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diff --git a/77402-0.txt b/77402-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..70849b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/77402-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3839 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77402 *** + + + + +[Illustration: _265 copies of this book have been printed_ + +_15 for presentation (A-O)_ + +_250 subscribed (1-250)_ + +_This is No. 62._ + +_Signature_ + +_Arthur Machen_] + + + + +Precious Balms + + + + +_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ + + + ELEUSINIA + THE ANATOMY OF TOBACCO + THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY + THE GREAT GOD PAN + THE THREE IMPOSTORS + HIEROGLYPHICS + DR STIGGINS + THE HOUSE OF SOULS + THE HILL OF DREAMS + THE BOWMEN + THE GREAT RETURN + THE TERROR + WAR AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH + THE SECRET GLORY + FAR OFF THINGS + THINGS NEAR AND FAR + THE SHINING PYRAMID + STRANGE ROADS + DOG AND DUCK + + + + + Precious Balms + By Arthur Machen + + _Let the righteous smite me friendly and reprove me, but let not + their precious balms break my head._—Ps. cxli + + London: Spurr & Swift + 123 Pall Mall, S.W.1 1924 + + _Printed in Great Britain + by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh_ + + + + + MELINA PLACE + LONDON + + _May 1, 1924_ + +_My dear Spurr_, + +_I am grieved, indeed, to hear your news about “Precious Balms.” You +say that during your recent visit to America, you were made acquainted +with some very serious misconceptions as to a phrase in the “Precious +Balms” prospectus. This document stated that for a certain period I was +“languishing in the cells of Carmelite House, serving a term of eleven +years’ ‘hard’ for a series of obscure crimes.” And now you tell me that +in the United States, this small piece of jocularity has been taken in +the most serious way. People were anxious to be informed as to the exact +nature of the crimes aforesaid, and confused Carmelite House with such +establishments as The Tombs, Sing Sing, Pentonville and Wandsworth._ + +_I am extremely sorry. I had no intention of hurting anybody’s feelings. +I hope you will present my sincere regrets and apologies—in the proper +quarters._ + + _Yours sincerely_, + + _ARTHUR MACHEN_ + +_Harry Spurr, Esq. Messrs Spurr & Swift Pall Mall, London_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + _Introduction_ ix + + _The Great God Pan and The Three Impostors_ 1 + + _Hieroglyphics_ 37 + + _The House of Souls_ 56 + + _The Hill of Dreams_ 89 + + _The Secret Glory_ 108 + + _Far Off Things and Things Near and Far_ 121 + + _Dog and Duck_ 139 + + _The Other Side_ 151 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +Now and again I glance at the correspondence columns of a paper devoted +to the affairs of those interested in writing—and find to my astonishment +that authors have a great dislike of unfavourable criticism. I note, for +example, the letter of a hurt and angry man, who protests that he has +had hard measure from the critic of the _Cosmopolitan_, that the _Daily +Mercury_ has clearly not read more than three pages of his book, that +“Judex” in the _Lyre_ says he is ignorant of the elements of prosody: +“a harsh judgment,” the poor man exclaims, “when directed against one +who has the privilege of signing himself ‘M.A. Oxon.’” And sometimes the +reviewer is entreated to remember that authors have their living to get; +the suggested inference being, as I suppose, that the critic should do +nothing but praise the books submitted to him. In fact, there are, it +seems, authors who conceive that a word of blame is a word of injury, and +that a harsh notice is a hardship. + +In my opinion, nothing can be farther from the truth. Could anything be +duller than a monotonous song of praise? Is it not obvious that there is +no sport in easy paths? If this were not so, what would become of the +Alpine Clubs? A mountaineer would not thank you for a free excursion +ticket to Romney Marsh or the Bedford Level. Opposition, whether it be +that of a mountain side or a body of critical opinion, is one of the +chiefest zests and relishes of life; and so profoundly have I felt this +that for the last thirty years I have hoarded up my “notices,” with a +very special eye of favour on those “notices” which are foolishly termed +bad. Foolishly, for many reasons, some of which I have suggested; but +chiefly because there is only one sort of notice that is really bad, +and that is no notice at all. I do not know whether there are critical +writers who desire to extinguish, make to cease, and bring to nought +this, that or the other author; but if there be such, I take it that they +are far too skilled in their craft to think that a man can be blotted +out by a column of words, be they fierce or jeering. Silence is the only +fatal sentence; from that there is no appeal, for it there is no remedy. + +But this must be done thoroughly; and here I would submit is the error of +the critic of _The Referee_, the late David Christie Murray, who will be +found quoted in the chapter devoted to “The House of Souls.” The writer +desired to “slate” the book with all his heart, and devoted the entire +front page of his paper to that excellent endeavour. He compared the book +to an obscene waxwork anatomical museum at a country fair: “it poisoned +everything.” He was light: he said it was all “baby-Satanic-tommy-rot,” +that it was “buried nastiness.” He declared that I was taking the +ha’pence of the public and making a very decent “(and most indecent)” +living by exhibiting the bestial side of my nature. All very well; but +the critic tried to combine the method of the hearty attack with the +method of silence: he neither mentioned the name of the book nor that +of the author. This was faulty technique: for the next few months the +Editor of _The Referee_ was pestered by correspondents who wanted to know +all about it; to ascertain for themselves the extent of the author’s +depravity. + +A more delicate method was employed—in perfect good faith, very +likely—by _The Bystander_. Here the critic gave the name of the book and +of the author, and praised the stories. _But he pretended that I had no +existence._ He said that he had a very strong suspicion that I was, in +reality, Mr Montagu Wood, the author of “A Tangled I.” He added that Mr +Montagu Wood’s humour was recognised in “Pop” at Eton, and afterwards at +the Canning Club at Oxford. + +Now, let us be fair. Honour to whom honour is due; I confess that the +dart of this reviewer penetrated my armour. I was genuinely annoyed—I was +a lad of 44 at the time—at being practically wiped out of existence. But, +on calm reflection, I wonder what Mr Wood thought of it. Perhaps he, too, +was not over-pleased. But I shall always think of _The Bystander_ with +the respect that one gives to a cunning craftsman. + +There are some very tolerable examples to be found in the collection +relating to “The Great God Pan” and “The Three Impostors.” Of course I +reject the violent, especially the morally violent. These are not in +the true tradition of the fine art of reviewing. When _The Manchester +Guardian_ said that “The Great God Pan” was “the most acutely and +intentionally disagreeable” book it had seen in English, the _Guardian_ +blundered. Deplorable as it may be, we must confess that such a sentence +constitutes a valuable free advertisement; and _The Manchester Guardian_ +did not desire to advertise the work. Indeed it said so; and thus +blundered again. And so again _The Lady’s Pictorial_: “Men and women +who are morbid and unhealthy in mind may find something that appeals +to them.” This is all wrong. Again we must deplore the anfractuosities +of human nature; but to say that a book is morbid and unhealthy is to +perform the office of a spielman, not of a censor. + +No; the way to go about it, if you must leave the safe way of silence, +is to take things lightly. Thus, in _The National Observer_: “In all the +glory of the binder’s and printer’s arts we have two tales of no great +distinction.” So _The Sketch_: “his bogles don’t scare”; _The Daily +Chronicle_: “his horror, we regret to say, leaves us quite cold”; _The +Observer_: “one shakes with laughter rather than with dread.” All these +are very well; and another manner is, I think, successful. The _Belfast +News Letter_ suggested that “sensationalism is the order of the day, and +must be pandered to to make the author’s pot boil.” There is something +intimate in this knowledge of the author’s very disastrous private +affairs which has a strange, elusive charm. Another favourite of mine +is Mr Walkely’s review of “Hieroglyphics” in _The Morning Leader_: here +again you will find intimate knowledge of the writer’s life which could +not have been gathered from title pages. Thus, the opening sentence: + +“I do not know whether Mr Machen is to be described as an actor who +amuses his leisure with writing books or as an author who fills up his +evenings by appearing on the stage.” But the article which follows, +though decisive as to the demerits of the book under review, is much +too long. Brevity in these affairs is of the utmost importance. If you +want to say that an author is an unimportant ass, you should say it in a +paragraph, not in a column. + +Other reviews which I should like to recommend to the notice of the +_virtuoso_ are _The Manchester Guardian_ on “The Hill of Dreams,” and on +“Far Off Things”; also _The Boston Evening Transcript_ review of “Things +Near and Far.” The heading of this article is: “The Reflections of a +Man of Self-Conceit.” The article displays my mean, sponging, irritable +nature in a very masterly manner. And the very choice collection of +“Outlook” reviews should not be neglected. And I have said that in my +opinion the review of vehement denunciation is not of the highest merit: +but I except Mr Murry’s notice of “The Secret Glory” in _The Nation and +Athenæum_. There is a completeness about it which satisfies. + + * * * * * + +Finally, it would not be honest to conceal that there is another side to +this as to most other questions. I have had “good” reviews in my day, and +I give a few specimens of these. The writers of these articles I leave +to the judgment of their own conscience. I only hope that, in the words +of Mr Pecksniff, they have not voluntarily deserted the flowery paths of +purity and peace. + + + + +THE GREAT GOD PAN AND THE THREE IMPOSTORS + + +[Sidenote: _The Observer_] + +... He imagines for us the horrible results of attempting by means of a +surgical experiment to make a young woman “see the god Pan.” Interference +with the nerve centres of the young woman’s brain turns her into an +idiot; but that is not the worst of it, for she becomes in due course +the mother of a sort of she-devil who goes through life frightening +people out of their wits, and eventually causes a “terrible epidemic +of suicide” amongst fashionable men about town. What is it about this +mysterious heroine which sends the friends of her girlhood crazy, which +ruins her husband “body and soul,” and which causes her later admirers +to go out and hang themselves—this is never definitely explained. The +intention evidently is to make us shudder by vague allusions to “awful +unspeakable elements,” which are “triumphant in human flesh,” and produce +“a horror one dare not name.” It is not Mr Machen’s fault, but his +misfortune, that one shakes with laughter rather than with dread over +the contemplation of his psychological bogey. His art has been hampered +by the limitations imposed upon it through his having to leave his +ingenious horror “indescribable” and “unutterable” from first to last. +Mr Aubrey Beardsley has no doubt come gallantly to the rescue with the +admirably-realised repulsiveness of the nymph designed by him as an +appropriate frontispiece. But the general effect of “The Great God Pan,” +as well as of the kindred tale which follows it in “The Inmost Light,” +is, we fear, hardly so creepy as it would have been if it had dared to be +intelligible. + +[Sidenote: _The Daily Chronicle_] + +... His horror, we regret to say, leaves us quite cold. Gallant gentlemen +commit suicide at the mere sight of the accursed thing; here be murders, +inquests, alarums and excursions—and our flesh obstinately refuses +to creep. Why? Possibly because we have had a surfeit of this morbid +thaumaturgy of late, and “ken the biggin’ o’t.” Possibly, too, because, +while Mr Machen describes the (literally) panic terror of the various +people who behold the monster, he never lets us have so much as a +glimpse of the monster for ourselves. How can we be petrified unless we +see Medusa’s head? To be told that others have been turned to stone won’t +do. That is only what the soldier said: it is not evidence.... + +[Sidenote: _Belfast News Letter_] + +... Sensationalism is the order of the day, and must, we suppose, be +pandered to to make the author’s pot boil; but, despite the ability in +this direction—for the conception is cleverly carried out—we fail to see +why such absurdities should be presented to intelligent readers. The +Great God Pan, with his syrinx, cloven hoof, and pointed ears, may have +been a serious bogey to the rustics Theocritus sings about; but to call +in this mythical monstrosity’s aid to work on our _fin-de-siècle_ nerves +is far-fetched, to say the least of it. Mr Machen’s ability is worthy +of a better _motif_ than mystifying innocent people about the devil, or +poking fun at his intellectual admirers about the unseen. + +[Sidenote: _The Westminster Gazette_] + +If Mr Arthur Machen’s object were to make our flesh creep, we can only +speak for ourselves and say that we have read the book without an +emotion. There are nameless horrors hinted at in every other page, which +make other people turn green and sick, but it is beyond the power of the +most susceptible reader to shudder at the shudders of these fictional +people. The story is, in fact, most elaborately absurd—so absurd, indeed, +as to save it from the less agreeable charge of being nasty, as it would +inevitably be if Mr Machen meant us to take it seriously. We can at +least congratulate him on having failed in the courage to make plain +the mysterious horrors which are supposed to be in the background of +this story, but the result is to leave an inchoate and confused series +of impressions, as of a man who is trying to tell a story and fails +to express himself. What the intention of the writer could possibly +have been we cannot even conjecture. Mr Machen was possibly under the +impression that he was writing a new “Jekyll and Hyde,” but “The Great +God Pan” is as meaningless as an allegory as it is absurd from any other +point of view. + +[Sidenote: _The Echo_] + +Mr Arthur Machen’s story, “The Great God Pan,” published by Mr John +Lane, is a failure and an absurdity. His meaning, if there is any, seems +to be the presentation, or rather the suggestion, of Pan as a hideous +being or force behind nature, of which being the men who fall victims to +an abandoned woman that appears in various disguises and under various +_aliases_ in the story catch glimpses, from the mere fact that they have +yielded to her power—the obscene nature deity revealing himself in the +person of the said woman.... Mr Machen tells us that the victims saw the +horrors, but that is not enough. Doubtless the horrors would turn out to +be mere grotesques, even if we did see them. Not the ghost of a “creepy” +feeling will this story produce in the mind of anybody who reads it. + +[Sidenote: _The Speaker_] + +... If we may believe Mr Machen, those doings are of the most horrible +character; but as he omits to tell us what they are, and leaves us +merely with the impression that she is “a bold, bad woman” of a very +ordinary description, we are compelled to take her special horrors upon +trust. Fortunately for everybody, and for the readers of the story in +particular, she comes to a speedy end, though whether she is hanged +or dissolved into “a substance as jelly” the record fails to explain. +All that we know is that Mr Machen writes of this unfortunate female +as if he were in deadly earnest and she were something too terrible +to be plainly revealed. There is another story, called “The Inmost +Light,” bound up with “The Great God Pan.” It deals with a lady who is +represented as having been in every way as horrible as the heroine of +the first tale; but as the only explicit fact recorded of her is that +she frightened the passers-by by the faces she made at the window of her +husband’s house, the reader is left as much in the dark about her as he +is about her sister in misfortune.... + +[Sidenote: _The Sketch_] + +Mr Machen’s “Great God Pan” (John Lane) is concerned more with the +nerves than with the imagination. We respect such things as, aiming at +the ghastly, do actually make us afraid in the dark and give us hideous +dreams. Mr Machen’s inhuman conceptions are put into ingenious forms, and +exhibit many different clevernesses; only, his bogles don’t scare. In his +next attempt, however, he may come out on the right side. + +[Sidenote: W. L. Courtney in _The Daily Telegraph_] + +“Really,” laughed the Hostess, “is the Yellow Book a disease?” + +“Assuredly,” said the Physician, “a very virulent form of jaundice, due +to an imperfect digestion and a morbid condition of liver.” + +“Yes,” continued the Philosopher, meditatively, “and ‘Theodora’ is a +form of typhoid, due to ethical blood poisoning. ‘Little Eyolf’ and ‘The +Rat-Wife’ are varieties of cerebral mania, Mr Aubrey Beardsley’s figures +are salient examples of locomotor ataxy, and as for ‘The House of Shame’ +and ‘The Great God Pan’—well, there are some kinds of maladies which are +not mentioned outside medical treatises!” + +[Sidenote: _The Manchester Guardian_] + +The meaning of “The Great God Pan,” by Arthur Machen, is very carefully +veiled, and on the whole we are inclined to think it is quite as well +that it is so, since such glimpses as we are vouchsafed of it are +singularly repulsive. In fact, so far as we have been able to make out, +to shock would seem to have been Mr Machen’s sole intention. To achieve +this desirable end he has ransacked the dark and hidden corners of Greek +mythology, and so piled up innuendo and suggestion, to say nothing of +the mere vulgar horror of five mysterious suicides and other unspeakable +crimes, that we are afraid he only succeeds in being ridiculous. The +book is, on the whole, the most acutely and intentionally disagreeable we +have yet seen in English. We could say more, but refrain from doing so +for fear of giving such a work advertisement. The same remarks apply to +“The Inmost Light,” the second story in the book, in only slightly lesser +degree. + +[Sidenote: _The Queen_] + +“The Great God Pan” comes near being a book of genius with its +originality and weirdness; but it distinctly misses it, because Mr Machen +has not the power of indicating, even by a hint, the nature of the horror +which made strong men destroy themselves rather than live with such a +memory. There are two stories in the book, both dealing with villainous +doctors, who make surgical experiments with the brains of living women in +the hope, apparently, of turning human beings into devils. In each case +the result is terrifying beyond human endurance, according to Mr Machen, +but he does not succeed in imparting any of the terror to his readers.... + +[Sidenote: _The Westminster Gazette_] + +_The English School of Diabolists._—I pass now to the fourth class, that +of the lurid and nonsensical. These, I take it, are written under the +inspiration of the French School of Diabolists. That school, as the +reader knows, is possessed with ideas of black magic, spirits of evil, +devils become incarnate, and numerous other nightmares of corruption. +You are introduced to modern alchemists who use Latin incantations, +pour mysterious fluids out of green phials, and by the black arts +transform men into monsters, or penetrate the corrupt mysteries of +their being. Several English imitators of this school have come into +my hands recently, but the wildest is, perhaps, Mr Machen’s “Great God +Pan,” published in the Keynotes Series. Here we have a physician who +practises the black art, and by an operation on the brain releases for +the time being the spirit of a woman, that she may visit the spirit world +and “see the Great God Pan.” She awakes, a lunatic “convulsed with an +unknowable terror.” Shortly afterwards she has a child whom we gather +from certain lurid hints to be a she-devil incarnate. “When the House of +Life is thrown open there may enter in that for which we have no name, +and human flesh may become the veil of a horror one dare not express.” +(That is Mr Machen’s favourite style. The unnameable, the unknowable, the +inexpressible, and the unmentionable have a nameless fascination for +him.) ... + +_Sex-Mania Incoherent._—The wild absurdity of all this really makes +comment superfluous. But note the sex-mania in it all. It is an +incoherent nightmare of sex and the supposed horrible mysteries behind +it, such as might conceivably possess a man who was given to a morbid +brooding over these matters, but which would soon lead to insanity if +unrestrained. I imagine, however, that Mr Machen’s desire has simply been +to emulate certain French practitioners in this line; indeed, the fact +that he is so often reduced to gasping negatives proves that he has not +made it clear even to himself what he is after. His work is innocuous +from its absurdity, but the type is most truly decadent.... + +[Sidenote: _The National Observer_] + +In all the glory of the binder’s and printer’s arts, we have two tales +of no great distinction. Indeed paper and form are worthy of much better +things. We look for literature and find the old, old tale of man or woman +who is possessed of a devil. Mr J. Sheridan Le Fanu made our youthful +scalp tingle years ago with something of the nature (but infinitely +cleverer) of these tales. The doctor who performs weird operations we +have met before but not one so fortunate as the hero of “The Inmost +Light,” the second story in this volume. For this gentleman digs for the +soul and finds it in the convenient form of an opal—a dangerous theory +surely. Men have committed murder for less. Dr Black murders his own +wife, quite unnecessarily it appears to us, and it is her soul in the +form of a jewel which he keeps for inexplicable reasons in a leather case +in the back parlour of a toy shop in London. Mr Machen does his very +best to thrill, and relates his horrors in a style which should carry +conviction but fails. The incidents are too loosely strung together, and +the form of narration, bringing in as it does characters who take no part +in the central idea of the tale, inevitably cools the interest of the +reader. Again, there is no motive assigned to any action except a vague +love of science which certainly fails to convince. Men do not pursue an +idea as does Villiers in the first story—doctors do not kill their wives +as does Dr Black in the second tale—without strong incentive, and it is +painfully obvious that in the present case their actions are a mere +necessity to the author. Mr Machen writes somewhat conventionally and +without affectation. It is in construction that he is as yet markedly +deficient. + +[Sidenote: _The Lady’s Pictorial_] + +This book is gruesome, ghastly, and dull. Mr Machen has done his best +with an impossible subject, but although men and women who are morbid +and unhealthy in mind may find something that appeals to them in the +description of Dr Raymond’s experiment and its results, the majority of +readers will turn from it in utter disgust. From first to last there is +not one human touch in the story, and not a trace of psychology to awaken +our interest in the actions of any one of the characters. Dr Raymond’s +apparent conviction that to see the Great God Pan would make up for any +loss or suffering entailed by the sight, is almost childish; and as I +waded through the dull list of horrors, which the too vivid imagination +of Mr Machen inspired him to write, I bethought me of the curious old +legend, so exquisitely told in verse by Mrs Browning, of the death of +“The Great God Pan.” It was waste of time for Mr Machen to bring him to +life again.... + +[Sidenote: _The Guardian_] + +Mr Machen has apparently tried to produce a novelty in fiction by +borrowing from Mr Conan Doyle some of the tricks of style of his +detective stories, and uniting them with the rather gruesome studies in +dehumanisation which Mr Stevenson justified by the fine turn he gave +them in his “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,” and Mr Rudyard Kipling essayed +less successfully in “The Mark of the Beast.” According to Mr Machen’s +postulate, “a slight lesion in the grey matter” of the brain is all that +is needed to “level utterly the solid wall of sense,” and enable “a +spirit to gaze on a spirit-world.” Fantastically enough, this is called +“seeing the god Pan,” with whom it appears to us to have about as much +to do as the vulgar figure which Mr Aubrey Beardsley has placed on the +title-page. The result on a lady of seeing the god Pan is that people +feel cold shivers when they look on her, and that she initiates her male +acquaintances into mysteries which either kill them outright with horror +or send them home to commit suicide—also that she herself has eventually +to be put to death by her husband or the amateur detective, and turns +into all sorts of remarkable shapes in the process. Mr Machen frequently +informs us that his story is very terrible, and tries to keep up the +mystery by breaking off every now and then as if his tale were too dread +for words—but these tricks have also their ludicrous side. Perhaps the +most discreditable paragraph in a not very creditable book is the “note” +at the end of the first story, asserting that the woman of whom it is +told “was born on August 5th, 1865, at the Red House, Breconshire, and +died on July 25th, 1888, in her house in a street off Piccadilly, called +Ashley Street in the story.” Mr Machen should make his choice between the +art of fiction and penny-a-lining. + +[Sidenote: _The Cork Examiner_] + +... Arthur Machen wants to thrill us, and sets about his task by mixing +surgical experiments, devil-possessed women of weird beauty, Latin +phrases, and fantastic art, reminiscent of craftsmen of ages agone, into +a pottage which, for our part, we find mawkish. The trick of the thing is +at once apparent. Ever so many circumstances, feelings, sights, thoughts, +etc., are unutterable, unnameable, unknowable, and unwhisperable, and +there are nameless horrors by the hundred.... In our judgment this is +what children call “a frightened story,” and, as an artistic piece of +fiction, it calls for no serious consideration. + +[Sidenote: _The Chronicle_] + +With this new volume Mr Machen boldly challenges comparison with Mr +Stevenson’s “Dynamiters.” The plan of the book is the same; that is to +say, a number of short stories are woven into the fabric of a long one. +Mr Machen’s literary method, too, is not unlike Stevenson’s; there is the +same careful turning of the phrase, the nice choice of epithets, the use +of certain words in their correct, but not in their common meaning.... Mr +Machen’s intention in all these stories is to give us a grue, to curdle +our blood, to make us think twice and thrice ere we mount the stairs and +face the possible horror awaiting us in our dimly-lighted bedroom. Well, +all we can say is that he has failed where few writers have succeeded. +Edgar Allan Poe has done this thing over and over again. Le Fanu did it +once; so did the author of a volume called “Phantasms” reviewed in these +columns some months ago; but here the delightful thrill never quite comes +off. Mr Machen lacks the power to create the necessary atmosphere, the +atmosphere in which we shiver with apprehension as we breathe it. We all +know how in dreams events in themselves commonplace and trifling enough, +suddenly become ghastly, horrible, soul-devastating. And all because +of our own state of mind. Now an author must somehow or other produce +that state of mind in us before he puts us face to face with his creepy +situation. He must compel “poetic faith” in us as Coleridge has it; bring +us into