Uncle Silas •
My Uncle Silas. By H. E. Bates. (Jonathan Cape. ios. 6d.) MR. BATEs's Uncle Silas made his bow some five or six years ago—a crusty, tippling reprobate, devoted to his garden—in a short story called The Lily. At intervals other aspects of his character were developed in further sketches and stories, and now he makes an imposing appearance as the subject of a collection of fourteen tales, of which about half are new. In a short preface Mr. Bates describes the origins of this many-sided character, whom he now reveals himself, as one had rather imagined, to have drawn from the life. His name was Joseph Betts, and he lived in a part of that wooded Midland country—to be precise, in Bedfordshire—whirl is the setting of almost all Mr. Bates's best writing. He was Mr. Bates's great-uncle, and these stories derive either from Joseph Betts's own mouth, or from Mr. Bates's childhood recollections, or from the fond legends with which the reputation of every rural character worth the name in time becomes encrusted. Uncle Silas certainly deserved a book to himself, and Mr. Bates was wise to choose a series of stories rather than a novel in which to set him. It would be difficult for the most gifted novelist to avoid making a lush family portrait out of such a figure ; using the form of the short story, Mr. Bates is like a photographer able to snapshot his model from a number of different angles. Seen from a dozen places, Uncle Silas remains much more vivid and alive than he would have been set formally in a solid frame.
It is true that some of the stories, read by themselves, would seem a little thin—Mas and Goliath, for example, an illus- tration of Silas's inventiveness in the form of a description of how he challenged and outwitted a boxing champion, which, unlike most of Mr. Bates's work, makes all its effect on the surface ; or The Race, which is similar in theme and illus- trates Silas's craftiness even more emphatically. But even these—the two weakest stories—contribute something to the general effect which the book as a whole creates—a picture not only of a single character, but of a way of life and of a countryside. These stories are not published with any pre- tence that they represent Mr. Bates's most serious work ; they are primarily written not to move, but to entertain ; but it is Mr. Bates's most enviable gift as a writer that even when he is frankly amusing himself with light exercises the astonishing sensibility which is his particular merit never flags ; he shows the commonplaces of country life more clearly, freshly and delicately than they have been shown before, and gives the fantastic and the bizarre precisely their proper emphasis. No other living writer, given an ancestor like Joseph Betts, could have contrived out of his reminiscences such a consistently lively and evocative creation.
My Uncle Silas is elegantly produced, and decorated with drawings by Mr. Edward Ardizzone which perfectly match the text. It is an agreeable possession.
DEREK VERSCHOYLE.
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