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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..097f872 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #67878 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67878) diff --git a/old/67878-0.txt b/old/67878-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index ca46a47..0000000 --- a/old/67878-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6684 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Gods of Modern Grub Street, by A. St. -John Adcock - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Gods of Modern Grub Street - Impressions of Contemporary Authors - -Author: A. St. John Adcock - -Photographer: E. O. Hoppé - -Release Date: April 19, 2022 [eBook #67878] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at - https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive/American - Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODS OF MODERN GRUB -STREET *** - - - - - -GODS OF MODERN GRUB STREET - -[Illustration: THOMAS HARDY] - - - - - GODS OF - MODERN GRUB STREET - - _IMPRESSIONS OF CONTEMPORARY - AUTHORS_ - - BY - A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK - - _WITH THIRTY-TWO PORTRAITS - AFTER PHOTOGRAPHS BY_ - - E. O. HOPPÉ - - [Illustration] - - NEW YORK - FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY - MCMXXIII - - - - - _Copyright, 1923, by_ - FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY - - _All Rights Reserved_ - - - _Printed in the United States of America_ - - - - - CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - THOMAS HARDY 3 - - HILAIRE BELLOC 13 - - ARNOLD BENNETT 23 - - JOHN DAVYS BERESFORD 33 - - JOHN BUCHAN 43 - - DONN BYRNE 53 - - WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES 63 - - WALTER DE LA MARE 73 - - SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE 83 - - JOHN DRINKWATER 93 - - JEFFERY FARNOL 103 - - JOHN GALSWORTHY 113 - - SIR ANTHONY HOPE HAWKINS 123 - - ARTHUR STUART MENTETH HUTCHINSON 133 - - SHEILA KAYE-SMITH 143 - - RUDYARD KIPLING 153 - - WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 163 - - STEPHEN MCKENNA 173 - - COMPTON MACKENZIE 183 - - JOHN MASEFIELD 193 - - ALFRED EDWARD WOODLEY MASON 203 - - WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM 213 - - WILLIAM BABINGTON MAXWELL 223 - - LEONARD MERRICK 233 - - ALAN ALEXANDER MILNE 243 - - ALFRED NOYES 253 - - E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM 263 - - MAY SINCLAIR 273 - - FRANK SWINNERTON 283 - - HUGH WALPOLE 293 - - HERBERT GEORGE WELLS 303 - - ISRAEL ZANGWILL 313 - - INDEX 323 - - - - - ILLUSTRATIONS - - - Thomas Hardy _Frontispiece_ - - FACING PAGE - - Hilaire Belloc 12 - - Arnold Bennett 22 - - John Davys Beresford 32 - - John Buchan 42 - - Donn Byrne 52 - - William Henry Davies 62 - - Walter de la Mare 72 - - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 82 - - John Drinkwater 92 - - Jeffery Farnol 102 - - John Galsworthy 112 - - Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins 122 - - Arthur Stuart Menteth Hutchinson 132 - - Sheila Kaye-Smith 142 - - Rudyard Kipling 152 - - William John Locke 162 - - Stephen McKenna 172 - - Compton Mackenzie 182 - - John Masefield 192 - - Alfred Edward Woodley Mason 202 - - William Somerset Maugham 212 - - William Babington Maxwell 222 - - Leonard Merrick 232 - - Alan Alexander Milne 242 - - Alfred Noyes 252 - - E. Phillips Oppenheim 262 - - May Sinclair 272 - - Frank Swinnerton 282 - - Hugh Walpole 292 - - Herbert George Wells 302 - - Israel Zangwill 312 - - - - -THOMAS HARDY - - -Those who dissent from Byron’s _dictum_ that Keats was “snuffed out by -an article” usually add that no author was ever killed by criticism; -yet there seems little doubt that the critics killed Thomas Hardy -the novelist, and our only consolation is that from the ashes of the -novelist, phœnix-like rose Thomas Hardy the Poet. - -As a novelist, Hardy began and finished his career in the days of -Victoria, but though he has only been asserting himself as a poet -since then, his earliest verse was written in the sixties; his first -collection of poetry, the “Wessex Poems,” appeared in 1898, and his -second in the closing year of the Queen’s reign. These facts should -give us pause when we are disposed to sneer again at Victorian -literature. Even the youngest scribe among us is constrained to -grant the greatness of this living Victorian, so if we insist that -the Victorians are over-rated we imply some disparagement of their -successors, who have admittedly produced no novelists that rank so high -as Hardy and few poets, if any, that rank higher. - -Born at Upper Bockhampton, a village near Dorchester, on the 2nd June, -1840, Mr. Hardy passed his childhood and youth amid the scenes and -people that were, in due season, to serve as material for his stories -and poems. At seventeen a natural bent drew him to choose architecture -as a profession, and he studied first under an ecclesiastical architect -in Dorchester, then, three years later, in London, under Sir Arthur -Blomfield, proving his efficiency by winning the Tite prize for -architectural design, and the Institute of British Architects’ prize -and medal for an essay on Colored and Terra Cotta Architecture. - -But he was already finding himself and realizing that the work he was -born to do was not such as could be materialized in brick and stone. He -had been writing verse in his leisure and, in his twenties, “practised -the writing of poetry” for five years with characteristic thoroughness; -but, recognizing perhaps that it was not to be taken seriously as a -means of livelihood, he presently abandoned that art; to resume it -triumphantly when he was nearing sixty. - -His first published prose was a light, humorous sketch of “How I Built -Myself a House,” which appeared in _Chambers’s Journal_ for March, -1865. In 1871 came his first novel, “Desperate Remedies,” a story more -of plot and sensation than of character, which met with no particular -success. Next year, however, Thomas Hardy entered into his kingdom with -that “rural painting of the Dutch school,” “Under the Greenwood Tree,” -a delightful, realistic prose pastoral that has more of charm and -tenderness than any other of his tales, except “The Trumpet Major.” The -critics recognized its quality and, without making a noise, it found -favor with the public. What we now know as the distinctive Hardy touch -is in its sketches of country life and subtle revelations of rural -character, in its deliberate precision of style, its naked realism, its -humor and quiet irony; and if the realism was to grow sterner, as he -went on, the irony to be edged with bitterness, his large toleration -of human error, his pity of human weakness, were to broaden and deepen -with the passing of the years. - -It is said that Frederick Greenwood, then editing the _Cornhill_, -picked up a copy of “Under the Greenwood Tree” on a railway bookstall -and, reading it, was moved to commission the author to write him a -serial; and when “Far from the Madding Crowd” appeared anonymously in -_Cornhill_ its intimate acquaintance with rural England misled the -knowing ones into ascribing it to George Eliot--an amazing deduction, -seeing that it has nothing in common with George Eliot, either in -manner or design. - -“A Pair of Blue Eyes” had preceded “Far From the Madding Crowd,” and -“The Hand of Ethelberta” followed it; then, in 1878, came “The Return -of the Native,” which, with “The Mayor of Casterbridge” and “The -Woodlanders,” stood as Hardy’s highest achievements until, in 1891 and -1896, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” and “Jude the Obscure” went a flight -beyond any that had gone before them and placed him incontestibly with -the world’s greatest novelists. - -Soon after Hardy had definitely turned from architecture to literature -he went back to Wessex, where he lived successively at Cranbourne, -Sturminster, and Wimborne, until in 1885 he removed to Max Gate, -Dorchester, which has been his home ever since. And through all those -years, instead of going far afield in search of inspiration, he -recreated the ancient realm of the West Saxons and found a whole world -and all the hopes, ambitions, joys, loves, follies, hatreds--all the -best and all the worst of all humanity within its borders. The magic of -his genius has enriched the hundred and forty square miles of Wessex, -which stretches from the Bristol Channel across Somerset, Devon, -Dorset, Wilts and Hampshire to the English Channel, with imaginary -associations that are as living and abiding, as inevitably part of it -now, as are the facts of its authentic history. - -A grim, stoical philosophy of life is implicit alike in Hardy’s poetry -and stories, giving a strange consistency to all he has written, so -that his books are joined each to each by a religion of nature that is -in itself a natural piety. He sees men and women neither as masters -of their fate nor as wards of a beneficent deity, but as “Time’s -laughing-stocks” victims of heredity and environment, the helpless -sport of circumstance, playing out little comedies or stumbling into -tragedies shaped for them inexorably by some blind, creative spirit -of the Universe that is indifferent to their misery or happiness and -as powerless to prolong the one as to avert the other. The earlier -pastoral comedies and tragi-comedies have their roots in this belief, -which reaches its most terribly beautiful expression in the epic -tragedies of “Tess” and “Jude the Obscure.” - -I am old enough to remember the clash of opinions over the tragic -figure of Tess and the author’s presentation of her as “a pure woman”; -how there were protests from pulpits; how the critics mitigated their -praise of Hardy’s art with reproof of his ethics; but the story gripped -the imagination of the public, and time has brought not a few of the -moralists round to a recognition that if Hardy’s sense of morality was -less conventional, it was also something nobler, more fundamental than -their own. He will not accept the dogmas of orthodox respectability, -but looks beyond the accidents of circumstance and conduct to the real -good or evil that is in the human heart that wrongs or is wronged. The -same passion for truth at all costs underlies his stark, uncompromising -realism and his gospel of disillusion, his vision of men as puppets -working out a destiny they cannot control. If he has, therefore, -little faith in humanity, he has infinite compassion for it, and -infinite pardon. The irony of his stories is the irony he finds in -life itself, and as true to human experience as are the humor and the -pathos of them. Other eyes, another temperament, may read a different -interpretation of it all; he has honestly and courageously given us his -own. - -The outcry against “Tess” was mild compared to the babble of prudish -censure with which “Jude the Obscure” was received in many quarters, -and it is small wonder that these criticisms goaded Hardy to a -resolve that he would write no more novels for a world that could -so misunderstand his purposes and misconstrue his teachings. “The -Well-Beloved,” though it appeared a year later than “Jude,” had been -written and published serially five years before, and it was with -“Jude,” when his power was at its zenith, that Thomas Hardy wrote finis -to his work as a novelist. - -Happily his adherence to this resolve drove him back on the art he had -abjured in his youth, and the last quarter of a century has yielded -some half dozen books of his poems that we would not willingly have -lost. Above all, it has yielded that stupendous chronicle-drama of the -Napoleonic wars, “The Dynasts,” which is sometimes acclaimed as the -highest and mightiest effort of his genius. This drama, and his ballads -and lyrics, often too overweighted with thought to have any beat of -wings in them, are at one with his novels in the sincere, sombre -philosophy of life that inspires them, the darkling imagination with -which it is bodied forth, and the brooding, forceful personality which -speaks unmistakably through all. - -Hardy, is, and will remain, a great and lonely figure in our -literature. It is possible to trace the descent of almost every other -writer, to name the artistic influences that went to his making, but -Hardy is without literary ancestry; Dickens and Thackeray, Tennyson -and Browning, had forerunners, and have left successors. We know, as a -matter of fact, what porridge John Keats had, but we do not know that -of Hardy. Like every master, he unwittingly founded a school, but none -of his imitators could imitate him except superficially, and already -the scholars are going home and the master will presently be alone -in his place apart. His style is peculiarly his own; as novelist and -poet he has worked always within his own conception of the universe as -consistently as he has worked within the scope and bounds of his own -kingdom of Wessex, and “within that circle none durst walk but he.” - - - - -HILAIRE BELLOC - -[Illustration: HILAIRE BELLOC] - - -So long and persistently has Hilaire Belloc been associated in -the public mind with G. K. Chesterton--one ingenious jester has -even linked and locked them together in an easy combination as the -Chesterbelloc--that quite a number of people now have a vague idea that -they are inseparables, collaborators, a sort of literary Siamese twins -like Beaumont and Fletcher or Erckmann-Chatrian; and the fact that one -appears in this volume without the other may occasion some surprise. -Let it be confessed at once that Chesterton’s omission from this -gallery is significant only of his failure--not in modern letters, but -to keep any appointments to sit for his photograph. - -I regret his absence the less since it may serve as a mute protest -against the practice of always bracketing his name with that of Hilaire -Belloc. The magic influence of Belloc which is supposed to have colored -so many of G. K. C.’s views and opinions and even to have drawn him at -length into the Roman Catholic community, must be little but legendary -or evidence of it would be apparent in his writings, and it is no more -traceable there than the influence of Chesterton is to be found in -Belloc’s books. They share a dislike of Jews, which nearly equals that -of William Bailey in “Mr. Clutterbuck’s Election”; Chesterton has -illustrated some of Belloc’s stories, and Belloc being an artist, too, -has made charming illustrations for one of his own travel volumes. All -the same, there is no more real likeness between them than there was -between Dickens and Thackeray, or Tennyson and Browning, who were also, -and are to some extent still, carelessly driven in double harness. -Belloc’s humor and irony are hard, often bitter; they have none of -the geniality, nimbleness, perverse fantasy of Chesterton’s. The one -has a profound respect for fact and detail, and learns by carefully -examining all the mechanical apparatus of life scientifically through -a microscope; while the other has small reverence for facts as such, -looks on life with the poet’s rather than with the student’s eye, and -sees it by lightning-flashes of intuition. When Chesterton wrote his -History of England he put no dates in it; he felt that dates were of -no consequence to the story; but Belloc has laid it down that, though -the human motive is the prime factor in history, “the external actions -of men, the sequence in dates and hours of such actions, and their -material conditions and environments must be strictly and accurately -acquired.” There is no need to labor the argument. “The Napoleon of -Notting Hill” is not more unlike “Emanuel Burden” than their two -authors are unlike each other, individually and in what they have -written. - -Born at St. Cloud in 1870, Belloc was the son of a French barrister; -his mother, an Englishwoman, was the grand-daughter of Joseph -Priestley, the famous scientist and Unitarian divine. She brought him -over to England after the death of his father, and they made their home -in Sussex, the country that has long since taken hold on his affections -and inspired the best of his poems. I don’t know when he was “living -in the Midlands,” or thereabouts except while he was at Oxford, and -earlier when he was a schoolboy at the Birmingham Oratory and came -under the spell of Cardinal Newman, and I don’t know when he wrote “The -South Country,” but not even Kipling has crowned Sussex more splendidly -than he crowns it in that vigorous and poignant lyric-- - - “When I am living in the Midlands, - That are sodden and unkind, - I light my lamp in the evening; - My work is left behind; - And the great hills of the South Country - Come back into my mind. - - The great hills of the South Country - They stand along the sea, - And it’s there, walking in the high woods, - That I could wish to be, - And the men that were boys when I was a boy - Walking along with me.... - - If ever I become a rich man, - Or if ever I grow to be old, - I will build a house with a deep thatch - To shelter me from the cold, - And there shall the Sussex songs be sung - And the story of Sussex told. - - I will hold my house in the high wood, - Within a walk of the sea, - And the men that were boys when I was a boy - Shall sit and drink with me.” - -Nowadays, he has to some extent realized that desire, for he is settled -at Horsham, in Sussex again, if not within a walk of the sea. But -we are skipping too much, and will go back and attend to our proper -historical “sequence in dates.” His schooldays over, he accepted the -duties of his French citizenship and served his due term in the Army of -France, as driver in an Artillery regiment. These military obligations -discharged, he returned to England, went to Oxford, and matriculated at -Balliol. He ran a dazzling career at Oxford, working assiduously as a -student, carrying off the Brackenbury Scholarship and a First Class in -Honor History Schools, and at the same time reveled joyously with the -robust, gloried in riding and swimming and coruscated brilliantly in -the Union debates. His vivid, dominating personality seems to have made -itself felt among his young contemporaries there as it has since made -itself felt in the larger worlds of literature and politics; though in -those larger worlds his recognition and his achievements have never, so -far, been quite commensurate with his extraordinary abilities or the -tradition of power that has gathered about his name. In literature, -high as he stands, his fame is less than that of men who have not -a tithe of his capacity, and in politics he remains a voice crying -in the wilderness, a leader with no effective following. Perhaps in -politics his fierce sincerity drives him into tolerance, he burns to -do the impossible and change human nature at a stroke, and is too far -ahead of his time for those he would lead to keep pace with him. And -perhaps in literature he lacks some gift of concentration, dissipates -his energies over too many fields, and is too much addicted to the use -of irony, which it has been said, not without reason, is regarded with -suspicion in this country and never understood. Swift is admittedly our -supreme master in that art, and there is nothing more ironic in his -most scathingly ironical work, “Gulliver’s Travels,” than the fact that -Gulliver is only popular as an innocently amusing book for children. - -Belloc began quietly enough, in 1895, with a little unimportant book of -“Verses and Sonnets.” He followed this in the next four years with four -delightfully, irresponsibly absurd books of verses and pictures such -as “The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts,” “More Beasts for Worse Children,” -publishing almost simultaneously in 1899 “The Moral Alphabet” and his -notable French Revolution study of “Danton.” In a later year he gave us -simultaneously the caustic, frivolous “Lambkin’s Remains” and his book -on “Paris,” and followed it with his able monograph on “Robespierre.” -It was less unsettling, no doubt, when “Caliban’s Guide to Letters” was -closely succeeded by the first and most powerful of his ironic novels, -“Emanuel Burden,” but serious people have never known where to have -him. He collects his essays under such careless titles as “On Nothing,” -“On Anything,” “This and That,” or simply “On”; and the same year that -found him collaborating with Cecil Chesterton in a bitter attack on -“The Party System,” found him collaborating with Lord Basil Blackwood -in the farcical “More Peers,” and issuing acute technical expositions -of the battles of Blenheim and Malplaquet. - -His novels, “Emanuel Burden,” “Mr. Clutterbuck’s Election,” “A Change -in the Cabinet,” “The Mercy of Allah,” and the rest, satirize the -chicanery and humbug rampant in modern commerce, finance, politics, and -general society, and are too much in earnest to attempt to tickle the -ears of the groundlings. - -For four years, in the first decade of the century, Belloc sat in -Parliament as Member for Salford, but the tricks, hypocrisies, -insincerities of the politicians disgusted and exasperated him; he -was hampered and suppressed in the House by its archaic forms, and -instead of staying there stubbornly to leaven the unholy lump he came -wrathfully out, washing his hands of it, to attack the Party system -in the Press, and inaugurate _The Witness_ in which he proceeded to -express himself on the iniquities of public life forcefully and with -devastating candor. - -No journalist wielded a more potent pen than he through the dark -years of the war. His articles in _Land and Water_ recording the -various phases of the conflict, criticizing the conduct of campaigns, -explaining their course and forecasting developments drew thousands -of readers to sit every week at his feet, and were recognized as the -cleverest, most searching, most informing of all the many periodical -reviews of the war that were then current. That his prophecies were -not always fulfilled meant only that, like all prophets, he was not -infallible. His vision, his intimate knowledge of strategy, his mastery -of the technique of war were amazing--yet not so amazing when you -remember his service in the French Army and that he comes of a race -of soldiers. One of his mother’s forbears was an officer in the Irish -Brigade that fought for France at Fontenoy, and four of his father’s -uncles were among Napoleon’s generals, one of them falling at the head -of his charging troops at Waterloo. It were but natural he should -derive from such stock not merely a love of things military but that -ebullient, overpowering personality which many who come in contact with -him find irresistible. - -As poet, he has written three or four things that will remain immortal -in anthologies; as novelist, he has a select niche to himself; “The -Girondin” indicates what he might have become as a sheer romantist, but -he did not pursue that vein; his books of travel, particularly “The -Path to Rome” and “Esto Perpetua,” are unsurpassed in their kind by -any living traveler; as historian, essayist, journalist, he ranks with -the highest of his contemporaries; nevertheless, you are left with a -feeling that the man himself is greater than anything he has done. You -feel that he has been deftly modeling a motley miscellany of statuettes -when he might have been carving a statue; and the only consolation is -that some of the statuettes are infinitely finer than are many statues, -and that, anyhow, he has given, and obviously taken delight in the -making of them. - - - - -ARNOLD BENNETT - -[Illustration: ARNOLD BENNETT] - - -If his critics are inclined to write Arnold Bennett down as a man of -great talent instead of as a man of genius, he is himself to blame for -that. He has not grown long hair, nor worn eccentric hats and ties, -not cultivated anything of the unusual appearance and manner that -are vulgarly supposed to denote genius. In his robust, commonsense -conception of the literary character, as well as in certain aspects of -his work, he has affinities with Anthony Trollope. - -Trollope used to laugh at the very idea of inspiration; he took to -letters as sedulously and systematically as other men take to farming -or shopkeeping, wrote regularly for three or four hours a day, whether -he was well or ill, at home or abroad, doing in those hours always the -same number of words, and keeping his watch on the table beside him to -regulate his rate of production. He was intolerant of the suggestion -that genius is a mysterious power which controls a man, instead of -being controlled by him, that - - “the spirit bloweth, and is still,” - -and the author is dependent on such vagrant moods, and he justified his -opinions and his practices by becoming one of the half dozen greater -Victorian novelists. - -I do not say that Arnold Bennett holds exactly the same beliefs and -works in the same mechanical fashion, but that his literary outlook -is as practical and business-like is apparent from “The Truth about -an Author,” from “The Author’s Craft,” “Literary Taste,” and other -of those pocket philosophies that he wrote in the days when he was -pot-boiling, and also from the success with which, in the course of his -career, he has put his own precepts into practice. - -The author who is reared in an artistic atmosphere, free from monetary -embarrassments, with social influence enough to smooth his road and -open doors to him, seldom acquires any profound knowledge of life -or develops any remarkable quality. But Bennett had none of these -disadvantages. Nor was he an infant phenomenon, rushing into print -before he was out of his teens; he took his time, and lived awhile -before he began to write about life, and did not adopt literature as -a means of livelihood until he had sensibly made up his mind what he -wanted to do and that he could do it. He was employed in a lawyer’s -office till he was twenty-six, and had turned thirty when he published -his first novel, “A Man from the North.” Meanwhile, he had been writing -stories and articles experimentally, and, having proved his capacity -by selling a sufficient proportion of these to various periodicals, -he threw up the law to go as assistant editor, and afterwards became -editor, of a magazine for women--which may, in a measure, account -for his somewhat cynical views on love and marriage and the rather -pontifical cocksureness with which he often delivers himself on those -subjects. - -In 1900 he emancipated himself from the editorial chair and withdrew -into the country to live quietly and economically and devote himself -to ambitions that he knew he could realize. He had tried his strength -in “A Man from the North,” and settled down now, deliberately and -confidently, to become a novelist and a dramatist; he was out for -success in both callings, and did not mean to be long about getting it, -if not with the highest type of work, then with the most popular. For -he was too eminently practical to have artistic scruples against giving -the public what it wanted if by so doing he might get into a position -for giving it what he wanted it to have. He expresses the sanest, -healthfulest scorn for the superior but unsaleable author who cries -sour grapes and pretends to a preference for an audience fit though few. - -“I can divide all the imaginative authors I have ever met,” he has -written, “into two classes--those who admitted and sometimes proclaimed -loudly that they desired popularity; and those who expressed a noble -scorn or a gentle contempt for popularity. The latter, however, always -failed to conceal their envy of popular authors, and this envy was a -phenomenon whose truculent bitterness could not be surpassed even in -political or religious life. And indeed, since the object of the artist -is to share his emotions with others, it would be strange if the -normal artist spurned popularity in order to keep his emotions as much -as possible to himself. An enormous amount of dishonest nonsense has -been and will be written by uncreative critics, of course in the higher -interests of creative authors, about popularity and the proper attitude -of the artist thereto. But possibly the attitude of a first-class -artist himself may prove a more valuable guide.” And he proceeds to -show from his letters how keenly Meredith desired to be popular, and -praises him for compromising with circumstance and turning from the -writing of poetry that did not pay to the writing of prose in the hope -that it would. I doubt whether he would sympathize with any man who -starved for art’s sake when he might have earned good bread and meat in -another calling. The author should write for success, for popularity; -that is his creed: “he owes the practice of elementary commonsense to -himself, to his work, and to his profession at large.” - -Bennett was born in 1887, and not for nothing was he born at Hanley, -one of the Five Towns of Staffordshire that he has made famous in -his best stories--a somber, busy, smoky place bristling with factory -chimneys and noted for its potteries. How susceptible he was to the -spell of it, how it made him its own, and how vividly he remembers -traits and idiosyncrasies of local character and all the trivial detail -in the furnishing of its houses and the manners and customs of its -Victorian home-life are evident from his books. He came to London with -the acute commonsense, the mother wit, the shrewd business instinct -and energy of the Hanley manufacturer as inevitably in his blood as if -he had breathed them in with his native air, and he adapted himself to -the manufacture of literature as industriously and straightforwardly -as any of his equally but differently competent fellow-townsmen could -give themselves to the manufacture of pottery. He worked with his -imagination as they worked with their clay; and it was essential with -him, as with them, that the goods he produced should be marketable. - -There is always a public for a good story of mystery and sensation so, -in those days when he was feeling his way, he wrote “The Grand Babylon -Hotel,” and did it so thoroughly, so efficiently that it was one of the -cleverest and most original, no less than one of the most successful -things of its kind. In the same year he published “Anna of the Five -Towns,” which was less popular but remains among the best six of his -finer realistic tales of his own people. He followed this with three -or four able enough novels of lesser note; with a wholly admirable -collection of short stories, “The Grim Smile of the Five Towns”; was -busy with those astute, provocative pot-boiling pocket-philosophies, -“Journalism for Women,” “How to Become an Author,” “How to Live on -Twenty-Four Hours a Day,” and the rest; writing dramatic criticisms; -plays, such as “Cupid and Commonsense,” “What the Public Wants”; and, -over the signature of “Jacob Tonson,” one of the most brilliant and -entertaining of weekly literary causeries. - -Then, in 1908, he turned out another romance of mystery and sensation, -“Buried Alive,” and in the same year published “The Old Wives’ -Tale,” perhaps the greatest of his books, and one that ranked him -unquestionably with the leading novelists of his time. A year later -came “Clayhanger,” the first volume in the trilogy which was continued, -in 1911, with “Hilda Lessways,” and completed, after a delay of five -years, with “They Twain.” This trilogy, with “The Old Wives’ Tale,” -and the much more recent “Mr. Prohack,” are Arnold Bennett’s highest -achievements in fiction. The first four are stories of disillusion; -the romance of them is the drab, poignant romance of unideal love and -disappointed marriage, and the humor of them is sharply edged with -irony and satire. In “Mr. Prohack” Bennett returns to the more genial -mood of “The Card” (1911). Prohack is a delightful, almost a lovable -creation, and the Card, with his dry, dour humor, for all his practical -hardheadedness, is scarcely less so. - -Unlike most men, who set out to do one thing and end by doing another, -Bennett laid down the plan of his career and has carried it out -triumphantly. He is a popular novelist, but, though he cheerfully -stooped to conquer and did a lot of miscellaneous writing by the -way, while he was building his reputation, the novels that have made -him popular are among the masterpieces of latter-day realistic art. -And with “Milestones” (in collaboration with Edward Knoblauch) and -“The Great Adventure,” to say nothing of his seven or eight other -plays, he is a successful dramatist. His versatility is as amazing -as his industry. It may be all a matter of talent and commonsense -perseverance but he seems to do whatever he chooses with an ease -and a brilliance that is very like genius. His list of nearly sixty -volumes includes essays, dramas, short stories, several kinds of novel, -books of criticism and of travel; he paints deftly and charmingly in -water-colors; and if he has written no poetry it is probably because he -is too practical to trifle with what is so notoriously unprofitable, -for if he decided to write some you may depend upon it he could. He -has analyzed “Mental Efficiency” and “The Human Machine” in two of his -little books of essays, and illustrated both in his life. - - - - -JOHN DAVYS BERESFORD - -[Illustration: JOHN DAVYS BERESFORD] - - -There seems to be something in the atmosphere of the manse and the -vicarage that has a notable effect of developing in many who breathe -it a capacity for writing fiction. Not a few authors have been cradled -into literature by the Law, Medicine and the Army, but as a literary -incubator no profession can vie with the Church. If it has produced no -poet of the highest rank, it gave us Donne, Herrick, Herbert, Crashaw, -Young, Crabbe, and a multitude of lesser note, and if it has yielded -no greater novelists than Sterne and Kingsley, it has fostered a vast -number that have, in their day, made up in popularity for what they -lacked in genius. - -Moreover, when the parsons themselves have proved immune to that -peculiarity of the clerical environment, it has wrought magically upon -their children, and an even longer list could be made, including such -great names as Goldsmith, Jane Austen and the Brontes, of the sons and -daughters of parsons who have done good or indifferent work as poets or -as novelists. - -Most of the novelists moulded by such early influences have leaned -rather to ideal or to glamorously or grimly romantic than to plainly -realistic interpretations of life and character, and J. D. Beresford -is so seldom romantic, or idealistic, so often realistically true -to secular and unregenerate aspects of human nature, that, if he did -not draw his clerical characters with such evident inside knowledge, -you would not suspect that in his beginnings he had been subject -to the limitations and repressions that necessarily obtain in an -ecclesiastical household. - -He was born in Castor rectory, and his father was a minor canon and -precentor of Peterborough Cathedral, and, if it pleases you, you can -play with a theory that the stark realism with which he handles the -facts, even the uglier facts, of modern life is either a reaction from -the narrow horizon that cramped his youthful days, or that the outlook -of the paternal rectory was broader than the outlook of rectories -usually is. - -After an education at Oundel, and at King’s School, Peterborough, he -was apprenticed, first to an architect in the country, then to one -in London; but before long he abandoned architecture to go into an -insurance office, and left that to take up a post with W. H. Smith & -Son, in the Strand where he became a sort of advertising expert and was -placed at the head of a bookselling department with a group of country -travellers under his control. - -Before he was half-way through his teens, he had been writing stories -which were not published and can never now be brought against him, -for he is shrewdly self-critical and all that juvenilia has been -ruthlessly destroyed. He was contributing to _Punch_ in 1908, and -a little later had become a reviewer on the staff of that late and -much lamented evening paper the _Westminster Gazette_. Among the -destroyed juvenilia was more than one novel. In what leisure he could -get from his advertising and reviewing, he was busy on another which -was not destined to that inglorious end. For though “Jacob Stahl” was -rejected by the first prominent publisher to whom it was offered, -because, strangely enough, he considered it old-fashioned, it was -promptly accepted by the second, and its publication in 1911 was the -real beginning of Beresford’s literary career. Had it been really -old-fashioned, it would have delighted the orthodox reading public, -which is always the majority, but its appeal was rather to the new -and more advanced race of readers, and though its sales were not -astonishing, its mature narrative skill and sound literary qualities -were unhesitatingly recognized by the discriminating; it gave him -a reputation, and has held its ground and gone on selling steadily -ever since. One felt the restrained power of the book, alike in the -narrative and in the intimate realization of character; its careful -artistry did not bid for popularity, but it ranked its author, at once, -as a novelist who was considerably more than the mere teller of a -readable tale. - -“Jacob Stahl” was the first volume in a trilogy (the other two -being “A Candidate for Truth” and “The Invisible Event”)--a trilogy -which unfolds a story of common life that might easily have been -throbbing with sentiment and noisy with melodramatic sensation; in -Mr. Beresford’s reticent hands, however, it is never overcharged -with either, but is touched only with the natural emotions, subdued -excitements, unexaggerated poignancies of feeling that are experienced -by such men and women as we know in the world as we know it. - -Meredith, in “The Invisible Event,” rather grudgingly praises Jacob -Stahl’s first novel, “John Tristram,” as good realistic fiction of -the school of Madame Bovary. “It’s a recognized school,” Meredith -continued. “I don’t quite know any one in England who’s doing it, but -it’s recognized in France, of course. I don’t quite know how to define -it, but perhaps the main distinction is in the choice of the typical -incidents and emotions. The realists don’t concentrate on the larger -emotions, you see--quite the reverse; they find the common feelings -and happenings of everyday life more representative. You may have a -big scene, but the essential thing is the accurate presentation of the -commonplace.” “Yes, I think that is pretty much what I _have_ tried to -do,” commented Jacob. “I think that’s what interests me. It’s what I -know of life. I’ve never murdered any one, for instance, or talked to -a murderer, and I don’t know how it feels, or what one would do in a -position of that sort.” - -That is perhaps a pretty fair statement of Beresford’s own aim as -a novelist; he prefers to exercise his imagination on what he has -observed of life, or on what he has personally experienced of it. And -no doubt the “Jacob Stahl” trilogy draws much of its convincing air -of truthfulness from the fact that it is largely autobiographical. -In the first volume, the baby Jacob, owing to the carelessness of -a nursemaid, meets with an accident that cripples him for the first -fifteen years of his existence; and just such an accident in childhood -befell Mr. Beresford himself. In due course, after toying with the -thought of taking holy orders, Jacob becomes an architect’s pupil. “A -Candidate for Truth” shows him writing short stories the magazines will -not accept, and working on a novel, but before anything can be done -with this, the erratic Cecil Barker gets tired of patronizing him and, -driven to earn a livelihood, he takes a situation in an advertising -agency and develops into an expert at writing advertisements. Then, -having revised and rewritten his novel, he is dissatisfied with it -and burns it. He does not begin to conquer his irresolutions and win -some confidence in himself until after his disastrous marriage and -separation from his wife, when he comes under the influence of the -admirable Betty Gale, who loves him and defies the conventions to help -him make the best of himself. Then he gets on to the reviewing staff -of a daily newspaper, and writes another novel, “John Tristram,” and -after one publisher has rejected it as old-fashioned, another accepts -and publishes it, and though it brings him little money or glory, it -starts him on the road to success, and he makes it the first volume of -a trilogy. - -Where autobiography ends and fiction begins in these three stories -is of no importance; what is not literally true in them is so -imaginatively realized that it seems as truthful. Philip of “God’s -Counterpoint,” who was injured by an accident in boyhood is a -pathological case; there are surrenderings to the morbid and abnormal -in “Housemates,” one of the somberest of Beresford’s novels, and -in that searching and poignant study in degeneracy, “The House in -Demetrius Road”; but if these are more powerful in theme and more -brilliant in workmanship they have not the simple, everyday actuality -of the trilogy; they get their effects by violence, or by the subtle -analysis of bizarre, unusual or unpleasant attributes of humanity, -and the strength and charm of the Stahl stories, are that, without -subscribing to the conventions, they keep to the common highway on -which average men and women live and move and have their being. This -is the higher and more masterly achievement, as it is more difficult -to paint a portrait when the sitter is a person of ordinary looks than -when he has marked peculiarities of features that easily distinguish -him from the general run of mankind. - -Although, in his time, Mr. Beresford was an advertising expert he has -never acquired the gift of self-advertisement; but he found himself and -was found by critics and the public while he still counted as one of -our younger novelists and had been writing for less than a decade. - -He has a subdued humor that is edged with irony, and can write with -a lighter touch, as he shows in “The Jervase Comedy” and some of -his short stories; and though one deprecates his excursions into -eccentricities of psychology, for the bent of his genius is so -evidently toward portraying what Meredith described to Stahl as the -representative “feelings and happenings of everyday life,” one feels -that he is more handicapped by his reticences than by his daring. He is -so conscious an artist that he tones down all crudities of coloring, -yet the color of life is often startlingly crude. An occasional streak -of melodrama, a freer play of sentiment and motion would add to the -vitality of his scenes and characters and intensify their realism -instead of taking anything from it; but his native reticence would seem -to forbid this and he cannot let himself go. And because he cannot let -himself go he has not yet gone beyond the Jacob Stahl series, which, -clever and cunninger art though some of his other work may be, remains -the truest and most significant thing he has done. - - - - -JOHN BUCHAN - -[Illustration: JOHN BUCHAN] - - -I have heard people express surprise that such a born romantist as John -Buchan has turned his mind successfully to practical business, and been -for so long an active partner in the great publishing house of Thomas -Nelson & Sons. But there is really nothing at all surprising about -that. One of the essays in his “Some Eighteenth Century Byways” speaks -of “the incarnation of youth and the eternal Quixotic which, happily -for Scotland, lie at the back of all her thrift and prudence”; and in -another, on “Mr. Balfour as a Man of Letters”, he says, “the average -Scot, let it never be forgotten, is incorrigibly sentimental; at -heart he would rather be ‘kindly’ and ‘innerly’ than ‘canny,’ and his -admiration is rather for Burns, who had none of the reputed national -characteristics, than for Adam Smith, who had them all.” He adds that -though Scotsmen perfectly understand the legendary Caledonian, though -“in theory they are all for dry light ‘a hard, gem-like flame,’ in -practice they like the glow from more turbid altars.” - -Having that dual personality himself, it is not incongruous that -John Buchan should be at once a poet, a romantic and a shrewd man of -affairs. But he is wrong in thinking the nature he sketches is peculiar -to his countrymen, the Scots; it is as characteristically English. -Indeed, I should not count him among practical men if he had not -proved himself one by doing more practical things than publishing; for -publishing is essentially a romantic calling as you may suspect if you -consider the number of authors who have taken to it, and the number of -publishers who have become authors. Scott felt the lure of the trade, -in the past, and in the present you have J. D. Beresford working at -it with Collins & Sons; Frank Swinnerton first with Dent, now with -Chatto & Windus; Frederick Watson, a brilliant writer of romances and -of modern social comedy, with Nisbet; Michael Sadleir with Constable; -C. E. Lawrence, most fantastic and idealistic of novelists, with John -Murray; Roger Ingram, writing with authority on Shelley and making -fine anthologies, but disguised as one of the partners in Selwyn and -Blount; Alec Waugh, joining that admirable essayist his father, Arthur -Waugh, with Chapman & Hall; C. S. Evans, whose “Nash and Others” may -stand on the shelf by Kenneth Grahame’s “Golden Age,” with Heinemanns; -B. W. Matz, the Dickens enthusiast and author of many books about him, -running in harness with Cecil Palmer; you have Grant Richards writing -novels that are clever enough to make some of his authors wonder why -he publishes theirs; Sir Ernest Hodder-Williams, an author, with at -least half-a-dozen successful books to his name; Herbert Jenkins, a -popular humorist and doing sensational detective stories; Sir Algernon -Methuen developing a passion for compiling excellent anthologies of -poetry--and there are others. - -But here is enough to show that Buchan need not think he is -demonstrating his Scottish practicality by going in for publishing. As -a fact, I have always felt that publishing should be properly classed -as a sport. It is more speculative than racing and I do not see how any -man on the Turf can get so much excitement and uncertainty by backing -a horse as he could get by backing a new book. You can form a pretty -reliable idea of what a horse is capable of before you put your money -on it, but for the publisher, more often than not, it is all a game of -chance, since whether he wins or loses depends less on the quality of -the book than on the taste of the public, which is uncalculable. So -when Buchan went publishing he was merely starting to live romance as -well as to write it. - -A son of the manse, he was born in 1875, and going from Edinburgh -University to Brasenose, Oxford, he took the Newdigate Prize there, -with other more scholarly distinctions, and became President of the -Union. Even in those early days he developed a love of sport, and found -recreation in mountaineering, deer-stalking and fishing. His enthusiasm -for the latter expressed itself in the delightful verses of “Musa -Piscatrix,” which appeared in 1896, while he was still at Oxford, his -first novel, “Sir Quixote,” a vigorous romance somewhat in the manner -of Stevenson, who was then at the height of his career, having given -him prominence among new authors a year earlier. I recollect the -glowing things that were said of one of his finest, most brilliantly -imaginative romances, “John Burnet of Barns,” in 1898, and with the -fame of that going before him he came to London. There he studied law -in the Middle Temple, and was called to the Bar, but seems to have been -busier with literary and journalistic than with legal affairs, for -two more books, “Grey Weather” and “A Lost Lady of Old Years” came in -1889; “The Half-Hearted” in 1900, and meanwhile he was occupied with -journalism and contributing stories to the magazines. - -Then for two years he sojourned in South Africa as private secretary -to Lord Milner, the High Commissioner. Two books about the present and -future of the Colony were the outcome of that excursion into diplomacy; -and better still, his South African experiences prompted him a little -later to write that remarkable romance of “Prester John,” the cunning, -clever Zulu who, turned Christian evangelist, professes to be the old -legendary Prester John reincarnate, and while he is ostensibly bent -on converting the natives, is fanning a flame of patriotism in their -chiefs and stirring them to rise against the English and create again -a great African empire. Here, and in “John Burnet of Barns,” and in -some of the short stories of “The Watcher by the Threshold” and “The -Moon Endureth,” John Buchan reaches, I think, his high-water mark as a -weaver of romance. - -After his return from South Africa he joined the staff of the -_Spectator_, reviewing and writing essays for it and doing a certain -amount of editorial work. At least, I deduce the latter fact from the -statement of one who had the best means of knowing. If you look up “The -Brain of the Nation,” by Charles L. Graves, who was then assistant -editor of the _Spectator_, you will find among the witty and humorous -poems in that volume a complete biography of John Buchan in neat and -lively verse, telling how he came up to town from Oxford, settled down -to the law, went to Africa, returned and became a familiar figure in -the _Spectator’s_ old offices in Wellington Street: - - “Ev’ry Tuesday morn careering - Up the stairs with flying feet, - You’d burst in upon us, cheering - Wellington’s funereal street.... - - Pundit, publicist and jurist; - Statistician and divine; - Mystic, mountaineer, and purist - In the high financial line; - Prince of journalistic sprinters-- - Swiftest that I ever knew-- - Never did you keep the printers - Longer than an hour or two. - - Then, too, when the final stages - Of our weekly task drew nigh, - You would come and pass the pages - With a magisterial eye, - Seldom pausing, save to smoke a - Cigarette at half past one, - When you quaffed a cup of Mocha - And devoured a penny bun.” - -The War turned those activities into other channels, and after being -rejected by the army as beyond the age limit, he worked strenuously in -Kitchener’s recruiting campaign, then served as Lieutenant-Colonel on -the British Headquarters Staff in France, and subsequently as Director -of Information. The novels he wrote in those years, “The Power House,” -“The Thirty-nine Steps,” “Greenmantle,” and “Mr. Standfast,” were -written as a relief from heavier duties. They are stories of mystery -and intrigue as able and exciting as any of their kind. “Greenmantle,” -he says in a preface, was “scribbled in every kind of odd place and -moment--in England and abroad, during long journeys, in half hours -between graver tasks.” He was present throughout the heroic fighting on -the Somme, and his official positions at the front and at home gave him -exceptional opportunities of seeing things for himself and obtaining -first-hand information for his masterly “History of the War,” which -will give him rank as a historian beside Kinglake and Napier. - -With “The Path of the King,” and more so with “Huntingtower,” he is -back in his native air of romance, and one hopes he will leave the -story of plot and sensation to other artists and stay there. - -Like all romancists, he is no unqualified lover of the democracy; it is -too lacking in picturesqueness, in grace and glamor to be in harmony -with his temperament. He belongs in spirit to the days when heroism -walked in splendor and war was glorious. He has laid it down that the -“denunciation of war rests at bottom upon a gross materialism. The -horrors of war are obvious enough; but it may reasonably be argued that -they are not greater than the horrors of peace ... the true way in -which to ennoble war is not to declare it in all its forms the work of -the devil, but to emphasize the spiritual and idealist element which -it contains. It is a kind of national sacrament, a grave matter into -which no one can enter lightly and for which all are responsible, more -especially in these days when wars are not the creation of princes and -statesmen but of peoples. War, on such a view, can only be banished -from the world by debasing human nature.” - -That is the purely romantic vision. Since 1914, Buchan’s experiences of -War and the horrors of peace that result from it may have modified his -earlier opinions. - -Anyhow, it is a wonderful theme for romance when it is far enough -away. It shows at its best in such chivalrous tales of adventure and -self-sacrifice as have gathered round the gallant figure of the Young -Pretender. You know from his books that John Buchan is steeped in the -lore of the Jacobites and sensitive to the spell of “old songs and lost -romances.” Dedicating “The Watcher by the Threshold” to Stair Agnew -Gillon, he says, “It is of the back-world of Scotland that I write, the -land behind the mist and over the seven bens, a place hard of access -for the foot-passengers but easy for the maker of stories.” One owns -to a wish that the author of “John Barnet of Barns” would now set his -genius free from the squabble and squalor of present-day politics (by -the way, he once put up for Parliament but fortunately did not get in) -and write that great story of the ’45 which he hints elsewhere has -never yet been written. - - - - -DONN BYRNE - -[Illustration: DONN BYRNE] - - -There are more gods than any man is aware of, and there is really -more virtue in discovering a new one, and catching him young, than in -deferring your tribute until he is old and so old-established that all -the world has recognized him for what he is. You may say that Donn -Byrne is not a god of modern Grub Street, but you can take it from me -that he is going to be. He has all the necessary attributes and is -climbing to his due place in the hierarchy so rapidly that he will have -arrived there soon after you are reading what I have to say about him. - -There is a general idea that he is an American; unless an author stops -at home mistakes of that kind are sure to happen. People take it for -granted that he belongs where he happens to be living when they find -him. Henry James had lived among us so long that he was quite commonly -taken for an Englishman even before he became naturalized during the -War. The same fate is overtaking Ezra Pound; he is the chief writer -of a sort of poetry that is being largely written in his country and -in ours, and because he has made his home with us for many years he -is generally regarded here as a native. On the other hand, Richard -Le Gallienne left us and has passed so large a part of his life in -the United States that most of us are beginning to think of him as an -American. - -The mistake is perhaps more excusable in the case of Donn Byrne, for -he was born at New York in 1889, but before he was three months old he -was brought over to Ireland which ought to have been his birthplace, -since his father was an architect there. He was educated at Trinity -College, Dublin, and when he was not improving his mind was developing -his muscles; he went in enthusiastically for athletics, and in his time -held the light-weight boxing championships for Dublin University and -for Ulster. He knows all about horses, too, and can ride with the best, -and has manifested a more than academic interest in racing. In fact, he -has taken a keen interest in whatever was going on in the life around -him wherever he has been, and he has been about the world a good deal, -and turned his hand to many things. There is something Gallic as well -as Gaelic in his wit, his vivacity, his swiftly varying moods. He is no -novelist who has done all his traveling in books and dug up his facts -about strange countries in a reference library. When he deals with -ships his characters are not such as keep all the while in the saloon -cabin; they are the ship’s master and the sailors, and you feel there -is a knowledge of the sea behind them when he gets them working; and -if he had not been an athlete himself he could not have described with -such vigor and realistic gusto that great fight between Shane Campbell -and the wrestler from Aleppo in “The Wind Bloweth.” - -How much of personal experience has gone into his novels is probably -more than he could say himself. But when he is picturing any place that -his imaginary people visit, you know from a score of casual, intimate -touches that he, too, has been there, and is remembering it while he -writes. Take this vivid sketch of Marseilles, for example: - -“Obvious and drowsy it might seem, but once he went ashore, the -swarming, teeming life of it struck Shane like a current of air. Along -the quays, along the Cannebière, was a riot of color and nationality -unbelievable from aboard ship. Here were Turks, dignified and shy. Here -were Greeks, wary, furtive. Here were Italians, Genoese, Neapolitans, -Livornians, droll, vivacious, vindictive. Here were Moors, here were -Algerians, black African folk, sneering, inimical. Here were Spaniards, -with their walk like a horse’s lope. Here were French business men, -very important. Here were Provencals, cheery, short, tubby, excitable, -olive-colored, black-bearded, calling to one another in the _langue -d’oc_ of the troubadors, _’Te, mon bon! Commoun as? Quezaco?_” - -There is that same sense of seeing things in the glamorous description -of the Syrian city where Shane lived with the Arab girl he had married; -and in the hasty outline of Buenos Aires: - -“Here now was a city growing rich, ungracefully--a city of arrogant -Spanish colonists, of poverty-stricken immigrants, of down-trodden -lower classes ... a city of riches ... a city of blood.... Here mud, -here money.... Into a city half mud hovels, half marble-fronted -houses, gauchos drove herd upon herd of cattle, baffled, afraid. Here -Irish drove streams of gray bleating sheep. Here ungreased bullock -carts screamed. From the bluegrass pampas they drove them, where the -birds sang and waters rippled, where was the gentleness of summer rain, -where was the majesty of great storms.... And by their thousands and -their tens of thousands they drove them into Buenos Aires, and slew -them for their hides....” - -That was the Buenos Aires of Shane’s day, in the Victorian era; but in -essentials it was probably as Donn Byrne saw it. For when he was about -twenty-two he quitted Ireland and went back to America, and presently -made his way to Buenos Aires to get married. His wife is the well-known -dramatist Dolly Byrne who wrote with the actress Gilda Varesi, the -delightful comedy “Enter Madam,” which has had long runs in London and -in New York. - -It was during this second sojourn in the States that Donn Byrne settled -down seriously to literary work. He says he began by contributing to -American magazines some of the world’s worst poetry, which he has never -collected into a volume; but he is given to talking lightly of his -own doings and you cannot take him at his own valuation. One of the -poems, at least, on the San Francisco earthquake, appropriately enough, -made something of a noise and was reprinted in the _United Irishman_, -but Ireland had not then become such a furious storm-center and an -earthquake was still enough to excite it. Before long he was making a -considerable reputation with his short stories, and a collection of -these, “Stories Without Heroes,” was his first book. - -But he will tell you he does not like that book and will not have it -reprinted. He says the same about his first novel, “The Stranger’s -Banquet,” though it met with a very good reception and had a sale that -many successful authors would envy. Then followed in succession three -novels that are original enough in style and idea and fine enough in -quality to establish the reputation of any man--“The Wind Bloweth,” -“Messer Marco Polo,” and “The Foolish Matrons.” These were all written -and published in America, and America knew how to appreciate them. The -third enjoyed such a vogue that we became aware of him in England and -the second, then the first, in quick succession, were published in this -country, and “The Foolish Matron” is, at this writing, about to make -its appearance here also. And with his new-won fame Donn Byrne came -home and is settled among his own people--unless a wandering fit has -taken him again before this can be printed. - -The beauty and charm of that old-time romance of the great Venetian -adventurer, “Messer Marco Polo,” are not easily defined; different -critics tried to shape a definition of it by calling it fascinating, -fantastic, clever, witty, strangely beautiful, a thing for laughter and -tears, and I think they were all right; and that the book owes its -success as much to the racy humor, the vision and emotional power with -which it is written as to the stir and excitement of the story itself. -Half the books you read, even when they greatly interest you, have a -certain coldness in them as if they had been built up from the outside -and drew no warmth from the hearts of their writers; but “Messer Marco -Polo” glows and is alive with personality, it is not written after the -manner of any school, but it is as full of eager, vital, human feeling -as if the author had magically distilled himself into it and were -speaking from its pages. - -That is part of the secret, too, of the charm of his more realistically -romantic “The Wind Bloweth.” You are convinced, as you read, that -those early chapters telling how the boy Shane gets a holiday on his -thirteenth birthday and goes alone up into the mountains to see the -Dancing Town in the haze over the sea, are a memory of his own boyhood -in Ireland. From the peace and fantasy of that beginning in the Ulster -hills, from an unsympathetic mother and his two quaint, lovable uncles, -Shane, at his own ardent desire, goes to knock about the world as a -seafarer, and, always with the simplicity and idealism of his boyhood -to lead and mislead him, is by-and-by tricked into marrying the cold -southern Irish girl who dies after a year or so, and, his love for -her having died before, he can feel no grief but only a strange dumb -wonder. Then, while his trading ship is at Marseilles, he meets the -beautiful, piteous Claire-Anne, and their lawless, perfect love ends -in tragedy. After another interval, comes the episode of his charming -little Moslem wife, and he loses her because he never understands -that she loves him not for his strength but for his weakness. Thrice -he meets with disillusion, but retains his simplicity, his idealism -throughout, and is never really disillusioned; and it is when he is in -Buenos Aires again that the kind, placid, large-hearted “easy” Swedish -woman, Hedda Hages, gives him the truth, and makes clear to him what -she means when she says, “No, Shane, I don’t think you know much about -women.” - -And it is not till his hair is graying that he arrives at the true -romance and the ideal happiness at last. The story is neither planned -nor written on conventional lines; you sense the tang of a brogue in -its nervous English, which is continually flowering into exquisite -felicities of phrase, and it lays bare the heart and mind of a man with -a most sensitive understanding. It is a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress, and -Shane Campbell is a desperately human pilgrim, who drifts into danger -and disasters, and stumbles often, before he drops his burden and finds -his way, or is led by strange influences, into the City Beautiful. - -I daresay Donn Byrne will laugh to discover that I have put him among -the gods; he is that sort of man. But it is possible for others to know -him better than he knows himself. Abou Ben Adhem was surprised you -recollect, when he noticed that Gabriel had recorded his name so high -in the list of those that were worthy; and though I am no Gabriel I -know a hawk from a handsaw when the wind is in the right quarter. - - - - -WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES - -[Illustration: WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES] - - -The lives of most modern poets would make rather tame writing, which is -possibly why so much modern poetry makes rather tame reading. It is a -pleasant enough thing to go from a Public School to a University, then -come to London, unlock at once a few otherwise difficult doors with the -_open sesame_ of effective introductions, and settle down to a literary -career; but it leaves one with a narrow outlook, a limited range of -ideas, little of personal experience to write about. Fortunately W. H. -Davies never enjoyed these comfortable disadvantages. He did not come -into his kingdom by any nicely paved highroads, but over rough ground -by thorny ways that, however romantic they may seem to look back upon, -must have seemed hard and bitter and sufficiently hopeless at times -while he was struggling through them. - -There is nothing to say of his schooling, except that it amounted to -little and was not good; but later he learned more by meeting the hard -facts of life and by desultory reading than any master could have -taught him. Born at Newport, Monmouthshire, in 1870, he was put to the -picture-frame making trade, and went from that to miscellaneous farm -work. But work, he once confessed to me, is among the things for which -he has never had a passion, and a legacy from a grandfather gave him -an interval of liberty. This grandfather, with a sensible foresight, -left him only a small sum in ready cash, but, in addition, the interest -on an investment that produced a steady eight shillings a week. With -the cash Davies went to America, and saw as much of that country as -he could as long as the money lasted. Then he subdued his dislike of -manual labor and did odd jobs on fruit farms; wearied of this and went -on tramp, and picked up much out-of-the-way knowledge of the world and -of men from the tramps he fell in with during his roamings. Presently, -he got engaged as a hand on a cattle-boat, and as such made several -voyages to England and back. - -At length, getting back to America just when the gold rush for Klondike -was at its height, he was seized with a yearning to go North and try -his luck as a digger. The price of that long journey being beyond his -means, he followed a common example and tried to “jump” a train, fell -under the wheels in the attempt and was so badly injured that he lost -a foot in that enterprise and had to make a slow recovery in hospital. -When he was well enough, his family sent out and carried him home into -Wales. - -But he could not be contented there. Although he says himself that he -became a poet at thirty-four (when his first book was published), the -fact is, of course, he has been a poet all his life and through all -his wanderings was storing up memories and impressions of nature and -human nature that live again now in vivid lines and phrases of his -verse and prose. He had already written poems, and sent them to various -periodicals in vain, and had a feeling that if he could be at the -center of things, in London, fortune and fame as a poet might be within -his reach. - -So to London he came, early in the century, and took up residence -in a common lodging-house at Southwark, his eight shillings a week -sufficing to pay his rent and keep him in food. The magazines remaining -obdurate, he collected his poems into a book, and started to look for a -publisher. But the publishers were equally unencouraging, till he found -one who was prepared to publish provided Davies contributed twenty -pounds toward the cost of the adventure. Satisfied that, once out, the -book would quickly yield him profits, he asked the trustees who paid -him his small dividends to advance the amount and retain his income -until they had recouped themselves. They, however, being worldly-wise, -compromised by saying that if he would do without his dividends for -some six months, when ten pounds would be due, they would pay him that -sum and advance a further ten, paying him no more till the second ten -was duly refunded. - -This offer he accepted; and he tramped the country as a pedlar, selling -laces, needles and pins, and occasionally singing in the streets for -a temporary livelihood. When the six months were past he returned to -London, took up his old quarters at the lodging-house, drew the twenty -pounds, and before long “The Soul’s Destroyer and Other Poems” made -its appearance. But so far from putting money in his purse, it was -received with complete indifference. Fifty copies went out for review, -but not a single review was given to it anywhere. No publisher’s name -was on the title page, but an announcement that the book was to be had, -for half-a-crown, “of the Author, Farmhouse, Marshalsea Road, S.E.,” -and possibly this conveyed an impression of unimportance that resulted -in its remaining unread. After a week or so, seeing himself with no -money coming in for the next few months, the author became desperate. -He compiled from “Who’s Who,” at a public library, a list of people who -might be expected to take an interest in poetry, and posted a copy of -his book to each with a request that, if it seemed worth the money, he -would remit the half-crown. - -One of the earliest went to a journalist who was, in those days, -connected with the _Daily Mail_. He read it at once and recognized -that though there were crudities and even doggerel in it, there was -also in it some of the freshest and most magical poetry to be found -in modern books. Mingled with grimly realistic pictures of life and -character in the doss-house were songs of the field and the wayside -written with all Clare’s minute knowledge of nature and with something -of the imagination and music of Blake. Being a journalist, he did not -miss the significance of this book issuing from a common lodging-house -(and one, by the way, that is described in a sketch of Dickens’), could -easily read a good deal of the poet’s story between the lines of his -poems, promptly forwarded his remittance and asked Davies to meet him. -Not sure that he would be welcome at the doss-house, he suggested a -rendezvous on the north of London Bridge, and a few evenings later the -meeting came about at Finch’s a tavern in Bishopsgate Street Within. -“To help you to identify me,” Davies had written, “I will have a copy -of my book sticking out of my pocket”; and there he was--a short, -sturdy young man, uncommunicative at first, as shy as a squirrel, -bright-eyed, soft of speech, and with a general air about him of some -woodland creature lost and uneasy in a place of crowds. By degrees his -shyness diminished, and in the course of a two hours’ session in that -bar he unfolded the whole of his story without reserve. Then said the -journalist, “If I merely review your book it will not sell a dozen -copies, but if you will let me combine with a review an absolutely -frank narrative of your career I have an idea we can rouse public -interest to some purpose.” - -This permission being given, such an article duly appeared in the news -columns of the _Daily Mail_, and the results were more astonishing -than any one could have foreseen. Not only did the gentle reader begin -to send in money for copies, but ladies called at the doss-house and -left At Home cards which their recipient was much too reticent to act -upon. Editors who had ignored and probably lost their review copies -sent postal orders for the book and lauded it in print; illustrated -papers sent photographers and interviewers; a party of critics, having -now bought and read the poems, made a pilgrimage to the Farmhouse, and -departed to write of the man and his poetry. After a second article -in the _Mail_ had recounted these and other astonishing happenings, -a literary agent wrote urging Davies to entrust him with all his -remaining copies and he could sell them for him at half-a-guinea and a -guinea apiece. - -His advice was taken, and the last of the edition of five hundred -copies went off quickly at these prices. So enriched, the poet quitted -his lodging-house and went home into Wales for a holiday, and while -there began the first of his prose books, “The Autobiography of a -Super-Tramp,” which was published in 1908 with an introduction by -George Bernard Shaw. Meanwhile, Davies had written two other volumes -of verse, and his recognition as one of the truest, most individual -of living lyrists was no longer in doubt. Mr. Shaw notes of his prose -that it has not the academic correctness dear to the Perfect Commercial -Letter Writer, but is “worth reading by literary experts for its -style alone”; and much the same may be said of his poetry. It is not -flawless, but its faults are curiously in harmony with its unstudied -simplicity and often strangely heighten the beauty of thought and -language to which verses flower as carelessly as if he thought and said -his finest things by accident. He has the countryman’s intimacy with -Nature--not for nothing did he work on farms, tramp the open roads, -sleep under the naked sky--knows all her varying moods, has observed -trivial significances in her that the deliberate student overlooks; and -he writes of her with an Elizabethan candor and fantasy and a natural, -simple diction that is an art in Wordsworth. He has made a selection -from his several volumes in a Collected Edition, but has published -other verse since. For some years after his success he lived in London, -but never seemed at home; he has no liking for streets and shrinks from -crowds; and now has withdrawn again into the country, where our ultra -modern Georgian poets who, despite the fact that he is in the tradition -of the great lyrists of the past, were constrained to embrace him as -one of themselves, are less likely to infect him with their artifices. - - - - -WALTER DE LA MARE - -[Illustration: WALTER DE LA MARE] - - -Except in the personal sense--and the charm of his gracious personality -would surely surround him with friends, whether he wanted them or -not--Walter de la Mare is, like Hardy, a lonely figure in modern -English poetry--no other poet of our time has a place more notably -apart from his contemporaries. You might almost read an allegory of -this aloofness into his “Myself”: - - “There is a garden grey - With mists of autumntide; - Under the giant boughs, - Stretched green on every side, - - “Along the lonely paths, - A little child like me, - With face, with hands like mine, - Plays ever silently.... - - “And I am there alone: - Forlornly, silently, - Plays in the evening garden - Myself with me.” - -only that one knows he is happy enough and not forlorn in his -aloneness. You may trace, perhaps, here and there in his verse elusive -influences of Coleridge, Herrick, Poe, the songs of Shakespeare, or, -now and then, in a certain brave and good use of colloquial language, -of T. E. Brown, but such influences are so slight and so naturalized -into his own distinctive manner that it is impossible to link him -up with the past and say he is descended from any predecessor, as -Tennyson was from Keats. More than with any earlier poetry, his verse -has affinities with the prose of Charles Lamb--of the Lamb who wrote -the tender, wistful “Dream-Children” and the elvishly grotesque, -serious-humorous “New Year’s Eve”--who was sensitively wise about -witches and night-fears, and could tell daintily or playfully of the -little people, fairy or mortal. But the association is intangible; he -is more unlike Lamb than he is like him. And when you compare him with -poets of his day there is none that resembles him; he is alone in his -garden. He has had imitators, but they have failed to imitate him, and -left him to his solitude. - -It is true, as Spencer has it, that - - “sheep herd together, eagles fly alone,” - -and he has this in common with the lord of the air, that he has -never allied himself with any groups or literary cliques; yet his -work is so authentic and so modern, so free of the idiosyncracies of -any period, that our self-centered, self-conscious school of “new” -poets, habitually intolerant of all who move outside their circle, are -constrained to keep a door wide open for him and are glad to have him -sitting down with them in their anthologies. - -But he did not enter into his own promptly, or without fighting for -it. He was born in 1873; and had known nearly twenty years of - - “that dry drudgery at the desk’s dead wood” - -in a city office, before he shook the dust of such business from his -feet and began to win a livelihood as a free-lance journalist. One is -apt to speak of journalism as if it were an exact calling, like that of -the watchmaker; but “journalism” is a portmanteau word which embraces -impartially the uninspired records of the junior reporter and the -delightful social essays and sketches of Robert Lynd; the witty gossip -of a “Beachcomber,” and the dull but very superior oracles of a J. A. -Spender. Not any of these, but reviewing was the branch of this trade -to which de la Mare devoted himself, and his reviews in the _Saturday -Westminster_, _Bookman_, _Times Literary Supplement_, and elsewhere, -clothed so fine a critical faculty in the distinction of style which -betrays his hand in all he has written that, his reputation growing -accordingly, the reviewer for a time overshadowed the poet; for though -he did much of it anonymously his work could be identified by the -discerning as easily as can the characteristic, unsigned paintings of a -master. - -Too often, in such a case, the journalist ends by destroying the -author; dulls his imagination, dissipates his moods, replaces his -careless raptures with a mechanical efficiency; makes him a capable -craftsman, and unmakes him as an artist. But de la Mare seems to -have learned how to put his heart into journalism without letting -journalism get into his heart; I have seen no review of his that has -the mark of the hack upon it; his mind was not “like the dyers hand” -subdued to what it worked in. Fleet Street might echo his tread, but -his spirit was away on other roads in a world that was beyond the -jurisdiction of editors. He was not seeking to set up a home in that -wilderness, but was all the while quietly paving a way out of it; and -in due season he has left it behind him. - -A good deal of what he wrote then bore the pseudonym of “Walter -Ramal,” a transparent anagram; and throughout those days he went -on contributing poems, stories, prose fantasies to _Cornhill_, the -_English Review_, and other periodicals. In 1902 he had published -“Songs of Childhood,” a first revelation of his exquisite genius for -writing quaint nursery rhymes, dainty, homely, faery lyrics and ballads -that can fascinate the mind of a child, or of any who has not forgotten -his childhood--a genius that flowered to perfection eleven years later -in “Peacock Pie.” - -“Henry Brocken” (1904) showed another side of his gift. It is a -story--you cannot call it a novel--that takes you traveling into a land -unknown to the map-makers, that is inhabited by people who have never -lived and will never die. You go with Brocken over a wild moor and meet -with Wordsworth’s Lucy Gray; you go further to hold converse with Poe’s -Annabel Lee, with Keat’s Belle Dame, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, -with Swift’s Gulliver, with Lady Macbeth, Bottom, Titania, with folk -from the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and many another. It is all a riot of -fancy and poetry in prose, with an undercurrent of shrewd commentary -that adds a critical value to its appeal as a story. - -This fresh, individual note is as prevailing in all his prose as in his -verse. It is in the prose and verse of his blithe, whimsical tale for -children, “The Two Mulla-Mulgars,” and in that eerie, bizarre novel, -“The Return”--where, falling asleep by the grave of old Sabathier, -Arthur Lawford goes home to find his family do not know him, for, as -he slept, the dead man’s spirit had subtly taken possession of him and -transformed his whole appearance. And the spiritual adventures through -which Lawford has to pass before he can break that grim dominance and -be restored to himself are unfolded with a delicate art that never -over-stresses the beauty or significance of them. - -By common consent, however, de la Mare’s prose masterpiece is “The -Midget.” One can think of no other present-day author who might have -handled successfully so _outre_ a theme; yet the whole conception -is as natural to de la Mare’s peculiar genius as it would be alien -to that of any of his contemporaries, and he fashions his story of -the little lady, mature and sane in mind and perfect in body, but so -small that she could stand in the palm of an average hand, into a -novel, a fable, a romance--call it what you will--of rare charm and -interest. The midget’s dwarfish, deformed lover, and the more normal -characters--Waggett, Percy Maudlin, Mrs. Bowater, Pollie--are drawn -realistically and with fleeting touches of humor, and while you can -read the book for its story alone, the quiet laughter and pathos of it, -as you can read Bunyan’s allegory, it is veined with inner meanings and -a profound, sympathetic philosophy of life is implicit in the narrative. - -It was two years after his 1906 “Poems” appeared I remember, that -Edward Thomas first asked me if I knew much of Walter de la Mare, and, -in that soft voice and reticent, hesitating manner of his, went on -to speak with an unwonted enthusiasm of the work he was doing. Until -then, I had read casually only casual things of de la Mare’s in the -magazines, but I knew Thomas’s fine, fastidious taste in such matters, -and that he was not given to getting enthusiastic over what was merely -good in an ordinary degree, and it was not long before I was qualified -to understand and respond to the warmth of his admiration. The “Poems” -were, with a few exceptions, more remarkable for what they promised -than for what they achieved, but they had not a little of the unique -magic that is in his “Songs of Childhood”; and “The Listeners and Other -Poems” (1912), and “Motley and Other Poems” (1918) more than fulfilled -this promise and brought him, at last such general recognition that in -1920, after a lapse of eighteen years, his poems were gathered into a -Collected Edition. - -He began late, as poets go, for he was nearly thirty when his first -book came out, and about forty before he began to be given his due -place among the poets of his generation. He was so slow in arriving -because he came without noise, intrinsically unconventional but not -fussily shattering the superficial conventions of others, making no -sensational approach, not attempting to shock or to startle. I don’t -think his verse ever had the instant appeal of a topical interest, -except such of it as grew out of the War, and nothing could be more -unlike the orthodox war poetry than that strange, poignant lyric of -his, “The Fool Rings his Bells”-- - - “Come, Death, I’d have a word with thee; - And thou, poor Innocency; - And love--a lad with a broken wing; - And Pity, too: - The Fool shall sing to you, - As Fools will sing....” - -Its quaintness, sincerity, tenderness and grim fancy are spontaneously -in keeping with the lovely or whimsical dreamings, the wizardries -and hovering music of his happier songs. He may not have lived in -seclusion, unfretted by the hard facts of existence but the world has -never been too much with him, so he can still hear the horns of elfland -blowing over an earth that remains for him - - “a magical garden with rivers and bowers,” - -haunted by fays and gnomes, dryads and fawns and the witchery and -enchantment that have been in dusky woods, in misty fields, in twilight -and midnight places since the beginning of time. Howbeit, even the -ghostly atmosphere of “The Listeners” is pierced with a cry that is -not of the dead, for in his farthest flights of fantasy he is not out -of touch with nature and human nature, and it is a glowing love of -these at the heart of his darkling visions and gossamer imaginings that -gives them life and will keep them alive. - - - - -SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE - -[Illustration: SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE] - - -If Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were more of a conventional man of -letters--had he been just “a book in breeches,” as Sidney Smith said -Macaulay was--it would not be so difficult to know where to make a -beginning when one sits down to write of him. But no author could be -farther from being “all author”; he is much too keenly interested in -life to do nothing but write about it, and probably shares Byron’s -scorn of “the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes,” and his -preference of doers to writers. He has read much, but lived more, as a -novelist ought to, giving freely of his time and thought and sympathy -to lives outside his own. He has no fretful little moods of morbidity, -cynicism, pessimism, but is essentially a big man and writes always -like himself, with a complete freedom from affection, a naturalness, a -healthy vigor and breadth of outlook that cannot be developed within -the four walls of a study. - -Characteristic of himself, I think, is this reflection in “The Tragedy -of the Korosko”: “When you see the evil of cruelty which nature wears, -try and peer through it, and you will sometimes catch a glimpse of a -very homely, kindly face behind.” And this, which he puts into the -mouth of Lord Roxton, in “The Lost World”; “There are times, young -fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and -justice, or you never feel clean again.” - -You may depend he felt that time had come for him when he took up the -cudgel for George _Edalji_ and would not rest or be silent till the -case had been reopened and _Edalji_ proved innocent and set at liberty; -it came again when he threw everything else aside to render patriotic -services in the Boer War (which were to some extent recognized by the -accolade), and again in the later and greater War; it came for him -when he resolutely championed the cause of the martyred natives in -the Belgian Congo; when, believing in Oscar Slater’s innocence, he -wrote a masterly review of the evidence against him and strove to have -him re-tried; and it came once more when, risking his reputation and -in defiance of the ridicule he knew he would have to face, he openly -confessed himself a believer in spiritualism and has persisted in that -unorthodoxy until he has become one of the most powerful and insistent -of its apostles. - -These and other such activities may seem outside a consideration of -Doyle’s work in literature, but they are not, any more than are his -medical knowledge or his love of sport, for you find their influence -everywhere in his books. There were ghosts in his fiction before ever -he began to raise them at the seance. Some find it hard to square his -absorption in spiritualism with his robust personality, with the sane -philosophy of his stories, and the fact that he is so much a man of -action, a lover of the open air and all the wholesome human qualities -that keep a writer’s blood sound and prevent his ink from getting muddy -and slow. But it is just these circumstances that add weight to his -testimony as a spiritualist; he is no dreamer predisposed to believe in -psychic phenomena; he is a stolid, shrewd man of affairs who wants to -look inside and see how the wheels go round before he can have faith in -anything. - -He has played as strenuously as he has worked. He has tasted delight of -battle with his peers at football, cricket, golf; he has made balloon -and aeroplane ascents; introduced ski-ing into the Grison division of -Switzerland; did pioneer work in the opening up of miniature rifle -ranges; can hold his own with the foils and is a formidable boxer; he -is a fisherman in the largest sense, for he has been whaling in the -Arctic Seas, he used to ride to hounds and is a good shot, but has a -hearty hatred of all sport that involves the needless killing of birds -or animals. - -Born at Edinburgh, in 1859, Conan Doyle commenced writing tales of -adventure when he was about six, and it was natural that he should -illustrate these with drawings of his own, for he was born into a very -atmosphere and world of art. His grandfather, John Doyle, was the -well-known political caricaturist who for over thirty years concealed -his identity under the initials “H. B.”; his father, Charles Doyle, and -three of his uncles were artists, one being that Richard Doyle whose -name is inseparably associated with the early days of _Punch_. The -remarkable water-colors of Charles Doyle, which I have seen, have a -graceful fantasy that remind one of the work of Richard Doyle, but at -times they have a grimness, a sense of the eerie and the terrible that -lift them beyond anything that the _Punch_ artist ever attempted; and -you find this same imaginative force, this same bizarre sense of the -weird and terrible in certain of the stories of Charles Doyle’s son--in -“The Hound of the Baskervilles,” in some of the shorter Sherlock Holmes -tales, in many of the “Round the Fire” stories and in some of those in -“Round the Red Lamp.” - -In 1881, by five years of medical studentship at Edinburgh University, -Doyle secured his diploma and, after a voyage to West Africa, -started as a medical practitioner at Southsea. But all through -his student days he was giving his leisure to literary work, and -in one of the professors at Edinburgh, Dr. Joseph Bell, a man of -astonishing analytical and deductive powers, he found the original -from whom, in due season, Sherlock Holmes was to be largely drawn. -His first published story, a Kaffir romance, appeared, like Hardy’s, -in _Chambers’s Journal_. That was in 1878, and it brought him three -guineas; but it was not until nine years later, when “A Study in -Scarlet” came out in _Beeton’s Annual_ for 1887, that Sherlock Holmes -and Dr. Watson made their first appearance in print, and laid the -foundation of his success. - -During ten years of hard work as medical student and practitioner Doyle -had gone through the usual experience of the literary beginner; he -had suffered innumerable rejections, had contributed short stories to -_Cornhill_, _Temple Bar_, _Belgravia_ and other magazines, never in any -year earning