ENCOUNTERS.*
ITS alluring title sufficiently advertises the character of this, Miss Bowen's first volume of short stories. One hopes that it will be followed by many more, equally mature in concep- tion and finished in workmanship. For Miss Bowen is the most notable newcomer to that company which, in the death of Katherine Mansfield, lost perhaps its most brilliant light. Her stories bear, indeed they almost challenge, comparison with Miss Mansfield's. Like hers, Miss Bowen's encounters are bloodless ; they will disappoint those who like to see differences settled by an appeal to arms. Like hers, they are concerned with ordinary people, not criminals or lunatics. It is not the conflict of wills or even the clash of raw personali- ties that Miss Bowen describes, but the contact and reaction of temperaments, scarred, as often as not, with tender spots, sore places, old wounds, the marks of former encounters. The occasions and incidents are slight enough in themselves : a harassed business-man eating breakfast at a boarding- house with tiresome people ; a sensitive schoolmistress intimidated by the sinister maturity of three giggling school- girls to whom she had tried to explain the significance and poetry of daffodils ; often, just the exits and entrances of tired, selfish, disappointed people.
Such fragile subjects need delicate handling and a nice sense of proportion or they will become like scenes from a madhouse, or at best a series of tours de force. Many writers could present more violent juxtapositions, many could find more searching turns of phrase and suggest a scene more vividly, but they would be likely to start with a preconceived
standard of intensity to which every situation and theme, however unsuitable to tragic treatment, would be made to conform. They plume themselves, one would think, on being
able to wring tragedy from the fall of a pin; to magnify, by an ingenious manipulation of value and perspective, its mild
declension into an epic impact. Miss Bowen's stories are free from this violent seasoning. Her dislike of exaggeration, the gravity and simplicity of her style, her restraint and her (Continued on page 92.)
• Encounters. By Elizabeth Bowen. London : Mira fa and Jackson. [5..]
carefulness never to tear a passion to tatters, preserve the identity of each story and allow its particular quality to emerge. In work where every detail is subdued to the general effect it is hard to find a passage that will do justice to the high standard of. Miss Bowen's achievement :- " The white-walled drawing-room . . . smelt very strongly of varnish, and seemed to Herbert emptier than a drawing-room ought to be. The chairs and sofas had retreated into corners, they lacked frilliness ; there was something just as startled and staccato about the room as there was about Cicely and Richard. Poor Mother and Dear Father eyed one another apprehensively from opposite walls ; the very tick of the clock was hardly regular."
Miss Bowen declines nearly all the artificial aids to story- writing, the element of suspense, the dramatic situation, the cumulative effect, almost—but not quite—the " clever " dialogue. Yet her stories arc not mere " slices of life." Their unemphatic position, midway between past and future, and looking, Janus-like, to each, gives them a setting and an atmosphere without which they might seem flimsy and unstable. Imponderability is perhaps their danger as it is their charm. They have no ballast of " copy," no evidence of nature-worship, no feats of irrelevant observation. One does not regret these. But perhaps Miss Bowen will increase the volume of the note she strikes. It could not easily be sweeter or clearer.
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