The Poetry and Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield 9781399504157
NEW LONGER EXTENT - NOW 784pp Katherine Mansfield’s non-fiction collected in one volume for the first time This volume
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The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield Volume 3
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The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield Volume 1: The Collected Fiction of Katherine Mansfield, 1898–1915, edited by Gerri Kimber and Vincent O’Sullivan Volume 2: The Collected Fiction of Katherine Mansfield, 1916–1922, edited by Gerri Kimber and Vincent O’Sullivan Volume 3: The Poetry and Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Gerri Kimber and Angela Smith Volume 4: The Diaries of Katherine Mansfield, edited by Gerri Kimber and Claire Davison
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The Poetry and Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield
Edited by Gerri Kimber and Angela Smith
Editorial Assistant Anna Plumridge Editorial Advisors Professor Claire Davison Professor Sydney Janet Kaplan Professor J. Lawrence Mitchell
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© Introduction, Arrangement and Editorial matter, Gerri Kimber and Angela Smith, 2014 © The Estate of Katherine Mansfield for copyright in materials held by the Estate © Margaret Scott and Daphne Brasell Associates for copyright in The Notebooks of Katherine Mansfield not otherwise held by the Estate of Katherine Mansfield Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10.5/12 Adobe Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 8501 1 (hardback) The right of Gerri Kimber and Angela Smith to be identified as Editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
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Contents
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations and Textual Note Introduction: Gerri Kimber and Angela Smith PART I POEMS AND SONGS Introduction
xv xvi xviii xxi 3
Poems An Escapade Undertaken by A Green Raspberry, & A Kidney Bean 6 The Old Inkstand 7 Friendship 7 Friendship (2) 8 The Song of My Lady 9 Evening 10 The Sea 12 The Three Monarchs 12 Music 13 A Fragment 14 Love’s Entreaty 14 Night 14 To M 15 Battle Hymn 16 The Chief’s Bombay Tiger 16 To Ping Pong by J.E.C. 17 To a Little Child 17 In the Darkness 18 The Springtime 19 To Grace 19 Farewell 20 Hope 20 Verses of Little Q 21
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One Day ‘This is my world, this room of mine’ ‘Dear friend’ ‘What, think you, causes me truest Joy’ The Students’ Room ‘The little boy’ ‘The sunlight shone in golden beams’ A Young Ladies Version of The Cards ‘To those who can understand her’ A Common Ballad ‘I constantly am hearing’ The [. . .] Child of the Sea The Bath Baby ‘This is just a little song’ ‘Out here it is the Summer time’ ‘London London I know what I shall do’ Ave ‘Lo I am standing the test’ In the Tropics In the Rangitaiki Valley ‘I have a little garden plot’ Vignette Youth ‘I could find no rest’ A Fine Day A New Hymn The Black Monkey The Family ‘When I was little’ The Clock The Letter The Birthday Present The Pillar Box Song by the Window Before Bed The Funeral A Little Boy’s Dream Winter Song On a Young Lady’s Sixth Anniversary Song of the Little White Girl A Few Rules for Beginners A Day in Bed Opposites Song of Karen the Dancing Child A Joyful Song of Five!
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21 22 23 23 24 24 24 25 25 25 26 27 28 30 30 31 32 32 33 34 35 35 36 36 38 38 39 40 41 41 42 42 43 44 45 45 46 47 47 48 48 49 50 51
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contents The Candle Fairy The Last Thing A Quarrel A Song for Our Real Children Grown Up Talks You won’t understand this – ’cause you’re a Boy The Lonesome Child Evening Song of the Thoughtful Child A Fairy Tale Autumn Song Why Love is Blind ‘I am quite happy for you to see’ To Pan October (To V.M.B.) ‘You ask me for a picture of my room’ Words for T.W.T. A Sad Truth A Song of Summer The Winter Fire In the Church The Lilac Tree On the Sea Shore Revelation The Arabian Shawl Sleeping Together The Quarrel (2) The Trio ‘Red as the wine of forgotten ages’ Spring Wind in London Florian nachdenklich To Stanislaw Wyspianski ‘A gipsy’s camp was in the copse’ Loneliness ‘The world is beautiful tonight’ The Secret The Awakening River Very Early Spring Mirabelle The Sea-Child The Earth-Child in the Grass To God the Father The Opal Dream Cave Sea Jangling Memory
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Sea Song ‘There was a Child Once’ Where did you get that hat? ‘Out to the glow of the sunset, brother’ Song of the Camellia Blossoms The Last Lover Scarlet Tulips ‘She has thrown me the knotted flax’ ‘And Mr Wells’ ‘William (P.G.) is very well’ The Meeting ‘These be two countrywomen’ ‘Most merciful God’ The Deaf House Agent ‘Toujours fatiguée, Madame?’ ‘Twenty to twelve, says our old clock’ To L.H.B. ‘Last night for the first time since you were dead’ Villa Pauline Camomile Tea The Town Between the Hills Waves Voices of the Air! Sanary The Grandmother Butterflies Little Brother’s Secret The Man with the Wooden Leg Little Brother’s Story The Candle When I was a Bird The Storm The Gulf Across the Red Sky Night-Scented Stock ‘Now I am a Plant, a Weed’ ‘Out in the Garden’ ‘There is a solemn wind tonight’ Tragedy ‘So that mysterious mother, faint with sleep’ A Version from Heine Caution The Butterfly Strawberries and the Sailing Ship
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84 86 86 87 88 88 89 89 90 91 92 93 93 94 95 95 96 96 97 98 99 101 102 103 104 105 105 106 106 107 108 109 109 110 110 112 113 113 113 114 114 116 117 118
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Malade Pic-Nic Arrivée Dame Seule Verses Writ in a Foreign Bed Men and Women Friendship Tedious Brief Adventure of K.M. To Anne Estelle Rice Fairy Tale Covering Wings Firelight Sorrowing Love A Little Girl’s Prayer Secret Flowers Old-Fashioned Widow’s Song Sunset The New Husband He wrote Et Après By all the laws of the M. & P. The Ring Winter Bird The Wounded Bird
119 119 120 120 121 121 122 123 124 125 125 126 127 127 128 129 129 130 131 133 133 134 134 135
Songs Love’s Entreaty Night
137 137
PART II TRANSLATIONS Introduction by Claire Davison
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Captain Ribnikov (Alexander Kuprin) The Judges (Stanislaw Wyspianski) M. Seguin’s Goat (Alphonse Daudet) Letters of Anton Tchehov Letters of Anton Tchehov II Letters of Anton Tchehov III Letters of Anton Tchehov IV Letters of Anton Tchehov V Letters of Anton Tchehov VI Letters of Anton Tchehov VII Letters of Anton Tchehov VIII Letters of Anton Tchehov IX
151 182 196 201 206 210 212 215 218 224 227 230
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Letters of Anton Tchehov X Letters of Anton Tchehov XI Letters of Anton Tchehov XII Letters of Anton Tchehov XIII A Letter of Anton Tchehov Anton Tchehov – Biographical Note Anton Tchehov – Biographical Note II The Diary of Anton Tchehov Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyev (Maxim Gorki) The Dream (Leo Tolstoy) The Creative History of ‘The Devils’ (‘The Possessed’) (F. M. Dostoevsky) F. M. Dostoevsky’s Letters to His Wife Anna Gregorevna Dostoevsky
233 236 239 242 245 250 254 257 264 304 306 347
PART III PARODIES, PASTICHES AND APHORISMS Introduction
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Parodies and Pastiches Bavarian Babies A Paper Chase North American Chiefs ‘Sumurun’: An Impression of Leopoldine Konstantin A P.S.A. Along the Gray’s Inn Road Love Cycle Pastiche. At the Club Pastiche. Puzzle: Find the Book Pastiche. Green Goggles Jack & Jill Attend the Theatre Sunday Lunch Virginia’s Journal Pastiche. Fragments Pastiche. Miss Elizabeth Smith Perambulations
382 383 384 385 387 392 393 395 397 399 402 404 407 410 412 413
Aphorisms Bites from the Apple
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PART IV REVIEWS AND ESSAYS Introduction
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Reviews Moods, Songs and Doggerels The Triumph of Pan
429 430
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contents The Green Fields Elsie Lindtner Confession of a Fool The Happy Family An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry Lu of the Ranges Paris Through an Attic A Frenchman’s Englishman Pour Toi, Patrie Three Women Novelists Two Novels of Worth A Citizen of the Sea Portrait of a Little Lady A Victorian Jungle Inarticulations The Public School Mixture Out and About A Bouquet A Novel Without a Crisis A Child and Her Note-Book An Exoticist A Short Story Glancing Light The Dean The New Infancy The Caravan Man Flourisheth in Strange Places Uncomfortable Words The Great Simplicity A Novel of Suspense A Sailor’s Home Anodyne A ‘Poser’ A Backward Glance Mr. Walpole in the Nursery Sans Merci Hand Made The ‘Sex-Complex’ Mr. De Morgan’s Last Book A Landscape with Portraits Lions and Lambs Dea Ex Machina Sensitiveness Portraits and Passions
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Humour and Heaviness A Plea for Less Entertainment A Standstill Three Approaches A ‘Real’ Book and an Unreal One A Ship Comes into the Harbour Some Aspects of Dostoevsky Control and Enthusiasm A Revival A Foreign Novel A Post-War and a Victorian Novel A Collection of Short Stories The Plain and the Adorned Dragonflies Words –Words –Words The Stale and the Fresh Amusement Portrait of a Child The Easy Path Promise Simplicity Orchestra and Solo The Wider Way Mystery and Adventure A Party On the Road ‘My True Love Hath My Heart’ Short Stories Two Modern Novels Butterflies Kensingtonia Alms Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Last Novel Pressed Flowers Mr. Mackenzie’s Treat A Woman’s Book A Tragic Comedienne A Japanese Novel An Enigma Two Novels Looking On A Model Story A Springe to Catch Woodcocks A Norwegian Novel
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517 520 522 526 529 532 535 537 540 544 547 550 552 556 558 560 562 563 566 568 569 571 574 575 577 578 580 582 584 587 589 590 593 595 596 598 599 603 604 606 608 610 612 613
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contents Echoes The Books of the Small Souls A Prize Novel Wanted, A New Word Mr. Conrad’s New Novel First Novels The Old and the New Hand A Hymn to Youth The Cherry Orchard Rather a Give-Away The Luxurious Style Hypertrophy A Foreign Novel Esther Waters Revisited A Holiday Novel Throw Them Overboard! Degrees of Reality Deader Than the Dodo Victorian Elegance Hearts Are Trumps A Witty Sentimentalist Sussex, All Too Sussex Savoir-Faire Letters An Imagined Judas A Dull Monster The Case of Mr. Newte Fishing as a Fine Art New Season’s Novels Entertainment – and Otherwise Observation Only ‘Some New Thing’ Ask No Questions The Silence is Broken A Batch of Five The Magic Door Old Writers and New A Set of Four Friends and Foes Two Novels Family Portraits The Lost Girl The Decay of Mr. D. H. Lawrence More Notes on Tchehov
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xiii 614 616 619 620 622 625 628 630 631 634 636 638 640 641 644 646 648 650 651 653 655 656 658 659 661 662 664 666 667 669 672 675 676 680 683 687 691 694 698 700 703 706 708 711
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The Nostalgia of Mr. D. H. Lawrence A Family Saga Two Remarkable Novels Aaron’s Rod
714 719 723 727
Essays Introduction
728
The Meaning of Rhythm Seriousness in Art The Stars In Their Courses Stop Press Biography The Critics’ New Year
729 732 734 735 737
Index of First Lines of Poems and Songs General Index
740 745
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List of Illustrations
Figure 1. Katherine Mansfield at her work table, Villa Isola, Menton, France. Ida Baker: Photographs of Katherine Mansfield. Ref: 1/2-011985-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
xx
Figure 2. Front illustrated cover page of ‘Little Fronds’ by Katherine Mansfield. MS-Papers-4006-14-4. John Middleton Murry Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
11
Figure 3. ‘The Opal Dream Cave’. Rhythm, 2: 11, December 1912, p. 306.
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Figure 4. First page autograph MS of ‘The Judges’. The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
183
Figure 5. Leopoldine Konstantin in ‘Sumurûn’. Postcard c. 1911, in possession of Gerri Kimber.
386
Figure 6. ‘Bites from the Apple’. Ref: KC/ADAM/MS18. King’s College London Archives.
416
Figure 7. ‘The Lost Girl’. Autograph MS by Katherine Mansfield. Ref: MS-Papers-11326-009-1. John Middleton Murry Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
707
Figure 8. ‘The Meaning of Rhythm’ by John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield. Rhythm, 2: 5, June 1912, p. 18.
730
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Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank the following people for making this edition of KM’s non-fiction possible: Margaret Scott and her publisher Daphne Brasell, for so generously allowing the editors to make full use of the transcriptions of KM’s notebooks; Jackie Jones, our editor at Edinburgh University Press (EUP), for having the vision and foresight to commit wholeheartedly to taking this massive project on, together with the editorial team at EUP including Rebecca MacKenzie, Dhara Patel, James Dale and Wendy Lee for their goodnatured efficiency; the Society of Authors, as the literary representatives of the Estate of Katherine Mansfield, for granting permission to reproduce copyright material, and especially Jeremy Crow, whose patience and diligence always went beyond the call of duty, and Sarah Burton; the Advisory Board, Professor Claire Davison, Professor Sydney Janet Kaplan and Professor J. Lawrence Mitchell, for their constant generosity in reading and assessing material presented to them, and without whose collective wisdom and additional editorial material this volume would be the poorer; our Editorial Assistant, Anna Plumridge, whose intellectual energy and incisive comments on problematic manuscripts have been invaluable in our research; Professor Chris Ringrose, who so kindly offered to take on the index for us; the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, and especially David Colquhoun, Jenni Christoffells and Jocelyn Chalmers; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, and especially Rick Watson, Pat Fox, Michael Gilmore, Jack Blanton, Bridget Gayle Ground and Jean Carmon; the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, and especially Isaac Gewirtz and Lyndsi Barnes; the King’s College London archive and especially Lianne Smith and Diana Manipud; Dr John Stoye and Jonathan Stoye as literary representatives of the estate of S. S. Koteliansky; Dr Mirosława Kubasiewicz, for her generosity in so willingly taking on the translation of the almost illegible sections of Stanisław Wyspian´ski’s play, The Judges, and providing a textual xvi
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note; Chris Mourant, for generously sharing his archival finds from the King’s College London archives and providing a textual note; Dr Rebecca Beasley, Dr Delia da Sousa Correa, Kevin Ireland, Professor Todd Martin, Professor C. K. Stead, Professor Peter Whiteford and Professor Janet Wilson; and Dr Richard Kilborn, for his research on our behalf on KM’s translation from Heine. On a personal note, Angela Smith would like to thank Professor Vincent O’Sullivan for inspirational conversations about KM’s work in the course of a long friendship; Dr Janka Kascakova, for lively collaborative discussions; and Professor Grahame Smith, for tirelessly reading and debating her work on KM. In addition to the names above, and echoing Angela Smith’s thanks, Gerri Kimber would also like to record her gratitude to the University of Northampton and Professor Janet Wilson for so generously supporting her research; the New Zealand Society of Great Britain, especially Tania Bearsley and Robyn Allardice-Bourne; Dr Sarah Sandley, Susan Price, Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Trish Beswick and Ali Smith, for their precious friendship on this journey and beyond; and finally, once more, her long-suffering husband, Ralph Kimber, and daughter, Bella Kimber, who have no idea what home life is like without a book on KM constantly in the process of being researched or edited. Your patience and support mean everything.
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Abbreviations and Textual Note
ATL BJK
Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington B. J. Kirkpatrick, A Bibliography of Katherine Mansfield (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989) BOS Bliss and Other Stories (London: Constable, 1920) CLKM The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, ed. Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984–2008) HRHRC Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin JMM John Middleton Murry Journal, 1927 Katherine Mansfield: Journal, ed. J. Middleton Murry (London: Constable, 1927) Journal, 1954 Katherine Mansfield: Journal, Definitive Edition, ed. J. Middleton Murry (London: Constable, 1954) KM Katherine Mansfield KMN The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks, ed. Margaret Scott, 2 vols (Canterbury, New Zealand, and Wellington: Lincoln University Press and Daphne Brasell Associates, 1997) Life Antony Alpers, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (London: Jonathan Cape, 1980) MS Manuscript NLC Newberry Library, Chicago NN Novels and Novelists by Katherine Mansfield, ed. John Middleton Murry (London: Constable, 1930) O’Sullivan Poems of Katherine Mansfield, ed. Vincent O’Sullivan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) Poems, 1923 Katherine Mansfield: Poems, ed. John Middleton Murry (London: Constable, 1923) Scrapbook The Scrapbook of Katherine Mansfield, ed. John Middleton Murry (London: Constable, 1939) TS Typescript U Not published in KM’s lifetime xviii
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abbreviations and textual note
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It is appropriate to note again how much the editors are indebted to the monumental work on KM’s notebooks by Margaret Scott, which we have so constantly drawn on in this volume with her kind permission, as well as B. J. Kirkpatrick’s superlative Bibliography of Katherine Mansfield. Our objective has been to include all extant material, either directly attributable to KM or where attribution is uncertain but has been suggested by Kirkpatrick. Our intention throughout this entire edition has been to retain KM’s own texts as far as possible. The notes following each item indicate source of text, first publication and where first collected, if appropriate. With items published in her lifetime, we have followed the last printing which she corrected or approved. With work that appeared posthumously and was taken from MS or TS, we have removed JMM’s editorial interventions wherever possible. We have silently emended slips of the pen but retained KM’s rare idiosyncratic spellings. Except in the case of the poems, we have supplied minor omissions such as obviously required commas, full stops and apostrophes, expanded ampersands, and provided quotation marks where direct speech clearly needed them. Quotations from her letters and personal entries in the notebooks follow the published texts. However, KM frequently used ellipses in both her fiction and personal writing. To avoid confusion, editorial omissions are indicated by ellipses in square brackets. Key words in foreign languages have been translated.
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Figure 1 Katherine Mansfield at her work table, Villa Isola, Menton, France. Ida Baker: Photographs of Katherine Mansfield. Ref: 1/2-011985-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
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Introduction: Gerri Kimber and Angela Smith
This third volume of the Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield advances considerably our knowledge and understanding of KM as a professional writer. Collected in one volume is every piece of non-fiction that she wrote (not including personal writing and diary entries – to be assembled in Volume 4). These are divided into the following sections: poems and songs, translations, parodies and pastiches, aphorisms, reviews and essays. The sheer size of the volume attests to KM’s endeavours in these diverse areas during her short lifetime. The body of work assembled is all the more exciting because of the new material presented in this volume for the first time, and in every section. The poetry section is considerably enlarged from any previous publication, the most recent being Vincent O’Sullivan’s Poems of Katherine Mansfield (1988).1 That edition contained 84 poems; ours contains more double that number with 179 poems. We make no claims for KM as a poet; there are flashes of brilliance in a mostly mediocre collection. As O’Sullivan remarks in his own preface, Mansfield’s poetry is ‘unassuming, often slight, serviceable enough for occasional published excursions into inherited effects and derived styles, yet capable too of unexpectedly inventive turns and intensity’.2 Our remit with this entire four-volume edition has been to publish all of KM’s extant work, fiction and non-fiction, good and bad, youthful and mature. The collection here reveals that, for the young KM, poetry was an easy form of artistic expression. Eighty of the poems were written before she left New Zealand at the age of 19 to return to England to become a writer. These are frequently juvenile in form and content, yet the sheer number attests to KM’s absolute need to find an expressive outlet for her burgeoning creative talent. And they are not all bad. The earliest, written in 1903 when she was 14, are particularly inventive and glimmers of the later mature writer are evident. The third poem, ‘Friendship’ (p. 7), with its first line: ‘He sat by his attic window’, is situated within a domestic arena which features so prominently in Mansfield’s short stories, where at xxi
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least one character will, at some point, be looking out of a window. These myriad references to windows by Mansfield reveal for Antony Alpers how a ‘trick of her mind is evident: she is constantly inhabiting one space while observing another, and has her characters doing the same’.3 This anticipates the concept of liminality in KM’s short stories: how the view from a window – a place-in-between – can alter perceptions from the present to the past, from the past to the future, and invite the crossing of a metaphorical threshold to an event yet to be realised or understood. It is a concept which runs through much of KM’s creative writing. Over a dozen poems are published here for the first time, discovered by Gerri Kimber in the ATL in early 2013. ‘To Pan’ is possibly the last poem she wrote before returning to England in 1908. [. . .] So we would laugh, your arm round my shoulder, Laugh at the world that was ours to keep, Cry that we two could never grow older, We were awake though the world lay asleep. Laugh until Pan . . . the munificent giver, Woke from a slumber to play his part, Plucked a reed from the frozen river Fashioned the song of our firebound heart. ‘Capable of a subjective passion,’ So you stigmatise me, today – Well, my dear, we pass in this fashion But Pan, God Pan, continues to play. (pp. 60–1)
Among the new manuscripts discovered in 2013 is a small handwritten booklet entitled ‘Little Fronds’, signed ‘Kathleen Beauchamp’ and ‘Dedicated to Ake, Ake Aroha’, compiled by KM while she was at Queen’s College in London; it contains nineteen poems. Two of them, ‘Love’s Entreaty’ and ‘Night’, would subsequently be published as songs in 1904, with music composed by KM’s eldest sister, Vera Beauchamp. The translation section offers perhaps the most exciting new aspect of KM’s work in the entire volume. With the assistance of Dr Mirosława Kubasiewicz and Professor Claire Davison, Gerri Kimber has assembled, for the first time, over 300 pages of KM translations. Apart from ‘M. Seguin’s Goat’, which KM translated directly from the French herself, her translations were all collaborations. For the Russian translations, her collaborator was the Russian émigré S. S. Koteliansky, who became one of her closest confi-
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dants, and who played a decisive role in foregrounding KM’s interest in Russia for almost ten years. As is well documented elsewhere,4 KM’s letters and journals are crowded with references to Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and other Russian writers. Koteliansky was a Russian Jew from the Ukraine, who emigrated to England in 1911, following political harassment by the then Tsarist government. In 1914, he came into the sphere of KM and JMM, having been introduced by D. H. Lawrence. Although literature was where his real interest lay, he was by then working in an office known as ‘The Russian Law Bureau’, translating Russian legal documents. During the winter of 1914, Koteliansky and JMM decided to collaborate on a series of translation projects for a publisher called Maunsel, translating Russian works into English for £20 a piece (dividing the fee between them), with Koteliansky doing the initial translation and JMM polishing and perfecting the English; their first such venture was The Bet and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov.5 Over a number of years this method would result in many books of Russian translations, with a variety of collaborators in addition to Murry – Leonard and Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence – and, of course, KM herself.6 In 1915, she worked with Koteliansky on a translation of the short story ‘Colonel Ribnikov’ (after which one of her favourite Japanese dolls, ‘Ribni’, was named), from Alexander Kuprin’s collection, The River of Life and Other Stories.7 In 1922, the pair worked on a translation of Gorky’s Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyev, which was eventually published in a limited edition in 1928. However, perhaps the collaboration with Koteliansky which influenced Mansfield the most – and also gave her the most pleasure – was the translations of Chekhov’s letters, which appeared as a thirteenpart series in the Athenaeum beginning on 4 April 1919. She wrote to Koteliansky on 6 June of that year: I do my very best always with these wonderful letters & can do no more. Wonderful they are. The last one – the one to Souverin about the duty of the artist to put the ‘question’ – not to solve it but to so put it that one is completely satisfied seems to me one of the most valuable things I have ever read. It opens – it discovers rather, a new world. May Tchekov live forever.8
In the autumn of 1919, ensconced on the Italian Riviera for health reasons, her first letters home were to Koteliansky and spoke about their plan to extend and publish a translation of these Chekhov letters in book form. Koteliansky sent her a pile of manuscripts he had been working on with the following note: ‘My ambition is to see our
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Tchekhov letters in book form [. . .] I want this book as a token of our perhaps uncommon friendship.’ 9 The edition was never finished in Mansfield’s lifetime, Koteliansky completing and publishing the volume with Philip Tomlinson in 1925. In addition, previously unpublished manuscripts are presented here for the first time. The Judges, KM’s translation of Stanisław Wyspian´ski’s play from 1904, has been painstakingly transcribed for this edition by Dr Mirosława Kubasiewicz. This was a collaboration KM undertook with Floryan Sobieniowski in 1917. A small section of the translation ended up in the New York Berg library, the rest in the ATL. In addition, the HRHRC holds the manuscripts of KM’s collaborative translation with Koteliansky of ‘The Dream’, a poem in prose by Leo Tolstoy, together with the creative history of ‘The Devils’ by Dostoevsky. All in all, then, the body of work that comprises this section, never collected in one place before, offers us a new vision of KM as a proficient and prolific translator. KM’s sense of humour – an important feature of all her writing – is particularly evident in the section containing the parodies, pastiches and aphorisms. Most of the pieces date from 1910–13, and reflect the influence of Beatrice Hastings, the partner of A. R. Orage, during the early period that KM was publishing work in the New Age. Both women had a mischievous and frequently mordant sense of humour, and while Hastings would end up taking her parodying to vindictive extremes later in life, KM retained a more measured, literary approach. Two pieces in this section have never been published before: ‘Sumurun: An Impression of Leopoldine Konstantin’ (1911), discovered by Gerri Kimber in the ATL in February 2013, does not easily fit into any category, being, as it states in the title, an ‘impression’ of an actress performing in a silent play–pantomime that KM saw on the London stage at the beginning of 1911; secondly, the group of aphorisms called ‘Bites from the Apple’ (1911) was discovered in the archives at King’s College London by Chris Mourant, who suggests that they were again influenced by her relationship with Hastings and Orage, and intended for publication in the New Age. A third piece, the parody ‘Virginia’s Journal’ (1913), is here definitively attributed to KM for the first time, a typed manuscript having been discovered by Gerri Kimber in the ATL in early 2013. A large part of the reviews section was published by JMM in his edited collection of KM’s reviews called Novels and Novelists (1930), and subsequently edited and republished in Clare Hanson’s excellent volume from 1987: The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield.10 Neither volume, however, reflects the entirety of KM’s critical writing. Where needed, we have restored original manuscripts, omitting
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JMM’s frequent small editorial changes and/or inaccuracies. In addition, we have now added other reviews written in numerous other magazines and papers, several of them overlooked until now. As Hanson notes of KM’s reviews for the Athenaeum: KM put ‘her all’ into these reviews, and devoted nearly two years of her short writing life to them, at the expense of her fiction. [. . . H]er critical writings represent a genuine attempt to take on the literary establishment on its own terms. KM wanted to ‘preach’, to convert, and could and would take up the opposition’s weapons in order to do this. The extent to which she at the same time subverted and undercut contemporary literary-critical forms must by the same token be recognised.11
The essays included in the volume fall into two distinct parts. The first essays show Mansfield and Murry collaborating with the excited vigour of young writers who have found their milieu. With Anne Estelle Rice, J. D. Fergusson, Michael Sadler and Frederick Goodyear, among others, they were plunged into a creative and intellectual ferment that gave them assertive confidence. The two essays for Rhythm, with their contempt for both the journalist as an ‘arch democrat’ and the tradesman in 1912, contrast strikingly with the weary tone of the essays written in 1920. At this time Mansfield was championing Chekhov’s plays, and lamenting the fact that a production of The Cherry Orchard was only staged for a few days. Here she satirises the audience’s adulation of American film stars and of the political and aristocratic glitterati – ‘The poor we have always with us, but the eminent, the great, the high-born, how seldom!’ (p. 736). Just as Mary Pickford’s barley-sugar curls and Douglas Fairbanks’s swashbuckling athleticism are prized above the work of actors committed to a challenging art, so ‘the good books, the books that are written by honest writers, men and women of talent, sincere artists, or a genius even’ (pp. 738–9) are disparaged by critics in favour of cliché-ridden, sentimental trash. Disillusion and disgust are powerfully communicated in the last three essays. What Volume 3 of Mansfield’s collected work demonstrates is the scale of her intellectual achievement, with intelligence and imagination vigorously interacting. As a young woman she relished the border-crossing of the Rhythm group, where women were empowered, gender roles became unstable, and any member of the group with a passionate interest could express it without being an ‘expert’, as, for instance, when Anne Estelle Rice reviewed the Ballets Russes’s Schéhérazade. Her subsequent involvement with Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group not only provided intriguing discussions of the art of fiction but also extended her skill in parody.
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Aldous Huxley described a skit she wrote for a house-party at Garsington in a letter to his brother Julian: ‘We performed a superb play invented by Katherine, improvising as we went along. It was a huge success, with Murry as a Dostoevsky character and Lytton as an incredibly wicked old grandfather.’ 12 Her preoccupation with Russian writing persisted; the shadow of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky seems to fall over such dark stories as ‘The Married Man’s Story’. As she became more ill, she continued to read voraciously and widely; her letters are peppered with requests to Murry to send her more books. She interspersed what she had to read for reviewing purposes with ‘real’ books. Writing to Koteliansky of D. H. Lawrence’s Aaron’s Rod, she celebrates it: ‘And it is written by a living man, with conviction. Oh, Koteliansky, what a relief it is to turn away from these little pre-digested books written by authors who have nothing to say!’ 13 Much of the reviewing must have been tedious but, as Mansfield said when she was close to death in 1922, ‘the sense of humour I have found true of every single occasion of my life.’ 14 Throughout this volume a corruscating wit irradiates the writing.
Notes 1. Vincent O’Sullivan, ed., Poems of Katherine Mansfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 2. O’Sullivan, p. xiii. 3. Alpers, Life, p. 53n. 4. See, in particular, Joanna Woods, Katerina: The Russian World of Katherine Mansfield (Auckland: Penguin, 2001). 5. Anton Chekhov, The Bet and Other Stories, trans. by S. S. Koteliansky and J. Middleton Murry (London: Maunsel, 1915). 6. See Claire Davison, Translation as Collaboration: Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and S. S. Koteliansky (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). 7. Alexander Kuprin, The River of Life and Other Stories, trans. by S. S. Koteliansky and J. Middleton Murry (London: Maunsel, 1916). JMM collaborated with Koteliansky on the rest of the collection. 8. CLKM, 2, p. 324. 9. Letter from Koteliansky to KM, 26 September 1919. ATL, MS-papers4003-23. 10. Katherine Mansfield, Novels and Novelists, ed. by John Middleton Murry (London: Constable, 1930); Clare Hanson, The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987). 11. Hanson, pp. 1–2.
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12. Grover Smith, ed., Letters of Aldous Huxley (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969), p. 118 [to Julian Huxley, 29 December 1916]. 13. CLKM, 2, p. 229. 14. KMN, 2, p. 336.
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PART I
POEMS AND SONGS
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Poems and Songs: Introduction
When KM’s brother Leslie was killed in the First World War, she wrote that she wanted ‘to write poetry. I feel always trembling on the brink of poetry. The almond tree, the birds, the little wood where you are, the flowers you do not see’ (KMN, 2, pp. 32–3). The impetus to recreate the lost world of childhood in a country to which she could not return drives some of the later poems in this collection, but they reveal that prose was her medium for an exploration of the glinting beauty, terror and comedy of childhood. The poems often read as stepping-stones, not written primarily with publication in mind, though JMM had other ideas. The first edition of KM’s poems appeared, edited by JMM, in the year of her death, 1923, with a slightly enlarged edition following in 1930. In 1988 Vincent O’Sullivan published his own selection of her verse, omitting what JMM classified as ‘Child Verse: 1907’ and including some previously unpublished work. In order to provide comprehensive coverage, we include all the poems Mansfield is known to have written. The early verse shows the influence of hymns, folk stories, popular culture and Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. Sometimes the young writer uses archaic diction in an attempt at poetic authenticity: ‘I feel for thee, O Sea’ (p. 12). The sea is a leitmotif here, as it is in Mansfield’s stories. There are two groups of verses about children. The first conforms to a pattern of banal rhymes about and for children that was popular in the Edwardian period; Mabel Lucie Attwell was a proponent of this sentimental genre. KM wrote them as an early but unsuccessful attempt at a commercial enterprise; they were to have been illustrated by Edith Bendall. They occasionally contain an arresting line, in spite of their mawkishness, such as ‘Shadow children, thin and small’ (p. 56). The second group of child poems is different in kind; written after the death of Leslie in the First World War and beginning with ‘The Grandmother’, it memorialises Mansfield’s childhood with the beloved ‘Little Brother’, whose loss is recorded in a series of poems written from the perspective of his grieving sister, herself an infant. 3
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poems and songs: introduction
A love poem to death indicates how her reading influences the young KM; her admiration for the work of Oscar Wilde and the fin-de-siècle poets such as Ernest Dowson is clear, and throughout the poems there is evidence of her attraction to the poetry of Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Hardy and William Blake. On her return to London in 1908 she writes a group of love poems for a living lover, Garnet Trowell, but also ‘The Trio’, a sympathetic evocation of three down-and-outs whose song evokes a mythic past in a ruthlessly hostile metropolitan milieu. The dichotomy that she identified in her fiction is evident in the poems: ‘Ive two “kick offs” in the writing game. One is joy – real joy [. . .] . The other “kick-off” is my old original one [. . .] a cry against corruption’.1 A satirical strain recurs, often in response to an exploited woman, as in the pastiche of Dorothy Wordsworth’s letters (p. 91); the parody of T. S. Eliot in ‘Night-Scented Stock’ seizes with a witty accuracy on the paradoxes in Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) in the line, ‘Is the moon a virgin or is she a harlot?’ (p. 111). A different tone is evident in the poems written for Rhythm, often under the pseudonym of Boris Petrovsky. ‘Very Early Spring’ and ‘The Awakening River’ mimic a Russian delight at the end of winter. The final group of poems, written under the pseudonym of Elizabeth Stanley, the name of KM’s paternal grandmother, for the Athenaeum when Murry was its editor, are conventional pieces, at odds with a small number of poems that express the idiosyncratic vigour of KM’s apprehension of her world. The first of these, ‘To Stanislaw Wyspianski’, is her elegy on the Polish artist. It offers an imaginative insight into her own country and, as Allen Curnow argues, shows why she had to leave New Zealand. The poem expresses ‘Katherine Mansfield’s intuition that New Zealand’s obstinate social hedonism, marching with the littleness and the isolation and already taking shape in its laws, stood between her and the knowledge of life (and death) she needed’.2 A similarly disturbing poem is another elegy, this time for her brother, ‘To L.H.B. (1894–1915)’, in which the berries the brother and sister gathered together as children become a sacrament implicating the living sister in the mortality of the dead brother. Even more disturbing, particularly for JMM as its first recipient, is the group of three savage poems, written in a rollicking rhythm, about Death replacing the speaker’s husband. Comparable with some of Emily Dickinson’s poems, ‘The New Husband’ shows Death persuading the speaker that he offers a better prospect than her current situation, ‘Et Après’ shows what the world said in agreement, and ‘He wrote’, written in an abrasive nursery-rhyme jingle, expresses the bereaved husband’s satisfaction with the outcome. The final poem in the collection, ‘The
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Wounded Bird’, has, arguably, an emotional intensity that avoids selfpity and confronts mortality.
Notes 1. KM to JMM, 3 February 1918, CLKM, 2, p. 54. 2. Allen Curnow, Look Back Harder Critical Writings 1935–1984 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1987), p. 153.
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Poems
An Escapade Undertaken by A Green Raspberry, & A Kidney Bean The shades of night had fallen fast When from Miss Wood’s1 two spirits passed Two girls, who bore a worried look And muttered as their way they took Miss Harper2 Their brows were sad their eyes were bright As stars upon a summer night But as they clambered down the stairs They both repeated unawares Miss Harper Beware pneumonia’s dreadful pain Beware the drafts that kill your frame This was their guardian’s last goodnight Their voices rang out clear and bright Miss Harper. O stay, the girls said, do not go Pray stay awhile and let us sew They turned away with maddened looks And sang out as they took their books Miss Harper At break of day did Alfred leap To light the fires and dust and sweep He whistled loud he whistled clear Voices rose from the thick atmosphere Miss Harper Two girls asleep in the office chair waked by Miss Harper who found them there
6
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friendship
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Look up at her with sleepy eyes And mutter – with a vague surprise Miss Harper
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-11326-093. Dated [?1].xii.03. 1. The Beauchamp girls lodged with Clara Finetta Wood, who had been running her boarding house at 41–3 Harley Street since 1873. She always wore purple or lavender and wrote with violet ink. This fixation may well have influenced KM’s predilection for these colours. 2. Miss Barbara Harper ‘gave exciting and unusual English lessons’ (Elaine Kaye, A History of Queen’s College, London 1848–1972 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1972), p. 139), and succeeded Miss Camille Croudace as ‘Lady Resident’ (retitled ‘Warden’) in 1906. She was also Honorary Secretary of the Swanwick (Literary) Club, to which KM belonged.
The Old Inkstand O, the old inkstand on the table stays It is too shabby to sell In truth it has seen much better days It has many a story to tell. There was a time when its drawers were full Of red wax and old quill pens
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 12.
Friendship He sat by his attic window The moonlight was streaming Over his furrowed face He had sat thus for hours with his head bent Never moving his place. He thought of the long past sweetness When life had started Like a blossoming rose Of how soon it had spent all its beauty and fragrance And gone – no man knows
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friendship (2) He thought of his future before him The figure of poverty Looked in his eyes He saw his old friends watch him begging and praying With silent surprise.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 12.
Friendship (2) He sat at his attic window The night was bitter cold But he did not seem to feel it He was so old – so old – The moonlight silvered his grey hair And caressed his furrowed face The clock at the old church tower struck twelve But he did not change his place. He thought of his happy boyhood How life had seemed to him Like an ever dancing river And his eyes grew misty and dim Then he thought of his dismal Future Alone, and loved by none Dark clouds lay in every direction And hid the glorious sun. He moaned as he sat at the window And moved as though in pain ‘O dream of my happy boyhood Come back to me again.’ – – – Suddenly all his attic Was lit with wondrous light And there stood up before him Figures from out the night. Lo, they were five young maidens And they stood before him all As though ’twere the richest castle And his room a banqueting hall
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the song of my lady
9
And he said in low strained accents What would ye have with me For I am poor and aged And have not heard of thee. And the maidens sang together ‘Hear us you poor old man We have come to blight your troubles And help you if we can. Know then our names are beauty, Youth, friendship, riches and peace And we would make you happy And cause your pain to cease. Choose one of us, choose wisely That whom thou lovest best She will remain with you always Until your eternal rest.’ Then the maidens stopped their singing ‘If my sorrow would find release I must choose that which is most perfect And her beautiful name is Peace’ Then before his weary vision The spirits faded fast But Peace stayed still beside him And held him to her, fast. They found him the next morning Quite dead upon the floor The old man had ah, truly Found Peace for evermore.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 12–13. An extended version of the previous poem.
The Song of My Lady My lady sits and sings The sunlight flings Its beams, and brings Ripe gold into her hair –
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evening
O my lady, knowing nothing Fearing nothing, she sits there. My lady sits and sighs The autumn wind Not overkind Tries to unbind Her golden hair – O my lady, knowing all things Fearing many, has learnt Care. My lady sits and sews The broidery grows Like a summer rose She little knows She’s aught to fear – O my lady, be more watchful Do not sit so blindly there!
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 15.
Evening Evening is come The glory of the sunset Floods the sky The little birds lift up their evening hymns To God on High. But one by one The colours now have faded The sky grows gray No star is seen in all the heavens to guide us If we should stray. At last, one wee star peeps from out its covert Of the now darkened sky To cheer the rough and stony way before us For you and I. It is a narrow path that lies before us And difficult and winding is the way, Almighty Guide, watch over us and shield us Lest we should stray.
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evening
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Figure 2 Front illustrated cover page of “Little Fronds” by Katherine Mansfield. MS-Papers-4006-14-4. John Middleton Murry Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-14. (Other versions: MS-Papers-11326-041, KMN, 1. p. 17.) This poem and the next fifteen in total, ending with ‘Farewell’, were compiled into a little handwritten booklet when KM was at Queen’s College. The booklet is titled ‘Little Fronds’, signed ‘Kathleen M. Beauchamp’, ‘Dedicated to
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the sea D—’, and addressed to ‘Ake, Ake Aroha’ (Maori for ‘love forever’) (see Figure 2).
The Sea O the beauty, O the grandeur of the sea What stories does its changeful visage tell To you and me. When fiercely rage the tempests o’er the deep And all the slumb’ring world is waked from sleep When the sea sobs, as if in sad distress And none are there to cheer my loneliness I feel for thee O Sea. In calm and tempest and in storm and strife In all the bitter changeful scenes of life In death’s dark hour before Eternity I feel for thee, O Sea.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, p. 17.
The Three Monarchs Day took off her azure mantle She laid down her golden crown And she sank to her rest on the cloudlets On pillows of rosy down. Twilight, clad in a sombre mantle Ascended the vacant throne His face was haggard and weary And his courtiers left him alone. When the reign of Twilight was over Night, clad in a robe of black Saw the far away form of the monarch And beckoned to him to come back. But twilight, his course pursuing Ne’er turned, ne’er lifted his head And the face of Night grew despairing In low hollow tones he said
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music
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Alas! Alas! where are my brethren? Am I left here alone to die? Does no one care for my welfare When I on my deathbed lie? And he wrapt his robe around him And down in the darkness he lay The reign of the night was over And back to her throne came Day.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. KMN, 1, pp. 17–18.
Music The world began with music, Wist ye not the ‘Music of the Spheres’1 And the angels will be playing harps of gold When Judgement Day appears. When Christ our Heavenly Lord came down to earth And solemn stillness reignèd all around A burst of angels song proclaimed his birth That made the whole world tremble at the sound – – – We pray that when our Lord may come again And when we hear that angels music ring That we may shout with one accord ‘Amen’ And with the angels joyfully may sing. All the world is music Wist ye not the music of the sea The music of the birds, the winds, the flowers ’Tis all in all to me.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. KMN, 1, p. 18. 1. The ‘Music of the Spheres’ refers to an ancient philosophical concept: Pythagoras proposed that the sun, moon and planets all emit unique hums which affect life on earth, although they are inaudible to the human ear.
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a fragment
A Fragment What thing, more beautiful, more fair To eyes of God and man is Than a garden. It is the spot where Man first prayed to God Craving his pardon.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, pp. 18–19.
Love’s Entreaty Lovest thou me, or lovest me not Whisper and do not fear Let me not wait thine answer, love The time to part draws near. Why standest thou, so proud, so cold Would I thy heart might see The moon shall wane, and the stars grow old Ere I lose my love for thee. If thou wouldst take my heart, my life If I thy slave might be I’d reck not for the world’s hard strife O my love, I would live for thee.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, p. 19.
Night When the shadows of evening are falling And the world is preparing for sleep When the birds to their wee ones are calling And the stars are beginning to peep A peace steals into my heart Which no one and nothing can break
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to m
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And I from my old sorrows part Till the morrow begins to awake. O night, how I love and adore thee Why dost thou so short a time stay My sorrows come crowding back o’er me When the shades of the night pass away. I hope I may die in the darkness When the world is so quiet and so still And my soul pass away with the shadows Ere the sun rises over the hill.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, p. 22.
To M1 For me, O love, thine eyes like stars are shining For me, thy voice is all the sound I need O love, dear love, dost know how I am pining My heart to plead. The world goes on, with tears and with laughter I care not for the world, I care for thee I care not for this life and what comes after ’Tis nought to me. O love, dear love, thou art my soul, thy presence Is aught that e’er can soothe my aching heart Wilt thou not give me but one word of comfort Before we part. Thou’rt going, and the light from out my life is dying It flickers and ere long it shall be dead And I shall try to follow, blind with crying Where thou hast led.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, p. 23. 1. Most likely Maata Mahupuku. However, in KMN, 1, p. 164, Scott refers to ‘M’ as KM’s close friend at this time – Margaret Wishart, unlikely to be the inspiration for this poem.
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battle hymn
Battle Hymn Fight on, weary pilgrims, fight Soon or late there shall be light Struggle then, with main and might Till the glass grows clear.1 Be not weary, seek not rest For to fight is to be blest And your victories He shall test When the glass grows clear. Like your leader strive to be Perfect, without fault is He And his greatness we shall see When the glass grows clear.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, p. 23. 1. This seems to refer to a verse in I Corinthians, 13: 12: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.’
The Chief’s Bombay Tiger Since leaving New Zealand I grieve to say A great Bombay tiger Has come to stay. He is kept by the chief In the No. 2 hold And is famous for doing Whatever he’s told. And at night when the ladies Have gone to bed This great Bombay tiger Prowls round overhead. At six and seven, he’s heard to roar At the ladies’ porthole or cabin door But the lady passengers venture to say They never feel safe till that tiger’s away. Now your pardon I beg, dear chief, to intrude And if you don’t think me most horribly rude
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to a little child
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Just keep your dear tiger in No. 2 hold And your pardon I beg for being so rude.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, pp. 23–4. Written on S. S. Niwaru, the liner on which the Beauchamp family sailed from Wellington to England in January 1903.
To Ping Pong by J.E.C. Ping Pong, thy charms have captured ladies fair Thou’rt spoken of by all the statesmen rare Cupid and bow and arrows, these are thine Ping Pong hast captured e’en this heart of mine. I care not for the charms of playing whist A game of billiards I can’t well resist But if I see a ping pong ball and bat Why man, I cry, the game’s not worth your hat. Give me a table and a green baize net A ball, a racquet, and a girl I met I am content to play all day and night Until I’ve lost my breath and lost my sight.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, p. 24.
To a Little Child Sleep on, little one1 All is well. Better to die thus Than go to Hell. Life is but cold and hard Death is sweet Many the traps are set For wandering feet. Would I could die as thou Hast done this day
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in the darkness
In childish faith and love Be ta’en away. Rest, my little one Flowers on your breast Safe in the cold earth’s arms Ever at rest.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, pp. 24–5. 1. This may echo Tennyson’s lullaby, ‘Sweet and Low’, in The Princess (1847), which became a popular Victorian and Edwardian song, ending: ‘Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep’.
In the Darkness I am sitting in the darkness And the whole house is still But I feel I need your presence Since I’ve been ill. It was different in the Springtime Different then, when all was right But when all the world is darkness When all the world is night O my darling then I want you1 For I know you understand And I yearn to feel your presence And to feel you clasp my hand. When I first was told my sorrow Told that I could never more See the gay world and the sunshine As I always had before O, I thought I could not bear it Bear to live and to be blind But the thought of your great absence Drove all else from out my mind. And I thought and thought about you Would you sorrow? Would you care? When you heard that I was blinded And was left to linger here?
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to grace
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I am lonely in the darkness All the world seems dull and still And my friends have all forgot me Since I’ve been ill.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, p. 25. 1. C. A. Hankin’s Katherine Mansfield and Her Confessional Stories (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 7, offers a variant for the opening line of the third stanza: ‘Granny darling, then I want you’.
The Springtime O, a Queen came to visit our country She was young, and was loved by us all How we hailed the glad signs of her coming When we first heard the merry thrush call. And the flowers sprang up to peep at her And the trees shook their young leaves with joy And the daisies came out for her carpet And she came to us, smiling and coy. E’en the sun stayed to watch her and court her How we wished she would stay here for aye But, alas, she grew tired of our revels And Queen Springtime soon vanished away.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, p. 26.
To Grace When shall I tell you it Shall it be at night When the soft wind kisses you And the stars are bright Or tell it in the twilight When the shadows fall
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farewell
And I still can see your face Your face, loved best of all. What matter when I tell you it Though the fact is shocking I’ll tell you ere my courage fails ‘There’s a big hole in your stocking.’
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, p. 26.
Farewell Dear little book, farewell I have loved thee long Bright may your future be Like a spring song. Oft thou hast cheerèd me When I was sad When I was all alone Thou made me glad. Dear little book, farewell I have loved thee long With thee, my childish thoughts Are ever gone.
Notes U Text: See note to ‘Evening’, above. Also KMN, 1, p. 27. Signed Kass.
Hope Life is hard But let us hope And to live will bring less pain Let us not in darkness grope Hope again. We are tired But let us hope
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one day
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And our rest will be more calm Let us cling fast to life’s rope Safe from harm.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 26.
Verses of Little Q (1) If you have never been a girl You cannot know the sin To wear just ‘dress material’ To keep your ‘bodies’ in. An’ I shall never quite forget The feeling that I felt When Mother went and bought for me A Ladies’ Leather Belt.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 27.
One Day One dreadful day, you hurried in, And ‘Half-past-five’, you said, ‘The Smiths is runnin after me And says my hair is red!’ The Smiths had been great friends of mine That feeling all was gone – ‘It’s just a halo, dear,’ I cried ‘God always has one on!’
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. (See also TS, ATL, MS-7224-09 and KMN, 1, p. 27.)
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‘this is my world, this room of mine’
‘This is my world, this room of mine’1 This is my world, this room of mine Here I am living – – – and here I shall die All my interests are here, in fine – – – The hours slip quickly by. Look on these shelves – just books, you would say Friends I can tell you, one and all Most of them sorrowful – some of them gay – – And my pictures that line the wall. Yes, that is a Doré,2 from where I sit At night with my books or my work, I see The light that falls and glorifies it – – – And I gaze and it strengthens me. Ah! in this cupboard, my miser’s store Of music finger it sheaf on sheaf Elixir of life – – it is something more It is Heaven to me, in brief. And that is my ’cello,3 my all in all Ah, my beloved, quiet you stand – – – If I let the bow ever so softly fall, – – – The magic lies under my hand. And on winter nights when the fire is low We comfort each other, till it would seem That the night outside, all cold and snow Is the ghost of a long past dream. This is my world, this room of mine Here I am living – – – here I shall die All my interests are here in fine – The hours slip quickly by.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 28–9. Untitled by KM. 1. ‘K_ _ Kathleen, Käthe, Kass, K, Kath,’ is written across the top of the page. Given to a school-friend at Queen’s College in 1903. 2. Gustave Doré (1832–83) was a French artist and literary illustrator. 3. It was Mansfield’s early ambition to become a cellist.
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‘what, think you, causes me truest joy’
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‘Dear friend’ Dear friend, when back to Canada you go And leave old England far away behind When in the dark storms, in the bitter snow You hug your fire, with a quiet mind Think of the bathroom, warm and filled with light With strains of ‘Orchid’ and sweet music rare And Norway singing songs with all her might – Then wish that you could be transported there. Dear friend, when back to Canada you go And taste once more the sweet delights of home Do not forget us who have loved you so And think of us, wherever you may roam.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. Also KMN, 1, p. 35. Signed Kathleen M. Beauchamp, dated April 1904. The ATL TS has a typed date of April 1914, which is clearly an error. Written for her Queen’s College school-friend, Marion Ruddick.
‘What, think you, causes me truest Joy’ What, think you, causes me truest joy Down by the sea – the wild mad storm of waves the fierce rushing swirl of waters together The cruel salt spray that blows, that beats upon my face. Wet grey sand, straight paths of it, leading far and away And showing never a sign of where man’s foot has trod Till only the sky overhead peers at itself in the mirror The flying clouds, silently screaming, shudder and gaze at themselves – – – The song of the wind as I stretch out my arms and embrace it This indeed gives me joy.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-16. Also KMN, 1, p. 40. Dated ii.iii.06, signed K.B.
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the students’ room
The Students’ Room In the students’ room the plain and simple beds The pictures that line the walls, of various excellence thrown together And the students with heads bent low, silent over their books.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-16. Also KMN, 1, p. 40. Dated ii.iii.06, signed K. B.
‘The little boy’ The little boy went to sleep in the car The journey had been too long. He hadn’t a notion that home was so far The little boy went to sleep in the car.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 69.
‘The sunlight shone in golden beams’ The sunlight shone in golden beams Across my lonely way But I was wrapped in youthful dreams And did not say them nay. If Mother and Father were left to themselves And hadn’t a baby to play with Suppose now we left you alone on the street For someone to just run away with. I really can’t think what we both would be at Two grumbly old nasty old cronies And never the sound of a young lady’s feet To make us not feel by our lonies.1 I think that we’d have to buy something instead A nice little dog or a kitten A nice little persian haired round little puss Not the family who would lose their mitten.2
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a common ballad
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But really we’d both of us feel very sad And quite wash our eyes out with water And sit very close and exclaim all the time If we only had that little daughter.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 70. 1. ‘On our own’. 2. Refers to the nursery rhyme, ‘Three little kittens they lost their mittens.’
A Young Ladies Version of The Cards Diamonds are for grown up ladies Clubs for Giants fierce and tall Spades for digging the garden But Hearts are meant for all – O but Hearts are meant for all.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 71.
‘To those who can understand her’ To those who can understand her London means everything. Black buds in the Times [?] Square garden Can herald a glorious Spring. Oh the park! in the early morning. You can hear the robin sing.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 77.
A Common Ballad Outside is the roar of London town But we have pulled the sun blinds down
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‘i constantly am hearing’
And are as snug as snug can be Chaddie1 and me. She lying on the empty bed Her book half covering up her head And very much ‘en déshabille’ Chaddie – not me. I – sitting here to write to you And looking like a stocking blue We both are longing for our tea Chaddie and me. But we’re not really learned tho’ This poem sounds as if we’re so And with our grammar we’re most free Chaddie and me. Our sister – with her face all red Has gone to see her Ma instead Well – she is she, and we are we Chaddie and me. Far better here to quietly stay And eat and yawn away the day We’ll end by going to the d – – – Chaddie and me. She now is very fast asleep God grant her hair in waves will keep But no one is so sweet as we Chaddie and me.
Notes U Text: TS ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. Dated ‘Sabbath Afternoon. – 13.v.06’. Also KMN, 1, p. 93. 1. Chaddie was KM’s sister, Charlotte Mary Beauchamp. ‘Our sister’ was Vera Beauchamp. Their parents arrived in April 1906 to take their daughters home to New Zealand; KM and her sister left Queen’s College, Harley Street, in June.
‘I constantly am hearing’ I constantly am hearing A cry, a muffled groan
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the [. . .] child of the sea
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A voice deep and despairing Is Ethel all alone – All alone Ethel It sounds quite like a song You will be hearing Melisande1 Before so very long But is the heart of every man Become so like a stone That he [. . .] While Ethel’s all alone? I constantly am hearing. Oft in the stilly Night Ere slumbers chains have bound me My sleep is put to flight By all the noise around me. Along the corridor Strange gurgles, many a sound.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 80–1. This poem was written aboard the S. S. Corinthic, the ship on which the Beauchamp family returned to New Zealand in October–December 1906. KM attended a lecture on Thomas Moore (1779–1852) and inserts between the third and fourth stanza above: ‘If Tom Moore was aboard the Corinthic I fancy his Muse would be inspired to sing.’ She quotes two of his best-known lines at the beginning of the fourth stanza. 1. See Maurice Maeterlinck’s play of doomed lovers, Pelléas and Mélisande (1893), and Claude Debussy’s opera (1902) of the same name, based on Maeterlinck’s play.
The [. . .] Child of the Sea Here in the sunlight wild I lie Wrapt up warm with my pillow and coat Sometimes I look at the big blue sky The wide grey sky, the wide grey sky And ever the clouds move slowly by The fierce shrill note of the sea-birds’ cry Here in my strange bed.
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the bath baby
The endless sea, the endless sea And the song that is sung repeatedly In every rhythm and time and theme Till I shriek aloud . . . but it deafens me. The changing light, the changing light Purple and gold change to the night A wide strong blue when the sun is bright A riot of colour – a wonder sight. Valley and hill, valley and hill I am swept along – I never am still I have cried, I have cursed, I have prayed my fill. It carries me near the loved one. Here we And the shivering song of the poplars And away in the distance the sea.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 81.
The Bath Baby Fair Water Nymph, I pray of you Dont splash the water so Although I’m sure it’s lovely to Make big waves with your toe. Six o’clock is bathing time, Bring the tub and bring the water Spread the big mat on the floor Run and fetch the little daughter. When you’ve got on your party frock, We really think you sweet And even in a pinafore You’re very clean and neat. But O the time we love you best Is – by the Nursery hearth With just your little nakeds on And splashing in the bath. It’s quite the most important thing That happens in the day
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the bath baby
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When you have sat on Daddy’s knee And quite forgot to play And feel your head go noddy nod And almost ’clined to cry Then Mummy says – come precious one It’s time for bedy bye. She takes you from your comfy place Your warm and cosy nest And pops off all your clothes until You’ve only just a vest. So back you creep to Daddykin He gives your toes a rub While Mummy puts the bath mat down And fetches in the tub. And sponge and soap and powder box (The dear soft fluffy puffs) And Mummy ties her apron on And pushes up her cuffs. The towels are spread before the fire And Mummy pins your hair And then she does your hair on top In one big wobbly curl And says now run along jump in O what a lucky girl. To get in right all by yourself’s The hardest thing of all. The water looks so big and hot And O – you feel so small. But when you’re soaped from top to toe All lovely frothy white You feel you never can get out But just stay there all night And [she] puts the sponge right in your mouth And makes the waves go by [. . . ] takes you, rolls you up You haven’t time to cry. It seems to you she rubs too hard You cry O that’s enough. And then the cloud of powder comes You love the powder puff.
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‘this is just a little song’
And while she pops your Nighty on And puts away your clothes You pull your Daddy down quite close And powder all his nose.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09 (shorter TS, ATL, omitting first two and last five verses). See also MS-Papers-11327-089 and Edith Bendall’s TS copy: MS-Papers-5129. KMN, 1, pp. 83–4.
‘This is just a little song’ This is just a little song That a child once sang to me. (O the bitter years and long Since she sat upon my knee.) Mother when we take a walk, you and I along the Shore I can scarcely ever talk.
* O Mother Mine, O mother mine Snuggle me close and hold me fast When will the weather again be fine Shall I really get well at last?
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 121.
‘Out here it is the Summer time’ Out here it is the Summer time The days are hot and white The gardens are ablaze with flowers The sky with stars at night. And [?] past my [?] bed I watch the sparkling bay – – – With London ever calling me The live long day.
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‘london london i know what i shall do’
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The people all about our place They’re meaning to be kind They drive around to visit me From miles and miles behind. But I had rather sit alone Why can’t they stay away. It’s London ever calling me The live long day. I know the bush is beautiful The cities up to date In life, they say, we’re on the top It’s England, though, that’s late. But I, with all my longing heart, I care not what they say It’s London ever calling me The live long day. When I get back to London streets When I am there again I shall forget that Summer’s here While I am in the rain. But I shall only feel at last The wizard has his way And London’s ever calling me The live long day.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 86–7. Dated 5.x.07.
‘London London I know what I shall do’ London London I know what I shall do. I have been almost stifling here And mad with love of you And poverty I welcome, yes –
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 87. Signed Kathleen M. Beauchamp.
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ave
Ave Ah! never more again Never more again Cries my soul in pain Elëanore. ––––– Ah! never more again Falls the winter rain Where thy head is lain Elëanore. ––––– Ah! my life is dead with sorrow Ah for me there is no morrow Thou from me my life didst borrow Elëanore. ––––– All the world is dark and dreary E’en the sea is very weary And the wind is wild and eerie Elëanore. –––––
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 90. This is apparently a response to ‘The Raven’ (1845), a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. The speaker, lamenting the loss of a lover called Lenore, is visited by a raven that croaks ‘Nevermore’. Misquoted in BJK as ‘never move again’. There is possibly also a quotation from the minstrel song by Stephen Foster, ‘The Old Folks at Home’ (1851): ‘All the world is dark and dreary / Everywhere I roam.’
‘Lo I am standing the test’ Lo I am standing the test. Laughing I go to my doom Crushed on the great Earth’s breast And the Night for Shroud and tomb. I betwixt Heaven and Earth I on the window sill Sitting here shaken with mirth For I have lived my fill.
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in the tropics
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These are the words that I write Scribble and just let them lie While I pass into the night, Take a great leap and die. Riding alone is the moon Through the great black starlit space I shall look like her quite soon I with my dead white face. Far far below the court Search for me there O my friend I – I shall not count for aught Yet I alone choose my end. Haunted by night and by day By shadows that cry to me – flee Loose the great bonds leave your place Learn what Existence can be.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 90–1.
In the Tropics How I love to wake in the morning And know I am far out at sea That night has gone, day is dawning And I am with thee, with thee. And I go out on deck in the sunshine And the sea is as calm as a lake See the flying fish far on the starboard There is no sound the silence to break. Save the lazy flap-flap of the mainsail And the voice of the men at their tasks – O Sea, how I love to be with thee ’Tis all that my tired spirit asks. And we pace the ship, forard in silence Your hand clasped in mine, and our eyes Gazing far on the distant horizon To the place our future home lies.
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in the rangitaiki valley
And at night, when the stars come out slowly And we glide ever on in the dark And the phosphorus floods past like fireballs There is no sound our silence to mark. O the peace, and the hush, and the beauty I would that my sea life would last And I left all my Soul in the Tropics And my heart ’tis bound up in the past.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 92.
In the Rangitaiki Valley Oh, valley of waving broom Oh, lovely, lovely light Oh, heart of the world, red-gold! Breast high in the blossom I stand It beats about me like waves Of a magical, golden sea The barren heart of the world Alive at the kiss of the sun The yellow mantle of Summer Flung over a laughing land Warm with the warmth of her body Sweet with the kiss of her breath Oh, valley of waving broom Oh, lovely, lovely light Oh, mystical marriage of Earth With the passionate Summer sun To her lover she holds a cup And the yellow wine o’erflows He has lighted a little torch And the whole of the world is ablaze Prodigal wealth of love Breast high in the blossom I stand
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4321-02. Published in Poems, 1923, p. 3. Listed by JMM (who gives the title as ‘In the Rangitaki
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vignette
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Valley’) as 1909 but presumably written at about the time that KM visited Rangitaiki on 20 November 1907, on a camping trip in the North Island. Ida Baker’s copy of Poems is annotated by hand ‘Earlier’. The date on the MS is possibly 1908. Our notes make frequent reference to Baker’s copy of KM’s Poems, published by JMM in 1923, and her pencilled annotations. She clearly disagreed with several of his dates and places of composition.
‘I have a little garden plot’ I have a little garden plot That Daddy gave to me And there I grow forgetmenot And radishes for tea. And pansies for my Mother dear Grace before meat.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 123.
Vignette This is Angelica Fallen from Heaven Fallen from Heaven Into my arms. Will you go back again Little Angelica Back into Heaven Out of my arms. ‘No,’ said Angelica Here is my Heaven Here is my heaven Here in your arms Not out of Heaven But into my Heaven Here have I fallen Here in your arms.
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youth Notes U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 158–9. The reference to a ‘fallen’ angel might refer to Maata Mahupuku, KM’s childhood friend, with whom she is reputed to have had a brief love affair.
Youth O Flower of Youth! See in my hand I hold This blossom flaming yellow and pale gold And all its petals flutter at my feet Can Death be sweet? Look at it now! Just the pale green is heart Heart of the flower see is white and bare The silken wrapping scattered on the ground What have I found? If one had come On a sweet summer day Breathless, half waking – full of youth I say If one had come [. . .] from the glen What happens then? Sighing it dies In the dawn flush of life Never to know the terror and the strife Which kills all summer blossoms when they blow. Far better so Ah! better better so.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 150. Signed K. Mansfield. Dated December 15th 1907.
‘I could find no rest’ I could find no rest Tossed and turned, and cried aloud, I suffer. In my tortured breast Turned the knife, and probed the flesh more deeply.
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‘i could find no rest’
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Up against it – Life seemed like a wall Brick and fouled and grimed. Oh delicate branches reaching out for the sun The plants – on tiptoe stretching up [to] the light.
* Do you see him? Look, in the half light here, High behind the curtain hanging there See how it swings and trembles Oh woman do not cry upon him so It is the wind that makes the curtain blow Pillow thy head upon my barren breast. The child! he comes and stands beside my chair Then claps his hands upon my eyes – ‘who’s there Motherling.’ ‘I’ve no notion[?] – it’s not you.’ The child he came into this room tonight Groping his way – Why haven’t you a light Mother. My eyes were tired with weeping dear I’m not afraid of dark if you stay here (Oh the thought in heart and brain He cannot see the light again.) The child – he came and stood beside my chair Then pressed his hands before my eyes. ‘Who’s there Motherling – guess.’ It never could be you. Oh no – three guesses – wait then that’s too few – – – The only hands to bring her calm Folded closely, palm to palm. The child – he shyly stood in front of me Am I too big to sit upon your knee Motherling? I’m too tired for any fun If I’m too heavy – ‘No my little son.’ (The blood within her veins ran cold Light he was – so light to hold) The child – he hid his face against my breast Crying ‘Oh Mother let me rest.’
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 163.
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a fine day
A Fine Day After all the rain, the sun Shines on hill and grassy mead Fly into the garden, child, You are very glad indeed. For the days have been so dull, Oh, so special dark and drear, What you told me, ‘Mr. Sun Has forgotten we live here.’ Dew upon the lily lawn Dew upon the garden beds Daintily from all the leaves Pop the little primrose heads. And the violets in the copse With their parasols of green Take a little ‘peek’ at you They’re the bluest you have seen. On the lilac tree a bird Singing first a little note Then a burst of happy song Bubbles in his lifted throat. O, the Sun, the comfy Sun! This the song that you must sing, ‘Thank you for the birds, the flowers, Thank you, Sun, for everything.’
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 80, minus the last verse. JMM creates a group which he claims was written at Queen’s College, ‘Child Verses: 1907’, in Poems, 1923, but Ida Baker in her annotated copy of the book writes: ‘K. M. wrote them when she was still in N.Z. before she came to Q.C. [Queen’s College] – before she was fourteen years old.’
A New Hymn Sing a song of men’s pyjamas, Half-past-six has got a pair,
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the black monkey
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And he’s wearing them this evening, And he’s looking such a dear. Sing a song of frocks with pockets I have got one, it is so’s I can use my ’nitial hankies Every time I blow my nose.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 83.
The Black Monkey My Babbles has a nasty knack Of keeping monkeys on her back. A great big black one comes and swings Right on her sash or pinny1 strings. It is a horrid thing and wild And makes her such a naughty child. She comes and stands beside my chair With almost an offended air And says: – ‘Oh, Father, why can’t I?’ And stamps her foot and starts to cry – I look at Mother in dismay . . . What little girl is this, to-day? She throws about her nicest toys And makes a truly dreadful noise Till Mother rises from her place With quite a Sunday churchy face And Babbles silently is led Into the dark and her own bed. Never a kiss or one Goodnight, Never a glimpse of candle light. Oh, how the monkey simply flies! Oh, how poor Babbles calls and cries, Runs from the room with might and main ‘Father dear, I am good again.’ When she is sitting on my knee Snuggled quite close and kissing me, Babbles and I, we think the same – Why, that the monkey never came
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the family
Only a terrible dream maybe . . . What did she have for evening tea?
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 85. 1. A pinny was the familiar word for a pinafore or apron. It is still used in some places.
The Family Hinemoa, Tui, Maina,1 All of them were born together They are quite an extra special Set of babies – wax and leather. Every day they took an airing Mummy made them each a bonnet Two were cherry, one was yellow With a bow of ribbon on it. Really, sometimes we would slap them For if ever we were talking They would giggle and be silly, Saying, ‘Mamma, take us walking.’ But we never really loved them Till one day we left them lying In the garden – through a hail-storm And we heard the poor dears crying. Half-past-six said – ‘You’re a mother What if Mummy did forget you?’ So I said, ‘Well, you’re their Father Get them’ but I wouldn’t let you.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 89. 1. Maori names. In the Maori legend of Hinemoa and Tutanekai, the two lovers are forbidden to marry. Hinemoa’s father, Umukaria, a chief from the shores of the lake, orders that she not be allowed to travel by canoe to Tutanekai’s tribal village on the island of Mokoia. Hinemoa decides to swim across the lake to the island, guided by the sound of Tutanekai’s flute-playing. KM had a doll called Hinemoa.
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‘When I was little’ When I was quite a little child Just three o’clock or even less – I always fell and hurt my knees, And once I tore my party dress. It’s such an awful thing to do Because folks say: – ‘What not again!’ I wish they’d do it by themselves And feel perhaps, the awful pain. I used to creep away and think – ‘I’ll die today, to make them sad’ The tears came always rushing down, Because I felt so very bad. But when my daddy found me there And kissed me – heaps of times – you know I used to say – ‘Perhaps then, dads – I’ll live another day or so.’
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. (Also TS, ATL, MS-7224-09.)
The Clock The clock is always going round, It never stops, it always goes – And makes a funny little sound What does it say – do you suppose? I stand upon my ‘special’ chair When Nurse has cleared away the tea And see its big white face quite near – With little marks like ‘A.B.C.’ You’re half-past-six – I’m half-past-five, O dear, how very old we are I wonder if we’ll stay alive Like Santa Claus and Grandmamma? Before I go to bed at night Or say my ‘Lead me into Heaven’ I kiss the clock with all my might And whisper – ‘Make us eight and seven’.
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the letter Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. (Also TS, ATL, MS-7224-09.)
The Letter Dear Half-past-six you know I can’t get out of bed I sat in wet feet – so A cold is in my head. I’ve got three blankets on As hot as hot can be The doctor has just gone I’m ninety-nine, point three.1 He told my Mummy it I heard him – by the door But it’s not true, a bit, I’m half-past five, no more. What would he say you were Could you be more than me? A billion p’raps – now dear Goodbye, here comes my tea.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. 1. A normal body temperature is usually thought to be 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Birthday Present Granny taught us how to make them ‘Knit two plain and then two pearl’ It is not so very easy Even if you are a girl. But I think cuffs are so useful They are not so very big, Cook told me they looked like waist bands But we said she was a pig.
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the pillar box
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They are grey – the colour’s pretty Don’t go thinking they were white I told daddy he was foolish He said, ‘Half-past-five, you’re right.’ If they won’t keep on you now please Save them till we’re married – for You can’t then be buying new things And your hands will grow much more.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09.
The Pillar Box The pillar box is fat and red, The pillar box is high; It has the flattest sort of head And not a nose or eye, But just one open nigger mouth That grins when I go by. The pillar box is very round But hungry all the day; Although it doesn’t make a sound, Folks know it wants to say, ‘Give me some letter sandwiches To pass the time away.’ ‘A postage stamp I like to eat Or gummy letterette.’ I see the people on the street, If it is fine or wet, Give something to the greedy thing; They never quite forget. The pillar box is quite a friend When Father goes away, My Mother has such lots to send, Fat letters every day, And so I drop them in its mouth When I go out to play.
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song by the window before bed Notes Text: Pall Mall Magazine, 45: 202, February 1910, p. 300. Signed K. Mansfield. Also TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 86. MS, ATL is dated 6.vi.1907. See also Edith Bendall’s autograph copy: MSPapers-5129, where the poem is dedicated ‘To E. K. B.’ and dated 6.vi.1907.
Song by the Window Before Bed Little star, little star Come down. Quick. The Moon is a Bogey-man He’ll catch you certain if he can. Little star, little star Come down quick. Little star, little star Whisper ‘Yes.’ The trees are just niggers all They look so black, they are so tall. Little star, little star Whisper ‘Yes.’ Little star, little star, Gone – all gone – The Bogey-man swallowed you The nigger trees are laughing, too Little star, little star Gone – all gone.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 72. Also KMN, 1, p. 178. Notebook 1 NLC consists of what JMM terms ‘Child Verses’. Many of them are included in Poems, 1923. Some of them were offered by Mansfield for publication in America, with illustrations by Edith Bendall. They were rejected; the poems were returned but the drawings were lost. Margaret Scott suggests (KMN, 1, p. 178) that they show the influence of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885).
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a little boy’s dream
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The Funeral It was Mr Lun’s ‘At Home’ day So of course he never came But it didn’t make much difference We was happy all the same. And just sittin’ by the window With what Mummy calls ‘the blue’ When we saw a lovely funeral Comin’ up our own street, too. All the horses wore a bonnet With a wobbly curly feather
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 179.
A Little Boy’s Dream To and fro, to and fro In my little boat I go Sailing far across the sea All alone – just little me And the sea is big and strong And the journey very long To and fro, to and fro In my little boat I go. Sea and sky, sea and sky. Quietly on the deck I lie Having just a little rest. I have really done my best In an awful Pirate Fight, But we captured them all right. Sea and sky, sea and sky Quietly on the deck I lie. Far away, far away From my home and from my play On a journey without end Only with the sea for friend And the fishes in the sea
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winter song
But they swim away from me Far away, far away From my home and from my play. Then he cried ‘O Mother dear’ And he woke and sat upright. They were in the rocking chair, Mother’s arms around him – tight.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 73. Also KMN, 1, p. 179.
Winter Song Rain and wind, and wind and rain Will the Summer come again? Rain on houses, on the street Wetting all the people’s feet Though they run with might and main Rain and wind and wind and rain. Snow and sleet and sleet and snow. Will the Winter never go? What do beggar children do With no fire to cuddle to P’raps with nowhere warm to go? Snow and sleet and sleet and snow. Hail and ice, and ice and hail, Water frozen in the pail See the robins brown and red They are waiting to be fed Poor dears! battling in the gale Hail and ice and ice and hail.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 74. Also KMN, 1, p. 180.
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song of the little white girl
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On a Young Lady’s Sixth Anniversary Baby Babbles – only one – Now to sit up has begun. Little Babbles quite turned two Walks as well as I and you. And Miss Babbles one two three Has a teaspoon at her tea. But her Highness at four Learns to open the front door. And her Majesty – now six Can her shoestrings neatly fix. Babbles, Babbles – have a care You will soon put up your hair!
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 75. Also KMN, 1, p. 180.
Song of the Little White Girl Cabbage Tree, Cabbage Tree – what is the matter – Why are you shaking so, why do you chatter? ’Cause it is just a white baby you see – And it’s the black ones you like – Cabbage Tree? Cabbage Tree, Cabbage Tree – you’re a strange fellow With your green hair and your legs browny-yellow Wouldn’t you like to have curls, dear, like me? What! no-one to make them – O poor Cabbage Tree! Never mind, Cabbage Tree – when I am taller And if you grow – please – a little bit smaller I shall be able by that time – may be – To make you the loveliest curls, Cabbage Tree.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 76. Also KMN, 1, pp. 180–1.
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a few rules for beginners
A Few Rules for Beginners Babies must not eat the coal And they must not make grimaces Nor in party dresses roll And must never black their faces. They must learn that ‘pointing’s’ rude They must sit quite still at table And must always eat the food Put before them – if they’re able. If they fall, they must not cry Though it’s known how painful this is Lo – there’s always Mother by Who will comfort them with kisses.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 77. Also KMN, 1, p. 181.
A Day in Bed I wish I had not got a cold; The wind is big and wild; I wish that I was very old, Not just a little child. Somehow the day is very long, Just keeping here alone. I do not like the big wind’s song, He’s growling for a bone. He’s like an awful dog we had Who used to creep around And snatch at things – he was so bad – With just that horrid sound. I’m sitting up and Nurse has made Me wear a woolly shawl – I wish I was not so afraid: It’s horrid to be small. It really feels quite like a day Since I have had my tea; P’raps everybody’s gone away, And just forgotten me.
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opposites
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And, oh, I cannot go to sleep, Although I am in bed; The wind keeps going ‘creepy-creep’ And waiting to be fed.
Notes Text: Lone Hand, Sydney, vol. 5, 1 October 1909, p. 636. Signed K. M. Beauchamp; illustrated by Ida S. Rintoul. The third verse is omitted in Lone Hand. Dated 13.v.07 and signed K. Mansfield in TS, ATL, MS7224-09. See also Poems, 1923, p. 78. KMN, 1, pp. 181–2.
Opposites The Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child, Walked out into the street, And splashed in all the puddles till She had such shocking feet. The Patent-Leather-Slipper-Child Stayed quietly in the house And sat upon the fender stool As still as any mouse. The Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child Her hands were black as ink She would come rushing through the house And begging for a drink. The Patent-Leather-Slipper-Child, Her hands were white as snow, She did not like to play around She only liked to sew. The Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child, Lost hair ribbons galore, She dropped them on the garden walks, She dropped them on the floor. The Patent-Leather-Slipper-Child, O, thoughtful little girl, She liked to walk quite soberly, It kept her hair in curl. The Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child When she was glad or proud
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song of karen the dancing child
Just flung her arms round Mother’s neck And kissed her very loud. The Patent-Leather-Slipper-Child, Was shocked at such a sight, She only offered you her cheek At morning and at night. Oh, Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child Her happy laughing face Does like a scented summer rose Make sweet the dullest place. Oh, Patent-Leather-Slipper-child, My dear I’m well content, To have my daughter in my arms And not an ornament.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 67. Also KMN, 1, pp. 182–3. Dated vi [or xi?].07.
Song of Karen the Dancing Child (O little white feet of mine) Out in the storm and the rain you fly (Red red shoes1 the colour of wine) Can the children hear my cry? (O little white feet of mine) Never a child in the whole great town (Red red shoes the colour of wine) Lights out and the blinds pulled down. (O little white feet of mine) Never a light on a window pane, (Red red shoes the colour of wine) And the wild wet cry of the rain. (O little white feet of mine) Shall I never again be still? (Red red shoes the colour of wine) And away over valley and hill. (O little white feet of mine) Children – children, open the door!
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a joyful song of five!
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(Red red shoes the colour of wine) And the wind shrieks ‘never more.’
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 69. Also KMN, 1, p. 183. Ida Baker’s copy of Poems, 1923, annotates this ‘Rottingdean’, therefore 1910. 1. The protagonist of Hans Andersen’s story, ‘The Red Shoes’ (1845), whose red shoes compel her to dance, is called Karen.
A Joyful Song Of Five! Come, let us all sing very high And all sing very loud – And keep on singing in the street Until there’s quite a crowd. And keep on singing in the house And up and down the stairs Then underneath the furniture Let’s all play Polar Bears And crawl about with doormats on And growl and howl and squeak Then in the garden let us fly And play at ‘Hide and seek’ And ‘Here We Gather Nuts and May’ ‘I Wrote a Letter,’ too ‘Here we go round the Mulberry Bush,’ ‘The Child Who Lost its Shoe’ And every game we ever played And then – to stay alive – Let’s end with lots of Birthday cake Because Today You’re Five.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 70. Also KMN, 1, pp. 183–4.
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the candle fairy
The Candle Fairy The candle is a fairy house That’s smooth and round and white And Mother carries it about Whenever it is night. Right at the top a fairy lives A lovely yellow one And if you blow a little bit It has all sorts of fun. It bows and dances by itself In such a clever way And then it stretches very tall ‘Well, it grows fast’ you say. The little chimney of the house Is black and really sweet And there the candle fairy stands Though you can’t see its feet. And when the dark is very big And you’ve been having dreams Then Mother brings the candle in How friendly like it seems! It’s only just for Mothers that The candle fairy comes And if you play with it – it bites Your fingers and your thumbs. But still you love it very much This candle fairy, dear Because, at night, it always means That Mother’s very near.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 71. Also KMN, 1, p. 184.
The Last Thing Now the Dustman’s reached our door, Now the blinds are all pulled down Everything is growing quiet Even noises in the town.
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You, all ready for your bed, First kneel down by Mummy’s chair Fold your hands upon her lap Learn to say a little prayer. First, just ‘thank you, God’ – and then ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild’1 Last ‘I lay me down to sleep Make me please a better child.’ Very solemn, very grave. Then you get up from your knees And you rush to Daddy kins ‘Now the Barley-sugar2 – please.’
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. Slightly variant version, KMN, 1, p. 185. 1. ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ is a children’s hymn by Charles Wesley, quoted erratically by Lottie in ‘Prelude’. 2. Barley sugar is a confection made from sugar, usually orange in colour and twisted into short sticks.
A Quarrel We stood in the veg’table garden As angry and cross as could be ’Cause you said you would not ‘beg pardin’ For eating my radish at tea. I said ‘I shall go and tell Mummy, I hope that it’s making you ill – I hope you’ve a pain in your tummy And then she will give you a pill.’ But you called out ‘Goodbye then, for ever Go and play with your silly old toys If you think you’re so grown up and clever I’ll run off and play with the Boys.’
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 87. See also KMN, 1, p. 185.
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a song for our real children
A Song for Our Real Children We sang ‘Up In the Cherry Tree’ Both sittin’ on the lawn And then we sang ‘The Busy Bee’ And ‘Jesus Chris’ was born.’ O dear, we had a lovely time An’ when the tea bell rang All by ourselves we made a rhyme To tell Nurse how we sang. So when we both is old and wise With babies six and seven We’ll say ‘We made this for a s’prise When you was all in Heaven.’
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. (See also TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089 and KMN, 1, pp. 185–6.)
Grown Up Talks Half-Past-Six and I were talking In a very grown-up way We had got so tired with running That we did not want to play. ‘How do babies come – I wonder’ He said – looking at the sky ‘Does God mix the things together And just make them – like a pie?’ I was really not quite certain, But it sounded very nice It was all that we could think of And one book said ‘sugar and spice.’ 1 Half-past-six said – he’s so clever – Cleverer than me – I mean ‘I suppose God makes the black ones When the saucepan isn’t clean!’
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the lonesome child
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Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 88. Also KMN, 1, p. 186. 1. This refers to the nursery rhyme, ‘What are little boys made of?’; its second verse claims that little girls are made of ‘Sugar and spice / And all things nice’.
You won’t understand this – ’cause you’re a Boy If you have never been a girl You cannot know the sin To wear just ‘dress material’ To keep your ‘bodies’ in. An’ I shall never quite forget The feeling that I felt When Mummy went and bought for me A Ladies Leather Belt.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. (See also TS, ATL, MS-7224-09 and KMN, 1, p. 186.) See ‘Verses of Little Q’ above (p. 21) for an earlier version.
The Lonesome Child The baby in the looking glass, Is smiling through at me; She has her teaspoon in her hand, Her feeder on for tea; And if I look behind her, I Can see the table spread. I wonder if she has to eat The nasty crusts of bread. Her doll, like mine, is sitting close Beside her special chair. She has a pussy on her cup It must be my cup there. Her picture book is on the floor, The cover’s just the same,
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evening song of the thoughtful child
And tidily upon the shelf I see my ninepins game. O baby in the looking glass, Come through and play with me, And if you will, I promise, dear, To eat your crusts at tea.
Notes Text: Dominion, Wellington, vol. 1, no. 217, 6 June 1908, p. 11. Signed Kathleen Beauchamp. Poems, 1923, p. 79. (See also TS, ATL, MS7224-09 and KMN, 1, pp. 186–7.)
Evening Song of the Thoughtful Child Shadow children, thin and small, Now the day is left behind, You are dancing on the wall, On the curtains, on the blind. On the ceiling, children, too Peeking round the nursery door, Let me come and play with you, As we always played before. Let’s pretend that we have wings And can really truly fly Over every sort of things Up and up into the sky. Where the sweet star children play, It does seem a dreadful rule, They must stay inside all day I suppose they go to school. And tonight, dears, do you see They are having such a race With their Father Moon – the tree Almost hides his funny face. Shadow children, once at night, I was all tucked up in bed, Father Moon came – such a fright! Through the window poked his head.
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a fairy tale
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I could see his staring eyes O my dears – I was afraid That was not a nice surprise And the dreadful noise I made. Let us make a Fairy Ring Shadow children, hand in hand And our songs quite softly sing That we learned in Fairy land. Shadow children, thin and small See – the day is far behind And I kiss you – on the wall On the curtains – on the blind.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09, missing the last three stanzas. Then KMN, 1, pp. 187–8. Poems, 1923, p. 81. (Also KMN, 1, pp. 122–3, dated 28.4.07.)
A Fairy Tale Now this is the story of Olaf1 Who, ages and ages ago, Lived right on the top of a mountain A mountain all covered with snow. And he was quite pretty and tiny With beautiful curling fair hair And small hands like delicate flowers Cheeks kissed by the cold mountain air. He lived in a hut made of pine wood Just one little room and a door A table, a chair, and a bedstead And animal skins on the floor. Now Olaf was partly a fairy And so never wanted to eat He thought dewdrops and raindrops were plenty And snowflakes – and all perfumes sweet. In the daytime when sweeping and dusting And cleaning were quite at an end He would sit very still on the doorstep And dream – O – that he had a friend.
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a fairy tale
Somebody to come when he called them Somebody to catch by the hand Somebody to sleep with at night time Somebody who’d quite understand. One night in the middle of winter He lay wide awake on his bed Outside there was fury of tempest And calling of wolves to be fed. Thin wolves, grey and silent as shadows And Olaf was frightened to death He had peeked through a crack in the doorpost He had seen the white smoke of their breath. But suddenly over the storm wind He heard a small voice, pleadingly Cry ‘I am a snow fairy, Olaf Unfasten the window for me.’ So he did, and there flew through the opening The daintiest prettiest sprite Her face and her dress and her stockings Her hands and her curls – were all white. And she said: ‘O you poor little stranger Before I am melted, you know, I have brought you a valuable present A little brown fiddle and bow. So now you can never be lonely With a fiddle, you see, for a friend But all through the Summer and Winter Play beautiful songs without end.’ And then, – O – she melted like water But Olaf was happy at last The fiddle he tucked in his shoulder He held his small bow very fast . . . So perhaps, on the quietest of evenings, If you listen you may hear him soon The child who is playing the fiddle ’Way up in the cold lonely moon.
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why love is blind
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Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 65. Also KMN, 1, pp. 189–91. Dated on TS: 24.XI.07. 1. Olaf is the name of a typical Norse hero.
Autumn Song Now’s the time when children’s noses All become as red as roses And the colour of their faces Makes me think of orchard places. Where the juicy apples grow And tomatoes – in a row. And today – the hardened sinner Never could be late for dinner But will jump up to the table Just as soon as he is able. Ask for three times hot roast mutton Oh! the shocking little glutton. Come then, find your ball and racquet, Pop into your winter jacket, With the lovely bear-skin lining, While the sun is brightly shining, Let us run and play together And just love the Autumn Weather.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 84. Also KMN, 1, p. 188.
Why Love is Blind The Cupid child tired of the winter day Wept and lamented for the skies of blue Till, foolish child! he cried his eyes away – And violets grew.
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‘i am quite happy for you see’ Notes U Text: Written in the autograph book of E. K. Robison (KM’s New Zealand friend, Edith Bendall) in 1908. Autograph MS, ATL, MSPapers-10049. ‘On Friday, 19 June 1908, KM attended a “violet tea”, at which flowers, décor, and even sweets were violet. She won a prize for her impromptu verse. [. . .] The poem, with details of the party, was published in the social column of the New Zealand Free Lance, 27 June 1908.’ CLKM, 1, p. 49. O’Sullivan suggests that the form is taken from Robert Herrick’s flower poems.
‘I am quite happy for you see’ I am quite happy for you see My books and music stay with me My days and nights are melody. And in the morning the great sun Climbs through the windows one by one Calls to me, laughs that the day’s begun. Late in the night – when I lie awake Comes the quiet and secret moon to make Delicate lamplight for my sake. And from my window – down below There is a box where the Spring flowers grow Daffodils golden breathe and blow.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089, dated 1908. See also KMN, 1, p. 208, signed ‘Kâthie Schônfeld’.
To Pan1 How we have spoken of Pan together Do you remember – long ago? Fast bound in by the winter’s weather Window bars even heaped with snow. Prisoners we with our books beside us Emerson, Meredith, Borrow,2 the man Chosen – of all our friends to guide us, Captain in chief of our caravan.
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october (to v.m.b.)
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Do you remember our plans to wander To find the altar of Pan one day? Over the hills and away back yonder Kneel in the heather. . . I think to pray? Pan, great Pan! In the soul of his playing We – the lovers – were giants, we said, Irresistible, unerring, slaying By heart’s witchery. . . ‘cut off his head’. So we would laugh, your arm round my shoulder, Laugh at the world that was ours to keep, Cry that we two could never grow older, We were awake though the world lay asleep. Laugh until Pan . . . the munificent giver, Woke from a slumber to play his part, Plucked a reed from the frozen river Fashioned the song of our firebound heart. ‘Capable of a subjective passion,’ So you stigmatise me, today – Well, my dear, we pass in this fashion But Pan, God Pan, continues to play.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089, dated 1908. 1. Pan – half-goat, half-man – was the Greek god of shepherds, flocks and music in Arcadia. 2. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) was an American poet, essayist and philosopher. George Meredith (1828–1909) was a British poet and novelist, whose long poem, Modern Love (1862), traces the disintegration of a passionate marriage. George Borrow (1803–81) was a linguist, translator and prolific writer who frequently combined fact with fiction in such books as Lavengro (1851).
October (To V.M.B.)1 Dim mist of a fog-bound day . . . From the lilac trees that droop in St Mary’s Square2 The dead leaves fall, a silent, shivering, cloud. Through the grey haze the carts loom heavy, gigantic Down the dull street. Children at play in the gutter
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‘you ask me for a picture of my room’
Quarrel and cry; their voices sound flat and toneless. With a sound like the shuffling tread of some giant monster I hear the trains escape from the stations near, and tear their way into the country. Everything looks fantastic, repellent. I see from my window An old man pass, dull, formless, like the stump of a dead tree moving. The virginia creeper, like blood, streams down the face of the houses. Even the railings, blackened and sharply defined, look evil and strangely malignant. Dim mist of a fog-bound day, From the lilac trees that droop in St Mary’s Square The dead leaves fall, a silent, fluttering crowd. Dead thoughts that, shivering, fall on the barren earth. .. . . . Over and under it all the muttering murmur of London.
Notes Text: Daily News, 1909. See also KMN, 1, pp. 202–3. O’Sullivan, p. 21, substitutes ‘leaves’ for ‘thoughts’ in the penultimate line. Dated 22.ix.08. 1. Dedicated to KM’s sister, Vera Margaret Beauchamp. Published in the ‘Table Talk’ column of the Daily News as ‘November’ on 3 November 1909, signed K. Mansfield. 2. St Mary’s Square, to the west of Paddington Green and just east of Beauchamp Lodge, where KM was then living.
‘You ask me for a picture of my room’ You ask me for a picture of my room.1 And through the wood he lightly came And lightly caught me by the hand He called me by my childish name How could I understand? He led me by a secret way A little path that seemed to wind And lose itself – the shining day Was very far behind. For here the trees so thickly stood The sunlight could not filter through Dear Christ it was a magic wood And magic boughs that grew.
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a sad truth
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And I have waited long for thee He scorched me with his fiery breath. I am the one eternity Not – love – not love – but Death. The very silence seemed to break And quiver with a thousand things The bird of passion seemed to wake I felt it spread its wings And fly from his head into mine He led me to a little bower All smothered with the creeping vine And purple passion flower. And there we kissed and passionately We clung together – all the past Blotted from out my memory I knew I had found love at last.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 207. Dated 29/10/08. 1. The first line appears to be unconnected to the poem.
Words for T.W.T.1 And which do I love most my dear The substance or the shadow.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 214. 1. For Thomas Wilberforce Trowell.
A Sad Truth We were so hungry, he and I We knew not what to do And so we bought a sugar cake Oh, quite enough for two.
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a song of summer
We ate it slowly, bit by bit And not a crumb was wasted It was the very best, we said That we had ever tasted. But all this happened years ago Now we are rich and old Yet we cannot buy such sugar cake With our united gold.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 197. Also called ‘A Song with a Moral’ in a version sent to Garnet Trowell. This and the following five poems in the Newberry Library are dated Hull, November 1908; the handwriting is assumed to be that of Garnet Trowell, who received the poems when he was travelling as a violinist with the Moody–Manners Opera Company.
A Song of Summer At break of day the Summer sun Shines through our windows one by one He takes us by his great warm hand And the world is changed to Fairyland. He gives us fairy bread to eat And fairy nectar, strange and sweet While a magic bird the whole day long Sings in our hearts his mating song.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 197. Hull. Nov.4.08.
The Winter Fire Winter without, but in the curtained room Flushed into beauty by a fluttering fire Shuttered and blinded from the ugly street A woman sits – her hands locked round her knees And bending forward . . . O’er her loosened hair The firelight spins a web of shining gold
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the winter fire
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Sears her pale mouth with kisses passionate Wraps her tired body in a hot embrace. Propped by the fender her rain-sodden boots Steam, and suspended from the iron bed Her coat and skirt – her wilted, draggled hat. But she is happy, huddled by the fire All recollections of the dingy day Dwindle to nothingness, and she forgets That in the street outside the rain which falls Muddies the pavement to a greasy brown, That in the morning she must start again And search again for that which will not come. She does not feel the sickening despair That creeps into her bones throughout the day. In her great eyes – dear Christ – the light of dreams Lingered and shone. And she, a child again Saw pictures in the fire. Those other days The rambling house, the cool sweet-scented rooms The portraits on the walls, and China bowls Filled with ‘pot pourri.’ On her rocking chair Her sofa pillow broidered with her name – She saw again her bedroom, very bare The blue quilt worked with daisies white and gold Where she slept, dreamlessly . . . . . . Opening her window, from the new-mown lawn The fragrant, fragrant scent of perfumed grass The lilac tossing in the shining air Its purple plumes. The laurustinus bush Its blossoms like pale hands among the leaves Quivered and swayed. And, oh, the sun That kisses her to life and warmth again So she is young, and stretches out her arms . . . The woman, huddled by the fire, restlessly stirs Sighing a little, like a sleepy child While the red ashes crumble into grey. Suddenly, from the street, a burst of sound A barrel organ turned and jarred and wheezed The drunken, bestial, hiccoughing voice of London.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 197–8. Hull. Nov. 4. 08. O’Sullivan, pp. 19–20.
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in the church
In the Church In the church, with folded hands she sits Watching the ivy beat upon the pane Of a stained glass window, until she is fain To shut her eyes – – – yet ever hears it tapping. ‘Come out’ says the ivy ‘I spring from the mound Where your husband lies buried. You, too, in the ground (The hour is at hand) You must lie down beside him.’ In the church with folded hands she sits Seeing a bride and bridegroom, hand in hand Stand at the altar, but no wedding band Crowns the young bride – save a chaplet of ivy leaves.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 199. Hull. Nov. 5. 08.
The Lilac Tree The branches of the lilac tree Are bent with blossom – in the air They sway and languish dreamily And we, pressed close, are kissing there The blossoms falling on her hair – Oh, lilac tree, Oh, lilac tree Shelter us, cover us, secretly. The branches of the lilac tree All withered in the winter air Shiver – a skeleton in minstrelsy[?] Soon must the tree stand stripped and bare And I shall never find her there Oh, lilac tree, Oh, lilac tree Shower down thy leaves and cover me.
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revelation
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Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 199. Hull. Nov. 5. 08.
On the Sea Shore Deafening roar of the ocean The wild waves thunder and beat Sea weed, fragments of wreckage They fling them up to her feet. She, her pale face worn with waiting Stands alone in the shuddering day And watches the flight of a sea-gull Wearily winging its way. ‘Why do you scream, oh sea bird, And why do you fly to me?’ ‘I am the soul of your lover Who lies drowned far out at sea.’
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 196–7. Hull. Nov. 5. 08.
Revelation All through the Winter afternoon We sat together, he and I . . . Down in the garden every tree Seemed frozen to the sky Yes, every twisted tree that bared Its naked limbs for sacrifice Was patterned like a monstrous weed Upon a lake of ice. It was as though the pallid world Was gripped in the embrace of Death. He wrapt the garden in his shroud He killed it with his breath. So through the Winter afternoon We sat together by the fire
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the arabian shawl
And in its heart strange magic worlds Would build, would flame, expire In an intensity of flame – Our books were heaped upon the floor Fantastic chronicles of men Of cities seen no more Of countries buried by the sea Of people who had laughed and cried And madly suffered – who had held The world – and then, had died. A faded pageant of the past Trooped by us in the gathering gloom And we could hear strange, muffled cries Like voices from the tomb. And sometimes as we turned a page We heard the shivering sound of rain It trickled down the window glass Like tears upon the pane. We two, it seemed, were shut apart Were fire bound from the Winter world And all the secrets of the past Lay, like a scroll unfurled. As through the Winter afternoon We dreaming, read of many lands And woke . . . to find the Book of Life Spread open in our hands.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 201–2. Dated 4.xii.08. O’Sullivan, pp. 22–3.
The Arabian Shawl ‘It is cold outside, you will need a coat – What! this old Arabian shawl! Bind it about your head and throat, These steps . . . it is dark . . . my hand . . . you might fall.’ What has happened? What strange, sweet charm Lingers about the Arabian shawl . . .
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sleeping together
69
Do not tremble so! There can be no harm In just remembering – that is all. ‘I love you so – I will be your wife,’ Here, in the dark of the Terrace wall, Say it again. Let that other life Fold us like the Arabian shawl. ‘Do you remember?’ . . . ‘I quite forget, Some childish foolishness, that is all, To-night is the first time we have met . . . Let me take off my Arabian shawl!’
Notes U Text: Poems, 1923, p. 12. Ida Baker annotates this G. T., for Garnet Trowell; O’Sullivan agrees but suggests that this poem, ‘Sleeping Together’ and ‘The Quarrel’ may date from later than the poems sent to Trowell in Hull.
Sleeping Together Sleeping together . . . how tired you were! . . . How warm our room . . . how the firelight spread On walls and ceiling and great white bed! We spoke in whispers as children do, And now it was I – and then it was you Slept a moment, to wake – ‘My dear, I’m not at all sleepy,’ one of us said. . . . Was it a thousand years ago? I woke in your arms – you were sound asleep – And heard the pattering sound of sheep. Softly I slipped to the floor and crept To the curtained window, then, while you slept, I watched the sheep pass by in the snow. O flock of thoughts with their shepherd Fear Shivering, desolate, out in the cold, That entered into my heart to fold! A thousand years . . . was it yesterday When we, two children of far away, Clinging close in the darkness, lay Sleeping together? . . . How tired you were! . . .
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the quarrel (2) Notes U Text: Poems, 1923, p. 13. Ida Baker annotates this: ‘1909. Garnet.’
The Quarrel (2) Our quarrel seemed a giant thing, It made the room feel mean and small, The books, the lamp, the furniture, The very pictures on the wall – Crowded upon us as we sat Pale and terrified, face to face. ‘Why do you stay?’ she said, ‘my room Can never be your resting place.’ ‘Katinka, ere we part for life, I pray you walk once more with me.’ So down the dark, familiar road We paced together, silently. The sky – it seemed on fire with stars! I said: – ‘Katinka dear, look up!’ Like thirsty children, both of us Drank from that giant loving cup. ‘Who were those dolls?’ Katinka said ‘What were their stupid, vague alarms?’ And suddenly we turned and laughed And rushed into each other’s arms.
Notes U Text: Poems, 1923, p. 14. Ida Baker annotates this ‘G. T.?’ [Garnet Trowell].
The Trio Out in the fog stained, mud stained street they stand Two women and a man . . . Their draggled clothes Hang on their withered bodies. It is cold So cold the very rain and fog feel starved And bite into their scarcely covered bones.
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the trio
71
Their purple hands move restlessly, at first They try to shield them with their thread-bare cuffs Then thrust them in their coats, and then again Blow on their fingers, but to no avail. The women wear a strangely faded look As though the rain which beat upon them both And, never ceasing, always dripping down Had worn away their features . . . In their eyes Hunger had lit a pallid, wavering torch . . . The man is like a seedy, draggled bird He frowns upon the women, savagely . . . Opposite them a warehouse, huge and grey And ugly – in the ghostly light of fog It looms gigantic – through the open doors Men and more men are passing out and in. . . . Then, at a signal from the draggled man The women sing – God, from their withered mouths A tragedy of singing issues forth High pitched and wandering, crazy tuneless tune Over and over comes the same refrain ‘Say, shepherds, have you seen my Flora pass this way. . .’ The simple words hang trembling in the air So strange, so foreign, if the filthy street Had blossomed into daisies; if a vine Had wreathed itself upon the warehouse wall It would have been more natural – they sing Shivering, staring – on their withered mouths The winter day has set a frozen kiss . . . Coldly impassive, cynically grim The warehouse seems to sneer at them and cry ‘My doors are shut and bolted, locked and barred And in my bosom nurture I my spawn Upon the blackened blood of my stone heart I blind their eyes. I stop their mouths with dust I hypnotise them with the chink of gold They search and grope – but ever out of reach I keep it, jingling. They can never hear Your Floras and your shepherds . . .’ 1 Through the fog The quavering voices fall and rise again . . . Are silent – and the trio shuffles on.
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‘red as the wine of forgotten ages’ Notes
U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 199–200. Dated 9.xii.08. O’Sullivan, pp. 23–4. See also KMN, 1, p. 215. 1. A pastoral glee for three voices called ‘The Wreath’ (1863), composed by Joseph Mazzinghi, begins: ‘Tell me shepherds, have you seen / My Flora pass this way? / In shape and feature, beauty’s queen / In pastoral array.’ In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), a ‘battered old woman’ sang a similarly incongruous love song that ‘bubbled up opposite Regent’s Park Tube Station’.
‘Red as the wine of forgotten ages’ Red as the wine of forgotten ages Yellow as gold by the sunbeams spun Pink as the gowns of Aurora’s pages White as the robes of a sinless one Sweeter than Araby’s1 winds that blow Roses. Roses I love you so.
Notes U Text: Two autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-13. Underneath the first is written the word ‘Unknown’. Underneath the second is written: ‘It cannot be possible to go through all the abandonment of Music and care humanly for anything human afterwards. K. Mansfield, 1908.’ See also KMN, 1, p. 202. 1. ‘Araby’ was a romanticised term for the Arabian Peninsula.
Spring Wind in London I blow across the stagnant world I blow across the sea, For me the sailor’s flag unfurled For me the uprooted tree. My challenge to the world is hurled; The world must bow to me. I drive the clouds across the sky, I huddle them, like sheep; Hercules’ shepherd’s dog am I And shepherd’s watch I keep
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spring wind in london
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If in the quiet vales they lie I blow them up the steep. And when a little child is ill I pause, and with my hand I wave the window curtain frill That he may understand Outside the wind is blowing still It is a pleasant land. Lo! In the tree-tops do I hide, In every living thing; On the moon’s yellow wings I glide, In the wild rose I swing; On the sea-horse’s back I ride, And what then do I bring? Oh, stranger in a foreign place See what I bring to you This rain – like tears upon your face I tell you – tell you true I came from that forgotten place Where once the heather grew. All the wild sweetness of the flower Tangled against a wall, It was that magic, silent hour; The branches grew so tall They twined themselves into a bower; The sun shone – and the fall Of yellow blossom in the grass You feel that golden rain? Both of you tried to hold, alas. Both could not hold – in vain. A memory, stranger, so I pass I will not come again.
Notes U Text: TS, with autograph corrections, ATL, MS-Papers-11326-040. A slightly different version is to be found in KMN, 1, pp. 188–9, signed ‘K. Mansfield 1909’. Poems, 1923, pp. 4–5.
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floryan nachdenklich
Floryan nachdenklich1 Floryan sits in the black chintz chair, An Indian curtain behind his head Blue and brown and white and red. Floryan sits quite still – quite still. There is a noise like a rising tide Of wind and rain in the black outside. But the firelight leaps on Floryan’s wall And the Indian curtain suddenly seems To stir and shake like a thousand dreams. The Indian flowers drink the fire As though it were sun, and the Indian leaves Patter and sway to an echo breeze. On the great brown boughs of the Indian tree Little birds sing and preen their wings. They flash through the sun like jewel rings. And the great tree grows and moves and spreads Through the silent room, and the rising tide Of wind and rain on the black outside Fades – and Floryan suddenly stirs And lifts his eyes, and weeps to see The dreaming flowers of the Indian tree.
Notes Text: Saturday Westminster Gazette, 41: 6129, 18 January 1913, p. 7, reprinted in the Dominion, Wellington, 3 March 1913, p. 11. O’Sullivan, p. 38. Also KMN, 1, pp. 236–7. 1. The German for ‘Floryan – pensive’. In 1909 KM met the Polish writer Floryan Sobieniowski in Bad Wörishofen; they became lovers.
To Stanislaw Wyspianski1 From the other side of the world, From a little island cradled in the giant sea bosom, From a little land with no history, (Making its own history, slowly and clumsily Piecing together this and that, finding the pattern, solving the problem, Like a child with a box of bricks), I, a woman, with the taint of the pioneer in my blood, Full of a youthful strength that wars with itself and is lawless, I sing your praises, magnificent warrior; I proclaim your triumphant battle.
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to stanislaw wyspianski
75
My people have had nought to contend with; They have worked in the broad light of day and handled the clay with rude fingers Life – a thing of blood and muscle; Death – a shovelling underground of waste material. What would they know of ghosts and unseen presences, Of shadows that blot out reality, of darkness that stultifies morn? Fine and sweet the water that runs from their mountains; How could they know of poisonous weed, of rotted and clogging tendrils? And the tapestry woven from dreams of your tragic childhood They would tear in their stupid hands, The sad, pale light of your soul blow out with their childish laughter. But the dead – the old – Oh Master, we belong to you there; Oh Master, there we are children and awed by the strength of a giant; How alive you leapt into the grave and wrestled with Death And found in the veins of Death the red blood flowing And raised Death up in your arms and showed him to all the people. Yours a more personal labor than the Nazarene’s miracles, Yours a more forceful encounter than the Nazarene’s gentle commands. Stanislaw Wyspianski – Oh man with the name of a fighter, Across these thousands of sea-shattered miles we cry and proclaim you; We say ‘He is lying in Poland, and Poland thinks he is dead; But he gave the denial to Death – he is lying there, wakeful; The blood in his giant heart pulls red through his veins.’
Notes Text: Published in English as a pamphlet, To Stanislaw Wyspianski, by Bertram Rota, September 1938. Written in Bavaria, 1909, when KM was learning Polish with her lover, Sobieniowski. First published in Polish, freely translated with a commentary by Floryan Sobieniowski, as ‘Pamieci Stanislawa Wyspianskiego’ in Gazieta poniedzialkowa, Dodatek literacki Swiatecznyo Numer, Krakow, 36, 26 December 1910, p. 10. O’Sullivan, pp. 30–1. 1. Stanisław Wyspian´ski (1869–1907) was a Polish writer, artist and patriot from Krakow, whose early death occasioned national mourning. Mansfield was introduced to his work by Floryan Sobieniowski, also from Krakow.
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76
‘a gipsy’s camp was in the copse’
‘A gipsy’s camp was in the copse’ A gipsy’s camp was in the copse Three felted tents with beehive tops And round black marks where fires had been And one old wagon painted green And three ribbed horses wrenching grass And three wild boys to watch me pass And one old woman by the fire Hulking1 a rabbit warm from wire.
Notes U Text: Cited in William Orton, The Last Romantic (New York and Toronto: Farrar & Rinehart, 1937), p. 273. 1. Hulking here is a verb meaning ‘disembowelling’ or ‘gutting’.
Loneliness Now it is Loneliness who comes at night Instead of Sleep, to sit beside my bed. Like a tired child I lie and wait her tread, I watch her softly blowing out the light. Motionless sitting, neither left nor right She turns, and weary, weary droops her head. She, too, is old; she, too, has fought the fight. So! with the laurel she is garlanded. Through the sad dark the slowly ebbing tide Breaks on a barren shore, unsatisfied. A strange wind flows . . . then silence. I am fain To turn to Loneliness, to take her hand, Cling to her, waiting, till the barren land Fills with the dreadful monotone of rain.
Notes Text: New Age, 7: 4, 26 May 1910, p. 83. Ida Baker annotates this ‘Cheyne Walk, Chelsea’. Poems, 1923, p. 17.
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the secret
77
‘The world is beautiful tonight’ The world is beautiful tonight So many stars shine in the sky, And homeward, lightly hand in hand The happy people pass me by I lose my way down every path I stumble over every stone And every gate and every door Is locked ’gainst me alone.
Notes U Text: William Orton, The Last Romantic (London: Cassell, 1937), p. 282. Signed ‘K. M. 6 Sept. 1911’.
The Secret In the profoundest Ocean There is a rainbow shell, It is always there, shining most stilly Under the great storm waves And under the happy little waves That the old Greeks called ‘ripples of laughter.’ And you listen, the rainbow shell Sings – in the profoundest ocean. It is always there, singing most silently!
Notes U Text: Ida Baker, Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of LM (New York: Taplinger, 1972) p. 69. Also published as a pamphlet by the Poets’ Guild, New York City, 1930. O’Sullivan, p. 34. KM wrote the poem for Baker in April 1912, ‘inscribing it inside the cover of a small book of occult wisdom, which was always one of my treasures’ (p. 68). The occult book in question was a theosophical text entitled Light on the Path and Karma, by M. C., her copy of which is now in HRHRC.
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the awakening river
The Awakening River The gulls are mad-in-love with the river, And the river unveils her face and smiles. In her sleep-brooding eyes they mirror their shining wings. She lies on silver pillows: the sun leans over her. He warms and warms her, he kisses and kisses her. There are sparks in her hair and she stirs in laughter. Be careful, my beautiful waking one! you will catch on fire. Wheeling and flying with the foam of the sea on their breasts, The ineffable mists of the sea clinging to their wild wings Crying the rapture of the boundless ocean The gulls are mad-in-love with the river. Wake! we are the dream thoughts flying from your heart. Wake! we are the songs of desire flowing from your bosom. O, I think the sun will lend her his great wings And the river will fly away to the sea with the mad-in-love birds.
Notes Text: Rhythm, 1: 4, Spring 1912, p. 30. Katherine Mansfield. ‘Translated from the Russian of Boris Petrovsky’; Boris Petrovsky was one of KM’s many pseudonyms. Poems, 1923, p. 23.
Very Early Spring The fields are snowbound no longer There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green. The snow has been caught up into the sky So many white clouds – and the blue of the sky is cold. Now the sun walks in the forest He touches the boughs and stems with his golden fingers They shiver, and wake from slumber. Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls. . . . . Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears . . . . A wind dances over the fields. Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter, Yet the little blue lakes tremble And the flags1 of tenderest green bend and quiver.
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the sea-child
79
Notes Text: Rhythm, 1: 4, Spring 1912, p. 30. On the same page as ‘The Awakening River’ and presumably also ‘translated from the Russian of Boris Petrovsky by Katherine Mansfield’. Poems, 1923, p. 22. 1. Irises are often called flags.
Mirabelle Breath and bosom aflame At a name: Mirabelle, Mirabelle. Mouth and eyes agape At a shape, Hands of me body-warm At a form: Mirabelle, Mirabelle. On the shores of my heart The pink feet dancing, From the seas of Desire The mad waves glancing At spoil so entrancing, Foam in their swell: Mirabelle, Mirabelle, Mirabelle.
Notes Text: ‘A Marriage of Passion’, New Age, 10: 19, 7 March 1912, pp. 447–8.
The Sea-Child Into the world you sent her, mother, Fashioned her body of coral and foam, Combed a wave in her hair’s warm smother, And drove her away from home. In the dark of the night she crept to the town And under a doorway she laid her down, The little blue child in the foam-fringed gown. And never a sister and never a brother To hear her call, to answer her cry. Her face shone out from her hair’s warm smother Like a moonkin up in the sky.
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the earth-child in the grass
She sold her corals; she sold her foam; Her rainbow heart like a singing shell Broke in her body: she crept back home. Peace, go back to the world, my daughter, Daughter, go back to the darkling land; There is nothing here but sad sea water, And a handful of sifting sand.
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 5, June 1912, p. 1. Ida Baker says that ‘The Sea Child’ and ‘Sea’ were written in the spring of 1910 in Rottingdean in Sussex, where KM was recovering from an operation (Baker, p. 56). Poems, 1923, p. 24. See also KMN, 1, pp. 235–6.