with his pen more than fifty pounds. His first long novel, -that brilliant romance of the Monmouth rebellion, “Micah Clarke,” after -being rejected on all hands, was sent to Longmans and accepted for -them by Andrew Lang, whom Sir Arthur looks upon as one of his literary -godfathers, James Payn, who encouraged him in _Cornhill_ being the -other. - -“Micah Clarke” was followed in the same year (1889) by another Sherlock -Holmes story, “The Sign of Four.” In 1890 Chatto & Windus published -“The Firm of Girdlestone,” and “The White Company” began to run -serially in _Cornhill_. Then it was that, taking his courage in both -hands, Sir Arthur resigned his practice at Southsea and came to London. -He practised there for a while as an eye specialist, but the success of -those two last books decided him to abandon medicine and devote himself -wholly to literature. - -He has written a score or so of novels and volumes of short stories -since then; one--and an admirable one--of literary criticism, “The -Magic Door”; two of verse; a History of the Boer War, and three or four -volumes embodying his gospel and experiences as a spiritualist. This is -to say nothing of his plays--“A Story of Waterloo,” the Sherlock Holmes -dramas, and the rest. - -“Sir Nigel” and “The White Company” are, in his own opinion, “the least -unsatisfactory” of all his books, which is to put it modestly. I -would not rank the latter below such high English historical romances -as “The Cloister and the Hearth” and “Esmond,” and think it likely -Doyle will be remembered for this and “Sir Nigel,” and perhaps “Micah -Clarke,” long after the sensational, more resounding popular Sherlock -Holmes books have fallen into the background. Howbeit, for the present, -there is no getting away from the amazing Sherlock; not only is he the -most vivid and outstanding of all Sir Arthur’s creations, but no other -novelist of our time has been able to breathe such life and actuality -into any of his puppets. - -Not since Pickwick was born has any character in fiction taken such -hold on the popular imagination, so impressed the million with a sense -of his reality. He is commonly spoken of as a living person; detectives -are said to have studied his methods, and when it was announced -that he was about to retire into private life and devote himself to -bee-keeping, letters poured in, most of them addressed to “Sherlock -Holmes, Esq.,” care of Conan Doyle, expressing regret at this decision, -offering him advice in the making and managing of his apiaries, and not -a few applying for employment in his service. It is on record, too, -that a party of French schoolboys, sight-seeing in London, were asked -which they wished to see first--the Tower or Westminster Abbey, and -unanimously agreed that they would prefer to go to Baker Street and see -the rooms of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. - -As for the imitators who have risen to compete with him--there are so -many there is no guessing off-hand at their number; their assiduity -has brought into being a recognized Sherlock Holmes type of story, and -though some of them have been popular, none of them has rivaled the -original either in popularity or ingenuity. - -Obviously, then, for his own generation Doyle is, above everything -else, the creator of that unique detective. But with him, as with -Ulysses, it is not too late to seek a newer world, and he may yet do -what nobody has done and fashion from his latter-day experiences a -great novel of spiritualism. - - - - -JOHN DRINKWATER - -[Illustration: JOHN DRINKWATER] - - -From his essays and some of his poems you gather an idea that John -Drinkwater was cradled into poetry by natural inclination but grew to -maturity in it by deliberate and assiduous study of his art. He set out -with a pretty definite idea of the poet’s mission, which is, he lays -it down in one of his essays, “not to express his age, but to express -himself”; and though he has largely lived up to that gospel, he has -from time to time gone beyond it and, perhaps unwittingly, expressed -his age as well. He subscribes to Coleridge’s rather inadequate -definition of poetry as “the best words in the best order,” but -improves upon it elsewhere by insisting that they shall be pregnant -and living words. He has all along taken himself and his function with -a certain high seriousness, believing it was for him and his fellow -artists to awaken the soul of the world, and conceiving of himself -and them as beset on every side by “prejudice, indifference, positive -hostility, misrepresentation, a total failure to understand the -purposes and the power of art.” - -There may be a touch of exaggeration in all this, but it is the lack of -some such intense belief in themselves that makes so many of our modern -poets trivial and ineffective, and the possession of it that gives a -sincerity and meaning to much of Drinkwater’s verse and atones for -the austerity and conscientious labor with which he fashions the lofty -rhyme after the manner of a builder rather than of a singer. But there -is magic in his building, and if he has not often known the rapture of -spontaneous singing he has known the quiet, profounder joy of really -having something to say and, as Alexander Smith says, the joy, while he -shaped it into words, of - - “Sitting the silent term of stars to watch - Your own thought passing into beauty, like - An earnest mother watching the first smile - Dawning upon her sleeping infant’s face, - Until she cannot see it for her tears.” - -During the twelve years in which he served as clerk in divers Assurance -Companies, he was serving also his apprenticeship to the Muses. His -first book of verse, published in 1908, when he was twenty-six, -contained little of distinction or of promise, and much the same -may be said of his second. If he was a born poet he was not born -ready-made, and in those books he was still making himself. His third -and fourth showed he was succeeding in doing that, and when the best -things in those first four were gathered into one volume, in 1914, -it was recognized that not merely a new but an authentic poet had -arrived. One might have recognized that if this little collection had -contained nothing but the four poems, “January Dusk,” “In Lady Street,” -“Reckoning,” and “A Prayer,” in which he has finely expressed so much -of himself, his own outlook and aspirations: - - “Lord, not for light in darkness do we pray, - Not that the veil be lifted from our eyes, - Nor that the slow ascension of our day - Be otherwise. - - Not for a clearer vision of the things - Whereof the fashioning shall make us great, - Nor for remission of the perils and stings - Of time and fate.... - - Grant us the will to fashion as we feel, - Grant us the strength to labour as we know, - Grant us the purpose, ribbed and edged with steel, - To strike the blow. - - Knowledge we ask not--knowledge Thou hast lent, - But, Lord, the will--there lies our bitter need, - Give us to build above the deep intent - The deed, the deed.” - -He has little of the delicate fantasy, the eerie atmosphere, the -gracious humor of Walter de la Mare, and little of the grim, stark -realism of Wilfrid Gibson. He cannot write of the squalors of a -Birmingham street, with its trams and fried-fish and rag shops without -touching it to loveliness in the dreams of the old greengrocer who, -among the colors and scents of his apples, marrows, cabbages, mushrooms -and gaudy chrysanthemums, sees the sun shining on lanes he had known in -Gloucestershire. And when he takes a slight and elusive theme that can -only be made to dance to the airiest pipings it dies on his hands and -is cold and stiff and formal, an embodied idea, that should have been -a thing all music and light or it is nothing. Drinkwater’s genius is -more didactic, descriptive, narrative than lyrical. He is heavy and -not happy on the wing; he is more at home when he feels the earth under -his feet, and walking in the Cotswolds or in the streets of the city it -is the visible life and beauty around him, the human joys and griefs, -strivings and visions in which he can share that are his surest sources -of inspiration. - -There is enough dramatic and rhetorical power in several of his -poems--in “Eclipse,” “Uncrowned,” “Reckoning,” “A Prayer”--to make it -nothing strange that he should turn to the stage. Moreover, he is more -prophet than minstrel, more preacher than singer, and though the dogmas -he has formulated about art and “we” who are artists, with the claim -that the renewal of the world rests with “us,” may seem confident and -self-assertive, he is a very modest egoist and, I think, of a sort -that must have felt he could express himself with greater freedom -and force through the medium of imaginary characters than in his own -person. Anyhow, in his early days, he joined in founding the Pilgrim -Players who have since developed into the Birmingham Repertory Theater, -and he proceeded to write plays to be produced there under his own -direction. These were written in blank verse--“Cophetua,” “Rebellion” -(not without hints of his practical idealism, for all its romance), -the three one-act pieces he published in one volume with the title of -“Pawns,” the best of which is that poignantly dramatic sketch “The -Storm”--and they gave him the beginnings of a reputation as dramatist, -but none of them was particularly successful from a business point -of view; and even later “Mary Stuart” was not that. By some irony of -circumstance, after devoting his life whole-heartedly to poetry he -scored his first big success with a play that was done in prose, and -the success of “Abraham Lincoln” was so big and so immediate that it -carried him straightway into a full tide of popularity on both sides of -the Atlantic. - -I doubt whether anybody who read it can have foreseen for “Abraham -Lincoln” such a triumphant reception. You might say it is completely -artless, or most subtly artistic in design and workmanship with -an equal chance of being right. Its structure is so simple, its -dialogue cast in such natural, everyday language that you easily may -overlook its bold originality of invention, overlook that it ignores -theatrical technique and traditions and in the quietest way makes a -drastically new departure. It is a chronicle play, but attempts none -of the beauty and harmony of poetry that clothes the chronicle plays -of Shakespeare in magnificence, nor is it alive with incident as his, -nor even knitted up into a continuing story. It is a chronicle play -in the barest meaning of the term; the dialogue is pieced out, where -possible, with Lincoln’s recorded sayings; each scene presents an -event in his career; there are more committee and cabinet meetings -than exciting episodes, far more talk than action throughout. Yet -because of the essential nobility of Lincoln’s character, his unique -personality, his quaintnesses, his brave honesty of thought and -intention, this unadorned presentment of the man and his doings -becomes curiously impressive, profoundly moving--the more so since -it strove to reincarnate what had happened with an exact and naked -realism unheightened by the conventional artifice and tricks of the -stage. The whole thing gained something undoubtedly by being produced -in 1918 when the shadow of the Great War that was upon us gave a -topical significance to Lincoln’s heroic struggle with the South, his -passion for freedom, his humanitarian but practical attitude toward -war in general. His vision and his ideals were at that time those of -the better part of our own people; the play largely voiced the minds -of the multitudes that crowded to see it, so that in writing “Abraham -Lincoln,” despite his artistic faith, Drinkwater was expressing his age -no less than himself. - -Already he has had imitators; his method looked too easy not to be -imitated; but it must be harder than it looks for none of them has -succeeded. Perhaps he cannot do it twice himself, for his “Oliver -Cromwell,” fashioned on similar lines, does not, in my thinking, reveal -so true and convincing a portrait of the man. Nearly ten years earlier -Drinkwater had tried his hand on the great Protector in a blank verse -poem sympathetically and dramatically conceived but not altogether -rising to the height of its subject. Like “Abraham Lincoln,” the later -“Oliver Cromwell” is a chronicle play, but he has allowed himself -more latitude in this than in that. He has less warrant for some of -his incidents; the pathos he introduces into Cromwell’s home life is -occasionally just a trifle stagey, and he has sentimentalized Oliver -himself, made him less of the sturdy, bluff, uncompromising Roundhead -that we know from his letters and speeches and the researches of -Carlyle; but it is a vivid, vital piece of portraiture and so often -catches the manner and spirit of the original as to leave a final -impression of likeness in which its unlikelier aspects are lost. -I am told it does not act so well as it reads, but if it does not -rival “Lincoln” on the boards one has to remember that it has not the -advantage of timeliness that “Lincoln” had. - -I have said nothing of John Drinkwater’s excursions into criticism; -his studies of Swinburne and Morris, of “The Lyric,” “The Way of -Poetry”; for what he has written about poetry and the drama is of small -importance in comparison with the poetry and the dramas he has written. -As poet and dramatist he has developed slowly, and it is too soon yet -to pass judgment on him. Plenty of men spend their lives in trying -vainly to live up to a brilliant first book, but he began without -fireworks and has grown steadily from the start, and is still young -enough not to have done growing. - - - - -JEFFERY FARNOL - -[Illustration: JEFFERY FARNOL] - - -Had it been, as some believe it is, an irrevocable law that a man’s -mind and temperament are naturally moulded by his early environment, -Jeffery Farnol ought to have been an uncompromising realist. Plenty -of good things come out of Birmingham, but they are solid things; you -would not suspect it was the native city of any peddler who had nothing -but dreams to sell. - -Scott, Ballantyne and Stevenson were all born in Edinburgh, a very haunt -of romance; Mayne Reid came from Ireland which, though Shakespeare -does not seem to have known it, is where fancy is bred; Stanley -Weyman hails from just such a quaint little country town as he brings -into some of his stories; Manchester nursed Harrison Ainsworth, and -even Manchester carries on business as usual against a shop-soiled -background of fantasy and the black arts. But Birmingham--well, -Birmingham forgets that it was visited by the Normans and sacked by -the Cavaliers; it has made itself new and large and is as go-ahead and -modern as the day after to-morrow; a place of hard facts, factories, -practical efficiency, profitable commerce, achievement in iron and -steel, and apparently has no use for fancy and imagination except on -strictly business lines, when it manufactures idols for the heathen -and jewellery that is not what it seems. - -Nevertheless, a fig from a thorn, a grape from a thistle, in Birmingham -Jeffery Farnol was born, and it would not have been surprising if he -had grown up to put present-day Birmingham and its people into his -novels, as Arnold Bennett has put the Five Towns and their people into -his; but instead of doing that he has perversely developed into one -of the most essentially romantic of modern novelists. He was writing -stories when he was nineteen, and some of them found their way into -the magazines. For a while, feeling after a source of income, he -coquetted with engineering, and there is some romance in that, but not -of the sort that could hold him. He experimentalized in half a dozen -trades and professions, and presently looked like becoming an artist -with brush and pencil rather than with the pen. In those uncertain -years, when he was still dividing his leisure between writing tales -and painting landscapes and drawing caricatures, he came to London -and spent his spare time at the Westminster Art School, where the -now distinguished Japanese artist, Yoshio Markino, was one of his -fellow-pupils. - -Then, in 1902, he cut the painter in one sense, though not in another, -and grown more enterprising went adventuring to America; where, having -married the youngest daughter of Hughson Hawley, the American scenic -artist, he took to scene-painting himself and did it diligently for two -years at the Astor Theater, New York. When he was not busy splashing -color on back-cloths, he was working strenuously at the writing of -fiction, and if his first novel smacks somewhat of the conventions and -artificialities of the theater in whose atmosphere he was living, his -second, “The Broad Highway,” is as untrammeled by all such influences -and as breezily, robustly alive with the wholesome, free air of the -countryside of eighteenth century England and the native spirit of -romance as if he had never heard of Birmingham or been within sight of -a stage door. - -With “The Broad Highway” he found himself at once; but he did not at -once find a publisher with it. Often enough an author who has been -rejected in England has been promptly received with open arms by a -publisher and a public in America; then he has come home bringing his -sheaves with him and been even more rapturously welcomed into the -households and circulating libraries of his penitent countrymen. But in -Farnol’s case the process was reversed. America would have none of “The -Broad Highway”; her publishers returned it to him time after time, as -they had returned “Mr. Tawnish,” which he had put away in despair. It -had taken him two years to write what is nowadays the most popular of -his books, and for three years it wandered round seeking acceptance or -slept in his drawer between journeys, until he began to think it would -never get out of manuscript into print at all. - -It was looking travel worn and the worse for wear, and had been -sleeping neglected in his drawer for some months, when his wife rescued -it and, on the off chance, sent it over to England to an old friend of -Farnol’s who, having read it with enthusiasm, passed it on to Sampson -Low & Co., and it came to pass that “The Broad Highway” was then -published immediately and as immediately successful. That was in 1910; -and in the same year Jeffery Farnol came back to his own country and -settled in Kent, which has given him so many scenes for the best of his -romances. - -Strange, you may say, that a novel so wholly and peculiarly English -should have been written so far away from its proper setting and in -such unpropitious surroundings, especially while Farnol had all the -glamorous adventure and lurid, living romance of the American outlands -waiting, as it were, at his elbow. But - - “The mind is its own place, and in itself - Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,” - -and an eighteenth century England of a twentieth century New York; -otherwise he might have been among the pioneer revivalists of the -riotously romantic novel of the Wild West. Stranger still that when -“The Broad Highway” recrossed the ocean it was no longer rejected and -had soon scored an even larger success with American than with English -readers. The magazines there opened their doors to the author without -delay and made haste to secure the serial rights in his next stories -before he had begun to think of them. Within the next three years, -“The Money Moon” and “The Amateur Gentleman” had increased and firmly -established his reputation, and the earlier “Mr. Tawnish” came out on -the strength of their abounding popularity, which was more than strong -enough to carry the tale of that elegant and honourable person much -farther than it might have gone if it had not had such best sellers and -long runners to set the pace for it. - -Romance is Farnol’s native air, and he does not breathe happily in -any other. When he tells a story of the trousered, railway-riding -life round him he is like a wizard who has turned from his spells and -incantations to build with mundane bricks and mortar instead of with -magic--he does the ordinary thing capably but in the ordinary way. “The -Chronicles of the Imp” is an entertaining trifle, and “The Definite -Object” is a clever, exciting story of a young millionaire’s adventures -in New York’s underworld, but they lack his distinctive touch, his -individual manner; he is not himself in them. He is the antithesis of -Antaeus and renews himself when he reaches, not the solid earth, but -the impalpable shores of old romance. He can do wonders of picturesque -realism with such charming latter-day fantasies as “The Money Moon,” -but give him the knee-breeches or strapped pants and the open road -and all the motley, thronging life of it in the gallant days of the -Regency and he will spin you such virile, breezily masculine, joyously -humorous romances as “The Broad Highway,” “The Amateur Gentleman” and -“Peregrine’s Progress”; give him the hose and jerkin, the roistering -merriment and rugged chivalries of the Middle Ages and he will weave -you so glowing and lusty a saga as “Meltane the Smith”; and you will -have far to go among recent books before you find more fascinating or -more vigorously imaginative romances of piracy and stirring adventure -on land and sea than “Black Bartlemy’s Treasure” and its sequel, -“Martin Conisby’s Vengeance.” - -He gives away the recipe for his best romance in that talk between -Peter Vibart and another wayfarer which preludes “The Broad Highway”: - -“As I sat of an early summer morning in the shade of a tree, eating -fried bacon with a tinker, the thought came to me that I might some -day write a book of my own; a book that should treat of the roads and -by-roads, of trees, and wind in lonely places, of rapid brooks and lazy -streams, of the glory of dawn, the glow of evening, and the purple -solitude of night; a book of wayside inns and sequestered taverns; a -book of country things and ways and people. And the thought pleased me -much. - -“‘But,’ objected the Tinker, for I had spoken my thought aloud, ‘trees -and suchlike don’t sound very interestin’--leastways--not in a book, -for after all a tree’s only a tree and an inn an inn; no, you must tell -of other things as well.’ - -“‘Yes,’ said I, a little damped, ‘to be sure there is a highwayman----’ - -“‘Come, that’s a little better!’ said the Tinker encouragingly. - -“‘Then,’ I went on, ticking off each item on my fingers, ‘come Tom -Cragg, the pugilist----’ - -“‘Better and better!’ nodded the Tinker. - -“‘----a long-legged soldier of the Peninsula, an adventure at a lonely -tavern, a flight through woods at midnight pursued by desperate -villains, and--a most extraordinary tinker.’” - -The tinker approves of all these things, but urges that there must also -be in the story blood, and baronets, and, above all, love and plenty -of it, and though Peter Vibart is doubtful about these ingredients -because he lacks experience of them, as he goes on his journey he -makes acquaintance with them all, and they are all in the story before -it ends. The tinker was only interpreting the passion for romance -that is in Everyman when he pleaded for the inclusion of picturesque -or emotional elements that Peter was for omitting, and the instant -and continuing popularity of “The Broad Highway” shows that he was a -correct interpreter. - -Born no longer ago than 1878, Farnol is younger than that in everything -but years. If he is seldom seen in literary circles it is simply -because the country draws him more than the town; he is the most -sociable of men, and his intimates will tell you that the geniality, -the warmth of feeling, the shrewd, humorous philosophy that are in his -books are also in himself; that his love of romance is as genuine and -inherent as every other sense belonging to him, and, consequently, when -he sits to write on the themes that naturally appeal to him he merely -follows Samuel Daniel’s counsel and dips his pen into his heart. - - - - -JOHN GALSWORTHY - -[Illustration: JOHN GALSWORTHY] - - -In attempting a personal description of almost any living poet or -novelist it is becoming such a customary thing to say he does not look -in the least like an author that I am beginning to feel a consuming -curiosity to know what an author looks like and what can cause him -to look so entirely different from men of other professions that you -can tell him for one at a glance. In my own experience, the worst -poetry nowadays is written by men of the most picturesquely poetical -appearance, and the best by men who are stout, or bald, or of an -otherwise commonplace or unattractive exterior. Nor among the many -literary persons I have met do I remember meeting even one novelist of -genius who looked it. How this myth of the ideal author, the splendid -creature carrying his credentials in his face, came into being is not -within my knowledge. An old gentleman of my acquaintance who had, in -his time, set eyes on Dickens assured me that he was an insignificant -little person who might have passed for a retired sea-captain. -Thackeray rather resembled a prize fighter who had gone flabby. -Trollope, with his paunch and massive beard suggested the country -squire. Browning would not have seemed out of place as a bank manager, -and though Tennyson was said to look a typical poet, he really looked -much more like a typical stage brigand. - -The fact is that while other trades and professions have developed -recognizable characteristics in such as follow them, literature has -naturally failed to do that. For men are drawn into it from all -sections of the community and there is no more reason that they should -conform to a family likeness than that they should each write the same -kind of books. They do not even, in appearance, live up to the books -they write. Stanley Weyman looks as unromantic as Austin Chamberlain; -that daring realist George Moore gazes on you with the blue-eyed -innocence of a new curate; and the mild and gentle aspect of Thomas -Burke does not harmonize with the violence and grim horrors of his -tales of Chinatown. - -In a word, no two authors look alike; as a race, they have even given -up trying to achieve a superficial uniformity by growing long hair -and, when they have any, cut it to an orthodox length. A few cultivate -the mustache; not many indulge in whiskers; the majority are clean -shaven; and in this they are not peculiar, for the same, in the same -proportions, may be said of their readers. Therefore, when at a recent -dinner a lady sitting next to me surveyed John Galsworthy, who was -seated opposite, and remarked, “You could guess he was an author--he -looks so like one,” I anxiously enquired, “Which one?” and was, perhaps -not undeservedly, ignored. - -If she had said he looked like an indefinite intellectual; that -his countenance was modeled on noble and dignified lines; that it -expressed at once shrewdness and benignity, I could have understood -and agreed with her. But these qualities are so far from being -infallibly the birthright of the author that they are seldom apparent -in him. With his firm, statuesque features, his grave immobility, -his air of detachment and distinction, the calm deliberation of his -voice and gesture, Galsworthy embodies rather what we have come to -regard as the legal temperament. It is not difficult to imagine -him in wig and gown pleading earnestly, impressively, but without -passion, or, appropriately robed, summing up from the bench sternly, -conscientiously, and with the most punctilious impartiality. - -Consequently, it was without surprise I heard the other day, for the -first time, that he had studied for the Bar and became, in his early -years, a barrister, though he did not practice. Nor is this legal -strain to be traced only in his personal aspect and bearing; it asserts -itself as unmistakably and often with considerable effectiveness -throughout his novels and plays. He has the lawyer’s respect for fact -and detail; he must have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but -the truth; and this gives his stories a certain aridity; a hardness as -well as clearness of outline. The ways of the impressionist are not -his ways; he omits nothing, but is as precise, as exact in developing -plot and character as a lawyer is in getting up a case. He is not -satisfied merely to paint portraits of his men and women, he analyses -them meticulously, tells you every little thing about them and their -families and friends, their taste in food and dress and furniture, -shows them in their domestic relations, in their business activities, -inventories their virtues and vices and material surroundings with a -completeness that leaves nothing unexplained and affects the reader -with an extraordinary sense of the reality of it all. If he is -recording a funeral he will take care to tell you “the hearse started -at a foot’s pace; the carriages moved slowly after.” You might have -been trusted to assume that this would be the order of the procession, -but nothing is assumed, the thing has got to be described just as it -happened. You are then told who was in each carriage, and note is made -of the thirteenth carriage which follows at the very end “containing -nobody at all.” That is the Galsworthy method. When he relates, in -“The Man of Property,” that the young architect, Bosinney, is building -a house in the country for Soames Forsyte he does not slur things and -content himself with generalities but acquaints you with the size, -design and cost of the house, its architectural peculiarities, and the -point is that all these particulars are strictly relevant and serve to -reveal more intimately the characters and idiosyncrasies of Bosinney -and of Soames, and have their significance in the unfolding of that -poignant tragedy of Soames’s wife. - -As the historian of later Victorian upper middle-class life in England, -Galsworthy is the legitimate successor of Anthony Trollope. He is -as true a realist as Trollope without the reticence imposed on the -Victorian writer by his period; but Trollope’s style was exuberant, -slipshod, obese, like himself, and Galsworthy’s, like himself, is lean, -subdued, direct, chary of displaying emotion; he observes a close -economy in the use of words, despite the length of his books. In common -with most of his contemporary novelists, Trollope was something of a -moralist; he handled from a sensible, man-of-the-world point of view -divers religious, financial and domestic problems of the time that lent -themselves to his purposes as a teller of stories. But the problems -that interested him were those that had to be faced by the well-to-do -and the respectable; he had no particular sympathy for the lower orders -and little contempt, good-humored or otherwise, for the vulgar folk -who had earned their own money, climbed up from the depths, and were -awkwardly trying to breathe and flutter in the refined air of good -society. - -He had a nice feeling for sentiment, and lapsed carelessly into -sentimentality. Galsworthy is generally too controlled and -self-conscious to do that. But if his irony and satire are keener-edged -than his predecessor’s, his sympathies are broader and deeper. He is -a humanitarian whose sense of brotherhood extends to birds and the -animals described as dumb. On the one hand, he understands and has -compassion for the under-dog, the poor, the humble; and on the other, -though he can smile, as in the three novels that make up his greatest -achievement, “The Forsyte Saga,” and elsewhere--and smile with a -sardonic humor--at the outlook and pretensions of those old prosperous -families who move in the best circles and, comfortably materialistic, -have, in place of a sense of brotherhood, acquired an ineradicable -sense of property in their wives, money, houses, he is not blind to the -finer human qualities that underlie their inherited social conventions. -In two of his dramas, “Strife,” and “The Skin Game,” he handles the -eternal struggle between capital and labor, and the conflict of -interests between a wealthy _parvenu_ and an impoverished patrician -with such an honest balancing of wrongs and rights, such sedulous -impartiality, that you can scarcely say at the end which side retains -most of his sympathy. - -He takes life too seriously, it seems, to be able to write stories or -plays for their own sake; he writes them to expose moral or economic -evils of his time, to advocate reforms in our social organization; -the crude barbarity of our prison system; the tyranny of the marriage -law; the hypocrisies of religion and orthodox morality; the vanity of -riches; the fatuity of all class inequalities--with him the creation -of character, the fashioning of a tale of individual love, rivalry, -ambition, triumph or disaster are generally more or less subordinate to -communal or national issues such as these. - -It is characteristic of Galsworthy’s reticence that he issued his -first three or four novels under the pseudonym of John Sinjohn; and -of the genuineness of his democratic ideals that when he had built -up a reputation and was offered a knighthood he declined it. It is -characteristic, too, of his restrained, deliberate habit of mind that, -unlike the generality of writers, he does not seem to have rushed -into print until he was old enough to have acquired enough personal -experience to draw upon. He was thirty-one when his first novel, -“Jocelyn,” was published; and thirty-nine when, in the one year, 1906, -he made another and a real beginning as a novelist in his own name -with “The Man of Property,” and as a dramatist with “The Silver Box.” -The keynote of his work is its profound sincerity. Art and the zeal -for reform seldom run in double-harness, but they do when Galsworthy -drives. - - - - -SIR ANTHONY HOPE HAWKINS - -[Illustration: SIR ANTHONY HOPE HAWKINS] - - -The dawn of the present century brought with it what critics, who like -to have such matters neat and orderly, delight to call a romantic -revival in fiction. As a matter of fact, it also brought with it a -revival of realism, and both had really started before the century -began, and have continued to advance together ever since on pretty -equal terms. In the 1890’s Gissing was nearing the end of his career, -but the torch of realism was being carried on by Hubert Crackanthorpe -(who died too soon), by Arnold Bennett, Arthur Morrison, Pett Ridge, -Edwin Pugh, George Moore, Oliver Onions, Kipling, Wells (who divided -his allegiance between both movements), George Egerton, Elizabeth -Robins, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, and many another. - -The romantic revival, which had started earlier, was well afoot during -the same period. Stevenson died in 1894. Rider Haggard’s best romances -were out in the 1880’s; Doyle’s “Micah Clarke” and “The White Company” -belong to 1888 and 1890; Sir Gilbert Parker came soon after; Stanley -Weyman and Anthony Hope arrived in the movement together, when the -century was still in its infancy. All these were in the same boat but, -to adopt Douglas Jerrold’s pun, with very different skulls; how they -are to take rank in the hierarchy of letters is not my concern at the -moment--I am only saying they were all romantics. That Weyman might -have been something else is indicated by the strong, quiet realism of -his second book, “The New Rector,” and the much later novels he has -written, after an inactive interval of ten years, “The Great House,” -and “The Ovington Bank”; and that Anthony Hope Hawkins might have been -something else is the inference you draw from nearly all his work after -“The Intrusions of Peggy.” - -His father was the Vicar of St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, and he was a -nephew, or some other near relation, of the famous “hanging Judge,” Sir -Henry Hawkins. From Marlborough he passed to Balliol, Oxford, where he -took his M. A. degree and was president of the Oxford Union Society. He -seems to have set out with an eye on a career at the Bar which should -lead him into the House of Commons. But though he was, like Stanley -Weyman, duly called to the Bar, like Weyman, he did not do anything -much in the way of practising. Once he put up as a Parliamentary -candidate, but was not elected; yet one can imagine him as an ideal -Member--he has the distinguished presence, the urbane, genially -courteous manner, the even temper and nimbleness of mind that ought to -but do not always go to the making of an Attorney General and, as any -who have heard him take part in after-dinner discussions will know, in -addressing an audience he has all the gifts of clarity, ease and humor -that make the successful public speaker. - -But law and politics piped to him in vain, and his ambition took the -right turning when he wrote his first novel, “A Man of Mark.” It was -a deft and lively enough tale; it was read and talked about, and -was considered promising, but caused no particular excitement. The -excitement was waiting for his next book. When “The Prisoner of Zenda” -burst upon the town, in 1894, it leaped into success at once. Stanley -Weyman’s “Under the Red Robe” was issued almost simultaneously and the -two ran a wild race for popularity and both won. Both were dramatized -promptly, and repeated on the stage the dazzling success they had -enjoyed between covers. Each inspired a large school of imitators, -which increased and multiplied until the sword and cloak romance, and -stories of imaginary kingdoms were, in a few years, almost as plentiful -as blackberriers and began to become a drug in the market. But, -meanwhile, the spirit of romance was awake and abroad, and any capable -novelist who rode into the library lists wearing her favors was pretty -sure of a welcome. - -In the same bustling year, 1894, we had from Anthony Hope “The God in -the Car,” a tale of a South African Company promoter, and “The Dolly -Dialogues.” These were not in a direct line of descent from “The -Prisoner of Zenda,” and were possibly written before that; they were, -at all events, written before the enormous vogue of that could prompt -the author to follow it with another of the same desirable brand. But -“The Dolly Dialogues” soared to an independent success of their own. -Those crisp, neat entertaining chats of that adroitest of flirts, -Dolly Foster, with her husband, with Mr. Carter, and others of her -fashionable circle, were not without a certain distant likeness to the -bright, irresponsible talk of “Dodo,” and repeated the triumph that had -been “Dodo’s” a decade earlier. The “Dialogues” set another fashion, -and generated another school of imitators. Whether people ever talked -with such consistent brilliance in real life was of no consequence; it -was amusing, clever, it was often witty, and when it was not it was -crisp and smart and so like wit that it could pass for it. And in so -far as such acute remarks and repartee were too good to be true they -only brought the book into line with the airy, impossible romance and -inventive fantasy of “The Prisoner of Zenda.” - -With “Rupert of Hentzau” Anthony Hope was back in his imaginary kingdom -next year; if the sequel was not so good as “The Prisoner” it had as -good a reception; and “The King’s Mirror,” and a romantic comedy, “The -Adventure of Lady Ursula,” not dramatized from one of his books but -specially written for the stage, followed in quick succession. For -those were days when he was working strenuously and systematically -at his art; to cultivate the habit of work he left home every -morning, like any lawyer or stockbroker, and went to a room off the -Strand--wasn’t it in Buckingham Street?--where he wrote steadily for a -fixed number of hours without interruption. The notion that an author -can only do his best by fits and starts as the mood takes him is a -romantic convention dear to the dilettante, but Hope was never that; -he kept his romance in his books as sedulously as Scott did and was as -sensibly practical as Scott in his methods of making them. - -But he had to pay for his first popular success, as most novelists do. -Jerome has more than once complained that the public having accepted -“Three Men in a Boat” with enthusiasm and labeled him a humorist would -never after allow him to be anything else. His “Paul Kelver” is worth -a dozen of the other book, but it has withdrawn into the background -and “Three Men in a Boat” is still selling freely. “Quisante” (1900) -marked a new departure, suggested that Hope was turning from romance to -reality. That study of the political adventurer and the aristocratic -wife who realizes she has made a mistake in marrying out of her order, -is, as literature and as a story, a stronger, finer piece of work than -any Hope had done before, but it was not what his readers had expected -of him, and it did not win the new reputation it ought to have won for -him, though the critics did not fail to recognize its quality. To the -general world of readers he was the author of “The Prisoner of Zenda”; -that was the type of novel they wanted from him; they continued to -ask for it and would not willingly take any other. He humored them at -intervals with “The Intrusions of Peggy,” and “Sophy of Kravonia,” but -on the whole he had done with such light entertainments and settled -down to the serious interpretation of modern life and character. -Next to “Quisante,” I would place his poignant and dramatic handling -of the marriage problem in “Double Harness,” the study, in “A Servant -of the Public,” of a temperament that is only baffling by reason of -its elemental simplicity; the masterly realistic presentment of a -capable, courageous, unconventional, attractive woman in “The Great -Miss Driver,” and the brilliant treatment again of the problem of -marriage and disillusion in “Mrs. Maxon Protests.” These five--subtle -in characterization and fashioned of the comedy and tragedy of actual -human experience--these and not his more notorious trifles are the true -measure of Anthony Hope’s achievement as a novelist. - -But they are obscured by the flashier glory of “The Prisoner of Zenda” -and “Rupert of Hentzau,” which are now renascent and appealing mightily -on the films to the romantic susceptibilities of a new generation of -admirers. - -The novels he has written since the honor of knighthood was conferred -upon him in 1918 are sufficient to show that his invention and skill in -narrative are by no means failing him, though neither “Beaumaroy Home -from the Wars” nor “Lucinda” reach the level of “Quisante” or “Mrs. -Maxon Protests.” But “Beaumaroy” has touches of humor and character -that are in his happiest vein, and if I say that “Lucinda” is an abler -and more notable piece of work than is either of the dazzling fairy -tales that established his position, it is not that I would belittle -those delightful entertainments but would emphasize that so far from -representing his capacity they misrepresent it; they stand in the way -and prevent his better work from being seen in its just proportions, -so that though at first they may have secured a prompt recognition for -him, it looks as if, at last, they will, in a larger sense, prevent him -from being recognized. - - - - -ARTHUR STUART MENTETH HUTCHINSON - -[Illustration: ARTHUR STUART MENTETH HUTCHINSON] - - -Success is good for people, when they do not get too much of it too -soon. Failure is even better for them, when they do not get more than -enough of it for too many years. Hardship, difficulty, failure--these -knock the nonsense out of a man and teach him his art or his business; -there is something lacking from the character and work of one who has -never known them. Many authors recover at last from their failures, but -an instant and early success is generally fatal; it makes them take -themselves too seriously and their work not seriously enough; their -vogue dwindles, in consequence, and the publishers who began to run -after them begin to run away from them. There is little more difference -between a too triumphant beginning and an unending failure than between -a drought and a deluge. - -The two extremes are equally devastating, and A. S. M. Hutchinson is -among the luckier ones who have been destined to a middle course. He -has not won his pearl without diving for it; but he has not had to dive -and come up empty-handed. - -Those who imagine, as some do, that, with “If Winter Comes,” he simply -came, and saw, and conquered, imagine a vain thing. He had come three -times before that, and had, moreover, toiled at the oar as a very -miscellaneous journalist, a writer of articles and short stories that -editors too frequently rejected. If he never exactly lived in Grub -Street, he sojourned for a few years in a turning out of it. - -He had no literary or journalistic ancestry, and was originally -dedicated to another profession, but he did not “drift into -journalism”--that not being his way; he walked into it deliberately, -having made up his mind to go there. His father is a General in -the Indian Army, and A. S. M. was born in India, in 1880. But his -grandfather was a doctor of medicine, and at an early age Hutchinson -was settled in London, beginning a career of his own as a Medical -student. To this day, he has a quiet, kindly, sympathetic bearing that -would have served him as an excellent bedside manner, if he had taken -his M. D. and put up a brass plate. But he is one of the shyest, most -retiring of men; you cannot associate him with any sort of brass; and -even while he was trying a ’prentice hand in medicine and surgery at -St. Thomas’s Hospital a private ambition was drawing him in another -direction. - -“I always intended to earn my living with my pen,” he told me, some -years ago. “I was writing then in my leisure, sending out all kinds of -MSS. and getting most of them back, and at length I took the plunge -when I had about one short story accepted by a magazine, two articles -by _Punch_ and some verses by _Scraps_. I did not know a soul who had -the remotest connection with literary work, but I chanced it.” - -And threw physic to the dogs. He did not limit himself to any working -hours, but by writing hard all day contrived to pick up a regular five -shillings a week from _Scraps_ for comic verse, and, augmenting this -from a precarious sale of articles and tales to various publications, -compiled a weekly income of about one pound sterling. He had done this -for three months or so, when a letter came from _Pearson’s_ accepting a -story and asking for more; and he has related how this sent him crazy -all day with excitement. A few days later he was asked to call at the -office and undertake a small, special job, and, one thing leading to -another, was presently engaged on the staff at £2 10s. a week. By -the time he had gained experience as assistant editor of the _Royal -Magazine_ and been made co-editor of the _Rapid Review_, he felt the -hour had come for another plunge. - -A friend of those days describes him as “a slight, almost boyish young -man of middle-height, who gazed at you with intense concentration -through the powerful lenses of his glasses.” This still describes him, -if you touch in an elusive twinkle of genial humor about the mouth and -eyes, and add that his slightness, despite something of a stoop, gives -him an appearance of being actually tall. Already he had started on -his first novel, “Once Aboard the Lugger,” and wanted to cut adrift -from too much editing and escape into other fields. He resigned from -_Pearson’s_ and hearing that the _Daily Graphic_ was looking for a -leader-note writer, posted specimens, and secured the appointment as -a stand-by. In 1907 he was sub-editing that paper, and edited it from -1912 to 1916. - -Meanwhile, “Once Aboard the Lugger” being finished, he offered it to -one publisher who declined it, because “humor was not in his line,” and -to another who published it, in 1908; and it scored what counts for a -considerable success, if you do not compare its sales with those of -his fourth and fifth books. That out of hand, he commenced “The Happy -Warrior,” but when it was done, was dissatisfied with it, and being, -as he confesses, “an appallingly, vilely conscientious” worker, he did -it all over again. It swallowed the leisure of four years, but when it -came out, in 1912, added not a little to his reputation. - -His first book was a lively mingling of comedy and burlesque; his -second, a realistic romance of humor and pathos, struck a deeper note, -was fired with a fine idealism, and revealed him as a shrewd observer -and one subtly acquainted with the complexities of human character. -Then in 1914 came “The Clean Heart,” the tragedy of a life that lost -its way, of one who had to learn through folly and suffering that -self-sacrifice is the secret of happiness. It was as successful as its -predecessors, and I am not sure that they are wrong who hold that it -is the best of all Hutchinson’s work; but the War overshadowed it and -left it no chance of anticipating the phenomenal popularity that was -waiting for his later books. - -For nine years he published no more. He was serving as a lieutenant of -the Royal Engineers, attached to the Canadian forces, and, after the -peace, went as a Captain of the R. E., with the Army of Occupation, -into Germany. Before he was demobilized he had planned his fourth -novel, and when he could, at length, return to civilian life, he -decided not to hamper himself again with journalism but to stake his -prospects on his new book, and in 1921 “If Winter Comes” more than -amply justified him of his decision. Not more than one or two novels -within my remembrance have leaped into such instant and enormous -popularity. For a few weeks it was praised by the reviews, but there -was no particular stirring of the waters till a “boom” broke out in -America. The noise of it soon woke us over here, and the story got -rapidly into its stride; Hutchinson suddenly found himself famous as -a best-seller of half a million copies in America and half as many in -his own country. The furore it created had scarcely showed signs of -subsiding when “This Freedom” followed in its wake and brewed another -storm. A storm of mingled eulogy and censure; for the critics this -time were largely hostile. The story handled the problem of woman’s -emancipation, and Hutchinson stood for the old ideals of femininity, -the sanctities and traditional duties of womanhood; he believed that a -mother has positive and inalienable responsibilities, and set himself -to demonstrate that she could not put them by and arrogate to herself -a share of what is known as man’s work in the world without neglecting -her children, losing their affection, and bringing tragic disaster -on them and on her husband. He was accused of exaggeration; of being -out of sympathy with the modern spirit; but if, instead of giving the -novel this general application, you take it, as a work of imagination -should be taken--as a story of what happened when one woman strove -to break away from conventions and be herself at all risks--it is a -powerful and poignantly suggestive narrative and one that may well be -temperamentally true of such a woman and of such a family. - -Here, as in his other books, Hutchinson is so in earnest and realizes -his characters so intensely, that he becomes, as it were, this -character and that in succession, slips involuntarily into writing from -their standpoints as if he personally felt the wrong, hope, pain or -passion each experienced, and this misleads some of his critics into -taking for mannerisms what are nothing but his intimate realization of -his people and the outcome of his complete sincerity. He is so closely -interested in them himself that he cannot play the showman and stand -apart exhibiting his puppets; to him they are not puppets but have -burgeoned and become living realities and their emotions are his no -less than theirs. - -On the stage “If Winter Comes” did not capture the public so completely -as it did in the book, but it ran well in London and the provinces and -here and in America still keeps its place on tour. It has got on to -the films, of course and “This Freedom” is following in its footsteps. - -Hutchinson took his first successes with a tranquillity that seemed -like indifference, and his later and larger triumphs and the -denunciations he has endured, have I think, moved him as little. He has -aimed at doing his own work in his own way, and his popularity is an -accident; he is not the sort of man that finds success, but the sort of -man that success finds. - - - - -SHEILA KAYE-SMITH - -[Illustration: SHEILA KAYE-SMITH] - - -Talking of Charlotte Bronte, in a novel of Sheila Kaye-Smith’s that -goes back to mid-Victorian days, a hairy young man, with a mustache, -in addition to the whiskers of the period, agrees that she is crude -and outlandish, and adds, “That always comes when women write books. -They’re so frightened of being called feminine that they bury what -talent they may have under a mountain of manliness--and manliness for -them consists entirely of oaths and violence and scarlet sin.” - -Whether you agree or disagree with him, the hairy young critic was -expressing an opinion that was common among his contemporaries, who -have handed it down to a large number of their successors. It was -probably half true, and is not so true now as it was. The women -novelists now who specialise in scarlet sin have no particular use for -oaths and violence. Moreover, though it would be easy to name several -who have a tendency to color their pages with sin of all colors, there -is nothing exclusively masculine in that and their novels remain -essentially feminine. It would be easy to name others who are much -addicted to violent scenes and characters, but I doubt whether that is -any conscious attempt on their part to be manly--on the contrary, it -arises from an inherent, very feminine admiration of that barbaric -strength and muscular vigor which the average woman is supposed to -find so splendid and so attractive in the average man. It is such an -orthodox feminine conception of the ideal male that its presence in a -story almost inevitably betrays the sex of the author. - -All which means no more than that the woman novelist quite legitimately -does her best to draw a man, as the man novelist does his best to draw -a woman, and she succeeds nearly as often; and no woman novelist, past -or present, has been more uniformly and extraordinarily successful -in this difficult application of her art than Sheila Kaye-Smith. It -is usual for the male author to excuse his artistic shortcomings by -insisting that woman is a mystery and it is impossible to comprehend -her; but it seems likely that he may himself be as much of a mystery to -woman and that is why, in fiction, the men she depicts so often seem -like women in masquerade. Two of our leading women writers, who can -analyse and reveal characters of their own sex with an almost uncanny -insight, lose that power when they try to exercise it on the male of -the species and he thinks, feels and talks in their pages more or less -after the manner of women. They are brilliantly clever in every other -way, but can only make man in their own image. - -But the men in Miss Kaye-Smith’s novels are the real thing; they are -the unqualified male in whom male readers unhesitatingly recognize -their kind. Not because they are harsh or brutal, though some of them -are that; not because they are susceptible to the lure of the other -sex and masterfully override the laws of conventional morality, though -some of them do that; not because they are heavy drinkers and lusty -fighters with their fists, though some of them are this and some that; -but simply because in their general habits, their ordinary everyday -behavior, in what they say no less than in what they think, they are -obviously of the masculine gender. It is easy to create an illusion -that your character is a man if you call him a soldier and describe him -as acting with vigor or daring; but take this fragment of conversation, -chosen at random from “The Challenge to Sirius,” between Frank Rainger -and the retired studious Mr. Bellack. Frank is the son of an embittered -gentleman who has withdrawn from the struggle of life; he works, from -choice, on the farm where he and his father live, and goes daily to -the Rectory to take lessons with Mr. Bellack, but has come to hesitate -between his love of working on the land and a desire to go away -somewhere and know more of life, and asks his tutor to advise him: - -“‘The question is which is the best: happiness or experience? If it’s -experience, you had better get out of this hole as quickly as possible; -if it’s happiness, you had better stay where you are.’ - -“‘Which do you think it is, sir?’ - -“‘My good boy, how can I tell you? Personally I would rather you did -not go to London and take your chances there, as I feel that, though -you have brains and certain rudimentary gifts, it is not the kind of -life you are cut out for, and that you will probably fail and be -wretched. On the other hand, never renounce what seems to you a good -opportunity and a fine experience because an old chap like me hints at -trouble ahead. Besides, your father would rather see you starve as a -journalist than grow fat as a farmer. Perhaps he is right--perhaps I -am.’ - -“‘Did you ever have to make a choice of your own, sir?’ - -“‘Certainly I did, and I chose to be Rector of Wittersham with an -income of two hundred a year, no congenial society, a congregation of -hop-sacks, and for my sole distraction the teaching of a muddle-headed -boy who, at the age of nineteen, is still undecided as to how he shall -live the rest of his life.’ - -“‘So you chose wrong, I reckon.’ - -“‘How do you reckon any such thing? You don’t know what my alternative -was. Besides, you may be sure of this, no matter which way you choose -you will never definitely know whether you were wrong or right. The -great question of all choosers and adventurers is “Was it worth -while?”--and whatever else you may expect of life, don’t expect an -answer to that.’” - -Now if there had been nothing to indicate who the boy was talking -with you would know at once he was not talking to a woman, for there -is a man’s way of thinking, a man’s manner, even a man’s voice in all -that Mr. Bellack says. There is always this subtle, easy, truthfully -realistic presentation of Miss Kaye-Smith’s male characters, of the -mild, unassertive, commonplace, as well as the aggressive and more -virile of them. Her rustic clowns are as roughly human and racy of the -soil as Hardy’s. Robert Fuller, half animal, half saint, in “Green -Apple Harvest”; Monypenny, the practical idealist of “Tamarisk Town,” -who, ambitious to develop and popularize a seaside resort, triumphs -over all obstacles, carries his schemes through, rises to wealth and -dignity, and, sacrificing to his ambition the woman he loves, finds -himself lonely and unhappy on his height and turns remorsefully -and madly to destroy all he has so laboriously built; Miles, in -“Starbrace,” with his strangely varying moods, his strength and pitiful -weaknesses; the stern, harsh, ruggedly heroic Reuben Backfield, in -“Sussex Gorse,” wholly given over to his desperate, indomitable fight -for the possession of a wild unfruitful common; Mr. Sumption, the dour, -pathetic Baptist minister in “Little England,” a graphic, poignant -revelation of what the war meant in a rural community, and one of the -two or three great novels of that era--these and, in their differing -class and degree, all the men who belong to her stories are real, -authentic, humans--are men in flesh and bone and spirit, easy, natural, -alive. - -Her women are drawn with a knowledge that is apparently as minutely -exact and is certainly as sympathetic. If I had to single out her most -remarkable study in feminine temperament and psychology, I think I -should say Joanna Godden; but her explicit interpretations of women are -not so unusual as her understanding of men. She knows their businesses -as thoroughly as she knows them. If, like Coalbran or Backfield, they -are farmers and working on the land, she is not contented with vivid -generalities but makes the varied, multifarious circumstance of farming -and cattle raising, and the whole atmosphere and environment that has -moulded their lives part of her story. When Monypenny devotes himself -to the development of Tamarisk Town you are not asked to take anything -for granted but are shown how he financed his scheme, acquired land, -carried out his building operations, how the borough was formed, and -the elections conducted--you follow the growth of the place through its -various stages, and Monypenny’s own story grows with and through it. -It is this acquaintance with practical detail, this filling in of all -essential surroundings that help to give the novels their convincing -air of realism. - -You would not suspect such broad and deep knowledge of humanity and the -affairs of the world in the quiet, soft-spoken, grey-eyed, dreamy, very -feminine person you discover the author to be when you meet her. At a -little distance, too, with her slight figure and bobbed hair, you might -take her for a mere school-girl. Little more than a school-girl she was -when she wrote her first novel, “The Tramping Methodist,” which, after -being rejected half a dozen times, was published in 1909. She had no -further difficulties with publishers, however, for this and her second -book, “Starbrace,” next year, put her on sure ground with critics and -public, though she had to wait for the beginnings of popularity until -“Tamarisk Town” came out in 1919. - -She was born at Hastings, her father being a doctor there, and has -passed all her life in Sussex. Her first two novels are of the -eighteenth century; one or two are of mid-Victorian times; the rest -are of our own day. Occasionally she brings her people to London, but -nearly always they are at home in Kent or Sussex. In “The Challenge to -Sirius” and “The End of the House of Alard” they are on the borderland -of the two counties; but mostly her scenes are in the county where she -was born. In her books she has become its interpreter and made it her -own. She has put something of her love of it and of the rugged lives -and passions of its folk into the poems in “Willow Forge,” and “Saints -in Sussex”; but her best poetry is in her novels. If you can compare -her with some of her leading women contemporaries you have a sense of -as much difference between them as there is between the collector of -insects and the hunter of big game. Those others take you into a study -and scientifically exhibit curious specimens under a microscope; she -is too warmly human for such pendantries and takes you where there is -sky and grass and a whole ordinary world full of mortal creatures and -shows you them living and working in the light of common day. I believe -the secret of her power is largely in her complete unselfconsciousness; -she has no affectations; the charm and strength of her style is its -limpid simplicity; she seems, while you read, to be merely letting her -characters act and think; to be thinking of her work and never of her -own cleverness; as if she were too sure and spontaneous an artist to be -even aware of the fact. - - - - -RUDYARD KIPLING - -[Illustration: RUDYARD KIPLING] - - -It is usual to write of the 1890’s as the days of the decadents; but I -never see them so labeled without being reminded of the Hans Brietmann -ballad-- - - “Hans Brietmann gif a barty: - Vhere is dot barty now?”... - -For though Wilde and Beardsley remain, the rest of their hectic -group have either gone home or are going, and, from this distance -it is possible to focus that decade and realize that its prevailing -influences were Henley and Stevenson, and that the true glory of the -90’s is that they were the flowering time of Shaw, Barrie, Wells and -Kipling. - -Kipling, indeed, began his literary career in the 80’s, and by the end -of the 90’s was the most popular, the most belauded and decried of -living authors. After being sent home to Westward Ho! in Devon, to be -educated at the school he has immortalized in “Stalkey & Co.,” he went -back to India (where he was born in 1865), and served successively on -the staffs of the Lahore _Civil and Military Gazette_ and the Allahabad -_Pioneer_ from 1882 to 1889. The satirical verses, sketches of native -character, stories of Anglo-Indian life, with their intriguings and -their shrewd understandings of the shabbier side of human nature, -that he contributed to those papers between the age of seventeen and -twenty-five, rather justified Barrie’s _dictum_ that he was “born -_blasé_.” But when they were collected into his first eight or nine -small books--“Departmental Ditties,” “Plain Tales from the Hills,” -“In Black and White,” “Soldiers Three,” “Under the Deodars,” and the -rest--they capped an instant boom in India with an even more roaring -success in England and America. The vogue of the shilling shocker was -then in its infancy, and Kipling’s insignificant looking drab-covered -booklets competed triumphantly with that showy ephemeral fiction on -our bookstalls for the suffrage of the railway traveller. From the -start, like Dickens, he was no pet of a select circle but appealed to -the crowd. While his contemporaries, the daintier decadents, issued -their more perishable preciosities in limited editions elegantly bound, -he carelessly flung his pearls before swine, and the maligned swine -recognized that they were pearls before the critics began to tell them -so. - -And when he came to England again, a youth of five-and-twenty, his -fame had come before him. He settled down from 1889 to 1891, on an -upper floor of a gloomy building squeezed between shops, at 19 Villiers -Street, Strand, and in that somewhat squalid London thoroughfare -were written some of the best stories in “Life’s Handicap,” and two -of his comparative failures--“The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot,” and -his first novel, “The Light that Failed.” Stevenson in his letters, -about then, deplored his “copiousness and haste,” said, “He is all -smart journalism and cleverness; it is all bright and shallow and -limpid, like a business paper--a good one, _s’entendu_; but there’s -no blot of heart’s blood and the Old Night ... I look on and admire; -but in a kind of ambition we all have for our tongue and literature, -I am wounded.” But, naturally, Stevenson, conjuring fastidiously with -words, like a lapidary with jewels, felt that his literary ideals -were outraged by this exuberant, amazing young man who, coming with a -banjo for a lyre, took the sacred temple of the Muses by violence and -disturbed it with raucous echoes of the music hall; who brought the -manners and speech of the canteen into the library, made free use of -slang and ugly colloquialisms with the most brilliant effectiveness, -and in general strode rough-shod over so many accepted artistic -conventions. It was easy to say his verse was meretriciously catchy, -but its cleverness, the bite of its irony and humor were indisputable; -that his Anglo-Indian stories were marred by vulgarities and crudities -of characterization; that the riotous humors of Mulvaney and his -soldier-chums showed nothing but a boisterous, schoolboyish sense of -fun; but there was no denying the originality of mind, the abounding -genius that was experimentally at work in all these things. - -Not only had Kipling broken new ground; he had defied conventions -and broken it in a new way of his own, and through the following ten -years he was justified of his daring by the maturer, more masterly -poems and stories in “Barrack-Room Ballads,” “The Seven Seas,” “Many -Inventions,” the two “Jungle Books,” and, above all, by “Kim”--that -wonderful story, steeped in the magic of the Orient, with its rich -gallery of characters, native and European, and its intimately pictured -panorama of the strange, motley life that flows along the Grand Trunk -Road. - -He was a born story-teller, and could interest you as keenly in ships, -bridges, machinery and mechanical objects as in the human comedy and -tragedy. He could take his tone with an equal mastery, as occasion -served, from the smoke-room, the bar or the street, and from the golden -phrasing and flashing visions of the biblical prophets. However much -the critics might qualify and hesitate, the larger world of readers, -men and women, cultured and uncultured, took him to their hearts -without reserve. Never since Dickens died had any author won so magical -a hold on the admiration and affection of our people. - -In those days, at the height of his fame, when he lay dangerously ill -in New York, the cables could not have flung more bulletins across the -world, nor the newspapers followed his hourly progress more excitedly -if it had been a ruling monarch _in extremis_. The Kaiser cabled -enquiries; all England and America stood in suspense, as it were, at -the closed door of that sick chamber, as those who loved Goldsmith -lingered on his staircase, when he was near the end, waiting for news -of him. Yet, curiously enough, in the personality of Kipling, so far -as it has revealed itself to his readers, there is little of the -gentleness and lovableness of Goldsmith, nor of the genial, overflowing -kindness that drew the multitude to Dickens. It was the sheer spell and -brilliance of his work, I think, that drew them to Kipling more than -the lure of any personal charm. - -During the Boer War he developed into the poet and apostle of -Imperialism; became our high-priest of Empire, Colonial expansion, -commercial supremacy and material prosperity. You may see in some -of his poems of that period and in his recently published “Letters -of Travel” how he has failed to advance with the times, how out of -touch he is with the spirit of modern democracy. A certain arrogance -and cocksureness had increased upon him; his god was the old Hebrew -god of battles, his the chosen race, and even amid the magnificent -contritions of the “Recessional” he cannot forget that we are superior -to the “lesser breeds without the law.” He is no idealist and has no -sympathy with the hopes of the poor and lowly; there is scornfulness in -his attitude toward those who do not share his belief that the present -social order cannot be improved, who do not join him in worshipping -“the God of things as they are,” but pay homage rather to the God of -things as they ought to be. And yet I remember the beauty, the wisdom -and whimsical understanding there is in his stories for children--I -remember that children’s song in “Puck of Pook’s Hill”-- - - “Teach us the strength that cannot seek, - By deed or thought, to hurt the weak; - That, under Thee, we may possess - Man’s strength to comfort man’s distress.” - ---I remember stray, poignant things in this book and that, especially -in “The Years Between,” and am ready to think I misjudge him when -I take his intolerant Imperialism too seriously, and that these -rarer, kindlier moods, these larger-hearted emotions are at least as -characteristic of him. - -Someday somebody will gather into one glorious volume “The Finest -Story in the World,” “Without Benefit of Clergy,” “At the End of the -Passage,” “The Man Who Would Be King,” “The Brushwood Boy,” “They,” and -a score or so of other short stories; and with “Kim,” and a book of -such poems as “Sussex,” “Tomlinson,” “To the True Romance,” “M’Andrew’s -Hymn,” “The Last Chantey,” those great ballads of “The Bolivar” and -“The Mary Gloster,” and half a hundred more, there will be enough and -more than enough to give him rank with those whose work shall endure -“while there’s a world, a people and a year.” After all, most of his -Imperialistic verse and his prose essays into political and economic -problems were mainly topical and are already pretty much out of date; -he is rich enough to let them go and be none the poorer. - -If his popularity has waned it is chiefly, as I have said, because he -has not advanced with the times--he has lost touch with the real spirit -of his age; and I believe that is a result of his having withdrawn too -much from contact with his fellows. Dickens did not immure himself at -Gads’ Hill; he was always returning to those planes where ordinary -folk do congregate and found inspiration, to the last, out among -the stir and business of the world. Shakespeare’s work was done in -the hurly-burly of London--he stagnated, after he settled down at -Stratford, and wrote no more; and one feels that if Kipling would only -come out from his hermitage at Burwash and mingle again in the crowded -ways of men, as he did in the fulness of his powers, he has it in him -yet to be “a bringer of new things,” that shall add new luster even to -his old renown. - - - - -WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE - -[Illustration: WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE] - - -You can account for almost every other sort of sudden outbreak, but why -an author of W. J. Locke’s unquestionably popular appeal should have -had to write eight novels in nine years and only achieve popularity all -of a sudden with a ninth in the tenth is one of those mysteries that -baffle even the wisest. There is no reason why any one out of six of -those earlier books should not have done as much for him, for they have -the same distinction of style, the same wit and humor, gay romance and -charming sentiment that captivated the reader so effectively in “The -Morals of Marcus Ordeyne”--indeed, I still think that its immediate -predecessor, “Where Love Is,” at least equaled that novel in all those -qualities, and in delicacy and finish of workmanship went beyond it. So -I put the problem and make no pretence to offering a solution of it but -cast myself for the safer, humbler role of the chronicler of facts. - -The fact that nearly all his stories are sweetened with a gracious -human kindness and a full allowance of love and sentiment might be -traced by subtle psychologists to some benign influence that the place -of his nativity had upon him, for he was born in British Guiana, at -Georgetown on the Demarara, where the sugar comes from. There may or -may not be something in such a theory; anyhow, that is where he was -born in 1863 and after an interval in England, he was sent to school -at Trinidad, where his father was a banker. Returning to England, when -he was eighteen, he matriculated at Cambridge, took the Mathematical -Tripos, and, having completed his education at St. John’s College, -departed from it with his B. A. degree. - -Thereafter, he lived for a while in France; he has lived there a good -deal, from time to time, since then, and if you were not aware of this -you would guess as much, and that he had a warm regard for the French -people, and a wide acquaintance with the literature of France, from -the sympathy and intimacy with which he draws the French characters -in his stories, and from a certain airy, sparkling wit and laughing, -good-humored cynicism that belong to him and are commonly accepted -as peculiar to the Gallic temperament. It has been said that he has -affinities with Anatole France. He has none of Anatole’s daring -irreverencies; nor his passionate revolt against the existing order of -society, nor his power in social satire; but he has the sure touch that -is at once light and scholarly, an abounding sense of fantasy, and a -tolerant, worldly-wise philosophy that he edges with an irony often as -delicately shrewd though never so bitter, so devastating as that of the -great French master. - -But we are going ahead too fast. When Locke quitted Cambridge he was -still a long way from the beginning of his literary career. I believe -he was already writing stories in those days, and am told that he -wrote at least one novel--one, moreover, of a highly melodramatic and -sensational kind--but he was too severely self-critical to attempt -to publish it and it remains hidden away in manuscript to this hour. -Feeling it was time to turn to something for a livelihood, he put an -end to holidaying in France and became for some years mathematical -tutor at a school in the North Country. I have seen it suggested -that his mastery of mathematics has been as valuable to him in the -construction of his novels as Hardy’s practical knowledge of the -principles of architecture has been to him, but you are at liberty to -doubt this after reading the opinion of that science which he allows -Marcus Ordeyne to express. “I earned my living at school-slavery,” -says Marcus, “teaching children the most useless, the most disastrous, -the most soul-cramping branch of knowledge wherewith pedagogues in -their insensate folly have crippled the minds and blasted the lives -of thousands of their fellow-creatures--elementary mathematics.” From -which you may gather also that he took little joy in those years -of labor in the school up North, and the wonder is that his native -urbanity and gracious personal charm should have remained completely -unruffled by those uncongenial experiences. - -He had escaped from schoolmastering and published four novels before he -was appointed secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects, -and he did not relinquish that post until after his two most successful -novels had made him famous and his position in literature was more than -secure. - -Not as a precocious genius, but as a man of thirty-two who had -seen enough of life to know something about it, Locke entered the -publisher’s list in 1895 and challenged the world at large with his -first book, “At the Gate of Samaria.” It was by way of being a problem -novel, for the problem novel was then having a day out. It was done -in rather somber, more realistic colors than he was going to use in -his succeeding stories; has little of the gaiety, glancing fancy -and idealistic sentiment that have now become characteristic of his -work. But it was a sound, capable piece of craftsmanship, the critics -were on the whole appreciative, the public interested, and the sales -respectable without being exciting. - -Following this in steady succession came “The Demagogue and Lady -Phayre,” “A Study in Shadows,” “Derelicts,” “Idols,” “The Usurper,” -“Where Love Is”--and the reviewers went on handing out laurels to him -(most of them), his circle of readers remained loyal, and it began -to look as if he were settling down among the many novelists whose -unfailing public is large enough to make an author’s life worth while -but has done growing. Yet by the time he had written “Derelicts” he had -discovered the formula that was presently to carry him far beyond such -quiet success into a roaring popularity; he had discovered his gift -for transfiguring the commonplace world and its people, conjuring them -into a fairy-tale and still making his men and women seem amazingly -lifelike and his tale all true. Nor is there any hint of disparagement -in saying this. Hasn’t Chesterton eulogistically declared that Mr. -Pickwick is a fairy? Doesn’t he insist that all Dickens’ characters -are fairies, gnomes and his scenes laid in a fairyland of his own -invention? There is a sense in which this is simple truth; a sense -in which it is the simplest truth of Locke. He is an idealist, and -sees that soul of goodness in things evil which remains invisible to -your superficial, short-sighted, unimaginative realist. He has the -imagination that creates, and therefore is not contented merely to -observe and describe what any of us can see for himself, but rightly -treats the visible existences around him as raw material for his art, -chooses his clay puppets and somewhat etherealizes them, touches them -with ideal qualities that most of us have but only exercise in our -dreams, as a magician might take a dull peasant and turn him into a -prince, not making him less human but more finely human in the process. - -For ten years he wove his spells adroitly and that circle of the -faithful was susceptible to them; then he did it once again and, in -1905, with “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne,” did it so triumphantly that -Marcus was soon the talk of the town, the book of the year, and not -only a special section but a wide world of all sorts and conditions was -at his feet. Yet there is nothing in the story to justify the miracle. -It is a typical Locke fantasy, and certainly not superior in theme or -treatment to its immediate forerunner. Sir Marcus, you remember, meets -on the Thames Embankment the lost, helpless, pretty Carlotta, who has -been brought from a Turkish harem by a rescuer who has deserted her; he -takes pity on the child, adopts her, devotes himself to her training -and upbringing with, after many tribulations, the only ending that -could have pleased everybody. Nothing here for which one would prophecy -a “boom.” But the book was full of character; its various characters -were all alive, such human traits were touched into them so subtly that -you could not disbelieve in them while the author had his spell on -you; and the whole thing was told with a wit and humor so lively and -so delicate, a sentiment so irresistibly alluring that you surrendered -yourself to the sheer delight of it without thinking what you were -doing. I recollect how one critic began by saying the plot was crude -and ridiculous, and ended by confessing his enjoyment, his admiration -of the artistic finish with which even the slightest characters were -drawn, and praising without stint the cleverness and brilliant ease of -the narrative throughout. That was the kind of hold it took upon its -readers. It gave Locke a vogue in America too, and being dramatized -filled a London theater for many nights and toured the provinces for -years. - -Next year Locke clinched his success with the greatest of his -books--“The Beloved Vagabond,” which eclipsed “The Morals of Marcus” -as a novel if not as a play, and still remains the high-water mark of -his achievement. It is the outstanding picaresque romance of our day. -Mr. Locke has a special weakness for such delightful, irresponsible, -romantic, golden-hearted rascals as Paragot, who could so easily have -been a squalid, unmitigated bounder in the hands of a plodding realist. -Sebastian Pasquale, in “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne,” is a lesser -member of the same family; so is that later, slighter, joyous heathen -Aristide Pujol; and there are other such in other of his books. - -The driving force behind his stories is their sincerity; their sympathy -with the sins, follies, vanities, errors of the motley human multitude -is his own; they are idealistic because he is himself an idealist and -in some ways almost as quixotic as any of his favorite heroes. He puts -himself into his books, and you find him there, scholarly, kindly, -witty, unaffected, and so much a man of the world that he no more feels -it necessary to write like one than a millionaire feels it necessary to -prove he is rich by talking all the time about his money. - - - - -STEPHEN McKENNA - -[Illustration: STEPHEN MCKENNA] - - -You would think it should be easy--far easier than writing a novel--for -any man of literary capacity to sit down and write the story of his -own life, bring into it, instead of imaginary characters, the real -men and women he has known, and so make a great Autobiography. Yet -there are fewer great books in autobiography than in any other form of -literature. Some years ago I was remarking on this to Keble Howard, and -he accounted for the deficiency by laying it down that hardly any man -started to write his memoirs till his memory was failing and he was -getting too old to work. It is supposed to be presumptuous, a little -self-conceited, for a celebrity of any sort to publish his private -history until he is so far advanced in years that, even if he has done -nothing else respectable, he can claim to be respected on account of -his age. Howard contended, and I agree with him, that a man of seventy -or so has generally forgotten as much of the earlier half of his life -as he remembers, and often misinterprets what he does remember because -he looks back on it from a wholly different standpoint, misses the -importance of things that were important when they happened, feels for -his young self now as he did not feel at the time, makes tragedies of -what then seemed comedies, and comedies of what seemed tragedies, and -gets the whole picture out of focus. - -I have lived long enough since then to have been able to prove for -myself that all this is accurate; for I have read divers memoirs of men -whom I knew when they were middle-aged and I was youthful, noting how -much they omitted, incidents they have warped in the telling, events -to which they have given an emotional significance that never really -belonged to them. To remedy such a state of things Keble Howard’s idea -was that anybody who had done anything and meant to do more, should -write the first volume of his autobiography when he was under thirty, -while he was still near enough to his youth not to have lost all the -freshness of its feelings, still near enough to his childhood to be -able to revive in his thoughts the actual magic of its atmosphere; he -should write his second volume when he was about fifty, and his third -when he was so far from the beginning that the end could not be much -farther on. That is the only way, I believe, to do the thing perfectly. -We have so few great autobiographies because most of them are more or -less imaginary, so few of them are true. - -Possibly Stephen McKenna arrived independently at the same conclusion, -for in 1921, when he was thirty-three, he published “While I Remember,” -which is in effect the first volume of his autobiography. But he -reveals less of himself in this than of his surroundings. He is too -much of what is commonly described as a gentleman of the old school -to indulge in personalities and give away unpleasant facts about his -friends, or even about his enemies; he will criticize their public -life with devastating wit and epigrammatic satire, but he betrays no -intimacies, will have nothing to say of their private characters or -conduct, and he is almost as reticent in talking of himself as of -others. You gather from his first autobiographical fragment that before -he went to Oxford, of which he gives some delightful impressionistic -sketches, he went to Westminster School, and was for a while, a -teacher there, and perhaps the most personal note in the book is in -a greeting to some of his old pupils, which owns that he blushes to -recall the lessons he taught them. “My incompetence was incurable,” -he says. “I should be well pleased to think that your memories of me -are a hundredth part as kindly as my memories of you. Does it comfort -you to know that my awe of you continued for three terms? If ever the -prayer-bell had not rung before I showed that I could not solve some -diabolical equation! If you could have seen into my mind during the -first week when I ranged you in alphabetical order and guided myself -despairingly by the two red-heads in the form!” - -If he does not fill his pages with careless and indiscreet gossip of -all sorts of well-known people it is not for lack of material, but -simply that he has a conscience and a strict code of honor that make -such chatter impossible to him. He will tell you of his experience, -during the War, in the Intelligence section of the War Trade -Department, and, briefly, of his experiences with the Balfour Mission -in America, but though he has mixed largely in modern society and the -world of letters and, as nephew of one of the ablest of latter-day -Chancellors of the Exchequer, has been a good deal behind the scenes -in political circles, he does not, after the manner of the usual -sensational Diaries and Memoirs, now-a-days, scarify individual members -of any circle, but reserves his commentary and condemnation for the -changes and degeneration that have come over our general social habits -and behavior, limits his discussion of contemporary writers to their -works, and his criticism of famous politicians, and this is drastic -enough, to their doings and misdoings in the political scene. - -All which reticences are natural to him and exactly characteristic. -They seem to denote an austerity that is in keeping with his somewhat -ascetic appearance. But if in profile, as somebody has suggested, -he curiously resembles the portraits of Dante, there is more of the -graciousness than of the gloom and bitterness of the somber Florentine -in his composition. You may realize that if you read “Tex,” the -charming memorial volume he produced after the death of Texiera -de Mattos. It is a collection of his dead friend’s letters linked -together with explanatory notes of his own, and in these letters, and -indirectly in the notes, I think you get more intimate glimpses of the -real McKenna than anywhere else, and find him, behind the polite mask -and settled air of restraint, often irresponsibly outspoken, always -sympathetic, warm-hearted, and with a very genius for friendship. - -If he has studiously avoided personalities in his memoirs, he has, -of course, drawn freely in his novels on his knowledge of political -and social life and people, though even there nobody has, so far, -pretended to recognize living originals of any of his characters. He -began his career as a novelist with two artificial comedies. “The -Reluctant Lover,” in 1912, and “Sheila Intervenes,” in 1913. They -had some affinity with the romantic fantasies of W. J. Locke and the -sparkling talk of “Dodo” and “The Dolly Dialogues.” The story in each -was told with the lightest of light touches, and the conversations -were punctuated with smart epigrams. Their cleverness was undeniable, -and already, in “Sheila,” he was making play with his knowledge of -political affairs. They were brilliantly clever, but ran entertainingly -on the surface of things. He was learning to use his tools; feeling his -way. In “The Sixth Sense” he was beginning to find it, and he found it -triumphantly in “Sonia, or Between Two Worlds.” - -“Sonia” is one of the notable things in fiction that came out of the -War. It appeared in 1917, when we were all uplifted to high ideals and -sustained by a fine belief that a new and nobler world was to rise, -phœnix-like, out of the ashes and chaos into which the old world had -been resolved. The atmosphere of that time, all its surge of altruistic -emotion, are so sensitively and