Fictio n Dir L. A. G. &sorra, .
PRAISE be for a book which is really funny, and for satire so good-natured that it does not want to alter what it ridicules. England, Their England is the story of a young man named Donald Cameron who came South in search of England: What he found is here related in full variety, from speech= making at Geneva to cricket on the village green.
This is a book which must be read : the mere reviewer can do no more than mention some of the best things in it. (I may say that on at least every other page I found something which I marked for quotation, until .I gave up in despair.) One good thing is the country house week-end at which Donald arrives with the-fourteensuiteases and the undeserved kudos provided for him by the indefatigable Mr. Huggins. Another is his search for a policy to guide his chief at Geneva: Another is the village cricket match (full marks awarded here) : another the University-rugger match : and yet another the electioneering at Eldonborough. Somewhat deeper aspects of the national character appear in the scene on the roof of the Hotel Josephine, where the film star's sausage- party guests are very nearly burnt to death ; in the talk at the village inn ; and in the corresponding talk in the squire's dining room. The concluding scene, at Winchester, is fine, and—if any such extra evidence is necessary—explains why Mr. Macdonell's victims must so greatly enjoy his strictures.
Mr. Cunliffe Owen's England is the England of Shakespeare and Elizabeth. The hero of The Phoenix and the Dove is Henry Earl of Southampton, " onlie begetter " (perhaps) of Shakespeare's sonnets. Mr. Owen makes him their recipient and Shakespeare's close friend, and makes Elizabeth Vernon, whom he married, Shakespeare's Dark Lady. Henry arrives. from Oxford at Elizabeth's court, and is dazzled by its beauty, though he himself is one of the handsomest things in it and is taken into high favour by the Queen. The Queen and. Shakespeare are jealous of Henry's love for Elizabeth Vernon, and trick him into marrying her. Mr. Owen describes Essex's rebellion and death, and Henry's disgrace and im- prisonment : then Elizabeth herself dies, and Henry and his son catch the plague in Holland.
The story is full, rich, and exciting : yet its atmosphere is one of decadence and decay. It is the lying-in-state of the Elizabethan Age, with the smell of death triumphing over the smell of the incense. There is no hard-hitting action' in the book, but velvets, satins, perfumes, masques, pro- cessions—and soliloquies. Shakespeare soliloquizes about himself. Elizabethodrom Mr. Owen represents as a tortured' and misshapen monster, soliloquizes about herself, England, and her lovers. Henry rhapsodizes about life, and murmurs of Shakespeare, " His eyes . . . His eyes. They saw into my soul. Dare I have such a friend ? " I feel that I owe The Phoenix and the Dove many kinds of praise, and I -wish I could be more enthusiastic about it than I am. Every now and then, just as I was starting to enjoy these carefully written (and beautifully tinted) pages, something held me up.t. The worst obstacle was Shakespeare's soliloquy, in which 1, he seemed to me to talk like a schoolmaster.
By a coincidence, there follow two books, one humorous, the other serious, about America, their America. The parallel cannot, however, be carried far. Mr. Hemingway's is a parody upon Mr. Sherwood Anderson's Dark Laughter and the attitude towards life which it expresses.' Although it was written in 1925, it shows that he has all along been aware of a comic side to the technique which he has himself used so successfully. The Torrent of Spring is often very funny, and one need not have personal acquaintance with the guffawing negroes of Mr. Anderson's story to appreciate it. _
I am afraid, however, that Mr. David Garnett, who contributes an introduction, convicts me of the want of humour. I laughed several times, and smiled a good many more ; but I did not roll on the floor.
Mr. Dahlberg's first noel was praised by, among others, D. H. Lawrence and Arnold 'Bennett, the latter saying of it, " It takes you by the scruff of the neck, and violently forces you to see and see afresh." It was entitled Bottom Dogs. In his second, he continues his exposition of the same aspects of the American scene. The nearest English equivalent I can think of to the particular brand of squalor in which he deals would be the backs of some of those miserable houses which adjoin some of our greater railway termini, in drizzling rain on a late November afternOon. Puddles in back yards, bodily odours, imperfect sanitation—Mr. Dahlberg faces them all, obliging us not only to see but to smell afresh.
" The streaky runs of greasy kitchen sweat were as thick as stage make-up on her face. She kept wiping her chin with the chubby bulging bellyflesh slab of her arm and pulling up the woolen sleeves of her underwear which was sticking to her."
This short excerpt will be enough to illustrate my main ob- jection to Mr. Dahlberg's method. I object to the elegant adjective in the second sentence, not because it is graphic, but because, after it has once startled our minds, we perceive that it is actually misleading. There is too much of this kind of violence in From Flushing to Calvary. Mr. Dahlberg knows a great deal, and sets it down with sincerity. There are two ways of making a reader's flesh creep, one by suggestion the other by going the whole hog. To do the latter successfully, it is imperative to wait for the right occasion, and then to surprise the reader and surpass anything he could have imagined for himself. Mr. Dahlberg's story has obvious merits, but it would have been the better for a little restraint. As the book progresses, it becomes more and more modern in manner, bursting into verse and finally into music.
Mr. Richard Strachey likewise avails himself of the modern technique. His book resembles one of those earlier German films in which everything was photographed from some queer angle for no discoverable reason. The publishers (who also modestly suggest a comparison between him and Swift) make much of this modernity of manner. It seems to me, on the other hand, that Mr. Strachey writes very much better when he is not bothering about being modern at all. I have no prejudice of any kind against any form of technique whatever, provided only that it is the one necessary means of saying what the author has to say ; but I could never feel that Mr. Strachey's methods were necessary to his story. He is very intelligent and has an excellent sense of comedy, and there are several good scenes in his pages. The destruction of the model Brighton built with 'bus tickets is good, and even better is Samuel's ride on the top of a 'bus to visit Mrs. Treetop. Such passages, rather than his deliberate evasion of the straightforward in technique, give the best measure of Mr. Strachey's ability and promise.
Dwelling Place, though far inferior to its predecessor, Broken House, does not seriawly shake one's belief in its author. Its substance is expressed in a paragraph which hints strongly at its faults :
" This poor little family : this sad, yet sweet collection of human beings (sad because born in poverty and a period of dejection following upon war), were the martyrs of what is known in civilised communities as an inferior station and education."
The "superior " person against whom they arc measured is the exquisitely sophisticated Phyllis Roan. Max, the eldest son, falls in love with her, and she ultimately finds that she has fallen in love with him. She would not marry him, even if he had the means for marriage. The climax comes when the couple and Max's sister Anne are out in the woods in a storm. The lovers go off by themselves, and Anne is assaulted by two semi-demented twin farm labourers of forty. Later, Phyllis finds that she is going to have a child. She takes double precautions, marrying a rich lover and drinking an old woman's concoction. The second precaution kills her. There is more in the book than this, but this, plus outbreaks of sentimentality, is too much for its merits to balance. I prefer to regard Broken House as the index of this author's powers.
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