The Earth-Child in the Grass In the very early morning Long before Dawn time I lay down in the paddock And listened to the cold song of the grass. Between my fingers the green blades, And the green blades pressed against my body. ‘Who is she leaning so heavily upon me?’ Sang the grass. ‘Why does she weep on my bosom, Mingling her tears with the tears of my mystic lover? Foolish little earth-child! It is not yet time. One day I shall open my bosom And you shall slip in – but not weeping. Then in the early morning Long before Dawn time Your lover will lie in the paddock. Between his fingers the green blades And the green blades pressed against his body . . . My song shall not sound cold to him In my deep wave he will find the wave of your hair In my strong sweet perfume, the perfume of your kisses. Long and long he will lie there . . . Laughing – not weeping.’
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to god the father
81
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 4, no. 8, September 1912, p. 125. ‘By Boris Petrovsky’. Poems, 1923, p. 25.
To God the Father1 To the little, pitiful God I make my prayer, The God with the long grey beard And flowing robe fastened with a hempen girdle Who sits nodding and muttering on the all-too-big throne of Heaven. What a long, long time, dear God, since you set the stars in their places, Girded the earth with the sea, and invented the day and night. And longer the time since you looked through the blue window of Heaven To see your children at play in a garden . . . . Now we are all stronger than you and wiser and more arrogant, In swift procession we pass you by. ‘Who is that marionette nodding and muttering On the all-too-big throne of Heaven? Come down from your place, Grey Beard, We have had enough of your play-acting!’ It is centuries since I believed in you, But to-day my need of you has come back. I want no rose-coloured future, No books of learning – no protestations and denials – I am sick of this ugly scramble, I am tired of being pulled about – O God, I want to sit on your knees On the all-too-big throne of Heaven, And fall asleep with my hands tangled in your grey beard.
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 10, November 1912, p. 237. Translated from ‘Boris Petrovsky’. Poems, 1923, p. 26. 1. Title taken from a stained-glass window designed by Stanisław Wyspian´ski, ‘God the Father: Let it Be’ (Polish: ‘Bóg Ojciec – Stan´ sie˛’), in the Franciscan church in Krakow, Poland, first noted by Gerri Kimber. See Gerri Kimber, ‘Mansfield, Rhythm and the Émigré Connection’, in Katherine Mansfield and Literary Modernism, ed. by Janet Wilson, Gerri Kimber and Sue Reid (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 13–29. The poem’s description of an almighty God replicates the image in the stained-glass window.
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the opal dream cave
The Opal Dream Cave In an opal dream cave I found a fairy: Her wings were frailer than flower petals – Frailer far than snowflakes. She was not frightened, but poised on my finger, Then delicately walked into my hand. I shut the two palms of my hands together And held her prisoner. I carried her out of the opal cave, Then opened my hands. First she became thistledown, Then a mote in a sunbeam, Then – nothing at all. Empty now is my opal dream cave.
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 11, December 1912, p. 36. O’Sullivan adds ‘The Opal Dream Cave’ to the list of poems that Ida Baker says were written in 1910 in Rottingdean in Sussex, where KM was recovering from an operation (O’Sullivan, pp. 87–8), which is confirmed by Baker’s annotation in Poems, 1923, p. 32.
Sea The Sea called – I lay on the rocks and said: ‘I am come.’ She mocked and showed her teeth, Stretching out her long green arms. ‘Go away!’ she thundered. ‘Then tell me what I am to do,’ I begged. ‘If I leave you, you will not be silent, But cry my name in the cities And wistfully entreat me in the plains and forests; All else I forsake to come to you – what must I do?’ ‘Never have I uttered your name,’ snarled the Sea. ‘There is no more of me in your body Than the little salt tears you are frightened of shedding. What can you know of my love on your brown rock pillow . . . . Come closer.’
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sea
83
Figure 3 ‘The Opal Dream Cave’. Rhythm, 2: 11, December 1912, p. 306.
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 11, December 1912, p. 307. Poems, 1923, p. 28. See note on ‘The Sea Child’.
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84
jangling memory
Jangling Memory Heavens above! here’s an old tie of yours – Sea-green dragons stamped on a golden ground. Ha! Ha! Ha! What children we were in those days. Do you love me enough to wear it now – Have you the courage of your pristine glories? Ha! Ha! Ha! You laugh and shrug your shoulders. Those were the days when a new tie spelt a fortune: We wore it in turn – I flaunted it as a waist-belt. Ha! Ha! Ha! What easily satisfied babies. ‘I think I’ll turn into a piano duster.’ ‘Give it to me, I’ll polish my slippers on it!’ Ha! Ha! Ha! The rag’s not worth the dustbin. ‘Throw the shabby old thing right out of the window; Fling it into the faces of other children!’ Ha! Ha! Ha! We laughed and laughed till the tears came!
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 12, January 1913, p. 337. ‘By’ Boris Petrovsky, not ‘translated from’ Boris Petrovsky. Poems, 1923, p. 29. An odd feature of the poems attributed to Boris Petrovsky, as here, is that they are often written from a female perspective. Ida Baker deletes 1911 in her copy of Poems, 1923, and writes ‘earlier’.
Sea Song I will think no more of the sea! Of the big green waves And the hollowed shore, Of the brown rock caves No more, no more Of the swell and the weed And the bubbling foam. Memory dwells in my far away home, She is nothing to do with me. She is old and bent With a pack
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sea song
85
On her back. Her tears all spent, Her voice, just a crack. With an old thorn stick She hobbles along, And a crazy song Now slow, now quick, Wheeks in her throat. And every day While there’s light on the shore She searches for something Her withered claw Tumbles the seaweed; She pokes in each shell Groping and mumbling Until the night Deepens and darkens, And covers her quite, And bids her be silent, And bids her be still. The ghostly feet Of the whispery waves Tiptoe beside her. They follow, follow To the rocky caves In the white beach hollow . . . She hugs her hands, She sobs, she shrills, And the echoes shriek In the rocky hills. She moans: it is lost! Let it be! Let it be! I am old. I’m too cold I am frightened . . . the sea Is too loud . . . it is lost, It is gone . . . . Memory Wails in my far away home.
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 14, 15 March 1913, pp. 453–4. Poems, 1923, p. 32.
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86
‘there was a child once’
‘There was a Child Once’ There was a child once. He came to play in my garden; He was quite pale and silent. Only when he smiled I knew everything about him, I knew what he had in his pockets, And I knew the feel of his hands in my hands And the most intimate tones of his voice. I led him down each secret path, Showing him the hiding-place of all my treasures. I let him play with them, every one, I put my singing thoughts in a little silver cage And gave them to him to keep . . . . It was very dark in the garden But never dark enough for us. On tiptoe we walked among the deepest shades; We bathed in the shadow pools beneath the trees, Pretending we were under the sea. Once – near the boundary of the garden – We heard steps passing along the World-road; O how frightened we were! I whispered: ‘Have you ever walked along that road?’ He nodded, and we shook the tears from our eyes . . . . There was a child once. He came – quite alone – to play in my garden; He was pale and silent. When we met we kissed each other, But when he went away, we did not even wave.
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 14, 15 March 1913, p. 471. ‘By Boris Petrovsky’. Poems, 1923, p. 30. Baker (p. 61) claims that the essence of KM’s relationship with the writer William Orton was expressed in this poem and that Orton’s autobiographical novel, The Last Romantic (1937), gives a picture of the time when he knew KM. She deletes the date 1911 in Poems, 1923, and writes: ‘Orton Cheyne Walk Chelsea’, thus dating it to autumn 1910.
Where did you get that hat?1 Nuts2 I’ll never tell He’ll never sell
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‘out to the glow of the sunset, brother’
87
Another Own brother Of similar guts I only say that I was given my hat By one of the nuts
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-11326-044. JMM’s handwritten note states: ‘This is a remnant (I think) of the game we played with Goodyear & K. The 3rd person had to make a first verse with the first two (blind) phrases. (22.7.53).’ 1. The title comes from a popular late Victorian music-hall song. The chorus includes the lines: ‘I should like to have one just the same as that / Where’er I go they shout “Hello! Where did you get that hat?”’ 2. To be ‘nuts’ about something became a colloquial phrase in about 1900.
‘Out to the glow of the sunset, brother’ Out to the glow of the sunset, brother Come with me The wild waves play and embrace one another Let us join their play my brother Far away out at sea. The sky is wondrous fair O brother (Let us go) The great sad Ocean shall be our Mother We are tired and she will rock us brother Gently to and fro. Why do you linger here, my brother (The sunset dies) The sun and the sea say goodbye to each other Come away, soon will be too late, my brother Hark to the sea birds’ cries. Ah! all the glory has faded brother The sea is still She is waiting for us to creep under the cover Of her great blue wings O brother, brother Peace, we shall soon be still.
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song of the camellia blossoms
We stood together on the shore The wind was moaning, the sun was dying And the sea was crying crying, crying For ever more. We knew we should part on the morrow We looked towards the sea and sky And dared not move, and could not cry For sorrow. We did not know when we should meet We only knew we had to part.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-13. KMN, 1, pp. 208–9. An uncanny anticipation of KM’s brother’s death.
Song of the Camellia Blossoms Dark dark the leaves of the camellia tree The flowers of the camellia tree Are whiter far than snow. I could drown myself in you Lose myself in your embrace.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 216.
The Last Lover And so she lay upon her bed And waited through the night. He will be coming soon she said And Oh, his step is light. How cold you are, how very cold Cling closely then to me [One line illegible] Why do you lie so pale and still Never a word spoke he.
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‘she has thrown me the knotted flax’
89
On her warm bosom his cold head I’m afraid, afraid, she said.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 219.
Scarlet Tulips Strange flower, half opened, scarlet So soft to feel and press My lips upon your petals Inhaled restlessness A fever and a longing Desire that burns in me A violent scarlet passion Stirs me so savagely. Strange flowers half opened, scarlet Show me your heart of flame Do you keep it in silken wrapping I shall find it all the same I shall kiss your scarlet petals Till they open your heart for me And a beautiful tremulous passion Shall bind us, savagely.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 219–20.
‘She has thrown me the knotted flax’1 She has thrown me the knotted flax It lies concealed in my bosom It twists about my heart Sapping the life blood from me As the rata2 saps the kauri3 As the little clinging tendril
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‘and mr wells’
covers the giant kauri So is the flax on my heart So would her arms round my body Cling and crush and enfold me. Like the flowering rata Is her young mouth’s scarlet.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 225. 1. New Zealand flax, used by Maori for a wide variety of purposes, can be woven and knotted. 2. Rata trees, which have brilliant red flowers, are native to New Zealand. Rata trees initially perch on a host tree and then produce roots and enclose the host. 3. Kauri trees, also native to New Zealand, grow to 50 metres.
‘And Mr Wells’ 1
And Mr Wells has got a play upon the English stage. Now – Arnold Bennett2 comes from where They make their pretty songs[?] I was a draper in my time And now I am all the rage My name is Mr H. G. Wells And Kipps is on the stage. I’m Arnold Bennett L.S.D.3
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 226. 1. H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was apprenticed to a draper but became an influential writer and thinker. Kipps (1905) concerns an aspiring draper’s assistant. 2. Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) is best known for his stories and novels set in the Potteries of his youth; he recreated them as the ‘Five Towns’ in a realistic style that Mansfield and Beatrice Hastings parodied in the New Age. Bennett wrote a literary column in the New Age. 3. L.S.D. stands for pounds, shillings and pence, a former British currency.
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‘william (p.g.) is very well’
91
‘William (P.G.)1 is very well’
‘William (P.G.) is very well’
Writes Dorothy:2 William (P.G.) is very well And gravely blithe – you know his way Talking with woodruff or harebell And idling all the summer day As he can well afford to do. P.G. for that again. For who Is more Divinely Entitled to. He rises and breakfasts sharp at seven Then pastes some fern fronds in his book Until his milk comes at eleven With two fresh scones baked by the cook. And then he paces in the sun Until we dine at half past one God and the cook are very good Laughs William relishing his food (Sometimes the tears rush to my eyes How kind he is – and oh, how wise!) After he sits and reads to me Until at four we take our tea My dear, you hardly would believe That William could so sigh and grieve Over a simple childish tale How ‘Mary Trod Upon the Snail’ Or ‘Little Ernie Lost his Pail’ And then perhaps a good half mile He walks to get an appetite For supper which we take at night In the substantial country style. By nine he’s in bed and fast asleep Not snoring dear, but very deep Oh deep asleep indeed! And so on ad. lib. What a Pa-man!3
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, pp. 274–5. The tone of the poem resembles Lewis Carroll’s parody of William Wordsworth’s ‘Resolution and Independence’, ‘Haddock’s Eyes’, in Through the Looking-Glass (1871). 1. P.G. presumably stands for ‘Praise God’. 2. Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855), the poet’s sister, kept journals
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the meeting
recording the details of their domestic life in vivid prose, revealing how strenuously she laboured to provide a comfortable context for the poet. 3. Alpers defines the use of ‘a Pa-man’ in the Beauchamp family as ‘a cheerfully feckless character who is always the first to make a joke of his own deficiencies’ (Life, p. 7), though this does not entirely apply to the picture of Wordsworth in the poem.
The Meeting We started speaking Looked at each other; then turned away. The tears kept rising to my eyes But I could not weep I wanted to take your hand But my hand trembled. You kept counting the days Before we should meet again But both of us felt in our heart That we parted for ever and ever. The ticking of the little clock filled the quiet room Listen I said: it is so loud Like a horse galloping on a lonely road. As loud as that – a horse galloping past in the night. You shut me up in your arms – But the sound of the clock stifled our hearts beating. You said ‘I cannot go: all that is living of me Is here for ever and ever.’ Then you went. The world changed. The sound of the clock grew fainter Dwindled away – became a minute thing. I whispered in the darkness: ‘If it stops, I shall die.’
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-13. O’Sullivan, pp. 42–3. Also KMN, 1, pp. 287–8. Alpers’s Life (pp. 165–6) records that the poem dates from 27 March 1914, when Ida Baker left to spend two years in Rhodesia. The Baker annotation is ‘Beaufort Mansion’, thus dating it possibly a month earlier.
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‘most merciful god’
93
‘These be two country women’ These be two Country women What a size! Grand big arms And round red faces Big substantial Sit down places Great big bosoms Firm as cheese Bursting through their country jacket. Wide big laps And sturdy knees Hands outspread Round and rosy Hands to hold A country posy Or a baby or a lamb And such eyes! Stupid, shifty, small and sly Peeping through a slit of sty Squinting through a neighbour’s placket.
Notes U Text: KMN, 1, p. 288. The title ‘Countrywomen’ was supplied by JMM for Poems, 1923, p. 34.
‘Most merciful God’ Most merciful God Look kindly upon An impudent child Who wants sitting on. This evening late I went to the door And then to the gate There were more stars – more Than I could have expected Even I! I was simply amazed
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the deaf house agent
Almighty, August I was utterly dazed Omnipotent, Just In a word I was floored Lord God of Hosts, Lord! That at this time of day They should still blaze away That Thou hadst not rejected Or at least circumspected Their white silver beauty . . Was it spite . . Was it duty . . ?
Notes U Text: Autograph MS-Papers-4006-15. Also KMN, 1, pp. 288–9. The title ‘Stars’ was supplied by JMM for Poems, 1923, p. 35.
The Deaf House Agent That deaf old man! With his hand to his ear His hand to his head stood out like a shell Horny and hollow. He said, ‘I can’t hear’ He muttered, ‘Don’t shout, I can hear very well!’ He mumbled, ‘I can’t catch a word I can’t follow.’ Then Jack with a voice like a Protestant bell Roared ‘Particulars! Farmhouse! At 10 quid a year!’ ‘I dunno wot place you are talking about,’ Said the deaf old man. Said Jack, ‘What the HELL –’ But the deaf old man took a pin from his desk, picked a piece of wool the size of a hen’s egg from his ear, had a good look at it, decided in its favour and replaced it in the aforementioned organ.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-13. Poems, 1923, p. 36. Also KMN, 1, p. 289.
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‘twenty to twelve, says our old clock’
95
‘Toujours fatiguée, Madame’? Toujours fatiguée, Madame? Oui, toujours fatiguée. Je ne me lève pas, Victorine; et le courier? Victorine smiles meaningly, Pas encore passé.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. Dated 1915. Bandol. Translation: Are you tired, Madame? Yes, still tired. I shan’t get up, Victorine; and the post? Victorine smiles meaningly, Not been yet.
‘Twenty to twelve, says our old clock’ Twenty to twelve, says our old clock. It seems to talk and slyly mock My hunger and my real distress At giving way to wickedness. Oh, say a quarter! Say ten to! Whirr in the wheezy way you do Before you strike! But no! As I have frequently observed, All clocks are deaf – this hasn’t heard. And, as it is, grâce à my guiding, The brute is fast beyond all hiding. It is really only seven Minutes past a bare eleven! Now Jack’s got up and made a move . . . But only to the shelves above. He’s settled down. Oh, what a blow! I’ve still a good fifteen to go. Before the brute has chimèd well, I may be dead and gone to hell.
Notes U Text: Journal, 1954, pp. 113–14. Dated March 1916.
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to l.h.b.
To L.H.B.1 (1894–1915) Last night for the first time since you were dead I walked with you, my brother, in a dream. We were at home again beside the stream Fringed with tall berry bushes, white and red. ‘Don’t touch them: they are poisonous,’ I said But your hand hovered, and I saw a beam Of strange bright laughter flying round your head And as you stooped I saw the berries gleam ‘Don’t you remember? We called them Dead Man’s Bread!’ I woke and heard the wind moan and the roar Of the dark water tumbling on the shore. Where – where is the path of my dream for my eager feet By the remembered stream my brother stands Waiting for me with berries in his hands ‘These are my body. Sister, take and eat.’ 2
Notes U Text: KMN, 2, p. 29. Another version appears in KMN, 2, p. 66, see below. (Rough autograph MS also exists, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-13.) JMM published the first version in Poems, 1923, p. 47. 1. KM’s only brother, Leslie Heron Beauchamp, was killed on 6 October 1915 when a faulty hand-grenade, whose use he was demonstrating to his men at Ploegsteert Wood near Armentières, blew up in his hand. He was a lieutenant in the South Lancashire Regiment. The date of 7 October has always been noted as the date of Leslie’s death, but Professor J. Lawrence Mitchell’s new research has discovered the original report, where the date is clearly stated as 6 October. See J. Lawrence Mitchell, ‘Katherine Mansfield’s War’, in Katherine Mansfield and World War I, ed. by Gerri Kimber, Todd Martin, Delia da Sousa Correa, Alice Kelly and Isobel Maddison (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), pp. 27–41. 2. The final line echoes the Book of Common Prayer’s injunction in the Eucharist, ‘Take, eat,’ which is followed by Jesus’s words at the Last Supper, ‘This is my body which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me’ (Luke, 22: 19).
‘Last night for the first time since you were dead’ Last night for the first time since you were dead I talked with you my brother in a dream,
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villa pauline
97
We were at home again walking by a stream Fringed with tall berry bushes, white and red – Dont touch them they are poisoned, I said But your hand hovered and I saw the gleam Of strange bright laughter playing round your head. Don’t you remember, we called them dead man’s bread? I woke and heard the wind moan and the roar Of the dark tumbling water on the shore Come back, oh darling dear! my brother stands Waiting for me and holding out his hands Full of the shining berries. By the remembered stream my brother stands Waiting for me and holding out his hands Full of the berries that I did not eat.
Notes U Text : KMN, 2, pp. 66–7.
Villa Pauline But Ah! before he came You were only a name Four little rooms and cupboard Without a bone And I was alone! Now with your windows wide Everything from outside Of sun and flower and loveliness Come in to hide To play to laugh on the stairs To catch unawares Our childish happiness And to glide Through the four little rooms on tiptoe With lifted finger Pretending we shall not know When the shutters are shut That they still linger Long long after Lying close in the dark He says to me hark Isn’t that laughter?
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camomile tea
We are robbers and thieves Your four little rooms and your cupboard Are full to the brim That is why You stand so trim Under the starry sky Our sentinel! And no one believes We are more than two You never will tell! You will play our game!
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-16. Poems, 1923, p. 39. Also KMN, 2, p. 67. KM rented the Villa Pauline in Bandol from the end of December 1915 for three and a half months. JMM joined her; it was a phase of intense happiness. JMM writes: ‘For the whole of one week we made a practice of sitting together after supper at a very small table in the kitchen and writing verses on a single theme which we had chosen’ (Poems, 1923, p. xiii). He groups ‘Camomile Tea’, ‘Waves’, ‘The Town Between the Hills’, ‘Voices of the Air’ and ‘Sanary’ with ‘Villa Pauline’ as part of this playful process.
Camomile Tea Outside the sky is light with stars; There’s a hollow roaring from the sea. And, alas! for the little almond flowers, The wind is shaking the almond tree. How little I thought, a year ago, In that horrible cottage upon the Lee1 That he and I should be sitting so And sipping a cup of camomile tea. Light as feathers the witches fly, The horn of the moon is plain to see; By a firefly under a jonquil flower A goblin toasts a bumble-bee. We might be fifty, we might be five, So snug, so compact, so wise are we! Under the kitchen-table leg My knee is pressing against his knee.
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the town between the hills
99
Our shutters are shut, the fire is low, The tap is dripping peacefully; The saucepan shadows on the wall Are black and round and plain to see.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09, dated 1916. Poems, 1923, p. 40. See also KMN, 2, p. 68. 1. On 26 October 1914, JMM and KM moved from London to Rose Tree Cottage, The Lee, three miles from the Lawrences’ cottage in Chesham. Rose Tree Cottage is described in Life (p. 169) as ‘small, gloomy, and damp’.
The Town Between the Hills The further the little girl leaped and ran, The further she longed to be; The white, white fields of Jonquil flowers Danced up as high as her knee And flashed and sparkled before her eyes Until she could hardly see. So to the woods went she. It was quiet in the wood, It was solemn and grave; A sound like a wave Sighed in the tree-tops And then sighed no more. But she was brave, And the sky showed through A bird egg’s blue, And she saw A tiny path that was running away Over the hill to, who can say? She ran, too. But there the path broke, Then the path ended And would not be mended. A little old man Sat on the edge, Hugging the hedge. He had a fire
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the town between the hills
And two eggs in a pan And a paper poke Of pepper and salt So she came to a halt To watch and admire: Cunning and nimble was he! May I help if I can little old man? Bravo! he said, You may dine with me. I’ve two old eggs From two white hens And a loaf from a kind ladie: Some fresh nutmegs, Some cutlet ends In pink and white paper frills: And – I’ve – got A little hot pot From the town between the Hills. He nodded his head And made her a sign To sit under the spray Of a trailing vine. But when the little girl joined her hands And said the grace she had learnt to say, The little old man gave two dreadful squeals And she just saw the flash of his smoking heels As he tumbled, tumbled With his two old eggs From two white hens, His loaf from a kind ladie, The fresh nutmegs The cutlet ends In the pink and white paper frills And away rumbled The little hot-pot, So much too hot, From the town between the hills.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09, dated 1916, and autograph MS, ATL, MSPapers-4006-16. Poems, 1923, p. 43. See also KMN, 2, pp. 68–9.
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waves
101
Waves I saw a tiny God Sitting Under a bright blue Umbrella That had white tassels And forked ribs of gold Below him His little world Lay open to the sun The shadow of His Hat Lay upon a city When he stretched forth His hand A lake became a dark tremble When he kicked up His foot It became night in the mountain passes. But thou art small! There are gods far greater than thee They rise and fall The tumbling gods of the sea. Can thy Breast heave such sighs Such hollow savage cries Such windy breath Such groaning death And canst thy arm enfold The old the cold The changeless dreadful places Where the herds Of horned sea monsters And the screaming birds Gather together. From those silent men That lie in the pen Of yon pearly prisons Canst thou hunt thy prey Like us canst thou stay Awaiting thine hour And then rise like a tower And crash and shatter? There are neither trees nor bushes In my country Said the Tiny God. But there are streams And water falls
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102
voices of the air!
And mountain peaks Covered with lovely weed There are little shores and safe harbours Caves for cool, and plains for sun and wind Lovely is the sound of the rivers Lovely the flashing brightness Of the lonely peaks. I am content. But Thy kingdom is small Said the God of the Sea. Thy kingdom shall fall We shall not let thee be Thou art proud With a loud Pealing of laughter He rose and covered The tiny God’s land With the tip of his hand With the curl of his fingers And after – – The tiny God Began to cry.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-16. Poems, 1923, p. 41. Also KMN, 2, pp. 70–1.
Voices of the Air! But then there comes that moment rare When for no cause that I can find The little voices of the air Sound above all the sea and wind The sea and wind do them obey And singing singing double notes On double basses – content to play A droning chord for the little throats. The little throats that sing and rise Up into the light with lovely ease
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sanary
103
And a kind of magical sweet surprise To hear and to know themselves for these. For these little voices, the bee, the fly The leaf that taps, the pod that breaks, The breeze in the grass tops bending by, The shrill quick sound that the insect makes. The insect hanging upon a stem And a thread of water dropping among The mosses, the big rocks and diadem All the infinite silent song. The silent song, so faint, so rare That the heart must not beat nor the quick blood run To hear the myriad voices of the air
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-16 (ends at ‘insect makes’). Poems, 1923, p. 45. Also KMN, 2, pp. 71–2. JMM writes that it ‘seems to me now almost miraculous that so exquisite a poem as, for instance, ‘Voices of the Air’ should have been thus composed [i.e. as described under ‘Villa Pauline’]’ (Poems, 1923, pp. xiii–iv). O’Sullivan points out that JMM printed only four of the poem’s six stanzas; O’Sullivan creates a fourth stanza ending at ‘insect makes’ and then transcribes the following lines, shaping them into two further stanzas (O’Sullivan, pp. 89–90).
Sanary1 Her little hot room looked over the bay Through a stiff palisade of glinting palms, And there she would lie in the heat of the day, Her dark head resting upon her arms, So quiet, so still, she did not seem To think, to feel, or even to dream. The shimmering, blinding web of sea Hung from the sky and the spider sun With busy frightening cruelty Crawled over the sky and spun and spun, She could see it still when she shut her eyes, And the little boats caught in the web like flies. Down below at this idle hour Nobody walked in the dusty street
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the grandmother
A scent of a dying mimosa flower Lay on the air, but sweet – too sweet.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09, dated 1916. Poems, 1923, p. 46. See also KMN, 2, p. 88. 1. Sanary is a fishing village near Bandol on the Mediterranean coast of France.
The Grandmother Underneath the cherry trees The Grandmother in her lilac printed gown Carried Little Brother in her arms. A wind, no older than Little Brother, Shook the branches of the cherry trees So that the blossom snowed on her hair And on her faded lilac gown And all over Little Brother. I said ‘may I see?’ She bent down and lifted a corner of his shawl. He was fast asleep. But his mouth moved as if he were kissing. ‘Beautiful,’ said the Grandmother, nodding and smiling. But my lips quivered, And looking at her kind face I wanted to be in the place of Little Brother To put my arms round her neck And kiss the two tears that shone in her eyes.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. KMN, 1, p. 235. O’Sullivan, p. 56. Probably part of a group of poems written in 1916 after Leslie Beauchamp’s death. KM wrote of wanting to ‘make our undiscovered country leap into the eyes of the old world’, and of wanting ‘to write poetry. I feel always trembling on the brink of poetry. The almond tree, the birds, the little wood where you are, the flowers you do not see’ (KMN, 2, pp. 32–3).
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little brother’s secret
105
Butterflies In the middle of our porridge plates There was a blue butterfly painted And each morning we tried who should reach the butterfly first. Then the Grandmother said: ‘Do not eat the poor butterfly.’ That made us laugh. Always she said it and always it started us laughing. It seemed such a sweet little joke. I was certain that one fine morning The butterfly would fly out of the plates Laughing the teeniest laugh in the world And perch on the Grandmother’s cap.
Notes U Text: KMN, 2, p. 85. JMM titled this ‘Butterfly Laughter’. Poems, 1923, p. 6; two drafts of it in ATL exist in KM’s handwriting, one with each title. There is also a TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. JMM dated it with a group of other poems as 1909–10. O’Sullivan corrects the dating, as this poem and ‘The Grandmother’ are clearly part of the memorialising process mentioned above, together with ‘The Candle’, ‘Little Brother’s Secret’, ‘Little Brother’s Story’, ‘The Man with the Wooden Leg’, ‘When I was a Bird’, ‘The Gulf’, ‘The Storm’ and ‘Across the Red Sky’. They therefore probably date from 1916. Ida Baker annotates this ‘N.Z.’
Little Brother’s Secret When my birthday was coming Little Brother had a secret He kept it for days and days And just hummed a little tune when I asked him. But one night it rained And I woke up and heard him crying. Then he told me. ‘I planted two lumps of sugar in your garden Because you love it so frightfully I thought there would be a whole sugar tree for your birthday And now it will all be melted.’ O, the darling!
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the man with the wooden leg Notes
U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-14. Poems, 1923, p. 8. Also TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. KMN, 2, pp. 85–6. Ida Baker annotates this ‘N.Z.’
The Man with the Wooden Leg There was a man lived quite near us He had a wooden leg and a goldfinch in a green cage His name was Farkey Anderson1 And he’d been in a war to get his leg. We were very sad about him Because he had such a beautiful smile And was such a big man to live in a very little house. When he walked on the road his leg did not matter so much But when he walked in his little house It made an ugly noise. Little Brother said his goldfinch sang the loudest of all other birds, So that he should not hear his poor leg And feel too sorry about it.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-13. Poems, 1923, p. 10. (See also TS, ATL, MS-7224-09 and KMN, 2, p. 87.) Ida Baker annotates this ‘N.Z.’ 1. British-born Farquhar Campbell Anderson (1850–1926), the son of an Indian Army Major-General, ended up as a farm labourer in Karori. He was lame but did not have a wooden leg. (See KMN, 1, p. 70.) Kathleen Jones, in her biography Katherine Mansfield: The Storyteller (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010, p. 234), adds that he was ‘a convicted murderer from the NZ backblocks who had fascinated [KM] as a child’.
Little Brother’s Story We sat in front of the fire Grandmother was in the rocking chair doing her knitting And Little Brother and I were lying down flat. ‘Please tell us a story, Grandmother,’ we said But she put her head on one side and began counting her stitches
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the candle
107
‘Suppose you tell me one instead.’ I made up one about a spotted tiger That had a knot in his tail But though I liked that about the knot I didn’t know why it was put there So I said: ‘Little Brother’s turn.’ ‘I know a perfect story,’ he cried, waving his hands. Grandmother laid down her knitting. ‘Do tell us, dear.’ ‘Once upon a time there was a bad little girl And her mummy gave her the slipper – and that’s all.’ It was not a very special story. But we pretended to be very pleased And Grandmother gave him jumps on her lap.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-14. Poems, 1923, p. 9. See also TS, ATL, MS-7224-09 and KMN, 2, pp. 88–9. Ida Baker annotates this ‘N.Z.’
The Candle By my bed, on a little round table The Grandmother placed a candle. She gave me three kisses telling me they were three dreams And tucked me in just where I loved being tucked. Then she went out of the room and the door was shut. I lay still, waiting for my three dreams to talk But they were silent. Suddenly I remembered giving her three kisses back Perhaps, by mistake, I had given my three little dreams. I sat up in bed. The room grew big - O bigger far than a church. The wardrobe, quite by itself, as big as a house And the jug on the washstand smiled at me. It was not a friendly smile. I looked at the basket chair where my clothes lay folded. The chair gave a creak as though it were listening for something. Perhaps it was coming alive and going to dress in my clothes. But the awful thing was the window
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108
when i was a bird
I could not think what was outside. No tree to be seen, I was sure, No nice little plant or friendly pebbly path. Why did she pull the blind down every night? It was better to know. I crunched my teeth and crept out of bed. I peeped through a slit of the blind There was nothing at all to be seen But hundreds of friendly candles all over the sky In remembrance of frightened children. I went back to bed. The three dreams started singing a little song.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-7224-09. Poems, 1923, p. 7. Also KMN, 2, pp. 89–90. Ida Baker annotates this ‘N.Z.’
When I was a Bird I climbed up the karaka tree1 Into a nest all made of leaves But soft as feathers. I made up a song that went on singing all by itself And hadn’t any words but got sad at the end. There were daisies in the grass under the tree. I said, just to try them: ‘I’ll bite off your heads and give them to my little children to eat.’ But they didn’t believe I was a bird They stayed quite open. The sky was like a blue nest with white feathers And the sun was the mother bird keeping it warm. That’s what my song said: though it hadn’t any words. Little Brother came up the path, wheeling his barrow I made my dress into wings and kept very quiet Then when he was quite near I said: ‘sweet, sweet.’ For a moment he looked quite startled Then he said: ‘Pooh, you’re not a bird; I can see your legs.’ But the daisies didn’t really matter And Little Brother didn’t really matter; I felt just like a bird.
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the gulf
109
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-16. Poems, 1923, p. 11. (See also TS, ATL, MS-7224-09, and KMN, 2, pp. 87–8.) Ida Baker annotates this ‘N.Z.’ 1. Karaka trees are evergreens, endemic to New Zealand; they are mentioned in ‘Prelude’.
The Storm I ran to the forest for shelter Breathless, half sobbing I put my arms round a tree Pillowed my head against the rough bark Protect me, I said, I am a lost child. But the tree showered silver drops on my face and hair. A wind sprang up from the ends of the earth It lashed the forest together. A huge green wave burst and thundered over my head I prayed, implored, Please take care of me. But the wind pulled at my cloak and the rain beat upon me. Little rivers tore up the ground and swamped the bushes. A frenzy possessed the earth: I felt that the earth was drowning In a bubbling cavern of space. I alone Smaller than the smallest fly, was alive and terrified. Then, for what reason I know not, I became triumphant. Well kill me, I cried, and ran out into the open. But the storm ceased: the sun spread his wings And floated serene in the silver pool of the sky I put my hands over my face: I was blushing And the trees swung together and delicately laughed.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-16. Poems, 1923, p. 20. Also KMN, 2, p. 86. JMM dates this as 1911–13 but it appears to be part of an elegiac group of poems for Leslie Beauchamp.
The Gulf A gulf of silence separates us from each other I stand at one side of the gulf – you at the other
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across the red sky
I cannot see you or hear you – yet know that you are there. Often I call you by your childish name And pretend that the echo to my crying is your voice. How can we bridge the gulf – never by speech or touch. Once I thought we might fill it quite up with our tears Now I want to shatter it with our laughter.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-13. Poems, 1923, p. 19. Also KMN, 2, p. 86. There is a clear implication that this concerns the death of KM’s brother, though JMM dates it as 1911–13. Ida Baker notes in her annotated copy of Poems, 1923: ‘I think after Chummie died’. Chummie was Leslie Beauchamp’s family nickname.
Across the Red Sky Across the red sky two birds flying Flying with drooping wings Silent and solitary their ominous flight. All day the triumphant sun with yellow banners Warred and warred with the earth and when she yielded Stabbed her heart, gathered her blood in a chalice Spilling it over the evening sky. When the dark plumaged birds go flying flying Quiet lies the earth wrapt in her mournful shadow Her sightless eyes turned to the red sky And the restlessly seeking birds.
Notes U Text: KMN, 2, p. 87. Poems, 1923, p. 21. Also dated 1911–13 by JMM but probably part of the later group, as O’Sullivan suggests.
Night-Scented Stock White, white in the milky night The moon danced over a tree ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely to swim in the lake!’ Someone whispered to me.
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‘Oh, do – do – do!’ cooed somebody else And clasped her hands to her chin. ‘I should so love to see the white bodies All the white bodies jump in!’ – – The big dark house hid secretly Behind the magnolia and the spreading pear-tree But there was a sound of music – music rippled and ran Like a lady laughing behind her fan Laughing and mocking and running away – Come into the garden – it’s as light as day! ‘I can’t dance to that Hungarian stuff The rhythm in it is not passionate enough’ Said somebody. ‘I absolutely refuse . .’ But he took off his socks and his shoes And round he spun. ‘It’s like Hungarian fruit dishes Hard and bright – a mechanical blue!’ His white feet flicked in the grass like fishes . . Some one cried: ‘I want to dance, too!’ – – But one with a queer Russian Ballet head Curled up on a blue wooden bench instead. And another, shadowy – shadowy and tall Walked in the shadow of the dark house wall, Someone beside her. It shone in the gloom, His round grey hat like a wet mushroom. – – ‘Don’t you think perhaps . . ’ piped someone’s flute ‘How sweet the flowers smell!’ I heard the other say – Somebody picked a wet, wet pink Smelled it and threw it away – ‘Is the moon a virgin or is she a harlot?’ Asked somebody. Nobody would tell. The faces and the hands moved in a pattern As the music rose and fell. – – In a dancing, mysterious, moon bright pattern Like flowers nodding under the sea The music stopped and there was nothing left of them But the moon dancing over the tree. – –
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‘now i am a plant, a weed’ Notes
U Text: Autograph MS, HRHRC. Ottoline Morrell Collection, Box 35.3. Poems, 1923, pp. 51–2. The poem, sent by KM to Lady Ottoline Morrell, is an ironic evocation of her house-parties at Garsington Manor. In the chapter called ‘Breadalby’ in D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (1920), the guests at a similar house-party, based on Garsington, dance in the evening and swim in the morning.
‘Now I am a Plant, a Weed’ Now I am a plant, a weed Bending and swinging On a rocky ledge And now I am long brown grass Fluttering like flames I am a reed And old shell singing Forever the same A drift of sedge A white, white stone A bone Until I pass Into sand again And spin and blow To and fro, to and fro On the edge of the sea In the fading light . . For the light fades. But if you were to come you would not say She is not waiting here for me She has forgotten. Have we not in play Disguised ourselves as weed and stones and grass While the strange ships did pass Gently – gravely – leaving a curl of foam That uncurled softly about our island home Bubbles of foam that glittered on the stone Like rainbows. Look darling! No, they are gone. And the white sails have melted into the sailing sky . .
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, HRHRC. Katherine Mansfield Collection, Box 1.4. Poems, 1923, p. 53.
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tragedy
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‘Out in the Garden’ Out in the garden Out in the windy, swinging dark Under the trees and over the flower beds Over the grass and under the hedge borders Someone is sweeping sweeping Some old gardener Out in the windy swinging dark Someone is secretly putting in order Someone is creeping creeping
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, HRHRC. Katherine Mansfield Collection, Box 1.4. Poems, 1923, p. 55.
‘There is a solemn wind tonight’ There is a solemn wind to-night That sings of solemn rain The trees that have been quiet so long Flutter and start again The slender trees – the heavy trees The fruit trees laden and proud Lift up their branches to the wind That cries to them so loud. The little bushes and the plants Bow to the solemn sound, And every tiniest weed and grass Shakes on the quiet ground.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, HRHRC. Katherine Mansfield Collection, Box 1.4. Poems, 1923, p. 54.
Tragedy From the towering, opal globes in the street The crude, white light streams down
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‘so that mysterious mother, faint with sleep’
On him, blue-eyed, on her, with hair Like a beautiful, golden crown. His cigarette glows in the dusk as he slowly paces And beside him, the woman shivers in silks and laces.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-16. (See also TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089 and KMN, 2, p. 85.)
‘So that mysterious mother, faint with sleep’ So that mysterious mother, faint with sleep, Had given into her arms her new-born son And felt upon her bosom the cherished one Breathe, and stiffen his tiny limbs and rasp. Her arms became as wings folding him over Into that lovely pleasaunce, and her heart Beat like a tiny bell: ‘He is my lover, He is my son, and we shall never part – Never, never, never, never – But why?’ And she suddenly bowed her head and began to cry.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089, dated early 1917.
A Version from Heine1 Countess Julia2 rowed over the Rhine In a light boat by clear moonshine. The waiting maid rowed, the Countess said: ‘Do you not see the seven young dead That behind us follow In the waters shallow? (And the dead swim so sadly!) They were warriors young and gay And on my bosom they softly lay And swore to be true. To plight our troth, That they should never be false to their oath,
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I had them bound Straightway and drowned.’ (And the dead swim so sadly!) The waiting-maid rowed, but loud laughed she; It rang through the night so dreadfully: Till at the side the corpses dip And dive and waggle a finger-tip; As though swearing, they bow With ice-glistening brow. (And the dead swim so sadly!)
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. Dated 1917. 1. Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) was a highly influential German Romantic poet, literary critic and journalist. The lines quoted below are from an English version of a poem by Heine, ‘Pfalzgräfin Jutta’, literally translated as ‘The Palatinate Countess Jutta’, which has been transmuted by KM: Lorelei By Heinrich Heine Translated by A. Z. Foreman I know not if there is a reason Why I am so sad at heart. A legend of bygone ages Haunts me and will not depart. The air is cool under nightfall. The calm Rhine courses its way. The peak of the mountain is sparkling With evening’s final ray. The fairest of maidens is sitting Unwittingly wondrous up there, Her golden jewels are shining, She’s combing her golden hair. The comb she holds is golden, She sings a song as well Whose melody binds an enthralling And overpowering spell. In his little boat, the boatman Is seized with a savage woe,
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caution He’d rather look up at the mountain Than down at the rocks below. I think that the waves will devour The boatman and boat as one; And this by her song’s sheer power Fair Lorelei has done.
2. Countess Julia was the Countess of Battenberg and thus a member of the family, related to Queen Elizabeth II, that anglicised its name strategically to Mountbatten.
Caution Said the snail, In delicate armour of silver mail: ‘Before too late I must know my fate, I must crawl Along the wall, Succeed or fall.’ Timid, cautious, one fine morn She put forth one quivering horn. Something bit her – No – hit her. She expired – No – retired. Two ants Carrying a grain of chaff Stopped to laugh. ‘Come out! Come out! That hit on the snout Was only a seed Blown by some weed. You haven’t begun To have any fun.’ ‘But I’ve had my fright, That’s Life enough – quite!’ Said the snail.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. Also Journal, 1954, p. 151, dated November, 1918.
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The Butterfly What a day to be born! And what a place! Cried the flowers. ‘Mais, tu as de la chance, ma chère!’ Said the wild geranium Who was very travelled. The campions, the bluebells The daisies and buttercups The bright little eyebright and the white nettle flower And a thousand others, All were there to greet her – And growing so high – so high (Right up to the sky, thought the butterfly) On either side of a little lane. ‘Only, my dear’, breathed an old snail Who was hugging the underside of a dock leaf ‘Don’t attempt to cross over. Keep to this side. The other side is just the same as this Believe me – just the same flowers – just the same greenness. Stay where you are and have your little flutter in Peace’. That was enough for the butterfly. What an idea! Never to go out into the open? Never to venture forth? To live, creeping up and down this side! Her wings quivered with scorn. ‘Really’, said she, ‘I am not a snail!’ And away she flew. But just at that moment a dirty-looking dog Its mean tail between its legs, Came loping down the lane. It just glanced aside at the butterfly – did not bite, Just gave a feeble snap and ran further. But she was dead. Little fleck of cerise and black, She lay in the dust. Everybody was sorry except the Bracken Which never cares about anything, one way or the other.
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strawberries and the sailing ship Notes
U Text: TS ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. O’Sullivan, pp. 68–9. See also KMN, 2, p. 126.
Strawberries and the Sailing Ship We sat on the top of the cliff Overlooking the open sea Our backs turned to the little town Each of us had a basket of strawberries We had just bought them from a dark woman With quick eyes – berry-finding eyes They’re fresh picked said she from our own garden The tips of her fingers were stained a bright red! Heavens what strawberries Each one was the finest The perfect berry – the strawberry Absolute The fruit of our childhood! The very air came fanning On strawberry wings And down below, in the pools Little children were bathing With strawberry faces. Over the blue swinging water Came a three masted sailing ship With nine ten eleven sails Wonderfully beautiful! She came riding by As though every sail were taking its fill Of the sun and the light. And Oh! how I’d love to be on board said Anne. The captain was below, but the crew lay about Idle and handsome – Have some strawberries we said Slipping and sliding on the rocking decks And shaking the baskets. They ate them in a kind of dream. And the ship sailed on Leaving us there in a kind of dream too With the empty baskets.
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pic-nic
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Notes U Text: ATL, Autograph MS, MS-Papers-4006-06. The O’Sullivan version, p. 65, omits the last four lines. This and the next four poems also appear in prose versions in KMN, 2, pp. 127–8. They were written when KM was with Anne Estelle Rice in Looe, Cornwall, during May–June 1918.
Malade The man in the room next to mine Has got the same complaint as I When I wake in the night I hear him turning And then he coughs And I cough And after a silence I cough And he coughs again – This goes on for a long time – Until I feel we are like two roosters Calling to each other at false dawn From far away hidden farms
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-13. Entitled ‘Malade’ in this verse form and ‘Pulmonary Tuberculosis’ in the prose version, KMN, 2, p. 127. Line 6 is missing in O’Sullivan, p. 66.
Pic-Nic When the two women in white Came down to the lonely beach She threw away her paintbox And she threw away her note book And down they sat on the sand The tide was low Before them the weedy rocks Were like some herd of shabby beasts Come down to the pool to drink And staying there – in a kind of stupor Then she went off and dabbled her legs in a pool Thinking about the colour of flesh under water And she crawled into a dark cave
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arrivée
And sat there thinking about her childhood Then they came back to the beach And flung themselves down on their bellies Hiding their heads in their arms They looked like two swans.
Notes U Text: ATL, Autograph MS, MS-Papers-4006-06. O’Sullivan, p. 66. In the prose version, KMN, 2, p. 127, ‘She’ is underlined each time, as if to differentiate between the painter and the writer.
Arrivée I seem to spend half my life arriving at strange hotels – And asking if I may go to bed immediately. And would you mind filling my hot water bottle Thank you that is delicious. No. I shan’t require anything more – The strange door shuts upon the stranger And then I slip down in the sheets Waiting for the shadows to come out of the corners And spin a slow, slow web Over the ugliest wallpaper of all.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-12. The prose version is called ‘Hotels’, KMN, 2, p. 127, and is more fully punctuated than the poem. O’Sullivan titles this poem ‘Arrival’, p. 67, but the autograph MS title shows an accent over the first ‘e’, hence, ‘Arrivée’.
Dame Seule She is little and grey With a black velvet band round her hair False teeth And skinny little hands coming out of frills Like the frills on cutlets. As I passed her room one morning
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men and women
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I saw her worked comb and brush bag And her Common Prayer book On the frilled table – – And when she goes to the ‘Ladies’ For some obscure reason she wears a little shawl. At the dinner table, smiling brightly – This is the first time I have ever travelled alone And stayed by myself in a strange hotel But my husband does not mind – As it is so Very Quiet. Of course if it were a gay place And she draws in her chin And the bead chain rises and falls Upon her vanished bosom.
Notes U Text: ATL, Autograph MS, MS-Papers-4006-06; prose version KMN, 2, p. 127. O’Sullivan, p. 67.
Verses Writ in a Foreign Bed Almighty Father of all and Most Celestial Giver Who hast granted to us thy children a Heart and Lungs and a Liver; If upon me should descend thy beautiful gift of tongues Incline not thine Omnipotent ear to my remarks on Lungs.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089 and autograph MS, ATL, MSPapers-4006-16. Also KMN, 2, p. 144.
Men and Women ‘I get on best with women,’ She laughed and crumbled her cake. ‘Men are such unknown country. I never know how to take What they say, nor how they mean it And – oh, well they are so queer,
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friendship
So – don’t you know! – so – this and that. You know what I mean, my dear! ‘With women it’s so much simpler,’ She laughed and cuddled her muff. ‘One doesn’t have to keep smiling – Now what have I said? – It’s enough To chat over nothing important. That is such a rest, I find, In these strenuous days, don’t you know, dear? They put such a strain on the mind.’
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. Dated 1919. Also Journal, 1954, p. 177.
Friendship When we were charming Backfisch1 With curls and velvet bows We shared a charming kitten With tiny velvet toes. It was so gay and playful; It flew like a woolly ball From my lap to your shoulder – And, oh, it was so small, So warm – and so obedient If we cried: ‘That’s enough!’ It lay and slept between us, A purring ball of fluff. But now that I am thirty And she is thirty-one, I shudder to discover How wild our cat has run. It’s bigger than a Tiger, Its eyes are jets of flame, Its claws are gleaming daggers, Could it have once been tame? Take it away; I’m frightened! But she, with placid brow,
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Cries: ‘This is our Kitty-witty! Why don’t you love her now?’
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, dated 1919, MS-Papers-11327-089 and MS-Papers7224-09. Also Journal, 1954, p. 178. Autograph first version: ATL, MSX6920. 1. Backfisch means a young girl, a flapper.
Tedious Brief Adventure of K.M. A doctor who came from Jamaica Said: ‘This time I’ll mend her or break her I’ll plug her with serum And if she can’t bear ’em I’ll call in the next undertaker.’ His locum tenens Doctor Byam Said: ‘Right O, old fellow, let’s try ’em For I’m an adept O At pumping in strepto Since I was a surgeon in Siam.’ The patient, who hailed from New Zealing Said: ‘Pray don’t consider my feeling Provided you’re certain ’Twill not go on hurtin’ I’ll lie here and smile at the ceiling.’ Those two very bloodthirsty men Injected five million, then ten But found that the strepto Had suddenly crept to Her feet – and the worst happened then! Any day you may happen to meet Her alone in the Hampstead High Street In a box on four wheels With a whistle that squeals And her hands do the job of her feet.
Notes U Text: KMN, 2, pp. 228–9. The form is a series of limericks.
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to anne estelle rice
To Anne Estelle Rice My darling Anne After my Plan For New Year’s Day fell through I gave up hope Of catching a rope Which would land me down near you. Since then I’ve been (Pulse one sixteen Temperature one o three)1 Lying in bed With a wandering head And a weak, weak cup of tea. Injections, chère In my derrière Driven into a muscular wad With a needle thick As a walking stick – How can one believe in God! Plus – pleurisy And je vous dis A head that went off on its own Rode a circular race That embraced every place I ever shall know or have known. I landed in Spain Went to China by train And rounded Cape Horn in a gale Ate an ice in New York Caught the boat for Majourke2 And went up the Nile for a sail.
Notes U Text: CLKM, 2, p. 300, 13 January 1919. Anne Estelle Rice (1877–1959), an American painter, was the partner of the Scottish Colourist, J. D. Fergusson, when he was living in Paris and was the art editor of Rhythm. She provided illustrations and essays for the magazine and remained a close friend of KM until KM’s death. Rice married the critic O. Raymond Drey and settled in London. She painted the colourist portrait of KM that is now in the Te Papa Museum in Wellington.
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covering wings
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1. A normal pulse rate is 60–100 beats per minute, and a normal temperature is 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit. 2. ‘Majourke’ is presumably Majorque/Majorca.
Fairy Tale Now folds the Tree of Day its perfect flowers, And every bloom becomes a bud again, Shut and sealed up against the golden showers Of bees that hover in the velvet hours. . . Now a strain Wild and mournful blown from shadow towers, Echoed from shadow ships upon the foam, Proclaims the Queen of Night. From their bowers The dark Princesses fluttering, wing their flight To their old Mother, in her huge old home.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, no. 4642, 18 April 1919, p. 199. Poems, 1923, p. 56. All KM’s poems published in the Athenaeum were signed Elizabeth Stanley, the name of her paternal grandmother.
Covering Wings Love! Love! Your tenderness, Your beautiful, watchful ways Grasp me, fold me, cover me; I lie in a kind of daze, Neither asleep nor yet awake, Neither a bud nor flower. Brings to-morrow Joy or sorrow, The black or the golden hour? Love! Love! You pity me so! Chide me, scold me – cry, ‘Submit – submit! You must not fight!’ What may I do, then – die? But, oh – my horror of quiet beds! How can I longer stay! ‘One to be ready, Two to be steady, Three to be off and away!’
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firelight
Darling heart – your gravity! Your sorrowful, mournful gaze ‘Two bleached roads lie under the moon, At the parting of the ways.’ But the tiny, tree-thatched, narrow lane, Isn’t it yours and mine? The blue-bells ring Hey, Ding-a-Ding, Ding!1 And buds are thick on the vine. Love! Love! grief of my heart! As a tree droops over a stream You hush me, lull me, darken me, The shadow hiding the gleam. Your drooping and tragical boughs of grace Are heavy as though with rain. Run! Run! Into the sun! Let us be children again.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, no. 4643, 25 April 1919, p. 233. Signed Elizabeth Stanley. Poems, 1923, p. 57. 1. ‘Hey ding a ding ding’ is a line from Shakespeare’s song, ‘It was a lover and his lass’, in As You Like It, V, iii, 18.
Firelight Playing in the fire and twilight together, My little son and I, Suddenly – woefully – I stoop to catch him. ‘Try, mother, try!’ Old Nurse Silence lifts a silent finger: ‘Hush! cease your play!’ What happened? What in that tiny moment Flew away?
Notes Text: Athenaeum, no. 4643, 25 April 1919, p. 233. Signed Elizabeth Stanley. Poems, 1923, p. 59.
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Sorrowing Love And again the flowers are come And the light shakes And no tiny voice is dumb, And a bud breaks On the humble bush and the proud restless tree. Come with me! Look, this little flower is pink, And this one white. Here’s a pearl cup for your drink, Here’s for your delight A yellow one, sweet with honey. Here’s fairy money Silver bright Scattered over the grass As we pass. Here’s moss. How the smell of it lingers On my cold fingers! You shall have no moss. Here’s a frail Hyacinth,1 deathly pale. Not for you, not for you. And the place where they grew You must promise me not to discover, My sorrowful lover! Shall we never be happy again? Never again play? In vain – in vain! Come away!
Notes Text: Athenaeum, no. 4647, 23 May 1919, p. 366. Signed Elizabeth Stanley. Poems, 1923, p. 60. 1. In Greek mythology the hyacinth flower was created by his lover Apollo from the blood of a beautiful youth, Hyacinthus, who was killed by the jealous god of the wind, Zephyrus.
A Little Girl’s Prayer Grant me the moment, the lovely moment That I may lean forth to see
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secret flowers
The other buds, the other blooms, The other leaves on the tree: That I may take into my bosom The breeze that is like his brother, But stiller, lighter, whose faint laughter Echoes the joy of the other. Above on the blue and white cloud-spaces There are small clouds at play. I watch their remote, mysterious play-time In the other far-away. Grant I may hear the small birds singing The song that the silence knows . . . (The Light and the Shadow whisper together, The lovely moment grows, Ripples into the air like water Away and away without sound, And the little girl gets up from her praying On the cold ground.)
Notes Text: Athenaeum, no. 4653, 4 July 1919, p. 552. Signed Elizabeth Stanley. Poems, 1923, p. 61.
Secret Flowers Is love a light for me? A steady light, A lamp within whose pallid pool I dream Over old love-books? Or is it a gleam, A lantern coming towards me from afar Down a dark mountain? Is my love a star? Ah me! so high above – so coldly bright! The fire dances. Is my love a fire Leaping down the twilight ruddy and bold? Nay, I’d be frightened of him. I’m too cold For quick and eager loving. There’s a gold Sheen on these flower petals as they fold More truly mine, more like to my desire. The flower petals fold. They are by the sun Forgotten. In a shadowy wood they grow
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sunset
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Where the dark trees keep up a to-and-fro Shadowy waving. Who will watch them shine When I have dreamed my dream? Ah, darling mine! Find them, gather them for me one by one.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, no. 4660, 22 August 1919, p. 776. Signed Elizabeth Stanley. O’Sullivan, p. 74. Not included by JMM in Poems, 1923 or 1930.
Old-Fashioned Widow’s Song She handed me a gay bouquet Of roses pulled in the rain, Delicate beauties frail and cold – Could roses heal my pain? She smiled: ‘Ah, c’est un triste temps!’ I laughed and answered ‘Yes,’ Pressing the roses in my palms. How could the roses guess? She sang ‘Madame est seule?’ Her eye Snapped like a rain-washed berry. How could the solemn roses tell Which of us was more merry? She turned to go: she stopped to chat; ‘Adieu,’ at last she cried. ‘Mille mercis pour ces jolies fleurs!’ . . . At that the roses died. The petals drooped, the petals fell, The leaves hung crisped and curled. And I stood holding my dead bouquet In a dead world.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, no. 4680, 9 January 1920, p. 42. Signed Elizabeth Stanley. Poems, 1930, p. 75.
Sunset A beam of light was shaken out of the sky On to the brimming tide, and there it lay
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the new husband
Palely tossing like a creature condemned to die Who has loved the bright day. ‘Ah, who are these that wing through the shadowy air’ She cries, in agony. ‘Are they coming for me?’ The big waves croon to her: ‘Hush now! There – now – there! There is nothing to see.’ But her white arms lift to cover her shining head And she presses close to the waves to make herself small . . . On their listless knees the beam of light lies dead And the birds of shadow fall.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, no. 4682, 23 January 1920, p. 103. Signed Elizabeth Stanley. Poems, 1930, p. 74. (Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-16. Also TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089 and KMN, 2, p. 248.)
The New Husband Some one came to me and said Forget, forget that you’ve been wed Who’s your man to leave you be Ill and cold in a far country Who’s the husband – who’s the stone Could leave a child like you alone. You’re like a leaf caught in the wind You’re like a lamb that’s left behind. When all the flock has pattered away You’re like a pitiful little stray Kitten that I’d put in my vest You’re like a bird that’s fallen from nest. We’ve none of us too long to live Then take me for your man and give Me all the keys to all your fears And let me kiss away these tears Creep close to me. I mean no harm My darling. Let me make you warm. I had received that very day A letter from the Other to say That in six months – he hoped – no longer
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I would be so much better and stronger That he would close his books and come With radiant looks to bear me home. Ha! Ha! Six months, six weeks, six hours Among these glittering palms and flowers With Melancholy at my side For my old nurse and for my guide Despair – and for my footman Pain – – I’ll never see my home again. Said my new husband: Little dear It’s time we were away from here In the road below there waits my carriage Ready to drive us to our marriage Within my home the feast is spread And the maids are baking the bridal bread. I thought with grief upon that other But then why should he aught discover Save that I pined away and died? So I became the stranger’s bride And every moment however fast It flies – we live as ’twere our last!
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4000-29. Signed Elizabeth Stanley. This poem was sent on 4 December 1919 by KM, who was at Ospedaletti, to JMM in London with ‘He wrote’ and ‘Et Après’. She asked him to file them for future polishing; perhaps they were signed ‘Elizabeth Stanley’ to imply that they were designed for the Athenaeum, but they were clearly a bitter attack on JMM’s perceived abandonment of her, and he did not publish them until after KM’s death. CLKM, 3, pp. 136–9.
He wrote Darling Heart if you would make me Happy, you have found the way. Write me letters. How they shake me Thrill me all the common day With our love. I hear your laughter Little laughs! I see your look
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he wrote
‘They Lived Happy Ever After’ As you close the fairy book. Work’s been nothing but a pleasure Every silly little word Dancing to some elfin measure Piped by a small chuckling bird. All this love – as though I’ve tasted Wine too rare for human food I have dreamed away and wasted Just because the news was good. Where’s the pain of counting money When my little queen is there In the parlour eating honey Beautiful beyond compare!1 How I love you! You are better. Does it matter – being apart? Oh, the love that’s in this letter Feel it, beating like a heart. Beating out – ‘I do adore you’ Now and to Eternity See me as I stand before you Happy as you’d have me be. Don’t be sad and don’t be lonely Drive away those awful fears When they come remember only How I’ve suffered these two years. Darling heart if you must sorrow Think: ‘My pain must be his pain.’ Think: ‘He will be sad tomorrow’ And then – make me smile again.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-13. Signed Elizabeth Stanley. Journal, 1954, pp. 181–2. Also KMN, 2, pp. 249–50. 1. The fifth stanza refers to the nursery rhyme, ‘Sing a song of sixpence’: ‘The king was in his counting house counting out his money / The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey.’
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Et Après When her last breath was taken And the old miser death had shaken The last, last glim1 from her eyes He retired. And to the world’s surprise Wrote these inspired, passion-fired Poems of Sacrifice! The world said: ‘If she had not been dead (And burièd) He’d never have written these. She was hard to please They’re better apart. Now the stone Has rolled away2 from his heart Now he’s come into his own Alone.’
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-13, signed Elizabeth Stanley. Journal, 1954, pp. 182–3. (See also KMN, 2, pp. 248–9. Shorter version, TS, dated 1919, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089.) 1. ‘Glim’ means a source of light. 2. The stone being rolled away perhaps suggests the resurrection of Christ: ‘And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre’, Luke, 24: 2.
By all the laws of the M. & P. By all the laws of the M. & P. This book is bound to belong to me. Besides I am sure that you agree I am the English Anton T.
Notes U Text: Journal, 1954, p. 226. KM wrote after this verse: ‘God forgive me, Tchehov, for my impertinence’ (12 December 1920).
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the ring
The Ring But a tiny ring of gold Just a link Wear it, and your heart is sold . . . Strange to think! Till it glitters on your hand You are free Shall I cast it on the sand In the sea? Which was Judas’ greatest sin Kiss or gold?1 Love must end where sales begin I am told. We will have no ring, no kiss To deceive. When you hear the serpent hiss Think of Eve.
Notes U Text: TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089. O’Sullivan, p. 80. Also KMN, 2, pp. 247–8. O’Sullivan reads this as a pastiche of Robert Browning’s ‘A Woman’s Last Word’; see CLKM, 3, p. 78. 1. In the Garden of Gethsemane Judas Iscariot kissed Jesus in order to identify him and so to betray him to the servants of the high priest; he was paid thirty pieces of silver.
Winter Bird My bird, my darling, Calling through the cold of afternoon – Those round, bright notes, Each one so perfect Shaken from the other and yet Hanging together in flashing clusters! The small soft flowers and the ripe fruit All are gathered. It is the season now of nuts and berries And round bright flashing drops On the frozen grass.
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Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-16. O’Sullivan, p. 81. (See also TS, ATL, MS-Papers-11327-089 and KMN, 2, p. 250.)
The Wounded Bird In the wide bed Under the green embroidered quilt With flowers and leaves always in soft motion She is like a wounded bird resting on a pool. The hunter threw his dart And hit her breast, Hit her, but did not kill. O my wings,1 lift me – lift me I am not dreadfully hurt! Down she dropped and was still. Kind people come to the edge of the pool with baskets ‘Of course what the poor bird wants is plenty of food!’ Their bags and pockets are crammed almost to bursting With dinner scrapings and scraps from the servants’ lunch. Oh! how pleased they are to be really giving! ‘In the past, you know you know, you were always so fly-away So seldom came to the window-sill, so rarely Shared the delicious crumbs thrown into the yard. Here is a delicate fragment and here a tit-bit As good as new. And here’s a morsel of relish And cake and bread and bread and bread and bread.’ At night – in the wide bed With the leaves and flowers Gently weaving in the darkness She is like a wounded bird at rest on a pool. Timidly, timidly she lifts her head from her wing. In the sky there are two stars Floating, shining – Oh, waters – do not cover me! I would look long and long at those beautiful stars! O my wings – lift me – lift me I am not so dreadfully hurt . . .
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the wounded bird Notes
U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-4006-16. Poems, 1923, p. 62. Also KMN, 2, p. 339. MS is signed Katherine Mansfield. Written in the Hôtel d’Angleterre, Sierre, in July 1922. KM had moved to Switzerland in the hope that the air would be beneficial to her health. 1. She habitually referred to her lungs as her ‘wings’, and it is therefore interesting that these last two poems, written just a few months before her death, should refer to birds.
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Songs
Love’s Entreaty Lov’st thou me or Lov’st me not Whisper and do not fear; Let me not wait thine answer love, the time to part draws near. Why standest Thou so proud, so cold; would I thy heart might see The moon shall wane and the stars grow old e’re I lose my love for Thee. . . . If Thou would’st take my heart, my life, If I thy slave might be, I’d reek not for the world’s hard strife; Oh, my love, I would live for thee, for thee!
Night When the Shadows of Evening are falling And the World is preparing for sleep, When the Birds to their wee ones are calling and the stars are beginning to peep, A peace steals into my heart Which no one and nothing can break, And I from my old sorrows part Till the morning begins to awake. O night how I love and adore thee; Why dost thou so short a time stay; My sorrows come crowding back O’er me e’re the shades of the night pass away. I hope I may die in the darkness when the world is so quiet and so still;
137
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night
And my soul pass away with the shadows E’re the sun rises Over the hill.
Notes Text: Published in 1904, by E. D. Bote and G. Boke, Berlin, as ‘Two Songs: No. 1. Love’s Entreaty. No. 2. Night. The words written by Kathleen M. Beauchamp. The music composed by Vera M. Beauchamp.’ The copy in the possession of the ATL has KM’s handwritten dedication: ‘To Tom, from Kathleen – 13.8.04.’ ‘Tom’ refers to Arnold Trowell (the twin brother of Garnet Trowell), with whom KM was infatuated at this time. Sylvia Berkman, in Katherine Mansfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 210, quotes a conversation with Isobel Ambrose, née Creelman, a contemporary of the Beauchamp girls at Queen’s College. Ambrose said that ‘Kathleen always seemed reserved and “different” – like the “deep notes” of the ’cello she played.’ She remembered the last stanza above after many years.
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PART II
TRANSLATIONS
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Translations: Introduction by Claire Davison
It would be unusual today to find an account of Anglophone modernism that did not dwell on the centrality of translating foreign languages and reading literatures in translation in the shaping of cultural dynamics in the years 1890–1930. The creation of a canon of Russian literature in translation was undoubtedly the most important of these translation projects, which was sustained as much by the ambient ‘Russian fever’ as it was by astute marketing policies and a growing visibility of Russian national and international affairs, whether reported in the newspapers, or observed in the unprecedented numbers of Russian exiles, emigrants and émigrés arriving in the capitals of Western Europe.1 This useful repositioning of translation as both a cultural process and a linguistic transaction or product has brought to light many of the more marginal networks, mediators and texts that had previously been overshadowed by the focus on national narratives of modernism, with their masterpieces and great authors. It meant raising the veil of invisibility that traditionally surrounded translation. Who were the translators? How did they work? How did they acquire the texts they translated? To what tools and reference manuals did they have access? Who commissioned and paid for the translations? Lawrence Venuti popularised the idea of the translator’s invisibility in the sense that the translator in the Anglo-American tradition was often expected to create a smooth, readable text that would make the reader feel at ease in a translated text, playing down stylistic innovations or cultural differences.2 This invisibility could also be far more prosaic, simply suggesting how easily readers, historians and critics have overlooked the fact that there was a translator and a translating ethos shaping the text, and that translation could play a vital part in the creative lives of so many authors. There is perhaps no better example of this invisibility than KM’s translations. Biographers have, of course, always underlined her passion for foreign languages and literatures, which began well before she left New Zealand for continental Europe and England. The publication of her notebooks confirmed how very multilingual she was, slipping playfully and creatively between languages, dialects 141
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and linguistic registers. Her lifelong passion for all things Russian, which included an imaginative construction of herself as Katerina or Kissienka adopting a child she would call Anton, in honour of Chekhov, has long been documented.3 And yet little was known about how she engaged in foreign literature by translating. Numerous critics and biographers certainly mentioned her translations of Chekhov, often circling around the question of how much her early stories owed to his influence. There were few readers, even among KM specialists, who realised quite how much translation she had done. This was not just because it had been overlooked. KM had quite simply disappeared into the shadows of other people’s translations, as a passing reminiscence in JMM’s autobiography reveals: ‘In the evenings Koteliansky4 would come round with a generous supply of Russian cigarettes and we would work together translating Tchehov and Kuprin – a speculative venture for which we had no publisher.’ 5 JMM’s fond recollection, with its subtly ambiguous ‘we’, leaves quite a lot unsaid or understated: the proactive role of many exiles who used translation to sustain public interest in Russian literature and contemporary cultural and political affairs; the practice of cotranslation, with a source-language translator and a target-language re-reader working side by side; the economics of translation as professional survival, in this case after Rhythm had run up colossal debts and Koteliansky had ventured into literary translation in the hope of escaping from his dull existence as a clerk at a Russian law bureau in Holborn; or the significance of authors who were as yet little known (which, in 1915, still included Chekhov) and who formed part of a second wave of interest in Russian literature. JMM is even rather elliptical about their achievements, since within a year he and Koteliansky had co-signed and published four volumes: Chekhov’s The Bet and Other Stories, Dostoevsky’s Pages from the Journal of an Author, Kuprin’s The River of Life and Other Stories, and a book of literary criticism, Shestov’s Anton Tchekhov and Other Essays. There is another more ominous oversight in JMM’s account. He fails to mention the degree to which the translating venture had been performed by a trio or a different duo, with KM working either alongside or instead of him, notably on the translation of ‘Captain Ribnikov’ from the Kuprin anthology.6 Koteliansky later paid tribute to this contribution, admitting that her name had been dropped ‘because she was not then known as a writer’.7 No proof has yet come to light attesting her involvement in the other 1915–16 translations, but the detail gives a different slant to her affection for a doll nicknamed Ribni, who features in several letters to JMM. The decision to omit KM’s name in favour of JMM’s reflects dismally on gender politics and assumptions of professional visibility in
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the early twentieth century. By 1915, KM may not yet have found her mature voice, but she had enjoyed success as a writer and reviewer, and was hardly less experienced in the publishing business than JMM. Even after her recognition as a serious, innovative writer, however, her translations remained mostly invisible. JMM and Koteliansky never worked together after their serious quarrel in 1916, but KM and Koteliansky collaborated on numerous occasions until weeks before her death in 1923, a rich undertaking marred only by a rift in 1918 when KM lost three manuscript books of Koteliansky’s translations of Chekhov’s letters. Within five years, and despite KM’s own frequent moves abroad, her prolific creative writing and her soon debilitating physical condition, they had completed an impressive number of memorable works, as the pages here attest. Vincent O’Sullivan even maintains that in the early 1920s, she was ‘finding it more satisfying to translate Dostoevsky and Andreyev than press on with her own fiction’.8 Admittedly, she was not, in the strict, professional sense of the term, a translator. Passing comments in their letters suggest she learnt some Russian from Koteliansky over the years, and during the last months in Fontainebleau she studied Russian avidly, sometimes even for several hours a day. Unpublished pages from her notebooks show her copying out unusual letters in Cyrillic and transliterating words and expressions she wanted to use. Useful as they were, these intuitions into how the language worked and sounded would not, of course, make her proficient as a translator. Like many of her contemporaries, KM worked as a co-translator, or ‘collaborator’ (a term she used), reading through Koteliansky’s first drafts, which he deliberately rendered in as literal a manner as possible, so as to explore the semantic potential of the words together.9 Ideally, they would sit down side by side to read the translations aloud, as certain letters indicate: I forgot to arrange with you a time for us to meet that I may read you the new letters. I read them last night. They might have been written yesterday. I dislike IMMENSELY not going over the letters with you. [. . .] I feel Tchekov would be the first to say we must go over them together.10
Such minute translation work would inevitably impact on her creative, aesthetic and political consciousness. As she told Ottoline Morrell, ‘I have been translating MG’s Journal of the Revolution. I find G wonderfully sympathetic. This journal is dreadful. It makes you feel – anything rather than revolution.’ 11 Regrettably, this translation has never come to light. Until recent years, the only clues we had about her involvement
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were passing references like these in her letters, usefully annotated by editors, and Koteliansky’s admission quoted in Mantz’s unpublished biographical notes. Little of what she translated was published in her lifetime and, as mentioned above, she was not always given credit for the work she had done. It has taken the compilation of this third volume of KM’s complete works to reveal the sheer volume of translation work, let alone its immense intellectual value. Where exactly does the importance of this body of texts lie? First, it confirms the direct link between her lifelong passion for literatures in translation and her activities as a co-translator. Like her letters, diaries and reading notes, the translations are sites of apprenticeship and craftsmanship, related genetically to her poetic experimentation in the same years. Second, they provide concrete proof of how she read, notably her acute attention to detail: textual rhythm, voice, gender and narrative construction. Surviving manuscripts and annotated drafts make interfaces between her translations and the letters, reviews and diaries even clearer.12 A third factor when assessing these translations is their part in the Anglophone reception of Russian culture in the early twentieth century, and KM’s place alongside Koteliansky as a key literary mediator. Instead of the longstanding, fruitless debate about what is influenced by or borrowed from Russian authors in her work, we find a much stronger case for insisting on her services to Russian literature. Admittedly, none of these texts is a canonical literary masterpiece. But their significance in KM studies, Russian literary history and cultural memory is undeniable, as a brief overview can reveal. The River of Life collection was first published in Russian in 1906, by which time Kuprin was already a successful journalist and shortstory writer, working between several literary traditions: fin-de-siècle sensationalism, satirical realism, bleak naturalism, and reportage, which included journalism and travel writing. All these features are apparent in the River of Life anthology. The historical context, notably the latent social unrest and Russia’s humiliating defeat by the Japanese in 1905, is perceptible throughout, not just as a backcloth but as part of the narrative dynamics. The tension between national character and national military history on the one hand, and the shabby, evanescent dealings of various social underworlds on the other is what makes ‘Captain Ribnikov’ so engaging, even today, as does the astute examination of psychological make-up, not only in the duel between a writer and an undercover agent, but also in the rivalries between prostitutes. Kuprin’s place in Russian literary history and its interconnections with Western European networks are important to note, since, unlike his near-contemporaries, Chekhov, Gorky and Bunin, he was largely forgotten in later years. He was one of the first generation of Russian exiles in Paris, however, where he
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lived from 1920 to 1938, and his writings from the revolutionary and post-revolutionary era offer key insights into that tumultuous period. He frequented the same émigré circles with which KM made tentative contacts in the early 1920s. We do not know how KM became involved in translating ‘Ribnikov’, rather than the other tales by Kuprin, but the storyline itself may have influenced the choice. Set in St Petersburg during the wars with Japan, the adventures of a Japanese military agent who almost escapes detection during a mission to penetrate Russian news agencies surely appealed to KM’s own sense of outsidedness, subversion and mimicry. The play of different voices and centres of consciousness in the story, and the dare-devil games with disguises, masks and misleading literary clues, for example, also invite comparisons with her own poetics. D. H. Lawrence, among others, considered this story in translation to be by far the most successful in the collection, a judgement which may have exacerbated the rivalries between him and JMM, whether or not Lawrence knew the truth about KM’s involvement.13 Moving on to Chekhov’s letters, we find another essential chapter in KM’s literary career, and also an important marker in the history of Chekhov’s reception in the English-speaking world. Of course, readers will recognise obvious biographical parallels that would have struck a poignant chord for her: the death of Chekhov’s brother, his accounts of lung haemorrhage, his protective concerns for his stories before they are launched into the market-place, the harsh tension between the economics and aesthetics of literary creation. Certain letters point to ways in which Chekhov’s definition of a writer’s ethics could later help KM define her own literary credo. The context, however, is more important than factual details and biographical parallels in this case. In 1919, Chekhov was gaining popularity in the Anglophone world as a short-story writer (Constance Garnett’s first volume had been published in the same year as Koteliansky and JMM’s, and earlier translations had been in circulation since the early 1900s) but as a playwright he had made little impact. The excessive clichés of Russian fever were still dominant in discussions of anything Russian, and spectators were perplexed by Chekhov’s restraint. Critics continued to suppose that outlandishness, emotional outbursts and ‘the soul’ were somehow quintessentially ‘Russian’ features, and therefore sought the same features in Chekhov, as nearly all pre-1919 reviews confirm.14 Koteliansky and KM’s letters were published in the Athenaeum before Garnett’s first volumes of Chekhov’s letters appeared. Thus we find them offering a distinctly novel vision of Chekhov – their selection of letters reveals Chekhov as a caring doctor and family man; they show a sensitive playwright underlining the artistic project common to his plays and stories; they
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foreground the banter and comic verve of the clownish, irreverent Chekhov. In other words, these letters were inviting readers to think beyond the conventions and clichés of the era, which the aftermath of the Russian revolution had, of course, sharpened. The critic and literary historian Mirsky claimed that KM was the only writer in Britain to have understood Chekhov’s art.15 It could be argued, with his letters and the diary as evidence, that KM was among the first to pick up on Chekhov’s exquisite art of the everyday: his tender affection for the marginal figures and objects encountered in passing, his sparkling delight in quirks and absurdities. In brief, their translations are the first step towards a new reception of Chekhov, shaping a perception of his works which gained in popularity throughout the twentieth century. Moving on to the Andreyev memoir, we find another fascinating document in Russian literary history. It deserves appreciation as a fine illustration of Gorky’s art as a biographer. It was written just after his immensely successful Reminiscences of Tolstoy, the book whose bestselling translation transformed Hogarth Press from a rather amateur printing press in Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s basement into a key London publishing house with a catalogue of works in translation that was possibly the most avant-garde of its time. Like all Gorky’s literary reminiscences, the Andreyev memoir reads both as a document of the era – setting the writer within the interwoven contexts of literary movements, political tensions, exile and pre-revolutionary upheaval – and as an example of his aesthetics of life-writing, shaping memory into a revealing dialogue between biographer and biographised subject. The memoir is also important because of its place within Gorky’s hugely enterprising, ambitious project to develop a World Literature publishing house in Moscow and Petersburg immediately after the revolution. His motivation was complex. On a more grandiose level, the aim was to encourage the translation of the world’s classics into Russian, and the translation of Russian literary landmarks into English, German and French, thereby creating circuits of literary exchange and understanding between peoples. On a more pragmatic level, the publishing house was an attempt to provide work and shelter for destitute writers and intellectuals in the new Soviet state – an undertaking for which Soviet writers continued to praise Gorky long after his political commitments shifted, to become more and more ambivalent, and in retrospect compromising, as the Stalin era advanced.16 There was an aesthetic dimension feeding into the ethics of Gorky’s project too. As part of the new Soviet literary dynamic, he dreamt of publishing 10,000 little life stories that would pay tribute to the everyday lives of Soviet citizens.17 Here we find the makings of what was to become factography. KM’s role in importing
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these new socio-literary visions to Anglophone readers is therefore another unexpected chapter, however slight, in her biography. The last three Russian translations here were all contemporary publications of older works that had come to light when the new Soviet government began opening up old literary archives. This brought a host of new materials to the public’s attention, many of which Koteliansky received directly from Grzebin, his literary contact in Moscow. These included suppressed chapters from Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, on which both Virginia Woolf and KM worked with Koteliansky;18 letters from Dostoevsky; notebooks and working drafts of novels, and juvenilia. Tolstoy’s prose-poem, ‘The Dream’, belongs to the last category, but as the prefatory notes explain, it provides important insights into his most famous novel. Tolstoy’s childhood reminiscences indicate that the theme of the dream derived from stories of the ‘Ant-Brethren’ told by his much-loved elder brother. Tolstoy revised his narrative on several occasions as a thirdand first-person reverie, and tried it out in draft chapters of War and Peace in the voices of both Nicolai Rostov and Pierre. The rich critical and biographical explanations which accompany the short prose-poem illustrate Koteliansky’s preoccupation with the reception of the various materials he tried to have published. The translator, as he understood the term, was also a pedagogue, anxious to enlighten readers as well as entertain them. The same is true of the extensive notes related to Dostoevsky’s controversial The Devils, which, as a note in Koteliansky’s handwriting points out, had been very mistakenly translated as The Possessed. The mistake was a deliberate one, which dated back to the most widely read authority on Russian literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Melchior de Vogüé, who found the original title too obscure for Western readerships.19 While they may appear rather unreadable at first glance, the drafts of Dostoevsky’s literary project undercut the conventional approach to his works. Since the late nineteenth century, audiences had tended to read him as a visionary genius, whose extravagant stories of madmen, murderers and raving eccentrics had gushed from his impassioned mind.20 The loose associations between his genius and his epilepsy likewise fed into this myth. The drafts and notes reveal a very different side to his poetics – the careful plotting, the constantly reworked twists and the meticulous use of foreshadowing and counterpoint show the painstaking artist at work. In other words, they invite the reader to question some of the easier clichés, and to read Dostoevsky as a masterful craftsman shaping the political news of the day and his personal convictions into intricately constructed narratives with immense psychological insight. All these features were, of course, later explored by various schools of
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literary criticism. KM and Koteliansky’s translations, however, were definitely avant-garde at the time, and Dostoevsky scholarship in the Anglophone world might well have changed earlier, had these pages been published.21 Both the drafts for The Devils and the Dostoevsky letters in this volume open up new perspectives in our understanding of KM’s engagement with Dostoevsky, which to this day remains a very unexplored topic. This may be put down to some of her more impatient responses to his novels. Concluding Crime and Punishment, for instance, she notes, ‘Very bad I thought it too.’ 22 The Idiot similarly inspires perplexity and dissatisfaction: ‘What was Dostoeivsky really aiming at?’ 23 His letters to his wife also irritated her initially: ‘there is hardly one single statement that isn’t pure matter-of-fact. [. . .] Theres no expansion, no evidence of a living man, a real man.’ 24 She came back on this judgement, however, in a post-scriptum to Koteliansky: ‘I was not fair to dear “Dosty” – Your Collaborator.’ 25 These reservations notwithstanding, KM’s response to Dostoevsky is rich, varied and indicative of how she read. Just as reading notes and letters show her picking up on his female characters, rather than the male protagonists, so the translations reveal her attention to Dostoevsky’s domestic life, and the relationship between the author and his wife. More than their psychological insights or her intuitive creation of a gendered reader’s stance, however, the letters are essential documents in our understanding of Russian cultural history. The letters were written during Dostoevsky’s three-week absence from home when he travelled to Moscow to attend the Pushkin festival in 1880, an event which, in the words of Joseph Frank, the outstanding Dostoevsky scholar and biographer, ‘has been remembered by posterity largely because of the sensation created by Dostoevsky’s impassioned apotheosis of the great poet’.26 Preparations had been under way for nearly a decade, and the political and cultural stakes were huge, stirring up the latent tensions between Slavophiles and Westernisers, as well as between the Tsar, the Orthodox Church and the intelligentsia. If the idea was to consecrate Pushkin as the national poet (already a vexed issue, bearing in mind that he had been exiled for his pro-Decembrist sympathies), it was still unclear which vision of the nation this implied. The two speeches to be given by Turgenev and Dostoevsky summed up the main political divide, and, given the two authors’ longstanding feud, both camps were expecting a memorably controversial encounter. The death of the Tsarina a few days before the festival, which therefore had to be postponed, only sharpened the tensions. For all these reasons, Dostoevsky’s letters make fascinating reading, offering cultural historians a day-by-day account, no matter how subjective, of how the ceremonies got under way. Even
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their constant shifts from micro-history (the state of the hotel rooms, conditions of transport, concern about lost letters, the children’s health and a shoestring budget) to macro-history (the speech itself as the incarnation of late nineteenth-century Russian messianism) make the letters essential eyewitness accounts. Clearly, these translations open up new, unexpected perspectives in KM studies. Every single piece included in this volume, many of which have been brought to light for the first time, thanks to determined, painstaking archival work, needs to be read in the triple perspective of what it brought to KM’s perception of foreign literatures, the lessons or examples they offered as new forms of craftsmanship and poetics, and the service she was rendering to Russian literature. Although it is impossible to evaluate the quality of the translations without comparing them to other translators’ versions, or reading them alongside the originals, a useful starting point can be to read them as some of the multiple masks and identities KM tried on. It is surely not going too far to suggest that, read as an œuvre, the different translations here offer a very different angle from the classic biographical approach to her foreign travels. There is, of course, an immense and utterly undeniable pathos in KM’s escapes to the continent, motivated as they so often were by personal trauma. Yet each of the poignant episodes has its counterpart in a bold, vibrant and often resoundingly playful translation, transforming the harshness of everyday life into a loving dialogue with a co-translator, an enduring act of cultural mediation, and a voyage out into a new world.
Notes 1. See R. Beasley and P. Bullock, eds, ‘Translating Russia: 1890–1935’, Translation and Literature 20/3, Autumn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011) for precise accounts of Russian translations in the modernist era. 2. Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility (London: Routledge, 1995). 3. See, in particular, Joanna Woods, Katerina: The Russian World of Katherine Mansfield (Auckland: Penguin, 2001). 4. Samuel Solomonovich Koteliansky (1880–1955) was a Russian Jew who moved to London in 1911. He became a friend of D. H. Lawrence, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, the painter Mark Gertler, and JMM and KM; he was known to them as Kot. He was influential as a translator of the work of Russian authors, helping them to achieve prominence in the English-speaking world.
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5. John Middleton Murry, Between Two Worlds: An Autobiography (London: Cape, 1935), p. 344. 6. See Rachel Polonsky’s study of how JMM occluded KM’s involvement with Koteliansky, notably in the Chekhov translations, in Anthony Cross, ed., A People Passing Rude: British Responses to Russian Culture (Cambridge: Open Book, 2012), pp. 201–14. 7. B. J. Kirkpatrick, A Bibliography of Katherine Mansfield (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), pp. 84–5. 8. See O’Sullivan’s essay in Gerri Kimber and Janet Wilson, Celebrating Katherine Mansfield: A Centenary Volume of Essays (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), p. 22. 9. Rebecca Beasley gives a detailed account of how Koteliansky worked with the Woolfs in ‘On Not Knowing Russian: The Translations of Virginia Woolf and S. S. Kotelianskii’, Modern Language Review, 108: 1, January 1913, pp. 1–29. Surviving drafts of the Gorky reminiscences in Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives show KM and Koteliansky working in the same way. 10. CLKM, 2, pp. 312, 309. 11. CLKM, 2, p. 291. 12. My own recent publication focuses precisely on these interlinks in the works of Woolf and KM. See Claire Davison, Translation as Collaboration: Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and S. S. Koteliansky (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). 13. The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. 2, ed. G. Zytaruk and J. Boulton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 577. 14. See, in particular, Le Fleming’s chapter in Patrick Miles, ed. and trans., Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 54–64. 15. Cross, p. 202. 16. Donald Fanger, ed. and trans., Gorky’s Tolstoy and Other Reminiscences: Key Writings by and about Maxim Gorky (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 1–12. 17. Fanger, pp. 177–9. 18. In 1922–3, Virginia Woolf collaborated with Koteliansky on three works: letters by Tolstoy, ‘Stavrogin’s Confession’ from The Possessed, and the Russian pianist Goldenweiser’s account of his friendship with Tolstoy. See Stuart N. Clarke, ed., Translations from the Russian, by V. Woolf and S. S. Koteliansky, introduced by L. Marcus (Southport: Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, 2006). 19. Melchior de Vogüé, Le Roman russe (Paris: Plon, 1912), pp. 260–1. 20. Helen Muchnic, Dostoevsky’s English Reputation 1881–1936 (New York: Octagon, 1969), pp. 7–49. 21. Frank underlines how much light the suppressed materials shed on Dostoevsky’s working method and creative imagination. See Joseph
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22. 23. 24. 25. 26.
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Frank, Dostoevsky, A Writer in his Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 621–5. KMN, 2, p. 8. KMN, 2, p. 33. CLKM, 5, p. 291. CLKM, 4, p. 278. Frank, p. 813.
Captain Ribnikov Alexander Kuprin On the very day when the awful disaster to the Russian fleet at Tsushima was nearing its end,1 and the first vague and alarming reports of that bloody triumph of the Japanese were being circulated over Europe, Staff-Captain Ribnikov, who lived in an obscure alley in the Pieski quarter, received the following telegram from Irkutsk: Send lists immediately watch patient pay debts. Staff-Captain Ribnikov immediately informed his landlady that he was called away from Petersburg on business for a day or two, and told her not to worry about his absence. Then he dressed himself, left the house, and never returned to it again. Only five days had passed when the landlady was summoned to the police station to give evidence about her missing lodger. She was a tall woman of forty-five, the honest widow of an ecclesiastical official, and in a simple and straightforward manner she told all that she knew of him. Her lodger was a quiet, poor, simple man, a moderate eater, and polite. He neither drank nor smoked, rarely went out of the house, and had no visitors. She could say nothing more, in spite of all her respectful terror of the inspector of gendarmerie, who moved his luxurious moustaches in a terrifying way and had a fine stock of abuse on hand. During this five days’ interval Staff-Captain Ribnikov ran or drove over the whole of Petersburg. Everywhere, in the streets, restaurants, theatres, tramcars, the railway stations, this dark lame little officer appeared. He was strangely talkative, untidy, not particularly sober, dressed in an infantry uniform, with an all-over red collar – a perfect type of the rat attached to military hospitals, or the commissariat, or the War Office. He also appeared more than once at the Staff Office, the Committee for the Care of the Wounded, at police stations, at the office of the Military Governor, at the Cossack headquarters, and at dozens of other offices, irritating the officials by his senseless grumbling and complaints, by his abject begging, his typical infantry rudeness, and his noisy patriotism. Already every one knew by heart that
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he had served in the Army Transport, had been wounded in the head at Liao-Yang, and touched in the leg in the retreat from Mukden.2 ‘Why the devil hasn’t he received a gratuity before now! Why haven’t they given him his daily money and his travelling expenses! And his last two months pay! He is absolutely ready to give his last drop of blood – damn it all – for the Czar, the throne, and the country, and he will return to the Far East the moment his leg has healed. But the cursed leg won’t heal – a hundred devils take it. Imagine only – gangrene! Look yourself’ and he put his wounded leg on a chair, and was already eagerly pulling up his trouser; but he was stopped every time by a squeamish and compassionate shyness. His bustling and nervous familiarity, his startled, frightened look, which bordered strangely on impertinence, his stupidity, his persistent and frivolous curiosity taxed to the utmost the patience of men occupied in important and terribly responsible scribbling. In vain it was explained to him in the kindest possible way that he had come to the wrong place; that he ought to apply at such and such a place; that he must produce certain papers; that they will let him know the result. He understood nothing, absolutely nothing. But it was impossible to be very angry with him; he was so helpless, so easily scared and simple, and if any one lost patience and interrupted him, he only smiled and showed his gums with a foolish look, bowed hastily again and again, and rubbed his hands in confusion. Or he would suddenly say in a hoarse, ingratiating tone: ‘Couldn’t you give me one small smoke? I’m dying to smoke. And I haven’t a cent to buy them. “Blessed are the poor. . . . Poverty’s no crime,” as they say – but sheer indecency.’ With that he disarmed the most disagreeable and dour officials. He was given a cigarette, and allowed to sit by the extreme corner of the table. Unwillingly, and of course in an off-hand way, they would answer his importunate questions about what was happening at the war. But there was something very affecting and childishly sincere in the sickly curiosity with which this unfortunate, grubby, impoverished wounded officer of the line followed the war. Quite simply, out of mere humanity, they wanted to reassure, to inform, and encourage him; and therefore they spoke to him more frankly than to the rest. His interest in everything which concerned Russo-Japanese events was so deep that while they were making some complicated inquiry for him he would wander from room to room, and table to table, and the moment he caught a couple of words about the war he would approach and listen with his habitual strained and silly smile. When he finally went away, as well as a sense of relief he would leave a vague, heavy and disquieting regret behind him. Often well-
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groomed, dandified staff-officers referred to him with dignified acerbity: ‘And that’s a Russian officer! Look at that type. Well, it’s pretty plain why we’re losing battle after battle. Stupid, dull, without the least sense of his own dignity – poor old Russia!’ During these busy days Captain Ribnikov took a room in a dirty little hotel near the railway station. Though he had with him a Reserve officer’s proper passport, for some reason he found it necessary to declare that his papers were at present in the Military Governor’s office. Into the hotel he took his things, a hold-all containing a rug and pillow, a travelling bag, and a cheap, new box, with some underclothing and a complete outfit of mufti. Subsequently, the servants gave evidence that he used to come to the hotel late and as if a little the worse for drink, but always regularly gave the door porter twopence for a tip. He never used to sleep more than three or four hours, sometimes without undressing. He used to get up early and pace the room for hours. In the afternoon he would go off. From time to time he sent telegrams to Irkutsk from various post offices, and all the telegrams expressed a deep concern for some one wounded and seriously ill, probably a person very dear to the captain’s heart. It was with this same curious busy, uncouth man that Vladimir Ivanovich Schavinsky, a journalist on a large Petersburg paper, once met.
II Just before he went off to the races, Schavinsky dropped into the dingy little restaurant called ‘The Glory of Petrograd,’ where the reporters used to gather at two in the afternoon to exchange thoughts and information. The company was rough and ready, gay, cynical, omniscient, and hungry enough; and Schavinsky, who was to some degree an aristocrat of the newspaper world, naturally did not belong to it. His bright and amusing Sunday articles, which were not too deep, had a considerable success with the public. He made a great deal of money, dressed well, and had plenty of friends. But he was welcome at ‘The Glory of Petrograd’ as well, on account of his free sharp tongue and the affable generosity with which he lent his fellow-writers half sovereigns. On this day the reporters had promised to procure a race-card for him, with mysterious annotations from the stable. Vassily, the porter, took off Schavinsky’s overcoat, with a friendly and respectful smile.
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‘If you please, Vladimir Ivanovitch, company’s all there. In the big saloon, where Prokhov waits.’ And Prokhov, stout, close-cropped, and red-moustached, also gave him a kindly and familiar smile, as usual not looking straight into the eyes of a respectable customer, but over his head. ‘A long time since you’ve honoured us, Vladimir Ivanovich! This way, please. Everybody’s here.’ As usual his fellow-writers sat round the long table hurriedly dipping their pens in the single inkpot and scribbling quickly on long slips of paper. At the same time, without interrupting their labours, they managed to swallow pies, fried sausages and mashed potatoes, vodka and beer, to smoke and exchange the latest news of the town and newspaper gossip that cannot be printed. Some one was sleeping like a log on the sofa with his face in a handkerchief. The air in the saloon was blue, thick and streaked with tobacco smoke. As he greeted the reporters, Schavinsky noticed the captain, in his ordinary army uniform, among them. He was sitting with his legs apart, resting his hands and chin upon the hilt of a large sword. Schavinsky was not surprised at seeing him, as he had learned not to be surprised at anything in the reporting world. He had often been lost for weeks in that reckless noisy company, – landowners from the provinces, jewellers, musicians, dancing-masters, actors, circus proprietors, fishmongers, café-chantant managers, gamblers from the clubs, and other members of the most unexpected professions. When the officer’s turn came, he rose, straightened his shoulders, stuck out his elbows, and introduced himself in the proper hoarse, drink-sodden voice of an officer of the line: ‘H’m! . . . Captain Ribnikov. . . . Pleased to meet you. . . . You’re a writer too? . . . Delighted. . . . I respect the writing fraternity. The press is the sixth great power. Eh, what?’ With that he grinned, clicked his heels together, shook Schavinsky’s hand violently, bowing all the while in a particularly funny way, bending and straightening his body quickly. ‘Where have I seen him before?’ the uneasy thought flashed across Schavinsky’s mind. ‘He’s wonderfully like some one. Who can it be?’ Here in the saloon were all the celebrities of the Petersburg reporting world. The Three Musketeers – Kodlubtzov, Riazhkin, and Popov – were never seen except in company. Even their names were so easily pronounced together that they made an iambic tetrameter. This did not prevent them from eternally quarrelling, and from inventing stories of incredible extortion, criminal forgery, slander, and blackmail about each other. There was present also Sergey Kondrashov, whose unrestrained voluptuousness had gained him the name of ‘A Pathological Case, not a man.’ There was also a man whose name had
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been effaced by time, like one side of a worn coin, to whom remained only the general nickname ‘Matanya,’ by which all Petersburg knew him. Concerning the dour-looking Svischov, who wrote paragraphs ‘In the police courts,’ they said jokingly: ‘Svischov is an awful blackmailer – never takes less than three roubles.’ The man asleep on the sofa was the long-haired poet Piestrukhin, who supported his fragile, drunken existence by writing lyrics in honour of the imperial birthdays and the twelve Church holidays. There were others besides of no less celebrity, experts in municipal affairs, fires, inquests, in the opening and closing of public gardens. Said lanky, shock-headed, pimply Matanya: ‘They’ll bring you the card immediately, Vladimir Ivanovich. Meanwhile, I commend our brave captain to your attention. He has just returned from the Far East, where, I may say, he made mince-meat of the yellow-faced, squinting, wily enemy. . . . Now, General, fire away!’ The officer cleared his throat and spat sideways on the floor. ‘Swine!’ thought Schavinsky, frowning. ‘My dear chap, the Russian soldier’s not to be sneezed at!’ Ribnikov bawled hoarsely, rattling his sword.’ ‘“Epic heroes!” as the immortal Suvorov3 said. Eh, what? In a word, . . . but I tell you frankly, our commanders in the East are absolutely worthless! You know the proverb: “Like master, like man.” Eh, what? They thieve, play cards, have mistresses . . . and every one knows, where the devil can’t manage himself he sends a woman.’ ‘You were talking about plans, General,’ Matanya reminded him. ‘Ah! Plans! Merci! . . . My head. . . . I’ve been on the booze all day.’ Ribnikov threw a quick, sharp glance at Schavinsky. ‘Yes, I was just saying. . . . They ordered a certain colonel of the general staff to make a reconnaissance, and he takes with him a squadron of Cossacks – dare-devils. Hell take ’em! . . . Eh, what? He sets off with an interpreter. Arrives at a village, “What’s the name?” The interpreter says nothing. “At him, boys!” The Cossacks instantly use their whips. The interpreter says: “Butundu!” And “Butundu” is Chinese for “I don’t understand.” Ha-ha! He’s opened his mouth – the son of a bitch! The colonel writes down “village, Butundu.” They go further to another village. “What’s the name?” “Butundu.” “What! Butundu again?” “Butundu.” Again the colonel enters it “village, Butundu.” So he entered ten villages under the name of “Butundu,” and turned into one of Tchekov’s types – “Though you are Ivanov the seventh,” says he, “you’re a fool all the same.”’ ‘Oh, you know Tchekov?’ asked Schavinsky. ‘Who? Tchekov? old Anton? You bet – damn him. . . . We’re friends – we’re often drunk together. . . . “Though you are the seventh,” says he, “you’re a fool all the same.”’
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‘Did you meet him in the East?’ asked Schavinsky quickly. ‘Yes, exactly, in the East, Tchekov and I, old man. . . . “Though you are the seventh – –”’ While he spoke Schavinsky observed him closely. Everything in him agreed with the conventional army type: his voice, manner, shabby uniform, his coarse and threadbare speech. Schavinsky had had the chance of observing hundreds of such debauched captains. They had the same grin, the same ‘Hell take ’em,’ twisted their moustaches to the left and right with the same bravado; they hunched their shoulders, stuck out their elbows, rested picturesquely on their sword and clanked imaginary spurs. But there was something individual about him as well, something different, as it were, locked away, which Schavinsky had never seen, neither could he define it – some intense, inner, nervous force. The impression he had was this: Schavinsky would not have been at all surprised if this croaking and drunken soldier of fortune had suddenly begun to talk of subtle and intellectual matters, with ease and illumination, elegantly; neither would he have been surprised at some mad, sudden, frenzied, even bloody prank on the captain’s part. What struck Schavinsky chiefly in the captain’s looks was the different impression he made full face and in profile. Side face, he was a common Russian, faintly Kalmuck,4 with a small, protruding forehead under a pointed skull, a formless Russian nose, shaped like a plum, thin stiff black moustache and sparse beard, the grizzled hair cropped close, with a complexion burnt to a dark yellow by the sun. . . . But when he turned full face Schavinsky was immediately reminded of some one. There was something extraordinarily familiar about him, but this ‘something’ was impossible to grasp. He felt it in those narrow coffeecoloured bright eagle eyes, slit sideways; in the alarming curve of the black eyebrows, which sprang upwards from the bridge of the nose; in the healthy dryness of the skin strained over the huge cheekbones; and, above all, in the general expression of the face – malicious, sneering, intelligent, perhaps even haughty, but not human, like a wild beast rather, or, more truly, a face belonging to a creature of another planet. ‘It’s as if I’d seen him in a dream!’ the thought flashed through Schavinsky’s brain. While he looked at the face attentively he unconsciously screwed up his eyes, and bent his head sideways. Ribnikov immediately turned round to him and began to giggle loudly and nervously. ‘Why are you admiring me, Mr. Author. Interested? I!’ He raised his voice and thumped his chest with a curious pride. ‘I am Captain Ribnikov. Rib-ni-kov! An orthodox Russian warrior who slaughters the enemy, without number. That’s a Russian soldier’s song. Eh, what?’
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Kodlubtzov, running his pen over the paper, said carelessly, without looking at Ribnikov, ‘and without number, surrenders.’ Ribnikov threw a quick glance at Kodlubtzov, and Schavinsky noticed that strange yellow green fires flashed in his little brown eyes. But this lasted only an instant. The captain giggled, shrugged, and noisily smacked his thighs. ‘You can’t do anything; it’s the will of the Lord. As the fable says. Set a thief to catch a thief. Eh, what?’ He suddenly turned to Schavinsky, tapped him lightly on the knee, and with his lips uttered a hopeless sound: ‘Phwit! We do everything on the off-chance – higgledy-piggledy – anyhow! We can’t adapt ourselves to the terrain; the shells never fit the guns; men in the firing line get nothing to eat for four days. And the Japanese – damn them – work like machines. Yellow monkeys – and civilisation is on their side. Damn them! Eh, what?’ ‘So you think they may win?’ Schavinsky asked. Again Ribnikov’s lips twitched. Schavinsky had already managed to notice this habit of his. All through the conversation, especially when the captain asked a question and guardedly waited the answer, or nervously turned to face a fixed glance from some one, his lips would twitch suddenly, first on one side then on the other, and he would make strange grimaces, like convulsive, malignant smiles. At the same time he would hastily lick his dry, cracked lips with the tip of his tongue – thin bluish lips like a monkey’s or a goat’s. ‘Who knows?’ said the captain. ‘God only. . . . You can’t set foot on your own doorstep without God’s help, as the proverb goes. Eh, what? The campaign isn’t over yet. Everything’s still to come. The Russian’s used to victory. Remember Poltava5 and the unforgettable Suvorov . . . and Sebastopol!6 . . . and how we cleared out Napoleon, the greatest captain in the world, in 1812.7 Great is the God of Russia. What?’ As he began to talk the corners of his lips twitched into strange smiles, malignant, sneering, inhuman, and an ominous yellow gleam played in his eyes, beneath the black frowning eyebrows. At that moment they brought Schavinsky coffee. ‘Wouldn’t you like a glass of cognac?’ he asked the captain. Ribnikov again tapped him lightly on the knee. ‘No thanks, old man. I’ve drunk a frightful lot to-day, damn it. My noddle’s fairly splitting. Damn it all, I’ve been pegging since the early morning. “Russia’s joy’s in the bottle!” Eh, what?’ he cried suddenly, with an air of bravado and an unexpectedly drunken note in his voice. ‘He’s shamming,’ Schavinsky instantly thought. But for some reason he did not want to leave off, and he went on treating the captain. ‘What do you say to beer . . . red wine?’
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‘No thanks. I’m drunk already without that. Gran’ merci.’ ‘Have some soda?’ The captain cheered up. ‘Yes, yes, please. Soda, certainly. I could do with a glass.’ They brought a siphon. Ribnikov drank a glass in large greedy gulps. Even his hands began to tremble with eagerness. He poured himself out another immediately. At once it could be seen that he had been suffering a long torment of thirst. ‘He’s shamming,’ Schavinsky thought again. ‘What an amazing man! Excited and tired, but not the least bit drunk.’ ‘It’s hot – damn it,’ Ribnikov said hoarsely. ‘But I think, gentlemen, I’m interfering with your business.’ ‘No, it’s all right. We’re used to it,’ said Riazhkin shortly. ‘Haven’t you any fresh news of the war?’ Ribnikov asked. ‘A-ah, gentlemen,’ he suddenly cried and banged his sword. ‘What a lot of interesting copy I could give you about the war! If you like, I’ll dictate, you need only write. You need only write. Just call it: Reminiscences of Captain Ribnikov, returned from the Front. No, don’t imagine – I’ll do it for nothing, free, gratis. What do you say to that, my dear authors?’ ‘Well, it might be done,’ came Matanya’s lazy voice from somewhere. ‘We’ll manage a little interview for you somehow. Tell me, Vladimir Ivanovich, do you know anything of the Fleet?’ ‘No, nothing. . . . Is there any news?’ ‘There’s an incredible story, Kondrashov heard from a friend on the Naval Staff. Hi! Pathological Case! Tell Schavinsky.’ The Pathological Case, a man with a black tragedy beard and a chewed-up face, spoke through his nose: ‘I can’t guarantee it, Vladimir Ivanovich. But the source seems reliable. There’s a nasty rumour going about the Staff that the great part of our Fleet has surrendered without fighting – that the sailors tied up the officers and ran up the white flag – something like twenty ships.’ ‘That’s really terrible,’ said Schavinsky in a quiet voice. ‘Perhaps it’s not true, yet? Still – nowadays, the most impossible things are possible. By the way, do you know what’s happening in the naval ports – in all the ships’ crews there’s a terrible underground ferment going on. The naval officers ashore are frightened to meet the men in their command.’ The conversation became general. This inquisitive, ubiquitous, cynical company was a sensitive receiver, unique of its kind, for every conceivable rumour and gossip of the town, which often reached the private saloon of ‘The Glory of Petrograd’ quicker than the minister’s sanctum. Each one had his news. It was so interesting that even the
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Three Musketeers, who seemed to count nothing in the world sacred or important, began to talk with unusual fervour. ‘There’s a rumour going about that the reserves in the rear of the army refuse to obey orders. The soldiers are shooting the officers with their own revolvers.’ ‘I heard that the general in command hanged fifty sisters of mercy. Well, of course, they were only dressed as sisters of mercy.’ Schavinsky glanced round at Ribnikov. Now the talkative captain was silent. With his eyes screwed and his chest pressed upon the hilt of his sword, he was intently watching each of the speakers in turn. Under the tight-stretched skin of his cheekbones the sinews strongly played, and his lips moved as if he were repeating every word to himself. ‘My God, whom does he remind me of?’ the journalist thought impatiently for the tenth time. This so tormented him that he tried to make use of an old familiar trick . . . to pretend to himself that he had completely forgotten the captain, and then suddenly to give him a quick glance. Usually that trick soon helped him to recall a name or a meeting-place, but now it was quite ineffective. Under his stubborn look, Ribnikov turned round again, gave a deep sigh and shook his head sadly. ‘Awful news! Do you believe it? What? Even if it is true we need not despair. You know what we Russians say: “Whom God defends the pigs can’t eat,” – that’s to say, I mean that the pigs are the Japanese, of course.’ He held out stubbornly against Schavinsky’s steady look, and in his yellow animal eyes the journalist noticed a flame of implacable, inhuman hatred. Piestrukhin, the poet asleep on the sofa, suddenly got up, smacked his lips, and stared at the officer with dazed eyes. ‘Ah! . . . you’re still here, Jap mug,’ he said drunkenly, hardly moving his mouth. ‘You just get out of it!’ And he collapsed on the sofa again, turning on to his other side. ‘Japanese!’ Schavinsky thought with anxious curiosity, ‘That’s what he’s like,’ and drawled meaningly: ‘You are a jewel, Captain!’ ‘I?’ the latter cried out. His eyes lost their fire, but his lips still twitched nervously. ‘I am Captain Ribnikov!’ He banged himself on the chest again with curious pride. ‘My Russian heart bleeds. Allow me to shake your hand. My head was grazed at Liao-Yang, and I was wounded in the leg at Mukden. You don’t believe it? I’ll show you now.’ He put his foot on a chair and began to pull up his trousers. ‘Don’t! . . . stop! we believe you,’ Schavinsky said with a frown. Nevertheless, his habitual curiosity enabled him to steal a glance at
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Ribnikov’s leg and to notice that this infantry captain’s underclothing was of expensive spun silk. A messenger came into the saloon with a letter for Matanya. ‘That’s for you, Vladimir Ivanovich,’ said Matanya, when he had torn the envelope. ‘The race-card from the stable. Put one on Zenith both ways for me. I’ll pay you on Tuesday.’ ‘Come to the races with me, Captain?’ said Schavinsky. ‘Where? To the races? With pleasure.’ Ribnikov got up noisily, upsetting his chair. ‘Where the horses jump? Captain Ribnikov at your service. Into battle, on the march, to the devil’s dam! Ha, ha, ha! That’s me! Eh, what?’ When they were sitting in the cab, driving through Cabinetsky Street, Schavinsky slipped his arm through the officer’s, bent right down to his ear, and said, in a voice hardly audible: ‘Don’t be afraid. I shan’t betray you. You’re as much Ribnikov as I am Vanderbilt. You’re an officer on the Japanese Staff. I think you’re a colonel at least, and now you’re a military agent in Russia. . . .’ Either Ribnikov did not hear the words for the noise of the wheels or he did not understand. Swaying gently from side to side, he spoke hoarsely with a fresh drunken enthusiasm: ‘We’re fairly on the spree now! Damn it all, I adore it. I’m not Captain Ribnikov, a Russian soldier, if I don’t love Russian writers! A magnificent lot of fellows! They drink like fishes, and know all about life. “Russia’s joy is in the bottle.” And I’ve been at it from the morning, old man!’
