and short stories which further enhanced the author’s rapidly growing reputation.
It was with “The Devil’s Garden” published in 1913 that Maxwell became recognised as one of the most powerful and arresting novelists of his day. This work, described as “a study of elemental passion”, excited wide discussion and was attacked in many quarters for the daring of its theme, obsession and adultery. Maxwell was surprised and disappointed by some of the critical reaction to his book and particularly by the ban that was placed on it by the circulating libraries. Ironically the publicity it received boosted its sales and made Maxwell a household name.
In August 1914, though over the military age, Maxwell volunteered for active service and was gazetted lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers. He spent most of the next three years in France and was at Loos, the Somme and Passchendaele. He was sent home to England at the end of 1917 on health grounds.
He began writing again after a break of four years and in 1918 published “The Mirror and the Lamp”, a complex study of the relationship between a clergyman and a labour leader’s wife. In “The Day’s Journey”(1923) he drew on his wartime experiences to examine the lasting friendship of two men from childhood till their time together in the trenches.
His depiction of women in a number of his novels seems stereotyped and at times his attitude could be interpreted as misogynistic. In “The Day’s Journey” his character, Carrington Bird muses “Always, always, in regard to women, there is the haunting illusion of some ineffable delight that one misses - that one must always miss, because it does not exist, except in dreams. Something one can get, but not this, for which one vaguely craves. He thought of one or two happily married men of his acquaintance, fathers of families watching vigorous lads grow up, giving their daughters away in marriage, being photographed with their wives on their silver weddings. They were happy, in a way. But that sort of happiness is only to be attained by total submission to the woman, and a loss of half the masculineness of the man. No, there is no getting away from it. Love of women is emasculation”
In his autobiography he speaks with great tenderness of his mother “the noble benign light that she shed…..seemed to prevent darkness from closing upon me”. (p. 282) He remembers the constant support and encouragement she gave him as a writer but also the difficulties of following in the footsteps of someone who had achieved such success in her own lifetime. He was saddened by the attitude of reviewers who by the 1930s seemed to dismiss Braddon as a curiosity “I am sometimes wounded by the tone of references made to my mother as a writer. The words are not unkind, but they imply a sort of amused tolerance”(p.285)
A contemporary critic, A. St. John Adcock, in his book “Gods of Modern Grub Street” (1923) describes Maxwell’s work as dealing with “the dark problems of character and temperament, the ugly but real facts of human experience that are still the spiritual inheritance and material environment of real men and women”. The best of his books explore the obsessive subconscious urges which can sometimes lead to great self-sacrifice or to great tragedy and though there is certainly a lot in his work that nowadays seems dated and coy, one can also find a rawness of emotion and generosity of spirit in exploring situations often left unspoken in his society.
Though very much rooted in another age and though sometimes his passion and inspiration may outstrip his skill of expression, it is sad that books of the calibre of “The Devil’s Garden” and “The Case of Bevan Yorke” are no longer in print.
All that is currently available of his work are two short stories, “Last Man In” and “The Prince” which are in a collection called Creepy Stories, published by Bracken Books 1994.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Described by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as “the greatest of British novelists” William Babington Maxwell, fourth child of novelist, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and publisher, John Maxwell, is largely forgotten and none of his 40 novels or books of short stories is now in print.
His early life was much influenced by his mother and the literary circles that gathered around her and he describes with awe in his autobiography his conversations with Henry James, George Moore, Bulwer Lytton, Oscar Wilde and other distinguished authors of the period. His childhood seems to have been particularly happy and carefree and although he never refers to the irregular marital situation of his parents, elements of it recur later in many of his novels.
He trained as an artist but never pursued this career, and spent his twenties managing an annual called “The Mistletoe Bough” and acting as secretary to his mother. His life appeared unsettled and unfocused during this period and his main preoccupations seemed to be hunting and socialising. His autobiography records an endless list of society events which he attended and reflects his almost excessive interest in the aristocracy. His creation, Wyke Bond (in “And Mr. Wyke Bond”), seems to speak for Maxwell himself when he describes the upper classes as “the best people in the literal meaning of the phrase ….[who] ought to be placed on high and to rule us - both to rule us and to be looked up to as an example”.
He began writing fiction in 1901 at the age of 35, his first success coming in 1904 with the publication of “The Ragged Messenger”. This was followed by “Vivien”, “The Guarded Flame” and a succession of novels and short stories which further enhanced the author’s rapidly growing reputation.