the mental condition in which we are ready to believe anything. +This Mr Machen never once succeeds in accomplishing. We are interested +in his stories, and pleased extremely with the exceedingly careful and +polished style in which they are told; we enjoy his humour and marvel at +his ingenuity, but that worked-for and longed-for grue never happens.... +The fact is that to triumph in the particular literary line which Mr +Machen seems to have marked out for himself a certain peculiar sort +of genius is, above all things, necessary. With this peculiar sort of +genius the fates have not endowed Mr Machen, and the sooner he frankly +recognises his want of it the better, for he has many other and most +excellent literary accomplishments. + +[Sidenote: _The Dundee Advertiser_] + +As tragedy and comedy go hand in hand, so the weird is seldom far removed +from the ridiculous. Arthur Machen’s volume, “The Three Impostors,” +furnishes an excellent case in point. The stories it contains form +a connected narrative such as Poe himself might have evolved. These +nameless horrors, however, weirdly fascinating as they are, have +something in common with the dreaded gnomes and goblins by whose aid +intelligent nursemaids are wont to charm little folk to sleep. What place +the book will occupy in the literature of entertainment we cannot take +upon ourselves to say. We can only regret that the author’s singular +inventiveness and great story-telling gifts have been employed in so +undesirable a cause. What can any healthy-minded reader think of this: +“There, upon the floor, was a dark and putrid mass, seething with +corruption and hideous rottenness, neither liquid nor solid, but melting +and changing before our eyes, and bubbling with unctuous, oily bubbles +like boiling pitch. And out of the midst of it shone two burning points +like eyes, and I saw a writhing and stirring as of limbs, and something +moved and lifted up that might have been an arm.” Such visions have +before been given to little boys who complained of headache and divers +other pains. The family doctor generally diagnosed the case as “mince +pies and pickles.” + +[Sidenote: _Punch_] + +“The Three Impostors,” a novel (“Keynote” Series) by Arthur Machen, opens +well, which, by the way, is more than the book does, being a bit stiff; +but, though it has the machens of a good story in it, there is very +little worth reading after page 64. + +[Sidenote: _Glasgow Herald_] + +There are some books that produce a positive physical repulsion in their +reader. Mr Machen’s extremely disagreeable story is one of them. One may +be fond of the gruesome, and even take pleasure in an occasional sup of +horror, administered in the piquant and artistic style of which Poe and +Baudelaire had the secret. Mr Machen himself, in his previous volume, +led some of us to imagine that a share of the same gift might be found +in him. But “The Three Impostors” changes our view. The horror in it is +palpably and very literally sickening. Nothing but a smart turn in brisk +air can cleanse the feelings of the person who has been unfortunate +enough to read this volume through. + +[Sidenote: _Black and White_] + +“The Three Impostors,” by Arthur Machen, lacks the vivid sense of +actuality genius alone can impart to the grotesque. In less able hands, +as Mr Machen’s, the weird tends to merge into the ridiculous. His +connecting chain, too, is clumsily wielded, and you close the book, which +opens with cleverness and promise, with disappointment. + +[Sidenote: _The Observer_] + +“The Three Impostors: or, The Transmutations,” by Arthur Machen, is a +puzzling book. It is both good and bad; good in the clear presentation of +some parts of it, in clever handling of some difficult characters, and +bad because of the indefinite and unreal impression which, as a whole, it +leaves on the reader’s mind. It also reminds us a little too strongly to +be agreeable of a work with which it cannot for a moment be compared—with +Mr Stevenson’s “New Arabian Nights.” ... + +[Sidenote: _Birmingham Post_] + +This is a singular effort of the imagination, suggestive of a mixture +of Conan Doyle, Douglas Jerrold, and the author of the “Murders in the +Rue Morgue,” seasoned with grim touches of German mysticism. It is not +over-delightful reading, but to those, and they are legion, who are fond +of being steeped in blood and mystery the book will commend itself +highly. It is cleverly constructed, and that is about the best thing we +can say of it. No doubt the author’s true intent is all for our delight; +but, all the same, it is a matter of wonderment to us how it is that men +with evident literary talents, which might be pointed to fine issues, +should exercise their brain power in the noble cause of bewildering the +brains of other people, and this without an adequate purpose. + +[Sidenote: _The Guardian_] + +We never expected to see the day when we should be tempted to regret +that Stevenson had written “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.” Nevertheless, when +we had waded through the pages of Mr Machen’s last production, we were +disposed to feel that even that book was dearly bought at the price of so +repulsive an imitation as that contained in “The Three Impostors.” For +the impressive and true use of the præternatural in “Dr Jekyll and Mr +Hyde,” we have senseless and sickening—we can use no other word—pictures +of mysterious scenes and of men returning to the bestial form which are +meant to inspire terror and intense dread, but really leave us entirely +unmoved, although he may imagine that his reader, like his hero, is +left “white and shuddering with sweat pouring from my flesh.” Language +seems almost to fail the author at times; he heaps up epithets of horror, +the words “bubbled and boiled out” of one man’s mouth “in the fury of +his emotion”; another person stands “shuddering and quaking as with the +grip of ague, sick with unspeakable agonies of fear and loathing”; a +doctor goes to see a patient, and reappears with “an unutterable horror +shining in his eyes.” If we are not mistaken members of the medical +profession would welcome the chance of investigating such a case as that +of the gentleman who took the witches’ Sabbath drug. Wearied with this +hysterical rubbish the reader hurries on to the end, to find in the last +chapter that the unfortunate youth who has got tired of the fauns and the +mysteries, and all the rest of the Greek burlesque, has been murdered +amid most horrible tortures, which, together with his sufferings, are +graphically described. + +[Sidenote: _Pall Mall Gazette_] + +... Mr Machen errs by never trusting sufficiently to his reader’s +imagination, and his most elaborate horrors leave us “more than usual +calm,” except when, by borrowing from Catlin, they make us feel slightly +unwell. It is impossible to admire the construction of Mr Machen’s +romance so much as if one did not know one’s Stevenson. Its framework, +with its amateurs of the odd in London; its set of characters who break +at sight into ingenious tales of absolute and elaborate falsehood with +no particular motive for using the decorative imagination; its choice +of a tobacco divan for the amateurs’ place of meeting, and sundry other +details, is curiously reminiscent of “The Dynamiter.” So, again, the +incident of the powder, strangely altered from its pure condition until +it obtained the power of “riving asunder the house of life and dissolving +the human trinity,” and giving a human form to “that which lies sleeping +within us all,” argues an uncommon boldness in the man who ventures to +use it after its being worked into “Dr Jekyll.” However, if Mr Machen +thinks he can wear the armour of Achilles with grace, that is his affair. +He has a sense of style, as witness his pictures of the deserted house +and his conception of the possible history of a street. He is strong +enough to walk alone, in fact; and we heartily wish him a little more +invention and a little less anxiety to make his reader’s flesh creep. + +[Sidenote: _Saturday Review_] + +Mr Machen is an unfortunate man. He has determined to be weird, horrible, +and as outspoken as his courage permits in an age which is noisily +resolved to be “’ealthy” to the pitch of blatancy. His particular +obsession is a kind of infernal matrimonial agency, and the begetting of +human-diabolical mules. He has already skirted the matter in his previous +book, “The Great God Pan,” and here we find it well to the fore again. +This time, however, it simply supplies one of a group of incoherent +stories held together in a frame of wooden narrative about a young man +with spectacles. This young man falls into a circle of Black Magicians, +who are practising indecorums and crimes at which Mr Machen dare only +hint in horror-struck whispers.... But it fails altogether to affect the +reader as it is meant to do. It fails mainly because Mr Machen has not +mastered the necessary trick of commonplace detail which renders horrors +convincing, and because he lacks even the most rudimentary conception of +how to individualise characters. The framework of the book is evidently +imitated from Mr Stevenson’s “New Arabian Nights,” a humorous form quite +unsuited, of course, to realistic horrors.... + +[Sidenote: _Lady’s Pictorial_] + +If you like the Prologue read the stories. I did not like the Prologue, +but I was obliged to read the stories. They are a shade less odious than +“The Great God Pan,” but the comparison says but little in their favour, +for, in the former, Mr Machen gave to the world a most gruesome and +_unmanly_ book. I should like to know how the imagination of the author +would work upon clean and wholesome lines. + +[Sidenote: _The Athenæum_] + +... “The Three Impostors” produces on the normal waking mind much the +same effect as a hearty supper of pork chops on the dream fancies of +a person of delicate digestion: “velut ægri somnia, vanæ finguntur +species.” It is Mr Machen’s chief joy, in the words of one of his +characters, to dabble “with the melting ruins of the earthly tabernacle”; +to hint, rather than describe, the unholy joys and infamous orgies of +those whose diet is framed in accordance with the recipes of the devil’s +cookery book, and whose esoteric acquaintance with the black art enables +them to practise short cuts to the sundering of body and spirit. The +result is never agreeable, occasionally disgusting, but seldom really +blood-curdling, since in the last resort Mr Machen generally takes refuge +in a copious use of such words as “unutterable,” “hideous,” “loathsome,” +“appalling,” and so on.... + +[Sidenote: _The Graphic_] + +... It is a pity, I think, that he does not confine himself to the +marvellous pure and simple, and eschew the gruesome—that he should not +be content with following in the footsteps of Stevenson instead of +entering into competition with Poe. For Mr Machen, though he has, it +must be admitted, an occasional inspiration of “the creepy,” is too +anxious to produce “goose-flesh” in the readers, and in his desire to +do so he is apt to seek his efforts in what I cannot but consider an +“unsportsmanlike” fashion. For instance, he is too much addicted to the +artifice of describing by telling you that things are indescribable. +This is a device which, though perhaps not absolutely illegitimate, +ought obviously to be very sparingly used; but in “The Three Impostors,” +as even more conspicuously in Mr Machen’s earlier volume in the same +series, “The Great God Pan,” it is employed to an extent which is almost +provocative of parody. A writer must, of course, leave something to our +imagination; but when we are continually meeting with creatures whose +aspect is too hideous to be portrayed in human language, who utter +words too awful to be repeated, and take part in orgies so abominable +and revolting that they must for ever remain nameless, even the most +indulgent reader may reasonably begin to feel that he is getting rather +short measure for his money. + +[Sidenote: _The Echo_] + +... “The Three Impostors” is plainly based on Stevenson’s “Dynamiters.” +The story opens in the same way, by a meeting of the principal characters +in a West London tobacco-shop, and we have brought before us the same +kind of house of mystery, and extraordinary men who haunt Italian +restaurants, talk in archaic language, and unceasingly tell each other +stories. Mr Machen would have stood a better chance of favourable +judgment if he had not so needlessly invited comparison with one of +Stevenson’s masterpieces. He has a powerful imagination, and a careful, +laborious style. The adventures he tells, centred around a golden coin +of Tiberius, are exciting enough to satisfy the most jaded palate. +There is no effort made to retain even a reasonable verisimilitude, and +probability is cast to the winds. A gentleman looking in an Oxford +Street bun-shop is accosted by a stranger, who takes him into an +Italian restaurant to dine. There the stranger pours out, with little +provocation, a long tale about how, when starving and shabby, he had +answered an advertisement for a private secretary, been accepted, gone +to America, and the adventures he met with there. Another sits down in +the gardens of Leicester Square, when an unknown young lady turns on +him and narrates all her family history. Some of the tales are as weird +and horrible as anything written in recent years, and there are murders +without number. Frankly, the subject matter of “The Three Impostors” is +not to our taste.... + +[Sidenote: _Literary World_] + +... There are scoundrels who stop at nothing to get possession of magic +seals and coins; there are foul creatures that come out of man; there are +attempts to make our blood run cold. These all signally fail. We remain +unthrilled; we pass from Mr Machen to our luncheon as easily as we change +from one coat into another. He never stirs us. He tells his stories well, +and that is all. Why are we so unmoved? Does the fault reside in us or in +the author? We are willing to admit that as reviewers we run a risk of +having our sensibilities blunted. We do not cry or tremble as easily as +we wept and shook a few years ago, but we _can_ shed an occasional tear +over a book, and we _can_ shudder when the real literary magician has us +in his conduct. To this title, however, Mr Machen has no claim, a fact +which explains our passive acceptance of his tame horrors. + +[Sidenote: _The New Age_] + +Mr Arthur Machen’s attempts are the more ambitious and elaborate and the +least successful. He well illustrates the limitations and dangers of +this class of composition. With all his fertile fancy and constructive +ingenuity he cannot create that magic atmosphere of creepiness that +we presume it is his chief object to attain. Both “The Great God Pan” +and “The Three Impostors” are clever and ingenious stories; but as +blood-curdlers they are almost failures. All the materials are there, +none of the conjuring paraphernalia are wanting, but alas! we are not +in the least deceived by the tricks, and vainly wish that the would-be +magician would prevent us from seeing how the thing is done. The fact +is that, while recognising the value of “suggestive” writing, and the +imaginative effects to be obtained from obscure hints of “unknowable” +and “unspeakable horrors,” he works this style—that ought to be used +with fine reticence—to death, and reduces the “suggestive” theory _ad +absurdum_. + +[Sidenote: Louis Weitzenkorn in _The New York Herald_] + +To climb Mount Everest is a great achievement, but there is always a +secret hate in the heart of the man who did it first for the man who +ascended after him. I do not mean to write this article on Arthur Machen +and compare him to Mount Everest. Let us reserve the crests for an Ibsen, +a France or a Plato. What I mean by my first sentence is that Machen, +at present, seems to be the prized property of a very few persons. He +has escaped what Ernest Boyd is pleased to call the æsthete, 1924 model, +and sunk to the next lower circle of the intelligentsia, who have an +exceedingly happy time springing him upon the ignorami. It has not been +my achievement to have read all his work, and there is not enough genuine +entertainment in him for me to do it unless The World pays me for the +job. But I have managed to stow away “The Hill of Dreams,” “Things Near +and Far” (a truly beautiful book, by the way), “Hieroglyphics,” a volume +issued under the presentation of Vincent Starrett called “The Shining +Pyramid,” and his latest publication here, “Dog and Duck.” + +Without going through the rest of his writings I feel rather confident +that I know something of him, and so far I have not yet read, in the +encomiums of his enthusiasts, the one characteristic of Machen that, to +me, lifts the man out of the ruck of those who just have a “beautiful +style.” It is idle to talk in praise of Machen’s writing, as writing. He +has polished up the language to a glittering surface. Each word he uses +is carefully chosen, so carefully, indeed, that the writing often becomes +of greater interest than the substance and the thought. + +His latest volume, “Dog and Duck,” is Machen taking a day off. The +book is uninteresting except to his worshippers, it being a kind of +vaudeville, essays under such titles as “Why New Year?” “April Fool,” +“Roast Goose: With a Dissertation on Apple Sauce and Sage and Onions.” +(Notice the recurrent “ands” for a clue to the man’s careful style.) In +the volume there is nothing of the Machen which brings him, for me, out +in the first rank of the modern minors. But in “The Hill of Dreams” and +perhaps, strangely, that imitative of Stevenson, “The Three Impostors,” +there is the trade-mark of the man, a psychological insight almost +uncanny. Machen has plumbed to the foundations, not of obscenity, but of +the obscene. + +For something over a decade I have watched what is known to the surface +observers of Greenwich Village as the Greenwich Villager, the type +of the kidding newspaper story, of the Webster Hall dance and the +table-d’hote, where bootleg liquor hides behind the entree. They are a +much more interesting study under the lights of Arthur Machen than the +Sunday magazines know. Nor is it true that they alone are a lost tribe +in this world. What they represent, I should say, in a rough guess, is +about 20 per cent. of the habitable Occident and more of the Orient, and +their kindred are to be found in all corners. One, specifically, is a +prominent restaurant proprietor. Another is a fairly well-known business +man, a third is an editor—in fact I could run pretty near the plane of +professions and pick out striking examples of men and women who fall in +the category discovered, so far as I know, by Arthur Machen. + +It is an exceedingly difficult task to express the thing, to present with +clarity what I think Machen means in his major efforts. In “The Three +Impostors” there is an episode that symbolically pictures what I mean. + +A young man is infected by some loathsome disease. As the malady grows +upon him he takes to his room, locks himself in, and his food is left at +his door. Finally his sister discovers the food is untouched. Several +days go by and the door of that room is unopened. Then the ceiling above +the inhabitants below the room begins to leak. The door of the horrible +chamber is burst, and upon the floor is a slimy mass from which two human +eyes glitter. + +I think Machen has intended a symbol here. It is quite possible, of +course, that I am doing that famous trick of interpreting into an author +something he never senses. Thanking myself for the compliment, I believe, +however, that Machen has deliberately intensified a certain type of +human being, too populous, alas, and that this slime with its eyes, and +the eyes are the most significant part of the picture, is the emphatic +point Machen makes. I know this, that after reading and swallowing and +then chewing the cud of this particular fantasy I found myself casting +up accounts with the world and making of myself a kind of census-taker. +I began to remember that certain persons I knew were slimy. Perhaps if I +put it this way I would be clearer. Certain persons I knew were possessed +of a hidden sexual rottenness, and those persons fell under vastly +different indexes. Let me make it specific. + +A young man, connected with the theatre, to almost every one who met +him was “clean cut, charming, boyish.” I think I, alone, held a violent +dislike for him, in spite of the fact that he was kindly, confidential, +open, toward me—an almost irresistible combination. I was accused of +jealousy. My oath of neutrality was sneered at. However, he was then +the particular idol of a particular girl. That was two years ago. A few +nights past I met that girl and asked about him. + +“You never saw such a change,” she said. “His face is grotesque. Over it +is written the most bestial lines I have ever seen. Everything that was +in his soul has come out—in his face. He is horrible.” + +I think Arthur Machen has penetrated to the bottom of a certain type +of man. He chooses to add to this type a touch of the unnatural or +supernatural, the latter a wrong term. He speaks of mysterious demons, +hill people, horrors that feed upon and devour human beings. He plays +upon mythology and Welsh legend, which is all very well; but beneath +this penchant for legend there is revealed in this writer a knowledge +of vile degeneracy, of inherited devilry that is as accurate as simple +mathematics. These invented demons of Machen destroy and devour. In our +own specific haunt of so-called Bohemia there exists the type of person +who devours and destroys, and beyond this section of the city there are +scattered innumerable individuals, the more dangerous because the better +disguised, men and women whose foundation is slime, who cannot be caught +and held because they slide from beneath the grasp and one says: “I +cannot quite catch hold of this person, I cannot quite pin him down, he +slips away from me, and yet I have him under my hand, I want to hold him +and it makes me sick to feel the touch of his soul.” + +Those who have read “The Hill of Dreams” will recall the mystical woman +of the slums who flits in and out of the night like a bird of darkness, +who, not touching the story, gives it an odour—the odour of decay and +flesh. To me, as the book has gotten farther away from my first reading, +I get to thinking of this woman as a human skull possessed of two full, +rich, red lips, the only living thing upon the bones. Perhaps I am +heightening the symbolism of Arthur Machen, but then he has revealed in +his method specific creatures to me, creatures, however, of the same +general base, the same compound of greasy, poisonous elements. + +Of course, that which Arthur Machen has been tortured with must +necessarily be expressed in symbolism. Gorgeous, magnificent symbolism +that is at once satire and tragedy. For these inhuman characteristics in +human beings present unexplored windings and twistings. So far psychology +does not light up the crooked pathways and metaphysics give little to the +pragmatic mind. This unwholesome or unholy nucleus of certain persons +is a basic quality which is not a quality, it is something which can be +felt and never named, sensed and never touched. It is directly inhuman, +remorseless, impenetrable. It is partial atavism, perhaps, but I can’t +see how much and to guess would be poetic. + +All of this does not say one word to the person who has not come up +against this quality, who has not felt it, not been made aware of +“something wrong” in some one, who has not been pained and stricken with +the fear of having looked at a weird and uncanny manifestation. The place +to find it most often is in the eyes. + + + + +HIEROGLYPHICS + + +[Sidenote: A. B. Walkley in _The Morning Leader_] + +I do not know whether Mr Arthur Machen is to be described as an actor +who amuses his leisure with writing books or as an author who fills up +his evenings by appearing on the stage. He was a member of the Benson +Company and is now to be seen in a small part in “Paolo and Francesca.” +He wrote some years ago a clever, disagreeable book, “The Great God Pan.” +He now publishes “Hieroglyphics,” which has attracted me (it is just as +well to confess frankly the queer reasons which prompt one to take up new +books) by its quiet binding and clear type. Unfortunately the type is +clearer than the matter. The book proves to be a discussion, in the form +of a monologue, of the question, What is Literature? But the monologue +is verbose and the reasoning circuitous—Mr Machen prefers to call it, +after Coleridge, a “cyclical mode of discoursing”—indeed the question is +not so much argued as begged. It would be unfair to Mr Machen to compare +him with Tolstoy, who in putting a similar question, “What is Art?” has +been as lucid and logical as Euclid himself. Apparently Mr Machen does +not want to be logical. He says that there are only two parties in the +world, the Rationalists and the Mystics, and as he happens to “plump for” +mysticism, he despises logic as one of the vain shibboleths of the other +party. + +Now it is this partisan attitude, this desire to see only one side of the +truth, which I think spoils Mr Machen’s book. There is room in this world +for both rationalists and mystics (as well as for rationalist mystics and +mystical rationalists), and neither side can claim all literature for its +own. Being a mystic, Mr Machen finds the touchstone of all real or, as +he calls it, fine literature, as distinguished from mere reading-matter, +in “ecstasy.” What does he mean by that? “Substitute, if you like, +rapture, beauty, adoration, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of the unknown, +desire of the unknown. All and each will convey what I mean; for some a +particular one term may be more appropriate than another, but in every +case there will be that withdrawal from the common life and the common +consciousness which justifies my choice of ‘ecstasy’ as the best symbol +of my meaning. I claim, then, that here we have the touchstone which will +infallibly separate the higher from the lower in literature, which will +arrange the innumerable multitude of books in two great divisions, which +can be applied with equal justice to a Greek drama, an eighteenth-century +novelist, and a modern poet, to an epic in twelve books, and to a lyric +in twelve lines.” Well, of course, “higher” and “lower” here are mere +question-begging terms. If you choose to call what appeals to the sense +of the mysterious “high” and what appeals to some other sense “low,” +there is nothing to prevent you. But all that you have established by +your classification is the fact that you, being what you are, prefer +one sort of thing to the other sort. This is not criticism, it is mere +personal whim. + +The essential whimsicality of Mr Machen’s classification comes out +when he proceeds to illustrate it by specific examples. “Pickwick,” it +seems, is literature, while “Vanity Fair” is not. Homer and Dickens are +on the same shelf—the shelf labelled “literature”—while Jane Austen +and George Eliot are on a lower shelf, labelled “reading matter.” Why? +Because the authors in the second class only give us pictures of life, +adroit rearrangements of what we know; they do not appeal to our sense +of the miraculous, our craving for the unknown, like the writers of the +first class. “Pickwick” is not a representation of life; “the book is +rather the suggestion of another life, beneath our own or beside our +own, and the characters, those queer, grotesque people, are queer for +the same reason that the Cyclops is queer, and the dragons and dwarfs +of mediæval romance are queer. We are withdrawn from the common ways of +life; and in that withdrawal is the beginning of ecstasy.” What is here +said about “Pickwick” is true, so far as it goes, though the comparison +with the “Odyssey” is rather forced. All _picaresque_ novels—“Gil Blas” +or “Roderick Random” or “Pickwick” or “Lavengro”—have something in +common with the “Odyssey,” but not much. The “Odyssey” still remains +noble poetry, and these others still remain rather ignoble prose. And +no parallelism between the “Odyssey” and “Pickwick” will persuade me +that the true _differentia_ of the latter is its sense of mystery. It +is for the fun of the book that the world cherishes it. But, like +other mystics—notably M. Maeterlinck—Mr Machen seems to be somewhat +lacking in a sense of humour. For proof of that, you have only to read +him complaining of the “limitations” of Miss Austen’s characters or +complacently calling the creator of Mrs Poyser “poor draggle-tailed +George Eliot.” + +One imagines for the moment that Mr Machen is really a humorist of a very +subtle kind when he compares the brandy-and-water drinking in “Pickwick” +with the Dionysiac orgies from which Greek tragedy sprang. He drags in +Rabelais with his _dive bouteille_. “After all, what does this Bacchic +cultus mean? We have seen that under various disguises the one spirit +appeared in Greece, in the France of the Renaissance, and in Victorian +England, and that in each instance there is an apparent glorification +of drunkenness.... We are to conclude that both the ancient people and +the modern writers recognised Ecstasy as the supreme gift and state of +man, and that they chose the Vine and the juice of the Vine as the most +beautiful and significant symbol of that Power which withdraws a man +from the common life and the common consciousness, and taking him from +the dust of the earth, sets him in high places, in the eternal world of +ideas.” The “symbolism” of Mr Pickwick’s milk-punch! The “ideas” of a +drunken man! Into such absurdities do writers fall when, like Mr Machen, +they set out with the preconceived notion that all great literature is a +form of mysticism, instead of quietly examining the question without any +preconceived notions at all. + +The truth is Mr Machen’s new dichotomy of Literature and Not-Literature +is simply the old dichotomy of Romanticism and Realism. Pater defined +the Romantic as the element of strangeness in beauty, and what Mr Machen +is in fact pleading for is the recognition of nothing but Romantic +Literature as great or fine literature. In other words he wants to narrow +down recognised terms to fit the limitations of his particular tastes. +Well, it won’t do. He calls himself, somewhat obtrusively, a Catholic, +and says that “literature is the expression, through the æsthetic medium +of words, of the dogmas of the Catholic Church.” Keeping the word +“catholic” untainted by any sectarian meaning, I should be inclined to +say that “catholicity of taste” is precisely what Mr Machen lacks. + +[Sidenote: _The Academy_] + +... Enter Mr Machen in the part of Boswell to a talker both “literary” +and “obscure,” who offers a test whereby to separate literature from +“fine” literature or, in effect, talent from genius. One listens +respectfully to a reading hermit, because, on the face of it, a hermit’s +opinions should be matured by study and conceived in the calm of one who +rolls no logs and grinds no axes. But, to get an unpleasant thing said +once and for all, Mr Machen’s hermit is an indolent person, careless of +accuracy, who has grudged the labour of justifying some extraordinary +depreciations. He is, in fact, for all his anonymity, an egoist, whose +object seems to be brilliance rather than elucidation.... + +[Sidenote: _The Bristol Mercury_] + +“Hieroglyphics” is a somewhat figurative title for the latest book of Mr +Arthur Machen, author of “The Great God Pan.” It reproduces a series of +monologues by and conversations with a kind of philosophical literary +hermit whom the author discovered in a quaint old house at Barnsbury, +an almost mythical region lying between Pentonville and the Caledonian +Road. Now and again one discerns a faint and far-away flavour of +Coleridge and Lamb in the dissertations, but the philosophy is not of the +most profound.... + +[Sidenote: _The Globe_] + +It is to be hoped that the title of this book, by no means a happy one, +will not deter anybody from making its acquaintance. For it is a very +readable book—at least, it will be found so by all who take any interest +in things literary. It might very well have been called, “What, really, +is Literature?”