III By business and disposition Schavinsky was a collector of human documents, of rare and strange manifestations of the human spirit. Often for weeks, sometimes for months together, he watched an interesting type, tracking him down with the persistence of a passionate sportsman or an eager detective. It would happen that the prize was found to be, as he called it, ‘a knight of the black star’– a sharper, a notorious plagiarist, a pimp, a souteneur, a literary maniac, the terror of every editor, a plunging cashier or bank messenger, who spends public money in restaurants and gambling hells with the madness of a man rushing down the steep; but no less the objects of his sporting passion were the lions of the season – pianists, singers, littérateurs, gamblers with amazing luck, jockeys, athletes, and cocottes coming into vogue. By hook or crook Schavinsky made their acquaintance and then, enveloping them in his spider’s toils, tenderly and gently secured his
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victim’s attention. Then he was ready for anything. He would sit for whole sleepless nights with vulgar, stupid people, whose mental equipment, like the Hottentots’,8 consisted of a dozen or two animal conceptions and clichés; he stood drinks and dinners to damnable fools and scoundrels, waiting patiently for the moment when in their drunkenness they would reveal the full flower of their villainy. He flattered them to the top of their bent, with his eyes open; gave them monstrous doses of flattery, firmly convinced that flattery is the key to open every lock; he lent them money generously, knowing well that he would never receive it back again. In justification of this precarious sport he could say that the inner psychological interest for him considerably surpassed the benefits he subsequently acquired as a realistic writer. It gave him a subtle and obscure delight to penetrate into the mysterious inaccessible chambers of the human soul, to observe the hidden springs of external acts, springs sometimes petty, sometimes shameful, more often ridiculous than affecting – as it were, to hold in his hand for a while, a live, warm human heart and touch its very pulse. Often in this inquisitive pursuit it seemed to him that he was completely losing his own ‘ego,’ so much did he begin to think and feel with another’s soul, even speaking in his language with his peculiar words until at last he even caught himself using another’s gesture and tone. But when he had saturated himself in a man he threw him aside. It is true that sometimes he had to pay long and heavily for a moment’s infatuation. But no one for a long time had so deeply interested him, even to agitation, as this hoarse, tippling infantry captain. For a whole day Schavinsky did not let him go. As he sat by his side in the cab and watched him surreptitiously, Schavinsky resolved: ‘No, I can’t be mistaken; – this yellow, squinting face with the cheekbones, these eternal bobs and bows, and the incessant hand washing; above all this strained, nervous, uneasy familiarity. . . . But if it’s all true, and Captain Ribnikov is really a Japanese spy, then what extraordinary presence of mind the man must have to play with this magnificent audacity, this diabolically true caricature of a brokendown officer in broad daylight in a hostile capital. What awful sensations he must have, balanced every second of the day on the very edge of certain death!’ Here was something completely inexplicable to Schavinsky – a fascinating, mad, cool audacity – perhaps the very noblest kind of patriotic devotion. An acute curiosity, together with a reverent fear, drew the journalist’s mind more and more strongly towards the soul of this amazing captain. But sometimes he pulled himself up mentally: ‘Suppose I’ve forced myself to believe in a ridiculous preconceived idea? Suppose I’ve
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just let myself be fooled by a disreputable captain in my inquisitive eagerness to read men’s souls? Surely there are any number of yellow Mongol9 faces in the Ural or among the Oremburg Cossacks.’ Still more intently he looked into every motion and expression of the captain’s face, listened intently to every sound of his voice. Ribnikov did not miss a single soldier who gave him a salute as he passed. He put his hand to the peak of his cap with a peculiarly prolonged and exaggerated care. Whenever they drove past a church he invariably raised his hat and crossed himself punctiliously with a broad sweep of his arm, and as he did it he gave an almost imperceptible side-glance to his companion – is he noticing or not? Once Schavinsky could hold out no longer, and said: ‘But you’re pious, though, Captain.’ Ribnikov threw out his hands, hunched his shoulders up funnily, and said in his hoarse voice: ‘Can’t be helped, old man. I’ve got the habit of it at the Front. The man who fights learns to pray, you know. It’s a splendid Russian proverb. You learn to say your prayers out there, whether you like it or not. You go into the firing line. The bullets are whirring, terribly – shrapnel, bombs . . . those cursed Japanese shells. . . . But it can’t be helped – duty, your oath, and off you go! And you say to yourself: “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy Will be done in earth, as it is in heaven . . .”’ And he said the whole prayer to the end, carefully shaping out each sound. ‘Spy!’ Schavinsky decided. But he would not leave his suspicion halfway. For hours on end he went on watching and goading the captain. In a private room of a restaurant at dinner he bent right over the table and looked into Ribnikov’s very pupils. ‘Listen, Captain. No one can hear us now. . . . What’s the strongest oath I can give you that no one will ever hear of our conversation? . . . I’m convinced, absolutely and beyond all doubt, that you’re a Japanese.’ Ribnikov banged himself on the chest again. ‘I am Capt –––’ ‘No, no. Let’s have done with these tricks. You can’t hide your face, however clever you are. The line of your cheekbones, the cut of your eyes, your peculiar head, the colour of your skin, the stiff, straggling growth on your face – everything points beyond all shadow of doubt to you belonging to the yellow race. But you’re safe. I shan’t tell on you, whatever offers they make me, however they threaten me for silence. I shan’t do you any harm, if it’s only because I’m full of admiration for your amazing courage. I say more – I’m full of reverence,
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terror if you like. I’m a writer – that’s a man of fancy and imagination. I can’t even imagine how it’s possible for a man to make up his mind to it: to come thousands of miles from your country to a city full of enemies that hate you, risking your life every second – you’ll be hanged without a trial if you’re caught, I suppose you know? And then to go walking about in an officer’s uniform, to enter every possible kind of company, and hold the most dangerous conversations. The least mistake, one slip will ruin you in a second. Half an hour ago you used the word “holograph” instead of “manuscript.” A trifle, but very characteristic. An army captain would never use this word of a modern manuscript, but only of an archive or a very solemn document. He wouldn’t even say “manuscript,” but just a “book” – but these are trifles. But the one thing I don’t understand is the incessant strain of the mind and will, the diabolical waste of spiritual strength. To forget to think in Japanese, to forget your name utterly, to identify yourself completely with another’s personality – no, this is surely greater than any heroism they told us of in school. My dear man, don’t try to play with me. I swear I’m not your enemy.’ He said all this quite sincerely, for his whole being was stirred to flame by the heroic picture of his imagination. But the captain would not let himself be flattered. He listened to him, and stared with eyes slightly closed at his glass, which he quietly moved over the tablecloth, and the corners of his blue lips twisted nervously. And in his face Schavinsky recognised the same hidden mockery, the same deep, stubborn, implacable hatred, the peculiar hatred that a European can perhaps never understand, felt by a wise, cultured, civilised beast, made man, for a being of another species. ‘Keep your kindness in your pocket,’ replied Ribnikov carelessly. ‘Let it go to hell. They teased me in the regiment too with being a Jap. Chuck it! I’m Captain Ribnikov. You know there’s a Russian proverb, “The face of a beast with the soul of a man.” I’ll just tell you there was once a case in our regiment ––––’ ‘What was your regiment?’ Schavinsky asked suddenly. But the captain seemed not to have heard. He began to tell the old, threadbare dirty stories that are told in camp, on manœuvres, and in barracks, and in spite of himself Schavinsky began to feel insulted. Once during the evening as they sat in the cab Schavinsky put his arm round his waist, and drew him close and said in a low voice: ‘Captain . . . no. Colonel, at least, or you would never have been given such a serious mission. Let’s say Colonel, then. I do homage to your daring, that is to the boundless courage of the Japanese nation. Sometimes when I read or think of individual cases of your diabolical bravery and contempt of death, I tremble with ecstasy. What immortal beauty, what divine courage there is, for instance, in the action of
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the captain of the shattered warship who answered the call to surrender by quietly lighting a cigarette, and went to the bottom with a cigarette in his lips! What titanic strength, what thrilling contempt for the enemy! And the naval cadets on the fireships who went to certain death, delighted as though they were going to a ball! And do you remember how a lieutenant, all by himself, towed a torpedo in a boat at night to make an end of the mole at Port Arthur?10 The searchlights were turned on and all there remained of the lieutenant and his boat was a bloody stain on the concrete wall. But the next day all the midshipmen and lieutenants of the Japanese Fleet overwhelmed Admiral Togo with applications, offering to repeat the exploit. What amazing heroes! But still more magnificent is Togo’s order that the officers under him should not so madly risk their lives, which belong to their country and not to them. It’s damnably beautiful, though!’ ‘What’s this street we’re in?’ interrupted Ribnikov, yawning. ‘After the dug-outs in Manchuria I’ve completely lost my sense of direction in the street. When we were in Kharbin. . . .’ But the ecstatic Schavinsky went on, without listening to him. ‘Do you remember the case of an officer who was taken prisoner and battered his head to pieces on a stone? But the most wonderful thing is the signatures of the Samurai.11 Of course, you’ve never heard of it. Captain Ribnikov?’ Schavinsky asked with sarcastic emphasis. ‘It’s understood, you haven’t heard of it. . . . You see General Nogi asked for volunteers to march in the leading column in a night attack on the Port Arthur forts. Nearly the whole brigade offered themselves for this honourable death. Since there were too many and they pressed in front of each other for the opportunity of death, they had to make application in writing, and some of them, according to an old custom, cut off the first finger of their left hand and fixed it to their signature for a seal of blood. That’s what the Samurai did!’ ‘Samurai,’ Ribnikov dully repeated. There was a noise in his throat as if something had snapped and spread. Schavinsky gave a quick glance to his profile. An expression such as he had never seen in the captain’s face before suddenly played about his mouth and on his chin, which trembled once; and his eyes began to shine with the warm, tremulous light which gleams through sudden, brimming tears. But he pulled himself together instantly, shut his eyes for a second, and turned a naïve and stupid face to Schavinsky, and suddenly uttered a long, filthy, Russian oath. ‘Captain, Captain, what’s the matter with you?’ Schavinsky cried, almost in fright. ‘That’s all newspaper lies,’ Ribnikov said unconcernedly. ‘Our Russian Tommy is not a bit behind. There’s a difference, of course.
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They fight for their life, however, independence – and what have we mixed ourselves up in it for? Nobody knows! The devil alone knows why. “There was no sorrow till the devil pumped it up,” as we say in Russian. What! Ha, ha, ha!’ On the race-course the sport distracted Schavinsky’s attention a little, and he could not observe the captain all the while. But in the intervals between the events, he saw him every now and then in one or another of the stands, upstairs or downstairs, in the buffet or by the pari-mutuel.12 That day the word Tsushima was on everybody’s lips – backers, jockeys, bookmakers, even the mysterious, ragged beings that are inevitable on every race-course. The word was used to jeer at a beaten horse, by men who were annoyed at losing, with indifferent laughter and with bitterness. Here and there it was uttered with passion. Schavinsky saw from a distance how the captain in his easy, confident way picked a quarrel with one man, shook hands with others, and tapped others on the shoulder. His small, limping figure appeared and disappeared everywhere. From the races they drove to a restaurant, and from there to Schavinsky’s house. The journalist was rather ashamed of his role of voluntary detective; but he felt it was out of his power to throw it up, though he had already begun to feel tired, and his head ached with the strain of this stealthy struggle with another man’s soul. Convinced that flattery had been of no avail, he now tried to draw the captain to frankness, by teasing and rousing his feelings of patriotism. ‘Still, I’m sorry for these poor Japs,’ he said with ironical pity. ‘When all is said, Japan has exhausted all her national genius in this war. In my opinion she’s like a feeble little man who lifts a half dozen hundredweight on his shoulders, either in ecstasy or intoxication, or out of mere bravado, and strains his insides, and is already beginning to die a lingering death. You see Russia’s an entirely different country. She’s a Colossus. To her the Manchurian defeats are just the same as cupping a full-blooded man.13 You’ll see how she will recover and begin to blossom when the war is over. But Japan will wither and die. She’s strained herself. Don’t tell me they have civilisation, universal education, European technique: at the end of it all, a Japanese is an Asiatic, half-man, half-monkey. Even in type he approaches a Bushman, a Touareg, or a Blackfellow. You have only to look at his facial angle. It all comes to this, they’re just Japs! It wasn’t your civilisation or your political youth that conquered us at all, but simply a fit of madness. Do you know what a seizure is, a fit of frenzy? A feeble woman tears chains to pieces and tosses strong men about like straws. The next day she hasn’t even the power to lift her hand. It’s the same with Japan. Believe me, after the heroic fit will follow impotence
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and decay; but certainly before that she will pass through a stage of national swagger, outrageous militarism and insane Chauvinism.’ ‘Really?’ cried Ribnikov in stupid rapture. ‘You can’t get away from the truth. Shake hands, Mr. Author. You can always tell a clever man at once.’ He laughed hoarsely, spat about, tapped Schavinsky’s knee, and shook his hand, and Schavinsky suddenly felt ashamed of himself and the tricks of his stealthy searching into human souls. ‘What if I’m mistaken and this Ribnikov is only the truest type of the drunken infantryman. No, it’s impossible. But if it is possible, then what a fool I’m making of myself, my God!’ At his house he showed the captain his library, his rare engravings, a collection of old china, and a couple of small Siberian dogs. His wife, who played small parts in musical comedy, was out of town. Ribnikov examined everything with a polite, uninterested curiosity, in which his host caught something like boredom, and even cold contempt. Ribnikov casually opened a magazine and read some lines aloud. ‘He’s made a blunder now,’ Schavinsky thought, when he heard his extraordinary correct and wooden reading, each separate letter pronounced with exaggerated precision like the head boy in a French class showing off. Evidently Ribnikov noticed it himself, for he soon shut the book and asked: ‘But you’re a writer yourself?’ ‘Yes. . . . I do a bit.’ ‘What newspapers do you write for?’ Schavinsky named them. It was the sixth time he had been asked the question that day. ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes. I forgot, I’ve asked you before. D’you know what, Mr. Author?’ ‘What is it?’ ‘Let us do this. You write and I’ll dictate. That is, I won’t dictate . . . oh, no, I shall never dare.’ Ribnikov rubbed his hands and bowed hurriedly. ‘You’ll compose it yourself, of course. I’ll only give you some thoughts and – what shall I call them – reminiscences of the war? Oh, what a lot of interesting copy I have! . . .’ Schavinsky sat sideways on the table and glanced at the captain, cunningly screwing up one eye. ‘Of course, I shall give your name?’ ‘Why, you may. I’ve no objection. Put it like this: “This information was supplied to me by Captain Ribnikov who has just returned from the Front.”’ ‘Very well. Why do you want this?’ ‘What?’
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‘Having your name in it. Do you want it for future evidence that you inspired the Russian newspapers? What a clever fellow, I am, eh?’ But the captain avoided a direct answer, as usual. ‘But perhaps you haven’t time? You are engaged in other work. Well, let the reminiscences go to hell! You won’t be able to tell the whole story. As they say: “There’s a difference between living a life and crossing a field.” Eh, what? Ha, ha, ha!’ An interesting fancy came into Schavinsky’s head. In his study stood a big, white table of unpainted ash. On the clean virgin surface of this table all Schavinsky’s friends used to leave their autographs in the shape of aphorisms, verses, drawings, and even notes of music. He said to Ribnikov: ‘See, here is my autograph-book, Captain. Won’t you write me something in memory of our pleasant meeting, and our acquaintance which’– Schavinsky bowed politely – ‘I venture to hope will not be short-lived?’ ‘With pleasure,’ Ribnikov readily agreed. ‘Something from Pushkin or Gogol?’ ‘No . . . far better something of your own.’ ‘Of my own? Splendid.’ He took the pen and dipped it, thought and prepared to write, but Schavinsky suddenly stopped him. ‘We’d better do this. Here’s a piece of a paper. There are drawingpins in the box at the corner. Please write something particularly interesting and then cover it with the paper and fasten the corners with the drawing-pins. I give you my word of honour as an author, that for two months I won’t put a finger on the paper and won’t look at what you’ve written. Is that all right? Well, write then. I’ll go out of the room so as not to hinder you.’ After five minutes Ribnikov shouted to him: ‘Please come in.’ ‘Ready?’ Schavinsky asked, entering. Ribnikov drew himself up, put his hand to his forehead in salute and shouted like a soldier: ‘Very good, sir.’ ‘Thanks. Now we’ll go to the “Buff,” or somewhere else,’ Schavinsky said. ‘There we’ll think what we’ll do next. I shan’t let you out of my sight to-day, Captain.’ ‘With the greatest pleasure,’ Ribnikov said in a hoarse bass, clicking his heels. He lifted up his shoulders and gave a military twist to his moustaches on either side. But Schavinsky, against his own will, did not keep his word. At the last moment before leaving his house the journalist remembered that he had left his cigarette-case in the study and went back for it, leaving Ribnikov in the hall. The piece of white paper, carefully fastened with drawing-pins, aroused his curiosity. He could not resist the temptation; he turned back stealthily and after lifting a corner of the paper
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quickly read the words written in a thin, distinct and extraordinary elegant hand: ‘Though you are Ivanov the seventh, you’re a fool all the same.’
IV Long after midnight they were coming out of a suburban café chantant accompanied by the well-known musical comedy actor ZheninLirsky, the young assistant Crown-Prosecutor Sashka Strahlmann, who was famous all over Petersburg for his incomparable skill in telling amusing stories about the topic of the day, and Karyukov, the merchant’s son, a patron of the arts. It was neither bright nor dark. It was a warm, white, transparent night, with soft chatoyant14 colours and water like mother-of-pearl in the calm canals, which plainly reflected the grey stone of the quay and the motionless foliage of the trees. The sky was pale as though tired and sleepless, and there were sleepy clouds in the sky, long, thin and woolly like clews of ravelled cotton-wool. ‘Where shall we go, now?’ said Schavinsky, stopping at the gate of the gardens. ‘Field-Marshal Oyama! Give us your enlightened opinion.’ All five lingered on the pavement for a while, caught by a moment of the usual early morning indecision, when the physical fatigue of the reveller struggles with the irresistible and irritating yearning after new and piquant sensations. From the garden continually came patrons, laughing, whistling, noisily shuffling their feet over the dry, white cobble-stones. Walking hurriedly, boldly rustling the silk of their petticoats emerged the artistes wearing huge hats, with diamonds trembling in their ears, escorted by dashing gentlemen, smartly dressed, with flowers in their buttonholes. With the porters’ respectful assistance these ladies fluttered into carriages and panting automobiles, freely arranging their dresses round their legs, and flew away holding the brims of their hats in their hands. The chorus-girls and the filles du jardin of the higher class drove off alone or two together in ordinary cabs with a man beside them. The ordinary women of the street appeared everywhere at once, going round the wooden fence, following close on the men who left on foot, giving special attention to the drunken. They ran beside the men for a long while, offering themselves in a whisper with impudent submissiveness, naming that which was their profession with blunt, coarse, terrible words. In the bright, white twilight of May, their faces seemed like coarse masks, blue from the white of their complexions, red with crimson colour, and one’s eyes were struck with the blackness, the thickness and the
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extraordinary curve of their eyebrows. These naïvely bright colours made the yellow of their wrinkled temples appear all the more pitiable, their thin, scraggy necks, and flabby, feeble chins. A couple of mounted policemen, obscenely swearing, rode them down now and then with their horses’ mouths afoam. The girls screamed, ran away, and clutched at the sleeves of the passers-by. Near the railing of the canal was gathered a group of about twenty men – it was the usual early morning scandal. A short, beardless boy of an officer was deaddrunk and making a fuss, looking as though he wanted to draw his sword; a policeman was assuring him of something in a convincing falsetto with his hand on his heart. A sharp, suspicious-looking type, drunk, in a cap with a ragged peak, spoke in a sugary, obsequious voice: ‘Spit on ’em, yer honour. They ain’t worth looking at. Give me one in the jaw, if you like. Allow me to kiss yer ’and.’ A thin, stern gentleman at the back, whose thick, black whiskers could alone be seen, because his bowler was tilted over his face, drawled in a low, indistinct voice: ‘What do you stand about talking for? Pitch him into the water and have done with it!’ ‘But really, Major Fukushima,’ said the actor, ‘we must put a decent finish to the day of our pleasant acquaintance. Let’s go off with the little ladies. Where shall it be, Sashka?’ ‘Bertha?’ Strahlmann asked in reply. Ribnikov giggled and rubbed his hands in joyful agitation. ‘Women? “Even a Jew hanged himself for company’s sake,” as the Russian proverb says. Where the world goes there go we. Eh, what? “If we’re going, let’s go,” as the parrot said. What? Ha, ha, ha!’ Schavinsky had introduced him to the young men, and they had all had supper in the café chantant, listened to the Roumanian singers, drinking champagne and liqueurs. At one time they found it amusing to call Ribnikov by the names of different Japanese generals, particularly because the captain’s good nature was evidently unlimited. Schavinsky it was who began this rude, familiar game. True he felt at times that he was behaving in an ugly, perhaps even treacherous, way to Ribnikov, but he calmed his conscience by the fact that he had not breathed a word of his suspicions, which never entered his friends’ heads at all. At the beginning of the evening he was watching Ribnikov. The captain was noisier and more talkative than anybody: he was incessantly drinking healths, jumping up, sitting down, pouring the wine over the tablecloth, lighting his cigarette the wrong end. Nevertheless, Schavinsky noticed that he was drinking very little. Ribnikov had to sit next the journalist again in the cab. Schavinsky was almost sober. He was generally distinguished for a hard head in
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a spree, but it was light and noisy now, as though the foam of the champagne was bubbling in it. He gave the captain a side-glance. In the uncertain, drowsy light of the white night Ribnikov’s face wore a dark, earthy complexion. All the hollows were sharp and black, the little wrinkles on his forehead and the lines round his nose and mouth were deepened. The captain himself sat with a weary stoop, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his uniform, breathing heavily through his open mouth. Altogether it gave him a worn, suffering look. Schavinsky could even smell his breath, and thought that gamblers after several nights at cards have just the same stale, sour breath as men tired out with insomnia or the strain of long brain work. A wave of kindly emotion and pity welled up in Schavinsky’s heart. The captain suddenly appeared to him very small, utterly worn out, affecting and pitiable. He embraced Ribnikov, drew him close, and said affably: ‘Very well. Captain, I surrender. I can’t do anything with you, and I apologise if I’ve given you some uncomfortable minutes. Give me your hand.’ He unfastened the rose he wore in his coat which a girl in the garden had made him buy, and fixed it in the buttonhole of the captain’s great-coat. ‘This is my peace-offering, Captain. We won’t tease each other any more.’ The cab drew up at a two-storied stone house standing apart in a pleasant approach. All the windows were shuttered. The others had gone in advance and were waiting for them. A square grille, a handsbreadth wide, set in the heavy door, was opened from inside, and a pair of cold, searching grey eyes appeared in it for a few seconds. Then the door was opened. This establishment was something between an expensive brothel and a luxurious club. There was an elegant entrance, a stuffed bear in the hall, carpets, silk curtains and lustre- chandeliers, and lackeys in evening dress and white gloves. Men came here to finish the night after the restaurants were shut. Cards were played, expensive wines kept, and there was always a generous supply of fresh, pretty women who were often changed. They had to go up to the first floor, where was a wide landing adorned by palms in tubs and separated from the stairs by a balustrade. Schavinsky went upstairs arm-in-arm with Ribnikov. Though he had promised himself that he would not tease him any more, he could not restrain himself: ‘Let’s mount the scaffold, Captain!’ ‘I’m not afraid,’ said he lazily. ‘I walk up to death every day of my life.’ Ribnikov waved his hand feebly and smiled with constraint. The smile made his face suddenly weary, grey and old.
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Schavinsky gave him a look of silent surprise. He was ashamed of his importunity. But Ribnikov passed it off immediately. ‘Yes, to death . . . A soldier’s always ready for it. There’s nothing to be done. Death is the trifling inconvenience attached to our profession.’ Schavinsky and Karyukov the art-patron were assiduous guests and honoured habitués of the house. They were greeted with pleasant smiles and low bows. A big, warm cabinet was given them, in red and gold with a thick, bright green carpet on the floor, with sconces in the corners and on the table. They were brought champagne, fruit and bonbons. Women came – three at first, then two more – then they were passing in and out continually. Without exception they were pretty, well provided with bare, white arms, neck, bosom, in bright, expensive, glittering dresses. Some wore ballet skirts; one was in a schoolgirl’s brown uniform, another in tight riding-breeches and a jockey’s cap. A stout elderly lady in black also came, rather like a landlady or a housekeeper. Her appearance was decent; her face flabby and yellow. She laughed continually the pleasant laugh of an elderly woman, coughed continually and smoked incessantly. She behaved to Schavinsky, the actor, and the art-patron with the unconstrained coquetterie of a lady old enough to be their mother, flicking their hands with her handkerchief, and she called Strahlmann, who was evidently her favourite, Sashka. ‘General Kuroki, let’s drink to the success of the grand Manchurian army. You’ll be getting mildewy, sitting in your corner,’ said Karyukov. Schavinsky interrupted him with a yawn: ‘Steady, gentlemen. I think you ought to be bored with it by now. You’re just abusing the captain’s good nature.’ ‘I’m not offended,’ replied Ribnikov. ‘Gentlemen! Let us drink the health of our charming ladies.’ ‘Sing us something, Lirsky!’ Schavinsky asked. The actor cheerfully sat down to the piano and began a gipsy song. It was more recitation than singing. He never moved the cigar from his lips, stared at the ceiling, with a parade of swinging to and fro on his chair. The women joined in, loud and out of tune. Each one tried to race the others with the words. Then Sashka Strahlmann gave an admirable imitation of a gramophone, impersonated an Italian opera, and mimicked animals. Karyukov danced a fandango and called for bottle after bottle. He was the first to disappear from the room, with a red-haired Polish girl. After him followed Strahlmann and the actor. Only Schavinsky remained, with a swarthy, white-toothed Hungarian girl on his knees, and Ribnikov, by the side of a tall blonde in a blue satin blouse, cut square and open half-way down her breast.
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‘Well, Captain, let’s say good-bye for a little while,’ said Schavinsky, getting up and stretching himself. ‘It’s late – we’d better say early. Come and have breakfast with me at one o’clock, Captain. Put the wine down to Karyukov, Madame. If he loves sacred art, then he can pay for the honour of having supper with its priests. Mes compliments!’ The blonde put her bare arm round the captain’s neck and kissed him, and said simply: ‘Let us go too, darling. It really is late.’
V She had a little gay room with a bright blue paper, a pale blue hanging lamp. On the toilet-table stood a round mirror in a frame of light blue satin. There were two oleographs15 on one wall, ‘Girls Bathing’ and ‘The Royal Bridegroom,’ on the other a hanging, with a wide brass bed alongside. The woman undressed, and with a sense of pleasant relief passed her hands over her body, where her chemise had been folded under her corset. Then she turned the lamp down and sat on the bed, and began calmly to unlace her boots. Ribnikov sat by the table with his elbows apart and his head resting in his hands. He could not tear his eyes from her big, handsome legs and plump calves, which her black, transparent stockings so closely fitted. ‘Why don’t you undress, officer?’ the woman asked. ‘Tell me, darling, why do they call you Japanese General?’ Ribnikov gave a laugh, with his eyes still fixed upon her legs. ‘Oh, it’s just nonsense. Only a joke. Do you know the verses: “It hardly can be called a sin, If something’s funny and you grin! . . .”’
‘Will you stand me some champagne, darling. . . . Since you’re so stingy, oranges will do. Are you going soon or staying the night?’ ‘Staying the night. Come to me.’ She lay down with him, hastily threw her cigarette over on to the floor and wriggled beneath the blanket. ‘Do you like to be next to the wall?’ she asked. ‘Do if you want to. O-oh, how cold your legs are! You know I love army men. What’s your name?’ ‘Mine?’ He coughed and answered in an uncertain tone: ‘I am Captain Ribnikov. Vassily Alexandrovich Ribnikov!’ ‘Ah, Vasya! I have a friend called Vasya, a little chap from the Lycée. Oh, what a darling he is!’
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She began to sing, pretending to shiver under the bedclothes, laughing and half-closing her eyes: ‘“Vasya, Vasya, Vasinke, It’s a tale you’re telling me.”
‘You are like a Japanese, you know, by Jove. Do you know who? The Mikado. We take in the Niva and there’s a picture of him there. It’s late now – else I’d get it to show you. You’re as like as two peas.’ ‘I’m very glad,’ said Ribnikov, quietly kissing her smooth, round shoulder. ‘Perhaps you’re really a Japanese? They say you’ve been at the war. Is it true? O-oh, darling, I’m afraid of being tickled – Is it dreadful at the war?’ ‘Dreadful . . . no, not particularly. . . . Don’t let’s talk about it’ he said wearily. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Clotilde. . . . No, I’ll tell you a secret. My name’s Nastya. They only called me Clotilde here because my name’s so ugly. Nastya, Nastasya – sounds like a cook.’ ‘Nastya,’ he repeated musingly, and cautiously kissed her breast. ‘No, it’s a nice name. Na – stya,’ he repeated slowly. ‘What is there nice about it? Malvina, Wanda, Zhenia, they’re nice names – especially Irma. . . . Oh, darling,’ and she pressed close to him. ‘You are a dear . . . so dark. I love dark men. You’re married, surely?’ ‘No, I’m not.’ ‘Oh, tell us another. Every one here says he’s a bachelor. You’ve got six children for sure!’ It was dark in the room, for the windows were shuttered and the lamp hardly burned. Her face was quite close to his head, and showed fantastic and changing on the dim whiteness of the pillow. Already it was different from the simple, handsome, round grey-eyed, Russian face of before. It seemed to have grown thinner, and, strangely changing its expression every minute, seemed now tender, kind, mysterious. It reminded Ribnikov of some one infinitely familiar, long beloved, beautiful and fascinating. ‘How beautiful you are!’ he murmured. ‘I love you. . . . I love you. . . .’ He suddenly uttered an unintelligible word, completely foreign to the woman’s ear. ‘What did you say?’ she asked in surprise. ‘Nothing. . . . Nothing. . . . Nothing at all. . . . My dear! Dear woman . . . you are a woman . . . I love you. . . .’ He kissed her arms, her neck, trembling with impatience, which
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it gave him wonderful delight to suppress. He was possessed by a tender and tempestuous passion for the well-fed, childless woman, for her big young body, so cared for and beautiful. His longing for woman had been till now suppressed by his austere, ascetic life, his constant weariness, by the intense exertion of his mind and will: now it devoured him suddenly with an intolerable, intoxicating flame. ‘Your hands are cold,’ she said, awkward and shy. In this man was something strange and alarming which she could in no way understand. ‘Cold hands and a warm heart.’ ‘Yes, yes, yes. . . . My heart,’ he repeated it like a madman, ‘My heart is warm, my heart . . .’ Long ago she had grown used to the outward rites and the shameful details of love; she performed them several times every day – mechanically, indifferently, and often with silent disgust. Hundreds of men, from the aged and old, who put their teeth in a glass of water for the night, to youngsters whose voice was only beginning to break and was bass and soprano at once, civilians, army men, priests in mufti, baldheads and men overgrown with hair from head to foot like monkeys, excited and impotent, morphomaniacs16 who did not conceal their vice from her, beaux, cripples, rakes, who sometimes nauseated her, boys who cried for the bitterness of their first fall – they all embraced her with shameful words, with long kisses, breathed into her face, moaned in the paroxysm of animal passion, which, she knew beforehand, would then and there be changed to unconcealed and insuperable disgust. Long ago all men’s faces had in her eyes lost every individual trait – as though they had united into one lascivious, inevitable face, eternally bent over her, the face of a he-goat with stubbly, slobbering lips, clouded eyes, dimmed like frosted glass, distorted and disfigured by a voluptuous grimace, which sickened her because she never shared it. Besides, they were all rude, exacting and devoid of the elements of shame. They were ludicrously ugly, as only the modern man can be in his underclothes. But this elderly little officer made a new, peculiar, attractive impression on her. His every movement was distinguished by a gentle, insinuating discretion. His kiss, his caress, and his touch were strangely gentle. At the same time he surrounded her imperceptibly with the nervous atmosphere of real and intense passion which even from a distance and against her will arouses a woman’s sensuality, makes her docile, and subject to the male’s desire. But her poor little mind had never passed beyond the round of everyday life in the house, and could not perceive this strange and agitating spell. She could only whisper shyly, happy and surprised, the usual trivial words: ‘What a nice man you are! You’re my sweet, aren’t you?’ She got up, put the lamp out, and lay beside him again. Through the chinks between the shutters and the wall showed thin threads of
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the whitening dawn, which filled the room with a misty blue halflight. Behind the partition, somewhere an alarm-clock hurriedly rang. Far away some one was singing sadly in the distance. ‘When will you come again?’ the woman asked. ‘What?’ Ribnikov asked sleepily, opening his eyes. ‘When am I coming? Soon – tomorrow. . . .’ ‘I know all about that. Tell me the truth. When are you coming? I’ll be lonely without you.’ ‘M’m. . . . We will come and be alone. . . . We will write to them. They will stay in the mountains . . .’ he murmured incoherently. A heavy slumber enlocked his body; but, as always with men who have long deprived themselves of sleep, he could not sleep at once. No sooner was his consciousness overcast with the soft, dark, delightful cloud of oblivion than his body was shaken by a terrible inward shock. He moaned and shuddered, opened his eyes wide in wild terror, and straightway plunged into an irritating, transitory state between sleep and wakefulness, like a delirium crowded with threatening and confused visions. The woman had no desire to sleep. She sat up in bed in her chemise, clasping her bended knees with her bare arms, and looked at Ribnikov with timid curiosity. In the bluish half-light his face grew sharper still and yellower, like the face of a dead man. His mouth stood open, but she could not hear his breathing. All over his face, especially about the eyes and mouth, was an expression of such utter weariness and profound human suffering as she had never seen in her life before. She gently passed her hand back over his stiff hair and forehead. The skin was cold and covered all over with clammy sweat. Ribnikov trembled at the touch, cried out in terror, and with a quick movement raised himself from the pillow. ‘Ah! Who’s that, who?’ he cried abruptly, wiping his face with his shirt-sleeve. ‘What’s the matter, darling?’ the woman asked with sympathy. ‘You’re not well? Shall I get you some water?’ But Ribnikov had mastered himself, and lay down once more. ‘Thanks. It’s all right now. I was dreaming. . . . Go to sleep, dear, do.’ ‘When do you want me to wake you, darling?’ she asked. ‘Wake. . . . In the morning. . . . The sun will rise early. . . . And the horsemen will come. . . . We will go in a boat. . . . And sail over the river. . . .’ He was silent and lay quiet for some minutes. Suddenly his still, dead face was distorted with terrible pain. He turned on his back with a moan, and there came in a stream from his lips mysterious, wild-sounding words of a strange language. The woman held her breath and listened, possessed by the supersti-
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tious terror which always comes from a sleeper’s delirium. His face was only a couple of inches from hers, and she could not tear her eyes away. He was silent for a while and then began to speak again, many words and unintelligible. Then he was silent again, as though listening attentively to some one’s speech. Suddenly the woman heard the only Japanese word she knew, from the newspapers, pronounced aloud with a firm, clear voice: ‘Banzai!’ 17 Her heart beat so violently that the velvet coverlet lifted again and again with the throbbing. She remembered how they had called Ribnikov by the names of Japanese generals in the red cabinet that day, and a far faint suspicion began to stir in the obscurity of her mind. Some one lightly tapped on the door. She got up and opened. ‘Clotilde dear, is that you?’ a woman’s gentle whisper was heard. ‘Aren’t you asleep? Come in to me for a moment. Leonka’s with me, and he’s standing some apricot wine. Come on, dear!’ It was Sonya, the Karaim,18 Clotilde’s neighbour, bound to her by the cloying, hysterical affection which always pairs off the women in these establishments. ‘All right. I’ll come now. Oh, I’ve something very interesting to tell you. Wait a second. I’ll dress.’ ‘Nonsense. Don’t. Who are you nervous about? Leonka? Come, just as you are!’ She began to put on her petticoat. Ribnikov roused out of sleep. ‘Where are you going to?’ he asked drowsily. ‘Only a minute . . . Back immediately . . . I must . . .’ she answered, hurriedly tying the tape round her waist. ‘You go to sleep. I’ll be back in a second.’ He had not heard her last words. A dark heavy sleep had instantly engulfed him.
VI Leonka was the idol of the whole establishment, beginning with Madame, and descending to the tiniest servant. In these places where boredom, indolence, and cheap literature produce feverishly romantic tastes, the extreme of adoration is lavished on thieves and detectives, because of their heroic lives, which are full of fascinating risks, dangers and adventures. Leonka used to appear in the most varied costumes, at times almost made up. Sometimes he kept a meaning and mysterious silence. Above all every one remembered very well that he often proclaimed that the local police had an unbounded respect
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for him and fulfilled his orders blindly. In one case he had said three or four words in a mysterious jargon, and that was enough to send a few thieves who were behaving rowdily in the house crawling into the street. Besides there were times when he had a great deal of money. It is easy to understand that Henrietta, whom he called Genka and with whom he had an assiduous affair, was treated with a jealous respect. He was a young man with a swarthy, freckled face, with black moustaches that pointed up to his very eyes. His chin was short, firm and broad; his eyes were dark, handsome and impudent. He was sitting on the sofa in his shirtsleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his necktie loose. He was small but well proportioned. His broad chest and his muscles, so big that his shirt seemed ready to tear at the shoulder, were eloquent of his strength. Genka sat close to him with her feet on the sofa; Clotilde was opposite. Sipping his liqueur slowly with his red lips, in an artificially elegant voice he told his tale unconcernedly: ‘They brought him to the station. His passport – Korney Sapietov, resident in Kolpin or something of the kind. Of course the devil was drunk, absolutely. “Put him into a cold cell and sober him down.” General rule. That very moment I happened to drop into the inspector’s office. I had a look. By Jove, an old friend: Sanka the Butcher – triple murder and sacrilege. Instantly I gave the constable on duty a wink, and went out into the corridor as though nothing had happened. The constable came out to me. “What’s the matter, Leonti Spiridonovich?” “Just send that gentleman round to the Detective Bureau for a minute.” They brought him. Not a muscle in his face moved. I just looked him in the eyes and said’: – Leonka rapped his knuckles meaningly on the table – ‘“Is it a long time, Sanka, since you left Odessa and decided to honour us here?” Of course he’s quite indifferent – playing the fool. Not a word. Oh, he’s a bright one, too. “I haven’t any idea who Sanka the Butcher is. I am . . . so and so.” So I come up to him, catch hold of him by the beard – hey, presto – the beard’s left in my hand. False! . . . “Will you own up now, you son of a bitch?” “I haven’t any idea.” Then I let fly straight at his nose – once, twice – a bloody mess. “Will you own up?” “I haven’t any idea.” “Ah, that’s your game, is it? I gave you a decent chance before. Now, you’ve got yourself to thank. Bring Arsenti the Flea here.” We had a prisoner of that name. He hated Sanka to death. Of course, my dear, I knew how they stood. They brought the Flea. “Well, Flea, who’s this gentleman?” The Flea laughs. “Why Sanka the Butcher, of course? How do you do, Sanichka? Have you been honouring us a long while? How did you get on in Odessa?” Then the Butcher gave in. “All right, Leonti Spiridonovich. I give in. Nothing can get away from you. Give us a cigarette.” Of course I gave him one. I never
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refuse them, out of charity. The servant of God was taken away. He just looked at the Flea, no more. I thought, well, the Flea will have to pay for that. The Butcher will do him in for sure.’ ‘Do him in?’ Genka asked with servile confidence, in a terrified whisper. ‘Absolutely. Do him in. That’s the kind of man he is!’ He sipped his glass complacently. Genka looked at him with fixed, frightened eyes, so intently that her mouth even opened and watered. She smacked her hands on her lips. ‘My God, how awful! Just think, Clotilduchka! And you weren’t afraid, Leonya?’ ‘Well, am I to be frightened of every vagabond?’ The rapt attention of the woman excited him, and he began to invent a story that students had been making bombs somewhere on Vassiliev Island, and that the Government had instructed him to arrest the conspirators. Bombs there were – it was proved afterwards – twelve thousand of them. If they’d all exploded then not only the house they were in, but half Petersburg, perhaps, would have been blown to atoms. . . . Next came a thrilling story of Leonka’s extraordinary heroism, when he disguised himself as a student, entered the ‘devil’s workshop,’ gave a sign to some one outside the window, and disarmed the villains in a second. He caught one of them by the sleeve at the very moment when he was going to explode a lot of bombs. Genka groaned, was terror-stricken, slapped her legs, and continually turned to Clotilde with exclamations: ‘Ah! what do you think of all that? Just think what scoundrels these students are, Clotilduchka! I never liked them.’ At last, stirred to her very depths by her lover, she hung on his neck and began to kiss him loudly. ‘Leonichka, my darling! It’s terrible to listen to, even! And you aren’t frightened of anything!’ He complacently twisted his left moustache upwards, and let drop carelessly: ‘Why be afraid? You can only die once. That’s what I’m paid for.’ Clotilde was tormented all the while by jealous envy of her friend’s magnificent lover. She vaguely suspected that there was a great deal of lying in Leonka’s stories; while she now had something utterly extraordinary in her hands, such as no one had ever had before, something that would immediately take all the shine out of Leonka’s exploits. For some minutes she hesitated. A faint echo of the tender pity for Ribnikov still restrained her. But a hysterical yearning to shine took hold of her, and she said in a dull, quiet voice: ‘Do you know what I wanted to tell you, Leonya? I’ve got such a queer visitor to-day.’
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‘H’m. You think he’s a sharper?’ he asked condescendingly. Genka was offended. ‘A sharper, you say! That’s your story. Some drunken officer.’ ‘No, you mustn’t say that,’ Leonka pompously interrupted. ‘It happens that sharpers get themselves up as officers. What was it you were going to say, Clotilde?’ Then she told the story of Ribnikov with every detail, displaying a petty and utterly feminine talent for observation: she told how they called him General Kuroki, his Japanese face, his strange tenderness and passion, his delirium, and finally now he said ‘Banzai!’ ‘You’re not lying?’ Leonka said quickly. Keen points of fire lit in his eyes. ‘I swear it’s true! May I be rooted to the ground if it’s a lie! You look through the keyhole, I’ll go in and open the shutter. He’s as like a Japanese as two peas.’ Leonka rose. Without haste, with a serious look, he put on his overcoat, carefully feeling his left inside pocket. ‘Come on,’ he said resolutely. ‘Who did he arrive with?’ Only Karyukov and Strahlmann remained of the all-night party. Karyukov could not be awakened, and Strahlmann muttered something indistinctly. He was still half drunk and his eyes were heavy and red. ‘What officer? Blast him to hell! He came up to us when we were in the “Buff,” but where he came from nobody knows.’ He began to dress immediately, snorting angrily. Leonka apologised and went out. He had already managed to get a glimpse of Ribnikov’s face through the keyhole, and though he had some doubts remaining, he was a good patriot, distinguished for impertinence and not devoid of imagination. He decided to act on his own responsibility. In a moment he was on the balcony whistling for help.
VII Ribnikov woke suddenly as though an imperative voice within him had said ‘Wake up.’ An hour and a half of sleep had completely refreshed him. First of all he stared suspiciously at the door: it seemed to him that some one was watching him from there with a fixed stare. Then he looked round. The shutter was half open so that every little thing in the room could be seen. The woman was sitting by the table opposite the bed, silent and pale, regarding him with big, bright eyes. ‘What’s happened?’ Ribnikov asked in alarm. ‘Tell me, what’s been happening here?’ She did not answer, but her chin began to tremble and her teeth chattered.
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A suspicious, cruel light came into the officer’s eyes. He bent his whole body from the bed with his ear to the door. The noise of many feet, of men evidently unused to moving cautiously, approached along the corridor, and suddenly was quiet before the door. Ribnikov with a quick, soft movement leapt from the bed and twice turned the key. There was an instant knock at the door. With a cry the woman turned her face to the table and buried her head in her hands. In a few seconds the captain was dressed. Again they knocked at the door. He had only his cap with him; he had left his sword and overcoat below. He was pale but perfectly calm. Even his hands did not tremble while he dressed himself, and all his movements were quite unhurried and adroit. Doing up the last button of his tunic, he went over to the woman, and suddenly squeezed her arm above the wrist with such terrible strength that her face purpled with the blood that rushed to her head. ‘You!’ he said quietly, in an angry whisper, without moving his jaws. ‘If you move or make a sound, I’ll kill you. . . .’ Again they knocked at the door, and a dull voice came: ‘Open the door, if you please.’ The captain now no longer limped. Quickly and silently he ran to the window, jumped on to the window-ledge with the soft spring of a cat, opened the shutters and with one sweep flung wide the window frames. Below him the paved yard showed white with scanty grass between the stones, and the branches of a few thin trees pointed upwards. He did not hesitate for a second; but at the very moment that he sat sideways on the iron frame of the window-sill, resting on it with his left hand, with one foot already hanging down, and prepared to leap with his whole body, the woman threw herself upon him with a piercing cry and caught him by the left arm. Tearing himself away, he made a false movement and suddenly, with a faint cry as though of surprise, fell in an awkward heap straight down on the stones. Almost at the very second the old door fell flat into the room. First Leonka ran in, out of breath, showing his teeth; his eyes were aflame. After him came huge policemen, stamping and holding their swords in their left hands. When he saw the open window and the woman holding on the frame and screaming without pause, Leonka quickly understood what had happened. He was really a brave man, and without a thought or a word, as though he had already planned it, he took a running leap through the window. He landed two steps away from Ribnikov, who lay motionless on his side. In spite of the drumming in his head, and the intense pain in his belly and his heels from the fall, he kept his head, and instantly threw himself heavily with the full weight of his body on the captain.
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‘A-ah. I’ve got you now,’ he uttered hoarsely, crushing his victim in mad exasperation. The captain did not resist. His eyes burned with an implacable hatred. But he was pale as death, and a pink froth stood in bubbles on his lips. ‘Don’t crush me,’ he whispered. ‘My leg’s broken.’
Notes
1.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
7.
Text: ‘Captain Ribnikov’ in The River of Life and Other Stories by Alexander Kuprin, trans. by S. Koteliansky and J. M. Murry (London: Maunsel, 1916), pp. 39–98. Ruth Mantz was told by Koteliansky that KM had assisted him. See BJK, p. 85. Alexander Kuprin (1870–1938) was a pilot, an explorer and a widely read writer, best known for his novel The Duel (1905). In a letter to KM, March 1916 (date not specified), D. H. Lawrence wrote: ‘Kot gave me a Kuprin. It reads awfully well. But I don’t think much of these lesser Russians. Ribnikov is by far the best; but the Japanese is not created – he is an object, not a subject’ (Aldous Huxley, ed., The Letters of D. H. Lawrence (London: Heinemann, 1932), p. 342). Fascinated by the Japan–British Exhibition held in London in 1910, KM bought a Japanese doll; she and it wore kimonos but she named it after Kuprin’s protagonist, Ribnikov, whose national identity is questioned in the story. Yearning as she did for children, she often wrote of Ribni in her letters as if he were her child. The Battle of Tsushima occurred on 27–8 May 1905. The Russian fleet was almost annihilated by the Japanese, forcing Tsar Nicholas II to negotiate for peace and an end to the Russo-Japanese War. In the Battles of Liao-Yang (24 August to 4 September 1904) and Mukden (20 February 1905) the Russians were defeated by the Japanese. Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) was a great Russian general who was reputed never to have lost a battle. A Buddhist Mongol people. At the Battle of Poltava (27 June 1709) Peter I’s Russian army defeated the Swedish forces in the Great Northern War. During the Siege of Sebastopol (1854–5), in the Crimean War, Russian forces defended the crucial seaport for a year against an allied attack by French, Ottoman and British troops. In the summer of 1812 the French army invaded Russia. The Russian army retreated before them, enticing the French to follow them towards Moscow. When they reached the city, it had been evacuated. Napoleon was forced to retreat, as his army was starving and unprepared for a
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8.
9.
10.
11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
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Russian winter. It was a turning point in the war, as Napoleon’s reputation for invincibility was damaged. This is a racist assumption about the Khoikhoi in southern Africa, who were named Hottentots by European immigrants in an unsuccessful attempt to mimic their language. The Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century caused the submission of all Russian states; some had to remain part of the Mongol Empire until 1480. The Cossacks were a group of Slavic peoples who were originally located mainly in Ukraine and southern Russia. Because of their military tradition they were valued in wartime. Leo Tolstoy explores their identity in his short novel The Cossacks (1863), which was Turgenev’s favourite work by Tolstoy. The Battle of Port Arthur, Manchuria (February 1904), began the RussoJapanese War; a squadron of Japanese destroyers mounted a night attack on the Russian fleet anchored at Port Arthur. The Samurai were the traditional warrior class in Japan. A betting system. A Chinese form of alternative medicine involving applying local suction to the patient’s skin. Gleaming like cats’ eyes. A colour lithograph, popular in the late nineteenth century. People with a craving for morphine. A traditional Japanese cry meaning ‘ten thousand years’; a banzai attack is a desperate military charge. A footnote at this point in the text reads: ‘The Karaim are Jews of the pure original stock who entered Russia long before the main immigration and settled in the Crimea. They are free from the ordinary Jewish restrictions.’
The Judges Stanislaw Wyspianski [Berg, lines 1–22]1 The opening scene from ‘The Judges’, a tragedy by Stanislaw Wyspian´ski, translated by Katherine Mansfield. (1917.) Joas:
My father’s features soften now And the ugly wrinkle upon his brow Vanishes, leaving all serene. His face on his hand I see him lean While he gathers together his thoughts again The scattered thoughts of his busy brain
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Figure 4 First page autograph MS of ‘The Judges’. The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
He strokes his beard, strokes the wavy hair And listens . . . My heart leaps up and I stare Into his eyes. I begin to play. Nathan:
How stupid you are; you don’t know what you say He is counting his profits. Let him be.
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Joas:
Brother, a light descends upon me And then I can see his heart right through I can read his thoughts, they are just and true Writ on his brow. But if – God defend – A bad thought comes – my playing’s at end. My heart aches, aches, and my fiddle is dumb. Then straightway I see my father come
[Berg, lines 23–36]
Nathan: Joas: Nathan: Joas: Nathan:
And take me into his arms and say – What ails you, Joas? But gone is my playing And fiddle is silent. You think – you do – That the Lord God is speaking through you [?]2 Yes, God speaks in warning through me Of the punishment doomed in the end to be. So you keep God in license [?] Little wretch you are mean! Everywhere, Nathan, God is to be seen. Beware of abusing his name in that way For it is God who will judge you on the last day. And you, are you a judge!? Now you’re angry with me, with your brother who could teach you the ways of the free world.
[Berg, lines 36–45] Joas: Nathan: Joas: Nathan: Joas: Nathan: Joas: Nathan:
But I see them .. Here is only a den Fit for wolves. But those spaces beyond your ken, Those boundless spaces. . . Mightn’t they be Just swarms of wolves’ dens? The world I see How splendid! And beautiful? A giant city! Like Holy Jerusalem rich with spices Hid in the smoke of her sacrifices. Stone bridges span each mighty river There are forests of masts that sway and quiver. The terraced houses rise wall on wall
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[Berg, lines 46–59]
Joas: Nathan: Joas: Nathan: Joas: Nathan:
And black smoke hovering over all. Smoke of sacrifice it could seem To you. But it’s the factories hiss and steam Howling, hammering, mighty roar From the players who play for evermore. Wealth and misery, slaves and the free. So good conquers evil and we see That the Lord will never forsake his own. Each man lives for himself alone And defends himself. The weak go to the wall. And God arms he who will not fall Who is strong like David. Nay, there are other Prophets and greater than David, brother. Are they in deed? A mighty band They have knocked the harp useless from David’s hand.
[Berg, line 60 + stage directions] Joas:
Brother, these prophets are false and vain.
(A beggar is seen in the passage. He is an old tramp in tattered sack cloth with several rosaries strung round his neck. In his bag is a leather satchel. His face is black; he has long shabby hair. He is speaking to Jewdocha.[)] Beggar: [ATL, lines 61–6] J. [. . .]: Beggar:
B. & J. God bless you my child – so it’s you who greets me. Jewdocha: Are you coming to give us a song? But I see You don’t look as if you would stay. Beggar: I am coming to sing (then) I go on my way My face is covered with blood and with tears. [ATL, lines 474–89]3
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[Samuel is listening to the fight between Nathan and the soldier in the passage when Joas enters.] Joas: Joas: Samuel: Joas: Samuel: Joas: Samuel: Joas: Samuel: Joas:
Father was habt ihr? Father what’s the matter? [shuts the door to the passage] Still, child of the Muses. Do not look, do not listen. What is happening there [?] Do not take it to heart – be at peace! Come to my heart. Lean your head so. Father, your eyes are so wild. There are fiery sparks lighting up your eyes. What are those two doing [?] They are taking your father’s happiness and dragging his soul to torture. Father, my brother was there. They are murderers – it is violent, vengeful blood that they shed. Oh, father your heart beats like a hammer on an anvil.
[ATL, lines 490–9] [A shot is heard, Jewdocha screams, then Nathan, terrified, bursts into the room.] Samuel: Nathan: Samuel: Nathan: Samuel:
Fly! Fly! He fled! He can’t succeed in escaping but you must. Where to? Into the town, into the town. [gives money to Nathan] –––
[Jewdocha, fatally wounded, crawls into the main room and towards the bedroom, helped by Feige, an elderly Jewish woman.] Jewdocha:
Feige:
Let me in there in the hour of my death, I want to die where I knew (and rued) this cruel deadly love. Let me in – in there. What has happened? What has happened? I shall die if I don’t know what’s happened.
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A gendarme [enters] followed by 2 other gendarmes (fetching/taking) in the soldier between them. A car drives up and stops before the house. [Samuel pushes Joas into the side room.] (?) – – – – – A school teacher and the sheriff and judge and the village apothecary. [ATL, lines 500–18] Judge: School teacher:
We must take evidence. That’s right, we must have evidence. Judge: You must write it down. S.T.: That’s right. I’ll write it down. Judge to N.: How did it happen? [Nathan is looking questioningly at his father] Samuel: Who is to answer [?] Judge [to N.]: Your name [?] Judge [to S.]: Your son [?] Samuel: My eldest. Judge: Have you got another [?] Samuel: Yes, but he has nothing to do with it. Judge: How old is he [?] Samuel: A child. Soldier: He is a grown man. Judge: Bring him in. [The Gendarme tries to open the door to the side room but it is locked from inside.] Judge: Why is that door locked? Samuel: It is Sabbath. Teacher: There are candles inside. That’s right. It is Sabbath. [ATL, lines 519–37] V.A.: Sheriff: Judge: S.T.: V.A.:
Well. . . Open. Open. That’s right, open. Well!
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[The Gendarme knocks on the door.] Samuel: He won’t open it. Judge: Tell him to. Samuel: Joas, Joas, open the door. [Joas opens the door and comes out.] Judge: Are you the younger son [?] Joas: I am. Gendarme: There are whispers of girls (in there/inside). Samuel: They are in service here. Gendarme: Come out. Who is your employer? [The girls come out carrying their bags.] Two girls: He is. [They point at Nathan.] Gendarme: Where are your (papers/documents/passports)? Girls: He’s got them. [They point at Nathan.] Gendarme: And where were you going to work? Girls: He was going to take us [ATL, lines 537/8–52] Gendarme: Girls: S.T.: V.A.: Gendarme: Girls: Judge: Nathan: Gendarme: Nathan: Gendarme: Nathan:
Judge:
to a place. Where? We don’t know. That’s right. They never know. Well. . . Who should know [?] The gentleman. [They point at Nathan.] Where can it be? (Na), I was taking them to the employment bureau. Where is it? In the town. Where about in the town? (Na), there was a gentleman waiting for us there who has got addresses of places and he was going to give the addresses for me to take the girls to. So you really didn’t know where these girls were going [?]
[ATL, lines: 553–68] Nathan: Teacher:
No, because it was no concern of me. That’s right. It had nothing to do with him.
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V.A.: Gendarme: Nathan:
Well. . . That is not allowed. That is not forbidden. It’s an honourable business and quite legal. Teacher: [in the play it is Gendarme] It’s against the law. Sheriff: That is a law for beasts – you scoundrel. S.T.: That’s right. It’s a law for beasts. V.A.: Well. . . Gendarme to N.: Be quiet! S.T.: That’s right. Hold your tongue. V.A.: Well. . . Judge to N.: Sign. Judge: Now, tell us how all this happened. Nathan: That (?), that (?), [ATL, lines: 569–83]
Judge: N.: [silent] S.T.: V.A.: Nathan: Judge: Soldier: Judge: Soldier: Judge: Soldier:
that (?) – he began fighting with me, he caught hold of me, banged my head against the wall in the passage, he pressed me against the wall and a shot went off. I didn’t know that there was somebody standing there. So it was an accident? That’s right. It was an accident. Well. . . Judge for yourselves. to S.[oldier] Now tell us your opinion. (?he began?), the devilish dog, and pressed my hands together and pulled the trigger. Didn’t you see anyone standing behind you [?] Yes. So it was no accident. Judge for yourselves.
[ATL, lines: 584–604] S.T.: V.A.: Judge:
That’s right. Well. . . Sign.
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the judges With a cross? Yes. He can’t write – in these days. That’s right. He’s illiterate. Well. . . [pointing at Nathan] He must get a lawyer to look after him. I will go bail for him for 2000 guldens.
[He takes out the money.] Teacher: That’s right, money. V.A.: Well. . . Judge: Who will take charge of this money [?] Samuel: The Judge. [He puts the money on the table in front of the judge.] Gendarme: [to Soldier]: And now we must be off. Soldier: Let’s go. [The Gendarme handcuffs him.] Judge: So you are guilty, are you [?] Soldier: Judge for yourselves. Teacher: That’s right, he’s guilty. V.A.: Well. . . [ATL, lines: 605–17] Joas (crying): [to Soldier] My friend, my singer, it was you who taught me to listen to the bird’s song. [to Judge] It’s not he who is guilty. Judge: Who then [?] Samuel: He is a fool, a big child, a (?), a lunatic. Sheriff: [to a farmhand] Go off and fetch the horses and wagon for Mr Gendarme. Joas: [points at Nathan]: He’s guilty, he’s the evil ghost, the devil himself. Samuel: Peace! Be silent, you dog’s pup. Joas: My father – do you see – look how he frowns – see his face is covered with frowns. His brows are drawn together. And I can read these frowns. They have whispered together,
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[ATL, lines: 617–41]
Samuel: Joas: Samuel: S.T.: V.A.: Samuel:
whispered together. [pointing at Samuel] He is guilty and then saieth the Lord – my lightning shall strike (?) all the evil that you have sown. The Lord saieth: I will destroy the whole mankind with hail storms, in one hour it shall be destroyed. The Lord saieth he is the guilty one, [in a terrible voice] he is guilty. [angry, clenches his fists, then puts his hands together with an imploring look and then puts his finger to his lips] Ah! [terrible cry] My father [!] [with open mouth and arms stretched, reeling] [holding dying Joas] Where is he? That’s right, the father. Well. . . He is gone – silence – he is gone – he is gone. His eyes are looking on me (frozen). Do not die, you are my Mozart, my Rubinstein4 – my Joachim.5 Do not die. You are worth thousands of thousands. You are my treasure, my treasure, my Paradise, my Eden.
[ATL, lines: 641–60] [he’s listening out] Live! Do you hear? His fiddle is playing – its playing – his fiddle. [he puts the body on the floor] He is dead – he is dead. Let me. [S. goes to the side room to fetch the violin which he puts on the boy’s chest]
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the judges [brings a sheet to cover the body of the boy] You my little player, my little, play, play again. Let him free. [he points at the Soldier] Yes, the death (was all my doing) but for this crime [he points at Joas] – God must pay. God is my debtor. I am innocent, my Judges, and yet I am one hundred times guilty of this crime. My (heartless) sons have brought me to this – and I stand before you a miserable wretch. A child, my child son branded me before God with (sinful) words. And behold the other, the first born, fill me with the terror of eternal shame – Judges – these (are) the works of my soul. They were born in my thoughts and now they stand
[ATL, lines: 660–73] in judgment upon me. (to Joas) A prophet awoke in the soul of my child and with an infallible hand – (?) I am guilty. Judgment is (ready) upon me. (to Joas) Your judgment has fallen right upon me. I fall (and break/back) under the power of the blow. (But through) the merciless will of fate you yourself (lie/are) (likewise but) forever fallen. It fell to your lot to denounce your guilty father. You have risen yourself up like David only to be (laid low) by the dart of Saul. . .(to die) in your father’s arms. (This then) was the evil. In my hands your [ATL, lines: 673–94]
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(life is) blown out like a lamp which breaks and my soul/conscience is (?) by the red flame (?) fires. The visions of my terror and my fear have come to life. Oh, my Absalom [!] Jahwe! Jahwe! Thou have taken my child from me. My treasure is laid low at my feet. Your promise – the cruel lie. Thou hast promised us the Kingdom of this world. You God – you were our own God. And you put your prophets to shame and strike down your sons [?] God who hast (pulled) down the Philistines – in [?]. Thou hast hidden thyself in clouds upon the mount Horeb, Thou hast hidden thyself on Sinai in a pillar of fire, like [ATL, lines: 695–713] like an invisible leader thou hast parted for us the waves of the sea. Moses lowered down before thee – he who struck water from the rocks and (?) in the thirsty desert. Jahwe [!] Jahwe! My sins are too heavy upon me and I am brought to dust. I fall upon my knees before thee and beat my head upon the floor. Jahwe! Thou art God. Powerful Lord [?] Judgment. Thou who hast commandeered Thy servant Abraham to make an offering of his first born son, Isaac, born of Sarah, look upon my house in mourning when the hour of death has struck
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the judges and speak one word – that it has been thy will to take away my
[ATL, lines: 713–21] son. [a bell ringing in the passage can be heard] Gendarme: Make way. A Priest: Peace be upon this house and upon all that dwell therein. Sheriff: Amen. Priest: Praised be the Lord Jesus Christ. Sheriff: Amen. S.T.: That’s right. Amen. [In the passage the village people have gathered; they kneel down; the priest enters the bedroom where Jewdocha is lying; the beggar on his knees follows him; the main room is now dark, from the bedroom the light falls on the kneeling people; behind the white curtains in the window of the side room the light of the Sabbath candles can be seen.] Beggar:
Thou willst give back to (?me again) what I own that (is/’s?) taken from me. For it is written. As it was in the beginning etc. etc. Curtain Notes
U Text: The text has been assembled from two separate autograph MSS, one in New York and the other at the ATL. Firstly, five-page autograph MS, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; secondly, Notebook 32, ATL, qMS-1256. This is the first time a transcription of this translation by KM has been attempted (Margaret Scott having omitted it from the Notebooks due to the difficulty of deciphering KM’s handwriting). Our transcription is by Polish scholar Mirosława Kubasiewicz, who devoted the summer of 2013 to unravelling both parts of KM’s handwritten translation, using Polish and German versions of Stanisław Wyspian´ski’s play (the latter being the one almost certainly used by KM). The editors would like to record their thanks to Mirosława Kubasiewicz for this feat of scholarship. Claire Tomalin notes a curious brief reappearance by Floryan
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3. 4. 5.
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Sobieniowski in KM’s life in 1917. In February Mansfield moved to a studio flat in Chelsea – ‘the first studio flat she found was “snatched” from her by a “perfidious Pole”, according to a letter she sent to Ottoline; one can’t help speculating that it may have been Floryan.’ Tomalin then goes on to reveal: ‘Her old incubus Sobieniowski leaves his trace in another way about this time, for there are fragments of translation from the Polish playwright Wyspianski in her hand and his; but she told no one about this’ (Tomalin, p. 159). We have retained the page structure of the two original manuscripts, and noted the line numbers of the original play, for purposes of clarity. Also for the purposes of clarity, missing phrases, stage directions and punctuation from the original are placed in square brackets and italicised. Material in round brackets indicates suggestions or omissions, due to the difficulties of transcribing KM’s handwriting. At this point in the text, JMM’s pencilled note records: ‘This is a translation from Wyspianski.’ Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) was a Polish–American pianist, regarded as one of the greatest interpreters of Chopin. Joseph Joachim (1831–1907) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor and composer.
Note on the play by Mirosława Kubasiewicz Stanisław Wyspian´ski (1869–1907) was a Polish playwright, poet, painter and designer. His plays include: The Wedding (1901), Deliverance (1903) and November Night (1904). Wyspian´ski’s one-act play, The Judges (1907), is based on a real-life event – a murder of a servant girl, Jewdocha, by her Jewish lover, the son of a village innkeeper, which was reported in a local newspaper in Krakow. The event inspired Wyspian´ski to write a kind of ancient Greek tragedy about crime, revenge and punishment, about human passions and God’s justice. The action of the play takes place at an inn run by Samuel, a welloff but unscrupulous local man. He has two sons: Joas, an innocent and sensitive young boy who is a talented musician; and his older brother Nathan, unscrupulous and cynical like his father, who deals in the white slave trade. Twenty years earlier Samuel brought to ruin the former owner of the inn and had him put in prison on a trumped-up charge of attempted murder. As well as acquiring the inn, Samuel acquired the former innkeeper’s young daughter, Jewdocha (an augmentative of Eve), and brought her up as a family servant. In the play, the former innkeeper (the ‘Beggar’) returns to take his revenge on Samuel. He
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is convinced that Jewdocha, when she learns who he is, will become his accomplice in exacting revenge on Samuel. The girl, however, does not want revenge – her only desire is to die, to achieve peace for her body and her tormented soul. She has loved Nathan, become pregnant by him, but now despises him. Nathan is about to leave the village and marry another girl. Jewdocha is tormented by her conscience – since at Nathan’s instigation, she tried (unsuccessfully) to terminate her pregnancy and then finally strangled her newborn child. Samuel, afraid that the Beggar and Jewdocha may cause problems for Nathan’s shady deals, suggests to his son that the girl should be killed and the blame put on the old man. Nathan readily agrees to carry out the plan. A soldier on leave (Jewdocha’s brother) arrives, with the intention of having Nathan punished for the mistreatment of his sister (having been informed about Nathan’s human trafficking by Jewdocha). He is on the way to the nearest gendarmerie station to register his stay in the village. Joas recognises in the soldier his music teacher from the past. Nathan sees the soldier as a tool with which to execute his plan. He asks the soldier to load a gun for him, then they start fighting in the passage; the gun fires and the shot fatally wounds Jewdocha. The soldier escapes and Nathan bursts into the room where Samuel and Joas have been listening. Nathan is about to run away when gendarmes, informed earlier by Samuel about the soldier’s unregistered stay in the village, bring him in. Soon after them, four judges arrive, informed earlier by the soldier about Nathan’s white slave trading. Two investigations start: the blame for the shooting of Jewdocha is put on the soldier, while the other investigation is inconclusive. When the gendarmes are taking the soldier away, Joas, the boy of pure heart and God’s prophet, indicates the real perpetrators of the crime – Nathan and Samuel. However, the discovery of his father’s evil actions breaks his heart and he dies. Over the body of his beloved son, Samuel, enraged, blames God for his loss but eventually accepts God’s justice. The play was composed in 1900 but prepared for publication, at the author’s own cost, only seven weeks before Wyspian´ski’s death in 1907. The play was one of the first literary texts used as a film script, filmed in Poland in 1911 as Sa˛d Boz˙y (God’s Judgement).
M. Seguin’s Goat Alphonse Daudet You will always be the same, my poor Gringoire. What! you have been offered a post on a good Paris newspaper and you have the nerve to refuse. . . . But look at yourself, you unhappy
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boy. Look at this torn tunic, this ruined cloak, this thin face that cries hunger. It’s to this, then, that your passion for pretty rhyming has led you. And that is what has come of your ten years loyal service as page to King Apollo. . . . Aren’t you ashamed at the end? Accept the post, idiot! Take it! Lovely silver money will be yours, you will have your place laid for you at Brebant’s, and you will be able to show yourself on first nights with a new feather in your cap. . . . No? You don’t want to? You pretend that you will live your free life, in your own way for ever . . . Very well, listen a moment to the story of M. Seguin’s goat. You will see what is to be gained by the longing for freedom. § M. Seguin had never had any luck with his goats. He lost them all in the same way: one fine morning they broke their cord, went off to the mountain, and up there the wolf ate them. Not the caresses of their master, not the fear of the wolf, nothing could keep them back. They were, it seemed, independent goats, who longed at all costs for the open air and for liberty. Good M. Seguin, who understood nothing of the character of his animals, was in despair. He said: ‘It is the end; goats feel bored when they are with me, I shall never be able to keep one.’ Nevertheless he did not lose heart, and, after having lost six goats in the same way, he bought a seventh; but this time he took care to buy quite a young one who would grow up more accustomed to living with him. Ah! Gringoire, how pretty that little goat of M. Seguin’s was! How graceful she was with her soft eyes, her little tuft of beard, her black gleaming sabots, her striped horns and her long white hair which served her for a mantle. She was almost as charming as Esmeralda’s kid,1 you remember, Gringoire? – and docile, affectionate, letting herself be milked without moving, without putting her foot in the pail. A love of a little goat. . . . Behind M. Seguin’s house there was a paddock surrounded by bushes of may. It was there that he put his new pupil. He tied her to a stake in the most charming part of the field, leaving her plenty of cord, and from time to time he came to see if all was well. The goat felt very happy and munched the grass with such good heart that M. Seguin was ravished. ‘At last,’ thought the poor man, ‘I have found one who is not going to feel bored.’ But M. Seguin deceived himself, the goat did become bored.
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One day she said, looking at the mountain: ‘How happy one might be up there. What joy to gambol in the heath without this hateful cord scraping one’s neck. . . . Munching in a paddock is quite good enough for an ass or cow . . . But goats – they must have space.’ From that moment the grass seemed to her to have lost its taste. She grew thin, she seldom gave any milk. It was sad to see her dragging at her cord all day long, her head turned to the mountain side, her nostrils open, crying ‘Me . . .’ piteously. M. Seguin saw very well that there was something wrong with his goat, but he could not think what it was . . . One morning, as he tried to milk her, the goat turned round and said to him in her own language: ‘Listen, M. Seguin, I am tired of being here; let me go up on to the mountain.’ ‘Ah, good God . . . She, too,’ cried M. Seguin, stupified, and down fell the milk pail; then, sitting on the grass by the side of his goat: ‘Really, Blanquette, you wish to leave me?’ And Blanquette replied: ‘Yes, M. Seguin.’ ‘Is it because you have not enough to eat here?’ ‘Oh, no! Monsieur Seguin.’ ‘Perhaps your cord is too short; would you like me to lengthen it?’ ‘It is not worth while, Monsieur Seguin.’ ‘Then what is the matter? What do you want?’ ‘I want to go up on to the mountain, Monsieur Seguin. ‘But, unhappy one, you do not know that there is a wolf on the mountain. What would you do when he came along?’ ‘I should give him some blows with my horns, Monsieur Seguin.’ ‘Little the wolf cares for your horns. He has eaten goats of mine that had far better ones . . . You remember Renaude, poor old Renaude who was here last year? . . . A queen of a goat, strong and fierce as a he-goat. She fought with the wolf all through one night . . . and then, in the morning he ate her up.’ ‘Alas! Poor Renaude. . . But that is nothing, Monsieur Seguin, let me go up on to the mountain.’ ‘Gracious heaven . . .’ said M. Seguin; ‘but what is it then that happens to all my goats? Here is another that the wolf will eat for me . . . But no . . . I shall save you from yourself, wicked one; and in case you should break from your cord, I am going to shut you up in the stable and there you shall stay.’ Thereupon M. Seguin pushed his goat into the pitchy dark stable,
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and double locked the door. Unfortunately he forgot about the window, and he had hardly turned his back before the little one was gone. . . . You laugh, Gringoire? Well! I can believe it; you are on the side of the goats, aren’t you, and against that good M. Seguin? . . . We shall see if you laugh in a moment. When the white goat arrived on the mountain everyone was enchanted. The old pine trees had never seen anything as pretty. She was received like a little queen. The chestnut trees bowed themselves down to the ground to caress her with the tips of their branches. The yellow gorse opened upon her way and smelled as fine as it could. She was fêted by all the mountain. You can imagine, Gringoire, that our goat was happy. No more cord, no more stake . . . nothing to stop her from gambolling, from nibbling as she pleased . . . And there was grass if you like! Up to the horns, my dear . . . And what grass! Tasty, fine, delicate, made of a thousand plants . . . It was a very different thing to the paddock. And the flowers, too. . . Big blue campanulas, orange lady flowers with long cups, a whole forest of wild flowers oozing with delicious honey. . . . The white goat, half drunk, rolled about with her legs in the air, rolled over and over down the slopes, pell-mell with the fallen leaves and the chestnuts. Then, all of a sudden, she sprang up again. Hop! Off she went, her head forward, through the brushwood and the box, presently on top of a little peak, then at the bottom of a ravine, now up, now down, everywhere. . . . One would have said that there were ten of M. Seguin’s goats on the mountain. And she wasn’t frightened of anything, La Blanquette. Those huge torrents that fling spray and foam into the air as they pass, she cleared at one bound. Then, all hung with drops she lay down on some flat rock and let the sun dry her . . . Once, going to the edge of a terrace, a sprig of broom between her teeth, she saw below, far below in the plain, M. Seguin’s house, with the paddock behind it. And that made her laugh till the tears came. ‘How tiny it is,’ said she. ‘How did I ever put up with it.’ Poor little creature! Perched up so high, she thought herself at least as big as the world. . . . Altogether that was a wonderful day for M. Seguin’s goat. In the middle of it, running from right to left, she fell in with a troop of chamois, who were just about to scrunch up a wild grape-vine. Our little runaway in her white frock made a sensation. She was given the best place on the grape-vine, and all the gentlemen were very gallant. . . It is even said – this between ourselves, Gringoire – that one young chamois with a black coat had the good fortune to please Blanquette. The two lovers lost themselves for an hour or two in the
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woods, and if you want to know what they talked about, go and ask the babbling streams that run unseen through the mosses. All of a sudden the wind freshened. The mountain became violent; it was evening. ‘Already!’ said the little goat; and she stopped, very surprised. Down below, the fields were drowned in the heavy mist. M. Seguin’s paddock disappeared under it, and of the tiny house there was nothing to be seen but the roof and a feather of smoke. She heard the bells of the returning flocks, and she felt sad to her heart. A hawk, on his way home, brushed her with his wings as he passed. She shivered . . . then there came a howling from the mountain:– ‘Hou! Hou!’ She thought of the wolf; all day the foolish little creature had forgotten him. . . . At the same moment a horn sounded far away in the valley. It was that good M. Seguin making a last effort. ‘Hou! Hou!’ went the wolf. ‘Return! return!’ cried the horn. Blanquette longed to return; but then she recalled the stake, the rope, the hedge round the field, and she felt that now she would not be able to bear that life, and that it was better to stay as she was. . . . The horn sounded no longer. . . . Behind her she heard the leaves rustle. She turned round and she saw in the shadow two short ears, alert, and two glistening eyes. It was the wolf. Enormous, motionless, sitting on his tail, he was there staring at the little white goat and licking his chops. As he was quite certain he was going to eat her, the wolf didn’t hurry; only, when she turned round, he began to laugh wickedly. ‘Ha! Ha! it’s M. Seguin’s little goat’; and he passed his huge red tongue over his slobbering lip. Blanquette knew that she was lost. . . . Just for one instant, recalling the story of old Renaude, who had fought all night long and been eaten next morning, she said to herself that perhaps it was better to let the wolf eat her straightway; then, changing her mind, she put herself on guard, her head low, her horns forward like the brave goat of M. Seguin that she was. . . Not that she hoped to kill the wolf – goats do not kill wolves – but only to see if she could keep up as long as Renaude had done. . . . Then the monster advanced and the little horns began to dance. Ah, the brave little goat, what a good heart she put into it. More than ten times – it is the truth I’m telling, Gringoire – she forced the wolf to fall back to recover his breath. And during those moments of truce the greedy one snatched once more a blade of her darling grass; then
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she returned to the fight, her mouth full. . . . That went on all night. From time to time M. Seguin’s goat looked up at the stars dancing in the clear sky, and said to herself:– ‘Oh, if only I can keep it up until dawn. . . .’ One after another the stars went out. Blanquette redoubled the blows with her horns, and the wolf the cuts with his teeth. . . . A faint light showed on the horizon. From a farm there sounded the crowing of a cock. ‘At last!’ said the poor creature, who was only waiting for the daylight that she might die, and she lay down on the ground in her lovely white fur, all spotted with blood. . . . And the wolf jumped on to the little goat and ate her up. Farewell, Gringoire. The story that you have heard is not one of my own. If ever you come to Provence, our people will talk to you often of M. Seguin’s goat, who fought the wolf all night long and was eaten up in the morning. You understand me well, Gringoire. In the morning the wolf ate her up.
Notes Text: New Age, 21: 19, 6 September 1917, pp. 411–12. Underneath the title is written: ‘To M. Pierre Gringoire, Lyric Poet in Paris. (Translated by Katherine Mansfield from the French of Alphonse Daudet.)’. Alphonse Daudet (1840–97) was a poet, playwright and fiction writer. This story first appeared in Lettres de mon moulin (1869). Alpers reads the story as KM’s identification with the fate of M. Seguin’s goat (Life, pp. 263–4). 1. Djali, the goat belonging to Esmeralda, in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), can perform spelling and counting tricks.
Letters of Anton Tchehov Biographical Note. – Anton Tchehov was born in 1860 in Taganrog. He completed his studies at the local ‘gymnasium’ in 1879, and in the same year he became a student of medicine at the Moscow University. In 1884 he took his doctor’s degree. He began writing in humorous periodicals in 1879. In 1888 he was awarded the Poushkin literary prize. In addition to his constant writing he practised medicine for a short time; he had a hard struggle to live, since his family was dependent on him. In 1894 his lungs began to trouble him seriously; in 1897 it became
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clear that he suffered from consumption. In 1901 he married Mlle. Knipper, a gifted actress of the Moscow Art Theatre. On July 2, 1904, Tchehov died of consumption at Badenweiler in the Black Forest. TO D. V. GRIGOROVITCH.1 Moscow, March 28, 1886. Your letter, my ardently loved bringer of good tidings, has struck me like a flash of lightning. I was so greatly agitated, I nearly cried, and I feel now that it has left a deep mark on my soul. May God comfort you in your old age for your loving care for me in my youth. As for me, I can find neither words nor deeds with which to thank you. You know in what a light distinguished men like yourself are regarded by ordinary people. You can judge, therefore, how your letter raises my amour-propre. It is higher than any honour, and for a writer who is beginning, it is his present and his future reward. I feel as if I were drunk. Whether I have deserved this high reward or not, it is not within my power to judge. I can repeat only that I am overcome. If I have a gift which I ought to respect, then, confronted by the purity of your heart, I confess that I have not respected it up till now. I felt that I had it, but I have grown accustomed to consider it insignificant. There are causes enough of a purely external kind in one’s organism to make one unjust to oneself, diffident and suspicious. And of such causes now I think of them, I have enough. All those dear to me looked condescendingly upon me as an author and persistently advised me in a friendly way not to give up my real work for scribbling. I have hundreds of acquaintances in Moscow, a score of writing fellows among them, and I cannot think of one who would read my work or see in me an artist. There is a so-called literary circle in Moscow: men of talent and mediocrities of all ages and complexions meet once a week in a private room of a restaurant and there give rein to their tongues. If I went there and read even a fragment of your letter they would laugh in my face. In the five years of my meandering through the newspapers I have succeeded in identifying myself with the general opinion of my literary insignificance. I soon grew accustomed to take an indulgent view of my work and – I let myself go. This is one reason. The second is that I am a doctor, and I have got entangled ear-deep in my medicine, so that the saying about the two stools has troubled no man’s peace of mind more than mine. I am writing all this to you only that I may acquit myself of a great sin. Until now I have taken my literary work extremely lightly, carelessly, at random. I do not remember a single story at which I worked more than a day, and ‘The Hunter,’ which you liked, I wrote in a bathing tent. I wrote my stories as reporters write their notes about
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fires – mechanically, half unconsciously, without caring a bit either for the reader or for myself. In my writing I tried in every way not to waste on a story the visions and the scenes which are dear to me, and which, God knows why, I guarded and jealously hid. What first put me on the track of self-criticism was a very kind, and as far as I know sincere letter from Souvorin.2 I began making up my mind to write some ‘good stuff,’ but still I had no faith in my own literary ‘good stuffiness.’ And then, unexpectedly, out of the blue, came your letter. Forgive me the comparison, but it affected me like an order from the Governor to leave the town in twenty-four hours. I felt suddenly the pressing need to hurry – to escape from the rut in which I am stuck. I agree with you completely. I realized the ‘cynicism’ which you point out when I saw ‘The Witch’ in print. Had I written that story not in one but in three or four days, it would not have been there. I am freeing myself from binding work for the newspapers, but this can’t happen all at once. It is not possible to get quite out of the rut in which I am stuck. Personally, I have no objection to starving, I have done it before, but it is not only a question of myself. I give my leisure time to writing – two or three hours during the day and a bit of the night; that is to say, time only for small things. In the summer, when I have more leisure and living expenses are less, I shall attempt something serious. It is impossible now to put my name on the book,3 as it is too late; the title-page is ready and the book printed. Many people in Petersburg, before you, advised me not to spoil the book by a nom de plume, but I did not listen to them – from conceit, probably. I do not like my little book at all. It is a made-up dish, a chaotic jumble from my undergraduate days, and little things, plucked of their feathers by the censorship as well as by the editors of humorous papers. I believe many people will be disappointed. If I had known that people read me and that you are watching, I never would have published that book. All my hope lies in the future. I am only twenty-six. Perhaps I may still succeed in doing something, although time runs swiftly by. Forgive my long letter, and do not count it a crime in a man who for the first time in his life dares to indulge himself in the delight of a letter to Grigorovitch. If you can, send me your photograph. You have been so kind to me and excited me so much that I feel I could write you whole reams instead of a single sheet. God grant you health and happiness, and believe in the sincerity of your deeply respectful and grateful ANTON TCHEHOV.
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[Grigorovitch’s letter to Tchehov contained these words: You possess a real talent, a talent which places you far above the set of young writers of the new generation. I am over sixty-five, but I still preserve so much love for literature, I watch her success with such ardour, and am always so delighted when I find in her something living and gifted, that, as you see, I could not restrain myself from holding out my hands to you. If you happen to be in Petersburg, I hope to see you and embrace you in the flesh as I do now in spirit . . . . A talent is a rare gift, one must respect it. Husband your impressions for considered, finished work – work not finished at a sitting. Your reward will be immediate, and you will at once be recognized by those who know and then by all the reading public] TO V. G. KOROLENKO.4 Moscow, October 17, 1887. I greatly thank you, esteemed Vladimir Galaktionovitch, for your book, which I have received and am now re-reading. As you have my books I am forced to confine myself to sending you my thanks only. That my letter should not be altogether brief, I will tell you I am extremely glad to have made your acquaintance. From my heart and sincerely I tell you this. First, I deeply appreciate and love your talent; it is dear to me for many reasons. Secondly, it seems to me that if you and I live another ten or twenty years in this world we shall not fail to find that in the future our ideas cross. Among all Russians who are writing away at the present day I am the most light-minded and least serious. But I have been warned; poetically speaking – I love my pure Muse, but I have not respected her; I have betrayed her more than once and taken her to places where she ought not to have been. And you are serious and sound and true. As you see, the difference between us is great, but nevertheless, having read your book and now having made your acquaintance I do not think we are alien to each other. Whether I am right or not I do not know, but it pleases me to think so. I am sending you a cutting from the Novoye Vremya.5 Thoreau,6 whom you will get to know from it, I shall cut out and keep for you. The first chapter promises a great deal; there are ideas, there is freshness and originality, but it is hard to read. The architecture and composition are impossible. Ideas beautiful and ugly, light and heavy, are piled on top of each other, crowded together, squeezing the juice out of each other, and you feel at any moment that the pressure may make them squeal . . .
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TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDER ABOUT HIS PLAY ‘IVANOV.’ 7 October, 1887. I wrote the play quite by chance after a talk with Korsh.8 I went to bed, thought out a theme, and wrote it down. I spent a fortnight on it, or rather ten days, for there were days in the fortnight when I did not work or wrote something else. Of the merits of the play I cannot judge. It turned out suspiciously short. Everybody liked it. Korsh did not find one mistake or one error from the point of view of the stage; that proves how kind and hyper-considerate my judges are. Mistakes are inevitable in one’s first play! The subject is complicated and not silly. Each act I finish like a story; the act as a whole I make go quietly and peacefully, and at the end I smack the spectator in the face. All my energies went into a few really strong, bright passages, but the bridges which connect these are insignificant, dull and commonplace. Still I am pleased. However bad the piece may be, I have created a type which has a literary value. I have created a part which only an actor of talent like Davidov would undertake to play – a role in which an actor can display himself and show his gifts. FROM A LETTER TO PLESHTCHEYEV.9 [? date.] I am afraid of those who look between the lines for ‘tendencies’ and who want to find in me, for certain, a liberal or a conservative. I am neither a liberal nor a conservative nor a gradualist nor a monk nor an indifferentist. My desire would be to be a free artist and nothing more and I regret that God has not given me that power. I hate falsehood and violence in all their forms; and secretaries of the Divorce and Probate Court and men like Notovitch and Gradovsky are equally disgusting to me. Pharisaism, stupidity and arbitrary ways do not reign only in shopkeepers’ houses and in prisons. I detect them in science and literature and among the new generation. Therefore I nourish no particular partiality for gendarmes or butchers or professors or authors or the new generation. A trade-mark – a label – I consider a prejudice. My Holy of Holies is the human body, health, mind, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute freedom: freedom from force and falsehood in whatever form these two may be manifested. Were I a great artist this would be the programme to which I would adhere.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4640, 4 April 1919, pp. 148–9. This first section of letters is unsigned by KM and Koteliansky. All other sections feature their names prominently as translators.
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1. The first novel of Dimitri Vasilyevich Grigorovich (1822–1900), The Village (1846), was regarded as significant by the great Russian novelist Turgenev because it criticised the system of serfdom in Russia. Grigorovich was an important figure in Russian literary life. 2. Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin (1834–1912) was an influential newspaper and book publisher. 3. A footnote at this point in the text reads: ‘This refers to Tchehov’s first book: “Mixed Stories”.’ 4. Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko (1853–1921) was an influential short-story writer and human rights activist. 5. Novoye Vremya was a newspaper published in St Petersburg from 1868 to 1917. Chekhov published in it until he severed relations with Alexei Suvorin, its owner, in the late 1890s. 6. Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) was a poet and philosopher whose bestknown work, Walden (1854), describes living simply in the woods. 7. Chekhov’s play Ivanov was first performed in 1887 at the Korsh Theatre, Moscow, then rewritten and performed in St Petersburg in 1889. 8. Fiodor Adamovich Korsh (1852–1923) was a dramatist, critic and impresario who created the Korsh Theatre in 1882. 9. Alexei Nikolayevich Pleshcheyev (1825–93) was a poet, political activist and translator. He was arrested and exiled with Dostoevsky in 1849. Late in his life, he became a friend of Chekhov.
Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. II. TO V. G. KOROLENKO. (9 January, 1888, Moscow.) I have deceived you without meaning to, dear Vladimir Galaktionovitch: I cannot get the proofs of my play [‘Ivanov’]; when it is published I’ll send it to you, or give it to you when I see you. Meanwhile, don’t be cross. I have taken it into my head to have copied and sent to you old Grigorovitch’s letter, which I received yesterday. For many reasons it is worth its weight in gold to me, and I am afraid to read it a second time for fear of losing the first impression. You will see from it that literary fame and high prices don’t by any means protect one from such commonplaces as illness, indifference, and loneliness. From the letter you see, too, that it was not you alone who, from a pure heart, showed me my rightful path, and you will understand how ashamed I am.
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When I finished reading Grigorovitch’s letter I remembered you and I felt ashamed. It became clear to me that I was not right. I am writing this to you and you alone, because there is nobody near me who needs my sincerity or who has the right to it. But with you, without asking, I have made an alliance in my soul. Acting on your friendly advice, I have begun a little story for the Syeverny Vyesnik.1 As a beginning I started describing the steppe, its people, and my experiences there. The subject is a good one; I enjoy writing it. But, unfortunately, because I am unaccustomed to writing long stories, and from fear of saying too much, I go to the other extreme. Each page turns out as compact as a small short story. The scenes are piled one upon another, crowded together and obscuring the light, and the general impression is ruined. The result is a picture, in which the details are not, like the stars in the sky, part of one great whole; it is a prospectus, a catalogue of impressions. You, for instance, as a writer, will understand me, but the reader will be bored and give it up. I spent two weeks and a half in Petersburg and saw a number of people. As a result, my feelings could, more or less, be reduced to the text: ‘Put not your hopes in princes, nor in any child of man . . .’ 2 I’ve seen a lot of nice people, but judges there are none. Perhaps it is just as well. I am waiting for the February number of Syev Vyesnik, to read your ‘On the Road.’ Pleshtcheyev told me that the censor had plucked your feathers thoroughly. Congratulations for the New Year. Keep well and happy. Your sincerely devoted A. T. P.S. – Your ‘Sokolinetz’3 seems to me the most outstanding work of recent times. It is written like a good musical composition, according to the rules which the instinct of the artist whispers to him. Altogether in your book you are such a big artist, such a power, that even your greatest defects, which would kill another man, pass unnoticed in you. For instance, in your whole book there is an obstinate absence of woman, and it is only lately that I have realized this. EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER TO A. S. SOUVORIN.4 (30 May, 1888, Soumy.) . . . I live on the shores of the river Pysol, in the cottage belonging to an old seignorial manor-house. I rented the cottage at random, without having seen it, and as yet I haven’t regretted it. The river is wide, deep, abounding in little islands, fishes and crayfish. The banks are beautiful with lots of green. And the chief thing is that it is all so spacious, that I seem to have got for my
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hundred roubles the right to live in a place which has no visible boundaries. Nature and life here are built up of those very same clichés which have become so obsolete and are rejected nowadays in all editors’ offices. As well as nightingales that sing day and night, the barking of dogs, heard from afar, old, desolate orchards, romantic, sad country houses, nailed and blocked up, wherein live the souls of beautiful women; as well as old, dying butlers who were former serfs, and girls who pine for the most ordinary love, there is not far from me such a hackneyed cliché as a water-mill with a miller whose daughter is always sitting by the window, evidently expecting something. Everything that I see and hear now seems to me long since familiar, from old stories and tales. The only novelty is the mysterious bird – the water heron – which sits somewhere in the reeds, and day and night utters a cry partly like a blow on an empty barrel, partly like the bellowing of a cow shut in a shed. Every Ukrainian says he has seen this bird, but all describe it differently. Therefore nobody has seen it. There is another novelty, but an adventitious one, and therefore not quite new. Each day I take a boat to the mill, and in the evenings, together with fishing maniacs from Kharitonenko’s sugar refinery, set off to the islets to fish. The talk is very interesting. On the eve of Whitsuntide all the fishing maniacs are going to spend all night there – fishing. I too. There are superb types. . . . . . I have Pleshtcheyev staying with me. He is looked upon by everybody as a demi-god. They consider it a happiness if he honours their curdled milk with his attention, offer him bouquets, invite him everywhere, etc. A girl, Vota, an undergraduate from Poltava, who is staying with my hosts, pays him particular court. And he ‘listens and eats,’ and smokes his cigars, which give his women admirers headaches. He is stodgy, elderly, lazy, but this does not prevent the fair sex from rowing him in boats, driving him to neighbours’ estates, and singing romances to him. Here he is – just as he was in Petersburg – an icon which is prayed to because it is old and hung once beside mysterious icons. Besides his being a very nice, genial and sincere man, I personally see in him a vessel full of tradition, interesting reminiscences, and pleasant commonplaces. I have already written a story and sent it to the ‘Novoye Vremya.’ What you say about my ‘Fires’ is quite right. ‘Nicolai and Masha’ are like a red thread run across the story, but what could I do? Because I am not used to writing long things, I am diffident; as I write, I am frightened every moment that my story is longer than it can afford to be, and I keep trying to make it as short as possible. The finale of the engineer with Kissotchka seemed to me to be an unimportant detail,
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holding up the story, and so I cut it out and unwillingly put in ‘Nicolai and Masha’ instead. You say that neither the discussion about pessimism nor Kissotchka’s story goes any further towards solving the question of pessimism. It seems to me that it is not the business of novelists to solve questions such as – God, pessimism, and so forth. The business of the novelist is merely to describe how and under what circumstances his people spoke or thought of God, or pessimism. An artist must not be a judge of his people or of what they say, but only an impartial witness. Suppose I hear a chaotic conversation between Russians about pessimism, a conversation which solves nothing, I must relate it in the very way in which I hear it, and leave the valuation of it to the jurors, i.e., the readers. My only concern is to be gifted enough to be able to distinguish important evidence from unimportant, to be able to throw the proper light on the characters, and to speak their language. Shzeglov-Leontyev5 blames me for having ended the story with the words, ‘One can’t understand anything in this world.’ In his opinion a psychological writer must understand; that’s why he is a psychologist. But I do not agree with him. For writers, particularly for writers who are artists, it is high time to confess, as Socrates6 once confessed, and as Voltaire7 owned up, that you can’t understand anything in this world. The mob thinks that it knows and understands everything, and the stupider people are the wider seems, to them, their horizon. If then an artist whom the mob trusts makes up his mind to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees, that in itself would be a great acquisition, a great step forward. . . . .
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4642, 18 April 1919, pp. 215–16. 1. The Northern Messenger, an influential literary magazine founded in St Petersburg in 1885. 2. Psalms, 146: 3: ‘Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.’ 3. A short story first published in 1885. 4. Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin (1834–1912) was an influential newspaper and book publisher, whose political views were initially liberal but eventually shifted to a nationalist position. 5. Ivan Leontyevich Leontyev, whose pseudonym was Shcheglov (1855– 1911), was a playwright and fiction writer, and a close friend of Chekhov. 6. Socrates (469 BC-399 BC) was a classical Greek philosopher. 7. Voltaire was the pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), a satirical French writer and philosopher.
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Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. III. EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS TO SHCHEGLOV-LEONTYEV WRITTEN DURING THE YEAR 1888. Jan. 1 . . . I have begun a story for the Sver: Vyestnik. I don’t know when I’ll finish it. The thought that I am writing for a weighty magazine, and that my little thing will be looked upon more seriously than it deserves, keeps on jerking my elbow, as the devil did the monk. It is a story about the steppe. I write, but feel that it does not smell of hay. . . . Jan. 22 . . . There is a great deal of phosphorus in our gift for writing, but there is no iron. Granted we are pretty birds and sing well, but we are not eagles. . . . My story [‘The Steppe’] is rather strange, but there are certain passages which satisfy me. It maddens me that it has no love-story. A story without a woman is like an engine without steam. Women are there, however, but neither wives nor mistresses. And I cannot do without women. Apr. 18. . . . I have only seventy-five roubles left. How can I go to Soumy [his summer home]? If I do not get some money in advance I’ll shoot myself. I, too, have got a ‘family complication.’ In order that it should not disturb me I take it about with me like luggage, and I am used to it, as one might be to a bump on one’s head. It is quieter and cheaper to take it with me than to leave it behind. Still, my ‘complication,’ if I compare it to an excrescence, is a benign excrescence, not a malignant one. My ‘complication’ sews superbly, cooks magnificently, and is always happy. During the winter it consists of eight persons, and in the summer of five. Anyhow, I am more often gay than sad, though if I think about it I am tied hand and foot. . . You have a little flat to keep up, but I have a whole house; even if it is only a shoddy one, still it is a house, and a two-storied one into the bargain. You have a wife, who would forgive your having no money, but I have a system, which will crumble down if I do not earn a certain amount per month. It will crumble down and fall on my shoulders like a heavy stone. May 3. . . How they love being suffocated in Petersburg! Don’t you all feel suffocated by such words as ‘solidarity,’ ‘union of young writers,’ ‘community of interests,’ etc.? I understand ‘solidarity’ and such phrases on the Stock Exchange, in politics, in religious affairs and such things, but solidarity among young writers is impossible and unnecessary. . . We cannot think and feel in the same way; our aims
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are different, or we haven’t got aims at all; we know each other too little, or we do not know each other at all. Therefore there is nothing for solidarity to catch a firm hold of. And is it necessary? No! To help a colleague, to respect his personality and work, not to gossip or to be envious of him, not to lie or to flatter – to do all that, one must be – not so much a young writer as a man, generally. Let us be ordinary people, let our relations to all be equal, then there will be no need for any artificially screwed up solidarity. A constant yearning after a private, professional, set solidarity, which you want, will breed involuntary spying upon each other, suspicion and control. And we, without desiring it, will become something like Jesuits with each other. I, my dear Jean, am not ‘solid’ with you, but I promise you, to the grave’s edge, complete freedom. You as a writer, for instance, may write where and how you like, think even like a revivalist, be a thousand times untrue to your convictions, tendencies, etc., etc., and my human relations with you will not change by a single hair. I could promise the same to my other colleagues, and I would wish the same from them. This is to me the most important normal relation. Only thus is it possible to keep respect, even friendship, and sympathy, in the hard moments of life. June 9. . . As regards the end of my ‘Fires,’ permit me to disagree with you. It is not the business of a psychological writer to understand that which he does not understand. Moreover, it is not his business to pretend that he understands that which nobody understands. Let us not play the charlatan, and let us confess frankly that in this world one can’t make out anything. Only fools and charlatans know and understand everything. July 18. . . All day long we pass in conversation. At night, too, I am turning into a talking machine. We have already solved all the known questions and mapped out a multitude of new ones which haven’t yet been raised by anybody. We talk, talk, talk, and in all probability we shall end by dying of inflammation of the tongue and the vocal chords. To be with Souvorin and to keep quiet makes one as uneasy as sitting at Palkin’s restaurant and not drinking. Really, Souvorin is flair incarnate. He is a big man. In art, he plays exactly the same part as a setter does in shooting woodcock – he works by his devilish flair and is always burning with passion. He is a poor theorist, an intellectual outsider; there is much he does not know. He is a self-taught man – hence his purely dog-like lack of response to corruption, his wholeness, and independence of outlook. Being poor in theories, he was forced to develop in himself the quality with which nature had richly endowed him – instinct. Involuntarily he developed his instinct to fill the whole of a big mind. He has a pleasant way of speaking. And when you understand his manner of talking and his sincerity
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– which the majority of talkers lack – then a chat with him becomes almost a delight. Nov. 7. . . The modern theatre is a skin disease – a disease of the cities. It must be swept away with a broom; to love it – is unwholesome. You will begin arguing with me and repeating the old phrase: The theatre is a school, it educates, etc. And I’ll tell you how it looks to me: the present-day theatre is no higher than the crowd; on the contrary, the life of the crowd is higher and more intelligent than the theatre. It therefore means that the theatre is not a school, but something quite different. . . Nov. 11. . . You want to argue with me about the theatre. Please do. But you won’t argue away my dislike of the scaffold where playwriters are executed. The present-day theatre is a world of muddle, of stupidity, of babble. The other day K. boasted to me that in his play ‘Crocodile Tears’ he ran down the ‘yellow-mouthed liberals,’ and for that reason his play did not please and was abused by the critics. After that I began to dislike the theatre even more, and to love those martyr-fanatics who want to make of it an ‘influence for good,’ and innocuous. Dec. 20. . . Souvorin is in the highest degree a sincere and outspoken man. All he told me was very interesting. His experience is huge. Anna Ivanovna treated me to morality and chartreuse. Of all the women I know she is the only one who has her own independent view of things. She is an Orfanov, the sister of Mishla Orfanov,1 a remarkable fellow, an author. The entire Orfanov family is excellent. The rest of Souvorin’s public are genial souls and not always boring. . . .
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4643, 25 April 1919, p. 249. 1. Mikhail Ivanovitch Orfanov (1847–84), an author.
Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. IV. EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO HIS SISTER, MARIE PAVLOVNA. (22 June, 1888, Feodosia) Yesterday I went to see Aivasovsky [a famous painter]1 at ShahMarnay, about 25 versts from here. It is a sumptuous estate, almost like a place in a fairy-tale; one could see its like in Persia.
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Aivasovsky himself, a hale and hearty old man of 75, is a cross between a good-natured Armenian and a dreadfully self-important bishop; he is full of his own dignity; he has soft white hands which he extends to you with the manners of a general. Clever he is not, but a complex nature and one worth studying. In his own self he manages to combine a general, as well as a bishop, an artist, an Armenian, and a naive grandpapa and an Othello. His wife is a young and very pretty woman whom he keeps with a tight rein. He is friendly with sultans, shahs, emirs. Together with Glinka2 he composed ‘Ruslan and Ludmila.’ He was Pushkin’s friend, but he has never read Pushkin.3 All his life he has not read a single book. When one suggests that he should read something, he says, ‘Why should I read if I have my own opinions?’ I spent the day and dined with him. The dinner was very long drawn out with endless toasts. During it, by the way, I was introduced to N. . . ., a woman doctor, the wife of a well-known professor. She is a stout, fattened up lump of meat. If she was naked and painted with green paint she would look like a marsh frog. After my talk with her, I, mentally, struck her off the roll of medicine. I saw a number of women. The best of them is S. [Souvorin’s wife]. She talks a lot of nonsense, but if she wishes to be serious she talks cleverly and independently. She is sunk to the ears in the writings of Tolstoi,4 and therefore with all her soul she cannot abide modern literature. When one talks books with her one feels that Korolenko, Byejezky, myself and the others are her personal enemies. She has an uncommon talent for talking nonsense without stopping, and also for talking so cleverly and amusingly that one can listen to her all day without being bored, as one can listen to a canary. On the whole she is an interesting, intelligent and nice creature. In the evenings she sits on the sand by the sea and weeps; in the mornings she giggles and sings gipsy love-songs. FROM A LETTER TO SOUVORIN. (11 September, 1888, Moscow.) You advise me not to hunt two hares at once and not to dream of continuing to practise medicine. I do not see why, even in the literal sense, one should not hunt two hares. As long as you’ve got the hounds, why not – hunt away? Probably what I do lack is hounds, but I feel more confident and more contented when I realize that I have two occupations, not one. Medicine is my legal wife, and literature is my mistress. When I am bored with one I spend the night with the other. But this is an ‘irregular’ life; nevertheless, it is not so tedious, and neither loses anything by my preaching. If I had not medicine, I
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should hardly devote my leisure and my superfluous thoughts to literature. There is no discipline in me. TO A. X. PLESHTCHEYEV. (15 September, 1888, Moscow.) . . . With regard to the Garshin book [a collection of stories and articles devoted to the memory of Garshin]5 I do not know what to say to you. I have no mind not to contribute. First, I love such men as the deceased Garshin with all my soul, and consider it my duty to proclaim publicly my sympathies with them; second, in the last days of his life Garshin took a great interest in me, and I cannot forget that; thirdly, to refuse to contribute to the book would be acting in uncomradelike fashion; in fact, behaving like a pig. I feel all this to the marrow of my bones – but imagine my absurd situation! I have not one single subject, not even a little one, suitable for such a book. All I have is either trivial, or very amusing, or too long. I had one little thing, but I used that in the form of a short sketch for the Novoye Vremya, with whom I am ear-deep in debt. Stay, I have one other: a young man, of the Garshin type, above the average, honest, and deeply sensitive, happens to visit a brothel for the first time in his life. About such subjects one must speak seriously, therefore all things in the story are called by their proper names. Perhaps I’ll be able to write it so that it will produce, as I should like it to do, a depressing effect; perhaps it will turn out well and suit the book. But, my dear friend, can you promise me that neither the censorship nor the editors themselves will cut anything out of it which I consider important? The book is to be illustrated; it is subject, therefore, to censorship. If you can promise me that not a single word will be cut, I can write that story in two evenings. But if you cannot promise that, then wait a week for my final answer; perhaps I shall hit on another subject. All honour to Schedrin6 and Scheylov, who write much! It’s certainly better to write much than not to write at all, and your reproach directed to the young writers is fully deserved. On the other hand, it does not suit every writer to be prolific. Take myself, for instance. During this last year I have written ‘The Steppe,’ ‘Fires,’ one play, two vaudevilles, a number of short stories, and I began a novel. . . . well? If those hundred tons of sand were washed the result would be (putting the money I received for them aside) about five ounces of gold.
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Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4644, 2 May 1919, p. 282. 1. Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817–1900) was a prominent Russian painter, particularly renowned for his seascapes. 2. Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804–57) is sometimes described as the father of Russian classical music. Ruslan and Lyudmila is a five-act opera composed between 1837 and 1842, and is based on a poem by Alexander Pushkin. The libretto was written by a group of writers. 3. Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799–1837), the great Russian poet, is best known for his play, Boris Godunov (1825), and his novel in verse, Eugene Onegin (serialised 1823–31). He died in a duel. 4. Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828–1910) is best known for his long novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), and for his short stories and novellas. After a spiritual crisis in about 1880 he became an extreme and influential moralist, indicting the pleasures of the flesh and private property, and rejecting both the state and the church. By the late nineteenth century he was world-famous as a philosopher, with both followers and opponents. He was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. 5. Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin (1855–88) was a soldier who served in the Russo-Turkish War, and a short-story writer. He suffered from mental illness and committed suicide. 6. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826–89) was a renowned satirist.
Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. V. TO A. X. PLESHTCHEYEV. (6 October, 1888, Moscow.) Forgive me, dear Alexey Nicolaevitch, for writing to you on this paper. I haven’t a single sheet of letter paper, and neither the wish nor the time to wait until they go to the little shop for some. Very many thanks for having read my story [‘The Birthday Party’], and for your last letter. I value your opinion. There is no one to talk to in Moscow, and I am glad to have nice people in Petersburg who do not find it a bore to exchange letters with me. Yes, my dear critic, you are right. The middle part of my story is tedious, grey and monotonous. I wrote it lazily and carelessly. As I am used to writing very short stories, made up of nothing but a beginning and end, I feel bored and inclined to ruminate when I feel I am starting on the middle part. You are right also not to conceal your
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opinion, but to speak out. Am I not frightened of appearing to be a liberal? That gives me a chance to take a peep at my inside. It seems to me that I would sooner be accused of gluttony, drunkenness, frivolity, indifference – anything rather than of a desire to ‘appear to be,’ or to ‘appear not to be.’ I never conceal myself. If I love you or Souvorin or Mihailovsky, I don’t hide the fact anywhere. If I feel sympathy for my heroine, Olga Mihailovna, a liberal and ex-student, I let it show in my story, which seems sufficiently clear. Neither do I conceal my respect for the Zemstvo,1 which I love, nor for the jury. True, my desire to balance the pluses and the minuses in my story is suspicious. But I am not trying to make conservatism and liberalism balance – they don’t seem to me the essential point – but the true and the false in my characters. Peter Dmitrich lies and plays the fool in court, he is pompous and hopeless, but I can’t help showing that by nature he is a lovable and sensitive man. Olga Mihailovna never stops lying, but the pain that lying costs her must be revealed. The Ukrainophil cannot be pointed at as evidence against me. I was not thinking of Paul Lintvariov [a mutual friend].2 Lord love you! Paul is an intelligent, modest, aspiring fellow who imposes his ideas on nobody. The Ukrainophilia of the Lintvariovs is love of the warmth, the costumes, the language of their native land. One sympathizes and is touched by it. I had in mind those profound idiots who rebuke Gogol3 because he did not write his books in Ukrainian, those wooden, incapable, inferior nincompoops, who try, nevertheless, to appear superior, by sticking a label on themselves and attempting to play a role. In describing the man of the sixties, I tried to be cautious and brief, although he deserves a story to himself. He is the faded, passive good-for-nothing who usurped the sixties; in the fifth form of the secondary school he got hold of five or six borrowed ideas, never digested them, and will go on stubbornly murmuring them until he dies. He is not a charlatan, but a silly fool who, while he understands little or nothing of that he murmurs, believes it all the same. He is stupid, deaf, heartless. You should just hear how, in the name of the sixties, which he does not understand, he grumbles at the present, which he cannot realize; he calumniates undergraduates, schoolgirls, women, writers, and everything modern, and in doing so he feels he is expressing the very essence of the spirit of the sixties. He’s as dull as ditch-water, and, like the Siberian mouse he harms those who trust him. The sixties are a sacred period, and to allow these silly mice to usurp it, is to vulgarize it. No, I will not strike out either the Ukrainophil or that old gander who bores me so. When I write or talk about such types I don’t think of conservatism or liberalism, but only of their stupidity and pretentiousness. Now for details. When a student of the Military Medical Academy is asked what he is studying he just answers: the faculty of medicine.
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To explain the difference between the academy and the university in common colloquial language, would only amuse and not bore an undergraduate. You are right in saying that the conversation with the pregnant peasant is like something out of Tolstoy. I appreciate that. But that conversation has no significance, I only wedged it in so that the abortion should not seem ex abrupto. I am a doctor, and so as not to disgrace myself I have to supply a motive for medical cases. Also about the neck you are right. I felt it when I wrote it; but I had not the courage to take out that about the neck which I had really seen. I would not dispense with it. You are also right in saying that a person who has just been crying cannot lie. But you are only partly right. Lying is just like alcoholism. Liars can lie even when they are dying. The other day an officer, an aristocrat, the fiancé of a girl friend of ours, tried for some reason to commit suicide. The father of the fiancé, a general, has not been, and won’t go, to the hospital to see his son, until he knows how society is going to take the affair. . . I have received the Poushkin prize!4 Ah, to have had those five hundred roubles in the summer, when it is merry, but in the winter they will be thrown away! To-morrow I mean to sit down and write a story for the Garshin book. I’ll have a good try. I’ll tell you when it takes shape and make a definite promise. It won’t be ready, probably, before next Sunday. I am upset just now and work badly. Keep well and happy. That prize has disorganized me. My thoughts go whirling round as never before. It is cold. Yours, A. T. To A. S. SOUVORIN. (October, 1888, Moscow.) I have read my ‘Ivanov’ again. I think that if I re-write Act IV, cut something, and add a monologue which sits in my brain, the play will ‘come off’ and be quite effective. I’ll have it corrected by Christmas, and send it to the Alexandrinsky Theatre. ‘The Bear’5 has been more or less passed by the censorship. It will be performed at Korsh’s Theatre. Solovzov longs to play the title-role. Has not Moslov got a play? I could get Korsh to stage it. The actors are very tender to me.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4647, 23 May 1919, p. 378. 1. The system of local government instituted in 1864 under the reforms of Alexander II.
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2. The Lintvariovs were politically radical family friends of the Chekhovs. When Chekhov writes from Luka he is staying on their estate. George Lintvariov (1865–1943) was a particular friend of Chekhov. 3. Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809–52) was a Ukrainian-born dramatist and fiction writer, renowned for his play, The Government Inspector (1836), and his novel, Dead Souls (1842). 4. The Pushkin Prize was established in 1881 in honour of Alexander Pushkin, and was awarded annually to a Russian writer who was considered to have achieved literary excellence. 5. The Bear is a comic one-act play by Chekhov, first performed in Moscow in 1888. Chekhov’s boyhood friend, Nikolai Nikolaevich Solovtsov, played Smirnov, the bear/boor.
Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. VI. TO A. S. SOUVORIN. (October 10, 1888, Moscow.) The news of the prize had an astounding effect. It broke over the house and over Moscow like the formidable thunder of immortal Zeus. I go about, these days, like one in love; mother and father talk nonsense and are unspeakably happy; my ambitious, nervous sister, who guards our reputation with the strictness and pettiness of a court lady, runs among her friends ringing a treble peal. Jean Scheglov1 talks about literary Iagos,2 and of the five hundred enemies I shall acquire with the five hundred roubles. I met the Lenskys [husband and wife: theatrical people] and gave them my word that I would dine with them; I met a lady, an admirer of the arts, who also invited me to dinner. The inspector of the county council school came to congratulate me, and brought my ‘Kashstanka’ [a story: ‘The Brown Doggy’] for two hundred roubles to ‘make a profit out of it.’ I believe that even Anna Ivanovna [Souvorin’s wife], who will not recognize either me or Scheglov as a writer, would invite me to dinner now. Xs, Zs and Ns, who write in humorous papers, have taken alarm, and begin to hope for their future. I say again: fiction writers of the second or third class ought to erect a monument to me, or at least present me with a silver cigarette case. It is I who have paved the way for them into the serious magazines, into the laurels and hearts of decent people. Up till now this is my only merit, and all that I have written and for which I have been given the prize will not live in men’s memories even ten years.