realistically preserved in the story -that one cannot re-read it now without a sense of regret that we have -forgotten so much of our near past and failed so meanly to realize -the better state that, in those dark days, we were all so sincerely -confident of building. Beginning in the decadent world of the late -’nineties and the dawn of the century, the story comes down, or goes -up, into the miraculously new world that the war made, and glances -optimistically into the future. Most of its characters are drawn from -the higher classes of society, and the love romance of Sonia and David -O’Rane, the most charming and glowingly human hero McKenna has ever -given us, has the social and political history of the period for its -setting. Never before or since has he shown himself so much of an -idealist nor handled great issues with such mastery and imaginative -insight. “Sonia” has been ranked with the great political novels of -Disraeli, and I doubt whether Disraeli ever did anything so fine in -poignancy of feeling and delicacy of style. - -“Ninety-Six Hours’ Leave,” his other war novel, was a lively tale -written for amusement only; and “Sonia Married” maintained the -tradition attaching to sequels and did not rise to the level of -“Sonia.” The biggest of his other novels are, I think, “Midas and Son,” -a masterpiece of irony, a mordant satire on the vanity of riches; and -that brilliant study of the snobbishness, shallowness, cynicism, social -ambition of the unpleasant Lady Ann Spenworth, “The Confessions of a -Well-Meaning Woman.” It blends a maturer philosophy of life with the -vivacity and sparkle of his early conversational novels. It exposes -without mercy the squalid little soul of a person who is or has been -of importance in society, and if her self-revelations make her seem -abhorrent it is because she herself seems so abhorrently alive and so -minutely true to certain morbid, unlovely sides of human nature. - -You would not guess from the abounding vitality he puts into his novels -that McKenna was by no means of the robust kind. In winter he generally -escapes from our unsatisfactory climate, and you hear of him voyaging -to remote parts of Asia or South America, or somewhere where the sun -shines. But when he is at home, there is an hour before lunch, at the -end of the morning’s work, that is given over to any friends who may -drop in at his pleasant Lincoln’s Inn chambers, to find him the most -genial and interesting and interested of hosts, with as neat a hand for -mixing a cocktail as any in London. - - - - -COMPTON MACKENZIE - -[Illustration: COMPTON MACKENZIE] - - -From a literary and dramatic point of view, Compton Mackenzie may -almost be said to have been born in the purple. Even a quite modest -minor prophet who had stood by his cradle at West Hartlepool, in -January, 1883, might have ventured to predict a future for him. For his -father was the well-known actor Edward Compton, author of several plays -and founder of the Compton Comedy Company, and his aunt was “Leah” -Bateman, one of the most famous Lady Macbeth’s who ever walked the -stage; his uncle C. G. Compton was a novelist of parts; and he numbers -among his distant relations the poet and critic John Addington Symonds -and that brilliant and, nowadays, too little appreciated novelist and -playwright “George Paston” (Miss E. M. Symonds). Nor did he absorb -all the gifts of the family, for that distinguished actress Miss Fay -Compton is his sister. - -From St. Paul’s School, Mackenzie went to Oxford in the early years -of this century, and if he did not break any scholarship records -at Magdalen, he edited “The Oxford Point of View,” which he helped -to found, and became business manager of the Oxford Union Dramatic -Society, and on occasion showed himself an actor of distinction. After -leaving Oxford he married and withdrew into the wilds of Cornwall, -where he seems to have written industriously for some years with no -immediate results, beyond the publication of a book of verse in 1907, -and a play, “The Gentleman in Grey,” which was produced at the Lyceum -Theater, Edinburgh, but did not stay there long enough to matter. Also -in his Cornish retirement he wrote his first novel, “The Passionate -Elopement,” but it took him longer to get it published than to write -it. When it had been up to London and back again three or four times -it began to look so worthless and he grew so indifferent toward it -that he would not waste more money than necessary on it but let it go -wandering unregistered up and down and take its chance of being lost in -the post. Seven publishers had rejected it before, in a happy hour, he -sent it to Martin Secker, who was then about setting up in business, -and when he published it, early in 1911, it sold so well that within -three weeks it had to be reprinted. The story is of the eighteenth -century; the scene is laid at Curtain Wells, a gay and fashionable spa, -where Beau Ripple reigned supreme as Beau Nash used to reign at Bath. -The characters are as gracefully artificial as if they had walked out -of an eighteenth century pastoral--the pretty blue-eyed Phyllida, the -chivalrous Charles Lovely, who loves her in vain, and the dashing, -rascally card-sharper, Vernon, who wins her and carries her off in -the end--they live gracefully, and their tale is all told, and they -smile and sigh and mince and bow their ways through it, with the charm -and fragile daintiness that belongs to old minuets and Dresden china -shepherds and shepherdesses. Mackenzie has never done another such -light and exquisite caprice though he had every encouragement to repeat -the experiment, for “The Passionate Elopement” pleased the public as -well as the critics and had run through four editions by the end of the -year. - -Just before or immediately after this success, he came from his Cornish -fastness up to London, settled in Westminster, and turned his hand -to potting plays, writing lyrics and reviews for Pelissier, whose -“Follies” were then at the height of their popularity. But in spite -of these distracting employments he found time for a good deal of -more important work during the brief period that Westminster’s staid, -old-world North street numbered him among its tenants. There he wrote -his second novel, “Carnival,” and had prepared a dramatic version of it -before it was published in 1912; he collected a second volume of his -verse, “Kensington Rhymes” (since when he has done no other) and it -appeared in the same year; and he had begun on the writing of “Sinister -Street,” but had to lay it aside to cross the water and superintend the -production of “Carnival” at a New York theater. - -He never set up his tent again in London; partly, I believe, because -its atmosphere had affected his health unfavorably; partly, I -suspect, because the social interruptions to which a town-dweller is -subject interfered too much with his working arrangements. Anyhow, -he transported himself to the Gulf of Naples and discovered an ideal -retreat in a delightful villa on the Isle of Capri. In these latter -days, as if the love of solitude had grown upon him, he has acquired -one of the smaller of the Channel Islands and made himself lord of -Herm, and now divides his year between that remote and rocky islet and -his villa at Capri. - -At Capri he finished “Sinister Street,” one of the longest of modern -novels and much the longest of his own. Some of De Morgan’s were -nearly as long, and some by Dickens and Thackeray were longer, but -a book of two hundred and fifty thousand words is apt to daunt the -degenerate reader of to-day so “Sinister Street” was published in two -volumes with half a year’s interval between, and nobody was daunted. -No book of Mackenzie’s had a more enthusiastic reception. His readers -are uncertain whether this or “Guy and Pauline” is his highest, most -artistic achievement, and I am with those who give first place to -“Sinister Street.” If there has ever been a more revealing study of the -heart and mind and every-day life of a boy than that of Michael Fane, -I have never read it. He and his sister Stella, the Carthew family and -the miscellaneous characters gathered about them in their early years -are drawn with such sympathy and insight, such a sense of actuality, -that not a few have professed to identify living originals from whom -certain of them were modeled. - -The War had broken out between the appearance of “Sinister Street” and -“Guy and Pauline” and Mackenzie had gone on the Dardanelles Expedition -as a Lieutenant (shortly to be promoted to a captaincy) in the -Royal Marines. He was invalided out of this business and presently -made successively, Military Control Officer at Athens, and Director -of an Intelligence Department at Syria, and in due course received -various honors for his War services. There is little or no trace of -the War in his subsequent books, unless you ascribe to its disturbing -influences the facts that neither “The Early Life and Adventures -of Sylvia Scarlett” nor “Sylvia and Michael,” admirable and vivid -picturesque stories as they are, will compare, either in subtlety of -characterization or in grace and strength of style, with the best -of his pre-war work. Neither “Rich Relatives” nor “Poor Relations” -marked much of a recovery, and “The Vanity Girl,” in which he uses the -war for the purpose of getting rid of a bad character, is not saved -by occasional flashes of narrative power and brilliant descriptive -passages from being an essay in picturesque and rather cheap melodrama. -But with “The Altar Steps” in 1922, he returned to higher levels--his -hand was never more cunning in the portrayal of character, and there -is enough in this story of the growth of Mark Lidderdale’s soul and -his progress toward the religious life to indicate that the author of -“Sinister Street” and “Guy and Pauline” is not yet to be put aside with -those whose future is behind them. - -I have seen it said that two or three of Mackenzie’s novels are largely -autobiographical. Certainly he puts into them scenes and places that -were associated with his youth and early manhood, life at Oxford, -Cornwall, the theater and theatrical people, and goes on handling, -developing three or four of his characters in successive novels, -bringing them into this, that and the other story as if he were giving -them their proper place in episodes that had really happened. Sylvia -Scarlett reappears in “The Vanity Girl”; Maurice Avery of “Carnival” -flits through “Sinister Street,” and Guy Hazlewood, who is at Oxford in -that novel, is the hero of “Guy and Pauline,” in which also, Michael -Fane, the principal figure in “Sinister Street,” plays a very minor -part. Thackeray, Trollope and others practised the same device, and -there is no reliable significance in it, except that it helps the -reader, and probably the author himself, to an easier sense of the -reality of such persons. Something of Mackenzie’s childhood has gone, -no doubt, into his “Kensington Rhymes”; and he, like Michael Fane, -spent his boyhood at Kensington, attended a big public school in -London, and, like Michael, went to Oxford, and may have given Michael -throughout some of his own experiences. You may fancy resemblances -between his withdrawing into Cornwall and publishing a book of verse, -and Guy Hazlewood going, as his father has it, “to bury yourself in a -remote village where, having saddled yourself with the responsibilities -of a house, you announce your intention of living by poetry!” There may -be personal touches in this, and in Guy’s effort to find a publisher -for his book of poems, but who shall say where autobiography ends and -fiction begins? Naturally, every novelist works with his experience as -a potter works with clay, but he usually transfigures that raw material -and moulds it into new shapes of his own invention. The truest, most -living characters in fiction are those that draw their vitality from -the author’s self. No doubt if we knew enough about him, we could find -a good deal of Shakespeare in his most masterly characterizations. - -There is a lot of solemn and pretentious nonsense talked in the name -of psychology. It is possible to make shrewd guesses, but no man can -positively analyse the mind of another. - -When we think we are making a marvelous study of another’s motives, -we are studying the motives that would have been ours in his -circumstances. Professor Freud, with his doctrine of psychoanalysis, -has turned the head and choked the narrative vein of many an otherwise -capable novelist who has felt a spurious sense of superiority in trying -to graft the art of medicine on the art of fiction. - -There is truer psychology in Mackenzie’s novels than in the precious -novels of most of our professed psychologists. He has done bigger work -than theirs with a more modest conception of the novelist’s function. -“I confess that I like a book to be readable,” he once wrote; “it seems -to me that a capacity for entertaining a certain number of people is -the chief justification for writing novels.” He deprecates this as “a -low-browed ambition,” but it was high enough for the great novelists of -the past, and the pseudo-medical methods of Freudism do not look like -producing any that are greater. - - - - -JOHN MASEFIELD - -[Illustration: JOHN MASEFIELD] - - -Were I put to select the four or five poets who are most typically -modern--most essentially of our own time, I think I should name -Kipling, Hardy, Wilfrid Gibson, Siegfried Sassoon and John Masefield, -and Masefield perhaps before all. There are others who have written -poetry as fine, or even finer, but nearly all of them, had they been -contemporary with Tennyson, Wordsworth, Keats, Blake, might have -written very much as they are writing now without seeming to have been -born out of their due period. The five I have named could not have done -this: either in theme or manner their poems are too intimate a growth -of our own generation, as unmistakably of to-day as the motor-bus -or as wireless is. I am not forgetting Crabbe, the father of modern -realistic poetry, but he mitigated his unorthodoxies by observing a -respectable reticence of phrase, by subscribing to poetical conventions -of language, and clothing his newness in the old-fashioned mantle of -Pope. - -The philosophy of my chosen five may be sometimes akin to that of -Fitzgerald’s Omar, but the old wine is in aggressively new bottles. And -I am not forgetting that Hardy was Tennyson’s contemporary, and not a -little of his poetry was written in the 60’s and 70’s, though it was -not published then. If it had been published, the tastes and standards -of that formal age would have found it so wanting that it never would -have won for Hardy then the fame it has given him now. Think of -Tennyson, with his conviction that - - “the form, the form alone is eloquent,” - -trying with his hyper-sensitive ear the wingless, rugged lyrics of -Hardy, setting himself to read them aloud, like the poet in his own -“English Idyls,” - - “mouthing out his hollow oes and aes,” - -and finding it couldn’t be done, for here was a poetical nonconformist -who sacrificed verbal beauty to naked truth and was more earnest about -what he had to say than about mouthing it in grandiose orotundities of -phrase. - -Certainly, by the time Tennyson had done with it, poetry was becoming -too much a matter of phrase-making; the poet himself was contracting -a sort of sentimental snobbery, segregating himself from the crowd, -losing touch with common life, and for their own sakes and that of -their art, many of us felt, as Dixon Scott put it, that we wanted -to “flatten out Parnassus. For poetry has been looked up to far too -long; it is time the reader looked down on it; nothing is doing its -dignity more damage than the palsying superstition that it is something -excessively sublime. The reader picks out his prose-men; he is familiar -with philosophers; but the moment he mentions verse he remembers the -proprieties; up go his eyes and down drops his voice; and from what -is no doubt just a nice, natural desire to do nothing offensive to -refinement, he invariably speaks of the specially simple, jolly, frank -and friendly souls who make it as though they were wilted priests. -Whereas, in reality, of course, they are of all writers, exactly the -men whom it is most needful to see as human beings; for of all forms -of writing theirs is the most personal, intimate, instinctive--poetry -being, after all, simply essence of utterance--speech with the artifice -left out.” - -To this it now approximates, but it was not this, nor were the poets -such simple, unaffected souls until Kipling had begun to outrage their -delicacies, shock their exquisite, artistic refinements with the noise -and dazzle of his robust magic, and others, like Hardy, Gibson and -Masefield, had brought poetry out of her sacred temple and made her at -home in inns, and kitchens, and workshops, cottages and mean streets -and all manner of vagabond places, restored her to plain nature and -human nature and taught her to sing her heart out in the language of -average men--sometimes in the language of men who were quite below the -average. But even this was better than limiting her to expressing her -thoughts and emotions in artificial elegancies that no man ever uses -except when he is posing and perorating on public platforms. - -In his beginnings Masefield was not unaffected by the Kipling -influence; you can trace it in the lilting measures of some of his -early “Salt Water Ballads”; perhaps here and there in his early prose -stories and sketches, “A Tarpaulin Muster,” “A Mainsail Haul.” He was -realizing and naturalizing the seamen there, as Kipling had realized -and naturalized the soldier. But he was already doing more than that; -he put into those first Ballads, and the “Poems and Ballads” that soon -followed them, a grace of fancy, a charm and beauty, also true to -the life he pictured, that do not come within the range of Kipling’s -genius. He was feeling after and foreshadowing there, too, his own -special mission as a poet--if one may use so portentous a word as -mission without having it taken in any but its artistic significance. -His business was not to be with dignitaries and classical heroisms, -he says in “Consecration,” but with sailors and stokers and men of no -account-- - - “Not the rulers for me, but the rankers, the tramp of the road, - The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad, - The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load ... - Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold-- - Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told.” - -And of this purpose have come that most poignant and effective of his -dramas, “The Tragedy of Nan,” his stories, “The Street of To-day,” -“Multitude and Solitude,” and those narrative poems that are his -highest and most distinctive achievement, “The Everlasting Mercy,” “The -Widow in the Bye Street,” “Dauber,” and “The Daffodil Fields.” In these -he is still on that quest for beauty-- - - “that one beauty - God put me here to find--” - -to which he consecrated his gift at the outset, when he claimed as his -kingdom - - “the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth,” - -though he is following it here less obviously than in the statelier, -noble sonnet sequence of “Lollingdon Downs.” In the narrative poems he -is seeking for the soul of beauty in things evil, in things common and -sometimes unclean, in lives that are broken and that the world’s rough -hands have soiled. His passion for realism, for the stark truth of -life as it is lived, is transparently sincere; it is absurd to object -that his stories are melodramatic, since they are not more so than -life itself is, but there is reason in the protest that he pushes the -crudities of his dialogue too far, is apt to be overviolent in language -and uses ugly expletives so freely that, instead of adding to the -reality of his characters and incidents, they detract from it, come to -seem artificial, till one suspects an affectation in them and is more -irritated than impressed. Take, for example, the close of that squabble -between Saul Kane and Billy Myers, in “The Everlasting Mercy”-- - - “You closhy put.” - - “You bloody liar.” - - “This is my field.” - - “This is my wire.” - - “I’m ruler here.” - - “You ain’t.” - - “I am.” - - “I’ll fight you for it.” - - “Right, by dam.” - -Whether such a man would say “I’m ruler here” is of small consequence, -but no man swears “By dam,” and you feel that the word is either -used arbitrarily for the sake of the rhyme, or with an idea of being -forceful at all costs. And though a man might say, “I’ll bloody well -put him in a bloody fix,” and “I’ll bloody well burn his bloody ricks,” -there is the same sense of desperate straining after effect in making -him say, - - “I’ll bloody him a bloody fix. - I’ll bloody burn his bloody ricks,” - -because no ruffian was ever heard to speak so elliptically, and you -feel it is only done in order that the meter may be made to accommodate -a startling plethora of profanity. Such excesses sound a false note and -are out of tune with the general truth, the vivid reality that give the -stories their authentic power and greatness. - -I have heard it said that these aberrations represent the efforts -of one who is naturally reticent and fastidious to present with due -forcefulness certain brutal and lawless types of character that are -not within his personal knowledge; but I doubt this. He may have -exercised his imagination, and if so he exercised it potently, in -writing “Reynard the Fox” and “Right Royal,” for I should guess he -never went fox-hunting or steeple-chasing, but for “Dauber” and the -raw human creatures of “The Everlasting Mercy,” “The Widow in the -Bye Street” and “The Daffodil Fields” he may very well have drawn on -memory and experience of people he has known. For he was not reared in -cotton-wool nor matured among the comparative decorums of office-life. -From a training vessel, he went to sea in the merchant service, knocked -about the world on sailing-ships and has put some of his old shipmates -into his ballads and some of them and some of their yarns into “A -Mainsail Haul” and his first novel, “Captain Margaret.” Quitting the -sea, he went tramping in America, picking up a livelihood by casual -work on farms, and after a while settled down to serve behind a bar in -New York, escaping from the noise and squalor and drudgery of it at -night to solace himself with the “Morte d’Arthur” after he had gone up -to his garret to bed. It was a harsh apprenticeship, that on sea and on -land, but it broadened his outlook and his sympathies, and fitted him -to be, as he was presently resolved to be, the interpreter of “the men -of the tattered battalion”-- - - “He had had revelation of the lies - Cloaking the truth men never choose to know; - He could bear witness now and cleanse their eyes; - He had beheld in suffering; he was wise.” - -His work as a critic is in a certain newspaper where he used to review -new poets before he was recognized as one, and in his scholarly, -revealing study of “Shakespeare”; but his finest, most imaginative -prose is in that poignant book “Gallipoli” which he wrote after he came -home from serving there in the Great War. - - - - -ALFRED EDWARD WOODLEY MASON - -[Illustration: ALFRED EDWARD WOODLEY MASON] - - -It is interesting, and a little saddening, to look through a list -of living novelists and pick out the names of those who were well -in the first flight of popularity ten or fifteen years ago but have -since fallen back steadily, year after year, into the second, third -and fourth flights, until now they are almost absorbed into the -multitudinous rearward ranks where the unpopular and the mediocre rub -shoulders with survivors who still ruffle it obscurely on the strength -of a past reputation. For it is easier to become popular than to -remain so. No author can take the public by surprise a second time. -A novel that has some freshness of fable or style, though it be in -some ways crude and in no way great, may do the trick once; but if an -author follows this with a succession of books in a too-similar vein, -showing no ripening of his mind, no growth of knowledge or invention, -nothing but a sprightly repetition of that same morning freshness, -which was well enough when the day was new, his public begins to yawn -and go away. A juggler, when he has exhausted his little repertoire -and finds the plate coming back to him almost empty, can roll up his -scrap of carpet, walk around the corner, and in another street collect -a different crowd to whom all his old conjurings are new; but no writer -can attract a fresh public for each fresh book he produces--his only -way is to keep sure hold on his first readers and add to them, and -this he cannot do unless he matures in his books as he does, or should -do, in himself. His public is all the while growing older, and the -pathos and humor and general outlook on life that satisfy a young man -or a young woman will rarely make the same appeal to them when they -arrive at maturity. The humor that tickles you to-day will scarcely -move you to a smile when you have lived, enjoyed, worked and suffered -for another decade or so in such a world as this; the pathos that once -melted you to pleasant tears jars upon you when you re-read it now -and seems but shallow, youthful sentimentality; what you had used to -think a dashingly romantic incident or character bores you now and -seems tinsel unreality. You have been growing up, and if the growth of -your favorite novelist does not at least keep pace with your own, you -naturally pass on and leave him behind. Had “David Copperfield” been -simply another “Oliver Twist,” Dickens would have been but the novelist -for an age, and that not the middle-age. - -Largely, I think, because he went on with a broadening vision of life, -a ripening knowledge of the world, a deepening sympathy with human -character, the books of A. E. W. Mason have retained for him the -popularity he won about a quarter of a century ago with “The Courtship -of Morrice Buckler.” Read “Morrice Buckler” again, and then “The Four -Feathers” and “The Broken Road,” and you will recognize how he grew -up with his readers. You can still take delight in “Morrice Buckler,” -but the later books yield you a fuller enjoyment--they have put off -the careless glamor and reckless gallantries of gay romance, and have -put on the soberer, more enduring garb of more familiar humanity, that -does not wear its romance upon its sleeve, but more poignantly, more -wonderfully, at the troubled heart of it. - -Born in 1865, Mason is an old Dulwich College boy, and took his B. A. -degree at Oxford. At Oxford, too, he showed a strong predilection for -the drama, and was one of that University’s notable amateur actors. -Later, he took to the stage in earnest, and toured the provinces with -the Benson Company and the Compton Comedy Company, and played in London -as one of the soldiers in Shaw’s “Arms and the Man.” But the ambition -that called him on to the stage presently called him off, and in 1895 -he commenced his career as a novelist. - -It was not a very promising beginning. His first novel, “A Romance of -Wastdale,” was well enough received by the critics, but the public did -not rise to it, and Mason seems to have suppressed it with unnecessary -rigor. Competent judges have assured me it was a story of more than -ordinary distinction and merited a better fate. However, its author -had not long to wait for his due meed. A year after, in 1896, “The -Courtship of Morrice Buckler” was published, and its publication gave -Mason his place forthwith as an extraordinarily popular novelist. It -was the novel of the day; it was read and talked about everywhere, -ran through I don’t know how many thousands, and still goes as a safe -seller into any series of popular reprints. - -“The Philanderers” appeared in 1897, and in quick succession came -“Laurence Clavering,” “Parson Kelley” (written in collaboration with -Andrew Lang), “Miranda of the Balcony,” “The Watchers,” “Clementina,” -that has all the dash and headlong movement of Dumas and a grace and -pathos that Dumas had not, “The Four Feathers,” “The Truants,” “Running -Water,” “The Broken Road,” “At the Villa Rose,” “The Turnstile,” and -“The Summons.” - -But Mason was never one of the authors who are all authors; he is not -of the sedentary breed who are contented to study life in books or from -their study windows; the noise and business of it have always appealed -to him irresistibly; he has roamed the world rubbing shoulders with -all sorts and conditions of humanity everywhere, and his later books -mirror much of his personal experience and the countries and people he -has known. He blends the appearance of a writer of romance with the -restless energy of a man of action, and in 1906, his superabundant -energies seeking a new outlet or a new ambition prompting him, he -turned his attention to politics, threw for Parliamentary honors, and -was elected M. P. for Coventry. He signalized his advent in the House -with a notable maiden speech; did not speak there often but proved -himself shrewd and eloquent in debate, and if he had not escaped we -might have been the richer by a sagacious, sympathetic Cabinet Minister -and one brilliant novelist the poorer. Fortunately, however, the -fascinations of the Mother of Parliaments could not subdue him, and -after some three years under her shadow he did not offer himself for -election again. - -Fortunately, because the air of the House of Commons is not healthful -breathing for poets or novelists. For them it is a soporific and -suffocating air. You may note that when a writer of imaginative -literature has sat in the House for more than a limited period his -spirit puts on flesh, dulness settles on his faculties and communicates -itself to his pen. What plays did Sheridan write after he took his seat -there? And who shall say that Lytton might not have written with fewer -capital letters and less of the manner of the big bow-wow if he had -never ventured into that fatal atmosphere? Mason’s sojourn in the House -had no influence on his fiction, unless it was his stay there that -turned his thoughts toward India and the grave problem of the education -of its native Princes in England and so resulted in his writing one of -the most powerful of his books, “The Broken Road”; in which case he has -brought more good out of it than any novelist who ever went into it, -except Disraeli, and Disraeli was really a politician in his romances -and a romancist in his politics, so he can hardly be counted. - -I could never imagine the author of “Miranda of the Balcony” sitting -out interminable debates, or trooping with his party into the voting -lobby. He must have felt much more at home in uniform when he became -in the first days of the war a Captain of the Manchester Regiment, and -later, a Major on the General Staff. If he wrote no more romance for -a time (his only book through those years was a collection of short -stories, “The Four Corners of the World,” in 1917) it was because he -was too busy living it. For with all its squalors and horrors and -agonies, the Great War is beginning, in remembrance, to take on the -color of romance by comparison with the tameness and monotony of -ordinary everyday life. - -You would gather from his stories that Mason was much given to boating, -traveling and mountaineering, for a love of the open air blows -through nearly all of them. The Alps and the enormous shadow of them -dominate “Running Water”; and the skies and landscapes and peoples of -present-day Egypt, Italy, India fill the pages of “The Four Feathers,” -“The Broken Road,” and “At the Villa Rose.” Latterly, too, his new -novels have become few and far between and he has given himself again, -more and more, to the stage. He never quite severed himself from it. -Soon after the novel appeared, he dramatized “Morrice Buckler,” in -collaboration with Miss Isabel Bateman, and it was very successfully -produced at the Grand, Islington, and had a long run in the provinces; -1901 saw a dramatic version of “Miranda of the Balcony” staged in -New York; in 1909 he produced two comedies, not founded on his books -“Colonel Smith” and “Marjorie Strode”; and in 1911 the most successful -of all his dramatic ventures, “The Witness for the Defence.” - -Since then, we have had “Open Windows,” and dramatized versions of “At -the Villa Rose” and “Running Water,” and one hears rumors of other -plays that he has in preparation. The indications are that in future he -will appear more often on the boards than between them, and nobody need -regret this if he only offers us as much pleasure in the stalls and the -pit as we have had from him in our arm-chairs at home. - - - - -WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM - -[Illustration: WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM] - - -On the whole, I incline to the orthodox belief that if an author wants -to find a short way to success he should not be too versatile. Nearly -all our famous writers have been contented to do one thing well--have -seemed to say with Marvell, - - “Let us roll all our strength and all - Our sweetness up into one ball.” - -I could name authors of our day who have dissipated their energies -in half a dozen or more directions. They are journalists, novelists, -poets, essayists, critics, dramatists, writers of books for children -and editors of all manner of books. They have no settled reputation, -the public does not know where to have them; they are all sorts of -things to all sorts of readers and nothing in particular to any. They -win some vague popularity, perhaps, and an income, but not fame. Fame -comes to the man who concentrates on the one kind of work for which he -has special gifts, puts all his heart and all his skill into the doing -of that. - -You may say that Somerset Maugham is versatile; but he has written -no verse, no essays, no criticism, no tales for children. He wisely -exercised his versatility within the range of a single art until he -turned his attention to the stage, and if he has been versatile since, -it has been only inside the limits of these two arts, a versatility as -legitimate in the artist as it is sagacious in the man who has to earn -a livelihood with his pen and hopes to go on pleasing his audience with -many books. For there is no virtue in the opposite extreme to which -some novelists go nowadays, who concentrate so conscientiously that -they narrow their outlook to one phase of life, one type of character, -and never shift their scenery. By this means they ensure that their -stories are graphically accurate, meticulously true, but by the time -they have told four or five the reader becomes aware of a sameness, -a monotony in them, pines for a change, goes after new gods, and the -old shrine begins to lack worshippers. If Maugham’s circulation ever -dwindles it will not be for this reason. - -Happily he has a sense of humor which prevents him from adopting -anything in the nature of a pose; but, however unassuming, he is not -diffident; he is without affectations, and assured me once he was -without ideals, by which I believe he meant no more than that he was -not too idealistic to be a practical man. It was when he had succeeded -as a novelist and was starting on his successful career as a dramatist -that he told me he felt there was a tremendous amount of nonsense -talked about the serious drama. “All this high falutin chatter about -ideals!” said he. “A playwright’s and a missionary’s calling appear to -me to be two distinct and quite separate callings which should not be -permitted to overlap. I cannot understand why a serious play should -be held to be pre-eminently greater or more important than a humorous -play, a comedy, for instance. Nor do I admit for a moment that the -former is more difficult to write or demands a consideration peculiar -to itself.” Briefly, he protested that his one aim as novelist or -dramatist was to amuse; he thought that was the first business of all -authors, adding, “I would excuse almost anything but dullness.” No -book fails because its literary quality is too high, but because the -writer who can write literature does not always know how to write it -interestingly. And I found that Maugham, in the broad sanity of his -judgment, had no sympathy with the egotistical talk of unpopular but -superior persons who ascribe their failure to a fine inability, a noble -disinclination to “write down” to the presumably lower apprehensions of -the vast majority of mankind. - -His practice, through the many years since he emerged as a new author, -has always squared with his precepts. Somebody writing of him a -little while ago said he got his intimate knowledge of men and women, -particularly of the London poor, while he was working as a doctor, but -this is scarcely accurate. After completing his education at King’s -School, Canterbury, and Heidelberg University, he became a student at -St. Thomas’s Hospital, and in due course took his M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. -degrees, but he never put up his brass plate and worked as a doctor. -He had never seriously intended doing so. His family wished him to -study medicine, and he yielded to that wish, but his own ambition -from the first had been to write for the stage. He was convinced that -stage-craft was a knack he could acquire if he made up his mind to -it; but he had a saving leaven of common sense and had seen enough -of things to know that it was infinitely harder to worry through all -the difficulties between writing a play and getting it produced than -to find a publisher for a novel, so he resolved to turn novelist as a -means of earning bread and butter and winning a large enough reputation -to move theater managers to feel that it was at least worth their while -to look at his dramas. - -That was in the 90’s--the glamorous 1890’s when some would persuade -us the whole world of letters in this country was dominated by Oscar -Wilde and his circle. But Maugham was one of the many authors of -the period--I have referred to others already--whose work shows -little trace of that influence. There is nothing much of romance in -the story of his literary beginnings; he did not cast himself upon -the town and drudge in the byways of journalism, nor did he undergo -the disheartening experience of having his manuscripts persistently -rejected by the magazines. While he was still a student at St. Thomas’ -he sent Fisher Unwin a collection of stories that eventually appeared -under the title of “Orientations,” and that astute publisher at once -accepted it, but strongly advised Maugham that it would be much better -for himself that he should make a start with a novel; and he accepted -the advice and went away to act upon it. - -Just then the slum story was all in the air--so much so that -“slumming” had become a popular pastime with young ladies of leisure. -The vogue of Gissing was at its height; Arthur Morrison had written in -“Tales of Mean Streets” and “The Child of the Jago” some of the most -powerfully realistic of any pictures of London low life; Edwin Pugh -had revealed the same underworld in “A Street in Suburbia” and “The -Man of Straw”; Pett Ridge’s “Mord Em’ly,” showing something of the -happier side of that drab underworld, was running serially, and various -other writers were finding themes for fiction in those ugly facts of -existence that the city keeps as much out of sight as possible. In any -case, the slums of Lambeth lay beside St. Thomas’s Hospital, their -inhabitants came into it as patients, so Somerset Maugham knew them, -their homes, their habits, their manner of speech, their manner of -living, and fashioned his first novel out of such personal experience. -He called it “A Lambeth Idyll”; Fisher Unwin accepted it and, in 1897, -published it as “Liza of Lambeth.” Its stark, violent realism roused -a good deal of protest; we were not so tolerant in such matters then -as we have now become; and though there were not wanting those who -praised the stern faithfulness with which it depicted certain phases -of London life, more and louder voices denounced it as unpleasant, -brutal, repellant, extravagantly squalid. Crude and raw it may have -been, somewhat obviously out to shock the delicate, omitting too much -light and massing too much shadow, but there was truth if not all the -truth in it, Liza and her mother and her barbaric lover, Jim, were -alive and real, and the controversy that raged round the book served, -at least, the good purpose of obtaining for it a measure of the success -it merited. - -But if any imagined that, like so many of his contemporaries, Maugham -was going to devote himself to the exploitation of the slums, or of -low life, they soon found they were mistaken. He finished with the -slums in “Liza of Lambeth” and never wrote another novel about them. -He moved through average society in “The Making of a Saint” (1898); -then his actual first book, the short stories “Orientations,” made -its appearance; on the heels of this followed “The Hero”; then came -what I still feel to be the strongest and ablest of his novels--“Mrs. -Craddock.” Good as it is, the times were not ripe for such frank -handling of sex mysteries and the book was rejected by every publisher -of consequence. Even Heinmann declined it at first; then, on a second -consideration, accepted it and published it in 1903. The study of -that elemental, passionate, intensely female creature, Mrs. Craddock, -is an aggressively candid, extraordinarily subtle essay in feminine -psychology; her story is touched with satire and irony and inevitably -clouded with tragedy, wherefore the general reader, who prefers -pleasanter things, did not take to it kindly. Maugham has never since, -perhaps, been so somber, though the sex element has continued to play -a potent part in most of his novels and stories, which have had their -scenes in middle-class and high society, at home, at the North Pole, in -the South Seas and, with those wonderful sketches of character, “On a -Chinese Screen,” in China. - -Meanwhile, as everybody knows, his triumphant progress as a novelist -had not diverted Somerset Maugham from his original bent. In 1902 -he had a one-act piece, “Schiffbrüchig,” produced in Germany. Next -year he wrote “The Man of Honor” for the Stage Society, but instead -of attracting theatrical managers to him it frightened them off, for -there was no laughter in it, and they appear to have taken for granted -that it fully represented what he could do and meant to do, and that -consequently nothing of his was likely to appeal to the playgoing -public or could be made to pay. - -But they reckoned without their host. Maugham set to work and wrote -three comedies, “Lady Frederick,” “Jack Straw” and “Dot,” which were -destined to establish him as a dramatist whose plays had money in them. - -His later plays have not gone begging for producers--producers have -gone begging for them. And the plays of Maugham have been as varied -in theme and manner as his novels. From gay, witty, frivolous, ironic -comedy, he has passed to sentimental or romantic drama; but he has -learned to touch in his realism more deftly, more cunningly, and is no -longer faced with the task of having to placate a public obsessed by -the mid-Victorian gospel that the plain truth about men and women is -not respectable and must not be told. - - - - -WILLIAM BABINGTON MAXWELL - -[Illustration: WILLIAM BABINGTON MAXWELL] - - -It has passed into a sort of proverb that famous men never have sons -who equal them in fame. There are, of course, exceptions. Benjamin -Disraeli has eclipsed that delightful bookworm, his father Isaac, who -wrote the “Curiosities of Literature”; Henry James, having a father who -was a distinguished novelist and theologian, used to describe himself -on his earlier books as “Henry James, Junr.” but the use of “Junr.” as -a means of identifying him has long ceased to be necessary. There are -others; but half a dozen swallows do not make a summer, and a dozen -such instances would not falsify the proverb. - -Perhaps what is true concerning fathers is not so true about mothers. -Nobody now reads the once popular novels of Mrs. Frances Trollope, -mother of the greater Anthony; Gilbert Frankau, to come at once to our -own times, looks like outshining that clever novelist, his mother, -“Frank Danby”; Shaw has gone far beyond his mother’s fame as an -operatic star; the novels of W. B. Maxwell surpass those of his mother, -M. E. Braddon, in literary art, and though he is not so enormously -popular in his day as she was in hers, he is widely read now when she -is scarcely read at all. - -He began to write while she was still writing; her vogue had declined, -but remained considerable, and she was still writing as well as -ever--in fact, in her two or three latest books, notably in “The -Green Curtain,” I think she was writing better than ever. There were -disadvantages for a young novelist, no doubt, in having a popular -novelist for his mother; but there were also advantages. His father -was the publisher, John Maxwell, whose business developed into that -of Messrs. Hurst & Blackett. He grew up in a literary atmosphere; the -very men who could open doors for a beginner, and make his way easier, -were friends of the family; moreover, he had a critic on the hearth -who could prompt his first steps and check his ’prentice errors with -knowledge drawn from a long and very practical experience. - -“Most of the knowledge I possess of how to write,” Maxwell once told -Clive Holland, “and, indeed, the fact that I commenced to write at all, -I owe to my mother. She was never too busy, or too immersed in her work -to discuss my literary ambitions, or work of my own. She did not always -know the way any story of mine was going, for I wished neither for it -to be an imitation of hers nor in any way to trade upon her own great -and worldwide reputation.” He confessed, however, to a frequent feeling -that however difficult he might find it to master his art, he had an -even more difficult task in the attempt to follow her and necessarily -challenge comparison with her work and her unqualified success. “I -remember,” he added, “the son of a great man saying in my hearing that -the fact that he was so situated had, in a measure, spoiled his life. -‘People expect too much,’ he remarked pathetically, ‘and sometimes -get so little. I might have been quite a success if I had not been -overshadowed by my great father.’” - -But he broke - - “his birth’s invidious bar” - -and without grasping either his mother’s skirts or those of happy -chance (unless Grant Richards was wearing them on the occasion I will -presently mention), he became a novelist in his own way and up built -his own reputation. Considering the influences that must have been -round him in his childhood, taking it that he inherited his literary -gift from his mother and that she, as he tells us, taught his young -idea how to shoot, if his stories had been more or less of the M. E. -Braddon pattern, it would not have been surprising. But, unlike those, -his novels are much less concerned with sensational happenings or plot -of any kind than with intricacies of character and the mysteries of -human psychology. Even from the beginning he struck out in independent -line for himself, and his first book, published in 1901, when he was -thirty-five, was (to give it its full title), “The Countess of Maybury: -Being the Intimate Conversations of the Right Honorable the Countess -of Maybury. Collected with Sedulous Care and Respectful Admiration by -W. B. Maxwell,” a series of satirical, light comedy dialogues of high -society which preceded the “Dolly Dialogues” by a year or two but did -not, as they did, set a fashion. His second book, two years later, was -a volume of short stories called “Fabulous Fancies,” and this revealed -him as a realist--one not without idealism and a sensitive feeling for -the romance of life, but a realist none the less, and that quality of -realism predominates in all the novels and stories he has written since. - -He was late in making this beginning, when he was over thirty, -especially considering how his environment favored his development, -but he was not hastened by the spur of necessity; he had found a -sufficient outlet for his energies in a healthy love of hunting and -outdoor sport, and traveled a good deal. Also he has said that he only -turned to literature after he had failed in other directions. What -those directions were I do not know, except that he was bitten with a -young ambition to be a painter and studied on and off for some years at -certain art schools in London. On the whole, and despite his ancestry, -he thinks himself he might never have taken seriously to the writing -of fiction if he had not happened to meet that enterprising publisher -Grant Richards who, with characteristic courage and fore-sight, -commissioned him to write him a novel, “an arresting novel,” of modern -life. Not many publishers would have risked giving such a commission -to an almost untried author, but the result amply justified the -publisher’s prescience, and with “The Ragged Messenger,” in 1904, -Maxwell scored the first and one of the biggest of his successes. Its -success was the more remarkable in that it was a story of tragedy, and -there is a tradition that the public shrinks from such, but it was its -reality, the understanding and poignant truth to human experience with -which its characters were drawn and their lives laid bare that caught -the reader’s sympathy and gave the book its power of appeal. - -“Vivian” was a readable successor to this, but “The Guarded Flame” -(1906) rose to an altogether higher level. So far as my judgment goes, -“The Guarded Flame” shares with the brilliant satirical story of the -middle-class, self-reliant “Mrs. Thompson” and that grim and powerful -study in degeneracy, “In Cotton Wool,” the distinction of representing -the highest reach of Maxwell’s art, with not far below them “The -Devil’s Garden” and “The Mirror and the Lamp.” - -“The Devil’s Garden,” which was published in the year before the -War burst upon us, brought Maxwell into trouble with our unofficial -censorship and was banned by the libraries. I remember it as a vivid, -uncompromising story of a self-made man whose life and the lives of his -associates do not smack of the innocence of Arcadia and are portrayed -with a conscientious exactitude, but the morality of the novel was -implicit, and why any one should object when an artist faithfully -pictures the unpleasant facts of life, why we should be shocked to find -in a novel things that we go on tolerating in the world around us is -one of those little eccentricities of the moral sense in man that I -have left off trying to understand. The only effect of the ban was that -“The Devil’s Garden” was more talked of and sold better than any other -of his novels, and it is this perhaps that has led many to accept it as -the best he has done; but I would rank it at most with his second best. - -For five years after that event, from September 1914 till the end of -the war, he turned his back on literature and served as subaltern and -as Captain in the Royal Fusiliers. He says that during the war he felt -that when peace came we should witness the uprising of “a new and -vigorous school of romantic novelists”; that a world so long oppressed -“by hideous realities must crave for the realm of pure imagination,” -for gaiety, joyousness, for something more akin to the charm and -happiness of the fairy-tale. - -But when the war was over, he confesses, he soon found he was mistaken. -No such complete change entered even into his own stories. A note of -idealism is sounded in “The Mirror and the Lamp,” in “A Man and his -Lesson” and “Spinster of this Parish,” but so it was in the books he -wrote before the war, and otherwise, as in those, he still handles, -with a subtle mastery of atmosphere and detail, 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. - -He did, in one of his post-war novels (“A Little More”), experiment -in what was for him rather a new vein. It was the story of a once -well-to-do family that was reduced to squalid poverty, and the -father and one daughter faced their altered circumstances with more -resolution than resignation, though the father had more courage than -competence. I think Maxwell was trying his hand at the kind of grown-up -fairy-tale toward which a reaction from the grim realities we had just -come through inclined him; but the sentiment softened at times into -sentimentality, his scenes and characters of poorer life were not so -convincing as they are in some of his other novels. The spirit of the -time had too thoroughly subdued him; but he made a quick recovery and -with “Spinster of this Parish” triumphantly found himself again and -proved that his hand had not lost its earlier cunning. - - - - -LEONARD MERRICK - -[Illustration: LEONARD MERRICK] - - -Until a collected edition of his novels and stories appeared in 1918, -Leonard Merrick had been writing for thirty years without receiving -a tithe of the recognition that was over-due to him. I doubt whether -even now he has such popularity as is enjoyed by many novelists who -have not half his capacity, his sure and delicate art, his supreme -gift as a story-teller. I can only explain this with a theory I have -sometimes played with that a book draws its life from its author, and -most books that are immediately and noisily successful are written by -men of robust and pushful personality; they impart these qualities to -what they write and so give their books an impetus that carries them to -success, makes them as pushful and aggressive in the reading world as -the personality behind them is in the world at large. - -This may be purely fantastic, but the fact remains that Leonard Merrick -is a personality of a gracious and retiring order; he is seldom seen -in literary circles, and has no skill in self-advertisement. Once, -not long ago, I told him I had often wondered that such stories as -his had not from the first taken the public by storm, and asked if he -could to any extent help me to understand why they had not done so. He -accepted the implications in my question with a smile and said, in -the quietest, most impartial fashion, “I don’t know. Of course I have -been disappointed when my books were freely praised by the critics -and did not meet with the large circulations I had hoped for them, -and sometimes, when I have thought about it, I have had a suspicion -that perhaps I wrote too much of artists--of novelists, journalists, -actors--and, moreover, too much about artists who failed. I fancy the -public are not particularly interested in the artist; they prefer to -read about people more like themselves--people with whom and whose -ways they are more familiar. Or if they are to be told of the artist, -they want him to be a hero--they want to be told how he struggled -through thrilling trials and difficulties to happiness and prosperity -at last--they don’t want to be saddened by a tale of his failure; they -don’t want to know about him unless he was the sort of man who could -conquer fate and circumstance romantically and, as the Americans say, -make good in the end. And I have seen a good deal of the artist’s life, -and seen how there is bound to be far more failure than success in it, -and I suppose I have tried to picture it truthfully. Perhaps that was -a mistake and I ought, in the language of the theater, to have kept my -eye on the box-office. I don’t know. That is merely a casual notion of -mine, and may not account for anything.” - -However that may be, and whatever it was that kept the large public -that has come to him by degrees from promptly appreciating him, -Merrick’s greatness as a novelist has from the beginning been fully -realized by his fellow-craftsmen; he has all along been the novelists’ -novelist, somewhat as Keats was the poets’ poet, and the collected -edition of his works bore testimony to this in prefaces to the various -volumes by Barrie, Wells, Locke, Chesterton, Neil Munro, Neil Lyons, -and other distinguished authors. None was more generous in his acclaim -than Barrie, who had long before greeted him as a master of fiction -and, in his introduction to “Conrad in Quest of his Youth,” said, “I -know scarcely a novel by any living Englishman, except a score or so -of Mr. Hardy’s, that I would rather have written.” Allowing for his -very different angle of vision, Merrick is as true a realist as Hardy, -but he touches in his characters and incidents with a lighter hand, -and has as shrewd a sense of the comedy--the piteous comedy it may be -at times--as Hardy has of the tragedy of existence. He does not show -his men and women as the foredoomed and helpless victims of a blind, -indifferent, implacable life-force, but simply tells his story of -them, what they did and what they felt and said, and any spiritual, -moral, or social problem involved in their doings and sufferings is -implicit in his dramatization of their lives and characters; he does -not take you aside to expound it or dogmatize about it: there it -is--that is how things happen, and he is a showman, not a preacher. -His prevailing qualities are a Gallic sparkle and effervescence of wit -and gaiety--especially in such tales as make up “While Paris Laughed” -and “A Chair on the Boulevard”--a limitless charity and pity for -the follies, weaknesses, caprices of mankind, a charm of sentiment -that just stops short of sentimentality, a quick sensitiveness to the -humor and pathos of common life, the anxieties of living by precarious -employment; the tragedy of straitened circumstances; the sheer joy of -living in spite of everything. - -He has experienced much of the life he has depicted, and has put -not a little of his personal experiences into “The Worldings,” into -“Laurels and the Lady,” one of the stories of “The Man Who Understood -Women,” and into other of his books. Usually there is nothing to tell -of a novelist’s early days, except that he went to certain schools, -practiced journalism for a while, then wrote a book or two which found -acceptance sooner or later and thereafter took up permanent residence -in the literary world. But Merrick’s career has been less orthodox and -more varied. - -A Londoner born, he went with his people to South Africa when he was -eighteen and, entering the South African Civil Service, became clerk -in the Magistrate’s Court on the Diamond Fields. But he had not the -smallest intention of settling down to that. He was, as he told me, -born “stage-struck,” and his one ambition as a youth was to tread the -boards and achieve fame as an actor. In 1884 he returned to England and -obtained an introduction to Augustus Harris, who gave him an engagement -to act in a touring company that was traveling the country with one of -the big Drury Lane autumn melodramas. He proved himself a thoroughly -capable player, yet would have lost his part, because the touring -manager was bent on pushing him out and supplanting him with a friend -of his own, but for the voluntary intervention of another member of the -company who wrote privately to Harris urging him to go down and see -Leonard Merrick’s acting for himself before making any change. Harris -did so, with the result that Merrick retained his position in the -company for two years, at the end of which period, his enthusiasm for -the actor’s life being cooled, he retired from the profession for good. -Not until some years later did he discover by chance that the member of -the company who, without his knowledge, had befriended him and saved -him from dismissal, was Arthur Collins, who, in due season, was to -succeed Augustus Harris as Drury Lane’s managing director. - -When the disillusioned mummer strutted his little hour before the -footlights for the last time he was twenty-three, and “The Position of -Peggy Harper” is by no means the only one of his books to which his two -years in motley have yielded a rich harvest. Since then, except that -he wrote “The Free Pardon” with F. C. Phillips and some very popular -dramas in collaboration with George R. Sims, the stage has ceased to -lure him and he has devoted himself to the writing of stories. - -Nor did he lose much time in passing from the one calling to the other, -for his first book appeared when he was twenty-four. His second novel, -“Violet Moses,” was rejected by Chatto & Windus, but accepted by -Bentley; and his third, “The Man Who Was Good,” was rejected by Bentley -as not up to the level of the other, but promptly accepted by Chatto -& Windus; one of life’s lighter ironies that nobody--certainly not -Merrick--would have wished to evade. He had published some half dozen -novels before he began to write short stories. He confesses that he -prefers to write these, and there are stories in at least two of his -volumes that for delicate satirical comedy and subtle art of narration -have not been surpassed by any of his contemporaries. - -From the outset, Merrick met with a more popular reception in America -than in this country; his books enjoyed a considerable vogue there, -and his short stories were soon in great demand with the American -magazines. This has happened to so many other of our writers that -one merely mentions it as a biographical fact and not as matter for -surprise. His first real success with short stories over here came when -his agent, A. P. Watt, handed one of his books to the editor of the -_Bystander_, urging him to read it and see whether its stories were not -of the sort he wanted. He read it, and commissioned six, and before -these had all appeared commissioned a further twelve. Thereafter, the -trouble was not to place such stories but to write as many as were -required. - -While he was in his thirties Leonard Merrick lived for some time in -Paris, and Paris still draws him at intervals from the retirement of -his English home, for he finds there ideas and stimulation, and can -work there as he never can in London. As a rule, the Londoner born has -a sneaking regard for his city and cannot be long away from it without -feeling its intangible human hands plucking at his heart and its -multitudinous voices calling him back, but in spite of the fact that he -is a true-blue Cockney, born, in 1864, at Belsize Park, on the skirts -of Hampstead, Merrick tells you he does not love London. It is the -most comfortable of cities, he admits, but he finds it uninspiring and -can work better and more easily when he is almost anywhere away from -it--especially when he is in Paris. - - - - -ALAN ALEXANDER MILNE - -[Illustration: ALAN ALEXANDER MILNE] - - -The tradition that the Scot has no humor still lingers among -old-fashioned people who don’t like changes, but of recent years -Barrie, Neil Munro (as Hugh Foulis), J. J. Bell, Ian Hay, A. A. -Milne, and some others have shaken it to such an extent that only the -incurably obstinate now attempt to maintain it. - -But while the humor of the others smack finely of the north of the -Tweed, the humor of Milne seems to indicate that his spiritual home -is a much more frivolous place. There is something Irish or English -about its airy gaiety, its blithe, amusing flippancy. Dr. Johnson once -spoke slightingly about the art of carving faces on cherry-stones, but -if he had tried his hand at that work he would have realized that to -accomplish it successfully one must be born with a gift that is as rare -as the more impressive gift for writing serious prose. Our ancestors, -as a whole, realized that, and would exclaim with admiration at the -marvelous facility of Swift who could write you an essay off-hand -on anything or nothing. I remember how, when I was a small boy, a -bookish old gentleman informed me of this in his library and went on -to tell with bated breath the familiar yarn of how, to test the Dean’s -limitless capacity, a lady challenged him to write an essay on a -broomstick, and he at once sat down and did it. But we should think -little of that nowadays. Milne would not need so much as a broomstick; -he could do it on one of the bristles. - -So could E. V. Lucas or Chesterton, or Belloc. But in the matter -of slightness of theme and the capacity for writing charmingly and -humorously on next to nothing at all Milne has closer affinities with -Lucas; they not only can do it but make a habit of doing it. Both write -light verse as well as light prose; both contributed to _Punch_ (Lucas -contributes to it still), and as Anstey and many another, in various -forms, had practiced the same volatile literature in those pages, it -seems possible that the influence of _Punch_ may have been more or less -responsible for developing likewise in them a delightfully neat and -sprightly vein of humor. - -However that may be, Milne had begun to exercise his characteristic -style while he was at Cambridge, where he was made editor of the -_Granta_. He came to London in 1903, and settled down, first in Temple -Chambers, afterwards at Chelsea (where he still resides, but not -in his original two rooms) to make a living as a free-lance author -and journalist. His earnings through the first two years were far -below the income-tax level, but in the third year he was appointed -assistant-editor of _Punch_, to which he had already been contributing -largely, and the world in general began to be aware of him from seeing -the initials A. A. M. appearing in that periodical with significant -regularity. It not only saw them, but looked out for them, and was -soon betraying curiosity in public places as to the identity of the -person who owned them; an infallible sign that a writer is giving the -public what it wants as well as what it ought to want. - -Between 1910 and 1914 he collected his _Punch_ contributions into three -volumes, “The Day’s Play,” “The Holiday Round,” and “Once a Week,” but -was no sooner so established as an entertaining and popular essayist -than the War intervened to take him to fresh woods and pastures that -were new but not desirable. It is impossible to unfold the record of -any of our younger and few of our older contemporary authors without -coming up against the War. Milne promptly withdrew from _Punch_, -joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and was sent out to France. -Here, in odds and ends of leisure from military occupations, he found -opportunity and the moods for writing that quaint, whimsical story -“Once on a Time,” which was published in 1917; and then, too, he made a -first experiment as a dramatist with his shrewdly, cleverly satirical -comedy of “Wurzel-Flummery.” There is a new depth and maturity under -the humor of these things, and he said that in writing the story he for -the first time wrote in earnest. - -By-and-by, after a breakdown which had put him in hospital for a while, -when he was sent to act as signaling instructor at a fort on Portsdown -Hill, he had an impulse to continue playwriting, and would spend a long -day at the fort teaching his class how to signal, then go home to the -cottage where he and his wife were living, a couple of miles away, and -dictate to her, until he had produced in succession, “Belinda,” “The -Boy Comes Home” and “The Lucky One.” These were in due course presented -on the London stage, and if they had no success comparable with his -later plays, they were successful enough before the footlights, and in -the book into which he gathered them in 1919, to demonstrate that a new -dramatist had arisen, and one to be reckoned with. - -There are plenty of signs of the potential dramatist in the pre-war -essays--in their easy and natural use of dialogue, and their deft, -vivid handling of incidents: and there is a bite of realism in their -genial satire and burlesque irony, which foreshadows the keener, riper -irony and satire of “Bladys.” For instance, there is the sketch of “The -Newspaper Proprietor,” that “lord of journalism,” Hector Strong, who, -to oblige a lady, saves her play from failure and forces it into a -raging success by the adroitness with which he booms it in his numerous -newspapers. It may seem ridiculous, and Milne may have invented it all, -but take away a few farcial details from his narrative, and there are -those behind the scenes who will assure you that this deed was actually -done. As for “A Breath of Life,” in which the actor who plays the young -hero falls really in love with the actress who plays the heroine and -on a passionate impulse finishes the play triumphantly at the end of -the third act to such thunders of applause from the audience that the -fourth is cut away for good--ask any dramatist and he will tell you -that his own plays suffered worse than that at the hands of their -producers until he became successful and important enough to insist on -the piece being acted exactly as it was written. - -Always there was this germ of truth in Milne’s earlier trifles and -flippancies. “A Trunk Call” is by no means such an irresponsible farce -as some may think it. Here, the dainty Celia buys a fancy knocker and -puts it on the door of her husband’s study, in order that she may give -him warning at any time before she comes to interrupt him. He wants her -to try it forthwith, but she demurs: - -“‘Not now. I’ll try later on, when you aren’t expecting it. Besides, -you must begin your work. Good-bye. Work hard.’ She pushed me in and -shut the door. - -“I began to work. - -“I work best on the sofa; I think most clearly in what appears to -the hasty observer to be an attitude of rest. But I am not sure that -Celia really understands this yet. Accordingly, when a knock comes at -the door I jump to my feet, ruffle my hair, and stride up and down -the room with one hand on my brow. ‘Come in,’ I call impatiently, and -Celia finds me absolutely in the throes. If there should chance to be a -second knock later on, I make a sprint for the writing-desk, seize pen -and paper, upset the ink or not as it happens, and present to any one -coming in at the door the most thoroughly engrossed back in London. - -“But that was in the good old days of knuckle-knocking. On this -particular morning I had hardly written more than a couple of thousand -words--I mean I had hardly got the cushions at the back of my head -comfortably settled when Celia came in. - -“‘Well?’ she said eagerly. - -“I struggled out of the sofa. - -“‘What is it?’ I asked sternly. - -“‘Did you hear it all right?’ - -“‘I didn’t hear anything.’ - -“‘Oh!’ she said in great disappointment. ‘But perhaps you were asleep,’ -she went on hopefully. - -“‘Certainly not. I was working.’ - -“‘Did I interrupt you?’ - -“‘You did rather; but it doesn’t matter.’ - -“‘Oh, well, I won’t do it again--unless I really have to. Goodbye, and -good luck.’” - -The knocker may be an effort of the imagination, otherwise this reads -as if it were taken from life. It may even be true about Milne himself, -for he has said in print that his work comes easy to him; and if you -show the complete sketch to the wife of any literary man of your -acquaintance the chances are she will wonder how Milne got to know so -much about her husband. But his trim figure and alert, clean-shaven -face, apart from the quantity of work he has placed to his credit, -belie any suggestion that since he finds his work easy he takes his -ease, except when it is finished. He is restlessly alive, and gives -you the impression of being something of an out-door man, a golfer -probably, perhaps a cricketer, though you need not believe he looks -forward to the opening of the cricket season quite so enthusiastically -as he suggests in “The First Game”-- - - “It is the day that I watch for yearly, - Never before has it come so late; - But now I’ve only a month--no, merely - A couple of fortnights left to wait; - And then (to make the matter plain) - I hold--at last!--a bat again: - Dear Hobbs! the weeks this summer--think! the _weeks_ I’ve lived in - vain.” - -When he was demobilized, his old post of assistant-editor of _Punch_ -was waiting for him, but he had formed other plans for his future -during the war, and arranged not to go back. He did not just then -intend to abandon the light essay, and in “If I may” (1920) his hand -for it is as cunning as ever; but the theater had got into his blood, -his ambition was taking higher flights, and “Mr. Pim Passes By” (he -wrote it also into a novel as quaintly humorous and sentimental as the -play) and the mordantly ironic “Truth About Bladys” soared at once -and almost simultaneously to such heights of popularity that if the -dramatist has not presently absorbed the essayist altogether, it won’t -be for want of an excellent excuse. - - - - -ALFRED NOYES - -[Illustration: ALFRED NOYES] - - -Early in his career, being rash as well as young, Alfred Noyes made the -tactical mistake of writing poetry that became popular. He was crowned -with eulogy by leading critics who, naturally, could not foresee that -he would also win the applause of the multitude or, no doubt, they -would have been more careful. Meredith helped to mislead them; he -praised the beauty and finely restrained pathos of “Michael Oaktree,” -a narrative poem in Noyes’s very first volume, “The Loom of Years.” -But it was his third and fourth books, those exquisite fairy tales in -verse, “The Flower of Old Japan” (1903) and “The Forest of Wild Thyme” -(1905), that carried him right into the popularity which disillusioned -those self-centered experts who cling to a narrow faith that poetry -cannot be poetry if it makes a triumphant appeal to the large world -that lives and works in outer darkness beyond the limits of their own -select, small circle. - -Noyes has always been reckless in these matters. He never took the -precaution to attach himself to any of our little groups of poetasters -who ecstatically give each other the glory the common public with-holds -from them. Before he made a book of his great epic, “Drake”--and -it is great not only by comparison with what has been done by his -living contemporaries--instead of treating it as something too rare -and delicate for human nature’s daily food, he ran it serially in -_Blackwood’s Magazine_, as if it had been a new novel. No poem had ever -appeared in that fashion before. I believe he had not written more than -half when the first instalment of it was printed, and the orthodox -could not be expected to approve of that sort of thing. They began to -say Noyes was too facile; wrote too hurriedly and too much; began to -take it for granted that no man who wrote thus copiously and fluently -could be an authentic poet, when they might more reasonably have -assumed that he did by a certain native gift what was only possible to -themselves by the slower, sedulous exercise of an average talent. - -Howbeit, from being lauded freely, Noyes is now more misrepresented, -by a group of poet-critics, whose judgments are too often sound in -the wrong sense, than any other poet of our day. Whether anything -less respectable than a restricted poetical outlook can account for -this misrepresentation I shall not attempt to guess, but, noticing -it, I have sometimes been reminded of lines he puts into the mouth of -Marlowe, in his “Tales of the Mermaid Tavern”-- - - “I tell thee ’tis the dwarfs that find no world - Wide enough for their jostlings, while the giants, - The gods themselves, can in one tavern find - Room wide enough to swallow the wide heaven - With all its crowded solitary stars.” - -Unprofessional lovers of poetry read Noyes not because it is the -proper, high-brow thing to do, but solely because they enjoy reading -him. It is an excellent reason; and for the same reason Tennyson and -Browning are famous; so, in these times, are Masefield and Davies; -de la Mare and William Watson. Noyes differs from most of his -contemporaries in being at once, like Chaucer, a born story-teller -and, like Swinburne, an amazing master of meter and rhyme. He is not -alone in being able more readily and adequately to express himself in -meter and rhyme than in prose, and it is ridiculous to assume that this -ability indicates any shallowness of thought; it indicates, rather, -that he is really efficient in an art he has taken pains to acquire. - -It is equally ridiculous to dub him old-fashioned, as some of our -superior persons do, because he accepts the classical tradition in -poetry. He has not accepted it unintelligently or slavishly; if you -look through his books you will note how cunningly he makes old meters -new again, and that he has invented enough new meters or variations -in accepted metrical forms to give him a place even with those who -claim to be rebels against authority. One such rebel, a prominent -American poet, included the other day in his collected works a goodly -proportion of _vers libre_ from which one of our advanced critics chose -two passages for admiring quotation. The ideas in these passages were -a mere repetition of two that are expressed with higher art and deeper -feeling in “In Memoriam,” yet that advanced critic is one who dismisses -Tennyson as out of date and has hailed the American poet as the last -word in modern thinking. Perhaps he and his like have not troubled to -read what they consider old-fashioned. I mention the circumstance by -way of showing to what a pass some of our critics and poets have come. - -If Noyes has any theories of poetry, I gather they are that the poet -is essentially one endowed with the gift of song; that all the great -poets, from Homer downward, have been great singers; and that when he -utters himself in meter and rhyme he is but putting himself in tune -with the infinite order of the universe--with the rhythm of the tides, -of the seasons, the recurring chime of day and night, the harmonious -movement of the stars in their orbits. He once confessed to me that he -was so far from fearing the possibilities of metrical invention were -exhausted that he was convinced we are still at the beginning of them; -they were exhausted, according to the first disciples of Whitman, sixty -years ago, but Swinburne arose and invented so many new meters that -he was considered more revolutionary in his era than Whitman’s later -disciples are in ours. - -There is a virility and range of subject and style in Noyes’s work -that make a good deal of modern verse seem old-maidish or anæmic by -comparison. It is a far cry from the grace and tenderness and dainty -fancy of “The Flower of Old Japan”, “The Forest of Wild Thyme”, and -some of the lyrics in “The Elfin Artist”, and elsewhere, to the -masculine imaginative splendor in thought and diction, the robust -energy of his epic, “Drake”, or, though gentler moods of pathos, -humor, wistful fantasy are never absent from any of his books, to the -series of narratives that make up “The Torch Bearers”--an ambitious -succession of poems that reveal, with dramatic power and insight -and a quick sensitiveness to the poetry of science, the progress of -scientific discovery in the life-stories of the great discoverers. -None has pictured War in more terribly realistic terms or with a more -passionate hatred of its inhumanity than he has in “The Wine Press”; -and you have him in the breeziest, most riotously humorous of his moods -in “Forty Singing Seamen.” But if I should single my own favorite from -his books it would be the “Tales of the Mermaid Tavern.” Here he finds -full scope for his many-sided gift; you can turn from the rollicking -yarn of “Black Bill’s Honeymoon” to the dignity and poignance of “The -Burial of a Queen,” from the anecdotal picturesqueness of “A Coiner of -Angels” to the fervor and glittering pageantry of “Flos Mercatorum,” -from the suspense and tragedy of “Raleigh” to the laughter and lighter -tears and buoyant tripping measures of “The Companion of a Mile,” -telling how Will Kemp, the player, danced from London to Norwich for a -wager, and passing through Sudbury met a young butcher who offered to -dance a mile with him-- - - “By Sudbury, by Sudbury, by little red-roofed Sudbury, - He wished to dance a mile with me! I made a courtly bow: - I fitted him with morrice-bells, with treble, bass and tenor bells, - _And ‘Tickle your tabor, Tom,’ I cried, ‘we’re going to market now.’_ - - And rollicking down the lanes we dashed, and frolicking up the hills we - clashed, - And like a sail behind me flapped his great white frock a-while, - Till with a gasp, he sank and swore that he could dance with me no - more; - And over the hedge a milk-maid laughed, _Not dance with him a mile_? - - ‘You lout!’ she laughed, ‘I’ll leave my pail, and dance with him - for cakes and ale! - ‘I’ll dance a mile for love,’ she laughed, ‘and win my wager too. - ‘Your feet are shod and mine are bare; but when could leather dance on - air? - ‘A milk-maid’s feet can fall as fair and light as falling dew.’ - - I fitted her with morrice-bells, with treble, bass and tenor bells: - The fore-bells, as I linked them to her throat, how soft they sang! - Green linnets in a golden nest, they chirped and trembled on her - breast, - And faint as elfin blue-bells at her nut-brown ankles rang. - - I fitted her with morrice-bells that sweetened into woodbine bells, - And trembled as I hung them there and crowned her sunny brow: - ‘Strike up,’ she laughed, ‘my summer king!’ And all her bells began to - ring, - _And ‘Tickle your tabor, Tom,’ I cried, ‘we’re going to Sherwood - now!’