—a large question, which the author, Mr Arthur Machen, +does not succeed in answering convincingly. His main theory is summed up +in one of his sentences, early in the volume: “If Ecstasy be present, +then I say there is fine literature; if it be absent, then, in spite of +all the cleverness, all the talents, all the workmanship and observation +and dexterity you may show me, then, I think, we have a product (possibly +a very interesting one), which is not fine literature.” How this theory +works out in practice is seen in another sentence: “Here is ‘Pickwick,’ +and here is ‘Vanity Fair’; and, applying my test, I set ‘Pickwick’ beside +the ‘Odyssey,’ and ‘Vanity Fair’ on top of the political pamphlet.” It +is impossible to treat with seriousness such propositions; but that is no +reason why “Hieroglyphics” should be neglected. There is a good deal in +it, mostly incidental, with which we quite agree—such as, for example, +the judgment passed on “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.” The book is suggestive +and therefore interesting. Mr Machen ascribes it to an “obscure literary +hermit,” whose conversations he professes to reproduce; but there is +no apparent necessity for such machinery. Mr Machen should have the +courage of his opinions—if they are his. Anyway, “Hieroglyphics” can be +recommended to the well-read and the thoughtful. + +[Sidenote: _The Daily Mail_] + +Mr Arthur Machen, after diligently applying a microscope to sundry +literary reputations, has detected a number of spots, which he enumerates +in “Hieroglyphics.” This sheaf of essays is undeniably clever; but it +leaves an impression of cynical iconoclasm, which sees false gods in +books which have fallen under the curse of popular approval. Mr Machen +finds, for instance, that Jane Austen’s works are not literature, and +that Dickens reeks of Camden Town. Nevertheless, the book is piquant +reading, and contains some shrewd pieces of analysis. + +[Sidenote: _Pilot_] + +The device by which vendors of patent wares tempt curiosity by giving +them some curious name is hardly worth the imitation of men of letters, +and we admire neither Mr Machen’s title nor his other artifice of +throwing what he has to say into the form of monologues delivered by a +Coleridge-loving hermit in Barnsbury. His theme is the old one of “What +constitutes Literature?” and his answer is given in the single word +Ecstasy. The process by which the answer is reached has the merit of +simplicity. Literature is explained to mean “fine literature” and (in an +unguarded moment) “imaginative literature.” “Ecstasy” is “the withdrawal, +the standing apart from common life,” and it is obvious that this is +only our old friend “imagination” under a new and less happy name. +Thus only imaginative literature deserves to be called literature, and +what constitutes imaginative literature is the quality of imagination, +a conclusion which we can reach without going to Barnsbury, but which +yet, ere it is attained, gives Mr Machen occasion for passing some +excellent criticisms on the books he reviews. Thus he illustrates his +axiom, “Only the Idea is pure art; with Plot and Construction and Style +there is an alloy of artifice,” by some admirable remarks on Stevenson’s +“Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,” and comes near the root of the matter in his +criticisms of Mr Hardy and Mr Meredith. That he recognises his quality of +“ecstasy” in “Pickwick,” despite its cockney atmosphere, is creditable +to his generosity. That he adopts “Vanity Fair,” which he never tires +of reading, as the supreme instance of “observation expressed with +artifice” (and, therefore, outside his definition of “literature”), shows +some blindness. Take away Thackeray’s deep religious feeling, and the +criticism would be true, but by the same process the “Agamemnon” may be +reduced to the rank of a bad French novel, and the “Œdipus Rex” to a tale +of horrors. To blunder thus seems the Nemesis of the straining after +novelty which has made Mr Machen attribute the worth of literature to its +possession of “ecstasy,” and the ambiguous definition he has given to +this word. To stand apart, not from common life, but from the common view +of life, is surely the criterion of true literature, and we are surprised +that Mr Machen should come so near as he does to making the subject +rather than the vision (we are careful not to say the “treatment”) of it +the main test. + +[Sidenote: _The Morning Post_] + +... He talks (like the Walrus) of many things, of office boys, of +Coleridge, of words that end in “ings”; of Homer and of Dickens, of +literature, of art; of books that bore and “lonely” books, which have “a +soul apart.” ... + +[Sidenote: _The Star_] + +“By what rule are we ... to judge exactly in the case of any particular +book whether it is literature or not?” When I read that question in Mr +Arthur Machen’s new book “Hieroglyphics” I pricked up my ears. Here at +last, I thought, is the divining rod for which I have yearned. No longer +need I vex my soul over the judgments delivered here every Saturday. +Fancy a rule which will make me infallible! What is it? “A single word.” +Out with it! “Ecstasy.” Is that all? “Substitute, if you like, rapture, +beauty, adoration, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of the unknown, desire +for the unknown”—Stop! these words are not “substitutes” or synonyms. +They are, I suspect, merely amplifications of another word, romance. +Your solution, in fact, is merely a statement of your attitude. You +are a romanticist, and I like you, for I am one myself. But your golden +rule does not help me, for it leaves me still under the necessity of +questioning my own soul. By “ecstasy” you mean YOUR ecstasy, not MY +ecstasy. For every man has his own private ecstasy. When you get to +work I find that your ecstasy is whimsical. You earmark words and use +them in a Machenian sense. You prefer to speak of “feelings” when you +mean “the things of life,” and you reserve “emotion” for “the influence +produced (_sic_) in man by fine art.” I challenge the distinction. It +is arbitrary. “Thus it will be with emotion that we witness the fall of +Œdipus, the madness of Lear, while we feel for our friends and ourselves +in misfortune.” This will never do. “Emotion” is simply a poor Latin +synonym for the fine Saxon word “feeling.” How on earth can I confine my +“emotions” to literature and my “feelings” to life? No, Mr Machen, your +sophistry won’t help me to discover masterpieces for the readers of that +“great pale bird,” _The Star_. + +And, really, your “ecstasy” leads you a mad dance. It makes you rate +“George Egerton” above George Meredith. Mr Meredith, you say, “not only +fails in the body of art but even more conspicuously in the soul of +it.” Clearly, your ecstasy is not mine. While you shut Meredith out of +literature you let “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” scrape in! After that, nothing +you say surprises me. Indeed, it is a relief when you damn Thackeray with +Meredith, and canonise Dickens with—Miss Wilkins. For by this time I +realise that you have gone MUST. Your “ecstasy” is merely the motor-car +in which your preferences go out for a nocturnal ride without a light at +seventy miles an hour. It is a very good vehicle if safely used. It is by +no means new either. Mr Watts-Dunton has been employing it for a quarter +of a century. Why, his famous discovery of “the renascence of wonder” has +become a critical commonplace. Indeed, so thoroughly has it permeated +criticism that the phrase is used as literary shorthand for the great +generalisation which it connotes. You have, indeed, turned the shorthand +into charming “Hieroglyphics,” but you go astray in the application. +Your “ecstasy” over that “thick white cloud” in the Tale of Gabriel Grub +is quite funny. And if you identify the brandy-and-water scenes in +“Pickwick” with the Bacchic cultus, what about Jos Sedley’s rack punch? +What about Mr Meredith’s glorifications of old port? But much shall be +forgiven you because you are a good Pantagruelist, though I think it is +a mistake to identify Pantagruelism either with Dionysus and the Greek +drama on the one hand or with Dickens and “Pickwick” on the other. +Falstaff is the only piece of real Pantagruelism in our literature. And +now, let me advise everybody to read “Hieroglyphics.” It is brilliantly +written, it bubbles over with pugnacities, and it is alive in every line. + +[Sidenote: _Glasgow Herald_] + +... The author’s main desire seems to be to utter a series of elaborate +paradoxes, and he does utter them in a somewhat conceited fashion. Mr +Machen has no doubt got hold of part of the truth, for it is indubitable +that the sense of ecstasy, or whatever else one chooses to call it, is a +main cause of æsthetic charm. As certainly, however, it is not the whole +secret of literature, which admits much more of the pure intellect than +Mr Machen will acknowledge. If there were nothing more in fine literature +than he will allow, then our masterpieces of prose and poetry would be +nothing more than so many pieces of music; but fine literature and fine +music are of course very different things. One judges theories by their +results, and there must be something radically wrong about a doctrine +which excludes Pope and Thackeray from the fine literary canon—which +makes them “artifice” and not “art.” There is something wrong also +about the critic who permits himself such trivial impertinences as “the +egregious M. Voltaire,” “poor draggle-tailed George Eliot,” “our great +false prophet Bacon, a wretch infinitely more guilty than Hobbes.” Even +dramatically, as the utterances of an obscure literary hermit, such +things are not witty—nor yet funny, except in an unconscious way. There +are, indeed, better things in the book, and the author succeeds at times +in saying a clever thing, as in truth, considering the earnestness of +his efforts in that direction, it were hard if he did not. But, on the +whole, the essay is the expression of a thoroughly false, unwholesome, +and effeminate theory of literature. + +[Sidenote: _The Graphic_] + +Mr Arthur Machen’s attractive-looking volume with above quaint title +is a little difficult to understand—namely, why was it written and why +published? It purports to be records of conversations listened to by +the author during many visits to the house of a friend in Barnsbury. +In the society of this friend, and in an “old mouldering room,” art in +general, and the art of literature in particular, seem to have been +very thoroughly discussed. This unnamed friend may have been an author, +though Mr Machen confesses himself ignorant, but “he was always ready to +defend the thesis that, all the arts being glorious, the literary art was +the most glorious and wonderful of all.” Mr Machen has now constituted +himself the Boswell of this Barnsbury friend, whose existence we take +leave to doubt, and the result is a discursive volume of opinions, given +conversationally, on literature and art—on what constitutes literature +and what constitutes art, with some smashing of idols (as, for instance, +George Eliot, George Meredith, and the already chipped Stevenson), all +set forth with a certain amount of affectation in style by the author. Mr +Machen, in point of fact, requires what he is pleased to call “ecstasy” +in a book before it pleases him. He has found it in the Mr Hardy of “Two +in a Tower” days, but not in the Mr Hardy who wrote “Jude,” any more +than in the work of the other writers mentioned above. It is well to +know, though, that he fancies he detected this quality in “Keynotes,” +which circumstance may comfort Mr Meredith for his lack of it, unless, +perchance, he admires that curious work. Those who would know more, +however, of the ecstatic in literature must turn to the book itself. + +[Sidenote: _The Pall Mall Gazette_] + +Mr George Gissing’s “George Ryecroft,” in the _Fortnightly_, deals with +a subject so like that of Mr Arthur Machen’s “Hieroglyphics,” that +for a time one thinks that both authors must be writing of the same +person. Both take as spokesman a sort of literary hermit, whose only +companions are his books, and who therefore gives forth his views on men +and their works with a real or assumed air of detachment. The setting, +however, is a little different; for, while Mr Machen’s protagonist is +a gentleman with a past, not uncomfortably buried alive in lodgings at +Highbury, Mr Gissing’s is an ex-literary hack, who has been left an +annuity by a thoughtful friend, and has retired to Devonshire to spend +what fag-end of life the newspapers and the publishers have left to +him. Yet both gentlemen prose a good deal, and awake in a contentious +mind the doubt whether the general public really care so much for the +opinions of literary men about books as they seem to imagine. Outside a +certain circle the reign of the old favourite seems to be pretty well +established, and although a new one is now and then adopted into the +dynasty, the admission is always due to his own merit, and not to that of +his backers. + + + + +THE HOUSE OF SOULS + + +[Sidenote: Thomas Lloyd in _The Sunday Sun_] + +... He seeks only to entertain by what he considers legitimate forms of +art. Nevertheless, there is a distinct likeness between his professor and +himself—even to the suffering from overwork and brain exhaustion. The +tales strike one as the work of one who has overtasked his imagination +in London streets and been overcome by nightmares produced by excessive +reading of the discussions of the British Association. An unusual but not +uninteresting case! Time and a rest-cure may work wonders—may lead to +Mr Machen’s next book being altogether as acceptable as the first story +in this, and the successor to “The House of Souls” becoming a house of +bodies and hearts and minds. + +[Sidenote: _Academy_] + +... The particular mark at which this criticism is directed is the +mystical tale called “The White People.” This story, which is inset into +a not particularly well-executed discussion on the nature and spiritual +significance of sin, contains the narrative of a young girl, who as a +child had lit somehow upon some of the secrets of Fairyland and whose +initiation gradually widened as she grew. The thing is not wanting +either in imagination or in a certain painful beauty of its own. It is, +perhaps, the best-written piece in the book, and the childish, simple +language, admirably suggested and maintained, heightens its undeniable +pathos. But in the end the young girl is found dead, self-poisoned in +time—whatever that may mean—and prostrate before an image which we are +given vaguely to understand is symbolic of the “monstrous mythology of +the (witches’) Sabbath.” We cannot satisfactorily follow the process +by which this gruesome consummation is attained. Mr Machen has been +inspired, no doubt, by wild, weird places. Their anciently reported +spells, as Emerson has it, have crept upon him, but nowhere here does +the enchantment of nature make for sober healing. And why should these +influences be set to work upon a pure young spirit for sorcery rather +than for sanctification? If Mr Machen should answer: Why not? we can +only say how very greatly we should prefer the alternative. The other +experiments with the “gurgoylesque” are at least legitimate. Weird and +resourceful as they are, however, perhaps they rather fail of horror in +their super-psychical parts. Nothing elsewhere in “The Great God Pan” +approaches the effect produced upon the reader by the callousness of the +experiment of the doctor (in the preliminary chapter) upon the brain of +the girl who had once owed her life to him, and that incident is nearer +to the possibilities of a lust for science than any part of the resulting +coil, in which the devil became incarnate for a while and was made woman. +In neither this nor the clever arabesque entitled “The Three Impostors” +(which might well have been called “The Murderers’ Fantasia”) is the +elaborate surrounding scroll-work quite as effective as it might be; and +in the latter extravaganza we lose touch with the main event through +the plethora of side tales with which it is garnished, though a word of +praise is due to the various literary and artistic characters upon whose +vagaries and idiosyncrasies the action indirectly hinges.... + +[Sidenote: _The Standard_] + +It is a pity that Mr Machen has done several things in connection with +his new volume of short stories. First and foremost, he might have +very well dispensed with his preface. Mr Machen is clever, of course, +but his bland references to the example of Mr Kipling and Edgar Allan +Poe as “fellow-authors” does not convince—it only irritates. Also his +diatribe about the Puritan elements in the English character is quite +out of date. Nearly every man who has written decadent fiction within +the past fifteen years has lashed himself into a similar fury because +he fancies that it has been “tacitly, if not openly, ordered that the +English novel is only great when it is a sermon, a tract, or a pamphlet +in disguise.” The success or failure of a book is not, as Mr Machen +seems to think, governed by hard-headed men of business, who have never +disguised their intolerance of imagination, _quâ_ imagination, and who +believe that “English fiction must justify itself either as containing +useful doctrine and information, or as a manifest transcript of life as +it is known to the average reader, due regard being had, of course, to +the salutary conventions of the social order.” It is almost invariably +limited by its own qualities. Only let Mr Machen produce a work of +genius—and his fame shall be known afar. Another source of difference +which we have with this writer is the inclusion of the first story, “A +Fragment of Life,” in “The House of Souls.” That story, in its particular +way, is almost perfect—tender, true, intimate, and restrained—in its +exhibition of how a small suburban clerk and his wife came to awake from +their dream of a London suburb, of daily labour, and of weary, useless +little things, and saw the things that really mattered in life, with +the result that “the voices of men and women came to sound with strange +notes, with the echo rather of a music that came over unknown hills.” Its +mystical qualities are both rare and beautiful, and, as a work of art +alone, it deserves to live. But the other stories of Black Magic—of Pan, +and of fauns and satyrs and other fearful wild-fowl of the occultist’s +stock-in-trade—frankly, they are failures. In one aspect, they would +shame any respectable sensational novelist who practises a certain amount +of natural illusion. In another—they are ineffective. They do not drive +home the intolerable horror of the mystery of Evil. They suggest, on +the contrary, the Fat Boy in “Pickwick.” Mr Machen may have ransacked +the whole British Museum for quaint and far-off ceremonies, simply to +make our flesh creep, but, in sober truth, all he has accomplished +is an engaging air of looking mysterious until the time comes for +explanation—and then—well, then we yawn. Now, his “fellow-author,” +Poe, would not have done this. If he had essayed to melt this too, too +solid flesh, if he had striven to throw into atoms and reconstitute +the primal elements of our existence, if he had essayed to summon the +eternal spirits of evil, the blind forces of ill that are hidden in the +constitution of man—we should have felt a rush of genuine terror, and +the breath of genius would have touched our cheeks. As it is—Mr Machen +only imparts a certain hot-house kind of atmosphere to several perfectly +familiar experiments, such as an obscure operation on a girl’s brain, the +secret of a wife’s disappearance, the reason why certain men of fashion +are driven irresistibly to suicide, and the cause of an obscure, and, +truth to tell, rather squalid murder in a deserted passage. He never +makes us believe in those Black Masses, or in his theory of demoniacal +possession, or in that wonderful jewel, the size of a pigeon’s egg, that +glowed and glittered, and was really a woman’s soul. He should realise +that poor Aubrey Beardsley, and the hot, impetuous souls that wrought as +he did, are quite dead, and now should turn his attention to other and +truer fragments of life. + +[Sidenote: _The Bystander_] + +My reference, a week or two back, to the new form of humour exploited +by Mr Montagu Wood in “A Tangled I,” a humour which amusingly combined +epigram and satire with literary power and imagination, has moved Mr +Grant Richards, the publisher of the book, to draw my attention to +another work of the same _genre_, entitled “The House of Souls,” by Mr +Arthur Machen. Certainly this book, which contains about six complete +novels, is a notable production. If it lacks the sparkle of Mr Wood’s +book, it is, nevertheless, the fruit of a curious talent which seems +to be of so very striking a resemblance to that work that I am moved +to a suspicion that it is the handiwork of the same brain. “The House +of Souls” stories are conceived largely with the desire to mix up the +humdrum in life with the transcendental—to indicate the “appeal of +Theosophy to atheists, men about town, journalists, and hard-headed men +of affairs.” The touch of humour is to be observed in the descriptions +in the various stories—particularly “A Fragment of Life”—of prosaic +suburban ways and manners, which reveal a very intimate knowledge of the +lower middle classes; and as to the Theosophical aspect of the stories, +undoubtedly it is interesting to find this theme exploited in fiction, +especially by so brilliant a descriptive and imaginative writer as Mr +Machen. I may add here, that Mr Montagu Wood’s humour was recognised in +“Pop” at Eton, and afterwards at the Canning Club at Oxford, and that his +skit, published some years ago, “An Island Story,” was highly successful +in those sets wherein it gained a reading. I am more than confident that +his is a literary talent which will, sooner or later, reach a wide and a +startled public. + +[Sidenote: _Liverpool Daily Courier_] + +... It is by no means a new trick, of course, but Mr Machen has it +to perfection, and he is shrewd enough to heighten its effectiveness +by sticking his nightmares in the very midst of the modern and the +circumstantial and the familiar—by transposing Edgar Allan Poe into the +key of “The New Arabian Nights.” Too obviously Poe, here and there, +perhaps; and too unmistakably the manner of “The Nights”; but in these +derivative days echoes of that sort will trouble none but the most +fastidious of readers, and certainly not those who have a healthy +appetite for robustious and not too conventional melodrama. + +[Sidenote: _Illustrated London News_] + +“My dear Sir,” says Dyson in “The House of Souls,” “I will give you +the task of a literary man in a phrase. He has got to do simply this: +to invent a wonderful story and to tell it in a wonderful manner.” +Judged by this test Mr Arthur Machen can scarcely be said to have made +literature. As the reader is conducted, Sherlock Holmes fashion, through +the House of Souls (there are six storeys to it) its wicked arabesques, +its old cabinets and prehistoric flints and faded pocket-books, wear an +unconvincing, property air. When wonderful gentlemen like Dyson having +drawn from some antique bureau a tattered paper or a black seal, and +presenting it for a chum’s inspection the chum exclaims, “Take it away; +never speak of this again. Are you made of stone, man? Why, the dread +and horror of death itself, the thoughts of the man who stands in the +keen morning air on the black platform, bound, the bell tolling in his +ears, and waits for the harsh rattle of the bolt, are as nothing compared +to this. I will not read it; I should never sleep again!”