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I have had a terrific run of luck. The summer I spent superbly, happily; living cost hardly more than a few farthings, and I made no particularly big debts. There smiled on me the Psyol,3 the sea, the Caucasus and the booksellers (I got something nearly every month for my ‘Twilight’). In September I cleared off nearly half my debt, and wrote a little tale in two and a quarter folios, which brought me over three hundred roubles. Also the second edition of ‘Twilight’ appeared. And suddenly, out of the blue, showered down that prize. Such a run of luck that I am beginning to look suspicious and askance at the heavens. I must with all speed hide under the table and sit there quietly, meekly, without raising my voice. Until I make up my mind to a serious step, i.e., until I write a novel, I shall keep myself apart, quietly and modestly, write little unpretentious stories and little plays, and neither climb mountains nor fall down them, but work smoothly like Burenin’s pulse.4 [Here there is a wavy line.] I shall model myself upon that Ukrainian who said: ‘If I were a king I should steal a hundred roubles and be off.’ While I am a little king on my anthill, I’ll steal a hundred roubles and be off. But I am writing you nonsense. . . . I am being talked about at present. Strike the iron while it’s hot. My two books ought to be advertised three times consecutively now, and on the 19th, when my premium will be officially announced. The five hundred roubles I’ll put away towards buying a little farm. The money for the books will go towards it, too. I am sending the story of the young man and prostitution, of which I told you, for the Garshin book. I am not easy in my soul. That’s all nonsense, though. Be well and happy. Yours, A. T. Am sending you a story by Yezhov, a teacher. The story is as immature and naïve as its heroine, Lelya – that’s why it is nice. All the wooden passages I have cut out. If you can’t use the story, don’t throw it away. My protégé would be hurt. To A. S. SOUVORIN. (October 14, 1888, Moscow.) How do you do again, Alexey Sergueyevitch. Jean Scheglov has probably handed you, yesterday or to-day, my letter with an enclosure – a story by my protégé Yezhov. To-day I want to answer your last letter. First about hæmorrhage5. . . I first noticed it in myself three years ago at the High Court. [He was reporting a case for a Petersburg paper.] It lasted three or four days, and it produced no small commotion in my soul and in my household. It was abundant . . . Blood from the right lung. Since then, about twice a year, I notice blood. I mean blood running, now abundantly, thickly colouring the expectoration,
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and now not so much. The day before yesterday or the previous day – I forget – I noticed blood; but that was ‘yesterday’ – it is over to-day. Each winter, autumn and spring, and on each damp summer day I cough. But all that only frightens me when I see blood: there is something ominous in blood running from the mouth: it’s like the reflection of a fire. But when there is no blood I don’t get excited or threaten Russian literature with ‘yet another loss.’ The point is that consumption or any other serious lung trouble is only recognized by a combination of symptoms, and with me that combination is lacking. Hæmorrhage from the lungs is not serious in itself: sometimes blood runs from the lungs all day long, it comes out with a gush, the patient and all the household are terrified, and in the end the patient does not die – and that is what happens most often. So do be convinced of this: if you are with anyone who is known to be not a consumptive and he spits blood, there is no cause for alarm. A woman can lose with impunity half of her blood, and a man a little less than half. If the hæmorrhage I had in the High Court was the sign of threatening consumption I should have been in the other world long ago – that is how I look at it. If Moslov has no time for writing comedies, advise him to try oneact plays. Between a long drama and a one-act play the difference is only in the quantity. You should sit down quietly and write a one-act play, too. A propos, I’ll put your name down at the Dramatic Society. Keep well. Yours A. T. To A. S. SOUVORIN. (October 27, 1888, Moscow.) Yezhov is not a sparrow, but rather (if I may express myself in the noble language of sportsmen) a puppy who has not yet been mated. He is still just running about and smelling things, and rushing at birds as well as frogs without distinguishing between them. I am still at a loss to say where he belongs or what his capacities are. In a Moscow newspaper sense his youth, decency and modesty are strongly in his favour. I do sometimes preach heresy, but I have never yet gone so far as to say there must be absolutely no questions about artistic work. When talking with fellow-writers, I insist always that it is not the business of an artist to solve highly technical questions. An artist is wrong in undertaking what he does not understand. For special questions there exist specialists whose business it is to discuss the affairs of the community, the future of capitalism, the evils of alcoholism, boots, women’s diseases. But an artist must discuss only that which he understands; his sphere is as limited as any other – this I repeat, and on this I shall
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always insist. That his sphere does not contain questions, but is made up wholly and solely of answers, could only be argued by one who has never written and never had to do with creative work. An artist observes, selects, divines, relates – these activities alone presuppose a question. If from the very first one has not put a question to oneself, then there is nothing to divine or to select. To put it briefly, I’ll have done with psychology, if one is going to deny, in creative work, the question and the deliberate intention. If you do that, you must admit that an artist creates without premeditation or purpose, under the influence of some false impression. Therefore, if an artist boasted to me that he had written a story without any previous deliberation, but by inspiration only, I should call him a lunatic. You are right in asking from an artist a conscious attitude to his activity, but you are mixing up two things: the solving of the question and the correct putting of the question. It is the latter only which is obligatory upon the artist. There’s not a single question solved in ‘Anna Karenina’ or ‘Onyegin,’ 6 but they satisfy completely, because all the questions are correctly put. The judge puts the question; the jury decides, each one according to his taste.7 Yezhov is not grown up yet. The other man whom I commend to your attention, A. Grusinsky-Lasaryov, has more talent; is cleverer and more sound. To-morrow, my ‘Bear’ is being performed at Korsh’s. I have written another one-act play: two male parts, one female. You write that the hero of my ‘Birthday Party’ is a type worth studying. Good God, I’m not an insensitive brute, I understand that. I am aware that I cut my heroes to pieces and spoil them, that good material is being simply thrown away. To speak frankly, I would willingly sit on the ‘Birthday Party’ six months. I love taking my time, and there’s no charm for me in quick-firing publication. Gladly, with pleasure, with relish and gusto, I should love to describe my whole hero; I would describe his soul during his wife’s travail, the verdict pronounced on him, his rotten feeling after acquittal. I would describe how the midwife and the doctors drank tea during the night, I would describe the rain . . . . This would give me nothing but pleasure, because I love rummaging about and having time to turn round. But what can I do? I begin the story on the 10th of September with the knowledge that I am bound to finish it by the 5th of October – the final date. If I’m late with it the editor is deceived and I get no money. The beginning I write quickly and at my ease, but in the middle I begin to falter and take fright lest my story should turn out too long. I must bear in mind that the Syeverny Vyestnik has very little money and that I am one of the expensive contributors. That is why the beginning, with me, always seems to promise a
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great deal; the middle crumples up and is timid, and the end, just as it does in a very short story, goes off like fireworks. It’s natural to me, when writing a story, to busy myself first of all with the framework. From the crowd of heroes and half-heroes I select one person – the wife, or the husband – I place that person against the background and draw only him. Him I lay stress on, and the others I scatter like little coins, and the result is something like the canopy of heaven: one large moon and a crowd of little stars round it. The moon is not a success because it could only be comprehended together with the stars, and the stars are not worked up enough. So the result with me is not literature but patchwork. What is to be done? I do not know. I do not know. I must trust to all-healing time. To be absolutely frank with you, in spite of the prize I have not yet begun my literary activity. There are subjects for five tales and two novels pining away in my head. One of the novels I thought out so long ago that some of the characters have become obsolete without having been written. There is a whole army of people in my head begging to be let out and only waiting the word of command. All that I have written up to now is rubbish compared with what I want to write and what I would write with rapture. Whether it is ‘Birthday Parties’ or ‘Fires’ or a one-act play or a letter to a friend does not matter. All that is boring, mechanical, dull stuff, and I am sorry for the critic who attaches importance, for instance to ‘Fires.’ It seems to me that I am deceiving him by my works just as I deceive many people by my serious or extremely gay expression. Success is no pleasure to me; the themes which sit in my head are vexatiously jealous of those already written; it is vexing that the rubbish is written already and the good stuff is still lying about in the warehouse, like so much waste paper. Of course, my lamentation is greatly exaggerated, much of it only seems so to me, but there is a pinch of truth in it and a big pinch. What do I mean by ‘good’? Those ideas which seem to me best, which I love and jealously guard so as neither to waste nor murder them in ‘Birthday Parties’ written against time. If my love for them is mistaken, then I am wrong, but it is possible that my love is not mistaken. Either I am a fool and a self-opiniated creature or I am in truth an organism capable of being a good writer. I dislike all that is being written nowadays and it bores me; but what sits in my head interests, moves and agitates me. From that I deduce that everybody is writing what need not be written, and that I alone have the secret of what should be done. Most likely all writers think the same. Well, the devil himself will break his neck over these questions. Money will not help in solving such a problem. Another thousand roubles will not solve the question, and a hundred thousand won’t buy the moon. Besides, when I do happen to have money (I wonder
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if it’s because I’m not used to it) I become awfully careless and lazy: then the sea is only up to my knees. What I need is solitude and time. Forgive me for taking up your time with my own affairs. I slipped into writing that. For some reason, I am not working now. Thank you for publishing my articles. Please don’t stand on ceremony with them; make them shorter or longer, modify them, cut them – do just what you like. As Korsh says: I give you carte blanche. I hope they are not keeping any other writer out. Tell me what Anna Ivanovna’s eye complaint is in Latin. Then I’ll let you know whether or not it is serious. If atropine8 is prescribed then it is serious, but not always. And what is wrong with Mastya? [Souvorin’s daughter]. If you hope to be cured of boredom in Moscow, your hopes are in vain. It’s most terrifically boring here. Many writers have been arrested – Golzev9 among them. Greetings to all. Yours. – A. T. A mosquito is flying about my room. Where did he come from? Thank you for the large-eyed advertisements of my books.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4649, 6 June 1919, pp. 441–2. 1. Ivan Leontyevich Leontyev (1855–1911) was a writer and member of the Moscow drama writers’ society; his pseudonym was Scheglov. 2. Iago, a soldier, is the treacherous ‘ancient’ of the general, Othello, in William Shakespeare’s Othello. 3. The Pysol is a river. 4. Viktor Petrovich Burenin (1841–1926) was a Russian poet and publicist. 5. Like John Keats, who also trained as a doctor, Chekhov recognised his haemorrhage as a symptom of tuberculosis. KM suffered her first haemorrhage on 19 February 1918; quoting Keats’s response to the same experience, she wrote: ‘when I saw the bright arterial blood I nearly had a fit’ (CLKM, 2, pp. 79–80). Keats had said to his friend Charles Brown: ‘I know the colour of that blood; – it is arterial blood; – I cannot be deceived in that colour; – that drop of blood is my death warrant; – I must die’ (Andrew Motion, Keats (London: Faber & Faber, 1997) p. 496). 6. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy and Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin. 7. KM wrote to Virginia Woolf circa 27 May 1919: ‘Tchekhov has a very interesting letter published in next week’s A. . . what the writer does is not so much to solve the question but to put the question. There must be the question put. That seems to me a very nice dividing line between the true & the false writer – Come & talk it over with me’ (CLKM, 2, p. 320).
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8. Atropine is a drug composed of deadly nightshade, Jimson weed and mandrake. 9. Viktor Alexandrovich Goltsev (1850–1906) was a journalist and literary critic who edited the monthly political review Russkaya Mysl.
Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. VII. To A. S. SOUVORIN. (November, 1888, Moscow.) Good evening to you, Alexey Sergueyevitch! In a moment I must don my evening clothes and go off to the opening of the ‘Society of Arts and Literature,’ whereto I am invited as a guest. There is to be a formal ball. What the aims and means of that society are, who are its members, etc., I do not know. I only know that Fyedotov,1 the author of many plays, is at the head of it. I am thankful to say I have not been elected a member – paying a twenty-five-rouble subscription for the privilege of being bored doesn’t appeal to me greatly. If anything interesting or amusing happens, I’ll tell you. Lensky, the actor, is going to read my stories. There is an article about me in the November number of Syeverny Vyestnik, by the poet Merezhkovsky.2 A long article. I commend it to your attention. It is characteristic. Merezhkovsky is still very young, he is a student of the faculty of science. Having mastered the wisdom of the scientific method, and being able, therefore, to think scientifically, he encounters not a few charming temptations. Archimedes3 wanted to turn the earth upside down, and present-day hotheads want, with the aid of science, to grasp the ungraspable; they desire to discover the physical laws of creative activity and to trace the outline of the general laws and formulæ by which an artist, who feels them instinctively, creates musical compositions, landscapes, novels, etc. It is probable those formulæ do exist in nature. We know that there is, in nature, a, b, c, d, do, ra, me, fa, sol, and a curve, a line, a circle, a square, green, red, blue. We know that these things, in a certain combination, produce a melody, or poem, or picture, just as simple chemical substances in a certain combination produce a tree, or a stone, or the sea. But the arrangement of that combination is hidden from us. Your scientific man has an inward presentiment that a musical composition and a tree have something in common, that the former as well as the latter is created according to equally regular, simple laws. Hence the question – what are those laws? Hence the temptation to write the
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physiology of creative activity (like Boborykin),4 or, with younger and more timid men, to refer everything to science and the laws of nature (like Merezhkovsky). The physiology of creative activity exists, probably, in nature, but speculation about it should be cut short at the very outset. No good will come of critics ranging themselves with scientists: they will waste a dozen years, write a lot of windy stuff, confuse the question still more – and get nowhere. To think scientifically is always valuable, but the misfortune is that scientific thinking about the creative activity will in the end, willy-nilly, become a chase after the ‘cells’ and ‘centres’ which administer to the creative faculty. And then some stodgy German will discover those cells in the temporal part of the brain; a second German will disagree with him, a third will agree. Finally a Russian will glance through an article on ‘cells,’ and write a paper for the Syeverny Vyestnik, the Syeverny Vyestnik will take the subject up, and a rubbishy miasma will hang for years in the Russian air, providing a living and popularity for blockheads, and filling sensible people with nothing but irritation. Men whom science inspires, who are granted the rare gift of thinking scientifically have, in my opinion, one outlet – the philosophy of the creative activity. It is possible to gather together all the best that has been created by artists through all the ages, and by scientific methods to grasp what it is that they share in common, and that determines their value. That thing-in-common will be the law. In works which are called immortal there is a great deal of it; were the thing-in-common removed the work would lose its significance and richness. It is more useful for young authors to write criticism than poems. Merezhkovsky writes smoothly and youthfully, but on each page he is apprehensive, he makes reservations and compromises – that is a sign that the question is not clear to him. Myself he calls a poet, my stories – novellas, my heroes – life’s failures; he uses all the worn old clichés. It is high time to give up talking about failures in life, superfluous men, and to dig something out of one’s own mind, instead. Merezhkovsky calls my Monk, the composer of chants, a failure. Why? God grant everyone to live like him; he believed in the Lord, earned his living and knew how to compose. To classify people as successes or failures means to look at human nature from a narrow, preconceived, point of view. Are you a success or not? And I? And Napoleon? And Basil, your butler? What is the criterion? One would have to be God to distinguish success from failure – without being mistaken. . . I am going off to that ball. I have come back. The aim of the society is ‘union.’ A learned German trained a cat, a mouse, a merlin, and a sparrow to eat from the same plate. But the German had a system, and the society has none. Deadly boredom. Everybody lounged about all over the rooms
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and tried to look as if they were not bored. A girl sang, Lensky read one of my stories (at which one of the listeners said: ‘A rather feeble story!’ And Lensky had the stupidity and cruelty to interrupt him with: ‘Here is the author himself! Allow me to introduce you!’ and the listener was awfully embarrassed). They danced, ate a bad supper and were cheated by the waiters. . . . If actors, artists and authors are indeed the best element in society, then we are in a bad way. Fine indeed must society be if its best element is so poor in colour, in desires, in intentions, so poor in taste, beauty, initiative. They had put a Japanese scarecrow in the hall, a Chinese lantern was stuck in one corner and a carpet hung over the staircase – and they think that is artistic. A Chinese sunshade and no newspapers. If an artist gets no further with the decoration of his house than a museum scarecrow with a halberd – no further than shields and fans; if all that is not accidental, but is felt and emphasized, then he’s not an artist, he’s a sanctimonious monkey. There is a mess-up at Korsh’s Theatre. The steam coffee-pot burst and scorched Mlle. Rybchinska’s face. Glama has left for Petersburg, Solovzov’s5 lady friend for life is ill, etc. Everybody shouts and quarrels; there is nobody to act, nobody listens. A costume-play would probably be rejected. I should like Maslov’s play to be staged. Not for the sake of Maslov, but out of pity for the theatre, and because I am ambitious. We must do our best to get the theatre away from greengrocers and deliver it into the hands of writers, otherwise the theatre will be lost. The coffee-pot killed my ‘Bear,’ Mlle. Rybchinska, and there is nobody else to act it. All mine greet you. My sincere greetings to Anna Ivanovna, Nastya and Boris. Your A. T. Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4652, 27 June 1919, p. 538. 1. Alexander Filippovich Fedotov (1841–95) was an actor, director and playwright, one of the founders of Moscow’s Society of Art and Literature in 1887. 2. Dimitri Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky (1865–1941) was a distinguished poet, novelist and religious thinker who twice had to go into political exile. 3. Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC to c. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician and scientist. 4. Pyotr Dimitryevich Boborykin (1836–1921) was a journalist, playwright and novelist. 5. Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (1853–1900), who was a friend of Dostoevsky, was an influential philosopher, theologian and literary critic.
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Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. VIII. TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV. (October 25, 1888, Moscow.). George Lintvariov is a gifted man. Of all the pianists, violinists, conductors, drummers and clarionists whom I have known in life, George Lintvariov alone seems to me to be an artist. He has a soul, sensitiveness, and ideas: he is intelligent and only slightly spoilt by the prejudices of those circles with whom it is his fate to have to mix. His chief misfortune is his laziness and timidity. He does not believe in himself. I am not serious enough, not musical enough to have the power to convince him. But fortunately he believes in you, and your attempts to rouse him may have good results. I should like to feel that the clever and charming Lintvariov family had not lived in vain. There is excellent material in the Lintvariovs; all of them are sensible, honest, intelligent, loving – but all this is being lost – like a whiff of tobacco, like the sun’s rays in the desert. Now – about envy. If I did not deserve to receive the Poushkin prize, then the envy which it arouses is not sincere. Only those who are better than I am or on a level with me have a moral right to be envious and to grumble; but these Messieurs Leman and Co., for whom I by my own labour paved the way to the serious magazines and to that very prize – they have no right whatever. These sons of whores should be pleased, and not envy me. They have no love of country, no love of literature, only their petty little conceit. They are ready to hang Korolenko and me for our success. Were Korolenko and myself geniuses, had we saved the country or built Solomon’s temple, they would hate us still more, because Messieurs Leman see neither country nor literature – all that is nonsense to them. They keep an eye on other people’s success and their own bad fortune, and do not care a fig for anything else. Who cannot be a servant must not be permitted to be a master; who cannot rejoice at the fortune of others – to him the interests of public life are alien, and no public work must be given into his hands. All mine greet you. Your A. T. To A. S. SOUVORIN. November, Moscow, 1888. Ah, what a story I’ve begun! I’ll bring it along and ask you to read it. The theme is love. I have chosen a feuilleton-belles-lettres form. A decent fellow takes away the wife of another decent fellow, and writes
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his views on the subject; he lives with her – his views on that: he leaves her – again his views on it. Here and there I mention the theatre, the false idea of marital differences of opinion, the Georgian military road, family life, the incapacity of a modern intellectual to lead that life, Petchorin [one of Lermontov’s heroes],1 Oniegin, Mount Kasbek.2 [This story seems to be the basis for ‘The Duel.’ Tr.3] What a mix-up! Heaven help me! My brain flaps its wings, but whither can it fly? I don’t know. You write that authors are the chosen people of God. I won’t argue about it. Scheglov calls me Potyemkin4 [the favourite of Catherine the Great], therefore it’s not for me to speak of the thorny road, of disappointments, etc. I do not know whether I suffer more than shoemakers, mathematicians, conductors suffer; I do not know who it is speaking through my lips – God, or some one much worse. I shall allow myself to mention one unpleasant thing which I myself have experienced, and which you, too, probably know. You and I love ordinary people, but we are loved because people see in us extraordinary people. For instance, I am invited out everywhere, dined and wined like a general at a wedding; my sister is furious because she receives invitations to go everywhere as the sister of an author. Nobody wants to love the ordinary person in us. So it follows that if to-morrow, in the eyes of our friends, we should appear as quite ordinary, they would stop loving us, and only pity us. And that is wrong. It is also wrong because they love in us something which we often neither love nor respect in ourselves. It is wrong that I was right in my story ‘A First-class Passenger,’ where the engineering architect and the professor discuss fame . . . Deuce take them all! I’ll go off to a farm. You have got your Feodosia.5 By the way, about Feodosia. The land has been stolen from the Tartars, and nobody cares about their welfare. There should be Tartar schools established. Write [in your paper] that the money which is being spent on the sausage university of Dorpat, with its useless German students, the Ministry of Education should be spending on schools for Tartars, who are useful to Russia. I would write about it myself, but I don’t know how to. Leikin6 has sent me a very funny one-act play. Nobody can touch him in that kind of thing. Keep well and happy. Yours, A. Tchehov. EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO A. S. SOUVORIN. December 23, 1888, Moscow. . . . There are moments when I positively faint by the way. For whom and for what am I writing? For the public? But I do not see it, and
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I believe in it less than I believe in a family ghost: it is uncivilized, barely educated, and its best elements are unscrupulous and insincere towards us. Does that public need me or not? I cannot make out. Burenin [critic on the Novoye Vremya] says I am not needed and am engaged in writing trifles; the Academy gave me a prize – the devil himself couldn’t puzzle it out. Writing for money? But I never have any money, and the lack of it has made me almost indifferent. Working for the sake of money, I work badly. Praise? It only irritates me. The literary society, students, Yevreyinova [editor of Syeverny Vyestnik], Pleshtcheyev, girls and so on, praised my ‘Fit’ to the skies, and only one, Grigorovitch, noticed the description of the first snow. And so on and so on. If we had real critics, then I would know that I was material for them, good or bad – it does not matter, I am as necessary to those who have devoted themselves to the study of life as a star is to an astronomer. Then I would exert myself to work and know for whom I was working. But now – you, I, Muravlin,7 etc., we’re like maniacs, who write books and plays for their own pleasure. One’s own pleasure, of course, is very nice; one feels it when one writes, but what comes after? But – I’d better not go on. In a word, I am sorry for Tatyana Ryepina [the heroine of a play by Souvorin], not because she poisoned herself, but because she wasted her life, died in torture, and was described quite in vain and without any profit to anybody. Many races, religions, languages, and civilizations have disappeared without a trace because there were no historians, no biologists. And in the same way many lives and works of art disappear before our very eyes, owing to the complete lack of criticism. It might be said that criticism can do nothing, that all modern works are insignificant and bad. But this is a narrow view. Life is studied not only from pluses, but from minuses as well. The belief held that the eighties gave us no great writer would serve as material for five volumes.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4654, 11 July 1919, p. 602. The hero of A Hero of our Time by Mikhail Lermontov (1814–41). One of the major mountains of the Caucasus. Chekhov’s novella, first published in 1891. Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin-Tavricheski (1739–91), after whom the battleship and thus Sergei Eisenstein’s film were named, was an army officer who became powerful as the lover of Catherine the Great. 5. A. S. Souvorin, a self-made man, had an estate in the Crimean resort town of Feodosia. 1. 2. 3. 4.
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6. Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin (1841–1906) was a writer and journalist, editor of the St Petersburg weekly journal Fragments. 7. Dimitri Petrovich Golitsyn (1860–1928) used the pseudonym Muravlin; he published stories and novels about the aristocracy.
Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. IX. EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO A. S. SOUVORIN. January 7, 1889, Moscow. It would give me great pleasure to read a paper before the Literary Society on how the idea entered my head to write ‘Ivanov.’ I would make a public confession. The bold dream that I cherished was to sum up all that had been written hitherto about complaining and gloomy characters, and with my ‘Ivanov’ to put an end to them. It seemed to me that all Russian writers and playwrights feel themselves compelled to describe gloomy characters, and that they had all written instinctively without definite ideas or a real point of view about the matter. With my plot I nearly hit on just that very point, but its execution is no damned good. I ought to have waited. I am glad that I did not take Grigorovitch’s advice two or three years ago and write a novel. I can imagine what a lot of good stuff I should have wasted, if I had listened to him. He said: ‘Talent and freshness will overcome everything.’ It would have been truer to say: talent and freshness can spoil a great deal. Granted an abundance of material and talent, a ‘something,’ no less important, is needed besides. There must be, first, a sense of the writer’s confidence; secondly, a sense of personal freedom; this sense only began to blaze up in me lately. I never felt it before; my frivolity, carelessness and lack of respect for my work were a successful substitute. What a big man took for granted from nature the rank and file buy at the price of their youth. Do write a story about a young man, the son of a serf, errand-boy, chorister, high-school pupil, student, brought up to venerate his superiors, kiss the hands of the priests, worship borrowed ideas, who is grateful for each bit of bread, flogged often, who runs in the cold and mud without goloshes to give lessons, fights, tortures animals, loves to dine at the tables of rich relatives, is insincere to God and man without needing to be, only out of consciousness of his own nullity – do write how that young man, drop by drop, squeezes the slave out of himself, until, waking one fine morning, he feels that in his veins there runs no longer the blood of a slave, but real human blood.
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EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO V. A. TIHONOV.1 March 7, 1889, Moscow. Thanks for your affectionate note and warm sympathy. When I was young I knew so little affection that now, being grown up, it comes to me as something unusual, a new experience. Just for this reason I should like to be tender to others, but I cannot; I have grown hard and indifferent, although I realize that it’s quite impossible to get on with a brotherhood of writers without kindness. Pray God the comedy you are big with will be a success, and give you what you desire. The greater success it has, the better for our generation. In spite of Wagner [Kot-Murlyka]2 I do not believe that any single one of us will be an elephant, or any other beast. I believe that we shall succeed as a whole, as a generation, not otherwise. We shall be known – not as Tchehov, Korolenko, Tihonov, Scheglov, Baranzevitch,3 Byezhezky – but as the ‘eighties’ or ‘the end of the nineteenth century.’ Something like a co-operative society. . . To A. S. SOUVORIN. April 9, ’89, Moscow. My Easter greetings to you, Anna Ivanovna, Nastya and Boris. I wish you lifelong riches, fame, honour, quiet and happiness. The weather in Moscow is vile: mud, cold, rain. The artist [his brother, Nicolay] still persists in having a temperature of 101. I go to see him twice a day. My mood fits in with the weather. I do not work, but I read and pace up and down my room. Not that I regret having the time to read. It is pleasanter to read than to write. Perhaps if I were to live another forty years and during those forty years I read, read, read and learned to write well, that is, to say just what I want to say, and no more – I would fire off such a big cannon at you all that the skies would shake. But at present I am a dwarf like the rest of them. My family spring-clean, bake, cook, grind, beat out the dust, run up and down the stairs. No end of a fuss. I am going off to the artist. Keep well. Come, let’s all go to the Volga, or to Poltava. Your Anton Tchehov. TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV. April 9, ’89, Moscow. Christ is risen!4 my dear, beloved Alexey Nicholayevitch. My greetings to you and yours. I wish you the best of everything, and chiefly – that all the desires of nice people should be realized. It is a long while since I last wrote. But all this time I have been expecting you to come to Moscow. Svobodin [an actor] told me you were coming, but you have not come, and so I am deceived. How I should enjoy a talk with you! there’s so much to talk about. Of late I have been stuffing my
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head with such rigmarole affairs, and there is such a rumpus going on in my inside that there’d be material for a hundred conversations. I should bore you, tire you out. Have you rather felt this – and is that why you did not come? I am practising here. The centre of that unlucky, very distasteful and tiresome practice is the sick-bed of my artist brother, who is down with abdominal typhus. I am a weak creature; I cannot look circumstances in the face, and you must believe me when I tell you that I am simply unable to work. These last three weeks I have not written a single line, all my subjects are forgotten, and I can’t think of a thing which might interest you. I am boring beyond words. My novel made considerable headway and then ran aground. I am dedicating it to you – but I’ve told you about that! It is founded on the lives of nice people, their faces, deeds, words, thoughts and hopes. My purpose is to kill two birds with one stone: to paint a faithful picture of life, and, at the same time, to show how far removed that life is from the normal. The normal is unknown to me, as it is to any one of us. [In another letter to Pleshtcheyev, March 7, 1889, Tchehov says: ‘I am writing some stories. One I sent to Souvorin the other day, the other I am working at slowly, polishing it. In the summer I mean to sweat at my novel. It is to be dedicated to you – so my soul ordaineth. I have never dedicated any of my published work to you, but in my dreams and plans my very best work is yours.’] We all know what a dishonest act is, but what is honour? Nobody knows. I shall stick to the framework nearest my heart, which has already been used by men stronger and wiser than I. That framework is the absolute freedom of man, freedom from violence, from prejudice, ignorance, the devil, freedom from passions, etc. I am sick to death of criticism. When I read a review I am seized with a certain horror: are there really so few intelligent people on this terrestrial globe that there is no one to write a criticism? Monstrously stupid, petty and personal even to vulgarity it all is. I begin almost to think that the reason we have not any decent criticism is because it is not needed, just as fiction (modern, of course) is not needed.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4656, 25 July 1919, p. 667. 1. V. A. Tikhonov was a dramatist who edited a journal called Seven. 2. Nikolai Petrovich Vagner (1829–1907), who used the pseudonym KotMurlyka when he wrote moral tales, was an entomologist. 3. Kazimir Stanislavovich Baranzevich (1851–1927) was a Pole who wrote
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novels about the lives of the poor, and worked as a ticket inspector on the trams in St Petersburg. 4. Easter Day.
Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. X. TO A. S. SOUVORIN. May 4, Luka. You write that I have become lazy. This does not mean that I am any lazier than I was. I work now as much as I did four or five years ago. To work or to appear to be working from nine o’clock in the morning until lunch-time, and from the evening tea until I go to bed, has become a habit with me: in that respect I am like a clerk. If, however, my work does not yield two stories a month or ten thousand roubles annual income, then it’s not my laziness which is to blame, but my psychico-organic qualities: I do not love money sufficiently to make a success of medicine, and for literature I lack passion, and talent too. In me the fire burns even and calm, without flashes and crackling; hence it does not happen that in one night I dash off three or four folios [a folio = sixteen pages], or that, fascinated with my work, I do not go to bed when I feel sleepy. And so I accomplish neither remarkably foolish things nor especially wise ones. I am afraid that in this respect I am very like Goncharov,1 whom I don’t like, and who is miles above me in talent. I haven’t enough passion; add to this a kind of psychosis: without rhyme or reason, for the last two years I have got to dislike seeing my work published. I’m indifferent to criticism, to discussions on literature, to gossip, to success, to failure, to high prices – in a word, I have just gone stupid. There is a sort of stagnation in my soul. I explain it by a stagnation in my physical life. I am not disappointed, or tired, or depressed, but somehow everything is suddenly less interesting. I must take a dose of gunpowder. The first act of my ‘Wood-Demon’2 is ready: think of that! It has turned out all right, but too long. I feel much stronger than when I wrote ‘Ivanov.’ The play will be ready about the beginning of June. Managers, please note! Five thousand roubles are mine. It’s an awfully strange play, and it’s a wonder to me that such strange things come from my pen. My only fear is that the censorship will not pass it. I am also at work on the novel which is more sympathetic to me and nearer my heart than the ‘Wood-Demon,’ in which I have to play tricks and act the fool.
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Yesterday I remembered that I have promised to write a one-act play for Varlamov [a famous actor]. I wrote it to-day and sent it off. Observe what a harvest! And you write that I have become lazy. To F. O. SKEKHTEL.3 June 18, 1889. Yesterday, the 17th of June, Nicolay died of consumption. He lies in his coffin now and looks most beautiful. The Kingdom of Heaven be his, and may you, his friend, have health and happiness! Your A. TCHEHOV. TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV. June 26, Luka. How do you do, my dear, beloved Alexey Nicholayevitch? Your letter arrived on the ninth day after Nicolay’s death, when we all began to return to our normal life. I shall answer it now, for I feel that normal life is indeed returned, and now nothing prevents me from corresponding punctually with you. The poor artist is dead. In Luka he melted away like ice, and I had not a single moment when I was free from the consciousness of the approaching catastrophe. It was impossible to say when Nicolay was going to die, but it was clear to me that he would not last. The end happened like this: Svobodin came to stay here as my guest. Availing myself of the arrival of my elder brother, who would take my place, I decided to have a rest, to breathe a different air for a few days; so I induced Svobodin and the Lintvariovs to join me, and we went off together to the Poltava district to see the Smagnins. My punishment for leaving was that there was such a wind, such a gloomy sky as would suit a Siberian tornado. Half-way there it began to pour with rain. We arrived at night, wet, cold; we went off to cold beds, and fell asleep to the sound of cold rain. Next morning, the same disgusting weather. Never in my life shall I forget the muddy road, the grey sky, the tears on the trees; I say, I never shall forget, because that morning a peasant arrived from town bringing me a wet telegram: ‘Nicolay dead.’ You can imagine my feelings. I had to rush off by horse to the railway station, then by railway, and each time I had to change there was a wait of eight hours. In Romny I waited from seven o’clock in the evening until two in the morning. From utter weariness I went for a ramble in the town. I remember sitting in the square; it was dark, most awfully cold, hellishly boring, and behind a dingy wall, near by, some actors were rehearsing a melodrama. At home I found sorrow. Our family has not known death before, and it was the first time we have had a coffin in the house.
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The artist’s funeral went off well. We carried him on our hands with church banners, etc. He was buried in the village cemetery under flowery grass; his cross can be seen far away in the fields. He seems to lie there very snugly. I shall probably go away. Where to? I do not know The Lintvariovs are well. They are superb creatures. Each day they become more and more themselves. I wonder how far they will go. In generosity and loving-kindness they have no equals in all the Kharkov district. The Smagnins are well, and they, too, are – perfection itself. My sister thanks you for your greetings, and asks me to return them. Mother too. And I kiss and embrace you, and wish you all happiness. Keep happy and well. Your A. TCHEHOV. TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV. September 14, 1889, Moscow. May thunder and may the teeth of crocodiles fall on the heads of your enemies and creditors, my dear and well-beloved Alexey Nicholayevitch! Having presented you with this Oriental and grandiose salutation I proceed to answer your letter. To Anna Michailovna’s letter [Mme. Yevreyinov, editor of the Syeverny Vyestnik] I replied begging her to let me have until the November number. She replied as follows: ‘Let it be as you wish. We’ll postpone it, then.’ You will understand all the value and charm of that answer if you picture to yourself Mr. Tchehov writing, sweating, correcting and realizing that, in spite of all the revolutionary disturbances and terrors which his story is suffering under his pen, it’s not a ha’porth better. I am not writing; I am engrossed in spiritual weariness. In such a mood, you will agree, it is not quite easy to have to hurry one’s work for publication. There are not two moods in my story [‘The Tedious Story’], but fifteen at least; it is quite possible that you will call it, too, a piece of patchwork. It is a patchwork, indeed. But I flatter myself that you will see in it two or three characters interesting to any intelligent reader; you will find in it a couple of new situations. I flatter myself with the hope, too, that my patchwork will create a certain stir, and will cause the enemy to blaspheme. As regards Korolenko, it is premature to come to any conclusions about his future. He and I are at present at that point when Fate decides whether to let us rise or fall. Fluctuations are perfectly natural. Even a temporary stagnation is possible in the order of things. I want to believe that Korolenko will come through as a conqueror and will find his true bent. He has good health in his favour, a sober,
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firm outlook and convictions, a clear, good mind; and although he’s not exempt from preconceptions, he is, for all that, free from prejudices. Neither will I surrender myself alive into Fate’s hands. Though I lack what Korolenko possesses, I have something else instead. In my past there is a multitude of mistakes which Korolenko did not make, and where there are mistakes, there is experience. Besides, my battle-field is broader and my choice richer; except for novels, verses and secret attacks on people, I have tried my hand at everything. I have written impressions, stories, one-act plays, leaders, humorous stuff and all sorts of nonsense, including drawing mosquitoes and flies for the ‘Gad-Fly.’ If writing impressions failed me, I could take up stories; if the latter be bad, I could turn to one-act plays; and so on without end unto my very dying death. So that, with all my wish to look at Korolenko and myself with the eye of a pessimist and hang my harp on a willow tree,4 I still am not cast down; since I do not as yet see what data there are to prove why I should be. Let us wait another five years, then we shall see.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4658, 8 August 1919, pp. 731–2. 1. Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov (1812–91) was a novelist and critic, best known for his novel Oblomov. 2. The Wood Demon was a comic play, which failed when it was first performed in 1889. Chekhov reworked the material and transformed the play into Uncle Vanya. 3. Fedor Shekhtel (1859–1926) was an architect and set designer, whose Art Nouveau designs still survive in Moscow. He built theatres, churches, a railway terminal and many private houses. 4. Psalms, 137: 1–2: ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.’
Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. XI. EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV. September 24, 1889, Moscow. With this letter I send you a story at which I waved my hands and said: ‘Depart from me, Satan, into the fire of tedious criticism and the indifference of readers.’ 1 It bores me to have anything more to
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do with it. It is called, indeed, ‘A Tedious Story’ (from an old man’s journal). The most tedious things in it are, as you will see, the lengthy discussions, which can’t, unfortunately, be cut out, as my hero, who writes the journal, cannot dispense with them. These discussions are fatal and inevitable – like heavy gun-carriages. They characterize the hero as well as his mood and his shillyshallying with himself. Read it and let me have your opinion. The rents and tears in it will be more visible to you because it has not yet bored you and made your eyes ache as it did mine. . . . TO THE SAME. September 30, 1889. I only agree with you on one or two points. For instance, the name of the story should not be changed. – Those idiots who, as you foretell, will joke about the name are so pig-headed that there is nothing to fear from them, and if anyone makes a really good joke I’ll be glad of having given him the opportunity. The professor could not write about Katy’s husband because he did not know him. Besides, my hero – and this is one of his chief traits – views the inner life of those round him too unconcernedly, and while they cry, make mistakes, lie, he goes on absolutely tranquilly, chatting about the theatre and literature. Had he been of a different nature, perhaps neither Liza nor Katy would have been wasted. Yes, about Katy’s past – it turned out too long and boring. But that could not be avoided. If I had attempted to make it more interesting, then, you will agree, my story would have had to be twice as long. As regards Mihail Fyodorovitch’s letter with the scrap of the word ‘passiona . . .’ – there is nothing strained about that. A story, just like a play, has its conventions. Thus, my instinct tells me that when the finale is reached I must, quite artificially, renew in the reader the impression of the whole, and that is why I – if only lightly and briefly – mention all those of whom I have spoken. Perhaps I am mistaken. You are worried because the critics will be down on me. What of it? One good turn deserves another. Doesn’t my professor go for them? At present I am taking a rest and indulge my hobbies in the noisy region of Melpomene.2 I am writing a big comedy novel, and have already fired off a salvo of two and a half acts. After the other story it is very easy to write a comedy. In it there are nice, healthy, halfsympathetic people; the end is happy. The general tone is, throughout, lyrical. It is called ‘The Wood Demon.’
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TO THE SAME. September, 1889, Moscow. Is there, even in this last story [‘A Tedious Story’], no apparent point of view? Once upon a time you told me that the protesting element was absent from my stories; that I do not express in them my sympathies or my antipathies. But in this story don’t I cry out against falsehood from beginning to end? Isn’t that a point of view? No? Well, then, either I am a flea or I cannot bite. I am frightened of the censors. They will cut out the part where I describe Peter Dmitrich as president of the court. Surely all living presidents are like him. Oh, how I bored you! A. T. TO THE SAME. October 21, 1889, Moscow. . . . . Granted the inclination to gossip which exists even in very nice people, nothing is proof against ugly suspicions. That is my answer to the question about the relations existing between the professor and Katy. But if people have lost their power of believing in friendship and respect and boundless love existing apart from sexuality, then they should at least not attribute their bad taste to me. Suppose Katy were in love with a half-alive old man – you must agree it would be sexual perversity, a freak, interesting only to a pathologist, and then merely as an unimportant and untrustworthy anecdote. Where’s the use of writing a story if it was sexual perversity? EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO A. S. SOUVORIN. December, 1889, Moscow. . . . Sketches, newspaper things, nonsense, one-act plays, tedious stories, a great mass of mistakes and absurdities, tons of used paper, the Academy prize, the Life of Potyemkin – and in all this there is not, in my eyes, a line which has serious literary value. A mountain of forced labour and a mouse of serious work. When I read Byezhezky’s ‘Family Tragedy’ the other day it evoked in me a sort of pity for its author; just the same feeling I experience when I see my books. What truth there is in this feeling is about the size of a fly, but my diffidence and envy when I am confronted with other people’s work puffs it up to the size of an elephant. I passionately long to hide for five years, and spend my time over a detailed, serious work. I must learn, learn everything all over again, because, as a writer, I am a complete ignoramus. I must write truthfully, with feeling, with spirit, not five folios a month, but one folio in five months. I must get away from the family. I must begin to live on seven hundred or nine hundred roubles a year,
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not on three or four thousand as I do now. I must ignore a lot of things. But there is more peasant indolence in me than courage. Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4662, 5 September 1919, p. 858. 1. An echo of Matthew, 16: 23: ‘Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me.’ 2. The muse of tragedy.
Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. XII1 TO A. S. SOUVORIN. December 30, 1888, Moscow. The producer considers Ivanov a superfluous man in the Tourgenev2 sense of the word. Savina [a famous Russian actress] asks why Ivanov is a scoundrel. You write: ‘You must grant Ivanov something or other, which would make it obvious why two women hang round his neck, why he is a villain, and why the doctor [Dr. Lvov of the play] is a great man. If this is how you three have understood me it means that my ‘Ivanov’ is no good at all. I must have lost my wits, I suppose, and written something entirely unlike what I intended. If Ivanov appears to be a scoundrel, or a superfluous man, and the doctor a great man, if it is not clear why Sarrah and Sasha love Ivanov, then, obviously, my play has not come off and there can be no question of staging it. This is how I understand my characters: Ivanov is a noble, a university man, with nothing remarkable about him; his is an easily excitable nature, fervent, very much disposed to infatuations, honest and straightforward, like the majority of educated noblemen. He lives on his estate and serves on the Zemstvo. His past deeds and behaviour, the things which have interested and held him, one can judge from the following words spoken to the doctor (Act I., Scene V.): ‘Do not marry Jewesses or neurotic women or blue-stockings. . . Do not fight alone against thousands, do not tilt against windmills,3 or knock your head against the wall. . . The Lord keep you from all kinds of model farming, from following extraordinary schools, from fiery speeches. . .’ This is a résumé of his past. Sarrah, who had witnessed the model farming and other whimsies says, of him to the doctor: ‘He is a remarkable man, doctor, and I am sorry you did not know him a couple of years ago. Now he is moody, silent, does nothing, but then how fascinating he
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was!’ (Act I., Scene VII.). Like the majority of Russian intellectuals, he has a fascinating past. There is scarcely one Russian noble or university man who would not boast of his past. Why? Because Russian excitability has one specific quality: it is quickly superseded by fatigue. A young man, in a fever, almost before he has jumped off the school bench, takes up a burden beyond his powers. Straightway he dashes at the question of schools, the lot of the peasant, model farming, Vyestnik Europy [a ‘serious’ review], delivers speeches, writes to ministers of State, combats evil, applauds good, falls in love, not simply and anyhow, but necessarily, either with blue-stockings or neurotic women or Jewesses, or even prostitutes, whom he is saving – and so on and so on. But no sooner has he reached the age of thirty or thirtyfive, when he begins already to feel fatigue and boredom. He has hardly grown a decent moustache when he declares authoritatively: ‘My dear chap, don’t marry. . . Trust my experience.’ . . . Or: ‘In the main what is liberalism? Between ourselves, Katkov [a reactionary publicist]4 was very often right. . .’ He is already prepared to deny the Zemstvo, model farming, science and love. My Ivanov says to the doctor (Act I., Scene V.): ‘You, my dear friend, left the university only last year. You are still young and hearty, but I am thirty-five. I have the right to advise you. . .’ That is the tone of these prematurely tired men. Sighing authoritatively, he advises further: ‘Do not marry, etc.’ (see one of the above quotations), ‘but choose some ordinary woman, grey, without bright colours, without too much vanity. In general, build up your life on what already exists. The greyer and the more monotonous the background, the better. . . The life that I have lived – ugh! how tiring it was! Oh, how awfully tiring!’ This fatigue and boredom makes it impossible for him to understand what is going on and what has happened. Horrified, he says to the doctor (Act. I. Scene III.): ‘You tell me she will die, and I feel neither love nor pity, but a kind of emptiness and lassitude. This must appear dreadful to an onlooker, but I myself do not understand what is happening in my soul.’ Finding themselves so situated, narrow-minded and unthinking people usually throw all the blame on their environment, or rank themselves as superfluous men and little Hamlets, and so are comforted. But Ivanov, an honest man, frankly declares to the doctor and to the public that he does not understand himself: ‘I do not understand, I do not understand. . .’ That he is sincere is seen from the monologue in Act III., when, face to face with the public, and making a public confession, he even weeps! The change that has happened to him offends his sense of decency. He seeks for reasons outside himself, but does not find them; he begins seeking within himself, and discovers only a vague sense of guilt. This is a Russian feeling. A Russian, if any one of the family
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dies in his house, or falls ill, or if he owes money to another, or lends it – always feels guilty. All the time Ivanov harps on his guilt, and with every dig he gets it grows on him. In the first Act he says: ‘Probably, I am terribly guilty, but my thoughts are confused, my mind is chained by a certain sloth, and I have no power to understand myself. . .’ In Act II. he says to Sasha: ‘Day and night my conscience aches, I feel I am deeply guilty, but in what my guilt consists – that I do not understand.’ To fatigue, boredom, and this sense of guilt, add one more enemy. That is loneliness. Were Ivanov an official, actor, priest, professor, he would get accustomed to his situation. But he lives on his estate. He is in the country where men are either drunkards or card-players or like the doctor. None of them cares about what he feels and the change that has come over him. He is lonely. Long winters, long nights, a deserted orchard, an empty house, the grumbling count and his sick wife – he has nowhere to escape from them. Therefore, every moment he is oppressed with the question of what to do with himself. Now the fifth enemy. Ivanov is worn out, he does not understand himself, but that has nothing to do with life. Life sets before him its legitimate demands, and, willy-nilly, he must solve its problems. A sick wife – one question; heaps of debts, another question; Sasha in love with him, a third question. How he solves all these is apparent in his monologue in Act III. and in the contents of the last two acts. Men like Ivanov do not solve questions, but sink under the weight of them. They lose control, wave their arms, get nervous, grumble, do stupid things; and when, at the final of final moments, they give full rein to their relaxed, weakened nerves, the ground goes from under their feet and they enter the ranks of the ‘broken-down’ and ‘not understood.’ Disillusionment, apathy, nervous exhaustion and lassitude are an inevitable result of excessive excitability, and such excitability is, in an extreme degree, peculiar to our younger generation. Take literature. Take the present time. Socialism is one form of excitement. And where is it? It is in Tihomirov’s letter to the Tsar. [Tihomirov was a distinguished revolutionary Socialist who betrayed his party and wrote a confession of his ‘sins’ to the Tsar.]5 Socialists marry and criticise the Zemstvo. Where is liberalism? Even Mihailovsky says the tables are turned. . . And what are all Russian infatuations worth? The war has worn them out, Bulgaria has turned them into irony, they are bored with Zuechi [a famous singer], and with musical comedy, too. Fatigue (Dr. Bertenson confirms it) is expressed not in lamentation alone or in the feeling of boredom. The state of a tired person may be described like this [a wavy line], that is, very uneven. People who are tired do not lose their capacity for getting excited to the highest degree, but the excitement only lasts for a short time, and it is followed by a
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still greater apathy. . . . Graphically, it might be described like this: [a wavy line broken by abrupt ascents and descents]. The decline, as you see, proceeds not on an inclined plane, but somewhat differently. Sasha tells him of her love. Ivanov in ecstasy shouts: ‘A New Life!’ and next morning he believes as little in the new life as he does in a family ghost (monologue in Act III.); his wife insults him, he is beside himself, gets excited and flings a cruel insult at her. They fling at him the name of scoundrel. But this does not kill his exhausted brain; it excites him to pronounce a verdict on himself. [The remainder of the letter will appear in the next instalment.]
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4669, 24 October 1919, pp. 1078–9. 1. A footnote at this point in the text reads: ‘The eleventh instalment appeared in THE ATHENÆUM for September 5.’ 2. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818–83) was a major writer, best known for his short story collection A Sportsman’s Sketches (1852), and for his novels On the Eve (1860) and Fathers and Sons (1862). He lived in the later part of his life in Baden Baden or Paris; he was more in sympathy with Western Europe than with the Slavophile movement. ‘Superfluous’, in the Turgenev sense mentioned by Chekhov, refers to Turgenev’s story written in 1850, ‘The Diary of a Superfluous Man’. It is often referred to as the Russian Hamlet. 3. Meaning: ‘attack imaginary enemies’, from the episode in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes in which Don Quixote imagines that windmills are giants. 4. Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov (1818–87) was a conservative journalist. He managed and edited the Moscow News from 1863 until his death. 5. Lev Alexandrovich Tikhomirov (1852–1923) eventually published a book called Why I am No Longer a Revolutionary (1888).
Letters of Anton Tchehov TRANSLATED BY S. KOTELIANSKY AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD. XIII. TO A. S. SOUVORIN (CONTINUED).1 Not to tire you out completely, I shall pass to Dr. Lvov. He is a typical honest, direct, ardent, but narrow, inelastic man. Clever men say of him ‘He is stupid, but a decent creature.’ Anything like breadth of outlook or directness of feeling is alien to Lvov. He is cliché incarnate,
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a walking opinionist. He peers, through his tight frame, at each phenomenon and person, and has a preconceived verdict on everything. The man who shouts: ‘Give way to honest labour!’ for him he has a religious regard; the man who does not shout that is a scoundrel and blood-sucker. There can be no halfway house. He has been reared on Mihailov’s novels (a sentimental, Radical novelist); on the stage he has seen new types, capitalists, i.e., misers, sons of this generation, who are described by the modern playwrights. And all this he regards as a portent, and such a portent that when reading ‘Rudin’2 he invariably asks himself: ‘Is Rudin a scoundrel or not?’ Literature and the theatre have trained him in such a way that he approaches any person in life and literature with that question. If he were to see your play, he would impute to you as a crime that you did not state definitely whether or no the characters are scoundrels. For him that is the important question. It is not enough that all men are frail. Give him saints or scoundrels! Arrived in the country, he is already prejudiced. In all well-to-do peasants he immediately sees misers, and in the incomprehensible to him – Ivanov – he sees, at once, a scoundrel. The man’s wife is ill, and off he goes to visit a rich neighbour. Isn’t he a scoundrel? He is evidently killing his wife so as to marry a rich woman. Lvov is honest, direct, and plain-spoken. If necessary, he will throw a bomb under a carriage, punch the medical inspector on the jaw, and hurl the name of scoundrel at anyone. He will stop at nothing. Pangs of conscience he never feels. That is why as an ‘honest worker’ he is out to punish the ‘dark forces.’ Such men are needed, and in most cases are likeable. To caricature them, even in the interests of the theatre, is dishonest, nor is it needed. True, a caricature is sharper and therefore more easy to understand, but it is better to leave undone than to put the paint on too thickly. Now about the women. What do they love him for? Sarrah loves Ivanov because he is a charming man – ardent, brilliant, and speaking with the same fire as Lvov (Act I., Scene VII.). While he is exciting and interesting she loves him; but when he begins to grow less clear to her and to lose his definiteness she understands him no longer, and at the end of the third act she speaks her mind, frankly and sharply. Sasha is a girl of the latest ‘school.’ She is educated, intelligent, honest, etc. Where there are no fish a crab may pass as one, and therefore she singles out Ivanov. He is better than the others. She has known him since her childhood, and during his active period she kept a close watch on him. He is a friend of her father’s. She is one of those females whom males conquer, not by bright plumage, or brilliance, or courage, but by their woes, lamentations and failures. She is a woman who loves men at the hour of their downfall. As soon as Ivanov loses his courage she is ready for him. It is the moment for which she has waited. She will raise up the fallen one, set him on his legs and give him happiness.
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It is the task that she loves, not Ivanov. Daudet’s Argenton says: ‘Life is not a novel.’ 3 But Sasha does not see that. She does not know that, for Ivanov, love is only one more unnecessary complication, one more stab in the back. And – well? Sasha struggles with Ivanov for a whole year, and far from rising up, he sinks lower and lower. My fingers ache, I am nearly done. If all this is not in the play, then there can be no question of producing it. It means that I have failed to write as I wished. Get the play back. I don’t want to preach heresy from the stage. If the public leave feeling in the theatre that Ivanovs are scoundrels and Lvovs are great men, then I must tender my resignation and throw my pen to the devil. Corrections and additions are of no use. No corrections can bring a great man down from his pedestal, and no interpolations can turn a scoundrel into an ordinary frail mortal. Sasha might appear at the end of the play, but to Ivanov and Lvov I can add nothing. I cannot. If I were to, I feel that I should spoil it still more. Do believe me; after all, I am the author. I apologize to Potyehin and Yourkovsky (producer and manager) for troubling them in vain. May they forgive me! Frankly speaking, it was not fame that tempted me nor Savina [a famous actress]. But I reckoned to make a profit of a thousand roubles. But I’d rather borrow that thousand roubles than risk doing a foolish thing. Do not tempt me with success. Success, if I do not die, is still ahead of me. I bet that sooner or later I’ll bag six or seven thousand roubles from the management. Will you take on the bet? On no account would I permit Kissellosky to play the part of the count. My play caused him a great deal of vexation in Moscow. He went about everywhere complaining that he was forced to play that son of a bitch, the count. Why should I worry him again? They say it is awkward; he has already played that part. Why, then, is it right to give the part of Ivanov to Sazonov or Dalmatov when Davydov has already played it? Ah! I’ve exhausted you with this letter. Stop, basta! I greet you for the New Year. Hu-r-r-ah! Lucky chap, you will have already drunk real champagne, and I vinegar and water. My sister is ill – splitting pains, high temperature, headache, etc. The cook is the same. Both are in bed. I am afraid it is typhoid fever. Forgive, my dear old man, this desperately long, tedious letter. I greet all your family and kiss Anna Ivanovna’s hands. Keep well. Your A. TCHEHOV.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4670, 31 October 1919, p. 1135. 1. A footnote at this point in the text reads: ‘The first portion of this
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long letter, in which Tchehov explains the motives of the characters in “Ivanov,” appeared in THE ATHENÆUM for October 24, p. 1078.’ 2. Rudin was the first novel by Ivan Turgenev, published in 1856. 3. Amaury d’Argenton is the poet in Daudet’s novel Jack (1876).
A Letter of Anton Tchehov [This remarkable letter was written to his brother Alexander by Anton Tchehov in April, 1883, that is to say, when Tchehov was twenty-three years of age.] My brother-of-the-first-water, Alexander Pavlovitch. First of all, I congratulate you and the wife of your bosom upon a happy delivery and addition to your family, and I congratulate the city of Taganrog upon the possession of a tiny new citizeness. May the infant (cross yourself!) live for many years, may she (cross yourself!) abound in physical and moral beauty, in gold, a fine voice and common sense, and may she in due time catch a good husband (cross yourself, you fool!) after having previously confused and dismayed all the schoolboys of the city of Taganrog!!! This congratulation over, I proceed straight to business. Nicolay has just given me your letter to read. The question about the right ‘to read or not to read’ must be laid aside for lack of time. Had the letter referred only to the subject of Nicolay I should have confined myself to congratulations only, but your letter touches, at the same time, several very interesting questions. I want to talk them over with you. I shall answer all your previous commandments as we go along. Unluckily I have not the time to write all that I should. For the sake of good form and also because my reasoning is circumstantial I shall proceed to analyse your letter by stages from A to Z inclusive. I am the critic; your letter is the work which is interesting from the artistic standpoint. As one who has read it, I have the right to criticise. Just consider yourself as the author – and all will go famously. By the way, it wouldn’t do us writing fellows any harm if we had a try at criticism. But a warning is needed; what I say refers to the above-mentioned questions and to them only; I shall do my utmost to keep my interpretation free from any personal element. There can’t be two opinions about Nicolay being in the wrong. They are not only your letters he does not answer, but business letters as well; I know nobody more impolite than he in this respect. For a year he’s been going to reply to L. who is still waiting; there has been a letter to him from a very decent man lying on the bookcase for six months and he hasn’t yet answered it; and it was written exclusively for the sake of an answer. A greater muddler than our fool of a brother would be hard to find.
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And worst of all, he is incorrigible. Your letter softened him for the moment but I don’t think he’ll find time to answer it. But all this isn’t the point. I’ll begin with the form of your letter. I remember how you used to laugh at Uncle’s manifestoes. . . . But you were laughing at yourself. Your manifestoes compete with his in sugariness. The whole bag of tricks is there: ‘embraces,’ ‘wounds in my soul’ . . . The one thing lacking is that you shed no tear. If Uncle’s letters were to be believed he would long ere now have dissolved away in tears. (Oh, you Provincials!) You weep from the beginning of a letter to the end. And your weeping is not confined to your letters; it’s in all your writings as well. One would think that Uncle and you consist solely and exclusively of lachrymal glands. I am not laughing; I am not being witty. I would not mention that lachrymosity, that asthmatical joy and sorrow, those wounds in the soul, &c, if they were not so out-ofdate and so . . . pernicious. Nicolay (as you very well know) is idling his life away; there is a good vigorous Russian talent going to the dogs and going to the dogs for nothing. Another year or two and the artist will have sung his swan song. He will be lost in a crowd of café types, filthy Y–––s, and other horrible creatures. You have seen his present work. What is it? It is all that is vulgar and catch-penny – while there stands in the room the beginnings of a remarkable picture. The Russian Theatre (publishers) offered him Dostoevsky to illustrate. He promised he would, but he won’t keep that promise; and those illustrations would give him a name and buy him bread. Well, what’s the use of talking? You saw him six months ago, and I hope you have not forgotten. . . . But now, instead of helping and encouraging a talented good fellow with a few strong words which would be of inestimable value to him, you write him pitiable melancholy letters. You saddened him for half an hour, you made him feel crushed and embittered – and that’s all. Tomorrow he will forget your letter. You are an excellent stylist, you have read a lot, written a lot, you understand things as well as others – and it’s nothing to you to write a kind word to your brother. Not a sermon – never! But, if instead of shedding tears you would talk to him about his painting, he for certain would sit down to his work straight away and be sure to answer you. You know how he can be influenced. ‘But I am forgetting myself. . . This is my final letter to you. . . .’ All that is nonsense, the point is not in that. That is not what needs emphasis. You the strong one, educated and well-read, should emphasise that which is vital, that which is eternal, which affects not only petty feelings, but true human sensibilities. You are capable of doing this. Of course you are! You are witty, a realist, an artist. For that
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letter of yours in which you describe divine service in a forest clearing I would forgive you all your trespasses, voluntary and involuntary, in deed and in word, if I were God. (Nicolay, by the way, reading that letter had a terrible desire to paint that field.) But even in your writing you lay too much stress on trivial things. And you were not born a subjective writer. . . That kind of writing is not inborn in you; it is acquired. . . It is as easy to give up that self-acquired subjectivity as to drink a glass of water. One only needs to be a bit more honest: to throw oneself absolutely overboard, not to push oneself as the hero of one’s novel, to deny oneself for even half an hour. There is a story of yours where a young couple sit kissing each other all through dinner, sitting and cooing and talking rubbish. There’s not a single sensible word, but thorough complacency. And you were not writing for the reader. You wrote because that chatter pleased you! Why don’t you describe the dinner, how they ate, what they ate, what the cook was like, how vulgar your hero was, satisfied with his lazy contentment, how vulgar your heroine, how ridiculous her love for that smug, napkinned, overfed gander? Everyone likes to see well-fed happy people – that’s true. But if you are going to write about them it’s not enough to tell what they said and the number of times they kissed. A something else is needed. You must deny yourself the personal impression that honeymoon happiness produces on all unembittered persons. Subjectivity is an awful thing – even for the reason that it betrays the poor writer hand over fist. I bet you that all the vicars’ daughters and clerks’ wives who read your writings are in love with you; and were you a German you would drink beer gratis in all beer-shops where there are German barmaids. If only you would give up that subjectivity you would become a most useful writer. You know so well how to laugh, to bite, to sneer, you have such a well-rounded style, you have experienced so much, and seen more than enough. . . . Ah! Material is being thrown away! You might at least put some of it in your letters and encourage Nicolay’s imagination thereby. Iron should be forged out of such material and not manifestoes. What a useful man you would become! Try, a sensible honest kind letter to Nicolay once or twice – you’re surely an hundred times cleverer than he – write to him and you will see what will happen. He will answer you, however lazy he may be. But no pitiable, embittering, enervating words; he is sufficiently soured without them. ‘Not much sensitiveness is needed,’ you say; and further, ‘that by my having left you I have cut myself off from the family and am doomed to oblivion.’ . . . So it appears you are forgotten. That you yourself do not believe what you write is quite obvious. There is no need to tell lies, my friend. . . . If it were not for your lachrymal glands, you would never have written that.
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‘I expected it and of course I got it. . . .’ You want to make our hearts bleed? Do so, if it’s necessary, but you won’t do it with such words. They read like quotations from ‘Little Sister’ [a story by the brother] and you have said more sensible things which you could quote with greater profit. ‘Father has told me I have not justified myself,’ &c. it’s the hundredth time you’ve written that. I wonder what it is you want from Father. He is the enemy of tobacco smoking and of illegal cohabitation – do you want him to make these his friends? You could manage Mother and Aunt but Father you never will. He is a flint, like the old dissenters, and you’ll never make him change. And this, I think, is his strength. However gently you write to him he will only sigh and write the same old story to you, and what is worse, suffer. You know this quite well – don’t you? Strange! Excuse me, but to my thinking this particular string, and it’s rather a rotten one, plays not the least important part in the refrain. You are not paddling against the stream, but as it were trying to float with the stream. What do you care how this or that dissenter regards your illegal marriage! Why do you make up to them? What do you want? Let another look at it as he pleases; he’s at liberty to. But you know you are right. Well stick to it, in spite of what others have written or suffered. Surely there’s all the salt of life, my friend, in a dignified protest. Everyone has the right to live with whom he pleases and how he pleases – that’s the right of an educated man, but you evidently don’t believe in it since you find it necessary to send advocates on your behalf to various people. What is your illegal marriage from your own point of view? It is your nest, your warmth, your sorrow and joy, your romance, and you go about clutching it as if it were a stolen melon, you look askance at everyone: ‘What does he think of me?’ You shove it on to everybody, talk it over, make moan. Were I your family I should feel offended at last. You really are interested in what I think, what Nicolay thinks, and Father! But why? You will not be understood just as you do not understand ‘the father of six children,’ just as you did not until now understand the feelings of paternity. Neither will they understand, however close they may be to you, neither is there any need. Live and – basta! we cannot feel for everybody at once but that is what you ask us to do. As soon as you see that our faces are indifferent you begin to worry. Strange are thy works, O Lord! If I were in your place and had a little family, I would not only allow no criticism – I would not even desire to be understood. This is my personal affair, my own private concern – and it lies in the natural order of things that no ‘sisters’ have the right to poke their noses into my affairs even if they are noses desirous of understanding and feeling emotions. I wouldn’t even write letters about my
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joy as a father. People won’t understand and will only laugh at your manifesto, and they will be right. ‘As to Anton I pass him by in silence. You alone remained.’ As a gentleman I ought to pass you by in silence. In the beginning of my letter I said that I would not be personal, I shall pass it by, but only hook out of it a single ‘question.’ (What an awful lot of questions!) There is in this wide world a bad disease, which not a single writing man should pretend to be ignorant of. . . . I’ve said too much. I must cross that out. You too know the disease. It is the unwillingness of men of the same camp to understand each other. A vile disease! We are of one kind, birds of a feather, we breathe the same air, think the same thoughts, we are kindred in spirit and yet at the same time we have the pettiness to write: ‘I pass him by in silence.’ How pompous! We are so few that we must stick to each other . . . but, well, vous comprenez! Whatever sins we may commit towards each other (and we do not commit so very many) we must respect even the least of us who are of ‘the salt of the earth.’ We, I, you, the Tretyakovs,1 our Mike, are above thousands, not below hundreds. We have a task, a universal and understandable one: to think, to have a head on our shoulders. Who is not for us is against us. And we deny each other! We puff and blow, make moan, rub our eyes, gossip, spit in one another’s faces. The number of people the Tretyakovs and company have spat upon! They have drunk bruderschaft2 with Vassya, and the rest of mankind is dismissed as narrow-minded. I am silly, I don’t know how to wipe my own nose yet, I have not read a lot, but I pray to your God – that suffices for you to think me worth my weight in gold. S—— is a fool, but he is a university man and a thousand times superior to Semyon Gavilovitch and Vassya, and yet they made him bang his head against the edge of a piano after dancing the cancan. Disgusting! A nice understanding of men and a nice using of them! If I were to put a dunce’s cap on Zemfilatov because he doesn’t know Darwin’s theory3 I should be nice person, too. A man who has been brought up on serfdom and is the enemy of serfdom – I could love him for that alone! And if I began not to know A——, B——, C——, D——, I should have to end my days in isolation. We newspaper men suffer from the disease of envy, instead of rejoicing at the success of another we feel envy and . . . pepper, pepper! Whereas all of us pray to one God, all work for the same cause. Pettiness! Lack of education! How all this poisons life! I must work and so I must stop. Some other time I’ll finish this. Upon my word of honour, all this is written in friendship. Nobody has forgotten you; nobody has anything particular against you . . . there is no ground for us not writing as friends. I greet Anna Ivanovna and our M.
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Do you get the Oskolki (a humorous periodical)? Let me know. I have sent you Leikin’s acknowledgment. And now my respects. A. TCHEHOV Would you like a little subject for an article? Well, I have written a lot! Twenty roubles’ worth. I think more. [Translated by Katherine Mansfield and S. S. Koteliansky.]
Notes Text: Adelphi, 2: 1, June 1924, pp. 38–45. Translated early January, 1920. A typescript version with autograph corrections is in the ATL: MS-Papers-11327-082. Subsequently published in The Life and Letters of Anton Tchekhov, translated and edited by S .S. Koteliansky and Philip Tomlinson (London: Cassell, 1925), pp. 53–8. Acknowledgement is made of KM’s involvement in this particular translation. See BJK, p. 87. 1. Pavel Mikhaylovich Tretyakov (1832–98) was a businessman, patron of the arts and philanthropist, whose collection formed the basis of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. His brother Sergei was also a patron of the arts. 2. Brotherhood. 3. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, presented in his book On the Origin of Species (1859).
Anton Tchehov BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE (1860–1887) Anton Pavlovitch Tchehov was born on Jan. 17. 1860, in Taganrog. His grandfather was a serf of Tchertkov’s, the father of that very same Tchertkov who, as a disciple of Tolstoy, is so well known abroad.1 In 1841, twenty years before the abolition of serfdom in Russia, Tchehov’s grandfather bought out his family of eight for £350, that is £50 per soul, with the eighth member, his daughter Alexandra, thrown in gratis. At that time the family lived in the Voronezh government, but with the purchase of their freedom they moved to the Caucasus, where Tchehov’s grandfather became steward on the estates of Count Platov,2 a hero of 1812. Tchehov’s father, Pavel Yegorovitch, was a gifted man. From early childhood he had a passion for music and singing. According to the family chronicles, a certain sexton taught him to sing from sight, and he also played the fiddle. At the age of sixteen, while he was
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apprentice at a sugar refinery, the owner, who considered him a very honest boy, sent him with a large sum of money to Moscow. He made the journey together with a large drove of cattle to be sold. In 1844 Tchehov’s father moved to Taganrog, where he became a clerk in an office. There he worked until 1857, when he opened a business of his own as a general merchant, giving it up in 1876, when he migrated to Moscow. As a merchant of the Second Guild of Taganrog he took an active part in the affairs of the city, and, to the detriment of his own business, gave himself to church singing, conducted the church choir, played the fiddle, and even painted. The icon of John Chrysostomus3 painted by him is still in existence, and is in Anton Tchehov’s study in his house in Yalta. Yevguenya Morozov, Anton’s mother, was the daughter of a very intelligent cloth merchant who travelled all over Russia with his goods, and settled finally in Taganrog. There she married in 1854. Her father was received in the best society in Taganrog, and respected by everybody. Anton’s mother used to tell her children stories about the journeys she had made as a child all over Russia with her father. All her children, Anton especially, loved to listen to these stories She had a quiet, gentle manner, which he was considered to have inherited from her. Through the insistence of his wife, Anton’s father wished his children to have a good education and made inquiries about the best schools. The local Greeks persuaded him to send Anton to the Greek school, but it turned out to be unsatisfactory and he was transferred to the local gymnasium. As was the case with many families of their day, the life of the Tchehovs was quite patriarchal. The father was strict and exacting, but this did not prevent them from all living in the greatest friendship. The day began and ended with work. All got up early. The boys (Anton had four brothers and one sister) went to school, came home, learned their lessons, and in spare moments each occupied himself with some hobby. The eldest brother, Alexander, made electric batteries, Nicolay drew, Ivan bound books and Anton made up stories. In the evenings, when the father was home, they all sang together, and he and Nicolay played the violin. The mother, tender and loving, was for ever looking after them all. Even as a young woman her life was devoted to her children. Hating serfdom, she instilled in them a hatred of its injustice and wretchedness; and she taught them to love and respect not only all who were their inferiors, but birds and animals and all defenceless creatures. Tchehov used to say to his friends in later years: ‘We inherited our talent from father, but mother gave us a soul.’ A Frenchman taught the children languages, a music teacher taught
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them to play the piano. And their life, unusual at that time, passed like the life of any middle-class Russian family of to-day. The peculiar trait was singing and household prayers. Every Saturday evening the whole family went to vespers, and on their return from church they continued the singing at home. Returning from Sunday evening service, the family again sang in chorus. The father arranged a regular choir with his children, and sang with them in the church of the local castle (in which Alexander I. lived, and died in 1825). Service here was held only in Passion Week, on the first day of Easter, Ascension Day, and Whit Sunday. There Tchehov got to know all the church services and to sing with his brothers. In the middle of the seventies of last century the economic life of Taganrog began to decline, owing to a new railway line connecting Rostov with Vladikavkaz, and the Tchehov family fortunes declined with it. This was attributed partly to the father’s interest in public affairs, his frequenting churches, and his being away from business a great deal. At times he would send his children to his shop ‘to keep a master’s eye on things.’ When this happened the children enjoyed undreamed of pleasures. They spent whole days at the sea, fishing; played all sorts of games, went to their grandfather’s village, walked in the park, arranged theatricals. In spite of the comparative strictness of the family régime all the Tchehov boys, outside the sphere of their immediate duties, enjoyed the greatest freedom. Anton was a healthy, large-browed, lively, agile boy, with an inexhaustible fund of tricks and pranks. He was the most gifted of the brothers in providing amusements for the family, and would mimic and imitate their friends in the form of a scene from a play. In home theatricals he was the leading spirit. One of his favourite improvisations was a scene in which the Chief of Police arrives at a parade in the cathedral, and stands in the middle of the church on a carpet surrounded by foreign ambassadors. Anton played the governor. In his school uniform, with an old-fashioned sabre strapped across his shoulder, he gave a clever imitation of the behaviour of the governor and held a military review of the Cossacks. The eldest brother, Alexander, played no more in theatricals by that time, and in 1875 he left Taganrog for Moscow and never returned back to his family. He took with him Nicolay, the next oldest brother. So there remained only Ivan, Marie, Michael, and Anton, who was now considered the eldest. They lived together thus until almost the middle of the nineties. After the two elder brothers left for Moscow, the father’s business collapsed quickly. He no longer took part in the municipal elections, his choir came to an end. The family now knew poverty; but in the evenings Anton would still amuse them with his improvisations, or the mother would tell of her early years in the caravan, or of how
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the allies bombarded Taganrog,4 or of the hardships of the peasants under serfdom. In 1876 the father gave up business. His house was sold at auction by his creditors, and the furniture removed by one of them. The father went to Moscow to look for work, leaving the family penniless. The two youngest boys were sent off temporarily to their grandfather, and Anton, as the eldest of the family, had to help them all. In a few months his mother and sister Marie left Taganrog for Moscow, where were the father, Alexander (at the University) and Nicolay (at the Academy of Painting and Sculpture). In the spring of 1876 Anton was left in Taganrog alone. He had to earn his living by giving lessons, and thus he continued for nearly three years until he finished the gymnasium at the age of nineteen. Very little is known of these three years of Tchehov’s life. He passed them in the house of the man who had bought their old home, and tutored the man’s cousin. He used to visit his pupil’s country house, drive across the steppe, hunt and frequent the mines. It was during that time that Anton grew to know the steppe and its life. When a boy of eighteen and nineteen he thoroughly enjoyed flirting with schoolgirl friends, and his love affairs, as he related them to his brother Michael, were always full of gaiety. He went to the theatre a great deal; he enjoyed farces and French melodramas and ‘Hamlet.’ And the novels and stories of Victor Hugo,5 Spielhagen6 and Georg Born greatly impressed him. At eighteen he wrote a play ‘Fatherless’ and a very funny one-act piece which he sent to his brothers in Moscow. Michael relates that when Anton came to Moscow he tore the play up, but kept the one-act piece. While at the Taganrog gymnasium he edited a journal, The Stammerer, especially written for his elder brothers and sent to them at Moscow. (To be continued.)
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4682, 23 January 1920, p. 124. 1. Vladimir Grigoryevich Chertkov (1854–1936) was the editor of Tolstoy’s works. 2. Count Matvei Ivanovich Platov (1751–1818) fought with a Cossack corps against Napoleon, hounding him during the French retreat from Moscow and after the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. 3. John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) was Archbishop of Constantinople and a father of the early church. He is honoured as a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church. 4. The siege of Taganrog began in May 1855, during the Crimean War.
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English and French troops bombarded the town, a seaport, but the Russians resisted and the siege ended in September 1855. 5. Victor Hugo (1802–85) was an influential poet, novelist and dramatist, best known today outside France for his novels Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Misérables (1862). 6. Friedrich Spielhagen (1829–1911) was a German novelist whose Reih’ und Glied (1866), which had a revolutionary hero, was translated into Russian. It achieved great popularity, resulting in the translation into Russian of his other works.
Anton Tchehov BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE (1860–1887) PART II1 In August, 1879, Anton went to Moscow to enter the University. He took with him two schoolfellows as lodgers, and this made it possible for the family to take a better flat. At that time, after many vain efforts, Anton’s father at last got a job as clerk in the stores of a merchant, for which he was paid forty roubles a month and was lodged free of charge. He came to see his family and children but rarely, and they could not exist on so little money. And so Anton, from the very moment of his arrival, took the household on his youthful shoulders. All worked hard to alleviate the family’s material circumstances. That winter, Anton sent to a humorous paper called The Dragon Fly a story entitled ‘A Letter to My Learned Neighbour.’ He was looked upon as the master of the house, and the father. His will was law, his opinion always considered, and ‘who knows’ – writes his brother – ‘what would have happened to our family, in the absence of Alexander and Nicolay, if Anton, had not come at that time from Taganrog?’ The need for money set Anton writing stories, Nicolay drew caricatures, Ivan prepared to be an elementary school teacher, and little Michael copied lectures for undergraduates. The mother and Marie worked very hard. ‘It was a touching reunion of all the members of the family, gathered round Anton, and bound together by sincere, sympathetic friendship,’ writes his brother. ‘What will Anton say? What will Anton think of it? How will Anton regard it?’ became the watchwords of the family. His literary successes and failures were followed with the fervent sympathies of all of them. In 1884 Tchehov left the University – a doctor, and very soon he began to practise in a Zemstvo hospital in Tchikino, under a wellknown doctor-therapeutist, Archangelsky. There he looked after the peasants and grew to know their life and the life of the poor generally. After a few months, Tchehov, at the request of a doctor-friend
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on temporary leave of absence, became the head doctor of a Zemstvo hospital in Zvenigorod, where he had a mixed medical practice, attended at inquests and was the medical expert to the courts. The summer of 1885 Tchehov and his family spent at Babkino with the Kissyelkovs, with whom they had spent three previous summers. The Kissyelkovs were a rare, talented family. The cousin of the well-known diplomatist count, Kissyelkov was married to Marie Vladimirovna Begitchev, director of the Moscow Imperial Theatres. He was an author and an art connoisseur, and the Tchehov brothers loved to hear of his adventures in Russia and abroad. Marie Vladimirovna was also a writer. She and her husband were the friends of Tchaihovsky,2 Dargomyzhsky3 and Salvini.4 There were long discussions in their home on music, literature and the theatre. Anton’s brother Michael thus describes their life in Babkino: ‘We used to get up very early. At about seven o’clock in the morning Anton would sit down at his table and begin to write. At that time he contributed to a Moscow paper, Oskolki [‘Splinters’], and to the Petersburg Gazette in Petersburg, and in all those stories one would find some scene or other from the life at Babkino, this or that character, the hosts or guests, or the people from the villages close by. Dinner was served at one o’clock. After dinner the whole company would go off to the Daragonov woods to gather mushrooms. Anton was passionately fond of gathering mushrooms, and while walking in the woods he more easily found subjects for his stories. Near the Daragonov woods there stood a lonely church which always captured his attention. Service was held there only once a year, but at night the sombre pealing of the bell would reach Babkino as the watchman rang the hours. That church with the night-watchman’s hut by the wayside gave Anton the idea for his ‘Witch’ and ‘The Evil Deed.’ Back from the woods, Anton wrote again or played croquet; at eight o’clock supper was served. Afterwards, the Tchehovs would go to the Kissyelkovs’ big house. Kissyelkov and Begitchev5 sat at the table playing patience, the tenor, Vladislavlyev, sang and the governess, Elisabeth Alexandrovna, accompanied him. All the Tchehovs would sit round Marie Vladimirovna and listen to her stories of foreign countries, of Tchaihovsky, Dargomyzhsky, Salvini. I can positively affirm that Tchehov’s love of music developed from that particular time. Anton would make jokes, was always gay and talked nonsense. The painter, T. T. Levitan,6 who was also at Babkino, drew Crimean scenes in the album, and Anton wrote funny descriptions under them. On these evenings a great deal was talked about literature and art; the names of Tourgeniev, Pissemsky7 and Schedrin were ever recurring with enthusiasm. They also read a great deal. All the serious periodicals and newspapers were received. Thanks to the cheerfulness
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of nature and to the charming people, Anton Tchehov was gay. He wrote, he was praised by the critics, they foretold a brilliant future for him, he was well in health. Sometimes during the summer evenings Levitan and he would dress up in Persian gowns; Anton would black his face with soot and don a turban, and taking a gun he would go to the other side of the river. Then Levitan would arrive there riding on a donkey, get down, put a carpet on the ground and, in Mohammedan fashion, pray to the East. Suddenly, from behind the bushes, Anton Tchehov, as a Bedouin, would come up stealthily and fire blank cartridges, Levitan would fall backward, and a perfectly Oriental scene follow. Or, at other times, Levitan would be brought before the court. Kissyelkov was the President, Anton Tchehov the Crown Prosecutor, for which purpose he would wear a proper make-up. Both were in uniform embroidered with gold. Anton Tchehov’s presentation speech made the company roar with laughter.’ Everything would have been all right but for the scarcity of money. From the Oskolki Tchehov received very little, and had the right to publish only a definite number of lines per month, and the Petersburg Gazette very often withheld payment. That is why Anton Tchehov had very often to remind his editors of his money difficulties and to ask for the money that he had earned. To these money troubles a new anxiety was added. In 1886 Anton Tchehov had a hæmorrhage of the lungs. It meant consumption, but he believed little in it, or consoled himself that it was not consumption, but just an ordinary hæmorrhage, and he therefore tried to be gay just as usual, going about with his friends and attaching no significance to the state of his health. When he returned to Moscow, his sleep was troubled, he ‘twitched’ in his sleep, ground his teeth. Later on, when he lived on his estate at Melikhovo, he used to get frightened at night, dreaming of a ‘black monk.’ This dream he used as the theme of a story. In 1880 Anton Tchehov began writing for the Novoye Vremya, which started a new feature especially for him – a Saturday supplement. From henceforward he attributed no more importance to his work for the Oskolki; a far bigger field of activity had opened for him. Under the influence of Grigorovitch, who was the first to salute his talent, Tchehov began to take his literary activities far more seriously. There occurred a crisis in his literary activity and in his outlook on life; he became more judicious and less and less gay, giving himself completely to literature. He continued to cough very much during the night. Still, as before, he liked to see people round him, could not dispense with them, and would give parties to young people, mostly to Conservatoire and University students. In 1887 Tchehov took a trip to the South of Russia, and visited his
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native place; his letters written to his sister on the journey are full of wit. On returning to Moscow, he wrote his play ‘Ivanov,’ which was staged by Korsh. With this play the first period of his literary activity ends.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4684, 6 February 1920, p. 191. 1. A footnote at this point in the text reads: ‘Part I. appeared in THE ATHENÆUM for January 23.’ 2. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–93) was a composer who has a worldwide reputation and whose works include symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets, chamber and religious music. He and Chekhov were close friends and even planned to collaborate on an opera. 3. Alexander Sergeyevich Dargomyzhsky (1813–69) was a composer who was encouraged by Glinka and who composed an opera, Esmeralda (1839), based on Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris (1831). 4. Tommaso Salvini (1829–1915) was an Italian actor, most famous for the role of Othello. He performed the role in Moscow in 1882. 5. Vladimir Petrovich Begichev (1828–91), director of the Moscow Imperial Theatres, probably wrote the libretto for Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake, first performed in 1877. 6. Isaac Levitan (1860–1900), a landscape artist, became a close friend of Chekhov’s and spent the last year of his life at Chekhov’s house in Crimea. 7. Alexei Feofilaktovich Pisemsky (1821–81) was a novelist and playwright, and was considered the equal of Turgenev and Dostoyevsky in the late 1850s.
The Diary of Anton Tchehov Translated by S. KOTELIANSKY and KATHERINE MANSFIELD [There are very few entries in Tchehov’s Diary, which is here given complete] 1896. My neighbour V. N. S. told me that his uncle, Fet-Shenshin,1 the famous poet, when driving through the Mokhovaia,2 would invariably each time let down the window of his carriage and spit at the University. His coachman got so used to it that every time he drove past the University he would stop and wait for Fet to spit. In January I was in Petersburg and stayed with the Souvorins. I often saw Potapenko.3 Frequently met Korolenko. I went often to
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the Maly Theatre. As Alexander and I came downstairs once, B. V. G. came simultaneously out of the editorial office of the Novoye Vremya and said to me indignantly: ‘Why do you set old Souvorin against Burenin?’ I have never spoken badly of the contributors of the Novoye Vremya in Souvorin’s presence, although I deeply despise the majority of them. In February, passing through Moscow, I went to see Leo Tolstoy. He was irritated, passed bitter remarks on the literary decadents, and for an hour and a half argued with B. Tchitcherin,4 who, I thought, talked nonsense all the time. Tatyana and Marya [Tolstoy’s daughters] laid out a patience; they both wished, and asked me to pick out a card, and I picked out for each of them separately the ace of spades; that grieved them. It turned out that accidentally two aces of spades were in the pack. Both of them are extraordinarily sympathetic, and their attitude towards their father is touching. The countess criticized the painter Gé5 all the evening. She too was irritated. May 5. The sexton Ivan Nicolayevitch brought my portrait, which he has painted from a photograph. In the evening V. H. S. brought his friend N. . . . . [who is . . . ] director of the Foreign department . . . editor of the magazine . . . and doctor of medicine. . . . He produces the impression of an unusually stupid person and a reptile. He said that ‘there’s nothing more pernicious on earth than a rascally liberal newspaper,’ and told us that the peasants whom he doctors, having got his advice and medicine free of charge, ask him for a tip. He and S. speak of peasants with exasperation and loathing. July 1. I was at the Vagankov Cemetery and saw there the graves of the victims of the Khodinka [during the coronation of Nicholas II. in Moscow hundreds of people were crushed to death on the Khodinka Square]. I. Pavlovsky, the Paris correspondent of the Novoye Vremya, came with me to Melihovo. August 4. Opening of the school in Talij. The peasants of Talij, Bershov, Dubechnia and Sholkovo presented me with four loaves, an icon, two silver salt-cellars. The Sholkovo peasant Postnov delivered a speech. August 15–18. N. stayed with me. He has been forbidden to publish anything; he speaks contemptuously now of G.’s son, who said to the new Chief of the Press that he was not going to sacrifice his weekly Nedelya for N.’s sake. ‘We are always ready to meet the wishes of the Censorship.’ In fine weather N. walks in goloshes, and carries an umbrella so as not to die of sunstroke; he is afraid to wash in cold water, complains of heart-palpitations. From me he went on to Leo Tolstoy. I left Taganrog on August 24. In Rostov I had supper with a schoolfriend, L. Volkenstein, barrister, who has already a house in town and
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a bungalow in Kislovodsk in the Caucasus. I was in Nakhichevan – what a change! The streets are lit by electric light. In Kislovodsk, at the funeral of General Safonov,6 I met Tchouprov [a famous professor of political economy].7 Afterwards I met Vesselovsky. On the 28th I went on a hunting party with Baron Steingel; passed the night in Bermamut; it was cold with a violent wind. September 2. In Novorossisk. Steamer ‘Alexander II.’ On the 3rd I arrived in Feodosia and stopped with Souvorin. I saw I. K. Aivasovsky [famous painter], who said to me: ‘You no longer want to see me, an old man.’ In his opinion I ought to have paid him a visit first. On the 16th in Kharkov at the theatre, ‘The Dangers of Intelligence.’ 17th, at home: wonderful weather. Vladimir Soloviov8 told me that he always carried an oak-gall in his trouser pocket. In his opinion, it is a radical cure for piles. October 17. Performance of my ‘Seagull’9 at the Alexandrinsky Theatre. It was not a success. 29th. I was at a meeting of the Zemstvo Council in Serpuhovo. November 10. Letter from A. F. Koni,10 who says he liked ‘The Seagull’ very much. November 26. A fire broke out in our house. Count S. I. Shakhovskoy took part in putting it out. When it was over, Sh. related that once at night, when a fire broke out in his house, he lifted a tank of water weighing 4½ cwt. and poured the water on the fire. Dec. 4. For the performance of ‘The Seagull’ on October 17 see Theatral, no. 95, p. 75. It is true that I fled from the theatre; but only when the play was near the end. During two or three acts I sat in L.’s dressing-room. During the intervals she was visited by uniformed officials of the State theatres with orders, P. with a Star, a young and handsome official of the Police Section of the Home Office. If a man takes up work which is alien to him, art for instance, and finds it impossible to become an artist, he infallibly becomes an official. What a lot of people, having put on a uniform, play the parasite round science, the theatre, and painting! Just the same happens to those who find life alien, and are incapable of living it fully. Nothing remains for them but to become officials. The fat actresses in the dressing-room made themselves pleasant to the officials, were respectful and flattering, L. said how pleased she was that P. had got the Star at such an early age. They were like respectable old housekeepers, serf-women whom the masters honoured with their presence. Dec. 21. Levitan suffers from dilation of the aorta. He keeps his chest plastered with clay. He has superb studies for pictures, and a passionate thirst for life. Dec. 31. P. T. Seryogin, the landscape painter, came.
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1897. From January 10 to February 3 busy with the census. I am the numerator of the sixteenth district and have to instruct the other fifteen numerators of our section, Barykin. They all work superbly, except the priest of the Starospassky parish and the Zemsky Nachalaik (chief of the census district), who is away nearly all the time in Serpuhovo, spends every evening at the club and keeps on wiring that he is not well. All the rest of our supervisors are said to do nothing. With such critics as we have, authors like N. S. Lyeskov11 and S. V. Maximov cannot be a success. . . Between ‘there is a God’ and ‘there is no God’ lies a whole vast tract which the really wise man crosses only with great labour. A Russian knows one of these two extremes, but the middle tract does not interest him; therefore he usually knows nothing, or very little. The ease with which Jews change their religion is justified by many on the ground of indifference. But that is not a justification. One has to respect even one’s indifference, and not change it for anything on earth, since indifference in a decent man is also a religion. Feb. 13. Dinner with Mme. V. A. Morosov. Tchouprov, Sobolievsky, Blaramberg,12 Sablin13 were present as well as myself. Feb. 15. Pancakes at Soldatienkov’s (Moscow publisher).14 Only Golziev and myself were there. Many fine pictures, nearly all badly hung. After the pancakes we drove to Levitan, from whom S. bought a picture and two sketches for 1,100 roubles. Met Polienov [painter].15 In the evening I was at Professor Ostroumov’s;16 he says that Levitan ‘can’t help dying.’ Ostroumov himself is ill and obviously frightened of death. Feb. 16. Several of us met in the evening at the offices of Russian Thought to discuss the People’s Theatre. Everyone liked Shehtel’s17 plan. Feb. 19. Dinner at the ‘Continental’ to commemorate the great reform. Tedious and absurd. To dine, drink champagne, make a noise, deliver speeches about the national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom and such things, whilst slaves in tail-coats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street in the bitter frost – that is lying to the Holy Spirit. Feb. 22. I went to Serpuhovo to an amateur performance in aid of the school at Novosiolki. As far as Tsaritsin I was accompanied by – a little queen in exile – an actress who thinks herself great; uneducated, and a bit vulgar. From March 25 till April 10 I was laid up in Professor Ostroumo’s hospital. Hæmorrhage. Creaking, moisture in the apices of both my lungs; congestion in the apex of the right. On March 28 Leo Tolstoy
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came to me. We spoke of immortality. I told him the contents of Nossilov’s story ‘The Theatre of the Voguls,’ 18 and he obviously listened with great pleasure. May 1. N. arrived in my house. He is always thanking you for tea and dinner, apologizing, afraid of being late for dinner; he talks a great deal, mentions his wife very often; like Gogol’s Mejuiev, pushes the proofs of his play over to you, first one sheet, then another; giggles, attacks Menshikov, whom ‘Tolstoy has swallowed’; assures you that he would kill Stassiulievich if he, as President of the Russian Republic, were to show himself at a review; giggles again, wets his moustache with the soup, eats hardly anything – and yet he is a decent man after all. May 4. The monks from a monastery paid us a visit. Daslia Moussin-Poushkin, the wife of the engineer Gliebov, who has been killed hunting, was there. She sang a great deal. May 24. I examined the two schools, one at Tchirkov, the other at Mihailovsk. July 13. Opening of the school at Novosiolki, which I have had built. The peasants gave me an icon with an inscription. The Zemstvo people were absent. Braz does my portrait [for the Tretiakov Gallery].19 Two sittings a day. July 22. Received a medal for my work on the census. July 23. In Petersburg. Stayed at Souvorin’s. In the drawing-room met V. T. . . . who complained of his hysteria and praised his own books; saw P. Gnieditch and E. Karpov, who imitated Leikin playing a Spanish grandee. July 27. At Leikin’s in Ivanovsk. 28th in Moscow. In the office of Russian Thought; bugs in the couch. Sept. 4. Arrived in Paris. Moulin Rouge, danse du ventre, Café du Néon with coffins. Café du Ciel, etc. Sept. 8. In Biarritz. V. M. Sobolievsky20 and Mme. V. A. Morosov are here. Every Russian in Biarritz complains of the number of Russians here. Sept. 14. Bayonne. Grande course landoise. Bull-fight. Sept. 23. Nice. I settled in the Pension Russe. Met Maxim Kovalevsky;21 breakfast at his house at Beaulieu, with N. I. Yurassov and Jacobi. In Monte Carlo. Oct. 7. Confession of a spy. Oct. 9. I saw B.’s mother playing roulette. Unpleasant sight. Nov. 15. Monte Carlo. I saw how the croupier stole a louis d’or. 1898. April 16. In Paris. Met M. M. Antokolsky [famous Russian sculptor].22
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Negotiations about the statue of Peter the Great. May 5. Returned home. May 26. Sobolievsky arrived in Melihovo. Must put down the fact that in Paris, in spite of the rain and the cold, I spent two or three weeks without being bored. Arrived here with Maxim Kovalevsky. Many interesting acquaintances: Paul Boyer,23 Art Roë, Bonnie, Dreyfus,24 De Roberti, Waliszewsky,25 Onieguin. Breakfasts and dinners with I. I. Schukin.26 Left by Nord express for Petersburg, whence to Moscow. At home found wonderful weather. An example of seminary boorishness. At a dinner the critic Protopopov27 came up to Maxim Kovalevsky, clinked glasses and said: ‘I drink to science so long as it does no harm to the people.’ 1901. Sept.12. I was at Leo Tolstoy’s. Dec. 7. Talked to Leo Tolstoy over the telephone. 1903. Jan. 8. Istorichesky Viestnik,28 Nov., 1902, ‘The Moscow Theatre in the Seventies,’ by I. N. Zaharin. It is said in that article that I sent my ‘Three Sisters’ to the Theatrical and Literary Committee. It is not true.
Notes
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Text: Athenaeum, 4692, 2 April 1920, p. 460. Subsequently published in the Note-Book of Anton Chekhov, translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1921) and then reprinted by the Hogarth Press in the same year. See BJK, p. 84, who notes: ‘Koteliansky informed Mantz: “we did not use Katherine’s name because she was not then known as a writer.”’ The poet Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (1820–92) was later known as Shensin. Mokhovaia is the University area of Moscow. Ignaty Nikolayevich Potapenko (1856–1929) was a writer and essayist. Boris Nikolayevich Chicherin (1828–1904) was a legal philosopher and historian, whose literary style was admired by Turgenev and Tolstoy. Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge (1831–94) was a realist painter. General Ilya Ivanovich Safonov was a highly regarded Cossack soldier. Alexander Alexandrovich Chuprov (1874–1926) was an influential statistician. Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (1853–1900) was a significant philosopher, theologian and poet. The Seagull is the first of Chekhov’s mature plays; the first night in 1896
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10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
17.
18.
19.
20. 21.
22.
23. 24.
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was a failure and Chekhov left the audience and retreated behind the scene. Constantin Stanislavsky directed it in 1898 at the Moscow Arts Theatre, where it was recognised as a major new achievement in Russian drama. Anatolii Fedorovich Koni (1844–1927) was a statesman and writer. His books included reminiscences of his work in the judiciary. Nikolai Semyonovich Lyeskov (1831–95) was a journalist and fiction writer who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitskiy. Pavel Ivanovich Blaramberg (1841–1907) was a self-taught composer and writer of songs and popular stage works. M. K. Sablin was a publisher. Koz’ma Terent’evich Soldatenkov (1818–1901) was a progressive book publisher and art collector. Vasili Dmitrievich Polenov (1844–1927) painted portraits, historical and religious pictures and landscapes. Levitan was one of his students. Alexei Alexandrovich Ostroumov (1845–1908) was a professor at the clinic of hospital therapy of Moscow University. His study of the significance of the patient’s environment was influential. Fyodor Osipovich Schechtel (1859–1926) was an architect and stage designer, particularly noted for his art nouveau buildings, many of which survive today. C. Nossilov explored the Novaya Zemlya, Arctic land off the coast of European Russia, 1887–92. The Voguls were people living in Western Siberia. Osip Emmanuilovich Braz (1873–1936) was a Russian–Jewish painter who also painted a portrait of Leonid Pasternak. His portrait of Chekhov is his best-known work. Vasily Mihailovitch Sobolevsky (1863–1911) was the editor of Russkiye Vedomosti, a daily newspaper published in Moscow. Maxim Maximovich Kovalevsky (1851–1916) was an authority on sociology, and became the president of the International Institute of Sociology in 1905. Mark Matveyevich Antokolski (1840–1902) was a Russian–Jewish sculptor famous for his historical images, such as a statue of Ivan the Terrible bought for the Hermitage by Alexander II. Paul Boyer (1861–1908) was a French photographer who made portraits of actors and other personalities. Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935) was a French–Jewish artillery officer who was tried and convicted for treason in 1894, and in 1906 was officially exonerated. False charges of high treason were brought against him; this was later attributed to anti-semitism in the army and law courts. The influential writer Emile Zola published an open letter, ‘J’accuse’, on 13 January 1898 in the newspaper L’Aurore, accusing the government of anti-semitism in the case. He was convicted of libel and had to go into exile in England for a year.
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25. Kazimierz Klemens Waliszewski (1849–1935) was a Polish historian who lived in France. 26. Possibly this is Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin (1854–1936), a businessman who made his first trip to Paris in 1897. He bought a painting by Monet and went on to create a major collection of French pictures. 27. Mikhail Alexeyevich Protopopov (1848–1915) was a journalist and literary critic who focused on literature’s social function. 28. Istoricheskii Vestnik was a popular and scholarly monthly historical journal, published in St Petersburg from 1880 to 1913, first by Suvorin.
Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyev1 Maxim Gorki2 In the spring of 1898 I read in the Moscow Courier a story called ‘Bergamot and Garaska’ – an Easter story of the usual type. Written to appeal to the heart of the holiday reader, it reminded him once again that man is still capable, at certain moments and in certain special circumstances, of a feeling of generosity, and that at times enemies become friends, if only for a short while, if only for a day. Since Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’3 Russian writers have probably written several hundreds or even thousands of such deliberately pathetic stories; they are, as it were, the dandelions, which, scattered among the superb flowers of genuine Russian literature, are meant to brighten the beggarly life of the sick and rigid Russian soul.4 But from that story there was borne to me the strong breeze of a talent which reminded me in a way of Pomyalovsky;5 again in the tone of the story one felt a roguish little smile of distrust of facts which the author concealed; that little smile easily reconciled one to the inevitable, forced sentimentalism of Easter and Christmas literature. I wrote the author a few lines about his story, and I received from L. Andreyev an amusing answer; he wrote merry, unusual phrases in a singular handwriting, with half-printed letters, and amongst them stood out in particular relief a disingenuous but sceptical aphorism: ‘To a well-fed man to be generous is as pleasant as to have coffee after dinner.’ So began my acquaintance with Leonid Nicolaievitch Andreyev. In the summer I read some more of his short stories and light articles under his journalistic pseudonym of James Lynch, and noticed how quickly and boldly the individual talent of the new writer was developing. In the autumn, on my way to the Crimea, at the Kursk railway station in Moscow, someone introduced us to each other. Dressed in
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an oldish overcoat, in a shaggy sheep-skin hat tilted to one side, he looked like a young actor in an Ukrainian theatrical company. His handsome face struck me as not very mobile, but in the fixed glance of his dark eyes gleamed the smile which so pleasantly irradiated his stories and light articles. I don’t remember his words, but they were unusual, and unusual also was the construction of his agitated speech. He spoke hurriedly, with a dullish, booming voice, with a little crisp cough, his words slightly choking him, while he waved his hands monotonously as though he were conducting. He appeared to me a healthy, sprite-like, cheery man, capable of supporting with a laugh the woes of this world. His excitement was pleasant. ‘Let us be friends!’ he said, pressing my hand. I, too, was joyfully excited. § In the winter, on my way from the Crimea to Nijni, I stopped in Moscow, and there our relations rapidly assumed the character of a close friendship. Seeing how little in touch he was with reality, how little interested in it, indeed, – I was the more surprised by the power of his intuition, by the fertility of his imagination, by the grip of his fantasy. A single phrase, at times a single pointed word was enough to start him off, and seizing the insignificant thing given him he would instantly develop it into a scene, anecdote, character, story. ‘Who is S?’ he asked about a certain author fairly popular at that time. ‘A tiger out of a furrier’s shop,’ I replied. He laughs, and lowering his voice, as though communicating a secret, says hurriedly: ‘You know, I must describe a man who has convinced himself that he is a hero, a tremendous destroyer of all that exists, and has become frightful to himself even – yes! Everybody believes him – so well has he deceived himself. But somewhere in his own corner – in real life – he is a mere miserable nonentity, is afraid of his wife or even of his cat.’ So winding one word after another round the core of his flexible thought, he was always creating something unexpected and singular, easily and gaily. The palm of one of his hands had been pierced by a bullet, his fingers were crooked; I asked him how it happened. ‘An équivoque6 of youthful romanticism,’ he replied. ‘You see, a man who has not tried to kill himself, is very small beer.’ Thereupon he sat down on the divan close to me, and in superb fashion related how once, when a youth, he had thrown himself
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under a goods train, but fortunately fell between the rails, and the train rushed over him and merely stunned him. There was something vague, unreal in the story, but he embellished it with an astonishingly vivid description of the sensations of a man over whom hundreds of ton loads are moving with an iron rumble. These sensations were familiar to me, too: as a lad of about ten I used to lie down under a ballast train, competing in audacity with my chums, one of whom, the pointsman’s son, played the game with particular cool-headedness. It is an almost safe amusement, provided the furnace of the locomotive is raised high enough and the train is moving up hill, not down hill, for then the brake-chains of the cars are tightly stretched, and can’t strike you or, having caught you, fling you on to the sleepers. For a few seconds you experience an eerie sensation, you try to press as flat and close to the ground as possible, and with the exertion of your whole will to overcome the passionate desire to stir, to raise your head. You feel that the stream of iron and timber, rushing over you, tears you off the ground and wants to drag you off somewhere, and the rumble and grinding of the iron rings as it were in your bones. Then, when the train has passed, you still lie motionless for a minute or more, powerless to rise, seeming to swim along after the train; and it is as if your body stretches out endlessly, grows, becomes light, melts into air, and – the next moment you will be flying above the earth. It is very pleasant to feel all this. ‘What fascinated you in such an absurd game?’ asked Andreyev. I said that perhaps we were testing the power of our wills, by opposing to the mechanical motion of huge masses the conscious immobility of our puny little bodies. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘that is too good; no child could think that.’ Reminding him of how children love to ‘tread the cradle’ – to gambol on the supple ice of a new frozen pond or of a shallow riveredge, I said that they generally liked dangerous games. ‘No, it can’t be that, somehow. Nearly all children are afraid of the dark. . . . The poet said: “There is delight in battle, And on the edge of a dark abyss;”7
but that is merely “fine words” nothing more. I have a different idea, but I can’t quite get at it.’ And suddenly he started up, as though touched by an inner fire. ‘I must write a story about a man who all his life long, suffering madly, sought the truth. And, behold, truth appeared to him, but he shut his eyes, stopped his ears and said: “I do not want thee, however
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fair thou mayst be, for my life, my torments have kindled in my soul a hatred of thee.” What do you think?’ I did not like the theme. He said, with a sigh: ‘Yes, one must first answer wherein lies the truth – in man or outside him? According to you – it is in man?’ And he burst out into laughter: ‘Then it is very bad, a very paltry affair.’ § There was scarcely a single fact, scarcely a single problem which Leonid Andreyev and I looked at in the same way, but innumerable differences did not prevent us – for years – from regarding each other with an intensity of interest and of consideration which is seldom the result of even a long-standing friendship. We were indefatigable in our discussions, I remember we once sat uninterruptedly for over twenty hours and drank several samovars of tea – Leonid swallowed an incredible quantity of tea. He was a wonderfully interesting talker, inexhaustible, witty. Although his mind always manifested a stubborn tendency to peer into the darkest corners of the soul – nevertheless, his thought was so alert, so capriciously individual that it readily took grotesque and humorous forms. In a conversation among friends he could use his sense of humour flexibly and beautifully, but in his stories he unfortunately lost that capacity, so rare in a Russian. Although he possessed a lively and sensitive imagination, he was lazy; he was much fonder of talking about literature than of creating it. The delight of martyr-like toil at night in stillness and solitude seated before a white, clean sheet of paper, was almost impossible to him, he valued but little the joy of covering that sheet with the pattern of words. ‘I write with difficulty. Writing is a strain on me,’ he would confess. ‘The nibs seem to me inconvenient, the process of writing – too slow and even degrading. My thoughts flutter about like jackdaws in a fire, I soon tire of catching them and arranging them in proper order. Often this is what happens: I have written a word – and suddenly I get caught in a cobweb – for no reason, I begin to think of geometry, algebra, and the teacher at my old school at Oriol – a very stupid man, indeed. He often quoted the words of some philosopher: “True wisdom is calm.” But I know that the best men on earth suffer torments of agitation. Curse calm wisdom! But what is there instead of it? Beauty? Vivat? However, although I have not seen Venus in the original, she seems to me from her photographs a rather silly female. As a rule, pretty things are always rather stupid. Take, for instance, a peacock, a greyhound, a woman. . . .’
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Indifferent to facts of actuality, sceptical in his attitude to the mind and will of man – it would seem that the idea of laying down the law, of playing the teacher ought not have to attracted him. That is a role inevitable for one who is familiar – much too familiar – with reality. But our very first conversation clearly indicated that, whilst possessing all the qualities of a superb artist, he wished to assume the pose of a thinker and of a philosopher as well. This seemed to me dangerous, almost hopeless, chiefly because his stock of knowledge was strangely poor. And one always felt as though he sensed the nearness of an invisible enemy, that he was arguing intensely with someone and wanted to subdue him. Leonid was not fond of reading, and himself the maker of books – the creator of miracles – he looked upon old books distrustfully and heedlessly. ‘A book to you is like a fetich to a savage,’ he would say. ‘That is because you have not rubbed holes in your breeches on the benches of a public school, because you have not come into contact with University learning. But to me the Iliad, Pushkin, and all the rest are beslavered by teachers, prostituted by constipated officials. Sorrow through Knowledge [a play by Griboyedov]8 is as boring to me as Hall and Knight’s arithmetic.9 I am as sick of The Captain’s Daughter10 as I am of the little lady from the Tverskoy Boulevard.’ I had heard these familiar words about the influence of the public school on one’s attitude to literature too often, and they had long since sounded to me unconvincing, for one felt in them the prejudice begotten by Russian laziness. Much more original was Andreyev when describing how the reviews and critical articles in the papers mutilate and maim books, treating them in the style of reports of street accidents. ‘They are mills, they grind Shakespeare, the Bible – anything you like – into the dust of banality. I once read in a paper a critical article on Don Quixote, and I suddenly saw with horror that Don Quixote was an old man of my acquaintance, a director of the Court of Exchequer; he had a chronic cold in the nose and a mistress, a girl from a confectionery shop, whom he called by the grand name of Millie, but in actual life – on the boulevards – she was known as Sonka Bladder. . . .’ But although he regarded knowledge and books lightly, heedlessly, and at times with hostility, he was always keenly interested in what I was reading. On one occasion seeing in my room at the ‘Moscow Hotel’ Alexey Ostroumov’s book on Synesius, the Bishop of Ptolemais,11 he asked wonderingly:
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‘What do you want this for?’ I told him about the queer half-pagan Bishop and read a few lines from his work In Praise of Baldness. ‘What [asks Synesius] can be more bald yet what is more divine than the sphere?’ This pathetic exclamation of the descendant of Hercules drove Leonid into a fit of laughter, but immediately, wiping the tears from his eyes and still laughing, he said: ‘You know, it is a superb subject for a story about an unbeliever who, wishing to test the stupidity of believers, assumes a mask of saintliness, lives the life of a martyr, preaches a new doctrine of God – a very stupid doctrine – and so attains the love and admiration of thousands. Then he says to his disciples and followers: ‘All this is rubbish.’ But they need a faith, and so they kill him.’ I was struck by his words. The point was that Synesius had expressed the same idea: ‘If I were told that a Bishop must share the opinions of the people, I would reveal to all who I am. For what can there be in common between the rabble and philosophy? Divine truth must be hidden; the people need something quite different.’ But I had not told Andreyev of that idea, nor had I the opportunity of telling him about the unusual position of the unbaptized pagan philosopher in the rôle of Bishop of a Christian Church. When eventually I did so, he exclaimed triumphantly and laughing: ‘There you see – one does not need to be always reading in order to know and to understand.’ § Leonid was talented by nature, organically talented; his intuition was astonishingly keen. In all that touched on the dark side of life, the contradictions in the human soul, the rumblings in the domain of the instincts, he had eerie powers of divination. The instance of Bishop Synesius is not the only one; I could quote a score of such cases. Thus, talking with him about various seekers after an unshakable belief, I related to him the contents of the MS. Confession, by the priest Apollonov – a work by one of the unknown martyrs of thought which had called forth Leo Tolstoi’s Confession.12 I told him what I had observed personally of men of dogmatic beliefs: they often appear voluntary prisoners of a blind, unyielding faith, and the more they actively defend its validity the more despairingly they doubt it. Andreyev mused for a while, slowly stirring his glass of tea; then he said, smiling: ‘It is strange to me that you understand this; you speak like an atheist, but you think as a believer. If you die before me I will inscribe
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on your grave-stone: “Crying to others to worship reason he himself secretly jeered at its impotence.”’ And in a couple of minutes leaning on my shoulder, glancing into my eyes with the dilated pupils of his dark eyes, he said in an undertone: ‘I shall write about a parson, you will see! This, my dear fellow, I shall do well!’ And threatening someone with his finger, vigorously rubbing his temples, he smiled: ‘To-morrow I am going home and shall begin it! I have even got the opening sentence: “Among people he was lonely, for he had a glimpse of a great mystery.” . . .’ Next day he went away to Moscow, and in a week’s time – not more – he wrote to me that he was working on the parson, and that his work was going smoothly ‘as on snow-shoes.’ Thus he always caught in flight anything that answered the needs of his spirit that was in contact with the most acute and tormenting mysteries of life. § The noisy success of his first book filled him to overflowing with youthful joy. He came to me at Nijni – happy, in a brand new tobaccocoloured suit; the front of his stiffly starched shirt was adorned with a rakishly bright tie, and on his feet he had yellow boots. ‘I tried to find straw-coloured gloves, but a lady in the shop at Kuznetsky warned me that straw colour was no longer the fashion. I suspect that she told a fib. The truth was she valued the freedom of her heart too much to risk becoming convinced of my irresistible attractiveness in straw-coloured gloves. But, between ourselves, I can tell you that all this magnificence is uncomfortable; a blouse is much better.’ And suddenly, hugging my shoulders, he said: ‘I want to write a hymn, you know. I don’t yet see – to whom or to what; but a hymn it must be! Something Schillerian,13 eh? Something grand, sonorous – boom-m!’ I chaffed him about it. ‘Well!’ he exclaimed merrily. ‘Is not Ecclesiastes right when he says: “Even a rotten life is better than a good death.” Although he puts it rather differently, something about a lion and a dog: “For domestic purposes a bad dog is more useful than a nice lion.”14 Well, what do you think: could Job have read the Book of Ecclesiastes?’ Intoxicated with the wine of joy he dreamt of a journey on the Volga in a good boat, of walking to the Crimea. ‘I’ll drag you off, too. Otherwise you will build yourself in among these old bricks,’ he said, pointing to the books.
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His happiness resembled the lively and comfortable state of a baby which has been hungry too long, and now thinks it has eaten enough to last for ever. We sat on a wide divan, in a little room, drank red wine; Andreyev took down from the shelf a note-book of poems: ‘May I?’ he asked, and began reading aloud: “Columns of coppery firs, The monotonous sound of the sea.”
‘It is the Crimea? Now, I can’t write poems, and I have no desire to. I like ballads best. As a rule: “I love all that is new, Romantic, nonsensical, Like the poet Of olden times.”15
‘I believe that is a song in the musical comedy The Green Island16: “And the trees are moaning Like verses unrhymed.”17
‘That I like. But – tell me – why do you write poems? It does not suit you at all. After all, whatever you may think, verse is an artificial business.’ Then we composed parodies of Skitalez18: I’ll grasp a huge log In my mighty hand, And all of you – unto the seventh generation – I will knock down flat! Moreover I will stupefy you – Hurrah! Tr-r-remble! I am glad – I’ll dash Kasbeck on your heads, I’ll bring down Ararat upon you!
