Good Company
MR. Comprox MACKENZIE is certainly an adept at turning his memories to account. We are to have, he tells us, three volumes (at least) of Athenian Memories, to be followed by a volume of Aegean Memories. The only answer to this is that, if they are to be like 'thevolume now before us, the more there are of them, the better.
First Athenian Memories exemplifies, happily and without effort, all Mr. Mackenzie's qualities as a writer. It is excellent reading.; and its secret is that he is excellent company. To take a reader who is without special- knowledge over a chapter
of history so thorny and so complicated, to lead him from personality to personality, from mood to mood, without once becoming tedious (to that reader) or striking an inhos- pitable note, is a considerable feat : and Mr. Mackenzie, who has all the skill of the virtuoso, is never once guilty of virtuosity. The best things in these pages are so good, and the whole such a victory over disorderly material, that the
innocent reader may well wonder why Mr. Mackenzie is not set upon some literary pedestal and venerated in whispers. The reason is plain. No one can venerate a man who is such delightful company. We want to dine with Mr. Mackenzie and hear him talk, not do obeisance to his effigy. To be a prolific writer, to be versatile, to be always readable, never to be dull : these are curses which have kept the laurel crown from many a man before Mr. Mackenzie. He ought to know
better.
As it is, he starts in from the first page. One after another, the personnel of the British Legation in Athens are set before us in light, revealing touches.
A smallish, finely made man of round about forty, with an air of polite weariness of the war as if it were a woman who would insist on tolking too loudly and insistently to him at a dinner party."
(" Insist—insistently," Mr. Mackenzie ?)
"He was like a boy with a large parcel addressed to himself."
Every character in the book, and every drift of policy, ii made vivid by strokes so easy and definite as to seem obvious.
"Alas, the statesmen and military leaders of Europe wore like schoolboys trying to stop the runaway balloon of the war they had loosed by pulling the ropes in different directions, and they were now being carried helter-skelter over rough country, most of them to drop off one by one with bruises of varying severity to their reputations."
The book is repeatedly and consistently funny. A light malice flickers over it : the account of Secret Service activi- ties is particularly delightful ; but nowhere is there any attempt to even up old scores—though Mr. Beverley Nichols has managed for a moment to set the smooth pen on edge.
Many tributes are paid, one of the finest to Admiral Mark Kerr. The whole muddle of Greek politics is made clear : Chapter II. is masterly, and so, in a different way, is Chapter XIII. The fascination of the Balkan States for Englishmen is amusingly discussed. Where Mr. Mackenzie says" I cannot recall any Englishman who has dared to confess to a passion for Roumania," my thoughts jumped at once to that other Boyle not mentioned here—Colonel " Klondyke " Boyle : but he was a Canadian : so, like General Sarrail, who thought he had found a miracle—the French and English working together—I am " not compelled to consider an exception" to Mr. Mackenzie's dictum. -(Incidentally, the account of General Sarrail here given is an interesting commentary upon certain versions of his career which have appeared in the press.)
, The book is full of good stories. Spectator readers will smile at one, on page 299, concerning Mr. E. S. P. Haynes. Names abound, from Lord Kitchener and Lord Grey to Mr. Chaundy of Oxford, and Mrs. Warre-Cornish. Byron, the spy with the pointed finger-nails ; Tucker : " Clarence " ; Lisa, and her chance encounter with her one-time lover, now Athanasius of Syra, Tenos, Andros, Kea, and Melos : the book is full to overflowing with characters whose surface no one could have observed more acutely, and stories no one could have told with better point. Mr. Mackenzie's touch is always light : the Image of the talker at the dinner table persists, the talker at ease, and confident of his listeners. Only for one craven, unnecessary moment does his nerve desert him, in an apology after one of the most charming chapters of the book, Fresh Figs. But we soon recover from the rebuff, and he does not suspect us again. This is the one trace of self-consciousness (personal, not artistic) in a wise and witty book.
L. A. G. STRONG.
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