—then is the +breath held, and the mind prepared for any delicious thrill. But the +Manuscript at length, or the black seal fully deciphered, prove well-nigh +soporific. And both lack the power of evoking that spiritual terror +which, leaving Hawthorne and Poe and Coleridge out of the comparison, +surrounds “The Island of Dr Moreau,” by Mr Wells, and is imprinted in +“The Mark of the Beast,” by Mr Kipling. + +[Sidenote: _Birmingham Gazette and Express_] + +... Whilst admiring the literary workmanship and the weird fancifulness +of it all, one wonders what it means and why the tales were ever written. +Do they purport to be works of imagination only, then the author has +sought a singularly repulsive form of expression for his undoubted +talent; do they seek to promulgate a theory concerning the link between +the human and the bestial, between the natural and the supernatural in +its most depraved possibilities of manifestation, then we would prefer +to remain in ignorance, debating for not one moment the reasonableness +or otherwise of such a theory. Really and truly, these awful stories +strongly suggest the half-mad imaginings of a degenerate mind steeped in +morbidity. They are too completely nauseous ever to have been permitted +the publicity of print, and we sincerely trust they will secure few +readers. + +[Sidenote: _Literary World_] + +... But when our author attempts to handle such occult matters as +are treated of in “The Great God Pan,” he seems to lose his footing. +He succeeds in giving his readers an impression of very disagreeable +horrors, but he does not succeed in giving verisimilitude to his +record. We feel ourselves in the presence merely of a somewhat morbid +imagination. Mr Machen does not reveal, as he leads us to hope, any real +arcana. + +[Sidenote: _East Anglian Daily Times_] + +... We have conscientiously perused the 500 pages which the volume +contains, and our conclusion is that we would not willingly repeat the +experience. We have supped full with horrors, and the lurid abominations +which are very plainly hinted at have sickened us. It is probable that +there are some whose literary digestion is strong enough to swallow such +pabulum with impunity; but we fancy that the great majority of readers +will rise from the book with a shudder of loathing. Certainly persons +of a sensitive temperament ought not to read the gruesome tales after +dusk.... + +[Sidenote: _Light_] + +... The promise of the first story is not redeemed, and the book is +given up to the blacker side of magical beliefs, wrapped up in a garb +suggestive of “Sherlock Holmes.” It is not Spiritualism, and we prefer +to believe that there is no truth in such auto-suggested horrors. The +book professes to indicate “the dangers of unauthorised research,” but +no such dangers as are here presented beset the path of the earnest and +conscientious Spiritualist investigator. + +[Sidenote: _Speaker_] + +Mr Arthur Machen writes a somewhat curious preface to his collection of +decadent stories in which he attempts to turn the Puritan’s flank in +an ingenious manner. He claims that “it is entirely from the Puritan +standpoint that I wish to rest my plea for these tales of mine ... +almost every page contains a hint (under varied images and symbols) of a +belief in a world that is not that of ordinary everyday experience.... +I contend that as an English novelist I am within my right in doing so; +since Science, the guide of Life, has done as much, has admitted many +transcendental conceptions into her scheme of things.” This is a neat +apology for the subject matter, which may be summarised by the line, “the +flesh is aghast at the half-heard murmurs of horrible things,” but it +may surprise the author to be told that in these clever artificial and +decidedly sickly romances, penned apparently under the joint influence +of Oscar Wilde’s and Aubrey Beardsley’s artistic example, he has proved +his Puritan heritage better than he knows. There has always seemed to +us something a little pathetic in the desperate attempt of the small +school of young Oxford hedonists to break away from the moral code of the +healthy Philistine and encounter and glorify the mysterious forbidden +pleasures of Sin. For their world was an artificial make-believe affair, +with an exhausted atmosphere, in which affectation stood in the place +of real pleasure. We can respect in a measure the Puritan who cries out +that pleasure is a sin, because he shows us thereby that it has a secret +fascination for him, but the man who can only enjoy pleasure by making +out to himself that it is a sin shows himself a Puritan _manqué_. We are +not surprised, therefore, to find that Mr Arthur Machen’s stories fail to +thrill us, because the artificial horrors and nameless sins in which they +abound are all carefully concocted and have practically no correspondence +with the sins or horrors of real life. That is where our young school +of modern hedonists fails in art; it is divorced from nature, and its +would-be spontaneity is palpably a carefully laboured, artificial affair. +And this is a great pity, for the refined sense of beauty that the young +hedonist starts with possessing can only create a stale preciosity when +it is divorced from the freshness of nature. Practically all the stories +in “The House of Souls” are so much labour thrown away, and the more +carefully studied are their “nameless horrors,” the more meaningless are +they, and the worse as art. Take, for example, the story “The Inmost +Light.” Here is a most deliberate attempt to make our flesh creep, and +the only result is to make the reader exclaim “stuff and nonsense.” A +certain Dr Black secludes himself with his beautiful wife in his house at +Harlesden, and makes experiments in “occult science”:— + + “... each night I had stolen a step nearer to that great abyss + which I was to bridge over, the gulf between the world of + consciousness and the world of matter.... In that work from + which even I doubted to escape with life, life itself must + enter; from some human being there must be drawn that essence + which men call the soul, and in its place (for in the scheme + of the world there is no vacant chamber)—in its place would + enter in what the lips can hardly utter, what the mind cannot + conceive without a horror more awful than the horror of death + itself. And when I knew this, I knew also on whom that fate + would fall; I looked into my wife’s eyes. Even at that hour, if + I had gone out and taken a rope and hanged myself, I might have + escaped, and she also, but in no other way. At last I told her + all. She shuddered, and wept, and called on her dead mother for + help, and asked me if I had no mercy and I could only sigh. I + concealed nothing from her; I told her what she would become, + and what would enter in where her life had been; I told her of + all the shame and all the horror.... That night she came down + to my laboratory, and there, with shutters bolted and barred + down, with curtains drawn thick and close, so that the very + stars might be shut out from the sight of that room, while the + crucible hissed and boiled over the lamp, I did what had to be + done, and led out what was no longer a woman. But on the table + the opal flamed and sparkled with such light as no eyes of man + have ever gazed on, and the rays of the flame that was within + it flashed, and glittered, and shone even to my heart. My wife + had only asked one thing of me; that when there came at last + what I had told her, I would kill her. I have kept my promise.” + Page 286. + +This passage is a very fair sample of the school to which Mr Machen +belongs, and it illustrates its utter artificiality. No thrill can +possibly come, because there is falsity in every line and human nature +is violated at every turn. The leading idea of the opal gaining an +unholy lustre from the commission of an evil deed is paltry in itself, +and the whole psychological interest should lie in the study of the man’s +warped human instincts. But Dr Black is a lay figure in whom we do not +even begin to believe, and so the piled-up structure of horror appears +childishly inept. And so with the description of the strange sins in the +story of “The Three Impostors.” The strange sins are not real sins, that +is why they fail to interest even a morbid imagination. If the author +would go into the street and pick up with the first wastrel he meets and +describe faithfully the workings of the man’s mind, he would thrill us +fifty times more than can this collection of concocted effects all alien +to the truth of life, and so all remote from human feeling. In its horror +of nature, indeed, our young hedonistic school shows but another phase of +the old Puritan’s distrust of art. + + +AN IMPURE IDEAL + +A CHALLENGE TO PURITANISM + +[Sidenote: David Christie Murray in _The Referee_] + +_The Philistine as Art’s Helper._—Every now and then some person rises +up in England to protest against the restrictions by which a vulgar and +uninstructed Philistinism cribs, cabins, and confines the imaginative +artist. Sometimes the protest is made by a man of genius, and whenever +that is the case it is triumphantly proved by events that there was +not the slightest real need to make it. The more daring and robust the +assault upon the proprieties the more assured is the attention of an +immediate audience. Mr Swinburne’s career affords an excellent example +of this truth. In some respects he is an artist of unique character, +but it was not by virtue of his artistry that he made at his first +coming so prodigious a noise in the world. Mr Swinburne’s admirers now +appreciate him for his literary excellences, but his earliest fame was +accorded to him because of his so delicious naughtiness. A man of genius +with a narrow intellectual field in which to disport himself, but with +extraordinary gifts of melody and energy, he has found his proper place +in the poetic hierarchy in his own lifetime, and to pretend that his fame +was retarded by his defiance of Puritanism is a task for a fool—and a +task which only a fool would undertake. The plain truth is that it is the +very shortest cut to notoriety in this country to make a mock of morals, +and there are not a few men and women who enjoy a public vogue simply +and merely because they flout the Puritan Ideal, whilst if they had been +content to ally decency with their native dullness they would never have +been heard of beyond their own doorsteps.... + +There has been sent to _The Referee_ for review a book the pretensions +of which I think it on several grounds desirable to examine. In an oddly +pompous preface the writer expresses his surety that his fellow-authors +will sympathise with him in the difficult task of finding for a +collection of short stories a general title which is not obviously +impertinent. He opines that the title he has chosen “will at all events +hint at the nature of the contents.” To me it afforded no remotest +suggestion, and it would be easy enough to write a book which would +justify the title with at least equal completeness whilst it would embody +the actual antithesis of its idea. Before I proceed to the exposition of +that idea it is just to set out such reasons as the author has to give +for its expression in a work of fiction. In France, we are told, “it is +agreed that imagination and fantasy are to work as they will and as they +can, and are to be judged by their own laws. He who carves gurgoyles +admirably is praised for his curious excellence in the invention and +execution of these grinning monsters; and if he is blamed it is for bad +carving, not because he has failed to produce pet lambs.” In England we +are said to judge very differently, and “Imagination itself is expected +to improve the occasion, to reform whilst it entertains, and to instruct +under the guise of story-telling.” ... + +_Where to Draw the Line._—It has to be objected here that the case is too +broadly stated. It is not agreed that imagination and fantasy are to work +as they will in France. There is a certain restraining sense which now +and then moves the authorities to suppress a theatrical production like +the “Timbale d’Argent” or a serial publication like “La Nature.” Fantasy +is nowhere in any civilised community allowed an unrestricted play. There +is a point at which all modern peoples divide the endurably coarse from +the intolerably indecent and abominable. You must arrange with your own +sensibilities the precise point at which you will say to fantasy, “Thus +far shalt thou go and no further,” but every civilised man has a limit +beyond which he will not permit himself to be carried. And, what is of at +least equal importance, he has a limit beyond which he will not knowingly +allow those innocences, ignorances, and inexperiences which are under his +guardianship or control to travel.... + +There are many examples of literary, pictorial, and plastic art in the +hands of lovers of the curious which are kept under lock and key. The +owners are not necessarily persons of unclean mind, and they generally +exercise some discretion as to the choice of the people by whom these +objects shall be seen. The common sense of the world—not the art-hatred +of the Philistine, but just the common-sense common decency of the +world—has decided that they shall be jealously hidden from the immature +in years and experience. The argument advanced by our author is that +perfection in the presentation makes the nature of the thing presented +of little consequence, I am not disposed to attach an exaggerated value +to that contention, but even if it were wholly defensible in respect to +a work of art in itself, it is impossible to argue that it is of little +consequence to whom it shall be shown. There is nothing more sacred than +that ingenuous shame which the growth of civilisation has fostered as a +guarding instinct against the violation of the mind. I make no fight for +prudery—pruriency aping modesty, and topping frank indecency by its lie. +I have had my say in _The Referee_ more than once already about those +egregious persons who from time to time seek an _arbiter elegantiarum_ in +the police-courts. But I stand for cleanliness in art, and, above all, +I stand for it in the modern novel, and not only because the novel goes +into the hands of boys and girls whose premature introduction to certain +dark places cannot fail to have disastrous results.... + +_A Public Pleasaunce._—Now here, of course, is an excellent opportunity +for those ladies and gentlemen who think it one of the privileges of Art +to be indecent to ask if I expect the writer of the novel to address +herself or himself exclusively to the Young Person—if I intend to tie +his or her soaring genius to a boy’s coat-tails or a girl’s pinafore. +I say in answer to that query that it is not I who choose the medium +through which the writers concerned have elected to reveal their genius +to the world. I say that having chosen that medium for themselves they +cannot rightly ignore certain responsibilities which the choice imposes +upon them. The field of the novelist is a very spacious pleasure-ground +indeed, and you may legitimately lay out in it almost any sort of garden +plot or plantation, and may erect in it almost any sort of palace or +cottage or mansion. But it is an open space, and it is dedicated to the +delectation of the public. Incidentally the wanderer in its precincts +may be instructed or warned or spiritually lifted, but his purpose in +going there is primarily to be entertained. The operating theatre and the +dissecting-room are out of place there, though there are some people who +can take their pleasure in such places and get no harm. Most out of place +of all conceivable things in a pleasure-ground which is free to everybody +is the mural picture gallery of the unburied cities.... + +_An Intrusion on Privacy._—When I was a boy I was taken by a middle-aged +fool who ought to have known better into a waxwork anatomical museum +at a rural wake. The sight left an evil taste on my mental palate for +years and years. A rural wake is no place for an anatomical museum. That +was a day of days, and Wombwell’s menagerie and that booth of Thespis +which belonged to Messrs Bennet and Patch, and the swinging-boats and +the merry-go-rounds, and the gingerbread stalls and the spangled lady +on the slack wire, and Mr Merriman and the shooting-galleries, and the +whole gay, harmless medley make clear pictures in my mind this minute, +though the rain and sunshine of a half-century have made many another of +memory’s paintings dim. And the anatomical museum poisoned everything. +The contention I desire to combat is that a literary craftsman has some +right to intrude the most hateful side of his mind upon others because +he is an artist. But who says he is an artist? A man may write fiction +and be no more of an artist than a ledger clerk. “He who carves gurgoyles +admirably is praised for his curious excellence in the invention and +execution of those grinning monsters; and if he is blamed he is blamed +for bad carving, not because he has failed to produce pet lambs.” But has +he who carves “gurgoyles” the double right to carve revolting shapes and +to plump them down in the public pleasure-ground for any unsuspecting +wayfarer to sicken at?... + +_A Buried Symbolism._—I offer a most emphatic denial to the assumption +that “imagination and fantasy” are anywhere justly to be “allowed to +work as they can and will,” so long as their product is exposed for +unrestricted sale in market overt. If I am to give fantasy free play I +can quite easily imagine things which would excite the loathing of a +savage. In every society which has raised itself above the intellectual +level of the hog there are certain things which are not currently +spoken of. There were certain obscure obscenities with which the +ancients surrounded Nature-Worship. They expressed imaginatively the +primal forces, and the emblems employed to represent them were candid +and unashamed. Their open exposure and popular exhibition were the +characteristic originally of a time of purest savagery and animalism. +As civilisation grew these emblems became conventionalised, and finally +they ceased to be symbolic. Some are in frequent use to-day, but their +meaning is so completely lost to the popular mind that every modern +cemetery displays an entire perversion of the meaning of one of them. +Now, the root-idea of the book under consideration is the survival of all +those old obscure obscenities into modern life. “It is in the character +of a sober portrayer of a certain side of life,” writes the author in his +own person, “that I hope to add to the pleasure of many pleasant Sunday +afternoons.” I am armed beforehand against the simpering suggestion that +I am impenetrable to the subtleties of irony. Solomon to the contrary +notwithstanding, it is sometimes good to answer a controversialist +according to his argument.... + +_The Naked Untruth._—In pursuit of this purpose of adding to the +pleasure of pleasant Sunday afternoons our author introduces his reader +to a girl-child in a modern rural neighbourhood in Wales whose mind is +unutterably debauched by her nurse, and who at the age of five has for +her playmate the very bodily devil of licentiousness. The girl thrives +under tuition to such advantage that when she comes to her demoniac +womanhood she has arrived at a knowledge of evil so complete that the +revelation of it drives men of the world to whom it is displayed to +suicide. Speaking for myself, I can aver quite honestly that this sort +of baby-Satanic-tommy-rot will not add to the pleasure of many pleasant +Sunday afternoons. It is offered, as I have said already, with a kind +of pomp, as a protest against the degraded state into which imagination +and fantasy have slipped under the withering influences of Puritanism. +Puritanism is as a red rag to the author. We all know, so he tells us, +“how Hampden died that England might be free, first under the martial +law of the Great Protector, and afterwards under the Whig oligarchy.” We +are instructed that the Puritans hanged witches in Salem, and flogged +the Quakers, baptised foals in cathedrals, hewed down the statues of the +saints, shut up the theatres, and gave us the English Sunday. It is not +quite a true bill. Hampden did not die for martial law and the _beaux +yeux_ of the Whigs. Nor did the Puritans—a really forbidding body of men, +to my fancy, amongst whom I wouldn’t have lived for any money—spend all +their energies in hanging witches and baptising foals in cathedrals. Like +many a tribe which went before them, and many another which has followed +after, they obscured a noble cause by gross excesses. But it does not +become a professed Iconoclast to get dancing-mad at the sight of a hammer +in another man’s hand.... + +_The Little Pig._—It is an assured thing in our author’s mind that +English Puritanism is going to take exception to his work. On the ground +that it is a needless and offensive resurrection of the buried nastiness +of early heathendom, I think it very likely that he is right. I was never +very much of a Puritan myself, but my taste and inclination take me to +the Puritan side for once. There was a dear old philosopher of a village +doctor whom I knew years ago when I lived in the Belgian Ardennes. We +were talking of the pornographies of French art one night, and with a +shake of his wise old head he said, “Il y a, dans l’âme de chacun de +nous, un petit cochon qui se grandit vite.” I know my own little pig, and +though I am compelled to find him house-room I have no liking for him, +and I certainly have no desire that his manners should be corrupted by +association with the little pigs of other people.... + +I have myself been a modest market-gardener in the field of fiction +now these thirty years, and I have been careful never to introduce my +little pig to anybody who has come to look at my very humble patch. I +try to keep him unseen and lonely in his sty. My attempt to starve him +out of existence has unhappily met with but indifferent success; but +I’ll be hanged if I will take anybody’s ha’pence to make a show of him. +I decline to put him on exhibition either for praise or pudding. And yet +I know that I could make a very decent (and most indecent) living out of +him. For my little pig is not at all like your little pig, and it is the +master-passion of the Artist to be different. We all know that a good +half of the talk we hear about Art for Art’s sake, with its accompanying +malediction on the English Puritan, means nothing more than that the +artist is setting the little pig on view for the gratification of a +prurient vanity.—MERLIN. + +[Sidenote: _The Athenæum_] + +... Like Poe, Mr Machen sets himself to make the reader’s flesh creep; +like Hawthorne, he abounds with subtle and suggestive symbolism, and, +had neither of these writers existed, his work would thrill the reader +even more ingeniously, although it lacks the originality of the one +and the poetic austerity and wealth of imagination of the other. He +deals in ancient mysteries; he is for ever hinting at the macabre, +the sinister, the unspeakable. His puppets peep and mutter through an +atmosphere of forbidden knowledge and obscure rites of remote antiquity, +which, however, he would seem to suggest are not so remote as they ought +to be, after all. He is an adept in the art of elusiveness—so much so, +indeed, that some of his most horrific endings fail of their proper +effect, and the piled-up agony topples to a fall, leaving the reader with +just the ghost of a suspicion of the author’s sincerity, and a haunting +reminiscence of turnip-headed spectres and clanking chains.... + +[Sidenote: _The Saturday Review_] + +Mr Machen adds three new stories to the contents of two earlier volumes, +and introduces the collection by a preface which is perhaps the best +thing in the book. We remember reading “The Great God Pan” when it +first appeared, and discussing it with brother-undergraduates. Most +of us thought that the story was interesting chiefly as illustrating +the difficulties which beset an ambitious English writer who wishes to +describe transcendental beastliness. Probably we were right. Mr Machen’s +literary monomania takes the form of postulating that behind the veil +of matter, in the centre of the material universe, resides an obscene +and terrible power, the revelation of which brings to mortals infamy and +madness. This pretty fancy is hardly relevant to his spirited attack +on Puritanism, for the Puritans had a lively sense of the demoniac. +As regards the execution of the stories, Mr Machen has style, and a +talent for the fantastic (though “The Three Impostors” is in its scheme +reminiscent of Stevenson), but he has not the power of creating horror. +One feels that he is carving gargoyles (to borrow his phrase) just for +fun, and his readers’ blood will not run cold, though possibly their +gorges may rise. + +[Sidenote: _Tribune_] + +The Great God Pan is finding himself extremely popular among the +novelists just now. It was Mr Benson who began it, earlier in the year, +and since that time the number of novels in which we are vouchsafed +manifestations of the goat-god—complete even to the hoofs, and with an +attendant murky odour thrown in—increases almost daily. Of course it is +natural enough, for nobody, not even a novelist, knows much about Pan, +whence unlimited possibilities of mystery and thrills. Mr Arthur Machen +is one of those who see in him all the possibilities of a “hair-raiser.” +Were it not disrespectful it might be said that “The House of Souls” is +exactly the kind of book which would have been written by the Fat Boy in +Pickwick, had he been possessed of literary ability. Had he also been, be +it said, familiar with the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. For never was +book more obviously written with the desire “to make your flesh creep.” +What with Pans and witches and mysterious keepers of treasures in hills, +the half-dozen stories contain quite a population of queer folk, not one +of which but has the potentiality of raising the hair upon the reader’s +head, until it resembles the quills upon a more than usually fretful +porcupine. Potentialities only, however, for, truth to tell, the author +never quite succeeds in raising our hair. He tells us either too much +or too little. He so constantly hints at quite unmentionable horrors +that we find ourselves mistrusting them, and when he does occasionally, +greatly daring, venture to unveil a horror or two, they are a wee bit +disappointing. This is, of course, as much the fault of the subject +as of the author. None of us can take the great God Pan, nor witches, +nor warlocks, very seriously nowadays—even if surgeons with alarming +surgical instruments are introduced into the same story to keep them in +countenance by their up-to-date associations. Because we know very well +that did Pan put in a bodily appearance in a British wood to-day he would +be given in charge by a stolid and unemotional gamekeeper for trespassing +in pursuit of game. Pan was killed by the Game Laws, if not before, and +not all the King’s horses and all the King’s men can put him together +again—alas! Of the various stories in the volume “The Inmost Light” comes +the nearest to being convincing, while lovers of Stevenson would feel +interested in the story series, “The Three Impostors,” which at times is +very successfully reminiscent of that writer. + +[Sidenote: _Manchester Guardian_] + +The stories in the volume entitled “The House of Souls,” by Arthur +Machen, are all addressed to the ancient purpose of making the reader’s +flesh creep. It is a favourite pastime for easy people to play with fear; +from time immemorial men have amused their leisure by sitting round the +fire capping horrors. It is not, we may concede, a very high form of art, +but any essay in this kind must stand or fall by its success in imputing +horror. Mr Machen has written a rather arrogant preface, in which the +following passage occurs: “He who carves gargoyles admirably is praised +for his curious excellence in the invention and execution of these +grinning monsters; and if he is blamed it is for bad carving, not because +he has failed to produce pet lambs.” Conceded! We may even call it a +necessary postulate of the reviewer; if he is writing of gargoyles he +has no business to say, “I do not like gargoyles”; he must look for the +curious excellence in invention and execution, and it is not to be found +in Mr Machen’s work. He understands what has long been known, that the +emotion of fear is best induced by vagueness; he insists—rather heavily, +indeed—on the mysterious power of the spirit, but he has not felt it; too +often the horror adumbrated in his vagueness is no more than physically +disgusting. Conjuring tricks with the grey matter of the brain, burning +and mutilating of live bodies are the clumsy devices of an unimaginative +man. The restrained intensity of feeling and economy of suggestion in +such scenes as those of Maeterlinck’s early plays are infinitely more +moving than these violent assaults.