Fiction
Sounding Harps and Tinkling Cymbals
April Fools. Compton Mackenzie. (Cassell. 7s. ed.) Tan modem novelist's pursuit of the fluid, elusive quality in life entices him frequently into attenuated impressionism and incoherence ; whereas, in art, the essence of that elusiveness, that "slow sad music of humanity," haunts the strictest order. This is not to revive that ancient feud of paradoxes, classicism versus romanticism ; there are, particularly in the novel, many orders but the same spirit. One may note, for instance, that Miss Maconechy, with her limited range and her almost eccentric deference to the conventions of her characters, releases the spirit, while Mr. Knut Hamsun, with his garrulous impressionism, chains and wearies it. The paradox is that Miss Maconechy has written a virtually plotless and externally formless novel, whose substance itself is hard to define. But a stealthy law governs it : creatures who were young grow old almost before they know, and vanish like shadows.
The scene is rural England, and alternates between the immobile life of a county family and the strict quietude of the neighbouring vicarage. The characters appear, glitter, resign themselves to the law and pass. In whom can one's interest centre ? In these women, young and old, who believe with ironic and religious austerity in the conventional subservience to their men ? In the men, who gravely regard their lives as a kind of long patient communion with the unknown ? In Philip, the heir, who, when the property comes into his hands, abandons a life of very nebulous debauch—Miss Maconechy's one attempt to convince us of Philip's vices by means of a casual telephone conversation with a discarded mistress is very crude—and who becomes an ascetic and taciturn country gentleman ? In Caroline, the vicar's terrified wraith-like daughter who marries Philip in the end, and who presumably dies—though this is not clear—in child-birth ? In the half-dozen children who grow up and marry ? There is no dominating will. Miss Maconechy's method, which evades all crises and puritanically denies itself the sensuous pleasures of tangling one creature artificially with another, prunes all but the most sober emotions and imposes a mood of stoicial resignation. One recognizes the painful rightness of her decision. She has the irony and humour not of the rebel but of the prisoner. Her people may not live : they are subdued by law and doctrine ; but they have been observed living their brief phases in her grave imagination. There is, in the best pages, something terrible about her reticence, something frightening and macabre in the monotone of her strange conventionalized, dialogue. With the , profound Englishness of her world she blends a remarkable spiritual bleakness which, however, occasionally breaks down in such mechanized hyphenations as "mind-realization," "mind- volition.". Vanishing Shadows is not a great book ; ft is not everybody's book, but it is a distinguished and original achievement. In its tranquillity "the slow, sad music" is unforgettable.
From Miss Maconechy's devotions to Mr. ICnut Hamsun's garrulous irony is a long step. He begins in the familiar way with Daniel, the sullen peasant, carving his path into the Norwegian forests, and building his-hut, but soon abandons him for the devitalized chatter and intrigue of a mountain sanatorium. His worthless and egotistical people, proud of their diseases, suspicious and jealous, weave their quarrels, their snobberies and amours in a confusion of pettiness from which eventually emerges Frocken Espard's commonplace liaisons first with a bogus Count, and then with the peasant. The consequences are tragic, but perhaps these shallow souls are incapable of tragedy. Mr. Hamsun's scrappy realism is undeniably effective in its way ; the atmosphere of the sanatorium, with its debilitating effect upon the will, becomes gradually real amid the drizzle of irrelevance. Even so, he strikes one as a writer who is spiritually lost ; his exaltation before the brute strength of the peasant—only the weak can worship the brutally strong—has waned, and he is left with little but a sniggering contempt for the townspeople and the interest of the caricaturist in their absurdities. The "slow, sad music ". is inaudible amid this chatter of tinkling cymbals.
War in Heaven is in many respects a distinctive piece of work, yet it suffers from the obscurity, the vague metaphysics and top-heavy mysticism of most books which dabble in the occult. One is for some time bewildered by not knowing whether Mr. Williams is " croyant," sceptical, or artist. The
story is concerned with the endeavours of a dowdy and sadistic old publisher to gain possession of an altar chalice which he believes to be the Holy Grail. His intention is to perform the sacrificial rites Of black magic upon a small child. One is in a bewildering world of Oriental necromancy—but with this the magazines have already made us familiar. There is the jargon of pseudo-metaphysics. The publisher is opposed by a holy and wily Archdeacon, who is aided by a Christlike being called—most unfortunately, I think—The Stranger. The Archdeacon suggests a debt to Mr. T. F. Powys, and he is the only really living character. The others are either dull foils or sinister patterns. There is a certain amount of uncom- fortable humour running undecidedly through the narra- tive. On the other hand, the book has moments of tense excitement, and the scenes enacted in the presence of the Grail are filled with an exultant lyricism which suggests that Mr. Williams would have been happier if he had abandoned his realism and his discourses for pure fantasy, or parable.
Miss Clara Viebig's book has nothing elusive or obscure about it. It goes to the other extreme and is burdened with the "seven deadly virtues." She writes a tender and re- spectable account of a young German schoolma'am's struggles in a slum school, and her hesitation between marriage and a career. Naturally, even after the conventional second chance, she renounces her own private desires.
April Fools is quite good, imitation Wodehouse. It is the complete "scream." One expected something rather different from Mr. Mackenzie's pen when an exasperated and wealthy brother presented his scandalmongering relatives with a house on condition that they lived in it together. As it is, we are given more of the antics of the children than of the snarlings of their parents. Mr. Mackenzie seems to change his mind two or three times about the course of the farcical plot, but it makes a very funny and very witty book. Perhaps too funny : it is tiring to be laughing at the top of one's voice
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