It was with “The Devil’s Garden” published in 1913 that Maxwell became recognised as one of the most powerful and arresting novelists of his day. This work, described as “a study of elemental passion”, excited wide discussion and was attacked in many quarters for the daring of its theme, obsession and adultery. Maxwell was surprised and disappointed by some of the critical reaction to his book and particularly by the ban that was placed on it by the circulating libraries. Ironically the publicity it received boosted its sales and made Maxwell a household name.
In August 1914, though over the military age, Maxwell volunteered for active service and was gazetted lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers. He spent most of the next three years in France and was at Loos, the Somme and Passchendaele. He was sent home to England at the end of 1917 on health grounds.
He began writing again after a break of four years and in 1918 published “The Mirror and the Lamp”, a complex study of the relationship between a clergyman and a labour leader’s wife. In “The Day’s Journey”(1923) he drew on his wartime experiences to examine the lasting friendship of two men from childhood till their time together in the trenches.
His depiction of women in a number of his novels seems stereotyped and at times his attitude could be interpreted as misogynistic. In “The Day’s Journey” his character, Carrington Bird muses “Always, always, in regard to women, there is the haunting illusion of some ineffable delight that one misses - that one must always miss, because it does not exist, except in dreams. Something one can get, but not this, for which one vaguely craves. He thought of one or two happily married men of his acquaintance, fathers of families watching vigorous lads grow up, giving their daughters away in marriage, being photographed with their wives on their silver weddings. They were happy, in a way. But that sort of happiness is only to be attained by total submission to the woman, and a loss of half the masculineness of the man. No, there is no getting away from it. Love of women is emasculation”
In his autobiography he speaks with great tenderness of his mother “the noble benign light that she shed…..seemed to prevent darkness from closing upon me”. (p. 282) He remembers the constant support and encouragement she gave him as a writer but also the difficulties of following in the footsteps of someone who had achieved such success in her own lifetime. He was saddened by the attitude of reviewers who by the 1930s seemed to dismiss Braddon as a curiosity “I am sometimes wounded by the tone of references made to my mother as a writer. The words are not unkind, but they imply a sort of amused tolerance”(p.285)
A contemporary critic, A. St. John Adcock, in his book “Gods of Modern Grub Street” (1923) describes Maxwell’s work as dealing with “the dark problems of character and temperament, the ugly but real facts of human experience that are still the spiritual inheritance and material environment of real men and women”. The best of his books explore the obsessive subconscious urges which can sometimes lead to great self-sacrifice or to great tragedy and though there is certainly a lot in his work that nowadays seems dated and coy, one can also find a rawness of emotion and generosity of spirit in exploring situations often left unspoken in his society.
Though very much rooted in another age and though sometimes his passion and inspiration may outstrip his skill of expression, it is sad that books of the calibre of “The Devil’s Garden” and “The Case of Bevan Yorke” are no longer in print.
All that is currently available of his work are two short stories, “Last Man In” and “The Prince” which are in a collection called Creepy Stories, published by Bracken Books 1994.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOVELS
Men and Women Series:
Tudor Green (1936)
The Emotional Journey (1937)
Everslade (1937)
Other Novels:
And Mr. Wyke Bond (1934)
The People of a House (1934)
This is my Man (1933)
Amos the Wanderer (1932)
The Concave Mirror (1931)
To What Green Altar (1930)
The Man who Pretended (1929)
We Forget Because We Must (1928)
The Case of Bevan Yorke (1927)
Fernande (1926)
Elaine at the Gates (1924)
The Day’s Journey (1923)
Spinster of this Parish (1922)
A Remedy against Sin (1920)
For Better, for Worse (1920)
A Man and his Lesson (1919)
Glamour (1919)
The Mirror and the Lamp (1918)
The Devil’s Garden (1913) (filmed 1920)
General Mallock’s Shadow (1912)
In Cotton Wool (1912)
Mrs. Thompson (1911) (filmed as: Just a Mother, 1923)
The Rest Cure (1910)
Seymour Charlton (1909)
Hill Rise (1907)
The Guarded Flame (1906)
Vivien (1905)
The Ragged Messenger (1904) (filmed as : Madonna of the Streets, 1924
and 1930)
The Countess of Maybury (1901)
A Romance:
Gabrielle (1926)
A Morality:
A Little More (filmed as: The Gilded Highway, 1926)
SHORT STORIES
Jacob’s Ladder (1937)
Like Shadows on the Wall (1929)
Children of the Night (1925)
The Great Interruption (1919)
Old Lengths (1907)
Fabulous Fancies (1903)
REFLECTIONS
Life: A Study of Self (1925)
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Time Gathered (1938)
THEATRE
The Naked Truth (with G. Paston) (1921)
The Last Man In (1910)