—H. M. S. + + + + +THE HILL OF DREAMS + + +[Sidenote: _East Anglian Daily Times_] + +This is the first complete novel by the author of “The House of Souls.” +When writing of that work we expressed regret at the prominence accorded +to an unhealthy atmosphere. The suggestions of hideous survivals in the +under-world were not pleasant reading, and it is our duty to insist +that their repetition in the present work is deplorable. No good can be +effected by a discussion of such esoteric matters, and we could have +wished that Mr Machen had refrained from introducing such horrors into +his book. The story purports to be “a study of the temperament of a +young literary man, whose dreams lead him into strange places, and bring +him to a strange sequel.” Expressed more plainly, the plot is that of a +crazy youth who undergoes some particularly unpleasant experiences, and +finally commits suicide. Frankly speaking, it was the best thing that +could have happened, for the “dreams” of this young man were repulsive. +If the reading public must have this kind of mental food, we can only +deplore the taste; but we protest with all possible strength against +the dissemination of such sickly, and in some sense horrible ideas, as +form the basis of Mr Machen’s latest effort. It is not denied that the +author writes cleverly. That, however, forms an additional reason why his +talents should be employed in producing something more admirable than +“The Hill of Dreams” can be said to be. + +[Sidenote: _The Outlook_] + +It is safe to compliment Mr Arthur Machen upon having produced a book +that stands, and will perhaps continue to stand, quite alone in English +fiction. Fellows might be found for it in the modern letters of Germany +and France, but not even the most determined of our own symbolists has +produced such an elaborate account of the adventures of an exclusively +æsthetic nature in the rough world. But apart from such praise as that +acknowledgment confers, it is not at all easy to put a value on Mr +Machen’s “Hill of Dreams.” It is written in a simple yet studied English +that conveys in the deeper passages of the book as much of magic as +words can impart; yet the whole work is so unreal and so charged with +spiritual disease that there is scarcely a place for it in the widest +utilitarian view. Beyond an impression of intense agony of the soul, +it leaves little behind it, and there is nothing to the purpose that +a critic can say except that the book evidently answered to something +in the writer, and may answer to something in others. The growth of +Lucian Taylor’s fervently mystic and quite inhuman nature, perfectly +pure, perfectly egoistic, is traced with power. Most of his outward +tragedy is that of the artist’s struggle with the world, and of his +association with gross and ordinary British barbarians, whose manners are +described with a cleverness and a rancour in which we can find nothing +but weakness; the inward story—if such a web of shadows can be called a +story—is one of some strange insight into the obscurity of an essential +evil in nature, of a strange development of the passion of love in the +soul of the ascetic of art, of his sufferings, his dreams, and of his +final destruction by the shadowy power of ill that laid its hands upon +him as a child, on the hill where once the Romans camped. An undefined +horror penetrates all the story, like an invisible vapour. It is an +extraordinary performance and a work of art; but art fallen, we think, on +unclean and fatal days. + +[Sidenote: _Birmingham Gazette and Express_] + +... There is much fine writing, but probably few other than literary +craftsmen will follow with patience the detailed story of his striving +after perfection in the use of language. The most pleasing part of the +book is that which treats of his love for and idealisation of the simple, +womanly country girl, Annie Morgan. It is scarcely a “healthy” book, but +it is evidently the work of a man who has thought deeply and suffered +much. + +[Sidenote: _Manchester Courier_] + +It would be hard to classify “The Hill of Dreams,” by Arthur Machen, for +it is both unprecedented and unusual. Moreover, it is unpleasing and +unconvincing, though its writer possesses a wealth of imagery and a power +not often met with. The little story there is concerns the life of Lucian +Taylor, but the plot of the book is but a peg on which the author hangs +a detailed study of temperament. Lucian is a “dreamer,” with literary +aspirations. His early life is devoid of all humanising influences, and +his character is only explicable, and then not very satisfactorily so, +when this is remembered. Despite education and cultivation, Lucian never +possesses any feelings which a barbarian might not be expected to have. +He never imposes the least restraint on his natural susceptibility, and +both as a boy and a man is a sensualist. After living a life of failure, +in which, apart from his vivid dreams, a passion for a country girl is +the only important event, he commits suicide. The reader is left in doubt +whether Lucian was a genius neglected by an unappreciative world or a +fool totally incapable of understanding the beauty of the world. The +writing of the book is astonishingly versatile. At times there is the +gruesomeness of Poe, at others the charm of Hawthorne. The descriptions +of country scenery show a love of the picturesque, and the chapters on +London life a knowledge of the seamy side of nature. Though there is +splendid capability shown in the book, it will not make a wide appeal +because of its want of humanity. + +[Sidenote: _Birmingham Post_] + +Mr Arthur Machen’s is hardly the sort of story that is likely to win +admiration from the average reader of current fiction. Perhaps it is as +well, for “The Hill of Dreams” is not a healthy book, and the power of +fascination that it exercises is tempered with a certain instinctive +feeling of repugnance. Let it be said at once that it does fascinate. +It is filled with passages of rare beauty. Mr Machen understands the +magic of words; his sentences are as silk shot with rich, variegated, and +harmonious colour; they have a fine rhythmic flow also; and page after +page is filled with “a procession of images” (we quote the author’s own +words), “now of rapture and ecstasy and now of terror and shame, floating +in a light that is altogether phantasmal and unreal.” So far as charm of +language and beauty of imagery go—and they go far—the season is hardly +likely to see the rival of Mr Machen’s novel. The weakness is that all +this accumulated beauty is something fantastic, exotic, and bizarre. Mr +Machen leads us through a forest of flowers; but they are _fleurs de +mal_, in Baudelaire’s phrase, sprung from miasmatic ground, and spreading +a perfume by which the atmosphere is vitiated. Through his power of +conjuring up visions of the world of long ago and living in a dreamland +of his own Lucian Taylor claims some kinship with Du Maurier’s “Peter +Ibbetson.” By the circumstances of his death he stands related to the +English opium-eater. But Mr Machen has neither Du Maurier’s light touch +and sense of humour nor De Quincey’s stern insistence on the penalties +of such visionary delights. His attitude is too accurately that which +another exquisite artist, Ernest Dowson, assumed in the sonnet, now +fairly well known, “To One in Bedlam”:— + + Oh, lamentable brother! if these pity thee, + Am I not fain of all thy lone eyes promise me— + Half a fool’s kingdom, far from men who sow and reap + All their days vanity. + +So Dowson sang; and in the same mood Mr Machen seems inclined, throughout +the greater part of his book at any rate, to hold up his invertebrate +hero—or victim—as a subject for sympathy and admiration. “Invertebrate” +is too weak a word. Most of Lucian’s peculiarities are definable in +the terminology of specialists in mental alienation. He is a sufferer +from what an expert witness in the American “cause célèbre” of the +day called lately “exaggerated ego.” Echolalia (in his attempts at +authorship), melancholia, visual and auditory hallucinations—all these +familiar phenomena of an unbalanced mind does he exhibit; and doubtless +the specialist in such diseases might trace more. It is because his +attitude towards this “lamentable brother” is too nearly that of Ernest +Dowson and too far from that of (say) De Quincey that Mr Machen has +failed to produce a piece of great literature which is above all things +sane and level-headed. On the other side of the scales must be put a +fertile imagination, a great deal of acute psychological analysis, and +an extraordinary sensitiveness to impressions of natural beauty. These +are sufficiently enviable endowments, which one hopes to see Mr Machen +exercising in the future on some more happily treated subject. + +[Sidenote: _Newcastle Chronicle_] + +Mr Machen’s story is all about a young man who adds to a temperament +naturally neurotic a passion for examining the inner workings of his own +mind, and a dislike for nourishing food. This combination of qualities +reduces him to a skeleton, and enables him to see visions and dream +dreams of the most fantastic variety. Those who are familiar with Mr +Machen’s work will recognise in such a subject one particularly suited to +his _métier_. Step by step he traces, with fine imagination, the workings +of the disordered brain until the inevitable end of complete madness and +death is reached. Only Mr Machen, perhaps, would not have us believe that +his hero is mad; preferring if anything to think that he is of a sanity +and clear-sightedness altogether denied to the devotees of plain living +and plain thinking. + +[Sidenote: _Morning Post_] + +Mr Machen has chosen for his book one of those subjects that depend +entirely on their treatment for their success or failure. “The Hill of +Dreams” provides an analysis of the character of an imaginative young +man consumed with literary aspirations. Unfortunately, the treatment of +this theme is marred by the two faults of exaggeration and monotonous +insistence on the psychological note of alternate despair and exultation. +The delineation of moods must be made variable if it is to be palatable +to the reader; otherwise weariness of the mind ensues as a necessary +consequence. Lucian Taylor’s continuous habit of selfish introspection +ultimately leads him to madness and “death by misadventure,” but these +misfortunes do not induce sympathy in the reader when he has become +satiated with the morbidity which itself brought them about. At the same +time, the book has style and is full of so many well-written descriptions +of scenery that one is inclined to forget about the dreamer and only to +dwell in fancy on the beautiful “Hill of Dreams” which prompted his +visions. + +[Sidenote: _P.T.O._] + +Mr Arthur Machen’s first long novel, “The Hill of Dreams,” fails in +humanity. The hero’s literary struggles are desperate; the hero himself +is an abstraction. The author labours too much over his work for it to +be wholly satisfactory; we are obliged to him for the pains he takes in +these days of careless writing, but could wish the effort less apparent. +In his pictures of Welsh scenery he is at his best; in suburbia he lays +it on with a trowel, and makes himself more unhappy than ever he will +make the worthy folk he dislikes should they chance upon his book. In a +word, Mr Machen has yet to find a story, yet to create real living people. + +[Sidenote: _The Scotsman_] + +Mr Machen’s novel displays a singular ability in giving a sustained and +varied interest to a theme of which the material is to the last degree +simple and monotonous. He has no more story to tell than how a young man, +a country clergyman’s son, feeling that he had a gift for literature, +went up to London, and kept writing and writing and writing while he +lived in a world of dreams, quite misunderstood and untouched by the +outer world of everyday circumstance, until at last he came to kill +himself, having accomplished nothing. Such is the subject, and it seems, +thus stated, to afford little matter enough for a full-length story. But +the work goes with such a skilful psychology into the workings of the +unhappy young man’s mind, and shows such fine imaginative artistry in +varying the light and shade of his emotions and contrasting his outward +with his inward life, that it proves interesting from first to last +without even for a moment disturbing its air of soft tranquillity. It is +a story that will readily impress a reader of quiet tastes who can reach +to the more subtle refinements of fiction. + +[Sidenote: _The Athenæum_] + +... In the emotional adventures of the hapless youth who is a victim of a +species of nympholepsy and intellectual loneliness combined, we cannot, +after the first hundred pages, feel any adequate interest. His agonies +while engaged in the long-drawn-out struggle with his stubborn literary +gifts are too protracted, too remote from any human sentiment, to hold +the interest of the reader. Their recital is almost as monotonous as, +and far more fatiguing than, the artistic _débâcle_ of the painter in +Zola’s “L’Œuvre,” which had at least some elements of humanity. But +the spirit of place which informs the book, whether it is the forlorn, +illimitable dreariness of suburbia that the author chooses to show us, or +the mysterious and melancholy beauty of that wild Wales he knows so well, +could only have found expression at the hand of an adept. It is perhaps +a pity that so clever a writer as Mr Machen should bestow such infinite +pains on astonishing the bourgeois, who in all likelihood will never have +the privilege of reading his books; it is an obsession that brings to +mind the unprofitableness of flogging dead horses. But, after all, the +main matter for regret is the utter formlessness and the arid inhumanity +of his work. His Muse is a kind of Lilith—not a drop of her blood is +human—and thus, except from the decorative point of view, he leaves us +cold.... + +[Sidenote: _The Daily Graphic_] + +A curious and fanciful book, which shows much misdirected ability. It +is the study of the temperament of a young man, who devotes himself to +literature, but his imagination is abnormal, and his mental condition +diseased. The book is not of much practical interest, as one feels that +his death, with which the story ends, is the best possible solution of +his difficulties. + +[Sidenote: _The Daily Chronicle_] + +Mr Arthur Machen has written “The Hill of Dreams,” we take it, not with a +view to saying anything in particular, but rather with a view to saying +something in a particular—almost a precious—way. We fancy that he would +not greatly object to identify himself with his hero, of whom he says:— + + Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty + of its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious + to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of + suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps + more ravishing and farther removed from the domain of strict + thought than the impressions excited by music itself. Here lay + hidden the sensuous art of literature, it was the secret of + suggestion, the art of causing delicious sensation by the use + of words. In a way, therefore, literature was independent of + thought; the mere English listener, if he had an ear attuned, + could recognise the beauty of a splendid Latin phrase. + +One would like to have Mr Machen’s criticism of that majestic line of R. +L. Stevenson’s:— + + Opulent orotundo strike the sky! + +“The Hill of Dreams” is a long, and in many respects, a clever +psychological analysis and demonstration of the mind of a young +degenerate. It is a deliberate and careful study of morbidity. It is +well written, but written not quite well enough. The good writing is just +a thought too obvious; one cannot help noticing it. It has what Mr Machen +calls “the secret of suggestion,” but it suggests some things which we +would much rather had not been suggested. It is a thoughtful piece of +work though, and it is often lighted up by swift and penetrating flashes +of satire. We wish the word “sonorous” did not occur quite so often in +it. “Sonorous” is a very good and effective word in its way, but, like +“sinister,” “sombre,” and one or two others, it should be used sparingly. +It does not do to make a pet of it. + +[Sidenote: _The Manchester Guardian_] + +Without a refined susceptibility to sensuous impressions there can be no +high art. But there is always a danger that the artist who recognises +this theoretically may give rein to susceptibility and sensitiveness +as such and be drawn headlong along the road to mere sensationalism. +For in art, as in everything else, the ultimate value of a sensation +lies always in its content. The fact that your sensations seem to you +“exquisite” or “delicious” no more gives them artistic than it would +give them moral import; in the one case as in the other, there is the +further question to be asked, the question what kind of person you are +who feel them so. Which question leads in its turn to other questions, +all pointing unmistakably one way. Sensation, you find, gives you no +principle either in art or in anything else. It can open no locked +doors. Take it for your guide and there can be no doubt but you will be +landed, sooner or later, in the ditch. Mr Arthur Machen in his new story +“The Hill of Dreams” drives perilously near this dangerous territory. +He recounts the life of a hypersensitive youth of whom the world is not +worthy, upon whose delicate nature the violence of healthy humanity +rasps and jars, who therefore, shut up within himself, runs riot in a +fantastic maze of morbid mystic fancies, constructs an impossible romance +out of a chance meeting with a farmer’s daughter in the dark (for whose +sake he afterwards inflicts upon himself nightly penance with a gorse +bough), and finally drifts up to London and laudanum and an untimely end. +This kind of story could only fail to be suffocating in its effect upon +the reader if the oxygen absent in the hero were supplied by some sort +of exhilaration derivable from the background against which he moves. +But he moves, alas! in an atmosphere as exquisite and as exhausted as +he is. “He knew that he himself had solved the riddle, that he held in +his hand the powder of projection, the philosopher’s stone transmuting +all it touched to fine gold, the gold of exquisite impressions.” It is +of these impressions, this “powder of projection,” that the bulk of the +narrative is composed. If your air is full of dust, it is no matter what +kind of particles the dust is made of; let it be powdered gold, the +effect is just as choking. Many objections might be advanced against a +story like “The Hill of Dreams” on the score of its subject matter: the +artist would be ready to dismiss these as ethical and irrelevant. But +the unrelieved preciosity of the style is equally open to criticism, and +this is the rock upon which the book finally founders. “Only in the Court +of Avallaunius is the true science of the exquisite to be found.” It +would be wise to leave it unmolested there; here in these lower courts, +this “land of sin and woe,” there is nothing that more quickly tends to +tedium.—B. S. + +[Sidenote: Louis Weitzenkorn in _The New York World_] + +Arthur Machen’s “The Hill of Dreams,” according to the introduction +included in a new American edition, was written in 1897. It was published +first in 1907. Mr Knopf would have been much fairer to Mr Machen had +he left this book to perish in the dust of things forgotten. It has a +great beauty of writing. The Machen style is clearly a deliberate and +successful attempt to get melody into prose. But it strikes us that music +is not the first element of a prose style; in fact it is one part that, +under compulsion, might be omitted without injury. After all, the poets +are entitled to something. + +Our first demand from a prose work styled a novel is living characters. +Except in the last three paragraphs, not one breath of life shows up +in “The Hill of Dreams.” Mr Machen confesses his plan to have been the +writing of a “Robinson Crusoe” of the mind. As to that there is a touch +of similarity here to “Peter Ibbetson,” and more to Jack London’s “Star +Rover.” Naturally enough, Machen didn’t see this latter work of fiction +before he began his. But it is to the analogy of “Robinson Crusoe” that +we mainly object. After all, that cast-off sailor had a man Friday who +was every inch alive. Good, deadly arrows fly through Defoe’s book. Ships +and savages and hot sunlight beat down. + +Whatever there is of Lucian Taylor beyond the author’s frail beating +against life, is something of a masculine and British Carol Kennicott. +That’s crowding a reputation, even a fictional one, pretty badly, but the +futile protest and final escape of Lucian Taylor through suicide doesn’t +follow as four does two plus two and as true tragedy must. Not once +does the book move us to feel for this hero, who lives like an essay in +the _Atlantic Monthly_. He and the British countryside aristocracy—the +British Main Streeters—are so many children’s toys. They are dolls that +get from one end of the room to the other only when lifted up and moved. + +Machen has written this book as if he had been young and angry. He seems +to have wanted to nail his old neighbours to some sort of cross. He +forgets that the Babbitts are the very ones who read “Babbitt” and make +the author rich. + +The book will not enhance Machen’s rather high reputation here. His +incident of the hanging of a dog by a set of children, not one of whom +protests, will never be swallowed, at least by American readers. The +rest of the book is just as impossible. We are willing still to take our +knowledge of Main Street Britons from Mr Bennett’s “Five Towns.” + + + + +THE SECRET GLORY + + +[Sidenote: _Manchester Guardian_] + +It is a little difficult to know what kind of readers “The Secret Glory” +is intended to please, and there is a temptation to believe that its +author wrote it simply and solely for his own amusement. The greatest +works of art are no doubt those in which an artist insists on satisfying +his own standard of taste, but Mr Machen’s game on this occasion seems +to have been rather that of “letting himself go.” He begins with a vivid +indictment of the English public school, but does not produce either +an original or a convincing picture of its faults and failings; and he +then proceeds to cut the painter and to launch forth into a juvenile +description of a juvenile escapade in London which his schoolboy hero, +half mystic, half Bohemian, is supposed to share with a young lady of +his choice, though not of his class—the whole embroidered with wonderful +pæans to punch and poetry, surrounded with a sort of religious halo, +and penetrated with a peculiar flavour of what one might call inebriate +innocence. There are perhaps deep lessons to be drawn from the perusal +of these singular heroics, but we have not succeeded in discovering or +profiting by them. The narrative itself is allusive and obscure. Huge +jokes are supposed to be concealed on one side, and on the other the +profound, impenetrable import of things. But, judging by what is actually +communicated to us, we remain in doubt whether what is withheld was +either very funny or very significant.—B. S. + +[Sidenote: _Punch_] + +I have always understood that what St Paul calls “visions and revelations +of the Lord” were sent to forward their recipients’ progress in virtue; +and that if glimpses of the supernatural resulted in _Schwärmerei_, or +sin, they were the work of the Devil. On this hypothesis there is no +doubt whatever concerning the origin of “The Secret Glory,” a latter-day +variant of the Holy Grail revealed in a Welsh farmhouse to the boy +_Ambrose Meyrick_ and his father; although its exposition is accompanied +(if I may credit Mr Arthur Machen) by a vision of “The Mystery of +Mysteries.” _Ambrose_, still harping on his mystic experiences, is sent +to an exquisitely odious public school, where he becomes first a cowed +and isolated dreamer and last a furtive and malicious rebel. Both +reverie and rebellion are natural enough, the school being what it is, +but they are not particularly creditable to a devotee of “The Mystery of +Mysteries.” Nor is a _liaison_ with a sympathetic parlour-maid, though +this is set down as part and parcel of the “wonders.” Nor is _Ambrose’s_ +subsequent career, which continues a marvel of irresponsibility until his +extremely unconvincing martyrdom at the hands of “miscreants” in Asia. +And, talking of irresponsibility, I cannot help wishing that Mr Machen +himself, who shows considerable savage humour in his guerilla campaign +against the public school system, would occasionally come to closer grips +with one or other of the problems his extravaganza has evoked. + +[Sidenote: Forrest Reid in _The Daily Herald_] + +In “The Secret Glory” the happenings are neither sober nor probable, +yet the effect is prosaic and even tedious. Here, again, it is all a +matter of treatment, or, rather, in Mr Machen’s case, of the absence of +treatment, for he has left his subject a mere kernel rattling in the +dry shell of didacticism. I have seldom been so disappointed in a book. +What has happened to Mr Machen? Have we gained a missionary and lost +an artist? His gift was always narrow, apt to lead him woefully astray +when he departed from the presentation of states of abnormal, or morbid, +consciousness; but it was vivid, haunting, and intensely individual. “The +Secret Glory” is little more than an elaborate tract in which Mr Machen +champions mediævalism and tilts at his usual windmills—the public school +system, athletics, suburban life, etc. + +[Sidenote: _The Outlook_] + +In “The Secret Glory” Mr Machen attempts to describe the rebellion of +a Celtic mystic against Anglicanism and the public school traditions. +I say “attempts,” because neither Anglicanism nor education interests +him sufficiently to make him barb his satire. But the mysticism excites +his dark and fantastic imagination, and there are bursts, in the +latter half of the book, of successful paradox. Ambrose Meyrick, who +had seen the “Holy Chalice of Teilo sant,” and had an affection for +Gothic architecture, was well whipped for absconding from football +practice. Thenceforth he exerted himself to be in all things the most +loyal Luptonian, but at night he walked in strange places and heard the +voices that outsing the Fairy Birds of Rhiannon. After winning a Balliol +Scholarship and performing some remarkable cricket at the Oval, he broke +away and joined a troupe of actors, and was for ever lost to Lupton and +its like. An effect of a kind Mr Machen certainly produces. He incants +Welsh names, and, as so often on lighter ground, he displays a great +power of giving a queer twist to the least uncanny events. Naturally, he +fails to inform us what there was so remarkable in the Welsh Church which +was ruined by “the Yellow Hag of Pestilence, the Red Hag of Rome, and the +Black Hag of Geneva”; consequently, he fails to show why Ambrose should +not have had all the spiritual experience desired in his own school +chapel. True, Lupton Chapel was built in 1840, and the neighbourhood was +slummy. But, then, Ambrose was capable of ecstasy in Bloomsbury and Soho. +No, Ambrose’s unhappiness is too like that of Mr Bultitude when, in “Vice +Versa,” this gentleman took his son’s place at Dr Grimstone’s academy, +and proceeds from an intelligible dislike of small boys. + +[Sidenote: _The Evening Standard_] + +A schoolboy is also the central figure in “The Secret Glory,” by Arthur +Machen. But Ambrose Meyrick is an unusual boy, not at all the sort of +boy to conform to the average type turned out at such a public school +as Lupton. It is to be hoped, by the way, that not many schools are like +Lupton, or at least that there are not any public schoolmasters like Mr +Horbury, who takes such a savage delight in using the cane. + +Mr Machen’s satire on the public school system, and especially public +school games, is a little too heavy-handed to be effective. Neither boys +nor masters are very convincing, and now and then the story gets lost +in