_” - -This, and the rest of it, is very typical of Noyes in his lighter vein, -and if you can’t see the poetry that twinkles through the deft, airy -gallop of the verse we won’t talk about it; typical of him too is the -pathetic aftermath of the dance, so delicately touched in that the -pathos is almost lost in the beauty of it, till the motley epilogue -strikes the deeper note of sadness through the loud laughter of the -fool. - -Noyes was born in Staffordshire in 1880, and I know nothing of his -doings at Oxford, except that he rowed in the Exeter College Eight. He -is nowadays an Hon. Litt. D. of Yale University, and since 1914 has -been Professor of Modern English Literature at Princeton University, -in America, and divides his time between that country and this. He is -the most unassuming of men, looking much younger than his years, and of -a sturdy, robust, serious aspect that (till his genial laugh, when he -breaks silence, spoils your calculations) seems more in keeping with -the vigor of his epic narratives, or with the noble rhetoric of such -as that most impressive of his shorter poems, “The Creation,” than -with the fairy fancies, the butterfly blitheness and laughing music -of “Come down to Kew at lilac time” and other of his daintier lyrics. -Like most true poets who have not died young, he has become popular in -his lifetime; and if he were not so versatile less versatile critics, -instead of panting after him in vain, would be able to grasp him and -get him under their microscopes and recognize him for the poet that he -is. - - - - -E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM - -[Illustration: E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM] - - -Even if we grant that there is a wide world of difference between -imaginative and inventive fiction, and that the way to immortality is -only open to the former, there is still so much to be said in praise of -the latter that, if the verdict rested with his contemporaries instead -of with posterity, the inventive author would often go permanently -crowned with the fame that is now reserved for his more imaginative -rival. Within my own recollection Wilkie Collins was the most popular -novelist of his day; Meredith and Hardy had their thousands of readers -and Collins his tens of thousands; everybody read him then, but hardly -anybody reads him now. He used to complain, as Hall Caine records in -“My Story,” that the reviewers were all along disposed to sniff and -qualify their appreciation, but he boasted that the public always -received him with enthusiasm and overwhelmed him with grateful and -adulatory letters. Moreover, his brother novelists admired and lauded -his amazing ingenuity; Dickens collaborated with him, and his influence -is perhaps traceable in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”--in the unusual -dexterity and subtlety with which its plot is constructed. - -His own formula for holding the reader’s attention was “make him -laugh; make him weep; or make him wait”; and he devoted himself almost -exclusively to the third of these methods. Character is of quite -minor importance in his stories--Count Fosco was his one masterly -creation; the only one of all his _dramatis personæ_ you recall without -effort--there is little humor in them, and little pathos. For him, the -plot was the thing, a cunningly contrived, carefully dovetailed plot, -with a heart of mystery and sensation that should hold the reader in -suspense till it was unraveled and cleared up in the last pages. His -justification was that he thrilled and delighted enormous multitudes. -It is enough that he did triumphantly what he set himself to do; the -best and most precious things in life are not often the most lasting; -and whether or not his work is immortal, it was great in its kind and -an art beyond the genius of novelists who seem destined to outlive him. - -And, as a form of literature, the novel of sensation, crime, mystery -is immortal if its authors are not. Collins has been dethroned, but -his successors are legion, and none has made out a stronger title to -the inheritance of his mantle than Phillips Oppenheim. For the skill -with which he constructs a baffling plot, intrigues his readers from -the opening, and keeps them in suspense till it is time, at last, to -give away his secret, none of them excels--I am not sure that more -than one of them equals him. I don’t think he aims to be anything but -entertaining, and how many of our novelists who claim to be much more -are not even that! Two of our most distinguished critics have, at -different times, confessed to me that with the passing of years they -have lost their taste for fiction; the modern psychological novel -seems pretentious and bores them; they are no longer young enough -to be susceptible to romantic adventure; they can learn nothing and -get no amusement from the crudeness and boyish or girlish naïveté of -the latter-day sex novel, but they do find interest, excitement and -a tonic recreation in novels such as Oppenheim writes. “I suppose I -have seen too much of actual life,” said one of them, “to be startled -or particularly interested in what I am told about it by a novelist -who knows no more of it than I know myself. I like Oppenheim because -he takes me outside my personal experiences; he does not appeal to -my memory but to my imagination; he tells me a tale that is new to -me, that rouses my curiosity, keeps me guessing, makes me forget -everything else in my keenness to follow up the clues to his mystery -and see how he solves it. I don’t care whether it is good literature, -I know it is a good story, and that’s what every novel ought to be -and few are. I sometimes think we take our novelists and they take -themselves and their function too seriously. The old troubador, when -he sang his ballads and told his yarns in the street, didn’t do it for -glory but for the coppers the crowd, if he pleased them, would throw -into his hat. He was nothing but an entertainer; people didn’t want -him to be anything else--it is all I want his modern representative, -the novelist, to be, and it is what Oppenheim emphatically is. He -simply writes for the time, and the time is promptly rewarding him with -popularity and hard cash, while so many of our little artists will not -stoop to the present and are writing neatly for a future that will -never read them.” - -He has written some sixty novels and books of short stories, having -seen his first novel published in 1886, when he was twenty. I do -not pretend to have read them all, but since I read “Mysterious Mr. -Sabin,” a good many years ago, I have never missed reading any Phillips -Oppenheim story that has come within reach of me. Read “The Amazing -Partnership,” “The Plunderers,” “A Prince of Sinners,” “Mr. Lessingham -Goes Home,” and you will find that while he is as ingenious as Wilkie -Collins at fashioning a plot that captures your interest in its -complexities, he gets more rapidly into his story, handles dialogue -more skillfully, unfolds his incidents as vividly but with a lighter -hand and loses no time on the way. - -After he left school Phillips Oppenheim went into his father’s leather -business at Leicester, but he had started writing stories for his own -amusement before that. The leather business was so successful that -Blumenthals, the big American and Paris leather firm, bought it up, -and appointed Phillips Oppenheim their director at Leicester. His -experience in that trade has proved immensely useful to him. It has -not only helped him to material for his tales, but it was through the -American head of Blumenthals that he had his chief incentive to the -writing of the type of story that has brought him such success as -a novelist. This gentleman introduced him to the proprietor of the -Café de Rat Mort, the once famous Montmartre haunt, for Oppenheim was -frequently in Paris on the affairs of his leather company, and at the -Café he acquired his taste for the mysteries of those international -intriguings and rascalities that figure so largely in several of his -books, for the proprietor used to tell him all manner of thrilling -yarns about political and international adventurers, some of whom had -been among his customers, and his listener formed a habit of weaving -stories round the more striking personalities in the cosmopolitan crowd -that he met in the Rat Mort. He assured me that however ingenious I -might think them, he never really constructs his stories but simply -lets them grow. “Two or three people in a crowded restaurant may arouse -my interest, and the atmosphere is compelling,” says he. “I start -weaving a story round them--the circumstances and the people gradually -develop as I go on dictating to my secretary the casual thoughts -about them that arose in me while I was looking at them and their -surroundings. First of all I must have a congenial atmosphere--then the -rest is easy.” - -Easy, that is, to him, partly from long practice but chiefly because -it was the method that came natural to him and suited his temperament. -There is no use in telling any one how to write a novel, in laying down -rules for doing it as if it were a mechanical trade. James Payn’s plan -was to prepare an elaborate synopsis, divide this into chapters, then -write down a description of each character, and keep these details -pinned on a screen where they were handy reference while he was -working. William De Morgan would start with little more than a general -idea of what was going to happen in future pages; he would get his -characters together and give them their heads and let them develop the -story as it went along. Every way is the best way--for the author who -finds it for himself and can do as well in it as Phillips Oppenheim has -done in his. - -He has traveled considerably; spent much of his time in America, -where he was married (and, by the way, large as his vogue is in Great -Britain, he is another of our authors whose vogue is even larger in -America); but for the most part he divides his days of work and leisure -now between his home in London and his other home by the sea, in North -Devon. - -He is fond of the country, and of golf and all kinds of sports; he is -an equally keen theater-goer, but gets more enjoyment out of writing -stories than out of anything else, and since he draws more inspiration -for these from the town than from the country, he is never happier than -when he is in town. “The cities for me!” he said to an interviewer. -“Half a dozen thoroughfares and squares in London, a handful of -restaurants, the people one meets in a single morning, are quite -sufficient for the production of more and greater stories than I shall -ever write.” He wrote “Mr. Laxworthy’s Adventures” while he was staying -at a hotel in Paris; but though Paris and New York attract him, London -is his spiritual home and, with its endless streets and motley crowds, -is the chief begetter of his sensational romances. - -Yet his appearance is less suggestive of the city than of rural life. -Ruddy, genial, smiling, with his sturdy figure and bluff manner, it -is easier to fancy him, in gaiters, carrying a riding whip, as a -typical country squire, than as a brilliant imaginative author creating -fictitious villains and preoccupied with dreams of strange crimes and -the mysterious doings of lawless and desperate men. Which is to say -only that he no more gives himself away to the casual observer than he -gives away the secret of any of his plots in the first chapter of the -book. - - - - -MAY SINCLAIR - -[Illustration: MAY SINCLAIR] - - -In a rash moment, recently, Michael Sadleir committed himself to the -retrospective and prophetic assertion that there never had been a great -woman novelist and never would be. The first part of that statement is, -of course, open to argument; the second cannot be proved. If he had -said the greatest novelists, so far, have been men, he would have been -on safe ground; for I don’t think even the most politely complaisant -master of the ceremonies would suggest that Fielding, Dickens and -Thackeray should step back and allow Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and -George Eliot to lead this particular procession of the immortals. Which -is not to say that these last are not great, but only that there have -been greater. - -Turning to living authors, if, so far as this country is concerned (and -here we are not concerned with any other), the same order of precedence -still obtains, the distance between the men in the first rank and the -women in the second has, at least, sensibly diminished. Leaving Hardy -apart in his incontestible supremacy, have we any novelists alive who -are, on the whole, superior to Wells, Conrad, Bennett, Galsworthy? It -is a question Time alone can decide with certainty, but fallible men -must needs, meanwhile, make up their separate minds as best they can, -and, for my part, I would answer in the negative. But should any one -claim that there are four women novelists who, if they do not surpass, -are equal in achievement with the four men I have named, I could not -begin to deny it until I had read them all over again. So nice, so -delicate a matter is not to be settled off-hand. Even such godlike -judges as Gosse and Squire might well lay aside their thunder and -lightning in face of it and be disposed to temporize. - -For, relegating to outer darkness (where many of us would be willing -to join them) all whose glory is nothing but a vast popularity and -its accessories--think what a galaxy of women novelists there are and -what sound and notable work the best of them have done. Of course -who have been longest before the public, you have Lucas Malet, Sarah -Grand, George Colmore, Mary Cholmondeley, Mary and Jane Findlater, -Mrs. W. K. Clifford, Mary E. Mann; of those who began somewhat later, -Elinor Mordaunt, Dolf Wyllarde, Violet Hunt, Mrs. Henry Dudeney, M. P. -Willcocks, Peggy Webling, Mrs. Dawson Scott, Beatrice Harraden, Mrs. -Belloc Lowndes, Phillis Bottome, Rose Macaulay, May Sinclair, Sheila -Kaye-Smith; and of a still later day, Viola Meynell, Ethel Sidgwick, -Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Mary Webb, Clemence Dane, Rebecca -West, G. B. Stern, Storm Jameson, M. Leonora Eyles, Stella Benson.... -This by no means completes the list, and there is no reason for ending -it here except that it is long enough and contains a sufficient number -of names for whomsoever will to select from it four whose work may -fairly challenge comparison with the greatest that has been done by -contemporary novelists of the other sex. - -Any adequate survey of the modern English novel would, at all events, -have to take into account most of the women writers I have mentioned, -but for my present less ambitious occasions I am contented to limit my -record to two--May Sinclair and Sheila Kaye-Smith--whom I take to be -generally representative of such of them as are still in the full tide -of their careers: the latter as having acquaintance with the larger -variety of human character and giving breadth, color and fullness -of life to her stories out of a wider, robuster interest in the -multifarious affairs that absorb so much of the thought and activities -of men; the former as being the subtler artist both in psychology and -style. - -As long ago as 1916, the distinguished American critic, Dr. Lyon -Phelps, described Miss Sinclair as “to-day the foremost living writer -among English-speaking women.” He rightly dated her rise to this -eminence from the publication of “The Divine Fire,” in 1904, and as -rightly reminded us that “the British audience for whom it was intended -paid no attention to it” till it had been acclaimed by critics and -read with enthusiasm by thousands of readers in America. Why Miss -Sinclair had to wait eight years for that recognition I cannot explain. -She adventured into literature in orthodox fashion by publishing two -volumes of verse early in the ’nineties. Her first novel, “Audrey -Craven,” appeared in 1896. Then came, with longish intervals between, -“Mr. and Mrs. Nevil Tyson” and “Two Sides of a Question.” These three -books were touched with something of the grey realism that prevented -Gissing from becoming popular with a public which, then more than now, -disliked novels of that hue and preferred its fiction to be either -elevating or pleasantly entertaining. But if there was no run on these -three books at the libraries, they did not pass, unless my memory -misleads me, without due meed of praise from the more discriminating -reviews; and, as Miss Sinclair has done far finer work since “The -Divine Fire,” so I think she did truer, finer work before that in, at -least, the second of her three earlier volumes. It were harder to say -why the laurels fell upon the fourth than why they missed the second. - -Rock Ferry, in Cheshire, was Miss Sinclair’s birthplace, but when -fame discovered her she had been living some years at Hampstead, in -London, and “The Divine Fire” moves among London literary circles, -sketches cleverly various literary types of character and life in -boarding-houses round about Bloomsbury, with for central figure a young -Cockney poet, a kind of new Keats, who worked as a shop-assistant, -wrote exquisite verse, had all the instincts of a gentleman, but was -afflicted with a deplorable habit of dropping his aitches. So much -is made of this weakness (which was really only as superficially -significant as was Stevenson’s inability to spell certain words -correctly) that the frequent insistence on it comes by degrees to seem -a little finicking, a little irritating. I do not share Dr. Phelp’s -fancy that Charlotte Bronte returned to earth to write “The Divine -Fire.” Miss Sinclair may have learned things from Charlotte Bronte; -she has written ably and searchingly of her in “The Three Brontes”; -but influence from that source--even from the Charlotte of “Shirley” -days--is scarcely traceable in any of her books and certainly does not, -in “The Divine Fire,” dominate her own quietly distinctive personality. - -Few authors owe their popularity to their best work, and, at the -risk of appearing heretical, I will admit I have always counted “The -Divine Fire” as one of Miss Sinclair’s unsuccessful experiments, and -“The Helpmate” as another. Both have charm and distinction of style, -but they have not the insight, the clearness of vision, that mark her -later novels. She is, especially in the second, like an artist drawing -without models and erring in small details, getting the anatomy of -her characters here and there out of proportion. The cleverness and -the interest of “The Helpmate” are undeniable, but its people do not -wear flesh about them; they are seriously presented, but one feels -they are as outside the world of actual humanity as are the brilliant -creations that play so deftly in some of the artificial comedies of the -Restoration. - -“The Creators” is another tale of literary life, and one in which you -are not always sure whether the author wishes you to take her poets -and novelists in dead earnest or whether she is secretly laughing at -them and touching off their idiosyncrasies with a covert irony, the -latter suspicion finding encouragement in the neat realism and hard-cut -brilliance with which the whole thing is done. Some have complained -that several of her novels are too preoccupied with the mysteries and -intimacies of sexual relationship, but you might as reasonably complain -that other authors exclude these from their scheme of things and are -too preoccupied with other and less vitally human experiences. There -is no forbidden tree in the garden of literature; all the world is the -artist’s parish and he is justified of any theme so long as he can -handle it with such artistic success as Miss Sinclair does in “Kitty -Tailleur,” in “The Combined Maze,” and in that tragically poignant -short story “The Judgment of Eve.” - -Perhaps she reaches the highest expression of her genius in this -and other of her short stories (“The Wrackham Memoirs” is a little -masterpiece of ironic comedy) and in the shortest of her novels, “The -Life and Death of Harriet Frean”--the detached pity, the insight, -the minute, illuminating realism with which the whole feeble, -self-sacrificing, sentimental little soul of Harriet is revealed, and -the perfect technique with which it is all set down, give power and -beauty to what in less skilled, less sensitive hands might have been a -frail, wistful story of no particular significance. - -Miss Sinclair is more erudite than the majority of novelists and, -outside the world of fiction, has proved herself a suggestive and -original thinker in such philosophical subtleties as “A Defence of -Idealism.” She worked, during the early stages of the War, with the -Red Cross, recording her experiences in “A Journal of Impressions in -Belgium,” and she drew on those experiences for scenes in some of her -novels, notably in “Tasker Jevons” and in that finer story of the same -period, “The Tree of Heaven.” - -Literary characters, the literary life, and sex problems enter pretty -largely into Miss Sinclair’s novels, but she has never like so many of -the successful settled down to run in a groove; she does not repeat -herself. She has not accepted ready-made formulas of art but has been -continually reaching out for new ways of advance. She was quick to see -virtue in the literary method of James Joyce and Dorothy Richardson -and the possibilities inherent in the novel which should look on -everything through the consciousness of a single one of its characters, -and proclaimed it as the type of novel that would have a future. She -may not have convinced us of this when she applied the method in -the ejaculatory, minutely detailed “Mary Olivier,” but its maturer -development in “Harriet Frean” demonstrated that it was a manner which -could be used with supreme artistic effectiveness. All the same, the -method is not so new as James Joyce; you may find the beginnings of it, -employed less self-consciously, with more reticence and more humor, in -the first and last novels of that very old-fashioned novelist William -De Morgan. - - - - -FRANK SWINNERTON - -[Illustration: FRANK SWINNERTON] - - -When his first novel, “The Merry Heart,” was published, in 1909, Frank -Swinnerton was still so youthful that I remember persons of my own -age had a way of referring to him, with an avuncular air, as “young -Swinnerton.” He was twenty-four, but his smooth, boyish face, his -unassuming manner, that hovered between a natural vivacity and a sort -of shyness, made him look and seem younger than he was. In the fourteen -years since then he has done work, as novelist and as critic, that has -made him famous on at least two continents, he has grown a moustache -and a trim, pointed reddish beard that with the lurking twinkle in his -eyes, give him somewhat the appearance of an acute Frenchman (though -nobody could, in general, be more thoroughly English), and, so far from -being shy, he will now rise on a platform or at a public dinner and -make you an admirably serious or witty and humorous address with the -completest self-possession. - -In fact, he has so matured, in himself and in his knowledge of life, -that he makes those who once called him young feel as if they had not -kept time with him and he had become their senior. Yet in the best way -he is still as young as ever. He has that tonic streak of frivolity -in him which is better than any monkey-gland for saving a man from -getting old. He can be as serious as most people on occasion, but his -joyous gifts for telling a droll anecdote or mimicking the voice, -manner and peculiarities of an acquaintance are gifts not so commonly -shared. He takes his art seriously, but unless you catch him in the -right mood he is not ready to talk seriously about it. Some authors -appear to be so in love with their work that they will tell you they -are never happier than when they are driving the pen and putting -their thoughts on paper, but Frank Swinnerton is not one of those. He -protests that he writes slowly; with difficulty; that he does not like -work; finds it irksome; that he finds pleasure in thinking out an idea, -but once he has thought it out he has a feeling that it ought to be -all done with, and puts off shaping it into words as long as he can, -and then can only bring himself to do it by fits and starts or with -intermittent bursts of energy. But if you took him too literally in -this I think you would misunderstand him. It would be truer to say of -him, as he has said of Gissing, “Conscientiousness was the note of his -artistic character.... The books are full of steady and sincere work. -Only when they were written with joy (which does not signify gaiety) -they were of original value.” For if his own books were not written -with that same joy in creation (which may co-exist with a dislike of -the mechanical act of writing) they could not be so intensely alive as -they are. - -You might almost guess from his novels that Swinnerton was a Londoner, -or at least, like Dickens, had been made a naturalized citizen of the -“dear, damned, delightful, dirty” town when he was a child. He was born -at Wood Green, no such ideally rural suburb as its name suggests, and -has lived in London all his life. A severe illness when he was eight -years old made going to school out of the question for some time, -and continued delicate health and recurring break-downs rendered any -education so fragmentary as to be pretty well negligible. But he was -all the while, without knowing it, educating himself in ways that were -fitting him for the career he was to follow. Books were his teachers, -and his literary ambitions took an active form so early that at the -age of ten he was running an amateur magazine--one of the kind that -years ago (and probably still) used to circulate in manuscript among -subscribers who were all contributors and usefully, and sometimes -mercilessly, criticized each other’s effort. - -He was about fourteen when he turned his hand to real business -and became a clerk in the London office of some Glasgow newspaper -publishers. After an interval, he worked for a few years in the -publishing house of J. M. Dent & Co.; then transferred himself to the -firm of Chatto & Windus, whose literary adviser he has since remained, -dividing his time between writing books of his own and reading and -passing judgment on the books of others, to say nothing of his doings -as a reviewer or as the writer for an American magazine of one of the -best monthly literary letters that go out of London. - -At twenty he wrote his first novel, and it was rejected by every -publisher to whom it was offered. Two more novels shared the same -discouraging fate, and I believe their author has now destroyed all -three. But a happier fate was reserved for his fourth, “The Merry -Heart,” which was promptly accepted and published; and if neither in -story nor in characterization this buoyant, quietly humorous romance of -a London clerk will compare with his maturer fiction, it has a charm -and morning freshness of feeling and outlook to atone for what it may -lack in finish. - -“The Young Idea” marks a great advance in his mastery of the type of -novel to which he was particularly devoting himself. This “comedy of -environment,” traces with a wonderfully sympathetic understanding -the mental and moral development of Hilda Vernon, who is a clerk -in a London office. She shares a flat with her boorish brother and -delightful younger sister, and disillusioned and disheartened by her -everyday experiences of the meanness and squalor of the life around -her, longing still to believe “in the beauty of something, in the -purity of some idea, or the integrity of some individual,” but giving -up hope, she meets with a man, a clerk like herself, who by his clean, -courageous personality and strength of character saves her from despair -and revives her old faith in humankind. - -The novel is remarkable for its insight and subtle analysis of -character no less than for the interest of its story; but henceforth -in Swinnerton’s work the analysis of character grows and the story -itself declines in importance. It is so in “The Casement,” “The Happy -Family,” “On the Staircase,” “The Chaste Wife,” “Nocturne,” until with -“The Three Lovers,” the story begins to reassert itself. I have seen -“The Chaste Wife” described as his one failure, but to me it seems one -of the ablest and most poignant of his books and Priscilla Evandine one -of the most gracious, finely simple women he has ever drawn. “Shops and -Houses” is perhaps less satisfactory, though it follows his favorite -method and studies very skillfully and with a shrewd irony the various -members of a middle-class family. It is in “September,” a brilliant -handling of the marriage of incompatible temperaments, in “The Happy -Family,” “The Casement,” “On the Staircase,” and, more than all, in -“Nocturne” that Swinnerton’s art is at its surest and highest. There -are only five characters in “Nocturne,” and from the time when Jenny -Blanchard is riding home in the tram to her going out and returning -from a covert visit to her lover in his yacht on the Thames, the -action occupies less than six hours. Jenny, her sister Emily, their -pitiful, tiresome, amusing old father, and the homely, dull Alf Rylett, -who pursues Jenny with unwelcome attentions--they and their whole -environment are revealed with a most graphic and intimate realism, and -Jenny’s impetuous rebellion against the squalor and narrowness of her -lot, the spiritual tragedy of her brief, passionate self-surrender -are touched with an emotional power and sense of pity that make a -story which easily might have been drab and gross a thing strangely -beautiful. Few who read it will wonder that H. G. Wells should have -declared it is a book “that will not die. It is perfect, authentic, and -alive.” - -One of his American critics (and his vogue is larger in America than -in this country) has described Swinnerton as “the analyst of lovers.” -He is that in most of his books, but he is a good deal more than that. -It is loosely said that he is a disciple of Gissing, but so far as I -can see he is one of the most original of living novelists and derives -less from his predecessors than do most of his contemporaries. He deals -with the gray, swarming London streets, and with middle and lower class -London life, but that life has changed radically since Gissing’s day, -and Swinnerton is true to its modern developments. Moreover, he is no -pessimist; he writes with a genial sympathy of the people whom Gissing -despised, and there is a prevailing sense of humor in his pages that is -never in Gissing’s. His mental attitude, his style, his realistic art -are altogether different. - -In his book on Gissing (I have not read his book on Stevenson, which -they tell me is unorthodox, and gave offence to Stevenson’s admirers) -he says that in Gissing’s time realism was regarded as “something -very repulsive and unimaginative ... he did not see in realism very -much more than laborious technical method. We are all realists -today, trying very hard to see without falsity and to reproduce our -vision with exactitude. Realism, I think, is no longer associated -with the foot-rule and a stupid purposeless reproduction of detail.” -It is not so associated in the reticent, imaginative realism he -practises himself. I fancy, too, that he is getting back to his -earlier manner--to the making of the story as important as the study -of psychology. “The Three Lovers,” as I have said, moves in that -direction, and if it goes so far as to be occasionally melodramatic -there is no falsity in that, for life itself is full of melodrama. He -recognized in “The Casement” that love is not the whole of life, that -“work of any kind seems to absorb the faculties, and some business men -do, I suppose, live for their work”; and recently he has owned to a -feeling that in its next development the novel will be a definite and -plain tale, that there will be a revival of realistic romance which -will pay less attention to men’s intermittent amorous adventures and -more to the business and general affairs that preoccupy most of the -time of the majority. And the signs are that he is of those who are -beginning to travel on those lines. - - - - -HUGH WALPOLE - -[Illustration: HUGH WALPOLE] - - -Without reading anything of an author’s works, or anything that was -written about them, you might form a practical notion of his value and -follow his progress along the path to glory by merely watching the -growth of his reviews and the extent to which they climbed up from the -obscurer into the more prominent parts of the papers. Unless he breaks -the precedents and is a roaring success from the first, and that seldom -happens, he will start by receiving short, inconspicuous notices some -weeks or months after his book is issued, or be grouped with four or -five others in a collective article, on the sardine principle. Perhaps -he will never escape out of that limbo; but if he is destined for -success, you will presently note that he is promoted to the dignity of -long reviews with a special heading to himself; and when you find him -topping a column, discussed at considerable length, with a breathless -announcement bracketed under the title, “Published Today,” you may be -sure that, if you have not yet started to read him, it is time you -began. - -Hugh Walpole has been through all those stages; he went through -more rapidly than most authors do, and has gone beyond them, for he -was still three or four years short of forty when a leading London -publisher sealed him of the elect by producing a collected edition of -his works. So as far as I can recall, he is the youngest novelist who -ever had that mark of distinction bestowed upon him. And, by way of -corroborating the significance of this, a selection of passages from -his books has been published in a special “Hugh Walpole Anthology,” and -two years in succession, with “The Secret City” and “The Captives,” he -has taken the Tait Black Prize awarded by the University of Edinburgh -for the best novel of the year. - -His father was vicar of a church at Auckland, New Zealand, in 1884, -when Hugh Walpole was born. In 1887 the family removed to New York, -where Dr. Walpole had accepted an appointment as Professor in a -Theological College; and seven years later they migrated to England, -where, in the fulness of time, the son was to become a famous novelist, -and the father Bishop of Edinburgh. After completing his education at -King’s School, Canterbury, and Emanuel College, Cambridge, Hugh Walpole -worked for a year or so as teacher at a boy’s school in the provinces. -Then he went to London, settled in cheap lodgings at Chelsea, and -reviewed books for the newspapers, to provide for his present needs, -and wrote novels with an eye on the future. - -He had written his first, “The Wooden Horse,” while he was at -Cambridge, but discouraged by the friend to whose judgment he submitted -it, laid it aside for about five years, and only offered it for -publication and had it accepted in 1909, after he had taken the plunge -and entered on that journalistic career in London. It was well enough -received and put a little money into his purse, and “Maradick at -Forty,” a much maturer work which followed within a year, met with a -reception from critics and public that made it clear he had found his -vocation; then with “Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill,” a brilliant, somewhat -bitter, study of the boys and masters at a dreary, lonely school in -Cornwall (reminiscent, no doubt, of his own teaching days) he fairly -established himself. That was in 1911, and thence-forward his story -is the story of the successive books he wrote, until the War came to -interrupt his career. - -In the earlier days of the war he worked with the Red Cross on the -Russian front; later, he was put in charge of British propaganda -at Petrograd, and lived there throughout the chaos of the first -Revolution, keeping a full diary of his experiences which has never -been published. People he met, things he did and saw while he was -serving with the Red Cross went into “The Dark Forest,” the sombrest -and one of the most ably written of his books. It came out in 1916, -while he was in Petrograd. He made a finely sympathetic study of the -soul of the Slav, and pictured Petrograd in the days of the Revolution, -in “The Secret City,” which has been described as the truest novel -of Russian life ever written by an alien, and was published toward -the close of the war, when he was home again and working here in the -Ministry of Information. - -But these two books, though they rank with his best, are not -representative. Hugh Walpole is probably as near to being a typical -Englishman as any man can be, and of his dozen other novels, “The -Golden Scarecrow” and “Jeremy” show how wonderfully he can enter into -the minds of children, and the rest are stories of lower-middle, -middle and higher English society in town and country. “The Duchess of -Wrexe,” with its vividly realistic drawing of the dreadful old Duchess, -enshrines an essentially English _grande dame_ of the old-school -that is rapidly becoming extinct; there are no better pictures of -English family life than the pictures of the Trenchards in “The Green -Mirror,” and a later novel; and you guess that personal observation -and experience have gone into “The Captives,” “The Cathedral,” and -other of his stories concerned with the clergy and schoolmasters, and -into the narrative in “Fortitude” of how Peter Westcott ran away from -his Cornish home to face poverty in London and embark on a successful -career as a novelist; for though Walpole has stated that he never draws -his characters from living models, he owns that living persons suggest -themes and characteristics to him. - -He reveals an English trait, I think, by his confession of faith in the -outlook and methods of Anthony Trollope, the most thoroughly English of -all our novelists. It is curious how in writing of present-day fiction -I am continually coming up against Trollope. His style is easygoing, -undistinguished, often slipshod; he did not pretend to be an artist; -rarely troubled much for a plot, never worried about psychology, never -heard of psychoanalysis, but wrote simply of people as he saw and -knew them, put them into a loose sort of story of things that were -happening round about him, and now we are more and more recognizing -that in his unassuming tales of the social, political and business life -of his period he was a closer observer, a greater realist than were -some of his contemporaries who surpassed him in humor, imagination and -in literary genius. I come up against him so often that I suspect his -quiet influence is growing more potent with our younger writers than -that of Dickens, or Thackeray, or Meredith. - -Not long ago, both W. L. George and Douglas Goldring announced that -they would write no more psychological novels; they had arrived at -a conclusion that the novelist’s real business was to tell a plain -tale in which his characters should be left to express themselves in -action. Compton Mackenzie had preceded them with a declaration that -the novelist’s function was not to analyse states of mind and emotions -but to dramatize them, that the novelist should before everything else -be an entertainer, a teller of tales; and since the war Hugh Walpole -has laid down his own views on this subject in a statement that was -published by Meredith Starr in his book on “The Future of the Novel.” - -“A novel seems to me,” says Walpole, “quite simply a business of -telling a story about certain people whom the writer attempts to make -as living as possible. Probably behind the lines of these people there -would be some philosophy of life either stated definitely or implied -in the attitude of the author.... If I were to make any prophesy -about the future of the novel, I would say that many of us are growing -tired of the thirst for novelty and are turning back with relief to -any simple presentment of real people in a real way. A good instance -of this is the wonderful recrudescence of Anthony Trollope, who cared -nothing about form or technique or style, and had, indeed, the smallest -pretensions of himself as a novelist. But he kept his eyes fixed on -the characters about whom he was writing and tried to tell the truth -about them as he saw them. He was indeed too deeply interested in their -adventures to think about anything else. And I believe that it is this -kind of simplicity of interest on the part of the narrator to which we -will return.” - -The Trenchards are a kind of family Trollope might have created had he -been living now; “The Cathedral” is a kind of story he might have told, -with its realistic melodrama and its clerical atmosphere, but Walpole -tells it with a subtler art in the writing and the construction, with -a conciseness and charm of style that are outside the range of the -earlier novelist. Trollope was fat, ponderous, bewhiskered; Walpole -is tall, well-knit, clean-shaven, looks even younger than his years, -is nimble-witted and modern-minded; and the two do not differ more in -personality than in their manner of telling a tale. The tale, and the -truth of it, may be the law for both, but though they row in the same -boat, to apply the pun to Douglas Jerrold, it is with very different -skulls. - -Most of Walpole’s work is done at his cottage by the sea in Cornwall; -he retires to that seclusion when a new idea has taken hold upon him, -stays there for some months at a stretch, then, with another novel -completed, returns to London for recreation, and is a very familiar -figure again at all manner of social functions, and one of the -cleverest and most popular of after-dinner speakers. “We love him out -yonder,” an American assured me; “none of your author-lecturers who -come over to us has larger or more delighted audiences.” A cousin of -the Earl of Orford, I have seen it said that he indirectly inherits -no little of the wit and shrewd worldly wisdom of his distant kinsman -Horace Walpole; but the realism and haunting mysticism of “The Dark -Forest” have nothing in common with the crudely romantic terrors of -“The Castle of Otranto,” and his wit and perspicacity are mitigated -by a genial human kindness that is no part of that conjectural -inheritance. - - - - -HERBERT GEORGE WELLS - -[Illustration: HERBERT GEORGE WELLS] - - -H. G. Wells made one of his mistakes--even the wisest of us have to -make a few--when, during a controversy with Henry James, he breezily -denied that he was an artist and proclaimed himself a journalist. I -think he must have said it with his tongue in his cheek; anyhow, it was -a mistake to put that opinion into anybody’s mind and those words into -anybody’s mouth, for there are always critics and artists, mainly of -the lesser breeds, ready enough, without such prompting, to belittle -any greatness that gets in their way. - -Undoubtedly, Wells is a journalist, and a mightily efficient one; -but he is also as subtle and fine an artist as you shall find among -our living men of letters, and something of an authentic prophet, -to boot. I hope his ideal state will never be realized; it is too -dreadfully efficient, too exactly organized, so all mechanical, with -human beings clicking in as part of the machinery that, if it ever -came to pass, life in it would be reduced to such monotony that I -am quite certain he would himself be one of the first to emigrate. -You may say the journalist is uppermost in his social and economic -gospels, such as “A Modern Utopia” and “New Worlds for Old,” in those -wonderful imaginative, inventive scientific romances, “The First Men -in the Moon,” “The War of the Worlds,” “The War in the Air,” “Men -Like Gods,” and in novels so given over to problems of religion, -morals, sex, education and general contemporary life and conduct as -are “God the Invisible King,” “Joan and Peter,” “Ann Veronica,” “The -Soul of a Bishop,” “The Undying Fire,” and “The Secret Places of the -Heart,” yet in all these it could be demonstrated that the artist and -the prophet collaborated with the journalist. It has been said that -when in those early romances he foresaw the coming of the Great War -and the part the aeroplane would play in it he was no prophet but a -clever prognosticator who had followed the progress of invention, noted -certain tendencies and calculated their developments as one might work -out a problem in mathematics, and that a prophet needs no such guides -to knowledge but speaks by inspiration and is concerned only with the -things of the spirit. However that may be, it is with the things of the -spirit that he is mostly preoccupied in at least three of the six later -novels I have just mentioned and, to name but one, his vision of “God -the Invisible King” is more like prophetic utterance than any we have -had in our time. - -But he is before all else an artist in the greatest of his novels--in -“The Wheels of Chance,” “Love and Mr. Lewisham,” “Kipps,” “The History -of Mr. Polly,” “Tono Bungay” and “The New Machiavelli,” in “The Country -of the Blind” and nearly all the other short stories in the same -volume. That book epitomises Wells’s versatile genius; its stories -represent in little nearly every variety of his work. They are by turns -fantastic, humorous, supernatural, visionary, grimly terrible and -sternly or sympathetically realistic. Personally, I like him best here, -as in his larger works, when his stories are all of ordinary men and -women living average human lives in the light of common day; but his -bizarre studies in psychology, his short tales of the eerie, nightmare -order and those that grow out of surprising scientific discoveries are -fashioned with an art as sure and as strong and as finished. If the -author of “The Country of the Blind” and “Kipps” is not an artist but a -journalist the sooner our other writers of fiction take to journalism -the better, both for them and for us. - -He is one of those exceptional authors who are in themselves exactly -what they seem to be in their books. Unaffected, alive with energy, -sociable, genially talkative, it is an amusing object lesson to see -him seated at a public dinner next to some distinguished but orthodox -philosopher of less learning than himself, younger but looking -older, with none of his imaginary power, his far-seeing vision, his -originality and suggestiveness as a thinker, who is yet clothed in the -gravity, reticence, aloofness that are supposed to denote superior -wisdom. There is nothing so impressive in Wells’s manner, his quick -gestures, his high, not unpleasant voice; but his keen gray eyes, with -a humorous twinkle in the depths of them, look out from under a broad, -massive forehead that prevents his appearance from being commonplace. -Sidney Dark has called him “The Superman-in-the-Street.” He is a great -deal more than that, but he owes his deep knowledge of humanity, his -broad sympathy with its sufferings and aspirations to the fact that he -did at the outset share the homely satisfactions, the limitations and -disadvantages that are the lot of the man-in-the-street, grew wise in -those experiences, and carried the memory of them with him into the -study. A far more profitable proceeding than to arrive in the study -ignorant and learn of the outer world from hearsay or from what others -have written. - -Socialist, scientist, practical idealist, immensely interested in -men and affairs, insatiably curious about all life, its origins, -implications, possibilities, restlessly delving into the history and -mystery of the past for truths that would light his guesses at the -darker mystery of the future, it was natural for Wells to put his -latest interests into each new book that he wrote, whether it was a -matter-of-fact philosophical treatise or romantic or realistic fiction. -If this habit of using as material for his work whatever was readiest -to hand led to his scandalizing friends and acquaintance by putting -even them, under thin disguises, into certain of his novels, he has, at -least, put himself into them also and no little of his autobiography. -You may trace the growth of his mind, the development of his ideas -through his successive books. He has been accused of inconsistency by -those who fancied his opinion had changed because it had matured, that -he had acquired a new root when he had merely grown new branches. All -his life, as somebody once said, he has been thus educating himself in -the public eye, but he was educating himself strenuously and in face of -many difficulties long before the eye of the public became aware of him. - -He was born, in 1866, at Bromley, Kent, where his father, a noted -cricketer who played in the County team, kept a small glass and china -and general shop. But the business failed; his father had to find -employment; his mother went as housekeeper to a great house near -Petersfield and Wells, then about thirteen, was apprenticed to a draper -at Windsor. Before long, he left there to go to Midhurst as assistant -to a chemist, and presently abandoned that profession to resume his -interrupted schooling at Wimblehurst. Thence, in 1881, he went to be, -for a brief period, pupil teacher at his uncle’s school in Somerset, -and gave that up to take to his first trade again in a draper’s shop at -Southsea. After two years of this, he emerged as assistant teacher at -Midhurst Grammar School, till, having won a scholarship at the South -Kensington School of Science, and taken his B.Sc. degree with honors, -he secured an appointment to teach Science and English at Henley House -School, St. John’s Wood. To increase his income, he passed from that to -work as lecturer and tutor to some University Correspondence Classes, -and the incessant and arduous labor this involved resulted in such a -complete breakdown of health that he had to resign his appointment and -go away to the south coast to rest and recuperate. - -But before he was fairly convalescent the irksomeness of doing nothing -and the need of getting an income prompted him to try his luck with his -pen. So far his literary work had not gone beyond what I am told was an -admirable biological text-book, contributions to technical journals, -and a few occasional newspaper articles. He turned now to writing -essays and sketches of a light and humorous kind, and found a ready -market for them in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and other papers. Once in -the lists as a literary free-lance, he rode from success to success -with astonishing deftness and energy. In 1895 he published “Select -Conversations with an Uncle,” but it was eclipsed by the appearance in -the same year of “The Stolen Bacillus and Other Stories,” and two of -the most original and characteristic of his early imaginative tales, -“The Time Machine” and “The Wonderful Visit.” Next year, hard on the -heels of that grim fantasy, “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” came the most -charmingly humorous, realistic-idyllic of his novels, “The Wheels of -Chance.” - -No man with a serious purpose should, in this country, retain a sense -of humor. If nature has afflicted him with one, he should do his best -to have it removed; it is more inimical to his well-being than an -appendix. But Wells seems to be incurable, and that he has carelessly -broken through all manner of prejudices to almost universal acceptance, -in spite of his handicap of humor, is in itself a testimony to the -power and quality of his work. If Darwin had followed “The Origin -of Species” by writing “Three Men in a Boat” I doubt whether the -pundits would have taken him seriously enough to have him buried in -Westminster Abbey. Wells, having published a novel and three searching -and profoundly earnest books on the Great War in 1914, burst forth next -year with the farcical, bitingly satirical “Boon” and the irresponsibly -laughable, “Bealby,” and immediately after appealed to us with his -prophetic “What is Coming?” and one of his finest novels, and certainly -the finest novel of the War, “Mr. Britling Sees it Through.” - -All which is, of course, as it should be. It is your little man who -has only one mood for all occasions, and dare not laugh and unbend -from his pose and come down from his pedestal lest he should seem -no bigger than those who had looked up to him. While other scholars -are toiling laboriously to write the record of a single nation, or a -single reign, Wells sandwiches between novel and novel that stupendous -survey, “The Outline of History,” which is not only a scholarly and -vastly comprehensive chronicle of the evolution of man and the progress -of humanity the world over from the dawn of time to the day before -yesterday, but is, as Macaulay rightly said all history ought to be, as -easy and fascinating reading as any work of fiction. - -No English author has a wider vogue outside his own country--he is -popular in America, and in Russia, Germany, Scandinavia, where many -other of our famous writers are unknown; and who was that Frenchman -that, on a visit to London, expressed himself as agreeably surprised to -discover that Wells is nearly as much appreciated over here as he is in -France? - - - - -ISRAEL ZANGWILL - -[Illustration: ISRAEL ZANGWILL] - - -Although I don’t think I ever exchanged a dozen words with him until -recently, since the days of my youth I have felt a special personal -interest in Israel Zangwill. With the passing of time, as it became -possible to know him from his books and his public doings, that -interest has strengthened to admiration and a real regard alike for -the great qualities of his work and the courageous sincerity of -his character; but I fancy it had its beginnings in quite trifling -associations. We were both born Londoners, and started in the same -way: when we were twenty, or less, we were competing against each -other for prizes in a weekly paper called _Society_, and I believe his -first appearance in print was with a prize story in that long deceased -periodical. I am a little uncertain of the exact dates, but he was -still in his twenties when he started _Ariel_, a brilliant rival to -_Punch_, and I sent him some contributions for it which he did not -use. About the same time I ran another short-lived rival to _Punch_ -myself, but he sent me no contributions for it, or, without desiring -to heap coals of fire on his head, I should have used them. Then we -both became members of the New Vagabond Club, and used to meet at -its dinners occasionally and sometimes nod to each other, but never -spoke. As a matter of fact, I don’t suppose he knew who I was and -cannot have suspected that I entertained such warm and proprietorial -sentiments toward him. For many years now, since his marriage (his -wife, the daughter of Professor W. E. Ayrton, is herself a novelist of -distinction), he has made his home at East Preston, in Sussex, and his -visits to London have been few and far between. But when he was up on -business, staying at his chambers in the Temple, I used to come across -him at long intervals careering down the Strand or Fleet Street, and -always felt I was meeting a sort of old friend, though, until recently, -we passed without recognition. - -It was in 1864 that he was born, his father being an exile who, lying -under sentence of death for a trivial military offence, had escaped -to this country from a Russian prison. He was educated at the Jews’ -Free School, in East London, where, a year or two before taking his -B. A. degree, with triple honors, at the London University, he became -a teacher. But teaching, though he proved extraordinarily successful -at it, was not to be his career. In 1888, he wrote in collaboration -with Louis Cowen a farcical political romance, “The Premier and -the Painter,” and presently resigned his scholastic engagement and -proceeded to earn a livelihood by free-lance literature and journalism. -That success did not come to him till he had paid for it in hard work -you may know by the moral he drew from his memories of those days when -he wrote (as J. A. Hammerton records in his “Humorists of To-Day”), “If -you are blessed with some talent, a great deal of industry, and an -amount of conceit mighty enough to enable you to disregard superiors, -equals and critics, as well as the fancied demands of the public, it is -possible, without friends, or introductions, or bothering celebrities -to read your manuscripts, or cultivating the camp of log-rollers, -to attain, by dint of slaving day and night for years during the -flower of your youth, to a fame infinitely less wide-spread than a -prize-fighter’s and a pecuniary position which you might with far less -trouble have been born to.” - -But in the first two years of the 90’s he had established himself as a -humorist with “The Bachelor’s Club,” “The Old Maid’s Club,” and “The -Big Bow Mystery,” an ingenious burlesque of the popular detective story -which was as exciting as the real thing; and as a new novelist of high -and original achievement with “The Children of the Ghetto.” Just then -Jerome and Robert Barr started _The Idler_, with G. B. Burgin as their -assistant editor: a year later Jerome launched _To-Day_, and Zangwill, -who, on the strength of his earlier books, had been branded by the -superior as a “humorist,” was among the notable group of young writers -that J. K. J. collected on his two magazines. Many of his short stories -appeared in the one, and to the other he contributed a causerie, -“Without Prejudice” (which re-emerged in due course as a book), and his -novel, “The Master,” as a serial. - -“The Master” is a sustained and revealing study of a single -character--the story of a young painter, Matt Strang, who comes from -Nova Scotia to London, self-centered, afire with ambition, but it is -not till, broken by disillusion and failure, he withdraws from the -babble and dazzle of art circles and social swaggerings, returns to -the obscurity of his own home and subserviates his hopes to his wife’s -happiness that he finds himself and is able to do the great work he had -dreamt of doing. There is more of the ironic, satirical Zangwill in -“The Mantle of Elijah”; he places his scenes in the days of Palmerston, -but drives home a big-minded gospel that is as badly needed in the -politics of these days as it was then. Broser, a strong, self-confident -political leader, rises to power by breaking his promises and changing -his convictions as often as necessary and is acclaimed the savior of -his country, but he has a wife, Allegra, whose conscience is not so -accommodating, who cannot abandon her principles whenever he abandons -his, and in the hour of his triumph she leaves him, to devote herself -to working for the cause that, in the interests of his career, he had -betrayed. - -Nearly twenty years later Zangwill gave us “Jinny the Carrier,” a very -charming story of mid-Victorian life and character in rural Essex; -but his finest, most memorable work in fiction has been done as the -interpreter of his own people. This he is in “Children of the Ghetto,” -in the whimsical grotesque, broadly and grimly humorous tales of “The -King of Schnorrers,” that glorious Hebrew mendicant Manasseh Bueno -Barzillai Azevedo da Costa, and in the masterly little stories of light -and shadow that make up the “Ghetto Tragedies” and “Ghetto Comedies.” -He has his unique place in letters as the novelist of London’s modern -Jewry. Aldgate, Whitechapel, Hoxton, Dalston, all the roads and byways, -mean lanes and squalid squares there and thereabouts are a world large -and varied and crowded enough for his purposes. His pride of race glows -as surely in such stories of the children of his fancy, the poor of the -Ghetto, their profoundly simple piety, their patience, self-sacrifice, -humble endurance, human kindness, as in his subtle studies of those -real, yet scarcely more real in seeming, “Dreamers of the Ghetto,” -Heine, Lasalle, Spinoza, and other such seers and prophets of -latter-day Israel. But he is too much of an artist to suppress anything -of the truth, and dealing with his own people, actual or imaginary, he -shows them starkly as they are, their vices as well as their virtues, -their avarice, meanness, hypocrisies, as well as their generosity and -loyalties. He is steeped in the Jewish tradition, and fills in the -atmosphere and intimate detail of his pictures with most meticulous -realism; he is ready enough to ridicule obsolete racial bigotries -and ancient customs that have lost their meaning, but is sensitively -reverent to the beauty and mystic significance of all old ceremonies -and practices that still embody the essential spirit of the faith. - -Nowhere has the soul of the London Jew (and the rich Jew who lives -in the West has not been overlooked) been more sympathetically or -impartially unveiled than in Zangwill’s novel and tales of the Ghetto. -His tragedies are touched with comedy, his comedies with tragedy; if -I were limited to three of his short stories, I would name “They that -Sit in Darkness,” “Transitional” and “To Die in Jerusalem,” for their -delicate art and simple directness of narrative, among the greatest in -the language. - -How many plays Zangwill has written altogether I do not know; but he -began in 1892 with “Six Persons,” a comedy, and in the last decade or -so has written more plays than stories. “Merely Mary Ann,” a tale of a -quaint little lodging-house slavey, came out first as a short novel, -then was adapted to the stage and had a popular success in both forms. -He dramatized “Children of the Ghetto”; and “Jinny the Carrier” was -a domestic drama before it was a novel. But his bigger work in this -kind is “The Melting Pot,” “The War God,” “The Next Religion,” “The -Forcing House” and “The Cockpit.” Each of them is inspired with a high -and serious purpose. The first is a moving plea for race-fusion: the -Jews are not a nation but a race; they become absorbed into the nation -where they make their home, and you are shown how David Quixano, in -America, “God’s crucible, where all the races of Europe are melting and -re-forming,” is moulded into a patriotic American with a passionate -ideal of freedom. “The War God,” with its appeal for international -goodwill and its scathing indictment of the crime and folly of war -is a prophetic commentary on much that has befallen the world since -1912; “The Forcing House” is a tragi-comedy of revolution, which has -its parallel in Bolshevik Russia; “The Cockpit” is the tragi-comedy, -edged at times with bitterest satire, of the restoration of a Queen -who, bent on ruling by love, is thwarted and brought to disaster by her -ministers, who have a family likeness to ministers everywhere; and “The -War God” (1911) was recognized as the noblest, most impressive drama -that had been seen on the London stage for years. - -If Zangwill’s road has sometimes been difficult, one reason is that -he has never gone with the crowd, never been afraid to go against the -view of the majority. More than once he has got himself into trouble -through championing unpopular causes. When it needed courage to come -out openly in favor of Woman’s Suffrage, he supported it in the press -and on the platform; for he is as witty and can be as devastating with -his tongue as with his pen. And with all these activities he has found -time to do a lot of spade work as President of the International Jewish -Territorial Organization, which aims at establishing Jewish Colonies -wherever land can be found for them, and time to give practical service -in Leagues and Committees that are doing what is possible to build up -the peace and universal brotherhood that politicians are too busy to do -more than talk about. From which you may take it that he does not put -all his sympathies into the printed page, does not write one way and -live another, but that his books and his life are of a piece, and if -you know them you know him. - - - - -INDEX - - - A - - Ainsworth, W. Harrison, 103 - - _Ariel_, 313 - - Austen, Jane, 33, 273 - - - B - - Ballantyne, R. M., 103 - - Barr, Robert, 315 - - Barrie, Sir James, 153, 235, 243 - - Bateman, Miss Isabel, 208 - - Bateman, Leah, 183 - - “Beachcomber,” 75 - - Beardsley, Aubrey, 153 - - Beaumont and Fletcher, 13 - - _Beeton’s Annual_, 86 - - _Belgravia_, 86 - - Bell, J. J., 243 - - Bell, Dr. Joseph, 86 - - Belloc, Hilaire, 13, 19, 244 - - Belloc-Lowndes, Mrs., 274 - - Bennett, Arnold, 23-29, 104, 273 - - Benson, Stella, 274 - - Beresford, J. D., 33-39, 44 - - _Blackwood’s Magazine_, 254 - - Blake, William, 67, 193 - - Blomfield, Sir Arthur, 4 - - _Bookman_, 75 - - Bottome, Phyllis, 274 - - Braddon, Miss, 223, 225 - - Brontë, Charlotte, 76, 273, 277 - - Brown, T. E., 74 - - Browning, 8, 113, 255 - - Buchan, John, 43-50 - - Bunyan, John, 78 - - Burgin, G. B., 316 - - Burke, Thomas, 114 - - Burns, Robert, 43 - - Byrne, Donn, 53 - - Byron, 3, 83 - - _Bystander_, 238 - - - C - - Caine, Sir Hall, 263 - - Carlyle, Thomas, 99 - - Clare, John, 66 - - Clifford, Mrs. W. K., 123, 274 - - Crabbe, George, 33 - - Crackanthorpe, Hubert, 123 - - Chamberlain, Austin, 114 - - _Chambers’s Journal_, 4 - - Chaucer, 255 - - Chesterton, Cecil, 18 - - Chesterton, G. K., 13, 14, 167, 235, 244 - - Cholmondeley, Mary, 274 - - Coleridge, 73, 93 - - Collins, Arthur, 237 - - Collins, Wilkie, 263, 264, 266 - - Colmore, George, 274 - - Compton, Edward, 183 - - Compton, G. C., 183 - - Conrad, Joseph, 273 - - _Cornhill Magazine_, 76, 87 - - Cowen, Louis, 314 - - Crashaw, 33 - - - D - - _Daily Graphic_, 136 - - _Daily Mail_, 67, 68 - - Danby, Frank, 223 - - Dane, Clemence, 274 - - Daniel, Samuel, 109 - - Dark, Sidney, 305 - - Darwin, 309 - - Davies, W. H., 63-69, 255 - - de la Mare, Walter, 73-80, 95, 255 - - de Mattos, Texiera, 176 - - De Morgan, William, 186, 268, 279 - - Dickens, 8, 66, 113, 154, 157, 158, 167, 186, 204, 263, 273, 284, 297 - - Disraeli, Benjamin, 178, 208, 223 - - Donne, 33 - - Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 83-89 - - Doyle, John, 85 - - Doyle, Richard, 86 - - Drinkwater, John, 93-99 - - Dudeney, Mrs. Henry, 274 - - - E - - Edalji, George, 84 - - Egerton, George, 123 - - Eliot, George, 5, 273 - - _English Review_, 76 - - Erckmann-Chatrian, 13 - - Evans, C. S., 44 - - Eyles, M. Leonora, 274 - - - F - - Farnol, Jeffery, 103-109 - - Fielding, Henry, 273 - - Findlater, Mary and Jane, 274 - - FitzGerald, Edward, 193 - - France, Anatole, 164 - - Frankau, Gilbert, 223 - - Freud, Professor, 189 - - - G - - Galsworthy, John, 113-119, 274 - - George, W. L., 297 - - Gibson, W. W., 96, 193, 195 - - Gissing, George, 123, 284, 288, 289 - - Goldring, Douglas, 297 - - Goldsmith, 33 - - Gosse, Edmund, 274 - - Grahame, Kenneth, 44 - - Grand, Sarah, 274 - - _Granta_, 244 - - Greenwood, Frederick, 5 - - - H - - Haggard, Sir Rider, 123 - - Hammerton, J. A., 314 - - Hardy, Thomas, 3-10, 73, 193, 194, 195, 235, 263, 273 - - Harraden, Beatrice, 274 - - Harris, Augustus, 236, 237 - - Hawkins, Sir Anthony Hope, 123-129 - - Hawley, Hughson, 104 - - Hay, Ian, 243 - - Henley, W. E., 153 - - Herbert, George, 33 - - Herrick, 33, 74 - - Hodder-Williams, Sir Ernest, 44 - - Holland, Clive, 224 - - Howard, Keble, 173, 174 - - Hunt, Violet, 274 - - Hutchinson, A. S. M., 133-139 - - - I - - _Idler, The_, 315 - - Ingram, Roger, 44 - - - J - - James, Henry, 53, 223, 303 - - Jameson, Storm, 274 - - Jenkins, Herbert, 44 - - Jerome, J. K., 127, 315 - - Jerrold, Douglas, 123 - - Joyce, James, 279 - - - K - - Kaye-Smith, Sheila, 143-150, 274 - - Keats, 3, 8, 74, 77, 193 - - Kingsley, Charles, 33 - - Kipling, Rudyard, 15, 123, 153-159, 193, 195, 196 - - Knoblauch, Edward, 29 - - - L - - Lamb, Charles, 74 - - Lang, Andrew, 87, 206 - - Lawrence, C. E., 44 - - Le Galliene, Richard, 53 - - Locke, W. J., 163-169, 177, 235 - - Lucas, E. V., 244 - - Lynd, Robert, 75 - - Lyons, A. Neil, 235 - - Lytton, Lord, 207 - - - M - - Macaulay, Lord, 83, 309 - - Macaulay, Rose, 274 - - McKenna, Stephen, 173-179 - - Mackenzie, Compton, 183-189, 297 - - Malet, Lucas, 274 - - Mann, Mary E., 274 - - Markino, Yoshio, 104 - - Marlowe, Christopher, 255 - - Marvell, Andrew, 213 - - Masefield, John, 193-200, 255 - - Mason, A. E. W., 203-209 - - Matz, B. W., 44 - - Maugham, W. S., 213-219 - - Maxwell, John, 224 - - Maxwell, W. B., 223-229 - - Meredith, George, 253, 263, 297 - - Merrick, Leonard, 233-239 - - Methuen, Sir Algernon, 44 - - Meynell, Viola, 274 - - Milne, A. A., 243 - - Milner, Lord, 46 - - Moore, George, 114, 123 - - Mordaunt, Elinor, 274 - - Morris, William, 99 - - Morrison, Arthur, 123, 217 - - Munro, Neil, 235, 243 - - - N - - Nelson, Thomas & Sons, 43 - - Newman, Cardinal, 15 - - Noyes, Alfred, 253-259 - - - O - - Onions, Oliver, 123 - - Oppenheim, E. Phillips, 263-269 - - - P - - _Pall Mall Gazette_, 308 - - Palmer, Cecil, 44 - - Parker, Sir Gilbert, 123 - - Paston, George, 183 - - Payn, James, 87, 267 - - _Pearson’s Magazine_, 135, 136 - - Phelps, Dr. Lyon, 275, 277 - - Phillips, F. C., 237 - - Poe, 76 - - Pope, Alexander, 193 - - Priestly, Joseph, 14 - - Pugh, Edwin, 123, 217 - - _Punch_, 34, 86, 134, 244, 245, 249, 313 - - - R - - _Rapid Review_, 135 - - Reid, Mayne, 103 - - Richards, Grant, 225 - - Richardson, Dorothy, 274, 279 - - Ridge, W. Pett, 123, 217 - - Robins, Elizabeth, 123 - - _Royal Magazine_, 135 - - - S - - Sadleir, Michael, 44, 273 - - Sassoon, Siegfried, 193 - - Scott, Mrs. C. A. Dawson, 274 - - Scott, Dixon, 194 - - Scott, Sir Walter, 103 - - _Scraps_, 135 - - Shakespeare, 97, 159, 183 - - Shaw, G. Bernard, 68, 153, 223 - - Sheridan, R. B., 207 - - Sidgwick, Ethel, 274 - - Sims, G. R., 237 - - Sinclair, May, 273-279 - - Slater, Oscar, 84 - - Smith, Adam, 43 - - Smith, Alexander, 94 - - Smith, Sydney, 83 - - Smith, W. H. & Son, 34 - - _Society_, 313 - - _Spectator, The_, 47 - - Spender, J. A., 74 - - Spenser, Edmund, 74 - - Squire, J. C., 274 - - Starr, Meredith, 297 - - Stern, G. B., 274 - - Sterne, Lawrence, 33 - - Stevenson, R. L., 103, 123, 153, 155 - - Swift, 17, 77, 243, 244 - - Swinburne, 100, 255, 256 - - Swinnerton, Frank, 44, 283-289 - - Symonds, John Addington, 183 - - - T - - _Temple Bar_, 87 - - Tennyson, 8, 74, 113, 193, 194, 255 - - Thackeray, 8, 113, 186, 188, 273, 297 - - Thomas, Edward, 78, 79 - - _Times Literary Supplement_, 75 - - _To-day_, 315 - - Trollope, Anthony, 23, 113, 117, 188, 223, 296-298 - - Trollope, Frances, 223 - - - W - - Walpole, Horace, 299 - - Walpole, Hugh, 293-299 - - Watson, Frederick, 44 - - Watson, Sir William, 255 - - Watt, A. P., 238 - - Waugh, Alec, 44 - - Waugh, Arthur, 44 - - Webb, Mary, 224 - - Webling, Peggy, 274 - - Wells, H. G., 123, 153, 235, 274, 288, 303-310 - - West, Rebecca, 274 - - _Westminster Gazette_, 35, 75 - - Weyman, Stanley, 103, 114, 124, 125 - - Whitman, Walt, 256 - - Wilde, Oscar, 153, 217 - - Willcocks, M. P., 274 - - Woolf, Virginia, 274 - - Wordsworth, 69, 76, 193 - - Wyllarde, Dolf, 274 - - - Y - - Young, Edward, 33 - - - Z - - Zangwill, I., 313-319 - - - - -Transcriber’s Notes - -Obvious errors in punctuation have been fixed. - -Page 107: “a like wizard” changed to “like a wizard” - -Page 137: “old ideals of feminity” changed to “old ideals of femininity” - -Page 159: “where ordinnary folks” changed to “where ordinary folks” - -Page 259: “under their miscroscopes” changed to “under their -microscopes” - -Page 278: “short shory” changed to “short story” - -Page 285: “critized each others” changed to “criticized each other’s” - -Page 286: “this bouyant” changed to “this buoyant” - -Page 295: “the successsive books” changed to “the successive books” - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODS OF MODERN GRUB -STREET *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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St. John Adcock</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Gods of Modern Grub Street</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>Impressions of Contemporary Authors</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: A. St. John Adcock</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Photographer: E. O. Hoppé</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April 19, 2022 [eBook #67878]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODS OF MODERN GRUB STREET ***</div> - - - - - -<h1>GODS OF MODERN GRUB STREET</h1> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img001"> - <img src="images/001.jpg" class="w50" alt="Thomas Hardy" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Thomas Hardy</span><br /></p> -</div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="center xbig"> GODS OF<br /> - MODERN GRUB STREET</p> - -<p class="center"> <i>IMPRESSIONS OF CONTEMPORARY - AUTHORS</i></p> - -<p class="center p2"> BY<br /> - A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK</p> - -<p class="center p2"> <i>WITH THIRTY-TWO PORTRAITS<br /> - AFTER PHOTOGRAPHS BY</i></p> - -<p class="center"> E. O. HOPPÉ</p> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img002"> - <img src="images/002.jpg" class="w10" alt="Publisher mark" /> -</span></p> - -<p class="center p4"> NEW YORK<br /> -<span class="big">FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY</span><br /> - MCMXXIII -</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="center small"> <i>Copyright, 1923, by</i> - <span class="smcap">Frederick A. Stokes Company</span></p> -<hr class="r5" /> -<p class="center small"> <i>All Rights Reserved</i></p> - - -<p class="center p4 small"> <i>Printed in the United States of America</i> -</p></div> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - -<table class="autotable"> -<tr> -<th> -</th> -<th class="tdr page"> -PAGE -</th> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#THOMAS_HARDY"><span class="smcap">Thomas Hardy</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_3">3</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#HILAIRE_BELLOC"><span class="smcap">Hilaire Belloc</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_13">13</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#ARNOLD_BENNETT"><span class="smcap">Arnold Bennett</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_23">23</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#JOHN_DAVYS_BERESFORD"><span class="smcap">John Davys Beresford</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_33">33</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#JOHN_BUCHAN"><span class="smcap">John Buchan</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_43">43</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#DONN_BYRNE"><span class="smcap">Donn Byrne</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_53">53</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#WILLIAM_HENRY_DAVIES"><span class="smcap">William Henry Davies</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_63">63</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#WALTER_DE_LA_MARE"><span class="smcap">Walter de la Mare</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_73">73</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#SIR_ARTHUR_CONAN_DOYLE"><span class="smcap">Sir Arthur Conan Doyle</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_83">83</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#JOHN_DRINKWATER"><span class="smcap">John Drinkwater</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_93">93</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#JEFFERY_FARNOL"><span class="smcap">Jeffery Farnol</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_103">103</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#JOHN_GALSWORTHY"><span class="smcap">John Galsworthy</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_113">113</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#SIR_ANTHONY_HOPE_HAWKINS"><span class="smcap">Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_123">123</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#ARTHUR_STUART_MENTETH_HUTCHINSON"><span class="smcap">Arthur Stuart Menteth Hutchinson</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_133">133</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#SHEILA_KAYE-SMITH"><span class="smcap">Sheila Kaye-Smith</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_143">143</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#RUDYARD_KIPLING"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_153">153</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#WILLIAM_JOHN_LOCKE"><span class="smcap">William John Locke</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_163">163</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#STEPHEN_McKENNA"><span class="smcap">Stephen McKenna</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_173">173</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#COMPTON_MACKENZIE"><span class="smcap">Compton Mackenzie</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_183">183</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#JOHN_MASEFIELD"><span class="smcap">John Masefield</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_193">193</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</span> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#ALFRED_EDWARD_WOODLEY_MASON"><span class="smcap">Alfred Edward Woodley Mason</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_203">203</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#WILLIAM_SOMERSET_MAUGHAM"><span class="smcap">William Somerset Maugham</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_213">213</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#WILLIAM_BABINGTON_MAXWELL"><span class="smcap">William Babington Maxwell</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_223">223</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#LEONARD_MERRICK"><span class="smcap">Leonard Merrick</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_233">233</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#ALAN_ALEXANDER_MILNE"><span class="smcap">Alan Alexander Milne</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_243">243</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#ALFRED_NOYES"><span class="smcap">Alfred Noyes</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_253">253</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#E_PHILLIPS_OPPENHEIM"><span class="smcap">E. Phillips Oppenheim</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_263">263</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#MAY_SINCLAIR"><span class="smcap">May Sinclair</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_273">273</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#FRANK_SWINNERTON"><span class="smcap">Frank Swinnerton</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_283">283</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#HUGH_WALPOLE"><span class="smcap">Hugh Walpole</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_293">293</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#HERBERT_GEORGE_WELLS"><span class="smcap">Herbert George Wells</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_303">303</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#ISRAEL_ZANGWILL"><span class="smcap">Israel Zangwill</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_313">313</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> - -<a href="#INDEX"><span class="smcap">Index</span></a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_323">323</a> -</td> -</tr> -</table> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</span></p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> -</div> - - -<table class="autotable"> -<tr> -<th> -</th> -<th class="tdr page"> -FACING PAGE -</th> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img001">Thomas Hardy</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#img001"><i>Frontispiece</i></a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img003">Hilaire Belloc</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_11">12</a> -</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img004">Arnold Bennett</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_21">22</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img005">John Davys Beresford</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_31">32</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img006">John Buchan</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_41">42</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img007">Donn Byrne</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_51">52</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img008">William Henry Davies</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_61">62</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img009">Walter de la Mare</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_71">72</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img010">Sir Arthur Conan Doyle</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_81">82</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img011">John Drinkwater</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_91">92</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img012">Jeffery Farnol</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_101">102</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img013">John Galsworthy</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_111">112</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img014">Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_121">122</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img015">Arthur Stuart Menteth Hutchinson</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_131">132</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img016">Sheila Kaye-Smith</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_141">142</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img017">Rudyard Kipling</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_151">152</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img018">William John Locke</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_161">162</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img019">Stephen McKenna</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_171">172</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img020">Compton Mackenzie</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_181">182</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img021">John Masefield</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_191">192</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img022">Alfred Edward Woodley Mason</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</span> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_201">202</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img023">William Somerset Maugham</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_211">212</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img024">William Babington Maxwell</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_221">222</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img025">Leonard Merrick</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_231">232</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img026">Alan Alexander Milne</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_241">242</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img027">Alfred Noyes</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_251">252</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img028">E. Phillips Oppenheim</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_261">262</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img029">May Sinclair</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_271">272</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img030">Frank Swinnerton</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_281">282</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img031">Hugh Walpole</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_291">292</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img032">Herbert George Wells</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_301">302</a> -</td></tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl"> -<a href="#img033">Israel Zangwill</a> -</td> -<td class="tdr page"> -<a href="#Page_311">312</a> -</td></tr> -</table> -<p> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THOMAS_HARDY">THOMAS HARDY</h2> -</div> - - -<p>Those who dissent from Byron’s <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">dictum</i> that Keats was “snuffed -out by an article” usually add that no author was ever killed by -criticism; yet there seems little doubt that the critics killed Thomas -Hardy the novelist, and our only consolation is that from the ashes of -the novelist, phœnix-like rose Thomas Hardy the Poet.</p> - -<p>As a novelist, Hardy began and finished his career in the days of -Victoria, but though he has only been asserting himself as a poet -since then, his earliest verse was written in the sixties; his first -collection of poetry, the “Wessex Poems,” appeared in 1898, and his -second in the closing year of the Queen’s reign. These facts should -give us pause when we are disposed to sneer again at Victorian -literature. Even the youngest scribe among us is constrained to -grant the greatness of this living Victorian, so if we insist that -the Victorians are over-rated we imply some disparagement of their -successors, who have admittedly produced no novelists that rank so high -as Hardy and few poets, if any, that rank higher.</p> - -<p>Born at Upper Bockhampton, a village near Dorchester, on the 2nd June, -1840, <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Hardy passed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span> his childhood and youth amid the scenes and -people that were, in due season, to serve as material for his stories -and poems. At seventeen a natural bent drew him to choose architecture -as a profession, and he studied first under an ecclesiastical architect -in Dorchester, then, three years later, in London, under Sir Arthur -Blomfield, proving his efficiency by winning the Tite prize for -architectural design, and the Institute of British Architects’ prize -and medal for an essay on Colored and Terra Cotta Architecture.</p> - -<p>But he was already finding himself and realizing that the work he was -born to do was not such as could be materialized in brick and stone. He -had been writing verse in his leisure and, in his twenties, “practised -the writing of poetry” for five years with characteristic thoroughness; -but, recognizing perhaps that it was not to be taken seriously as a -means of livelihood, he presently abandoned that art; to resume it -triumphantly when he was nearing sixty.</p> - -<p>His first published prose was a light, humorous sketch of “How I Built -Myself a House,” which appeared in <i>Chambers’s Journal</i> for March, -1865. In 1871 came his first novel, “Desperate Remedies,” a story more -of plot and sensation than of character, which met with no particular -success. Next year, however, Thomas Hardy entered into his kingdom with -that “rural painting of the Dutch school,” “Under the Greenwood Tree,” -a delightful, realistic prose pastoral that has more of charm and -tenderness than any other of his tales, except “The Trumpet Major.” The -critics recognized its quality and,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span> without making a noise, it found -favor with the public. What we now know as the distinctive Hardy touch -is in its sketches of country life and subtle revelations of rural -character, in its deliberate precision of style, its naked realism, its -humor and quiet irony; and if the realism was to grow sterner, as he -went on, the irony to be edged with bitterness, his large toleration -of human error, his pity of human weakness, were to broaden and deepen -with the passing of the years.</p> - -<p>It is said that Frederick Greenwood, then editing the <i>Cornhill</i>, -picked up a copy of “Under the Greenwood Tree” on a railway bookstall -and, reading it, was moved to commission the author to write him a -serial; and when “Far from the Madding Crowd” appeared anonymously in -<i>Cornhill</i> its intimate acquaintance with rural England misled the -knowing ones into ascribing it to George Eliot—an amazing deduction, -seeing that it has nothing in common with George Eliot, either in -manner or design.</p> - -<p>“A Pair of Blue Eyes” had preceded “Far From the Madding Crowd,” and -“The Hand of Ethelberta” followed it; then, in 1878, came “The Return -of the Native,” which, with “The Mayor of Casterbridge” and “The -Woodlanders,” stood as Hardy’s highest achievements until, in 1891 and -1896, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” and “Jude the Obscure” went a flight -beyond any that had gone before them and placed him incontestibly with -the world’s greatest novelists.</p> - -<p>Soon after Hardy had definitely turned from architecture to literature -he went back to Wessex,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> where he lived successively at Cranbourne, -Sturminster, and Wimborne, until in 1885 he removed to Max Gate, -Dorchester, which has been his home ever since. And through all those -years, instead of going far afield in search of inspiration, he -recreated the ancient realm of the West Saxons and found a whole world -and all the hopes, ambitions, joys, loves, follies, hatreds—all the -best and all the worst of all humanity within its borders. The magic of -his genius has enriched the hundred and forty square miles of Wessex, -which stretches from the Bristol Channel across Somerset, Devon, -Dorset, Wilts and Hampshire to the English Channel, with imaginary -associations that are as living and abiding, as inevitably part of it -now, as are the facts of its authentic history.</p> - -<p>A grim, stoical philosophy of life is implicit alike in Hardy’s poetry -and stories, giving a strange consistency to all he has written, so -that his books are joined each to each by a religion of nature that is -in itself a natural piety. He sees men and women neither as masters -of their fate nor as wards of a beneficent deity, but as “Time’s -laughing-stocks” victims of heredity and environment, the helpless -sport of circumstance, playing out little comedies or stumbling into -tragedies shaped for them inexorably by some blind, creative spirit -of the Universe that is indifferent to their misery or happiness and -as powerless to prolong the one as to avert the other. The earlier -pastoral comedies and tragi-comedies have their roots in this belief, -which reaches its most terribly beautiful expression in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> epic -tragedies of “Tess” and “Jude the Obscure.”</p> - -<p>I am old enough to remember the clash of opinions over the tragic -figure of Tess and the author’s presentation of her as “a pure woman”; -how there were protests from pulpits; how the critics mitigated their -praise of Hardy’s art with reproof of his ethics; but the story gripped -the imagination of the public, and time has brought not a few of the -moralists round to a recognition that if Hardy’s sense of morality was -less conventional, it was also something nobler, more fundamental than -their own. He will not accept the dogmas of orthodox respectability, -but looks beyond the accidents of circumstance and conduct to the real -good or evil that is in the human heart that wrongs or is wronged. The -same passion for truth at all costs underlies his stark, uncompromising -realism and his gospel of disillusion, his vision of men as puppets -working out a destiny they cannot control. If he has, therefore, -little faith in humanity, he has infinite compassion for it, and -infinite pardon. The irony of his stories is the irony he finds in -life itself, and as true to human experience as are the humor and the -pathos of them. Other eyes, another temperament, may read a different -interpretation of it all; he has honestly and courageously given us his -own.</p> - -<p>The outcry against “Tess” was mild compared to the babble of prudish -censure with which “Jude the Obscure” was received in many quarters, -and it is small wonder that these criticisms goaded Hardy to a -resolve that he would write no more novels for a world that could -so misunderstand his purposes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span> and misconstrue his teachings. “The -Well-Beloved,” though it appeared a year later than “Jude,” had been -written and published serially five years before, and it was with -“Jude,” when his power was at its zenith, that Thomas Hardy wrote finis -to his work as a novelist.</p> - -<p>Happily his adherence to this resolve drove him back on the art he had -abjured in his youth, and the last quarter of a century has yielded -some half dozen books of his poems that we would not willingly have -lost. Above all, it has yielded that stupendous chronicle-drama of the -Napoleonic wars, “The Dynasts,” which is sometimes acclaimed as the -highest and mightiest effort of his genius. This drama, and his ballads -and lyrics, often too overweighted with thought to have any beat of -wings in them, are at one with his novels in the sincere, sombre -philosophy of life that inspires them, the darkling imagination with -which it is bodied forth, and the brooding, forceful personality which -speaks unmistakably through all.</p> - -<p>Hardy, is, and will remain, a great and lonely figure in our -literature. It is possible to trace the descent of almost every other -writer, to name the artistic influences that went to his making, but -Hardy is without literary ancestry; Dickens and Thackeray, Tennyson -and Browning, had forerunners, and have left successors. We know, as a -matter of fact, what porridge John Keats had, but we do not know that -of Hardy. Like every master, he unwittingly founded a school, but none -of his imitators could imitate him except superficially, and already -the scholars<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> are going home and the master will presently be alone -in his place apart. His style is peculiarly his own; as novelist and -poet he has worked always within his own conception of the universe as -consistently as he has worked within the scope and bounds of his own -kingdom of Wessex, and “within that <span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>circle none durst walk but he.”</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="HILAIRE_BELLOC">HILAIRE BELLOC</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img003"> - <img src="images/003.jpg" class="w50" alt="Hilaire Belloc" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Hilaire Belloc</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p> - - -<p>So long and persistently has Hilaire Belloc been associated in -the public mind with G. K. Chesterton—one ingenious jester has -even linked and locked them together in an easy combination as the -Chesterbelloc—that quite a number of people now have a vague idea that -they are inseparables, collaborators, a sort of literary Siamese twins -like Beaumont and Fletcher or Erckmann-Chatrian; and the fact that one -appears in this volume without the other may occasion some surprise. -Let it be confessed at once that Chesterton’s omission from this -gallery is significant only of his failure—not in modern letters, but -to keep any appointments to sit for his photograph.</p> - -<p>I regret his absence the less since it may serve as a mute protest -against the practice of always bracketing his name with that of Hilaire -Belloc. The magic influence of Belloc which is supposed to have colored -so many of G. K. C.’s views and opinions and even to have drawn him at -length into the Roman Catholic community, must be little but legendary -or evidence of it would be apparent in his writings, and it is no more -traceable there than the influence of Chesterton is to be found in -Belloc’s books. They share a dislike of Jews, which nearly equals that -of William Bailey in “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Clutterbuck’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> Election”; Chesterton has -illustrated some of Belloc’s stories, and Belloc being an artist, too, -has made charming illustrations for one of his own travel volumes. All -the same, there is no more real likeness between them than there was -between Dickens and Thackeray, or Tennyson and Browning, who were also, -and are to some extent still, carelessly driven in double harness. -Belloc’s humor and irony are hard, often bitter; they have none of -the geniality, nimbleness, perverse fantasy of Chesterton’s. The one -has a profound respect for fact and detail, and learns by carefully -examining all the mechanical apparatus of life scientifically through -a microscope; while the other has small reverence for facts as such, -looks on life with the poet’s rather than with the student’s eye, and -sees it by lightning-flashes of intuition. When Chesterton wrote his -History of England he put no dates in it; he felt that dates were of -no consequence to the story; but Belloc has laid it down that, though -the human motive is the prime factor in history, “the external actions -of men, the sequence in dates and hours of such actions, and their -material conditions and environments must be strictly and accurately -acquired.” There is no need to labor the argument. “The Napoleon of -Notting Hill” is not more unlike “Emanuel Burden” than their two -authors are unlike each other, individually and in what they have -written.</p> - -<p>Born at <abbr title="saint">St.</abbr> Cloud in 1870, Belloc was the son of a French barrister; -his mother, an Englishwoman, was the grand-daughter of Joseph -Priestley, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> famous scientist and Unitarian divine. She brought him -over to England after the death of his father, and they made their home -in Sussex, the country that has long since taken hold on his affections -and inspired the best of his poems. I don’t know when he was “living -in the Midlands,” or thereabouts except while he was at Oxford, and -earlier when he was a schoolboy at the Birmingham Oratory and came -under the spell of Cardinal Newman, and I don’t know when he wrote “The -South Country,” but not even Kipling has crowned Sussex more splendidly -than he crowns it in that vigorous and poignant lyric—</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“When I am living in the Midlands,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That are sodden and unkind,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I light my lamp in the evening;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">My work is left behind;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the great hills of the South Country</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Come back into my mind.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The great hills of the South Country</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They stand along the sea,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And it’s there, walking in the high woods,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That I could wish to be,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the men that were boys when I was a boy</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Walking along with me....