Hymns of Praise
Earth Memories is perhaps not the most appropriate title for Mr. Powys' twenty-three brief essays ; they are more cor- rectly hymns to life—a life that Mr. Powys came very near to losing twenty-five years ago. In the opening essay, "A Struggle for Life," Mr. Powys records, with quietness, courage and even some humour, how in 1909 he very nearly came to die : in the November of that year the first symptoms of pul- monary tuberculosis revealed themselves in him and he lay for some weeks extremely ill, "contemplating the bare elms and misty autumnal roof-tops of the town of Sherbourne," before he was recovered enough from the nervous and physical shock to travel to Switzerland. "I am ashamed now to think of how I dramatized my illness," he writes. And he goes on to tell how foolishly he behaved in other matters : staying too long in Switzerland, attempting a colossal mountain walk during his convalescence, going from Switzerland to the Rocky Mountains to hunt bears. Unlike the man in Sherwood Anderson's story, he did not realize that he held his life in his hand like a ball, and that he had only to open his fingers to let it drop. He realizes it now : and in reality these essays; though there is nothing to indicate it except their common spirit of vitality, are prose hymns of praise not only to life, but to the mere fact of existence. Except for the essay "Merton Wood's Luncheon 'I they are extremely quiet and re- flective pieces of work : much as if the singer were singing to amuse himself. ' Here and there Mr. Powys prefaces his singing or breaks its rhythm or its climax by some discursive and inapt philosophy. Thus the essay " Tne Yellow Iris" is gravely marred if not quite ruined aesthetically by its prolix first paragraph, and "Unicorn Legends" suffers similarly. It is a natural fault in a writer of Mr. Powys' temperament and his experience of suffering.
It is very natural also that among the hymns of praise there should be also a hymn of hate; and in "Merton Wood's Luncheon" Mr. Powys raises his voice against scholastic hum- bug in general and certain Oxford dons in particular. Having made an abridgement of Clark's Life and Times of Anthony I Wood, Mr. Powys was pleased and honoured by'an invitation to attend at Merton a luncheon in honour of Wood's tercen- tenary. I am not sure that the resultant essay is not the finest thing in the book : it is a delicious piece of contempt.
Earth Memories is therefore, whatever its faults, a deeply sincere and in many ways a most moving book, written from a genuine impulse, with restraint and beauty. Not so Here's England, which is in every way its antithesis. Its prevailing tone is one of gushing romance and enthusiasm ; and it may very we //have been purposely and solely conceived with a view to attracting Americans and colonials to these shores. They would almost certainly appreciate the entre-nous style of writing, the quotations from olde Englishe _which preface each chapter, and the many recipes for Quainie tristies which are embodied in the text. For myself, I see no reason why such things should not be confined to the pages of ladies'
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