Fiction

BY HERBERT READ

THE first of these novels bears the label " The Choice of the Book Society " ; the second a similar label which reads " Recommended by the Book Society." Presumably, there- fore, the distinguished committee of critics who determine the choice of the Book Society considered these two novels together and decided that A Warning. to Wantons was better than Harriet. I should very much like to know by what obscure reasoning they came to this decision, for by every standard that I can conceive, Harriet is immeasurably the better book. It is written in a better style, it is admirably constructed, it is absolutely convincing in its psychology and it is intensely dramatic ; whereas A Warning to Wantons is badly written, loosely constructed, preposterous in its psycho- logy and fundamentally boring. The only possibility left is that the choice of the Book Society is determined by other than literary standards—by, shall we say, a gambling presentiment of what the public will like ; the public, in their opinion, being

an emotionally starved and half-educated section of humanity, avid for any type of sentimental romance. If this is the policy of the Book Society, it is a pity that critics so dis- tinguished as Mr. Hugh Walpole, Mr. Edmund Blunders and Professor George Gordon should give it the authority of their names, thereby corrupting, on an extensive scale, public literary standards.

By way of substantiating in more detail the criticisms I have made against A Warning to Wantons, I will quote a fair example of the stilted prose in which the whole book is written : " Though so far imbued with what was due to Kardak and himself—for money was a necessity, and his ancestral estate though large was poor—as to marry an Argentine heiress, he considered he had only received the reward due to virtue, when two years later the lady died bequeathing him her fortune and an heir, this action of hers being to his mind her only one in unquestioned good taste."

It is hardly possible to agree with the blurb in describing this as " prose of sheer beauty." Admittedly it is not from one of the " highest pinnacles " of the book, but take this from a scene of rapturous wooing in the moonlight :

" She breathed a sigh of relief as, without demur, he handed them (her hairpins) meekly to her. The danger was past, she had him in hand. But with the exaltation which comes from the successful issue of a perilous enterprise, her spirits rose to such maddening heights as to make it imperative to keep her eyes modestly downcast. It would nit yet be safe to let him see their riotous gaiety. Too often, she lthew, over-confidence may lose a day that seems won. Besides, she reflected, as with dexterous fingers she fastened the coils of her hair, the affair was not yet safely concluded. By some means she had yet to reach the haven of a bedroom without being discovered ; she could not return to the salon with this tell-tale negligent coiffure."

It may seem that I attach too much importance to this question of style, that it is a technical matter of no great interest to the average novel reader. Actually, however, the style of a book is an index to all its other qualities, and Miss Mitchell's prose is a perfect reflector of her crude psychology arid incorrigible sentimentality. A romantic setting can be justified, and fantasy is a legitimate alternative to realism ; but fantasy and even romance has its own logic—it must be self-consistent and give the illusion of its own laws of being. True fantasy, however, is not in question. Miss Mitchell's heroine is merely the embodiment of a false romanticism, exhibiting a coy eroticism in one impossible situation after another.

Harriet is the reconstruction of an historical event—the Penge murder case of 1875. With some slight adaptation of the circumstances, Miss Jenkins proceeds to reconstruct the motives which led four apparently normal people to commit one of the most cruel and disgusting crimes of the last century. She is perfectly successful. The half-witted victim, a young woman of means, is a credible and pathetic figure, and Lewis Oman, the principal villain, a masterly re-creation. It is not a pleasant story—neither is King Lear ; but the unpleasant-

_ ness is sublimated in the art, justified by the tragic atmosphere. Miss Jenkins's style has the rare quality of implying more than it states ; it is somehow invested with an emotional overtone.

Only towards the end of the book does the author seem to falter ; the trial of the murderers is related in a summary and disjointed manner inconsistent with the general design of the book. I think something more or something less was needed,

either a brief impassive statement, or a fuller treatment on the scale of the rest of the book. But this is a minor fault- in an impressive work of art.

Lore and Let Lore comes unheralded ; it is an unpretentious looking book, badly printed and resting on a feather-bed of

more than sixty pages of the publisher's advertisements. Nevertheless it is a very competent and entertaining novel, well written with a quiet humour and a liveliness of observa- tion that gradually engage the reader. It describes the comedy and tragedy of English village life near a cathedral town ; the method of characterization and the general struc- ture of the book is rather old-fashioned and Dickensian, and one has to keep reminding oneself that the time dealt with is of the present day. But the situations in Mr. Woden's book and the emotions provoked by them are independent of time and place, so this cannot be held as an objection against him. It may be restraint on Mr. Woden's part, but I cannot help feeling that he would have a much bigger reputation if he was more conscious of contemporary idiom.

The question of style is once again raised by Mr. Dennis's

book. His earlier books, Mary Lee and Harvest in Poland, were exceptionally well received, and The End of the World was

awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1931. We cannot, therefore, lightly accuse Mr. Dennis of a lack of any distinction of style ; he has made his hit. But can we really condone a writer who habitually uses words and expressions like " ere," " °Mimes," the while," " what there befell," " 'twould " and "'twasn't " ? The following comes from a description of a irrz-.t of foxhounds :

" I have since gathered that they who ride to hounds may include many of the most jovial, the most generous, the most splendid of Englishmen ; the best of the best ; oppressors my eye ! Yet, as I turn over the pages of the Totter or Bystander ; as I reflect on the portion allowed to the landless underfed peasant (agricultural wage-labourer) of England, and to these, the newest hardest rich, taking the day off from their night clubs, who ride over the land that should be his ; or on the dying stag driven landwards again by motor-boats to give pleasure of cruelty to rich Americans who, now that they no longer have slaves to hunt, some such pleasure must have, a newspaper pleaded—to rich Americans and their English husbands and friends—then the old prejudice burns again, and I see the- weary old"woman and the cursed-at

starving old man. . "

Such prose is completely insensitive to any of the qualities that make for style. The book is a detailed reminiscence of a boy's experiences at an old-fashioned secondary school in Lancashire. I use the word " reminiscence," but recollec- tion " or " memory " would perhaps have been more exact ; at least, there is a distinction between two modes of memory which is not clearly expressed in the English language—the distinction which the French more logically maintain between

" le souvenir " and " la memoire." It was the subject of a famous essay by the Danish philosopher, Kierkegaard. The distinction is an important one, implying the difference

between a spontaneous process of retrieving past events—a process in which the personality is merely passive—and a reflective process in which events are held in some kind of emotional suspension. Only in the latter process is the per- sonality in any sense " creative " ; the personality only tends to survive in those who have the faculty of forgetting. The whole question is perhaps rather metaphysical, but Mr. Dennis is a writer whose past work shows that he would not resent this kind of criticism ; who would not resent being told that the whole method of his new book precludes any question of a work of artistic significance. He may reply that such was not his intention, and I would only be toa

willing to admit that in Bloody Mary's he has given us a social document of considerable value. The school in question no longer exists, but some of the evils that characterized it are

still prevalent ; and the conflicts that arise in any com- munity of children will be with us always.