He laughed as he went on composing verse after verse of delightful, amusing parodies. But suddenly bending towards me, with a glass of wine in his hand, he began in a low voice and gravely: ‘I read recently an amusing anecdote. In a certain English town there stands a memorial to Robert Burns, the poet.19 But there is no inscription on the memorial to inform you to whom it is erected. At the foot of it a boy was selling newspapers. A certain author came up
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to him and said: “I’ll buy a paper from you if you’ll tell me whose statue this is.” “Robert Burns,” the boy replied. “Splendid!” said the author. “Now I’ll buy all your papers if you’ll tell me why this memorial was erected to Robert Burns.” The boy replied: “Because he is dead.” How do you like it?’ I did not like it much; I was always seriously perturbed by Leonid’s sharp and sudden fluctuations of mood. § Fame to him was not merely ‘a bright patch on the bard’s old rags’20 – he wanted a great deal of it, he wanted it greedily and he made no secret of his desires. He said: ‘When I was only fourteen I said to myself, I shall be famous or life won’t be worth living. I am not afraid of telling you that all that has been done before my time does not seem to me to be better than what I myself can do. If you take that for conceit, you are wrong. Yes! Don’t you see that this must be the basic conviction of anyone who does not want to place himself in the impersonal ranks of the millions of others. Indeed, the conviction of one’s uniqueness must – and can – serve as the source of creative power. First let us say to ourselves: We are not like all the others, and already we are on the way to prove this to all the rest as well.’ ‘In a word you are a baby which does not want to feed at its nurse’s breast.’ ‘Just so! I want the milk of my soul only. Man needs love and attention, or that people should fear him. This even peasants realise, when they put on the mask of a sorcerer. Happiest of all are those who are loved with fear, as Napoleon was.’ ‘Have you read his Memoirs?’ 21 ‘No. I don’t need to.’ He winked at me, smiling: ‘I, too, keep a diary and I know how it is done. Memoirs, Confessions and such like are the excrements of the soul that is poisoned by bad food.’ He loved such sayings, and when they were successful he was sincerely delighted. Despite his gravitation towards pessimism, there was in him something ineradicably childish – for instance, his childishly naive boasting about his verbal agility, of which he made much better use in conversation than on paper. Once I told him about a woman who prided herself to such a degree on her ‘honest’ life and took so much trouble to convince all and sundry of her inaccessibility that those who surrounded her gasped from weariness, and either rushed headlong away from this model of virtue, or hated her to the verge of frenzy.
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Andreyev listened, smiled and suddenly said: ‘I am an honest woman, I am. I have no need to clean my nails, eh?’ In these words, with almost perfect exactness he donned the character and even the habits of the creature of whom I was speaking – the woman was careless in her person. I told him this. He was delighted, and with childish sincerity began to boast: ‘My dear fellow, I am myself surprised at times to find how cleverly and pointedly I can in two or three words seize the very essence of a fact or of a character.’ And he delivered a long speech in praise of himself; but – sensible man that he was – he realised that this was a trifle ridiculous, and he ended his tirade with a touch of buffoonery. ‘In time I shall develop my capacity as a genius to such an extent that I shall be able to define in a single word the meaning of the whole life of a man, of a nation, of an epoch. . . .’ Yet the critical attitude towards himself was not particularly strongly developed in him; and this at times greatly spoiled his work and his life. § In every one of us, to my thinking, live and struggle embryos of several personalities. These dispute between themselves until, in the struggle, there is developed the embryo which is the strongest and most capable of adapting itself to the various reactions to impressions which form the final spiritual character of a man, thus creating a more or less complete psychical individuality. Strangely and to his own torment Leonid split into two: in one and the same week he could sing ‘Hosannah’ to the world, and pronounce ‘Anathema’ against it. This was not an external contradiction between the bases of his character and the habits or demands of his profession; no, in both cases he felt equally sincerely. And, the more loudly he proclaimed Hosannah, the more powerfully resounded the echo Anathema. He said: ‘I hate individuals who refuse to walk on the sunny side of the street for fear that their faces may be burnt or their jackets faded – I hate all those who for dogmatic motives hamper the free, capricious play of their inner ego.’ Once he wrote a rather caustic article on the people of the shady side, and immediately after this – on the occasion of Emile Zola’s death from gas fumes22 – engaged in a vigorous attack on the barbarous asceticism at that time fairly popular among the intelligenzia. But talking to me about that attack he declared suddenly: ‘And yet, you know, my opponent is more consistent than I am: a
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writer ought to live like a homeless tramp. Maupassant’s23 yacht is an absurdity!’ He was not joking. We had an argument. I maintained: the more varied the needs of man, the more eager he is for the joys of life, however paltry, the quicker develops the culture of the body and of the spirit. He retorted: No, Tolstoi is right, culture is rubbish, it only maims the free growth of the soul. ‘Attachment to things,’ he would say, ‘is the fetishism of savages, idolatry. Don’t make an idol for yourself, if you do you are rotten – that is the truth! Make a book to-day, and to-morrow make a machine. Yesterday you made a book, and you have already forgotten about it. We must learn to forget.’ And I said: ‘It is necessary to remember that each thing is the embodiment of the human spirit, and often the inner value of a thing is more significant than man.’ ‘That is worship of dead matter,’ he exclaimed. ‘In it is embodied immortal thought.’ ‘What is thought? Its impotence makes it double-faced and disgusting.’ We argued more and more often, more and more intensely. The sharpest point of difference was our attitude to thought. To me – thought is the source of all that exists, out of thought arose everything that is seen and felt by man; even in the consciousness of its impotence to solve the ‘accursed questions’ thought is majestic and noble. I feel that I live in the atmosphere of thought, and, seeing the great and grand things that have been created by it – I believe that its impotence is temporary. Perhaps I am romancing and exaggerate the creative power of thought; but this is so natural in Russia, in a country where there is no spiritual synthesis, in a country paganly sensual, monstrously cruel. Leonid regarded thought as a ‘wicked trick played on man by the devil’; it seemed to him false and hostile. Luring man to the abysses of inexplicable mysteries it deceives him, it leaves him in painful and impotent loneliness in face of all that is mysterious, and itself vanishes. Equally irreconcilably did we differ in our views on man, the source of thought, its furnace. To me man is always the conqueror, even when he is mortally wounded and dying. Splendid is his longing to know himself and to know nature; and although his life is a torment, he is ever widening its bounds, creating with his thoughts wise science, marvellous art. I felt that I did sincerely and actively love man – him who is at present alive and working side by side with me, and him, too, the sensible, the good, the strong, who will follow after in the
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future. To Andreyev man appeared poor in spirit, a creature interwoven of irreconcilable contradictions of instinct and intellect, for ever deprived of the possibility of attaining inner harmony. All his works are ‘vanity of vanities,’ decay and self-deception. And above all he is the slave of death and all his life long he walks, dragging its chain. § It is very difficult to speak of a man whom you know and know profoundly. That sounds like a paradox; but it is true: when the mysterious thrill that emanates from the flame of another’s ego is felt by you, agitates you – you fear to touch with your oblique clumsy words the invisible rays of the soul that is dear to you; you fear lest you express things wrongly. You don’t want to mutilate what you feel and what is almost indefinable in words; you dare not enclose in your constricted speech that which is the essence of another, even though it be universally valid, of human value. It is much easier and simpler to speak of what you feel less vividly. In such cases you can add a great deal, indeed anything you like, for yourself. I think that I comprehended Leonid Andreyev clearly: to be more exact, I saw that he was treading a path overhanging a precipice, a precipice that leads to the slough of madness, a precipice at the mere contemplation of which the sight of the mind is extinguished. Great was the force of his imagination; but notwithstanding the continuous and strained attention which he gave to the humiliating mystery of death, he could not imagine anything beyond it, nothing majestic or comforting – he was after all too much of a realist to invent comfort for himself, even though he wished it. This preference of his for treading the path over the void was what above all kept us apart. I had passed through Leonid’s mood long before – and through natural human pride, it became organically revolting and humiliating to me to reflect on death. The time had come when I said to myself: while that which feels and thinks in me is alive, death dare not touch that power. I once told Leonid of how I had once to go through a hard time of ‘the prisoner’s dream of life beyond the bounds of his prison,’ of ‘stony darkness,’ of ‘immobility for ever poised’; he jumped up from the divan and pacing the room, waving his maimed hand, he said hurriedly, indignantly, gasping for breath: ‘It is cowardice, my dear fellow, to shut the book without reading it to the end! In the book is your indictment, in it you are denied, don’t you see? You are denied along with everything there is in you, with your humanism, socialism, aesthetics, love – isn’t all this nonsense
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according to the book? It is ridiculous and pitiable: you have been sentenced to death – for what? And you, pretending that you are not aware of the fact, play about with little flowers, deceiving yourself and others – silly little flowers! . . .’ I pointed out to him the futility of protesting against an earthquake; I argued that protests cannot in the least affect the tremors of the earth’s crust – all this merely angered him. We talked in Petersburg, in the autumn, in an empty, depressing room on the fifth floor. The city was enveloped in a thick mist; in its grey mass the ghostly, rainbow globes of the street lamps hung motionless like huge bubbles. Through the thin cotton-wool of the mist nonsensical sounds rose up from the well of the street. Wearisome above all else were the hooves of the horses drumming on the wooden blocks of the road. Leonid went and stood by the window, with his back to me. I realised keenly that at that moment he hated me as a man who walked the earth more easily and more freely than he, because he had thrown from his shoulders a humiliating and useless burden. Even before this I had felt in him sharp spurtings of anger against me, but I can’t say that this offended me, although it did alarm me; I understood – in my own way certainly – the source of his anger, and how life was hard on this rarely gifted man, dear to me and – at that time – my intimate friend. There, below, the fire brigade dashed along noisily. Leonid came up to me, threw himself on the divan and suggested: ‘Shall we drive to see the fire?’ ‘In Petersburg a fire isn’t interesting.’ He agreed. ‘True, but in the provinces, in Oriol say, when streets of wooden buildings are burning and the people dash about like moths – it is nice! And pigeons over the cloud of smoke – have you ever seen that?’ Hugging my shoulders he said, smiling: ‘You see everything – the devil take you! “Stony emptiness” – that is very good. Stony darkness and emptiness! You do understand the mood of the captive. . . .’ And butting my side with his head: ‘At times I hate you for this as I do a beloved woman who is cleverer than myself.’ I said I felt this, and that only a minute before he had hated me. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, nestling his head on my knees. ‘Do you know why? I wish you were aching with my pain, then we should be nearer to one another – you really do know how lonely I am!’ Yes, he was very lonely, but at times it appeared to me that he jeal-
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ously guarded his loneliness, it was dear to him as the source of his fantastic inspirations and the fertile soil of his originality. ‘You lie when you say that scientific thought satisfies you,’ he said sternly, looking darkly at the ceiling with scared eyes. ‘Science, my dear fellow, is only mysticism dealing with facts: nobody knows anything – that’s the truth. And the problem: how I think and why I think, is the source of man’s greatest torment – this is the most terrible truth! Come, let’s go off somewhere, please . . . .’ Whenever he touched on the problem of the mechanism of thinking, he became most agitated. And frightened. We put on our coats, descended into the mist, and for a couple of hours swam in it on the Nevsky like eels at the bottom of a slimy river. Then we sat in a café and three girls pressed themselves on us, one of them a graceful Estonian who called herself Elfrida. Her face was stony; she looked at Andreyev out of large, grey, lustreless eyes, with eerie gravity, while she drank a greenish venomous liqueur out of a coffee cup. It smelt of burnt leather. Leonid drank cognac, rapidly got tipsy, became riotously witty, made the girls laugh by his surprisingly amusing and ingenious jokes, and at last decided to drive to the girls’ flat – they were very insistent on this. To leave Leonid was impossible; whenever he began drinking something uncanny awoke in him, a revengeful need of destruction, the fury of ‘the captured beast.’ I went with him. We bought wine, fruit, sweets, and somewhere in the Razyezhaya Street, in the corner of a dirty courtyard, blocked up with casks and timber, on the second floor of a wooden outbuilding, in two tiny rooms, the walls wretchedly and pathetically adorned with picture postcards – we began to drink. Before he got to the state in which he would lose consciousness Leonid always became dangerously and wonderfully excited, his brain boiled up riotously, his imagination flared, his speech became almost intolerably brilliant. One of the girls, plump, soft and agile as a mouse, told us, almost with rapture, how the Assistant Crown Prosecutor had bitten her leg above the knee; she evidently considered the lawyer’s action the most significant event of her life. She showed the scar left by the bite and, choking with agitation, her little glassy eyes shining with joy, said: ‘He was awfully gone on me, it’s quite frightening to remember it! He bit, you know, and he has a false tooth – and it stuck in my skin!’ This girl quickly got drunk, tumbled down in a corner of the couch, and fell asleep, snoring. The full-bodied, thick-haired, chestnut coloured girl, with sheepish eyes and monstrously long arms, played the guitar, and Elfrida deliberately undressed until she was stark naked, moved the bottles and plates on to the floor, jumped on the table and
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danced silently, wriggling like a serpent without taking her eyes from Leonid. Then she began to sing in an unpleasantly thick voice, with angrily dilated eyes, and now and then as though broken in half, she bent over Andreyev. He kissed her knees, repeating the words he had caught up of the strange foreign song, while he nudged me with his elbow and said: ‘She understands something, look at her, do you see? She understands!’ At moments Leonid’s excited eyes seemed to go blind; growing still darker they sank deeper, as if in an attempt to peer inside his brain. Grown tired the Esthonian jumped from the table to the bed, stretched herself, her mouth open, stroking with her palms her little breasts, sharp as a she-goat’s. Leonid said: ‘The highest and deepest sensation in life accessible to us is the spasm of the sexual act – yes, yes! Perhaps the earth, just like this b––– here, is rushing about in the desert of the universe expecting me to impregnate her with the realisation of the purpose of life, and I myself, with all that is marvellous in me – am only a spermatazoön.’ I suggested to him that we should go home. ‘Go, I will stay here. . . .’ I could not leave him – he was already very drunk, and he had a good deal of money on him. He sat down on the bed, stroking the girl’s finely shaped legs, and began in an amusing way to tell her he loved her. She never let her eyes leave his face, her head resting on her hands. ‘The baron has only to eat horseradish to grow wings,’ Leonid said. ‘No, it isn’t true,’ the girl said gravely. ‘I told you she understands something!’ exclaimed Leonid in drunken joy. In a few minutes he came out of the room. I gave the girl money and asked her to persuade Leonid to go for a drive. She instantly agreed, jumped up and began quickly to dress. ‘I am afraid of him,’ she murmured. ‘Men like him pull out revolvers.’ The girl who played the guitar fell asleep, sitting on the floor near the couch where her friend slept and snored. The Esthonian was dressed by the time Leonid returned. He began making a row and shouted: ‘I don’t want to go! Let there be a feast of the flesh!’ And he attempted to undress the girl again; but struggling with him, she gazed so stubbornly into his eyes that her look tamed Leonid, and he agreed: ‘Let us go!’
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But he wanted to put on the lady’s hat à la Rembrandt24 and had already plucked out the feathers. ‘You’ll pay for the hat?’ the girl asked in a businesslike fashion. Leonid raised his brows and burst into laughter. ‘The hat settles it! Hooray!’ In the street we took a cab and drove through the mist. It was still not late, about midnight. The Nevsky with its huge beads of lamps, looked like a road going down hill into a hollow; round the lamps flitted wet particles of dust, in the grey dampness black fishes swam, standing on their tails, the hemispheres of the umbrellas seemed to draw people up – all was very ghostly, strange and sad. In the open air Andreyev became completely drunk. He fell into a doze, swaying from side to side. The girl whispered to me: ‘I’ll get out. Shall I?’ And jumping from my knees into the liquid mud of the street she disappeared. At the end of the Kamennostrovsky Prospect Leonid asked, opening his eyes with a start: ‘Are we driving? I want to go to a pub. You sent her away?’ ‘She went away.’ ‘You are lying! You are cunning, so am I. I left the room in order to see what you would do. I stood behind the door and heard you urging her to make me go for a drive. You behaved innocently and nobly. When it comes to the point, you are a bad man. You drink a lot but don’t get drunk, and because of this your children will be dipsomaniacs. My father also drank a great deal and did not get drunk, and I am an alcoholic.’ Then we sat and smoked in the ‘Strelka,’ 25 under the stupid bubble of the mist, and when the light of our cigarettes flared up we could see our overcoats covered with dim glass beads of dampness turning to grey. Leonid spoke with boundless frankness, and it was not the frankness of a drunken man. His mind was scarcely affected until the moment when the poison of the alcohol completely stopped the working of his brain. ‘You have done and are doing a great deal for me – even to-day, I quite understand. If I had remained with the girls it would have ended badly for someone. Just so. But it is just because of this that I don’t love you, precisely because of this. You prevent me from being myself. Leave me! I want to expand. Perhaps you are the hoop on the cask; you will go away and the cask will fall to pieces; but let it fall to pieces – do you understand? Nothing should be restrained; let everything be destroyed. Perhaps the true meaning of life consists indeed in the destruction of something which we don’t know, of everything that has been thought out and made by us.’
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His dark eyes were fixed sternly on the grey mass around and above him; now and then he turned them towards the wet, leaf-strewn ground, and he stamped his feet as though testing the firmness of the earth. ‘I don’t know what you think, but what you always say is not the expression of your faith, of your prayer. You say that all the forces of life spring from the violation of equilibrium. But you yourself are indeed seeking for an equilibrium, for some kind of harmony, and are urging me to seek for the same thing; whereas – on your own showing – equilibrium is death!’ I said I was not urging him to anything, I had no wish to urge him, but his life was dear to me, his health was dear, his work. ‘It is only my work that pleases you – my external self, but not I myself, not that which I cannot incarnate in work. You stand in my way and in everybody’s way. Into the mud with you!’ He leant on my shoulder and, peering into my face with a smile, he went on: ‘You think I am drunk and don’t realise that I am talking nonsense? I simply want to make you angry. You are a rare friend, I know, and you are stupidly disinterested, and I am a farceur begging for attention, like a beggar who shows his sores.’ This he said not for the first time, and I recognised a grain of truth in it. Or rather, a cleverly contrived explanation of certain peculiarities of his character. ‘I, my dear fellow, am a decadent, a degenerate, a sick man. But Dostoevsky was also a sick man, as are all great men. There’s a book, I don’t remember by whom, about genius and insanity, it proves that genius is a psychical disease! That little book has spoiled me. If I had not read it I should be a simpler man. And now, I know that I am almost a genius, but I am not sure whether I am sufficiently insane? Do you understand? I pretend to myself to be insane in order to convince myself of my talent – do you see?’ I burst out laughing. This seemed to me a poor invention, and therefore untrue. When I said so, he also burst out laughing, and suddenly, with a flexible movement of his soul, with the agility of an acrobat, he leapt into the tone of a humorist: ‘Ah! Where is a pub, the temple of literary worship? Talented Russians must necessarily converse in pubs. That is the tradition, and without it the critics won’t admit talent.’ We sat in a night-tavern for cabmen in damp, smoky stuffiness. The ‘waiters’ raced about the dirty room angrily and wearily, drunken men swore ‘astronomically,’ terrible prostitutes screamed, and one of them bared her left breast – huge and yellow – put it on a plate, presented it to us, saying:
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‘Won’t you buy a pound?’ ‘I love shamelessness,’ said Leonid. ‘In cynicism I feel the sadness, almost the despair of man who realises that he can’t – do you understand? – that he can’t help being a beast. He wants not to be one, but he can’t! Do you understand?’ He drank strong, almost black tea. I knew that he liked it so, and that it sobered him and I purposely ordered it strong. Sipping the tarry bitter liquid, his eyes probing the puffy faces of the drunkards, Leonid spoke uninterruptedly: ‘With women I am cynical. It’s the more truthful way – and they love it. It’s better to be a consummate sinner than a righteous man who can’t puff himself up into a state of complete saintliness.’ He glanced round, was silent for a while and said: ‘Here it is as boring as an Ecclesiastical Council!’ This made him laugh. ‘I’ve never been at an Ecclesiastical Council, it must be something like a fishpond . . .’ The tea sobered him. We left the tavern. The mist thickened, the opalescent globes of the street lamps melted like ice. ‘I should like some fish,’ said Leonid, as he leant his elbows on the parapet of the bridge across the Neva, and continued with animation: ‘You know my way? Probably children think like that. A child will pitch on a word and begin to pick out words that rhyme to it: fish, dish, butter, gutter – but I can’t write verse.’ After thinking for a while he added: ‘Makers of children’s alphabets think like that . . .’ Again we sat in a tavern treating ourselves to a fish solianka;26 Leonid was saying that the ‘decadents’ had invited him to contribute to their review Vyessy. ‘I shan’t accept, I don’t like them. With them I feel there is no body behind their words. They “intoxicate” themselves with words, as Balmont27 is fond of saying. He too is talented and – sick.’ On another occasion, I remember, he said of the Scorpion group28: ‘They outrage Schopenhauer,29 and I love him, and therefore hate them.’ But on his lips, this was too strong a word – to hate was beyond him, he was too gentle for that. Once he showed me in his diary ‘words of hatred,’ but they turned out to be merely humorous, and he himself laughed heartily at them. I saw him to his hotel in a cab, and put him to bed. But when I called in the afternoon, I learned that immediately after I left, he got up, dressed, and disappeared. I searched for him the whole day, but could not find him.
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He drank continuously for four days, and then went away to Moscow. § He had an unpleasant way of testing the sincerity of people’s mutual relations. He did it like this: suddenly he would ask, as if by the way, ‘Do you know what Z. said about you?’ Or he would let you know, ‘S. says of you . . .’ And with a dark glance he would look into your eyes as if to test you. Once I said to him: ‘Look here, if you go on like that you will end by setting all your friends against one another!’ ‘What of it?’ he replied, ‘if they quarrel for trifles like that, it only shows that their relations were not sincere.’ ‘Well, what do you want?’ ‘Stability, a sort of monumental firmness, beauty of relationship. Each one of us ought to realise how delicate is the lace of the soul, how tenderly and warily it should be regarded. A certain romanticism is needed in the relations between friends; it used to exist in Pushkin’s circle, and I envy them it. Women are sensitive only to eroticism. The woman’s gospel is the “Decameron.”’ 30 But in half an hour’s time he scoffed at his view of women, as he gave a droll description of a conversation between an erotomaniac and a public school girl. He could not stand Artsybashev31 and at times scoffed at him with crude hostility just for his one-sided presentations of woman as exclusively sensual. § Once he told me this story. When he was about eleven he saw, somewhere in a wood or park, the deacon kissing a young girl. ‘They kissed one another, and both cried,’ he said, lowering his voice and shrinking. Whenever he told anything intimate, his limp muscles became strained and keyed up. ‘The young girl, you see, was so slim and fragile, little legs like matches; the deacon – fat, the cassock on his belly greasy and shiny. I already knew why people kissed, but it was the first time I saw them crying when they kissed, and I thought it funny. The deacon’s beard got caught on the girl’s open blouse. He began wriggling his head. I whistled in order to frighten them – but got frightened myself and ran away. On the evening of that very same day I felt myself in love with the daughter of our magistrate, a girl of ten. I touched her: she had no breasts. So there was nothing to kiss, and she was not fit for love. Then I fell in love with a neighbour’s maid, a short-legged girl, with white eyebrows, with enormous breasts – the blouse on her bosom was as greasy as the cassock on the deacon’s belly. I approached her
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very resolutely, and she as resolutely pulled my ear. But this did not prevent me from loving her. She seemed to me a beauty, and the longer I knew her the more beautiful she seemed. It was almost torture and very sweet. I saw many really beautiful girls and in my mind I well understood that my beloved was a monster compared with them, and yet to me she remained the fairest of all. This knowledge made me happy; nobody could love as I did that fat hussy with her white eyebrows and white eyelashes. Nobody – do you understand? – could see in her one fairer than the fairest!’ He told this superbly, saturating his account with delightful humour, which I cannot reproduce. What a pity, that he who in conversation was such a master of humour neglected or was afraid to enrich his stories with its play. Evidently he was afraid of spoiling the dark tones of his pictures with the varied colours of humour. When I said it was a pity that he had forgotten how well he succeeded in creating out of the short-legged maid the first beauty in the world, that he no longer wished to extract the golden veins of beauty from the dirty mine of reality, he screwed up his eyes, comically and slyly, saying: ‘See what a sweet tooth you have got! No, I am not going to pamper you, you romantics. . . .’ It was impossible to persuade him it was just he who was the romantic. § In his Collected Works, which he presented to me in 1915, Leonid wrote: ‘Beginning with Bergamot in the Courier, all that is contained here has been written, has passed before your eyes, Alexey: it is to a large extent the history of our relations.’ This, unfortunately, is true; unfortunately, because I think it would have been better for Andreyev had he not introduced ‘the history of our relations’ into his stories. But he did it too readily, and in his haste to ‘refute’ my views he thereby spoiled his whole. It seemed it was just in my personality that he had embodied his invisible enemy. ‘I have written a story which you are sure not to like,’ he once said to me. ‘Shall we read it?’ We read it. I liked the story very much, save for a few details. ‘That’s a trifle, that I’ll correct,’ he said with animation, pacing the room, shuffling with his slippers. Then he sat down by my side and throwing back his hair he glanced into my eyes. ‘Well, I know, I feel that you were sincere in praising that story. But I can’t understand how it can please you?’ ‘There are many things on earth which don’t please me; yet, so far as I can see, they are none the worse for it.’
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‘Reasoning like that you can’t be a revolutionary.’ ‘Now, do you look upon a revolutionary as Netchayev32 did, who held that a revolutionary is not a man?’ He embraced me, laughed: ‘You don’t properly understand yourself. But, look here, when I wrote Thought I had you in my mind. Alexey Savelov is you. There is one phrase there: “Alexey was not talented” – this perhaps was wrong on my part, but with your stubbornness you so irritate me at times that you seem to me without talent. It was wrong of me to have written it, wasn’t it?’ He was agitated, he even blushed. I calmed him, saying that I did not consider myself an Arab steed, but only a dray horse. I knew that I owed my success not so much to my inborn talent as to my capacity for work, my love of work. ‘You are a strange man,’ he said softly, interrupting my words and suddenly, changing the tone of the conversation, he began musingly to speak of himself, of the agitations of his soul. He lacked the unpleasant general Russian habit of confessing and of doing penance. But at times he managed to speak of himself with manly frankness, even severity, yet without losing his self-respect. And this was pleasant in him. ‘You understand,’ he said, ‘every time I write something that particularly agitates me I feel as though a crust had fallen from my soul; I see myself more clearly and I see that I am more talented than the thing written. Take Thought. I expected it would astonish you, and now I myself see that it is, essentially, a story with a purpose which, even so, misses the mark.’ He jumped to his feet, and shaking back his hair, half jokingly declared: ‘I’m afraid of you, you rascal! You are stronger than I. I don’t want to submit to you.’ And again gravely: ‘Something is lacking in me, my dear fellow. Something very important – eh? What do you think?’ I thought that he treated his talent with unpardonable carelessness and that he lacked knowledge. ‘One must study, read, go to Europe. . . .’ He waved his hand: ‘It isn’t that. One must find a God for oneself and learn to believe in his wisdom.’ As usual we began arguing. After one such argument he sent me the proofs of his story, The Wall, and with reference to his Ghosts he said to me: ‘The lunatic who knocks is myself, and the energetic Yegor is you. You really possess confidence in your powers; that is your obsession
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and the obsession of all your fellow romantics, idealisers of reason, uprooted from life by their dream.’ § The outcry aroused by his story The Abyss unnerved him. People ever ready to cater for the gutter press began writing all sorts of unpleasant things about Andreyev, going so far in their calumnies as to approach absurdity. Thus a certain poet announced in a Kharkov paper that Andreyev and his fiancée bathed with no costumes on. Leonid plaintively asked: ‘What does he think then, that one must bathe in a frock-coat? And he lies, too. I did not bathe either with a fiancée or solo. I have not bathed for a whole year – there was no river to bathe in. Look here, I have made up my mind to print and have posted on the hoardings a humble request to readers – a brief one: “Yours is bliss Who don’t read Abyss!” He was excessively, almost morbidly, attentive to his press notices, and always, with sadness or with irritation, complained of the barbarous coarseness of the critics and reviewers; once he even wrote to the press to complain of the hostile attitude adopted towards him personally. ‘You should not do this,’ he was advised. ‘Yes, I must. Otherwise these people, in their zeal to reform me, will cut off my ears or to scald me with boiling water. . . .’ § He suffered cruelly from hereditary alcoholism; his malady would manifest itself at comparatively rare intervals, but nearly always in a very aggravated form. He fought against it, the struggle cost him enormous efforts, but, at times, falling into despair, he scoffed at his efforts. ‘I’ll write a story about a man who, from his youth onwards, was for twenty-five years afraid to drink a thimbleful of vodka. Because of this he lost a multitude of splendid hours in life, he spoilt his career, and died in his prime through having cut his corn unsuccessfully or run a splinter into his finger.’ And indeed, when he came to see me at Nijni, he brought with him the MS. of that very story. § In Nijni Leonid met at my house Father Feodor Vladimir, the archpriest of the town of Arzamas, who subsequently became a member
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of the Second State Duma – a remarkable man. Some time I will try and write about him fully, and meanwhile I find it necessary briefly to outline the chief deed of his life. The town of Arzamas, almost from the time of Ivan the Terrible,33 obtained its water from ponds, where, in the summer, swam corpses of drowned cats, rats, fowls, dogs, while in the winter, under the ice, the water became tainted, and had a disgusting smell. Father Feodor having made it his object to supply the town with wholesome water, spent twelve years in investigating personally the hidden waters around Arzamas. Every summer, year in and year out, he rose at dawn and wandered like a sorcerer about the fields and woods, observing where the ground ‘perspired.’ And after long labour he found hidden sub-soil springs, traced their course, canalised them, conducted them to a forest hollow a couple of miles from the town; and having obtained for a population of ten thousand over a hundred thousand gallons of superb spring water, proposed to the town the laying down of a water supply. The town had a sum of money bequeathed to it by a merchant to be used either for the laying down of a water supply or for the founding of a credit bank. The tradespeople and the authorities, who employed horses to carry the water in barrels from remote springs outside the town, had no need of a water supply, and using all means to hinder the work of Father Feodor, tried to get hold of the capital for the establishment of a credit bank; while the unimportant inhabitants swallowed the tainted water of the ponds, indifferent and passive, in conformity with their immemorial custom. Thus, having found water Father Feodor was compelled to carry on a long and tedious struggle with the stubborn selfishness of the rich and the villainous stupidity of the poor. When I arrived at Arzamas under police surveillance34 I found him at the end of his work of gathering together the springs. Exhausted as he was by drudgery and misfortune, that man was the first Arzamasian who dared to make my acquaintance. The wise Arzamasian authorities had most strictly forbidden the employees of the Zemstvo and all other civil servants to visit me, and, in order to intimidate them, had established a police post just under my windows. Father Feodor came to me one evening, in pouring rain, soaking wet from head to foot, soiled with clay, in heavy peasant boots, in a grey cassock, and in a faded hat – it was so wet that it looked like a lump of soaked clay. Pressing my hand tightly with his horny, digger’s hand he said in a stern little bass voice: ‘Are you the unrepentant sinner who has been foisted on us for the good of your soul? We will do your soul good! Can you treat me to tea?’
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In his grey little beard the dried up little face of an ascetic was hidden. From his deep sockets shone the meek smile of understanding eyes. ‘I have come straight from the forest. Have you got any garments into which I could change?’ I had already heard a great deal about him. I knew that his son was a political exile, one daughter was in prison ‘for politics,’ a second daughter was intent on her preparations to get there. I knew that he had already spent all his means on this search for water, had mortgaged his house, and was now living like a pauper, himself digging ditches in the forest and stopping them with clay. When his strength failed he would implore the neighbouring peasants, for the love of Christ, to lend him a hand. They would help him; but the townspeople, sceptically watching the work of this ‘queer’ parson, would not lift a finger. It was this man whom Leonid Andreyev met at my house. It was October, a dry cold day, the wind was blowing, in the streets scraps of paper, birds’ feathers and onion peels were flying about. The dust scratched against the window panes, a huge rain cloud moved from the fields to the town. Suddenly, into our room came Father Feodor, rubbing his dust-covered eyes, shaggy, angry, cursing the thief who had stolen his handbag and umbrella, and the Governor General who refused to understand that a water supply is more useful than a credit bank. Leonid opened his eyes wide, and whispered to me: ‘What is this?’ An hour later, at the samovar, with his mouth quite agape, he listened to the archpriest of the absurd town of Arzamas denouncing the Gnostics for having fought against the democratic principles of the Church and for trying to make instruction in the knowledge of God inaccessible to the minds of the people. ‘These heretics consider themselves seekers after the highest knowledge, aristocrats of the spirit. But are not the people, in the persons of their wisest guides, the embodiment of the wisdom of God and of His spirit?’ ‘Docetists,’ ‘Ophites,’ ‘Pleroma,’ ‘Carpocrates,’ 35 – Father Feodor droned on, and Leonid, nudging me with his elbow, whispered: ‘There is the Arzamasian horror incarnate!’ But soon he was waving his hand in front of Father Feodor’s face as he proved to him the impotence of thought; and the priest, shaking his beard, retorted: ‘It is not thought that is impotent, but unbelief.’ ‘But that is the essence of thought. . . .’ You are sophisticated, Mr. Author. . . .’ The rain lashed the window panes, the old man and the young one
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rummaged among ancient wisdom, and from the wall Leo Tolstoy, with the little stick in his hand – the great pilgrim of this world – gazed down on them. Having overthrown everything we could in the time, we went to our rooms long after midnight. I was already in bed, with a book, when there came a knock at my door and Leonid appeared, dishevelled, agitated, his shirt collar undone, he sat down on my bed and began rapturously: ‘What a parson! How he found me out, eh?’ And suddenly tears gleamed in his eyes. ‘Lucky fellow you, Alexey, the devil take you. You always have wonderfully interesting people round you, and I – am lonely . . . or I have hanging on to me. . . .’ He waved his hand. I began telling him of the life of Father Feodor, how he had been seeking for water; of the book he had written, ‘The History of the Old Testament,’ the MS. of which had been taken away from him by order of the Synod; of his book ‘Love the Law of Life,’ also forbidden by the Ecclesiastical censorship. In that book Father Feodor proved by quotations from Pushkin and from other poets that the feeling of love, as between one man and another, was the basis of life and of the progress of the world, that it was as powerful as the law of universal gravitation, and resembled it in every respect. ‘Yes,’ said Leonid musingly, ‘there are things I must learn; otherwise I feel ashamed before the parson. . . .’ Another knock at the door. Enter Father Feodor, folding his cassock round him, barefooted, sad. ‘You are not asleep? So, well . . . Here I am! I heard talking, I thought I’d come and apologise! I rather shouted, young people, but don’t take offence. . . . I lay down, thought of you. You are nice people. I decided that I had grown warm for no reason. . . . Now, here I am, forgive me! I’m going to bed . . .’ Both sat down on the bed, and again began an endless conversation. Leonid, elated, laughed again and again. ‘What a country this Russia of ours is! “Look here, we haven’t yet solved the problem of the existence of God, and you are calling us to dinner!” It is not Byelinsky36 who says this, it is what all Russia says to Europe. For Europe, in the main, calls us to dine, to feed well, nothing but this!’ And Father Feodor, wrapping his thin, bony legs in his cassock, smilingly replied: ‘After all Europe is our godmother, don’t forget it! Without her Voltaires,37 without her men of science, we should not now be disputing about matters philosophical, but should be silently swallowing bleeny [pancakes] – and only that!’ At daybreak Father Feodor left us, and in a couple of hours he was
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gone – to set about work again on the Arzamasian water supply. And Leonid having slept till evening, said to me then: ‘Just think, in whose interest and for what purpose is it that in this rotten little town a parson should live who is energetic, interesting and a wizard? And why indeed should the parson of this town be a wizard, eh? What nonsense? You know one can live only in Moscow. Come, leave this place. It is horrid here – rain, dirt . . .’ And immediately he began preparing to go home. At the railway station he said: ‘And yet this parson is an oddity. It is all a story!’ He complained more than once that he scarcely met any big, original people: ‘Now, you can find them; while only burrs that I drag along on my tail stick to me. Why is it?’ I mentioned people whose acquaintance would be useful to him – men of high culture or of original mind. I spoke to him of V. V. Rosanov38 and others. It seemed to me that an acquaintance with Rosanov would be extremely useful to Andreyev. He was surprised! ‘I can’t make you out!’ And he spoke of Rosanov’s conservatism, which he need not have done, since his essential self was profoundly indifferent to politics, only now and then displaying fits of external curiosity about them. His real attitude to political activities he expressed most sincerely in his story As it was – So it will be. I tried to prove to him that one can learn from the devil himself or a thief as well as from a saintly recluse, and that study does not mean submission. ‘That is not quite true,’ he replied, ‘all learning represents submission to facts. And Rosanov I don’t like. He reminds me of the dog in the Bible who returns to his vomit.’ 39 At times it seemed as if he avoided personal acquaintance with big people, because he was afraid of their influence on him. He would meet such a person once or twice. Sometimes he would praise him ardently; but his interest was short lived. So it was with Savva Morosov.40 After the first long conversation with him, Andreyev, carried away by the man’s subtle mind, wide knowledge and energy, called him Yermak Timofeyevitch [the conqueror of Siberia],41 and said that he would play a great political rôle: ‘He has the face of a Tartar; but, my dear fellow, he is an English lord!’ And Savva Morosov said of Andreyev: ‘He only appears self-assured; but he does not feel confidence in himself and seeks to obtain it from his mind. But his mind wavers. He knows that and does not trust it . . .’
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I write as my memory prompts me, with no care for sequence or for chronology. In the Moscow Art Theatre, when it was still in Karetny Row, Leonid introduced me to his fiancée, a slim, fragile girl with lovely clear eyes. Modest, reserved, she appeared to me unoriginal; but I soon became convinced that she was a person of an understanding heart. She realised splendidly the need of a maternal, watchful attitude to Andreyev, at once and deeply she comprehended the significance of his talent and the tormenting fluctuations of his mood. She was one of those rare women who, capable of being passionate mistresses, are yet able to love with the love of a mother. This double love armed her with a subtle knowledge, so that she had a marvellous understanding of the genuine complainings of his soul as well as of the highsounding words of a capricious passing mood. As is known, a Russian ‘For a word that is witty shows his father and mother no pity,’ Leonid, too, was very much carried away by words that were ‘witty,’ and at times composed maxims in very dubious taste. ‘A year after marriage a wife is like a well-worn boot: one does not feel it,’ he said once in the presence of Alexandra Mikhailovna (his wife). She was capable of taking no notice of such phrase-making, and at times even found these pranks of the tongue witty, and laughed caressingly. But, possessing in a high degree sense of self-respect, she could – if need be – show herself very obstinate, even immovable. There was subtly developed in her a taste for the music of words, for forms of speech. She was small, lithe, elegant and at times somewhat amusingly, childishly grave – I nicknamed her ‘Lady Shura’42 – the name stuck to her. Leonid valued her, and she lived in constant concern for him, in a continuous tension of all her powers, her personality was completely sacrificed to her husband’s interests. At the Andreyevs’ house in Moscow authors often met together, it was very crowded and cosy. ‘Lady Shura’s’ lovely eyes, smiling caressingly, restrained to a certain extent the ‘breadth’ of Russian natures. Chaliapin43 often put in an appearance, fascinating everyone with his stories. When ‘Modernism’ was in full flower an attempt was made at the Andreyev gatherings to understand it. But on the whole it was condemned, which was much the simplest way. There was no time to think seriously of literature; war and politics were of first importance. Blok,44 Byely,45 Bryussov,46 appeared ‘isolated provincials’; in
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the most favourable opinion – queer fellows, in the least favourable – something like traitors to ‘the great traditions of the Russian commonwealth.’ I also thought and felt like that. Was it the time for a ‘Symphony’ when the whole of Russia was gloomily making ready to dance the trepak?47 Events were moving towards a catastrophe, the symptoms of its approach were becoming ever more and more ominous. The Social Revolutionaries were throwing bombs, and each explosion shook the whole country, calling forth an intense expectation of a fundamental overthrow of social life. It was in Andreyev’s flat that the sittings of the Central Committee of the Social Democrats – the Bolsheviks – took place; and once the whole committee, together with the host, was arrested and carried off to prison. Having spent a month in prison Andreyev came out as though from the pool of Siloam48 – hearty and cheerful. ‘It does one good to be tied down,’ he said, ‘it makes you want to fly out in all directions!’ And he laughed at me. ‘Well, now, pessimist. Is not Russia coming to life? And you rhymed: “autocracy – gone rusty.”’ He published then his stories The Marseillaise, The Alarm, The Story which will never be finished. But already in October, 1905, he read to me the MS. of his story As it was. ‘Is it not premature?’ I asked. ‘The good is always premature . . .’ he answered. Soon he went off to Finland and was right in doing so: the senseless brutality of the December events would have crushed him.49 In Finland he was active politically; he spoke at meetings, published in Helsingfors papers bitter attacks on the policy of the Monarchists. But his mood was depressed, his view on the future hopeless. In Petersburg I received a letter from him. Among other things he wrote: ‘Each horse has its inborn peculiarities, nations too. There are horses for which all roads lead to the public house: our country is now turned towards a goal most beloved by it and for a long time it will go on in a drunken frenzy.’ § A few months later we met in Switzerland, at Montreux. Leonid jeered at the life of the Swiss: ‘We people of large plains can’t live in these cockroach holes,’ he would say. It appeared to me he had become somewhat faded, dimmed; a glassy expression of fatigue and of disquieting sadness showed in his eyes. Of Switzerland he spoke as flatly, as superficially, and in
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the same words as the freedom-loving inhabitants of Tchukhloma, Konotop and Tetiushi50 have been wont to speak for ever so long. One of these penned the Russian notion of freedom profoundly and pointedly in these words: ‘In our town we live as in a public bath, without restrictions, without ceremony.’ About Russia Leonid spoke reluctantly and tediously, and once sitting by the fireplace he recalled a few lines of Yakoubovitch’s melancholy poem ‘To My Country.’ 51 ‘Why should we love thee, Art thou our mother?’
‘I have written a play. Shall we read it?’ And in the evening he read Savva. While he was still in Russia, hearing about young Ufimtsev52 and his comrades who attempted to blow up the icon of the Virgin of Kursk, Andreyev decided to work this episode into a story, and at that very time he at once created the plan of the story and definitely outlined the characters. He was particularly fascinated by Ufimtsev, a poet in the domain of scientific technique, a youth who possessed the undoubted talent of an inventor. Exiled to the Semiretchensk province, I believe, to Karkaraly, living there under the strict surveillance of men ignorant and superstitious, who denied him the necessary tools and materials, he invented an original motor of internal combustion, perfected the cyclostyle, worked on a new system of dredging, invented a ‘permanent cartridge’ for sporting guns. I showed the designs of his motor to engineers at Moscow, and they told me that Ufimtsev’s invention was very practical, ingenious and clever. I don’t know the fate of all these inventions – having settled abroad I lost sight of Ufimtsev. But I knew that young man was one of those superb dreamers who, carried away by their belief and love, march in different ways to one and the same goal – the arousing in their people of that sensible energy that creates goodness and beauty. I was sad and vexed to see that Andreyev had distorted such a character, as yet untouched in Russian literature. It seemed to me that in the story, in the way it had been conceived, that character should have found the appreciation and the tone worthy of it. We had a little argument, and perhaps I spoke rather sharply of the necessity of representing exactly certain – most rare and positive – phenomena of actuality. Like all people of a definitely circumscribed ‘ego,’ with a keen perception of their ‘selfness,’ Leonid did not like being contradicted. He took offence, and we parted coldly.
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§ I believe it was in 1907 or 1908 that Andreyev arrived at Capri, after burying ‘Lady Shura’ in Berlin – she died of puerperal fever. The death of this sensible and good friend reacted very painfully on Leonid’s soul. All his thoughts and words centred in recollections of the senselessness of it. ‘You understand,’ he said with strangely dilated pupils, ‘she was still alive as she lay in bed, but already her breath smelt of a corpse. It was a very ironical smell.’ Dressed in a black velvet jacket he even outwardly looked crushed, downtrodden. His thoughts and words were weirdly concentrated on the problem of death. It so happened that he settled down in the villa Caraciollo, which belonged to the widow of an artist, a descendant of the marquis Caraciollo, that supporter of the French party who had been executed by Ferdinand Bomba.53 In the dark rooms of that villa it was damp and gloomy; on the walls hung unfinished grimy pictures that looked like mould-stains. In one of the rooms was a large smoke-stained fireplace, and in front of the windows, shading them, grew a dense cluster of shrubs. From the walls of the house ivy crept in at the window panes. This room Leonid turned into his dining-room. One evening when I arrived I found him in a chair, in front of the fireplace. Dressed in black and bathed in the purple glow of the smouldering coal, he held on his knees his little son Vadim, and in a low tone, with sobs, was telling him something. I entered softly, it seemed to me that the boy was falling asleep. I sat down on a chair by the door and I heard Leonid telling his son how Death stalked over the earth and mowed down little children. ‘I’m frightened,’ Vadim said. ‘Don’t you want to hear?’ ‘I’m frightened,’ the boy repeated. ‘Well, go to bed. . . .’ But the child pressed close to his father’s knees and began crying. For long we could not manage to comfort him. Leonid was in a hysterical mood, his words irritated the boy who stamped his feet and cried: ‘I don’t want to sleep! I don’t want to die!’ When his granny took him away, I observed that it was hardly necessary to frighten the boy with stories like that, stories about death, the invincible giant. ‘But if I can’t speak of anything else?’ he said sharply. ‘At last I understand how indifferent “beautiful Nature” is, and I want one thing only – to tear my portrait out of this frivolously pretty frame.’
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It was difficult, almost impossible, to speak to him. He was nervous, irritable, and it seemed as though he deliberately chafed his wound. ‘The idea of suicide haunts me; it seems to me that my shadow crawls after me, whispering “Begone, die!”’ This aroused considerable anxiety among his friends; but now and then he would drop hints that he was consciously and deliberately creating this anxiety. It was as though he wished to hear once more what they had to say in justification and defence of life. But the cheerful scenery of the island, the caressing beauty of the sea, and the genial attitude of the Caprians to the Russians soon drove away Leonid’s gloomy mood. In a couple of months he was seized, as by a whirlwind, with a passionate desire for work. I remember one moonlit night, sitting on the pebbles by the sea, he said, with a shake of his head: ‘Basta! To-morrow morning I’ll begin to work!’ ‘The best thing you could do.’ ‘Just so!’ And – a thing which he had not done for a long time – he began to talk cheerfully of his plans for new books. ‘First of all, old fellow, I will write a story with the despotism of friendship for its subject. I’ll pay off my score to you, you rascal!’ And instantly he began – easily and quickly – to weave a humorous story of two friends, one a dreamer, the other a mathematician. The one spends his whole life in the clouds, while the other is carefully calculating the expense of these imaginary travels, thereby decidedly killing once and for all the dreams of his friend. But immediately afterwards he said: ‘I want to write about Judas.54 When I was in Russia I read a poem about him, I don’t remember by whom55 – it was very clever. . . . What do you think of Judas?’ At that time I had a translation of Julius Wexel’s tetralogy Judas and Christ,56 and a translation of Thor Goedberg’s story,57 also Golovanov’s poem.58 I suggested that he should read them. ‘I don’t want to, I have an idea of my own, and they might muddle me. You had better tell me what they say. No, you had better not, don’t tell me.’ As was his way – in moments of creative excitement – he jumped to his feet – he had to move about. ‘Let’s be off!’ On the way he gave me an account of his Judas, and in three days brought me the manuscript. With that story began one of the most productive periods of his creative activity. At Capri he thought out his play Black Masks, wrote the caustic satire Love of One’s Neighbour, the story Darkness, created the plan of Sashka Zheguliov, sketched
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out his play Ocean, and wrote several chapters – two or three – of his long tale My Memoirs – all these in the course of six months. These serious works and plans did not prevent Leonid from taking a lively part in composing the play Alas, a piece in the classical ‘people’s theatre’ style, written partly in verse, partly in prose, with songs, dances, and all kinds of tortures perpetrated on the unfortunate Russian peasants. The plot of the play is clearly enough indicated by the list of dramatis personæ: Oppressum – a merciless landlord. Furiosa – his wife. Philisterius – brother to Oppressum, a prose litterateur. Decadentius – unsuccessful son to Oppressum. Endurance – a peasant, very unhappy, but not always drunk. Griefella – Endurance’s beloved wife, full of meekness and common sense, although pregnant. Sufferalla – Endurance’s beautiful daughter. Smackface – a most horrible police-constable (Bathes in full uniform and all his medals). Mangle – an indubitable village policeman, but, in fact, the noble Count Edmond de Ptié. Motrya Bell – secretly married to the Count, the Spanish Marchioness Donna Carmen Intolerablia Detestablia, in fact, disguised as a gitana.59 The Shadow of the Russian literary critic Skabitchevsky. The Shadow of Koblitz-Yusov. Athanasius Schapov, in a perfectly sober state. ‘We told you so’ – a group of persons without words or actions. The play takes place in ‘Sky-blue Clay,’ Oppressum’s estate, twice mortgaged to the Noblemen’s Bank and once mortgaged somewhere else. A whole act of this play had been worked out fully saturated with delightful absurdities. Leonid wrote the prose dialogue, which was terribly funny, so droll indeed that he himself laughed like a child at his own inventions. Never before or since have I seen him in a frame of mind so active, so unusually industrious. He renounced, as it were, for ever, his dislike for the process of writing, and he could sit at his table all day and all night, half-dressed, unkempt, cheerful. His imagination blazed wonderfully brightly and productively – nearly every day he told me the plan of a new tale or story. ‘Now at last I have taken myself in hand,’ he would say triumphantly.
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And he inquired about the famous pirate Barbarossa,60 about Tommaso Aniello,61 about smugglers, carbonari, about the life of Calabrian shepherds. ‘What a multitude of subjects, what a diversity of life!’ He was in raptures. ‘Yes, these people have accumulated something for posterity. But with us: I picked up The Lives of the Russian Tzars, and read that they ate. I tried to read The History of the Russian People – they suffered. I gave it up. The whole thing hurts and bores.’ But, while the plans he related were full of colour and substance, he composed carelessly. In the first version of his Judas several mistakes occurred which indicated that he had not even taken the trouble to read the New Testament. When he was told that ‘Duke Spadaro’ sounds as absurd to an Italian as ‘Prince Bashmatchnikov’ would to a Russian, and that St. Bernard dogs did not exist in the twelfth century he was annoyed. ‘These are trifles!’ he objected. ‘One can’t say: “They drink wine like camels” without adding “drink water.”’ ‘Rubbish!’ he said. He behaved to his talent as an indifferent rider treats a superb horse – he galloped it mercilessly, but did not love it, did not tend it. His hand had not the time to draw the intricate designs of his riotous imagination; he did not trouble to develop the power and dexterity of his hand. At moments he himself realised that this was a great hindrance to the normal growth of his talent. ‘My language is ossifying. I feel it is getting more difficult for me to find the necessary words. . . .’ He tried to hypnotise the reader by the monotony of his phrasing, but his phrasing was losing the convincing quality of beauty. Wrapping his thought in the cotton-wool of monotonously obscure words he only succeeded in revealing it too much, and his stories read like popular dialogues on philosophical subjects. Now and then, aware of this, he was vexed: ‘It is all cobweb, it sticks, but is not solid! Yes, I must read Flaubert.62 I believe you are right. Indeed he is a descendant of those mason geniuses who built the indestructible temples of the Middle Ages.’ § At Capri Leonid was told an episode of which he made use for his story Darkness. The hero of that episode was an old acquaintance of mine, a Revolutionary. In reality, the affair was very simple: a girl at a brothel, having guessed intuitively that her visitor was a revolution-
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ary, hunted by detectives and driven to take shelter there from the pursuit of the political police, treated him with a mother’s tender care and with the tact of a woman who still possesses the sense of respect for a hero. But the hero, a bookish man of clumsy soul, responded to the impulse of the woman’s heart with a sermon on morality, so reminding her of what she wanted to forget at the moment. Hurt by this she smacked his face – a smack perfectly deserved, in my opinion. Then, having realised the whole crudity of his mistake, he apologised to her and kissed her hand – I think he might have omitted the kissing. That is all. Sometimes, unfortunately very seldom, reality happens to be more truthful and more pleasant than even a very talented story that is based on it. So it was in this case. But Leonid distorted the meaning as well as the form of the event out of recognition. In the actual brothel there was neither the agonising and foul mockery at man, nor even one of those weird details with which Andreyev has enriched the story so abundantly. This distortion affected me very painfully: Leonid, as it were, revoked and annulled the feast which I had been awaiting long and hungrily. I know people too well not to appreciate – very highly – the least manifestation of a good, honest feeling. Certainly I could not help pointing out to Andreyev the meaning of his action, which to me was equivalent to murder for a mere whim, for a wicked whim. He reminded me of the freedom of the artist, but this did not change my attitude – even now I am not convinced that such rare manifestations of ideally human feelings should be arbitrarily distorted by the artist, for the gratification of a dogma he loves. We talked long on this theme. But although our conversation bore a perfectly peaceful friendly character, still from that moment something snapped between me and him. The end of that conversation is very memorable to me: ‘What are you trying for?’ I asked Leonid. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders and closing his eyes. ‘But you certainly have some desire – either it is always there before all others, or it arises more often than all others?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he repeated. ‘I believe there is nothing of the sort. Sometimes, though, I feel that I need fame – much fame, as much as the whole world could give. Then I concentrate it in myself, condense it to its ultimate capacity, and when it has acquired the force of explosive matter, I explode, illuminating the world with a new light. And after that people will begin to live with a new mind. You see, what we need is a new mind, not this lying old swindler! He takes from me all the best of my flesh, all my feelings and, promising to return them
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with interest, returns nothing, saying: “To-morrow!” “Evolution.” Then when my patience is exhausted and the thirst for life stifles me – “Revolution!” he says. And fondly goes on deceiving till I die, having received nothing.’ ‘You must have belief, not reason.’ ‘Perhaps. But if so, then first of all belief in myself.’ He paced the room in agitation, then sitting down on the table waving his hand in front of my face, he went on: ‘I know that God and the Devil are mere symbols. But it seems to me that the whole life of man, all the meaning of it, consists in the infinite and boundless expansion of these symbols, fed with the flesh and blood of the world. And having invested these two opposites with all its powers – to the very last – mankind will disappear, but those two will become carnal realities and will go on living in the emptiness of the universe, face to face with one another, invincible, immortal. There is no sense in this. But there is none anywhere, in anything.’ He grew pale, his lips trembled, stark terror shone in his eyes. Then he added in a low voice, feebly: ‘Let us imagine the Devil as woman, God as man, and let them beget a new being, certainly just as dual as you and I. Just as dual. . . .’ § He left Capri unexpectedly, all of a sudden. Only the day before his departure he had said to me that he would sit down at his table and work for three months. But on the evening of the very same day he said to me: ‘You know, I have decided to leave this place. After all, one must live in Russia. Here one is overcome by a kind of operatic levity – one wants to write vaudevilles – vaudevilles with songs. Life simply is not real here, it is an opera: there is more singing here than thinking. Romeo, Othello and the rest of their kind – Shakespeare made them – the Italians are incapable of tragedy. Here neither Byron63 nor Poe64 could have been born.’ ‘And what about Leopardi?’ 65 ‘Well, Leopardi, who knows about him? He is one of those who are talked about, but not read.’ As he left he said to me: ‘This, Alexeyushko, is also an Arzamas – a gay little Arzamas, no more than that.’ ‘Don’t you remember how it fascinated you?’ ‘Before marriage we are all fascinated. . . . You will be leaving here soon? Do go away, it is time you went. You are beginning to look like a monk. . . .’
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§ At the time I was living in Italy my mind was very uneasy on account of Russia. As early as 1911 people round me spoke confidently of the inevitability of an all-European war and of the certainty that that war would be fatal to Russians. My uneasy mood was particularly heightened by facts which indicated beyond all doubt that in the spiritual world of the great Russian people there lurked something morbidly obscure. Reading the volume on agrarian risings in the Central Russian provinces, published by the Free Economic Society, I saw that those risings bore a particularly brutal and senseless character. An investigation of the crimes of the population of the Moscow Circuit, based on an examination of the reports of the Moscow High Court, astounded me by its revelation of the tendency of the criminal will, expressed in the great number of cases in crimes against the person, violation of women, and rape of minors. Even before then I had been unpleasantly struck by the fact that, though in the Second State Duma there had been a very considerable number of priests, men of the purest Russian blood, these men had not produced a single talent, a single statesman. And there was a great deal more that confirmed my anxiously sceptical attitude towards the fate of the Great-Russian race. On my arrival in Finland I met Andreyev, and talking to him, told him my cheerless thoughts. Hotly and even as though wounded by them, he argued with me. But his arguments seemed to me unconvincing: he had no facts. But suddenly, lowering his voice, with his eyes screwed up, as though straining to look into the future, he began to talk of the Russian people in words unusual with him – abruptly, incoherently, and with great and undoubtedly sincere conviction. I am unable, and if I could I should not like, to reproduce his words. Their force consisted not in their logic nor in their beauty, but in a feeling of tormented sympathy for the people, a feeling of which, in such force and in such expression, I had not thought Leonid capable. He shook all over with nervous tension, and crying, almost sobbing like a woman, he shouted: ‘You call Russian literature provincial because the majority of the great Russian writers are men of the Moscow province? Good, let us suppose so. But yet it is a world literature, it is the most serious and powerful creative activity of Europe. The genius of Dostoevsky66 alone is enough in itself to justify even the senseless, even the thoroughly criminal, life of the millions of the people. And suppose the people are spiritually sick – let us heal them and remember as has been said: “A pearl only grows in a diseased shell.”’
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‘And the beauty of the beast,’ I asked. ‘And the beauty of human endurance, of meekness and love?’ he replied. And he went on to speak of the people, of literature more and more ardently and passionately. It was the first time he had spoken so passionately, so lyrically. Previously I had heard such strong expressions of his love applied only to talents congenial to his spirit – to Edgar Poe most frequently of all. Soon after our conversation this filthy war broke out. Our attitude, different towards it, divided me still further from Andreyev. We scarcely met; it was only in 1916, when he brought me his books that we both once more deeply felt how much we had gone through and what old comrades we were. But, to avoid arguing, we could speak only of the past; the present erected between us a high wall of irreconcilable differences. I shall not be violating the truth if I say that to me that wall was transparent and permeable – I saw behind it a big, original man, who for ten years had been very near to me, my sole friend in literary circles. Differences of outlook ought not to affect sympathies, and I never gave theories and opinions a decisive role in my relations to people. Leonid Nicolaievitch Andreyev felt otherwise. But I don’t blame him for this; for he was what he wished to be and could not help being – a man of rare originality, rare talent and manly enough in his seekings after truth. THE END
Notes First published in the Adelphi, February to April 1924, and subsequently in the Dial, New York, June to August 1924. Published in book form by Crosby Gaige, New York, in 1928, in an edition limited to 400 copies, and subsequently in 1931 by Heinemann, London, in an edition limited to 750 copies, from which this version is taken. The inside fly-leaf page of the Heinemann edition reads as follows: ‘This translation, which is authorised by Maxim Gorki, was made by Katherine Mansfield and S. S. Kotelianski during the last stay of the former in England, August– September, 1922.’ See BJK, p. 90, for details of the variants between these versions. The annotations below are indebted to Frederick H. White’s notes to Memoirs and Madness: Leonid Andreev through the Prism of the Literary Portrait (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006).
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1. Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev (1871–1919) was a playwright and fiction writer whose work was popular. He was encouraged by Gorky to give up the law and focus on his career as a writer, which he did. He, Chekhov and Gorky were the three most popular prose writers in early twentieth-century Russia but his work, unlike theirs, fell into obscurity. 2. Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, known as Maxim Gorky (1868–1936), is an active presence in the memoir. He found immense literary fame in the 1890s as a tramp who became a realist writer; he was a political activist who went into exile on Capri from 1906 to 1913, and was an outspoken opponent of the Bolshevik regime. He went into exile again, mostly in Sorrento in Italy, from 1921 to 1928. He then returned to Russia and became compliant with Stalin’s regime in the 1930s. 3. Gogol published ‘The Overcoat’ in 1842. 4. A footnote at this point in the text reads: ‘It is quite likely that at that time my thoughts were different from those I describe now, but it is not of interest to recall my old thoughts.’ 5. Nikolai Gerasimovich Pomyalovsky (1835–63) was a realist fiction writer. 6. An ambiguity, a double meaning. 7. An inexact quotation from Pushkin’s ‘A Feast in the Time of Plague’ (1830). 8. Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov (1795–1829), a diplomat and the author of a verse comedy, Woe from Wit, was the Russian ambassador to Persia, where he and the embassy staff were butchered by a mob. 9. H. S. Hall and R. S. Knight published a series of mathematical textbooks for schools at the end of the nineteenth century. 10. The Captain’s Daughter is a historical novel by Pushkin, first published in 1836. 11. Alexei Ostroumov’s Sinesius, the Bishop of Ptolemais (1879) was based on Synesius (c. 373 to c. 414), a Greek bishop of Ptolemais in Libya. 12. Leo Tolstoy’s A Confession, written in 1879–80. 13. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) was a German poet, philosopher and playwright, and a friend of Goethe. 14. Ecclesiastes, 9: 4: ‘For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.’ 15. Alexander Ivanovich Apollov (1864–93) was a priest who eventually rejected the Orthodox Church. He sent a copy of his Confession to Tolstoy. 16. An operetta by Charles Lecocq (1832–1918), Les Cent Vierges (1872), includes a Green Island, which may account for the Russian title. 17. See n. 13. 18. Skitalets was the pseudonym of the poet Stepan Gavrilovich Petrov (1869–1941). The name means ‘wanderer’ in Russian. 19. The Scottish poet, Robert Burns (1759–96).
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20. A quotation from Pushkin’s ‘Conversations of a Bookseller with a Poet’ (1825). 21. The History of Napoleon’s Captivity on the Island of St Helena, compiled by Count Tristan Montholon and translated by Nikolai Polevoi (1846). 22. Emile Zola (1840–1902), the French novelist, died of inhaling carbon monoxide fumes from a smokeless coal fire in his bedroom. 23. Henri René Guy de Maupassant (1850–93) is particularly famous for his short stories. 24. The Dutch painter, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–69), often appears in self-portraits in a floppy velvet beret. 25. The Strelka in St Petersburg is at the tip of Vasilievsky Island, at the confluence of two rivers. 26. Solianka is a Russian soup made with wild mushrooms and fish or meat. 27. Konstantin Dimitriyevich Balmont (1867–1942) was a symbolist poet. 28. Scorpion was a Russian publishing house (1899–1915). It was important in the development of Russian Symbolism. 29. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was an influential German philosopher. 30. The Decameron (c. 1350–3) is an allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75); it is a collection of a hundred tales, many of them erotic, told by ten young people. Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet who wrote in the vernacular. 31. Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev (1878–1927) was a Ukrainian playwright and novelist, whose naturalism shocked many of his contemporaries. 32. Sergei Gennadiyevich Nechayev (1847–82) was a revolutionary terrorist who wrote Catechism of a Revolutionary (1869). He was part of the militant anti-autocracy movement and inspired Dostoevsky’s Verkhovensky in The Devils. 33. Ivan IV Vasilyevich (1530–84) is known in English as Ivan the Terrible. He was the first ruler to be crowned as Tsar of All the Russias in 1547. He was intelligent but suffered from paranoia. 34. A footnote at this point in the text reads: ‘Gorki was forbidden to reside in any of the large towns of Russia, and as punishment for his political views was exiled by the authorities to the remote provincial town of Arzamas.’ 35. Docetists, Ophites and Pleroma are Gnostic sects; Carpocrates of Alexandria was the founder of a Gnostic sect in the first half of the second century. 36. Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky (1811–48) was an influential literary critic. Turgenev records an occasion when he and Belinsky were called to dinner by Belinsky’s wife, and Belinsky objected to being interrupted before he and his guest had settled the question of whether God exists. 37. Voltaire was the pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), the French philosopher, historian, writer and dramatist.
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38. Vasili Vasilievich Rozanov (1856–1919) was a controversial writer and philosopher who tried to reconcile Christian teaching with active sexuality. 39. Proverbs, 26: 11: ‘As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.’ 40. Savva Timofeyevich Morozov (1862–1905) was a wealthy industrialist and patron of the arts. 41. Yermak Timofeyevich (c. 1532–84) was a Cossack who led the Russian conquest of Siberia in 1582, overcoming the Tatars, in the reign of Ivan the Terrible. 42. A footnote at this point in the text reads: ‘“Shura” is the diminutive pet form of “Alexandra”.’ 43. Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin (1873–1938) was an internationally renowned opera singer with a deep bass voice. 44. Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (1880–1921) was a lyrical poet, whose wife, Lyuba, involved him in a complicated love–hate triangle with Andrei Bely. 45. Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (1880–1934), whose pen name was Andrei Bely, was a novelist, poet and literary critic best known for his symbolist novel, Petersburg (1916). 46. Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873–1924) was a poet who was part of the Russian Symbolist Movement, and a prose writer, critic and dramatist. 47. Andrei Bely wrote cycles of poetry called ‘Symphonies’. The trepak is a Cossack dance. 48. John, 9: 6–7: ‘When he [Christ] had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.’ 49. ‘Bloody Sunday’, 9 January 1905, when factory workers marched peacefully to the Winter Palace to petition the Tsar and were fired on by troops, triggered a series of uprisings, including mutiny on the battleship Potemkin, which worsened as the year went on. 50. Remote areas of Russia. 51. Peter Filippovich Iakubovich (1860–1911) was a revolutionary poet who served a prison sentence for his political activities. 52. Anitoli Georgievich Ufimtsev (1880–1936) was a revolutionary. 53. Niccolo Caraciollo was an artist from Capri. Ferdinand II, King of Sicily, was known as ‘the Bomb’ because of his attack on Messina in 1849, during a rebellion against the monarchy. 54. Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Christ. 55. A footnote at this point in the text reads: ‘By A. Roslaviev’ (1883–1920) whose poem “Judas” was published in 1907.’ 56. A mistake; Gorky is thinking of a dramatic poem in four parts, Jesus (1906), by the German writer Karl Weiser (1848–1913).
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57. Thor Hoedberg (1862–1931), a Swedish author, published Judas in 1886 and a Russian translation of it was published in 1908. 58. Nikolai Nikolaevich Golovanov (1867–1938) published his verse play Iscariot in 1905. 59. A Romany. 60. Barbarossa (1473–1518) was a Mediterranean corsair. 61. Tommaso Aniello (1620–47) was a Neapolitan revolutionary. 62. Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) was an influential French novelist, renowned for his attention to the aesthetic qualities of his prose. His best-known novel is Madame Bovary (1857). 63. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), a British poet, was a leading figure in the Romantic movement. 64. Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) was an American poet and short-story writer. 65. Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837) was an Italian poet and philosopher. 66. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–81) was a distiguished novelist, best known for Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).
The Dream (A hitherto unpublished poem in prose by Leo Tolstoy.) He stood, white and swaying, on a strange high place, above a crowd huge as the sea. And hypnotising the crowd, he spoke. He spoke to the people of all that was in his soul, of which he himself had not been aware before. Strange were his ideas, dream-like, but garbed in such inspiring words, and the sound of his voice was so radiant that the crowd, at one with him, yielded to his spell. And he felt in himself this power over people, he felt that this power knew no bounds. And the high place on which he stood, swaying, lifted him ever higher and higher. Then suddenly, during his inspired speech, he felt someone’s glance upon him. It was strange, free, unlike the glances of the spell-bound people. Among the crowd, but not of it, was a woman, and in her, in this woman, was all that is desirable. And towards her an ‘irresistible power drew him sweetly and painfully.’ She glanced at him and turned her face away, and in her glance was ‘gentle irony and hardly perceptible pity.’ Of what he spoke she understood nothing; only she pitied him. Her glance shamed him. He wanted to speak on, but he no longer had the words. All his being was drawn to her, and he could not remove her glance from him. But she was full of happiness; she needed no one. Thus he felt that without her life was impossible. But darkness shut her away from him. And he burst into tears. He cried for the past irrevocable happiness, and for
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the impossibility of future happiness – happiness for others. But in his tears happiness was present. NOTE. . . ‘The Dream,’ the only prose poem written by Leo Tolstoy, belongs to the early part of his life. It is possible to read various meanings into it. Perhaps it is an expression of his dissatisfaction with mortal fame, his desire to follow a new way of being. Perhaps it is a real dream, dreamt by him, or by someone near to him. This last suggestion gains in probability from the fact that in his diary Tolstoy refers to his poem as ‘Nicolenka’s Dream.’ Nicolenka was his eldest brother whom he loved intensely and who exerted a great influence over him. Nicolay N. Tolstoy was indeed a very highly gifted man of rare imaginative sympathies. He it was who in their childhood days invented the mysterious game of the ‘Ant Brothers’ as described in Tolstoy’s Reminiscences. Nicolenka told the children how somewhere in a wood there was hidden a little green stick that had the secret of happiness inscribed on it. When the stick was found everybody would be happy and good for ever; they would become ‘Ant Brothers.’ ‘Probably he meant by this name the Moravian Brethren1 of whom he had heard or read, but in our childish language they were Mooraveyny (Ant) Brothers. I remember the word Mooraveyny pleased us especially as it reminded us of an ant hill.’ When Tolstoy died he directed that his body be buried on the edge of the little wood where the stick lay hidden. Turgenev in speaking of Nicolay Tolstoy said he lacked only the defects necessary to be a writer; he had no vanity and no self-interest. But ‘he had an extraordinary imagination and a truthful, highly moral conception of life.’ It may well have been that ‘The Dream’ was a real dream of his, or a story related by him and refashioned by his brother. That Leo Tolstoy was attracted by it and pleased with its execution we learn from the fact that he wished to send it to the Countess A. A. Tolstoy,2 a fine critic and a deep admirer of his talent. Also, in the two records in his diary he expresses definitely his satisfaction. In the second we read ‘Nobody agrees but I know that it is good.’ It would be interesting therefore to know why he did not send it to the press under his name. Copied in a strange handwriting ‘The Dream’ was sent to the editor of a newspaper as coming from a friend of Tolstoy’s. It was described as her first attempt. This friend, Natalya Petrovna Sreznevsky, lived at Yasnaya Polyana3 with Tolstoy’s aunt. So the editor’s reply was sure to reach the real author’s hands. But ‘plain, good-natured old Natalya Petrovna’ as Tolstoy describes her, was not destined to be known as a poet. The editor, Aksakov, returned ‘The Dream,’ but strongly recommended its author not to give up literature, and promised to consider the publication of future work.
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This attempt at publication was not the last, however. A few years later, when Tolstoy was working on ‘War and Peace’ he decided to include it in his novel. A copy, in the handwriting of his early period, with corrections made in his later handwriting, was inserted in the MSS. The chief correction was that where he had used the form of the first person ‘I stood in my dream,’ he now used the third. He assigned ‘The Dream’ to Nicholas Rostov in a chapter the whole of which remained unpublished. Yet again Tolstoy changed his mind and gave ‘The Dream’ to Pierre, instead, at a later stage in the novel. But for the third time ‘The Dream’ was laid aside and this time it was to remain out of sight for over fifty years. Such is its small eventful history.
Notes Text: MS in HRHRC, Katherine Mansfield Collection, Box 1.1, handwritten by S. S. Koteliansky, with annotations by KM, accompanied by typescript with slight variations and further annotations by KM. Across the first page of the typescript in KM’s handwriting is written: ‘Translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Katherine Mansfield’. 1. The Moravian Brethren were members of the Moravian Church, a Protestant denomination. Exiled members of the Church arrived in Saxony in 1722 from Moravia, to escape persecution. 2. Countess Alexandra Tolstoy (1857–1903) was Tolstoy’s cousin. Their correspondence has been published. 3. Yasnaya Polyana, meaning ‘Bright Glade’, was Leo Tolstoy’s country home 200 kilometres from Moscow. It became a destination for pilgrims in the late nineteenth century.
The Creative History of ‘The Devils’ (The Possessed)1 by F. Dostoevsky With a Foreword By N. I. Brodsky. ‘Never did any work cost me more labour,’ wrote Dostoevsky to N. N. Strakhov2 on 9/21 October, 1870,3 when nearing the end of The Devils. ‘For a very long time,’ he confessed to M. N. Katkov,4 in a letter written on 8/20 October, 1870, ‘I could not manage the opening of this novel. I re-wrote it several times. While writing this novel something happened to me which never has happened before: for weeks I stopped work on the opening and wrote from the end.’ In the same month he wrote to A. N. Maykov5: ‘I have saddled myself
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with a work almost beyond my strength. Having conceived a huge novel (with a tendency – a wild affair for me!) I thought at first that I would manage it easily. And well? I have composed almost ten versions.’ The novel was being written ‘drowsily.’ ‘I felt,’ he wrote to his niece S. A. Ivanov on Aug. 17., ‘there was a capital defect in the whole, but what precisely it was I could not make out’. . . . ‘And then a real inspiration seized me,’ he said in his letter to Strakhov, ‘and I suddenly fell in love with the work, grasped it with both hands – and began striking out what I had written.’ On August 17, after an epileptic fit, Dostoevsky wrote to his niece S. A. Ivanov: ‘I suddenly realised what was halting in my novel and where the mistake lay; at once, by itself as by inspiration, a new plan of the novel presented itself to me in complete harmony. Everything had to be radically altered; without hesitating for a moment I struck out all I had written (about fifteen folios in all), and started afresh from the first page! The work of a whole year gone! Oh, Sonechka! if you knew how hard it is to be a writer, I mean, to endure this lot!’ ‘In the “new plan” there appeared another character who claimed to be the real hero, so that the former hero (a curious character, but really not worthy of the name of hero) receded to the background. The new hero has fascinated me so much that I have settled down again to alter the novel. . . . Owing to these alterations I have lost an awful lot of time and have written awfully little,’ he said further in his letter to Strakhov on October 9th, 1870. From Dostoevsky’s letter of Dec. 8/20 1870 to M. N. Katkov we learn important details which explain the creative rift in the composition of The Devils.6 ‘One of the most important events in my story,’ he wrote, ‘will be the notorious Moscow murder of Ivanov by Nechayev. I hasten to explain: I know neither Nechayev,7 nor Ivanov, nor the circumstances of that murder, nor do I know them at all even now, except from what I have read in the newspapers. Even if I knew them, I would not think of copying them: I take only the accomplished fact. My fantasy may differ in the highest degree from the reality, and my Piotr Verkhovensky may not be in the least like Nechayev. But it seems to me that in my astonished mind there has been created the character, the type, that corresponds to that murder. He alone would not have tempted me, however. In my opinion, these wretched monsters are not worthy of literature. To my own surprise that man (Piotr Verkhovensky) turns out a comical character. And therefore, in spite of the fact that all this event occupies one of the first planes of the novel, it is only an accessory to and a setting for the actions of another, who indeed may be called the principal character. ‘That other character of the novel – Nicolay Stravrogin – is also gloomy, also a villain. But it seems to me he is tragic; although many
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people are sure, after reading, to exclaim: ‘What is this?!’ I settled down to write a poem on that character for this reason; I have long waited to present him. ‘In my opinion he is both a Russian and a typical character. I shall be sad, very sad, if I fail with him. Sadder still, if I hear the verdict that he is stilted. It is from my heart that I have taken him. Certainly he is a rare character; but he is a Russian (of a certain stratum of our society) . . . . Something tells me that I shall manage him. I don’t explain him now in detail, for I fear I may not say what I want. I’ll make only this observation: the whole of that character is written in scenes, in action, and not in arguments. Therefore there is hope that I shall succeed in describing him . . . . ‘But not all will be gloomy characters. There will be sunny ones, too. I am afraid that much in the novel is beyond my powers. ‘For the first time, for instance, I want to dwell on a certain group as yet little touched by literature. As the ideal of that group I take Tikhon Zadonsky.8 Mine, too, is a prelate living in retirement, in a monastery. It is with him that I confront my hero, and I bring them together for a time. I am fearful: I have never tried this before, yet of Tikhon’s world I have some little knowledge.’ These valuable details from Dostoevsky’s letters distinctly indicate the double plane of the creative conception of The Devils. But it would be rash to build on these admissions of the author. His imagination was so saturated with the images and situations, his creative visions poured forth in such a molten stream, his pattern flowed so capriciously, running into new patterns and re-crossing again, that he himself at times did not know which ‘plan’ would be the foundation of the novel, or whether it would be sustained to the end. What Dostoevsky wrote of his conceptions in October and December of 1870 must be understood to hold good only for that period. For ‘the gloomy villain,’ Stavrogin, of 1870, underwent a change in the following year while the novel was being published. Originally Stavrogin was entirely different from the man of the published version. Enigmatic, mysterious, in the final version, – he was simpler, more understandable in the original conception. Now he contained within himself all the traits lavished by the author on the other characters. Now one of the ‘Devils,’ indeed the principal one, originally he stood for their antithesis, a man of the ‘soil’ who was preparing to become a ‘new man,’ revealing the silhouette of ‘a Russian Candide.’ 9 Not a day passed but in Dostoevsky’s reflections and designs Stavrogin changed his lineaments and was placed in new correlations with the other figures. Nor did those others remain static; especially did Lisa Toushin and Shatov change. Certain characters
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were rejected; new ones were introduced; the schemas of the plot altered; the intrigue broke down capriciously more than once. The novel ‘with a tendency’ changed its currents and cross-currents: now it became a pamphlet on the theme of Turgenev’s ‘Fathers & Children,’ 10 now a chronicle of a publicist castigating the nihilists of the ‘forties and sixties;’ now it was a pathetic narrative of the love and sufferings of a young girl; now a poem on Granovsky’s unsuccessful love; now there was one ‘hero;’ now several characters, on parallel planes, played the leading roles. When and where was the author going to stop; whither would his irresistibly whirling imagination land him? He himself did not know. Yet, in mysterious cohesions, the divergent lines would meet and join, only to disappear again in the distance, where in fresh combinations they would flame into new life. Was the author baffled by what seemed to him ‘an idea of a somewhat novel kind?’ Was he prevented from drawing a single pattern for The Devils by the idea which obsessed him at that time of a huge artistic canvas, – of the five-volumed Life of a Great Sinner – that split off here (in The Devils) into Stavrogin and the Prelate? It is difficult to say which of these causes made the one-plane construction of the novel impossible. Probably neither the one cause nor the other was primary. The study of the manuscripts of The Devils, that is, of the materials for the novel contained in the author’s notebooks, justifies the assumption that only the publication of The Devils ended the complicated play of Dostoevsky’s creative designs. Students of the novel may argue over their conceptions of the characters, and consider their conceptions most nearly corresponding to the author’s ‘idea;’ but, when with thrilled attention we watch the kaleidoscope of intrigues and events unfolded before us in the pages written in Dostoevsky’s own hand; when hosts of characters and figures race before us, fixed not by the press, but by the pen of their creator, – then we are convinced that both the hero and the plot were accidentally conceived. We know nothing of the fifteen folios of the first plan which were cancelled by Dostoevsky in the summer of 1870. But the rough studies for the novel written down ‘in scenes,’ and reverently preserved by Mme. Dostoevsky, introduce us into the laboratory of the author’s original creation, acquaint us with all the minutiae of the author’s creative musings, and show us the early strokes of his designs and conceptions. These pages are of exceptional importance: we are present at the travail of thought of a writer of genius; we perceive his basic designs, and touch the secret dynamics of his creation.
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On January 22, 1870, Dostoevsky sketched out the finished ‘portrait of a pure and idealistic Westerner with all his charm’ – the character of Timofey Nicolayevich Granovsky. This character – Gr. (the future Stepan Verkhovensky of The Devils), is married for the third time. Other characters simultaneously enter into the plan of the novel: Shaposhnikov (the future Shatov); St. (the Student, the future Piotr Verkhovensky), the adopted daughter (the future Dasha Shatov), the Princess and Prince (the future Stavrogins – mother and son), the Belle (the future Lisa Toushin).11 The entries in Dostoevsky’s notebooks, in which The Devils is ‘written down in scenes,’ are brought up to the beginning of March, when Stavrogin’s character begins to dim. New touches have altered him greatly: quite vague in the opening of the novel, – in the process of work he has acquired bright distinctness; he has become concrete and stands firmly on his feet. ‘Suddenly “the new man” began to be transformed into “an elegant Nozdrev,”12 a Don Juan,13 a sceptic “playing with life,” a cosmopolitan and voluptuary.’ The ‘scenes,’ which follow here, stop at the moment when the author began ‘remaking’ both the hero and the plot. Later the ‘scenes’ from the second plan of the novel will be presented so that the reader may watch the complicated panorama of Dostoevsky’s creative visions, the flights of his poetic imagination . . . For clues to much that is obscure in the published text of The Devils are to be found in the manuscript bequest. The published text of The Devils, seen through the mirror of the notebooks, more than once reflects fragments of a great whole; and the link between them is easily established, as we watch the oscillation and flights of Dostoevsky’s creative spirit in his original entries. §
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THE DEVILS ‘in scenes.’ Sh. (Shaposhnikov) is in town. Acquaintance with his wife. Gr. (Granovsky). ‘I’ve heard about him before.’ Gr’s conversations with Sh. (Sh. is a student who has taken part in political disorders); he is no longer a student; he has a mother (and foundlings). Sh. is a shaft-horse type. His convictions: the Slavophiles are a prank of the barins (landed aristocracy). The Nihilists14 are the sons of landowners. No one knows himself in Russia. A Russian does not realise his distinctness and has no independent attitude toward the West. This is not only a matter of conviction; the point here is in
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the fiscal consequences of Peter (the Great’s)15 reform. The sudden desire on Peter’s part – to turn Russians into Europeans by means of a Ukase;16 and he did get Europeans one hundred and fifty years later, with the result that they broke away from their own nation without attaching themselves to another. For this reason: that all other peoples are national; while we repudiate the very idea of nationality; we long to be pan-Europeans, whereas there is no such thing as a panEuropean. ‘They’ve overlooked Russia. One has to work.’ He criticises the Westerners. Gr. (himself a Westerner) argues ardently and agreeably. A poetic soiree – The St. appears in the town (to make counterfeit notes, to spread proclamations among the populace and to organise revolutionary ‘trinities.’) Sh. is pleased that he has met him. The St. perplexes his father (Granovsky) by his nihilism, mockery, contradictions. He is simple, direct. ‘To re-build the world.’ He suggests that Sh. take part in all this. Sh. foolishly enough goes to secret meetings. – ‘He contradicts himself,’ says Gr. – Gr. speaks of it to the St. – The St. reproaches Sh. for confiding in Gr. – Sh. replies hotly that he considers himself in no way bound (and might even inform the authorities a quarter of an hour before the revolutionary act was to take place). Present: Polkov, Mezhuev. Gr. says that he would never inform the authorities. (Banishment to the Solovetzky Monastery for six months) – The St. is in the town and is received in society. Sh. (who has also arrived in the town) keeps watch on the Prince who has dishonoured his sister. (A sort of Bazarov).17 – To give a poetic portrait of Sh’s sister. Throwing herself into the river. – The St. induces the ‘trinity’ to murder Sh. They murder him. – Some time before this there takes place an important discussion. Gr. expresses his definitive views. The St. who has often defeated his father on all points, defeats him again this time, too. He also tells him that his, Gr.’s, wife is with child by Sh. (He makes fun of ‘Polinka Sax,’ 18 or he says, for instance: ‘If there were no persecutions by the government, you would feel terribly unhappy.’ His theory is: the building is falling to pieces. Take the case of von Zon. 8,000 railways. The credit of the country is shaken, morality is shaken. To shatter the country by means of counterfeit notes and false rumours, – any means would do. (A fiery and bright picture). The son killed his mother. ‘But is this true?’ asks Gr. ‘They wanted to do away with you, too,’ says the St.
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A piece of jewellery. – Sh. maintains that reforms act in a vigorous and revolutionizing way. When the waves have subsided, the rate of the rouble will also be stabilised. ‘And when will stability come?’ ‘When we enter the national path, and when even in our reforms we become conscious of our nationality.’ ‘Therefore, never!’, says the St. – Gr. is with his wife. She at last bluntly says to him that she never thought of being unfaithful to him, but that she was very much bored. (This is to come in the beginning. As the result of the verbal duel with Sh.) The hint of the whole plot. The Prince; the adopted daughter, who is either Sh’s sister or his fiancée. The Belle. The Prince refuses to marry the adopted daughter and drags Gr. into the affair (Gr. has kept on giving him advice). Sh.’s quarrel with the Prince. The Prince is afraid that they may tell the Belle of it. Sh’s murder is ascribed to him. – The St., on leaving, laughs at Gr. saying that they will drag him into a scandal. – The adopted daughter is Sh.’s sister. The Pr., the elegant friend of Gr., afraid of a scandal, suggests that he, Gr., should act as intermediary. Sh. declares that neither he nor she desires to make a scandal; and should the Pr. seek her hand now, he would be refused. One evening (after she had spoken to the St. about a child, about marriage and Nihilism and had gone into the garden where she met the Pr. to talk over the past) she began to tell Sh. about their love and how they had met and so on.19 She could not stand the strain, and tried to drown herself, but she cried for help, and was rescued; she died. Sh. goes on living. His one idea is to kill the Prince. Gr. entertains fears on this account. All this suits the St.’s purposes. Having murdered Sh., they accuse the Pr.. Gr. himself is dragged into the affair and is implicated in the forgery of the counterfeit notes. The St.’s theory. You have turned the Nihilist into something private so as not to face the phenomenon, which is general, universal and natural. You have become frightened and turned back, clinging to God, art and science. When God is destroyed, a new era will begin for mankind. (N.B. He came here only for a short time and is going now to another province. Where he is going, Gr. does not know). The St. is in hiding. Gr. is shown revolutionary proclamations. A raid is made by the authorities. One evening the St. suddenly appears – only to disappear again. One of the murderers, U-y, has been in love with Sh.’s sister. After Sh.’s murder, he feels conscience stricken and talks of the crime, first to Gr. (‘Can it be true?’). (N.B. The murderers spread the rumour about a meeting between
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Sh. and the Pr. and suggest that people have actually heard that the Pr. had killed him in self-defence. Everybody had heard, but nobody knows). – But where does Grnovsky come in this story? – He stands here for the conflict between the two generations of Westerners, the pure ones and the Nihilists. But Sh. is a new man. He is stern, simple, strong and lately has become impetuous. N.B. The Pr. gives Sh. a slap in the face. (The Pr. is a big landowner). Sh. puts up with the insult. Gr. is surprised at Sh’s attitude and almost shrinks away from him; after that he is almost convinced that Sh. has vowed to kill the Pr., and speaks about it to his son. The latter has an idea. (To introduce here the Little Priest). The St.’s theory to Gr. You would have acted precisely like this, if you had not stopped half way. ‘But feelings, – what have you done with feelings?’ Gr. asks. N.B. The St. carries away even Gr. (Perhaps the Little Priest comes to the St. He is an old sectarian, of the Raskolnik sect).20 – Gr. fears that his son has been bringing political suspects to the house. (Not his fiancée, but sister). The St.’s idea. All this cannot go on; therefore it must be destroyed root and branch, and something different is needed. (To compose the plan of the story as concisely as possible). Gr. is somewhat dependent on the Princess and used to receiving a pension (from Mme Smirnov).21 (The St. says to Gr.: ‘I should think so, if you are taking a pension from those people.’) Gr., as the Pr.’s tutor and adviser, had been abroad with him. A Dinner at the Princess’s. Gr. and the Princess are old and devoted friends, but their friendship is of a special order: from long experience each has learned to understand the other, and each knows the defects of the other. Also appreciates the merits. Their friendship is a strong and even very cordial one. If one of them were to die, the other would perhaps not survive (at any rate, those in their circle speak so of their friendship), and they too believe it. The Princess is somewhat more fastidious and colder; Gr. more sentimental and capricious. Despite their great friendship, both are exacting on the point, of making and returning calls. Gr. feels (and this is true) that there are times when the Princess is tired of him, though there are other times when she is almost hysterical in her need of him (for pouring out hog-wash on him, as the St. says. ‘That is why one needs a friend – to pour out one’s hog-wash on him.’) Gr. is more inclined to observe the conventional etiquette. He forgives the Princess her aristocratic origin,
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and has become reconciled to her view of him as one much below her in station. The Princess in her turn has submitted to the necessity of acknowledging his authority as a great man. – Gr. does not call on the Princess, when she has not been to see him for a long time. He coquets before her and bears himself with a suggestion of being enamoured of her. The Princess allows herself at times sharp, fastidious and contemptuous sarcasm at his expense, although she is quite aware that he is very touchy and will not put up with such things; but she cannot deny herself the pleasure, so much does her friend at times become revolting to her (‘One needs a friend – to pour out one’s hog-wash on him,’ says the St.) ‘And besides she keeps you.’ ‘What, do you think, will friendship be like in the future?’ ‘But there will be no friendship then, and relations between people will be quite clear, in accordance with strict, scientific, natural definitions.’ ‘Will people grow dumb then?’ ‘Not at all; but having clearly realised what in the nature of man is natural and necessary, one will not blame another for his defects and vices; one will not quarrel with another and be disgusted with him. No love whatever will be needed then, least of all Christian love, only pure knowledge, science.’ – He is jealous of the St. and delivers a tirade in order to rehabilitate his authority with the Princess, who has begun to look on him mockingly. – At home, going over the scene in his mind, he says to himself: ‘How could I have been satisfied with such a friendship?’ He looks at his wife and exclaims: ‘Here is my haven and hope!’ And then come the rumours and insinuations that Sh. was his wife’s lover. During the dinner the St. is reserved, silent, and regards the Princess with a hardly perceptible expression of derision, but without any arrogance. He avoids discussing serious matters, but readily talks of unimportant things without any fear of appearing uncultured. A point comes when she twits him with considering her intellect too frivolous for serious matters. He eats with appetite. ‘Mark you,’ he says afterwards to his father, who has reproached him for not speaking seriously to her. ‘You started to speak (about Nihilism) saying fine things, and she got very much interested; but no sooner had her son come in and announced that the second cousin of Prince Piotr Ivanovich might perhaps get married, than all interest in you ceased and you were clearly shown that the latest news about Prince Piotr was more precious than all your fine talk. They are all like that. But you want to show that the position is not like that at all. Besides, it seems to me that you have managed your affairs pretty well, marrying now at the age of sixty and getting money into the bargain.’ ‘I have not touched the money given to Marie Alexeyevna as her dowry; it is her money, and I am glad that she will be left a considerable sum after my death.’ ‘Rather! And so you should be,’ says the St. ‘Though, she
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keeps herself, and you depend on her. You are writing letters to one another, coquetting with one another; though I have never read your letters. You write not for friendship, but for posterity; for surely you regard yourself as a great man.’ During dinner Gr. says: ‘Little Pisarev.’ Why little? (Because he looks like Pisarev).22 Pisarev had once paid a visit to the Princess. The St. behaves properly all the time, but is absent-minded and quite unresponsive to the Princess’s attentions. Suddenly he calls his father ‘snivelling ranting old woman.’ – The St. at dinner, en passant, makes a significant comment, but does not pursue it nor attempt to develop it; it is as though he did not notice its importance (actually he did not notice its importance), although he roused the curiosity of the whole company. He turned the conversation to pies. He naturally regards everyone with a lofty air. Afterwards, provoked by his father, he explains to him: ‘All this is a lie, all your friendship, and feelings, and coquetries and correspondence, as well as her dress and title. And since I do not regard all these things as serious, I am just bored by them. All this may perhaps be necessary; but surely it must come to an end sooner or later.’ N.B. The Princess had heard about Nihilists and seen them (Pisarev), but she wanted to meet a Bazarov (the character in Turgenev’s ‘Fathers & Children,’) – not in order to argue with him or to convert him, but just to hear from his own lips his views (on society, on friendship), and to see him pose à la Bazarov. The St., on the contrary, manages to behave in a way that seems to stamp him as a most indifferent, quiet and barren mediocrity. He soon bores the whole company; but suddenly towards the end of the dinner, apropos of manners, he says that our Russian nobleman abroad is just a lackey (his dress, servility, the obligation he feels to speak of interests alien to him, as though he had no personality nor interests of his own). Then comes his exclamation: ‘You snivelling, ranting old woman.’ (The principal person in the house is the Princess; but at dinner the St. addresses himself to the Prince, taking little notice of the Princess). The St. ridicules the Utopian phalanstries23 where the people, with song and dance, will till the land. ‘You have no love even for your own cause,’ says Gr. ‘All this love is mere self-love,’ the St. retorts. ‘There is only division of labour – I destroy, others will build.’ ‘Are you without self-love,’ Gr. asks. ‘Haven’t you been telling about remarkable escapes from prison etc?’ ‘Now, you are beginning to tease me,’ says the St. ‘Don’t be angry,’ he adds more gently, ‘I see that you are hurt because I do not bow to your authority here, and this has annoyed you from the very start. But surely I can see that you must behave like that: you are a mummy that
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cannot be re-born. All your life long you have behaved in the same way and now you must remain the same.’ (‘He would have killed you, but for me. For it is no use killing you; you would have played the coward and besides such a great commotion would have arisen. Now, the affair having been settled so cleverly, you must keep steady; go on living and go on repeating the same old things.’) The Belle has brought with her a proclamation. At dinner at the Princess’s they talk about proclamations. – The St. at first appears so insignificant, shy, silent that Gr. says sadly to his wife that ‘his son did not invent gun-powder.’ During the dinner news is suddenly brought that the raid (by the political police) is still going on. (Before this, there is a discussion on Socialism, provoked by Gr. The St. replies as though reluctantly, out of politeness, though not haughtily or carelessly, but in an indifferent tone which lacerates still further Gr.’s self-esteem. When Gr. realises that his son can argue, he remarks to him: ‘I see that after all you can argue.’ But when Gr. sees that his son has a definite outlook, he is even surprised, and tries to provoke him to a discussion. (Here should come in Gr.’s monologue). The St. sharply and abruptly utters a few provocative opinions, and ‘snivelling ranting old woman,’ etc. When one circumstance after another begins to be disclosed, Gr. gets terrified, – and in their final conversation realises, at last, what sort of man his son is. §
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(Bazarov has been described by a man of the ’forties without any pose and consequently without violation of truth. But a man of the ’forties could not have described Bazarov). ‘What is wrong then with him?’ ‘He has been placed on a pedestal, – that’s what is wrong with him.’ ‘A tiny Pisarev.’ ‘What do you say – “tiny Pisarev?”’ ‘Pisarev was not tall, but neither was he short?’ ‘Did I say ‘tiny?’ (As though surprised and correcting himself). I don’t know why this word has slipped out; but it seems to me that it fits Pisarev. I am not speaking of his stature or of anything definite; but somehow the man altogether appears to me tiny, – the whole impression was of something tiny’ . . . ‘It’s you who are the giant then,’ suddenly comes from the St. ‘I liked Pisarev very much,’ the Princess remarked. §
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The Belle replies to the St. and asks him to call on her. The Pr. takes him there.
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There is a scene between her and the St., who straightway tells her that he has no time for love-making. §
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‘You have been badly brought up; your manners are ugly’ . . . ‘Oh, I did not catch what you said; what was it you were saying?’ Gr., irritated, began a sentence. ‘You are going to talk nonsense,’ the St. cuts him short. ‘You’d better tell me’ . . . and here he asks him the very important question about Sh.’s relations with his wife, with a terrible implied allusion. Then he bursts out laughing and goes out. On the following day, to Gr.’s question, he answers: ‘Oh, I don’t care about all this affair; I asked you with a different view in mind’ . . . §
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To inform the authorities. ‘If you had known about K – sov,24 say, a couple of hours before the act, would you have informed the authorities?’ asks Sh. Gr. says ‘no,’ manoeuvring and beating about the bush in reply. ‘Suppose you had taken no part at all in the conspiracy, but only had got to know about the attempt?’ Sh. asks. ‘No, I would not have given information,’ Gr. says. ‘And I would,’ declares Sh. ‘What you say is unnatural . . .’ The St.: ‘Sh. at any rate has the courage of his convictions, but you, even in this, are a skunk.’ §
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After Gr. has repeated many times that his son ‘did not invent gunpowder,’ and has learnt that the Belle has honoured him and that the Princess has given the dinner in order to ask Gr. and the St. to it, and also to have the St. meet the Belle, he begins to feel surprised and somewhat jealous. – The St. says: ‘Do admit that you already feel jealous of me because of the attentions of that magpie (because you are a hangeron) and are envious of my success.’ Gr. is offended. In the evening he distinguishes himself in that society by an improvisation. He is inspired. And coming home he says to his son: ‘Now you have heard my convictions. I wonder how I rediscovered in myself that well-spring of inspiration, which has been dry for so long. But my grief and the insults I received from you called it forth. You have heard me; there is the whole of me.’ ‘If that is the
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whole of you,’ says the St., ‘then you are just a snivelling ranting old woman, like all the rest. But I believe that you actually were a woman and envied me, – that’s why you chattered away tonight. That’s all. Perhaps I shall not come here for a long time; don’t start asking questions about me.’ ‘How dare you speak like that to me?’ ‘Is it not true?’ – The Princess sends for Gr. and tells him about the rumours of counterfeit notes and proclamations. Gr. goes and finds his son. He speaks to him, – for the first time quite earnestly about his convictions. – The St. defeats him on all points. And tells him about his wife. (‘You tale bearer! Be off and cease intriguing!’) – That same evening the girl throws herself into the river. – Two days later the murder takes place. – Gr. thinks that this is the work of the Pr. – But the Princess sends for Gr. and asks him where his son is. The son appears that night. ‘Is it true?’ The son laughs, and says that they had decided to kill him (Gr.), too: and finally declares that Sh. has made his (Gr.’s) wife pregnant – playing the part of Sax.25 U–y informs the authorities. At this time Gr. has a scene with his wife. U–y says to him that the rumour of his wife’s pregnancy is nonsense, that he knew Sh. quite well, and that he himself loved the drowned woman. And the chief person who took part in Sh.’s murder was Nechayev, and also an officer who had embezzled a large sum of money and had made off. §
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The Princess had said to the Prince of Gr.: ‘How queer, they are not at all like one another! Gr. even now, at the age of 57, is good-looking; his hair is like a lion’s mane; his glance is that of an eagle . . . . and the son is exactly like a26 cherub painted on a ceiling. And yet there is some resemblance between them: the cherub’s face suddenly grows extraordinarily clever and earnest, like his father’s; while Gr.’s face at times gets suddenly furrowed with a sort of laughter, and becomes awfully insignificant – the lion suddenly turning into a cherub on a ceiling, precisely like his son’ . . . – Gr. was truly pure minded and ardently strove for the good; but towards the end he could not help play-acting and becoming a phrasemonger. And not only this, he also became a poseur. ‘La vertu à nous ce n’est pas l’in–me’ (he says in his after dinner speech at the Princess’s).
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The St. says: ‘Neither do we need science; I am not much of a scholar myself, nor am I a Westerner, and I have nothing against Russia. Things are even better here. But I simply want to do away with everything root and branch.’ – Sh. speaks about the landed gentry and students, and says that Belinsky and Granovsky simply hated Russia. (N.B. I must write more fully and pointedly about their hatred for Russia). – Gr., in reply, says to him: ‘Oh, if only you knew how they loved Russia!’ – Sh. says: ‘It is themselves that they loved, and themselves only that they ached for.’ Sh. says: ‘They are the sons of the landed gentry, along with all the other untalented fellows, idlers, hating work, inclined to wander about, fond of some soft job; and above all they are the sons of the landed gentry, that is, an uprooted class.’ ‘You seem quite bitter,’ remarked the St. §
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What are they then? Arrogant in solving problems etc. Sh. says: ‘Oh, they are just little field-mice!’ §
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The St.: ‘Victor Hugo kept on talking about the final terrible war, – and yet they have poetry, art, etc. He’s an old skunk and that is all27 there is to say about it. ‘You haven’t even got an excuse for your Utopia, like Ch-y, D-v, who were also skunks.’ 28 ‘We are the latest and the very best.’ §
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After the last talk, when leaving, the St. tells his father about his wife and her pregnancy. Gr.: ‘I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you!’ ‘Certainly, you don’t. How could you? Neither your self-love nor your vanity allows you to (you are taking photographs.)’ ‘Clear out!29 I disown you; you who are soiled with blood. I have a stroke and shall die. ‘May be you will still survive; though, do as you please . . . But what a phrasemongering and snivelling ranting old woman you are, I must say!’ ‘You monster! If it be true, as that unfortunate fellow (Sh.) asserts
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that you are the product of our own generation, uprooted from the soil, that progressively there were born the Utopians who existed 8 years ago, and after them progressively there came you, – then what will those be like who will come to replace you, and whom I may perhaps have the misfortune to see in the flesh?’ §
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N.B. Most important. After the first appearance of the St., when the father having taken him to the Princess, becomes convinced that his son did not invent gun-powder, – after this should follow directly the whole history of the Pr. and of Sh’s sister, and also of Sh. himself. (The Belle has not yet arrived and therefore did not ask the St. to come to her, and therefore Gr.’s illusion that his son did not invent gunpowder was not yet dispersed). Then suddenly the son comes on the scene and there takes place the beginning of the finale, and a quick finale (Sh’s death; the slander on Gr’s wife etc). Previous to the arrival of the Belle the St. breaks out at moments with casual remarks about the Princess and the Pr.; and there even takes place the discussion at the house of Gr. who in the presence of Sh. denounces Socialism. The St. during the discussion tries to get out of it by making jokes; he also makes a few serious remarks about the main problem; and then the conversation turns on laying information before the authorities. Gr., later, alone with his son, incautiously mentions Sh’s hostility to the Pr. The St. listens eagerly and goes away without saying anything. Then, the Belle who has arrived in the town three days before, suddenly sends for the St. The party. It is after the party that he tells his father that he is a snivelling old woman, and makes the first allusion to the pregnancy of his wife. That very night Sh. is murdered. – The following day the girl throws herself into the river. Two days later the Princess in agitation sends for the father, and tells him that all this is the work of his son. – On the following day U – y. In the evening: ‘Is it true?’ The St. departs. Gr. curses him. Gr. is taken ill and is dying. He tries to understand all that has taken place and what they are striving for (the socialists and all those people), but cannot. Quarrel with his wife. He is forbidden to leave the town. With the arrival of the Belle the romantic vein in the St.’s character manifests itself. He gives her up completely. The Pr., too, gives her up after having given the St. a sound thrashing. He has known for a long time now that the Belle loves himself, and is jealous of the St.
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N.B. The history of the Belle and the St. to be developed. The father asks the St.: ‘Is it true that you have any relations with the Belle?’ The adopted daughter only played a prank. The Pr. slaps Sh. in the face; the latter takes it. He proposes to the adopted daughter, but she rejects him. N.B. To work up the opening amusingly, and as concisely and richly in events as possible; so as to pose all the characters as naturally and yet as romantically as possible, and to make them express themselves as much as possible. ? ? ? For the sake of conciseness, better not introduce Sh.’s sister, but replace her by someone else. Granovsky’s wife comes from the Princess’s house (it is she who is the adopted daughter). The Pr. fell in love with her. The Princess, in the absence of the Pr., arranged her marriage to Gr. The St. consoles Sh. The Pr. does not like it.30 The Pr. continues to love Gr.’s wife and struggles against his passion. The marriage of the Pr. to the Belle has been arranged for family reasons. She is the daughter of a General. The Pr. is prepared to regard her condescendingly, with a suggestion of raillery, with the gracious air of an accepted necessity. The Belle had already met the St., and meeting him unexpectedly at the Princess’s, she says: ‘Oh, it is you.’ All are surprised, and the Pr. no less than the rest. At that moment the Pr. suddenly slaps Sh.’s face. The latter takes it. The Prince, through Gr., apologizes for the insult. But Sh. says he does not care for the apology . . . . And the Belle proposes. The St. decides to run away. At the dinner Gr. becomes convinced that his son is stupid . . . . But the Pr. warns Gr., gravely yet in fun, that his son wants to steal his fiancée. ‘They had an assignation, I know.’ A soirée at the General’s house. §
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N.B. The Pr. always hated Sh. When he suddenly slaps his face, Gr. is bewildered, and his son then declares to him: ‘Surely, Sh. is your wife’s consoler, and the Pr. is jealous of Sh.’ Feb. 5. Perhaps this may be a bit better. N.B. A scandal at the Belle’s party, where she shows a marked preference for the St. The Princess is alarmed. The St. had some time before this dropped hints to his father about Sh. Gr. and Sh. Gr. and his wife. The Pr. comes in and speaks about Gr.’s son; all express surprise; he asks about the Belle’s arrival. The Pr. invites all the company to dinner for the next day.
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The son appears – only for a while. He disappears again. Then comes the invitation to dinner. At the dinner: ‘So it is you!’ The Pr. thought that he was going to meet the Belle condescendingly, whereas she faces him condescendingly (she is a Nihilist). – The slander on Gr.’s wife, which the son helps to spread. – The murder of Sh. (is she his? . . . . The St. runs away). The Belle discusses with her father his reasons for wanting her to marry the Pr.; and says bluntly to the Princess that the Pr. has a liaison with Mme. Gr. and is jealous of Sh., who is believed to have stolen Gr.’s wife and is now her happy lover. A commotion arises. The Princess has an explanation with Gr. Suddenly Sh. is murdered. N.B. The St. leaves the town before Sh’s murder; but after the murder of Sh. he appears in Gr.’s garden and demands that the latter should keep silent about the whole affair. Gr’s wife is brought to shame. The Pr. is passionately and madly in love with Gr.’s wife. She keeps him at a distance. He is jealous of Sh. The arrival of the Belle causes the Pr. to have some sort of explanation with Gr.’s wife. (N.B. Gr.’s wife is still in love with the Pr., and confesses it to Sh.). In the meantime the St. spreads the story (completely believing it himself) that Mme Gr. has a liaison with Sh. The Pr. meets Sh. and slaps his face and so on. §
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The Princess asks Gr. to call with his son. ‘My son? But he has not arrived yet!’ ‘Well, I’ve just met him and told him that I was going here.’ ‘How strange!’ Just at this moment the St. rings the bell. The Pr. too has been away and has only just arrived. (N.B. Gr. did not like his visits, but he never showed it). The Pr. speaks of his fiancée condescendingly, and is irritated by the coming meeting. N.B. Gr. is talking about his son, without suspecting that the two are acquainted or have any relations. – Granovsky. – Gr. and Sh. (Partly about his son and the proclamations). – Enter the Pr.; he has not yet seen the Belle, who also has only arrived that morning. He says he has met the son. All are surprised. – Enter the son. Says a few strange words, and leaves. (Sh. and the Pr. exchange a few stinging remarks at the street corner. Sh. walks away, and suddenly the St. appears from behind the corner; he laughs and joins Sh. so that they should be seen walking together and
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believed to have relations with one another (what they speak of is a mystery)). – The Princess, her relations to Gr. Her attitude to the fiancée (to Gr.’s wife). She sends the Pr. to the General, –The Pr.’s meeting with the fiancée. (N.B. She went out for a ride or something like that.) The Princess gets hold of a proclamation. The fiancée rebukes the Pr. (The Pr. is a big landowner; but money would be useful). – The dinner. The Princess. The St. and Gr. have arrived earlier and suddenly the fiancée comes up to the St. The St. is involuntarily shown up. (Some silly prank on his part; as for instance, ‘snivelling ranting old woman’ or something of the sort, – about current affairs, about Nihilists.) – After the dinner, there is the sitting of the Revolutionary Committee, with Sh. present. (N.B. The Pr. has written a letter to Mme. Gr. Demands an appointment. Sh. is aware of the letter. He demands an explanation from the Pr. etc.) (The Nihilist’s stay in town; his visits to the Belle at the General’s house; gossip about Sh. and the Pr. Rumours. The father twits his son; has an explanation with him. Meanwhile the counterfeit notes, proclamations etc. are circulated. A soirée at the General’s. (The General is acquainted with Gr.). There, at the General’s house, Gr. makes his speech on art and on himself. The Son: ‘I didn’t even listen to you.’ A quarrel; he says things about his father’s wife. When they approach the house, – the Pr. and Sh. are there. The Pr. slaps Sh.’s face in the presence of Gr. and the St. Gr. is bewildered; the son. . . (‘I shall not come back for a long time.’) The scandal at the General’s house next morning. The Belle breaks off her engagement. The Pr. too breaks off his engagement. The Princess sends for Gr. The Princess’s information about the rumours. – Gr. goes to find his son; an explanation and quarrel. (Sh. and Mme. Gr.) Mme. Gr. tells Sh. that she loves the Pr. She has come to Sh.’s rooms in a fit of despair (the slap in the face, as well as her sisterly love for Sh. and her love for the Pr.).31 Sh. immediately after she has left, goes to the park (where is kept the secret Revolutionary printing press). In the park the conspirators wait for Sh. When he arrives, they kill him –. Gr. and his wife. The Princess sends for Gr. ‘It is his work, – three days ago.’ The St. appears during the night, – the final explanation. The return of the runaway fiancée. The St. renounces her; after his father’s curses, he leaves the town.
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The Pr. meets the fiancée and walks with her to her house. Gr. dies of diarrhoea. The last communion. The Pr. and Gr.’s wife to be shown in perspective. §
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N.B. To describe in detail the St.’s actions towards Sh.; the conspiracy, and also Sh’s intention to inform the authorities. (He himself speaks of this to Gr.’s wife, as he says goodbye to her). (A curious tête-a-tête between the St. and the fiancée). (To invent again something about the St. and the fiancée). The conspirators to be described in all possible detail. N.B. The principal thing. (When Gr.’s wife agreed to marry him, she refused Sh.; or Sh. refused her, – for some romantic reason, or something of that sort. Shall I make Sh.’s wife a drunkard?). – The Pr. says: ‘I never possessed firmness of character.’ – The Belle says: ‘I have done now with all these stupidities.’ The General, her father, is in despair, and strictness having proved unsuccessful he begins to reason with her. ‘You aren’t an animal.’ A lecture on the difference of animals. She says to him: ‘You are making a fool of yourself.’ (Perhaps by nature she is jolly and loves fun. Perhaps she takes her full part in the murder of Sh.) The Bishop is invited to speak to her. The St. is cold to her. The General writes Gr. a letter (an illiterate letter) about his Liberalism. Gr. replies – with eloquence and tears. §
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Sh. says to Gr.’s wife that a certain affair is distressing him and that he intends to inform the authorities. §
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Gr. has a brother, a retired lieutenant colonel. He is a free-thinker, a free-liver and radical, but a man of sterling honesty. When Radicalism has reached its ultimate bounds, he gives it up and becomes horrified at his nephew. He is in love with the Governor’s wife, or with the Belle; he writes verses. He has quarrelled with his brother, Gr., and regards him with a certain condescension. He indignantly renounces his nephew for his calumny on Mme. Gr. He does not like Sh., but helps his (drunken) wife. Since he began to help Sh.’s family, he no longer feels angry with Sh. (‘It is not proper nor delicate to be angry with him, when I am helping him.’) At first he treats his nephew to his free thinking views and enjoys it; then he grows terrified of him. He plays all sorts of pranks in the town. A sort of Harpagon.32 The bear. Nonsensical letters.