</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">If ever I become a rich man,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or if ever I grow to be old,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I will build a house with a deep thatch</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To shelter me from the cold,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And there shall the Sussex songs be sung</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And the story of Sussex told.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I will hold my house in the high wood,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Within a walk of the sea,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the men that were boys when I was a boy</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Shall sit and drink with me.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p> - -<p>Nowadays, he has to some extent realized that desire, for he is settled -at Horsham, in Sussex again, if not within a walk of the sea. But -we are skipping too much, and will go back and attend to our proper -historical “sequence in dates.” His schooldays over, he accepted the -duties of his French citizenship and served his due term in the Army of -France, as driver in an Artillery regiment. These military obligations -discharged, he returned to England, went to Oxford, and matriculated at -Balliol. He ran a dazzling career at Oxford, working assiduously as a -student, carrying off the Brackenbury Scholarship and a First Class in -Honor History Schools, and at the same time reveled joyously with the -robust, gloried in riding and swimming and coruscated brilliantly in -the Union debates. His vivid, dominating personality seems to have made -itself felt among his young contemporaries there as it has since made -itself felt in the larger worlds of literature and politics; though in -those larger worlds his recognition and his achievements have never, so -far, been quite commensurate with his extraordinary abilities or the -tradition of power that has gathered about his name. In literature, -high as he stands, his fame is less than that of men who have not -a tithe of his capacity, and in politics he remains a voice crying -in the wilderness, a leader with no effective following. Perhaps in -politics his fierce sincerity drives him into tolerance, he burns to -do the impossible and change human nature at a stroke, and is too far -ahead of his time for those he would lead<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span> to keep pace with him. And -perhaps in literature he lacks some gift of concentration, dissipates -his energies over too many fields, and is too much addicted to the use -of irony, which it has been said, not without reason, is regarded with -suspicion in this country and never understood. Swift is admittedly our -supreme master in that art, and there is nothing more ironic in his -most scathingly ironical work, “Gulliver’s Travels,” than the fact that -Gulliver is only popular as an innocently amusing book for children.</p> - -<p>Belloc began quietly enough, in 1895, with a little unimportant book of -“Verses and Sonnets.” He followed this in the next four years with four -delightfully, irresponsibly absurd books of verses and pictures such -as “The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts,” “More Beasts for Worse Children,” -publishing almost simultaneously in 1899 “The Moral Alphabet” and his -notable French Revolution study of “Danton.” In a later year he gave us -simultaneously the caustic, frivolous “Lambkin’s Remains” and his book -on “Paris,” and followed it with his able monograph on “Robespierre.” -It was less unsettling, no doubt, when “Caliban’s Guide to Letters” was -closely succeeded by the first and most powerful of his ironic novels, -“Emanuel Burden,” but serious people have never known where to have -him. He collects his essays under such careless titles as “On Nothing,” -“On Anything,” “This and That,” or simply “On”; and the same year that -found him collaborating with Cecil Chesterton in a bitter attack on -“The Party System,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> found him collaborating with Lord Basil Blackwood -in the farcical “More Peers,” and issuing acute technical expositions -of the battles of Blenheim and Malplaquet.</p> - -<p>His novels, “Emanuel Burden,” “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Clutterbuck’s Election,” “A Change -in the Cabinet,” “The Mercy of Allah,” and the rest, satirize the -chicanery and humbug rampant in modern commerce, finance, politics, and -general society, and are too much in earnest to attempt to tickle the -ears of the groundlings.</p> - -<p>For four years, in the first decade of the century, Belloc sat in -Parliament as Member for Salford, but the tricks, hypocrisies, -insincerities of the politicians disgusted and exasperated him; he -was hampered and suppressed in the House by its archaic forms, and -instead of staying there stubbornly to leaven the unholy lump he came -wrathfully out, washing his hands of it, to attack the Party system in -the Press, and inaugurate <i>The Witness</i> in which he proceeded to -express himself on the iniquities of public life forcefully and with -devastating candor.</p> - -<p>No journalist wielded a more potent pen than he through the dark -years of the war. His articles in <i>Land and Water</i> recording the -various phases of the conflict, criticizing the conduct of campaigns, -explaining their course and forecasting developments drew thousands -of readers to sit every week at his feet, and were recognized as the -cleverest, most searching, most informing of all the many periodical -reviews of the war that were then current. That his prophecies were -not always fulfilled meant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> only that, like all prophets, he was not -infallible. His vision, his intimate knowledge of strategy, his mastery -of the technique of war were amazing—yet not so amazing when you -remember his service in the French Army and that he comes of a race -of soldiers. One of his mother’s forbears was an officer in the Irish -Brigade that fought for France at Fontenoy, and four of his father’s -uncles were among Napoleon’s generals, one of them falling at the head -of his charging troops at Waterloo. It were but natural he should -derive from such stock not merely a love of things military but that -ebullient, overpowering personality which many who come in contact with -him find irresistible.</p> - -<p>As poet, he has written three or four things that will remain immortal -in anthologies; as novelist, he has a select niche to himself; “The -Girondin” indicates what he might have become as a sheer romantist, but -he did not pursue that vein; his books of travel, particularly “The -Path to Rome” and “Esto Perpetua,” are unsurpassed in their kind by -any living traveler; as historian, essayist, journalist, he ranks with -the highest of his contemporaries; nevertheless, you are left with a -feeling that the man himself is greater than anything he has done. You -feel that he has been deftly modeling a motley miscellany of statuettes -when he might have been carving a statue; and the only consolation is -that some of the statuettes are infinitely finer than are many statues, -and that, anyhow, he has given, and obviously taken delight in the -making of them.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ARNOLD_BENNETT">ARNOLD BENNETT</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img004"> - <img src="images/004.jpg" class="w50" alt="Arnold Bennett" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Arnold Bennett</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p> - - -<p>If his critics are inclined to write Arnold Bennett down as a man of -great talent instead of as a man of genius, he is himself to blame for -that. He has not grown long hair, nor worn eccentric hats and ties, -not cultivated anything of the unusual appearance and manner that -are vulgarly supposed to denote genius. In his robust, commonsense -conception of the literary character, as well as in certain aspects of -his work, he has affinities with Anthony Trollope.</p> - -<p>Trollope used to laugh at the very idea of inspiration; he took to -letters as sedulously and systematically as other men take to farming -or shopkeeping, wrote regularly for three or four hours a day, whether -he was well or ill, at home or abroad, doing in those hours always the -same number of words, and keeping his watch on the table beside him to -regulate his rate of production. He was intolerant of the suggestion -that genius is a mysterious power which controls a man, instead of -being controlled by him, that</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“the spirit bloweth, and is still,”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">and the author is dependent on such vagrant moods, and he justified his -opinions and his practices by becoming<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> one of the half dozen greater -Victorian novelists.</p> - -<p>I do not say that Arnold Bennett holds exactly the same beliefs and -works in the same mechanical fashion, but that his literary outlook -is as practical and business-like is apparent from “The Truth about -an Author,” from “The Author’s Craft,” “Literary Taste,” and other -of those pocket philosophies that he wrote in the days when he was -pot-boiling, and also from the success with which, in the course of his -career, he has put his own precepts into practice.</p> - -<p>The author who is reared in an artistic atmosphere, free from monetary -embarrassments, with social influence enough to smooth his road and -open doors to him, seldom acquires any profound knowledge of life -or develops any remarkable quality. But Bennett had none of these -disadvantages. Nor was he an infant phenomenon, rushing into print -before he was out of his teens; he took his time, and lived awhile -before he began to write about life, and did not adopt literature as -a means of livelihood until he had sensibly made up his mind what he -wanted to do and that he could do it. He was employed in a lawyer’s -office till he was twenty-six, and had turned thirty when he published -his first novel, “A Man from the North.” Meanwhile, he had been writing -stories and articles experimentally, and, having proved his capacity -by selling a sufficient proportion of these to various periodicals, -he threw up the law to go as assistant editor, and afterwards became -editor, of a magazine<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span> for women—which may, in a measure, account -for his somewhat cynical views on love and marriage and the rather -pontifical cocksureness with which he often delivers himself on those -subjects.</p> - -<p>In 1900 he emancipated himself from the editorial chair and withdrew -into the country to live quietly and economically and devote himself -to ambitions that he knew he could realize. He had tried his strength -in “A Man from the North,” and settled down now, deliberately and -confidently, to become a novelist and a dramatist; he was out for -success in both callings, and did not mean to be long about getting it, -if not with the highest type of work, then with the most popular. For -he was too eminently practical to have artistic scruples against giving -the public what it wanted if by so doing he might get into a position -for giving it what he wanted it to have. He expresses the sanest, -healthfulest scorn for the superior but unsaleable author who cries -sour grapes and pretends to a preference for an audience fit though few.</p> - -<p>“I can divide all the imaginative authors I have ever met,” he has -written, “into two classes—those who admitted and sometimes proclaimed -loudly that they desired popularity; and those who expressed a noble -scorn or a gentle contempt for popularity. The latter, however, always -failed to conceal their envy of popular authors, and this envy was a -phenomenon whose truculent bitterness could not be surpassed even in -political or religious life. And indeed, since the object of the artist -is to share<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> his emotions with others, it would be strange if the -normal artist spurned popularity in order to keep his emotions as much -as possible to himself. An enormous amount of dishonest nonsense has -been and will be written by uncreative critics, of course in the higher -interests of creative authors, about popularity and the proper attitude -of the artist thereto. But possibly the attitude of a first-class -artist himself may prove a more valuable guide.” And he proceeds to -show from his letters how keenly Meredith desired to be popular, and -praises him for compromising with circumstance and turning from the -writing of poetry that did not pay to the writing of prose in the hope -that it would. I doubt whether he would sympathize with any man who -starved for art’s sake when he might have earned good bread and meat in -another calling. The author should write for success, for popularity; -that is his creed: “he owes the practice of elementary commonsense to -himself, to his work, and to his profession at large.”</p> - -<p>Bennett was born in 1887, and not for nothing was he born at Hanley, -one of the Five Towns of Staffordshire that he has made famous in -his best stories—a somber, busy, smoky place bristling with factory -chimneys and noted for its potteries. How susceptible he was to the -spell of it, how it made him its own, and how vividly he remembers -traits and idiosyncrasies of local character and all the trivial detail -in the furnishing of its houses and the manners and customs of its -Victorian home-life are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span> evident from his books. He came to London with -the acute commonsense, the mother wit, the shrewd business instinct -and energy of the Hanley manufacturer as inevitably in his blood as if -he had breathed them in with his native air, and he adapted himself to -the manufacture of literature as industriously and straightforwardly -as any of his equally but differently competent fellow-townsmen could -give themselves to the manufacture of pottery. He worked with his -imagination as they worked with their clay; and it was essential with -him, as with them, that the goods he produced should be marketable.</p> - -<p>There is always a public for a good story of mystery and sensation so, -in those days when he was feeling his way, he wrote “The Grand Babylon -Hotel,” and did it so thoroughly, so efficiently that it was one of the -cleverest and most original, no less than one of the most successful -things of its kind. In the same year he published “Anna of the Five -Towns,” which was less popular but remains among the best six of his -finer realistic tales of his own people. He followed this with three -or four able enough novels of lesser note; with a wholly admirable -collection of short stories, “The Grim Smile of the Five Towns”; was -busy with those astute, provocative pot-boiling pocket-philosophies, -“Journalism for Women,” “How to Become an Author,” “How to Live on -Twenty-Four Hours a Day,” and the rest; writing dramatic criticisms; -plays, such as “Cupid and Commonsense,” “What<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> the Public Wants”; and, -over the signature of “Jacob Tonson,” one of the most brilliant and -entertaining of weekly literary causeries.</p> - -<p>Then, in 1908, he turned out another romance of mystery and sensation, -“Buried Alive,” and in the same year published “The Old Wives’ -Tale,” perhaps the greatest of his books, and one that ranked him -unquestionably with the leading novelists of his time. A year later -came “Clayhanger,” the first volume in the trilogy which was continued, -in 1911, with “Hilda Lessways,” and completed, after a delay of five -years, with “They Twain.” This trilogy, with “The Old Wives’ Tale,” -and the much more recent “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Prohack,” are Arnold Bennett’s highest -achievements in fiction. The first four are stories of disillusion; -the romance of them is the drab, poignant romance of unideal love and -disappointed marriage, and the humor of them is sharply edged with -irony and satire. In “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Prohack” Bennett returns to the more genial -mood of “The Card” (1911). Prohack is a delightful, almost a lovable -creation, and the Card, with his dry, dour humor, for all his practical -hardheadedness, is scarcely less so.</p> - -<p>Unlike most men, who set out to do one thing and end by doing another, -Bennett laid down the plan of his career and has carried it out -triumphantly. He is a popular novelist, but, though he cheerfully -stooped to conquer and did a lot of miscellaneous writing by the -way, while he was building his reputation, the novels that have made -him popular are among the masterpieces of latter-day realistic art.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> -And with “Milestones” (in collaboration with Edward Knoblauch) and -“The Great Adventure,” to say nothing of his seven or eight other -plays, he is a successful dramatist. His versatility is as amazing -as his industry. It may be all a matter of talent and commonsense -perseverance but he seems to do whatever he chooses with an ease -and a brilliance that is very like genius. His list of nearly sixty -volumes includes essays, dramas, short stories, several kinds of novel, -books of criticism and of travel; he paints deftly and charmingly in -water-colors; and if he has written no poetry it is probably because he -is too practical to trifle with what is so notoriously unprofitable, -for if he decided to write some you may depend upon it he could. He -has analyzed “Mental Efficiency” and “The Human Machine” in two of his -little books of essays, and illustrated both in his life.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="JOHN_DAVYS_BERESFORD">JOHN DAVYS BERESFORD</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img005"> - <img src="images/005.jpg" class="w50" alt="John Davys Beresford" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">John Davys Beresford</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span></p> - - -<p>There seems to be something in the atmosphere of the manse and the -vicarage that has a notable effect of developing in many who breathe -it a capacity for writing fiction. Not a few authors have been cradled -into literature by the Law, Medicine and the Army, but as a literary -incubator no profession can vie with the Church. If it has produced no -poet of the highest rank, it gave us Donne, Herrick, Herbert, Crashaw, -Young, Crabbe, and a multitude of lesser note, and if it has yielded -no greater novelists than Sterne and Kingsley, it has fostered a vast -number that have, in their day, made up in popularity for what they -lacked in genius.</p> - -<p>Moreover, when the parsons themselves have proved immune to that -peculiarity of the clerical environment, it has wrought magically upon -their children, and an even longer list could be made, including such -great names as Goldsmith, Jane Austen and the Brontes, of the sons and -daughters of parsons who have done good or indifferent work as poets or -as novelists.</p> - -<p>Most of the novelists moulded by such early influences have leaned -rather to ideal or to glamorously or grimly romantic than to plainly -realistic interpretations of life and character, and J. D. Beresford -is so seldom romantic, or idealistic, so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> often realistically true -to secular and unregenerate aspects of human nature, that, if he did -not draw his clerical characters with such evident inside knowledge, -you would not suspect that in his beginnings he had been subject -to the limitations and repressions that necessarily obtain in an -ecclesiastical household.</p> - -<p>He was born in Castor rectory, and his father was a minor canon and -precentor of Peterborough Cathedral, and, if it pleases you, you can -play with a theory that the stark realism with which he handles the -facts, even the uglier facts, of modern life is either a reaction from -the narrow horizon that cramped his youthful days, or that the outlook -of the paternal rectory was broader than the outlook of rectories -usually is.</p> - -<p>After an education at Oundel, and at King’s School, Peterborough, he -was apprenticed, first to an architect in the country, then to one -in London; but before long he abandoned architecture to go into an -insurance office, and left that to take up a post with W. H. Smith & -Son, in the Strand where he became a sort of advertising expert and was -placed at the head of a bookselling department with a group of country -travellers under his control.</p> - -<p>Before he was half-way through his teens, he had been writing stories -which were not published and can never now be brought against him, -for he is shrewdly self-critical and all that juvenilia has been -ruthlessly destroyed. He was contributing to <i>Punch</i> in 1908, and -a little later had become a reviewer on the staff of that late and -much lamented<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> evening paper the <i>Westminster Gazette</i>. Among -the destroyed juvenilia was more than one novel. In what leisure he -could get from his advertising and reviewing, he was busy on another -which was not destined to that inglorious end. For though “Jacob -Stahl” was rejected by the first prominent publisher to whom it was -offered, because, strangely enough, he considered it old-fashioned, -it was promptly accepted by the second, and its publication in 1911 -was the real beginning of Beresford’s literary career. Had it been -really old-fashioned, it would have delighted the orthodox reading -public, which is always the majority, but its appeal was rather to the -new and more advanced race of readers, and though its sales were not -astonishing, its mature narrative skill and sound literary qualities -were unhesitatingly recognized by the discriminating; it gave him -a reputation, and has held its ground and gone on selling steadily -ever since. One felt the restrained power of the book, alike in the -narrative and in the intimate realization of character; its careful -artistry did not bid for popularity, but it ranked its author, at once, -as a novelist who was considerably more than the mere teller of a -readable tale.</p> - -<p>“Jacob Stahl” was the first volume in a trilogy (the other two -being “A Candidate for Truth” and “The Invisible Event”)—a trilogy -which unfolds a story of common life that might easily have been -throbbing with sentiment and noisy with melodramatic sensation; in -<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Beresford’s reticent hands, however, it is never overcharged -with either,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> but is touched only with the natural emotions, subdued -excitements, unexaggerated poignancies of feeling that are experienced -by such men and women as we know in the world as we know it.</p> - -<p>Meredith, in “The Invisible Event,” rather grudgingly praises Jacob -Stahl’s first novel, “John Tristram,” as good realistic fiction of -the school of Madame Bovary. “It’s a recognized school,” Meredith -continued. “I don’t quite know any one in England who’s doing it, but -it’s recognized in France, of course. I don’t quite know how to define -it, but perhaps the main distinction is in the choice of the typical -incidents and emotions. The realists don’t concentrate on the larger -emotions, you see—quite the reverse; they find the common feelings -and happenings of everyday life more representative. You may have a -big scene, but the essential thing is the accurate presentation of the -commonplace.” “Yes, I think that is pretty much what I <em>have</em> -tried to do,” commented Jacob. “I think that’s what interests me. It’s -what I know of life. I’ve never murdered any one, for instance, or -talked to a murderer, and I don’t know how it feels, or what one would -do in a position of that sort.”</p> - -<p>That is perhaps a pretty fair statement of Beresford’s own aim as -a novelist; he prefers to exercise his imagination on what he has -observed of life, or on what he has personally experienced of it. And -no doubt the “Jacob Stahl” trilogy draws much of its convincing air -of truthfulness from the fact that it is largely autobiographical. -In the first volume,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> the baby Jacob, owing to the carelessness of -a nursemaid, meets with an accident that cripples him for the first -fifteen years of his existence; and just such an accident in childhood -befell <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Beresford himself. In due course, after toying with the -thought of taking holy orders, Jacob becomes an architect’s pupil. “A -Candidate for Truth” shows him writing short stories the magazines will -not accept, and working on a novel, but before anything can be done -with this, the erratic Cecil Barker gets tired of patronizing him and, -driven to earn a livelihood, he takes a situation in an advertising -agency and develops into an expert at writing advertisements. Then, -having revised and rewritten his novel, he is dissatisfied with it -and burns it. He does not begin to conquer his irresolutions and win -some confidence in himself until after his disastrous marriage and -separation from his wife, when he comes under the influence of the -admirable Betty Gale, who loves him and defies the conventions to help -him make the best of himself. Then he gets on to the reviewing staff -of a daily newspaper, and writes another novel, “John Tristram,” and -after one publisher has rejected it as old-fashioned, another accepts -and publishes it, and though it brings him little money or glory, it -starts him on the road to success, and he makes it the first volume of -a trilogy.</p> - -<p>Where autobiography ends and fiction begins in these three stories -is of no importance; what is not literally true in them is so -imaginatively realized that it seems as truthful. Philip of “God’s -Counterpoint,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> who was injured by an accident in boyhood is a -pathological case; there are surrenderings to the morbid and abnormal -in “Housemates,” one of the somberest of Beresford’s novels, and -in that searching and poignant study in degeneracy, “The House in -Demetrius Road”; but if these are more powerful in theme and more -brilliant in workmanship they have not the simple, everyday actuality -of the trilogy; they get their effects by violence, or by the subtle -analysis of bizarre, unusual or unpleasant attributes of humanity, -and the strength and charm of the Stahl stories, are that, without -subscribing to the conventions, they keep to the common highway on -which average men and women live and move and have their being. This -is the higher and more masterly achievement, as it is more difficult -to paint a portrait when the sitter is a person of ordinary looks than -when he has marked peculiarities of features that easily distinguish -him from the general run of mankind.</p> - -<p>Although, in his time, <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Beresford was an advertising expert he has -never acquired the gift of self-advertisement; but he found himself and -was found by critics and the public while he still counted as one of -our younger novelists and had been writing for less than a decade.</p> - -<p>He has a subdued humor that is edged with irony, and can write with -a lighter touch, as he shows in “The Jervase Comedy” and some of -his short stories; and though one deprecates his excursions into -eccentricities of psychology, for the bent of his genius is so -evidently toward portraying what<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> Meredith described to Stahl as the -representative “feelings and happenings of everyday life,” one feels -that he is more handicapped by his reticences than by his daring. He is -so conscious an artist that he tones down all crudities of coloring, -yet the color of life is often startlingly crude. An occasional streak -of melodrama, a freer play of sentiment and motion would add to the -vitality of his scenes and characters and intensify their realism -instead of taking anything from it; but his native reticence would seem -to forbid this and he cannot let himself go. And because he cannot let -himself go he has not yet gone beyond the Jacob Stahl series, which, -clever and cunninger art though some of his other work may be, remains -the truest and most significant thing he has done.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="JOHN_BUCHAN">JOHN BUCHAN</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img006"> - <img src="images/006.jpg" class="w50" alt="John Buchan" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">John Buchan</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span></p> - - -<p>I have heard people express surprise that such a born romantist as John -Buchan has turned his mind successfully to practical business, and been -for so long an active partner in the great publishing house of Thomas -Nelson & Sons. But there is really nothing at all surprising about -that. One of the essays in his “Some Eighteenth Century Byways” speaks -of “the incarnation of youth and the eternal Quixotic which, happily -for Scotland, lie at the back of all her thrift and prudence”; and in -another, on “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Balfour as a Man of Letters”, he says, “the average -Scot, let it never be forgotten, is incorrigibly sentimental; at -heart he would rather be ‘kindly’ and ‘innerly’ than ‘canny,’ and his -admiration is rather for Burns, who had none of the reputed national -characteristics, than for Adam Smith, who had them all.” He adds that -though Scotsmen perfectly understand the legendary Caledonian, though -“in theory they are all for dry light ‘a hard, gem-like flame,’ in -practice they like the glow from more turbid altars.”</p> - -<p>Having that dual personality himself, it is not incongruous that -John Buchan should be at once a poet, a romantic and a shrewd man of -affairs. But he is wrong in thinking the nature he sketches is peculiar -to his countrymen, the Scots; it is as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> characteristically English. -Indeed, I should not count him among practical men if he had not -proved himself one by doing more practical things than publishing; for -publishing is essentially a romantic calling as you may suspect if you -consider the number of authors who have taken to it, and the number of -publishers who have become authors. Scott felt the lure of the trade, -in the past, and in the present you have J. D. Beresford working at -it with Collins & Sons; Frank Swinnerton first with Dent, now with -Chatto & Windus; Frederick Watson, a brilliant writer of romances and -of modern social comedy, with Nisbet; Michael Sadleir with Constable; -C. E. Lawrence, most fantastic and idealistic of novelists, with John -Murray; Roger Ingram, writing with authority on Shelley and making -fine anthologies, but disguised as one of the partners in Selwyn and -Blount; Alec Waugh, joining that admirable essayist his father, Arthur -Waugh, with Chapman & Hall; C. S. Evans, whose “Nash and Others” may -stand on the shelf by Kenneth Grahame’s “Golden Age,” with Heinemanns; -B. W. Matz, the Dickens enthusiast and author of many books about him, -running in harness with Cecil Palmer; you have Grant Richards writing -novels that are clever enough to make some of his authors wonder why -he publishes theirs; Sir Ernest Hodder-Williams, an author, with at -least half-a-dozen successful books to his name; Herbert Jenkins, a -popular humorist and doing sensational detective stories; Sir Algernon -Methuen developing a passion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> for compiling excellent anthologies of -poetry—and there are others.</p> - -<p>But here is enough to show that Buchan need not think he is -demonstrating his Scottish practicality by going in for publishing. As -a fact, I have always felt that publishing should be properly classed -as a sport. It is more speculative than racing and I do not see how any -man on the Turf can get so much excitement and uncertainty by backing -a horse as he could get by backing a new book. You can form a pretty -reliable idea of what a horse is capable of before you put your money -on it, but for the publisher, more often than not, it is all a game of -chance, since whether he wins or loses depends less on the quality of -the book than on the taste of the public, which is uncalculable. So -when Buchan went publishing he was merely starting to live romance as -well as to write it.</p> - -<p>A son of the manse, he was born in 1875, and going from Edinburgh -University to Brasenose, Oxford, he took the Newdigate Prize there, -with other more scholarly distinctions, and became President of the -Union. Even in those early days he developed a love of sport, and found -recreation in mountaineering, deer-stalking and fishing. His enthusiasm -for the latter expressed itself in the delightful verses of “Musa -Piscatrix,” which appeared in 1896, while he was still at Oxford, his -first novel, “Sir Quixote,” a vigorous romance somewhat in the manner -of Stevenson, who was then at the height of his career, having given -him prominence<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> among new authors a year earlier. I recollect the -glowing things that were said of one of his finest, most brilliantly -imaginative romances, “John Burnet of Barns,” in 1898, and with the -fame of that going before him he came to London. There he studied law -in the Middle Temple, and was called to the Bar, but seems to have been -busier with literary and journalistic than with legal affairs, for -two more books, “Grey Weather” and “A Lost Lady of Old Years” came in -1889; “The Half-Hearted” in 1900, and meanwhile he was occupied with -journalism and contributing stories to the magazines.</p> - -<p>Then for two years he sojourned in South Africa as private secretary -to Lord Milner, the High Commissioner. Two books about the present and -future of the Colony were the outcome of that excursion into diplomacy; -and better still, his South African experiences prompted him a little -later to write that remarkable romance of “Prester John,” the cunning, -clever Zulu who, turned Christian evangelist, professes to be the old -legendary Prester John reincarnate, and while he is ostensibly bent -on converting the natives, is fanning a flame of patriotism in their -chiefs and stirring them to rise against the English and create again -a great African empire. Here, and in “John Burnet of Barns,” and in -some of the short stories of “The Watcher by the Threshold” and “The -Moon Endureth,” John Buchan reaches, I think, his high-water mark as a -weaver of romance.</p> - -<p>After his return from South Africa he joined the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> staff of the -<i>Spectator</i>, reviewing and writing essays for it and doing a -certain amount of editorial work. At least, I deduce the latter fact -from the statement of one who had the best means of knowing. If you -look up “The Brain of the Nation,” by Charles L. Graves, who was then -assistant editor of the <i>Spectator</i>, you will find among the witty -and humorous poems in that volume a complete biography of John Buchan -in neat and lively verse, telling how he came up to town from Oxford, -settled down to the law, went to Africa, returned and became a familiar -figure in the <i>Spectator’s</i> old offices in Wellington Street:</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Ev’ry Tuesday morn careering</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Up the stairs with flying feet,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You’d burst in upon us, cheering</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wellington’s funereal street....</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pundit, publicist and jurist;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Statistician and divine;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mystic, mountaineer, and purist</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the high financial line;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Prince of journalistic sprinters—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Swiftest that I ever knew—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Never did you keep the printers</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Longer than an hour or two.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Then, too, when the final stages</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of our weekly task drew nigh,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You would come and pass the pages</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With a magisterial eye,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Seldom pausing, save to smoke a</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Cigarette at half past one,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When you quaffed a cup of Mocha</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And devoured a penny bun.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span></p> - -<p>The War turned those activities into other channels, and after being -rejected by the army as beyond the age limit, he worked strenuously in -Kitchener’s recruiting campaign, then served as Lieutenant-Colonel on -the British Headquarters Staff in France, and subsequently as Director -of Information. The novels he wrote in those years, “The Power House,” -“The Thirty-nine Steps,” “Greenmantle,” and “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Standfast,” were -written as a relief from heavier duties. They are stories of mystery -and intrigue as able and exciting as any of their kind. “Greenmantle,” -he says in a preface, was “scribbled in every kind of odd place and -moment—in England and abroad, during long journeys, in half hours -between graver tasks.” He was present throughout the heroic fighting on -the Somme, and his official positions at the front and at home gave him -exceptional opportunities of seeing things for himself and obtaining -first-hand information for his masterly “History of the War,” which -will give him rank as a historian beside Kinglake and Napier.</p> - -<p>With “The Path of the King,” and more so with “Huntingtower,” he is -back in his native air of romance, and one hopes he will leave the -story of plot and sensation to other artists and stay there.</p> - -<p>Like all romancists, he is no unqualified lover of the democracy; it is -too lacking in picturesqueness, in grace and glamor to be in harmony -with his temperament. He belongs in spirit to the days when heroism -walked in splendor and war was glorious. He has laid it down that the -“denunciation of war rests at bottom upon a gross materialism.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span> The -horrors of war are obvious enough; but it may reasonably be argued that -they are not greater than the horrors of peace ... the true way in -which to ennoble war is not to declare it in all its forms the work of -the devil, but to emphasize the spiritual and idealist element which -it contains. It is a kind of national sacrament, a grave matter into -which no one can enter lightly and for which all are responsible, more -especially in these days when wars are not the creation of princes and -statesmen but of peoples. War, on such a view, can only be banished -from the world by debasing human nature.”</p> - -<p>That is the purely romantic vision. Since 1914, Buchan’s experiences of -War and the horrors of peace that result from it may have modified his -earlier opinions.</p> - -<p>Anyhow, it is a wonderful theme for romance when it is far enough -away. It shows at its best in such chivalrous tales of adventure and -self-sacrifice as have gathered round the gallant figure of the Young -Pretender. You know from his books that John Buchan is steeped in the -lore of the Jacobites and sensitive to the spell of “old songs and lost -romances.” Dedicating “The Watcher by the Threshold” to Stair Agnew -Gillon, he says, “It is of the back-world of Scotland that I write, the -land behind the mist and over the seven bens, a place hard of access -for the foot-passengers but easy for the maker of stories.” One owns -to a wish that the author of “John Barnet of Barns” would now set his -genius free from the squabble and squalor<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span> of present-day politics (by -the way, he once put up for Parliament but fortunately did not get in) -and write that great story of the ’45 which he hints elsewhere has -never yet been written.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="DONN_BYRNE">DONN BYRNE</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img007"> - <img src="images/007.jpg" class="w50" alt="Donn Byrne" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Donn Byrne</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p> - - -<p>There are more gods than any man is aware of, and there is really -more virtue in discovering a new one, and catching him young, than in -deferring your tribute until he is old and so old-established that all -the world has recognized him for what he is. You may say that Donn -Byrne is not a god of modern Grub Street, but you can take it from me -that he is going to be. He has all the necessary attributes and is -climbing to his due place in the hierarchy so rapidly that he will have -arrived there soon after you are reading what I have to say about him.</p> - -<p>There is a general idea that he is an American; unless an author stops -at home mistakes of that kind are sure to happen. People take it for -granted that he belongs where he happens to be living when they find -him. Henry James had lived among us so long that he was quite commonly -taken for an Englishman even before he became naturalized during the -War. The same fate is overtaking Ezra Pound; he is the chief writer -of a sort of poetry that is being largely written in his country and -in ours, and because he has made his home with us for many years he -is generally regarded here as a native. On the other hand, Richard -Le Gallienne left us and has passed so large a part of his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> life in -the United States that most of us are beginning to think of him as an -American.</p> - -<p>The mistake is perhaps more excusable in the case of Donn Byrne, for -he was born at New York in 1889, but before he was three months old he -was brought over to Ireland which ought to have been his birthplace, -since his father was an architect there. He was educated at Trinity -College, Dublin, and when he was not improving his mind was developing -his muscles; he went in enthusiastically for athletics, and in his time -held the light-weight boxing championships for Dublin University and -for Ulster. He knows all about horses, too, and can ride with the best, -and has manifested a more than academic interest in racing. In fact, he -has taken a keen interest in whatever was going on in the life around -him wherever he has been, and he has been about the world a good deal, -and turned his hand to many things. There is something Gallic as well -as Gaelic in his wit, his vivacity, his swiftly varying moods. He is no -novelist who has done all his traveling in books and dug up his facts -about strange countries in a reference library. When he deals with -ships his characters are not such as keep all the while in the saloon -cabin; they are the ship’s master and the sailors, and you feel there -is a knowledge of the sea behind them when he gets them working; and -if he had not been an athlete himself he could not have described with -such vigor and realistic gusto that great fight between Shane Campbell -and the wrestler from Aleppo in “The Wind Bloweth.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></p> - -<p>How much of personal experience has gone into his novels is probably -more than he could say himself. But when he is picturing any place that -his imaginary people visit, you know from a score of casual, intimate -touches that he, too, has been there, and is remembering it while he -writes. Take this vivid sketch of Marseilles, for example:</p> - -<p>“Obvious and drowsy it might seem, but once he went ashore, the -swarming, teeming life of it struck Shane like a current of air. Along -the quays, along the Cannebière, was a riot of color and nationality -unbelievable from aboard ship. Here were Turks, dignified and shy. Here -were Greeks, wary, furtive. Here were Italians, Genoese, Neapolitans, -Livornians, droll, vivacious, vindictive. Here were Moors, here were -Algerians, black African folk, sneering, inimical. Here were Spaniards, -with their walk like a horse’s lope. Here were French business men, -very important. Here were Provencals, cheery, short, tubby, excitable, -olive-colored, black-bearded, calling to one another in the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">langue -d’oc</i> of the troubadors, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">’Te, mon bon! Commoun as? Quezaco?</i>”</p> - -<p>There is that same sense of seeing things in the glamorous description -of the Syrian city where Shane lived with the Arab girl he had married; -and in the hasty outline of Buenos Aires:</p> - -<p>“Here now was a city growing rich, ungracefully—a city of arrogant -Spanish colonists, of poverty-stricken immigrants, of down-trodden -lower classes ... a city of riches ... a city of blood.... Here mud, -here money.... Into a city half mud<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> hovels, half marble-fronted -houses, gauchos drove herd upon herd of cattle, baffled, afraid. Here -Irish drove streams of gray bleating sheep. Here ungreased bullock -carts screamed. From the bluegrass pampas they drove them, where the -birds sang and waters rippled, where was the gentleness of summer rain, -where was the majesty of great storms.... And by their thousands and -their tens of thousands they drove them into Buenos Aires, and slew -them for their hides....”</p> - -<p>That was the Buenos Aires of Shane’s day, in the Victorian era; but in -essentials it was probably as Donn Byrne saw it. For when he was about -twenty-two he quitted Ireland and went back to America, and presently -made his way to Buenos Aires to get married. His wife is the well-known -dramatist Dolly Byrne who wrote with the actress Gilda Varesi, the -delightful comedy “Enter Madam,” which has had long runs in London and -in New York.</p> - -<p>It was during this second sojourn in the States that Donn Byrne settled -down seriously to literary work. He says he began by contributing to -American magazines some of the world’s worst poetry, which he has never -collected into a volume; but he is given to talking lightly of his own -doings and you cannot take him at his own valuation. One of the poems, -at least, on the San Francisco earthquake, appropriately enough, made -something of a noise and was reprinted in the <i>United Irishman</i>, -but Ireland had not then become such a furious storm-center<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span> and an -earthquake was still enough to excite it. Before long he was making a -considerable reputation with his short stories, and a collection of -these, “Stories Without Heroes,” was his first book.</p> - -<p>But he will tell you he does not like that book and will not have it -reprinted. He says the same about his first novel, “The Stranger’s -Banquet,” though it met with a very good reception and had a sale that -many successful authors would envy. Then followed in succession three -novels that are original enough in style and idea and fine enough in -quality to establish the reputation of any man—“The Wind Bloweth,” -“Messer Marco Polo,” and “The Foolish Matrons.” These were all written -and published in America, and America knew how to appreciate them. The -third enjoyed such a vogue that we became aware of him in England and -the second, then the first, in quick succession, were published in this -country, and “The Foolish Matron” is, at this writing, about to make -its appearance here also. And with his new-won fame Donn Byrne came -home and is settled among his own people—unless a wandering fit has -taken him again before this can be printed.</p> - -<p>The beauty and charm of that old-time romance of the great Venetian -adventurer, “Messer Marco Polo,” are not easily defined; different -critics tried to shape a definition of it by calling it fascinating, -fantastic, clever, witty, strangely beautiful, a thing for laughter and -tears, and I think they were all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> right; and that the book owes its -success as much to the racy humor, the vision and emotional power with -which it is written as to the stir and excitement of the story itself. -Half the books you read, even when they greatly interest you, have a -certain coldness in them as if they had been built up from the outside -and drew no warmth from the hearts of their writers; but “Messer Marco -Polo” glows and is alive with personality, it is not written after the -manner of any school, but it is as full of eager, vital, human feeling -as if the author had magically distilled himself into it and were -speaking from its pages.</p> - -<p>That is part of the secret, too, of the charm of his more realistically -romantic “The Wind Bloweth.” You are convinced, as you read, that -those early chapters telling how the boy Shane gets a holiday on his -thirteenth birthday and goes alone up into the mountains to see the -Dancing Town in the haze over the sea, are a memory of his own boyhood -in Ireland. From the peace and fantasy of that beginning in the Ulster -hills, from an unsympathetic mother and his two quaint, lovable uncles, -Shane, at his own ardent desire, goes to knock about the world as a -seafarer, and, always with the simplicity and idealism of his boyhood -to lead and mislead him, is by-and-by tricked into marrying the cold -southern Irish girl who dies after a year or so, and, his love for -her having died before, he can feel no grief but only a strange dumb -wonder. Then, while his trading ship is at Marseilles,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> he meets the -beautiful, piteous Claire-Anne, and their lawless, perfect love ends -in tragedy. After another interval, comes the episode of his charming -little Moslem wife, and he loses her because he never understands -that she loves him not for his strength but for his weakness. Thrice -he meets with disillusion, but retains his simplicity, his idealism -throughout, and is never really disillusioned; and it is when he is in -Buenos Aires again that the kind, placid, large-hearted “easy” Swedish -woman, Hedda Hages, gives him the truth, and makes clear to him what -she means when she says, “No, Shane, I don’t think you know much about -women.”</p> - -<p>And it is not till his hair is graying that he arrives at the true -romance and the ideal happiness at last. The story is neither planned -nor written on conventional lines; you sense the tang of a brogue in -its nervous English, which is continually flowering into exquisite -felicities of phrase, and it lays bare the heart and mind of a man with -a most sensitive understanding. It is a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress, and -Shane Campbell is a desperately human pilgrim, who drifts into danger -and disasters, and stumbles often, before he drops his burden and finds -his way, or is led by strange influences, into the City Beautiful.</p> - -<p>I daresay Donn Byrne will laugh to discover that I have put him among -the gods; he is that sort of man. But it is possible for others to know -him better than he knows himself. Abou Ben Adhem<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> was surprised you -recollect, when he noticed that Gabriel had recorded his name so high -in the list of those that were worthy; and though I am no Gabriel I -know a hawk from a handsaw when the wind is in the right quarter.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="WILLIAM_HENRY_DAVIES">WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img008"> - <img src="images/008.jpg" class="w50" alt="William Henry Davies" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">William Henry Davies</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span></p> - - -<p>The lives of most modern poets would make rather tame writing, which -is possibly why so much modern poetry makes rather tame reading. It is -a pleasant enough thing to go from a Public School to a University, -then come to London, unlock at once a few otherwise difficult doors -with the <em>open sesame</em> of effective introductions, and settle -down to a literary career; but it leaves one with a narrow outlook, a -limited range of ideas, little of personal experience to write about. -Fortunately W. H. Davies never enjoyed these comfortable disadvantages. -He did not come into his kingdom by any nicely paved highroads, but -over rough ground by thorny ways that, however romantic they may seem -to look back upon, must have seemed hard and bitter and sufficiently -hopeless at times while he was struggling through them.</p> - -<p>There is nothing to say of his schooling, except that it amounted to -little and was not good; but later he learned more by meeting the hard -facts of life and by desultory reading than any master could have -taught him. Born at Newport, Monmouthshire, in 1870, he was put to the -picture-frame making trade, and went from that to miscellaneous farm -work. But work, he once confessed to me, is among the things for which -he has never had a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> passion, and a legacy from a grandfather gave him -an interval of liberty. This grandfather, with a sensible foresight, -left him only a small sum in ready cash, but, in addition, the interest -on an investment that produced a steady eight shillings a week. With -the cash Davies went to America, and saw as much of that country as -he could as long as the money lasted. Then he subdued his dislike of -manual labor and did odd jobs on fruit farms; wearied of this and went -on tramp, and picked up much out-of-the-way knowledge of the world and -of men from the tramps he fell in with during his roamings. Presently, -he got engaged as a hand on a cattle-boat, and as such made several -voyages to England and back.</p> - -<p>At length, getting back to America just when the gold rush for Klondike -was at its height, he was seized with a yearning to go North and try -his luck as a digger. The price of that long journey being beyond his -means, he followed a common example and tried to “jump” a train, fell -under the wheels in the attempt and was so badly injured that he lost -a foot in that enterprise and had to make a slow recovery in hospital. -When he was well enough, his family sent out and carried him home into -Wales.</p> - -<p>But he could not be contented there. Although he says himself that he -became a poet at thirty-four (when his first book was published), the -fact is, of course, he has been a poet all his life and through all -his wanderings was storing up memories and impressions of nature and -human nature that live<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> again now in vivid lines and phrases of his -verse and prose. He had already written poems, and sent them to various -periodicals in vain, and had a feeling that if he could be at the -center of things, in London, fortune and fame as a poet might be within -his reach.</p> - -<p>So to London he came, early in the century, and took up residence -in a common lodging-house at Southwark, his eight shillings a week -sufficing to pay his rent and keep him in food. The magazines remaining -obdurate, he collected his poems into a book, and started to look for a -publisher. But the publishers were equally unencouraging, till he found -one who was prepared to publish provided Davies contributed twenty -pounds toward the cost of the adventure. Satisfied that, once out, the -book would quickly yield him profits, he asked the trustees who paid -him his small dividends to advance the amount and retain his income -until they had recouped themselves. They, however, being worldly-wise, -compromised by saying that if he would do without his dividends for -some six months, when ten pounds would be due, they would pay him that -sum and advance a further ten, paying him no more till the second ten -was duly refunded.</p> - -<p>This offer he accepted; and he tramped the country as a pedlar, selling -laces, needles and pins, and occasionally singing in the streets for -a temporary livelihood. When the six months were past he returned to -London, took up his old quarters at the lodging-house, drew the twenty -pounds, and before<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> long “The Soul’s Destroyer and Other Poems” made -its appearance. But so far from putting money in his purse, it was -received with complete indifference. Fifty copies went out for review, -but not a single review was given to it anywhere. No publisher’s name -was on the title page, but an announcement that the book was to be had, -for half-a-crown, “of the Author, Farmhouse, Marshalsea Road, S.E.,” -and possibly this conveyed an impression of unimportance that resulted -in its remaining unread. After a week or so, seeing himself with no -money coming in for the next few months, the author became desperate. -He compiled from “Who’s Who,” at a public library, a list of people who -might be expected to take an interest in poetry, and posted a copy of -his book to each with a request that, if it seemed worth the money, he -would remit the half-crown.</p> - -<p>One of the earliest went to a journalist who was, in those days, -connected with the <i>Daily Mail</i>. He read it at once and recognized -that though there were crudities and even doggerel in it, there was -also in it some of the freshest and most magical poetry to be found -in modern books. Mingled with grimly realistic pictures of life and -character in the doss-house were songs of the field and the wayside -written with all Clare’s minute knowledge of nature and with something -of the imagination and music of Blake. Being a journalist, he did not -miss the significance of this book issuing from a common lodging-house -(and one, by the way, that is described in a sketch of Dickens’), could -easily<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span> read a good deal of the poet’s story between the lines of his -poems, promptly forwarded his remittance and asked Davies to meet him. -Not sure that he would be welcome at the doss-house, he suggested a -rendezvous on the north of London Bridge, and a few evenings later the -meeting came about at Finch’s a tavern in Bishopsgate Street Within. -“To help you to identify me,” Davies had written, “I will have a copy -of my book sticking out of my pocket”; and there he was—a short, -sturdy young man, uncommunicative at first, as shy as a squirrel, -bright-eyed, soft of speech, and with a general air about him of some -woodland creature lost and uneasy in a place of crowds. By degrees his -shyness diminished, and in the course of a two hours’ session in that -bar he unfolded the whole of his story without reserve. Then said the -journalist, “If I merely review your book it will not sell a dozen -copies, but if you will let me combine with a review an absolutely -frank narrative of your career I have an idea we can rouse public -interest to some purpose.”</p> - -<p>This permission being given, such an article duly appeared in the news -columns of the <i>Daily Mail</i>, and the results were more astonishing -than any one could have foreseen. Not only did the gentle reader begin -to send in money for copies, but ladies called at the doss-house and -left At Home cards which their recipient was much too reticent to act -upon. Editors who had ignored and probably lost their review copies -sent postal orders for the book and lauded it in print; illustrated -papers sent photographers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span> and interviewers; a party of critics, having -now bought and read the poems, made a pilgrimage to the Farmhouse, and -departed to write of the man and his poetry. After a second article in -the <i>Mail</i> had recounted these and other astonishing happenings, -a literary agent wrote urging Davies to entrust him with all his -remaining copies and he could sell them for him at half-a-guinea and a -guinea apiece.</p> - -<p>His advice was taken, and the last of the edition of five hundred -copies went off quickly at these prices. So enriched, the poet quitted -his lodging-house and went home into Wales for a holiday, and while -there began the first of his prose books, “The Autobiography of a -Super-Tramp,” which was published in 1908 with an introduction by -George Bernard Shaw. Meanwhile, Davies had written two other volumes -of verse, and his recognition as one of the truest, most individual -of living lyrists was no longer in doubt. <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Shaw notes of his prose -that it has not the academic correctness dear to the Perfect Commercial -Letter Writer, but is “worth reading by literary experts for its -style alone”; and much the same may be said of his poetry. It is not -flawless, but its faults are curiously in harmony with its unstudied -simplicity and often strangely heighten the beauty of thought and -language to which verses flower as carelessly as if he thought and said -his finest things by accident. He has the countryman’s intimacy with -Nature—not for nothing did he work on farms, tramp the open roads, -sleep under the naked sky—knows all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span> her varying moods, has observed -trivial significances in her that the deliberate student overlooks; and -he writes of her with an Elizabethan candor and fantasy and a natural, -simple diction that is an art in Wordsworth. He has made a selection -from his several volumes in a Collected Edition, but has published -other verse since. For some years after his success he lived in London, -but never seemed at home; he has no liking for streets and shrinks from -crowds; and now has withdrawn again into the country, where our ultra -modern Georgian poets who, despite the fact that he is in the tradition -of the great lyrists of the past, were constrained to embrace him as -one of themselves, are less likely to infect him with their artifices.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="WALTER_DE_LA_MARE">WALTER DE LA MARE</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img009"> - <img src="images/009.jpg" class="w50" alt="Walter De La Mare" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Walter De La Mare</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span></p> - - -<p>Except in the personal sense—and the charm of his gracious personality -would surely surround him with friends, whether he wanted them or -not—Walter de la Mare is, like Hardy, a lonely figure in modern -English poetry—no other poet of our time has a place more notably -apart from his contemporaries. You might almost read an allegory of -this aloofness into his “Myself”:</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“There is a garden grey</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With mists of autumntide;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Under the giant boughs,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stretched green on every side,</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Along the lonely paths,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A little child like me,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With face, with hands like mine,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Plays ever silently....</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“And I am there alone:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Forlornly, silently,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Plays in the evening garden</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Myself with me.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">only that one knows he is happy enough and not forlorn in his -aloneness. You may trace, perhaps, here and there in his verse elusive -influences of Coleridge, Herrick, Poe, the songs of Shakespeare, or, -now and then, in a certain brave and good use<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span> of colloquial language, -of T. E. Brown, but such influences are so slight and so naturalized -into his own distinctive manner that it is impossible to link him -up with the past and say he is descended from any predecessor, as -Tennyson was from Keats. More than with any earlier poetry, his verse -has affinities with the prose of Charles Lamb—of the Lamb who wrote -the tender, wistful “Dream-Children” and the elvishly grotesque, -serious-humorous “New Year’s Eve”—who was sensitively wise about -witches and night-fears, and could tell daintily or playfully of the -little people, fairy or mortal. But the association is intangible; he -is more unlike Lamb than he is like him. And when you compare him with -poets of his day there is none that resembles him; he is alone in his -garden. He has had imitators, but they have failed to imitate him, and -left him to his solitude.</p> - -<p>It is true, as Spencer has it, that</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“sheep herd together, eagles fly alone,”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">and he has this in common with the lord of the air, that he has -never allied himself with any groups or literary cliques; yet his -work is so authentic and so modern, so free of the idiosyncracies of -any period, that our self-centered, self-conscious school of “new” -poets, habitually intolerant of all who move outside their circle, are -constrained to keep a door wide open for him and are glad to have him -sitting down with them in their anthologies.</p> - -<p>But he did not enter into his own promptly, or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span> without fighting for -it. He was born in 1873; and had known nearly twenty years of</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“that dry drudgery at the desk’s dead wood”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">in a city office, before he shook the dust of such business from his -feet and began to win a livelihood as a free-lance journalist. One is -apt to speak of journalism as if it were an exact calling, like that of -the watchmaker; but “journalism” is a portmanteau word which embraces -impartially the uninspired records of the junior reporter and the -delightful social essays and sketches of Robert Lynd; the witty gossip -of a “Beachcomber,” and the dull but very superior oracles of a J. A. -Spender. Not any of these, but reviewing was the branch of this trade -to which de la Mare devoted himself, and his reviews in the <i>Saturday -Westminster</i>, <i>Bookman</i>, <i>Times Literary Supplement</i>, and -elsewhere, clothed so fine a critical faculty in the distinction of -style which betrays his hand in all he has written that, his reputation -growing accordingly, the reviewer for a time overshadowed the poet; for -though he did much of it anonymously his work could be identified by -the discerning as easily as can the characteristic, unsigned paintings -of a master.</p> - -<p>Too often, in such a case, the journalist ends by destroying the -author; dulls his imagination, dissipates his moods, replaces his -careless raptures with a mechanical efficiency; makes him a capable -craftsman, and unmakes him as an artist. But de la Mare seems to -have learned how to put his heart<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> into journalism without letting -journalism get into his heart; I have seen no review of his that has -the mark of the hack upon it; his mind was not “like the dyers hand” -subdued to what it worked in. Fleet Street might echo his tread, but -his spirit was away on other roads in a world that was beyond the -jurisdiction of editors. He was not seeking to set up a home in that -wilderness, but was all the while quietly paving a way out of it; and -in due season he has left it behind him.</p> - -<p>A good deal of what he wrote then bore the pseudonym of “Walter -Ramal,” a transparent anagram; and throughout those days he went on -contributing poems, stories, prose fantasies to <i>Cornhill</i>, the -<i>English Review</i>, and other periodicals. In 1902 he had published -“Songs of Childhood,” a first revelation of his exquisite genius for -writing quaint nursery rhymes, dainty, homely, faery lyrics and ballads -that can fascinate the mind of a child, or of any who has not forgotten -his childhood—a genius that flowered to perfection eleven years later -in “Peacock Pie.”</p> - -<p>“Henry Brocken” (1904) showed another side of his gift. It is a -story—you cannot call it a novel—that takes you traveling into a land -unknown to the map-makers, that is inhabited by people who have never -lived and will never die. You go with Brocken over a wild moor and meet -with Wordsworth’s Lucy Gray; you go further to hold converse with Poe’s -Annabel Lee, with Keat’s Belle Dame, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, -with Swift’s Gulliver, with Lady Macbeth, Bottom,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span> Titania, with folk -from the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and many another. It is all a riot of -fancy and poetry in prose, with an undercurrent of shrewd commentary -that adds a critical value to its appeal as a story.</p> - -<p>This fresh, individual note is as prevailing in all his prose as in his -verse. It is in the prose and verse of his blithe, whimsical tale for -children, “The Two Mulla-Mulgars,” and in that eerie, bizarre novel, -“The Return”—where, falling asleep by the grave of old Sabathier, -Arthur Lawford goes home to find his family do not know him, for, as -he slept, the dead man’s spirit had subtly taken possession of him and -transformed his whole appearance. And the spiritual adventures through -which Lawford has to pass before he can break that grim dominance and -be restored to himself are unfolded with a delicate art that never -over-stresses the beauty or significance of them.</p> - -<p>By common consent, however, de la Mare’s prose masterpiece is “The -Midget.” One can think of no other present-day author who might have -handled successfully so <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">outre</i> a theme; yet the whole conception -is as natural to de la Mare’s peculiar genius as it would be alien -to that of any of his contemporaries, and he fashions his story of -the little lady, mature and sane in mind and perfect in body, but so -small that she could stand in the palm of an average hand, into a -novel, a fable, a romance—call it what you will—of rare charm and -interest. The midget’s dwarfish, deformed lover, and the more normal -characters—Waggett, Percy Maudlin,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> Mrs. Bowater, Pollie—are drawn -realistically and with fleeting touches of humor, and while you can -read the book for its story alone, the quiet laughter and pathos of it, -as you can read Bunyan’s allegory, it is veined with inner meanings and -a profound, sympathetic philosophy of life is implicit in the narrative.</p> - -<p>It was two years after his 1906 “Poems” appeared I remember, that -Edward Thomas first asked me if I knew much of Walter de la Mare, and, -in that soft voice and reticent, hesitating manner of his, went on -to speak with an unwonted enthusiasm of the work he was doing. Until -then, I had read casually only casual things of de la Mare’s in the -magazines, but I knew Thomas’s fine, fastidious taste in such matters, -and that he was not given to getting enthusiastic over what was merely -good in an ordinary degree, and it was not long before I was qualified -to understand and respond to the warmth of his admiration. The “Poems” -were, with a few exceptions, more remarkable for what they promised -than for what they achieved, but they had not a little of the unique -magic that is in his “Songs of Childhood”; and “The Listeners and Other -Poems” (1912), and “Motley and Other Poems” (1918) more than fulfilled -this promise and brought him, at last such general recognition that in -1920, after a lapse of eighteen years, his poems were gathered into a -Collected Edition.</p> - -<p>He began late, as poets go, for he was nearly thirty when his first -book came out, and about forty<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span> before he began to be given his due -place among the poets of his generation. He was so slow in arriving -because he came without noise, intrinsically unconventional but not -fussily shattering the superficial conventions of others, making no -sensational approach, not attempting to shock or to startle. I don’t -think his verse ever had the instant appeal of a topical interest, -except such of it as grew out of the War, and nothing could be more -unlike the orthodox war poetry than that strange, poignant lyric of -his, “The Fool Rings his Bells”—</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Come, Death, I’d have a word with thee;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And thou, poor Innocency;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And love—a lad with a broken wing;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And Pity, too:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Fool shall sing to you,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As Fools will sing....”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>Its quaintness, sincerity, tenderness and grim fancy are spontaneously -in keeping with the lovely or whimsical dreamings, the wizardries -and hovering music of his happier songs. He may not have lived in -seclusion, unfretted by the hard facts of existence but the world has -never been too much with him, so he can still hear the horns of elfland -blowing over an earth that remains for him</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“a magical garden with rivers and bowers,”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">haunted by fays and gnomes, dryads and fawns and the witchery and -enchantment that have been in dusky woods, in misty fields, in twilight -and midnight places since the beginning of time. Howbeit, even the -ghostly atmosphere of “The Listeners”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span> is pierced with a cry that is -not of the dead, for in his farthest flights of fantasy he is not out -of touch with nature and human nature, and it is a glowing love of -these at the heart of his darkling visions and gossamer imaginings that -gives them life and will keep them alive.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="SIR_ARTHUR_CONAN_DOYLE">SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img010"> - <img src="images/010.jpg" class="w50" alt="Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Sir Arthur Conan Doyle</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span></p> - - -<p>If Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were more of a conventional man of -letters—had he been just “a book in breeches,” as Sidney Smith said -Macaulay was—it would not be so difficult to know where to make a -beginning when one sits down to write of him. But no author could be -farther from being “all author”; he is much too keenly interested in -life to do nothing but write about it, and probably shares Byron’s -scorn of “the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes,” and his -preference of doers to writers. He has read much, but lived more, as a -novelist ought to, giving freely of his time and thought and sympathy -to lives outside his own. He has no fretful little moods of morbidity, -cynicism, pessimism, but is essentially a big man and writes always -like himself, with a complete freedom from affection, a naturalness, a -healthy vigor and breadth of outlook that cannot be developed within -the four walls of a study.</p> - -<p>Characteristic of himself, I think, is this reflection in “The Tragedy -of the Korosko”: “When you see the evil of cruelty which nature wears, -try and peer through it, and you will sometimes catch a glimpse of a -very homely, kindly face behind.” And this, which he puts into the -mouth of Lord Roxton, in “The Lost World”; “There are times,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span> young -fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and -justice, or you never feel clean again.”</p> - -<p>You may depend he felt that time had come for him when he took up -the cudgel for George <i>Edalji</i> and would not rest or be silent -till the case had been reopened and <i>Edalji</i> proved innocent and -set at liberty; it came again when he threw everything else aside to -render patriotic services in the Boer War (which were to some extent -recognized by the accolade), and again in the later and greater War; it -came for him when he resolutely championed the cause of the martyred -natives in the Belgian Congo; when, believing in Oscar Slater’s -innocence, he wrote a masterly review of the evidence against him and -strove to have him re-tried; and it came once more when, risking his -reputation and in defiance of the ridicule he knew he would have to -face, he openly confessed himself a believer in spiritualism and has -persisted in that unorthodoxy until he has become one of the most -powerful and insistent of its apostles.</p> - -<p>These and other such activities may seem outside a consideration of -Doyle’s work in literature, but they are not, any more than are his -medical knowledge or his love of sport, for you find their influence -everywhere in his books. There were ghosts in his fiction before ever -he began to raise them at the seance. Some find it hard to square his -absorption in spiritualism with his robust personality, with the sane -philosophy of his stories, and the fact that he is so much a man of -action, a lover of the open<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span> air and all the wholesome human qualities -that keep a writer’s blood sound and prevent his ink from getting muddy -and slow. But it is just these circumstances that add weight to his -testimony as a spiritualist; he is no dreamer predisposed to believe in -psychic phenomena; he is a stolid, shrewd man of affairs who wants to -look inside and see how the wheels go round before he can have faith in -anything.</p> - -<p>He has played as strenuously as he has worked. He has tasted delight of -battle with his peers at football, cricket, golf; he has made balloon -and aeroplane ascents; introduced ski-ing into the Grison division of -Switzerland; did pioneer work in the opening up of miniature rifle -ranges; can hold his own with the foils and is a formidable boxer; he -is a fisherman in the largest sense, for he has been whaling in the -Arctic Seas, he used to ride to hounds and is a good shot, but has a -hearty hatred of all sport that involves the needless killing of birds -or animals.</p> - -<p>Born at Edinburgh, in 1859, Conan Doyle commenced writing tales of -adventure when he was about six, and it was natural that he should -illustrate these with drawings of his own, for he was born into a very -atmosphere and world of art. His grandfather, John Doyle, was the -well-known political caricaturist who for over thirty years concealed -his identity under the initials “H. B.”; his father, Charles Doyle, and -three of his uncles were artists, one being that Richard Doyle whose -name is inseparably associated with the early days of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span> <i>Punch</i>. -The remarkable water-colors of Charles Doyle, which I have seen, have -a graceful fantasy that remind one of the work of Richard Doyle, but -at times they have a grimness, a sense of the eerie and the terrible -that lift them beyond anything that the <i>Punch</i> artist ever -attempted; and you find this same imaginative force, this same bizarre -sense of the weird and terrible in certain of the stories of Charles -Doyle’s son—in “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” in some of the shorter -Sherlock Holmes tales, in many of the “Round the Fire” stories and in -some of those in “Round the Red Lamp.”</p> - -<p>In 1881, by five years of medical studentship at Edinburgh University, -Doyle secured his diploma and, after a voyage to West Africa, started -as a medical practitioner at Southsea. But all through his student -days he was giving his leisure to literary work, and in one of the -professors at Edinburgh, <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Joseph Bell, a man of astonishing -analytical and deductive powers, he found the original from whom, -in due season, Sherlock Holmes was to be largely drawn. His first -published story, a Kaffir romance, appeared, like Hardy’s, in -<i>Chambers’s Journal</i>. That was in 1878, and it brought him three -guineas; but it was not until nine years later, when “A Study in -Scarlet” came out in <i>Beeton’s Annual</i> for 1887, that Sherlock -Holmes and <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Watson made their first appearance in print, and laid -the foundation of his success.</p> - -<p>During ten years of hard work as medical student and practitioner Doyle -had gone through the usual experience of the literary beginner; he -had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span> suffered innumerable rejections, had contributed short stories -to <i>Cornhill</i>, <i>Temple Bar</i>, <i>Belgravia</i> and other -magazines, never in any year earning with his pen more than fifty -pounds. His first long novel, that brilliant romance of the Monmouth -rebellion, “Micah Clarke,” after being rejected on all hands, was sent -to Longmans and accepted for them by Andrew Lang, whom Sir Arthur looks -upon as one of his literary godfathers, James Payn, who encouraged him -in <i>Cornhill</i> being the other.</p> - -<p>“Micah Clarke” was followed in the same year (1889) by another Sherlock -Holmes story, “The Sign of Four.” In 1890 Chatto & Windus published -“The Firm of Girdlestone,” and “The White Company” began to run -serially in <i>Cornhill</i>. Then it was that, taking his courage in -both hands, Sir Arthur resigned his practice at Southsea and came to -London. He practised there for a while as an eye specialist, but the -success of those two last books decided him to abandon medicine and -devote himself wholly to literature.</p> - -<p>He has written a score or so of novels and volumes of short stories -since then; one—and an admirable one—of literary criticism, “The -Magic Door”; two of verse; a History of the Boer War, and three or four -volumes embodying his gospel and experiences as a spiritualist. This is -to say nothing of his plays—“A Story of Waterloo,” the Sherlock Holmes -dramas, and the rest.</p> - -<p>“Sir Nigel” and “The White Company” are, in his own opinion, “the least -unsatisfactory” of all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span> his books, which is to put it modestly. I -would not rank the latter below such high English historical romances -as “The Cloister and the Hearth” and “Esmond,” and think it likely -Doyle will be remembered for this and “Sir Nigel,” and perhaps “Micah -Clarke,” long after the sensational, more resounding popular Sherlock -Holmes books have fallen into the background. Howbeit, for the present, -there is no getting away from the amazing Sherlock; not only is he the -most vivid and outstanding of all Sir Arthur’s creations, but no other -novelist of our time has been able to breathe such life and actuality -into any of his puppets.</p> - -<p>Not since Pickwick was born has any character in fiction taken such -hold on the popular imagination, so impressed the million with a sense -of his reality. He is commonly spoken of as a living person; detectives -are said to have studied his methods, and when it was announced -that he was about to retire into private life and devote himself to -bee-keeping, letters poured in, most of them addressed to “Sherlock -Holmes, Esq.,” care of Conan Doyle, expressing regret at this decision, -offering him advice in the making and managing of his apiaries, and not -a few applying for employment in his service. It is on record, too, -that a party of French schoolboys, sight-seeing in London, were asked -which they wished to see first—the Tower or Westminster Abbey, and -unanimously agreed that they would prefer to go to Baker Street and see -the rooms of <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Sherlock Holmes.</p> - -<p>As for the imitators who have risen to compete<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span> with him—there are so -many there is no guessing off-hand at their number; their assiduity -has brought into being a recognized Sherlock Holmes type of story, and -though some of them have been popular, none of them has rivaled the -original either in popularity or ingenuity.</p> - -<p>Obviously, then, for his own generation Doyle is, above everything -else, the creator of that unique detective. But with him, as with -Ulysses, it is not too late to seek a newer world, and he may yet do -what nobody has done and fashion from his latter-day experiences a -great novel of spiritualism.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="JOHN_DRINKWATER">JOHN DRINKWATER</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img011"> - <img src="images/011.jpg" class="w50" alt="John Drinkwater" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">John Drinkwater</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span></p> - - -<p>From his essays and some of his poems you gather an idea that John -Drinkwater was cradled into poetry by natural inclination but grew to -maturity in it by deliberate and assiduous study of his art. He set out -with a pretty definite idea of the poet’s mission, which is, he lays -it down in one of his essays, “not to express his age, but to express -himself”; and though he has largely lived up to that gospel, he has -from time to time gone beyond it and, perhaps unwittingly, expressed -his age as well. He subscribes to Coleridge’s rather inadequate -definition of poetry as “the best words in the best order,” but -improves upon it elsewhere by insisting that they shall be pregnant -and living words. He has all along taken himself and his function with -a certain high seriousness, believing it was for him and his fellow -artists to awaken the soul of the world, and conceiving of himself -and them as beset on every side by “prejudice, indifference, positive -hostility, misrepresentation, a total failure to understand the -purposes and the power of art.”</p> - -<p>There may be a touch of exaggeration in all this, but it is the lack of -some such intense belief in themselves that makes so many of our modern -poets trivial and ineffective, and the possession of it that gives a -sincerity and meaning to much of Drinkwater’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span> verse and atones for -the austerity and conscientious labor with which he fashions the lofty -rhyme after the manner of a builder rather than of a singer. But there -is magic in his building, and if he has not often known the rapture of -spontaneous singing he has known the quiet, profounder joy of really -having something to say and, as Alexander Smith says, the joy, while he -shaped it into words, of</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Sitting the silent term of stars to watch</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Your own thought passing into beauty, like</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">An earnest mother watching the first smile</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dawning upon her sleeping infant’s face,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Until she cannot see it for her tears.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>During the twelve years in which he served as clerk in divers Assurance -Companies, he was serving also his apprenticeship to the Muses. His -first book of verse, published in 1908, when he was twenty-six, -contained little of distinction or of promise, and much the same -may be said of his second. If he was a born poet he was not born -ready-made, and in those books he was still making himself. His third -and fourth showed he was succeeding in doing that, and when the best -things in those first four were gathered into one volume, in 1914, -it was recognized that not merely a new but an authentic poet had -arrived. One might have recognized that if this little collection had -contained nothing but the four poems, “January Dusk,” “In Lady Street,” -“Reckoning,” and “A Prayer,” in which he has finely expressed so much -of himself, his own outlook and aspirations:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span></p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Lord, not for light in darkness do we pray,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not that the veil be lifted from our eyes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor that the slow ascension of our day</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Be otherwise.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not for a clearer vision of the things</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whereof the fashioning shall make us great,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor for remission of the perils and stings</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Of time and fate....</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grant us the will to fashion as we feel,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grant us the strength to labour as we know,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grant us the purpose, ribbed and edged with steel,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">To strike the blow.