Short Stories
The Last Voyage. By James Hanley.—The Big Man. By L. A. G. Strong.—Little Peter the Great. By H. A.
= Manhood.—A Moral Ending, and Other Stories.. By Sylvia Townshend Warner. Being Nos. 5 to 8 of the Furnivall .Books. (Joiner and Steele. 10s. 6d. each.) Ps:rumps we may say that the " meaning " of a story, or the " point," if the word " meaning " sounds too big, lies In the emotion with which it is written, always given, of :eourse, that it comes through to the reader. We might further suggest that if there is no emotion, or no sense of ‘` meaning," the thing is merely an anecdote, not a story.
The emotion with which we are here concerned is not merely the immediate reaction, pitiful or comic, to the event narrated, ,but the resultant of the writer's pondering about life. A shoit. ,story is in some respects a severer test of an author's pei- sonality than the longest novel, since he has to crystallize so ,much into so little space.
Mr. James Hanley survives the test triumphantly ; his is by far the best of these stories, and The Last Voyage is 'a grim vision of the life of a stoker on board ship. To quote Mr. Aldington's admirable introduction, " his material is authentic " ; and we might extend the scope of the word ." material" to include that inner material which is an integral part of an artist's subject. The story moves with an extraordinary surety, in an idiom thoroughly adapted to the matter. Its " point " is an angry and pitiful vision of the life of the labouring classes ; but it is never dreary, never whining, for Mr. Hanley has the tragic vision, which is wider and harder than the mere emotion over an event. This is not a tale told because the yarn struck the author as a good one, interesting or amusing, but because Mr. Hanley has something to say and is an artist who can trans- form his vision into an objective thing.
Mr. Manhood also has something to say in his Little Peter the Great, but he has a moral message rather than a clear vision. Peter Blagott is a coach-painter who has inherited an inn where his loneliness is relieved only by his dog, which is poisoned by two itinerant medicine-pedlars. One of them is an amazing character, full of noisy vitality,' rather of the Chestertonian kind, to whom Peter, thinking the dog has died a natural death, wishes to give the inn. When he discovers that this pedlar's companion has poisoned the dog, he forgives him ; whence his greatness. This is distinctly a story, and not an anecdote ; but one feels that the idea dictated the end, rather than that the end was born from the facts. Moreover, the whole thing is somewhat over- written ; it smacks here and there of literature-making, and thus tends to leave the impression of conscious virtuosity.
We reach anecdote proper in Miss Warner's three short sketches of village life. They have what is necessary to anecdote, a certain amount of humour and even wit ; but they are written in a convention of which we are beginning to get tired, namely, that of England's green and pleasant land being provided with a rustic satyr behind every hedge, and a plentiful supply of Pandemian Venuses in every village. Mr. T. F,- Powys, wlio appropriately supplies the intro- duction, remarks that " The secret of Sylvia Warner's success in literature is that she understands exactly how much flavouring to put into a dish—and she never lets the cake burn—sometimes she snatches out a potato before it is quite done, but she puts it back again with a pretty fillip, so that it is impossible to notice that anything is lacking in the pie." What dark secret of criticism this astonishingly mixed metaphor may conceal it is impossible-to say. It suggests, however, that these three anecdotes were potatoes snatched out of a cake, and were found not worth while to put back into any pie. The reader will gain what nourish- ment he may from this mixed grill.
Mr. L. A. G. Strong tells us about a couple, who have been married for some years, going to Switzerland, where they see a very big man by whom the wife is much attracted. The anecdote seems absolutely pointless. Any emotion one may be expected to feel, either of .the particular event or more generally, one suspects of being fudge. The booklet, in common with all the Furnivall productions, contains a fore- word, this one by Mr. A. E. Coppard, and like all of them except Mr. Aldington's, is a mere -indiscriminate buttering of the writer of the succeeding tale. . Mr. Aldiiigton does not overpraise, though he has the best excuse for doing so, but indicates the tradition in which his author writes. This, incidentally, is far better propaganda.
Mr. Aldington's own " story " ought, properly speaking, not to be included in this batch at all : it is a dialogue, in which three still war-shattered men indict present-day society, and at the conclusion of which one of them goes off to kill his wife, her lover, and himself. To criticize this as a story would be invidious ; it would require what space here will not allow : philosophic comment. It is worth reading as vividly expressing a not uncommon, though perhaps not very constructive, attitude, and it is a pity that it should be disfigured by so much ill-printing and misprinting : it is not what one expects from an edition-de-luxe.
All these books give one the feeling that they are " hook making," produced to scrounge as much money as possible for publisher and author from a snob public, a form of com- merce not in the best interests of literature ; for though writing is a trade, it is an hOhouiable oze. Mr. Hanley's story, however, should survive any such slur cast upon it, and is well worth the somewhat fantastic price asked.
BONAMY DOBREE,
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