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The St.’s comrades. The honest and fiery Uspensky; the stupid Zaitzev and his sister; a terribly embittered school-master; a very nasty little man. – A conscientious fellow perfectly convinced that it will cost two million heads; so that they must start at once to hang, burn and do away with all laws. (Blasphemy and sacrilege in a church). – To describe the rising of the Decembrists as a nonsensical affair, which would not have lasted a couple of hours. N.B. ‘They whine now, but it was their own choice,’ – this is the Colonel’s opinion. – The Colonel maintains that the Russian soldier, even of the old days, had stout spirit. Let the slave be like unto the free (St. Paul). This is said by Sh. to Gr. The latter does not understand it. §
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When the nephew is invited to the Princess’s, he annoys his uncle, the Colonel, by saying that he (the Colonel) envies him. The Colonel on the contrary is delighted, and is hurt that his nephew should suspect him, firstly, of envy, and secondly, of a desire to go there. ‘She would be only too glad to invite me; but she does not do so because she knows that I should rudely refuse.’ – The Colonel supports his sister, the St.’s mother. When the St. arrives in the town the old woman immediately plays false to the Colonel and gives all her devotion to her son. She gossips about the Col. to her son and makes him out a monster. The son leaves her with the Col. She learns of Sh’s murder, and makes a shroud for the body; she curses her son and goes out of her mind. While she is making the shroud and washing the body, she praises the deceased. ‘I am his godmother. What his poor mother, Natalie Petrovna, must feel now!’ She finally curses her son after he has been disrespectful to her and laughed at her. She hates the Col. for being in love with the Belle; she hands over (his verses) to her son. She is delighted when she learns that the Pr. has broken with the Belle. ? – (N.B. Shall I make Sh. Mme. Gr’s brother?) ? Gr. used to support his brother when the latter was in the army (the Col. is his enemy), and also brought up the nephew (the St.) at his own expense. The St.’s mother is particularly hostile to Gr. – Sh. is the brother of Gr.’s wife. He has no mother. He hates the Pr. He keeps a watch on his sister, who is offended by this although she loves her brother. To the Pr. she is staunch. – The Lieutenant-Colonel is an embittered and low scoffer;
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behind his back he jeers at his brother and at his friendship with the Princess. He scoffs at them just because she is a benefactress. The Princess certainly wishes to be a benefactress. The Col. is a mad-cap; has designs on the Belle; slanders Mme. Gr. The St. does not spare his feelings; and later without much ado just brutally accuses him of baseness. – ‘I look at his face,’ Gr. says several times, in a desire to annoy his nephew (which the latter perceives at once). – (I must consult Flerovsky’s book, the review of the book in ‘The Zarya’ No. 1.). It begins by Gr. being terribly afraid that he may not be invited. He tries to show his independence before Sh. Enter the Pr. Having sat for some time listening to the irritated Sh. and the pedantic Gr., the Pr. asks the latter to dine with him the next day; he also invites his wife and nephew. They are surprised that the nephew is already in town. – Enter the nephew. Pinpricks at Gr.’s expense. (He considers himself immeasurably above Gr., naively so, with a pure conscience, and can’t help laughing at him. He eagerly listens to the gossip). – Next day, at the Princess’s house, he behaves badly and laughs at everyone. The Pr. at last puts him in his place. There is a quarrel between them. The fiancée shows marked attention to the St. and next day has an explanation with the Pr. – Gr. is awfully afraid that his nephew will make fun of him at dinner, the next day. §
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The last to take place on Feb. 16. – Gr. as bridegroom and celebrating his birthday. He has a swollen face and is indisposed. He holds caressingly in his hand a piece of jewellery. Had intended all the time to do some work. Has received a letter from his son and is afraid. His heart is throbbing because of the imminent visit of the Princess. To keep up appearances, he has a lively conversation with the embittered Sh. All the guests arrive at once. The Princess asks Sh. to continue the conversation. She has got hold of a proclamation. The Pr. mentions the son in passing. Gr. (and all) are surprised that the son is already in town.33 The son has evidently stopped at his uncle’s house. Enter the son; talks about his uncle, about his verses. ‘I look at him. He’s an exact copy.’ All the guests leave. The son and Sh. remain. The Pr. A comic situation. ‘If you want to talk business, why do it here?’ They leave. (On the way the Pr. meets the fiancée). Sh. and the St. are at the uncle’s house. They laugh at the uncle, and have a confidential talk. Sh. flatly
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refuses. (The St., in his uncle’s presence, gossips about the fiancée, and before Sh. he reveals himself suspicious of everybody and a scoundrel. – Sh. has a mother and a wife who is a drunkard. Originally Sh. is a tutor; then he falls in love with the adopted daughter). The relations between Sh. and the Pr. to be narrated by the author himself. Sh. has not spoken about his love (yet the Pr. is jealous). People think that there is nothing between the Pr. and the girl. The St. undertakes to reassure the Pr. (Gr. in the course of the whole novel continually twits his son with his superiority, but suddenly learns that the son does not play about, but actually does things). Part II shows all the relations of the fiancée (at her soirée). Dinner at the Princess’s. Has an explanation with the Pr. With the General, at home, she has stormy encounters. Before the St. she plays upon the fact that it was she who had safely brought over the proclamations. But the St. does not respond and pays no attention. She sends the Pr. to the St. on a certain errand. The St. is afraid: ‘Hasn’t she blabbed?’ But she had blabbed something to Sh. when the St. refused to come to see her. Sh. speaks about it to the St. The latter is angry. A revolutionary meeting with the schoolmasters (the first, informal meeting). Meanwhile rumours are circulating in the town about proclamations and about incendiarism. The Pr. learns what is going on, and is opposed to it all. Then there is the dinner at the Princess’s. Gr.’s tirade on poetry. The St. twits him with having married the Pr.’s past. (He also teases the Pr. saying that Sh. was telling him about the Pr.’s past). The Pr. slaps Sh.’s face. Gossip. – After the slap in the face, Sh. at the final meeting of the Revolutionaries falls out with them. (He had previously expressed his disagreement with them in his conversations with the fiancée and with the Pr.) Part III. Sh. wants to inform the authorities. He is murdered. The Belle runs to the St., but he drives her away, and leaves the town alone. The Pr. unexpectedly marries Gr.’s fiancée. Gr. has an attack of diarrhoea. – Sh. and the Pr. – they provoke one another to the last degree. Proclamations, sacrilege in the church and the fire. – (After the fire Sh. wants to inform the authorities). N.B. Gr. by principle is for incendiarism. ‘If we are to act, then we must act.’ Sh. tells him about himself (confesses) – – Here should come the principal scene – the quarrel between the son and father, a quarrel which was foreshadowed at the parties. The son succeeds in setting Gr. against his brother; and Gr. has a quarrel with the Princess. Yet Gr. shows off, and in his magnanimity
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says: ‘I don’t believe what others say.’ ‘If you don’t believe, why then did you kick up the row and make a fuss?’ The Princess complains to Gr. that the Belle and the St. have become very thick. Gr., because of this, regards the son more respectfully, and is both surprised and envious. ‘Oh, Milyukov knows that Gr. has been busy at the tea tables today!’ Her step-father is not a General, but a Colonel, who has married her old mother for her money. He has violent radical views. (The mother for the time being keeps her own counsel). Flatters both the St. and the Pr. – The Colonel notices the St.’s attitude to her, and makes love to her, for he has already got power over her mother. – Captain Kartousov, a Sebastopol hero, a cousin of Gr. He is sister Anne’s son. Gr. says of his marriage: ‘It is not yet settled; it is a delicate matter.’ Feb. 18. – The Princess has just had an explanation from Gr. The marriage is not discussed; but both the Pr. and Sh. know of it. The adopted daughter consents to marry Gr. The Pr. is secretly in love with her; but he has never spoken to her of his love. In the opening of the novel the Pr. is undecided how to act; but he seems to be ready to give her up. The idea that his mother is arranging the marriage of the adopted daughter and Gr. gives him a great shock. Until then he has been terribly jealous of Sh. without, however, saying a word. The adopted daughter, not wishing to hamper the Pr.’s career, has not reassured him regarding Sh. She is eager for the Pr. to declare his love, although she has made up her mind not to hamper him in his career. But the Pr. is proud, diffident, awfully shy, almost morbid, and under his mother’s thumb. He hates Sh. all the time. And the St. has managed to see through it all. Deceived by the assumed admission of the adopted daughter (expressed by her in a moment of annoyance) that she loved Sh., the Pr. has been absent for some three months. He has been away (for six months). Having returned home in August he suddenly learns of her engagement to Gr. Meantime the Belle’s family, after an absence abroad for 18 months, comes back. (A year before the Princess, too, had been abroad, but she had been back for six months). The mothers (friends from childhood) have decided upon the marriage. The Pr. and the Belle are aware of this decision. The Pr. has remained abroad with his fiancée for some time longer. The Belle is undecided. After her return, a fortnight before the arrival of the Pr., the mothers talk the matter over again (they are waiting for the Pr.); and the Belle learns the news about Gr. (during a ride with her step-father). – Meanwhile the Belle has made the St.’s acquaintance abroad. The Pr. has found them already acquainted. On his return,
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when he comes to see the Belle, she tells him that he has come too late. (She does not tell him of the St., but the Pr. guesses, and thinks it strange). N.B. The Pr. does not propose to the Belle, but she herself (tactlessly) writes to him to say that he is too late. They have an explanation, but she is not at all put out, and surprises the Pr. by her conceit and ‘Radical’ rigmarole. – It is the Pr. who announces the arrival of the St. Gr., too, has had a letter from him and feels uneasy (on account of their former quarrel). Gr. is ashamed of his relatives and is uneasy on their account. His sisters, who are on a pension, don’t live with him, and he is therefore proud of his son’s successes, and makes him display his learning. – At.Gr.’s birthday party the Princess suddenly wishes to announce Gr.’s engagement. Sh., the Pr. and the Belle are present. The adopted daughter faints. The son appears. Insolent expressions. The Belle’s attitude to him is a surprise to all present. At that party the Belle refuses the Pr. The St. has an explanation with Sh. His relations with Uspensky. Sh. declares to the Pr. that the adopted daughter has never loved him, but is in love with him, the Pr. The Tragic Mother has an explanation with her daughter and with the Colonel. The St. begins to come to see the Colonel quite frequently. The Colonel pays great attention to the St. to please his step-daughter. The break between the mother and daughter. – The break between the Pr. and the Princess. – A great quarrel; they shut him up. Then the Captain comes to the rescue. An awful scandal. The engagement was to have been announced at the Princess’s house. It does not come off. The son pokes fun at his father. Gr. is trying to act a magnanimous role. The Princess’s break with Gr. on account of his having given in. Rumours about the son. (Proclamations are being circulated in the town; sacrilege; the fire). Gr.’s explanation with his son. – The Belle suddenly declares to her mother that she is going to marry Gr.’s son. Gr. regards the son with respect. The murder of Sh. who wanted to inform the authorities. The St. runs away, frightening both the Colonel and Gr. Gr.’s death. The Belle and the St. are inhuman and merciless both to their people and to one another. The Governor General has for a long time failed to keep watch on the St. just because he does not want to risk displeasing the Princess. The Captain is utterly disgraced and laughed at; she runs away with the St. The Captain learns all this as well as about Sh.’s death; he informs the authorities, and goes out of his mind. It ends with an arrest.
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The chronicler34 proceeds to the hospital. The black beetle. – The Pr. marries the adopted daughter. – N.B. The Pr. establishes friendship with the Captain from the moment the Captain learns that the Belle has rejected him, the Pr. The Pr. is friendly with Sh. and the Captain, but not publicly. The novel is a sort of poem describing how Gr. wanted to marry, but did not. Or an exposition of how all the events have come to pass. To begin with the proclamations. To conduct the whole thing as a narrative, as a very direct and simple narrative and . . . From the Provincial chronicle. To begin the narrative with this: that people are saying all sorts of things about all that has happened; many people are carried away by it and yet surprised by the suicide and the postponement of the marriage. ‘How could such literature have sprung up.’ Also ‘how they discuss, God knows why, N. Granovsky’s last days.’ (It is positively known now that the Princess was paying him a pension). Yet everything was going on quite simply, – until the quarrel with the Governor General. At first the Governor is away; then he arrives and adopts doubly strict measures. He begins with the Captain. (And the Captain, in fact, is the most innocent), but he overlooks the St. altogether . . . There are people who say that he deliberately overlooks him. – On the day of the birthday party (the first day of the novel) the Captain is tripped up. ‘I sat with Gr., the third from him, and heard his heated conversation with Sh.’ Generally, when I describe a conversation, even very friendly people pay no attention. I may possess data, I may make it up myself, but one knows whether what I narrate is true. This shall be a chronicle. For instance, Nechayev comes in. Here is a new character, with the impression he has produced on me. People said that he had a wart on his face; but I noticed no wart. And if, as is said, the police agent at the frontier took no notice of him, well, there is nothing surprising in this, considering that he could make up so cleverly. There was nothing striking about him. Even his views on terrorist acts have nothing original about them. (And the poor Belle, who ran away after the Sh. affair, did they stop her? She ran away with the Captain. The Captain was brought back. Ushakov had informed the authorities of everything. The Pr. paid him a visit). N.B. (In the description of the fire I must have a shopkeeper saying, for instance: ‘You can imagine that at the very moment I . . . It started at the wooden shed.’) Ushakov I must describe as an ardent and fiery
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fellow (in the story he gives himself away, it is I who say so about him). He had conversations with the St., too. I must, generally, give the St.’s views and doctrines (‘two million heads etc.’). But Ushakov went even further etc. – N.B. Where it deals with the meetings of the Revolutionary Committee I must observe, like a chronicler: ‘Perhaps they have held many more meetings, – they certainly must have held them, – I don’t know. But the thing must have happened like this. . . And here in a simple narrative I tell how Nechayev had turned their heads by his views; how the Belle had brought over the proclamations; of the Captain’s innocence; how Timofey Nikolaevich (Gr.) had at first agreed with the revolutionary views, then, to his shame, was duped by the conspirators; . . and about the Princess, about the suspicions of the Tragic Mother; how people thought that the Pr. was perfectly aware of all that was going on; also how they had falsely implicated the Pr.; how the St. deliberately excited the Pr.’s jealousy, and how he told his father (Gr.) that the Pr. would kill Sh. (That is why Gr. so absurdly accused the Pr. of Sh.’s death); how eventually Gr. got terrified and died from diarrhoea. §
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N.B. Or to conduct the story as a chronicle describing: the quarrel between Sh. and Gr. Not a full account, but as though the chronicler is giving his own version of it: ‘Sh’s view (of Tchatzky) was’ . . . N.B. In the opening, speaking of Gr. and describing him, the chronicler says: ‘Unfortunately our contemporaries must be reminded even of these men. And why do we so lightly glide over the realities of our life and condemn our past to oblivion? Do we deny our past?’ The St. teases his father by telling him that he is covering up the Pr.’s past, and makes him quarrel with the Princess (he had his purpose in so doing). ? ? ? What purpose? N.B. The chronicler, in his version, either in the middle of the novel or at the end says: ‘On the whole, the St. had such and such a purpose; though we gather it only from Ushakov’s evidence. I don’t know of their plots there, in Switzerland, but their outlook, their philosophy, the meaning of their activities are defined by me correctly. “I vouch for it.”’ – ‘Gr. has become a good deal of a windbag and, I must say, he has had tiffs with the Princess.’ I know for certain that he was afraid that the Princess would not call on him. It was she herself who broached to him the idea of his marrying, and herself stopped coming to see him.
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N.B. ‘I write for yourself, for you alone have expressed the desire to know.’ – Sh. says: ‘We can have neither the family, nor family virtues, for the family cannot be cosmopolitan and would be destroyed the very moment it tore itself away from its own country. But we have foresworn our country; or, in any case, we are quite indifferent to our country.’ – Gr. is in the Governor’s disfavour; he is a figure of fun. – ‘Nechayev is the sort of man who has no particular regard for aristocrats.’ The Princess, having seen through this, tries to insinuate herself into Nechayev’s good graces. – The Princess had formerly played a great part in the town, particularly when the Governor General was a relation of hers. Now, for no reason, she tries to score over the Governor, who is a quiet man of the middle class (the Governor is Gr.’s school friend). But the Princess failed to form a party; there was no sense in forming one, anyway. The Chronology. – The action of the novel is during September. – The Pr. has an explanation with the adopted daughter in March, abroad. There he learns from her that she loves Sh. – In June35 the Princess, the adopted daughter and Sh. (who have spent six months abroad) return to the provincial town; but the Pr. stays on, distressed with the unsatisfactory position of his estate and the pending lawsuit. – The Belle, the Tragic Mother, and the step-father (the Colonel) have come from abroad a month before the action of the novel begins (in August). They have spent two years abroad. – The Pr. arrives in town on the day on which the action of the novel begins. He sees Gr.’s son arrive. – The Captain arrives and settles in the town a month before the action of the novel starts. He brings with him his mother, ‘sister Ann,’ and they move into her little house. This upsets Gr. so greatly, that he moves to another house. – The Pr., on his arrival, learns that the adopted daughter does not love Sh., but is engaged to Gr. Sh. wrote him about it when he was abroad. – On the day on which the action of the novel starts, the Captain is tripped up, and he is in raptures. The change from hostilities to an ecstatic Quixotic36 love. This change I must, for instance, begin to explain in Part II, through the mouth of the chronicler, leaving everything aside, and I must do it with psychological exactitude; and then I must bring it down to and link it up with the other action. In Part I. the Captain only is to be outlined, but presented as a queer fellow. – When the Pr. returns home, the Princess immediately arranges the engagement. But the Belle on the very first day honours the Pr. with a letter: ‘You have come too late.’ And the Pr., even when abroad, has kept at a distance
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from her; this displeased his mother; she thought that remaining abroad he was sure to pay court to the Belle. At this very time she revives her old plan: to marry the adopted daughter to Gr. She knows and perceives that her son is in love with the adopted daughter; she has a talk with her son and says: ‘this shall not be!’ Everything happens all of a sudden. – To give the psychology of the relations between the mother and son. Sh. has a drunken wife. He treats her like a Christian: forgives and chastises her. She is jealous of the adopted daughter. When the adopted daughter calls on Sh. (apropos of her sudden engagement to (Gr.) and cries, Sh.’s wife reports it to the Pr. (who is jealous of Sh.), and to Gr. Gr. makes a scene by magnanimously refusing to believe this. ‘Why then did you kick up a row?’ the Princess asks. And the St., in his cynicism, is convinced that it is not for nothing that the adopted daughter has called on Sh., but that she must have a liaison with him. But the Pr., when abroad, received a letter from Sh. informing him of the real state of affairs, and on the first day of the action of the novel, having obtained from Sh. all his explanations, he is so indignant, when he learns that the adopted daughter has called on him that he thrashes him. – Being cynical, the St. is glad to spread the rumour that the adopted daughter has a liaison with Sh. (which he believes); and he perceives the need, for the sake of the common cause, of setting the Pr. against Sh., so that the murder may be attributed to the Pr. N.B. Until the murder the St. does not go into hiding, believing that suspicion will fall on the Pr. (the St. has not yet completed his work with the factory hands). But the case takes a different turn, and then the St. flies. – The St. does not at all want to marry the Belle; he tells his father that the adopted daughter has a liaison with Sh., and that formerly she had a liaison with the Pr. Gr. incautiously mentions it to the Princess, who demands explanations. She does not believe it; yet she worries the adopted daughter. The girl declares that she is not going to be Gr.’s wife (and this after her engagement). The Princess is furious and says she shall be Gr.’s wife; and anyhow she is pleased now that she can tell her son, the Pr., that his beloved has a liaison with Sh. Hence the slap in the face. Yet the Pr. does not believe it, and has an explanation with the adopted daughter. (I may also relate that the silly, cruel, but noble Belle helps the Pr. to find out the truth and to realise that the adopted daughter has always loved him, but has kept it secret.) In the final explanation between the Pr. and the adopted daughter, they declare their love for one another. The Captain (the Belle is
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with him now), Sh. and the Pr. celebrate the wedding. The St. is also present. Suddenly Sh’s murder is committed. The Belle knows nothing about it; is astounded; yet runs after the St. She is arrested. The St. has made a fool of all of them, including the Belle. N.B. The Belle had no previous knowledge of Sh.’s murder; she was astounded by it, yet it inspired her (because of her shallow little mind) with a still greater infatuation for the St. And the fact that the St. had deserted her inspired her with a still greater admiration for him. – After the Belle had gone to the Captain and a great commotion had arisen in the town, everybody thought that Nechayev wanted to marry her; and this report came to the ears of the Governor, too: the Tragic Mother complained to the Governor. But Nechayev remained indifferent to her, so the Belle was reduced to perplexity and grief. But not seriously, for she was lightminded. On this occasion the Pr. demanded an explanation from Nechayev; as did Gr.; but this only added to their confusion: ‘If his purpose in remaining here was not that he wanted to have a little intrigue and to marry her, then what was his purpose?’ Nechayev at first, however, gave vague answers, but later (the chronicler so explains it) having perceived that by carrying off the Belle he could blind their eyes to his real purpose, he began to entertain the idea himself. The Chronicler says: ‘Nechayev was indeed so simple that Uspensky could easily confuse him; and Uspensky was the first to suggest to him that idea. . . Yet even when he had adopted that idea he went on giving vague answers and joking, for he despised them all to such an extent that he considered that there was no need even to be crafty with them. But the more he muddled it and looked indifferent, the more he was trusted. Indeed chance favoured him.’ The Chronicler says; Formerly, no one could write novels. But nowadays, when publication is allowed. . . (But my opinion is that even now, under the new conditions, most romantic stories are still possible). Mazurin, Akimov (uses small shot), the Darling, women, poisons, daggers, drownings. The question about the St.; ‘Is he crafty or not? He will be crafty, but now he is only young. Mere chance and condition brought it about.’ In what, precisely, do the St.’s intrigues consist? Well, indeed, he is not a great intriguer. Firstly, he has his work: proclamations, revolutionizing the factory hands, incendiarism, organizing the ‘trinities’ etc. Golubov. And for this purpose he has to spend a certain time in town, and he knows that he is being watched by the political police and may be caught (for he is organising and setting the whole thing in motion). Consequently, with his discernment, he studies the place, persons,
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makes observations, gets to know – is very fond of getting to know people he comes across, as well as their interests. Finally he realises perfectly well that having identified himself with these interests, he distracts attention from his other, his more important activity. (When Nechayev has implicated Milyukov in the affair of the fire, he feels quite happy. He himself says so to them). He manages it all so well that until his very departure no one asks him what he is doing in the town. (Save Gr. who puts this question to him now and then). And no one notices his association with the schoolmasters and with Uspensky. The Governor General, himself, meeting him at the Princess’s house and in her circle (and also at the house of the rich heiress, the Belle) is convinced that the St. is staying in town in order to make his career, and to marry the adopted daughter. The Governor and everybody else in town think at first that the St. is in the employ of the Princess, that he has met her abroad and has got round the queer idiotic Prince, and that he has a great influence over him; that acting on the suggestion of the Princess he is trying to persuade the Pr. to marry the heiress. The rumour about Sh. and his liaison with the adopted daughter is immediately believed by everyone, and they blame Sh., and also the Governor. Gr. is laughed at. People think that the St. is bossing the whole show. Afterwards when the Belle runs away with the Captain, the whole town ‘guesses’ at once that it is not at all the Captain whom she wants – that the Captain is a mere tool – but that it is the St. who has stolen her affections with a view to marrying her, and all say that he is a ‘fine fellow.’ Even the Governor praises him, and invites him to his house, for the Governor, of course, is pleased that the Princess has made a fool of herself. (The Tragic Mother and the Bishop complain to the Governor.) And now what is surprising is just this: ‘The St. was so incapable of playing a farsighted game that although he perceived that it was useful for him to get them off his track in that manner, yet he despised everyone so much that he took no special precautions and made a lot of blunders.’ (To describe them, the blunders). All this is explained by the chronicler in the middle of the novel, and is supported by the following considerations: N.B. Perhaps he will turn out a businesslike fellow, but now he is still young. All the more shame and disgrace on his environment. The St. is not a fool, but is handicapped by his contempt for people and by Nihilistic arrogance; he refuses to know realities. (To relate the stories of how the factory hands had duped him, though he went away convinced that they, like Frenchmen, would erect barricades). As to Uspensky, the St. never even perceived that he had a heart and that he might inform the authorities. Like other Nihilists the St. does not even postulate the question of
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nobility and baseness. His mind is occupied with other things and he does not bother about subtleties. – The Princess and Gr. suspect that the St. has criminal designs (owing to the proclamations and fires). The Pr. suspects him, but keeps silent.37 The Colonel (the step-father) does not suspect anything. – As regards Sh., he, too, is not a man, but only a babbler. He himself is aware of it; yet despises Nechayev’s business-like activity; for it is all based on sheer stupidity and on his utter ignorance of the cause, on his ignorance of reality. Gr. meanwhile talks a great deal about the cause and says: ‘If there must be fires, let there be fires; if acts are needed, let us act!’ N.B. His position is comical, for he says this in the presence of his son, without suspecting that it is his son and those worthless fellows like Uspensky who are responsible for the fires. After that from shame and fear he dies of diarrhoea. – And Sh. says about himself: ‘I will teach people how to act; although I am a babbler, I too can act: I will inform the authorities of your activities’ (he says this to himself and also aloud). Nechayev has so much discernment that in Sh. alone he has recognized a man capable of action, and decides to murder him immediately. In the St.’s opinion, Uspensky is a man incapable of action; that is why he had informed the authorities. Gr. dies (however strange it may seem) more from fear than from distress, or even from wounded self-love. But the principal idea (that is, the sentimental interest of the novel) is represented by the Pr. and the adopted daughter, the new people who have withstood temptations and decided to begin a new life. The Pr. speaks to Sh. about this, just before the latter’s death. He also expresses himself in this sense to the adopted daughter, to the Princess and to Gr. The Pr. wishes to work (the proud Prince!) and distresses his mother by such a wish. Gr., the Pr’s tutor, has brought him up on these principles; but now at the mother’s request he discourages him: ‘mais distinguons!’ The Pr.’s is a strong and obstinate character, but he has an impressionable, sad, shy soul. The Princess understands him; Gr. does not. The Princess and Gr. discuss the Pr. with one another, but fail to agree. Gr. at the improvised engagement party shows himself before the adopted daughter in the poetic role of father (Feb. 20, on the first day of the action of the novel). – The adopted daughter is so bewildered at first that she does not deny it, for they refrained from telling her their final decision. – Afterwards Gr. plays the part of a magnanimous man, and gives the
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adopted daughter back her freedom, etc. Then she tells him quite frankly that he has no rights over her which he can resign. The adopted daughter has a very strong character, but is tender and generous. She is inordinately proud. Later on she explains it all to the Pr.: she had loved him, but out of pride, did not show it, since he had not told her that he loved her. He, too, out of pride refrained from telling her. Also it was because of the question: would he have the strength to keep his vows? Later he cannot speak to her about his love because he is jealous of Sh. The Pr. says to her: ‘I am an ordinary man and undistinguished, but we will try to be good and fine people. I am aware of my powers; but mother has to be handled tactfully.’ N.B. The Problem. (To embellish and to create this pair – the Pr. and the adopted daughter). Here’s where the difficulty lies. The Pr. is going to be a Magistrate. More poetry – ? N.B. (To tell, for instance, how Uspensky starts a discussion about an alien making up his mind to save money, and how one ought actually to save if one wishes to amass a fortune. – The Pr. listens, smiles but does not say a word. The Pr., for instance, never argues with atheists, although passionately believing in God.) He is obstinate and independent to the verge of morbidity. Altogether, at the end of the novel, to show that no one did even suspect in the Pr. such a strong and passionate character. Tomorrow I must outline all the characters. That is, the Pr. and the adopted daughter – modest, ideal and really fine people. – Gr. is not a real ideal; he is a survival, muddled, conceited, a caricature. – Sh. is restless, the product of books, who has got into conflict with reality; he believes passionately but does not know what to do. Much beauty. To give everyone his epithet; and chiefly as regards the Pr. to present him with two or three outstanding traits (surely he is not an ideal man, for he is jealous, stubborn, proud and persistent, taciturn and morbid, i.e. sad). He is not even very eager to marry the adopted daughter, for he is aware of all these defects of his, and knows that she will not be able to put up with them. He has had a friendship with her about two years before; then, after the interval, in a conversation with her, he demands her complete submission. He has refrained from acting or declaring himself before, because he has been watching things. He has even thought of killing the adopted daughter. And he has suffered in consequence. Later, for this very reason, he is suspected of having killed Sh. But the Pr., on his knees, had implored Sh.’s forgiveness. The Pr. is an aristocrat and says: ‘I hate and despise them all.’ I have still to create the Pr. He has lost his estates: ‘I am not crying over the estate; but I am not going to give up what is mine.38 To
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respect oneself and to be scrupulously honest, to be a real Prince? (N.B.) He denounces the provocative fellow. Of the Pr.’s relations with Nechayev. Both Nechayev and Uspensky partly perceive the Pr.’s character. And Nechayev says that they must be on their guard with the Pr. – The Pr. with great pride and obstinacy announces his decision to his mother. Even she does not expect this. Everyone thinks that he is under her thumb, but he suddenly reveals himself, yet kindly, tactfully. – The Princess, in reckoning on his marriage with the Belle, chiefly relied on her son’s prudence and practical good sense, on his unpoetic character. But, indeed, he is a poet: he despises atheists, he believes fiercely. He wants to become a peasant and to join the Raskolnik sect. He manages his own estates. But he has not enough money to run them properly. N.B. The Princess had even been inclined not to believe that the Pr. could love the adopted daughter, so unpoetic and prudent had he seemed to her. But a certain fact opened her eyes and filled her with suspicion, so that she instantly made up her mind, in any case, to arrange for Gr.’s marriage with the adopted daughter. – The Pr. has perfectly formed and settled opinions of people and events. Gr. does not even suspect the Pr.’s opinion of him. He is always silent, but once he unexpectedly corrects a quotation made by Gr. Equally correct is the opinion which the Pr. has formulated of events. In his conversation with Sh. he makes his views on things and people perfectly clear: ‘I shall be an ordinary honest and new man (?).’ He astounds Sh. by his ardour and by his hidden spiritual fire, as well as by his hidden sorrows, from his long, wild and gloomy silence. He can dare anything. We have such men in Russia. The last two months have been spent by the Pr. in Petersburg (on account of the lawsuit in which he is involved there). He has received Sh.’s letter at Petersburg, and not abroad. – The Pr. keeps watch on Nechayev and begins to feel uneasy. (I must describe it poetically). The partial destruction of the town by fire torments him. He makes up his mind: he would even become friends again with Sh. to clear up his suspicions. ‘I knew that I was to blame, but I could not ask your forgiveness. I could not from shame.’ He is a perfect citizen. – (He does not at all want to be merely a nice and kind husband and father). He avoids talking to Sh. about Nechayev; he only listens to Sh. N.B. Nechayev, although he begins to suspect the Pr., yet fails to take his correct measure, and this from contempt and also from levity. When rumour accuses the Pr. of Sh’s murder, the Pr. at once per-
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ceives the whole thing, goes to Uspensky, makes him confess, and straightway reports it all to the Governor. The Pr. shows up everything. The Pr. speaks about a Boyar39 aristocratic party. For some time the Princess has been entertaining the idea of a Boyar party and has made friends with Nechayev, for the nihilists and boyars have points in common. She is convinced that her son, too, is a Boyar. N.B. The Princess, in the course of her friendship with the St., has declared herself a Nihilist and free thinker; and then – the shame! And when Gr. begins ‘returning her freedom’ to the adopted daughter (he begins playing the gentleman when there is nothing else left for him to do!) the Princess, who at that time is in the very thick of Nihilism, provokes Gr. and the son to discussions, humiliating Gr. and exalting the son, and thereby avenging herself on Gr. for their friendship of long standing. N.B. (The chronicler inserts here a tirade on hatred of benefactors and how it originates). So that when Gr. begins to talk of poetry and of Rafael’s Madonna,40 she immediately says: ‘It’s all nonsense, nonsense! You’ve invented the Madonna!’ – N.B. The Tragic Mother tells a few homely truths to the Princess after the Belle has run away with the Captain. N.B. As in a lunatic asylum – the doctors biting one another. The cause being the great economic and social upheaval and instability.41 N.B. Feb. 26. There are positive rumours that the Pr. has seduced the adopted daughter, and that Gr. is willing to marry her. The St. too believes it. Nechayev. He arrived in the town also for the purpose of setting up together with Golubov a secret printing press. Sh., after his travels, is not admitted to the Princess’s house. (He is suspected of having a liaison with the adopted daughter and of having made up again with his drunken wife and mother). I must describe it so as to make clear the fact that the Pr. has never had an explanation with the adopted daughter. Never. Even in his childhood he was inordinately proud. (He is of a very aristocratic family, on his mother’s side). But he has known all along that she loves him. He generally distrusts people and looks on them with condescension. He has regarded her love as the unimportant and ridiculous feeling of a young girl. Abroad, however, he has once kindled a flame in her; though he has said nothing in particular. But suddenly seeing her inflamed, he has remained abroad. At that time he still liked the heiress; only later (having remained abroad) he became disappointed with the heiress. He returns home as hard as steel – and with a secret vow to break with everything, even if his mother were to deprive him of his inheritance for doing so. (At first he makes friends with Nechayev, then with
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Sh.; afterwards, only, does he associate with Golubov). Having kept a close watch on the adopted daughter during the whole course of the novel, and observing how she refuses Gr. and is even driven out of the house by his mother, he suddenly, aware of her innermost secret, proposes to her. ‘To leave everything, to break utterly with people’ – this explanation of the Pr.’s amazes her by the insistency of its decision. Sh. keeps watch on him. He too believes that the Pr. has seduced her; and he calls the Pr. to account. They meet at Gr.’s quite unexpectedly. The Pr. has that day given Uspensky a sound thrashing because of his article. The Captain, Gr.’s cousin, is tripped up. – The great author arrives in town. He has called on the Princess, but not on Gr. Now he arrives at Gr.’s. house rather late. The Pr. enters and announces his meeting with the son. The son makes some sort of declaration. (Sh. several times attempts to stop him). Gr.’s engagement. The Captain leaves the room clinking his sword. Recitation of poems. Apropos of the poems, Gr. delivers a speech on poetry. ‘No, you are not dead yet.’ The son says: ‘Snivelling ranting old woman.’ The great author: ‘I am a Nihilist.’ The Belle, too, reveals herself. Gr. speaks about the fires, etc. They all leave. The Belle has an explanation with the Pr.; a quarrel with her mother; and the son quarrels with Sh. (The Belle beckons to the son). The Colonel has received an order to arrest the son. A quarrel with the mother. Sh. with his family (his wife is a drunkard). A serious explanation between Sh. and the Pr. The adopted daughter calls on Sh. and cries. The St. witnesses it. The Captain and his doings. The Captain becomes friends with the St. The St. becomes friends with the Princess. The Princess turns Nihilist. (The great author, too, has had an influence over her in this respect). The Belle’s blasphemy; the mother invites the Bishop to speak to the daughter. The Belle quarrels with the Governor’s wife. Her flight with the Captain. The St. in the character of ‘The Hero of our Time.’ (Lermontov’s).42 – The Pr. announces that he is going to marry the adopted daughter. – Gr. at the parties pays homage to love. – The Pr. has known the St. well when still abroad, etc.43 It is gathered that the Pr. has arrived with the post of Chief of Department44 which drives the Princess crazy. The Captain makes love to all the women. ‘To marry her to the Captain, should Gr. refuse,’ is the Princess’s decision. Gr. does not want to marry and sharply refuses, yet he is flattered. The Princess is angry with him. At the party at his house the engagement is suddenly announced. The Pr., on his arrival, refuses the Belle.
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On the Pr.’s arrival, on that very day at the party, the adopted daughter, resenting Gr.’s advances, refuses him; she runs off to Sh. to tell him of her love for the Pr. (She had run to Gr., but he indulged in high flown language just to show her his sensibility) (Sh. is with his mother, and Golubov with Sh.’s drunken wife.) The plot and theme. The girl dies from love for the Prince (he knows it, and she knows that he knows it; she has written him, but he does not answer). She gladly seizes the Princess’s suggestion about Gr. – Then she cannot force herself to adopt it (and runs to Sh., who is her friend). Sh. has an explanation with the Pr. Meanwhile it is rumoured that she has assignations with Sh. The Pr. is furious; every one believes the rumour. Gr., too, believes it and makes a scene, but when it is made plain to him that she loves the Pr., Gr. gives her to him, (but without success). §
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Rumours about the arrival of the great author, which upset Gr. The great author is to appear in Part III. Where is the tragedy? Either: 1). Granovsky makes his appearance in the opening of the novel. 2). Granovsky is expecting his son; his son being somewhat famous. 3). The sudden engagement (owing to the Pr.’s arrival on the day of the wedding). 4). Gr. in conversation with his son: ‘It’s a lucky chance that has brought you here. I want to marry etc. . . And then I must link-up everything with the son and with Gr.’s relations to the son (everything is bound up with him, as with The Hero of our Time). Or: The Pr. is hopelessly and desperately in love (here is the tragedy) to the verge of committing a crime; and the tragedy consists in this, that they are men of the new school. The adopted daughter is in love with Sh., who is married (he is a tragic character and a thorough Christian). The Pr. hates everything and everyone, and finally joins Nechayev in order to have Sh. murdered. The adopted daughter curses the murderer, and only afterwards realises that the murder is a political one. Gr.’s influence and – how he was made a fool of. The St. says about Russia: ‘Oh, one can do a great deal here! How
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can they say that there is nothing to be done in Russia? It is only those who don’t know Russia that say so. First of all, there is Socialism everywhere, and secondly, nowhere else can you destroy so well and so much as in Russia!’ Sh. speaks against the people (about the French proletariat). ‘O ma mère que je vénère.’ The Pr. dislikes all that is false, false democracy, Granovsky, and false love. He finally proposes conditions to the adopted daughter – to give up his inheritance, to give up all pleasures, to become poor, to work. She accepts them. At first he advocates the flagellation of the democrats. Has a quarrel with Sh. and Golubov. He thrashes Sh.; he thrashes Uspensky for his newspaper article. He seeks after truth; he has found the truth in Russia and Christianity. He is cruel. Nechayev excites his jealousy of Sh. Christian meekness and self-condemnation. He becomes reconciled to his mother. He condemns himself for having wished for Sh.’s death. A conversation between the Princess and her son, in which she wants to prove to him that Nechayev’s doctrine is true. It is useful for big landowners. Notions about the feudal aristocracy, the Boyars, and Nihilism keep on in her head without any connection. – Sh. must be presented as a tragic character. – The Prince: truthful, cruel, resolute, hating the present order of things, progress, and present-day men (becomes friends with Nechayev), makes friends with Golubov (to become a monk); finally proposes to the adopted daughter (self-condemnation); firmly announces his decision to his mother; and to his fiancée he says: ‘We must be born again, we must be honest.’ Irony as defence in the form of attack. Hatred. A pure man. The new kind of boyar. Terribly proud. ‘To be honest, to save our souls and to start a new race.’ – Sh. is, after all, weak, a phrasemonger. The Pr. is no phrasemonger; he is strong. N.B. He is a splendid figure, but I must reveal only the outline of him. Sh. is asking the Pr. both by letter and after his arrival: ‘Is it true, and what exactly do you want to do?’ Sh. who at one time was slapped in the face. – The Pr. arrives in the town and tells him that it is true, but that he does not know what to do. The adopted daughter, out of wounded pride (since she has been left in that position), refuses him and goes to Gr. The Pr. bears it all with irony; he listens to Nechayev,
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devotes himself to Golubov and Sh. (Golubov restrains Sh.). The Pr. proudly accuses all and her, too, before them. He is overwhelmed by their meekness and by the question put to him: ‘Are you better than they?’ But it is this very question that has been tormenting him; he has arrived here burdened already with that hesitation and doubt, in process of transforming into a different man. Now he proposes formidable conditions for their future, and imposes terms; now he himself laughs at everything. ‘To be new men, to begin the transformation with ourselves. I am not a genius, yet I have discovered a new thing, a thing which no one in Russia save me has discovered: self-correction.’ §
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The Prince is embittered, morbidly proud, contradictory, and Sh.’s enemy; out of malicious pride he laughs at the prank which the adopted daughter played on Granovsky; he is amazed by Golubov, yet does not admit it; he is dissatisfied with everything, and has secretly made up his mind to put an end to himself. (He despises himself above all). The death of Sh. astonishes him. He proposes difficult conditions to the adopted daughter; declares his decision to his mother. (I must describe some great scandal in the middle of it all). ‘Let us go away, let us run away, let us start a new race of men; we are not worthy yet’ (these and the others are right, all are right, because no one of them is any good) ‘We must begin afresh.’– – The Pr. at Golubov’s. ‘The first I correct’ (those who are uprooted from the soil) – ‘I have faith.’ Golubov: ‘And this is also the last! This is the first and the last. Nothing else is needed, everything consists in this.’ Gr. says to the adopted daughter: ‘Why, why did not you come to me?’ (envious that the adopted daughter, in despair, just before the wedding, has rushed off to the Pr. or to Sh.). ‘Why did not you open your heart to me? I might, I might have been able to set you at peace and to make you happy!’ (i.e. he would have noisily and prettily acted the part of Sax). The Prince is a sympathetic figure, glorious (under the mask of lightmindedness, he conceals deep thought and feeling). He is a sceptic and a Don Juan, but this only out of despair. – On his arrival he, like a gentleman, proposes to the adopted daughter, but he is refused. – His talk with Sh., of whom he begs forgiveness for the slap in the face. At Gr.’s engagement party, by paying court to a beautiful horsewoman and owing to the unexpected engagement, he drives the adopted daughter to despair. – His affair with the
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Governor’s wife – he makes her fall in love with him and carries her off. A great scandal. – He has made the beautiful horsewoman fall in love with him – (from sheer boredom), but the horsewoman rejects him and gives herself to a Nihilist. At this time the wedding takes place. The adopted daughter runs to the Pr. in despair. (He receives her. A scandal at Gr.’s). Sh. demands that he should fulfil his vow. His affair with the Governor’s wife is progressing smoothly, but as soon as she learns that the Pr. is with the adopted daughter, in a fit of mad jealousy, she decides that they must run away. The Pr. elopes with her (playing with life). The adopted daughter is left alone. Sh. is killed. Nechayev deserts the Belle, and the Pr., after his latest escapade, commits . . . . (N.B.? does he shoot himself?). The adopted daughter is left alone. (Only Golubov agitates and surprises him). The idea is that of playing with life. Wild gestures, mad escapades, shutting his eyes to everything simply in order not to see. If he saw things as they were, he would be bound to shoot himself. A Variant (A Don Juan, but a self-punishing one. ‘We are not the sort of people to live while we may.’) The adopted daughter secretly loves the Pr., but he never offers himself to her. – Ardent relations: the adopted daughter and Sh. know that he is aware of her love, but that he keeps silent and refuses to say that he loves her (yet once he has said it and has turned her head – because she was bored). But the adopted daughter runs to him and he gives in (or, to put it better, it amuses him to make Gr. a cuckold). He prevails upon Gr., and the adopted daughter runs away with him. Sh. interferes, but Sh. is killed. The Governor’s wife capitulates and he carries her off. The adopted daughter is left alone. N.B. A lightminded man, engaged only in playing with life, an ‘elegant Nozdriov’45 playing an awful lot of pranks, both fine and filthy, and suddenly he shoots himself, having listened to Golubov (only once) casually. The empty and lightminded man turning out, finally, to be the most profound man, and is this all ? ? ? (What is to come of this?) – Being haughty he is not ashamed of Sh. and even prides himself on his levity. He is learned. ‘When have you had the time to study?’ asks Gr. ‘What capacities, what talent!’ He is a sceptic and makes fun of everybody, but condescendingly and thoughtlessly. ‘An Elegant Nozdriov,’ is Gr.’s expression. Utter indifference to anything that concerns the community, sheer intoxication with sensuality. ‘A cosmopolitan cannot be honest’ (is Sh.’s conviction). §
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Notes
1. 2.
3.
4. 5. 6.
7.
8. 9.
10.
11.
Text: Typescript in HRHRC, Katherine Mansfield Collection, Box 3.7. See BJK, p. 85, for details of KM’s help with this typescript. A footnote at the end of the first page of text reads: ‘In the existing English translation “The Devils” is wrongly called “The Possessed.”’ Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov (1828–96) was a philosopher and literary critic who was a long-time friend of Leo Tolstoy, and a friend of and collaborator with Dostoevsky. The Gregorian calendar was implemented in Russia on 14 February 1918 by dropping the Julian dates of 1–13 February 1918. It was decreed that the Julian date was to be written after the Gregorian date until 1 July 1918; hence the two dates. Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov (1818–87) was a conservative journalist. Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov (1821–97) was a poet, some of whose poems were set to music by Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. First published in Russian in 1872, and published in the first English translation, by Constance Garnett, as The Possessed, though now usually entitled Demons or The Devils. It is based on the real-life murder in 1869 of Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, who was killed by a revolutionary group, The People’s Vengeance, of which he was a member. Sergei Gennadiyevich Nechayev (1847–82) strangled and shot Ivanov, hiding his body by putting it in a hole in the ice of a frozen lake. It was found but Nechayev eluded capture. Tikhon of Zadonsk (1724–83) was a Russian Orthodox bishop who was canonized a saint in 1861. Candide, a picaresque novel by Voltaire first published in 1759, is a satirical account of the gradual disillusionment of an innocent and optimistic young man. The title of Ivan Turgenev’s novel, published in 1862, is usually translated in English as Fathers and Sons, though Fathers and Children is the literal translation. The enigmatic hero, Bazarov, popularised the figure of the Nihilist; he was mentioned in political and literary debates. A footnote here reads: Among the other characters of the novel we find ‘the men of the forties;’ the publicist Granovsky, the great writer I. Turgenev; such well-known members of the Petrashevsky Revolutionary group as Shaposhnikov and Milyukov; also members of the Nechayev Revolutionary circle like Uspensky. We also find mentioned the influential critics Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Tcherynshevsky, as well as the famous Terrorists Karakosov and Saizev.
12. Nozdrev is a dilettante serf owner in Gogol’s Dead Souls. 13. Don Juan is the legendary rake and seducer whose tale has been told in
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14.
15. 16. 17. 18.
19. 20.
21.
22. 23. 24.
25. 26. 27. 28.
29. 30. 31.
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a variety of media, including Byron’s epic poem Don Juan (1821) and Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni (1787). Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine that argues that life is without meaning, purpose and value. Russian interest in it in the late nineteenth century built on German eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophy. Peter the Great (1672–1725) led a cultural revolution that replaced the traditional system with a modern one orientated towards Europe. A Ukase was a decree by the tsar that had the force of law. A footnote here reads: ‘From Turgenev’s Fathers & Children.’ A footnote here reads: ‘The leading heroine in Drouzhinin’s novel entitled “Polinka Sax.” (1847).’ Alexander Vasilyevich Druzhinin (1824–64) was a journalist and novelist who translated many works of English literature into Russian. A footnote here reads: ‘On the right margin is Dostoevsky’s note: “to describe simply and powerfully.”’ A Raskolnik, derived from the noun ‘raskol’, a split or schism, was a member of any of several sects that were founded by dissenters from the Russian Orthodox Church because they opposed the liturgical reforms of Nikon in the seventeenth century. They were also called ‘Old Believers’. A footnote here reads: ‘Dostoevsky probably had in his mind Mme. A. O. Smirnov-Rosseti, who served as a prototype also for one of Turgenev’s characters (Mme. D. M. Lassounsky in Rudin.)’. Dimitri Ivanovich Pisarev (1840–68) was an influential radical thinker, social critic and writer, imprisoned for his revolutionary views. Phalansteries are self-sustaining co-operative communities. A footnote here reads: ‘An allusion to Karakosov’s terroristic act – the murder of Alexander II’. Dimitri Vladimirovich Karakozov (1840–66) made an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II and in consequence was executed. A footnote here reads: ‘The hero of the novel “Polinka Sax.”’ A footnote here reads: ‘The word “disgusting” is struck out.’ A footnote here reads: ‘Crossed out by Dostoevsky: “And Ch-y too is a skunk.”’ A footnote here reads: ‘Ch-y (Chernyshevsky), D-v (Dobrolyubov) were both famous Russian critics, Westerners.’ Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828–89) was a revolutionary democrat, philosopher and critic. Nikolai Alexandrovich Dobrolyubov (1836–61) was a literary critic, poet and revolutionary democrat. A footnote here reads: ‘The word “cursed one” is struck out.’ A footnote here reads: ‘The marginal note: “at that time the Belle arrives” is struck out.’ A footnote here reads: ‘On the right margin: “Here takes place the meeting between the St. and the Belle. Sh. informs the authorities.”’
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32. Harpagon, meaning a hook, is the name of the miser in L’Avare (1668), a comedy by the French dramatist Molière (1622–73). 33. A footnote here reads: ‘On the margin, opposite the last two lines, is Dostoevsky’s note: “I would give a nought for such work.”’ 34. A footnote here reads: ‘“The Prince goes” is struck out.’ 35. A footnote here reads: ‘“April” is struck out.’ 36. Quixotic means ‘extremely idealistic and impractical’, like Cervantes’s character Don Quixote. 37. A footnote here reads: ‘A note on the margin: “they do not suspect.”’ 38. A footnote here reads: ‘A marginal note says: “tragedy, many doubts.”’ 39. Boyars were members of the highest feudal ranks. 40. Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483–1520), Raphael, was renowned for the range of his paintings of the Madonna. 41. A footnote here reads: ‘There follow in the MS character studies of Granovsky, Nechayev and Sh., already published in the original jubilee edition of Dostoevsky’s works.’ 42. A Hero of Our Time (1839) is a novel with a Byronic hero, Pechorin, written by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (1814–41), a Romantic poet and psychological novelist. Pechorin is the best-known ‘superfluous man’ type of protagonist in Russian literature. 43. A footnote here reads: ‘There follows in the MS an interrogation mark and a cancelled sentence: “Nechayev is only sister Ann’s son, and he worries Gr.”’ 44. A footnote here reads: ‘From what follows further in the MS. we gather that the Pr. becomes chief of department to the Governor.’ 45. A footnote here reads: ‘Nozdriov is a character from Gogol.’
F. M. Dostoevsky’s Letters to His Wife Anna Gregorevna Dostoevsky (During May and June, 1880, from Moscow, on the Poushkin Anniversary.)1 I Moscow, May 23–24, 1880. My dearest friend Anya, you can’t imagine how the news of the death of the Empress2 upset me. Peace to her soul, pray for her. I heard about it from the passengers in the train just after we left Novgorod. The thought struck me immediately that the Poushkin festivities might not take place. I even thought of returning home from Tchudov, but gave up the idea because I could not decide. I kept thinking ‘If there are no celebrations, then the memorial could be unveiled without celebrations, with just literary meetings and speeches.’ Only
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on the 23rd when I bought the Moscowskya Viedomosti3 as we left Tver, I read the announcement of Governor-General Dolgorouky, that the Sovereign had ordered the postponement of the unveiling of the memorial to another date. I thus arrived at Moscow without any object whatsoever. I think of leaving on Tuesday the 28th at 9 o’clock in the morning. Till then I shall, at least, avail myself of the opportunity now that I am in Moscow and get to know something. I shall also see Lubimov and have a talk with him about the whole idea, also Katkov.4 I shall go the round of the booksellers, etc. If only I can manage it all! I shall, at last, also learn all the ins and outs of these literary intrigues. I parted with Anna Nicolayevna in Tchudov; we kissed each other cordially. She promised to come back if it is at all possible. It was a hot day. Literally I did not sleep a wink and I was tired and completely done up when I arrived at Moscow about 10 o’clock (Moscow time). At the station Yuriev, Lavrov,5 all the editorial staff and contributors of the Russkaya Mysl,6 Nicolay Aksakov,7 Barsov, and a dozen others were waiting to welcome me. We were introduced to one another. Immediately they asked me to come to Lavrov for a specially arranged supper. But I was so worn out by the journey, so unwashed, my linen, etc., so dirty that I refused. To-morrow, the 24th, at 2 o’clock, I shall go to see Yuriev. Lavrov said that the best and most comfortable hotel in Moscow was the ‘Loskutnaya’ (on the Tverskoy, close to the Square, close to the Church of Our Lady of Iversk), and he instantly rushed away and brought back with him a driver saying he was a cabman, but I don’t believe he was a cabman, but an expensive coachman or perhaps his own. When he put me down at the hotel, he refused any money, but I forced 70 kopecks on him. The ‘Loskutnaya’ is full up, but they found a room for me at three roubles per day, very decently furnished; but its windows face the court and a wall, so that I think it will be dark to-morrow. – I foresee that my speech cannot be published before I deliver it. It would be strange to publish it now. Thus, my journey will not pay for itself for the time being. It is now one o’clock in the morning. It is very hard to be without you three, without you and the dear children. I kiss you all a great deal, first you, and then Lilya and Fedya. Give them a big kiss from me and tell them that I love them awfully, Probably I shall not have time to get anything from the booksellers, for they will hardly settle accounts in two days. Good-bye for now. I wonder if I shall have a letter from you. Write care of Elena Pavlovna. I don’t think you can answer this letter, however, as I should not get it before the 29th, and on the 29th I want to be in Roussa. If you yourself have thought of writing to Elena Pavlovna, it would be splendid. If any misfortune happens (which
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God forbid) wire to me to the ‘Loskutnaya,’ on the Tverskoy, F. M. Dostoevsky. My room is No. 32. Once again I embrace all the three of you and kiss you many times, – Your F. DOSTOEVSKY. II Loskutnaya, on the Tverskoy, Moscow, Sunday, May 25, 1880. My dear friend Anya, yesterday morning Lavrov, N. Aksakov, and a lecturer of the University called Zveriev, arrived on an official visit; they came to present their respects. The same morning I had to return visits to all three. It took a long time driving about. After that I went to Yuriev. A rapturous reception with embraces. I learned that they wanted to petition that the unveiling of the memorial should be put off to the autumn, in October instead of June or July, as the authorities seem inclined to suggest; but then the opening will be escamoté, for no one will come. From Yuriev I could not get any sensible account of the progress of the affair; he is a chaotic man, Repetilov in a new shape. [Repetilov – a character from Griboyedov’s play Sorrow through Intelligence.]8 Yet he is by no means a fool. (Intrigues there certainly were.) I mentioned, by the way, my article, and suddenly Yuriev said to me: ‘I didn’t ask for your speech’ (that is, for his magazine). Yet I remember that in his letters he did ask for it. The point is that Repetilov is sly: he does not want to take the speech now and pay for it. ‘In the autumn, you give it us in the autumn; to nobody else but us. We are the first to ask you, you see, and by that time you will have polished it more carefully.’ (As much as to say that he knows exactly it is not carefully polished now.) It’s true I immediately stopped talking about the speech and promised it for the autumn, but only in a general way. I disliked the business awfully. – Then I went to Madame Novikov; was received very graciously. After that – visits, then to Katkov: I found neither Katkov nor Lubimov at home. I went off to the booksellers. The two (Kashkins) have moved. They all promised to give me something on Monday. I wonder if they will. However, I am leaving on Monday and shall try to find out their new addresses. Afterwards I called on Aksakov. He is still in town, but I did not find him at home, but in the bank. Then, coming home, I dined. After this, at seven o’clock I drove to Katkov: I found both Katkov and Lubimov, was received very, very cordially, and I talked with Lubimov about the delivery of the Karamazovs. They insist very strongly on having it in June. (When I come back I shall have to work like the devil.) Afterwards I mentioned the speech, and Katkov pleaded with me to let him have it, that is, for the autumn. Being furious with Yuriev, I almost promised. So
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that now, should the Russkaya Mysl want the speech, I’ll make them pay through the nose for it, or it goes to Katkov. (The speech by that time can be made longer.) From Katkov’s (where I upset a cup of tea over myself) I went to Varya. I found her in, and although it was about ten already we drove with her to Elena Pavlovna. Varya had just had a letter from brother Andrey (concerning the titles of nobility) to be handed over to me. I took the letter. Elena Pavlovna, as it turned out, had moved to another house; she has given up keeping apartments. We went to the new house to pay her a visit and found there Masha and Nina Ivanov (with whom Elena Pavlovna has made it up), and Khmyrov. The Ivanovs are going in a couple of days to ‘Dorovoye,’ Khmyrov is also going, as his wife is staying there with Vera Mihailovna. We sat there about an hour. Coming home, I found a letter, delivered in person by N. Aksakov and Lavrov: they invite me on the 25th (that is, to-day) to dinner and will call for me at 5 o’clock. The dinner is given by the contributors of the Russkaya Mysl, but others will be present as well, I think there will be between fifteen to thirty guests, from Yuriev’s hints (when I saw him). Apparently the dinner is being given to celebrate my visit, that is, in my honour; it will probably be in a restaurant. (All these young Moscow authors ardently long to make my acquaintance.) It is now after two o’clock. In two hours they will come here. My only trouble is, what to put on – a frock-coat or evening jacket? Now this is the whole bulletin, I have not asked Katkov for money, but I told Lubimov that I might need some in the summer. Lubimov answered that he would give it me the moment I asked for it. To-morrow I shall go the round of the booksellers. I’ll have to call on Elena Pavlovna to see if there is a letter from you; to be at Mashenka’s, who begged me to come, etc. After to-morrow, on Tuesday, the 27th, I am leaving for Roussa, but don’t yet know whether by the morning or afternoon train. I am afraid that tomorrow they won’t let me do much work: Yuriev roared all the while that he ‘must have a chat, a chat’ with me, etc. On the whole, I miss you very much, and my nerves are not right. I don’t think I shall write to you again unless something very special happens. Good-bye for now, darling. I kiss you a great deal and the children. Many kisses to Lilya and Fedya. I love you all very much. – Your F. DOSTOEVSKY P.S. – (May 25, 2 o’clock in the afternoon.) My dear Anya, I have broken open yesterday’s envelope so as to send a postscript. This morning Ivan Sergueyevich Aksakov9 came to me to beg me most insistently to remain here for the celebrations, since they will take place, according to everybody, before the 5th. He says that I ought not to go away, that I have no right to, that I have an influence on Moscow, and above all on the students and the younger generation
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as a whole; that my going off will injure the triumph of our convictions; that yesterday at dinner he had heard the draft of my speech and that convinced him finally that I must speak, and so on, and so on. On the other hand, he said to me that as delegate of the Slav Charitable Society I could not very well go away, since all delegates remain waiting here, in view of the rumour that the ceremony is coming off. He left, and immediately after came Yuriev (with whom I am dining to-day), and said the same. Prince Dolgorouky left to-day (the 25th) for Petersburg, and promised to send a telegram from Petersburg stating the exact day of the unveiling of the memorial. The telegram is expected not later than Wednesday, the 28th, but it may also come tomorrow. This is what I decided: to remain here and wait for the telegram about the day of the opening, and if the opening is really fixed between the first and fifth of June, then I shall remain. But if it be postponed, then I’ll leave for Roussa on the 28th or 29th, – this is what I said to Yuriev. The principal thing is that I can’t find out anything about Zolotariov. Yuriev promised to find out to-day and to come to me with news of him. Then in spite of being a delegate of the Slav Charitable Society I could go away, having charged Zolotariov to be present at the ceremony alone. (By the way. wreaths for the memorial are being charged to the delegates’ own account, and a wreath costs 50 roubles!) [Here four lines are struck out.] Then Yuriev began bothering me about publishing my speech in the Russkaya Mysl. Finally I told him frankly exactly how matters stood, namely, that I had almost promised it to Katkov. He was terribly excited and grieved; he apologised, maintained that I had not understood him right, that it had resulted in a misunderstanding; and when I let drop a hint that I am paid for my work, he said that Lavrov had instructed him to pay anything I might ask, i.e. even 400 or 500 roubles. It was at this point I told Yuriev that I had almost promised the article to Katkov. What I had in view was to ask him to put off the Karamazovs, and to make up for this, instead of the Karamazovs, he would have the speech on Poushkin. But now, if I let the Russkaya Mysl have my speech, it will look as if I am trying to get a postponement from Katkov with the express object of availing myself of that postponement in order to work for his enemy Yuriev. (Imagine, now, what a position I am in! But it is Yuriev himself who is to blame.) Katkov will be offended. True, Katkov won’t pay, for instance, 400 roubles (it is for the Karamazovs that he is giving 300 roubles; for the speech he may not give 300 roubles), so that the one or two hundred more from Yuriev would cover my staying here till the unveiling of the memorial. In a word, there’s a mass of worries and difficulties. How it will all end I don’t know, but I have decided meanwhile to remain here till the 28th. So that, if the unveiling of the memorial is
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not fixed before the 5th, I shall return to Roussa on the 29th or 30th, having arranged to publish my speech somewhere. (But try to write to me immediately; I again repeat my request.) Am I not to have a single line from you? Do write without fail to the addresses which I told you of yesterday in my letter (the one with the postscript). Telegraph, if you like. Yuriev told me that a number of people called on him to-day to abuse him: why had he concealed yesterday’s dinner from them? Four students even came to him to ask for a place at the dinner. Among the others were Suhomlinov who is here now, Gatzuk, Viskovatov, and more of them. I’m off to the booksellers, Good-bye for now. I kiss you all once again. – Your F. DOSTOEVSKY. Yuriev has already got Ivan Aksakov’s speech on Poushkin. That is probably why they were so vague the day before yesterday. But having heard yesterday at the dinner what I was saying about Poushkin he probably decided that my article, too, is indispensable. Turgenev has also written an article on Poushkin. III Loskutnaya, on the Tverskoy (Room No. 33), Moscow, May 25–26, 1880. My dear friend Anya, here is one more letter (I am writing after one o’clock in the morning). Perhaps you will receive it after my return (for I still intend leaving on Tuesday the 27th), but I write to you in any event, for circumstances are shaping so that I shall perhaps have to remain here for some time longer. But to begin at the beginning. To-day, the 25th, at 5 o’clock, Lavrov and Nicolay Aksakov called on me and took me in their own carriage to the Hermitage restaurant. They were in frock-coats and I too went in a frock-coat, although the dinner, as it turned out, was given expressly in my honour. At the Hermitage authors, professors, and men of letters, twenty-two of them altogether, already awaited us. The first thing Yuriev, who received me most ceremoniously, said was that many people had done their utmost to be present at the dinner, and if it had been postponed for one day only, hundreds of guests would have come. But it had been arranged too hastily, and now they are afraid that, when the many others come to hear about it, their reproaches will be bitter for not having been asked. There were present four professors of the University, one director of a public school, Polivanov (a friend of the Poushkin family),10 Ivan Sergueyevich Aksakov, Nicolay Aksakov, Nicolay Rubinstein (the Moscow one),11 etc., etc. The dinner was arranged extraordinarily sumptuously. A whole reception room
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was engaged (at no small cost). The dinner was on such a luxurious scale that afterwards two hundred magnificent and expensive cigars appeared with the coffee and liqueurs. They order these things differently in Petersburg! Dried sturgeon, osiotr12 a yard long, a yard long stewed sterlet, turtle soup, strawberries, quails, wonderful asparagus, ice-cream, rivers of most exquisite wines and champagne. Six speeches (the speakers rising from their chairs) were made to me, some very long ones. They were by Yuriev, both Aksakovs, three of the professors and Nicolay Rubinstein. At dinner two congratulatory telegrams were received, one of them from a most respected professor who had been called away suddenly from Moscow. They spoke of my ‘great’ significance as an artist with ‘universal sympathy,’ as a publicist and as a Russian. After that, an infinite number of toasts were given, at which all got up and came to me to touch glasses. Further details when we meet. All were in a state of rapture. I answered them all with a speech which went off very well and produced a great effect, by managing to switch on to Poushkin. This made a great impression. Now for a most intolerable and most awkward business: a deputation from the ‘Lovers of Russian Literature’ called to-day on Prince Dolgorouky, and he declared that the opening of the memorial would take place between the first and fifth of June. Yet he did not fix a definite date. Now, of course, they are all in raptures, as the authors and certain delegations will not disperse, and although there will be no music and no theatrical performances, there will be meetings of the ‘Society of Lovers of Literature,’ speeches and dinners. But when I announced that I was going away on the 27th, there was an absolute storm: ‘We shan’t let you!’ Polivanov (who is on the Unveiling Committee of the Memorial), Yuriev and Aksakov declared aloud that all Moscow was buying tickets for the sittings, and all those who bought tickets (for the meetings of the ‘Lovers of Russian Literature’) asked when they took them (and sent to inquire several times): Will Dostoevsky speak? And as they could not tell at which meeting I was going to speak, at the first or at the second, – then they all began taking tickets for both meetings. ‘All Moscow will be offended and indignant with us, if you go away now,’ they said to me. I made the excuse that I must write the Karamazovs (and deliver the part for the June No.); they began in all seriousness to shout about sending a deputation to Katkov to ask him to postpone the date. I began saying that you and the children would be anxious if I were to remain here for so long, and then (perfectly seriously) they not only proposed sending you a telegram, but also a deputation to Staraya Roussa to ask you if I may remain here. I answered that to-morrow, that is, Monday the 26th, I’ll decide. I am sitting here in terrible perplexity and uneasiness. On the one
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hand, there is the consolidation of my influence not in Petersburg alone, but also in Moscow, which matters a great deal; on the other, there is this being away from you, the difficulties about the Karamazovs (the writing and delivery on the appointed date to Katkov’s magazine), the expense, etc. Finally, although my ‘Word’ on Poushkin will now certainly be published, where is it to appear? I almost promised it, on Saturday, to Katkov. And in this case the ‘Lovers of Russian Literature’ and Yuriev will be saddened. If I give it to them, Katkov will be angry, I am still thinking of going away without fail, if not on the 27th, then on the 28th or 29th, as soon as Dolgorouky sends a notification of the exact date of the opening. Perhaps, I shall have to wait until that notification arrives. On the other hand, all that Dolgorouky has said as yet has been his personal opinion; he has not yet got the definite date from Petersburg. (I think he is going to Petersburg himself for a few days.) So suppose I remained till June 5th, and then there suddenly came an order to postpone everything till the 10th or 15th, should I still have to wait here? To-morrow I shall tell Yuriev, that I am going on the 27th, that only in the case of definite and serious circumstances I shall remain. At any rate, I am in awful perplexity now. After dinner I called at Elena Pavlovna’s but found nothing from you. Certainly it is still early for letters from Roussa, but shall I really receive none to-morrow? With Elena Pavlovna I drove off to Mashenka Ivanov and told her that I had dined with Rubinstein; she was in raptures. At any rate, as soon as you receive this letter, answer me without fail: even if I leave, Elena Pavlovna will send on the letter, without opening it, to Roussa. So answer immediately, without fail. Elena Pavlovna’s absolutely exact address is ‘Ostozhenka, borough of Voskresenye, in the house of Mme. Dmitrevsky, to be given to F. M. Dostoevsky.’ Should you want to telegraph, send either to Elena Pavlovna, or direct to me, Hotel Loskutnaya, on the Tverskoy, – I am certain to receive it. (Your letters you had better address to Elena Pavlovna.) I was elected a member of the ‘Society of Lovers of Russian Literature’ as far back as a year ago, but the late secretary, Bezsonov, neglected to notify me about the election, for which they now apologise. I hold you firmly in my arms, my dear one. I kiss the children. I have strange and ominous dreams at night. – Wholly your F. DOSTOEVSKY. P.S. – I think after all I shall put my foot down and leave on the 27th. True enough, I shall not be able to publish my speech then, for it will not have the value of a speech, it will only be an article. This must be thought out. [On the margin is the following.] I made a good speech.
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I embrace you once again. Kiss the children, tell them about their Daddy. IV Loskutnaya, Room 33, Moscow, May 27, 1880, 3 P.M. My dear friend Anya, more news, When I arrived in Moscow, Yuriev and Lavrov saw me to the Loskutnaya, and I engaged there a room, No. 32, at three roubles per day. The next morning the manager of the hotel (a young man, apparently an educated man) came to me and in a gentle voice proposed that I should move to No. 33, the room opposite. As No. 33 was incomparably better than my No. 32, I instantly agreed and moved in. I only wondered to myself, how it was that such a nice room should go for the same price, three roubles; but since the manager said nothing about the price, but simply asked me to move in there, I concluded then that it also was three roubles. Yesterday, the 26th, I dined at Yuriev’s, and Yuriev suddenly said that in the Town Hall I am registered as staying in the Loskutnaya, No. 33. I was surprised and asked him; ‘How does the Town Hall know?’ ‘But you are staying there at the expense of the Town Hall,’ Yuriev replied. I lifted up my voice at that; Yuriev replied resolutely that I could not do otherwise than accept accommodation from the Town Hall: that all the visitors are staying at the hotels at the expense of the City, that even Poushkin’s children and Poushkin’s nephew Pavlischev are staying at our hotel, all of them at the expense of the City; that by refusing to accept the hospitality of the City, I will offend them and it will be considered a scandal; that the City is proud to count men like myself among its guests, etc. etc. At last I decided that even if I did accept my lodging from the City I shall on no account accept board as well. When I returned home, the manager came in again to ask me: Was I satisfied? Did I want anything? Was it quiet? All this with the most obsequious politeness. I instantly asked him: ‘Is it true that. I am staying at the expense of the City of Moscow?’ – ‘Precisely so.’ – ‘And my board?’ – ‘All your board as well.’ – ‘But I do not want to!’ – ‘In that case you will offend not only the Town Hall, but the whole City of Moscow. The City is proud to have such guests, etc.’ – Anya, what shall I do now? I can’t refuse to accept it; there will be rumours about it; it will become an anecdote, a scandal, as though I had refused the hospitality of the whole City of Moscow, etc. Then in the evening I asked Lavrov and Yuriev, – and they were surprised at my scruples and simply say that I shall offend all Moscow, that people will remember it, that there will be gossip about it. So I see positively that I must accept their hospitality entire. But, how all this will worry me! – Now I shall deliberately go out to dine at a restaurant so as to reduce my bill
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as much as possible, seeing that the bill will be presented to the Town Hall. And I’ve already twice complained about the coffee and sent it back to have it boiled thicker. In the restaurant they will say: See how he plays the gentleman at other people’s expense. Twice I’ve asked in the office for stamps; when the bill is presented to the Mansion House, they will say: See, how he enjoyed himself! He even got his stamps at our expense! It is a great strain on me, but certain items I will certainly have put to my account. I believe this might be arranged. As a result, however long I stay in Moscow I shan’t have very great expenses. (N.B. – Yesterday I received from (the booksellers) Soloviov, from Kishkin and from Priesnov 170 roubles altogether; you yourself will see the accounts when I come home. From the Central Shop and from the Morosovs I have not received anything yet.) Yesterday at four o’clock in the afternoon Dolgorouky stated (definitely) that the unveiling of the memorial would take place on the 4th June and that Petersburg urgently desired it. A final telegram from Dolgorouky as to the exact day of the unveiling will arrive only tomorrow, but every one is firmly convinced that the opening will be on the 4th, and besides, letters to this effect have also been received from Petersburg. Delegations (a multitude) from various towns and organisations are waiting here and not going away. There is the greatest excitement. They positively won’t let me go away. I have decided now: I believe I’ll stay for certain if the opening takes place on the 4th. Then I’ll leave for Roussa, and on the 8th or 9th I shall be with you. This morning Grigorovich13 called on me, also Yuriev; they began crying that my going away will be considered by all Moscow as an affectation; every one will be surprised; all Moscow keeps on inquiring whether I shall be present; that people will circulate stories about the whole affair. It will be said that I was so lacking in patriotism that I would not put aside my personal business for a higher object. For in the rehabilitation of the significance of Poushkin every one all over Russia sees a means for expressing the new change of convictions, of mentality, of tendencies. Two things stand in my way as a hindrance and torment my soul: the first is the Russky Fiestnik14 and the obligation which I acknowledged a month ago to deliver the Karamazovs for the June number. If I come home on the 10th, what shall I be able to do in some ten days? Four days ago Lubimov said that a further postponement, till July, depended on Markevich;15 if he sent in some part of his novel, mine could be postponed; but if he does not, they can’t do it. An answer from Markevich will not come before the 10th of June. Thus, I am in the dark and anxious. I had thought of writing the Karamazovs here, but because of the continuous bustle, visits and invitations, it is almost impossible. The second reason which torments me is my longing to be with you: I have not had a single line from you up till
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now, and we had agreed that you would write care of Elena Pavlovna! What is the matter with you, tell me for the love of God! Why don’t you write? Are you well, safe? Are the children well? If you had written telling me whether to wait here or not till the unveiling I should be easy about it. You must have seen in the papers that the Empress was dead. Why didn’t you write then, foreseeing that I must certainly be in a difficult position. Every day, and yesterday in the rain, I’ve had a very long drive to Elena Pavlovna’s to inquire: Aren’t there any letters? There and back the cab fare is one rouble. Do write, write without fail. But I believe I shall decide to remain here for certain. If only I could be sure of the date, other-wise what shall I do if they postpone it again? Yesterday, by a most pressing invitation, I was at an evening party at Lavrov’s. Lavrov, the publisher and the backer of the Russkaya Mysl, is my passionate, frenzied admirer, who has been feeding on my works for many years now. He himself is a very rich retired merchant. His two brothers deal in grain, but he has got out of the business and lives on his capital. He is thirty-three years old, a most sympathetic and sincere man, devoted to art and poetry. At the evening party about fifteen local men of letters and authors were present, a few also from Petersburg. My appearance there yesterday aroused enthusiasm. I did not intend remaining to supper, but, seeing that I should mortally offend all of them, I remained. The supper was like a grand dinner, luxuriously served, with champagne. After supper, champagne and cigars – 75 roubles per hundred. (The dinner the other day was a subscription dinner, a very modest one, not more than 3 roubles a head, but all the luxuries, the flowers, turtle soup, cigars, the reception room itself, Lavrov himself contributed.) I came home about four in the morning. To-day Grigorovich told me that Turgenev, who has come back from visiting Leo Tolstoy, is ill, and that Tolstoy is almost deranged, and perhaps gone completely off his head.16 Annenkov17 too has returned; what will our meeting be like? Yuriev came here for my article just now, imploring me to give it without fail to the Russkaya Mysl. Zolotariov is coming (he sent a message). Only from you alone I receive no news, Anya, for the love of Christ, write to me at the addresses I gave you. Have you had all my letters? Up till now I have written every day. You, Anya, love to ask, Do I love you? And you yourself don’t miss me at all, and I miss you. How are the little ones? Only to hear a little word from them! It is not easy, almost another fortnight of being away from you. Goodbye for now, my darling, I kiss you ever so much, I kiss the children and bless them. If anything new happens, I shall write to-morrow. – Wholly your F. DOSTOEVSKY. P.S. – In our hotel, besides myself, three others are also staying at
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the expense of the Mansion House; two professors from Kazan and Warsaw and Pavlischev, Poushkin’s own nephew. V Loskutnaya, Room No. 33, Moscow, May 27–28, 2 A.M. My dear friend Anya, at last, this evening, I received from you five lines, in pencil, written on the 24th. And this I received only on the evening of the 27th! How long a letter takes! I was awfully glad, but also saddened, for there were only five lines, and they began with ‘Dear Fiodor Mihailovich.’ Well never mind! I hope to receive more next time. You know now everything from my letter; it seems I shall certainly have to remain here for the unveiling of the memorial. In the evening I was at Katkov’s. I told him everything (he had already heard from others about how ‘Moscow’ was waiting for me); and he said firmly I must not go away. To-morrow there will be a telegram from Dolgorouky and the day of the opening will be definitely settled. But every one says the 4th. If the opening takes place on the 4th, I’ll leave probably on the 8th (if not on the 7th even), and on the 9th I shall be in Roussa. I called on Katkov with the object of obtaining a postponement of the Karamazovs till the July number. He listened to me very amiably (and was altogether very friendly and obliging, as he never had been to me before), but he said nothing definite about the postponement. All depends on Markevich, that is, on whether he sends in the next instalment of his novel. I told Katkov about my acquaintance with the high personage at Countess Mengden’s and then at K. K.’s. He was pleasantly surprised; his expression completely changed. This time I did not upset the tea, for which he treated me to expensive cigars. He saw me down to the hall and thereby surprised the whole office, who were watching us from the other room, for Katkov never comes down with any one. I think on the whole the affair with the Russky Viestnik will somehow be arranged. I did not say a single word about the article on Poushkin. Perhaps they’ll forget about it, so that I shall be able to give it to Yuriev, from whom I am certain to get more money. I dream even of finding a moment of time here before the 8th to sit down to the Karamazovs, so as to be ready for any emergency, but it is hardly possible. – If my speech at the solemn opening is a success, then in Moscow (and therefore in all Russia) I shall henceforth be more famous as a writer. (I mean, famous in the sense in which Turgenev and Tolstoy have already won greatness, Goncharov,18 for instance, who never moves out of Petersburg, although he is known here, yet it is only vaguely and coldly.) – But how can I manage to live without you and without the little ones all
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this time? Is it an easy thing, for twelve whole days? I sit and dream of the children, and am sad all the while. Did Grandma return? How are you there all by yourselves? Are you afraid of anything, are you worried about anything? For the love of God, write me oftener, and if anything should happen (which God forbid) telegraph me instantly. By the way (read this carefully), address all letters direct to me in the future to the Loskutnaya Hotel, on the Tverskoy, Moscow, F. M. Dostoevsky, Room No. 33. Why should I have to go every evening to Elena Pavlovna for your letters? First, it is a long way; secondly, I lose time, so that if I happened to want to do something (the Karamazovs), I should have no time at all. Also I must have tired them out. To-day I drove on there from Katkov; I received your letter and found there the Ivanovs. Mashenka played Beethoven very well. Here it is half sun, half showers, and it is fairly windy and fresh. Mashenka is going with Natasha the day after tomorrow to ‘Dorovoye,’ and Ninochka is remaining here. Ninochka is untamed and taciturn; you can’t get anything out of her; it’s as though she were ashamed. All of them live near Elena Pavlovna. Well, good-bye for now. I believe I have written everything I wanted to. If there is something new tomorrow, I shall write; if not then the day after to-morrow. As for Leo Tolstoy, Katkov also declared that people say he has gone quite on his head. Yuriev urged me to go to Yasnaya Polyana;19 there and back including my visit would take less than two days altogether. But I shall not go, although it would be very interesting. To-day I dined at the Moscow Tavern on purpose to keep down the bill at the Loskutnaya. But I came to the conclusion the Loskutnaya may perhaps after all charge for my having dinner there every day. In the Loskutnaya they are polite to a degree: not a single letter of yours will go wrong, and as I shall in no case change my hotel now, you may without hesitation send me letters addressed to the Loskutnaya. Good-bye for now, I kiss you ‘dear Anna Gregorevna.’ Hug the little ones as tightly and warmly as you can, tell them Daddy told you to. – Wholly your F. DOSTOEVSKY. Elena Pavlovna’s children are with her and they are charming. VI Loskutnaya. Room 33, Moscow, May 28–29, 2 A.M. My dear Anya, the only news is that a telegram came from Dolgorouky to-day saying the unveiling of the memorial is on the 4th. This is now settled. So that I can leave Moscow on the 8th or even on the 7th, and of course I’ll try to hurry. But remain here I must, and I have decided to remain. The chief point is that I am needed here not
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only by the ‘Lovers of Russian Literature,’ but by our whole party, by our whole idea, for which we have been fighting these thirty years. For the hostile party (Turgenev, Kovalevsky,20 and almost the whole University) is quite determined to belittle Poushkin’s significance, as the representative of the Russian nation, and thereby to deny the very nation itself. Against them, on our side, we have only Ivan Sergueyevich Aksakov (Yuriev and the rest have no weight). But Ivan Aksakov has grown rather out of date and Moscow is a bit bored by him. Myself, however, Moscow has not heard or seen, and it is in me alone that the people are interested. My voice will have weight, and thus our side will triumph. All my life I have been fighting for this; I can’t run away from the field of battle now. When even Katkov, who on the whole is not a Slavophil, says to me: ‘You must not go away, you can’t go away,’ then, certainly, stay I must. This morning, at twelve o’clock, when I was still asleep, Yuriev arrived with that telegram. I began to dress while he was there. Suddenly just at that moment two ladies were announced. I was not dressed and sent to inquire who they were. The waiter returned with a note, that a Mme. Ilyin wished to ask my permission to select from all my works passages which were suitable for children, and to publish such a book for children. There’s an idea! We ought to have thought of it ourselves long ago and published such a little book for children. Such a book would certainly sell and perhaps give us a profit of 2000 roubles. Make her a present of 2000 roubles – what impertinence! Yuriev immediately went down (since it was he himself in his thoughtless way who had directed her to me) to say that I could not possibly agree, and that I couldn’t receive her. He went out, and suddenly Varvara Mihailovna arrived, and no sooner had she entered when Viskovatov appeared.21 Seeing that I had visitors Varvara immediately ran away. Yuriev came back and explained that the other lady visitor was on her own; she did not give her name, but only said that she had come to express her boundless respect, admiration, gratitude for all that I had given her by my works, etc. She went away: I did not see her. I asked my visitors to tea, when suddenly in came Grigorovich. They all sat for a couple of hours, and when Yuriev and Viskovatov left, Grigorovich remained without any thought of going. He began telling me various stories of things that had happened in the last thirty years, recollecting the past, etc. He certainly made up half of it; but it was interesting. Then when it was past four he declared that he was not going to part with me and began begging that we should dine together. We went again to the Moscow Tavern, where we dined at our leisure, and he talked all the while. Suddenly Averkiev22 and his wife turned up. Averkiev sat down at our table, and Donna Anna declared that she would call on me (much I want to see her!). It turned
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out that near us were dining Poushkin’s relations, his two nephews, Pavlischev and Poushkin, and some one else. Pavlischev also came up and declared that he too would call on me. In a word, here as in Petersburg they won’t let me alone. After dinner Grigorovich began asking me to drive with him to the park ‘for a breath of fresh air,’ but I refused, left him, walked home, and in ten minutes drove to Elena Pavlovna for your letter. But there was no letter, I only met the Ivanovs there. Mashenka is going to-morrow. I sat till eleven and returned home to have tea and write to you. This is all my news. The worst of it is that letters take three or four days. As I wrote to you that I was coming home, you of course won’t write to me, expecting me on the 28th; and now the time it will take before my letter of yesterday and of to-day about my new decision reaches you! I am afraid you will be wondering what has happened and be uneasy. But it can’t be helped. The only bad thing is that I shall perhaps have no letters from you for two days, and I am pining for you. I am sad here in spite of guests and dinners. Ah, Anya, what a pity that you could not have arranged (of course, it was out of the question) to have come with me! They say that even Maikov has changed his mind and will come here. There will be a lot of fuss; I have to present myself at the Town Hall as a delegate (I don’t know when yet), in order to receive my admission card for the ceremony. The windows of the houses that surround the square are being let at 50 roubles a window. They are also building wooden stands for the public at an equally enormous price. I am afraid too of its being a rainy day and I may catch a cold. I am not going to speak at the dinner on the opening day. At the meeting of the ‘Lovers of Russian Literature,’ I believe, I am to speak on the second day. Besides that, instead of a theatrical performance they think of having certain works of Poushkin read by well-known authors (Turgenev, myself, Yuriev), each selecting a passage. [They have asked me to read the scene of the Monk-Chronicler (from Boris Godounov), and also the ‘Miser’s Monologue’ (from the Poor Knight).]23 Besides, Yuriev, Viskovatov and myself will each read a poem on Poushkin’s death; Yuriev Guber’s, Viskovatov Lermontov’s, myself Tyuchev’s.24 The time passes, and people keep me from doing anything. Up till now I have not called for money at the Central Shop or at the Morosovs. I have not been to Chayev’s yet; I must call on Varya; I should also like to make the acquaintance of the church dignitaries, Nicolay Yaponsky and the local vicar Alexey, very interesting men. I don’t sleep well, I have nothing but nightmares. I am afraid of catching a cold on the opening day and of coughing while I am reading. With terrible impatience I keep expecting a note from you. Oh, my God, how are the children, how I long to see them! Are you well,
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happy, or are you cross? It is difficult without you. Well, good-bye for now. To-morrow I shall not go to Elena Pavlovna’s, she herself promised to send me any letter if it comes. I hug you all warmly, I bless the little ones. – Wholly your F. DOSTOEVSKY. P.S. – If anything happens, telegraph to the Loskutnaya. Address letters there, too. Do my letters arrive safely? Bad luck if any get lost! VII Loskutnaya, Room 33, Moscow, May 30, 1880. I am writing to you now, although the letter will not go away till to-morrow, my dear Anya. There is almost no news. Only that I am in for a lot of bother and various official ceremonies: I have to present myself at the Town Hall, obtain admission cards, find out where to stand and sit at the ceremony, etc. And above all, those wreaths – they say I must have two. The Town Hall is arranging for them – 30 roubles for the two. Stupid! Zolotariov has not come yet, but he is coming, and I’ll put the whole ceremony of the unveiling on to his shoulders: in a frock-coat only and with no hat on I really may catch a cold. Yesterday morning the Averkievs came in to see me; Poushkin’s nephews, Pavlischev and Poushkin, called on me also, to make my acquaintance. After that I drove to Yuriev (about all these cards and ceremonies), but did not find him at home. I dined at home, and after dinner in came Viskovatov, who declared his love for me, and asked, why I did not love him? etc. Still he was more possible than I’ve known him before. By the way, he told me that Sabourov (Minister of Education), a relation of his, had read certain passages of the Karamazovs and literally wept for ecstasy. At nine o’clock we drove to Yuriev, but again did not find him. Viskovatov suddenly remembered that Anna Nicolayevna Englehardt25 was here and suggested we should call on her. We took a cab and arrived at ten o’clock at Dusseau’s Hotel. She was already in bed, but was very glad, and we sat for an hour, talking of the beautiful and the sublime. She is not here for the celebration, but to meet some relatives. But now she is not well; she has a swollen leg. This morning when I was asleep Ivan Sergueyevich Aksakov called on me, but told them not to wake me. After this I drove to Polivanov (Director of the Secondary School and the Secretary of the Society). He explained to me all the steps I must take at the Mansion House, and about the admission cards, and despatched a young man to help me. He introduced me to his family. A whole company of teachers and pupils gathered round and we went (in the same building) to look at the Poushkin portraits and things which are at present at the school. After that, having come home, I
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found a note from Grigorovich, inviting me to dine at Tiestov’s26 at six. I wonder whether I shall go. Meanwhile I sat down to write you my bulletin. At 8 o’clock I shall go to Elena Pavlovna for your letter. (Yesterday, the 29th, I received one.) After that, I’ll go home and sit down to my speech, which must be polished up. A horrid existence on the whole; the weather is wonderful. All the people here are in their own homes; I am the only visitor. In the evening I shall write more. May 30–31, 1 A.M. At Tiestov’s restaurant I found no Grigorovich, so I returned home and dined. After that I drove to Elena Pavlovna; she was not at home, but her children told me there had been no letter from you. By my reckoning perhaps to-morrow there will be a letter from you for certain. Putting two and two together I now understand that from all my previous letters you came to the conclusion that I was coming on the 28th. But you must by now have received the letters in which I hesitated whether to return or not, and therefore there should be an answer now. The trouble was that we somehow failed to make all this clear before I went awav. For you could have written in any case, even reckoning that I was coming back, care of Elena Pavlovna, so as not to leave me in the dark about yourself and the children. I also imagine that on the 2nd I shall have a letter from you sent direct to the Loskutnaya. Your letters addressed care of Elena Pavlovna, that is, your previous letters you might have sent without any fear, for even had I gone away, nobody would have opened them, and she would have sent them back to Roussa. But it would be better to address your letters to the Loskutnaya, so that I don’t have to go to Elena Pavlovna’s because the great to-do begins immediately (from the 2nd). I shall have to get up early and bustle about all day long; I shall not have the time even to keep on going to Elena Pavlovna. Also I shall stop writing detailed bulletins to you, as I have done till now: I shall have no time at all. On the 3rd the Mansion House receives guests; there will be speeches, frock-coats, silk hats, white ties. And then there is the unveiling dinner at the Town Hall; after which on the mornings of the 5th and 6th there will be meetings, and in the evenings literary readings. Also on the 2nd there will be an evening meeting of the ‘Lovers of Literature,’ when it will be settled who shall speak and at what time. I believe I shall have to speak on the second day, on the 6th. I have been to Morosov and to the Central Shop. From Morosov I got altogether 14 roubles, and at the Central, although they told me you had written to them to remit me 50 roubles, they ask for a postponement until the 6th or 7th. As on the 7th, moreover, I shall have to make farewell visits, and there is a number of them, I may be able to leave only on the 8th, and shall let you know by which train. But
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I shall try to leave on the 8th for certain. I called on Varya. She told me a great deal about her grandchildren and asked my advice. She is a sensible and good woman. In the evening I managed to have just a glance at the MS. How are the little ones? I miss them very much; I don’t hear their sweet voices. And I keep on wondering if anything has happened to you all? If anything should happen (which God forbid), wire to me without fail. Good-bye for now, my darling. Ah, if I received only a line from you to-morrow! I embrace you and the children, and kiss you all a great deal. And the Karamazovs, oh, the Karamazovs! Ah, what a throwing away of precious time! Still I am now absorbed in this affair: they (the Westerners) have a strong party. I embrace you again and again. – Your F. DOSTOEVSKY. Yesterday afternoon the gold link in my cuff was broken; the one I had repaired. Half of it remained in the sleeve of my shirt, and the other I must have dropped somewhere in the street. VIII Loskutnaya, Room 33, Moscow, May 31, 1880, 1 A.M. My dear Anya, I thought of not writing to you to-day, for I have almost nothing to write about. But as I’ve at last received your note (of the 29th), and as days are certainly coming when in the bustle I shall not be able to write you anything, or at best a couple of lines, I have decided to write now. I am so very glad that you are all well; I am glad for the little ones and for you; it is as if my anxiety had rolled away from my heart, although I still miss you. It is annoying that Grandma won’t wait my arrival. – Aksakov promised me Gogol’s autograph,27 although I wonder if I shall have time to get it now. And besides, I have forgotten and muddled in my head all the directions for the celebrations, so that I shall have to inquire who lives where, from Yuriev. A certain mathematician (I forget his name) called on me to-day and sat for a long time in the reading-room of my hotel, waiting for me to get up. When I awoke, he came in, stayed precisely three minutes, and did not even sit down: he called to declare his deep respect, admiration for my talent, his devotion, gratitude; he expressed it all ardently and went away. An oldish man, with a most sympathetic face. After that came Lopatin, the young man whom Polivanov had charged to look after my tickets for the Town Hall, and to give me all necessary information, etc. We entered into a conversation and, to my pleasant surprise, I found him an extraordinarily clever man, very intelligent, extremely decent, and sharing my own convictions to an extreme degree. In a word, a most pleasant meeting. After that came Grigorovich, and lied and gossiped a great deal.
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They really seem to be preparing themselves to say something spiteful at the sittings and dinners. Grigorovich is also a delegate from the Literary Fund. The other three are: Turgenev, Gayevsky, Kravevsky. Each received 150 roubles from the Fund for their expenses. Only our Slav Society voted nothing, nor could it have done so. Grigorovich complains that 150 roubles is too little. Indeed, money goes so fast here that although I shall have to pay little at the hotel, yet I shall have spent a great deal: cabmen, tobacco, special expenses, buying of wreaths, etc. Apropos, the two obligatory wreaths are prepared by the Town Hall at 30 roubles for the two from each delegate. If Zolotariov does not come, then I shall certainly have to pay. I must also buy cuff-links. I dined at the Moscow Tavern. Then I went to Elena Pavlovna and got your note. Her Manya is a most lovely girl of twenty, and I noticed there a young doctor as their guest, who was very intrigued by her. After that together with Viskovatov we went to Anna Englehardt, who is still sitting at home with her bad leg, and there we met her doctor, who says that the illness is pretty serious if it be even slightly neglected. Then we walked home with Viskovatov. In the morning there were two thunderstorms and a downpour, and now the night is wonderful. These are all my adventures for the time being. How am I going to read my speech? Aksakov said that his was the same as mine. It is sad if we coincide so literally in our ideas. – How shall I read at the evening literary recitals the scene of Pimen28 and the Poor Knight, and also (most important) Tyuchev on Poushkin’s death? It is interesting to try and imagine my meeting with Annenkov. Will he indeed hold out his hand? I should not like quarrels. Well, good-bye for now, darling Anya. Kiss the little ones warmly, remind them of me. Remember me to Anna Nicolayevna. How is she, has she had a good journey? Mine was not. I ought to call on Katkov. Farewell, I embrace you closely. – Wholly your F. DOSTOEVSKY. I bless the little ones. P.S. – [The first word is struck out] near Auntie playing cards with her, how can he think of coming here. IX Loskutnaya, Room 33, Moscow, June 2–3, 1880, 2 A.M. My dearest lovely friend Anyechka, yesterday evening I went off to Elena Pavlovna for your letter but received none: and to-day your two letters arrived at the Loskutnaya, one at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the other in the evening. In a word, letters addressed to the Loskutnaya apparently reach here quicker than if sent to Elena Pavlovna. Kiss the children hard for their lovely messages at the end
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and buy them some sweets, without fail. Do you hear, Anya? – Even doctors prescribe sweets for children. – As to your remark that I do not love you much, I say it is sillyssimo. I think only of you and the children. And I see you in my dreams. – There has been a hubbub again here. Yesterday the Celebration was again suddenly postponed, but now it is definitely stated that the opening will be on the 6th. The wreaths are prepared by the Town Hall at 8 roubles each. I need two, which I shall order to-morrow. Zolotariov has not come yet. The train from Petersburg with various delegates for the Celebration is arriving here only the day after to-morrow. Now to proceed: two days ago in the evening there was a consultation at Turgenev’s of nearly all participants in the Celebration (I was excluded), as to what precisely should be read, how the Celebration should be arranged, etc. I was told they met at Turgenev’s as though by chance. Grigorovich told me this as if to comfort me. Certainly I myself would not have gone to Turgenev without a formal invitation from him; but the noodle Yuriev whom I haven’t seen for four days now, blabbed to me four days ago that there was going to be a gathering at Turgenev’s. Viskovatov thereupon told me that already three days ago he had received an invitation. Thus I was simply passed over. (Of course it is not Yuriev, it is the doing of Turgenev and Kovalevsky; Yuriev has only remained out of sight, and probably that is why he does not show himself.) And then yesterday morning, I was no sooner awake than enter Grigorovich and Viskovatov to inform me that the full programme of the Celebration and of the evening readings had been fixed at Turgenev’s. According to them there is to be music and a recital of the Poor Knight by the actor Samarin;29 the reading of the Poor Knight has been taken away from me, also the reading of the poem on the death of Poushkin (and it was just the poem I wanted to read). Instead of this I have been appointed to read Poushkin’s poem The Prophet. I shall probably not refuse to read The Prophet, but why have I not been officially informed? Then Grigorovich declared that I was requested to come to-morrow to the Hall of the Noblemen’s Assembly (close to here), where everything will be finally arranged. (It means then my opinion was not asked, and now I am told to come to the Noblemen’s Assembly to a general rehearsal, with the public present, and above all with the pupils of the secondary schools (free admission), as the rehearsal is arranged for them so that they too may hear. Thus I am placed in a most awkward position: they have settled things without me, never asked my consent beforehand to read the poems allotted to me, and yet I can’t help being at the rehearsal and reading to the young. It will be said: Dostoevsky did not want to read to the young. Finally, I am at a loss how to appear tomorrow: whether in a frock-coat like the public, or in full dress. I was in a very bad way
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yesterday. I dined alone; in the evening I called on Anna Nicolayevna (Englehardt); her doctor was there (he is her friend, related to her even). I sat for half an hour, and they both walked back with me to my hotel. This morning Grigorovich and Viskovatov called again, and Grigorovich was very pressing that we three should dine together at the Hermitage, and then spend the evening in the Hermitage park. They went away, and I drove to Katkov, whom I had not called on for three days. There I chanced on Lubimov, who had just had a letter from Markevich promising to send in his novel for the June number! So that I may be easy on that score. It is a very good thing. At Katkov’s there was news: he had only just received an official letter from Yuriev, as Chairman of the ‘Society of Lovers of Russian Literature’ (of which Society Katkov has been a member from times immemorial). Yuriev informed him that the invitation card for the celebrations had been sent to the Moscowskya Viedomosti by mistake, and that the Council of the Society for the arrangement of the celebrations had revoked the invitation, as contrary to the resolution of the Council, so that the invitation must be considered as not having been issued. The style of the letter was most dry and rude. Grigorovich assured me that Yuriev had been made to sign it, chiefly by Kovalevsky, but of course also by Turgenev. Katkov was evidently irritated. ‘Even without this I would not have gone,’ he said to me, as he showed me the letter. He wants to publish it as it stands in the Viedomosti. This is certainly quite odious, and the important thing is they had no right at all to act like that. It is abominable, and had I not been so much involved in the Celebration, I would perhaps break off my connection with them. – I will speak sharply to Yuriev about the whole affair. Then I asked Katkov who was the best dentist here, and he mentioned Adelheim at the Kuzvetsky Most, saying that I should tell Adelheim that he, Katkov, had sent me to him. My little plate has broken down completely and hangs on a thread. I drove up to Adelheim and he put in a new one for five roubles. From him I went home, and together with Grigorovich and Viskovatov drove to the Hermitage, where we dined for a rouble each. Then the rain began. When it stopped for a little, we went out and the three of us got into a single cab and drove to the Hermitage park. On our way there it began raining. We arrived at the park soaked through and asked for tea in the restaurant. We bought one-rouble tickets with admission to the Hermitage Theatre. The rain kept on. Grigorovich told all sorts of fibs, then we went into the theatre, to the second act: the opera Paul et Virginie30 was on, – theatre, orchestra, singers, – none of them bad, only the music is bad (in Paris it was performed several hundreds of times). Charming scenery for Act III. Without waiting for the end, we came out and each went home. At the Loskutnaya I found your second
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letter. To-morrow’s rehearsal agitates me extremely. Grigorovich has promised to call for me, so that we can go there together. I got rather wet. On my journey here I caught a chill in my left arm, and it still rather aches. Yesterday morning I called on the bishops Alexey and on Nicolay (Yaponsky). I was very pleased to make their acquaintance. I sat there for about an hour; a countess was announced, and I left. I had a heart-to-heart talk with both. They said that my visit had done them great honour and given them happiness. They had read my works. So they appreciate who stands for God. Alexey blessed me ardently. He gave me the Host. Good-bye for now, my darling. If I can, I shall write you to-morrow, too. I love you very much. A good kiss for the little ones. To Anna Nicolayevna my lowest bow, and kiss her little hand besides for me. – Wholly without division your F. DOSTOEVSKY. (Postscript on the first page): But you are mistaken. My dreams are very bad ones. Listen: you keep on writing about the application to the nobility. Firstly, even if I could, I have no time, above all, this matter must be done from Petersburg, through people. I shall explain it all to you when we meet. I’ll do it without fail in Petersburg. Here no applications will serve any purpose: I know it. I am firmly convinced. (Postscript on the second page): I called on Ivan Aksakov – he is away in his country house. – Chayev is also in the country. I shall go to Muraviov if I find time. Once more wholly yours, loving you. X Loskutnaya, Room 33, Moscow, June 3–4. Tuesday, 2 A.M. My lovely darling Anyechka, to-day I again received a dear little letter from you, and am very grateful to you that you do not forget your Fedichka. Since your letters began coming frequently I really do feel more peaceful and happier about you. I am also glad because of the children. This morning Lopatin came to me and brought the programme of the dates and ceremonies. I gave him 17 roubles to order the wreaths at the Town Hall (two wreaths). Zolotariov is not here yet. After this came a certain barrister Soloviov and introduced himself. He is a learned man, and came only to speak about mystical religious problems (a new craze.) After that came Grigorovich and Viskovatov, and then Yuriev. We all attacked Yuriev terribly for his letter to Katkov and scolded him awfully. Then I lunched with Grigorovich and Viskovatov in the Moscow Tavern and there made the acquaintance of the actor Samarin; the old fellow is sixty-four; he was all the while making speeches to me. He will act at the Poushkin Celebration the Poor Knight, in costume. (He took it away from me.)
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The Moscow Tavern is always very crowded, and it is seldom that people do not turn round and look at me: every one knows, every one knows who I am. Samarin told many stories about the artistic life of Moscow. Then, straight from lunch, we drove to the general meeting of the committee of the ‘Lovers of Literature’ for the settling of the final programme of the morning sittings and the evening festivities. Turgenev, Kovalevsky, Chayev, Grot, Bartenev,31 Yuriev, Polivanov, Kalachov,32 and others were there. Everything has been settled to our common satisfaction. Turgenev was rather nice to me, and Kovalevsky (a large fat carcass and enemy of our way of thinking) gazed at me fixedly all the time. I am to read on the second day of the morning sessions, June 8th, and at the evening festivity of the 6th I am to read (music has been allowed) the Pimen scene (from Poushkin’s Boris Godounov.) Many are to read, nearly all. Turgenev, Grigorovich, Pisemsky,33 and others. On the second evening, the 8th, I shall recite three poems by Poushkin (the second part of the Western Slavs, and the She-Bear), and in the finale, at the conclusion of the festivity, I shall read Poushkin’s Prophet, – a little poem awfully difficult to read aloud; they have purposely put me in the finale in order to produce an effect – I wonder if I shall? Sharp at ten I returned home and found two cards from Souvorin saying that he will come at 10. The two cards were a mistake (they had stuck together), and as I thought from the second that he had already called and found me out, I drove to his hotel, the Slavianky Bazaar (not far from here), and I found him and his wife at tea. He was awfully pleased. The ‘Lovers of Literature’ have put him on the black list for his articles just as they have Katkov. He was not even given an admission card for the morning sessions. I had one card (Varya’s), which she had refused, and I offered it to him. He was delighted. He will pay them off later. He said that Burenin34 too was here. – At Chayev’s we made an appointment for to-morrow at the Armoury at one o’clock in the afternoon, where he will show us everything. Grigorovich and Viskovatov also wished to come. But I wonder if they will. They went away after nine straight from the session to the Hermitage and insisted tremendously that I should come, too, but I went to Souvorin. When Souvorin heard that we were going to-morrow to the Armoury Chamber he asked me to take him and his wife there, and afterwards suggested that we should all dine together at the Moscow Tavern, he and his wife, myself, Grigorovich and Viskovatov, and then drive to the Hermitage. He, poor thing, seems to be tied to his wife. He will certainly be at the evening sessions, where one pays for admission. The rehearsal of the reading for the pupils of the schools has been abandoned. After to-morrow, the 5th, the trials begin; all delegates are to appear at the Town Hall in frock-coats, and I am afraid I shall
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not have time to write to you. To-morrow a trainful of Petersburg delegates arrive at our Loskutnaya. On the 8th all will be over; so on the 9th I’ll pay my visits, and on the 10th I leave – at what hour I will write later, Maikov35 telegraphed that he was coming. Polonsky too. Now, that is all, my precious, so expect me on the 11th, and this I believe is for certain. Souvorin is asking for my speech. I positively do not know who to give it to or how to arrange it. Wait till he hears me at the reading. I warmly embrace you, my Anka. I kiss you a great many times for much – much and much. I kiss the little ones and bless them. You write that you have dreams, and that I do not love you. And I keep on having very bad dreams, nightmares every night about your being unfaithful to me with others. God knows it torments me terribly. I kiss you a thousand times. – Wholly your F. DOSTOEVSKY. Kiss the children. XI Loskutnaya, Room 33, Moscow, June 5, 1880, 8 P.M. My lovely Anyutka, I have just received your lovely little letter of June 3rd and hasten to write to you quickly as much as I shall have time for. No, my darling, don’t ask now for long letters, for there will hardly be time just to write you letters at all. Literally, the whole time, every minute, will now be occupied, and even that won’t be enough for what is taking place here, – that’s certain, let alone for letters. To begin at the beginning. Yesterday morning myself, Souvorin, his wife, Burenin and Grigorovich were in the Kremlin, in the Armoury, where we examined all the ancient things; Chayev, the inspector of the Armoury, showed them to us. After that we went to the Patriarch’s sacristy. Having looked at everything, we went to Tiestov’s for a snack and remained to lunch. After that I called for a short while on Anna Nicolayevna Englehardt and had to buy a few things in the shops. Then, as agreed, we went to the Hermitage Park. The Souvorins, Grigorovich, and the rest were already there. In the park I met nearly all the delegates who have recently arrived from Petersburg. All kinds of persons came up to me; I can’t remember them all. Gayevsky, Lentovsky,36 the singer Melnikov37 and others. I sat all the time at tea with the Souvorins and Burenin, and now and then with Grigorovich, who kept on coming and going away. And suddenly a rumour spread that the Celebration had been postponed. The rumour was spread by Melnikov. It was 11 o’clock, and I drove off to Yuriev. He was not at home, but I found his son and he assured me that it was nonsense. (And so it turned out to be.) Having come home I began to prepare
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myself for my reading on the evening of the 6th. It is, Anya, a stiff job. Imagine, the unveiling of the memorial will be on the 6th, and from 8 in the morning I shall be on my feet. At 2 o’clock the ceremony will be over, and the Solemn Service at the University begins. (No, upon my word, I shan’t go on.) After that dinner at the Mansion House, and the very same day, at 9 o’clock in the evening, tired, exhausted, crammed with food and drink, I have to read the monologue of the Chronicler (from Boris Godounov) – a most difficult thing to read aloud, requiring calmness and control of the subject. I feel I am not yet ready. Moreover, the evening almost starts with me – the most inconvenient position. I sat till 4 o’clock in the morning, and unexpectedly this morning after 9 o’clock I was awakened by Zolotariov who has at last arrived. I slept altogether 5½ hours. After him came Fiodor Petrovich Kornilov, after them Lopatin with the wreaths (the wreaths cost 14, not 17 roubles, but without ribbons). The ribbons, as well as to-morrow’s to-do, I handed over to Zolotariov. So I shall have to pay the 14 roubles for the wreaths myself. True, Zolotariov will have to pay just as much for the rest of the accessories. At 2 o’clock we set off to the Mansion House. All delegations (there are a hundred delegations) presented themselves to Prince Oldenburgsky, etc. The ceremonial, the fuss, the chaos – I don’t describe; it is too impossible to describe. I saw and spoke even with Poushkin’s daughter. Ostrovsky,38 the local Jupiter, came up to me. Turgenev, very amiable, ran up. The other liberal groups, amongst them Plescheyev39 and even the lame Yazykov, bear themselves with reserve and almost haughtily, as if to say: You are a reactionary, but we are radicals. And, generally, complete dissension has already begun. I am afraid that all these different tendencies existing side by side for so many days may end in a fight. The history of Katkov’s exclusion from the Celebration revolts many people terribly. I came home and dined at home in the hope of receiving a little letter from you and answering you, then to go through Pimen and my speech, afterwards to prepare my shirt and frock-coat for to-morrow, and then go to bed earlier, But Gaydebourov came in, and suddenly after him Maikov, and then Viskovatov. Maikov came (to Moscow) to read his poems. He is all right, nice; having a sniff round. I talked to them for a while, but sent them off soon. I am finishing these lines. Zolotariov does not come, and the wreaths are not finished. This morning I was at Varya’s. To-morrow all day long until night I shall be busy. After to-morrow there will be the session of the ‘Lovers of Literature,’ but I am not reading at that session, and after that there will be a dinner for 500 guests with speeches, and perhaps a free fight. Then on the morning of the 8th there is my speech at the session of the ‘Lovers of Literature,’ and in the evening, at the second festivity of the ‘Lovers’ I among others am reading several poems of
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Poushkin, and finishing with The Prophet. You write that I ought to leave on the 8th, but it is only on the 9th that I shall be paying my visits. I’ll leave on the 10th and arrive on the 11th, and this only if I am not detained for one more day, which is quite possible. But I’ll let you know then. It is much better for me to leave by the 1 P.M. train, than by the morning train, for in the first case I shall miss only one night’s sleep, but in the second I shan’t sleep two nights, for the night before leaving I shan’t sleep or I’ll get up at 6. Letters about my own triumphs I shan’t have to write, since my day is on the 8th, and on the 6th I am only reading Pimen. Think it over, the speech will have to be published. Although there are three claimants, Yuriev is again drawing back, and Katkov after his affair might perhaps become completely indifferent to the whole business of the ceremony, and Souvorin, for all I know, may not repeat his request. Then it would be bad. Therefore it is quite possible that I may be back one day late, Recently I received 18 roubles 75 kopecks from Alexandrov. I called on Varya and I seem to have said my good-byes. She is going to her daughter in the country. – Good-bye for now, my darling. There are of course a thousand things one can’t manage to write in a letter; what can one say in a letter? But now there is no time, no time at all to write letters! Even this minute I am all exhausted and worn out. And I have to sit up for a long time. And when shall I have my sleep out? I embrace you warmly – warmly, the little ones I kiss terrifically and bless them, – Wholly your F. DOSTOEVSKY. I don’t want to write of love, for love is not in words, but in deeds. And when shall I get to deeds? They are long overdue. All the same I’ll try to find time to write you, if it’s only a few lines. XII Loskutnaya, Room 33, Moscow, June 7, 1880, Midnight. My lovely dearest darling Anya, I write in a hurry. The unveiling of the memorial took place yesterday, how then can I describe it? Even twenty pages would not describe it, and I haven’t a minute. This is the third night. I have slept for only five hours, – to-night will be the same. Then there was the dinner with speeches.40 Then the reading with music at the evening literary festivity at the Noblemen’s Assembly. I read the scene of Pimen. In spite of the impossible choice (for surely one cannot shout Pimen across a whole hall) and the fact that I had to read in the worst sounding hall, they say that it went off superbly, but that I was not very audible. I was received excellently; they would not let me begin for a long time; they kept applauding; and after the reading they called me out three times. But Turgenev,
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who read shockingly, was called out more often than I. Behind the scenes (a huge place in darkness) I noticed about a hundred young people, who began a frenzied shouting each time Turgenev appeared. It immediately occurred to me that they must be a claque put there by Kovalevsky. And so it turned out. To-day at the morning sitting because of that claque Ivan Aksakov refused to make his speech after Turgenev (in which the latter underrated Poushkin, taking away from him the name of national poet), and he explained to me that the claqueurs were arranged beforehand and placed there by Kovalevsky (all of them are his students and all Westerners), in order to proclaim Turgenev as the head of their school of thought, and to humiliate us, in case we go against them. Nevertheless, the reception given to me yesterday was most wonderful, although only the public in the chairs applauded. Besides, crowds of men and women kept on coming to me behind the scenes to press my hand. In the interval I crossed the hall, and a multitude of people, youths, greybeards, women, threw themselves at me, saying: ‘You are our prophet, we are better men after reading the Karamazovs.’ (In a word, I became convinced that the Karamazovs have a colossal significance.) To-day, coming out from the morning session, at which I did not speak, the same thing happened, On the staircase and at the cloak-room, men, women, and all sorts of people detained me. At the dinner in the evening two ladies brought me flowers. Some of them I recognised by their names – Mme. Tretiakov, Mme. Golokhvastov, Mme. Moshnin, and others. I’ll pay a visit to Mme. Tretiakov the day after to-morrow. (She is the wife of the Tretiakov41 who has a picture gallery.) To-day was the second dinner – the literary one, a couple of hundred people. The young generation met me at my arrival, hailed me, paid court to me, made frenzied speeches – and all this still before the dinner. At dinner many speeches were made and toasts given. I did not want to speak, but towards the end of the dinner many people jumped up from the table and forced me to speak. I said only a few words, – and there was a roar of enthusiasm, literally a roar. After that in the next hall they sat round me – a dense crowd – and spoke much and ardently (at the coffee and cigars). But when at half-past nine I got up to go home (two-thirds of the guests were still there), they shouted out ‘Hurrah!’ to me, in which even those who did not sympathise had to take part involuntarily. After that, all that crowd poured with me down the stairs, and without overcoats, with no hats on, came out into the street and put me into my cab. And suddenly they threw themselves on me to kiss my hands. Not one, but scores of people, and not students only, but greybeards. No, Turgenev has only claqueurs, but my people have true enthusiasm. Maikov was there and witnessed all this; he must have been surprised. Several people (strangers to me)
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said in a whisper that for to-morrow, at the morning sitting, a real row was prepared for me and Aksakov. To-morrow, the 8th, is my really fateful day: in the morning I read my speech, and in the evening I read twice, The She-Bear and The Prophet. The Prophet I intend to read well. Wish for me! There is great commotion and excitement here. Yesterday at the Town Hall lunch Katkov ventured to make a long speech and did produce an effect, at least on a part of the public. Kovalevsky is outwardly very amiable to me, and in one toast he mentioned my name among others. Turgenev too. Annenkov tried to make up to me, but I turned away. You see, Anya, I have written to you, although my speech is not yet finally revised. On the 9th I am paying visits, and I must make up my mind definitely who I shall give my speech to. Everything depends on the effect it will make. I have stayed here a long time, spent a fair amount of money, but in all this I have laid a foundation for the future. I must now correct my speech, and get my linen ready for to-morrow. – To-morrow is my important début. Am afraid I shall not have enough sleep, I am afraid of having a fit. – The Central Shop will not pay in spite of everything. Good-bye for now, my darling. I embrace you, do kiss the little ones. I’ll probably leave on the 10th, and shall arrive on the night of the 11th. Be ready. I embrace you all warmly and bless you. – Your eternal and invariable F. DOSTOEVSKY. This letter will probably be the last. XIII Loskutnaya, Room 33, Moscow. June 8, 1880, 8 P.M. My dear Anya, to-day I sent you yesterday’s letter of the 7th, but now I can’t help sending you also these few lines, although I am awfully tired out morally and physically, So perhaps you will receive this letter together with the preceding one. This morning was the reading of my speech at the ‘Lovers.’ 42 The hall was packed. No, Anya, no, you can never present to yourself nor imagine the effect it produced! What are my Petersburg successes? Nothing, nothing at all, compared to this! When I came out, the hall thundered applause, and for a long, very long time, they would not let me speak. I bowed, made gestures, asking them to let me read – nothing was of any avail: raptures, enthusiasm (all because of the Karamazovs). At last I began reading: I was interrupted positively at each page, and at moments at each phrase, by a thunder of applause. I read loudly, with fire. All that I wrote about Tatyana was received with enthusiasm. (This is a great victory for our idea over the twenty-five years of delusions!) When at the end I proclaimed the universal union of people, the hall
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was as though in hysterics, and when I finished, – I cannot tell you about the roar, about the wail of ecstasy: strangers among the public cried, wept, embraced one another, and swore to one another to be better, not to hate one another from henceforth, but to love. The order of the session was upset; all rushed to me to the platform – grand ladies, students, Secretaries of State, students – all embraced, kissed me. All the members of our Society who were on the platform embraced me and kissed me, and all, literally all, cried for ecstasy. The calls for me lasted half an hour; they waved their handkerchiefs; suddenly, for instance, two old men, strangers to me, stopped me: ‘We have been enemies for twenty years, we have not spoken to one another, and now we have embraced and made peace. It is you who have reconciled us. You are our saint, you are our prophet!’ ‘Prophet, prophet!’ the crowd shouted. Turgenev, about whom I had put in a good word in my speech, threw himself at me to embrace me with tears. Annenkov ran up to press my hand and kiss my shoulder. ‘You are a genius, you are more than a genius!’ they both said to me. Ivan Aksakov ran up to the platform and declared to the public that my speech – is not a mere speech, but a political event! A cloud had been hiding the horizon, and now Dostoevsky’s words, like the sun, have driven it away, have shed their light upon all. From this moment begins true brotherhood, and there will be no more misunderstanding. ‘Yes, yes!’ they all cried, and embraced again, and wept again. The sitting was closed. I tried to escape behind the scenes, but everybody forced their way in there from the hall, mostly women. They kissed my hands, would not let me be. The students rushed in. One of them, in tears, fell down before me on the floor in hysterics and lost consciousness. Complete, completest victory! Yuriev rang his bell and announced that the ‘Society of Lovers of Russian Literature’ unanimously elected me honorary member. Again wailing and shouting. After an interval of almost an hour the session was resumed. All the other speakers had a mind not to read. Aksakov got up and declared that he would not read his speech since all had been said and all had been solved by the great word of our genius – Dostoevsky. However, we all made him speak. The reading went on, and meanwhile a conspiracy was arranged. I was worn out and wanted to go home, but they forced me to stay. In that one hour they managed to get a sumptuous laurel crown, a yard and a half across, and at the end of the sitting a number of ladies (over a hundred) stormed the platform and crowned me in sight of the whole hall with the wreath: ‘From women of Russia, of whom you spoke so much good!’ All cried; enthusiasm again, Tretyakov, the Lord Mayor, thanked me on behalf of the City of Moscow. – Admit, Anya, that for this it was worth staying on: this is a pledge for the future, a pledge for everything, should I even
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die. – When I came home, I received your letter about the new-born foal, but you write so unfeelingly about my staying on. In an hour’s time I’ll go off to read at the second literary festivity. I shall read The Prophet. Tomorrow – visits. After to-morrow, on the 10th I am leaving. On the 11th I shall be at home, unless anything very important detains me. The speech must be placed, but to whom shall I give it? They are all tearing it between them. Terrible! Good-bye for now, my dear, desirable and precious one, I kiss your little feet. I embrace the children, I kiss them, – bless them. I kiss the foal. I bless you all. My head is queer, my hands and feet shake. Good-bye for now, for a little while. – Yours all and wholly F. DOSTOEVSKY.