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Knowledge we ask not—knowledge Thou hast lent,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But, Lord, the will—there lies our bitter need,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Give us to build above the deep intent</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">The deed, the deed.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>He has little of the delicate fantasy, the eerie atmosphere, the -gracious humor of Walter de la Mare, and little of the grim, stark -realism of Wilfrid Gibson. He cannot write of the squalors of a -Birmingham street, with its trams and fried-fish and rag shops without -touching it to loveliness in the dreams of the old greengrocer who, -among the colors and scents of his apples, marrows, cabbages, mushrooms -and gaudy chrysanthemums, sees the sun shining on lanes he had known in -Gloucestershire. And when he takes a slight and elusive theme that can -only be made to dance to the airiest pipings it dies on his hands and -is cold and stiff and formal, an embodied idea, that should have been -a thing all music and light or it is nothing. Drinkwater’s genius is -more didactic, descriptive, narrative<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span> than lyrical. He is heavy and -not happy on the wing; he is more at home when he feels the earth under -his feet, and walking in the Cotswolds or in the streets of the city it -is the visible life and beauty around him, the human joys and griefs, -strivings and visions in which he can share that are his surest sources -of inspiration.</p> - -<p>There is enough dramatic and rhetorical power in several of his -poems—in “Eclipse,” “Uncrowned,” “Reckoning,” “A Prayer”—to make it -nothing strange that he should turn to the stage. Moreover, he is more -prophet than minstrel, more preacher than singer, and though the dogmas -he has formulated about art and “we” who are artists, with the claim -that the renewal of the world rests with “us,” may seem confident and -self-assertive, he is a very modest egoist and, I think, of a sort -that must have felt he could express himself with greater freedom -and force through the medium of imaginary characters than in his own -person. Anyhow, in his early days, he joined in founding the Pilgrim -Players who have since developed into the Birmingham Repertory Theater, -and he proceeded to write plays to be produced there under his own -direction. These were written in blank verse—“Cophetua,” “Rebellion” -(not without hints of his practical idealism, for all its romance), -the three one-act pieces he published in one volume with the title of -“Pawns,” the best of which is that poignantly dramatic sketch “The -Storm”—and they gave him the beginnings of a reputation as dramatist, -but none of them was particularly successful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span> from a business point -of view; and even later “Mary Stuart” was not that. By some irony of -circumstance, after devoting his life whole-heartedly to poetry he -scored his first big success with a play that was done in prose, and -the success of “Abraham Lincoln” was so big and so immediate that it -carried him straightway into a full tide of popularity on both sides of -the Atlantic.</p> - -<p>I doubt whether anybody who read it can have foreseen for “Abraham -Lincoln” such a triumphant reception. You might say it is completely -artless, or most subtly artistic in design and workmanship with -an equal chance of being right. Its structure is so simple, its -dialogue cast in such natural, everyday language that you easily may -overlook its bold originality of invention, overlook that it ignores -theatrical technique and traditions and in the quietest way makes a -drastically new departure. It is a chronicle play, but attempts none -of the beauty and harmony of poetry that clothes the chronicle plays -of Shakespeare in magnificence, nor is it alive with incident as his, -nor even knitted up into a continuing story. It is a chronicle play -in the barest meaning of the term; the dialogue is pieced out, where -possible, with Lincoln’s recorded sayings; each scene presents an -event in his career; there are more committee and cabinet meetings -than exciting episodes, far more talk than action throughout. Yet -because of the essential nobility of Lincoln’s character, his unique -personality, his quaintnesses, his brave honesty of thought and -intention, this unadorned presentment of the man and his doings<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span> -becomes curiously impressive, profoundly moving—the more so since -it strove to reincarnate what had happened with an exact and naked -realism unheightened by the conventional artifice and tricks of the -stage. The whole thing gained something undoubtedly by being produced -in 1918 when the shadow of the Great War that was upon us gave a -topical significance to Lincoln’s heroic struggle with the South, his -passion for freedom, his humanitarian but practical attitude toward -war in general. His vision and his ideals were at that time those of -the better part of our own people; the play largely voiced the minds -of the multitudes that crowded to see it, so that in writing “Abraham -Lincoln,” despite his artistic faith, Drinkwater was expressing his age -no less than himself.</p> - -<p>Already he has had imitators; his method looked too easy not to be -imitated; but it must be harder than it looks for none of them has -succeeded. Perhaps he cannot do it twice himself, for his “Oliver -Cromwell,” fashioned on similar lines, does not, in my thinking, reveal -so true and convincing a portrait of the man. Nearly ten years earlier -Drinkwater had tried his hand on the great Protector in a blank verse -poem sympathetically and dramatically conceived but not altogether -rising to the height of its subject. Like “Abraham Lincoln,” the later -“Oliver Cromwell” is a chronicle play, but he has allowed himself -more latitude in this than in that. He has less warrant for some of -his incidents; the pathos he introduces into Cromwell’s home life is -occasionally just a trifle<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span> stagey, and he has sentimentalized Oliver -himself, made him less of the sturdy, bluff, uncompromising Roundhead -that we know from his letters and speeches and the researches of -Carlyle; but it is a vivid, vital piece of portraiture and so often -catches the manner and spirit of the original as to leave a final -impression of likeness in which its unlikelier aspects are lost. -I am told it does not act so well as it reads, but if it does not -rival “Lincoln” on the boards one has to remember that it has not the -advantage of timeliness that “Lincoln” had.</p> - -<p>I have said nothing of John Drinkwater’s excursions into criticism; -his studies of Swinburne and Morris, of “The Lyric,” “The Way of -Poetry”; for what he has written about poetry and the drama is of small -importance in comparison with the poetry and the dramas he has written. -As poet and dramatist he has developed slowly, and it is too soon yet -to pass judgment on him. Plenty of men spend their lives in trying -vainly to live up to a brilliant first book, but he began without -fireworks and has grown steadily from the start, and is still young -enough not to have done growing.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="JEFFERY_FARNOL">JEFFERY FARNOL</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img012"> - <img src="images/012.jpg" class="w50" alt="Jeffery Farnol" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Jeffery Farnol</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span></p> - - -<p>Had it been, as some believe it is, an irrevocable law that a man’s -mind and temperament are naturally moulded by his early environment, -Jeffery Farnol ought to have been an uncompromising realist. Plenty -of good things come out of Birmingham, but they are solid things; you -would not suspect it was the native city of any peddler who had nothing -but dreams to sell.</p> - -<p>Scott, Ballantyne and Stevenson were all born in Edinburgh, a very haunt -of romance; Mayne Reid came from Ireland which, though Shakespeare -does not seem to have known it, is where fancy is bred; Stanley -Weyman hails from just such a quaint little country town as he brings -into some of his stories; Manchester nursed Harrison Ainsworth, and -even Manchester carries on business as usual against a shop-soiled -background of fantasy and the black arts. But Birmingham—well, -Birmingham forgets that it was visited by the Normans and sacked by -the Cavaliers; it has made itself new and large and is as go-ahead and -modern as the day after to-morrow; a place of hard facts, factories, -practical efficiency, profitable commerce, achievement in iron and -steel, and apparently has no use for fancy and imagination except on -strictly business lines, when it manufactures idols for the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span> heathen -and jewellery that is not what it seems.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, a fig from a thorn, a grape from a thistle, in Birmingham -Jeffery Farnol was born, and it would not have been surprising if he -had grown up to put present-day Birmingham and its people into his -novels, as Arnold Bennett has put the Five Towns and their people into -his; but instead of doing that he has perversely developed into one -of the most essentially romantic of modern novelists. He was writing -stories when he was nineteen, and some of them found their way into -the magazines. For a while, feeling after a source of income, he -coquetted with engineering, and there is some romance in that, but not -of the sort that could hold him. He experimentalized in half a dozen -trades and professions, and presently looked like becoming an artist -with brush and pencil rather than with the pen. In those uncertain -years, when he was still dividing his leisure between writing tales -and painting landscapes and drawing caricatures, he came to London -and spent his spare time at the Westminster Art School, where the -now distinguished Japanese artist, Yoshio Markino, was one of his -fellow-pupils.</p> - -<p>Then, in 1902, he cut the painter in one sense, though not in another, -and grown more enterprising went adventuring to America; where, having -married the youngest daughter of Hughson Hawley, the American scenic -artist, he took to scene-painting himself and did it diligently for two -years at the Astor Theater, New York. When he was not busy splashing -color on back-cloths, he was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span> working strenuously at the writing of -fiction, and if his first novel smacks somewhat of the conventions and -artificialities of the theater in whose atmosphere he was living, his -second, “The Broad Highway,” is as untrammeled by all such influences -and as breezily, robustly alive with the wholesome, free air of the -countryside of eighteenth century England and the native spirit of -romance as if he had never heard of Birmingham or been within sight of -a stage door.</p> - -<p>With “The Broad Highway” he found himself at once; but he did not at -once find a publisher with it. Often enough an author who has been -rejected in England has been promptly received with open arms by a -publisher and a public in America; then he has come home bringing his -sheaves with him and been even more rapturously welcomed into the -households and circulating libraries of his penitent countrymen. But in -Farnol’s case the process was reversed. America would have none of “The -Broad Highway”; her publishers returned it to him time after time, as -they had returned “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Tawnish,” which he had put away in despair. It -had taken him two years to write what is nowadays the most popular of -his books, and for three years it wandered round seeking acceptance or -slept in his drawer between journeys, until he began to think it would -never get out of manuscript into print at all.</p> - -<p>It was looking travel worn and the worse for wear, and had been -sleeping neglected in his drawer for some months, when his wife rescued -it and, on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span> the off chance, sent it over to England to an old friend of -Farnol’s who, having read it with enthusiasm, passed it on to Sampson -Low & <abbr title="company">Co.</abbr>, and it came to pass that “The Broad Highway” was then -published immediately and as immediately successful. That was in 1910; -and in the same year Jeffery Farnol came back to his own country and -settled in Kent, which has given him so many scenes for the best of his -romances.</p> - -<p>Strange, you may say, that a novel so wholly and peculiarly English -should have been written so far away from its proper setting and in -such unpropitious surroundings, especially while Farnol had all the -glamorous adventure and lurid, living romance of the American outlands -waiting, as it were, at his elbow. But</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“The mind is its own place, and in itself</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">and an eighteenth century England of a twentieth century New York; -otherwise he might have been among the pioneer revivalists of the -riotously romantic novel of the Wild West. Stranger still that when -“The Broad Highway” recrossed the ocean it was no longer rejected and -had soon scored an even larger success with American than with English -readers. The magazines there opened their doors to the author without -delay and made haste to secure the serial rights in his next stories -before he had begun to think of them. Within the next three years, -“The Money Moon” and “The Amateur Gentleman” had increased and firmly -established<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span> his reputation, and the earlier “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Tawnish” came out on -the strength of their abounding popularity, which was more than strong -enough to carry the tale of that elegant and honourable person much -farther than it might have gone if it had not had such best sellers and -long runners to set the pace for it.</p> - -<p>Romance is Farnol’s native air, and he does not breathe happily in -any other. When he tells a story of the trousered, railway-riding -life round him he is like a wizard who has turned from his spells and -incantations to build with mundane bricks and mortar instead of with -magic—he does the ordinary thing capably but in the ordinary way. “The -Chronicles of the Imp” is an entertaining trifle, and “The Definite -Object” is a clever, exciting story of a young millionaire’s adventures -in New York’s underworld, but they lack his distinctive touch, his -individual manner; he is not himself in them. He is the antithesis of -Antaeus and renews himself when he reaches, not the solid earth, but -the impalpable shores of old romance. He can do wonders of picturesque -realism with such charming latter-day fantasies as “The Money Moon,” -but give him the knee-breeches or strapped pants and the open road -and all the motley, thronging life of it in the gallant days of the -Regency and he will spin you such virile, breezily masculine, joyously -humorous romances as “The Broad Highway,” “The Amateur Gentleman” and -“Peregrine’s Progress”; give him the hose and jerkin, the roistering -merriment and rugged chivalries of the Middle<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span> Ages and he will weave -you so glowing and lusty a saga as “Meltane the Smith”; and you will -have far to go among recent books before you find more fascinating or -more vigorously imaginative romances of piracy and stirring adventure -on land and sea than “Black Bartlemy’s Treasure” and its sequel, -“Martin Conisby’s Vengeance.”</p> - -<p>He gives away the recipe for his best romance in that talk between -Peter Vibart and another wayfarer which preludes “The Broad Highway”:</p> - -<p>“As I sat of an early summer morning in the shade of a tree, eating -fried bacon with a tinker, the thought came to me that I might some -day write a book of my own; a book that should treat of the roads and -by-roads, of trees, and wind in lonely places, of rapid brooks and lazy -streams, of the glory of dawn, the glow of evening, and the purple -solitude of night; a book of wayside inns and sequestered taverns; a -book of country things and ways and people. And the thought pleased me -much.</p> - -<p>“‘But,’ objected the Tinker, for I had spoken my thought aloud, ‘trees -and suchlike don’t sound very interestin’—leastways—not in a book, -for after all a tree’s only a tree and an inn an inn; no, you must tell -of other things as well.’</p> - -<p>“‘Yes,’ said I, a little damped, ‘to be sure there is a highwayman——’</p> - -<p>“‘Come, that’s a little better!’ said the Tinker encouragingly.</p> - -<p>“‘Then,’ I went on, ticking off each item on my fingers, ‘come Tom -Cragg, the pugilist——’</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span></p> - -<p>“‘Better and better!’ nodded the Tinker.</p> - -<p>“‘——a long-legged soldier of the Peninsula, an adventure at a lonely -tavern, a flight through woods at midnight pursued by desperate -villains, and—a most extraordinary tinker.’”</p> - -<p>The tinker approves of all these things, but urges that there must also -be in the story blood, and baronets, and, above all, love and plenty -of it, and though Peter Vibart is doubtful about these ingredients -because he lacks experience of them, as he goes on his journey he -makes acquaintance with them all, and they are all in the story before -it ends. The tinker was only interpreting the passion for romance -that is in Everyman when he pleaded for the inclusion of picturesque -or emotional elements that Peter was for omitting, and the instant -and continuing popularity of “The Broad Highway” shows that he was a -correct interpreter.</p> - -<p>Born no longer ago than 1878, Farnol is younger than that in everything -but years. If he is seldom seen in literary circles it is simply -because the country draws him more than the town; he is the most -sociable of men, and his intimates will tell you that the geniality, -the warmth of feeling, the shrewd, humorous philosophy that are in his -books are also in himself; that his love of romance is as genuine and -inherent as every other sense belonging to him, and, consequently, when -he sits to write on the themes that naturally appeal to him he merely -follows Samuel Daniel’s counsel and dips his pen into his heart.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="JOHN_GALSWORTHY">JOHN GALSWORTHY</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img013"> - <img src="images/013.jpg" class="w50" alt="John Galsworthy" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">John Galsworthy</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span></p> - - -<p>In attempting a personal description of almost any living poet or -novelist it is becoming such a customary thing to say he does not look -in the least like an author that I am beginning to feel a consuming -curiosity to know what an author looks like and what can cause him -to look so entirely different from men of other professions that you -can tell him for one at a glance. In my own experience, the worst -poetry nowadays is written by men of the most picturesquely poetical -appearance, and the best by men who are stout, or bald, or of an -otherwise commonplace or unattractive exterior. Nor among the many -literary persons I have met do I remember meeting even one novelist of -genius who looked it. How this myth of the ideal author, the splendid -creature carrying his credentials in his face, came into being is not -within my knowledge. An old gentleman of my acquaintance who had, in -his time, set eyes on Dickens assured me that he was an insignificant -little person who might have passed for a retired sea-captain. -Thackeray rather resembled a prize fighter who had gone flabby. -Trollope, with his paunch and massive beard suggested the country -squire. Browning would not have seemed out of place as a bank manager, -and though Tennyson was said to look a typical poet,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span> he really looked -much more like a typical stage brigand.</p> - -<p>The fact is that while other trades and professions have developed -recognizable characteristics in such as follow them, literature has -naturally failed to do that. For men are drawn into it from all -sections of the community and there is no more reason that they should -conform to a family likeness than that they should each write the same -kind of books. They do not even, in appearance, live up to the books -they write. Stanley Weyman looks as unromantic as Austin Chamberlain; -that daring realist George Moore gazes on you with the blue-eyed -innocence of a new curate; and the mild and gentle aspect of Thomas -Burke does not harmonize with the violence and grim horrors of his -tales of Chinatown.</p> - -<p>In a word, no two authors look alike; as a race, they have even given -up trying to achieve a superficial uniformity by growing long hair -and, when they have any, cut it to an orthodox length. A few cultivate -the mustache; not many indulge in whiskers; the majority are clean -shaven; and in this they are not peculiar, for the same, in the same -proportions, may be said of their readers. Therefore, when at a recent -dinner a lady sitting next to me surveyed John Galsworthy, who was -seated opposite, and remarked, “You could guess he was an author—he -looks so like one,” I anxiously enquired, “Which one?” and was, perhaps -not undeservedly, ignored.</p> - -<p>If she had said he looked like an indefinite intellectual;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span> that -his countenance was modeled on noble and dignified lines; that it -expressed at once shrewdness and benignity, I could have understood -and agreed with her. But these qualities are so far from being -infallibly the birthright of the author that they are seldom apparent -in him. With his firm, statuesque features, his grave immobility, -his air of detachment and distinction, the calm deliberation of his -voice and gesture, Galsworthy embodies rather what we have come to -regard as the legal temperament. It is not difficult to imagine -him in wig and gown pleading earnestly, impressively, but without -passion, or, appropriately robed, summing up from the bench sternly, -conscientiously, and with the most punctilious impartiality.</p> - -<p>Consequently, it was without surprise I heard the other day, for the -first time, that he had studied for the Bar and became, in his early -years, a barrister, though he did not practice. Nor is this legal -strain to be traced only in his personal aspect and bearing; it asserts -itself as unmistakably and often with considerable effectiveness -throughout his novels and plays. He has the lawyer’s respect for fact -and detail; he must have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but -the truth; and this gives his stories a certain aridity; a hardness as -well as clearness of outline. The ways of the impressionist are not -his ways; he omits nothing, but is as precise, as exact in developing -plot and character as a lawyer is in getting up a case. He is not -satisfied merely to paint portraits of his men and women, he analyses -them meticulously, tells you every little thing about them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span> and their -families and friends, their taste in food and dress and furniture, -shows them in their domestic relations, in their business activities, -inventories their virtues and vices and material surroundings with a -completeness that leaves nothing unexplained and affects the reader -with an extraordinary sense of the reality of it all. If he is -recording a funeral he will take care to tell you “the hearse started -at a foot’s pace; the carriages moved slowly after.” You might have -been trusted to assume that this would be the order of the procession, -but nothing is assumed, the thing has got to be described just as it -happened. You are then told who was in each carriage, and note is made -of the thirteenth carriage which follows at the very end “containing -nobody at all.” That is the Galsworthy method. When he relates, in -“The Man of Property,” that the young architect, Bosinney, is building -a house in the country for Soames Forsyte he does not slur things and -content himself with generalities but acquaints you with the size, -design and cost of the house, its architectural peculiarities, and the -point is that all these particulars are strictly relevant and serve to -reveal more intimately the characters and idiosyncrasies of Bosinney -and of Soames, and have their significance in the unfolding of that -poignant tragedy of Soames’s wife.</p> - -<p>As the historian of later Victorian upper middle-class life in England, -Galsworthy is the legitimate successor of Anthony Trollope. He is -as true a realist as Trollope without the reticence imposed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span> on the -Victorian writer by his period; but Trollope’s style was exuberant, -slipshod, obese, like himself, and Galsworthy’s, like himself, is lean, -subdued, direct, chary of displaying emotion; he observes a close -economy in the use of words, despite the length of his books. In common -with most of his contemporary novelists, Trollope was something of a -moralist; he handled from a sensible, man-of-the-world point of view -divers religious, financial and domestic problems of the time that lent -themselves to his purposes as a teller of stories. But the problems -that interested him were those that had to be faced by the well-to-do -and the respectable; he had no particular sympathy for the lower orders -and little contempt, good-humored or otherwise, for the vulgar folk -who had earned their own money, climbed up from the depths, and were -awkwardly trying to breathe and flutter in the refined air of good -society.</p> - -<p>He had a nice feeling for sentiment, and lapsed carelessly into -sentimentality. Galsworthy is generally too controlled and -self-conscious to do that. But if his irony and satire are keener-edged -than his predecessor’s, his sympathies are broader and deeper. He is -a humanitarian whose sense of brotherhood extends to birds and the -animals described as dumb. On the one hand, he understands and has -compassion for the under-dog, the poor, the humble; and on the other, -though he can smile, as in the three novels that make up his greatest -achievement, “The Forsyte Saga,” and elsewhere—and smile with a -sardonic humor—at the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span> outlook and pretensions of those old prosperous -families who move in the best circles and, comfortably materialistic, -have, in place of a sense of brotherhood, acquired an ineradicable -sense of property in their wives, money, houses, he is not blind to the -finer human qualities that underlie their inherited social conventions. -In two of his dramas, “Strife,” and “The Skin Game,” he handles -the eternal struggle between capital and labor, and the conflict -of interests between a wealthy <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">parvenu</i> and an impoverished -patrician with such an honest balancing of wrongs and rights, such -sedulous impartiality, that you can scarcely say at the end which side -retains most of his sympathy.</p> - -<p>He takes life too seriously, it seems, to be able to write stories or -plays for their own sake; he writes them to expose moral or economic -evils of his time, to advocate reforms in our social organization; -the crude barbarity of our prison system; the tyranny of the marriage -law; the hypocrisies of religion and orthodox morality; the vanity of -riches; the fatuity of all class inequalities—with him the creation -of character, the fashioning of a tale of individual love, rivalry, -ambition, triumph or disaster are generally more or less subordinate to -communal or national issues such as these.</p> - -<p>It is characteristic of Galsworthy’s reticence that he issued his -first three or four novels under the pseudonym of John Sinjohn; and -of the genuineness of his democratic ideals that when he had built -up a reputation and was offered a knighthood he declined it. It is -characteristic, too, of his restrained,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> deliberate habit of mind that, -unlike the generality of writers, he does not seem to have rushed -into print until he was old enough to have acquired enough personal -experience to draw upon. He was thirty-one when his first novel, -“Jocelyn,” was published; and thirty-nine when, in the one year, 1906, -he made another and a real beginning as a novelist in his own name -with “The Man of Property,” and as a dramatist with “The Silver Box.” -The keynote of his work is its profound sincerity. Art and the zeal -for reform seldom run in double-harness, but they do when Galsworthy -drives.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="SIR_ANTHONY_HOPE_HAWKINS">SIR ANTHONY HOPE HAWKINS</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img014"> - <img src="images/014.jpg" class="w50" alt="Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span></p> - - -<p>The dawn of the present century brought with it what critics, who like -to have such matters neat and orderly, delight to call a romantic -revival in fiction. As a matter of fact, it also brought with it a -revival of realism, and both had really started before the century -began, and have continued to advance together ever since on pretty -equal terms. In the 1890’s Gissing was nearing the end of his career, -but the torch of realism was being carried on by Hubert Crackanthorpe -(who died too soon), by Arnold Bennett, Arthur Morrison, Pett Ridge, -Edwin Pugh, George Moore, Oliver Onions, Kipling, Wells (who divided -his allegiance between both movements), George Egerton, Elizabeth -Robins, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, and many another.</p> - -<p>The romantic revival, which had started earlier, was well afoot during -the same period. Stevenson died in 1894. Rider Haggard’s best romances -were out in the 1880’s; Doyle’s “Micah Clarke” and “The White Company” -belong to 1888 and 1890; Sir Gilbert Parker came soon after; Stanley -Weyman and Anthony Hope arrived in the movement together, when the -century was still in its infancy. All these were in the same boat but, -to adopt Douglas Jerrold’s pun, with very different skulls; how they -are to take rank in the hierarchy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span> of letters is not my concern at the -moment—I am only saying they were all romantics. That Weyman might -have been something else is indicated by the strong, quiet realism of -his second book, “The New Rector,” and the much later novels he has -written, after an inactive interval of ten years, “The Great House,” -and “The Ovington Bank”; and that Anthony Hope Hawkins might have been -something else is the inference you draw from nearly all his work after -“The Intrusions of Peggy.”</p> - -<p>His father was the Vicar of <abbr title="saint">St.</abbr> Bride’s, Fleet Street, and he was a -nephew, or some other near relation, of the famous “hanging Judge,” Sir -Henry Hawkins. From Marlborough he passed to Balliol, Oxford, where he -took his M. A. degree and was president of the Oxford Union Society. He -seems to have set out with an eye on a career at the Bar which should -lead him into the House of Commons. But though he was, like Stanley -Weyman, duly called to the Bar, like Weyman, he did not do anything -much in the way of practising. Once he put up as a Parliamentary -candidate, but was not elected; yet one can imagine him as an ideal -Member—he has the distinguished presence, the urbane, genially -courteous manner, the even temper and nimbleness of mind that ought to -but do not always go to the making of an Attorney General and, as any -who have heard him take part in after-dinner discussions will know, in -addressing an audience he has all the gifts of clarity, ease and humor -that make the successful public speaker.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span></p> - -<p>But law and politics piped to him in vain, and his ambition took the -right turning when he wrote his first novel, “A Man of Mark.” It was -a deft and lively enough tale; it was read and talked about, and -was considered promising, but caused no particular excitement. The -excitement was waiting for his next book. When “The Prisoner of Zenda” -burst upon the town, in 1894, it leaped into success at once. Stanley -Weyman’s “Under the Red Robe” was issued almost simultaneously and the -two ran a wild race for popularity and both won. Both were dramatized -promptly, and repeated on the stage the dazzling success they had -enjoyed between covers. Each inspired a large school of imitators, -which increased and multiplied until the sword and cloak romance, and -stories of imaginary kingdoms were, in a few years, almost as plentiful -as blackberriers and began to become a drug in the market. But, -meanwhile, the spirit of romance was awake and abroad, and any capable -novelist who rode into the library lists wearing her favors was pretty -sure of a welcome.</p> - -<p>In the same bustling year, 1894, we had from Anthony Hope “The God in -the Car,” a tale of a South African Company promoter, and “The Dolly -Dialogues.” These were not in a direct line of descent from “The -Prisoner of Zenda,” and were possibly written before that; they were, -at all events, written before the enormous vogue of that could prompt -the author to follow it with another of the same desirable brand. But -“The Dolly Dialogues” soared to an independent success of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span> their own. -Those crisp, neat entertaining chats of that adroitest of flirts, -Dolly Foster, with her husband, with <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Carter, and others of her -fashionable circle, were not without a certain distant likeness to the -bright, irresponsible talk of “Dodo,” and repeated the triumph that had -been “Dodo’s” a decade earlier. The “Dialogues” set another fashion, -and generated another school of imitators. Whether people ever talked -with such consistent brilliance in real life was of no consequence; it -was amusing, clever, it was often witty, and when it was not it was -crisp and smart and so like wit that it could pass for it. And in so -far as such acute remarks and repartee were too good to be true they -only brought the book into line with the airy, impossible romance and -inventive fantasy of “The Prisoner of Zenda.”</p> - -<p>With “Rupert of Hentzau” Anthony Hope was back in his imaginary kingdom -next year; if the sequel was not so good as “The Prisoner” it had as -good a reception; and “The King’s Mirror,” and a romantic comedy, “The -Adventure of Lady Ursula,” not dramatized from one of his books but -specially written for the stage, followed in quick succession. For -those were days when he was working strenuously and systematically -at his art; to cultivate the habit of work he left home every -morning, like any lawyer or stockbroker, and went to a room off the -Strand—wasn’t it in Buckingham Street?—where he wrote steadily for a -fixed number of hours without interruption. The notion that an author -can only do his best by fits and starts<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span> as the mood takes him is a -romantic convention dear to the dilettante, but Hope was never that; -he kept his romance in his books as sedulously as Scott did and was as -sensibly practical as Scott in his methods of making them.</p> - -<p>But he had to pay for his first popular success, as most novelists do. -Jerome has more than once complained that the public having accepted -“Three Men in a Boat” with enthusiasm and labeled him a humorist would -never after allow him to be anything else. His “Paul Kelver” is worth -a dozen of the other book, but it has withdrawn into the background -and “Three Men in a Boat” is still selling freely. “Quisante” (1900) -marked a new departure, suggested that Hope was turning from romance to -reality. That study of the political adventurer and the aristocratic -wife who realizes she has made a mistake in marrying out of her order, -is, as literature and as a story, a stronger, finer piece of work than -any Hope had done before, but it was not what his readers had expected -of him, and it did not win the new reputation it ought to have won for -him, though the critics did not fail to recognize its quality. To the -general world of readers he was the author of “The Prisoner of Zenda”; -that was the type of novel they wanted from him; they continued to -ask for it and would not willingly take any other. He humored them at -intervals with “The Intrusions of Peggy,” and “Sophy of Kravonia,” but -on the whole he had done with such light entertainments and settled -down to the serious interpretation of modern life<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span> and character. -Next to “Quisante,” I would place his poignant and dramatic handling -of the marriage problem in “Double Harness,” the study, in “A Servant -of the Public,” of a temperament that is only baffling by reason of -its elemental simplicity; the masterly realistic presentment of a -capable, courageous, unconventional, attractive woman in “The Great -Miss Driver,” and the brilliant treatment again of the problem of -marriage and disillusion in “Mrs. Maxon Protests.” These five—subtle -in characterization and fashioned of the comedy and tragedy of actual -human experience—these and not his more notorious trifles are the true -measure of Anthony Hope’s achievement as a novelist.</p> - -<p>But they are obscured by the flashier glory of “The Prisoner of Zenda” -and “Rupert of Hentzau,” which are now renascent and appealing mightily -on the films to the romantic susceptibilities of a new generation of -admirers.</p> - -<p>The novels he has written since the honor of knighthood was conferred -upon him in 1918 are sufficient to show that his invention and skill in -narrative are by no means failing him, though neither “Beaumaroy Home -from the Wars” nor “Lucinda” reach the level of “Quisante” or “Mrs. -Maxon Protests.” But “Beaumaroy” has touches of humor and character -that are in his happiest vein, and if I say that “Lucinda” is an abler -and more notable piece of work than is either of the dazzling fairy -tales that established his position, it is not that I would belittle -those delightful entertainments<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span> but would emphasize that so far from -representing his capacity they misrepresent it; they stand in the way -and prevent his better work from being seen in its just proportions, -so that though at first they may have secured a prompt recognition for -him, it looks as if, at last, they will, in a larger sense, prevent him -from being recognized.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ARTHUR_STUART_MENTETH_HUTCHINSON">ARTHUR STUART MENTETH HUTCHINSON</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img015"> - <img src="images/015.jpg" class="w50" alt="Arthur Stuart Menteth Hutchinson" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Arthur Stuart Menteth Hutchinson</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span></p> - - -<p>Success is good for people, when they do not get too much of it too -soon. Failure is even better for them, when they do not get more than -enough of it for too many years. Hardship, difficulty, failure—these -knock the nonsense out of a man and teach him his art or his business; -there is something lacking from the character and work of one who has -never known them. Many authors recover at last from their failures, but -an instant and early success is generally fatal; it makes them take -themselves too seriously and their work not seriously enough; their -vogue dwindles, in consequence, and the publishers who began to run -after them begin to run away from them. There is little more difference -between a too triumphant beginning and an unending failure than between -a drought and a deluge.</p> - -<p>The two extremes are equally devastating, and A. S. M. Hutchinson is -among the luckier ones who have been destined to a middle course. He -has not won his pearl without diving for it; but he has not had to dive -and come up empty-handed.</p> - -<p>Those who imagine, as some do, that, with “If Winter Comes,” he simply -came, and saw, and conquered, imagine a vain thing. He had come three -times before that, and had, moreover, toiled<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span> at the oar as a very -miscellaneous journalist, a writer of articles and short stories that -editors too frequently rejected. If he never exactly lived in Grub -Street, he sojourned for a few years in a turning out of it.</p> - -<p>He had no literary or journalistic ancestry, and was originally -dedicated to another profession, but he did not “drift into -journalism”—that not being his way; he walked into it deliberately, -having made up his mind to go there. His father is a General in -the Indian Army, and A. S. M. was born in India, in 1880. But his -grandfather was a doctor of medicine, and at an early age Hutchinson -was settled in London, beginning a career of his own as a Medical -student. To this day, he has a quiet, kindly, sympathetic bearing that -would have served him as an excellent bedside manner, if he had taken -his M. D. and put up a brass plate. But he is one of the shyest, most -retiring of men; you cannot associate him with any sort of brass; and -even while he was trying a ’prentice hand in medicine and surgery at -<abbr title="saint">St.</abbr> Thomas’s Hospital a private ambition was drawing him in another -direction.</p> - -<p>“I always intended to earn my living with my pen,” he told me, some -years ago. “I was writing then in my leisure, sending out all kinds of -MSS. and getting most of them back, and at length I took the plunge -when I had about one short story accepted by a magazine, two articles -by <i>Punch</i> and some verses by <i>Scraps</i>. I did not know a soul -who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span> had the remotest connection with literary work, but I chanced it.”</p> - -<p>And threw physic to the dogs. He did not limit himself to any -working hours, but by writing hard all day contrived to pick up a -regular five shillings a week from <i>Scraps</i> for comic verse, -and, augmenting this from a precarious sale of articles and tales to -various publications, compiled a weekly income of about one pound -sterling. He had done this for three months or so, when a letter came -from <i>Pearson’s</i> accepting a story and asking for more; and he -has related how this sent him crazy all day with excitement. A few -days later he was asked to call at the office and undertake a small, -special job, and, one thing leading to another, was presently engaged -on the staff at £2 10s. a week. By the time he had gained experience as -assistant editor of the <i>Royal Magazine</i> and been made co-editor -of the <i>Rapid Review</i>, he felt the hour had come for another -plunge.</p> - -<p>A friend of those days describes him as “a slight, almost boyish young -man of middle-height, who gazed at you with intense concentration -through the powerful lenses of his glasses.” This still describes him, -if you touch in an elusive twinkle of genial humor about the mouth and -eyes, and add that his slightness, despite something of a stoop, gives -him an appearance of being actually tall. Already he had started on -his first novel, “Once Aboard the Lugger,” and wanted to cut adrift -from too much editing and escape into other fields.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span> He resigned from -<i>Pearson’s</i> and hearing that the <i>Daily Graphic</i> was looking -for a leader-note writer, posted specimens, and secured the appointment -as a stand-by. In 1907 he was sub-editing that paper, and edited it -from 1912 to 1916.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, “Once Aboard the Lugger” being finished, he offered it to -one publisher who declined it, because “humor was not in his line,” and -to another who published it, in 1908; and it scored what counts for a -considerable success, if you do not compare its sales with those of -his fourth and fifth books. That out of hand, he commenced “The Happy -Warrior,” but when it was done, was dissatisfied with it, and being, -as he confesses, “an appallingly, vilely conscientious” worker, he did -it all over again. It swallowed the leisure of four years, but when it -came out, in 1912, added not a little to his reputation.</p> - -<p>His first book was a lively mingling of comedy and burlesque; his -second, a realistic romance of humor and pathos, struck a deeper note, -was fired with a fine idealism, and revealed him as a shrewd observer -and one subtly acquainted with the complexities of human character. -Then in 1914 came “The Clean Heart,” the tragedy of a life that lost -its way, of one who had to learn through folly and suffering that -self-sacrifice is the secret of happiness. It was as successful as its -predecessors, and I am not sure that they are wrong who hold that it -is the best of all Hutchinson’s work; but the War overshadowed it and -left it no chance of anticipating<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> the phenomenal popularity that was -waiting for his later books.</p> - -<p>For nine years he published no more. He was serving as a lieutenant of -the Royal Engineers, attached to the Canadian forces, and, after the -peace, went as a Captain of the R. E., with the Army of Occupation, -into Germany. Before he was demobilized he had planned his fourth -novel, and when he could, at length, return to civilian life, he -decided not to hamper himself again with journalism but to stake his -prospects on his new book, and in 1921 “If Winter Comes” more than -amply justified him of his decision. Not more than one or two novels -within my remembrance have leaped into such instant and enormous -popularity. For a few weeks it was praised by the reviews, but there -was no particular stirring of the waters till a “boom” broke out in -America. The noise of it soon woke us over here, and the story got -rapidly into its stride; Hutchinson suddenly found himself famous as -a best-seller of half a million copies in America and half as many in -his own country. The furore it created had scarcely showed signs of -subsiding when “This Freedom” followed in its wake and brewed another -storm. A storm of mingled eulogy and censure; for the critics this -time were largely hostile. The story handled the problem of woman’s -emancipation, and Hutchinson stood for the old ideals of femininity, -the sanctities and traditional duties of womanhood; he believed that a -mother has positive and inalienable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span> responsibilities, and set himself -to demonstrate that she could not put them by and arrogate to herself -a share of what is known as man’s work in the world without neglecting -her children, losing their affection, and bringing tragic disaster -on them and on her husband. He was accused of exaggeration; of being -out of sympathy with the modern spirit; but if, instead of giving the -novel this general application, you take it, as a work of imagination -should be taken—as a story of what happened when one woman strove -to break away from conventions and be herself at all risks—it is a -powerful and poignantly suggestive narrative and one that may well be -temperamentally true of such a woman and of such a family.</p> - -<p>Here, as in his other books, Hutchinson is so in earnest and realizes -his characters so intensely, that he becomes, as it were, this -character and that in succession, slips involuntarily into writing from -their standpoints as if he personally felt the wrong, hope, pain or -passion each experienced, and this misleads some of his critics into -taking for mannerisms what are nothing but his intimate realization of -his people and the outcome of his complete sincerity. He is so closely -interested in them himself that he cannot play the showman and stand -apart exhibiting his puppets; to him they are not puppets but have -burgeoned and become living realities and their emotions are his no -less than theirs.</p> - -<p>On the stage “If Winter Comes” did not capture the public so completely -as it did in the book, but it ran well in London and the provinces and -here<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span> and in America still keeps its place on tour. It has got on to -the films, of course and “This Freedom” is following in its footsteps.</p> - -<p>Hutchinson took his first successes with a tranquillity that seemed -like indifference, and his later and larger triumphs and the -denunciations he has endured, have I think, moved him as little. He has -aimed at doing his own work in his own way, and his popularity is an -accident; he is not the sort of man that finds success, but the sort of -man that success finds.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="SHEILA_KAYE-SMITH">SHEILA KAYE-SMITH</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img016"> - <img src="images/016.jpg" class="w50" alt="Sheila Kaye-Smith" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Sheila Kaye-Smith</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span></p> - - -<p>Talking of Charlotte Bronte, in a novel of Sheila Kaye-Smith’s that -goes back to mid-Victorian days, a hairy young man, with a mustache, -in addition to the whiskers of the period, agrees that she is crude -and outlandish, and adds, “That always comes when women write books. -They’re so frightened of being called feminine that they bury what -talent they may have under a mountain of manliness—and manliness for -them consists entirely of oaths and violence and scarlet sin.”</p> - -<p>Whether you agree or disagree with him, the hairy young critic was -expressing an opinion that was common among his contemporaries, who -have handed it down to a large number of their successors. It was -probably half true, and is not so true now as it was. The women -novelists now who specialise in scarlet sin have no particular use for -oaths and violence. Moreover, though it would be easy to name several -who have a tendency to color their pages with sin of all colors, there -is nothing exclusively masculine in that and their novels remain -essentially feminine. It would be easy to name others who are much -addicted to violent scenes and characters, but I doubt whether that is -any conscious attempt on their part to be manly—on the contrary, it -arises from an inherent,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span> very feminine admiration of that barbaric -strength and muscular vigor which the average woman is supposed to -find so splendid and so attractive in the average man. It is such an -orthodox feminine conception of the ideal male that its presence in a -story almost inevitably betrays the sex of the author.</p> - -<p>All which means no more than that the woman novelist quite legitimately -does her best to draw a man, as the man novelist does his best to draw -a woman, and she succeeds nearly as often; and no woman novelist, past -or present, has been more uniformly and extraordinarily successful -in this difficult application of her art than Sheila Kaye-Smith. It -is usual for the male author to excuse his artistic shortcomings by -insisting that woman is a mystery and it is impossible to comprehend -her; but it seems likely that he may himself be as much of a mystery to -woman and that is why, in fiction, the men she depicts so often seem -like women in masquerade. Two of our leading women writers, who can -analyse and reveal characters of their own sex with an almost uncanny -insight, lose that power when they try to exercise it on the male of -the species and he thinks, feels and talks in their pages more or less -after the manner of women. They are brilliantly clever in every other -way, but can only make man in their own image.</p> - -<p>But the men in Miss Kaye-Smith’s novels are the real thing; they are -the unqualified male in whom male readers unhesitatingly recognize -their kind. Not because they are harsh or brutal, though some of them -are that; not because they are susceptible<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span> to the lure of the other -sex and masterfully override the laws of conventional morality, though -some of them do that; not because they are heavy drinkers and lusty -fighters with their fists, though some of them are this and some that; -but simply because in their general habits, their ordinary everyday -behavior, in what they say no less than in what they think, they are -obviously of the masculine gender. It is easy to create an illusion -that your character is a man if you call him a soldier and describe him -as acting with vigor or daring; but take this fragment of conversation, -chosen at random from “The Challenge to Sirius,” between Frank Rainger -and the retired studious <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Bellack. Frank is the son of an embittered -gentleman who has withdrawn from the struggle of life; he works, from -choice, on the farm where he and his father live, and goes daily to -the Rectory to take lessons with <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Bellack, but has come to hesitate -between his love of working on the land and a desire to go away -somewhere and know more of life, and asks his tutor to advise him:</p> - -<p>“‘The question is which is the best: happiness or experience? If it’s -experience, you had better get out of this hole as quickly as possible; -if it’s happiness, you had better stay where you are.’</p> - -<p>“‘Which do you think it is, sir?’</p> - -<p>“‘My good boy, how can I tell you? Personally I would rather you did -not go to London and take your chances there, as I feel that, though -you have brains and certain rudimentary gifts, it is not the kind of -life you are cut out for, and that you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span> will probably fail and be -wretched. On the other hand, never renounce what seems to you a good -opportunity and a fine experience because an old chap like me hints at -trouble ahead. Besides, your father would rather see you starve as a -journalist than grow fat as a farmer. Perhaps he is right—perhaps I -am.’</p> - -<p>“‘Did you ever have to make a choice of your own, sir?’</p> - -<p>“‘Certainly I did, and I chose to be Rector of Wittersham with an -income of two hundred a year, no congenial society, a congregation of -hop-sacks, and for my sole distraction the teaching of a muddle-headed -boy who, at the age of nineteen, is still undecided as to how he shall -live the rest of his life.’</p> - -<p>“‘So you chose wrong, I reckon.’</p> - -<p>“‘How do you reckon any such thing? You don’t know what my alternative -was. Besides, you may be sure of this, no matter which way you choose -you will never definitely know whether you were wrong or right. The -great question of all choosers and adventurers is “Was it worth -while?”—and whatever else you may expect of life, don’t expect an -answer to that.’”</p> - -<p>Now if there had been nothing to indicate who the boy was talking -with you would know at once he was not talking to a woman, for there -is a man’s way of thinking, a man’s manner, even a man’s voice in all -that <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Bellack says. There is always this subtle, easy, truthfully -realistic presentation of Miss Kaye-Smith’s male characters, of the -mild, unassertive, commonplace, as well as the aggressive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span> and more -virile of them. Her rustic clowns are as roughly human and racy of the -soil as Hardy’s. Robert Fuller, half animal, half saint, in “Green -Apple Harvest”; Monypenny, the practical idealist of “Tamarisk Town,” -who, ambitious to develop and popularize a seaside resort, triumphs -over all obstacles, carries his schemes through, rises to wealth and -dignity, and, sacrificing to his ambition the woman he loves, finds -himself lonely and unhappy on his height and turns remorsefully -and madly to destroy all he has so laboriously built; Miles, in -“Starbrace,” with his strangely varying moods, his strength and pitiful -weaknesses; the stern, harsh, ruggedly heroic Reuben Backfield, in -“Sussex Gorse,” wholly given over to his desperate, indomitable fight -for the possession of a wild unfruitful common; <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Sumption, the dour, -pathetic Baptist minister in “Little England,” a graphic, poignant -revelation of what the war meant in a rural community, and one of the -two or three great novels of that era—these and, in their differing -class and degree, all the men who belong to her stories are real, -authentic, humans—are men in flesh and bone and spirit, easy, natural, -alive.</p> - -<p>Her women are drawn with a knowledge that is apparently as minutely -exact and is certainly as sympathetic. If I had to single out her most -remarkable study in feminine temperament and psychology, I think I -should say Joanna Godden; but her explicit interpretations of women are -not so unusual as her understanding of men. She knows their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> businesses -as thoroughly as she knows them. If, like Coalbran or Backfield, they -are farmers and working on the land, she is not contented with vivid -generalities but makes the varied, multifarious circumstance of farming -and cattle raising, and the whole atmosphere and environment that has -moulded their lives part of her story. When Monypenny devotes himself -to the development of Tamarisk Town you are not asked to take anything -for granted but are shown how he financed his scheme, acquired land, -carried out his building operations, how the borough was formed, and -the elections conducted—you follow the growth of the place through its -various stages, and Monypenny’s own story grows with and through it. -It is this acquaintance with practical detail, this filling in of all -essential surroundings that help to give the novels their convincing -air of realism.</p> - -<p>You would not suspect such broad and deep knowledge of humanity and the -affairs of the world in the quiet, soft-spoken, grey-eyed, dreamy, very -feminine person you discover the author to be when you meet her. At a -little distance, too, with her slight figure and bobbed hair, you might -take her for a mere school-girl. Little more than a school-girl she was -when she wrote her first novel, “The Tramping Methodist,” which, after -being rejected half a dozen times, was published in 1909. She had no -further difficulties with publishers, however, for this and her second -book, “Starbrace,” next year, put her on sure ground with critics and -public,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span> though she had to wait for the beginnings of popularity until -“Tamarisk Town” came out in 1919.</p> - -<p>She was born at Hastings, her father being a doctor there, and has -passed all her life in Sussex. Her first two novels are of the -eighteenth century; one or two are of mid-Victorian times; the rest -are of our own day. Occasionally she brings her people to London, but -nearly always they are at home in Kent or Sussex. In “The Challenge to -Sirius” and “The End of the House of Alard” they are on the borderland -of the two counties; but mostly her scenes are in the county where she -was born. In her books she has become its interpreter and made it her -own. She has put something of her love of it and of the rugged lives -and passions of its folk into the poems in “Willow Forge,” and “Saints -in Sussex”; but her best poetry is in her novels. If you can compare -her with some of her leading women contemporaries you have a sense of -as much difference between them as there is between the collector of -insects and the hunter of big game. Those others take you into a study -and scientifically exhibit curious specimens under a microscope; she -is too warmly human for such pendantries and takes you where there is -sky and grass and a whole ordinary world full of mortal creatures and -shows you them living and working in the light of common day. I believe -the secret of her power is largely in her complete unselfconsciousness; -she has no affectations; the charm and strength of her style is its -limpid simplicity; she seems, while you read, to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span> be merely letting her -characters act and think; to be thinking of her work and never of her -own cleverness; as if she were too sure and spontaneous an artist to be -even aware of the fact.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="RUDYARD_KIPLING">RUDYARD KIPLING</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img017"> - <img src="images/017.jpg" class="w50" alt="Rudyard Kipling" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span></p> - - -<p>It is usual to write of the 1890’s as the days of the decadents; but I -never see them so labeled without being reminded of the Hans Brietmann -ballad—</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Hans Brietmann gif a barty:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vhere is dot barty now?”...</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>For though Wilde and Beardsley remain, the rest of their hectic -group have either gone home or are going, and, from this distance -it is possible to focus that decade and realize that its prevailing -influences were Henley and Stevenson, and that the true glory of the -90’s is that they were the flowering time of Shaw, Barrie, Wells and -Kipling.</p> - -<p>Kipling, indeed, began his literary career in the 80’s, and by the -end of the 90’s was the most popular, the most belauded and decried -of living authors. After being sent home to Westward Ho! in Devon, to -be educated at the school he has immortalized in “Stalkey & <abbr title="company">Co.</abbr>,” he -went back to India (where he was born in 1865), and served successively -on the staffs of the Lahore <i>Civil and Military Gazette</i> and the -Allahabad <i>Pioneer</i> from 1882 to 1889. The satirical verses, -sketches of native character, stories of Anglo-Indian life, with their -intriguings and their shrewd understandings of the shabbier side of -human nature, that he contributed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span> to those papers between the age of -seventeen and twenty-five, rather justified Barrie’s <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">dictum</i> -that he was “born <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">blasé</i>.” But when they were collected into -his first eight or nine small books—“Departmental Ditties,” “Plain -Tales from the Hills,” “In Black and White,” “Soldiers Three,” “Under -the Deodars,” and the rest—they capped an instant boom in India with -an even more roaring success in England and America. The vogue of the -shilling shocker was then in its infancy, and Kipling’s insignificant -looking drab-covered booklets competed triumphantly with that showy -ephemeral fiction on our bookstalls for the suffrage of the railway -traveller. From the start, like Dickens, he was no pet of a select -circle but appealed to the crowd. While his contemporaries, the -daintier decadents, issued their more perishable preciosities in -limited editions elegantly bound, he carelessly flung his pearls before -swine, and the maligned swine recognized that they were pearls before -the critics began to tell them so.</p> - -<p>And when he came to England again, a youth of five-and-twenty, his -fame had come before him. He settled down from 1889 to 1891, on an -upper floor of a gloomy building squeezed between shops, at 19 Villiers -Street, Strand, and in that somewhat squalid London thoroughfare were -written some of the best stories in “Life’s Handicap,” and two of his -comparative failures—“The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot,” and his -first novel, “The Light that Failed.” Stevenson in his letters, about -then, deplored his “copiousness and haste,” said, “He is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span> all smart -journalism and cleverness; it is all bright and shallow and limpid, -like a business paper—a good one, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">s’entendu</i>; but there’s no -blot of heart’s blood and the Old Night ... I look on and admire; but -in a kind of ambition we all have for our tongue and literature, I -am wounded.” But, naturally, Stevenson, conjuring fastidiously with -words, like a lapidary with jewels, felt that his literary ideals -were outraged by this exuberant, amazing young man who, coming with a -banjo for a lyre, took the sacred temple of the Muses by violence and -disturbed it with raucous echoes of the music hall; who brought the -manners and speech of the canteen into the library, made free use of -slang and ugly colloquialisms with the most brilliant effectiveness, -and in general strode rough-shod over so many accepted artistic -conventions. It was easy to say his verse was meretriciously catchy, -but its cleverness, the bite of its irony and humor were indisputable; -that his Anglo-Indian stories were marred by vulgarities and crudities -of characterization; that the riotous humors of Mulvaney and his -soldier-chums showed nothing but a boisterous, schoolboyish sense of -fun; but there was no denying the originality of mind, the abounding -genius that was experimentally at work in all these things.</p> - -<p>Not only had Kipling broken new ground; he had defied conventions -and broken it in a new way of his own, and through the following ten -years he was justified of his daring by the maturer, more masterly -poems and stories in “Barrack-Room<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span> Ballads,” “The Seven Seas,” “Many -Inventions,” the two “Jungle Books,” and, above all, by “Kim”—that -wonderful story, steeped in the magic of the Orient, with its rich -gallery of characters, native and European, and its intimately pictured -panorama of the strange, motley life that flows along the Grand Trunk -Road.</p> - -<p>He was a born story-teller, and could interest you as keenly in ships, -bridges, machinery and mechanical objects as in the human comedy and -tragedy. He could take his tone with an equal mastery, as occasion -served, from the smoke-room, the bar or the street, and from the golden -phrasing and flashing visions of the biblical prophets. However much -the critics might qualify and hesitate, the larger world of readers, -men and women, cultured and uncultured, took him to their hearts -without reserve. Never since Dickens died had any author won so magical -a hold on the admiration and affection of our people.</p> - -<p>In those days, at the height of his fame, when he lay dangerously ill -in New York, the cables could not have flung more bulletins across the -world, nor the newspapers followed his hourly progress more excitedly -if it had been a ruling monarch <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">in extremis</i>. The Kaiser cabled -enquiries; all England and America stood in suspense, as it were, at -the closed door of that sick chamber, as those who loved Goldsmith -lingered on his staircase, when he was near the end, waiting for news -of him. Yet, curiously enough, in the personality of Kipling, so far -as it has revealed itself to his readers, there is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span> little of the -gentleness and lovableness of Goldsmith, nor of the genial, overflowing -kindness that drew the multitude to Dickens. It was the sheer spell and -brilliance of his work, I think, that drew them to Kipling more than -the lure of any personal charm.</p> - -<p>During the Boer War he developed into the poet and apostle of -Imperialism; became our high-priest of Empire, Colonial expansion, -commercial supremacy and material prosperity. You may see in some -of his poems of that period and in his recently published “Letters -of Travel” how he has failed to advance with the times, how out of -touch he is with the spirit of modern democracy. A certain arrogance -and cocksureness had increased upon him; his god was the old Hebrew -god of battles, his the chosen race, and even amid the magnificent -contritions of the “Recessional” he cannot forget that we are superior -to the “lesser breeds without the law.” He is no idealist and has no -sympathy with the hopes of the poor and lowly; there is scornfulness in -his attitude toward those who do not share his belief that the present -social order cannot be improved, who do not join him in worshipping -“the God of things as they are,” but pay homage rather to the God of -things as they ought to be. And yet I remember the beauty, the wisdom -and whimsical understanding there is in his stories for children—I -remember that children’s song in “Puck of Pook’s Hill”—</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Teach us the strength that cannot seek,</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">By deed or thought, to hurt the weak;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That, under Thee, we may possess</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Man’s strength to comfort man’s distress.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>—I remember stray, poignant things in this book and that, especially -in “The Years Between,” and am ready to think I misjudge him when -I take his intolerant Imperialism too seriously, and that these -rarer, kindlier moods, these larger-hearted emotions are at least as -characteristic of him.</p> - -<p>Someday somebody will gather into one glorious volume “The Finest -Story in the World,” “Without Benefit of Clergy,” “At the End of the -Passage,” “The Man Who Would Be King,” “The Brushwood Boy,” “They,” and -a score or so of other short stories; and with “Kim,” and a book of -such poems as “Sussex,” “Tomlinson,” “To the True Romance,” “M’Andrew’s -Hymn,” “The Last Chantey,” those great ballads of “The Bolivar” and -“The Mary Gloster,” and half a hundred more, there will be enough and -more than enough to give him rank with those whose work shall endure -“while there’s a world, a people and a year.” After all, most of his -Imperialistic verse and his prose essays into political and economic -problems were mainly topical and are already pretty much out of date; -he is rich enough to let them go and be none the poorer.</p> - -<p>If his popularity has waned it is chiefly, as I have said, because he -has not advanced with the times—he has lost touch with the real spirit -of his age; and I believe that is a result of his having withdrawn too -much from contact with his fellows. Dickens did not immure himself at -Gads’ Hill; he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span> was always returning to those planes where ordinary -folk do congregate and found inspiration, to the last, out among -the stir and business of the world. Shakespeare’s work was done in -the hurly-burly of London—he stagnated, after he settled down at -Stratford, and wrote no more; and one feels that if Kipling would only -come out from his hermitage at Burwash and mingle again in the crowded -ways of men, as he did in the fulness of his powers, he has it in him -yet to be “a bringer of new things,” that shall add new luster even to -his old renown.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="WILLIAM_JOHN_LOCKE">WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img018"> - <img src="images/018.jpg" class="w50" alt="William John Locke" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">William John Locke</span><br /></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span></p> - - -<p>You can account for almost every other sort of sudden outbreak, but why -an author of W. J. Locke’s unquestionably popular appeal should have -had to write eight novels in nine years and only achieve popularity all -of a sudden with a ninth in the tenth is one of those mysteries that -baffle even the wisest. There is no reason why any one out of six of -those earlier books should not have done as much for him, for they have -the same distinction of style, the same wit and humor, gay romance and -charming sentiment that captivated the reader so effectively in “The -Morals of Marcus Ordeyne”—indeed, I still think that its immediate -predecessor, “Where Love Is,” at least equaled that novel in all those -qualities, and in delicacy and finish of workmanship went beyond it. So -I put the problem and make no pretence to offering a solution of it but -cast myself for the safer, humbler role of the chronicler of facts.</p> - -<p>The fact that nearly all his stories are sweetened with a gracious -human kindness and a full allowance of love and sentiment might be -traced by subtle psychologists to some benign influence that the place -of his nativity had upon him, for he was born in British Guiana, at -Georgetown on the Demarara, where the sugar comes from. There may or -may<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span> not be something in such a theory; anyhow, that is where he was -born in 1863 and after an interval in England, he was sent to school -at Trinidad, where his father was a banker. Returning to England, when -he was eighteen, he matriculated at Cambridge, took the Mathematical -Tripos, and, having completed his education at <abbr title="saint">St.</abbr> John’s College, -departed from it with his B. A. degree.</p> - -<p>Thereafter, he lived for a while in France; he has lived there a good -deal, from time to time, since then, and if you were not aware of this -you would guess as much, and that he had a warm regard for the French -people, and a wide acquaintance with the literature of France, from -the sympathy and intimacy with which he draws the French characters -in his stories, and from a certain airy, sparkling wit and laughing, -good-humored cynicism that belong to him and are commonly accepted -as peculiar to the Gallic temperament. It has been said that he has -affinities with Anatole France. He has none of Anatole’s daring -irreverencies; nor his passionate revolt against the existing order of -society, nor his power in social satire; but he has the sure touch that -is at once light and scholarly, an abounding sense of fantasy, and a -tolerant, worldly-wise philosophy that he edges with an irony often as -delicately shrewd though never so bitter, so devastating as that of the -great French master.</p> - -<p>But we are going ahead too fast. When Locke quitted Cambridge he was -still a long way from the beginning of his literary career. I believe -he was already writing stories in those days, and am told<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span> that he -wrote at least one novel—one, moreover, of a highly melodramatic and -sensational kind—but he was too severely self-critical to attempt -to publish it and it remains hidden away in manuscript to this hour. -Feeling it was time to turn to something for a livelihood, he put an -end to holidaying in France and became for some years mathematical -tutor at a school in the North Country. I have seen it suggested -that his mastery of mathematics has been as valuable to him in the -construction of his novels as Hardy’s practical knowledge of the -principles of architecture has been to him, but you are at liberty to -doubt this after reading the opinion of that science which he allows -Marcus Ordeyne to express. “I earned my living at school-slavery,” -says Marcus, “teaching children the most useless, the most disastrous, -the most soul-cramping branch of knowledge wherewith pedagogues in -their insensate folly have crippled the minds and blasted the lives -of thousands of their fellow-creatures—elementary mathematics.” From -which you may gather also that he took little joy in those years -of labor in the school up North, and the wonder is that his native -urbanity and gracious personal charm should have remained completely -unruffled by those uncongenial experiences.</p> - -<p>He had escaped from schoolmastering and published four novels before he -was appointed secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects, -and he did not relinquish that post until after his two most successful -novels had made him famous and his position in literature was more than -secure.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span></p> - -<p>Not as a precocious genius, but as a man of thirty-two who had -seen enough of life to know something about it, Locke entered the -publisher’s list in 1895 and challenged the world at large with his -first book, “At the Gate of Samaria.” It was by way of being a problem -novel, for the problem novel was then having a day out. It was done -in rather somber, more realistic colors than he was going to use in -his succeeding stories; has little of the gaiety, glancing fancy -and idealistic sentiment that have now become characteristic of his -work. But it was a sound, capable piece of craftsmanship, the critics -were on the whole appreciative, the public interested, and the sales -respectable without being exciting.</p> - -<p>Following this in steady succession came “The Demagogue and Lady -Phayre,” “A Study in Shadows,” “Derelicts,” “Idols,” “The Usurper,” -“Where Love Is”—and the reviewers went on handing out laurels to him -(most of them), his circle of readers remained loyal, and it began -to look as if he were settling down among the many novelists whose -unfailing public is large enough to make an author’s life worth while -but has done growing. Yet by the time he had written “Derelicts” he had -discovered the formula that was presently to carry him far beyond such -quiet success into a roaring popularity; he had discovered his gift -for transfiguring the commonplace world and its people, conjuring them -into a fairy-tale and still making his men and women seem amazingly -lifelike and his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span> tale all true. Nor is there any hint of disparagement -in saying this. Hasn’t Chesterton eulogistically declared that <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> -Pickwick is a fairy? Doesn’t he insist that all Dickens’ characters -are fairies, gnomes and his scenes laid in a fairyland of his own -invention? There is a sense in which this is simple truth; a sense -in which it is the simplest truth of Locke. He is an idealist, and -sees that soul of goodness in things evil which remains invisible to -your superficial, short-sighted, unimaginative realist. He has the -imagination that creates, and therefore is not contented merely to -observe and describe what any of us can see for himself, but rightly -treats the visible existences around him as raw material for his art, -chooses his clay puppets and somewhat etherealizes them, touches them -with ideal qualities that most of us have but only exercise in our -dreams, as a magician might take a dull peasant and turn him into a -prince, not making him less human but more finely human in the process.</p> - -<p>For ten years he wove his spells adroitly and that circle of the -faithful was susceptible to them; then he did it once again and, in -1905, with “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne,” did it so triumphantly that -Marcus was soon the talk of the town, the book of the year, and not -only a special section but a wide world of all sorts and conditions was -at his feet. Yet there is nothing in the story to justify the miracle. -It is a typical Locke fantasy, and certainly not superior in theme or -treatment to its immediate forerunner. Sir Marcus, you remember,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span> meets -on the Thames Embankment the lost, helpless, pretty Carlotta, who has -been brought from a Turkish harem by a rescuer who has deserted her; he -takes pity on the child, adopts her, devotes himself to her training -and upbringing with, after many tribulations, the only ending that -could have pleased everybody. Nothing here for which one would prophecy -a “boom.” But the book was full of character; its various characters -were all alive, such human traits were touched into them so subtly that -you could not disbelieve in them while the author had his spell on -you; and the whole thing was told with a wit and humor so lively and -so delicate, a sentiment so irresistibly alluring that you surrendered -yourself to the sheer delight of it without thinking what you were -doing. I recollect how one critic began by saying the plot was crude -and ridiculous, and ended by confessing his enjoyment, his admiration -of the artistic finish with which even the slightest characters were -drawn, and praising without stint the cleverness and brilliant ease of -the narrative throughout. That was the kind of hold it took upon its -readers. It gave Locke a vogue in America too, and being dramatized -filled a London theater for many nights and toured the provinces for -years.</p> - -<p>Next year Locke clinched his success with the greatest of his -books—“The Beloved Vagabond,” which eclipsed “The Morals of Marcus” -as a novel if not as a play, and still remains the high-water mark of -his achievement. It is the outstanding picaresque romance of our day. -<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Locke has a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span> special weakness for such delightful, irresponsible, -romantic, golden-hearted rascals as Paragot, who could so easily have -been a squalid, unmitigated bounder in the hands of a plodding realist. -Sebastian Pasquale, in “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne,” is a lesser -member of the same family; so is that later, slighter, joyous heathen -Aristide Pujol; and there are other such in other of his books.</p> - -<p>The driving force behind his stories is their sincerity; their sympathy -with the sins, follies, vanities, errors of the motley human multitude -is his own; they are idealistic because he is himself an idealist and -in some ways almost as quixotic as any of his favorite heroes. He puts -himself into his books, and you find him there, scholarly, kindly, -witty, unaffected, and so much a man of the world that he no more feels -it necessary to write like one than a millionaire feels it necessary to -prove he is rich by talking all the time about his money.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="STEPHEN_McKENNA">STEPHEN McKENNA</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img019"> - <img src="images/019.jpg" class="w50" alt="Stephen McKenna" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Stephen McKenna</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span></p> - - -<p>You would think it should be easy—far easier than writing a novel—for -any man of literary capacity to sit down and write the story of his -own life, bring into it, instead of imaginary characters, the real -men and women he has known, and so make a great Autobiography. Yet -there are fewer great books in autobiography than in any other form of -literature. Some years ago I was remarking on this to Keble Howard, and -he accounted for the deficiency by laying it down that hardly any man -started to write his memoirs till his memory was failing and he was -getting too old to work. It is supposed to be presumptuous, a little -self-conceited, for a celebrity of any sort to publish his private -history until he is so far advanced in years that, even if he has done -nothing else respectable, he can claim to be respected on account of -his age. Howard contended, and I agree with him, that a man of seventy -or so has generally forgotten as much of the earlier half of his life -as he remembers, and often misinterprets what he does remember because -he looks back on it from a wholly different standpoint, misses the -importance of things that were important when they happened, feels for -his young self now as he did not feel at the time, makes tragedies of -what then seemed comedies, and comedies<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span> of what seemed tragedies, and -gets the whole picture out of focus.</p> - -<p>I have lived long enough since then to have been able to prove for -myself that all this is accurate; for I have read divers memoirs of men -whom I knew when they were middle-aged and I was youthful, noting how -much they omitted, incidents they have warped in the telling, events -to which they have given an emotional significance that never really -belonged to them. To remedy such a state of things Keble Howard’s idea -was that anybody who had done anything and meant to do more, should -write the first volume of his autobiography when he was under thirty, -while he was still near enough to his youth not to have lost all the -freshness of its feelings, still near enough to his childhood to be -able to revive in his thoughts the actual magic of its atmosphere; he -should write his second volume when he was about fifty, and his third -when he was so far from the beginning that the end could not be much -farther on. That is the only way, I believe, to do the thing perfectly. -We have so few great autobiographies because most of them are more or -less imaginary, so few of them are true.</p> - -<p>Possibly Stephen McKenna arrived independently at the same conclusion, -for in 1921, when he was thirty-three, he published “While I Remember,” -which is in effect the first volume of his autobiography. But he -reveals less of himself in this than of his surroundings. He is too -much of what is commonly described as a gentleman of the old school -to indulge in personalities and give away<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span> unpleasant facts about his -friends, or even about his enemies; he will criticize their public -life with devastating wit and epigrammatic satire, but he betrays no -intimacies, will have nothing to say of their private characters or -conduct, and he is almost as reticent in talking of himself as of -others. You gather from his first autobiographical fragment that before -he went to Oxford, of which he gives some delightful impressionistic -sketches, he went to Westminster School, and was for a while, a -teacher there, and perhaps the most personal note in the book is in -a greeting to some of his old pupils, which owns that he blushes to -recall the lessons he taught them. “My incompetence was incurable,” -he says. “I should be well pleased to think that your memories of me -are a hundredth part as kindly as my memories of you. Does it comfort -you to know that my awe of you continued for three terms? If ever the -prayer-bell had not rung before I showed that I could not solve some -diabolical equation! If you could have seen into my mind during the -first week when I ranged you in alphabetical order and guided myself -despairingly by the two red-heads in the form!”</p> - -<p>If he does not fill his pages with careless and indiscreet gossip of -all sorts of well-known people it is not for lack of material, but -simply that he has a conscience and a strict code of honor that make -such chatter impossible to him. He will tell you of his experience, -during the War, in the Intelligence section of the War Trade -Department, and, briefly, of his experiences with the Balfour Mission<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span> -in America, but though he has mixed largely in modern society and the -world of letters and, as nephew of one of the ablest of latter-day -Chancellors of the Exchequer, has been a good deal behind the scenes -in political circles, he does not, after the manner of the usual -sensational Diaries and Memoirs, now-a-days, scarify individual members -of any circle, but reserves his commentary and condemnation for the -changes and degeneration that have come over our general social habits -and behavior, limits his discussion of contemporary writers to their -works, and his criticism of famous politicians, and this is drastic -enough, to their doings and misdoings in the political scene.</p> - -<p>All which reticences are natural to him and exactly characteristic. -They seem to denote an austerity that is in keeping with his somewhat -ascetic appearance. But if in profile, as somebody has suggested, -he curiously resembles the portraits of Dante, there is more of the -graciousness than of the gloom and bitterness of the somber Florentine -in his composition. You may realize that if you read “Tex,” the -charming memorial volume he produced after the death of Texiera -de Mattos. It is a collection of his dead friend’s letters linked -together with explanatory notes of his own, and in these letters, and -indirectly in the notes, I think you get more intimate glimpses of the -real McKenna than anywhere else, and find him, behind the polite mask -and settled air of restraint, often irresponsibly outspoken, always -sympathetic, warm-hearted, and with a very genius for friendship.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span></p> - -<p>If he has studiously avoided personalities in his memoirs, he has, -of course, drawn freely in his novels on his knowledge of political -and social life and people, though even there nobody has, so far, -pretended to recognize living originals of any of his characters. He -began his career as a novelist with two artificial comedies. “The -Reluctant Lover,” in 1912, and “Sheila Intervenes,” in 1913. They -had some affinity with the romantic fantasies of W. J. Locke and the -sparkling talk of “Dodo” and “The Dolly Dialogues.” The story in each -was told with the lightest of light touches, and the conversations -were punctuated with smart epigrams. Their cleverness was undeniable, -and already, in “Sheila,” he was making play with his knowledge of -political affairs. They were brilliantly clever, but ran entertainingly -on the surface of things. He was learning to use his tools; feeling his -way. In “The Sixth Sense” he was beginning to find it, and he found it -triumphantly in “Sonia, or Between Two Worlds.”