the mystical atmosphere with which Mr Machen surrounds his hero. +Altogether “The Secret Glory” is rather an incoherent and tiresome +production, and certainly does not represent Mr Machen at his best. +Schoolboys and mysticism do not mix. + +[Sidenote: _Liverpool Daily Courier_] + +Mr Arthur Machen has attempted an ambitious character study in “The +Secret Glory.” He has also tried to give us a new version of the Grail, +introducing a mystical cup preserved in a cottage in Wales. But neither +the character nor the cup are very convincing, and it must be said that +Mr Machen has this time failed to get into his story any deep sense +of the mystical. His principal character, Ambrose Meyrick, is a queer +chap, as he is meant to be, but there is no reason why he should be +as irresponsible as he is, and less reason why he should finish up by +getting himself crucified somewhere in Asia. These improbabilities would +matter less, however, if Mr Machen had made Meyrick vital, and his +adventures interesting. The story never runs with sufficient sequence +to ensure this. It is all confused with propaganda, and very bitter +propaganda at that, against the public schools, and criticism of Welsh +Nonconformity when it combines religious revival fervour with sensuality. +Mr Machen knows how to tell a story, but he does not demonstrate that +capacity in this work. + +[Sidenote: _Sheffield Daily Telegraph_] + +Ambrose Meyrick said that “people who pushed ... always reminded him of +the hungry little pigs fighting for the largest share of the wash”—but +though a reasonable aversion to Extravertism is comprehensible, it is +really unnecessary to be so exaggerated an introvert as the hero of “The +Secret Glory,” by Arthur Machen. Ambrose carried his mental “Secret +Doctrine” to perverse, even morbid, excesses; he lived in a _paysage +intérieur_ peopled by mystics and martyrs, and visions of the jewelled +Grail hidden by the descendant of Celtic Saints in some humble cottage +on the Welsh mountains; and all this was naturally incompatible with the +brutal facts of life at an English public school. An unpleasant school, +certainly, but not more so than most. + +It is to be assumed that Ambrose possessed a sense of humour, since he +could enjoy, and even parody, Rabelais, but there is scant evidence of +the quality otherwise than as stated. Extracts from his famous book, “In +Praise of Taverns,” are equally unconvincing. + +Some of Mr Machen’s arguments on religion are interesting. “In my +heart,” he says, “I have always doubted whether moderate Anglicanism +be Christianity in any sense, whether it even deserves to be called +a religion at all,” and he objects to Protestantism because of the +fundamental heresy on which it “builds its objection to what is called +Ritual. I suppose this heresy is called Manichee; it is a charge of +corruption and evil made against the visible universe, which is affirmed +to be not ‘very good’ but ‘very bad’—or, at all events, too bad to +be used as the vehicle of spiritual truth.... Incense, vestments, +candles, all ceremonies, processions, rites—all these things are +miserably inadequate; but they do not abound in the horrible pitfalls, +misapprehensions, errors, which are inseparable from speech of men used +as an expression of the Church.” + +Mr Machen is trying to present Celtic Paganism in the guise of +Christianity, he confuses the Greek philosophy of restraint, “Nothing in +excess,” with a mere negation. There is very little glory in the book. It +is concerned with the tortuous byways of a perverse soul through which +the free wind from the mountains has never blown. + +[Sidenote: _The Morning Post_] + +Though issued as fiction, this is not a novel. It is composite of story, +autobiography, essay, satire, philosophy, criticism, poetry, and too +formless to be brought within any literary mode. Presumably it was not +written all of a piece, and that just yesterday. Spatchcocked passages +point to times when there were as yet no Boches, only Boers, and “’E +dunno where ’e are” was still a music-hall ditty. These were the days of +Ambrose Meyrick’s youth, true; but—though this need not (and will not) +trouble the shade of Mr Blackmore—the most consistent romancer, as to +time and place, would not now suggest the Valley of the Doone as even +a bogus field for the adventure of the Sangraal. Other times, other +fashions, even in that high Quest. Pieced or wrought whole, the book +nevertheless is unified by one idea. The “secret glory” of its title is +the imaginative life, to which its every line and circumstance is meant +as acclamation and appeal. + +There are in it, among others of rare and rich beauty, a thousand absurd +lines and circumstances we could willingly blot. For Mr Machen’s own +purpose, Lupton School is a prejudice; like its Headmaster it is too much +“commerce with mortality.” “A deeper transport and a mightier thrill” are +communicated in wise, rapturous praise of wine and humorous discourse on +the marriage of Panurge. Here Nelly Foran is cunningly kept with Ambrose, +aloof and aloft in a fragrant old Bloomsbury whose “stinks” in reality +were neither better nor worse than the Midlands’. More understanding +still of its own “secret glory” would Mr Machen’s fascinating book have +been had he realised that its ecstatic vision, being of the spirit and +the imagination, is as likely to occur in a “Bethel with the stucco +front” as in the Celtic Church with its Cup of Sacrament. But Mr Machen, +in his own exclusive way, does catch it, and for that we are grateful. + +[Sidenote: Rose Macaulay in _The Daily News_] + +“The Secret Glory” is, like most of Mr Machen’s books, very odd. It is +the story of a mystic, of the inner and the outer life. The outer life +of Ambrose Meyrick is passed at Lupton, a typically commonplace and +materialistic public school, whose masters talk of “playing the game” and +write horrible school songs of the “Forty Years on” type; while his inner +life, which is alone of significance or importance to him, is spent in +exploring mystic realms of Celtic Christian legend with or without his +dead father, a Welsh architectural enthusiast. “I do not know,” writes +Ambrose in later life, “how it all happened; I had been leading two eager +lives. On the outside I was playing games and going up in the school +with a rush, and in the inside I was being gathered more and more into +the sanctuaries of immortal things.” Ambrose’s mystical adventures are +described with a good deal of beauty; it is his contacts with actuality +which strike one as distorted and unreal. + +Both he and Mr Machen loathe public schools and all pertaining to them +with such intensity that neither of them can see straight. They set +up a monstrous figure of savagery and idiotcy and call him a typical +schoolmaster, adding that schoolmasters are just like schoolboys, +the implication being that nearly all schoolboys also are savage and +imbecile. Even public schools are not really quite as bad as all that; +and Mr Machen would have been more effective if he had been more +temperate. There is quite enough to be said about the savagery and +stupidity of schools without resorting to distortion. Psychological +accuracy is not, indeed, the strength of the book, which is full of +unlikely actions. For instance, was Ambrose really the kind of boy who, +in his quest for beauty, would have absconded with one of the school +housemaids? Surely his dead father would have told him that this was +conduct unworthy of an inquirer into spiritual mysteries. But the whole +book is a fantasy, and not to be judged as a tale of real life. Its +curious occurrences and characters are made odder by the difficult, +obscure, and fragmentary method of narration. There is, in fact, a good +deal of silliness in the book, as well as some bad taste, but there is +also a good deal of beauty, and the beauty and the silliness and the bad +taste are all the work of a writer. + +[Sidenote: Middleton Murry in _The Nation and Athenæum_] + +Even if we wished we could not tell the story of “The Secret Glory.” +Mr Machen manages to combine an onslaught on the public school system +with some watery Paterian mysticism. Personally we have an equal dislike +of those who belaud and those who denigrate the public school system. +Besides, “there ain’t no sich person,” there are as many systems as there +are public schools. But Ambrose Meyrick, if he could have been jerked for +a moment by his creator into a semblance of real existence, would justify +the worst outrages wrought upon him by his equally incredible _alma +mater_. + +He is a sentimental philanderer with æsthetic Catholicisms, a mystic +Celtic dreamer, a Soho Bohemian (before Soho was ruined, of course); but +these crimes are as nothing compared to his incorrigible penchant for +“poetic prose.” Mr Machen has encouraged him in it. He will have a great +deal more to answer for in the day of judgment than the schoolmaster who +tried to beat it out of him. + + + + +FAR OFF THINGS AND THINGS NEAR AND FAR + + +[Sidenote: _The Outlook_] + +It is difficult to know quite what to make of Mr Machen’s two most recent +books. “Far Off Things” was a rather scrappy chapter of what might have +been an excellent autobiography not written in the first place for +publication in book form. Like the new volume it spoiled a great deal of +good material and was not organised in any way that tends to make lasting +literature. For all that, both volumes are excellent reading. There is +a great deal to be said for Mr Machen. And he himself has a great deal +to say. He is not quite at home in the twentieth century. Spiritually +he belongs to the years before the ’nineties, to Charing Cross Road as +it was in the days when he translated Casanova at the rate of thirty +shillings a week. The Strand is not what it was, and he paints the +difference for us in no uncertain terms. Nor do the modern restaurants +know their business half so well as the old chop-houses did. + + So through this monstrous incursion of women with the war and + nursery hours of to-day, the old tavern life has gone; utterly + and for ever, I am afraid. + +This is one of the chief grudges he urges against the modern age; and he +can give us chapter and verse for it. + + Going there (to Herbert’s) in these latter days I used to + wonder why all the meats seemed to taste alike.... I had + business, oddly enough, in their kitchen. One of the cooks + showed me the joints roasting on the jack; and I perceived + that three different meats were cooking at the one fire, while + beneath, in a common pan, their juices mingled, ready for the + basting ladle. It is not much wonder, I think, that veal and + lamb and beef taste all much alike in this unhappy place, once + so high, now fallen so low. + +On another occasion, when he asked for Stilton cheese, the waiter +replied that only English cheeses were supplied! And just as the food +has deteriorated, so has the journalism. “Always remember that we appeal +not to the cabman, but to the cabman’s wife,” said one of Mr Machen’s +friends, a distinguished journalist; and Mr Machen, who, to say the worst +of him, prefers the cabman, might have been a little more disgusted than +he is, and that is not a little. He does his best to fix a considerable +share of the blame for our present condition on this “monstrous +incursion of women.” + +Such things as these are not, however, the main features of Mr Machen’s +confessions—for that is what his pages really are. He is most interesting +when he hints at his incidental experiences at novelist, journalist, +and actor. And here, at the same time, because of his brevity, he is +most disappointing. Mr H. B. Irving once said to him of his book “The +Great God Pan”—“You shouldn’t have done it; you destroy the illusion. +Never take people behind the scenes. I never do.” Mr Machen’s great +mistake in his two latest books is that he never takes us further than +the stage-door. Although he is telling us about himself all the time, +we learn very little about him because he does not tell us enough of +other people. We enjoy his story, but always with a sense of irritation +that he has not dotted more of the i’s and crossed more of the t’s. Time +and again, following on some succulent anecdote, he seems almost to be +about to paint for us the whole moving pageant of the ’nineties, and +just as often he turns aside to trace something else into other and less +interesting channels. + +The truth is “Things Near and Far” is not really a book at all because +it was neither conceived nor written as a book. It is a collection of +amazingly good snippets, a sort of prearranged notebook that might have +borne such a title as “Towards Biography.” One feels about it as about +something that might have been, that almost was, but is not. One is left +wondering whether Mr Machen is a good journalist or a good author, for it +seems fairly evident that he cannot be both, at all events, not at the +same time, as he has tried to be in his two latest books. + +[Sidenote: _Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury_] + +... It is debonair, it is graceful, it is dignified and extraordinarily +at its ease, it is essentially belles-lettres; it is not much more than +that; it is not specially memorable, nor does it presage very brilliantly +of the book to come (in the indefinite future), where “an interior tale +of the soul and its emotions” is to be told through the shapes of “hills +and valleys, woods and rivers, sunrise and sunset, buried temples and +mouldering Roman walls.” Mr Machen has humour, poetic sensibility, a +sense of style; he is reflective, open to the influences of nature, +appreciative of the town’s common and uncommon interests, readily +responsive to the appeal of art and literature. What perhaps his work +lacks to make it true literature is virility, and it wants substance +to make it really worth while, though it is—this must be one’s last +word—exceedingly pleasant. + +[Sidenote: _The Morning Post_] + +Mr Arthur Machen has his full circle of readers, who will be delighted +with this sumptuous edition which Mr Secker has so ably prepared. It +is limited to a thousand sets; five hundred of which have gone to +America. Mr Machen loves the unusual and the mysterious. They appeal to +his imagination and set him thinking on a train of thought which seems +without end. Someone has said that few men can more agreeably fill a +column. The remark finds justification in these volumes. This gift is +the strength and weakness of his writing. It might be said of Mr Machen +that he has at once too much and too little imagination. Too much, that +his ideas flow on like the summer brook; too little, that his style lacks +incisiveness and the power of expressing instantaneously some thought. + +“The Great God Pan” is a fair example of this weakness. He tells us in +“Far Off Things” that he was persuaded to write this tale of horror by +a wish to “pass on the vague, indefinable sense of awe and mystery and +terror” that he had received in childhood days spent in the valley of the +Usk, above Newbridge. The feeling that all the best in human beings is +built on a treacherous morass which may engulf it at any moment has often +been expressed. Mr Machen’s effort does not compare with Stevenson’s “Dr +Jekyll and Mr Hyde.” Its terror is dissipated through failure to bring +any definite incident of horror before the reader. The alternative would +have been to envelop the story in such a wealth of strangeness that the +impression would have been created through atmosphere; the method of Poe. +Mr Machen is neither sufficiently dramatic nor sufficiently keyed to the +weirdness of his tale. It certainly lacks resemblance to the dark gravity +of deep woods. + +From a consideration of this point we notice another peculiarity in Mr +Machen’s work. It is not plagiarism, but the ignoring of any reference +to ideas which other men have worked upon. True, there is no monopoly +of thought, but we are led sometimes right up to a thought which has +been superbly expressed before. It would seem more natural if Mr Machen +directed us to the poet or writer instead of enlarging in his own words +on that idea. It would certainly be more effective from the point of view +of art. + +It may be that we are somewhat critical. There is much to enjoy and +admire in these books with ever a word for the weak and distressed, and +the fascinating hint of “worlds unrealised.” But library editions are +becoming increasingly popular, and we wonder whether they may not be +overdone. These fine books are delightful to handle, but the thought +creeps in if their matter is quite up to the high standard of production; +whether anything but the very best should find a home in these limited +editions, which rise so readily in mere marketable value. Still, Mr +Machen has his admirers. No doubt they will think nothing too good as a +home for his thoughts. + +[Sidenote: _Manchester Guardian_] + +In “Far Off Things” Mr Arthur Machen describes his rambling boyhood +on the borderland of South Wales and his adolescence (a rather sad +affair of lonely lodging and penurious journalism in London) as far +as the publication of his first book. His memories have been laid up +in lavender, and they emerge rather heavily scented. The result is +the praise of old and simple things in a style that has too glib an +antiquarianism to be pleasing over a long stretch. The reader finds +himself predicting Mr Machen’s reaction to each situation as it arises +and trying to forestall the phrase which the author’s sentimental +conservatism will use. For instance, when he describes how his mother +made “fermety” or “frumenty” in the autumn he must allude to it as “a +very honourable dish and a most ancient and Christian pottage.” One +feared in advance some such pomposity. It is the more pity because Mr +Machen is sensitive as well as sentimental, and when he allows his +memories to flow in unprinked English he achieves a beauty apt to the +object he describes, notably in his landscapes of the Usk Valley and the +surrounding hills. + +[Sidenote: _The Outlook_] + +Literature and the journalist do not always rub shoulders nowadays; at +all events few people look to find anything claiming to be prose in the +misprinted, smudgy sheets of our raucous evening Press, unless, perhaps, +in newspapers published North of the Trent. So that it does not promise +well to read in Mr Machen’s preface that his new book appeared seven +years ago in one of the best-known London evening papers under the title +“Confessions of a Literary Man.” It sounds like Mr Bennett all over +again, and misgiving increases when he adds that the confessions were +written to editorial order when he was a reporter. It is an old truth +that Fleet Street has ruined more good writers than Fleet Street ever +made. Only at a first glance does Mr Machen appear to be an exception, +for in spite of the extraordinary quality and power of his present book, +though it challenges comparison with Gissing’s best work and surpasses it +in parts, Mr Machen is quite clearly not the writer he might have been. +“Far Off Things” is one of the most entertaining and familiar books one +remembers; a vivid autobiographical chapter, condensed and complete in +much less than two hundred pages, but it is without that distinctive +art that makes Mr Gosse’s “Father and Son” one of the great pieces of +autobiography of this or any time, and it has not just that sense for +the right word in the right place which knits language into abiding +literature. He cannot wrestle with the conventional:— + + Now winter has its splendours; but with what joy do we welcome + the yearly miracle of spring. We and the whole earth exult + together as though we had been delivered from prison, the + hedgerows and the fields are glad, and the woods are filled + with singing; and men’s hearts are filled with an ineffable + rapture. Israel once more has come out of Egypt, from the house + of bondage. + +That is the prose of the best journalism, but not the prose of the man +who is, first and foremost, expressing the pure content of his mind with +all his mind’s power through the power of words. + +But the real charm of the book lies elsewhere, chiefly in the zest with +which he describes the places he has loved and the people he remembers, +the curious, quiet anecdotes, his sense of poetry in all things, and, +especially, his literary enthusiasms. Cervantes and Scott come into his +range, and even De Quincey, who “wrote in the great manner because he +thought in the great manner.” He is inspiriting about Carlyle, and there +is a tone of voice meant for the detractors of that great man in the +quiet statement: “I know not any man of these days that is worthy to dust +Carlyle’s hat or to clean his pipe for him.” But the journalist comes out +badly in that sentence. The best thing in the book is his description of +the Strand as it was in the ’eighties, and there is a curious parallel +with one of Mr W. H. Davies’ best poems when he writes of Gwent and Twyn +Barlwm. He is equally happy proving that the Rosicrucians never existed +as in describing the conventional garret of authorhood’s infancy, and +there is one magnificent anecdote of a lesson in Welsh pronunciation:— + + I said, “Yn oes oesodd”—from ages to ages. “That is right,” + said my Welsh friend, “speak it so that it makes a sound like + the wind about the mountains.” + +And, as he says himself, the spirit of that sentence is very near to the +heart of true literature. Mr Machen knows what true literature is. There +is a good critic in the man who can define realism as “the depicting of +eternal, inner realities—the ‘things that really are’ of Plato—as opposed +to the description of transitory, external surfaces; the delusory masks +and dominoes with which the human heart hides and drapes itself.” Though +he is digressive he is never garrulous, even when he writes about food +and drink, and he does that well enough to whet the reader’s appetite. + +“Far Off Things,” if it is not a great book, is a book too good to be +read lightly. It contains a great deal of wisdom and more than a little +humour. The author throws out hints of a book yet to be written, in which +hills and valleys, woods and rivers, sunrise and sunset will be described +so that a story is suggested to the reader; something of Wordsworth’s +method, and certainly a method of poetry, though Mr Machen does not seem +to realise it in that way. Such a book he has in his mind, and if, when +it comes, it improves on “Far Off Things,” Mr Machen will have done his +work better than he knew. + +[Sidenote: _Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury_] + +Mr Arthur Machen is a modest man: he says so himself; but his modesty +is of that most profitable kind—to the world, we mean, of course—which +inspired Montaigne, Cowley, “Elia,” and other famous “egoists.” In +“Things Near and Far” he continues the tale he began in “Far Off Things,” +published a few months ago, the tale of his life, outer and inner, public +and private. He is, it is increasingly evident, a man of letters, a +complete man of letters, and nothing but a man of letters. The landmarks +of his life are either one or other of his books, or one or other of +the events out of which a book is to grow. He has a positive flair for +making literary capital out of life. He is a very appreciative collector +of experiences, and always has plenty to say on any point; he is fairly +fertile in ideas, though no great thinker; and he is interested and can +communicate his interest—even in his own books and the reviews they +called forth. That notable modesty of his takes on, by the way, in +presence of those reviews, an aspect too like self-complacency to leave +us quite assured of his ingenuousness. There are, however, many books +less worth 7s. 6d. than this. + +[Sidenote: _Daily News_] + +“Far Off Things,” by Arthur Machen. “Heaven lies about us in our +infancy.” Nevertheless, few sensitive men recall a really happy +boyhood. Mr Machen is one of them. The only child of the rector of +Caerleon-on-Usk, in the romantic solitudes of Gwent, he looks back on +his earliest days as a secluded yet intense experience. The power of +association is strong; and the vein of mysticism which characterises Mr +Machen’s writings both derives from, and is heightened by, the gleam of +such fond recollection. With Sir Thomas Browne, he finds those years “a +miracle ... which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry.” + +We all know that the author of such diversities in unity as +“Hieroglyphics,” “The Great God Pan,” and “The Bowmen,” is a thoroughly +illogical and genial spirit. The incredibly genuine sense of wonder that +runs through his excursions in practical journalism somehow prevents +us from being irritated as we ought to be. His new book is good, if +not a “piece of poetry.” We are glad to have his apologia, it is oddly +convincing. It must be a great and unbalancing thing to find miracles all +the way. + +When Mr Machen writes of his studies, his early yearning for London, +and the hard times he knew in the capital, it is in the same untroubled +spirit. His temperament is unchanged through all these years. “Omnia +exeunt in mysterium”—the thought brings him the mystic’s consolation. +If one loves the unfathomable, why go about to probe it? Yet he demands +realism from literature: De Quincey was his first idol by virtue of this +possession. The old inference is made clear again. The mystic lives not +in experience, but in the aura with which he encases it. To us others +this way of acceptance is an illusion, an escape from the perplexed soul. +But can we make anything better of life? + + +THE REFLECTIONS OF A MAN OF SELF-CONCEIT + +[Sidenote: _The Boston Evening Transcript_] + +An extremely pleasant philosophy harboured by literary folk of a certain +class in regard to the stress of bread-winning is that there is monotony +about such a humdrum occupation. It is not agreeable to work at something +you hate when you long to be literarily productive. Nevertheless, despite +Carl Van Vechten’s sympathetic explosions all over the yellow cover of +this book, we wonder just how much self-respect and inclination may war +with each other in a young man’s soul when the young man lives as Mr +Machen did in his youth. A book called “The Anatomy of Tobacco” was an +early effort. That achieved, he seems to have lived on his father, a +clergyman who had no money. He speaks of the situation thus: “My mother +had been a hopeless invalid for fifteen years; my father’s health had +failed, and he had become very deaf; the poor living of Llanddewi Fach +had grown poorer still through the agricultural smash of 1880; he was +in dire and perpetual straits for money; he underwent most of the +mortifications which are allotted to the poor. It makes me grieve to this +day to remember with what piteous sadness he would lean his head on his +hand; he had lost hope.” + +Thus Mr Machen summarises his family’s situation financially. He does +not appear to have been much comfort to his father. He speaks now of +“grieving.” Better indeed if he had done a little honest work. He goes +to London. He reads manuscripts for a bookseller. Some intelligent +people like that sort of occupation. He calls it a “weary business.” +In fact, this book is filled with complaints, constant, unstinted in +their outgo, because he, Arthur Machen, could not do exactly what he +wished to do, on all occasions. There is a good deal of what we might +term the pseudo-classic touch to his style. He likes to pose as an +intellectual deserving of immortality. He is not content to be one of our +leading contemporaries. He prefers, as in one instance, to “abide by the +verdict of M. Octave Uzanne, who is said, I believe, to be a good judge +of letters. He said that it (a certain work called ‘The Chronicle of +Clemendy’) was ‘le renouveau de la Rennaissance,’ and that I was sure of +my place beside Rabelais and Boccaccio, on the serene immortal seats.” + +We quote the above from Mr Machen because it is wholly typical of the +man. Another remark in reference to George Moore’s “A Mummer’s Wife” +shows his attitude toward the age in which he lives equally well. He +complains because no good novel of stage life has been written. And +then he adds that in the old days, the days of the Crummles Company, it +would have been easier. That is nonsense. This age and generation is +adequate for all, provided some effort at adaptation is made by those of +us who have been too overburdened by the weight of the glorious past. +A good novel can be written as well in the twentieth century as in the +seventeenth, provided some one has the brains to compass it. The whole +book shows the reflections of a conceited man of mediocre ability, who +buries his talent in the ashes of the past, mumbles over it incessant +Latin quotations, pats himself on the back because he knows so much Latin +to quote and then ... is continually irritated because the world hurries +by without digging into the ashes, or listening respectfully to his +incantations.