Notes
1.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
7. 8. 9.
Text: Dostoevsky’s Letters and Reminiscences, translated from the Russian by S. S. Koteliansky and J. Middleton Murry (London: Chatto & Windus, 1923), pp. 172–235. See BJK, p. 85, for evidence of KM’s involvement in the section of the book titled ‘Letters to his Wife’, published here. The anniversary of the death of Russia’s greatest poet is a major event in Russian life. Alexander Pushkin was born on 26 May/6 June 1799. The Gregorian calendar was implemented in Russia on 14 February 1918 by dropping the Julian dates of 1–13 February 1918. It was decreed that the Julian date was to be written after the Gregorian date until 1 July 1918; hence the two dates. Maria Alexandrovna, born in 1824, was the Empress Consort of All the Russias, the wife of Tsar Alexander II. She died on 8 June 1880. The Moscow News. Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov (1818–87) was a conservative journalist who became manager and editor of the Moscow News in 1863. Peter Lavrovich Lavrov (1823–1900) was a radical philosopher, sociologist and writer. Russkaya Mysl (Russian Thought) was a popular magazine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was founded in 1880 by Vukol Mikhailovich Lavrov (1852–1912); until 1885, the editor was Sergey Yuryev. This is possibly Alexander Nikolayevich Aksakov (1832–1903), who was an author, journalist and editor interested in spiritualism. Alexander Griboyedov (1795–1829) wrote one verse comedy, usually translated into English as Woe from Wit, posthumously published in 1833. Ivan Sergeyevich Aksakov (1823–86) was a controversial journalist and newspaper publisher.
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10. L. I. Polivanov (1838–99) published a five-volume version of Pushkin’s work for children in 1887. 11. Nikolai Grigoryevich Rubinstein (1835–81) was a pianist, composer and conductor, and a friend of Tchaikovsky. 12. Osiotr and sterlet are both sturgeon. 13. Dimitri Vasilyevich Grigorovich (1822–1900) was a writer, artist and art critic, whose fiction focused on the real life of the rural community. 14. Ruskii Vestnik (the Russian Messenger) was an influential literary magazine founded (1856) by a group of liberal writers and academics such as Mikhail Katkov, who was the chief editor. 15. Boleslav Mikhailovich Markevich (1822–84) was the author of several popular novels, and an essayist, journalist and critic. 16. A footnote at this point in the text reads: ‘A reference to the abandonment of artistic work by Tolstoy and his absorption in religious and philosophical problems. Tolstoy’s Critique of Dogmatic Theology appeared in 1880, and his Brief Exposition of the Gospels in 1881.’ 17. Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov (1813–87) was a literary critic, and a friend of Turgenev and Gogol. 18. Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov (1812–91) was a novelist and literary and theatre critic, best known for his novel Oblomov (1859). 19. Yasnaya Polyana, meaning ‘Bright Glade’, was Leo Tolstoy’s country home 200 kilometres from Moscow. It became a destination for pilgrims in the late nineteenth century. 20. Maxim Maximovich Kovalevsky (1851–1916) was an authority on sociology in the Russian Empire and became president of the International Institute of Sociology in 1905. 21. Pavel Viskovatov (1842–1905) was a literary historian with a particular interest in the works of Lermontov. 22. Dimitri Vasilevish Averkiev (1836–1905) wrote for journals in the 1860s, serialising a novel called The Evil Spirit. 23. These are both plays by Pushkin. 24. Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1803–73) was a major Romantic poet. 25. Anna Nikolaevna Englehardt (1838–1903) was a translator, editor and social activist. 26. A restaurant. 27. A footnote at this point in the text reads: ‘Gogol’s letter of March 1841, to Aksakov, is among Dostoevsky’s personal archives. It was forwarded to Dostoevsky by Aksakov on September 3, 1880.’ 28. Pimen is a character in Pushkin’s play, Boris Godunov; he is a monk and chronicler. 29. Nikolai Ivanovich Sobol’Shchikov-Samarin (1868–1945) became a leading figure in Russian theatre after the October Revolution of 1917. 30. Paul et Virginie (1788) is a novel by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de SaintPierre. It is set in Mauritius, then under French rule, and argues for
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31. 32. 33.
34. 35.
36. 37. 38. 39. 40.
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the emancipation of slaves. Jean-François Le Sueur wrote an operatic version of it, Paul et Virginie ou Le Triomphe de la vertu, first produced in Paris in 1784. Peter Ivanovich Bartenev (1829–1912) was a historian, archaeographer and bibliographer, whose knowledge Tolstoy immensely admired. Nikola Vasilevich Kalachov (1819–85) wrote about the law in Russia. Alexei Feofilaktovich Pisemsky (1821–81) was a realist novelist and dramatist who had a similar reputation to Turgenev and Dostoevsky until its sudden decline in the early 1860s. Viktor Petrovich Burenin (1841–1926) was a poet and publicist. Apollon Nikolayevich Maikov (1821–97) was a lyric poet, whose work focused on Russian village life, history and nature. Many of his poems were set to music by Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. Mikhail Valentinovich Lentovsky (1843–1906) was a stage impresario, actor, theatre director and writer. Ivan Alexandrovich Melnikov (1832–1906) was a baritone who sang in all but one of Tchaikovsky’s operas. Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky (1823–86) was a dramatist and translator. Alexei Nikolayevich Plescheyev (1825–93) was a radical poet who spent ten years in exile. A footnote at this point in the text reads: On June 6th, the Moscow City Society gave a luncheon in the Hall of the Nobility to the delegations which had arrived for the unveiling of the Poushkin memorial. On the evening of the same day the ‘Society of Lovers of Russian Literature’ gave a literary and musical soirée, at which Turgenev read Poushkin’s poem The Cloud. On June 7th, the inaugural session of the ‘Society of Lovers of Russian Literature’ took place, after which a subscription dinner, organised by the Society, was held.
41. Pavel Mikhaylovich Tretyakov (1832–98) was a businessman, philanthropist and, with his brother, a significant art collector. His collection was originally shown in his house in Moscow but in 1893 it was transferred to a custom-built museum. 42. A footnote at this point in the text reads: At the second special session on June 8th of the ‘Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.’ Dostoevsky’s speech appeared neither in the Russkaya Mysl, nor in the Russky Viestnik (with whose editors, Yuriev and Katkov, Dostoevsky, as we have seen, had been negotiating), but in the daily Moscowskya Viedomosti, No. 162, 1880. It was republished in the sole number of The Journal of an Author for 1880.
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PART III
PARODIES, PASTICHES AND APHORISMS
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Parodies, Pastiches and Aphorisms: Introduction
KM’s sense of humour – an important feature of all her writing – is particularly evident in this section. Most of the pieces date from 1910– 13, and reflect the influence of Beatrice Hastings, the partner of A. R. Orage, during the early period KM was publishing work in the New Age. Both women had a mischievous and frequently mordant sense of humour, and whilst Hastings would end up taking her parodying to vindictive extremes later in her life, KM retained a more measured, literary approach. Two pieces in this section have never been published before: ‘Sumurun: An Impression of Leopoldine Konstantin’ (1911), discovered by Gerri Kimber in the ATL in February 2013, does not easily fit into any category, being, as it states in the title, an ‘impression’ of an actress performing in a silent play-pantomime that KM saw on the London stage at the beginning of 1911; secondly, the group of aphorisms called ‘Bites from the Apple (1911)’, discovered in the archives at King’s College London by Chris Mourant, who suggests that they were again influenced by her relationship with Hastings and Orage and intended for publication in the New Age. A third piece, the parody ‘Virginia’s Journal’ (1913), is here definitively attributed to KM for the first time, a typed manuscript having been discovered by Gerri Kimber in the ATL in early 2013.
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Bavarian Babies (1910) To The Editor Of ‘The New Age.’ With reference to the article in your issue of last week, entitled ‘Bavarian Babies,’ I beg to state that, in my lowly opinion, I consider Miss Katharine Mansfield has given quite a wrong impression of the home life of these people. As one who has lived among them for some years, may I say that ‘a bundle of twigs tied with strong string’ would be found in about 1 per cent. of the homes, and then only intended for the delectation of the boys. Of course, in some of the other German States the birch is greatly used, and it is no uncommon thing for a housewife to birch the bare back of her maidservant or daughter; but this does not apply to Bavaria. May I ask in how many English homes does not the mother lay her children across her knee? With regard to the moral of the story – if any – I would not comment upon it; my action would be as superfluous as that of the man who blacked his coals with lamp black.
Notes Text: New Age, 6: 18, 3 March 1910, p. 430. Signed ‘Vidi’. This parody is an example of what Faith Binckes writes about the journalistic strategy of the New Age: ‘The pages bristle with reviews and summaries, opinion and counter-opinion. When suitably opposing parties could not be organized, it simply used its own journalists, who, under a variety of pseudonyms, wrote against one another and occasionally against themselves.’ Faith Binckes, Modernism, Magazines, and the British Avant-Garde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 8. Alpers, in Life, p. 113, assumes that ‘Vidi’ was Beatrice Hastings.
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A Paper Chase (1910) To The Editor Of ‘The New Age.’ A rabbit nibbling a lettuce leaf one moment before it becomes a python’s dinner is hardly a spectacle for universal and ironic laughter – whatever crimes the rabbit may have committed, whatever just hunger the python may feel. And yet if we are to believe the Little Fathers of Fleet Street the whole world has been bursting its sides over Crippen1 stroking a newly-grown beard and Miss Le Neve with her trousers safety-pinned on confronted by the Inspector from Scotland Yard and six good men and true snapped into a carefully prepared trap with that quiet air of triumph which doubtless distinguishes the true British sportsman. This nation of fair play seems satiated with small game, and in the desire to outdo ‘Teddy’ is on the war path for human heads. Captain Kendall, supported by his Kermit of a first officer, has become the latest national hero, and I have no doubt but that he will be publicly presented with Miss Le Neve’s outfit of boy’s clothing to grace his pretty little country home in the vicinity of Pinner. Perhaps we have underestimated the peculiar subtlety of the methods employed by Scotland Yard – perhaps full to the brim of that entente cordiale syrup which flowed at the funeral of our late lamented Peace Maker,2 they have banded all the nations of the world together as brothers – invited them down into the cellar to have a look on their own account and chase after the little man with bulging eyes and false teeth and his typist who proved her guilt by wearing another lady’s dresses. I believe that the English nation has the reputation of not being particular with regard to its food – quantity, never mind quality, being the axiom. Certainly the stomach for which the Press caters is a mighty affair indeed, and now the staple joint of the Crippen menu being ‘off,’ demands the scrapings of prison plates which the ‘Daily Mail’ so obligingly heats up for breakfast each morning. There can be no question of judging Crippen. He can be bought outright, with a photograph and a book of words, by any street gamin possessed of a halfpenny. Surely we owe a debt of gratitude to all concerned who have shepherded us in this personally conducted tour into the hidden chambers of that machine which separates the wheat from the tares with all the impartiality and infallibility of our Courts of Law.
Notes Text: New Age, 7: 15, 11 August 1910, pp. 354–5. Signed: Katherine Mansfield.
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north american chiefs (1910)
1. Officers from Scotland Yard found part of the corpse of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen’s second wife, Cora, hidden under the floor of the basement of his house. They pursued him and his lover, Ethel Le Neve, who fled together by sea. They were tracked down by means of a wireless telegram sent by the captain of the liner on which they were travelling, and tried separately; he was hanged on 23 November 1910 and she was acquitted. It was a sensational cause célèbre in which, KM ironically suggests, a guilty verdict was arrived at before the trial. 2. King Edward VII died on 6 May 1910.
North American Chiefs (1910) Sir, – As a respectable citizeness of pagan England I cannot fail to be thrilled by R. B. Kerr’s letter justifying the claims of Canada’s seven millions to a literature pioneered by the ‘two boldest popular novelists of our time,’ Grant Allen and Elinor Glyn.1 Far be it from me to repudiate Mr. Allen’s statement in declaring his own novels rubbish, but Elinor Glyn doubtless ‘because she is a woman,’ and ‘even more admirable’ has not yet spat upon her inspiration or condemned her feminine fancies as unfit reading for our hardy Colonial children. Am I to understand as a result of this very natural and praiseworthy modesty she is to accept the precious ointment of the reading public – she is to be provided with a little bower of laurel wreaths sacredly set apart for the production of yet another ‘Three Weeks’?2 But I think it is ‘hardly fair’ to speak of that exquisite creature in purple draperies who ate so many strawberries and cooed like a dove, and was obviously the slave of her sexual passions, as a ‘real free woman.’ If Elinor Glyn is the prophetic woman’s voice crying out of the wilderness of Canadian literature, let her European sister novelists lift shekelled hands in prayer that the ‘great gulf’ may ever yawn more widely. As regards the United States it would seem that the only course open to the entire literary world is to make a pilgrimage into those pregnant fastnesses where stories ‘too true to life and too vivid in imagination to be printed in any country’ are ‘handed round in the form of typewritten manuscripts’ (did ever creation take on so novel a disguise) ‘among a very few select persons.’ Mr. Kerr has touched America with the wand of romance. Fascinating thought! That your companion on the Elevated Railway may be hiding under a striped chewing-gum wrapper the quivering first fruits of his soul. Notes Text: New Age, 7: 17, 25 August 1910, p. 407. Signed: Katherine Mansfield. 1. Grant Allen (1848–99) was a Canadian novelist and science writer, whose
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‘sumurun’: an impression of leopoldine konstantin (1911) 385 novel, The Woman Who Did (1895), was a best-seller. Elinor Glyn (1864– 1943) was a British novelist who spent eight childhood years in Canada; her mother was Canadian. She wrote risqué novels apparently based on her own experience of aristocratic life in Britain. 2. Three Weeks (1907) was a novel by Glyn, in which a Balkan queen seduces a young British aristocrat; it was twice made into a film.
‘Sumurun’: An Impression of Leopoldine Konstantin (1911) She opens the iron barred window and leans out. Below her the hunchback sits on the stage thrumming his guitar, and the old comic woman, the snake charmer, and the little, fantastic audience, stir and cry aloud with the gestures and voices of dolls. The room behind her is quite dark but a bright light shines on her dusky face and hair, on her shimmering green dress and bare, brown arms. One thinks of a bird quivering a moment at the open door of the cage – there is just that wild eagerness about her – listening one moment, for the live voice of liberty, and passionately indifferent to everything else. From some unseen place – some dark corner you know nothing of – a whistle is heard. Her body stiffens – she lifts her head, triumphantly smiling, and at her smile you feel like a child who is at the theatre for the very first time and that everything wonderful and glorious is going to happen – her smile tells you so – you wait for her with the confidence of the child dreamer. This little slave dancer of ‘fatal fascination’ moves through the strange drama of Sumurun utterly indifferent to everything about her which she does not wish to possess – greedy for wealth and hungry for love – thrilling with that curious half cruel joy in herself and her own beauty – using these weapons of joy and beauty with the passionate courage of youth. The mournful figure of the hunchback is not tragic to her – he is disgusting and his love is disgusting. When he is seriously in her way she tries to throttle him – gropes at his twisted neck with her brown fingers – shakes him to and fro – then stands above him arms folded – tosses back her hair, heartlessly laughing. By and bye she is frightened of detection – looks round her like a frightened animal and runs away in terror – over the Flowery Way – from the ugly thing. But she comes back to it, just like a little wild animal and hides the stupid body, annoyed that it should be so heavy. When she beckons to her lover – throws him from her – beckons to him again – and is found by the old Sheick who has bought her – she stifles his grim suspicions with caresses, and suffers him to do with her what he will – but her smile deepens and becomes very secret.
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‘SUMURUN’: AN IMPRESSION OF LEOPOLDINE KONSTANTIN (1911)
Figure 5 Leopoldine Konstantin in ‘Sumurûn’. Postcard c. 1911.
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Through the quaint fabric of music and dance – of vivid tapestried colour – and opaque light – threading her laughing way among the mazes of tragedy the little slave dancer lives as the personification of youth winged with impulse – the frailest flower of them all. When she rises from the great bed – drops the brown coverlet – tiptoes into the shadow – where her lover waits for her – you feel she is perfectly justified in wanting to kill that old, sleeping figure – you want to cry ‘hush’ yourself when she is alarmed – you refuse to believe that the hunchback could be so cruel. . . . . . . . And all through the last scene – above the din and struggle – you are haunted by the knowledge that the slave dancer lies dead – shut fast in a bigger cage by the hands that set her free.
Notes Text: Alexander Turnbull Library, MS-Papers-11327-048. Typescript with autograph corrections by KM. Signed ‘Katharina Mansfield’, discovered by Gerri Kimber at the ATL in February 2013.
This signature dates the piece to the end of 1910 or early 1911. This was the pen name KM used for ‘A Fairy Story’, published in the Open Window in December 1910, and also the name she – illegally – used on her UK 1911 National Census form in April 1911. KM must have seen the almost silent play-pantomime, Sumurûn, based on a story from the Arabian Nights and directed by Max Reinhardt, which played to packed houses at the London Coliseum for six weeks from January 1911, with the Austrian actress Leopoldine Konstantin in the title role. Open eroticism was the reason for the play’s success, as well as its scandalous reputation. ‘Sumurun’ is a creative impression – as the title says – of the play that she saw. There are dark images and even darker themes in the piece itself, which may explain why JMM never used it in any of his posthumous publications of KM’s work.
A P.S.A. (1911) Sir, – Finding ourselves on Sunday in Ditchling-on-Sea, without any literature, we were driven to rely upon memories of our favourite authors. We forward our summaries for the benefit of your readers who may sometime find themselves in a similar situation. K. M. and B. H.
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a p.s.a. (1911) MR. BART KENNEDY.1
A grim day. Too full and pregnant swelled the sky. I looked out of the window. In at my room. Struck a match – and kindled my pipe. With a sort of bloody anger – fist clenched over knotted hand bones, I dreamed of the world. The world as it is. This place. This stewpot of Fine Endeavour, this melting-pot of Rancid Waste and Fever. Ants. On the floor I observed the greenish whiteness of my Sunday newspaper. Like black ants the letters swarming. I looked deeper. I saw buildings where these ants fashioned this greenish whiteness. I saw the sweat pour from their wizened bodies into the oily maw of the machines. I heard in the clanging crying of these automatic monsters – hand-fed by them – the crying clangour of the inarticulate. Then deeper. And all over the world. Little figures – ants again – yes, strangely ants – sinking their contorted vision – pen-digging in public offal. I plunged. And this greenish whiteness became significant – flew like the flag of England – with a dry crackling over my red thoughts. I looked out of the window. I opened it. I was passionately sick. MR. G. K. CHESTERTON.2 There is a broom-stick in my garden. The bristles shining yellow as ripe corn, and observing from the wadded chair of my Sunday musings the long, pure, unbroken line of the handle, I appreciate, for the first time, most fully and completely, the charm of the witches’ progress – the fascination of broomsticks. Magic in this clean and intimate weapon by day, those yellow bristles turn a dull gold at evening time and change at nightfall to a thick, mysterious darkness. I find myself regretting my complete abandon to my English dinner, and I long to leap from my wadded wrappings and straddle the broomstick for the one, great, simple adventure. For it seems to me that adventure can only be sought after in the near consciousness of very beautiful, homely things. Things which have felt the good grip of our hands, watching and guarding us as the crucifix the fingers of a little nun telling the shining length of her rosary. I want to combine, and call ‘sister’ the broom sweeping the untroubled glory of my Bickensfield hillsides with that plaintive swishing down the London area steps of my lighter – my very much lighter – so my friends tell me – youth. I protest that the one is as romantic as the other. . . . A new broom sweeps clean is fine enough to scroll the spring heavens and thrill the soul with rare, mysterious unity of thought as a barrelorgan grinding out a Catholic chant in a half-forgotten street at evening time.
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MR. RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.3 Like country children in starched pinafores, soberly and a little tearfully gathered together at Sunday school, the pansies star my garden walks. There is long grass in the orchard, lush and thickly green. . . . it swings in sombre rhythm. And over the grass fall the frail, shattering petals of apple-blossom. . . . April Showers came into my study, with a blue ribbon dropped from the amber curls of Shining Feet. She said: ‘Darling, do I disturb you?’ and as I kissed her, she drooped her fragrant bosom over my shoulder. I answered: ‘For your dear question, I shall read you my poem.’ April Showers clapped her hands. Lush and thickly green, Ah ! why must I think of graves! Of lovers that might have been, Under these swinging waves. My sad soul could not rest Till April knocked my door, Leaning her delicate breast Over me – as of yore. She cried – ‘Beloved, see The apple-blossom fall Like angels’ feathers a-free From winter’s barren pall.’
From the room above we heard Shining Feet cry out as though in pain. She put her finger to her lips, subtly smiling. . . . Little Feathers! Little Shining Feet! . . . MR. ALFRED AUSTIN.4 Droop ye no more – ye stalwart oaken trees, For mourning time is spent and put away – Red, white and blue unfurls, the morning breeze Bring leaves – strew leaves for Coronation Day. And thrill along your mighty, crusted bark, King George, our Sailor King, goes to be crowned, Your limbs have nursed his navy – the long mark Of his wide Empire by your arms is bound. Bud roses! scatter at the matron feet Of his proud consort, Mary, all your bloom. Let Englishman the bronzed Colonial meet In brotherhood – and weave upon the loom
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Of this great Empire stronger, deeper ties – Ties that shall hold 11,000 miles. Perhaps in some far Heaven of the skies Edward the Peace-maker looks down and smiles.
MR. EDEN PHILLPOTTS.5 As usual I was out and about the moor. It ran up misty to the skyline, only the delicate morning petals glimmering between green blades, at the tip of each which a dewdrop, ready to flutter its opalescent upon my boots . . . and wave upon wave now rising, foaming away like very sea to the empyrean . . . with a shadow where the signpost white and stark on the road below the red-roofed farm led the eye towards Burryzizzer, lying like a maid amid the heather . . . the meaning of the familiar and yet. . . . I saw a gleam of rounded whiteness . . . nay, creamness, milkness . . . . something – a sensation of approaching primevalness. Then I saw that the woman was trying to feed a child which lay cooing and slapping her magnificent breasts. She made no movement though I approached as the crow flies. ‘Tell me your story,’ I cried. ‘Fear not; your history will be sacred to the public.’ Her great, round, deep, shining, hard eyes searched mine and I blinked, sorry for her. The woman always pays! Still she said nothing, but mechanically buttoned up her dress. ‘Ah, don’t,’ I cried; ‘don’t let a mere accident embitter thee so. Thee knows we’m all frail. Confide, poor toad, in me, a stranger, but almost a woman myself. Tell me the fellow’s name and I’ll write a book about him un he’ll marry ’ee or thou’lt have his blood in the end.’ Still those luscious lips were sealed. She lifted the child and rose at last, and I saw my next story vanishing. However, one of the old ones with new names would serve (I know my hydropathic public). Suddenly she dealt me a sounding box on the ears. And I recognised her hand. She had done the same thing twice before. ‘Tha’ll feel Tom’s boot if thee stops here a minute,’ she murmured, and went towards the farm. MR. ARNOLD BENNETT.6 In Pottinghame High Street, at seventeen minutes past three on a certain Sunday in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninetyfive, the fine dust was stirring. It was round, grey, piercing, sandy dust that rose and fell with precocious senility; for the month was June, and June is early for dust. Out of one of the vacant-looking, but actually swarming, two-storeyed houses that run monotonously up one side and down the other, a girl leaned. She threw out faded flowers, violets and a wallflower, and disappeared. Her bedroom expressed a
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character at once original and passive. The neatness of enforced nonconformity ruled her collars and shoes, but a bright blue petticoat, frilled with dyed lace, betokened a side of its owner’s nature, perhaps unsuspected by Pottinghame, perhaps never to be suspected by Pottinghame, perhaps better never to be suspected by Pottinghame. For Pottinghame is a town whereof someone said somewhere that its influence and its decree were unique. Once a Pottinghammer, always a Pottinghammer. Let Pottinghame pronounce benediction, the Pottinghammer went blessed: but let Pottinghame pronounce malediction, the Pottinghammer went cursed. And the influence aforesaid of Pottinghame upon the Pottinghammer lasted just as long. Tinker, tailor, be you, gentleman or novelist, a Pottinghammer never gets away from Pottinghame. The family of the Luke Pilders were below awaiting Susan’s advent to pour out tea. The little parlour bore curiously that same distinctive touch as above signified by the output of stiff cuffs and dyed lace. No house in Pottinghame could be complete of course without . . . . (To be continued until 1950.) MR. H. G. WELLS.7 So we stowed Biology and got to business. ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘Affairs,’ I replied, laconically. She understood, and moaned a little. My heart-strings creaked – a man’s heart-strings. ‘Damn!’ I burst out. ‘Do what you will with me.’ So we stowed Biology and got to business. ‘England!’ I snarled. ‘Pah – England will have to do the best she can without me. You’re my England now, curse you, bless you.’ She fell at my knees, clinging, weeping, smiling: ‘God!’ The epithet seemed to be torn out of her. I wondered. . . . ‘You won’t expect too much, Anthelesia?’ ‘Only three girls and three boys.’ ‘Curse the expense,’ I said. So we stowed Biology and got to business.
Notes Text: New Age, 9: 4, 25 May 1911, p. 95. Signed: K. M. and B. H. Written in collaboration with Beatrice Hastings. A P.S.A. is the acronym for ‘A Pleasant Sunday Afternoon’. 1. Bart Kennedy (1861–1930) was a British writer who had tramped across America and wrote about travel and social issues for the New Age.
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2. Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) was a writer, theologian, broadcaster and critic, best known as a novelist for his Father Brown stories. He converted to Catholicism in 1922. 3. Richard Le Gallienne (1866–1947) wrote sentimental, archaic verse. 4. Alfred Austin (1835–1913), an undistinguished poet, became Poet Laureate in 1896, after the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He was expected to write occasional poems at moments of national significance; the poem here refers to the death of Edward VII and the coronation of his successor, George V, on 22 June 1911. 5. Eden Phillpotts (1862–1960) was a novelist and playwright, whose work was often set on Dartmoor in Devon, and focused on local trades and industries. KM reviewed two novels by Phillpotts: Storm in a Teacup (pp. 499–500) and Evander (pp. 552–5). The irony in the second review is particularly evident: ‘Little baby fauns run in and out of the story’ (p. 555). 6. Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) wrote traditional realist fiction about the ‘Five Towns’, the Potteries in Staffordshire where he was born. 7. Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) was an influential writer of science fiction and of novels exploring English society; he was an advocate of sexual freedom for men and women.
Along the Gray’s Inn Road (1911) Sir, – Over an opaque sky grey clouds moving heavily like the wings of tired birds. Wind blowing: in the naked light buildings and people appear suddenly grotesque – too sharply modelled, maliciously tweaked into being. A little procession wending its way up the Gray’s Inn Road. In front, a man between the shafts of a hand-barrow that creaks under the weight of a piano-organ and two bundles. The man is small and greenish brown, head lolling forward, face covered with sweat. The piano-organ is bright red, with a blue and gold ‘dancing picture’ on either side. The big bundle is a woman. You see only a black mackintosh topped with a sailor hat; the little bundle she holds has chalk-white legs and yellow boots dangling from the loose ends of the shawl. Followed by two small boys, who walk with short steps, staring intensely at the ground, as though afraid of stumbling over their feet. No word is spoken; they never raise their eyes. And this silence and pre-occupation gives to their progress a strange dignity. They are like pilgrims straining forward to Nowhere, dragging, and holding to, and following after that bright red, triumphant thing with the blue and gold ‘dancing picture’ on either side.
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Notes Text: New Age, 9: 23, 5 October 1911, p. 548. Signed: Katherine Mansfield. O’Sullivan reads this as a prose poem (CLKM, 1, p. 109), which was placed by Beatrice Hastings in the correspondence column of the New Age as a piece of editorial malice. Alternatively, it can be read as a pastiche of such writers as Arthur Morrison (1863–1945), who described in realistic detail the lives of the poor in London’s East End.
Love Cycle (1911) [. . . Now it came to pass that four of these Sweet English Singers were gathered together in one place. And they took counsel together as to how and in what manner they should beguile a Vacant Half Hour. ‘For,’ they agreed, ‘it is written, or at any rate we believe, that the feeblest chirrup, that the song too faint even to stir the Back Hairs of God is better than the shortest silence.’ And I dreamed that the names of these singers were written in a book in the order of their singing, and that it was commanded me to set them down. And they stood in a fair, sweet line and they sang.] Soprano: MISS KATHERINE TYNAN.1 Spring i’ the wood! And the aconites frail Cold all a’ tremble In this wild gale. The snowdrop, the daffodil, hyacinth flower, Posy the earth in a colourful shower. Spring i’ the wood! Love i’ the wood! And my love all pale, White limbs a’ flutter In this wild gale. ‘Do you care?’ ‘Would you dare?’ and ‘I know a sweet bower.’ So I whispered my love in that riotous hour. Love i’ the wood!
Contralto: MRS. E. NESBIT.2 Now leaps the sun on his own spears and dies! Across the passionate sky his red blood flies;
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The roses crush their mouths upon the breeze That woos them, and Dusk threads among the trees. So leapt my love upon her virgin drouth So stained and passionate scarlet her young mouth; She crushed upon me all her swooning grace In silence – and her dark hair hid her face.
Tenor: MR. WILFRID GIBSON.3 Ah, no, Beloved, the air is chill, We dare not climb th’ accustomed hill, We dare not gaze o’ th’ familiar sea, And Autumn’s skeleton minstrelsy Jigs i’ the bone of the leafless tree. No, ah Beloved, thy mouth is cold; We dare not kiss as we kissed of old; I dare not gaze in the well-known eyes; My shivering spirit might surprise An answering shiver, that barren, dies. . . .
Bass: MR. LAURENCE HOUSMAN.4 Howl, wind! Thud, hail! Drive, rain, upon a naked world! Weave thy pale pall, snow. (Ah, God, then, is it always so? Must the year die, must the year go?) The storm clouds shudder, the old winds blow, And life is oblivion – hushed. Break, heart! Beat, hands! Drive, tears, upon my with’ring breast? She lies more pale than any snow. (God, God, then, is it ever so? And must I stay, and must she go?) Despair – tossed, spent, I wait below And mourn my restless rest.
Notes Text: New Age, 9: 25, 19 October, 1911, p. 586. Signed: Katherine Mansfield.
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1. Katharine Tynan (1859–1931), her name misspelt by KM, was an Irish writer, known mainly for her novels and poetry. 2. E. Nesbit (1858–1924) was an English author and poet, most famous as a prolific author of children’s books. 3. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878–1962) was a British Georgian poet. He was known to JMM and KM through his connections with Edward Marsh and Rupert Brooke, eventually becoming one of Brooke’s literary executors. 4. Laurence Housman (1865–1959) was an English playwright, writer and illustrator.
Pastiche. At the Club (1912) Viewed from the drawing-room door, the members of the ‘Advanced’ presented a fantastic appearance, for they crouched in chintzcovered armchairs, their heads only being visible, for all the world like a company of garish snails browsing on the Brussels roses. One man stood in an upright position guarding the fire, his eyes following a little maidservant who wandered familiarly among the tables, turning over newspapers and magazines as though they were pieces of bread in the process of toasting. Voice from a lady decorated with red quills: ‘Oh, they’re much worse abroad.’ ‘My dear, you can’t go out of your hotel in comfort. Followed everywhere. And the eyes! There is really only one word to describe them.’ ‘But,’ leaning forward, ‘I suppose they never make any definite . . . ?’ The red quills quivered. ‘Of course they do. I was walking underneath a railway bridge . . .’ – followed a whisper proper, on receipt of which the tense companion fell back into her chair. ‘No!’ ‘Perfectly true, my dear; you can imagine my horror.’ She took up a cigarette and smiled at it. ‘He was frightfully good-looking.’ ‘What type?’ asked the tense companion, feigning indifference. ‘Oh, dark – you know – awfully passionate! Foreigners are good-looking; I rather like the way Russians have of parting their beards down the middle, don’t you?’ A lady in a grey motor veil approached the masculine fireguard. ‘So sorry to hear about poor dear Mamie,’ she said, in a voice of great satisfaction. ‘Hey? What’s that? Oh, she’s all right,’ answered the fireguard, taking some eyeglasses from a waistcoat pocket and blowing on them. ‘Do her good. Cure her indigestion. Last time she was there she never had a touch of it until that wretched ‘welcome breakfast’ at the Holborn. Girl got excited – stodged, and started the whole game again.’ The motor veil looked damped, but said nothing. ‘By the way – saw your husband at the club last night: he’s looking very white about the gills. I told him about those charcoal biscuits again, but he doesn’t seem keen on ’em; says they stick to his teeth.’ She murmured
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confidingly: ‘Harry hasn’t any teeth of his own, you know. They’re very good, aren’t they?’ He looked in the eyeglasses, and looked thunderstruck. ‘By Jove, you do surprise me! That’s an astonishing thing! But that seems to me to simplify the biscuit trouble. He could take them out afterwards and pour the tap over ’em. What?’ ‘I hardly consider that suggestion appropriate or feasible,’ she said. And she thinned her lips and drifted away from him towards a copy of ‘Votes for Women.’ ‘Did you hear that man by the fire?’ whispered one of two young green things without collars; ‘aren’t men extraordinarily coarse? Fancy having to – to share a room with a person who might grate on your soul like that.’ ‘Yes, but I wouldn’t. At any rate, I’ve always decided ever since I was about fifteen to have separate beds. Have you read Masefield’s last poem?1 Isn’t it marvellous?’ ‘Yes, simply wonderful. Did you see that picture of him? I don’t know why, but it reminds me of a dandelion.’ ‘Oh, my dear, how wonderful of you. I never thought of it before, but I can see it immediately you say so. Quite ordinary in a way, and yet with a sort of glowing beauty in it.’ ‘Not ordinary. I’d rather say wistful. There is only seed cake in this tray. Do you hate it?’ ‘Not me!’ exclaimed an elderly lady with a moustache. ‘They think they have but they haven’t, and I don’t think they ever will. As our lovers they are too occupied in getting us into their arms; as our husbands they are too busy in endeavouring to escape from our legalised embraces: they never see us in a normal state at all. Supposing we don’t succumb to or pursue their fascinating qualities their pride is hurt and we’re voted cold-blooded or physiological freaks.’ She sat up and punched a leather cushion. ‘The fact is, sex is the only weapon we’ve got, and the sooner we realise that the better. Acceptance isn’t subservience. As the slave ministers to his master so must we make man minister to our needs. I’m all against this suppression of the subject. The pangs of sex are as natural and as inevitable as the pangs of hunger.’ ‘Oh, but Mrs. Cartwright,’ said a Bright Creature, ‘that almost reaches the Oriental standpoint. We can’t lie about on Persian pillows nowadays and kiss our loves between mouthfuls of Turkish delight. Men can choose to realise it or not, but we’re on the battlefield as surely as they are – all of us here, for instance!’ she waved her glove, embracing by gesture the entire room. ‘Why,’ cried a Laughing Voice, ‘just imagine if we sat here in chintz-covered chairs and talked about nothing but men all the afternoon. Pooh, they’re not worth it! Preposterous idea!’
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Notes Text: New Age, 10: 19, 7 March 1912, pp. 449–50. Signed Katherine Mansfield. 1. John Masefield, The Everlasting Mercy (1912).
Pastiche. Puzzle: Find the Book (1912) Among the galaxy of autumnal literary friends and strangers spread over shelf and work-table and floor of my sanctum for evening relaxation and the more sober duties of the newspaper reviewer none has so deeply impressed me with the artistic significance and the peculiar beauty of our time as Professor Rattyscum’s lavishly illustrated book of travel: ‘From Sewer to Cathedral Spire’. The work opens as is fitting and fashionable nowadays with a dedication to Mrs. Rattyscum, to whom we are indebted for the generous profusion of ‘quarter and half-quarter tone’ water-colours. It is not without reason that I quote the Professor’s words in their short entirety:– ‘While I did write, thy busy fingers, dabbler, Painted the page; The verdant prattle of thy child-heart, babbler, Sweet’ning the sage Words of my virile tongue As herbs are hung In juicy breast of roasted farmyard gabbler!’
Voila! (as our great-hearted Charles Dickens was so fond of exclaiming after his journey to Paris in the early ’seventies)1 there you have the man – the writing hand, the tender eye, and the sardonic, albeit wholesome, twist of the lip! There is something of a divine swoop in the Professor’s immediate grip of you; in the way he leads you from the figure of Mrs Rattiscum painting, perhaps, some intimate corner of the Sahara, to the dining-table, to the roasted bird or the willow pattern dish set in a little mat of pale yellow straw. Gleam of silver, gloss of napery, hoarded splendour of the dust-covered wine bottle, bloom of the fruit in season. . . . ‘Both so equally beautiful,’ we might fancy him saying. ‘For the modern artist refuses to find – nay, cannot find – one jot of difference between the beauty of spiritual things and the beauty of the earth, earthy. . . .’ Perhaps an even more forcible example of this modern vision is found on page 976, ‘Street Idyll in Wang-Thang.’ He gives a detailed and extremely powerful description of the beating of a girl-child in the open roadway, who, finally escaping her persecu-
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tor, leaves on the pavement the handkerchief with which she has stilled her weeping. A boy, who has observed the whole scene ‘with infinite compassion’ possesses himself of the ‘cambric trifle’ and thrusts it into his breast pocket. . . . ‘Ah, and why not? Surely the tear-stained handkerchief of the little beloved on the paving-stone is as lovely as the first rain-washed flower in the milk-white meadows of Paradise.’ It is natural, in the reading of this volume, that the thoughts should fly off to the tragic figure of Heinrich Heine,2 and it is true that there is a resemblance; Heine is the invalid brother of the Rattyscum family. Small doubt that had he been blessed with the Professor’s physique and the permanent pillow of a chaste’s wife’s lap the fruits of his bitterness might have temperately mellowed. It is difficult to imagine the laughing apostle of ‘Welt-Schmerz’ rising to the primitive splendour of this conception. The Rattyscums on leaving London are unable to pass through Chancery Lane as the road is ‘up’ and thronged with labourers. Here is the professor’s note: ‘And I thought God Himself was to be pitied in that He created the world alone and could not remark the sturdy beauty of workmen in His pay, nor rejoice in their swinging poise, nor inhale through His Omnipotent nostrils the good, rich smells of tar and pitch.’ One is tempted to quote endlessly, but the book must be bought and held to be appreciated. In this restricted space I can give only the cup without the cold water, the quiver without the arrows. You must deepen over the pages until your very eyes seem to fasten on to this vivid colour, to shapen in it – until you fancy that the book might glow in the dark – you might rise from your bed and see it phosphorescent, luminous, afloat on your table. Permeating and penetrating every sewer, lighting upon and uplifted by every Cathedral spire of every country where such things are – and where such things are not finding their just equivalent in intimate probing of the psychology of the cannibal heart on the one hand, or writing in rainbow prose the lonely loveliness of mountains at sunrise on the other, Professor Rattyscum girdles the earth with his pen point for the reader’s delight, stirring and keeping ever in motion those twin well-springs of laughter and tears. For who can help but laugh – and we, ourselves are laughing as we write – at the Professor’s encounter with a young, recently converted and flannelette-clad cannibal girl in a mission school in New Guinea, who folded her hands, and raising her great black eyes exclaimed: ‘Me lovee Jesus; Jesus my boy.’ Yet hardly has one recovered before the Professor suggests the ultimate truth of their naïve statement, i.e., the personal appeal of the carnate Christ to the feminine temperament.
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And, to finish with the taste of the Professor strong and sweet in the mouth, I quote from chapter 137, ‘Wallowings’:– ‘For the true realist must fain love the swine – the rough-silvered back, the round, bright eyes, like berries twinkling under the eyebrow hedge, the solemn monotone of the snorting snout. Gladly before them he scatters his pearls, laughing, fiery-bosomed, as Nature herself does not hesitate to scatter over the meanest of her creatures dew from the rose of morning.’
Notes Text: New Age, 11: 7, 13 June 1912, p. 165. Signed: Katherine Mansfield. 1. Charles Dickens died in 1870. 2. Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) was a German Romantic poet, essayist and critic, much admired by KM. Her teenage copy of a book of his poems is now in HRHRC.
Pastiche. Green Goggles (1912) ‘Green goggles, green goggles, The glass is so green . . .’ (Russian Folk Song)
The servant girl, wearing a red, sleeveless blouse, brought in the samovar. ‘But it is impossible to speak of a concrete ideal,’ thought Dimitri Tchernikofskoi. ‘In the first place, concrete is a composition. It is not a pure substance. Therefore it must be divided against itself.’ ‘There is a gentleman in the passage,’ bawled the servant girl. Dimitri Tchernikofskoi disguised his nervousness by frowning deeply and plucking at the corners of his collar, as though the starch were permeating his skin and stiffening the throat muscles. ‘Show him in,’ he muttered, ‘and’ – he closed his eyes for a moment – ‘bring some cucumbers.’ ‘Even so, Little Father.’ A young man, wearing a bear-skin coat and brown top boots, entered the room. His head was completely covered in an astrakhan cap, having enormous ear-flaps, and his pale, kind eyes smiled timidly from behind a pair of green goggles. ‘Please to sit down,’ said Dimitri Tchernikofskoi; and he thought: ‘How do I know those eyes? Are they green? Da, if they were green I should not know them. I feel that they are blue. Lord help me! I must try to keep calm, at all events.’ The young man sat down and pulled his coat over his knees. Twice he opened his mouth and twice he closed it. A round spot of red, about
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the size of a five-rouble piece, shone on his cheek-bones. Dimitri Tchernikofskoi fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for his watch, and then he remembered that he had pawned it three months before – or sold it, he could not remember which – to Ivan Dvorsniak. And he saw again the little evil-smelling shop and the grotesque, humped figure of the Jew, bending over a green-shaded lamp, weighing the watch on the index finger of his right hand. He fancied he heard it ticking quite sharply and distinctly. Then he realised it was the voice of the young man. ‘My name is Olga Petrovska.’ ‘Eh? What’s that? What’s that you are saying?’ Olga Petrovska raised her hand. ‘Please do not speak so loudly. You must remember we are only on the fifth floor, and the servant girl may be listening in the basement.’ Her brilliant grasp of the technique of the house calmed him. He waited for her to explain. ‘I came to see you,’ she said, ‘because I could not stay away, Dimitri Tchernikofskoi. I am leaving Russia to-night, and I felt that I owed it to you to explain my reasons. For I shall not return – at least, not for a long time. And – people speak so falsely. Truth must be first-hand.’ Her words fell upon his soul like flakes of snow; he counted them – one, two, three, four – wondering, grimly, how large his soul was, how many flakes it would take to cover it completely. ‘Why are you going?’ he asked gently. The young girl stiffened. ‘I am going because they will not arrest me. Think of it! I have killed five officials, I have kidnapped the children of three noblemen – and look at me!’ She stretched out her arms, lifting her bosom so that it strained the buttons of her coat. ‘Ah, it is shameful – shameful! I do not mind about the noblemen, but the children’ – she suddenly spoke in French – ‘je sais ce que je dis; even the noblest soul does not care to have three children thrust upon him without. . . .’ She paused, and for the first time in his life Dimitri saw her smile. It caught his heart; it was miraculous, as the unfolding of a lily on a desolate sea. His emotion was so terrible that he turned up his coat collar and began to pace the room. Olga Petrovska continued speaking: ‘But that is all over now. Da, da; I am free again.’ ‘But,’ stammered the unfortunate man, pouring out a glass of tea and thoughtlessly stirring into it a spoonful of peach preserve, ‘what have you done with the children?’ ‘Now that was quite simple. I borrowed this suit from a young coachman, then I hired a sleigh, and, having carefully labelled the little ones with their correct names and addresses, I drove them to the chief Post Office. They were very good. Only Ani cried a little – the darling – she bit off the fingers of her gloves and her hands grew quite cold. When we arrived I told them to wait for me while I posted a letter, and I simply disappeared round a corner. They are bound to be found, you know,’ she added confidently. His admiration for her knew no bounds. Taking a book from a shelf covered in black ‘American cloth’, bound
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in red cotton, he turned the pages feverishly. ‘The women of Russia do not only bear children, they keep them alive,’ he read. Yes, that was deep! Olga Petrovska removed her cap. He sat down opposite to her and searched her face; the red colour had faded, giving place to green shadows cast by the goggles. ‘Where are you going?’ She did not know. All she knew was that, like all of them, ‘she was going on.’ ‘But,’ he cried, ‘you must take a ticket, Olga Petrovska.’ With a quick movement she seized his hands and bent her face over them. He felt her tears falling – her tears on his hands. ‘Ah,’ he thought, with fierce, intense joy, ‘they must never be washed again. They are purified. They must never know sweeter water.’ ‘Sometimes,’ she whispered, ‘it seems to me that the universe itself is nothing but an infernal machine hurtling through space and destined to shiver’ – a crack of laughter, harsh as blood, burst from his lips – ‘the hosts of heaven.’ He did not answer; he was infinitely troubled at this. In the silence they heard the servant girl wiping down the stair rails with a greasy rag. Olga raised her head. ‘Have I white hairs?’ The fringe of her stiff black hair was covered in fine, white snow-crystals. ‘They will melt, Olga Petrovska.’ At that she laid her cheek a moment against his hands. ‘What a child you are,’ she murmured; ‘I did not mean that.’ And suddenly all that he had imagined and thought and dreamed – the values and revalues and supervalues of good and evil, his hopes, his ambitions – faded away. That settled, action became easy. He drew his handkerchief from his pocket and spread it on the table. She watched him. He went over to the washstand and, taking a toothbrush and a half-used cake of some yellowish soap, he wrapped them neatly in the handkerchief. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, vaguely troubled. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘it is time.’
Notes Text: New Age, 11: 10, 4 July 1912, p. 237. Signed: Katherine Mansfield. Alpers, in Life, notes (p. 550) that this piece was ‘probably contributed a good deal earlier and held in type, since K.M. had broken with Orage in May. It is entirely characteristic of her that a penchant for the Russians should be heralded by a send-up. Its targets could be anyone from the Gogol of its title to Tolstoy, Chekhov or Dostoevsky.’
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Jack & Jill Attend the Theatre (1912) THE WELL OF THE SAINTS. J. M. Synge.1 Court Theatre. June. Jill Jack
Jill
Jack
Jill
Jack Jill Jack Jill Jill
Eh! Glory be to God and here we are, Jack.2 And isn’t it a grand thing for a woman to be sitting on a velvet seat, and she with her man beside her in a boiled shirt and all. Whist! woman, when I tell ye – they’ll be after pulling up the curtain, and it’s myself will be destroyed entirely if you do be talking in the one ear, and the music do be sounding in the other, and the actors speaking like the saints of God with fine beautiful voices on them, or like the little cherubs of heaven, maybe, and they warm with the milk of Mary. (Astonished) What will the women be after Jack? the way they do be sitting with their necks and their chests on them as naked as a bucket of peeled potatoes. I’m thinking the women of England are strange creatures, and they hiding their little bits of heads under a great fullness of hair, and bits of ribbons, and bits of feathers or a square of auld net, maybe, the way the birds of the air might be nesting on the top of them, and they not noticing surely. Do you be looking at the men, Jill? I’m after thinking they do be spending the long day sitting in their offices and combing their hair with a fine tooth comb, and it dipped in oil the way it lays as flat on their heads as the grass of the field when you’ve been lying on it in the hollow night, maybe dreaming of Helen of Troy, or maybe fornicating with – Audience: Sh! Sh! Whist yourself! For we’re not heeding you at all. Let you be looking on the stage now, Jack. It’s a fine Irish place you’ll be seeing this night. (Curtain rises.) Oh! God help me! that’s a bit of a green tree, and it rising out of the boards of the floor. It’s a miracle, surely. And what will the old people be doing the way they do be sitting on a little bench? There’s a man coming. He’s after speaking with them. And three girls. They do be walking like yellow hens and they fearful of the grain we’ll be throwing them. (Loud laughter of audience.) Do you hear that yourself? Ah now, I’m a distracted man. It’s the joke I missed entirely. It will be the auld man with the woman’s skirt on him. (Curtain falls.) Programme girl: Tea, coffee, chocolates, ices, lemonade. Would you be having us getting our deaths, sitting out with first a hot stomach, and then a cold stomach on us? Get away
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now with your bit of an apron, that’s not big enough for a decent woman to wipe her nose into, and the cap on your head like the holder to a tea kettle. Ask her if she’s after knowing of the name of the tune that they’re playing, for it’s a wonderful, beautiful tune, and my two feet dancing to it like the buds of May in a breeze. I’ll not be asking her anything. You’ve no need to look at her waist Jack Tiger, an it’s a poor thing surely for a woman to be so small in the middle of her body, the way she might swallow a fish bone, and cut herself into two halves entirely. (Curtain rises.) Now, if that isn’t the same auld man, and he cutting an auld thorn, and the young man cursing and swearing at his holy years. D’you see, his auld woman is after passing him, and she not noticing him at all. It’s a fine – sad play, I’m thinking. Let you keep watching. There’s the girl coming, and she with a pail in her hands. Eh! now what will be happening! They’re having a power of talk I’m thinking, and they all getting in one place, and raising their voices. I’m thinking there’ll be blood shed, Jack Tiger. God protect us, they’re going away again. It’s a disappointed woman I am. (Loud laughter of audience.) Did you hear that yourself? Now can you tell me what they’re laughing at – and you with nothing but your woman’s wits to save you from the powers of hell. It will be the auld man, and him walking like a pint of whisky. (Curtain falls.) Well, a play’s a queer thing for upsetting a man. It’s a queer thing – I’d live to this night to be yawning at the likes of it, but if it’s yawning I am for a short while, I’ll soon be sleeping myself. Put on your coat, Jack Tiger. You can be standing up then, and having a great stretch of your muscles, and the people not knowing at all. It’s fine care I’ll be taking that you’ll not put me to shame. Whist, woman! Your head’s been near dropping down the last half of an hour. (Curtain rises.) Now, the Lord have mercy on us both if it isn’t all beginning again from where it began before, surely? Where will the auld man be? Ah! here he comes. They do be sitting together again. Do you mark that – they’re all coming back again. There’ll be blood shed this time, surely. There’s little use expecting, with the auld one with the
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woman’s skirt, preaching at them and praying. Have you got your hat on, woman? The auld ones are going, and we’ll be going too. Jill The saints of God preserve us! Have you got the outside key of our door, Jack Tiger? Jack Don’t be making game of me – an it’s a hard thing for a man with his eyes the only part of him that’s not asleep, to be asked foolish questions. You’ve got it yourself. Jill I’ll be letting you know that I haven’t, Jack Tiger! The audience: Sh! Sh! Jill Oh! it’s the last time I’ll be seeing a play at all. (Loud laughter of the audience.) Jack The curse of black night upon you, woman! – And you making me miss the last joke with your foolish talk about the key! Jill Keep off myself, Jack Tiger! It’s roaring crying I’ll be, and the next minute not ended. (The curtain falls.)
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 7, August 1912, pp. 120–1. Signed: The Two Tigers. ‘By the summer of 1912 Jack and Katherine were known as the Two Tigers. The novelist Gilbert Cannan, delighted by a woodcut in Rhythm’s first number of a tiger stalking a monkey, had bestowed the name’ (Life, p. 146). 1. John Millington Synge (1871–1909) was an Irish dramatist, whose play, The Playboy of the Western World, caused a riot when it was first performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1907. Rhythm adapted as its watchword a line from his preface to his poems, ‘It may almost be said that before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.’ His plays differed from those of his Irish contemporaries; rather than dramatising myths and folklore in the manner of the Celtic Twilight writers, he satirised superstitious credulity. The review mimics the voices of his peasant characters, creating a drama of its own. 2. JMM was known to his friends as Jack.
Sunday Lunch (1912) Sunday lunch is the last of the cannibal feasts. It is the wild, tremendous orgy of the upper classes, the hunting, killing, eating ground of all the George-the-Fifth-and-Mary English artists. Pray do not imagine that I consider it to be ever so dimly related to Sunday dinner.
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Never! Sunday dinner consists of a number of perfectly respectable dead ladies and gentlemen eating perfectly respectable funeral bakemeats with all those fine memories of what the British beef and blood has stood for, with all that delicate fastidiousness as to the fruit in season, of the eternal and comfortable pie. Sunday lunch is followed by a feeling of excessive excitement, by a general flush, a wild glitter of the eye, a desire to sit close to people, to lean over backs of chairs, to light your cigarette at some one else’s cigarette, to look up and thank them while doing so. And above all there is that sense of agitating intimacy – that true esprit de corps of the cannibal gathering. Different indeed is the close to the Sunday dinner. It has never been known to come to a decided finish, but it dies down and dwindles and fades away like a village glee singing Handel’s ‘Largo,’ 1 until finally it drops into sofas and chairs and creeps to box-ottomans and beds, with illustrated magazines, digesting itself asleep until tea time. The Society for the Cultivation of Cannibalism waxes most fat and kicks hardest (strictly under the table) in Chelsea, in St John’s Wood, in certain select squares, and (God help them) gardens. Its members are legion, for there is no city in this narrow world which contains so vast a number of artists as London. Why, in London you cannot read the books for the authors, you cannot see the pictures for the studios, you simply cannot hear the music for the musicians’ photographs. And they are so careless – so proud of their calling. ‘Look at me! Behold me, I am an artist!’ Mark their continued generosity of speech – ‘We artists; artists like ourselves.’ See them make sacrifice to their Deity – not with wreath or garland or lovely words or fragrant spices. They will not demand of her as of old time the gift of true vision and the grace of truth. ‘Ah, no,’ they say, ‘we shall give her of ourselves. The stuffs of our most expensive dresses, our furniture, our butcher’s bills, our divorce cases, our thrilling adulteries. We men shall have her into the smoking room and split her sides with our dirty stories, we women shall sit with her on the bedside brushing our side curls and talking of sex until the dawn kisses to tearful splendour the pink rose of morning. And we shall always remain great friends for we shall never tell the truth to each other.’ From half-past one until two of the clock the cannibal artists gather together. They are shown into drawing rooms by marionettes in white aprons and caps or marionettes in black suits and foreign complexions. The form of greeting is expansive, critical and reminding. Hostess to female cannibal: ‘You dear! How glad I am to see you!’ They kiss. Hostess glances rapidly over guest, narrows her eyes and nods. ‘Sweet!’ Raises her eyebrows. ‘New? From the little French shop?’ Takes the guest’s arm. ‘Now I want to introduce you to Kaila Scarrotski. He’s Hungarian. And he’s been doing those naked backs
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for that café. And I know you know all about Hungary, and those extraordinary places. He’s just read your “Pallors of Passion” and he swears you’ve Slav blood.’ She presses the guest’s hand thereby conveying: ‘Prove you have. Remember I didn’t ask you to my lunch to wait until the food was served and then eat it and go. Beat your tom-tom, dear.’ When male meets male the greeting is shorter. ‘Glad you came.’ Takes guest aside. ‘I say, that French dancing woman’s here. Over there – on the leopard skin – with the Chinese fan. Pitch into her, there’s a good chap.’ The marionette reappears. ‘Lunch is served.’ They pay no attention whatever to the marionette, but walk defiantly into the dining-room as though they knew the fact perfectly well and had no need of the telling. They seat themselves, still with this air of immense unconcern, and a sort of ‘Whatever you give me to eat and the forks and knives thereof will not surprise me, I’m absolutely indifferent to food. I haven’t the faintest idea of what there is on the table.’ And then, quite suddenly, with most deliberate lightness, a victim is seized by the cannibals. ‘S’pose you’ve read Fanton’s “Grass Widower!”’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Not as good as the “Evergreen Petals.”’ ‘No,’ ‘I did not think so either.’ ‘Tailed off.’ ‘So long-winded.’ ‘Fifty pounds.’ ‘But there were bits, half lines, you know, and adjectives.’ The knife pauses. ‘Oh, but have you read his latest?’ ‘Nothing. All about ships or something. Not a hint of passion.’ Down comes the knife, James Fanton is handed round. ‘I haven’t read it yet.’ ‘Not like “The Old Custom.” Well, it can’t be as good.’ ‘. . . Writing in the Daily Mail . . .’ ‘Three to four thousand a year.’ ‘A middle-class mind but interesting.’ The knife wavers. ‘But can’t keep the big mould for more than a paragraph.’ His bones are picked. This obvious slaughter of the absentees is only a preliminary to a finer, more keen and difficult doing to death of each other. With kind looks and little laughs and questions the cannibals prick with the knife. ‘I liked your curtain-raiser frightfully. But when are you going to give us a really long play? Why are you so against plot? Of course I’m old-fashioned. I’m ashamed. I still like action on the stage . . . ’ ‘I went to your show yesterday. There were the funniest people there. People absolutely ignorant – you know the kind. And trying to be facetious, not to be able to distinguish a cabbage from a baby. I boiled with rage. . . . ’ ‘But if they offered you eighty pounds in America for a short poem, why ever didn’t you write it?’ ‘I think it’s brave of you to advertise so much, I really do, I wish I had the courage – but at the last moment I can’t. I never shall be able.’ With ever greater skill and daring the cannibals draw blood, or the stuff like blood that flows in their veins. But the horrible tragedy of the Sunday lunch is this: However often
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the Society kills and eats itself, it is never real enough to die, it is never brave enough to consider itself well eaten.
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 9, October 1912, pp. 223–5. Signed ‘The Tiger’. 1. An aria, ‘Ombra mai fu’, from an unsuccessful opera, Serse (1738), by George Frederic Handel; the aria, unlike the opera, is popular and is often performed. ‘Largo’ means ‘slow tempo’.
Virginia’s Journal (1913) I cannot but wish, my dear Isabel, that you had left your dear Mama and journey’d with me to this Wondrous City. For indeed it is more full of marvels daily, and I am fearful to think that I must so soon return to my home and have nothing of it remaining but Fragrant Memories, united to a pang in the heart that is no longer wholly mine! But of this I shall speak later. . . . Suffice it to say that I have not one string alone to my bow, and I am daily in such distinguished companies that I am compell’d to wear my Indian Muslins from Morning to Night. Aunt says she has never seen a Shade more suited to my Eyes and Hair! But I am not mindful to write of Frivolity, my dear Isabel. – Indeed, were I to remain longer in my present surroundings, I think I should forsake all thought of Men and Matrimony and comb the curls out of my hair (were that not impossible) and bid my maid make me a grey woollen gown with a wide pocket such as we detest, and become an Intellectual Female! I am certain that had Papa not laugh’d so hearty (which was wrong in him) at my childish attempts to con the Classics; I should have succumb’d to their Fascinations. It is lamentable to what Confusion one can be put for one’s ignorance of Great Men! And that is not all. I now see clearly the shocking harm Mama has done in locking the door of the library against me when I would have read the books by the Famous Authors of our own times. (Burn this after you have read it.) It would seem that there has never been so great and so distinguish’d a company of Authors as is at this time in London, and a Knowledge of their Works is – as Aunt’s Journal has it – as important to the modern reader as Life or Death! You will laugh at my Seriousness, my dear Isabel, but pray, pray do not do so. Yesterday I went with Uncle to a Tea House in the City to meet a Mr. Crawley from the country (except twice in the week when he resides in London) and a Mr. Bloom who is a very stout, pale gentle-
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man in tight trousers. Mr. Crawley has publish’d two Papers in Praise of a Philosopher, whom he declared yesterday he has since grown out of – and is embarked upon a Book which all declare will create a Mighty Stir on account of the strange Lack of all Female Characters. Not a Frill or a Flutter of a Petticoat, my dear Isabel! He confess’d yesterday that he has since – I don’t know when – grown out of them, also! Indeed he is what a sea-faring Friend of Uncle’s is pleased to call a Rum Shark! Mr. Bloom – who displeased me mightily by tickling my hand unobserved when Uncle presented him (which I cannot account for now except that he is the victim of a nervous complaint, he being so serious afterwards), has spent the greater part of his Life in Continental Travelling. He told a Story yesterday which fill’d me with Astonishment to the effect that when he was travelling in Paraguay he was mistook for the King of Spain. ‘But, Sir,’ said Uncle, ‘I fail to see, I fail entirely to see . . ’ Whereupon Mr. Bloom fell a laughing and as sudden became grave. ‘They did not see me,’ said he, ‘but only the Lady with whom I was travelling!’ This, winking at Mr. Crawley, who smiled in an Abashed Manner and knocked out his Tobacco Pipe. I think that Uncle was offended that Mr. Bloom should speak thus in my Hearing for he turn’d the Conversation, as they say in London – and it is most apt – to Modern Literature. ‘Pray Sir,’ he said to Mr. Crawley, ‘and what is your opinion of Mr. Rennet?’ Mr. Crawley replied as quick as little Miss reciting Catechism. ‘I think Mr. Rennet hath a certain facility of technique, which facility hath no virtue since it is entirely mechanical, and floweth with the ease of water from a Bath-Cock rather than a stream down a mountain. Mr. Rennet hath no true understanding of the Essentials. If he is taking you to the Death-Bed of his Hero he must needs make you stumble over a Brown Dog on the Door Mat and swear that this tripping is more than objective, or realistic, or naturalistic. And Mr. Rennet’s ignorance of the Poetics, Sir, of Aristotle and the Universal Consciousness is such that . . . in short . . ’ – here he faltered and said no more, but calling a serving maid order’d a Portion of Luncheon Cake. My dear Isabel, you can imagine how edified I felt to be listening to such Pearls of Wisdom! But Uncle seemed out of Humour still on account of that Silly Jest of Mr. Bloom’s, for he retorted, ‘I fail to see, Sir, how you can dismiss Mr. Rennet so lightly, seeing that he hath made a fortune out of his writings and is paid, I have heard, at the Rate of Several Shillings a Word for all that he makes public, and even his private Correspondents – both here and in the United States of America – dispatch him Half-a-Crown or a Dollar Bill for every answer he may send, it being appropriated by him for a Statue of himself which is being erected out of China in a Pottery Works to the North. I cannot but count him as one of our Ablest Men.’
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‘Speaking of pottery,’ quoth Mr. Bloom, ‘ reminds me of a gem – a gem of a Poem which I have just found and translated from the Greek. I am so delighted with it that I have gone about all day repeating it to my Friends and to myself and to any one who perceiveth a Cultural Atmosphere. Alas! How few! And all Foreigners!’ ‘Pray let us hear it without delay,’ cried Mr. Crawley. And Mr. Bloom repeated – ‘Stop his Spouting; if not, break his China!’ He and Mr. Crawley were so vastly amused at this Comick Poem that I endeavoured to smile, my dear Isabel, but for the Life of me I could not see the beauty of this Jewel! ‘Ah!’ said Mr. Crawley, blowing his nose upon a spotted Handkerchief, ‘What is the use of saying Anything when Everything hath been said to such Perfection! Habil, habbilim, hakkol habil! quoth Mr. Bloom. (I had the words written for me by him that I might astonish my Friends with my Hebraic Learning.) ‘But while we are speaking of the Greeks,’ said Mr. Crawley, ‘ I have a mind to repeat a Poem of such beauty that it seems to me to be the still small Voice itself after the Thunder and Lightning of Greek Tragedy. Now, My God,’ he cried, striking the marble table with his handkerchief, ‘this is true Poetry – ‘“Becalm’d the Sea-gull riding the purple Wave . . . ”’ Uncle became impatient of so much Classical Learning and he inquir’d of Mr. Bloom if he were acquainted with the Literature of To-Day. ‘I have in my possession,’ said Mr. Bloom, ‘some Thousand Volumes bound very exquisite in saffron leather which are uncut and reposing on my Shelves, until I shall have Time to tear myself from my Researches. At present I am engag’d upon the study of Chinese Literature that I may find a certain Word which is known to exist – it is referr’d to by at least one Spanish Chronicler – as expressing the Delight in Sensual Enjoyment as understood by the Squami Monks B.C. 497 or 8. Failing to find it within a Year I purpose journeying to Berlin, where I am entitl’d to an entry to the Secret Library of the German Emperor. It is possible – mais pas probable – that it may be there!’ . . . By that time, my dear Isabel, I was quite exhausted by all this fine Talk, and I dosed off in my Chair while the gentlemen discours’d of Shaxpere and the Open Vowel . . . I am afraid you will not have read thus far. If I might flatter my poor Powers of Relating that you have done so I would send my very best Love to everybody. I have a great deal more to say, but I have no more time at present. Most affectly. VIRGINIA.
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 12, January 1913, pp. 360–2. Signed ‘Virginia’.
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An exciting discovery amongst Mansfield’s papers in the ATL archive, acquired in 2012, was the typescript of an unsigned parody in the style of an early nineteenth-century epistolary novel, called ‘Virginia’s Journal’ – first published in Rhythm in January 1913, and never formally attributed until Gerri Kimber’s discovery of the typescript. Two New Zealand scholars had for many years asserted it could not have been penned by Mansfield, though Clare Hanson disagreed, and in her volume on The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987) made an excellent case for its provenance as a ‘clear hit back at the New Age and its circle of contributors’. Her decision is now vindicated. There are clear references to Orage and other writers, including, as Hanson points out, an early criticism of Bennett (‘Rennet’), who wrote for the paper under the pseudonym Jacob Tonson, thus demonstrating how criticism of Bennett ‘was common, or commonplace, by 1913, long before the publication of Woolf’s “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown”’.
Pastiche. Fragments (1917) ALORS, JE PARS. It is astonishing how violently a big branch shakes when a little bird has left it. I expect the bird knows it, and feels immensely arrogant. . . . My dear, you cannot imagine the way he went on when I said I was going to leave him. He was quite desperate! . . . But now the branch is quiet again. Not a bud has fallen, not a twig has snapped. It stands up in the bright air, steady and fine, and thanks the Lord that it has got its evenings to itself again. LIVING ALONE. Even if I should, by some awful chance, find a hair upon my bread and honey – at any rate, it is my own hair. E. M. FORSTER.1 Putting my weakest books to the wall, last night I came across a copy of Howard’s End, and had a look into it. But it’s not good enough. E. M. Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He’s a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot! Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain’t going to be no tea.
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BEWARE OF THE RAIN! Late in the evening, after you have cleared away your supper, blown the crumbs out of the book that you were reading, lighted the lamp, and curled up in front of the fire – that is the moment to beware of the rain. You are conscious of a sudden hush. You open your eyes wide. What’s that? Hullo, it’s raining! Reluctant at first, and then faster and faster, tapping against the window, beating on the door, comes the rain. The air seems to change; you are so aware of the dark flowing water that your hands and cheeks grow cold. You begin to walk up and down. How loud the rain sounds! You catch sight of yourself in the mirror, and you think that you look very plain. You say to that plain creature in the wavy glass: ‘I am twenty-eight, and I have chosen, but absolutely deliberately chosen, to live quite alone for ever.’ The creature in the glass gives a short laugh and says: ‘C’est pour rire, ça.’ But you reply severely: ‘Don’t speak French if you’re English; it’s a vulgar habit.’ Now there are quick steps coming up the garden path, stopping at the door. Someone is coming. But nobody knocks. Again there are steps and again that pause as though someone felt for the wet door-knocker in the dark. You are sure that somebody is there. Nobody. You remember that the kitchen window is wide open. Run up and shut it. Is the rain coming in? No, not really. You lean out a moment. Two little roof gutters flow into the garden. In the dark they sound like two women sobbing and laughing, talking together and complaining and laughing, out in the wet garden. One says: ‘Life is not gay, Katherine. No, life is not gay.’ But now the rain is over. The lamp-post outside, yellow in the light, with a spray of shining tree across it, looks like a very bad illustration out of a Dickens novel. Yes, it is quite over. You make up the fire and squat before it, spreading out your hands, as though you had been rescued from a shipwreck, and just to be alive and safe were bliss enough. ‘L. M.’s’ WAY.2 ‘L. M.’ came to see me the other evening; she brought me some oysters. Oh! I said, the smell of them reminded me so of a little café in Marseilles. And how well I remembered one particular evening! Just then, I looked up. ‘L. M.’s’ face had changed – became curiously blank and then serious and distressed. ‘One moment, dear,’ said she; ‘I must fly and pay a little visit.’ She flew, and came back all smiles and readiness. ‘Yes, dear, one evening in the little café,’ said she, composing herself. But while she was away it occurred to me that something of this kind invariably happened whenever I wished to
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describe anything to her. . . . ‘Would you just wait, dear, while I get a hanky?’ Or, ‘Shall I put on a lump of coal before you begin?’ Or, ‘Shall I just dash up to the kitchen and put the kettle on?’ . . . Then, ‘About the little café, dear. Do go on!’ ‘No; I’ve forgotten.’ Very distressed: ‘Oh, you haven’t! Not really.’ ‘Yes, absolutely. Have you washed your hair lately? It’s such a pretty colour – like lager beer.’ ‘No, I haven’t washed it for ages. I must, though. It’s coming out in handfuls, simply.’ Which is the correct reply according to the Book of Female Conversations? CEPHALUS.3 ‘Certainly’, he replied, with a smile, and immediately withdrew to the sacrifices. What an admirable exit! I can always see his eyebrows and the way he inclined his head as he spoke. And these three words, ‘with a smile,’ give the last perfect words. They seem to imply that he knew so very well what they were in for. . . . I have been re-reading the Republic,4 walking up the ample, difficult staircase, taking breath upon the little landings, struggling up the narrow ways. At the top one does, quite finally, once and for all, tread on the stair that isn’t there. Yes, but one’s foot rests on something.
Notes Text: New Age, 20: 25, 19 April 1917, p. 595. Signed: Katherine Mansfield. 1. E. M. Forster (1879–1970), an acquaintance of JMM and KM, was a major English fiction writer, essayist and librettist. His novel Howards End (1910) has retained its readership and was made into a film in 1992. 2. L. M. (Lesley Moore) was KM’s private name for her friend and companion, Ida Baker. 3. Cephalus is an old man who offers hospitality to Socrates but disappears after a conversation about age and wealth before discussion of morality and ethics begins. 4. The Republic is a Socratic dialogue by Plato written in about 360 BC.
Pastiche. Miss Elizabeth Smith (1917) There is no doubt but that Miss Elizabeth Smith was exceedingly remarkable. De Quincey1 informs us that she made herself mistress of the French, the Italian, the Spanish, the Latin, the German, the Greek, and the Hebrew languages. She had also a considerable knowledge of the Syriac, the Arabic, and the Persian, was a good geometrician
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and algebraist, and an expert musician, had an accurate knowledge of perspective, drew from nature, and manifested an early talent for poetry. But to my mind her crowning wonder was the currant tart. We are informed how that, after her family’s fortunes had fallen, and she and her mother were accompanying her father’s regiment, they arrived, late one pouring wet night, at an Irish cabin. It was dirty, narrow, and unfurnished, except for a miserable fragment of iron rod which had been left by way of a poker. . . . What did Elizabeth do? She laughed, she assumed an apron, and ‘so varied were her accomplishments that in no long time she had gathered together a very comfortable dinner for her parents, and amongst other things a currant tart, which she had herself made in a tenement absolutely unfurnished of every kitchen utensil.’ This indeed is staggering! It is almost awe-inspiring! When I consider all the commodities and preparations which are essential to the making of the simplest tart – let alone a currant one – I am forced to the conclusion that Miss Smith’s act partook of the miraculous. Did she strike some portion of the kitchen with the iron rod and cause the currant tart to issue forth ? . . . No. I am persuaded that it sprang, fully baked, out of the head of this young Minerva!2
Notes Text: New Age, 22: 7, 13 Dec 1917, p. 138. Signed: K. M. 1. Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) was an English essayist, renowned for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. 2. Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom, who sprang from the head of her father, Jupiter.
Perambulations (1919) She told me she dreamed she took her darling to a publisher, and, having placed it upon the altar, she made obeisance and waited to hear if it should be found worthy in his sight for a sacrifice. And he asked her how old she was. She had to confess that, though she had seen him quite recently and they had spent a wonderful time together, she never would see Thirty again. But, my dear madam, said the publisher, wonderingly taking up her darling, I understood you to say this was your first novel? Ah, perhaps you meant it was your last, on the ‘last shall be first’ principle.1
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Hee-haw! Oh, I say – rather nice, don’t you think? Oh, neat – very neat! You writing people ought to come to us for a tip or two occasionally. What? At his words, age – great age – descended upon her. She heard herself say in a prim, elderly voice, No, it really is my first novel. And she held out her arms for her darling. Said he, handing it back to her, You know, I should have had this fourteen or fifteen years ago. At your time of life, dear lady, you ought to be either writing your memoirs or crackin’ up the new generation. We’ve no use for anything in the creative line that’s not brought to market in the green ear. We can’t have enough of it. And he waved her out of the temple, crying triumphantly, The greener the ear, the sweeter the meat! At this she shivered so dreadfully that she woke up. So you see, she ended mournfully, we are condemned for years to sentimental journeys in perambulators: more and more young men and maidens caught up as they lean from parental windows admiring the ‘sticky buds’, and strapped in and whirled off down the bright avenues and through the little back streets, up and down the City Road – of the hour, and in and out the Eagle2 – of the moment – in Life’s ramshackle old baby-carriage. And theirs is the only comment upon life, at present, shrill enough to be heard, and persistent enough to be wondered at. The one crumb of comfort for us to nibble is that one can’t cry, Back to the Perambulator! For the perambulator is a thing that, once having grown out of, you simply can’t fit into again. That would be too frightful. . . . Think of – – – sitting up bland and tidy and chewing his bonnet strings or dear – – – coming once again upon the miracle of her waving toes! So the future of us and those like us is quite plain to me. We are doomed to pass these delicious hours of our fine flowering not only unwept (which doesn’t matter so much), but quite absolutely unhonoured and unsung – which does. The path upon which we linger is the path of the perambulator, too. Our one high excitement will be to stop the nurse occasionally and gush over her incredible charge. You hear us – Didums manage to blow his little trumpet so loud? or to throw his pretty public school so far, or to put out her little tongue and hit our admiring fingers such a rap with her naughty macaw. And the worst of it is, every time we admire the child it will come back for more with such rapidity. It will merely be whisked round the corner and back again – bigger, brighter, bolder than ever. . . . . Why are you staring at me? I was looking, dearest, at your nose.
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It is, isn’t it, said she, stroking it with a finger, a charming little nose? Every time I greet it in the glass I thank the Lord and my precious little mother for giving me hers and sparing me papa’s. . . . But why has it flashed upon your outward eye so particularly just at this moment? It seemed to me – fancy, perhaps – you haven’t hurt it in any way? You haven’t knocked it or caught it in anything, or blown it unmercifully – or – it’s ridiculous – it’s absurd – it must be an effect of light.’ . . .? But from where I am sitting it does look just the weeniest – teeniest – just the slightest shade – out of joint.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4644, 2 May 1919, pp. 264–5. Signed: Katherine Mansfield. 1. From Matthew, 19: 30: ‘But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.’ 2. From the nursery rhyme ‘Pop goes the weasel’: ‘Up and down the City road / In and out the Eagle’.
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Aphorisms
Bites from the Apple (?1911)
Figure 6 ‘Bites from the Apple’. ref: KC/ADAM/MS18. King’s College London Archives.
416
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aphorisms 1. 2. 3.
4. 5. 6. 7.
8. 9.
10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
15.
417
Repentance is the duster with which we sop up the split milk. It serves its estimable purpose but is nothing but a damp rag afterwards to be thrown into the soiled linen bag. Love is the germ – passion the disease. Take Regret as your mistress but never make her your wife. For she will hang about your neck and twine her arms around your body, and she is heavy to hold as the dead are heavy. Take Regret as your mistress but never make her your wife – for her body is salt to taste with the tears of a thousand lovers and her womb is barren. If a man bore in mind the fact that when he chose his wife his wife also chose him, there would be less talk of the equality of the sexes and more realisation. The average Englishwoman imagines that every Frenchman is a devil – with his horns only half concealed under an opera hat. If you wish to live you must first attend your own funeral. People are charmingly conservative. The story of the Garden of Eden is practically the only plot to fill and refill our West-end theatres and the pages of our magazines. . . . Domestic felicity destroyed by a 20th century serpent in an embroidered shirt front and that dangerous little gift which Eve . . . hands to her husband. Before confessing be perfectly certain that you do not wish to be forgiven. I keep the God of my childhood hanging round my neck by a string, like a little camphor bag – an old-fashioned remedy for warding off infectious and dangerous complaints. Of course there is one disadvantage . . . when I wear evening dress . . . it is impossible. Most women do the same – that is why men find my sex so far more vulnerable when they are décolleté. Enough for the Present – yet they say no woman is ever satisfied – yet she does not wish you to give her a Past. Life’s a game of cards – which mainly consists of shuffling. It took a woman to realise the fact that the greatness of great men depends mainly upon the length of their hair. Easy enough to strike a match – but it requires experience to keep a fire burning. If you attempt to pull out the arrow with which Cupid has speared you, be certain that you shall find your heart impaled upon its point. If you let it remain be equally certain that Cupid will call around for it himself and manage the operation with far greater dexterity. ‘Patience’ is a game only for one – if two people wish to play they invariably choose ‘animal grab’.
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418 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
21. 22.
23. 24. 25. 26. 27.
aphorisms A good figure costs a good figure and is seldom paid for with interest. The man of the people has only one sole which he keeps under his feet . . . that is why it is so often contaminated with the mud on the road. I find substance beautiful for the shadow it throws, just as I find reality bearable for the dreams it brings me. ’Tis better far to count the cost than never to accost at all. Defiance is the trumpet which we blow in the ears of the world. ‘Ah,’ cries the world, turning from us, ‘how brazen.’ But it does not hear the pitiful little attempts that we have made in the privacy of our own room before we were able to emit any sound at all. Epigrams are the froth of life, blown into your face from the waves of the sea. But they leave a bitter taste in the mouth. She wove her thoughts, her desires, her dreams into a long garment of strange colour. And when she had finished the shining length of it she wrapped herself in its folds and went, in the dawn, to the battlefield. And young men in the pride of their youth – women far older and stronger than she, were cut down. The girl stood silently watching. ‘I have woven so strongly,’ said she, ‘that the sharp swords of Reality cannot pierce through my garment of Dreams.’ So she smiled . . . But in the full heat of the day she felt heavy and oppressed – the yellow sun beat down upon her. ‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I stifle – this heat – I am choking!’ and she sought to loosen the heavy folds. But they clung round her, and moving this way and that she stumbled and fell, heavily, her arms, yea, even her head and breast bound round in the shining fabric. ‘Alas!’ she moaned, ‘now is mine the more terrible tragedy. For I, too, must die, but never having known the fierce, splendid reality of being wounded.’ However frugal the meal that Life shows you, she always gives you your desert. Those who eat greatly of the fruit on the Tree of Knowledge must expect to find themselves crucified on the bare branches. One must envy Christ his crucifixion for few indeed of us are permitted at the close of day to cry ‘It is finished.’ One thing always keeps me from going into deep waters; I am so afraid of finding shallows there. She gave him a rose and an old glove. He fell down on his knees and cried to her that he worshipped her – the ground she trod on – the image of her hand was sacred to him for Ever. She gave him a little book and a curl of her hair. He flung out his arms . . .
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28.
29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.
36. 37.
419
did she feel his kisses tangled in the shining web of her curls. . . His heart was bound to her Eternally by that little golden twist. She sent him a letter, and he, by devious lover’s arts, found the place where her hand had rested as she signed her name, and he kissed it over and over, and slept with the letter under his pillow. Then she gave him her mouth and he swore Absolute Homage – darkness for him was light, the crooked straight – etc. etc. She gave him herself, and by and bye he pulled out his watch and said: Jove, time was getting on, and would she be at the Foodle-um’s dance on the 12th of next month? She started laughing, and the pitiful thing is that she cannot stop. The unsophisticated, seeing her face hidden, think that she is drying her tears, but we know better. We are all of us in a gigantic maze – running round and round, but at last, sooner or later, we reach the gate – the station – and breathless, worn out, dishevelled, we fly through – it is locked and barred after us. Where are we now, we ask of the grinning janitor. He does not speak but points to the name on the board – it is Life’s last, stupendously fiendish joke – it is her letter of introduction to her superior – Death – the name of the place is Eternity. The sooner Eve meets the serpent the better – then she leaves the Garden of Eden and has the whole world before her. Life’s little flutter inevitably ends in ‘broken wings.’ Dawn is a herald running with wind-tossed hair and rosy feet to cry that Night is fast approaching. To be completely lost is to take the first step towards finding yourself. Reality is only so strong a dream that it becomes a Nightmare. Life is a tremendous game of ‘Hide the Thimble,’ without the delicious, childish certainty that there is any thimble to be found. If you must be a moth make the splendid sacrifice worthwhile. Do not revolve around a farthing dip, but, once having chosen your candle with all due consideration take care that you extinguish its flame at your own death. There is something hideously vulgar in the thought that the candle keeps on burning. What so many people seem to forget is that you must have a Past before you can possibly have a Future. I love chance and hate certainty – than the latter there is no more miserable prop to depend upon. Lean on it, and it is so hard that it breaks – Chance is a supple thing that has the option of delicately yielding.
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40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.
49. 50.
aphorisms Turn in upon yourself for comfort and you are like a poor spider caught in the web of its own weaving. If you have once known Love – if you have been chained by him – and he to you – then everything that grows springs as a sign and token from his grave. I walk in the fields and the buttercups are full of the young gold of his hair – these flowers – growing strongly scarlet are full of the passion of his red mouth – I put my arms round a tree and it is not stronger and more lean than his young body. If you would find Peace in the silent places do not go to them as a lover with a sick heart to be cured but as a child, who, knowing nothing of Death finds but an infinitely sweet promise – a prophecy that is always just about to be fulfilled, who finds Autumn – Spring in a dream – Winter – Summer in the enchanted sleep that is broken by a kiss. There is the gift that we can do very well without – it is the Present that the Past persists in thrusting upon us. Love is the Wine of Life – Marriage the non-alcoholic beverage. Of course the game is worth a candle, but it is often better played without one. Of course most people keep a skeleton in the cupboard. The trouble with the majority of women is that they will persist in shutting themselves up in that cupboard with that skeleton . . . Small wonder that a pillar box is such a channel for gossip – like a woman, it never shuts its Mouth. Love has grown blind through being kept so long in the dark. The secret of remaining satisfied is to make it a rule to leave the table long before you have had enough. In these days of social depravity we do not look under the bed before retiring, but in it. Progressive women can never be popular – why Eve gave Adam the pip – what can you expect. However, generous soul! he did not keep it, but gave it her for seed – And wasn’t she wild! She just raised Cain as far as she was Able (Abel.) Love feeds upon itself – that is why it is so soon starved to Death. The classic is that which is eternally modern – the modern that which can never be classic. Notes
U Text: King’s College London Archive, KC/ADAM/MS/18. Undated. One of the group of KM typescripts uncovered in 2012 by PhD student Chris Mourant, in the archives of the Adam International Review, edited by Miron Grindea.
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Note by Chris Mourant: These aphorisms were given to Grindea by Ida Baker in the 1960s. Whilst the clear imitation of Oscar Wilde might suggest that ‘Bites from the Apple’ was composed at the height of KM’s enthusiasm for the writer in 1907–8, a three-page typescript of the same title is held by the University of Texas, signed by KM and dated 1911. This date would suggest that ‘Bites from the Apple’ was intended for publication in the New Age. Indeed, when Baker responded to Grindea about his research into the life of Beatrice Hastings (A. R. Orage’s assistant editor on the New Age), she observed: ‘Don’t be influenced by anything [Hastings] says or rather said. She was connected with “Bites from an apple” [sic] and the “German Pension” period.’ Archival evidence suggests that Hastings composed her articles for the New Age by first writing pithy, aphoristic statements, and ‘Bites from the Apple’ can be interpreted as an imitation of this style. Moreover, Orage’s Nietzsche in Outline and Aphorism (1907) would have been a significant influence. It is also possible that KM was responding to J. M. Kennedy’s translations of aphorisms by Niccolo Machiavelli and Alfred Guinon, serialised in the New Age in March and April 1911.
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Reviews: Introduction
KM had emphatic opinions about reviewing. She wrote to JMM about the reviews in the Athenaeum when he had taken over as editor: In my reckless way I would suggest all reviews were signed & all were put into the first person. I think that would give the whole paper an amazing lift up. A paper that length must be definite, personal, or die. It can’t afford the ‘we’, ‘in our opinion’. To sign reviews, to put them in the 1st person stimulates curiosity, makes for correspondence, gives it (to be 19-eleventyish) GUTS.1
The 1911 guts that she refers to were expressed in Rhythm, as is evident in the essays written jointly with Murry for the magazine. An emphatic discrimination between art and journalism is made by the two young authors: ‘True seriousness is an assertion, a courageous acceptance of the unexplored; the false is a negation, a cowardly clinging to the outworn known’ (p. 733). Within the context of championing freedom there are intellectual inconsistencies, such as the affirmation of an aristocracy over democracy, but aspiration and courage are not wanting. KM may well have thought, by the time she was reviewing for the Athenaeum, that she herself was being forced to work for payment within the ‘outworn known’. The dreariness of the task is encapsulated in an aside in a review: ‘but we have been seeking for pearls in such a prodigious number of new books that we are forced to the conclusion that it is useless to dismiss any that contain something that might one day turn into a pearl’ (p. 627). Just before she gave up the task she wrote to JMM: ‘But isn’t it grim to be reviewing Benson when one might be writing ones own stories which one will never have time to write’.2 JMM himself seems to cling to convention in often restricting his gifted reviewer, who had no academic qualifications, to reviewing potboilers – what she describes as ‘pastime novels’. Her astute letters to him about Shakespeare, Chekhov, Dickens and Keats all cry out for fuller treatment in an extended essay. In a tentative suggestion, KM 425
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writes from Italy asking JMM to send her a life of George Eliot and some of Eliot’s novels so that she can write an article for the centenary of Eliot’s birth. The books are not sent. Having disregarded her request, JMM tells KM in a letter that Sydney Waterlow is writing the Athenaeum’s leading article for 21 November 1919 on George Eliot. KM’s disappointment when she reads the article is palpable, offering a tantalising insight into what her version of the article might have been, given her reading of a passage from The Mill on the Floss: I dont think S.W. brought it off with George Eliot. He never gets under way. The cartwheels want oiling. I think, too, he is ungenerous. She was a deal more than that. Her English, warm, ruddy quality is hardly mentioned. She was big, even though she was ‘heavy’ too. But think of some of her pictures of country life – the breadth – the sense of sun lying on warm barns – great warm kitchens at twilight when the men came home from the fields – the feeling of beasts horses and cows – the peculiar passion she has for horses (when Maggie Tullivers lover walks with her up & down the lane & asks her to marry, he leads his great red horse and the beast is foaming – it has been hard ridden and there are dark streaks of sweat on its flanks – the beast is the man one feels SHE feels in some queer inarticulate way).3
Instead of an extended treatment of the writers she most valued and understood, we have to be content with her reviews of generally nondescript novels, which of course offer insight into her own literary practice. Aphoristic comments provide an aperçu. In an early review in Rhythm, KM encapsulates the edginess of Strindberg, saying that ‘he writes with his nerves, he lives in them, agitated and fearful’ (p. 433). Her razor-sharp analysis is more extended in an Athenaeum review of Dorothy Richardson’s stream-of-consciousness technique, revealing her own insight into the role of memory in fiction. Memory in the fiction which engages our imagination is not comprehensive but selective, she suggests. Having described how Richardson ‘holds out her mind’ and Life hurls objects into it, all of which are recorded, KM writes: There is one who could not live in so tempestuous an environment as her mind – and he is Memory. She has no memory. It is true that Life is sometimes very swift and breathless, but not always. If we are to be truly alive there are large pauses in which we creep away into our caves of contemplation. And then it is, in the silence, that Memory mounts his throne and judges all that is in our minds – appointing each his separate place, high or low, rejecting this, selecting that – putting this one to shine in the light and throwing that one into the darkness. (pp. 446–7)
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KM praises that very quality of selectivity in Virginia Woolf’s story, ‘Kew Gardens’: ‘Why is it that, thinking back upon that July afternoon, we see so distinctly that flower-bed? We must have passed myriads of flowers that day; why do these particular ones return?’ (p. 475). There is a bubbling irritation with fictional recreations of the conventions of family life that recurs in the reviews, as in this feminist comment about the nursery rhyme, ‘Mary had a little lamb’: ‘We have more than once entertained a suspicion that Mary hated her little lamb and could not bear the way it persisted in running after her, rocking along on its little grey-white legs, stopping dead for a moment, and then rocking along again’ (pp. 563–4). The re-establishment of bourgeois life after the trauma of the First World War is a motif in the fiction that KM covers in the reviews, and she relishes books that defy those conventions. The little girl who narrates The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford, written when she was nine though published later, creates her own rules: [S]he remains a little child with a little child’s vision of her particular world. That she managed to write it down and make a whole round novel of it is a marvel almost too good to be true. But there it is, and even while the grown-up part of us is helpless with laughter we leap back with her into our nine-year-old self where the vision is completely real and satisfying. (p. 470)
Most of the comedy in the reviews is provided by Mansfield’s sardonic spin on the trite ‘mental knitting’ she was required to read, castigating platitudes: ‘And afterwards, when the sun had finally triumphed, there had supervened a golden day with just a hint of crispness in the air at first, but with sunshine that blazed prodigally for nearly a dozen hours. [. . .] And now the day was done.’ These observations, which occur on page 1, set us dreaming. Just supposing that between two and three the sky had become overcast, and it had looked very much like a shower, or, before luncheon, a nasty little wind had sprung up. How would the sympathetic reader have received such intelligence? (p. 658)
The reviews provide, sometimes obliquely, an insight into KM’s view of the language and structure of fiction, most evidently when she discusses work by Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster or Joseph Conrad. The review that most clearly triggered her personal interest gives a different perspective. R. O. Prowse’s A Gift of the Dusk
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focuses unsentimentally on a developing relationship in a sanatorium in Switzerland between two patients suffering from tuberculosis, one of whom is dying. Mansfield’s reaction to the book reveals with imagistic intensity her understanding of their dilemma: In the confusion and immediate pressure of modern existence we are borne along, we are carried and upheld until we are half persuaded that we could not escape if we would. Then, suddenly – as though it had all been a dream – the crowd vanishes, the noise dies away, and the little human creature finds himself alone, with time to think of his destination. Well, perhaps the moment need not be grim. Perhaps you will not so dreadfully mind that invisible hand touching you so lightly [. . .] you really won’t know, as the last man swings on the box and the horses break into a decent trot, whether it is an adorable wet day – with the sky a waterspout, a soft roaring in the trees, and the first jonquils shaking with flower – or an adorable fine day. (pp. 680–1)
Here she shows guts of a different kind from that expounded in the pages of Rhythm, but throughout the reviews and essays KM demonstrates intellectual rigour combined with imaginative involvement in any fiction that moves beyond the pastime novel. If only she had been invited to write that essay on George Eliot!
Notes 1. CLKM, 4, p. 135. 2. CLKM, 4, p. 136. 3. CLKM, 3, p. 118.
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Reviews
Moods, Songs and Doggerels By John Galsworthy.1 Heinemann. 5s.
There are one and thirty ‘Moods’ in this book. From the curious effort entitled ‘Errantry’ we select the third verse: Ah! for the summons of a challenge cry Which sets to swinging fast the bell that tolls The high and leaping chimes of sympathy Within that true cathedral of our souls Set in our bodies’ jeering market-place – So, crystal clear, the shepherd’s wayward pipe From feasts his cynical soft sheep cajoles.
From fourteen songs, the third verse of ‘Devon to Me’ is representative: Where my fathers sat, Passing their bowls; – They’ve no cider now, God rest their souls! – There my mother feeds Red cattle three. Taste o’ the cream-pan: Devon to me!
And from fourteen Doggerels we content ourselves with quoting from ‘To My Dog’: My dear, since we must leave (One sorry day) I you, you me;
429
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the triumph of pan
I’ll learn your wistful way to grieve; Then through the ages we’ll retrieve Each other’s scent and company; And longing shall not pull my heart – As you now pull my sleeve!
We have neither time nor space to speak of this volume further. Mr Galsworthy is wise in that he avoids all mention of the word ‘poetry’ in connexion with his verses. Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 5, June 1912, p. 35. Signed: K. M. 1. John Galsworthy (1867–1933) was best known as a dramatist and novelist; he was the author of The Forsyte Saga. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.
The Triumph of Pan By Victor Neuburg.1 Thomas Burleigh, 155 Victoria Street, S.W. 5s. net.
Victor Neuburg has written some poems. He has something of the poet’s vision, delighting in simplicity and sensuality which is born of passionate admiration. The best poems in this book, ‘The Triumph of Pan,’ are three – ‘Sleep in the Hills,’ ‘The Little Prince,’ ‘Gipsy Tom’ – and of these three, the first is undeniably the most successful. There is peace on the hills to gather, There a sad, proud soul may sleep; Gold gorse and green purple heather Hold the tears that the salt winds weep, And we will lie down together.
‘The Little Prince’ is a poem of imagination and charm. Under the trees I love to lie, Watching the cloudlets over the sky, And the green sward down to the river; The little green leaves prate of the spring, And the wild geese all are on the wing, And the shy little branches quiver.
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431
And in ‘Gipsy Tom’ the metre has something of the terror of slowdropping hidden water. Star by star Gleams down there by the hill; They follow, follow on to the bar That lies by the foaming mill. Tom lies dead in the water chill, With a wreath of bubbles about him still.
But there is another side to the poetry of Victor Neuburg. He appears to take strange delight in mysticism, which is never anything but second-hand. Mysticism is perverted sensuality; it is ‘passionate admiration’ for that which has no reality at all. It leads to the annihilation of any true artistic effort. It is a paraphernalia of clichés. It is a mask through which the true expression of the poet can never be discerned. If he rejects this mask Mr Neuburg may become a poet.
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 6, July 1912, p. 70. Signed: K. M. 1. Victor Neuberg (1883–1940), a poet and writer on occultism, was an associate of Aleister Crowley.
The Green Fields By Kenneth Hare.1 Elkin Mathews. 1s.
We cannot see the necessity for another little book of this kind. The writing of slight verse is the easiest thing in the world – far simpler than the writing of prose – and perhaps it is the most valueless thing in the world. Mr Hare, having nothing to say, says it in rhyme, the which unfortunate state of affairs happens to most young ladies and gentlemen before they have learnt the gentle art of self consciousness. Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 6, July 1912, p. 71. Signed: K.M. 1. Kenneth Hare (1888–1962) persisted as a poet: for instance, publishing New Poems in 1923.
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elsie lindtner
Elsie Lindtner By Karin Michaelis.1 John Lane. 3s. 6d. net.
To write a sequel to a book, is as dangerous an experiment as to marry after a love passion. There is a quality of spontaneity and of adventure in the book and the passion, and a sequel or a marriage is a deliberate thing – a thing making for steady permanence – a ‘settling down.’ The glamour is gone – the glamour, light and delicate as dew upon trembling grasses – and the even brightness of day succeeds the light of morning. The which most sober reflection in no wise deters us in the hour of temptation – and in the case of Karin Michaelis, the provocation must have been very great indeed. Elsie Lindtner is a sequel to the ‘Dangerous Age.’ I have always found it difficult to understand why the ‘Dangerous Age’ appealed to England only in so far as it dealt with the problem of the woman of forty-five as a medical case. Perhaps it is because English ‘literature’ of to-day is so plagued with furtive writers, writing of their mean sexual desires in a furtive spirit, and with a high stomached public wallowing in this ‘literature’ for the sake of what dirt they may find in it, and marking their prize with a blue pencil, and crying it bold. The simple statements of physical facts in the ‘Dangerous Age’ they seized with avidity, and it was a pretty sight to see the enlightened male youth of Chelsea looking upon their robust English mothers with a sympathetic eye. But I think that Karin Michaelis merits other and far different treatment. In the ‘Dangerous Age’ she has created a personality – Elsie Lindtner – a strange, passionate creature, weeping and laughing, sometimes reviewing her life, and the lives of her friends with unimpassioned truthfulness, sometimes leaning to a future of romantic happiness with the blind trust of a young girl – jealous and proud of her body – fighting continually her desire for, and dependence on, man – and always, in the depths of her heart, feeling lonely. Every woman knows that the world is full of Elsie Lindtners, but Karin Michaelis has the courage of her knowledge. In this, her latest book, she deals with the last years of Elsie’s life. Elsie has forsaken her ‘white villa’ – her dream house. She has renounced utterly her solitude, to travel round the world. With her acceptance of the fact that she is no longer young and desirable, her small personality ebbs slowly from her. She seeks the distractions of middle-aged women – and finally, she offers up herself as sacrifice for a little New York gutter child. All her life she has railed against maternity, but the boy once in her keeping, she is more absorbed in him, and far more adoring than the normal mother – and that is the irony of nearly every feminist.
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433
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 7, Aug 1912, p. 122. Signed: K. M. 1. Karin Michaelis (1872–1950) was a Danish author, whose novel The Dangerous Age (1910) explores the sexual desires of a middle-aged divorced woman.
Confession of a Fool By August Strindberg.1 Stephen Swift and Co. 6s. net.
His vision is the vision of a world in the power of a storm. If one were to believe that the conditions preceding a storm were normal conditions, that the storm itself, of gloom and thunder and sudden lightning flashing upon and making over clear and over intense all sorts of unsuspected places, that uneasy, restless winds were to continue eternally, then the ‘Confession of a Fool,’ by August Strindberg would be true and sane and utterly appalling. But the storm is not over the world: it is in Strindberg himself. Under the stress of it he writes with his nerves, he lives in them, agitated and fearful, with neither love nor faith in his heart – not even for himself. He seems to go through life with the prayer on his lips: ‘I do not believe; help thou my unbelief.’ 2 His book is a record of his meeting and ‘friendship’ and marriage with a woman, Marie, a creature of exceeding beauty and grace, who inspires in him a tremendous passion. And although he finds her out as spiteful and vicious and the victim of a disgusting form of sex mania she holds him as her lover and her betrayer. He realizes his ignominious captivity without having the power to escape, and so in common with all weak-willed and captive creatures who are conscious of the reason for their captivity, he vents this suppressed strength and insolence upon the woman Marie. It seems to me that the whole secret of Strindberg’s power lies in this acute consciousness of his own weakness. Time and again he would have us believe that his woman is typical – appeals to all men as his ‘brothers,’ entreats them to treat ‘her sisters’ in like manner as he treated her – but the appeal is very vain. It is an ugly fashion nowadays for little leering people to suspect every love and friendship and enthusiasm as being the symbol of some abnormality or perversion, but their suspicions are ignored – the world is not full of ‘Maries.’ Strindberg is not the ‘average man.’ Truly, as he says, this is a ‘terrible book’ – most truly a confession. But where are the confessions of those artists for whom the world is full of laughter and delight and tenderness – whose days are adventures sought after
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in the gay company of comrades. Who is going to write to-morrow ‘The Confessions of a Wise Man?’
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 8, September 1912, pp. 181–2. Signed: K. M. 1. The first English translation of the autobiographical novel by the Swedish writer August Strindberg (1849–1912). It was written in French and first published in a German translation in 1893. This translation into English was by Ellie Schleusser. Strindberg was a major playwright, novelist, poet and painter, who drew on personal experience to produce works of intense passion and conflict. 2. A play on Mark, 9: 24: ‘Lord I believe; help thou mine unbelief’.
The Happy Family There are no people who lend themselves so readily to observation, criticism, and delineation as the English middle-class. Our photographic novelists have grouped them time and time again, failing to give us any valuable result for the reason that the group photograph always fails in that it represents a collection of individuals and can in no wise be concerned with an harmonious whole. The fact that the grandmother holds the youngest baby on her lap and the eldest son stands with his hands upon his father’s shoulders is too obvious to suggest any true symbolism. We are no longer curious regarding the photographic albums, but we are infinitely curious regarding the family. Nowadays the English middle-class is in a strange and disturbing state. A wider gulf than could be deemed possible exists between one generation and the next, sometimes the grandmother, mother and daughter seeming to be three distinctive species with no common interests except in the unchanging realities of birth and death and marriage. They are all three in a state of rebellion, the old woman inarticulate and vague, brooding over false and broken household-gods, the mother realising by her daughter’s freedom her captive and colourless existence, the girl by the desire of her mind to be free as a man and the desire of her heart to be bound by one. Between father and sons there is the contempt of the young and strong for the old and the bitter complaint of the old that the young wish to do nothing but bite the hand that feeds them. Perhaps the children of today will look back in after years and see that all the real drama of their lives was compressed into the early years of home life. The reason for all this is quite clear and simple. The
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fabric of family ties is rent in twain; and its members are not strong enough to bear reality or true enough to realise what truth is. It is of such a ‘happy family’ that Mr. Swinnerton1 has written. ‘The Happy Family’ (Methuen, 6s.) is a singular and attractive book, dealing with the growth and fortunes of the Amersons, an English middle-class family living in the neighbourhood of Hampstead. It is a large family of two sons and three daughters, the father, mother, and grandmother, several young men who are ‘after the girls,’ ‘business pals’ of the boys, and a wide circle of uncles and aunts and cousins who take no active part, and yet are felt to be near and liable at any moment to slip in with that sense of possession and confidence which is considered the divine right of relatives. The book compels from the first chapter; in the second you are carried into it on the wings of an evening suburban party at the Amersons. You enter the house with the eager, warm relations. You say good evening to Gran’ma Amerson, see the father with his cronies in the smoking-room, Mrs. Amerson very inefficient and vague . . . ‘At the bottom of the table with custards and jellies and enormous dishes within her reach . . .’ and come to realise that the youngest girl, Mary, is wholly delightful and charming, with all the signs of a heroine about her. Mary is the heroine. She is the Cinderella of the Amerson family, the burdenbearer. Her frankness and loyalty shed a strange light upon the ugly shadows that darken the Amerson family. It is Mary who, unconsciously real in herself, gradually realises the unreality of the others, and her struggle to keep to the old belief in the ‘happy family’ and her longing for fearlessness in life and in love are admirably depicted. Love saves her, carrying her away from the Amerson family to the home of Roger Dennett, the hero, an impulsive, splendid young fellow, who is just saved from marrying a ‘real Amerson,’ and starting another ‘happy family,’ and is just about to marry Mary instead when we reluctantly reach the end. But though Mary and Roger are creatures of light, shining through and above the book, there remain the tragedy of old Gran’ma Amerson, whose fires are all burnt out to a dull, resentful smouldering; the lonely tragedy of the Amerson father and his breakdown and fumbling death; the tragedy of the Amerson children who are preparing for just such another fate. So that there is suffering in the book, and sometimes grim satire. Mr. Swinnerton shirks nothing that is essential, but he has fine judgment and the vision of an artist which can never be wholly dark. One of the most vivid memories of the book is Edie, Roger Dennett’s little sister, the happiest study of a little girl that we can remember.
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an anthology of modern bohemian poetry Notes
Text: Saturday Westminster Gazette, 40: 6029, 21 September 1912, p. 12. Unsigned. 1. Frank Swinnerton (1884–1982) was a prolific novelist, critic and biographer, and a supporter of Rhythm.
An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry By P. Selver.1 Henry T. Drane, London. 3s. 6d. net.
‘It is a noble, highly cultivated language, of whose kinship Russia may well be proud. Its facility for representing the finest shades of thought renders it peculiarly adapted to lyric poetry.’ Thus Mr Selver, speaking of the Bohemian language in the introduction to his anthology; and it is just this facility that makes his task of translation so extremely difficult. A good translation is not unlike a good reproduction of a drawing. It is dependent for success upon many of the same qualities – simple and sure treatment, directness of purpose, very clear treatment of the subject, preferably on a broad scale. Granted these, there is no reason whatever why a translation should be a ‘paper rose without perfume or colour.’ Such poems as may be said to belong to this category, Mr Selver has translated ably and well; but the works of the more obscure writers – of men who have escaped the blessed tradition of the folk song, to express more consciously, perhaps, the ‘finest shades’ – he has failed to interpret. But Bohemian poetry is so vivid, its life is so intense and sincere, one is able to welcome with great pleasure Mr Selver’s uneven labours. Those songs, which are written in the mould of the folk song, find their most complete expression in a collection of ‘Songs of Evening,’ by Vileslav Hálek. Here is one:– ‘Now all is sleeping in the world Save the heart within my breast. God knows, it is the heart alone That ne’er lies down to rest. Upon God’s earth, all now is mute, But the heart its song desires; God knows, it is the heart alone That never, never tires. Thought is by slumber overcome, Night changes place with day;
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The heart keeps watch – aye in the breast; And there o’er love holds sway.’
And here is a charming poem by Antonin Sova. – ‘Alder Trees.’ – ‘Ye Alder Trees, to me how dear At eve, with fragrant coolness near; When o’er the water bent alone Your shadow here and there was thrown. Somewhere the fishers’ voices trailing, Within the depths of night are quailing; The mill-sails, as they rustle low, Have stirred within me old-time woe. Among the reeds a snipe, black speck The pond with ripples did bedeck; And likewise in my soul, me seems, Has strayed the bird of golden dreams.’
It is easy to find fault with Mr Selver’s choice of words in the last verses of both these little poems, but it is the spirit of them which, to me, goes to the heart like the music of the Bohemian people, with the same ultimate and melancholy appeal. Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 9, October 1912, p. 235. Signed: K. M. 1. Paul Selver (1888–1970) was a translator of Czech literature who wrote for the New Age. Ezra Pound’s review of the book in Poetry magazine (November 1912) concurs with KM’s evaluation of the translation.