</p> - -<p>“Sonia” is one of the notable things in fiction that came out of the -War. It appeared in 1917, when we were all uplifted to high ideals and -sustained by a fine belief that a new and nobler world was to rise, -phœnix-like, out of the ashes and chaos into which the old world had -been resolved. The atmosphere of that time, all its surge of altruistic -emotion, are so sensitively and realistically preserved in the story -that one cannot re-read it now without a sense of regret that we have -forgotten so much of our near past and failed so meanly to realize<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span> -the better state that, in those dark days, we were all so sincerely -confident of building. Beginning in the decadent world of the late -’nineties and the dawn of the century, the story comes down, or goes -up, into the miraculously new world that the war made, and glances -optimistically into the future. Most of its characters are drawn from -the higher classes of society, and the love romance of Sonia and David -O’Rane, the most charming and glowingly human hero McKenna has ever -given us, has the social and political history of the period for its -setting. Never before or since has he shown himself so much of an -idealist nor handled great issues with such mastery and imaginative -insight. “Sonia” has been ranked with the great political novels of -Disraeli, and I doubt whether Disraeli ever did anything so fine in -poignancy of feeling and delicacy of style.</p> - -<p>“Ninety-Six Hours’ Leave,” his other war novel, was a lively tale -written for amusement only; and “Sonia Married” maintained the -tradition attaching to sequels and did not rise to the level of -“Sonia.” The biggest of his other novels are, I think, “Midas and Son,” -a masterpiece of irony, a mordant satire on the vanity of riches; and -that brilliant study of the snobbishness, shallowness, cynicism, social -ambition of the unpleasant Lady Ann Spenworth, “The Confessions of a -Well-Meaning Woman.” It blends a maturer philosophy of life with the -vivacity and sparkle of his early conversational novels. It exposes -without mercy the squalid little soul of a person who is or has been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span> -of importance in society, and if her self-revelations make her seem -abhorrent it is because she herself seems so abhorrently alive and so -minutely true to certain morbid, unlovely sides of human nature.</p> - -<p>You would not guess from the abounding vitality he puts into his novels -that McKenna was by no means of the robust kind. In winter he generally -escapes from our unsatisfactory climate, and you hear of him voyaging -to remote parts of Asia or South America, or somewhere where the sun -shines. But when he is at home, there is an hour before lunch, at the -end of the morning’s work, that is given over to any friends who may -drop in at his pleasant Lincoln’s Inn chambers, to find him the most -genial and interesting and interested of hosts, with as neat a hand for -mixing a cocktail as any in London.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="COMPTON_MACKENZIE">COMPTON MACKENZIE</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img020"> - <img src="images/020.jpg" class="w50" alt="Compton Mackenzie" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Compton Mackenzie</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span></p> - - -<p>From a literary and dramatic point of view, Compton Mackenzie may -almost be said to have been born in the purple. Even a quite modest -minor prophet who had stood by his cradle at West Hartlepool, in -January, 1883, might have ventured to predict a future for him. For his -father was the well-known actor Edward Compton, author of several plays -and founder of the Compton Comedy Company, and his aunt was “Leah” -Bateman, one of the most famous Lady Macbeth’s who ever walked the -stage; his uncle C. G. Compton was a novelist of parts; and he numbers -among his distant relations the poet and critic John Addington Symonds -and that brilliant and, nowadays, too little appreciated novelist and -playwright “George Paston” (Miss E. M. Symonds). Nor did he absorb -all the gifts of the family, for that distinguished actress Miss Fay -Compton is his sister.</p> - -<p>From <abbr title="saint">St.</abbr> Paul’s School, Mackenzie went to Oxford in the early years -of this century, and if he did not break any scholarship records -at Magdalen, he edited “The Oxford Point of View,” which he helped -to found, and became business manager of the Oxford Union Dramatic -Society, and on occasion showed himself an actor of distinction. After -leaving Oxford he married and withdrew into the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span> wilds of Cornwall, -where he seems to have written industriously for some years with no -immediate results, beyond the publication of a book of verse in 1907, -and a play, “The Gentleman in Grey,” which was produced at the Lyceum -Theater, Edinburgh, but did not stay there long enough to matter. Also -in his Cornish retirement he wrote his first novel, “The Passionate -Elopement,” but it took him longer to get it published than to write -it. When it had been up to London and back again three or four times -it began to look so worthless and he grew so indifferent toward it -that he would not waste more money than necessary on it but let it go -wandering unregistered up and down and take its chance of being lost in -the post. Seven publishers had rejected it before, in a happy hour, he -sent it to Martin Secker, who was then about setting up in business, -and when he published it, early in 1911, it sold so well that within -three weeks it had to be reprinted. The story is of the eighteenth -century; the scene is laid at Curtain Wells, a gay and fashionable spa, -where Beau Ripple reigned supreme as Beau Nash used to reign at Bath. -The characters are as gracefully artificial as if they had walked out -of an eighteenth century pastoral—the pretty blue-eyed Phyllida, the -chivalrous Charles Lovely, who loves her in vain, and the dashing, -rascally card-sharper, Vernon, who wins her and carries her off in -the end—they live gracefully, and their tale is all told, and they -smile and sigh and mince and bow their ways through it, with the charm -and fragile daintiness that belongs to old<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span> minuets and Dresden china -shepherds and shepherdesses. Mackenzie has never done another such -light and exquisite caprice though he had every encouragement to repeat -the experiment, for “The Passionate Elopement” pleased the public as -well as the critics and had run through four editions by the end of the -year.</p> - -<p>Just before or immediately after this success, he came from his Cornish -fastness up to London, settled in Westminster, and turned his hand -to potting plays, writing lyrics and reviews for Pelissier, whose -“Follies” were then at the height of their popularity. But in spite -of these distracting employments he found time for a good deal of -more important work during the brief period that Westminster’s staid, -old-world North street numbered him among its tenants. There he wrote -his second novel, “Carnival,” and had prepared a dramatic version of it -before it was published in 1912; he collected a second volume of his -verse, “Kensington Rhymes” (since when he has done no other) and it -appeared in the same year; and he had begun on the writing of “Sinister -Street,” but had to lay it aside to cross the water and superintend the -production of “Carnival” at a New York theater.</p> - -<p>He never set up his tent again in London; partly, I believe, because -its atmosphere had affected his health unfavorably; partly, I -suspect, because the social interruptions to which a town-dweller is -subject interfered too much with his working arrangements. Anyhow, -he transported himself to the Gulf of Naples and discovered an ideal -retreat in a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span> delightful villa on the Isle of Capri. In these latter -days, as if the love of solitude had grown upon him, he has acquired -one of the smaller of the Channel Islands and made himself lord of -Herm, and now divides his year between that remote and rocky islet and -his villa at Capri.</p> - -<p>At Capri he finished “Sinister Street,” one of the longest of modern -novels and much the longest of his own. Some of De Morgan’s were -nearly as long, and some by Dickens and Thackeray were longer, but -a book of two hundred and fifty thousand words is apt to daunt the -degenerate reader of to-day so “Sinister Street” was published in two -volumes with half a year’s interval between, and nobody was daunted. -No book of Mackenzie’s had a more enthusiastic reception. His readers -are uncertain whether this or “Guy and Pauline” is his highest, most -artistic achievement, and I am with those who give first place to -“Sinister Street.” If there has ever been a more revealing study of the -heart and mind and every-day life of a boy than that of Michael Fane, -I have never read it. He and his sister Stella, the Carthew family and -the miscellaneous characters gathered about them in their early years -are drawn with such sympathy and insight, such a sense of actuality, -that not a few have professed to identify living originals from whom -certain of them were modeled.</p> - -<p>The War had broken out between the appearance of “Sinister Street” and -“Guy and Pauline” and Mackenzie had gone on the Dardanelles Expedition -as a Lieutenant (shortly to be promoted to a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span> captaincy) in the -Royal Marines. He was invalided out of this business and presently -made successively, Military Control Officer at Athens, and Director -of an Intelligence Department at Syria, and in due course received -various honors for his War services. There is little or no trace of -the War in his subsequent books, unless you ascribe to its disturbing -influences the facts that neither “The Early Life and Adventures -of Sylvia Scarlett” nor “Sylvia and Michael,” admirable and vivid -picturesque stories as they are, will compare, either in subtlety of -characterization or in grace and strength of style, with the best -of his pre-war work. Neither “Rich Relatives” nor “Poor Relations” -marked much of a recovery, and “The Vanity Girl,” in which he uses the -war for the purpose of getting rid of a bad character, is not saved -by occasional flashes of narrative power and brilliant descriptive -passages from being an essay in picturesque and rather cheap melodrama. -But with “The Altar Steps” in 1922, he returned to higher levels—his -hand was never more cunning in the portrayal of character, and there -is enough in this story of the growth of Mark Lidderdale’s soul and -his progress toward the religious life to indicate that the author of -“Sinister Street” and “Guy and Pauline” is not yet to be put aside with -those whose future is behind them.</p> - -<p>I have seen it said that two or three of Mackenzie’s novels are largely -autobiographical. Certainly he puts into them scenes and places that -were associated with his youth and early manhood, life<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span> at Oxford, -Cornwall, the theater and theatrical people, and goes on handling, -developing three or four of his characters in successive novels, -bringing them into this, that and the other story as if he were giving -them their proper place in episodes that had really happened. Sylvia -Scarlett reappears in “The Vanity Girl”; Maurice Avery of “Carnival” -flits through “Sinister Street,” and Guy Hazlewood, who is at Oxford in -that novel, is the hero of “Guy and Pauline,” in which also, Michael -Fane, the principal figure in “Sinister Street,” plays a very minor -part. Thackeray, Trollope and others practised the same device, and -there is no reliable significance in it, except that it helps the -reader, and probably the author himself, to an easier sense of the -reality of such persons. Something of Mackenzie’s childhood has gone, -no doubt, into his “Kensington Rhymes”; and he, like Michael Fane, -spent his boyhood at Kensington, attended a big public school in -London, and, like Michael, went to Oxford, and may have given Michael -throughout some of his own experiences. You may fancy resemblances -between his withdrawing into Cornwall and publishing a book of verse, -and Guy Hazlewood going, as his father has it, “to bury yourself in a -remote village where, having saddled yourself with the responsibilities -of a house, you announce your intention of living by poetry!” There may -be personal touches in this, and in Guy’s effort to find a publisher -for his book of poems, but who shall say where autobiography ends and -fiction begins? Naturally, every novelist works with his experience<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span> as -a potter works with clay, but he usually transfigures that raw material -and moulds it into new shapes of his own invention. The truest, most -living characters in fiction are those that draw their vitality from -the author’s self. No doubt if we knew enough about him, we could find -a good deal of Shakespeare in his most masterly characterizations.</p> - -<p>There is a lot of solemn and pretentious nonsense talked in the name -of psychology. It is possible to make shrewd guesses, but no man can -positively analyse the mind of another.</p> - -<p>When we think we are making a marvelous study of another’s motives, -we are studying the motives that would have been ours in his -circumstances. Professor Freud, with his doctrine of psychoanalysis, -has turned the head and choked the narrative vein of many an otherwise -capable novelist who has felt a spurious sense of superiority in trying -to graft the art of medicine on the art of fiction.</p> - -<p>There is truer psychology in Mackenzie’s novels than in the precious -novels of most of our professed psychologists. He has done bigger work -than theirs with a more modest conception of the novelist’s function. -“I confess that I like a book to be readable,” he once wrote; “it seems -to me that a capacity for entertaining a certain number of people is -the chief justification for writing novels.” He deprecates this as “a -low-browed ambition,” but it was high enough for the great novelists of -the past, and the pseudo-medical methods of Freudism do not look like -producing any that are greater.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="JOHN_MASEFIELD">JOHN MASEFIELD</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img021"> - <img src="images/021.jpg" class="w50" alt="John Masefield" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">John Masefield</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span></p> - - -<p>Were I put to select the four or five poets who are most typically -modern—most essentially of our own time, I think I should name -Kipling, Hardy, Wilfrid Gibson, Siegfried Sassoon and John Masefield, -and Masefield perhaps before all. There are others who have written -poetry as fine, or even finer, but nearly all of them, had they been -contemporary with Tennyson, Wordsworth, Keats, Blake, might have -written very much as they are writing now without seeming to have been -born out of their due period. The five I have named could not have done -this: either in theme or manner their poems are too intimate a growth -of our own generation, as unmistakably of to-day as the motor-bus -or as wireless is. I am not forgetting Crabbe, the father of modern -realistic poetry, but he mitigated his unorthodoxies by observing a -respectable reticence of phrase, by subscribing to poetical conventions -of language, and clothing his newness in the old-fashioned mantle of -Pope.</p> - -<p>The philosophy of my chosen five may be sometimes akin to that of -Fitzgerald’s Omar, but the old wine is in aggressively new bottles. And -I am not forgetting that Hardy was Tennyson’s contemporary, and not a -little of his poetry was written in the 60’s and 70’s, though it was -not published then.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span> If it had been published, the tastes and standards -of that formal age would have found it so wanting that it never would -have won for Hardy then the fame it has given him now. Think of -Tennyson, with his conviction that</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“the form, the form alone is eloquent,”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">trying with his hyper-sensitive ear the wingless, rugged lyrics of -Hardy, setting himself to read them aloud, like the poet in his own -“English Idyls,”</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“mouthing out his hollow oes and aes,”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">and finding it couldn’t be done, for here was a poetical nonconformist -who sacrificed verbal beauty to naked truth and was more earnest about -what he had to say than about mouthing it in grandiose orotundities of -phrase.</p> - -<p>Certainly, by the time Tennyson had done with it, poetry was becoming -too much a matter of phrase-making; the poet himself was contracting -a sort of sentimental snobbery, segregating himself from the crowd, -losing touch with common life, and for their own sakes and that of -their art, many of us felt, as Dixon Scott put it, that we wanted -to “flatten out Parnassus. For poetry has been looked up to far too -long; it is time the reader looked down on it; nothing is doing its -dignity more damage than the palsying superstition that it is something -excessively sublime. The reader picks out his prose-men; he is familiar -with philosophers; but the moment he mentions verse he remembers the -proprieties; up go his eyes and down drops his voice; and from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span> what -is no doubt just a nice, natural desire to do nothing offensive to -refinement, he invariably speaks of the specially simple, jolly, frank -and friendly souls who make it as though they were wilted priests. -Whereas, in reality, of course, they are of all writers, exactly the -men whom it is most needful to see as human beings; for of all forms -of writing theirs is the most personal, intimate, instinctive—poetry -being, after all, simply essence of utterance—speech with the artifice -left out.”</p> - -<p>To this it now approximates, but it was not this, nor were the poets -such simple, unaffected souls until Kipling had begun to outrage their -delicacies, shock their exquisite, artistic refinements with the noise -and dazzle of his robust magic, and others, like Hardy, Gibson and -Masefield, had brought poetry out of her sacred temple and made her at -home in inns, and kitchens, and workshops, cottages and mean streets -and all manner of vagabond places, restored her to plain nature and -human nature and taught her to sing her heart out in the language of -average men—sometimes in the language of men who were quite below the -average. But even this was better than limiting her to expressing her -thoughts and emotions in artificial elegancies that no man ever uses -except when he is posing and perorating on public platforms.</p> - -<p>In his beginnings Masefield was not unaffected by the Kipling -influence; you can trace it in the lilting measures of some of his -early “Salt Water Ballads”; perhaps here and there in his early prose -stories and sketches, “A Tarpaulin Muster,” “A<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span> Mainsail Haul.” He was -realizing and naturalizing the seamen there, as Kipling had realized -and naturalized the soldier. But he was already doing more than that; -he put into those first Ballads, and the “Poems and Ballads” that soon -followed them, a grace of fancy, a charm and beauty, also true to -the life he pictured, that do not come within the range of Kipling’s -genius. He was feeling after and foreshadowing there, too, his own -special mission as a poet—if one may use so portentous a word as -mission without having it taken in any but its artistic significance. -His business was not to be with dignitaries and classical heroisms, -he says in “Consecration,” but with sailors and stokers and men of no -account—</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Not the rulers for me, but the rankers, the tramp of the road,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load ...</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>And of this purpose have come that most poignant and effective of his -dramas, “The Tragedy of Nan,” his stories, “The Street of To-day,” -“Multitude and Solitude,” and those narrative poems that are his -highest and most distinctive achievement, “The Everlasting Mercy,” “The -Widow in the Bye Street,” “Dauber,” and “The Daffodil Fields.” In these -he is still on that quest for beauty—</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">“that one beauty</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">God put me here to find—”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span></p> - -<p class="p0">to which he consecrated his gift at the outset, when he claimed as his -kingdom</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth,”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">though he is following it here less obviously than in the statelier, -noble sonnet sequence of “Lollingdon Downs.” In the narrative poems he -is seeking for the soul of beauty in things evil, in things common and -sometimes unclean, in lives that are broken and that the world’s rough -hands have soiled. His passion for realism, for the stark truth of -life as it is lived, is transparently sincere; it is absurd to object -that his stories are melodramatic, since they are not more so than -life itself is, but there is reason in the protest that he pushes the -crudities of his dialogue too far, is apt to be overviolent in language -and uses ugly expletives so freely that, instead of adding to the -reality of his characters and incidents, they detract from it, come to -seem artificial, till one suspects an affectation in them and is more -irritated than impressed. Take, for example, the close of that squabble -between Saul Kane and Billy Myers, in “The Everlasting Mercy”—</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“You closhy put.”</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 16em;">“You bloody liar.”</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“This is my field.”</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 16em;">“This is my wire.”</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“I’m ruler here.”</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 16em;">“You ain’t.”</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 22.5em;">“I am.”</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“I’ll fight you for it.”</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 16em;">“Right, by dam.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span></p> - -<p>Whether such a man would say “I’m ruler here” is of small consequence, -but no man swears “By dam,” and you feel that the word is either -used arbitrarily for the sake of the rhyme, or with an idea of being -forceful at all costs. And though a man might say, “I’ll bloody well -put him in a bloody fix,” and “I’ll bloody well burn his bloody ricks,” -there is the same sense of desperate straining after effect in making -him say,</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“I’ll bloody him a bloody fix.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I’ll bloody burn his bloody ricks,”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">because no ruffian was ever heard to speak so elliptically, and you -feel it is only done in order that the meter may be made to accommodate -a startling plethora of profanity. Such excesses sound a false note and -are out of tune with the general truth, the vivid reality that give the -stories their authentic power and greatness.</p> - -<p>I have heard it said that these aberrations represent the efforts -of one who is naturally reticent and fastidious to present with due -forcefulness certain brutal and lawless types of character that are -not within his personal knowledge; but I doubt this. He may have -exercised his imagination, and if so he exercised it potently, in -writing “Reynard the Fox” and “Right Royal,” for I should guess he -never went fox-hunting or steeple-chasing, but for “Dauber” and the -raw human creatures of “The Everlasting Mercy,” “The Widow in the -Bye Street” and “The Daffodil Fields” he may very well have drawn on -memory and experience of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span> people he has known. For he was not reared in -cotton-wool nor matured among the comparative decorums of office-life. -From a training vessel, he went to sea in the merchant service, knocked -about the world on sailing-ships and has put some of his old shipmates -into his ballads and some of them and some of their yarns into “A -Mainsail Haul” and his first novel, “Captain Margaret.” Quitting the -sea, he went tramping in America, picking up a livelihood by casual -work on farms, and after a while settled down to serve behind a bar in -New York, escaping from the noise and squalor and drudgery of it at -night to solace himself with the “Morte d’Arthur” after he had gone up -to his garret to bed. It was a harsh apprenticeship, that on sea and on -land, but it broadened his outlook and his sympathies, and fitted him -to be, as he was presently resolved to be, the interpreter of “the men -of the tattered battalion”—</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“He had had revelation of the lies</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cloaking the truth men never choose to know;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He could bear witness now and cleanse their eyes;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He had beheld in suffering; he was wise.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>His work as a critic is in a certain newspaper where he used to review -new poets before he was recognized as one, and in his scholarly, -revealing study of “Shakespeare”; but his finest, most imaginative -prose is in that poignant book “Gallipoli” which he wrote after he came -home from serving there in the Great War.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ALFRED_EDWARD_WOODLEY_MASON">ALFRED EDWARD WOODLEY MASON</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img022"> - <img src="images/022.jpg" class="w50" alt="Alfred Edward Woodley Mason" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Alfred Edward Woodley Mason</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span></p> - - -<p>It is interesting, and a little saddening, to look through a list -of living novelists and pick out the names of those who were well -in the first flight of popularity ten or fifteen years ago but have -since fallen back steadily, year after year, into the second, third -and fourth flights, until now they are almost absorbed into the -multitudinous rearward ranks where the unpopular and the mediocre rub -shoulders with survivors who still ruffle it obscurely on the strength -of a past reputation. For it is easier to become popular than to -remain so. No author can take the public by surprise a second time. -A novel that has some freshness of fable or style, though it be in -some ways crude and in no way great, may do the trick once; but if an -author follows this with a succession of books in a too-similar vein, -showing no ripening of his mind, no growth of knowledge or invention, -nothing but a sprightly repetition of that same morning freshness, -which was well enough when the day was new, his public begins to yawn -and go away. A juggler, when he has exhausted his little repertoire -and finds the plate coming back to him almost empty, can roll up his -scrap of carpet, walk around the corner, and in another street collect -a different crowd to whom all his old conjurings are new; but no writer -can attract<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span> a fresh public for each fresh book he produces—his only -way is to keep sure hold on his first readers and add to them, and -this he cannot do unless he matures in his books as he does, or should -do, in himself. His public is all the while growing older, and the -pathos and humor and general outlook on life that satisfy a young man -or a young woman will rarely make the same appeal to them when they -arrive at maturity. The humor that tickles you to-day will scarcely -move you to a smile when you have lived, enjoyed, worked and suffered -for another decade or so in such a world as this; the pathos that once -melted you to pleasant tears jars upon you when you re-read it now -and seems but shallow, youthful sentimentality; what you had used to -think a dashingly romantic incident or character bores you now and -seems tinsel unreality. You have been growing up, and if the growth of -your favorite novelist does not at least keep pace with your own, you -naturally pass on and leave him behind. Had “David Copperfield” been -simply another “Oliver Twist,” Dickens would have been but the novelist -for an age, and that not the middle-age.</p> - -<p>Largely, I think, because he went on with a broadening vision of life, -a ripening knowledge of the world, a deepening sympathy with human -character, the books of A. E. W. Mason have retained for him the -popularity he won about a quarter of a century ago with “The Courtship -of Morrice Buckler.” Read “Morrice Buckler” again, and then “The Four -Feathers” and “The Broken<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span> Road,” and you will recognize how he grew -up with his readers. You can still take delight in “Morrice Buckler,” -but the later books yield you a fuller enjoyment—they have put off -the careless glamor and reckless gallantries of gay romance, and have -put on the soberer, more enduring garb of more familiar humanity, that -does not wear its romance upon its sleeve, but more poignantly, more -wonderfully, at the troubled heart of it.</p> - -<p>Born in 1865, Mason is an old Dulwich College boy, and took his B. A. -degree at Oxford. At Oxford, too, he showed a strong predilection for -the drama, and was one of that University’s notable amateur actors. -Later, he took to the stage in earnest, and toured the provinces with -the Benson Company and the Compton Comedy Company, and played in London -as one of the soldiers in Shaw’s “Arms and the Man.” But the ambition -that called him on to the stage presently called him off, and in 1895 -he commenced his career as a novelist.</p> - -<p>It was not a very promising beginning. His first novel, “A Romance of -Wastdale,” was well enough received by the critics, but the public did -not rise to it, and Mason seems to have suppressed it with unnecessary -rigor. Competent judges have assured me it was a story of more than -ordinary distinction and merited a better fate. However, its author -had not long to wait for his due meed. A year after, in 1896, “The -Courtship of Morrice Buckler” was published, and its publication gave -Mason his place forthwith as an extraordinarily<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span> popular novelist. It -was the novel of the day; it was read and talked about everywhere, -ran through I don’t know how many thousands, and still goes as a safe -seller into any series of popular reprints.</p> - -<p>“The Philanderers” appeared in 1897, and in quick succession came -“Laurence Clavering,” “Parson Kelley” (written in collaboration with -Andrew Lang), “Miranda of the Balcony,” “The Watchers,” “Clementina,” -that has all the dash and headlong movement of Dumas and a grace and -pathos that Dumas had not, “The Four Feathers,” “The Truants,” “Running -Water,” “The Broken Road,” “At the Villa Rose,” “The Turnstile,” and -“The Summons.”</p> - -<p>But Mason was never one of the authors who are all authors; he is not -of the sedentary breed who are contented to study life in books or from -their study windows; the noise and business of it have always appealed -to him irresistibly; he has roamed the world rubbing shoulders with -all sorts and conditions of humanity everywhere, and his later books -mirror much of his personal experience and the countries and people he -has known. He blends the appearance of a writer of romance with the -restless energy of a man of action, and in 1906, his superabundant -energies seeking a new outlet or a new ambition prompting him, he -turned his attention to politics, threw for Parliamentary honors, and -was elected M. P. for Coventry. He signalized his advent in the House -with a notable maiden speech; did not speak there often but proved -himself shrewd and eloquent in debate, and if he had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span> not escaped we -might have been the richer by a sagacious, sympathetic Cabinet Minister -and one brilliant novelist the poorer. Fortunately, however, the -fascinations of the Mother of Parliaments could not subdue him, and -after some three years under her shadow he did not offer himself for -election again.</p> - -<p>Fortunately, because the air of the House of Commons is not healthful -breathing for poets or novelists. For them it is a soporific and -suffocating air. You may note that when a writer of imaginative -literature has sat in the House for more than a limited period his -spirit puts on flesh, dulness settles on his faculties and communicates -itself to his pen. What plays did Sheridan write after he took his seat -there? And who shall say that Lytton might not have written with fewer -capital letters and less of the manner of the big bow-wow if he had -never ventured into that fatal atmosphere? Mason’s sojourn in the House -had no influence on his fiction, unless it was his stay there that -turned his thoughts toward India and the grave problem of the education -of its native Princes in England and so resulted in his writing one of -the most powerful of his books, “The Broken Road”; in which case he has -brought more good out of it than any novelist who ever went into it, -except Disraeli, and Disraeli was really a politician in his romances -and a romancist in his politics, so he can hardly be counted.</p> - -<p>I could never imagine the author of “Miranda of the Balcony” sitting -out interminable debates,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span> or trooping with his party into the voting -lobby. He must have felt much more at home in uniform when he became -in the first days of the war a Captain of the Manchester Regiment, and -later, a Major on the General Staff. If he wrote no more romance for -a time (his only book through those years was a collection of short -stories, “The Four Corners of the World,” in 1917) it was because he -was too busy living it. For with all its squalors and horrors and -agonies, the Great War is beginning, in remembrance, to take on the -color of romance by comparison with the tameness and monotony of -ordinary everyday life.</p> - -<p>You would gather from his stories that Mason was much given to boating, -traveling and mountaineering, for a love of the open air blows -through nearly all of them. The Alps and the enormous shadow of them -dominate “Running Water”; and the skies and landscapes and peoples of -present-day Egypt, Italy, India fill the pages of “The Four Feathers,” -“The Broken Road,” and “At the Villa Rose.” Latterly, too, his new -novels have become few and far between and he has given himself again, -more and more, to the stage. He never quite severed himself from it. -Soon after the novel appeared, he dramatized “Morrice Buckler,” in -collaboration with Miss Isabel Bateman, and it was very successfully -produced at the Grand, Islington, and had a long run in the provinces; -1901 saw a dramatic version of “Miranda of the Balcony” staged in -New York; in 1909 he produced two comedies, not founded on his books -“Colonel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span> Smith” and “Marjorie Strode”; and in 1911 the most successful -of all his dramatic ventures, “The Witness for the Defence.”</p> - -<p>Since then, we have had “Open Windows,” and dramatized versions of “At -the Villa Rose” and “Running Water,” and one hears rumors of other -plays that he has in preparation. The indications are that in future he -will appear more often on the boards than between them, and nobody need -regret this if he only offers us as much pleasure in the stalls and the -pit as we have had from him in our arm-chairs at home.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="WILLIAM_SOMERSET_MAUGHAM">WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img023"> - <img src="images/023.jpg" class="w50" alt="William Somerset Maugham" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">William Somerset Maugham</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span></p> - - -<p>On the whole, I incline to the orthodox belief that if an author wants -to find a short way to success he should not be too versatile. Nearly -all our famous writers have been contented to do one thing well—have -seemed to say with Marvell,</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Let us roll all our strength and all</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our sweetness up into one ball.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>I could name authors of our day who have dissipated their energies -in half a dozen or more directions. They are journalists, novelists, -poets, essayists, critics, dramatists, writers of books for children -and editors of all manner of books. They have no settled reputation, -the public does not know where to have them; they are all sorts of -things to all sorts of readers and nothing in particular to any. They -win some vague popularity, perhaps, and an income, but not fame. Fame -comes to the man who concentrates on the one kind of work for which he -has special gifts, puts all his heart and all his skill into the doing -of that.</p> - -<p>You may say that Somerset Maugham is versatile; but he has written -no verse, no essays, no criticism, no tales for children. He wisely -exercised his versatility within the range of a single art until he -turned his attention to the stage, and if<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span> he has been versatile since, -it has been only inside the limits of these two arts, a versatility as -legitimate in the artist as it is sagacious in the man who has to earn -a livelihood with his pen and hopes to go on pleasing his audience with -many books. For there is no virtue in the opposite extreme to which -some novelists go nowadays, who concentrate so conscientiously that -they narrow their outlook to one phase of life, one type of character, -and never shift their scenery. By this means they ensure that their -stories are graphically accurate, meticulously true, but by the time -they have told four or five the reader becomes aware of a sameness, -a monotony in them, pines for a change, goes after new gods, and the -old shrine begins to lack worshippers. If Maugham’s circulation ever -dwindles it will not be for this reason.</p> - -<p>Happily he has a sense of humor which prevents him from adopting -anything in the nature of a pose; but, however unassuming, he is not -diffident; he is without affectations, and assured me once he was -without ideals, by which I believe he meant no more than that he was -not too idealistic to be a practical man. It was when he had succeeded -as a novelist and was starting on his successful career as a dramatist -that he told me he felt there was a tremendous amount of nonsense -talked about the serious drama. “All this high falutin chatter about -ideals!” said he. “A playwright’s and a missionary’s calling appear to -me to be two distinct and quite separate callings which should not be -permitted to overlap. I cannot understand why a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span> serious play should -be held to be pre-eminently greater or more important than a humorous -play, a comedy, for instance. Nor do I admit for a moment that the -former is more difficult to write or demands a consideration peculiar -to itself.” Briefly, he protested that his one aim as novelist or -dramatist was to amuse; he thought that was the first business of all -authors, adding, “I would excuse almost anything but dullness.” No -book fails because its literary quality is too high, but because the -writer who can write literature does not always know how to write it -interestingly. And I found that Maugham, in the broad sanity of his -judgment, had no sympathy with the egotistical talk of unpopular but -superior persons who ascribe their failure to a fine inability, a noble -disinclination to “write down” to the presumably lower apprehensions of -the vast majority of mankind.</p> - -<p>His practice, through the many years since he emerged as a new author, -has always squared with his precepts. Somebody writing of him a -little while ago said he got his intimate knowledge of men and women, -particularly of the London poor, while he was working as a doctor, but -this is scarcely accurate. After completing his education at King’s -School, Canterbury, and Heidelberg University, he became a student at -<abbr title="saint">St.</abbr> Thomas’s Hospital, and in due course took his M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. -degrees, but he never put up his brass plate and worked as a doctor. -He had never seriously intended doing so. His family wished him to -study medicine, and he yielded to that wish,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span> but his own ambition -from the first had been to write for the stage. He was convinced that -stage-craft was a knack he could acquire if he made up his mind to -it; but he had a saving leaven of common sense and had seen enough -of things to know that it was infinitely harder to worry through all -the difficulties between writing a play and getting it produced than -to find a publisher for a novel, so he resolved to turn novelist as a -means of earning bread and butter and winning a large enough reputation -to move theater managers to feel that it was at least worth their while -to look at his dramas.</p> - -<p>That was in the 90’s—the glamorous 1890’s when some would persuade -us the whole world of letters in this country was dominated by Oscar -Wilde and his circle. But Maugham was one of the many authors of -the period—I have referred to others already—whose work shows -little trace of that influence. There is nothing much of romance in -the story of his literary beginnings; he did not cast himself upon -the town and drudge in the byways of journalism, nor did he undergo -the disheartening experience of having his manuscripts persistently -rejected by the magazines. While he was still a student at <abbr title="saint">St.</abbr> Thomas’ -he sent Fisher Unwin a collection of stories that eventually appeared -under the title of “Orientations,” and that astute publisher at once -accepted it, but strongly advised Maugham that it would be much better -for himself that he should make a start with a novel; and he accepted -the advice and went away to act upon it.</p> - -<p>Just then the slum story was all in the air—so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span> much so that -“slumming” had become a popular pastime with young ladies of leisure. -The vogue of Gissing was at its height; Arthur Morrison had written in -“Tales of Mean Streets” and “The Child of the Jago” some of the most -powerfully realistic of any pictures of London low life; Edwin Pugh -had revealed the same underworld in “A Street in Suburbia” and “The -Man of Straw”; Pett Ridge’s “Mord Em’ly,” showing something of the -happier side of that drab underworld, was running serially, and various -other writers were finding themes for fiction in those ugly facts of -existence that the city keeps as much out of sight as possible. In any -case, the slums of Lambeth lay beside <abbr title="saint">St.</abbr> Thomas’s Hospital, their -inhabitants came into it as patients, so Somerset Maugham knew them, -their homes, their habits, their manner of speech, their manner of -living, and fashioned his first novel out of such personal experience. -He called it “A Lambeth Idyll”; Fisher Unwin accepted it and, in 1897, -published it as “Liza of Lambeth.” Its stark, violent realism roused -a good deal of protest; we were not so tolerant in such matters then -as we have now become; and though there were not wanting those who -praised the stern faithfulness with which it depicted certain phases -of London life, more and louder voices denounced it as unpleasant, -brutal, repellant, extravagantly squalid. Crude and raw it may have -been, somewhat obviously out to shock the delicate, omitting too much -light and massing too much shadow, but there was truth if not all the -truth in it, Liza and her mother<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span> and her barbaric lover, Jim, were -alive and real, and the controversy that raged round the book served, -at least, the good purpose of obtaining for it a measure of the success -it merited.</p> - -<p>But if any imagined that, like so many of his contemporaries, Maugham -was going to devote himself to the exploitation of the slums, or of -low life, they soon found they were mistaken. He finished with the -slums in “Liza of Lambeth” and never wrote another novel about them. -He moved through average society in “The Making of a Saint” (1898); -then his actual first book, the short stories “Orientations,” made -its appearance; on the heels of this followed “The Hero”; then came -what I still feel to be the strongest and ablest of his novels—“Mrs. -Craddock.” Good as it is, the times were not ripe for such frank -handling of sex mysteries and the book was rejected by every publisher -of consequence. Even Heinmann declined it at first; then, on a second -consideration, accepted it and published it in 1903. The study of -that elemental, passionate, intensely female creature, Mrs. Craddock, -is an aggressively candid, extraordinarily subtle essay in feminine -psychology; her story is touched with satire and irony and inevitably -clouded with tragedy, wherefore the general reader, who prefers -pleasanter things, did not take to it kindly. Maugham has never since, -perhaps, been so somber, though the sex element has continued to play -a potent part in most of his novels and stories, which have had their -scenes in middle-class and high society, at home, at the North Pole, in -the South Seas<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span> and, with those wonderful sketches of character, “On a -Chinese Screen,” in China.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, as everybody knows, his triumphant progress as a novelist -had not diverted Somerset Maugham from his original bent. In 1902 -he had a one-act piece, “Schiffbrüchig,” produced in Germany. Next -year he wrote “The Man of Honor” for the Stage Society, but instead -of attracting theatrical managers to him it frightened them off, for -there was no laughter in it, and they appear to have taken for granted -that it fully represented what he could do and meant to do, and that -consequently nothing of his was likely to appeal to the playgoing -public or could be made to pay.</p> - -<p>But they reckoned without their host. Maugham set to work and wrote -three comedies, “Lady Frederick,” “Jack Straw” and “Dot,” which were -destined to establish him as a dramatist whose plays had money in them.</p> - -<p>His later plays have not gone begging for producers—producers have -gone begging for them. And the plays of Maugham have been as varied -in theme and manner as his novels. From gay, witty, frivolous, ironic -comedy, he has passed to sentimental or romantic drama; but he has -learned to touch in his realism more deftly, more cunningly, and is no -longer faced with the task of having to placate a public obsessed by -the mid-Victorian gospel that the plain truth about men and women is -not respectable and must not be told.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="WILLIAM_BABINGTON_MAXWELL">WILLIAM BABINGTON MAXWELL</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img024"> - <img src="images/024.jpg" class="w50" alt="William Babington Maxwell" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">William Babington Maxwell</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span></p> - - -<p>It has passed into a sort of proverb that famous men never have sons -who equal them in fame. There are, of course, exceptions. Benjamin -Disraeli has eclipsed that delightful bookworm, his father Isaac, who -wrote the “Curiosities of Literature”; Henry James, having a father who -was a distinguished novelist and theologian, used to describe himself -on his earlier books as “Henry James, Junr.” but the use of “Junr.” as -a means of identifying him has long ceased to be necessary. There are -others; but half a dozen swallows do not make a summer, and a dozen -such instances would not falsify the proverb.</p> - -<p>Perhaps what is true concerning fathers is not so true about mothers. -Nobody now reads the once popular novels of Mrs. Frances Trollope, -mother of the greater Anthony; Gilbert Frankau, to come at once to our -own times, looks like outshining that clever novelist, his mother, -“Frank Danby”; Shaw has gone far beyond his mother’s fame as an -operatic star; the novels of W. B. Maxwell surpass those of his mother, -M. E. Braddon, in literary art, and though he is not so enormously -popular in his day as she was in hers, he is widely read now when she -is scarcely read at all.</p> - -<p>He began to write while she was still writing;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span> her vogue had declined, -but remained considerable, and she was still writing as well as -ever—in fact, in her two or three latest books, notably in “The -Green Curtain,” I think she was writing better than ever. There were -disadvantages for a young novelist, no doubt, in having a popular -novelist for his mother; but there were also advantages. His father -was the publisher, John Maxwell, whose business developed into that -of Messrs. Hurst & Blackett. He grew up in a literary atmosphere; the -very men who could open doors for a beginner, and make his way easier, -were friends of the family; moreover, he had a critic on the hearth -who could prompt his first steps and check his ’prentice errors with -knowledge drawn from a long and very practical experience.</p> - -<p>“Most of the knowledge I possess of how to write,” Maxwell once told -Clive Holland, “and, indeed, the fact that I commenced to write at all, -I owe to my mother. She was never too busy, or too immersed in her work -to discuss my literary ambitions, or work of my own. She did not always -know the way any story of mine was going, for I wished neither for it -to be an imitation of hers nor in any way to trade upon her own great -and worldwide reputation.” He confessed, however, to a frequent feeling -that however difficult he might find it to master his art, he had an -even more difficult task in the attempt to follow her and necessarily -challenge comparison with her work and her unqualified success. “I -remember,” he added, “the son of a great man saying in my hearing that -the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span> fact that he was so situated had, in a measure, spoiled his life. -‘People expect too much,’ he remarked pathetically, ‘and sometimes -get so little. I might have been quite a success if I had not been -overshadowed by my great father.’”</p> - -<p>But he broke</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“his birth’s invidious bar”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p class="p0">and without grasping either his mother’s skirts or those of happy -chance (unless Grant Richards was wearing them on the occasion I will -presently mention), he became a novelist in his own way and up built -his own reputation. Considering the influences that must have been -round him in his childhood, taking it that he inherited his literary -gift from his mother and that she, as he tells us, taught his young -idea how to shoot, if his stories had been more or less of the M. E. -Braddon pattern, it would not have been surprising. But, unlike those, -his novels are much less concerned with sensational happenings or plot -of any kind than with intricacies of character and the mysteries of -human psychology. Even from the beginning he struck out in independent -line for himself, and his first book, published in 1901, when he was -thirty-five, was (to give it its full title), “The Countess of Maybury: -Being the Intimate Conversations of the Right Honorable the Countess -of Maybury. Collected with Sedulous Care and Respectful Admiration by -W. B. Maxwell,” a series of satirical, light comedy dialogues of high -society which preceded the “Dolly Dialogues” by a year or two but did -not, as they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span> did, set a fashion. His second book, two years later, was -a volume of short stories called “Fabulous Fancies,” and this revealed -him as a realist—one not without idealism and a sensitive feeling for -the romance of life, but a realist none the less, and that quality of -realism predominates in all the novels and stories he has written since.</p> - -<p>He was late in making this beginning, when he was over thirty, -especially considering how his environment favored his development, -but he was not hastened by the spur of necessity; he had found a -sufficient outlet for his energies in a healthy love of hunting and -outdoor sport, and traveled a good deal. Also he has said that he only -turned to literature after he had failed in other directions. What -those directions were I do not know, except that he was bitten with a -young ambition to be a painter and studied on and off for some years at -certain art schools in London. On the whole, and despite his ancestry, -he thinks himself he might never have taken seriously to the writing -of fiction if he had not happened to meet that enterprising publisher -Grant Richards who, with characteristic courage and fore-sight, -commissioned him to write him a novel, “an arresting novel,” of modern -life. Not many publishers would have risked giving such a commission -to an almost untried author, but the result amply justified the -publisher’s prescience, and with “The Ragged Messenger,” in 1904, -Maxwell scored the first and one of the biggest of his successes. Its -success was the more remarkable in that it was a story of tragedy, and -there is a tradition<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span> that the public shrinks from such, but it was its -reality, the understanding and poignant truth to human experience with -which its characters were drawn and their lives laid bare that caught -the reader’s sympathy and gave the book its power of appeal.</p> - -<p>“Vivian” was a readable successor to this, but “The Guarded Flame” -(1906) rose to an altogether higher level. So far as my judgment goes, -“The Guarded Flame” shares with the brilliant satirical story of the -middle-class, self-reliant “Mrs. Thompson” and that grim and powerful -study in degeneracy, “In Cotton Wool,” the distinction of representing -the highest reach of Maxwell’s art, with not far below them “The -Devil’s Garden” and “The Mirror and the Lamp.”</p> - -<p>“The Devil’s Garden,” which was published in the year before the -War burst upon us, brought Maxwell into trouble with our unofficial -censorship and was banned by the libraries. I remember it as a vivid, -uncompromising story of a self-made man whose life and the lives of his -associates do not smack of the innocence of Arcadia and are portrayed -with a conscientious exactitude, but the morality of the novel was -implicit, and why any one should object when an artist faithfully -pictures the unpleasant facts of life, why we should be shocked to find -in a novel things that we go on tolerating in the world around us is -one of those little eccentricities of the moral sense in man that I -have left off trying to understand. The only effect of the ban was that -“The Devil’s Garden” was more talked<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span> of and sold better than any other -of his novels, and it is this perhaps that has led many to accept it as -the best he has done; but I would rank it at most with his second best.</p> - -<p>For five years after that event, from September 1914 till the end of -the war, he turned his back on literature and served as subaltern and -as Captain in the Royal Fusiliers. He says that during the war he felt -that when peace came we should witness the uprising of “a new and -vigorous school of romantic novelists”; that a world so long oppressed -“by hideous realities must crave for the realm of pure imagination,” -for gaiety, joyousness, for something more akin to the charm and -happiness of the fairy-tale.</p> - -<p>But when the war was over, he confesses, he soon found he was mistaken. -No such complete change entered even into his own stories. A note of -idealism is sounded in “The Mirror and the Lamp,” in “A Man and his -Lesson” and “Spinster of this Parish,” but so it was in the books he -wrote before the war, and otherwise, as in those, he still handles, -with a subtle mastery of atmosphere and detail, 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.</p> - -<p>He did, in one of his post-war novels (“A Little More”), experiment -in what was for him rather a new vein. It was the story of a once -well-to-do family that was reduced to squalid poverty, and the -father and one daughter faced their altered circumstances<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span> with more -resolution than resignation, though the father had more courage than -competence. I think Maxwell was trying his hand at the kind of grown-up -fairy-tale toward which a reaction from the grim realities we had just -come through inclined him; but the sentiment softened at times into -sentimentality, his scenes and characters of poorer life were not so -convincing as they are in some of his other novels. The spirit of the -time had too thoroughly subdued him; but he made a quick recovery and -with “Spinster of this Parish” triumphantly found himself again and -proved that his hand had not lost its earlier cunning.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="LEONARD_MERRICK">LEONARD MERRICK</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img025"> - <img src="images/025.jpg" class="w50" alt="Leonard Merrick" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Leonard Merrick</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span></p> - - -<p>Until a collected edition of his novels and stories appeared in 1918, -Leonard Merrick had been writing for thirty years without receiving -a tithe of the recognition that was over-due to him. I doubt whether -even now he has such popularity as is enjoyed by many novelists who -have not half his capacity, his sure and delicate art, his supreme -gift as a story-teller. I can only explain this with a theory I have -sometimes played with that a book draws its life from its author, and -most books that are immediately and noisily successful are written by -men of robust and pushful personality; they impart these qualities to -what they write and so give their books an impetus that carries them to -success, makes them as pushful and aggressive in the reading world as -the personality behind them is in the world at large.</p> - -<p>This may be purely fantastic, but the fact remains that Leonard Merrick -is a personality of a gracious and retiring order; he is seldom seen -in literary circles, and has no skill in self-advertisement. Once, -not long ago, I told him I had often wondered that such stories as -his had not from the first taken the public by storm, and asked if he -could to any extent help me to understand why they had not done so. He -accepted the implications in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span> my question with a smile and said, in -the quietest, most impartial fashion, “I don’t know. Of course I have -been disappointed when my books were freely praised by the critics -and did not meet with the large circulations I had hoped for them, -and sometimes, when I have thought about it, I have had a suspicion -that perhaps I wrote too much of artists—of novelists, journalists, -actors—and, moreover, too much about artists who failed. I fancy the -public are not particularly interested in the artist; they prefer to -read about people more like themselves—people with whom and whose -ways they are more familiar. Or if they are to be told of the artist, -they want him to be a hero—they want to be told how he struggled -through thrilling trials and difficulties to happiness and prosperity -at last—they don’t want to be saddened by a tale of his failure; they -don’t want to know about him unless he was the sort of man who could -conquer fate and circumstance romantically and, as the Americans say, -make good in the end. And I have seen a good deal of the artist’s life, -and seen how there is bound to be far more failure than success in it, -and I suppose I have tried to picture it truthfully. Perhaps that was -a mistake and I ought, in the language of the theater, to have kept my -eye on the box-office. I don’t know. That is merely a casual notion of -mine, and may not account for anything.”</p> - -<p>However that may be, and whatever it was that kept the large public -that has come to him by degrees from promptly appreciating him, -Merrick’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span> greatness as a novelist has from the beginning been fully -realized by his fellow-craftsmen; he has all along been the novelists’ -novelist, somewhat as Keats was the poets’ poet, and the collected -edition of his works bore testimony to this in prefaces to the various -volumes by Barrie, Wells, Locke, Chesterton, Neil Munro, Neil Lyons, -and other distinguished authors. None was more generous in his acclaim -than Barrie, who had long before greeted him as a master of fiction -and, in his introduction to “Conrad in Quest of his Youth,” said, “I -know scarcely a novel by any living Englishman, except a score or so -of <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Hardy’s, that I would rather have written.” Allowing for his -very different angle of vision, Merrick is as true a realist as Hardy, -but he touches in his characters and incidents with a lighter hand, -and has as shrewd a sense of the comedy—the piteous comedy it may be -at times—as Hardy has of the tragedy of existence. He does not show -his men and women as the foredoomed and helpless victims of a blind, -indifferent, implacable life-force, but simply tells his story of -them, what they did and what they felt and said, and any spiritual, -moral, or social problem involved in their doings and sufferings is -implicit in his dramatization of their lives and characters; he does -not take you aside to expound it or dogmatize about it: there it -is—that is how things happen, and he is a showman, not a preacher. -His prevailing qualities are a Gallic sparkle and effervescence of wit -and gaiety—especially in such tales as make up “While Paris Laughed” -and “A Chair on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span> Boulevard”—a limitless charity and pity for -the follies, weaknesses, caprices of mankind, a charm of sentiment -that just stops short of sentimentality, a quick sensitiveness to the -humor and pathos of common life, the anxieties of living by precarious -employment; the tragedy of straitened circumstances; the sheer joy of -living in spite of everything.</p> - -<p>He has experienced much of the life he has depicted, and has put -not a little of his personal experiences into “The Worldings,” into -“Laurels and the Lady,” one of the stories of “The Man Who Understood -Women,” and into other of his books. Usually there is nothing to tell -of a novelist’s early days, except that he went to certain schools, -practiced journalism for a while, then wrote a book or two which found -acceptance sooner or later and thereafter took up permanent residence -in the literary world. But Merrick’s career has been less orthodox and -more varied.</p> - -<p>A Londoner born, he went with his people to South Africa when he was -eighteen and, entering the South African Civil Service, became clerk -in the Magistrate’s Court on the Diamond Fields. But he had not the -smallest intention of settling down to that. He was, as he told me, -born “stage-struck,” and his one ambition as a youth was to tread the -boards and achieve fame as an actor. In 1884 he returned to England and -obtained an introduction to Augustus Harris, who gave him an engagement -to act in a touring company that was traveling the country with one of -the big Drury<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span> Lane autumn melodramas. He proved himself a thoroughly -capable player, yet would have lost his part, because the touring -manager was bent on pushing him out and supplanting him with a friend -of his own, but for the voluntary intervention of another member of the -company who wrote privately to Harris urging him to go down and see -Leonard Merrick’s acting for himself before making any change. Harris -did so, with the result that Merrick retained his position in the -company for two years, at the end of which period, his enthusiasm for -the actor’s life being cooled, he retired from the profession for good. -Not until some years later did he discover by chance that the member of -the company who, without his knowledge, had befriended him and saved -him from dismissal, was Arthur Collins, who, in due season, was to -succeed Augustus Harris as Drury Lane’s managing director.</p> - -<p>When the disillusioned mummer strutted his little hour before the -footlights for the last time he was twenty-three, and “The Position of -Peggy Harper” is by no means the only one of his books to which his two -years in motley have yielded a rich harvest. Since then, except that -he wrote “The Free Pardon” with F. C. Phillips and some very popular -dramas in collaboration with George R. Sims, the stage has ceased to -lure him and he has devoted himself to the writing of stories.</p> - -<p>Nor did he lose much time in passing from the one calling to the other, -for his first book appeared when he was twenty-four. His second novel, -“Violet<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span> Moses,” was rejected by Chatto & Windus, but accepted by -Bentley; and his third, “The Man Who Was Good,” was rejected by Bentley -as not up to the level of the other, but promptly accepted by Chatto -& Windus; one of life’s lighter ironies that nobody—certainly not -Merrick—would have wished to evade. He had published some half dozen -novels before he began to write short stories. He confesses that he -prefers to write these, and there are stories in at least two of his -volumes that for delicate satirical comedy and subtle art of narration -have not been surpassed by any of his contemporaries.</p> - -<p>From the outset, Merrick met with a more popular reception in America -than in this country; his books enjoyed a considerable vogue there, -and his short stories were soon in great demand with the American -magazines. This has happened to so many other of our writers that -one merely mentions it as a biographical fact and not as matter for -surprise. His first real success with short stories over here came -when his agent, A. P. Watt, handed one of his books to the editor -of the <i>Bystander</i>, urging him to read it and see whether its -stories were not of the sort he wanted. He read it, and commissioned -six, and before these had all appeared commissioned a further twelve. -Thereafter, the trouble was not to place such stories but to write as -many as were required.</p> - -<p>While he was in his thirties Leonard Merrick lived for some time in -Paris, and Paris still draws him at intervals from the retirement of -his English<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span> home, for he finds there ideas and stimulation, and can -work there as he never can in London. As a rule, the Londoner born has -a sneaking regard for his city and cannot be long away from it without -feeling its intangible human hands plucking at his heart and its -multitudinous voices calling him back, but in spite of the fact that he -is a true-blue Cockney, born, in 1864, at Belsize Park, on the skirts -of Hampstead, Merrick tells you he does not love London. It is the -most comfortable of cities, he admits, but he finds it uninspiring and -can work better and more easily when he is almost anywhere away from -it—especially when he is in Paris.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ALAN_ALEXANDER_MILNE">ALAN ALEXANDER MILNE</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img026"> - <img src="images/026.jpg" class="w50" alt="Alan Alexander Milne" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Alan Alexander Milne</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span></p> - - -<p>The tradition that the Scot has no humor still lingers among -old-fashioned people who don’t like changes, but of recent years -Barrie, Neil Munro (as Hugh Foulis), J. J. Bell, Ian Hay, A. A. -Milne, and some others have shaken it to such an extent that only the -incurably obstinate now attempt to maintain it.</p> - -<p>But while the humor of the others smack finely of the north of the -Tweed, the humor of Milne seems to indicate that his spiritual home -is a much more frivolous place. There is something Irish or English -about its airy gaiety, its blithe, amusing flippancy. <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Johnson once -spoke slightingly about the art of carving faces on cherry-stones, but -if he had tried his hand at that work he would have realized that to -accomplish it successfully one must be born with a gift that is as rare -as the more impressive gift for writing serious prose. Our ancestors, -as a whole, realized that, and would exclaim with admiration at the -marvelous facility of Swift who could write you an essay off-hand -on anything or nothing. I remember how, when I was a small boy, a -bookish old gentleman informed me of this in his library and went on -to tell with bated breath the familiar yarn of how, to test the Dean’s -limitless capacity, a lady challenged him to write an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span> essay on a -broomstick, and he at once sat down and did it. But we should think -little of that nowadays. Milne would not need so much as a broomstick; -he could do it on one of the bristles.</p> - -<p>So could E. V. Lucas or Chesterton, or Belloc. But in the matter -of slightness of theme and the capacity for writing charmingly and -humorously on next to nothing at all Milne has closer affinities with -Lucas; they not only can do it but make a habit of doing it. Both write -light verse as well as light prose; both contributed to <i>Punch</i> -(Lucas contributes to it still), and as Anstey and many another, in -various forms, had practiced the same volatile literature in those -pages, it seems possible that the influence of <i>Punch</i> may have -been more or less responsible for developing likewise in them a -delightfully neat and sprightly vein of humor.</p> - -<p>However that may be, Milne had begun to exercise his characteristic -style while he was at Cambridge, where he was made editor of the -<i>Granta</i>. He came to London in 1903, and settled down, first in -Temple Chambers, afterwards at Chelsea (where he still resides, but -not in his original two rooms) to make a living as a free-lance author -and journalist. His earnings through the first two years were far -below the income-tax level, but in the third year he was appointed -assistant-editor of <i>Punch</i>, to which he had already been -contributing largely, and the world in general began to be aware of him -from seeing the initials A. A. M. appearing in that periodical with -significant regularity. It not only saw them, but looked out for them, -and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span> was soon betraying curiosity in public places as to the identity -of the person who owned them; an infallible sign that a writer is -giving the public what it wants as well as what it ought to want.</p> - -<p>Between 1910 and 1914 he collected his <i>Punch</i> contributions -into three volumes, “The Day’s Play,” “The Holiday Round,” and “Once -a Week,” but was no sooner so established as an entertaining and -popular essayist than the War intervened to take him to fresh woods and -pastures that were new but not desirable. It is impossible to unfold -the record of any of our younger and few of our older contemporary -authors without coming up against the War. Milne promptly withdrew from -<i>Punch</i>, joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and was sent out -to France. Here, in odds and ends of leisure from military occupations, -he found opportunity and the moods for writing that quaint, whimsical -story “Once on a Time,” which was published in 1917; and then, too, -he made a first experiment as a dramatist with his shrewdly, cleverly -satirical comedy of “Wurzel-Flummery.” There is a new depth and -maturity under the humor of these things, and he said that in writing -the story he for the first time wrote in earnest.</p> - -<p>By-and-by, after a breakdown which had put him in hospital for a while, -when he was sent to act as signaling instructor at a fort on Portsdown -Hill, he had an impulse to continue playwriting, and would spend a long -day at the fort teaching his class how to signal, then go home to the -cottage where he and his wife were living, a couple of miles<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span> away, and -dictate to her, until he had produced in succession, “Belinda,” “The -Boy Comes Home” and “The Lucky One.” These were in due course presented -on the London stage, and if they had no success comparable with his -later plays, they were successful enough before the footlights, and in -the book into which he gathered them in 1919, to demonstrate that a new -dramatist had arisen, and one to be reckoned with.</p> - -<p>There are plenty of signs of the potential dramatist in the pre-war -essays—in their easy and natural use of dialogue, and their deft, -vivid handling of incidents: and there is a bite of realism in their -genial satire and burlesque irony, which foreshadows the keener, riper -irony and satire of “Bladys.” For instance, there is the sketch of “The -Newspaper Proprietor,” that “lord of journalism,” Hector Strong, who, -to oblige a lady, saves her play from failure and forces it into a -raging success by the adroitness with which he booms it in his numerous -newspapers. It may seem ridiculous, and Milne may have invented it all, -but take away a few farcial details from his narrative, and there are -those behind the scenes who will assure you that this deed was actually -done. As for “A Breath of Life,” in which the actor who plays the young -hero falls really in love with the actress who plays the heroine and -on a passionate impulse finishes the play triumphantly at the end of -the third act to such thunders of applause from the audience that the -fourth is cut away for good—ask any dramatist and he will tell you -that his own plays<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span> suffered worse than that at the hands of their -producers until he became successful and important enough to insist on -the piece being acted exactly as it was written.</p> - -<p>Always there was this germ of truth in Milne’s earlier trifles and -flippancies. “A Trunk Call” is by no means such an irresponsible farce -as some may think it. Here, the dainty Celia buys a fancy knocker and -puts it on the door of her husband’s study, in order that she may give -him warning at any time before she comes to interrupt him. He wants her -to try it forthwith, but she demurs:</p> - -<p>“‘Not now. I’ll try later on, when you aren’t expecting it. Besides, -you must begin your work. Good-bye. Work hard.’ She pushed me in and -shut the door.</p> - -<p>“I began to work.</p> - -<p>“I work best on the sofa; I think most clearly in what appears to -the hasty observer to be an attitude of rest. But I am not sure that -Celia really understands this yet. Accordingly, when a knock comes at -the door I jump to my feet, ruffle my hair, and stride up and down -the room with one hand on my brow. ‘Come in,’ I call impatiently, and -Celia finds me absolutely in the throes. If there should chance to be a -second knock later on, I make a sprint for the writing-desk, seize pen -and paper, upset the ink or not as it happens, and present to any one -coming in at the door the most thoroughly engrossed back in London.</p> - -<p>“But that was in the good old days of knuckle-knocking. On this -particular morning I had hardly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span> written more than a couple of thousand -words—I mean I had hardly got the cushions at the back of my head -comfortably settled when Celia came in.</p> - -<p>“‘Well?’ she said eagerly.</p> - -<p>“I struggled out of the sofa.</p> - -<p>“‘What is it?’ I asked sternly.</p> - -<p>“‘Did you hear it all right?’</p> - -<p>“‘I didn’t hear anything.’</p> - -<p>“‘Oh!’ she said in great disappointment. ‘But perhaps you were asleep,’ -she went on hopefully.</p> - -<p>“‘Certainly not. I was working.’</p> - -<p>“‘Did I interrupt you?’</p> - -<p>“‘You did rather; but it doesn’t matter.’</p> - -<p>“‘Oh, well, I won’t do it again—unless I really have to. Goodbye, and -good luck.’”</p> - -<p>The knocker may be an effort of the imagination, otherwise this reads -as if it were taken from life. It may even be true about Milne himself, -for he has said in print that his work comes easy to him; and if you -show the complete sketch to the wife of any literary man of your -acquaintance the chances are she will wonder how Milne got to know so -much about her husband. But his trim figure and alert, clean-shaven -face, apart from the quantity of work he has placed to his credit, -belie any suggestion that since he finds his work easy he takes his -ease, except when it is finished. He is restlessly alive, and gives -you the impression of being something of an out-door man, a golfer -probably, perhaps a cricketer, though you need not believe he looks -forward to the opening of the cricket season<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span> quite so enthusiastically -as he suggests in “The First Game”—</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">“It is the day that I watch for yearly,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Never before has it come so late;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">But now I’ve only a month—no, merely</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">A couple of fortnights left to wait;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">And then (to make the matter plain)</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">I hold—at last!—a bat again:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dear Hobbs! the weeks this summer—think! the <em>weeks</em> I’ve lived in vain.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>When he was demobilized, his old post of assistant-editor of -<i>Punch</i> was waiting for him, but he had formed other plans for his -future during the war, and arranged not to go back. He did not just -then intend to abandon the light essay, and in “If I may” (1920) his -hand for it is as cunning as ever; but the theater had got into his -blood, his ambition was taking higher flights, and “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Pim Passes By” -(he wrote it also into a novel as quaintly humorous and sentimental as -the play) and the mordantly ironic “Truth About Bladys” soared at once -and almost simultaneously to such heights of popularity that if the -dramatist has not presently absorbed the essayist altogether, it won’t -be for want of an excellent excuse.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ALFRED_NOYES">ALFRED NOYES</h2> -</div> - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img027"> - <img src="images/027.jpg" class="w50" alt="Alfred Noyes" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Alfred Noyes</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span></p> - - -<p>Early in his career, being rash as well as young, Alfred Noyes made the -tactical mistake of writing poetry that became popular. He was crowned -with eulogy by leading critics who, naturally, could not foresee that -he would also win the applause of the multitude or, no doubt, they -would have been more careful. Meredith helped to mislead them; he -praised the beauty and finely restrained pathos of “Michael Oaktree,” -a narrative poem in Noyes’s very first volume, “The Loom of Years.” -But it was his third and fourth books, those exquisite fairy tales in -verse, “The Flower of Old Japan” (1903) and “The Forest of Wild Thyme” -(1905), that carried him right into the popularity which disillusioned -those self-centered experts who cling to a narrow faith that poetry -cannot be poetry if it makes a triumphant appeal to the large world -that lives and works in outer darkness beyond the limits of their own -select, small circle.</p> - -<p>Noyes has always been reckless in these matters. He never took the -precaution to attach himself to any of our little groups of poetasters -who ecstatically give each other the glory the common public with-holds -from them. Before he made a book of his great epic, “Drake”—and -it is great not only by comparison with what has been done by his -living<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span> contemporaries—instead of treating it as something too rare -and delicate for human nature’s daily food, he ran it serially in -<i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i>, as if it had been a new novel. No poem had -ever appeared in that fashion before. I believe he had not written more -than half when the first instalment of it was printed, and the orthodox -could not be expected to approve of that sort of thing. They began to -say Noyes was too facile; wrote too hurriedly and too much; began to -take it for granted that no man who wrote thus copiously and fluently -could be an authentic poet, when they might more reasonably have -assumed that he did by a certain native gift what was only possible to -themselves by the slower, sedulous exercise of an average talent.</p> - -<p>Howbeit, from being lauded freely, Noyes is now more misrepresented, -by a group of poet-critics, whose judgments are too often sound in -the wrong sense, than any other poet of our day. Whether anything -less respectable than a restricted poetical outlook can account for -this misrepresentation I shall not attempt to guess, but, noticing -it, I have sometimes been reminded of lines he puts into the mouth of -Marlowe, in his “Tales of the Mermaid Tavern”—</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“I tell thee ’tis the dwarfs that find no world</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wide enough for their jostlings, while the giants,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The gods themselves, can in one tavern find</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Room wide enough to swallow the wide heaven</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With all its crowded solitary stars.”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>Unprofessional lovers of poetry read Noyes not because it is the -proper, high-brow thing to do, but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span> solely because they enjoy reading -him. It is an excellent reason; and for the same reason Tennyson and -Browning are famous; so, in these times, are Masefield and Davies; -de la Mare and William Watson. Noyes differs from most of his -contemporaries in being at once, like Chaucer, a born story-teller -and, like Swinburne, an amazing master of meter and rhyme. He is not -alone in being able more readily and adequately to express himself in -meter and rhyme than in prose, and it is ridiculous to assume that this -ability indicates any shallowness of thought; it indicates, rather, -that he is really efficient in an art he has taken pains to acquire.</p> - -<p>It is equally ridiculous to dub him old-fashioned, as some of our -superior persons do, because he accepts the classical tradition in -poetry. He has not accepted it unintelligently or slavishly; if you -look through his books you will note how cunningly he makes old meters -new again, and that he has invented enough new meters or variations in -accepted metrical forms to give him a place even with those who claim -to be rebels against authority. One such rebel, a prominent American -poet, included the other day in his collected works a goodly proportion -of <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">vers libre</i> from which one of our advanced critics chose two -passages for admiring quotation. The ideas in these passages were a -mere repetition of two that are expressed with higher art and deeper -feeling in “In Memoriam,” yet that advanced critic is one who dismisses -Tennyson as out of date and has hailed the American poet<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span> as the last -word in modern thinking. Perhaps he and his like have not troubled to -read what they consider old-fashioned. I mention the circumstance by -way of showing to what a pass some of our critics and poets have come.</p> - -<p>If Noyes has any theories of poetry, I gather they are that the poet -is essentially one endowed with the gift of song; that all the great -poets, from Homer downward, have been great singers; and that when he -utters himself in meter and rhyme he is but putting himself in tune -with the infinite order of the universe—with the rhythm of the tides, -of the seasons, the recurring chime of day and night, the harmonious -movement of the stars in their orbits. He once confessed to me that he -was so far from fearing the possibilities of metrical invention were -exhausted that he was convinced we are still at the beginning of them; -they were exhausted, according to the first disciples of Whitman, sixty -years ago, but Swinburne arose and invented so many new meters that -he was considered more revolutionary in his era than Whitman’s later -disciples are in ours.</p> - -<p>There is a virility and range of subject and style in Noyes’s work -that make a good deal of modern verse seem old-maidish or anæmic by -comparison. It is a far cry from the grace and tenderness and dainty -fancy of “The Flower of Old Japan”, “The Forest of Wild Thyme”, and -some of the lyrics in “The Elfin Artist”, and elsewhere, to the -masculine imaginative splendor in thought and diction, the robust -energy of his epic, “Drake”, or, though<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span> gentler moods of pathos, -humor, wistful fantasy are never absent from any of his books, to the -series of narratives that make up “The Torch Bearers”—an ambitious -succession of poems that reveal, with dramatic power and insight -and a quick sensitiveness to the poetry of science, the progress of -scientific discovery in the life-stories of the great discoverers. -None has pictured War in more terribly realistic terms or with a more -passionate hatred of its inhumanity than he has in “The Wine Press”; -and you have him in the breeziest, most riotously humorous of his moods -in “Forty Singing Seamen.” But if I should single my own favorite from -his books it would be the “Tales of the Mermaid Tavern.” Here he finds -full scope for his many-sided gift; you can turn from the rollicking -yarn of “Black Bill’s Honeymoon” to the dignity and poignance of “The -Burial of a Queen,” from the anecdotal picturesqueness of “A Coiner of -Angels” to the fervor and glittering pageantry of “Flos Mercatorum,” -from the suspense and tragedy of “Raleigh” to the laughter and lighter -tears and buoyant tripping measures of “The Companion of a Mile,” -telling how Will Kemp, the player, danced from London to Norwich for a -wager, and passing through Sudbury met a young butcher who offered to -dance a mile with him—</p> - -<p class="poetry p0"> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“By Sudbury, by Sudbury, by little red-roofed Sudbury,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">He wished to dance a mile with me! I made a courtly bow:</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">I fitted him with morrice-bells, with treble, bass and tenor bells,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>And ‘Tickle your tabor, Tom,’ I cried, ‘we’re going to market now.’</i></span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And rollicking down the lanes we dashed, and frolicking up the hills we clashed,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And like a sail behind me flapped his great white frock a-while,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Till with a gasp, he sank and swore that he could dance with me no more;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And over the hedge a milk-maid laughed, <em>Not dance with him a mile</em>?</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">‘You lout!’ she laughed, ‘I’ll leave my pail, and dance with him for cakes and ale!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">‘I’ll dance a mile for love,’ she laughed, ‘and win my wager too.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">‘Your feet are shod and mine are bare; but when could leather dance on air?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">‘A milk-maid’s feet can fall as fair and light as falling dew.’</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I fitted her with morrice-bells, with treble, bass and tenor bells:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The fore-bells, as I linked them to her throat, how soft they sang!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Green linnets in a golden nest, they chirped and trembled on her breast,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And faint as elfin blue-bells at her nut-brown ankles rang.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I fitted her with morrice-bells that sweetened into woodbine bells,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And trembled as I hung them there and crowned her sunny brow:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">‘Strike up,’ she laughed, ‘my summer king!’ And all her bells began to ring,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>And ‘Tickle your tabor, Tom,’ I cried, ‘we’re going to Sherwood now!’</i>”</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>This, and the rest of it, is very typical of Noyes in his lighter vein, -and if you can’t see the poetry<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span> that twinkles through the deft, airy -gallop of the verse we won’t talk about it; typical of him too is the -pathetic aftermath of the dance, so delicately touched in that the -pathos is almost lost in the beauty of it, till the motley epilogue -strikes the deeper note of sadness through the loud laughter of the -fool.</p> - -<p>Noyes was born in Staffordshire in 1880, and I know nothing of his -doings at Oxford, except that he rowed in the Exeter College Eight. He -is nowadays an <abbr title="honorable">Hon.</abbr> Litt. D. of Yale University, and since 1914 has -been Professor of Modern English Literature at Princeton University, -in America, and divides his time between that country and this. He is -the most unassuming of men, looking much younger than his years, and of -a sturdy, robust, serious aspect that (till his genial laugh, when he -breaks silence, spoils your calculations) seems more in keeping with -the vigor of his epic narratives, or with the noble rhetoric of such -as that most impressive of his shorter poems, “The Creation,” than -with the fairy fancies, the butterfly blitheness and laughing music -of “Come down to Kew at lilac time” and other of his daintier lyrics. -Like most true poets who have not died young, he has become popular in -his lifetime; and if he were not so versatile less versatile critics, -instead of panting after him in vain, would be able to grasp him and -get him under their microscopes and recognize him for the poet that he -is.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="E_PHILLIPS_OPPENHEIM">E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM</h2> -</div> -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img028"> - <img src="images/028.jpg" class="w50" alt="E. Phillips Oppenheim" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">E. Phillips Oppenheim</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span></p> - - -<p>Even if we grant that there is a wide world of difference between -imaginative and inventive fiction, and that the way to immortality is -only open to the former, there is still so much to be said in praise of -the latter that, if the verdict rested with his contemporaries instead -of with posterity, the inventive author would often go permanently -crowned with the fame that is now reserved for his more imaginative -rival. Within my own recollection Wilkie Collins was the most popular -novelist of his day; Meredith and Hardy had their thousands of readers -and Collins his tens of thousands; everybody read him then, but hardly -anybody reads him now. He used to complain, as Hall Caine records in -“My Story,” that the reviewers were all along disposed to sniff and -qualify their appreciation, but he boasted that the public always -received him with enthusiasm and overwhelmed him with grateful and -adulatory letters. Moreover, his brother novelists admired and lauded -his amazing ingenuity; Dickens collaborated with him, and his influence -is perhaps traceable in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”—in the unusual -dexterity and subtlety with which its plot is constructed.</p> - -<p>His own formula for holding the reader’s attention<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span> was “make him -laugh; make him weep; or make him wait”; and he devoted himself almost -exclusively to the third of these methods. Character is of quite minor -importance in his stories—Count Fosco was his one masterly creation; -the only one of all his <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">dramatis personæ</i> you recall without -effort—there is little humor in them, and little pathos. For him, the -plot was the thing, a cunningly contrived, carefully dovetailed plot, -with a heart of mystery and sensation that should hold the reader in -suspense till it was unraveled and cleared up in the last pages. His -justification was that he thrilled and delighted enormous multitudes. -It is enough that he did triumphantly what he set himself to do; the -best and most precious things in life are not often the most lasting; -and whether or not his work is immortal, it was great in its kind and -an art beyond the genius of novelists who seem destined to outlive him.</p> - -<p>And, as a form of literature, the novel of sensation, crime, mystery -is immortal if its authors are not. Collins has been dethroned, but -his successors are legion, and none has made out a stronger title to -the inheritance of his mantle than Phillips Oppenheim. For the skill -with which he constructs a baffling plot, intrigues his readers from -the opening, and keeps them in suspense till it is time, at last, to -give away his secret, none of them excels—I am not sure that more -than one of them equals him. I don’t think he aims to be anything but -entertaining, and how many of our novelists who claim to be much more -are not even that!<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span> Two of our most distinguished critics have, at -different times, confessed to me that with the passing of years they -have lost their taste for fiction; the modern psychological novel -seems pretentious and bores them; they are no longer young enough -to be susceptible to romantic adventure; they can learn nothing and -get no amusement from the crudeness and boyish or girlish naïveté of -the latter-day sex novel, but they do find interest, excitement and -a tonic recreation in novels such as Oppenheim writes. “I suppose I -have seen too much of actual life,” said one of them, “to be startled -or particularly interested in what I am told about it by a novelist -who knows no more of it than I know myself. I like Oppenheim because -he takes me outside my personal experiences; he does not appeal to -my memory but to my imagination; he tells me a tale that is new to -me, that rouses my curiosity, keeps me guessing, makes me forget -everything else in my keenness to follow up the clues to his mystery -and see how he solves it. I don’t care whether it is good literature, -I know it is a good story, and that’s what every novel ought to be -and few are. I sometimes think we take our novelists and they take -themselves and their function too seriously. The old troubador, when -he sang his ballads and told his yarns in the street, didn’t do it for -glory but for the coppers the crowd, if he pleased them, would throw -into his hat. He was nothing but an entertainer; people didn’t want -him to be anything else—it is all I want his modern representative, -the novelist, to be, and it is what Oppenheim emphatically<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span> is. He -simply writes for the time, and the time is promptly rewarding him with -popularity and hard cash, while so many of our little artists will not -stoop to the present and are writing neatly for a future that will -never read them.”</p> - -<p>He has written some sixty novels and books of short stories, having -seen his first novel published in 1886, when he was twenty. I do -not pretend to have read them all, but since I read “Mysterious <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> -Sabin,” a good many years ago, I have never missed reading any Phillips -Oppenheim story that has come within reach of me. Read “The Amazing -Partnership,” “The Plunderers,” “A Prince of Sinners,” “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Lessingham -Goes Home,” and you will find that while he is as ingenious as Wilkie -Collins at fashioning a plot that captures your interest in its -complexities, he gets more rapidly into his story, handles dialogue -more skillfully, unfolds his incidents as vividly but with a lighter -hand and loses no time on the way.</p> - -<p>After he left school Phillips Oppenheim went into his father’s leather -business at Leicester, but he had started writing stories for his own -amusement before that. The leather business was so successful that -Blumenthals, the big American and Paris leather firm, bought it up, -and appointed Phillips Oppenheim their director at Leicester. His -experience in that trade has proved immensely useful to him. It has -not only helped him to material for his tales, but it was through the -American head of Blumenthals that he had his chief incentive to the -writing of the type of story that has brought him<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span> such success as -a novelist. This gentleman introduced him to the proprietor of the -Café de Rat Mort, the once famous Montmartre haunt, for Oppenheim was -frequently in Paris on the affairs of his leather company, and at the -Café he acquired his taste for the mysteries of those international -intriguings and rascalities that figure so largely in several of his -books, for the proprietor used to tell him all manner of thrilling -yarns about political and international adventurers, some of whom had -been among his customers, and his listener formed a habit of weaving -stories round the more striking personalities in the cosmopolitan crowd -that he met in the Rat Mort. He assured me that however ingenious I -might think them, he never really constructs his stories but simply -lets them grow. “Two or three people in a crowded restaurant may arouse -my interest, and the atmosphere is compelling,” says he. “I start -weaving a story round them—the circumstances and the people gradually -develop as I go on dictating to my secretary the casual thoughts -about them that arose in me while I was looking at them and their -surroundings. First of all I must have a congenial atmosphere—then the -rest is easy.”</p> - -<p>Easy, that is, to him, partly from long practice but chiefly because -it was the method that came natural to him and suited his temperament. -There is no use in telling any one how to write a novel, in laying down -rules for doing it as if it were a mechanical trade. James Payn’s plan -was to prepare an elaborate synopsis, divide this into chapters,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span> then -write down a description of each character, and keep these details -pinned on a screen where they were handy reference while he was -working. William De Morgan would start with little more than a general -idea of what was going to happen in future pages; he would get his -characters together and give them their heads and let them develop the -story as it went along. Every way is the best way—for the author who -finds it for himself and can do as well in it as Phillips Oppenheim has -done in his.</p> - -<p>He has traveled considerably; spent much of his time in America, -where he was married (and, by the way, large as his vogue is in Great -Britain, he is another of our authors whose vogue is even larger in -America); but for the most part he divides his days of work and leisure -now between his home in London and his other home by the sea, in North -Devon.</p> - -<p>He is fond of the country, and of golf and all kinds of sports; he is -an equally keen theater-goer, but gets more enjoyment out of writing -stories than out of anything else, and since he draws more inspiration -for these from the town than from the country, he is never happier than -when he is in town. “The cities for me!” he said to an interviewer. -“Half a dozen thoroughfares and squares in London, a handful of -restaurants, the people one meets in a single morning, are quite -sufficient for the production of more and greater stories than I shall -ever write.” He wrote “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Laxworthy’s Adventures” while he was staying -at a hotel in Paris;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span> but though Paris and New York attract him, London -is his spiritual home and, with its endless streets and motley crowds, -is the chief begetter of his sensational romances.</p> - -<p>Yet his appearance is less suggestive of the city than of rural life. -Ruddy, genial, smiling, with his sturdy figure and bluff manner, it -is easier to fancy him, in gaiters, carrying a riding whip, as a -typical country squire, than as a brilliant imaginative author creating -fictitious villains and preoccupied with dreams of strange crimes and -the mysterious doings of lawless and desperate men. Which is to say -only that he no more gives himself away to the casual observer than he -gives away the secret of any of his plots in the first chapter of the -book.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="MAY_SINCLAIR">MAY SINCLAIR</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img029"> - <img src="images/029.jpg" class="w50" alt="May Sinclair" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">May Sinclair</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span></p> - - -<p>In a rash moment, recently, Michael Sadleir committed himself to the -retrospective and prophetic assertion that there never had been a great -woman novelist and never would be. The first part of that statement is, -of course, open to argument; the second cannot be proved. If he had -said the greatest novelists, so far, have been men, he would have been -on safe ground; for I don’t think even the most politely complaisant -master of the ceremonies would suggest that Fielding, Dickens and -Thackeray should step back and allow Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and -George Eliot to lead this particular procession of the immortals. Which -is not to say that these last are not great, but only that there have -been greater.</p> - -<p>Turning to living authors, if, so far as this country is concerned (and -here we are not concerned with any other), the same order of precedence -still obtains, the distance between the men in the first rank and the -women in the second has, at least, sensibly diminished. Leaving Hardy -apart in his incontestible supremacy, have we any novelists alive who -are, on the whole, superior to Wells, Conrad, Bennett, Galsworthy? It -is a question Time alone can decide with certainty, but fallible men -must needs, meanwhile, make up their separate minds as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span> best they can, -and, for my part, I would answer in the negative. But should any one -claim that there are four women novelists who, if they do not surpass, -are equal in achievement with the four men I have named, I could not -begin to deny it until I had read them all over again. So nice, so -delicate a matter is not to be settled off-hand. Even such godlike -judges as Gosse and Squire might well lay aside their thunder and -lightning in face of it and be disposed to temporize.</p> - -<p>For, relegating to outer darkness (where many of us would be willing -to join them) all whose glory is nothing but a vast popularity and -its accessories—think what a galaxy of women novelists there are and -what sound and notable work the best of them have done. Of course -who have been longest before the public, you have Lucas Malet, Sarah -Grand, George Colmore, Mary Cholmondeley, Mary and Jane Findlater, -Mrs. W. K. Clifford, Mary E. Mann; of those who began somewhat later, -Elinor Mordaunt, Dolf Wyllarde, Violet Hunt, Mrs. Henry Dudeney, M. P. -Willcocks, Peggy Webling, Mrs. Dawson Scott, Beatrice Harraden, Mrs. -Belloc Lowndes, Phillis Bottome, Rose Macaulay, May Sinclair, Sheila -Kaye-Smith; and of a still later day, Viola Meynell, Ethel Sidgwick, -Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Mary Webb, Clemence Dane, Rebecca -West, G. B. Stern, Storm Jameson, M. Leonora Eyles, Stella Benson.... -This by no means completes the list, and there is no reason for ending -it here except that it is long enough and contains a sufficient number -of names<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span> for whomsoever will to select from it four whose work may -fairly challenge comparison with the greatest that has been done by -contemporary novelists of the other sex.</p> - -<p>Any adequate survey of the modern English novel would, at all events, -have to take into account most of the women writers I have mentioned, -but for my present less ambitious occasions I am contented to limit my -record to two—May Sinclair and Sheila Kaye-Smith—whom I take to be -generally representative of such of them as are still in the full tide -of their careers: the latter as having acquaintance with the larger -variety of human character and giving breadth, color and fullness -of life to her stories out of a wider, robuster interest in the -multifarious affairs that absorb so much of the thought and activities -of men; the former as being the subtler artist both in psychology and -style.</p> - -<p>As long ago as 1916, the distinguished American critic, <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Lyon -Phelps, described Miss Sinclair as “to-day the foremost living writer -among English-speaking women.” He rightly dated her rise to this -eminence from the publication of “The Divine Fire,” in 1904, and as -rightly reminded us that “the British audience for whom it was intended -paid no attention to it” till it had been acclaimed by critics and -read with enthusiasm by thousands of readers in America. Why Miss -Sinclair had to wait eight years for that recognition I cannot explain. -She adventured into literature in orthodox fashion by publishing two -volumes of verse early in the ’nineties. Her first novel, “Audrey -Craven,” appeared<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span> in 1896. Then came, with longish intervals between, -“<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> and Mrs. Nevil Tyson” and “Two Sides of a Question.” These three -books were touched with something of the grey realism that prevented -Gissing from becoming popular with a public which, then more than now, -disliked novels of that hue and preferred its fiction to be either -elevating or pleasantly entertaining. But if there was no run on these -three books at the libraries, they did not pass, unless my memory -misleads me, without due meed of praise from the more discriminating -reviews; and, as Miss Sinclair has done far finer work since “The -Divine Fire,” so I think she did truer, finer work before that in, at -least, the second of her three earlier volumes. It were harder to say -why the laurels fell upon the fourth than why they missed the second.</p> - -<p>Rock Ferry, in Cheshire, was Miss Sinclair’s birthplace, but when -fame discovered her she had been living some years at Hampstead, in -London, and “The Divine Fire” moves among London literary circles, -sketches cleverly various literary types of character and life in -boarding-houses round about Bloomsbury, with for central figure a young -Cockney poet, a kind of new Keats, who worked as a shop-assistant, -wrote exquisite verse, had all the instincts of a gentleman, but was -afflicted with a deplorable habit of dropping his aitches. So much -is made of this weakness (which was really only as superficially -significant as was Stevenson’s inability to spell certain words -correctly) that the frequent insistence on it comes by degrees to seem -a little<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span> finicking, a little irritating. I do not share <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Phelp’s -fancy that Charlotte Bronte returned to earth to write “The Divine -Fire.” Miss Sinclair may have learned things from Charlotte Bronte; -she has written ably and searchingly of her in “The Three Brontes”; -but influence from that source—even from the Charlotte of “Shirley” -days—is scarcely traceable in any of her books and certainly does not, -in “The Divine Fire,” dominate her own quietly distinctive personality.</p> - -<p>Few authors owe their popularity to their best work, and, at the -risk of appearing heretical, I will admit I have always counted “The -Divine Fire” as one of Miss Sinclair’s unsuccessful experiments, and -“The Helpmate” as another. Both have charm and distinction of style, -but they have not the insight, the clearness of vision, that mark her -later novels. She is, especially in the second, like an artist drawing -without models and erring in small details, getting the anatomy of -her characters here and there out of proportion. The cleverness and -the interest of “The Helpmate” are undeniable, but its people do not -wear flesh about them; they are seriously presented, but one feels -they are as outside the world of actual humanity as are the brilliant -creations that play so deftly in some of the artificial comedies of the -Restoration.</p> - -<p>“The Creators” is another tale of literary life, and one in which you -are not always sure whether the author wishes you to take her poets -and novelists in dead earnest or whether she is secretly laughing at -them and touching off their idiosyncrasies<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span> with a covert irony, the -latter suspicion finding encouragement in the neat realism and hard-cut -brilliance with which the whole thing is done. Some have complained -that several of her novels are too preoccupied with the mysteries and -intimacies of sexual relationship, but you might as reasonably complain -that other authors exclude these from their scheme of things and are -too preoccupied with other and less vitally human experiences. There -is no forbidden tree in the garden of literature; all the world is the -artist’s parish and he is justified of any theme so long as he can -handle it with such artistic success as Miss Sinclair does in “Kitty -Tailleur,” in “The Combined Maze,” and in that tragically poignant -short story “The Judgment of Eve.”</p> - -<p>Perhaps she reaches the highest expression of her genius in this -and other of her short stories (“The Wrackham Memoirs” is a little -masterpiece of ironic comedy) and in the shortest of her novels, “The -Life and Death of Harriet Frean”—the detached pity, the insight, -the minute, illuminating realism with which the whole feeble, -self-sacrificing, sentimental little soul of Harriet is revealed, and -the perfect technique with which it is all set down, give power and -beauty to what in less skilled, less sensitive hands might have been a -frail, wistful story of no particular significance.</p> - -<p>Miss Sinclair is more erudite than the majority of novelists and, -outside the world of fiction, has proved herself a suggestive and -original thinker in such philosophical subtleties as “A Defence of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span> -Idealism.” She worked, during the early stages of the War, with the -Red Cross, recording her experiences in “A Journal of Impressions in -Belgium,” and she drew on those experiences for scenes in some of her -novels, notably in “Tasker Jevons” and in that finer story of the same -period, “The Tree of Heaven.”</p> - -<p>Literary characters, the literary life, and sex problems enter pretty -largely into Miss Sinclair’s novels, but she has never like so many of -the successful settled down to run in a groove; she does not repeat -herself. She has not accepted ready-made formulas of art but has been -continually reaching out for new ways of advance. She was quick to see -virtue in the literary method of James Joyce and Dorothy Richardson -and the possibilities inherent in the novel which should look on -everything through the consciousness of a single one of its characters, -and proclaimed it as the type of novel that would have a future. She -may not have convinced us of this when she applied the method in -the ejaculatory, minutely detailed “Mary Olivier,” but its maturer -development in “Harriet Frean” demonstrated that it was a manner which -could be used with supreme artistic effectiveness. All the same, the -method is not so new as James Joyce; you may find the beginnings of it, -employed less self-consciously, with more reticence and more humor, in -the first and last novels of that very old-fashioned novelist William -De Morgan.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="FRANK_SWINNERTON">FRANK SWINNERTON</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img030"> - <img src="images/030.jpg" class="w50" alt="Frank Swinnerton" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Frank Swinnerton</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span></p> - - -<p>When his first novel, “The Merry Heart,” was published, in 1909, Frank -Swinnerton was still so youthful that I remember persons of my own -age had a way of referring to him, with an avuncular air, as “young -Swinnerton.” He was twenty-four, but his smooth, boyish face, his -unassuming manner, that hovered between a natural vivacity and a sort -of shyness, made him look and seem younger than he was. In the fourteen -years since then he has done work, as novelist and as critic, that has -made him famous on at least two continents, he has grown a moustache -and a trim, pointed reddish beard that with the lurking twinkle in his -eyes, give him somewhat the appearance of an acute Frenchman (though -nobody could, in general, be more thoroughly English), and, so far from -being shy, he will now rise on a platform or at a public dinner and -make you an admirably serious or witty and humorous address with the -completest self-possession.</p> - -<p>In fact, he has so matured, in himself and in his knowledge of life, -that he makes those who once called him young feel as if they had not -kept time with him and he had become their senior. Yet in the best way -he is still as young as ever. He has that tonic streak of frivolity -in him which is better<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span> than any monkey-gland for saving a man from -getting old. He can be as serious as most people on occasion, but his -joyous gifts for telling a droll anecdote or mimicking the voice, -manner and peculiarities of an acquaintance are gifts not so commonly -shared. He takes his art seriously, but unless you catch him in the -right mood he is not ready to talk seriously about it. Some authors -appear to be so in love with their work that they will tell you they -are never happier than when they are driving the pen and putting -their thoughts on paper, but Frank Swinnerton is not one of those. He -protests that he writes slowly; with difficulty; that he does not like -work; finds it irksome; that he finds pleasure in thinking out an idea, -but once he has thought it out he has a feeling that it ought to be -all done with, and puts off shaping it into words as long as he can, -and then can only bring himself to do it by fits and starts or with -intermittent bursts of energy. But if you took him too literally in -this I think you would misunderstand him. It would be truer to say of -him, as he has said of Gissing, “Conscientiousness was the note of his -artistic character.... The books are full of steady and sincere work. -Only when they were written with joy (which does not signify gaiety) -they were of original value.” For if his own books were not written -with that same joy in creation (which may co-exist with a dislike of -the mechanical act of writing) they could not be so intensely alive as -they are.</p> - -<p>You might almost guess from his novels that Swinnerton was a Londoner, -or at least, like Dickens,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span> had been made a naturalized citizen of the -“dear, damned, delightful, dirty” town when he was a child. He was born -at Wood Green, no such ideally rural suburb as its name suggests, and -has lived in London all his life. A severe illness when he was eight -years old made going to school out of the question for some time, -and continued delicate health and recurring break-downs rendered any -education so fragmentary as to be pretty well negligible. But he was -all the while, without knowing it, educating himself in ways that were -fitting him for the career he was to follow. Books were his teachers, -and his literary ambitions took an active form so early that at the -age of ten he was running an amateur magazine—one of the kind that -years ago (and probably still) used to circulate in manuscript among -subscribers who were all contributors and usefully, and sometimes -mercilessly, criticized each other’s effort.</p> - -<p>He was about fourteen when he turned his hand to real business -and became a clerk in the London office of some Glasgow newspaper -publishers. After an interval, he worked for a few years in the -publishing house of J. M. Dent & <abbr title="company">Co.</abbr>; then transferred himself to the -firm of Chatto & Windus, whose literary adviser he has since remained, -dividing his time between writing books of his own and reading and -passing judgment on the books of others, to say nothing of his doings -as a reviewer or as the writer for an American magazine of one of the -best monthly literary letters that go out of London.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span></p> - -<p>At twenty he wrote his first novel, and it was rejected by every -publisher to whom it was offered. Two more novels shared the same -discouraging fate, and I believe their author has now destroyed all -three. But a happier fate was reserved for his fourth, “The Merry -Heart,” which was promptly accepted and published; and if neither in -story nor in characterization this buoyant, quietly humorous romance of -a London clerk will compare with his maturer fiction, it has a charm -and morning freshness of feeling and outlook to atone for what it may -lack in finish.</p> - -<p>“The Young Idea” marks a great advance in his mastery of the type of -novel to which he was particularly devoting himself. This “comedy of -environment,” traces with a wonderfully sympathetic understanding -the mental and moral development of Hilda Vernon, who is a clerk -in a London office. She shares a flat with her boorish brother and -delightful younger sister, and disillusioned and disheartened by her -everyday experiences of the meanness and squalor of the life around -her, longing still to believe “in the beauty of something, in the -purity of some idea, or the integrity of some individual,” but giving -up hope, she meets with a man, a clerk like herself, who by his clean, -courageous personality and strength of character saves her from despair -and revives her old faith in humankind.</p> - -<p>The novel is remarkable for its insight and subtle analysis of -character no less than for the interest of its story; but henceforth -in Swinnerton’s work the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span> analysis of character grows and the story -itself declines in importance. It is so in “The Casement,” “The Happy -Family,” “On the Staircase,” “The Chaste Wife,” “Nocturne,” until with -“The Three Lovers,” the story begins to reassert itself. I have seen -“The Chaste Wife” described as his one failure, but to me it seems one -of the ablest and most poignant of his books and Priscilla Evandine one -of the most gracious, finely simple women he has ever drawn. “Shops and -Houses” is perhaps less satisfactory, though it follows his favorite -method and studies very skillfully and with a shrewd irony the various -members of a middle-class family. It is in “September,” a brilliant -handling of the marriage of incompatible temperaments, in “The Happy -Family,” “The Casement,” “On the Staircase,” and, more than all, in -“Nocturne” that Swinnerton’s art is at its surest and highest. There -are only five characters in “Nocturne,” and from the time when Jenny -Blanchard is riding home in the tram to her going out and returning -from a covert visit to her lover in his yacht on the Thames, the -action occupies less than six hours. Jenny, her sister Emily, their -pitiful, tiresome, amusing old father, and the homely, dull Alf Rylett, -who pursues Jenny with unwelcome attentions—they and their whole -environment are revealed with a most graphic and intimate realism, and -Jenny’s impetuous rebellion against the squalor and narrowness of her -lot, the spiritual tragedy of her brief, passionate self-surrender -are touched with an emotional power and sense of pity that make a -story which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span> easily might have been drab and gross a thing strangely -beautiful. Few who read it will wonder that H. G. Wells should have -declared it is a book “that will not die. It is perfect, authentic, and -alive.”</p> - -<p>One of his American critics (and his vogue is larger in America than -in this country) has described Swinnerton as “the analyst of lovers.” -He is that in most of his books, but he is a good deal more than that. -It is loosely said that he is a disciple of Gissing, but so far as I -can see he is one of the most original of living novelists and derives -less from his predecessors than do most of his contemporaries. He deals -with the gray, swarming London streets, and with middle and lower class -London life, but that life has changed radically since Gissing’s day, -and Swinnerton is true to its modern developments. Moreover, he is no -pessimist; he writes with a genial sympathy of the people whom Gissing -despised, and there is a prevailing sense of humor in his pages that is -never in Gissing’s. His mental attitude, his style, his realistic art -are altogether different.</p> - -<p>In his book on Gissing (I have not read his book on Stevenson, which -they tell me is unorthodox, and gave offence to Stevenson’s admirers) -he says that in Gissing’s time realism was regarded as “something -very repulsive and unimaginative ... he did not see in realism very -much more than laborious technical method. We are all realists -today, trying very hard to see without falsity and to reproduce our -vision with exactitude. Realism, I think,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span> is no longer associated -with the foot-rule and a stupid purposeless reproduction of detail.” -It is not so associated in the reticent, imaginative realism he -practises himself. I fancy, too, that he is getting back to his -earlier manner—to the making of the story as important as the study -of psychology. “The Three Lovers,” as I have said, moves in that -direction, and if it goes so far as to be occasionally melodramatic -there is no falsity in that, for life itself is full of melodrama. He -recognized in “The Casement” that love is not the whole of life, that -“work of any kind seems to absorb the faculties, and some business men -do, I suppose, live for their work”; and recently he has owned to a -feeling that in its next development the novel will be a definite and -plain tale, that there will be a revival of realistic romance which -will pay less attention to men’s intermittent amorous adventures and -more to the business and general affairs that preoccupy most of the -time of the majority. And the signs are that he is of those who are -beginning to travel on those lines.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="HUGH_WALPOLE">HUGH WALPOLE</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img031"> - <img src="images/031.jpg" class="w50" alt="Hugh Walpole" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Hugh Walpole</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span></p> - - -<p>Without reading anything of an author’s works, or anything that was -written about them, you might form a practical notion of his value and -follow his progress along the path to glory by merely watching the -growth of his reviews and the extent to which they climbed up from the -obscurer into the more prominent parts of the papers. Unless he breaks -the precedents and is a roaring success from the first, and that seldom -happens, he will start by receiving short, inconspicuous notices some -weeks or months after his book is issued, or be grouped with four or -five others in a collective article, on the sardine principle. Perhaps -he will never escape out of that limbo; but if he is destined for -success, you will presently note that he is promoted to the dignity of -long reviews with a special heading to himself; and when you find him -topping a column, discussed at considerable length, with a breathless -announcement bracketed under the title, “Published Today,” you may be -sure that, if you have not yet started to read him, it is time you -began.</p> - -<p>Hugh Walpole has been through all those stages; he went through -more rapidly than most authors do, and has gone beyond them, for he -was still three or four years short of forty when a leading London -publisher sealed him of the elect by producing a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span> collected edition of -his works. So as far as I can recall, he is the youngest novelist who -ever had that mark of distinction bestowed upon him. And, by way of -corroborating the significance of this, a selection of passages from -his books has been published in a special “Hugh Walpole Anthology,” and -two years in succession, with “The Secret City” and “The Captives,” he -has taken the Tait Black Prize awarded by the University of Edinburgh -for the best novel of the year.</p> - -<p>His father was vicar of a church at Auckland, New Zealand, in 1884, -when Hugh Walpole was born. In 1887 the family removed to New York, -where <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Walpole had accepted an appointment as Professor in a -Theological College; and seven years later they migrated to England, -where, in the fulness of time, the son was to become a famous novelist, -and the father Bishop of Edinburgh. After completing his education at -King’s School, Canterbury, and Emanuel College, Cambridge, Hugh Walpole -worked for a year or so as teacher at a boy’s school in the provinces. -Then he went to London, settled in cheap lodgings at Chelsea, and -reviewed books for the newspapers, to provide for his present needs, -and wrote novels with an eye on the future.</p> - -<p>He had written his first, “The Wooden Horse,” while he was at -Cambridge, but discouraged by the friend to whose judgment he submitted -it, laid it aside for about five years, and only offered it for -publication and had it accepted in 1909, after he had taken the plunge -and entered on that journalistic career in London. It was well enough -received<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span> and put a little money into his purse, and “Maradick at -Forty,” a much maturer work which followed within a year, met with a -reception from critics and public that made it clear he had found his -vocation; then with “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Perrin and <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Traill,” a brilliant, somewhat -bitter, study of the boys and masters at a dreary, lonely school in -Cornwall (reminiscent, no doubt, of his own teaching days) he fairly -established himself. That was in 1911, and thence-forward his story -is the story of the successive books he wrote, until the War came to -interrupt his career.</p> - -<p>In the earlier days of the war he worked with the Red Cross on the -Russian front; later, he was put in charge of British propaganda -at Petrograd, and lived there throughout the chaos of the first -Revolution, keeping a full diary of his experiences which has never -been published. People he met, things he did and saw while he was -serving with the Red Cross went into “The Dark Forest,” the sombrest -and one of the most ably written of his books. It came out in 1916, -while he was in Petrograd. He made a finely sympathetic study of the -soul of the Slav, and pictured Petrograd in the days of the Revolution, -in “The Secret City,” which has been described as the truest novel -of Russian life ever written by an alien, and was published toward -the close of the war, when he was home again and working here in the -Ministry of Information.</p> - -<p>But these two books, though they rank with his best, are not -representative. Hugh Walpole is probably as near to being a typical -Englishman as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span> any man can be, and of his dozen other novels, “The -Golden Scarecrow” and “Jeremy” show how wonderfully he can enter into -the minds of children, and the rest are stories of lower-middle, -middle and higher English society in town and country. “The Duchess of -Wrexe,” with its vividly realistic drawing of the dreadful old Duchess, -enshrines an essentially English <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">grande dame</i> of the old-school -that is rapidly becoming extinct; there are no better pictures of -English family life than the pictures of the Trenchards in “The Green -Mirror,” and a later novel; and you guess that personal observation -and experience have gone into “The Captives,” “The Cathedral,” and -other of his stories concerned with the clergy and schoolmasters, and -into the narrative in “Fortitude” of how Peter Westcott ran away from -his Cornish home to face poverty in London and embark on a successful -career as a novelist; for though Walpole has stated that he never draws -his characters from living models, he owns that living persons suggest -themes and characteristics to him.</p> - -<p>He reveals an English trait, I think, by his confession of faith in the -outlook and methods of Anthony Trollope, the most thoroughly English of -all our novelists. It is curious how in writing of present-day fiction -I am continually coming up against Trollope. His style is easygoing, -undistinguished, often slipshod; he did not pretend to be an artist; -rarely troubled much for a plot, never worried about psychology, never -heard of psychoanalysis, but wrote simply of people as he saw and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span> -knew them, put them into a loose sort of story of things that were -happening round about him, and now we are more and more recognizing -that in his unassuming tales of the social, political and business life -of his period he was a closer observer, a greater realist than were -some of his contemporaries who surpassed him in humor, imagination and -in literary genius. I come up against him so often that I suspect his -quiet influence is growing more potent with our younger writers than -that of Dickens, or Thackeray, or Meredith.</p> - -<p>Not long ago, both W. L. George and Douglas Goldring announced that -they would write no more psychological novels; they had arrived at -a conclusion that the novelist’s real business was to tell a plain -tale in which his characters should be left to express themselves in -action. Compton Mackenzie had preceded them with a declaration that -the novelist’s function was not to analyse states of mind and emotions -but to dramatize them, that the novelist should before everything else -be an entertainer, a teller of tales; and since the war Hugh Walpole -has laid down his own views on this subject in a statement that was -published by Meredith Starr in his book on “The Future of the Novel.”</p> - -<p>“A novel seems to me,” says Walpole, “quite simply a business of -telling a story about certain people whom the writer attempts to make -as living as possible. Probably behind the lines of these people there -would be some philosophy of life either stated definitely or implied -in the attitude of the author.... If I were to make any prophesy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span> -about the future of the novel, I would say that many of us are growing -tired of the thirst for novelty and are turning back with relief to -any simple presentment of real people in a real way. A good instance -of this is the wonderful recrudescence of Anthony Trollope, who cared -nothing about form or technique or style, and had, indeed, the smallest -pretensions of himself as a novelist. But he kept his eyes fixed on -the characters about whom he was writing and tried to tell the truth -about them as he saw them. He was indeed too deeply interested in their -adventures to think about anything else. And I believe that it is this -kind of simplicity of interest on the part of the narrator to which we -will return.”</p> - -<p>The Trenchards are a kind of family Trollope might have created had he -been living now; “The Cathedral” is a kind of story he might have told, -with its realistic melodrama and its clerical atmosphere, but Walpole -tells it with a subtler art in the writing and the construction, with -a conciseness and charm of style that are outside the range of the -earlier novelist. Trollope was fat, ponderous, bewhiskered; Walpole -is tall, well-knit, clean-shaven, looks even younger than his years, -is nimble-witted and modern-minded; and the two do not differ more in -personality than in their manner of telling a tale. The tale, and the -truth of it, may be the law for both, but though they row in the same -boat, to apply the pun to Douglas Jerrold, it is with very different -skulls.</p> - -<p>Most of Walpole’s work is done at his cottage<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span> by the sea in Cornwall; -he retires to that seclusion when a new idea has taken hold upon him, -stays there for some months at a stretch, then, with another novel -completed, returns to London for recreation, and is a very familiar -figure again at all manner of social functions, and one of the -cleverest and most popular of after-dinner speakers. “We love him out -yonder,” an American assured me; “none of your author-lecturers who -come over to us has larger or more delighted audiences.” A cousin of -the Earl of Orford, I have seen it said that he indirectly inherits -no little of the wit and shrewd worldly wisdom of his distant kinsman -Horace Walpole; but the realism and haunting mysticism of “The Dark -Forest” have nothing in common with the crudely romantic terrors of -“The Castle of Otranto,” and his wit and perspicacity are mitigated -by a genial human kindness that is no part of that conjectural -inheritance.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="HERBERT_GEORGE_WELLS">HERBERT GEORGE WELLS</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img032"> - <img src="images/032.jpg" class="w50" alt="Herbert George Wells" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Herbert George Wells</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</span></p> - - -<p>H. G. Wells made one of his mistakes—even the wisest of us have to -make a few—when, during a controversy with Henry James, he breezily -denied that he was an artist and proclaimed himself a journalist. I -think he must have said it with his tongue in his cheek; anyhow, it was -a mistake to put that opinion into anybody’s mind and those words into -anybody’s mouth, for there are always critics and artists, mainly of -the lesser breeds, ready enough, without such prompting, to belittle -any greatness that gets in their way.</p> - -<p>Undoubtedly, Wells is a journalist, and a mightily efficient one; -but he is also as subtle and fine an artist as you shall find among -our living men of letters, and something of an authentic prophet, -to boot. I hope his ideal state will never be realized; it is too -dreadfully efficient, too exactly organized, so all mechanical, with -human beings clicking in as part of the machinery that, if it ever -came to pass, life in it would be reduced to such monotony that I -am quite certain he would himself be one of the first to emigrate. -You may say the journalist is uppermost in his social and economic -gospels, such as “A Modern Utopia” and “New Worlds for Old,” in those -wonderful imaginative, inventive scientific romances, “The First Men -in the Moon,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</span> “The War of the Worlds,” “The War in the Air,” “Men -Like Gods,” and in novels so given over to problems of religion, -morals, sex, education and general contemporary life and conduct as -are “God the Invisible King,” “Joan and Peter,” “Ann Veronica,” “The -Soul of a Bishop,” “The Undying Fire,” and “The Secret Places of the -Heart,” yet in all these it could be demonstrated that the artist and -the prophet collaborated with the journalist. It has been said that -when in those early romances he foresaw the coming of the Great War -and the part the aeroplane would play in it he was no prophet but a -clever prognosticator who had followed the progress of invention, noted -certain tendencies and calculated their developments as one might work -out a problem in mathematics, and that a prophet needs no such guides -to knowledge but speaks by inspiration and is concerned only with the -things of the spirit. However that may be, it is with the things of the -spirit that he is mostly preoccupied in at least three of the six later -novels I have just mentioned and, to name but one, his vision of “God -the Invisible King” is more like prophetic utterance than any we have -had in our time.</p> - -<p>But he is before all else an artist in the greatest of his novels—in -“The Wheels of Chance,” “Love and <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Lewisham,” “Kipps,” “The History -of <abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Polly,” “Tono Bungay” and “The New Machiavelli,” in “The Country -of the Blind” and nearly all the other short stories in the same -volume. That book epitomises Wells’s versatile genius;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</span> its stories -represent in little nearly every variety of his work. They are by turns -fantastic, humorous, supernatural, visionary, grimly terrible and -sternly or sympathetically realistic. Personally, I like him best here, -as in his larger works, when his stories are all of ordinary men and -women living average human lives in the light of common day; but his -bizarre studies in psychology, his short tales of the eerie, nightmare -order and those that grow out of surprising scientific discoveries are -fashioned with an art as sure and as strong and as finished. If the -author of “The Country of the Blind” and “Kipps” is not an artist but a -journalist the sooner our other writers of fiction take to journalism -the better, both for them and for us.</p> - -<p>He is one of those exceptional authors who are in themselves exactly -what they seem to be in their books. Unaffected, alive with energy, -sociable, genially talkative, it is an amusing object lesson to see -him seated at a public dinner next to some distinguished but orthodox -philosopher of less learning than himself, younger but looking -older, with none of his imaginary power, his far-seeing vision, his -originality and suggestiveness as a thinker, who is yet clothed in the -gravity, reticence, aloofness that are supposed to denote superior -wisdom. There is nothing so impressive in Wells’s manner, his quick -gestures, his high, not unpleasant voice; but his keen gray eyes, with -a humorous twinkle in the depths of them, look out from under a broad, -massive forehead that prevents his appearance from being commonplace. -Sidney Dark has called<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</span> him “The Superman-in-the-Street.” He is a great -deal more than that, but he owes his deep knowledge of humanity, his -broad sympathy with its sufferings and aspirations to the fact that he -did at the outset share the homely satisfactions, the limitations and -disadvantages that are the lot of the man-in-the-street, grew wise in -those experiences, and carried the memory of them with him into the -study. A far more profitable proceeding than to arrive in the study -ignorant and learn of the outer world from hearsay or from what others -have written.</p> - -<p>Socialist, scientist, practical idealist, immensely interested in -men and affairs, insatiably curious about all life, its origins, -implications, possibilities, restlessly delving into the history and -mystery of the past for truths that would light his guesses at the -darker mystery of the future, it was natural for Wells to put his -latest interests into each new book that he wrote, whether it was a -matter-of-fact philosophical treatise or romantic or realistic fiction. -If this habit of using as material for his work whatever was readiest -to hand led to his scandalizing friends and acquaintance by putting -even them, under thin disguises, into certain of his novels, he has, at -least, put himself into them also and no little of his autobiography. -You may trace the growth of his mind, the development of his ideas -through his successive books. He has been accused of inconsistency by -those who fancied his opinion had changed because it had matured, that -he had acquired a new root when he had merely grown<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</span> new branches. All -his life, as somebody once said, he has been thus educating himself in -the public eye, but he was educating himself strenuously and in face of -many difficulties long before the eye of the public became aware of him.</p> - -<p>He was born, in 1866, at Bromley, Kent, where his father, a noted -cricketer who played in the County team, kept a small glass and china -and general shop. But the business failed; his father had to find -employment; his mother went as housekeeper to a great house near -Petersfield and Wells, then about thirteen, was apprenticed to a draper -at Windsor. Before long, he left there to go to Midhurst as assistant -to a chemist, and presently abandoned that profession to resume his -interrupted schooling at Wimblehurst. Thence, in 1881, he went to be, -for a brief period, pupil teacher at his uncle’s school in Somerset, -and gave that up to take to his first trade again in a draper’s shop at -Southsea. After two years of this, he emerged as assistant teacher at -Midhurst Grammar School, till, having won a scholarship at the South -Kensington School of Science, and taken his B.Sc. degree with honors, -he secured an appointment to teach Science and English at Henley House -School, <abbr title="saint">St.</abbr> John’s Wood. To increase his income, he passed from that to -work as lecturer and tutor to some University Correspondence Classes, -and the incessant and arduous labor this involved resulted in such a -complete breakdown of health that he had to resign his appointment and -go away to the south coast to rest and recuperate.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</span></p> - -<p>But before he was fairly convalescent the irksomeness of doing nothing -and the need of getting an income prompted him to try his luck with his -pen. So far his literary work had not gone beyond what I am told was an -admirable biological text-book, contributions to technical journals, -and a few occasional newspaper articles. He turned now to writing -essays and sketches of a light and humorous kind, and found a ready -market for them in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, and other papers. Once -in the lists as a literary free-lance, he rode from success to success -with astonishing deftness and energy. In 1895 he published “Select -Conversations with an Uncle,” but it was eclipsed by the appearance in -the same year of “The Stolen Bacillus and Other Stories,” and two of -the most original and characteristic of his early imaginative tales, -“The Time Machine” and “The Wonderful Visit.” Next year, hard on the -heels of that grim fantasy, “The Island of <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Moreau,” came the most -charmingly humorous, realistic-idyllic of his novels, “The Wheels of -Chance.”</p> - -<p>No man with a serious purpose should, in this country, retain a sense -of humor. If nature has afflicted him with one, he should do his best -to have it removed; it is more inimical to his well-being than an -appendix. But Wells seems to be incurable, and that he has carelessly -broken through all manner of prejudices to almost universal acceptance, -in spite of his handicap of humor, is in itself a testimony to the -power and quality of his work.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</span> If Darwin had followed “The Origin -of Species” by writing “Three Men in a Boat” I doubt whether the -pundits would have taken him seriously enough to have him buried in -Westminster Abbey. Wells, having published a novel and three searching -and profoundly earnest books on the Great War in 1914, burst forth next -year with the farcical, bitingly satirical “Boon” and the irresponsibly -laughable, “Bealby,” and immediately after appealed to us with his -prophetic “What is Coming?” and one of his finest novels, and certainly -the finest novel of the War, “<abbr title="mister">Mr.</abbr> Britling Sees it Through.”</p> - -<p>All which is, of course, as it should be. It is your little man who -has only one mood for all occasions, and dare not laugh and unbend -from his pose and come down from his pedestal lest he should seem -no bigger than those who had looked up to him. While other scholars -are toiling laboriously to write the record of a single nation, or a -single reign, Wells sandwiches between novel and novel that stupendous -survey, “The Outline of History,” which is not only a scholarly and -vastly comprehensive chronicle of the evolution of man and the progress -of humanity the world over from the dawn of time to the day before -yesterday, but is, as Macaulay rightly said all history ought to be, as -easy and fascinating reading as any work of fiction.</p> - -<p>No English author has a wider vogue outside his own country—he is -popular in America, and in Russia, Germany, Scandinavia, where many -other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</span> of our famous writers are unknown; and who was that Frenchman -that, on a visit to London, expressed himself as agreeably surprised to -discover that Wells is nearly as much appreciated over here as he is in -France?</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ISRAEL_ZANGWILL">ISRAEL ZANGWILL</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center p0 p2"><span class="figcenter" id="img033"> - <img src="images/033.jpg" class="w50" alt="Israel Zangwill" /> -</span></p> -<p class="center p0 caption"><span class="smcap">Israel Zangwill</span><br /></p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</span></p> - - -<p>Although I don’t think I ever exchanged a dozen words with him until -recently, since the days of my youth I have felt a special personal -interest in Israel Zangwill. With the passing of time, as it became -possible to know him from his books and his public doings, that -interest has strengthened to admiration and a real regard alike for -the great qualities of his work and the courageous sincerity of -his character; but I fancy it had its beginnings in quite trifling -associations. We were both born Londoners, and started in the same way: -when we were twenty, or less, we were competing against each other -for prizes in a weekly paper called <i>Society</i>, and I believe -his first appearance in print was with a prize story in that long -deceased periodical. I am a little uncertain of the exact dates, but -he was still in his twenties when he started <i>Ariel</i>, a brilliant -rival to <i>Punch</i>, and I sent him some contributions for it which -he did not use. About the same time I ran another short-lived rival -to <i>Punch</i> myself, but he sent me no contributions for it, or, -without desiring to heap coals of fire on his head, I should have -used them. Then we both became members of the New Vagabond Club, and -used to meet at its dinners occasionally and sometimes nod to each -other, but never spoke. As a matter of fact, I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</span> don’t suppose he knew -who I was and cannot have suspected that I entertained such warm and -proprietorial sentiments toward him. For many years now, since his -marriage (his wife, the daughter of Professor W. E. Ayrton, is herself -a novelist of distinction), he has made his home at East Preston, in -Sussex, and his visits to London have been few and far between. But -when he was up on business, staying at his chambers in the Temple, I -used to come across him at long intervals careering down the Strand -or Fleet Street, and always felt I was meeting a sort of old friend, -though, until recently, we passed without recognition.</p> - -<p>It was in 1864 that he was born, his father being an exile who, lying -under sentence of death for a trivial military offence, had escaped -to this country from a Russian prison. He was educated at the Jews’ -Free School, in East London, where, a year or two before taking his -B. A. degree, with triple honors, at the London University, he became -a teacher. But teaching, though he proved extraordinarily successful -at it, was not to be his career. In 1888, he wrote in collaboration -with Louis Cowen a farcical political romance, “The Premier and -the Painter,” and presently resigned his scholastic engagement and -proceeded to earn a livelihood by free-lance literature and journalism. -That success did not come to him till he had paid for it in hard work -you may know by the moral he drew from his memories of those days when -he wrote (as J. A. Hammerton records in his “Humorists of To-Day”), “If -you are blessed with some talent,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</span> a great deal of industry, and an -amount of conceit mighty enough to enable you to disregard superiors, -equals and critics, as well as the fancied demands of the public, it is -possible, without friends, or introductions, or bothering celebrities -to read your manuscripts, or cultivating the camp of log-rollers, -to attain, by dint of slaving day and night for years during the -flower of your youth, to a fame infinitely less wide-spread than a -prize-fighter’s and a pecuniary position which you might with far less -trouble have been born to.”</p> - -<p>But in the first two years of the 90’s he had established himself as a -humorist with “The Bachelor’s Club,” “The Old Maid’s Club,” and “The -Big Bow Mystery,” an ingenious burlesque of the popular detective story -which was as exciting as the real thing; and as a new novelist of high -and original achievement with “The Children of the Ghetto.” Just then -Jerome and Robert Barr started <i>The Idler</i>, with G. B. Burgin as -their assistant editor: a year later Jerome launched <i>To-Day</i>, -and Zangwill, who, on the strength of his earlier books, had been -branded by the superior as a “humorist,” was among the notable group -of young writers that J. K. J. collected on his two magazines. Many of -his short stories appeared in the one, and to the other he contributed -a causerie, “Without Prejudice” (which re-emerged in due course as a -book), and his novel, “The Master,” as a serial.</p> - -<p>“The Master” is a sustained and revealing study of a single -character—the story of a young painter, Matt Strang, who comes from -Nova Scotia to London,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</span> self-centered, afire with ambition, but it is -not till, broken by disillusion and failure, he withdraws from the -babble and dazzle of art circles and social swaggerings, returns to -the obscurity of his own home and subserviates his hopes to his wife’s -happiness that he finds himself and is able to do the great work he had -dreamt of doing. There is more of the ironic, satirical Zangwill in -“The Mantle of Elijah”; he places his scenes in the days of Palmerston, -but drives home a big-minded gospel that is as badly needed in the -politics of these days as it was then. Broser, a strong, self-confident -political leader, rises to power by breaking his promises and changing -his convictions as often as necessary and is acclaimed the savior of -his country, but he has a wife, Allegra, whose conscience is not so -accommodating, who cannot abandon her principles whenever he abandons -his, and in the hour of his triumph she leaves him, to devote herself -to working for the cause that, in the interests of his career, he had -betrayed.</p> - -<p>Nearly twenty years later Zangwill gave us “Jinny the Carrier,” a very -charming story of mid-Victorian life and character in rural Essex; -but his finest, most memorable work in fiction has been done as the -interpreter of his own people. This he is in “Children of the Ghetto,” -in the whimsical grotesque, broadly and grimly humorous tales of “The -King of Schnorrers,” that glorious Hebrew mendicant Manasseh Bueno -Barzillai Azevedo da Costa, and in the masterly little stories of light -and shadow that make up the “Ghetto Tragedies” and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</span> “Ghetto Comedies.” -He has his unique place in letters as the novelist of London’s modern -Jewry. Aldgate, Whitechapel, Hoxton, Dalston, all the roads and byways, -mean lanes and squalid squares there and thereabouts are a world large -and varied and crowded enough for his purposes. His pride of race glows -as surely in such stories of the children of his fancy, the poor of the -Ghetto, their profoundly simple piety, their patience, self-sacrifice, -humble endurance, human kindness, as in his subtle studies of those -real, yet scarcely more real in seeming, “Dreamers of the Ghetto,” -Heine, Lasalle, Spinoza, and other such seers and prophets of -latter-day Israel. But he is too much of an artist to suppress anything -of the truth, and dealing with his own people, actual or imaginary, he -shows them starkly as they are, their vices as well as their virtues, -their avarice, meanness, hypocrisies, as well as their generosity and -loyalties. He is steeped in the Jewish tradition, and fills in the -atmosphere and intimate detail of his pictures with most meticulous -realism; he is ready enough to ridicule obsolete racial bigotries -and ancient customs that have lost their meaning, but is sensitively -reverent to the beauty and mystic significance of all old ceremonies -and practices that still embody the essential spirit of the faith.</p> - -<p>Nowhere has the soul of the London Jew (and the rich Jew who lives -in the West has not been overlooked) been more sympathetically or -impartially unveiled than in Zangwill’s novel and tales of the Ghetto. -His tragedies are touched with comedy,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</span> his comedies with tragedy; if -I were limited to three of his short stories, I would name “They that -Sit in Darkness,” “Transitional” and “To Die in Jerusalem,” for their -delicate art and simple directness of narrative, among the greatest in -the language.</p> - -<p>How many plays Zangwill has written altogether I do not know; but he -began in 1892 with “Six Persons,” a comedy, and in the last decade or -so has written more plays than stories. “Merely Mary Ann,” a tale of a -quaint little lodging-house slavey, came out first as a short novel, -then was adapted to the stage and had a popular success in both forms. -He dramatized “Children of the Ghetto”; and “Jinny the Carrier” was -a domestic drama before it was a novel. But his bigger work in this -kind is “The Melting Pot,” “The War God,” “The Next Religion,” “The -Forcing House” and “The Cockpit.” Each of them is inspired with a high -and serious purpose. The first is a moving plea for race-fusion: the -Jews are not a nation but a race; they become absorbed into the nation -where they make their home, and you are shown how David Quixano, in -America, “God’s crucible, where all the races of Europe are melting and -re-forming,” is moulded into a patriotic American with a passionate -ideal of freedom. “The War God,” with its appeal for international -goodwill and its scathing indictment of the crime and folly of war -is a prophetic commentary on much that has befallen the world since -1912; “The Forcing House”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</span> is a tragi-comedy of revolution, which has -its parallel in Bolshevik Russia; “The Cockpit” is the tragi-comedy, -edged at times with bitterest satire, of the restoration of a Queen -who, bent on ruling by love, is thwarted and brought to disaster by her -ministers, who have a family likeness to ministers everywhere; and “The -War God” (1911) was recognized as the noblest, most impressive drama -that had been seen on the London stage for years.</p> - -<p>If Zangwill’s road has sometimes been difficult, one reason is that -he has never gone with the crowd, never been afraid to go against the -view of the majority. More than once he has got himself into trouble -through championing unpopular causes. When it needed courage to come -out openly in favor of Woman’s Suffrage, he supported it in the press -and on the platform; for he is as witty and can be as devastating with -his tongue as with his pen. And with all these activities he has found -time to do a lot of spade work as President of the International Jewish -Territorial Organization, which aims at establishing Jewish Colonies -wherever land can be found for them, and time to give practical service -in Leagues and Committees that are doing what is possible to build up -the peace and universal brotherhood that politicians are too busy to do -more than talk about. From which you may take it that he does not put -all his sympathies into the printed page, does not write one way and -live another, but that his books and his life are of a piece, and if -you know them you know him.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX">INDEX</h2> -</div> - - - -<p class="center">A</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Ainsworth, W. Harrison, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Ariel</i>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Austen, Jane, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li> -</ul> - -<p class="center">B</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Ballantyne, R. M., <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Barr, Robert, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Barrie, Sir James, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Bateman, Miss Isabel, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Bateman, Leah, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">“Beachcomber,” <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Beardsley, Aubrey, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Beaumont and Fletcher, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Beeton’s Annual</i>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Belgravia</i>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Bell, J. J., <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Bell, <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Joseph, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Belloc, Hilaire, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Belloc-Lowndes, Mrs., <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Bennett, Arnold, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>-<a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Benson, Stella, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Beresford, J. D., <a href="#Page_33">33</a>-<a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Blake, William, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Blomfield, Sir Arthur, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Bookman</i>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Bottome, Phyllis, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Braddon, Miss, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Brontë, Charlotte, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Brown, T. E., <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Browning, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Buchan, John, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>-<a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Bunyan, John, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Burgin, G. B., <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Burke, Thomas, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Burns, Robert, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Byrne, Donn, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Byron, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Bystander</i>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> -</ul> - -<p class="center">C</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Caine, Sir Hall, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Carlyle, Thomas, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Clare, John, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Clifford, Mrs. W. K., <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Crabbe, George, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Crackanthorpe, Hubert, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Chamberlain, Austin, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Chambers’s Journal</i>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Chaucer, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Chesterton, Cecil, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Chesterton, G. K., <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Cholmondeley, Mary, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Coleridge, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Collins, Arthur, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Collins, Wilkie, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Colmore, George, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Compton, Edward, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Compton, G. C., <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Conrad, Joseph, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Cornhill Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Cowen, Louis, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Crashaw, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> -</ul> - -<p class="center">D</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst"><i>Daily Graphic</i>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Daily Mail</i>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Danby, Frank, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Dane, Clemence, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Daniel, Samuel, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Dark, Sidney, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Darwin, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Davies, W. H., <a href="#Page_63">63</a>-<a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</span></li> - -<li class="ifrst">de la Mare, Walter, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">de Mattos, Texiera, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">De Morgan, William, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Dickens, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Disraeli, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Donne, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Doyle, John, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Doyle, Richard, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Drinkwater, John, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Dudeney, Mrs. Henry, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">E</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Edalji, George, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> -<li class="ifrst">Egerton, George, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Eliot, George, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>English Review</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Erckmann-Chatrian, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Evans, C. S., <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Eyles, M. Leonora, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">F</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Farnol, Jeffery, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Fielding, Henry, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Findlater, Mary and Jane, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">FitzGerald, Edward, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">France, Anatole, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Frankau, Gilbert, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Freud, Professor, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">G</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Galsworthy, John, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>-<a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">George, W. L., <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Gibson, W. W., <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Gissing, George, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Goldring, Douglas, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Goldsmith, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Gosse, Edmund, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Grahame, Kenneth, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Grand, Sarah, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Granta</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Greenwood, Frederick, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">H</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Haggard, Sir Rider, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hammerton, J. A., <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hardy, Thomas, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>-<a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Harraden, Beatrice, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Harris, Augustus, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hawkins, Sir Anthony Hope, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>-<a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hawley, Hughson, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hay, Ian, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Henley, W. E., <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Herbert, George, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Herrick, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hodder-Williams, Sir Ernest, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Holland, Clive, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Howard, Keble, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hunt, Violet, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Hutchinson, A. S. M., <a href="#Page_133">133</a>-<a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">I</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst"><i>Idler, The</i>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Ingram, Roger, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">J</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">James, Henry, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Jameson, Storm, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Jenkins, Herbert, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Jerome, J. K., <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Jerrold, Douglas, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Joyce, James, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">K</p><ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Kaye-Smith, Sheila, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>-<a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Keats, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</span></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Kingsley, Charles, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Kipling, Rudyard, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>-<a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Knoblauch, Edward, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">L</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Lang, Andrew, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Lawrence, C. E., <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Le Galliene, Richard, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Locke, W. J., <a href="#Page_163">163</a>-<a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Lucas, E. V., <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Lynd, Robert, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Lyons, A. Neil, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Lytton, Lord, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">M</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Macaulay, Lord, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Macaulay, Rose, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">McKenna, Stephen, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>-<a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Mackenzie, Compton, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>-<a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Malet, Lucas, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Mann, Mary E., <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Markino, Yoshio, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Marlowe, Christopher, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Marvell, Andrew, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Masefield, John, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-<a href="#Page_201">200</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Mason, A. E. W., <a href="#Page_203">203</a>-<a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Matz, B. W., <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Maugham, W. S., <a href="#Page_213">213</a>-<a href="#Page_219">219</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Maxwell, John, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Maxwell, W. B., <a href="#Page_223">223</a>-<a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Meredith, George, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Merrick, Leonard, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Methuen, Sir Algernon, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Meynell, Viola, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Milne, A. A., <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Milner, Lord, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Moore, George, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Mordaunt, Elinor, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Morris, William, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Morrison, Arthur, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Munro, Neil, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">N</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Nelson, Thomas & Sons, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Newman, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Noyes, Alfred, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>-<a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">O</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Onions, Oliver, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Oppenheim, E. Phillips, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>-<a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">P</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst"><i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Palmer, Cecil, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Parker, Sir Gilbert, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Paston, George, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Payn, James, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Pearson’s Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Phelps, <abbr title="doctor">Dr.</abbr> Lyon, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Phillips, F. C., <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Poe, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Pope, Alexander, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Priestly, Joseph, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Pugh, Edwin, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Punch</i>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">R</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst"><i>Rapid Review</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Reid, Mayne, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Richards, Grant, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Richardson, Dorothy, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Ridge, W. Pett, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Robins, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Royal Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">S</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Sadleir, Michael, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Sassoon, Siegfried, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Scott, Mrs. C. A. Dawson, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Scott, Dixon, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Scott, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Scraps</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</span></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Shaw, G. Bernard, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Sheridan, R. B., <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Sidgwick, Ethel, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Sims, G. R., <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Sinclair, May, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>-<a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Slater, Oscar, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Smith, Adam, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Smith, Alexander, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Smith, Sydney, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Smith, W. H. & Son, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Society</i>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Spectator, The</i>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Spender, J. A., <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Spenser, Edmund, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Squire, J. C., <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Starr, Meredith, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Stern, G. B., <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Sterne, Lawrence, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Stevenson, R. L., <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Swift, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Swinburne, <a href="#Page_101">100</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Swinnerton, Frank, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>-<a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Symonds, John Addington, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">T</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst"><i>Temple Bar</i>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Tennyson, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Thackeray, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Thomas, Edward, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Times Literary Supplement</i>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>To-day</i>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Trollope, Anthony, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>-<a href="#Page_298">298</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Trollope, Frances, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">W</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Walpole, Horace, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Walpole, Hugh, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>-<a href="#Page_299">299</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Watson, Frederick, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Watson, Sir William, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Watt, A. P., <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Waugh, Alec, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Waugh, Arthur, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Webb, Mary, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Webling, Peggy, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Wells, H. G., <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>-<a href="#Page_310">310</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">West, Rebecca, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Westminster Gazette</i>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Weyman, Stanley, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Whitman, Walt, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Wilde, Oscar, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Willcocks, M. P., <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Woolf, Virginia, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Wordsworth, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> - -<li class="ifrst">Wyllarde, Dolf, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -</ul> -<p class="center">Y</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Young, Edward, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> -</ul> - -<p class="center">Z</p> -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Zangwill, I., <a href="#Page_313">313</a>-<a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> -</ul> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> - -<div class="chapter transnote"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes">Transcriber’s Notes</h2> - - -<p>Obvious errors in punctuation have been fixed.</p> - -<p>Page <a href="#Page_107">107</a>: “a like wizard” changed to “like a wizard”</p> - -<p>Page <a href="#Page_137">137</a>: “old ideals of feminity” changed to “old ideals of femininity”</p> - -<p>Page <a href="#Page_159">159</a>: “where ordinnary folks” changed to “where ordinary folks”</p> - -<p>Page <a href="#Page_259">259</a>: “under their miscroscopes” changed to “under their -microscopes”</p> - -<p>Page <a href="#Page_278">278</a>: “short shory” changed to “short story”</p> - -<p>Page <a href="#Page_285">285</a>: “critized each others” changed to “criticized each other’s”</p> - -<p>Page <a href="#Page_286">286</a>: “this bouyant” changed to “this buoyant”</p> - -<p>Page <a href="#Page_295">295</a>: “the successsive books” changed to “the successive books”</p> -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODS OF MODERN GRUB STREET ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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