—D. F. G. + +[Sidenote: Maurice Hewlett in _The Evening Standard_] + +... “To be in the Strand,” he says, sighing, “was like drinking punch +and reading Dickens.” So it was—but one can read Dickens the better +without the punch, either within or without the pages. It was a strange +chapter of literary history where human happiness could not be imagined +or pictured without too much to eat and too much to drink. I will be +sentimental with almost anyone, for the mingling of tears is as wholesome +a vent as the chiming of laughter—but I cannot cry over the bad smells of +yesteryear to save my life. When I remember Holywell Street I turn with +thanksgiving to Charing Cross Road. It is nothing to write home about—but +you can feel the wind in it. So much for that.... + + + + +DOG AND DUCK + + +[Sidenote: Laurence Housman in _Now and Then_] + +The brief essay is a friendly form of literature; it enables the writer +to say zestfully just what is in his mind to say, and no more. The moment +his zest diminishes he can leave off, and another day start fresh on +a new subject. So, in small measure, it gives us the man, the natural +everyday furnishings of his brain, the room he lives in, the mental +paraphernalia with which his taste for life has surrounded him. + +The brief essay is, therefore, a personal test of character. Its writer +need not make you, or even wish to make you agree with his opinions, he +may have that type of minority mind which prefers to annoy people; he may +be unlovable, provocative, sceptical, superstitious—I could string you +any number of unvirtuous qualities from which a good brief essay may be +compounded—but he must be himself, he must be interesting, and he must +have a point of view. + +I have not the pleasure, or the pain, of Mr Machen’s personal +acquaintance. I do not know whether I should like him; but I do know +that he would interest me—that he is himself, and that he has a point of +view. I think that often we should differ and sometimes quarrel, that +his point of view occasionally invites as much ridicule as it casts on +others, that it is now and then inconsistent. But the inconsistency is +all of a piece with the character: he has a mind with a certain focus, +outside which the view becomes blurred, perhaps a little distorted. It +is the kind of mind which Mr Chesterton invented for himself, the better +to attract attention to the good which God had given him: he has a mind +credulous toward folk-lore and the past, incredulous toward modern +history and science; but he does not explain why folk-lore should be +believed and modern history rejected—beyond giving us a few instances +where folk-lore has been proved true, and modern history proved false; as +to which one need only say that the means for correcting modern history +are more abundantly to hand than those for correcting folk-lore. He +is a romantic, and has a romantic detestation for the impossibilities +of Euclid, whom he therefore dismisses as unworthy of the wise man’s +consideration. But I could be just as romantic in favour of Euclid, on +those very same grounds. It is only by giving it impossible things to +believe that Euclid provides the human brain with foothold for clear +logical thinking. It is only, as Mr Chesterton might say, by accepting +the impossible that man can attain to true belief. It is on those lines +that theology has provided us with a spiritualised Euclid of its own: and +only by believing in its impossibilities shall we ever get to eternal +life—which in itself is to the human mind an impossible condition, unless +miserable science, through the theories of Einstein, is now going to +help us to accept it. It is quite possible to be as romantic in one’s +acceptance of science as Mr Machen is in his acceptance of folk-lore. + +But it is when Mr Machen is sceptical of human nature’s ability to +recapture the good it has let go that I quarrel with him most. As surely +as I could train an intelligent child to be superstitious about going +under a ladder, so surely could I train it to enjoy the bracing and +rhythmical exercise of the Morris dance, on which Mr Machen throws a +black and a wicked doubt for which I do not readily forgive him. + +This only means that in his twenty-eight essays, his _Dogs_ and his +_Ducks_, Mr Machen has not always scored a complete “Duck,” and brought +his point home with conviction. For the meaning of which I refer +the reader to the first essay, which gives the book its unexplained +title. But every one of them is interesting and attractive, even when +provocative. + +[Sidenote: _New York Herald_] + +Some twenty-odd little essays by Arthur Machen have been gathered into +a book carrying the title of the first essay, “Dog and Duck” (Knopf), +on its cover. This singular combination refers to an ancient game that +is still played in a Georgian setting in London, but before Machen gets +through describing the game he takes the reader through a famous criminal +trial of the eighteenth century. Carl Van Vechten says for the publisher +that these essays are “in the Dickens manner,” but we found little of +that savour in “Roast Goose” or “Martinmas” or “Christmas Mumming,” just +the kind of subjects Dickens wrote about but in a so different manner and +spirit. But, on their own merits, they make very agreeable reading. + +[Sidenote: _Boston Transcript_] + +This collection of rambling essays represents a late phase of its +author’s work and presents an interesting contrast with some of the +earlier books recently reissued as the result of the growth of a Machen +cult in this country. The newer Machen is revealed as a less eccentric, +healthier, but not less sensitive writer than the old. There is in “Dog +and Duck” and its companion essays little trace of the author’s former +prepossession with things occult and ghastly, while his more pleasing +qualities as a writer are fairly well represented. When Machen writes +with a gentle regret for things past or passing, such as old sports and +old enjoyments, or the disappearance of the vulgar Valentine and the +“fogs of yesteryear,” he is altogether charming. + +A number of the essays have a satiric tinge, often sharply pointed +and telling, as in “Simnel Cakes,” wherein Machen pays his respects +to the professional etymologist, or “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with +its observations of the development of the popular idea of a fairy. +Elsewhere there is a good deal of matter that is trite and obvious, as +when the author demonstrates that Shakespeare was a practical man of the +theatre rather than a university “don,” or that the Victorians were not +strait-laced on all occasions. Briefly, in a number of the essays one +perceives the journalist writing to fill space. There is much in the +book that will not enhance Machen’s reputation as a man of letters. + +[Sidenote: _The Manchester Guardian_] + +The suspicion which assails the reader who is familiar with the present +state of the “first edition” market as he takes up Mr Machen’s new +book of essays is very natural. In a note on the dust-cover is the +announcement that the issue is limited to less than a thousand copies, +and that the author has autographed a considerable number of them. This, +taken in conjunction with the news from America that at the auction +of Mr John Quinn’s library two first-edition copies of Mr Machen’s +earlier works were sold at impressive figures, irresistibly suggests +that one, at all events, of the immediate purposes of “Dog and Duck” +has been to “catch the market.” If this be so, then the modern craze +for book-collecting has for once been useful. The essays are selected +from the author’s most recent journalism, and the reader will have rich +enjoyment in them. A characteristic corn-cob atmosphere is created in the +very first pages, describing with a quiet and mellow humour the ancient +pastime of “Dog and Duck,” which is so simple, we are assured, that only +a soft india-rubber ball and a garden surrounded by an unbroken path +are needed; yet it takes a lifetime for the player to become an expert. +Dissertations on valentines, simnel cakes, old port, the only good way to +make chocolate, fogs in November, and Shakespeare, Bacon, collops, and +astrology follow handsomely; and through them all we have ample evidence +that Mr Machen has kept intact his creed that, in his own language, +“it is the love of splendour—the splendid robe, the splendid word, the +splendid picture—which constitutes the vital distinction between man and +brute. Many beasts have reason, the faculty of using means for a certain +end. But only man has art, which is the love of splendour and the desire +to create it.” The wistful note introduced a year since into his “Things +Near and Far” develops occasionally into a page-long phase of sighing +ostentatiously and regretting angrily, for he cannot help remembering the +glories of his own youth in London that are no more.—T. M. + +[Sidenote: _The Times Literary Supplement._] + +About most of the essays in Mr Arthur Machen’s “Dog and Duck”: A London +Calendar et cetera, there is a graceful tenuousness which compares +interestingly with the fiercer note of the other few. While he is +gravely and reflectively tuning his discursive pen to the changing +seasons of the year, he is grave, tenderly reminiscent, a trifle elderly. +He discourses of the New Year and French influence in Scotland, of bygone +valentines in February, of March and simnel cakes, of May and the decay +of joy, of July and why young men row races at Henley, of roast goose in +September, of first fogs in October, and so forth. These essays, with +the charming account of the (we suspect) apocryphal game of Dog and Duck +which constitutes the first, are nearly all in the wistful note which is +characteristic of this author. + +Mr Machen excels at the picturesque-peevish, when he complains that the +joys which he knew in his youth are no more, that joy has vanished like +the fogs and horse-omnibuses, that the race of Englishmen has perished +to give place to a generation of inmates for a convalescent home. Then +all of a sudden he flares up, and the hidden reason seems to be that some +misguided doctor once tried to put Mr Machen on a diet: at all events the +flare-up takes the form of violent diatribes against any interference in +the name of science, health, or intelligence with the freedom of the +stomach to indulge in wine, beer, stout, roast beef, kidneys, oysters, +and other fleshly delights. At one moment he attacks poor old superseded +Euclid under this inspiration, at another he satirically concludes that +on scientific principles we had all better spend Christmas in gaol; and +he will fire off a broadside at any moment against those who object to +self-indulgence, who disbelieve in a primitive roystering Shakespeare, +and who show any tendency to explain away anything at all. They hate +life, says Mr Machen; but apparently he himself confesses to finding the +actualities of life repulsive. One must get away from them somehow, then; +young men do it by rowing themselves blue in the face, pure scientists +by turning to abstractions, applied scientists by interfering with old +ideas, and Mr Machen by imagining that he knew what Merrie England was +like, somewhere about Caerleon in the day of Chaucer. Now he need never +be dull, for he can revile the present in musical language. + +[Sidenote: H. P. Collins in _The Outlook_] + +Mr Machen has the one great requisite of a popular journalist: he holds +the reader’s attention from the beginning to the end of his article, and +holds it no longer. He is never dull; and he is never profound. To adopt +a simile from the ingenious old game of “Dog and Duck” into which he +initiates us: he brings his ball to rest between the chases without going +to earth in “grounds” or “green,” scores five points or maybe ten—he +never rounds the last corner and attains the Duck for a score of forty. + +Mr Machen has a spirited and genial manner; but it does not proceed from +a really robust and consistent personality. He is akin to Mr Chesterton +in his gusto, his love of good fare, and his faith in medievalism and +Merrie England; but he has none of Mr Chesterton’s wit and intellectual +vigour. In “Far Off Things” the author’s mystical attitude brought him +through in a qualified triumph; it has thinned unawares to sentimentality +in these laments for valentines in February, Victorian bonhomie, and the +fogs of yesteryear. He is vexed with Hewlett for his dislike of “the +universe in general and human nature in particular”! It is nothing to +the cheery tribe of Machen that there are and always have been those to +whom history is not a pretty game, those who cannot afford milk-punch and +those who cannot stomach roast goose and sage-and-onion. What Mr Machen, +for all his gestures, cannot stomach is reality. He lives in a world not +of experience but of legend, where it will please many to visit him. + +It is with relief, though as must needs be a touch of sadness, that one +turns from Mr Machen to these posthumous essays of Maurice Hewlett. From +rose-coloured and enervating mists we pass to the keen air of Wiltshire +and the keener stimulus of the voice that is now still. + +[Sidenote: Richard Church in _The Nation and Athenæum_] + +Mr Machen is a good journalist because he writes clearly and simply, +and, for some reason or other, makes us finish reading his articles. +We may think that his god, Commonsense, is often an uncommon fool, a +creature of shallow thought and indolent prejudice, but we read on and +enjoy the author’s company—often with a yawn. It is boring to hear +that the world of to-day is degenerate, that the spirit of joy left +England somewhere about the time of Elizabeth; for such talk recalls the +conversation of the clubs, and the bores who always buttonhole us when +we are particularly depressed by the weather or the political situation. +Mr Machen is inclined to overdo this old “stunt” of the golden days of +thirty, forty, fifty, five hundred years ago. In one article after +another it appears, like the conventional “sea-runs” in the Norse and +Keltic folktales. Our exasperation may be due to the fact that these +articles are read one after another in the book, whereas they should be, +and originally were, scattered in the periodical Press. Mr Machen has a +hearty way with him, and a humorous and observant eye which informs a +mind never weary of the pageant of passing events. In his description of +old scenes and games, of personal adventures, of the flotsam and jetsam +incidental to the daily life of his neighbour—and all the world is his +neighbour—he is delightful and Dickensian. When he dogmatises he tends to +become “lowbrow,” which is equally as unpleasant as being “highbrow.” The +publisher is to be congratulated on the perfect production of this book. + + + + +THE OTHER SIDE + + +[Sidenote: Marc Logé in _La Revue Hebdomadaire_] + +La littérature anglaise contemporaine possède peu de figures plus +curieuses ni plus sincères que celle de M. Arthur Machen, mystique et +satiriste, lettré et rêveur, qui traverse le prosaïsme de la vie moderne +comme un étranger revenant de très loin,—du moyen âge pour le moins—et +qui se trouve sans cesse choqué, peiné et dépaysé par ce qu’il voit +et entend. L’œuvre de M. Machen compte déjà une vingtaine de volumes, +dont plusieurs sont fort recherchés par les bibliophiles pour leur +rareté. Et il vient de publier deux nouveaux récits,—autobiographiques +ceux-là,—“Things Near and Far” et Arthur Machen, une “Bibliographie,” +agrémentée de notes et de souvenirs, qui éclairent singulièrement sa si +originale personnalité. + +M. Arthur Machen passa une grande partie de sa jeunesse dans un +presbytère du pays de Galles, dont l’ambiance mystique a mis sur sa +pensée une empreinte ineffaçable. Il a, toute sa vie, été hanté par +le profond mystère de la beauté, et toutes ses œuvres sont comme +frémissantes d’un émerveillement incessant, qu’il s’efforce de +communiquer à ses lecteurs. Et ce n’est pas sa faute si ceux-ci ne +connaissent point le charme de Caermaen la Blanche, ou la magie du doux +pays de Gwent. Ses héros, dont la jeunesse ardente et tourmentée doit +ressembler, on le devine, beaucoup à celle de M. Machen, laissèrent +envahir leurs âmes rares et étranges par des rêves que les gens sensés et +ordinaires qualifieraient de folies. Mais M. Machen excelle à dépeindre +ce qui se trouve “sur les confins mêmes de l’inconnu.” C’est pourquoi il +aime pardessus toute la Nature. + +Pourtant l’impérieuse nécessité de la vie l’obligea à quitter ses +bois, ses collines et ses montagnes de Galles pour Londres, où l’on +vit ce mystique exercer consciencieusement à Fleet Street le métier +de journaliste qui lui répugnait. Il possédait heureusement le don de +s’intéresser à tout, même à ce qui lui déplaisait le plus. Mais, comme +il l’a dit lui-même dans le _Lignes écrites en contemplant d’une hauteur +de Londres une école communale éclairée par le soleil_,—“celui qui +n’éprouve ni émerveillement ni mystère, ni crainte, ni le sentiment d’un +monde nouveau, ni d’un royaume inconnu dans les environs de Gray’s Inn +Road, ne découvrira jamais ces secrets,—ni au cœur de l’Afrique ni dans +les cités cachées du Thibet. ‘La matière de notre travail est partout +présente,’ disaient les anciens alchimistes; toutes les merveilles se +trouvent à un pas de la gare de King’s Cross” ... Peut-être, lorsqu’elles +sont transmuées par le soleil!... + +M. Machen connut bien des vicissitudes; il fut reporter, puis libraire, +et il put ainsi satisfaire son goût insatiable de livres rares et +curieux, et en particulier d’ouvrages occultes du moyen âge;—il fut +traducteur,—il compila des catalogues; mais il continua toujours, malgré +toutes les difficultés d’une vie laborieuse, à écrire et à proclamer la +permanence de la beauté. + +Il est pourtant curieux de noter qu’à côté de ce mystère de la beauté, +il fut également pénétré par le mystère de l’horrible: et l’influence de +Poë est nettement apparente dans ses deux œuvres de jeunesse, “The Great +God Pan” et “The Three Impostors.” Pourtant sa conception de l’horrible +diffère de celle de Poë, en ce que le pessimisme morbide de ce dernier +l’entraînait, ainsi que ses lecteurs, vers un désespoir sans fond. M. +Machen, dans sa foi, persiste à voir le soleil et la beauté filtrer à +travers les ténèbres les plus denses et la plus terrible hideur. + +L’œuvre la plus curieuse de M. Machen est, nous semble-t-il, “The Hill +of Dreams,” dont le héros, Lucian Taylor, est un des caractères les plus +troublants du roman anglais moderne. Lucian vit une vie de rêves peuplée +de présences invisibles pour les autres: il circule dans l’aujourd’hui +sans y appartenir; sa sensualité, éveillée par les caresses d’une petite +paysanne perverse, qui ensuite se marie bien sagement avec un bon +fermier,—se transforma, sous l’effet de son imagination et de son désir, +en un étrange mysticisme maladif. Lucian ne vivra désormais que par son +imagination qui est féconde et morbide, et sur laquelle la “magie celte” +exerce une influence puissante. Sa plus grande joie fut désormais de +“rêver,”—laissant son esprit errer parmi des idées à demi imaginées et +délicieuses, en permettant à son cerveau vierge de vagabonder à sa guise. +D’une sensibilité qui allait s’exaspérant avec les années, Lucian se +retrancha de plus en plus dans sa thébaïde spirituelle, inaccessible à +tous les êtres qui l’entouraient. Dans Caermaen, dans sa propre maison, +on le considéra comme un demifou. Mais que lui importait? + +“Il se plongea de plus en plus dans ses livres; tout ce qui était ancien +et désuet était devenu son domaine. Dans le dégoût qu’il éprouvait +pour les stupides questions habituelles: ‘Cela rapportera-t-il? A quoi +bon?’—il ne voulait lire que ce qui était étrange et inutile. La pompe +et le symbolisme de la Kabbalah,—pleine de suggestions de choses encore +plus terribles,—les mystères de la Rose-Croix de Fludd, les énigmes de +Vaughan,—les rêves des alchimistes, faisaient sa joie. Tels étaient ses +compagnons avec les collines et les bois, les ruisseaux et les étangs +solitaires.... Parfois, lorsqu’il était plongé dans ses livres, une +flamme de plaisir montait en lui tout à coup, lui révélant toute une +province, tout un continent inconnu de sa nature, brûlant et embrasé,—et +devant ce triomphe et cette exaltation il reculait, un peu apeuré. Il +était devenu ascète dans son isolement studieux et mélancolique, et la +fusion de pareilles extases l’effrayait.” + +Lucian se met à écrire et ses tourments redoublent, car il “devinait les +immenses difficultés de la carrière littéraire, sans les comprendre +clairement.” De ses longues promenades solitaires à travers les bois +silencieux et crépusculaires, balayés par le grand vent, il “revenait +rempli de pensées, d’émotions et d’imaginations mystiques qu’il +souhaitait ardemment traduire grâce au mot écrit”; mais il ne peut le +faire, et connaît toutes les amertumes. + +“Et dans ces moments-là, la vision habituelle du paysage l’alarmait, et +les sauvages collines, arrondies comme des dômes, et les bois sombres +lui paraissaient les symboles de quelque secret terrible de la vie +intérieure,—de cet étranger, lui-même.” + +C’est ainsi que Lucian se débat et souffre dans les rets de sa propre +imagination, alimentée par toute son hérédité celtique, qui crée autour +de lui des visions tour à tour mystiques ou païennes, sacrées ou +charnelles, qui torturent et broient son âme et son corps. + +Comme fond, contre lequel se détache si douloureusement le pâle visage +tourmenté de Lucian, M. Machen a brossé, avec une ironie mordante, mais +sobre, un tableau de la société bourgeoise de Caermaen;—et le contraste +entre la placidité prosaïque et repue des “county families” et l’âme +inquiète du fils du pasteur, est indiqué par quelques traits fins et +satiriques qui prouvent que M. Machen n’a point perdu son humour à +feuilleter avec amour les bouquins poussiéreux d’autrefois. + +Son dernier livre, “The Secret Glory,” est l’histoire d’un autre jeune +Gallois, Ambrose Meyrick, qui s’efforce, _lui_, d’accorder sa nature +pleine d’élans, de curiosités et d’aspirations vers un idéal tout +gothique, avec la routine conventionnelle prescrite et acceptée. Inutile +de dire qu’il échoue. Mais ce livre est aussi la critique âpre et +passionnée de ces “public schools” qui sont l’orgueil de l’Angleterre, +et dans lesquels M. Machen ne voit, assez justement, que des machines à +broyer toute individualité, et il condamne sévèrement l’esprit de ces +grands centres d’éducation, où toute “excentricité est impitoyablement +réprimée, où toute conscience individuelle est détruite.” Pourtant +Ambrose Meyrick échappe à temps à l’annihilation de sa personnalité, +car il découvre la _gloire secrète_ qu’il porte en lui, et cela le +sauvera. La terre entière devient pour lui “un sanctuaire,” toute vie un +rite et une cérémonie dont le but tend à la possession de la sainteté +mystique,—la découverte du Graal. Pour cela seulement,—pour quelle autre +raison? toutes choses ont été créées? C’est de cela que le petit oiseau +chante dans le buisson, en émettant quelques notes faibles et plaintives +dans les soirées crépusculaires, comme si son petit cœur regrettait +ne pouvoir élever que de si piteuses louanges. C’était cela aussi que +célébrait la splendeur de l’aube blanche sur les collines,—le souffle +des bois à l’aurore. C’était cela qui était figuré dans le cérémonial +rouge du couchant, lorsque des flammes brillaient au-dessus du dôme de la +grande montagne et que des roses semblaient s’épanouir dans les plaines +lointaines du ciel. C’était cela aussi le secret que connaissaient les +endroits obscurs des bois; le mystère du soleil sur la hauteur, et +chaque petite fleur, chaque petite fougère, chaque roseau était chargé +de célébrer secrètement ce sacrement. Ayant compris ces vérités, “tout +ce qui était beau et merveilleux fit dorénavant partie pour lui de la +sainteté; toute la gloire de la vie était dans le service du sanctuaire.” + +L’œuvre de M. Machen est inégale et parfois confuse,—mais il s’en dégage +toujours un charme étrange et pénétrant,—une espèce de fascination qui +provient sans doute de l’extase dont elle est tout imprégnée. Car +l’extase, nous dit-il dans son essai intitule “Hieroglyphics,” est +révélatrice de l’art véritable; celui qui ne cherche à exprimer que +le quotidien, le visible, l’ordinaire, usurpe le titre d’artiste,—qui +n’appartient qu’à ceux qui savent croire à l’invisible, en se fiant +à leur imagination et à leur désir, et tendre de tout leur être vers +l’inconnu. Car l’art, pour M. Machen, ne remplace pas la religion: il en +est une forme! + +[Sidenote: _The Daily Telegraph_] + +Wonderful indeed are the changes and chances of the literary life! Many +years ago—let us say thirty—a judicious student of fiction who happened +upon one of Mr Arthur Machen’s early books might well have thought +to himself, “There can be no keeping down an imagination and a power +of style like these. Whether one likes it or not, this man’s work is +literature, and some meed of fame will undoubtedly be his.” A generation +which had revelled in “The New Arabian Nights” and in “Dr Jekyll and Mr +Hyde” must, it seemed certain, have rewards in store for the writer of +“The Three Impostors” and “The Great God Pan.” + +And then year after year went by, and Arthur Machen remained practically +unknown. One or two more of his singular books appeared, written +exclusively to satisfy himself, and in total disregard of the existence +of any school of public taste. The mystical tragedy of modern life called +“The Hill of Dreams” is not a book for everybody; but it is undeniably +the outpouring of a strangely gifted spirit. + +The war broke out in 1914, and Mr Machen invented a fable about the +“Angels of Mons” which flew all round the English-speaking world, and was +passionately believed by vast multitudes of simple people to be a plain +account of an actual miracle; so that its fabricator naturally got no +credit for them, and met, indeed, with no little abuse for strenuously +declaring that the story was a lie of his own imagining. Then there came +out a curious essay in mystical Christianity, about the coming of the +Holy Grail to a secluded place in Wales. Next appeared a gruesome little +nightmare of a story about an attempted revolt, during the war, of the +animals against mankind, the truth about which was supposed, in the tale, +to have been rigorously suppressed by the censorship. Then the oddest, +certainly, of all that class of recent fiction which has occupied itself +with savage criticism of the English public school system and spirit. + +Still nothing seemed likely to win a wide recognition for this peculiar +talent. And then, quite suddenly, one began to hear it talked about on +all sides among literary people, and especially those of whom Mr Machen +was by this time old enough to be the father. Now, after a remarkably +brief period of celebrity, as these things go, his “Collected Works” +appear in nine stately volumes, beautiful with wide margins and severely +tasteful binding; an edition such as any writer living might be proud of, +and any lover of the externals as well as the substance of books might +delight to see on his shelves. + +It is only too likely that recognition in this very substantial form has +come too late to give Mr Machen more than a fraction of the pleasure +which it would once have yielded. Indeed, one may say it is certain; for +the two volumes of reminiscences included in this edition are sometimes +very painful, though always quite absorbing reading. There is nothing in +them so petty as mere embitterment; but they are the