Language barrier
Terence de Vere White
Progress of Stories Laura Riding (Carcanet New Press £7.95)
1—Nive in at the deep end:
An island is all around an island. An island is all round the outside of an island. From one side of an island across to the other side is from outside to out- side; but also from inside to outside; and also from outside to inside. An island is all round the inside and outside of an island. And so with open; and so with closed; and so with beautiful; and so with not beautiful; and so with Miss Banquett; and so with Miss Banquett. That is, it is not possible to lie, that is , only roundness is possible.
That is taken from 'Miss Banquett, or the Populating of Cosmania'; it comes quite late in the story, when one is asking oneself responsibly, 'Am I missing the point?' This is one of Miss Riding's longer, later stories. It began on a philosophical note: Miss Ban- quett is alone on a desert island, Miss Ban- quett is beautiful, but can one be beautiful if no one is there to see it? Miss Banquett meets the difficulty by taking seven days, on an established precedent, to create her own world and its inhabitants. 'Smiling and naked and black, Miss Banquett descended from her dais and walked among her peo- ple, who were also smiling and naked and black.' They were yellow too, and tawny, and blue. They came in every colour, like the most expensive ice cream. There is the merest concession to sensation-seekers when Miss Banquett introduces polar bears to the tawny-faced women. The women sank into 'their accustomed melancholy in- ertia. The bears, however, were not so easi- ly repulsed.' Afterwards the tawny-faced women were 'no happier, but a little more comfortable'. Then there were the fire peo- ple: "We are your fire-people, 0 Spark of Sparks", one called out to her. "I know", she replied.' Then she came closer.
"Oh Bush of Bushes", she said, "how nearly really like home!"
"I know", it replied perfunctorily. And Miss Banquett disappeared into the bush of bushes.'
A convenient place to leave her and to consider the other 'Stories of Ideas'. 'Reali- ty as Port Huntlady' has a magnificent beginning. 'Dan the Dog came to the town of Port Huntlady with two friends, Baby and Slick.' This is Runyan country. We are at home here. But Miss Riding is never predictable. The promising trio disappear, and we are left to consider what makes Port Huntlady the sort of town Port Huntlady is. It is a place where people come for holidays. Lady Port-Huntlady owns the better houses for letting and Cards is the
name of the resort's house-agent. (Note the symbolical importance of 'Cards' in that setting.) 'And Lady Port-Huntlady herself, considered as a human being? ... not this, not that, not particularly anything, and yet so decidedly there?' With Cards she is engaged on some secret business on Foolish Island. The reader hears, in confidence, that the business is connected with the disposal of things left behind by short-term tenants.
While we are being kept waiting for Dan the Dog and his friends is the moment to consider all the characters that have spilled into the story — Tomatoes, who when he was a clergyman was called Clingby, Mabick, a retired publisher, Barney Flagg, a crippled ex-acrobat, and Laura Manilla, a temperamental modiste, Miss Bookworthy, her friend Diana and their adopted baby. Don the Dog and Baby and Slick are rather a letdown when we get to them at last. Slick was a draper's assistant in the town where Dan and Baby were university undergrad- uates. Dan was 'a tall young man with im- perfect muscular control'. Baby was 'perhaps the only gentleman in Port Huntlady'. Dan lived on Baby's money, so did Slick. Slick and Diana married each other. 'Diana was fifteen years older than Slick, but she married him for his vulgarity rather than his youth.' And so it goes until Barney (who sounds Irish) knocked Tomatoes on the head. 'Perhaps this was fun. But Tomatoes was dead.' Not to no purpose; his death introduces yet another character, Miss Man. Tomatoes owes her money since he was a clergyman interested in prostitutes. He used to rescue girls with money borrowed from the Salvation of the Flesh Society of which Miss Man was Mother-Leader.
It might be better to begin the book at the beginning with the 'Stories of Lives'. These are strictly two-dimensional. My first im- pression was of Japanese painting, my se- cond of the story of the ballet given away with the programme. Perhaps I made a mistake plunging the reader in at the deep end. Perhaps the best way is to start by reading the instructions on the bottle: the preface of 1935, when the stories were first published, then the preface to this edition. There we read: 'With the material of the first group of stories I have been very fair. I have done a certain amount of work on it, but no more than was enough to establish it decently in its unimportance. Why did I bother at all?' The author answers that point at length and then helpfully disarms any reader who was looking for some metaphysical catch in the first group of stories. The second lot, which I have dwelt on 'deal with material of diluted impor- tance; they are dilutions, and because they are dilutions they are stories.'
That was written in 1935. Since then, she tells us, 'there has been little hearty response to my writings as a whole, and in some quarters the reception of them has been distinctly surly.' But her flag is still flying. The opening of that first preface read like a parody of St John's Gospel, and
she goes off on a top note: 'I make bold to Suggest that Progress of Stories and its readers of these times, given full scope as an occurrence of contemporary relevance, could produce some illumination of the spiritual date of us.' Before that she has engaged with the reader in a confrontation that each must meet as best he may. 'No, it is not that I am difficult to understand, but that I do so want us all to speak the same conversation. And will those who are In' capable of this please, please go away now' if you have not already gone away.'
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