Fiction

By WILLIAM PLOMER Sow people mistrust cleverness because they lack it, and some because they are clever enough to recognize the limita- tions and dangers that sometimes go with it. The first-rate novelist is always clever, but his cleverness is of course disci- plined : he uses it, not to obtain easy effects, but to lend bril- liance where brilliance is needed, and to make seriousness delightful. Many of our novelists are, alas, not at all clever and so can never be first-rate, and indeed reviewers and readers alike must often wonder why so many novels are written. Do the authors hanker for money and fame ? Are they " expressing themselves " ? The answer to both ques- tions must be in the affirmative, but the true purpose of the novel, as of any work of art, is in the first place to describe life from a new angle, and that is a thing which few are clever enough to do.

The very word " clever " originally meant " quick at seizing " and is related to the word " claws," and women are as a rule much quicker in the uptake than men and get their claws quicker into their quarry, often in its most vulnerable parts. Just as cleverness seems to be found more often in female novelists than male ones, so it seems to be more often their enemy. It would be possible to suggest instances of women writers in recent years whose cleverness has made them seem fussy or affected, trying to score a bull's-eye with every sentence and afraid or unable to keep cool. All the same, cleverness is welcome because it is rare, and if we do not praise without reservations the works of certain women writers among us, we may be glad of their achievements. Miss Eliza- beth Bowen is certainly a cause for rejoicing. The Cat Jumps is a book of short stories, and like perhaps all books of short stories it is not of equal impressiveness throughout. When it is good it is very good, and when it is not it is only clever. In one or two of the less successful stories there is a distinct sense of straining after effect, and that of course is an artistic fault, but in the best ones cleverness is made to serve im- portant issues, and the tension then becomes emotional, as is proper. The best of all, called The Disinherited, showi what Miss Bowen can do when all her powers are called into play. Here her prevailing concern with the foibles of the leisured upper middle class rises higher than comedy. The frivolity and weakness of the characters has turned into the moral decay that afflicts those whom " the old order has left stranded, while the new offers them no place." But they are not freakish. They include the youngish men and women who rush about the countryside in cars trying to palliate their condition. They include the old lady playing bridge, the criminal chauffeur, and Miriam, who does Devonshire Teas at one-and-six and Dainty Teas a in carte. An acute comment on contemporary life, this is a brilliant piece of writing. A volume that also includes The Tommy Crans, The Needle-Case and Her Table Spread must be warmly recommended.

The faults of The High House—occasional mawkishness, a ruthless stroke of coincidence at. the most critical moment, and a feminisni at times slightly hysterical—are outweighed by its energetic presentation of a central conflict. A young woman of a French provincial family, after being " moulded into gentleness, patience, -self-effacement and resignation " marries k heavy, selfish savant who takes her to live in a

lonely, rat-ridden, windswept house in the Auvergne. He is a man " damned to go through life without seeing, without hearing anything of what makes life gracious, his own and other people's lives," and she feels that she has been " flung bound, bewildered and helpless, into a conflict with wild beasts." She finds consolation in children, two of her own and one adopted, and it eventually becomes clear that she has "flung herself wildly into maternity, for want of outside distractions." She wants to bring the children Up " by methods born of light—love and confidence ; not by the methods of darkness and chaos—terror and whipping." But her husband ` would understand nothing, he was blinded by jealousy, a veritable dementia of jealousy and hatred," and he drives her to some savage generalizations :

" Oh man, man, blundering, mischievous and destructive creature, dazzled by his own intelligence, and, in all else besotted, below the very beasts ; crass, obtuse, ridiculous bully, barring the highway of naturd. . . . Me, me, me, apoplectic, hideous, mascu- line me ! Oh, to sweep him from the earth, every man of him, and breathe—breathe at last 1 '.'

We see a great deal of the children. Not unskilfully drawn, they are at times painful, as when the little boy thinks of

his sister as " a mysterious little creature, partly will-o% the-wisp, partly white cat, and partly little girl," or when the little girl rhapsodizes about " the marvellous soft moon- light, fragrant with fairies' breath," or when she addresses

her mother as " Darling and Best, my treasure, my- lovely,

my white narcissus." But in spite of this the book has a certain atmosphere and vividness, and is not without value

as a study of the effect a certain kind of man can have on a certain kind of woman, and of motherhood turned morbid. Whatever their good or bad points, the two remaining

books on this list do not suffer from an excess of cleverness. If there still exists a public for a certain type of hackneyed romanticism, for a pompous manner, and characters invested with a false theatrical glamour in a limelight never for an instant dimmed, Mr. Robert Speaight should find numerous admirers. In the pages of the aptly-named Lost Hero features are " chiselled," slightly sardonic expressions play about thin but aristocratic mouths, evening clothes are of course " immaculate," a man cannot be rich without being a " Napoleon of finance " nor a woman beautiful without being " the pride of the pampas, the Aphrodite of the Andes," a villain's face has an " incandescent but malevolent loveliness," while as for the hero himself, an " excessively handsome " tennis champion and airman from the Argentine, he must of course be " somebody important to the Gods, endowed by them with beauty and power, with courage and skill, always to be involved in some high contest . . . " His conversation may be sampled. He can " exclaim " with a " sudden access of feeling " :

" Strange that the religion which claims a monopoly of the supernatural should be wedded to the contemplation of •decay, that the brokers of Eternal Life should be so preoccupied with the details of death."

When he makes love he says, " I'll not deny myself the grandeur of my loving. I claim the ftiffilthent of your passion, your tenderness, your companionship," and more in the same vein. " Come," was all the Aphrodite of the Andes could reply, "as she took his hand and led him forth into the afternoon." Had she been American she would probably have asked him if he had gone cuckoo, but she was already used to his unconscious humour. Describing Peru, had he not " made her see again the rare sugar-canes and eucalyptus trees, the occasional bananas . . . " ?

After this, Mr. Lindsey's simplicities are almost disarming. Tenderness, a tale of village life, is written for the most part in the style of a child's primer :

" The kettle boiled and she made the tea. She poured out the two cups of strong, brown tea and called, not moving from her seat on the curb, she called, Your tea, father.' . . . She was glad. Her father entered the kitchen. The dog lay at the door outside. It did not enter the room. It was not allowed to enter the room. It knew its place. It lay on the mat outside the door, panting."

Such stylistic infantilism is only acceptable when it has something vital to convey. Mr. Hemingway, for example, has played some remarkable tunes on one string, and made magic with monosyllables, but Mr. Lindsey has really nothing to tell us. His characters moralize a little in this strain :

" . . . She saw that there were only two realities in life, that suffering was the common lot of mankind, and tenderness the gift to assuage 'that suffering."

But for the most part they are so taken up with pouring out cups of tea, lighting pipes, and other commonplace matters, that they have no time left to impress themselves on the reader.