writings of a man +who has suffered deeply. Most deeply, perhaps, during those recent years +of journalistic hack-work of which he definitely declines to give any +straightforward account, but of which melancholy glimpses are to be had +from time to time in one of the most discursive works of autobiography +ever penned. These were the years of acknowledged, and apparently final +and irredeemable, failure, and they can hardly be lived down at such an +age as Mr Machen has reached. + +Success was denied to his earlier books, it may be surmised, because +there was so much less feeling then than exists now for the spirit +of poetic mysticism which went along with the gruesomeness of those +extraordinary tales. They were dismissed by some as “morbid,” and perhaps +they were, although morbidity, by all accounts, is the last quality +which one would attribute to Mr Machen as a man. But the horrors of +sorcery and the embodiment of evil were mingled here with a feeling for +beauty and a severity of style which became more and more apparent in Mr +Machen’s later books; and all through his work runs that thread of sombre +preoccupation with the life of the spirit which, contrasted as it is with +an unusually vivid perception of the colour and detail of the life about +him, makes his personal reminiscences so strangely interesting, and even +his tales of diabolism more plausible than a man merely attempting to +exploit a popular liking for “the supernatural” could possibly have made +them. + +Mr Machen’s talent is certainly one of the most marked and individual +that has appeared in his generation of English writers. + + +UP FROM THE RANKS OF GRUB STREET AUTHORSHIP + +[Sidenote: Robert Hillyer in _The New York Times Book Review_] + +Ten years ago weekly explorations of second-hand bookshops in Boston +never failed to yield me a copy of the American reprints by Dana Estes & +Co. of Arthur Machen’s “House of Souls” and his “Hill of Dreams.” They +were a regular feature of the rubbish counter. For these I usually had +to pay about 50 cents a copy—though I bought one “Hill of Dreams,” which +I still possess, for 10 cents. I must have purchased about twenty of +these books. I gave them to friends, I lent them to friends—it does not +matter which; the volumes disappeared one way or another. It seemed at +the time a method within my means of bestowing great riches on the people +I liked or admired. Few of my friends went away without their copy of a +book they had never heard of, but which they would read for friendship’s +sake. When I had only two copies of “The Hill of Dreams” left, and could +find no more, I decided to suppress my prodigal instincts, but a burst +of generosity brought on by some green chartreuse disposed of one of the +two. The other one, saved by the banishment decreed to monastic liquor, +is still with me. + +And beside it on the shelf is Mr Knopf’s new edition of the book. “The +Hill of Dreams” will never again be found on the rubbish counter; the old +red edition is a collector’s rarity; the new yellow one is a substantial +proof of the advance of good literature in America. During the last +ten years Mr Machen’s art has been recognised; he is almost the only +example of a fine writer rescued from oblivion in his own lifetime. Yet +he has made no concession to the world in general. He has not changed +a word of “The Hill of Dreams” since he wrote it twenty-six years ago. +It is the same book—a failure in 1907, rubbish in 1913, a success in +1923. Obviously, the world has made concessions to the ideas which he +represents. + +The triumph of mechanism, which is shown in its full glory by the +late war and the wars that follow it, has, like all bad tyrannies, +engendered a reaction. For years isolated voices were raised against it, +but they spoke in syllables that were incomprehensible to the minds of +men spellbound by the wonder of Things. In differing accents, protests +came from writers as diverse in talent as Samuel Butler, Walter Pater +and Arthur Machen. People took it for granted that such protests were +the inevitable whine of the Old Order against Progress, an explanation +at once so simple and inclusive that it could dispose of any objection +calculated to disturb their satisfaction in the machinery of manufacture +and the machinery of life. The world, indeed, was fast stampeding into a +herd which would not tolerate the existence of unconverted individuals. +Then suddenly the machine itself went wrong, and threatened, like the +machine in the ballad, to transform its inventor into sausage meat. +There was a wild flight of worshippers from the crumbling shrine of +Moloch—whither? Into Spiritism, Bahaism, neo-Buddhism; into every cult, +in fact, that offered even a temporary shelter from desperation. This +headlong rout into faddism of all sorts was a superficial earnest that +the mind of the race was turning, had in fact turned, back toward an +acknowledgment of the final mystery of life. + +Of this mystery, Arthur Machen has from the first been the consistent +exponent. His mind is that of a medieval Christian; a liberal monk, +perhaps, who has taken many an appreciative peek at the classics in the +library of the foundation. To him all that is beautiful builds walls of +the celestial city in the mind of man; all that makes war against that +beauty is unutterably evil. There is no middle ground. And “The Hill of +Dreams” is the epic of this spiritual battle. + +In the new introduction, written for the new edition, the author tells us +that he intended to write a Robinson Crusoe of the soul: the soul, and +not the body of a man, solitary amid an alien sea. It would have been +impossible for Mr Machen to write any other sort of Robinson Crusoe, for +he never leaves the material world untransmuted; everything becomes, +either for good or for evil, the shadow of an overwhelming portent. Thus +“The Hill of Dreams” shows us life, carnal and ethereal, as heightened +by the oversensitive imagination of the hero, Lucian Taylor. The boy +grows up in the outland country between Wales and England; all the +glamour and terror of ancient forests become a part of him. Left largely +to himself by his pathetically frustrate father, the vicar, and repelled +by the lapses of taste and decency in the provincial society around him, +he wanders over the domed hills under violently blue Summer skies, the +hard glare of Winter and the sad wet twilight of Autumn, while the Roman +past and the Celtic past, whose ruined fortresses and tumuli are only +half-concealed by the moss and the thicket, gradually take possession +of his imagination and ally themselves in his mind with an already +established love of medieval lore, ecclesiastic and occult. All hidden +beauties become his preoccupation, but, driven inward by the vicious +sordidness of actuality, corruption also fascinates him. Year by year +this struggle between the rapture of the inner life and the staleness +of the outer aggravates an intolerable situation to be solved only by +expressing it all in adequate style. But words fail, and the reasonable +mind finally collapses under the weight of the imaginative. + +It is obvious that Mr Machen does not want Lucian to become the victim +of this combat between modern existence and the life of the imagination. +He staves off the conclusion again and again until, forced by the +inevitable, he yields his hero to fate. His unwillingness to surrender +the youth may be accounted for by the fact that, up to a certain point, +Lucian’s life was his life—his autobiography—a circumstance which has +made the book suspiciously bitter in spots. He satirises the moneyed, +the hypocritical, the snobbish, with a fine cruelty and vivid fidelity +to life—but are these shoddy creatures, after all, worthy of so much +attention? Yes, perhaps—if their mere existence is an obstacle to the +higher sanity. And they are such an obstacle to Lucian, who magnifies +their imbecile gestures of futility into really monstrous evils. They are +a part of that wall of loneliness which isolates a naturally friendly and +convivial spirit, driving it in upon itself, until all the beauties that +it loves become, for lack of some one to share them, horrors and madness. + +Fortunately for Mr Machen, he is of stronger stuff than the hero of his +masterpiece. In his two-volume autobiography, “Far Off Things,” which +appeared last Fall, and “Things Near and Far,” which has just been +published, he describes the loneliness which enhedged him and the means +he took to cope with it. Now in his middle fifties, he can look back over +that struggle with no bitterness, but certainly with no complacency. One +cannot be complacent before the materialism of modern life, which not +only fails to help a man whose interests are elsewhere, but will not even +tolerate him if it knows him for what he is. + +Like Lucian, Mr Machen was born in the Welsh borderland, faced poverty in +its fearfullest form—“genteel” poverty—went to London hoping to obtain +the necessities of life by writing, and ended by nearly starving to death +on the wages of tutoring, translating and cataloguing second-hand books. + +In bookshops, he came in contact with alchemical and occult works which +were to influence, though not dominate, all his later writing. Much of +the interest of “Things Near and Far” lies in his treatment of various +phases of mysticism, from its faddish to its serious manifestation. Very +wisely, as I think, he has carefully guarded himself against seizure as +an “adept” by any Spiritistic or pseudo-Oriental cult. In his burlesque +description of a séance, he closes the doors of Spiritism against him:— + + The room is in total darkness. One of the sitters proclaims + with exultation that his nose has been tweaked by Joey, who, + on this side, was a clown. John King, understood to have been + a master mariner, sings “Tom Bowling” in a falsetto voice + through a speaking trumpet. On this Cardinal Newman, known + to be a lover of music, is gratified, and utters the word + “Benedictine.” ... “This spirit’s name is Milton. Henry—no, + John Milton, the author of the ‘Faery Queen.’ He says that they + are very happy.... All repeat the Lord’s Prayer, and Sir Arthur + Conan Doyle expresses his intense gratification.... Well, it + may be so. But I hope it isn’t, and I never shall believe that + it is so.” + +And the Oriental fanatics receive small comfort at Mr Machen’s hands:— + + There is one thing that I hope I may be spared, that is the + comment of the Oriental Occult Ass.... I do hope nobody will + say, “Why, this is only Ruja-Puja! You get it all in the + first chapter of the Anangasataga Raja! It’s all perfectly + elementary. Little Hindu children learn their A.B.C. out of it + in the Svanka Visatvara.” + +Despite his contempt for the physical phenomena of the Spiritists, Mr +Machen concedes their possibility. His one question remains: Is this of +consequence? And he puts the same question concerning his own experience. +During a fit of the most uncontrollable melancholy, he sat down in his +apartment in London, and attempted, by some mental process which he does +not describe, to rid himself of depression. Suddenly the pictures on the +wall + + trembled, dilated, became misty in their outlines; seemed on + the point of disappearing altogether, and then shuddered and + contracted back again into their proper form and solidity; that + is the closest description of what I witnessed: with a shaking + heart, and with a sense that something, I knew not what, was + also being shaken to its foundations. + +He was filled with dread, yet, at the same time, with an almost +unendurable ecstasy. For a moment the fear of death was upon him. Then +gradually the fright passed, leaving him in an exalted and serene +frame of mind that lasted for an entire year. Concerning the physical +phenomenon of the pictures, he remarks:— + + This is all wonderful? I suppose that it is; but let me here + say firmly that I consider an act of kindness to a wretched + mangy kitten to be much more important. + +But the year of peace that followed was, decidedly, of consequence, +since he was lifted above the petty emotions that degrade and destroy +humanity, and he saw life in its true colours. His implied conclusion is, +therefore, that no occult experience is of any consequence in itself; its +sole value is to enhance the dignity, decency and happiness of the human +race. + +All of Mr Machen’s fiercest satirical passages against humanity are +dictated not by hatred but love of humanity. Nothing is so maddening as +to behold a beloved being or race of beings degenerate into Yahoos. We +observe the same quality in Swift, who was the most virulent of satirists +because he was, fundamentally, the tenderest of humanitarians. When Mr +Machen is at his bitterest, we find no desire for vengeance; merely an +infuriated, baffled perplexity that his fellows should sink so low. And +even this emotion he reserves for types; for individuals he exhibits a +friendliness, a conviviality, an understanding, which are worthy of the +rich variety of his nature. + +Indeed, though the mystical side of his character is the most interesting +and the satirical the most entertaining, his Rabelaisian gusto for the +good things of life sets them both off to advantage. He can recreate +London or Touraine with a phrase or give us the play of sunlight on the +brim of an old cup filled with clear wine. All phases of life interest +him, since he has entered into more of them than most men. For example, +in the opening years of the present century he was one of a company of +strolling players. The single chapter he devotes to this pilgrimage might +well be expanded into a sort of Thespian Lavengro. And in literature, all +of whose halls, ante-rooms and little dark corridors are known to him, we +always find him where we should wish to find him—on the side of rapture +and care against emotionalism and slovenliness. For to him “Literature is +the sensuous art of causing exquisite impressions by means of words”:— + + To win the secret of words, to make a phrase that would murmur + of Summer and the bee, to summon the wind into a sentence, to + conjure the odour of the night into the surge and fall and + harmony of a line; this was the tale of the long evenings, of + the candle flame white upon the paper and the eager pen. + +His style approaches the gift of music, and will repel such readers as +consider words to be utilitarian vessels for measuring out their quart +or bushel of meaning. But those who find reality in “Kubla Khan,” “The +Fall of the House of Usher,” or the “Dream Fugue” will find it also in +the books of Arthur Machen, who is of that small group of Coleridge, +De Quincey, Sir Thomas Browne, Poe and Malory—a group where each is a +master. In a vision we use the language of vision, and if on waking +we would interpret what we have seen and heard into the language of +waking, we can only suggest. If we state, the magic slips out between the +syllables. By the marvellous orchestration of his prose, its undertones +and overtones, Mr Machen has suggested to us his vision of the battle +between Light and Darkness—a vision that is far more real than this +seeming reality which shifts with the passing years. It is not strange +that he has been misconstrued as the artist of Terror and of Madness; +he has seen so clearly the titanic war in the troubled spirit of the +world, compared to which all the wars that have scarred the body of the +world are but as the twitching of a sleeper in whose brain the nightmare +rages. And, because of the same limitation which makes Dante’s “Inferno” +infinitely more convincing than his “Paradiso,” Arthur Machen’s lurid +darkness shines with a grander beauty than his open day. For this reason +the superficial minded will persist in calling that great book “The Hill +of Dreams” a “morbid” piece of work. + +Objections of this sort, which entirely overlook the real robustness of +the author’s nature, grow fainter and fainter as the world swings around +to his point of view. In brief, Mr Machen’s outlook on life is similar to +his opinion of occult phenomena: external facts, valueless in themselves, +are only important as they affect the imagination or spirit of man. They +are merely the symbols of the great sacrament that lies behind them. For +him, literature became the escape from circumstance, and he could not, if +he would, relinquish it or write what was not in him. + + And my total receipts for these eighteen volumes, he says, + for these forty-two years of toil, amount to the sum of six + hundred and thirty-five pounds. That is, I have been paid at + the rate of fifteen pounds and a few shillings per annum. + It seems dear, then, that my literary activities cannot be + adequately accounted for on the hypothesis of mere greed and + money-grubbing. + +It is this kind of devotion that gives us our masterpieces, this +slow-burning, indomitable desire, independent of all consideration +but the building up, phrase by phrase, of an enduring structure. That +America, long the source of uninspired materialism, should recognise so +fully the value of Mr Machen’s work, is a happy augury for the future of +our literature. + + +THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY + +[Sidenote: Octave Uzanne in _Le Livre_] + +Je ne sais si la dédicace de ce livre rabelaisien, je veux dire de +haulte graisse, adressée au _Right Honourable, Illustrious and Puissant +Prince_, Humphrey, duc de Glocester, chevalier de l’ordre très noble de +la Jarretière, etc., etc., est une satire barbelée ou l’hommage sérieux +d’un humoriste. Le noble duc me semble le mieux situé pour en décider, +et là dessus je m’en rapporte bien à lui. Mais ce que je constate dès +les premières pages, sans l’ombre d’un doute, c’est l’esprit, le goût +littéraire, la connaissance familière et intime de la langue jusque dans +ses sources vives, le renouveau de Renaissance, si je puis dire, qui +éclate à chaque ligne dans ce qu’écrit Mr Arthur Machen. + +Des contes en eux-mêmes, je ne dis rien, sinon que, les ayant lus, je +les relirai souvent, à petites doses, sans me lasser, comme on visite +ces flacons qui contiennent une fine et réconfortante liqueur. Gervase +Perrot de Clemendy, gentleman, seigneur du manoir de Pwllcwrw,—ce qui, au +pays de Galles, je crois, veut dire “flaque de bière,”—et maréchal des +pots aux assises de l’Ale, ne m’est, je l’avoue humblement, pas autrement +connu. Il me suffit de savoir que, depuis “The Discourse of Ale,” +traduit, paraît-il, du latin, jusqu’au dernier conte des neuf joyeuses +journées, il se montre franc compère, aussi bon Gaulois qu’Anglais +rabelaisien peut l’être, gai à miracle, spirituel à plaisir, fécond en +histoires réjouissantes où les personnages n’échappent au ridicule que +par l’amour, comme le peuvent désirer et faire des créatures en chair +et en os, différentes de sexes et de natures semblables; en un mot, +tel que nous connaissons les conteurs d’Italie et de France: Boccace, +Marguerite, le seigneur des Accords, Camille Blessebois, l’Arétin, +Beroalde de Verville, le Pogge, La Fontaine, et tant d’autres, au premier +rang desquels le traducteur anglais de Marguerite de Navarre et de la +“Chronique de Clemendy” est désormais sûr de sa place.... + +[Sidenote: _The New York Times Book Review_] + +Mr Machen, it will be recalled, is that author who, in the late ’eighties +and the early ’nineties, was so overshadowed by his contemporary, Robert +Louis Stevenson, that it is only of late years that his own varied +genius has received the praise that was its due. Machen has recently +been republished in England and in this country, but “Dog and Duck” does +not belong to his earlier work. Some of the essays may date back several +years, either in whole or in part, but it is clear that most of the +papers are new, and that such as may embody earlier material have been +elaborated and rewritten. + +In “Dog and Duck” Arthur Machen has treated of nearly a score and a half +of subjects; but he has neglected to write on the subject which would be +of greatest use to his reviewer—namely, the art of being casual. For the +essay—the true essay, that is, as defined above, not the thesis essay or +the editorial—must, of all things, wear the air of absolute casuality. +In actual composition, of course, there may have been nothing of the +casual; and the very contrary is probable, painful delivery having, very +likely, followed on long gestation. But when the essay is spread upon +the pages, when the last revision of the proof has been made, it is a +literary product or it is not according as a reader will be left with the +impression that it sprang as spontaneously as Minerva from the head of +Jove. And now that we have been carried into mythology, it might not be +amiss to press the figure a little further. Minerva was the Goddess of +Wisdom; and the burden of the essay—again distinct from the thesis, the +burden of which is knowledge—is wisdom; and moreover, as Minerva, issued +full-panoplied and radiant of jewels and gold. And one thing more; the +true essay will have wit—not loud and boisterous humour, but the wit that +mellows while it stings; in short, the wit of wisdom. + +To return to Arthur Machen: Does “Dog and Duck” satisfy the demands +of our questionnaire? There can be but one answer, an unqualified +affirmative. And that is why the complaint was raised that Mr Machen had +omitted an essay on the art of being casual. How does he achieve his +illusion of apparent chance, of absolute spontaneity, when we well know +that his essays must have been deliberate, as deliberate as any poem? But +let it go; the question is not to be answered of Machen any more than it +can be answered of Stevenson or of Lamb. + +The title essay, it appears, has to do with an English outdoor game of +venerable age, although Americans, apparently, are unfamiliar with it. As +Chase Mallard the pastime of Dog and Duck takes on veritable antiquity. +Yet the reader will not follow Machen through any desire to learn the +technique of this simple outdoor sport; he will, however, be infected +with the gusto of the author in trailing the game itself back through +several generations, mention of it in literature, and especially—for here +one will come upon the Machen of that fascinating psycho-romantic tale, +“The Three Impostors”—in the part Dog and Duck played in a celebrated +murder trial of the eighteenth century. + +Yet, if Machen is entertaining and enlivening when he discourses upon +antique sports, he is none the less so when he directs a flashing eye on +“Valentines and Other Things,” when he turns to the matter of holidays—as +he does more than once—when he talks of April Fool, of Twelfth Night, of +fogs, of February stars, of the vice of making collections (to which we +all are prone), to the matter of splendour, to the art of unbelief. In +his best vein—though to single out any one essay from the teeming sheaf +is invidious—is the one to which he gives the title “The Poor Victorians.” + + We all know [he writes] what the poor Victorians were like. We + have heard all about them over and over again. To begin with, + they were prim. They were proper. They went to bed early. + Their only form of revelry consisted in tea parties. The laws + of their lives were dictated to them by maiden ladies and + the vicar’s wife. As for the arts in the Victorian era, they + could not properly be said to exist. Nobody spoke out: nobody + dared to be “daring.” No picture was painted that went beyond + the vision of the Young Person. No poem that the curate could + possibly dislike was ever written. As to love, the word was, + beware! Above all, there must be no faintest hint of the vital + things, of any sort of realities. And so on and so on, the + general conclusion being that the Victorians couldn’t write, + couldn’t paint, couldn’t think, and couldn’t properly be said + to be alive at all. + +And thus, having stated the case of the moderns against the Victorians, +Mr Machen suddenly whisks from his pocket several documents. The first +is a love poem by the Victorian Tennyson that does not in the least +remind the essayist of Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for Young Ladies or the +vicar’s drawing-room. And then, lest this be a little solemn, he adduces +one of Swinburne’s stanzas on “lazy, laughing, languid Jenny,” who was +equally “fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea.” And from this frankness he +turns to Rossetti; then to Dickens. He finds that there were theatres in +Victoria’s day, and theatre parties; that there were also supper parties, +and rich food, and Burgundy. And, finally, having presented the evidence, +he comes to the summing up. + + The truth is, of course, that the Victorian Age, more + especially the early and mid-Victorian Ages, were times of + jollity and times of liberty, both in life and in letters. + Those people who took a dozen oysters in the Haymarket at + midnight and strolled off to Covent Garden would not have + believed that their grandsons would submit to be smacked and + sent to bed like naughty children. And as in life, so in + letters. What the mid-Victorians wrote, whether it were well + or ill, was written with a relish. We have lost all that. + Cubism, Vorticism, Post-Impressionism; verse that doesn’t scan + and doesn’t rhyme; novels that make one think of a stupid + post-mortem or a dissection: that is what we have in place + of Tennyson, Swinburne, Rossetti, Dickens, Thackeray, the + pre-Raphaelites and the great illustrators of this despised + age, the wood-cutters whose work has become to us miraculous. + Those poor Victorians! + +Arthur Machen is himself—outside of this volume—a late Victorian; so that +this is a defence and an excoriation by one who not only knows what he +is talking about, but whose emotions have been aroused by the slurs cast +upon his people. And there is one phrase of his defence that we shall +do well to linger over for a moment: “Whether they wrote well or ill +it was written with a relish.” It is the relish for life—the relish of +letters—that Machen in the “Dog and Duck” essays would have us recapture, +would help us to recapture. And this is important: as he himself says, +too few of our present-day writers either care to relish life or evince +any desire that their readers should relish letters. Indeed, this is +a phase of English literature which seemed, in the main, to end with +Stevenson, and Machen’s little book is one of the few modern volumes able +in any degree to win it back to us. Thus is “Dog and Duck” literature in +the highest sense. + +In more than one essay does Machen go back even further than to +Stevenson; his little homilies on customs, and especially those on +viands and potations, remind one of Dickens. When he discusses “Roast +Goose: With a Dissertation on Apple Sauce and Sage and Onions,” he even +outdoes Lamb himself. And all these papers are shot with shafts of wit, +stuffed with matured advice; and if Machen, as a philosopher, might fail +in a rigid test, even the most quarrelsome of metaphysicians will be +forced to bow before his sagacity. + +There is a curious note appended to the final essay of the book, a paper +on what the author calls “The Art of Unbelief.” The editor of _The Lyons +Mail_, who had accepted and printed all of the preceding essays, refused +this one with the words:— + + I cannot deal with the enclosed.... I am afraid my readers + would not understand it; ... a mass of dissertation, some of + which I would not ask our linotype operators to translate. + +The essay deals with the survival of the primitive capacity for +myth-making, a recrudescence of which Machen discovers in the absurd +legends surrounding the death of Lord Kitchener which appear to have +gained credence in some circles in which intelligence in respect +to other matters has generally been shown. But either the “linotype +operators” of _The Lyons Mail_ are a peculiarly susceptible force +of workers, or—and, one will conclude, more probably—the editor was +strangely deficient in a sense of humour. Mr Machen, however, turns the +matter off with the good nature one would expect of him; the good nature +which is characteristic of the book. “Such are the amenities,” he says, +“of that highway which Sir Philip Gibbs has so delightfully called ‘the +Street of Adventure.’” + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77402 *** |