January 8 Wednesday – The Clemens party was at sea on the Oceana en route to Colombo, Ceylon. Sam’s notebook carries comment on books he’d recently read at sea. First up, Henry Kingsley’s The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn, n.d.

Henry Kingsley’s book, Geoffry Hamlin is a curiosity. In places & for a little while at a time, it strongly interested me, but the cause lay in the action of the story, not in the story’s people. All the people are offensive. Some of them might be well enough if they could be protected from the author’s intolerable admiration of them….The reader is lost in wonder that any man can be so piteously bewitched & derationalized by his own creations. The book’s grammar is bad, its English poor & slovenly, its art of the crudest. There is one very interesting feature: the author is never able to make the reader believe in the things that happen in the tale. It is not that the things are extraordinary, it is merely that the author lacks the knack of making them look natural….And how misty, vague, unreal, artificial the characters are [Gribben 374; NB 37 TS 3-4]. Note: See also Dec. 1 NB entry.

On this voyage I have read a number of novels. Prince Otto — full of brilliances, of course — plenty of exquisite phrasing — an easy-flowing tale, but — well, my sympathies were not with any of the people in it. I did not care whether any of them prospered or not. There was a fault somewhere; it could have been in me [Gribben 664; NB 37 TS 3]. Note: Prince Otto: A Romance (1885) by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Zangwill’s “Master” is done in good English — what a rare thing good English is! & the grammar is good, too — & what a very very rare thing that is! The characters are real, they are flesh & blood, they are definite; one knows what they will do in nearly any given set of circumstances. And when there is an incident, an episode, it comes about in a natural way, & happens just as it would happen in actual life [Gribben 796; NB 37 TS 4-5]. Note: Israel Zangwill’s The Master; A Novel.