Aspects of Uncertainty
'I i,e Child in the Crystal. By Lady Sybil Lubbock. (Cape. los. 6d.) 111c.,e Poor Hands : a Miner's Autobiography. By B. L. Coombes. (Gollancz. 7s. 6d.) THESE four books have all of them some detachment and skill in self-expression, a remarkable concurrence in its way, because it is rare for the general run of autobiographers to have much idea of writing, and, although some will disagree with Miss Elizabeth Bowen's estimate that the author of No One to Blame might have become a "major artist," there is no doubt about Mrs. Taylor having gifts of an unusual sort. Indeed, her book is in some ways so good that its own merits raise the question why it is not even better and why this cool self-analysis and clarity of style does not succeed entirely in creating a satisfactory "work of art." Mrs. Taylor was the daughter of a consumptive Lancashire weaver, a man who had made a failure of the material side of life and lived only for Sunday and his work at the Methodist chapel. She herself began at the mills at the age of eleven, and suffered all kinds of unhappiness and humilia- tion in her existence at home that ill-health and poverty could cause. She took up religious work, turned to Spiritualism, married, and at last, after many ups and downs, found relative freedom and consolation in psychoanalysis. In case some readers may be frightened off by the mention of this method of approach, it cannot be too firmly stressed that Mrs. Taylor's book is wholly free from jargon, and perhaps her most notable literary gift is a power of explaining her views and experiences with regard to psychoanalytical matters with an admirable lucidity. Her view seems to be that most people would find life easier if they knew a few of the elementary principles of psychoanalytical theory and applied these to themselves. She makes out a good case for this, though whether or not it would be approved of by the mandarins themselves is doubtful ; and it must be admitted that the enlightened application of many other theories of life might be of use if only the necessary enlightenment was present to apply them.
However, to return to Mrs. Taylor as a writer, her powers of exposition are striking. It was a bad day for the teaching profession when they decided not to employ her, because her grasp and common sense would have made her invaluable. It is in such spheres rather than in those of imaginative art that, I am inclined to think, her gifts would have found their best expression. The religious background of her home has followed her in a sense because her new beliefs are accorded the same respect she formerly gave to those with which she was brought up.
In the case of the author of The Convent, who was born in Switzerland and whose book covers only her convent experiences and is not a full-length autobiography, the religious emotions were her own rather than her parents', and, when at the age of twenty she decided to take the veil, her father and mother were far from enthusiastic. However, no serious objection was raised, and their daughter became a novice in the neighbouring convent of the Mystic Rose. The account of her experiences there are convincing and, although critical, are not unreasonably so. The novitiate was not a success, and the mediaeval attitude towards many things,
notably hygiene (dirt, and faulty and inadequate nourishment made tuberculosis and other diseases an ever-present danger), the superstition, hysteria, and jealousies she found there made
her change her mind and return to the world. The description of individual nuns is good in the early pages, but as the book
progresses they tend to lose their identity—perhaps as they did in life. On leaving the convent the author married and settled down. Twenty years later she revisited the Mystic Rose. She found everything as she had left it, and the nuns, many of them sadly aged, engrossed in the affairs of the Duke of Windsor. Mrs. Simpson (whose married name no doubt gave rise to this conversational orientation) writes with fluency in a language that is presumably not her own, but although she conveys her meaning with ease there is an occasional unfamiliar phrase or construction.
Lady Sybil Lubbock and Mr. Coombes, using different material, show that they are both of them interested in writing
as such, and at their best each can write forcibly, though each suffers from a weakness in selective capacity. Both are energetic and determined to get something out of life, but Lady Sybil's book takes her only as far as the age of twenty, which is more or less the point where Mr. Coombes begins his. The Child in the Crystal is an account of what it was like to grow up, come out, and get engaged in late Victorian times. Tht-re is something a little overpowering about these country houses and well-behaved people, and only the fact that the author considered herself to be treated as a bad second- best to to her sister redeems, with a little malice, a dangerously syrupy style. It is a pity that Lady Sybil did not let herself go more among the less agreeable of her relatives. She is obviously indignant about the way one of her cousins was treated by his family, but even with regard to this episode she shows a mildness which someone of her character could hardly have felt. Mrs. Taylor's psychoanalysts would probably have something to say about someone who became engaged to a man who bore the same name as his fiancée's favourite governess.
Mr. Coombes is a miner by profession, and the main part of These Poor Hands is taken up with an account, some of it good, of the ways and dangers of mining. Unfortunately there seems to have been some confusion in the author's mind whether he should present an objective account of a miner's life, or write a plea for a change in the social order, and even these two main themes are sometimes blurred by irrele- vant information. On the one hand, Mr. Coombes implies that he and many of his colleagues dislike mining, while on the other he decries a suggestion that some of them might be found other employment. The fact is, of course, that if Mr. Coombes is a writer (and he has some justification for regarding himself as such), he must want to write, and not go down the mine. But this objection is an individual one, and even he deliberately became a miner, leaving an agricultural neighbour- hood in Herefordshire to do so. Without for one moment belittling the hazards of the mine, or questioning his remarks on conditions there, it cannot be denied that Mr. Coombes writes best when he keeps to his personal experiences.
ANTHONY POWELL.
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