I reckon there are about 12,055
of these people. They constitute the elite. Without their aid, without
their refined and judicial twittering, no book can hope to be a book of
the year.
Now I am in a position to state that no novel for very many years has
been so discussed by the elite as Mr. Forster's "Howard's End" (published
by Edward Arnold). The ordinary library reader knows that it has been a
very considerable popular success; persons of genuine taste know that it
is a very considerable literary achievement; but its triumph is that it
has been mightily argued about during the repasts of the elite. I need
scarcely say that it is not Mr. Forster's best book; no author's best book
is ever the best received--this is a rule practically without exception. A
more curious point about it is that it contains a lot of very straight
criticism of the elite. And yet this point is not very curious either. For
the elite have no objection whatever to being criticized. They rather like
it, as the alligator likes being tickled with peas out of a pea-shooter.
Their hides are superbly impenetrable. And I know not which to admire the
more, the American's sensitiveness to pea-shooting, or the truly correct
Englishman's indestructible indifference to it.
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