Lu of the Ranges The first chapter of ‘Lu of the Ranges’ (Heinemann, 6s.) promises a fascinating, unusual book. It is a description of winter among the mountain ranges of Australia – of a vast, never-ending forest covering the huge slopes topped with a sombre curtain of unfallen snow – of a wretched clearing where the icy wind ‘swirled round and round like water in a bowl,’ and of a tiny girl washing clothes at a bush creek. The desolate spot and the efforts of the brave, half-frozen little creature win the imagination immediately. It is clear that Miss Eleanor Mordaunt1 has first-hand knowledge of the back blocks and of the bush children. Her touch is so sure and her manner so
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vivid. Lu, rubbing clothes, is one of three children, deserted by their parents and faced with the grim prospect of winter and starvation. She scolds and feeds and cares for them with that strange strength and age-old wisdom of the bush children, but they have been without food for three days when they are discovered by an English trapper – Julian Orde. How absurd and how preposterous does Miss Eleanor Mordaunt mean her hero to appear? He personifies the Colonial idea of the English prig. But he is worse than that. Discovering Lu crouched in the snow before an empty rabbit trap, starving, her face bone white, her eyes blazing in their hollows, ‘ . . . Orde laughed . . . “Well, young woman! Doubtless I appear to you as mysterious as Sylvanius, deity of woods and forests; or – greater still – Jove himself, new descended from a cloud. And ’tis said that human wonder feeds the mind.” . . .’ Thus and thus, throughout the book, this dull braggart struts and swaggers. He cares for Lu and her brothers until he grows tired of them and sends Lu to a farm where she grows up and is a woman by the time he remembers her again and takes her away to his mountain ‘humpy’. Six months later, bored again, he leaves her in Melbourne. Lu becomes a general servant and a charwoman. She has a child by Orde, and after his birth she takes a place as ‘help’ with a third-rate theatrical couple. The stage fascinates her; she becomes a dancer, and soon she is the talk of Australia and the idol of everybody. She dances the steps and the movements of the bush birds. But the life is too artificial for Lu. She throws it up and buys a farm. It is here that Orde, suffering with an ‘internal complaint,’ finds her, and plagues her until he dies in rare old melodrama style. Miss Mordaunt is rather too much in love with her heroine. She is inclined to ‘gush’ over her, but nevertheless Lu is a queer, fascinating creature. There is much fine material in the book, and much talent, but it is not successful, and mainly on account of the wire-and-strings hero. Surely the brilliant young whimsical man with a smattering of the classics is become too old to attract our novelists very much longer.
Notes Text: Saturday Westminster Gazette, 42: 6282, 19 July 1913, p. 12. Unsigned. 1. Eleanor Mordaunt (1872–1942) was an English writer who lived in Melbourne for about eight years. The bush girl’s story first became a popular form with Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (1901).
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Paris Through an Attic There are certain voyages appropriate to youth which youth has embarked upon times without number and yet they remain for us adventures, sailings into unknown seas, voyages of discovery in a peagreen boat for two little people, their light guitar and a five-pound note.1 And the tales that are told and the songs that are made by these travellers never fail to hold – not, perhaps, the young children from play or the old men from the chimney corner,2 but the great company of grown-up children who dwell at the sign of the cross roads for ever and ever and are perhaps the best listeners of all. One of the most familiar, but a darling favourite for all that, is ‘Of How they Were Young and in Love, and Lived on Nothing a Year.’ And here, in PARIS THROUGH AN ATTIC (Dent. 6s.), is a new version of it, very complete, by A. Herbage Edwards. Seventy pounds a year for two people and ten pounds with which to buy all the furniture is near enough to nothing to make all grown-ups and what Keats would call immovable people3 hold up their eyes and hands and cry woe to those wantons who could imagine for a moment that such a thing were possible. But that is the only sort of God-speed these adventurers expect; they would, indeed, be cruelly disappointed if Uncle Thomas and Cousin Harriet cordially approved and only wished they had done the same in their young days. And in this case the aspects were extremely favourable. The relations were shocked, Uncle Thomas sent a silver biscuit box, in the hope that they might have the necessary biscuits to put in it. ‘But frankly, I fail to see how.’ But Cousin Harriet, seeing no chance of their ever having a house in which to put the good wardrobe she had intended, gave them a ten-pound note instead, and with that ten pounds they bought everything, from carpets and curtains to an oyster knife and a string bag. If you do not believe this even without reading the long minute statement of accounts you must put down the book with a sigh and read the stores catalogue instead. We confess that some of the prices are very much the same as those that were charged at the furniture sales which were held in the nursery on wet afternoons, but they must be believed, especially as a far greater strain is put upon your faith when the five sous string-bag goes a-marketing. It is thrilling to hear how the cubbyhouse was worked, what Richard did, what she did, and how when they opened the door in the morning there was the long roll of bread and the bottle of milk hanging from the handle. But most thrilling of all is the account of what they ate, and how they bought and cooked it, and how awfully good it was. These menus, these price lists, these descriptions of markets where every stall was a picture give the book quite
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an emotional quality in these lean days. These are the passages one lingers over, with Lamblike4 sympathy. How wise they were to care so much about their food! And though, perhaps, one cannot believe that tomatoes were over two pounds for twopence, or that this superb melting mutton which lasted them for days only cost one and sixpence, it is – nice to pretend.
Notes Text: Times Literary Supplement, 851, 9 May 1918, p. 220. Unsigned. Kirkpatrick writes: ‘KM’s three reviews in the TLS (C103–5) are recorded as by JMM in the TLS marked files in the Times Newspapers Ltd archives’ (see BJK, p. 118). A. Herbage Edwards published Paris through an Attic in 1918. 1. A reference to Edward Lear’s poem (1871): The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money Wrapped up in a five pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar . . . 2. From Philip Sidney’s ‘Defence of Poesy’ (1583): ‘[The poet] cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner.’ 3. This may be a reference to the ‘marble men and maidens’ in Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820). 4. A reference to Charles Lamb’s ‘A Dissertation upon Roast Pig’ in Last Essays of Elia (1833). At the last minute, he instead provides a sacrificial ram.
A Frenchman’s Englishman LE MAJOR PIPE ET SON PÈRE. PAR RENÉ BENJAMIN.1 (Paris: Fayard. 3fr. 50.)
M. Benjamin’s third war-book has, for an English audience at least, neither the scope nor the attraction of its predecessors. It partakes rather too much of the nature of an official compliment to the British character to interest us as deeply as the revelation of the idiosyncrasy of the soldier of Pantruche in ‘Gaspard,’ or the more weary, less high-spirited records of the psychology of war in ‘Sous
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le Ciel de France.’ Now M. Benjamin turns to admire England, and we have the uneasy feeling that his admiration is wasted on a figure of his own imagination. Major Pipe and his father may be valuable evidence of the impression which the British soldier and the British gentleman make upon our Allies at first acquaintance, but we cannot help thinking the impression is unfortunate. It is not, for instance, very comforting to think that Major Pipe, who is a liaison officer, whose duty it is to act as cicerone to a French journalist in the English zone, should so cheerfully mutilate the French language, and begin the majority of his remarks with ‘Oh, yes.’ The imperturbable silence with which he quenches the equally imperturbable loquacity of M. Barbet strikes one as unfairly crushing, and we think that the journalist would be justified in manifesting a good deal more resentment than he does. It is a pity that the greater part of M. Benjamin’s book should be occupied with the staccato remarks of a person so obviously unsuited to his job as Major Pipe. M. Barbet may have taken them in good part and have been suitably impressed; but M. Barbet’s countrymen will probably consider that he should have stuck to his guns and insisted upon having a guide capable of giving him some coherent information, instead of leaving him in silence to contemplate a few hundred thousand tins of bully beef. M. Benjamin is unfair to his own side. We do not imagine he intended to be unfair; rather it was the inevitable result of a very penetrating vision into the little weaknesses of his own nation unmitigated by a similar acquaintance with those of the English character. His hits at Barbet are of the shrewdest:– Barbet était à cinq cent mètres de ce qu’il allait voir, que déjà il s’émerveillait, et cela c’est un des côtés légers mais charmants du Français qui voyage. Il a, pour ce qu’on lui montre, une galanterie a priori, qui est de l’habitude et non de l’observation. Il aperçoit des formes vagues sur un terrain d’un kilomètre; il dit: ‘Comme c’est étendu!’ Il découvre que ce sont des tentes, il s’écrie: ‘Des tentes; quelle bonne idée!’ Puis il ajoute: ‘Je parie que tout est prévu là-dedans.’ Et comme on ne lui répond pas, il poursuit: ‘Quelle différence avec nous . . . !’ Après quoi, il développe: ‘En France nous battons l’air de nos bras; chacun soupire: “Nous sommes débordés! Au petit bonheur! Et allez donc!” Vous, Anglais, dites: “Puisque c’est la guerre, du calme.” Vous êtes des sages . . . nous, nous parlons trop!’ Et pour le prouver, Barbet parla encore.2
As a matter of fact, of course, Barbet had no choice. Some one had to speak or the silence would have become portentous. Barbet rushed into the breach.
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M. Benjamin’s study of Barbet is brilliant. The author, who has himself been thoroughly well apprenticed to the trade, knows the French journalist through and through; and the little visions of the dessous du métier with which his book begins and ends are full of a cynical and exquisite wit. But there is hardly enough of the substance which we have learnt to expect from M. Benjamin; and we are inclined to suspect that he has himself been sent upon some such mission as Barbet’s and has thrown his articles, with a rather perfunctory gesture, into a book; and we are left with an uneasy sense that M. Benjamin himself is far too sharp-sighted to have been so overwhelmed by British phlegm as Barbet. What he himself thought is another matter. He should declare himself without delay.
Notes Text: Times Literary Supplement, 855, 6 June 1918, p. 261. Unsigned. The TLS gives the name of the reviewer as John Middleton Murry, but Kirkpatrick quotes a letter from JMM to KM of 20 May 1918: ‘I sent a book the Times sent me. They want ½ col – the same as you did last time’ (BJK, p. 118). 1. War was the theme of this novel and the two previous ones by René Benjamin (1885–1948), who was seriously wounded in 1914 near Verdun. He received the Prix Goncourt for his novel Gaspard. 2. The French quotation reads: Barbet was five hundred metres away from what he was going to see, but he was already in raptures, which is one of the more superficial, but charming features of the Frenchman abroad. He has, for whatever one might show him, a sense of a priori gallantry, acquired through habit, not observation. He catches glimpses of vague shapes on a stretch of ground one kilometer across and he says ‘How broad it is!’ He finds out these are tents, and he exclaims, ‘Tents! What a good idea!’ Then he adds, ‘I bet they are fully equipped.’ Since no one replies, he adds, ‘It’s so different from anything we do . . . !’ From here, he goes on to expand his idea. ‘In France, we do a lot of waving our arms about; people go around sighing, “We’re up to our eyes in work! It’ll be a mess! Come what may!” You English say, “Since it’s a war, let’s keep calm.” You’re wise . . . we speak far too much.’ And to prove his point, Barbet went on speaking. Translation by Claire Davison.
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Pour Toi, Patrie Very often in these times when one sees a little party of people together, a little group, a family detached, isolated, and absorbed in themselves, one wonders and longs to ask what difference the war has made to them. Has it changed everything? Do they feel that the old, warm, safe life is gone forever? But they would not answer, except superficially. They would not answer otherwise because they do not know. They do not think ‘like that,’ and they do not want to. Why should they? They have enough to do ‘carrying on.’ Carrying on – mysterious, magic phrase dans le civil. Whispered in the middle class, in the family ear, it has the gift of healing, of making the intolerable tolerable, of taking the dreadful, sharp, unnatural edge off everything, and at the same time filling them, uplifting them, making them part of that superb, dauntless wave that never can be beaten back. After all, isn’t that just how they should feel? Is it right or safe to probe any deeper? Oughtn’t one not only to accept but to be grateful for their superficial answer? Perhaps. But one cannot feel very strongly about them, one way or another. Nor can one rejoice or weep with people who, even in these moments, are still ‘carrying on.’ It is just this tepid sympathy that we feel for M. Paul Margueritte’s1 new war novel POUR TOI, PATRIE (Paris: Plon, 4f.). Here we have two grandmothers, two husbands, two young wives, two babies, two fiancés, and all of them thoroughly typical middle-class people. We meet them first très en famille holiday making in Jersey; and M. Margueritte does not fail to describe those last days before the war with that peculiar relish which is a little stale on the palette (nevertheless there are tragic moments when those last days seem to have been one long picnic in the lap of kind nature). Comes the decisive newspaper and the picnic breaks up. The husbands join up. The wives decide to become nurses, and the old women cosset the young children. There are glimpses of the mobilization, of life at the front, of the wonderful spirit of everybody, of the devotion of the wives, of the babies playing at war, and the old granny making plum tart and wishing they were there to taste it. And then – all is rounded off. The husbands return on leave, each with a decoration – partners in one glorious deed; the children are tossed up in the air; the wives arrive from the ambulance in time to cry Pour toi, Patrie; while the grannies plan such a chicken slaughter, such a tart, such a crème! Picnic the second, one feels inclined to cry cynically. But then if one thinks of this picnic ground, of the ruins that the family is seated upon so securely, so confidently, just because they are ‘carrying on’ – because it is all Pour toi, Patrie – one is filled with amazement. Yes,
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they are wonderful – wonderful. But perhaps not quite in the way that M. Margueritte would have us believe.
Notes Text: Times Literary Supplement, 859, 4 July 1918, p. 312. Unsigned. Kirkpatrick writes: ‘JMM wrote to KM on 25 May 1918: “I sent you The Possessed & a French book to review today.” KM replied on 2 June: “I’ve reviewed Pour toi, Patrie”’ (The Letters of JMM to KM, 1983, p. 158; CLKM, 1, p. 212). See BJK, pp. 118–19. 1. Paul Margueritte (1860–1918), born in Algeria, was a novelist who began as a realist but later signed a manifesto against Zola’s La Terre (1887).
Three Women Novelists HOPE TRUEBLOOD. By Patience Worth.1 (Skeffington, 6s. 9d. net) THE HOUSE OF COURAGE. By Mrs. Victor Rickard.2 (Duckworth, 7s. net) THE TUNNEL. By Dorothy Richardson.3 (Duckworth, 7s. net)
Very often, after reading a modern novel, the question suggests itself: Why was it written? And the answer is not always immediate. Indeed, there is no one answer; it is perhaps a little reflection on our present authors that there can be so many and of so diverse a kind. One of our famous young novelists half solves the problem for us by stating, in a foreword to his latest book, that he wrote it because he could not help himself, because he was ‘compelled’ to – but half solves it only. For we cannot help wondering, when the book is finished and laid by, as to the nature of that mysterious compulsion. It is terrifying to think of the number of novels that are written and announced and published and to be had of all libraries, and reviewed and bought and borrowed and read, and left in hotel lounges and omnibuses and railway carriages and deck chairs. Is it possible to believe that each one of them was once the darling offspring of some proud author, – his cherished hope in whom he lives his second richer life? Public Opinion, garrulous, lying old nurse that she is, cries: ‘Yes! Great books, immortal books are being born every minute, each one more lusty than the last. Let him who is without sin among you cast the first criticism.’ 4 It would be a superb, thrilling world if this were true! Or if even a very moderate number of them were anything but little puppets, little make-believes, playthings on strings with the same stare and the same sawdust filling, just unlike enough to keep the
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attention distracted, but all like enough to do nothing more profound. After all, in these lean years of plenty how could it be otherwise? Not even the most hardened reader, at the rate books are written and read nowadays, could stand up against so many attacks upon his mind and heart, if it were. Reading, for the great majority – for the reading public – is not a passion but a pastime, and writing, for the vast number of modern authors, is a pastime and not a passion. Miss Patience Worth’s ‘Hope Trueblood’ is almost too good an example of the pastime novel. It never for one moment touches the real world or the realm of faëry, preferring to linger in that ‘valley of soft springs’ which lies between where every echo is a sigh, every voice a cry upon the wind, where Melodrama has his castle and Sentimentality is the weeping lady of the tower. The story is an old one; it is the Bastard’s Progress. A little child without a father is left at her mother’s death to the cruel mercies of a virtuous village. Although she has the ‘sunshine smile’ and: ‘there is a bud here, I beat my heart over,’ she is doomed. She is the little innocent lamb branded with the sign of shame who must be sacrificed. To make this tragedy the more pitiful, Miss Worth causes her lamb to speak in a special language, a kind of theatrical pot-pourri, and by the time the end is reached there is not a device or an ornament left in the property-box. Even the symbolic white butterfly has flown into the air: ‘Up-up-up!’ Added to this, Miss Worth has thrown over all a veil of mystery which never is lifted wholly. Now and again a corner flutters, but if we venture to look beneath it is dropped again – and our curiosity with it. ‘Can you read this, O reader? Try! Try! for my foolish tears are flowing and I cannot see.’ It would require a simple soul indeed to be beguiled by such mock pearls. But we stand amazed before her publisher’s announcement. However much support she may need, it is surely unfair to announce her with so extraordinary a flourish of trumpets without. This is lions’ music and should be kept for their coming. Mrs. Victor Rickard is a skilled competent writer of a very different type of book. The theme of her ‘House of Courage’ is not new; nor is there, in her treatment of it, a variation with which we have not become familiar during the past four years. There are the opening scenes before the war, light, domestic, carefree, with the principal love interest just beginning, followed by the gathering storm, then the war itself, threatening to destroy everything, but not destroying everything, and then the afterglow, which is like the opening scene, but richer, more sober, and with the principal love interest fulfilled. To write this type of work successfully it is essential that all the characters should be of the same class – the men, well-bred, well-dressed,
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and ‘thorough sportsmen’ – the women, equally well bred and dressed and the cheeriest of souls. The atmosphere must be an upper middleclass atmosphere and, even if the ‘sheer horror of it all’ threatens to engulf them, one golden rule must be observed: they never give way. For these are not real whole people; they are aspects of people, living examples of appropriate and charming behaviour before and during the war. All this Mrs. Rickard knows and understands. From the first paragraph the story flows from her easy pen with unwavering fluency, one of those hundreds of novels which do not send you to sleep, but – do not keep you awake. Why was it written? The question does not present itself – it is the last question one would ask after reading ‘The Tunnel.’ Miss Richardson has a passion for registering every single thing that happens in the clear, shadowless country of her mind. One cannot imagine her appealing to the reader or planning out her novel; her concern is primarily, and perhaps ultimately, with herself. ‘What cannot I do with this mind of mine!’ one can fancy her saying. ‘What can I not see and remember and express?’ There are times when she seems deliberately to set it a task, just for the joy of realizing again how brilliant a machine it is, and we, too, share her admiration for its power of absorbing. Anything that goes into her mind she can summon forth again, and there it is, complete in every detail, with nothing taken away from it – and nothing added. This is a rare and interesting gift, but we should hesitate before saying it was a great one. ‘The Tunnel’ is the fourth volume of Miss Richardson’s adventures with her soul-sister, Miriam Henderson. Like them, it is composed of bits, fragments, flashing glimpses, half scenes and whole scenes, all of them quite distinct and separate, and all of them of equal importance. There is no plot, no beginning, middle or end. Things just ‘happen’ one after another with incredible rapidity and at break-neck speed. There is Miss Richardson, holding out her mind, as it were, and there is Life hurling objects into it as fast as she can throw. And at the appointed time Miss Richardson dives into its recesses and reproduces a certain number of these treasures, – a pair of button boots, a night in Spring, some cycling knickers, some large, round biscuits – as many as she can pack into a book, in fact. But the pace kills. There is one who could not live in so tempestuous an environment as her mind – and he is Memory. She has no memory. It is true that Life is sometimes very swift and breathless, but not always. If we are to be truly alive there are large pauses in which we creep away into our caves of contemplation. And then it is, in the silence, that Memory mounts his throne and judges all that is in our minds – appointing each his separate place, high or low, rejecting this, select-
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ing that – putting this one to shine in the light and throwing that one into the darkness. We do not mean to say that those large, round biscuits might not be in the light, or the night in Spring be in the darkness. Only we feel that until these things are judged and given each its appointed place in the whole scheme, they have no meaning in the world of art.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4640, 4 April 1919, pp. 140–1. NN. Unsigned. 1. Patience Worth was allegedly a spirit from the seventeenth century, who channelled her narratives to a St Louis housewife, Pearl Curran (1883– 1937). Curran became a literary phenomenon in 1913 during a revival of interest in spiritualism. Worth’s knowledge of nineteenth-century experience in Hope Trueblood is difficult to explain. 2. Jessie Louisa Rickard (1876–1963) was known as Mrs Victor Rickard, the name of her second husband, who died at the Battle of Aubers Ridge in 1915. She was a prolific Irish writer. 3. The Tunnel was the fourth volume of the multi-volume Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957). Virginia Woolf writes of calling on KM: ‘At once she flung down her pen & plunged, as if we’d been parted for 10 minutes, into the question of Dorothy Richardson’ (Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie, eds, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. 1 (London: Hogarth Press, 1978), p. 257). Woolf, in her review of the book, agreed with KM that Richardson’s version of the stream-of-consciousness novel is indiscriminate. 4. A reference to Christ’s response to the Pharisees, who want him to condemn the woman taken in adultery: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone’ (John, 8: 7).
Two Novels of Worth CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS. By the author of ‘Elizabeth and her German Garden.’ 1 (Macmillan, 7s. 6d. net.) WHAT NOT. By Rose Macaulay.2 (Constable, 6s. net.)
If one pauses to consider the nature of that very considerable number of novels concerned with the fortunes of young females who fly out of the home nest, one is almost tempted to believe that they are written by the forsaken parents themselves. The mind conjures up a vision of those solitary ones sitting by the bedside of their wounded pride, and distracting it from its pains with these horrific tales of the torments
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and disasters which must inevitably overtake the bold, guilty stray. Who else would find the same gloomy relish in making the very worst of it – in picturing a path one simply cannot see for lions? Who else would dare to end upon that lullaby note – with such a sting in it! – the peaceful, happy ending with the good simple man whom she might, far more suitably and comfortably, have met in her own mother’s drawing-room? One likes to think that the escaped children are too happy to bother about proving their parents to be wrong. Nevertheless, one does wish sometimes that their song was not quite without words. True, no bird, however golden, flies fully fledged from the nest up into the sun. But trying your wings, so long as you are perfectly certain that you have wings to try, so long as you are confident that you fall only to rise again, and that all these little essays and flutters are but the prelude to exquisite flight, need not of necessity be tragic. Christopher and Columbus, the twin orphans and heroines of ‘Elizabeth’s’ novel, are, indeed, the most unconscious but radiant little proofs to the contrary, in spite of the fact that they do not fly of their own accord, but are quite unmercifully thrown at a tender age, at just seventeen, with their hair still in gold and silver pigtails and with ‘perambulator faces,’ from England to America, in the middle of the war, by that loyal British citizen their Uncle Arthur. It is true, the poor man had provocation. For although they had been brought up to love England and Milton and Wordsworth above all other loves by their mother, Uncle Arthur’s sister-in-law, they were the children of a German father, a von Twinkler. And whenever they opened their mouths, which was very often, out their disgraceful r’s came rolling right under the infinitely suspicious and patriotic noses of Uncle Arthur’s friends. This was not to be borne; Uncle Arthur did not bear it. He equipped them with two introductions, two hundred pounds and two second-class fares, and sent them flying. The delightful miracle is that, helped by Mr. Twist, of Twist’s Non-Trickler Teapot fame, from the very first moment they flew. We shudder to think what might have happened had the twins not been twins, but Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas rolled into one, and had Mr. Twist not been ‘a born mother.’ America certainly did not help them. That great heart beat very fast and hard at the sight of their innocence and childish unbroken courage, but curiosity, suspicion and the tingling air of scandal set it going; America turned her broad back, but looked over her shoulder and coldly, frigidly stared. So well is the devastating quality of that glance conveyed that it might serve as a warning never to go to America with nothing but your own watery reflection in the mirror for prop and comfort, for a shadow twin, as it were, and never to find yourself in America with a young
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man who does not glory, as Mr. Twist gloried, in the fact of his being a mother. But, after all, when the triumph of the twins is complete even to wedding bells, these two advantages, great as they are, do not explain it wholly. Above and through everything runs their laughter – their laughing comment upon the grown-up world and its ways. And this it is which is irresistible. We are still very dazed, very dumb and stiff after the four years’ winter sleep; the winter has lasted too long; our sleep has been like death. We are dazed creatures, ‘lizards of convalescence,’ creeping back into the sun. And then, in the quiet, we hear Christopher and Columbus laughing – laughing at everything. Is it not cruel to make merry after such a winter? But they themselves are spring. Round-eyed and even a little unsteady, they wander among these preposterous grown-ups, the big, fat, cold-blooded ones and the lean elderly prying ones, never dreaming that these same grown-ups could, in an instant, turn – not into lions, perhaps, but into malignant toads and spiders. Elizabeth appreciates their danger, for the minds of toads and spiders are open books to her. But having them by heart, she, with her delicate impatient pen, is not in the least tempted to make a solemn copy of them. All that she wants she can convey with a comment – at a stroke. There is a whole volume for one of our psychological authors in Mr. Twist’s quarrel with his mother; she dismisses it in a little chapter. And therein perhaps lies her value as a writer; she is, in the happiest way, conscious of her own particular vision, and she wants no other. She is so enchanted with the flowers growing in the path she has chosen that she has not, as the twins might say, a ‘single eye to spare’ for her neighbours. In a world where there are so many furies with warning fingers it is good to know of someone who goes on her way finding a gay garland, and not forgetting to add a sharp-scented spray or two and a bitter herb that its sweetness may not cloy. ‘What Not,’ Miss Rose Macaulay’s brilliant little comedy, is played in a vastly different world. One does not dream of questioning the large freedoms enjoyed by the heroine, Miss Kitty Grammont; one can only admire her excellent control of them. Dare we hope that this fascinating creature is the fore-runner of the business woman, the ‘political’ woman, the woman whose business it is to help to govern the country? Miss Macaulay presents us to her when she is attached to the Ministry of Brains – a vast organization which has been started after the war to control, stimulate, reward and punish the brains of the nation, and to safeguard the intellects of the Great Unborn. The wonderful system of classification with which we have
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become so familiar serves this time a twofold purpose; it not only registers the mental category of every man and woman in England, it also tells him or her whom to marry and whom not to marry. Miss Grammont, whose brains were of the highest order, was classified ‘A’; but the Minister of Brains, for all his brilliant powers, was uncertificated for matrimonial purposes because of mental deficiency in his family. He was ‘A’ (Deficiency), and thereby hangs the tale. Moving spirits though they are of Brains Week, the Mental Progress Act, the Mind Training Bill and the great Explanation Campaign, they find their official co-partnership inadequate, and as though these obstacles were nothing more than convenient stiles to lean across, like any simple two, they fall in love. Realizing ‘it will come out as certainly as flowers in spring or the Clyde engineers next week,’ they marry. And it does come out. The dreadful truth wrecks the Ministry of Brains and ruins their careers, but leaves them ‘laughing ruefully.’ This is the bare theme from which Miss Macaulay composes her ingenious and delightful variations. Although one feels her fertility of invention is so great that nothing would be easier for her than to obtain an ‘easy effect,’ it is their chief excellence that each one is as unexpected as the last. It is only in the enjoyment of Miss Macaulay’s nice sense of humour, matched with her fine, sensitive style, that one realizes how rarely the two qualities are found together. We are so accustomed to the horse without the rider, roaming very free, or the rider very desperate, looking for the horse.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4641, 11 April 1919, pp. 173–4. NN. Unsigned. 1. ‘Elizabeth’ was KM’s cousin, Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941), the Australian author of Elizabeth and her German Garden and many novels. 2. Rose Macaulay (1881–1958) was a prolific writer and feminist intellectual. In 1922 Michael Sadleir, KM’s publisher at Constable, entered The Garden Party and Other Stories for the Prix Femina–Vie Heureuse, a French prize with an all-woman jury, and a feminist stand against the predominantly male jury for the Goncourt Prize. Macaulay won the prize and KM came third.
A Citizen of the Sea OLD JUNK. By H. M. Tomlinson.1 (Melrose, 6s. net.)
There are times when one is tempted to make a kind of childish division of mankind into two groups and to say: ‘These are the men who
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live on the land and these are they whose home is the sea.’ Is the division quite idle? Perhaps it were better to say: ‘These are the men who are ruled by the land and these who are governed by the sea.’ For you may meet the citizens of the sea far away from their own kingdom, carried away, to all outward resemblance, and absorbed by the immediate life of the land, yet are they never other than foreigners; their glance, however keen and discerning, still is a wondering glance; and what they discover is not the familiarity of things, but their strangeness. They see it all like this because they have just ‘come off the ship,’ as it were. For long they have been identified with the moving waters, the changing skies, winds, stars, the dawn running into bright day, and evening falling on the fields of night. This is the life, changing, but ever changeless, in which men live nearest to that which enchants them, and to that which threatens to overwhelm them. Here the terrible monotony of ceaseless distraction is unknown; neither can men die that wilful first death to all outward things as they can on land – refusing to look any longer upon the sky or to care whether the wind be foul or fair. But through everything it is the calmness of those seagoverned men which compels us most. Shall we of the land ever be calm again? Shall we ever find our way out of this hideous Exhibition with its lights and bands and wounded soldiers and German guns? There is a quivering madness in all this feverish activity. Perhaps we are afraid that when we do reach the last turnstile we shall push one another over the edge of the world, into space – into darkness. It is at times like these that we find it extraordinary comfort to have in our midst a citizen of the sea, a writer like Mr. H. M. Tomlinson. We feel that he is calm, not because he has renounced life, but because he lives in the memory of that solemn gesture with which the sea blesses or dismisses or destroys her own. The breath of the sea sounds in all his writings. Whether he tells of an accident at a mine-head, or the front-line trenches in Flanders, or children dancing, or books to read at midnight – if we listen, it is there and we are not deceived. There is a quality of remoteness and detachment in his work, but it is never because he has turned aside from life. On the contrary he steps ashore and is passionately involved in it. Deliberately he enters into the anguish of experience and suffering; he gives himself to it because of his great love for human beings; yet the comfort of being ‘lost’ – of being just a part of the whole and merged in it – is denied him. He is always that foreigner with keen wondering glance, thinking over the strangeness of it all. . . . And when life is not tragic, when children dance, or he visits the African Coast, or a lonely little grocer’s boy shows him his homemade ‘wireless,’ then are we conscious of his unbroken, unspoilt joy in lovely things and funny ones. He is alive; real things stir him
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profoundly. He has no need to exaggerate or heighten his effects. One is content to believe that what he tells you happened to him and it was the important thing; it was the spiritual truth which was revealed. This is the life, changeless and changing, wonderfully conveyed to us in the pages of ‘Old Junk.’ There is a quality in the prose that one might wish to call ‘magic’; it is full of the quivering light and rainbow colours of the unsubstantial shore. One might dream as one puts the book down that one has only to listen, to hear the tide, on the turn, then sweeping in full and strong.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4642, 18 April 1919, p. 205. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Henry Major Tomlinson (1873–1958), a novelist and journalist, was a close friend of JMM. He was originally a shipping clerk; when he became a journalist he travelled up the Amazon for the Morning Leader.
Portrait of a Little Lady MY WAR EXPERIENCES IN TWO CONTINENTS. By S. Macnaughtan.1 (Murray. 10s. 6d. net.)
In the beginning of this book there is a portrait of a little lady sitting upright and graceful in a high-backed chair. She wears an old-world, silk brocade gown fastened with a row of little buttons. There is fine lace at the neck, and a delicate scarf slips from her shoulders. As she leans her cheek on two fingers her intent, unsmiling gaze is very gentle. But her eyes and lips – typical Northern eyes and lips – challenge her air of sheltered leisure. It would be hard to deceive those eyes – they are steady, shrewd and far-seeing; and one feels that the word that issues from those firm determined lips would be her bond. It is the portrait of Miss Macnaughtan, who gave the last two years of her life, from July, 1914 to September, 1916, to suffering humanity, and died as the result of the hardships she endured. There were women whom nobody had ever ‘wanted,’ young women who longed to put their untried strength to the test, women who never kindled except at the sight of helplessness and suffering, vain women whose one desire was to be important, and unimaginative women who craved a sporting adventure – for all of them the war unlocked the gates of Life, and they entered in and breathed the richer air and were content at last. How different was Miss Macnaughtan’s case! She was one of those
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admirable single Englishwomen whose lives seem strangely fulfilled and complete. She had a home she loved, many friends, leisure for her work, a feeling for life that was a passion, and an immense capacity for happiness. But the war came to her, locking the gates of Life. ‘I think something in me has stood still or died,’ she confessed. Except for a few family letters, her experiences in Belgium, North France, Russia, and on the Persian front are written in the form of a diary. But though one feels that her deliberate aim was to set down faithfully what she saw – the result is infinitely more than that. It is a revelation of her inner self which would perhaps never have been revealed in times less terrible and strange. For though her desire for expression was imperative and throughout the book there are signs of the writer’s ‘literary’ longing to register the moment, the glimpse, the scene; it is evident that she had no wish to let her reserved, fastidious personality show through. It happened in spite of her, and there she is for all time, elderly, frail, with her terrible capacity for suffering, her love for humanity, her pride in being ‘English,’ and her burning zeal to sacrifice herself for those who are broken; not because of their weakness, but because they have been strong. Perhaps above all things she loves the Northern courage, not only to endure, but to hide suffering behind a bright shield. But the war makes her cry: It isn’t right. This damage to human life is horrible. It is madness to slaughter these thousands of young men. Almost at last, in a rage, one feels inclined to cry out against the sheer imbecility of it. The pain of it is all too much. I am sick of seeing suffering.
And: . . . Above all, one feels – at least I do – that one is always, and quite palpably, in the shadow of the death of youth – beautiful youth, happy and healthy and free. Always I seem to see the white faces of boys turned up to the sky, and I hear their cries and see the agony which youth was never meant to bear. They are too young for it, far too young; but they lie out on the field . . . and bite the mud in their frenzy of pain; and they call for their mothers and no one comes. . . . Who can listen to a boy’s groans and his shrieks of pain? This is war.
Again: A million more men are needed – thus the fools called men talk. But youth looks up with haggard eyes, and youth, grown old, knows that Death alone is merciful.
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As one reads on one becomes more and more aware how unfitted by nature Miss Macnaughtan was for the great part which she accepted and played so magnificently. Nothing short of rude youth could have stood the wet and cold, lack of sleep, horrible food, agonizing discomfort at the little railway station where she chopped up vegetables for soup, journeys that (only to read of) are a torment. But she was always ill; she loathed communal life with its meanness, pettiness, scandal and muddling untidiness. How can people behave like this – at such a time? she seems to cry. And little by little her weariness turns to disgust and she cannot bear it. She sorrowfully turns aside – all her love goes out to suffering youth. Nothing else matters. I wish I could give my life for some boy who would like to live very much, and to whom all things are joyous. But alas! one can’t swop lives like this ...
When she writes that, she is dying. Her journal ends with the words: I should like to have left the party – quitted the feast of life – when all was gay and amusing. I should have been sorry to come away, but it would have been far better than being left till all the lights are out. I could have said truly to the Giver of the feast, ‘Thanks for an excellent time.’ But now so many of the guests have left, and the fires are going out, and I am tired.
What is heroism? There was a time when one had the easy belief that heroes and heroines were a radiant few who were born brave, and the reason why they did not shrink or turn aside from their lonely, perilous path was that they were blind to the shadows. They had lifted their eyes; they had seen their star, and their joyful feet ran in the light of it to some high, mysterious triumph. But our silver heroes and heroines glitter no longer. Gone is that shining band of knights and ladies. We know better, turning aside from their lifeless perfections as ‘bad’ children do from a ‘good’ fairy book that has all the old stories, but with the wolves and witches and wicked giants left out. We have learned that the final sticking of the dragon counts for almost nothing; it is in the fighting that has gone before against Fear and his shadowy army, against the dark hosts of Imagination and the blacker hosts of Reality, that true heroes and heroines are discovered. They are not born brave, and perhaps the burning star is not other than their own spirit, bright and solitary in the incomprehensible darkness of their being. For common men there is a star that beckons; these chosen ones live by a light, yet are they not led.
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Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4643, 25 April 1919, pp. 237–8. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Sarah Broom Mcnaughtan (1864–1916), who was Scottish, not English as the review says, was a novelist who went to Antwerp as part of an ambulance unit in 1914 and continued to provide medical assistance in war zones until her death.
A Victorian Jungle THE GAY-DOMBEYS. By Sir Harry Johnston.1 (Chatto & Windus. 7s. net.)
It is not without a tinge of malicious satisfaction that we realize there are delights reserved for us elderly creatures which are quite out of sight, out of reach, of the golden boys and girls who are making so wonderfully free of our apples and pears and plums. Perhaps one of the rarest and most delicious is meeting with an old play-fellow who is just come from the country of our childhood, and having an endless talk with him about what is changed and what is the same – whether the Allens still live in the same house, what has become of the huge Molesworth family, and was the mystery of old Anderson ever solved. We shall never see these people again; we shall share nothing more with them. We shall never push open their garden gates and smell our way past the flower bushes to the white verandahs where they sit gossiping in the velvet moonlight. Why should we feel then this passionate interest? Is it because, prisoners as we are, we love to feel we have inhabited other lives – lived more lives than one – or we are reluctant to withdraw wholly because of that whispered word ‘Finis’ which locks the doors against us, one by one, for ever? The memory of our childhood is like ‘the memory of a tale that is told,’ and the delight of talking over with a boon companion a book you have read in the long ago is hardly less real. It is very different; you are both left wondering. What happened ‘after that’? Does the author know? Or does he – wonder too? What would Dickens2 say if he read Sir Harry Johnston’s ‘Gay-Dombeys,’ which continues the history of the Dombey family and their circle through the Victorian period and into our own times, with wonderful elaborateness and excursions and allusions such as their author loved, and with a canvas so crowded that you have to stand on tiptoe and look over people’s shoulders and under their arms and round them before you can be perfectly sure that you have seen everybody who is there? We can think of no other author who took a final farewell of his characters with greater reluctance than did Dickens. His meanest vil-
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lains were, after all, citizens of his world, and as such they stumbled and were up again, to be nearly caught, and again escaped before he could bear to let them go for ever. As to those whom he loved – and in whom he lived – it was anguish to him to submit to their passing. ‘Shall I never be that dying boy again, waving my hand at the water on the wall?3 Never be again the child-wife Little Blossom, asking if my poor boy is very lonely downstairs?’ 4 And so the boat puts back once more for one last sob, one last gush of tears. Even the survivors were not allowed to gather without one final Grand Tableau before the fall of the curtain, which is intended for an abiding proof for him and for us that they are still there, still going on, still extravagantly, abundantly alive. It is this extraordinary delight in the exuberance of life, in its endless possibilities of such complications and combinations, that Sir Harry Johnston shares with Dickens. We are inclined to believe that his fantastic choice of characters is due to his recognition of Dickens as a fellow passionate explorer, with London for a dark continent,5 and surely as strange a collection of animals as could be discovered in any jungle to wonder at, to watch, and to track to their lairs. It is certain that they both have the peculiarly English gift (which foreigners call our ‘indifference’) of accepting the strange thing in all its strangeness, presenting it with all the freakish detail left in, and of being ‘at home’ anywhere they may choose to feel ‘at home.’ But the author of ‘The Gay-Dombeys’ is far too much the born writer to put on the manner of the author of ‘Dombey and Son.’ To be carried away by him in the good old-fashioned style that your modern writer would think shame to attempt, you must admit that the Dickens world existed as part of the real world, and there is no reason why Mr. Arthur Balfour6 should not discuss theology with Mrs. Humphry Ward7 at one of Florence Gay-Dombey’s parties in her Morris drawing-room8 in Onslow Square. Why not? And is not Sir Harry Johnston justified in portraying real personalities of the period by the fact that, for the reader, they are never quite so convincing as the unreal. Indeed, there comes ever a moment in the life of your confirmed reader when he catches himself murmuring: ‘Who shall say which is which . . .?’ This novel is full of such moments. Nevertheless, it is no hunting-ground for scandalmongers; they may stand up to the canvas as close as they like; the style of the painting is too large, too happy, and too free to feed the prying eye. It would be difficult to tell the story, for the story is made up of stories, each as separate as flowers on a tree, and all contributing to the delightful effect. One pauses, wondering which to gather; but no – they make so satisfactory a whole that it were useless to attempt to choose. Perhaps the finest bloom is Lady Feenix’s friendship with Eustace Morven. But that is because she is such an
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adorable woman – and adorable women are still a little painfully rare.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4644, 2 May 1919, p. 272. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Sir Harry Johnston (1858–1927) was an explorer, painter, photographer, writer, botanist, colonial officer and imperialist. 2. Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son, the story of a Victorian merchant who was so preoccupied with his firm that he alienated his young daughter and oppressed his son, who died in childhood, was published in serial parts from 1846 to 1848. 3. Paul Dombey. 4. David Copperfield’s dying wife, Dora. 5. The ‘Dark Continent’ was a phrase used of Africa in the nineteenth century. Sir Harry Johnston was an explorer and colonial administrator in sub-Saharan Africa. 6. Arthur Balfour (1848–1930) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905. 7. Mrs Humphry Ward (1851–1930) was a novelist and educationalist, niece of the poet Matthew Arnold and a keen anti-suffrage campaigner. 8. By the 1870s fashionable people, including Mrs Humphry Ward, were decorating their drawing-rooms with wallpapers and fabrics designed by William Morris.
Inarticulations THE MOON AND SIXPENCE. By W. S. Maugham.1 (Heinemann. 7s. net.)
Had Mr. Maugham confessed to his hero Charles Strickland, a painter of genius, his great desire to present him, to explain him to the public, with all his eccentricities, violences and odious ways included, we imagine the genius would have retorted in his sardonic way: ‘Go to hell. Let them look at my pictures or not look at them – damn them. My painting is all there is to me.’ This discouraging reply is not without a large grain of truth. Strickland cut himself off from the body of life, clumsily, obstinately, savagely – hacking away, regardless of torn flesh and quivering nerves, like some old Maori warrior separating himself from a shattered limb with a piece of sharp shell. What proof have we that he suffered? No proof at all. On the contrary, each fresh ugly blow wrung a grin or chuckle from him, but never the slightest sign that he would have had it otherwise if he could.
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If we had his pictures before us, or the memory of them in our mind’s eye, this his state of mind might be extremely illuminating, but without them, with nothing to reinforce our knowledge of him but a description of two or three which might apply equally well to a very large number of modern works, we are left strangely unsatisfied. The more so in that Mr. Maugham takes extraordinary pains in explaining to us that Strickland is no imaginary character. His paintings are known everywhere, everywhere acclaimed. Books have been written about him in English and French and German. He even goes so far as to give us the author’s and the publishers’ names – well-known live publishers who would surely never allow their names to be taken in vain. So it comes to this. If Strickland is a real man and this book a sort of guide to his works, it has its value; but if Mr. Maugham is merely pulling our critical leg it will not do. Then, we are not told enough. We must be shown something of the workings of his mind; we must have some comment of his upon what he feels, fuller and more exhaustive than his perpetual: ‘Go to hell.’ It is simply essential that there should be some quality in him revealed to us that we may love, something that will stop us for ever from crying: ‘If you have to be so odious before you can paint bananas – pray leave them unpainted.’ Here are the facts. Charles Strickland, a middle-aged stockbroker, the husband of a charming cultured woman and the father of two typically nice English children, suddenly, on a day, without a hint of warning, leaves his home and business and goes off to Paris to paint. The reason is unthinkable. A sturdy, ruddy middle-aged man cannot so utterly change his nature. He can; he does. Living in poverty, great untidiness and discomfort, he renounces his old life and seemingly never gives it another thought. For the moment he sheds that respectable envelope and is away, it is no longer part of his new self. He is grown out of its roundness and firmness and is become a lean pale creature with a great red beard, a hooked nose and thick sensual lips, possessed with one passion, ravaged by one desire – to paint great pictures. Paris he accepts as though he had always known it. He lives the life of its disreputable quarters as though he had been brought up in them and adopts its ugly ways with a kind of fiendish glee. Then he is discovered, half dead of a fever, by a stupid kind-hearted little Dutchman who takes him into his flat and nurses him. The adored gentle wife of the Dutchman falls under Strickland’s spell and ruins her life for him. When he is sick of her (for his contempt for women is fathomless) she takes poison and dies. And Strickland, his sexual appetite satisfied, ‘smiles dryly and pulls his beard.’ Finally, he leaves Paris and makes his home in Tahiti. Here he goes native, living in a remote hut with a black woman and her relatives,
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and painting masterpieces until his body takes its great and final revenge upon his spirit and he becomes a leper. He lives for years, painting the walls of his house. When he is dying he makes his black wife promise to burn the house down so that the pictures may be destroyed. ‘His life was complete. He had made a world and saw that it was good. Then, in pride and contempt, he destroyed it.’ This strange story is related by a friend of Mrs. Strickland’s, a young, rather priggish author, who is sent over to Paris after the first tragedy to discover with whom Strickland has eloped and whether he can be induced to return. ‘You won’t go back to your wife?’ I said at last. ‘Never.’ ‘. . . She’ll never make you a single reproach.’ ‘She can go to hell.’ ‘You don’t care if people think you an utter blackguard? You don’t care if she and her children have to beg their bread?’ ‘Not a damn.’
That is very typical of their conversations together. Indeed, the young man confesses that if Strickland is a great deal more articulate than that, he has put the words into his mouth – divined them from his gestures. ‘From his own conversation I was able to glean nothing.’ And ‘his real life consisted of dreams and of tremendously hard work.’ But where are the dreams? Strickland gives no hint of them; the young man makes no attempt to divine them. ‘He asked nothing from his fellows except that they should leave him alone. He was single-hearted in his aim, and to pursue it he was willing to sacrifice not only himself – many can do that – but others . . .’ But what does the sacrifice matter if you do not care a rap whether the creature on the altar is a little horned ram or your only beloved son?2 The one outstanding quality in Strickland’s nature seems to have been his contempt for life and the ways of life. But contempt for life is not to be confused with liberty, nor can the man whose weapon it is fight a tragic battle or die a tragic death. If to be a great artist were to push over everything that comes in one’s way, topple over the table, lunge out right and left like a drunken man in a café and send the pots flying, then Strickland was a great artist. But great artists are not drunken men; they are men who are divinely sober. They know that the moon can never be bought for sixpence, and that liberty is only a profound realization of the greatness of the dangers in their midst.
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Text: Athenaeum, 4645, 9 May 1919, p. 302. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was a writer and traveller; The Moon and Sixpence is generally thought to be based on the life of Paul Gauguin. 2. A reference to the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis, 22), in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son but, at the last minute, instead provides a sacrificial ram.
The Public School Mixture LOOSE ENDS. By Arnold Lunn.1 (Hutchinson. 6s. 9d. net.)
In attempting to make a novel out of his ideas on public school education, Mr. Lunn has set himself a peculiarly difficult task. This is, chiefly, because he knows his subject so well from the point of view of the boy as well as that of the master, and his sympathies are so nicely divided between them that he is unsatisfied if he does not convey both. He succeeds, but his success breaks his book into halves, and we cannot quite see how it can fail to have the same effect upon his public. Who but little boys could take a lively interest in the play and chatter of little men of thirteen upwards, could exult in the way they routed old Slimy: Phillips looked Slimy up and down. He gazed at his hair, his face and his feet. ‘Slimy dear,’ he said with deliberate and cold-blooded contempt, ‘you smell. Your feet stink. We don’t want you. Get out, and leave the door open behind you to air the room’. . . .
– could burn with indignation at the rotten shame it was that old Tom didn’t get his colours and Burton did, could relish to the full the exquisite joke of bringing the Museum baboon into the class-room of the short-sighted master, or could squeeze the last drop of enjoyment from: Jack’s cricket was meteoric. He was a fast but indifferent bowler, a brilliant but not very reliable bat. The local yeomen who watched the school matches from behind the palings greeted his boundaries with full-throated enthusiasm, and his ‘ducks’ with noisy grief. No member of the school side could score so rapidly as Jack when he was in form, and none were more subjected to periodic runs of bad luck.
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But the roaring conversations, debates and sets-to between ‘unconventional’ masters, whose pipes are always going out and who have a way of signifying their pleasure or displeasure by ‘inarticulate noises,’ would leave the juvenile reader dreadfully cold. And the vague sad fears of gentle, thoughtful Mother Helen that her boy is hers no longer – not wholly hers (can she win him back by taking a house on the river for his summer ‘hols’ and reading Swinburne to him in the punt?) – would leave him, if possible, colder still. We are put to it to imagine whom these situations would warm and vivify, especially the former one – the young schoolmaster, rampant, in the old traditional school. What original fire it had has kindled many torches of late; it would need a powerful breath to blow the flame clear and shining again. Beautiful, gentle Helen, mother of the hero, in spite of the fact that she reads Mr. Masefield2 and has her very own opinion of Dickens and Mr. Arnold Bennett,3 is never more than a shadow. Were the light to fall upon her one instant, she would be gone. The book opens with a discourse by the author upon ‘that most obstinately English of English families – the Chattel Leighs. It is typical of the family that they have never hyphened their double name and never dropped the Chattel.’ Conscientious, hard-headed, reserved and discreet, they are chosen for the hero’s ancestors on the paternal side. Philip Chattel Leigh, father of Maurice, is indeed an astonishing reproduction of a Royal Academy portrait of an English gentleman. He is complete even to the little scene in the consulting room of the ‘eminent specialist,’ where he receives his sentence of death. ‘I think the end will be sudden, perhaps almost painless.’ Philip pulled out his notebook. ‘I’ll jot down a note or two,’ he said calmly, ‘it’s as well to make no mistake. Possibly two years, six months probably. Let’s see, what about smoking? . . .’ ‘Yes, smoke by all means in moderation.’ Philip rose briskly. ‘Well, Sir Horace, thank you for your sympathy. I know your time is valuable. The trees are coming out nicely, aren’t they?’
His wife, daughter of a bookish father, ‘led a life of restrained happiness and entertained his friends with that tranquil serenity that was her most distinctive charm.’ But she kept ‘the intangible life of books’ away from her husband, and when he returned from his work she ‘listened patiently but with intelligence. They have two sons. Tom, the elder, is his father over again, but Maurice is cast in another mould. He clung to his mother, appealed to her for sympathy, thought aloud when he was with her, and gave to Helen that unique joy that belongs to those who know they have the power of shaping and moulding a human soul.
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Her ‘unique joy’ is short-lived. At eight years of age he goes off to a ‘Priver’; at thirteen he joins Tom at Hornborough and becomes a public school man. What is the effect of the Public School system upon a boy who ‘worships at the shrine of physical fitness,’ and yet has ‘discovered that poetry not only unlocks new aspects of beauty, but that it serves as a key to those forgotten chambers of the soul where beauty once perceived . . . . slumbers till the magic numbers waken her to life once more’? For the purposes of his experiment, Mr. Lunn selects two friends for him – Jack Spence, who stands for the life of the body and whose batting thrills him to the bone, and Quirk, the revolutionary schoolmaster, who makes Shakespeare live again and leads Maurice from Kipling to Conrad,4 higher still and higher. We cannot see that it has any effect upon him at all. The Chattel Leigh in him makes him moderately good at games, and enthusiastic enough over ‘footer pots’; his mother’s literary tastes keep him from narrow-mindedness or from being feverishly interested in knowing what a concubine is. In fact, he comes out by the same door as in he went, with Jack still his friend, Quirk his master, and his mother waiting, hoping still. Is Mr. Lunn administering a powder? But if the powder is to be disguised, surely it is not too much to ask that the jam should be really good jam – none of your familiar mixtures from a dreary pot, but some exquisite preserve of the author – black cherry, Frimley peach, sharp, sweet quince. The dose is large; jam quâ jam, alas! excites us no longer. We cannot help feeling that Mr. Lunn expects of us an innocence of appetite which is very rare.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4646, 16 May 1919, p. 335. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Sir Arnold Lunn (1888–1974) was a skier, mountaineer and writer. 2. John Masefield (1878–1967) was the Poet Laureate from 1930 until his death. 3. Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) is best known for his novels about the Potteries in Staffordshire, which were best-sellers. He was also influential as a critic, reviewing in the New Age under the pseudonym of Jacob Tonson, and promoting Russian literature. Beatrice Hastings and KM parodied his work (CLKM, I, 105). 4. Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) and Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) were both avant-garde writers, unlike Arnold Bennett.
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Out and About By Thomas Burke1
Is it with intent to deceive us, or out of longing to gild the meagre present, or is it merely for the malicious pleasure of crying, as they set the bones and broken bread before us, how good the feast was – how rich and delicious that fare – that so many writers, in describing a beloved country or city, adopt the elegiac tone? Or this or that place is ruined. There is an electric tram now where there was only a muletrack, and a German hotel where the native market used to be. . . . . This is very tantalizing, the more so because our sober self cautions us that the author is probably quite right. Paris is gone; the tram, the steamer, the hotel – all, all are there. But the romantic part of us sets up a dismal wail. Is there no place left we can read about and fly to find more marvellous than ever? It would be delightful to believe the London of five years ago, mourned for so entertainingly by Mr. Thomas Burke, would return now the war is over. Although he describes his book, OUT AND ABOUT (Allen & Unwin. 5s. net), as an attempt ‘to catch the external war-time atmosphere of some of the old haunts,’ that is not all his concern. Indeed, he almost confesses there really is nothing to describe. And so he holds up, for the chagrin of drab to-day, her gay intriguing gown of yesterday. Only five years ago she looked so fine, dressed so gaily, had so rare a choice of strange, amusing pleasures! Mr. Burke’s London is no fashionable madam, neither is she fastidious or discreet, but she has great personality. She is a ‘character’ whom one longs to have known half as well as he knew her in those palmy days before 1914. The dark and the light side of London life are alike known to him. He passes from one to the other with that strange equality of interest so characteristic of his fellow-citizens; he loafs from one to the other, idle, familiar with a happy gift for reproducing the essential strangeness of each. You feel as you read his easy prose that he has been doing this sort of thing all his life – indeed, he confesses to going, at the altitude of three-foot six, into the ‘Dog and Duck’ every Saturday night for his weekly heart-cake, and how, even then, he would catalogue the shop smells in his mind. But the charm of Saturday shopping is gone; you can no longer eat a superb dinner of eight courses in Greek Street for one and sixpence; Chinatown is a fake for the silly rich; there are no more beanfeasts, and then the coffee-stall man meets ‘a Cockney . . . like yesself I feel like dropping down dead – ’s trewth 1 do.’ London is fallen – fallen! But while these astonishing characters exist with whom Mr. Burke talks over the sad change in her, one cannot but feel there is a likely hope of her recovery.
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a bouquet Notes
Text: Athenaeum, 4646, 16 May 1919, p. 336. Unsigned. 1. Thomas Burke (1886–1945) was known for his depiction of London’s Chinatown. His story ‘The Chink and the Child’ was made into the film Broken Blossoms by D. W. Griffith.
A Bouquet PINK ROSES. By Gilbert Cannan.1 (Fisher Unwin. 7s. 6d. net.)
It seems that the curtain has hardly fallen upon his last appearance, but here is Mr. Cannan on the stage again. Again, with charming bravery he faces the lights, the music, the humming, hungry audience. What has he to offer? What new impersonation, what fresh, original ‘turn’? And are we to discover, behind him, a vast bounding landscape, very rich in light and shadow, or something gay, exquisite, dotted with bright colours like fruits, with just a line of sea to give him his far horizon? . . . . Trevor Mathew, denied the Great Adventure because of a systolic murmur of the heart, ‘was beginning to think he was losing his sense of humour.’ He sat down in a hard green garden chair.’ . . . ‘Fifteen yards away from him a girl was sitting’ . . . . ‘her eyes were fixed on him’ . . . . ‘her left eyelid drooped, and she gave an inviting jerk of the head.’ . . . . ‘Never in his life had Trevor spoken to an unknown lady.’ ‘Their chairs had been fifteen yards apart. He kept exactly’ (note that: as Dostoevsky would have said) ‘fifteen yards behind her. As she reached Hyde Park Corner she stopped. He stopped, too, fifteen yards behind her.’ And so into the Café Claribel, where he sat at a table ‘fifteen yards away.’ It is surely evident from this remarkable opening, with its ever so simple refrain of ‘Fifteen yards away,’ that our expert performer is grown ambitious of attracting the sympathies of a larger, simpler audience than was his formerly. But we must go carefully; there may be more in this than meets the astonished eye. How friendly her smile was! How charming to be in sympathy with another human being fifteen yards away. He did not wish it to be any nearer, nor did he desire the adventure to proceed any further. On the other hand he would not have it come to an end. As it was it had in it an exquisite quality of happiness, of fulfilment, of poignancy – just a hint. He did not require more.
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Let us be just to Mr. Cannan. If this exact measurement can convey happiness, fulfilment, just a hint of poignancy even, he cannot have marked it off so lightly. These be no common garden fifteen yards. May they not be the shy beginnings of a courtship between Science and Literature – the measuring of fifteen yards of soul? . . . . Our tentative question is almost answered on the very next page: ‘“I never thought I should be happy again.” It seemed to him that he was wronging his friends to be made happy by such a little thing as the scent and sweetness of a nosegay of fresh roses.’ . . . How far away? Come, we all know it by this time. Now ladies and gentlemen, please, once more, and all together, ‘fifteen yards away.’ This new sense in our hero makes us eager for a fuller description of him. . . . . ‘As he had an ample allowance the rise in prices did not affect him at all, and he remained untouched, always perfectly dressed and careful to eat in the atmosphere to which he was accustomed. . . It was not that he did not notice shabbiness. He did, especially in boots, but he put it down to slovenliness. He was an only son.’ Here, again, you observe, the apparently innocent statement is broken in upon very strangely by the ‘especially in boots,’ and the sudden hammer-like stroke, ‘he was an only son.’ Did the boots also have to be a certain distance away before – but to return to our Pink Roses. Trevor did not see the lady again until one evening outside the café, when he bought a pup, ‘fortunately a male,’ from an old man. She was standing by, and the innocent creature broke the ice between them; in two minutes he was in her flat and telling her, ‘I wanted to stay at Cambridge. I could easily have got a Fellowship. I did History in my first two years and got a First. I wanted to go on with it, but my governor insisted on my taking Law. I got a First in that, too, but there isn’t much Law in practising. I mean it isn’t often you get a legal point. . . . Her lips were parted, her eyes shone, her bosom rose and fell.’ Until, ‘suddenly in Trevor there came tumbling in a series of swift painful realizations that this evening was somehow very important, and that it was what he had been waiting for through the weary months of almost catalepsy. It was his chance to assert himself, to break his arranged life that was left untouched when all other arranged lives had been broken.’ . . . And thus, to heal his hurt, to make him forget his too infinitely cherished friends whom the war had broken, that he might be ‘disturbed out of the nauseated lethargy in which his grief had left him’ and ‘have something working in his soul to withstand the corrosion of the war,’ excusing himself ‘on the ground that it was better for his mother to have him restored to some kind of sanity, than reduced to a frozen and insensible imbecility by the mental strain which was as bad, if not worse, than the physical strain of the trenches,’ the
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brilliant, captivating young Cambridge man decides to allow the frail but doting lady to love him for one whole year. Why not? ‘She was so completely, even abjectly, his, as to give him an indomitable sense of possession. She was as much his as the pup . . .’ And Mr. Cannan is sure enough of himself to cry for his hero, ‘After that the deluge.’ But not even the sure hand of our author can make a whole satisfying meal of such an intimacy, complete with its trip to Brighton and pink satin bedroom bows, enriched by a coloured maid, a magnificent motor-car, a black chauffeur, and two comic Jews. Let us hasten to assure the reader that other meats are provided; the table veritably groans under hearty English fare. Here is the lawyer’s office, dusty, traditional, with its pompous old chief and the case that never is settled; here the rosy-cheeked, silver-haired mother who trusts her boy; here the girl whose grey eyes ‘cannot but look direct,’ and who is to have what is left of Trevor after the Lady of the Roses has taught him all there is to know about women; here is the foolish old inventor in his ‘tattered and stained dressing-gown,’ whose explosions blow off ‘one eyebrow’; and everywhere there are large slabs of war-time conversation for ravenous youth to munch between the courses. None but the dainty or the rich need go empty away. Surely it is a little pity that the very unpleasant subject of the war should find a place in all this plenty. Need we be told of these twinges of indigestion suffered by our hero as he takes a bite of now this – now that? They are never more than slight twinges, never serious pangs, and as often as not cured by a chuckle. But their effect is, somehow, disastrous upon the fragile, fast-fading flowers behind which Mr. Cannan has chosen to make his bow.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4647, 23 May 1919, p. 367. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Gilbert Cannan (1884–1955), a dramatist and novelist, was a close friend of JMM and KM. He gave them the nickname ‘The Tigers’, taking it from a woodcut of a tiger stalking a monkey in the first number of Rhythm.
A Novel Without a Crisis HERITAGE. By V. Sackville West.1 (Collins. 6s. net.).
On page 3 of her novel Miss Sackville West makes an interesting comment:
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I should like to explain here that those who look for facts and events as the central points of significance in a tale will be disappointed. On the other hand I may fall upon an audience which, like myself, contends that the vitality of human beings is to be judged less by their achievement than by their endeavour, by the force of their emotion rather than by their success.
These are not extraordinary words; but we are inclined to think they contain the reason for the author’s failure to make important a book which has many admirable qualities. If we are not to look for facts and events in a novel – and why should we? – we must be very sure of finding those central points of significance transferred to the endeavours and emotions of the human beings portrayed. For, having decided on the novel form, one cannot lightly throw one’s story over the mill without replacing it with another story which is, in its way, obedient to the rules of that discarded one. There must be the same setting out upon a voyage of discovery (but through unknown seas instead of charted waters), the same difficulties and dangers must be encountered, and there must be an ever-increasing sense of the greatness of the adventure and an ever more passionate desire to possess and explore the mysterious country. There must be given the crisis when the great final attempt is made which succeeds – or does not succeed. Who shall say? The crisis, then, is the chief of our ‘central points of significance’ and the endeavours and the emotions are stages on our journey towards or away from it. For without it, the form of the novel, as we see it, is lost. Without it, how are we to appreciate the importance of one ‘spiritual event’ rather than another? What is to prevent each being unrelated – complete in itself – if the gradual unfolding in growing, gaining light is not to be followed by one blazing moment? We may look in vain for such a moment in ‘Heritage.’ It abounds in points of significance, but there is no central point. After an excellent first chapter – an excellent approach – we begin almost immediately to feel that the author, in dividing her story as she does between two tellers, has let it escape from her control. And as one reads on the feeling becomes more and more urgent: there is nobody in control. Her fine deliberate style is, as it were, wilfully abused by the two tellers; they use it to prove much that is irrelevant; they make it an excuse for lingering and turning aside when everything was to be gained by going forward – until finally, between them they break the book into pieces, not harshly or madly, but by a kind of delicate, persistent tugging, until there is a piece of Sussex, a fragment of Italy, some letters from the war, a long episode in Ephesus, fine, light, glowing pieces – each one, if we examine closely, a complete little design in itself.
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The first teller is Malory, a wandering inconsistent man who loves to stand aside and see what people make of this dark business, life. Seated on a hillside in Italy, he relates to a half acquaintance, half friend, a strange experience he had while living in a farmer’s household in Kent. His first vision of the Penniston family as he stands on the threshold watching them at meat, is beautifully conveyed; one shares his ‘thrill of excitement’ and his consciousness that there was something strange here – something that wasn’t at all in keeping with sober English farm folk. Little by little he discovers what it is. That tiny aged great-grandmother, crouched over the fire, roasting chestnuts, wrapping herself in the warmth and the faint foreign smell of the burnt nuts was a Spanish dancer. The wild warm blood glows again in her great-granddaughter, Ruth, and in Ruth’s cousin, Rawdon Westimcott. In Rawdon it runs pure and dark, but there is that in Ruth which rebels; she appeals to Malory to save her – and feeling that Malory is her saviour she loves him, but he is blind until it is too late. Thus Malory. And now the story is taken up by the man who listened. More than a year has passed; the war is raging. He is in England, discharged from hospital, and he decides to visit the Pennistons and see for himself what has happened. He goes, and realising the deep misery of Ruth in the clutches of her brutal husband, he longs for Westimcott’s death and that Ruth should marry Malory. But there is a spoiled tragedy. Rawdon is not killed when his wife shoots him. He masters her again. The third part of the book is a journal sent by Malory to his friend, giving an account of the next ten years; how he returned from the war and asked Ruth to leave her husband, how when she refused he went on an expedition to North Africa and then to Ephesus. At Ephesus an entirely new character appears, a man named MacPherson, who has nothing whatever to do with the story, and, except that he receives a yearly packet of flower seeds from Ruth, Malory’s story becomes the story of his life with MacPherson. After the outsider’s death Malory returns to London where Ruth finds him and – takes him home. She explains (or rather he explains for her) that her wild husband has turned coward and left her. He, the bully, has been through all those ten years gradually filling with fear of her, until at last, he can bear no more. What has she done to provoke that fear? Ah, that would be interesting to know, but the author does not tell us. It happened and it freed her; and with his going from her the devil goes from her, too, leaving her at peace and free to lead her other life with Malory. These are bare outlines, richly filled in by the author, and yet we are not ‘carried away.’ She has another comment:
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Little of any moment occurs in my story, yet behind it all I am aware of tremendous forces at work which none have rightly understood, neither the actors nor the onlookers.
That is easily said. We have heard it so often of late that we are grown a little suspicious, and almost believe that these are dangerous words for a writer to use. They are a dark shield in his hand when he ought to carry a bright weapon.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4648, 30 May 1919, p. 399. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) was a writer and gardener who was the inspiration for Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.
A Child and Her Note-Book THE YOUNG VISITERS OR MR. SALTEENA’S PLAN. By Daisy Ashford.1 (Chatto &Windus. 3s. 6d. net.)
This is the story of Mr. Salteena’s plan to become a real gentleman (‘I am quite alright as they say but I would like to be the real thing can it be done he added slapping his knees . . .’), of his unrequited love for fair and flighty Ethel Monticue, of Bernard Clark’s dashing and successful wooing of Ethel, together with some very rich, costly pictures of High Socierty, a levie at Buckingham Palace, a description of the Compartments at the Chrystal Palace occupied by Earls and Dukes, and a very surprising account of the goings on at the Gaierty Hotel. It is one of the most breathless novels we have ever read, for the entirely unmerciful and triumphant author seems to realize from the very first moment that she can do what she likes with us, and so we are flung into the dazzling air with Bernard and Ethel, and dashed to earth with poor Mr. Salteena, without the relief of one dull moment. Happily, there are only twelve chapters; for human flesh and blood could stand no more – at any rate grown-up human flesh and blood. For, as far as we can judge from the portrait of the nine-year-old author, this rate of living did not upset her in the least; she positively throve on it and could have sustained it for ever. At first glance Daisy Ashford may appear very sophisticated. There is evidence that she thoroughly enjoyed the run of her parents’ library,
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and, unseen and unheard, revelled in the conversation of her elders. Signs are not wanting that she enjoyed exceptional opportunities for looking through keyholes, peeping through half-open doors, gazing over the banisters at the group in the hall below, and sitting, squeezed and silent, between the grown-ups when they took the air in the ‘baroushe.’ But for all her dressing up in Ouida’s plumy hat and long skirt with a train,2 she remains a little child with a little child’s vision of her particular world. That she managed to write it down and make a whole round novel of it is a marvel almost too good to be true. But there it is, and even while the grown-up part of us is helpless with laughter we leap back with her into our nine-year-old self where the vision is completely real and satisfying. Who among us à cet âge là has not smiled through his fingers at Ethel Monticue, overheard at a party: What plesand compartments you have cried Ethel in rarther a socierty tone. Fairly so so responded the Earl do you live in London he added in a loud tone as someone was playing a very difficult peice on the piano. Well no I dont said Ethel my home is really in Northumberland but I am at present stopping with Mr. Clark at the Gaierty Hotel she continued in a somewhat showing off tone. Oh I see said the earl well shall I introduce you to a few of my friends. Oh please do said Ethel with a dainty blow at her nose.
It has been questioned whether the book is not an elaborate hoax; but if one remembers the elaborate games one played at that age, the characters that were invented, the situations and scenes – games that continued for days and days, and were actually unwritten novels in their way – one finds no difficulty in believing in the amazing child. One only rushes to rejoice in her and to advise our old young men when they approach the more solemn parts of their serious adventures to take a dip into her ‘plan’ and see how it should be done.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4648, 30 May 1919, p. 400. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Though Daisy Ashford (1881–1972) wrote the book when she was nine years old, it was not published for almost twenty years, preserving her childish spelling and punctuation. 2. Ouida (1839–1908) was a novelist, whose flamboyant lifestyle intrigued and scandalised Victorian society.
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An Exoticist BLIND ALLEY. By W. L. George.1 (Fisher Unwin. 9s. net.)
There is a certain large shop in London where one may still enter in and worship at one’s will. The aisles are lofty; the lights dim; each little side chapel is a rich mysterious jewel. Here one may linger, stroking the languid velvet; staring at the embroideries that seem to come to ever richer, more intricate flowering the longer one looks; sighing over chiffons, soft as the shadows on sea water; gazing at the fruit-like cushions gathered from some giant’s orchard, and fainting by the way at last upon couches made to pillow the golden heads of millionaires . . . The sound of the clocks is so sweet, one fancies from their chiming honey is distilled; walking among the huge solemn furniture one expects the air to be shaken by the roaring of a lion; the glass and the china still glitter as though fresh from a reluctant wave. But it is very strange in the midst of all this to observe the character of one’s fellow-worshippers. They are, without exception, solid uppermiddle-class English people, well nourished, easy in their behaviour, and immensely cool and indifferent, seeming to ignore, indeed, their fabulous surroundings. They are used to this kind of thing, born and bred in it. Why exclaim? Why give it one’s attention? If we may judge from the latest novel of Mr. W. L. George the whole of England is glassed over, roofed over, subdivided, as he sees it, into just such another magasin de luxe, through which he tip-toes, touching, tasting, positively gloating over not only the merchandise, but, with his eyes still a little dazzled by the Eastern glare, the upper-middle-class English people wandering through. It is the ensemble which fascinates him; this coolness and heat which he mixes together into a brew which is, to say the least, most uncommonly exotic. For, if we are to believe ‘Blind Alley,’ the intactness of the upper-middle-class is all a superficial seeming; they are each and all of them capable of taking up a length of that filmy silk, binding it about their brows in turbans, or shrouding themselves in its veils and going out into the Tottenham Court Road to ride away upon camels. Picture a father, a retired banker, and now a country gentleman, an eminently practical man, hushing a quarrel with a rebellious daughter in this fashion: Then Sylvia flung down the pen and stamped: ‘You’re all against me. You all want to kick me when I’m down. I hate you – I hate you.’ ‘So do I,’ shouted Sir Hugh, and slammed the door behind him. A few minutes later . . . he felt remorseful. So he sent by a messenger boy an enormous bunch of Parma violets and a note: ‘Sylvia dear, your father
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has the pride of age and the temper of youth. He asks pardon of his beautiful daughter, and hopes that, when next she comes to cheer his waning years, she will bring forgiveness in her eyes of amber.’
Does that touch and start quivering, in many an English daughter’s bosom, a familiar chord? And here is a young husband, the owner of an aircraft works, musing in the garden of his country home, with his wife and lovely screaming children near by: ‘There is the truth of life,’ he thought. ‘To enjoy all that is easily graceful. The sight of lovely women, yet not the stress of loving them; pictures and books, yet not the agony of trying to achieve art; little children that come up as flowers, to get older, to get fat, to get bald, and still to know how to smile.’
It is hard to see his gentleman without a fan and a sash and a little short dagger. And yet but a moment before, thinking over his loves, he had ‘sneered at himself’ . . . ‘Frank, old fellow, you’ve pitched on a rotten hobby. Why don’t you go in for gardening?’ Which is as difficult to reconcile with his Oriental self as the political father’s joke with his other daughter who asked him why the spring, my dear, was no longer spring. Sir Hugh laughed. ‘Ah yes, those were the days of spring onions; these are the days of spring offensives.’ Perhaps from these extracts the reader may gather that, whatever else Mr. George’s long strong book may be, it is not dull. It opens on January 9, 1916, and it closes with the January of this year. It is, therefore, yet another revue of England in war-time, but produced by an expert and conscientious manager who is determined that no scene, situation, character, phrase, catchword or fashion shall be left without a role and a name in the packed souvenir programme. The chief parts are sustained by Sir Hugh Oakley, his wife and three grown-up children, each one, as it were, a specimen of his or her kind, and all of them, grouped together, forming what Mr. George doubtless considers ‘the representative English family.’ The dominating member is Sir Hugh, with his ‘high, boney, beak-like nose which had been set as a brand upon the face of nearly every male Oakley’ [discriminating Providence!] ‘for the last two centuries.’ Next in importance comes Monica, a slim unawakened girl whose experiences in a T.N.T. factory are, we gravely hope, more explosive than was usual. She and the manager of the works are the lovers of the piece. ‘Most exquisite, most adorable, copper-crowned lily . . . this is the key of the place they call Bull’s Field.’ When she let herself in she noticed ‘a small shanty on wheels, on the walls of which was painted:
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Foreman’s Office . . . The window opened and Cottenham looked out at her. He did not smile nor sign to her to come, but so remained . . .’ Cottenham indeed? Does one not expect rather at such a time and place – Mr. Wilkie Bard?2 Monica’s sister, Sylvia, is the woman floating on the dark swollen flood from the embrace of one man into the arms of another and another. Then there is Stephen, the wounded son, whose nose repeats his father’s, and whose arguments repeat his nose, being singularly high, boney and beak-like. And lastly the mother, a very handsome woman with thick dark-red hair and ‘sherry-bright’ eyes who is impelled to decisive assertions . . . They are to be found living through this tremendous interval in the Country House Department, which is incredibly complete, down to a butler carving the joint at the ‘tortured marble-topped Louis XV table’ and the old, all-too-old collie dozing in front of the logs in the hall. The completeness, however, is but symptomatic of Mr. George’s method. It persists in scenes from country life, scenes in a bar parlour, before a military tribunal, at a flag day in the Berkeley Hotel. These are all ‘models’ of their kind, with not a detail missing and only unfamiliar because of that curious strong scent from the Oriental Department, permeating everything. The prologue and the epilogue are sung by an orange-coloured Persian cat with eyes of watered agate – Kallikrates his name. He enters, on the alert, suspicious, but finding himself alone in the hall with the human beings safely away behind closed doors, he subsides, folds the ‘velvet gauntlets of his paws,’ composes his squat head into the sumptuous silk of his ruff, and begins to purr . . . If we may say so without disrespect, we can almost hear the author joining in.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4649, 6 June 1919, p. 430. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. W. L. George (1882–1926) was a writer who introduced JMM to KM. He wrote for Rhythm and the Blue Review. 2. Wilkie Bard (1874–1944) was a popular music-hall entertainer.
A Short Story KEW GARDENS. By Virginia Woolf 1 (Richmond. Hogarth Press, 2s. net.)
If it were not a matter to sigh over, it would be almost amusing to remember how short a time has passed since Samuel Butler2 advised
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the budding author to keep a note-book. What would be the author’s reply to such a counsel nowadays but an amused smile: ‘I keep nothing else!’ True; but if we remember rightly, Samuel Butler goes a little further; he suggests that the note-book should be kept in the pocket, and that is what the budding author finds intolerably hard. Up till now he has been so busy growing and blowing that his masterpieces still are unwritten, but there are the public waiting, gaping. Hasn’t he anything to offer before they wander elsewhere? Can’t he startle their attention by sheer roughness and crudeness and general slapdashery? Out comes the note-book, and the deed is done. And since they find its contents absolutely thrilling and satisfying, is it to be wondered at that the risk of producing anything bigger, more solid, and more positive – is not taken? The note-books of young writers are their laurels; they prefer to rest on them. It is here that one begins to sigh, for it is here that the young author begins to swell and to demand that, since he has chosen to make his note-books his All, they shall be regarded as of the first importance, read with a deadly seriousness and acclaimed as a kind of new Art – the art of not taking pains, of never wondering why it was one fell in love with this or that, but contenting oneself with the public’s dreary interest in promiscuity. Perhaps that is why one feels that Mrs. Virginia Woolf’s story belongs to another age. It is so far removed from the note-book literature of our day, so exquisite an example of love at second sight. She begins where the others leave off, entering Kew Gardens, as it were, alone and at her leisure when their little first screams of excitement have died away and they have rushed afield to some new brilliant joy. It is strange how conscious one is, from the first paragraph, of this sense of leisure: her story is bathed in it as if it were a light, still and lovely, heightening the importance of everything, and filling all that is within her vision with that vivid, disturbing beauty that haunts the air the last moment before sunset or the first moment after dawn. Poise – yes, poise. Anything may happen; her world is on tiptoe. This is her theme. In Kew Gardens there was a flower-bed full of red and blue and yellow flowers. Through the hot July afternoon men and women ‘straggled past the flower-bed with a curiously irregular movement not unlike that of the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf in zig-zag flights from bed to bed,’ paused for a moment, were caught ‘in its dazzling net, and then moved on again and were lost. The mysterious intricate life of the flower-bed goes on untouched by these odd creatures. A little wind moves, stirring the petals so that their colours shake on to the brown earth, grey of a pebble, shell of a snail, a raindrop, a leaf, and for a moment the secret life is half-revealed; then a wind blows again, and the colours flash in the air and there are only leaves and flowers. . . . .
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It happens so often – or so seldom – in life, as we move among the trees, up and down the known and unknown paths, across the lawns and into the shade and out again, that something – for no reason that we can discover – gives us pause. Why is it that, thinking back upon that July afternoon, we see so distinctly that flower-bed? We must have passed myriads of flowers that day; why do these particular ones return? It is true, we stopped in front of them, and talked a little and then moved on. But, though we weren’t conscious of it at the time, something was happening – something . . . . But it would seem that the author, with her wise smile, is as indifferent as the flowers to these odd creatures and their ways. The tiny rich minute life of a snail – how she describes it! the angular high-stepping green insect – how passionate is her concern for him! Fascinated and credulous, we believe these things are all her concern until suddenly with a gesture she shows us the flower-bed, growing, expanding in the heat and light, filling a whole world.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4650, 13 June 1919, p. 459. NN. Unsigned. 1. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) may have written ‘Kew Gardens’ as a result of receiving a letter from KM suggesting a story about a garden. The letter has not survived but KM wrote a similar letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell: ‘There would be people walking in the garden – several pairs of people – their conversation their slow pacing – their glances as they pass one another – the pauses’ (CLKM, 1, p. 325). 2. Samuel Butler (1835–1902) was best known as the author of Erewhon, a satire, and The Way of All Flesh, a novel.
Glancing Light JAVA HEAD. By Joseph Hergesheimer.1 (Heinemann. 7s. net.)
Those who have spent any portion of their life in a seaport town will remember a peculiar quality of light, which is to be observed there and in no other surroundings. For when the sun is over the sea and the waves high a trembling brilliance flashes over the town, now illuminating this part, now that. In its erratic hovering behaviour it might be likened to that imp of light children love to call Jack-on-the-wall; one can never tell where it may next appear. It is, and something is caught in it, dazzling fine, and then it is gone to be back again for another glittering moment – but almost before one has time to look it
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is flown away. Brilliant light, but not deep light, not a steady shining – a light by which one can register the moment but not discover and explore it. For the writing of his novel, ‘Java Head,’ Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer would seem to have pointed his compass to this unfixed star and the result is an exciting but not a satisfying book. The scene, the personages and the drama – they are all separate, one from another, and as one story unfolds itself we have the sense that while the author applies himself to one he forgets the other two. They are dropped from him and from us until he chooses to revive them, to bring them into the light again. The scene is Salem, at the time when it was still rich with incoming and outgoing trade, with ships bound for the East Indies and China and returning laden with fabulous cargoes. But for all the author’s inside information and professional way in handling a ship, we are never quite sure that the sea is real sea or that these curious perfumed chests and jars are really full. While we read we are fascinated, but our fascination is conscious and almost assumed, as at a spectacle – something arranged and specially ‘set’ for a performance. The personages are old Jeremy Ammidon, head of the firm of Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltanstone, his son William, William’s wife and their family of half-grown daughters. There is another son Gerrit, captain of the ‘Nautilus’ and hero of the book, whose ship is long overdue, and the early chapters full of the growing anxiety of the household at Java Head for his return are, to our thinking, the most successful. Here, at least, it is hardly possible to avoid a sense of progression, and the members of the family, gathered together under the shadowy wing of disaster are more nearly seen in relation to one another. Obvious as it is, and again more than a little theatrical, it is enough to lead us on in the hope that when the moment of relief comes and the ship is sighted, the scene, the personages and the drama will – not lose their separateness – but become part of one springing arch of light, their colours banded together as in a rainbow. This does not happen. For though Gerrit is seen on the deck, on the wharf, greeting his family, he never comes home at all. It is a wooden sailor who leads his high-born Manchu wife through the doors of Java Head, and however greatly Mr. Hergesheimer may insist upon Gerrit’s heroic qualities wooden he remains. We are told that he loved the Manchu lady. She was pining away, like some fabulous exquisite bird in a cage in Shanghai until he rescued her and brought her into a bigger cage, with heavier bolts and clumsier bars, and stupid unpainted faces to stare through and wonder at her. Her appearance, her clothes, her appointments, they are game indeed for the greedy light to play with, but, absorbed in them, it
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penetrates no further than to give us just a glimpse of her superhuman calm, of the tragedy it was for her that this calm should be broken by Edward Dunsack, a low wretch whose mind has been poisoned by opium and who realises in his fiendish dreaming way how she suffers. By the bedside of Dunsack’s niece, whom Gerrit has always loved, she commits suicide, and on the light flickers and dances, over another love affair, over the town, on to the niece, on to Gerrit’s ship waiting for him in the harbour, until finally it shows us Gerrit married to his old love and again putting out to sea. It is not enough to be comforted with colours, to finger bright shawls, to watch the fireworks, to wonder what those strange men are shouting down at the wharves and to wander with the Ammidon family through the rooms of Java House. We are excited; our curiosity is roused as to what lies beneath these strange rich surfaces. Mr. Hergesheimer leaves us wondering and unsatisfied.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4650, 13 June 1919, p. 463. Signed: K. M. 1. Joseph Hergesheimer (1880–1954) was a wealthy American novelist from Pennsylvania.
The Dean Charnwood (Lady).1 THE DEAN. Constable, 1919. 8 in. 312 pp., 6/ n.
This gentle tale of ecclesiastical circles is remarkable for the extraordinary number of its characters. Lady Charnwood seems to think in terms of congregations. No one person is conspicuous; nothing happens to disturb the atmosphere of well-bred, well-nourished ease. True, a grim verger comes in from time to time, taps a young man on the shoulder and leads him away; but their departing footfalls are discreetly muffled. Even the light falling upon the dean is tempered – is from stained-glass windows.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4650, 13 June 1919, p. 477. Unsigned. 1. Baroness Dorothea Mary Roby Thorpe Charnwood (1874–1942) ran her husband’s residence, Stowe House, in Litchfield.
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The New Infancy MARY OLIVIER: A LIFE. By May Sinclair.1 (Cassell 7s. net.)
There has been discovered, of late, cropping up among our established trees and flowers a remarkable plant, which, while immensely engaging our attention, has not hitherto attained a size and blooming sufficient to satisfy our desire to comprehend it. Little tight buds, half-open flowers that open no further, a blossom or two more or less out – these the plant has yielded. But here at last, with ‘Mary Olivier’ Miss Sinclair has given into our grateful hands a full fine specimen. Is this, we wonder, turning over its three hundred and sixty-eight pages, to be the novel of the future? And if so, whence has it sprung? Who are its ancestors, its parents, its relations, its distant connections even? But the longer we consider it the more it appears to us as a very orphan of orphans, lying in a basket on the threshold of literature with a note pinned on its chest saying: ‘If I am to be taken in and welcomed, then the whole rest of the family must be thrown out of the window.’ That they cannot exist together seems to us very plain. For the difference between the new way of writing and the old way is not a difference of degree but of kind. Its aim, as we understand it, is to represent things and persons as separate, as distinct, as apart as possible. Here, if you like, are the animals set up on the floor, the dove so different from the camel, the sheep so much bigger than the tiger. But where is the Ark?2 And where, even at the back of the mind, is the Flood, that dark mass of tumbling water which must sooner or later receive them, and float them or drown them? The Ark and the Flood belong to the old order, they are gone. In their place we have the author asking with indefatigable curiosity: ‘What is the effect of this animal upon me, or this or the other one?’ But if the Flood, the sky, the rainbow, or what Blake beautifully calls the bounding outline,3 be removed and if, further, no one thing is to be related to another thing, we do not see what is to prevent the whole of mankind turning author. Why should writers exist any longer as a class apart if their task ends with a minute description of a big or a little thing? If this is the be-all and end-all of literature why should not every man, woman and child write an autobiography and so provide reading matter for the ages? It is not difficult. There is no gulf to be bridged, no risk to be taken. If you do not throw your Papa and your Mamma against the heavens before beginning to write about them, his whiskers and her funny little nose will be quite important enough to write about, quite enough, reinforced with the pattern of the drawing-room carpet, the valse of the moment and
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the cook upstairs taking her hair out of pins, to make a whole great book. And as B’s papa’s whiskers and B’s mamma’s funny little nose are bound to be different again, and their effect upon B again different – why here is high entertainment forever! Entertainment. But the great writers of the past have not been ‘entertainers.’ They have been seekers, explorers, thinkers. It has been their aim to reveal a little of the mystery of life. Can one think for one moment of the mystery of life when one is at the mercy of surface impressions? Can one think when one is not only taking part but being snatched at, pulled about, flung here and there, cuffed and kissed, and played with? Is it not the great abiding satisfaction of a work of art that the writer was master of the situation when he wrote it and at the mercy of nothing less mysterious than a greater work of art? It is too late in the day for this new form, and Miss Sinclair’s skilful handling of it serves but to make its failure the more apparent. She has divided her history of Mary Olivier into five periods, infancy, childhood, adolescence, maturity and middle-age, but these divisions are negligible. In the beginning Mary is two, but at the end she is still two – and forty-seven – and so it is throughout. At any moment, whatever her real age may be she is two – or forty-seven – either, both. At two (poor infant staggerer!) the vast barn of impressions opens upon her and life, with a pitchfork, tosses her out Mamma, Papa, Mark, Roddy, Dan, Jenny, Catty, Aunt Charlotte, Uncle Victor, and all the rest of them. At forty-seven, although in the meantime many of them have died and died disgustingly, she is still turning them over and over, still wondering whether any of them did happen to have in one of their ignoble pockets the happiness she has missed in life. . . . For on page 355 she confesses, to our surprise, that is what she has been wanting all along – happiness. Wanting, perhaps, not seeking, not even longing for, but wanting as a child of two might want its doll or its donkey, running into the room where Papa on his dying bed is being given an emetic, to see if it is on the counterpane, running out to see if it is in the cab that has come to take Aunt Charlotte to the Lunatic Asylum, and then forgetting all about it to stare at ‘Blancmange going round the table, quivering and shaking and squelching under the spoon.’
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4651, 20 June 1919, p. 494. Signed: K. M. 1. May Sinclair (1863–1946) was the author of many novels, short stories and poems. She was also a critic and suffragist, introducing the phrase
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‘stream of consciousness’ as a literary term in reviewing the fiction of Dorothy Richardson. 2. A reference to the children’s toy, an ark with pairs of animals, based on the biblical passage in Genesis, 6: 9 about Noah and the Flood. 3. ‘How do we distinguish the oak from the beech, the horse from the ox, but by the bounding outline? How do we distinguish one face or countenance from another, but by the bounding line and its infinite inflexions and movements?’ (Geoffrey Keynes, ed., Poetry and Prose of William Blake (London: Nonesuch Library, 1961): ‘A Descriptive Catalogue’, Number XV Ruth – A Drawing, p. 617).
The Caravan Man Goodwin (Ernest). THE CARAVAN MAN. Collins, 1919. 8 in. 312 pp., 7/ n.
This is a summer novel, and evidently intended to be picked up on the beach, skimmed through and left to the incoming tide. It is a variation of the old, old story with an artistic-Bohemian-caravan flavour. But the bumpkin humour is in deplorable taste. There are passages so meaningless that they are an insult to the reader’s intelligence. Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4651, 20 June 1919, p. 511. Unsigned.
Flourisheth in Strange Places LOVE LANE. By J. C. Snaith.1 (Collins. 7s. net.)
The coloured wrapper to ‘Love Lane’ depicts an elderly fat man in a yellow suit and a swollen white waistcoat. His felt hat is to one side, he wears white spats, a large bow-tie, and in the corner of his mouth, at an angle, flourishes a cigar. Thumbs in his armholes, away he swaggers from pretty Miss, who stands, blue-eyed, pale and goldencrowned, one lily hand raised, one lily hand clenched, looking after him with eyes of longing. And above them the title of the book, wellspaced and bold, hangs for a signboard. Which of us, except in those last dread three minutes before the bookstall, when a man feels his mind dissolve as a wisp of smoke under the station roof and is as a little child in the hands of the braggart youth with a pencil behind his ear, would dream of inquiring any further? Which of us would not decide at a glance that ‘Love Lane’
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was one of those half-sentimental, half-humorous mixtures – the refreshing non-alcoholic summer novel enfin, and pass it by? A superficial examination of the plot would not tend to alter that opinion. Here is the self-made vulgar old man, half hero, half bully, who aspires to be mayor of Blackhampton, and his timid wife, weeping for the old simple times. They have three daughters: one a successfully married snob; the second, a poor creature who has quarrelled with her parents, having married beneath her; and Sally, the baby, struck out of the old man’s will for joining the suffragettes and getting six weeks’ hard. The husband of the second girl is that familiar figure in our recent fiction – a pathetic tradesman – a little self-effacing greengrocer, a failure. He can’t get hold of business, somehow, but he can grow a rose to beat any man, and the sunset reminds him of the ‘Inferno by Dant with Lustrations by Door.’ 2 One can hardly imagine characters less promising, less original. Nevertheless they are the material that the artist has chosen and his success is the final justification of his choice. At the beginning we are shown these people, their interests and their lives, as all separate, scattered, and uncontrolled. They are puffed up or cast down, greedy, self-centred and vain – all except Amelia’s husband, who is merely a shadow of a man with a vague suspicion that things might be different, and therefore a vague grudge against things as they are. Then, quite suddenly, we are conscious of an immense, inconceivable ring of fire closing in upon them; they are bathed in one terrible light, and William Hollis marches off towards it –out of his little misery in the shop in Love Lane into the anguish of his first experience. In our youth we were taught that pain was not only a kind of necessary gymnastic exercise set us by the Lord – an immensely heavy dumb-bell to be lifted in His sight as a proof of what we could still stagger but not fall under – we were assured that we could not possibly appreciate the value of anything unless it had been first all but taken from us. Nowadays we are inclined to believe that it is neither pain nor happiness that heightens the value of life; it is rather the sense of danger, common to them both – danger which strips us of our false acquired security and demands of us that we shall take the risk. William Hollis, before the war, had no particular desire to live, and the agonizing misery of life in the trenches – incredible as it might seem to our aged pastors and masters – did not awaken any new desire in him. But the feeling that any moment might be his last unlocked his lips. He made a friend, a man who came from his part of the country, an artist, who understood his fumbling speech, said for him what he wanted to say – taught him to see clearly what he vaguely glimpsed. The artist died, but William Hollis went on living not only his new
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free life, but the life of his dead friend as well. He came home, and a wonderful late-flowering love blossomed for him and his wife. Then he was seriously wounded and the chance offered for him to leave the army and settle down with his woman. But he would not take it. For some unaccountable reason that she never understood, he decided to go back and die among the men with whom he had learned to live. What he had learned out there had been so marvellous to him, it had given such value to life, that he could not, without betraying himself, submit to anything less wonderful. While this great miracle has been happening to William Hollis lesser changes, but changes no less wonderful, have happened to the others. They, too, have become human beings, but human beings ennobled. But they are all grouped round the central figure, and upon him the author has brought all his power of understanding to bear. He has created an extraordinarily poignant character.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4652, 27 June 1919, p. 526. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. John Collis Snaith (1876–1936) was a prolific British novelist. 2. Presumably ‘Inferno by Dant with Lustrations by Door’ refers to Gustave Doré’s illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Uncomfortable Words THE BONFIRE. By Anthony Brendon. (Heinemann. 7s. net.)
If a child alone on a desert island were to be visited suddenly by two presences – one, a divine, angelic winged creature with comfortable hands and eyes that shone with love and mercy, the other a hideous, scaly fiend, with a hissing tail, immense claws, and jets of flame for eyes – we imagine that the child’s first feeling would not be one of wonder and delight at the angel; it would be terror, uncontrollable terror, at sight of the fiend. He would not even be certain that the angel could save him. The angel would have no meaning, no significance, for him except as a possible safeguard from the fiend. Even if the angel were to bear him away and set him down under a garden tree and play him a soft air upon a little harp, we do not believe that the child would ever recover from that monstrous vision. Terror might keep him from wandering far, might lend him a false look of listening to the harp, might cause him to join in the singing in the
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hope of keeping the fiend away, but one glimpse of the hissing tail again, and the doctrine of Divine Love would be nothing but a possible means of escape. In a ‘coda’ to his book of short stories dealing with life at a Jesuit school, Mr. Brendon, while acclaiming the supreme excellence of the Jesuit education in that it teaches the doctrine of Divine Love, deplores the teaching of hell-fire to children. But, if we are to believe his account, were the flames to be removed, there would be left nothing but a cold fireplace. It is the devils who keep the schoolhouse in a glow, and not the angels. It is the sinfulness of those little boys, or their potential sinfulness, which is almost the whole concern of their masters. Lessons are only ‘of secondary consideration,’ play is a means of keeping out of mischief; during the day the boys are never out of sight of a warder, at night the dormitories are patrolled by a figure in felt slippers carrying a lantern. This ‘watching’ the author defends on the ground that ‘it did maintain a standard of bodily purity. The boys left school unsullied: was the price too high to pay?’ We find this idea of the persistent viciousness of normal healthy children very hard to swallow. But, if we have read Mr. Brendon aright, the Jesuits do not believe there is such a person as a normal healthy boy; there is the coarse, cunning and dirty-minded boy, and the too soft, too gentle, almost idiotic boy. Both of them are defective; both stand an equally good chance of going to hell, an equally poor one of getting to heaven; and since the human soul is far more easily ensnared by terror than by love, shake the devil at them five times for every once that you show them the angel. It is a sorry view of childhood. The argument apart, these stories are written with an admirable simplicity of style. But whether the author is ironic or naïve is an intriguing little problem for the reader to solve.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4653, 4 July 1919, p. 556. NN. Signed: K. M.
The Great Simplicity THE FOUR HORSEMEN. By Vincente Blasco Ibañez.1 (Constable. 6s. net.)
There is no need for the three loud solemn blasts of American criticism which herald this translation of ‘Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis’; for although the fine edges are blurred and the whole is misted over
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by the heavy fingers of Charlotte Brewster Jordan,2 it is recognizable almost immediately as a powerful and distinguished novel. We say almost, for the first chapter, skilful and not extraordinary, in no wise prepares us for the magnificent second chapter, giving a description of the life of an aged Argentine landowner and chief, his family, dependents and possessions. Madariaga the Centaur is the author’s name for the foolish, wise old millionaire; it could not be more apt. As we read we are haunted by a vision of troops of horses, streaming away and away over limitless prairies, being rounded up, stamping and quivering and tossing their brilliant heads and then off again in a bounding line against the far horizon, until all that happens seems to become a part of this rich free life and rhythm. To the old man there comes a young Frenchman, Desnoyers, seeking employment; the master takes a fancy to him. ‘He’s a regular pearl, this Frenchy . . . I like him because he is very serious. That is the way I like a man.’ Desnoyers becomes part of the family and marries the elder daughter, Chica; the younger, La Romantica, runs away with another of the employees, a timid, weak creature who has been forced to leave Germany under a cloud. Madariaga detests Von Hartrott and detests his children . . . with hair like a shredded carrot and the two oldest wearing specs. . . They don’t seem like folks wearing those glasses; they look like sharks. Madariaga had never seen any sharks, but he imagined them, without knowing why, with round glassy eyes like the bottoms of bottles.
But he gave the whole of his savage old heart to Desnoyers’ children, Julio and Chichi, teaching them, before they were eight years old, to ride, to eat beefsteaks for breakfast and to lasso wild horses. When he died he left an enormous fortune to each of the two families, and the Von Hartrotts went off to Berlin to live in splendour, while the Desnoyers, not to be outdone, set up their home in Paris. By this time Desnoyers himself is old, and Julio and Chichi shorn of their wildness are exquisite, extravagant young persons, as Parisian as it is possible to be. Only the fat, comfortable Chica is the same. When the war breaks upon them, Julio is an artist, a celebrated tango dancer and the lover of a famous society woman; Chichi the butterfly, is engaged to a senator’s son, and the father is become almost a maniac for buying rich furniture, motor-cars – all kinds of fantastic possessions for his splendid apartment in Paris and his castle at Villefranche-sur-Marne. They, with the rest of the world, are lifted upon the huge ugly wave and shaken and tumbled, and strangely, at this moment, the mantle of Madariaga seems to descend upon old Desnoyers; he becomes, in the sober sense of the words, a great
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character. Full of fear for his treasures at the castle, and especially for an immense gold bath, the purchase of which he considered the culminating achievement of his wealth, he rushes off to the rescue – too late. The Germans are there, and the strange old man has to stand by, staring stupidly while they break up and plunder his toy, and kill the innocent villagers. It is a dreadful fact that since it has been our misfortune to read so much and so much of the horror of war we have become almost indifferent to it. We accept – we nod at a repetition – ‘There it is; there’s the old tune played again’ – but how moved are we? But when we are confronted by the figure of old Desnoyers, not taking part in it, just looking on, powerless and helpless, at the great laying-waste of life, the familiar tune becomes again an unbearable agony to hear. Señor Ibañez does not believe in the purifying fire; or that out of evil good will come; or that God works in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; he believes that war is Hell. Neither can there be any line drawn so that here we are at war and here we are not at war. When old Desnoyers returns to Paris all is just as terrible as it was at Villefranche-sur-Marne, and the fact that because of it Julio turns soldier and goes off to fight for his father’s country and Chichi learns the anguish of love is not the result of a divine accident but of a diabolical one. The young men die in battle, but the women and the old men die just as surely in the battle against unseen, untiring enemies who can never be driven back. Just as Madariaga in his old age gave his heart to Julio, the little wild fearless boy, so does Desnoyers live for his soldier son. Everything is changing, scattering, quaking, he feels that at any moment the earth may be swallowed up, yet he has this instinctive faith, very absurd, very firm that . . . ‘No one will kill him. My heart, which never deceives me, tells me so. . . None will kill him.’ How many fathers in these hideous years have echoed these words? Chica, the anxious sorrowing mother, has her consolations; she can talk, she can go to church, weep, send Julio comforts, but the father’s worn-out old heart beats only to ‘my son, my son.’ And Julio is killed. The last chapter describes a visit by the Desnoyers family to the battlefield where Julio is buried: Tombs . . . tombs on all sides! The white locusts of death were swarming over the entire countryside. There was no corner free from their quivering wings. The recently ploughed earth, the yellowing roads, the dark woodland, everything was pulsating in unresting undulation. The soil seemed to be clamouring, and its words were the vibrations of the restless little flags. . .
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The father was staring at the rustic grave in dumb amazement. His son was there, there forever! . . . and he would never see him again! He imagined him sleeping unshrouded below, in direct contact with the earth, just as Death had surprised him in his miserable and heroic old uniform.
All was ended. ‘The Four Horsemen’ is not a subtle novel; the characters are simple, their emotions are simple and direct. But however complicated our acquired existence may be, we are, when the last clever word has been spoken, simple creatures. Living in this dishonourable age, it is a strange, great relief to us to have that simplicity recognized so nobly by Señor Ibañez.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4654, 11 July 1919, p. 591. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis was first published in Spanish in 1916. Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867–1928) was a journalist, politician and novelist; his name is mis-spelt Vincente Blasco Ibañez in the review. The film of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, made by Rex Ingram in 1921, brought Rudolph Valentino to stardom. 2. Charlotte Brewster Jordan (1862–c. 1932), an American writer, was the otherwise unacknowledged translator of The Four Horsemen.
A Novel of Suspense THE ESCAPE OF SIR WILLIAM HEANS. By William Hay.1 (Allen & Unwin. 10s 6d. net.)
It is strange how content most writers are to ignore the influence of the weather upon the feelings and the emotions of their characters, or, if they do not ignore it, to treat it, except in its most obvious manifestations – ‘she felt happy because the sun was shining’– ‘the dull day served but to heighten his depression’– as something of very little importance, something quite separate and apart. But by ‘the weather’ we do not mean a kind of ocean at our feet, with broad effects of light and shadow, into which we can plunge or not plunge, at will; we mean an external atmosphere which is in harmony or discordant with a state of soul; poet’s weather, perhaps we might call it. But why not prose-writer’s weather, too? Why indeed! Are not your poet and your writer of prose faced with exactly the same problem? Can we of this age go on being content with stories and sketches and impres-
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sions and novels which are less than adventures of the soul? It is all so wearying, so wearying – this vision of the happy or unhappy pair or company, driving through the exhibition, meeting with adventures on the way and so safe home, or not safe home, at last. How can anything not trivial happen while the author still thinks it necessary to drive them at such a pace? Why will he not see that we would rather – far rather – they stayed at home, mysteriously themselves, with time to be conscious, in the deepest, richest sense, of what is happening to them . . . Then, indeed, as in the stories of Tchehov, we should become aware of the rain pattering on the roof all night long, of the languid, feverish wind, of the moonlit orchard and the first snow, passionately realized, not indeed as analogous to a state of mind, but as linking that mind to the larger whole. In ‘The Escape of Sir William Heans’ Mr. Hay has made the most of a curious and unusual opportunity to exploit this method. The scene of his story is Hobart, Tasmania; the time, between 1830 and 1840, when that place was a ‘thriving’ convict settlement; and the plot – how Sir William Heans, an English gentleman, transported for a crime against society, finds his captivity insupportable and makes three attempts at escape, of which the third is successful. But this simple plot is only the stem pushing up painfully into the forbidden light; from it there grow many dark, intricate branches and ashy fruits; the half-blind little girl, Abelia, clings to it, smothering and pale, like a clematis, and always wandering near there is the old native woman Conapanny, with her hidden bracelet of black hair. Nevertheless, the figure of Sir William is always the outstanding one, and the author is so faithful to his state of mind that there are moments when he feels that all else that happens is a dream, dreamed by the prisoner as he sat staring at an opaque glass window, seven by three, and crossed with iron bars. For that which is peculiar to the book is the persistent and dreadful sense of imprisonment. Hobart itself, locked in its pretty harbour and hemmed in on either side by huge tangled forests, is the first of a series of ‘boxes,’ each one a little smaller, a little narrower and tighter than the one that went before. Even the small official society with its convict servants, its precautions against escaped prisoners and its continual gossip about prison affairs is not ‘free’; an innocent gathering becomes a plot, with its victim, its watcher and its spy; they arrange a dance, and in the middle of the dancing a shot is heard, and a whisper goes round that someone has been killed upstairs – nobody knows who . . . But the abiding impression is the horrible light in which poor Sir William sees this crude new town, half full of corrupt, filthy men, with its prisons and gaolers, and police patrols and natural defences of giant bush. All is bathed in the unendurable half-light and flicker that
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comes before a storm: great puffs of wind blow through the book, the sea arises, tossing and shaking – and the storm never breaks. Those who have lived in the Antipodes know such days – days of waiting for the storm to break, of getting up to another day of wind, of watching the strange divided pallor and darkness, of tearing voices, nervous, agitated, shouting against the wind. One feels that at any moment anything may happen – and nothing happens. Until at last when the storm does come its violence is almost a relief – a calm. So, when Sir William finally escapes, his ordeal and his sufferings in the bush seem quite simple and endurable. We almost lose sight of him before he reaches the Bay, where the little broken-down ship sails in at last to rescue him. The suspense is over, and with it, in a way, everything is over. It was a moment therefore of intense relief when the ship jibbed about and moved imperceptibly away on the south-eastern tack. Slowly the sound of the waterfall softened, and slowly the great walls dimmed over the silent pool, and slowly they shrank under the wings and pinnacles of the forests, while these with their thousand shouldering sentinels slowly – very slowly – softened in the smoke of morning.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4655, 18 July 1919, p. 622. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. William Hay (1875–1945) was an Australian author, whose fiction often concerned convict history.
A Sailor’s Home Dehan (Richard).1 A SAILOR’S HOME. Heinemann, 1919. 8 in. 319 pp., 7/n.
Written in the effortless, familiar style characteristic of magazine literature, these short stories are practically undistinguishable from hundreds of their kind. The author has evidently relied upon her large and loyal public being in holiday mood, for she has not troubled to create a new character, a new scene or a new situation. The comic sailor-man, elderly spinster, curate, stepmother – all are present; there are jokes about sitting on wasps’ nests or falling back on spittoons; there is an illiterate confession or two written in comic spelling, a fine lady or two living in Jacobean halls and a highly-coloured picture of a
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little girl’s adventure with our king. In fact, there is every reason why ‘A Sailor’s Home’ should be one of the great successes of the seaside circulating library.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4655, 18 July 1919, p. 639. Unsigned. 1. Richard Dehan was the pseudonym of Clotilde Graves (1863–1932), an Irish journalist, dramatist and writer of fiction.
Anodyne CRABTREE HOUSE. By Howel Evans. (Grant Richards. 7s. net.)
What is a ‘sweetly pretty’ novel? Standing in the library waiting for the book which never is in, we are constantly hearing this term of recommendation used by a certain type of young lady. ‘Oh, do read “Room for Two.” Of course “The Fireplace” is interesting and awfully thrilling and exciting, but it is not sweetly pretty.’ And the sweetly pretty book wins the day. We imagine it is a novel which sets out to prove that the only form of government is government by the heart alone, and for the heart alone. There is a dreadful black monster, a kind of wild bull, looking over the fence at the innocent undefended pic-nic and plotting and planning how he may come in and upset and trample all – it is in the mind. Beware of it. Have nothing to do with it. Shun it as you would your mortal enemy. The innocent, the simple, the loyal, the trusty, the faithful, the uncomplaining – all, all are children of the heart. Have they ever plotted and planned, ever lain tossing through the dark hours – and thinking; ever smiled strangely and disappeared; ever slunk down narrow streets muttering something and frowning? Never! These are the habits of villains, of schemers, adventurers and clever men – these are the signs by which ye may know the children of the mind. If the mind triumphs – where is your happy ending? And as we understand the sweetly pretty novel it is part of its ‘appeal’ that you are never out of sight of the happy ending from the very first page. Your faith is tried, but not unduly tried; the boat may rock a little and a dash or two of spray come over, but you are never out of harbour – never so much as turned towards the open sea. Poor little human beings! From the success of the sweetly pretty novel one may learn how difficult it is for them to keep their faith intact in the triumph of good over evil. What consolation to turn from the every-day world with its obscure processes and its happy
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endings so remarkably well hidden to another existence where every other moment they may have the comfort of crying: ‘There now! I knew that was going to happen!’ What the outside reader does feel inclined to question is whether the simple people need be so incredibly simple and the innocent characters innocent to imbecility. The heroine of ‘Crabtree House,’ for instance, at the age of nineteen when about to tell her father that her young man wishes to marry her, goes to these lengths: ‘ . . . and Dad –’ Rosie came up and fingered her father’s collar, and put his tie straight and whispered a little shyly: ‘ he–he–he’s been asking me when–when it’s to be. You know what I mean, Dad, don’t you? And I said, well, that–he–I–he–we must ask you, Dad. Don’t you see?’
That is hard enough to bear. But when Rose delivers herself later of: ‘But there, I won’t speak any more of that, Daddy . . . I know it only makes you sad, and Daddie – may I – may I, to-night, like I used to when I was a little girl, and you used to call me Goldilocks, may I say my prayers on your knees?’ Amos could only smooth that silken hair once more; he could not trust himself to answer; and Rosie knelt at her father’s knees and with eyes shut and hands folded prayed in silence . . .
we seem to hear the ‘Broken Melody’ as we read and the waves beating against the Eastbourne Pier. Let us be grateful to Mr. Howel Evans that we are not with Rosie and her husband in the early months of their wedded life when Rosie is caught hemming an infinitesimal garment . . . But apart from this embarrassing exaggeration of the characters’ heavenly qualities ‘Crabtree House’ is as nice an example of the sweetly pretty novel as you might wish to find. Heart and mind are nicely balanced against each other, and though you would not doubt the issue of the fight, you cannot be absolutely certain how the victory will be obtained, and so – you read on.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4656, 25 July 1919, p. 654. NN. Signed: K. M.
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A ‘Poser’ THE LAND THEY LOVED. By G. D. Cummins.1 (Macmillan. 6s. net.)
A woman is standing on the deck of an Atlantic liner, straining to catch the first glimpse of the Irish coast. She is ‘nearly five foot eight in height, with handsome features and a stately carriage . . . with this straightness of carriage there was a looseness of limb, a certain deft grace in all her movements, that made her a remarkable figure . . .’ We are told that she has come home because of a craving in her blood for the fields and wide spaces, because she was conscious that any life away from Ireland could never satisfy her profoundly. Whence exactly came these strange urgings of the spirit she did not know, but they were strong enough to drive her back to her brother’s farm . . . ‘The memory of old forgotten times came drifting back to her from the outlying spaces of her mind as she watched and waited now.’ Thinking of the joy of working in the field again, of the warm welcome awaiting her from her brother Denis and Aunt Maggie, Kate Carmody wept tears of joy. And all happened just as she had expected – if anything, better than she had expected. For the war had brought prosperity to Droumavalla; the seven fat years seemed to be there. On the evening of her return, Kate went for a walk alone, and overcome she ‘knelt down and took up a little of the earth, cradling it for a moment in the palms of her hands and then letting it slip slowly through her fingers. Ah! how she loved the land . . .’ There is one difference. Many of the boys are gone to fight; her two boon companions, Steve and Michael Turpin, both are dead – one in France, one, a Sinn Feiner, killed in the Dublin rebellion. Only one brother, Eugene, is left, and he is lamed from a hurley match. This is a terrible shock to Kate. Dimly she had always thought that one day she would marry Steve or Michael; it is more terrible still for her to find that Eugene is a weak creature, father-ridden, obedient as a dog to his bullying old father for fear that the old man will leave the farm away from him. For, like Kate, Eugene has one passion. It is for the land. Nevertheless, he has the courage to ask Kate to marry him; but although she is tempted to, because of the part of him that is like his darling brothers, his cowardice and weakness shame her. She’ll never marry any but ‘a whole man.’ So far, Mr. Cummins succeeds in conveying, with astonishing ease and freshness, the charm of that country. As we read we seem to wade into its flowering beauty and warmth until we are lost like children wading in a ripe meadow. Sharply he pulls us up. No, Kate won’t have Eugene; she won’t stay in Droumavalla. Off she goes to
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Dublin, and after a series of gloomy vicissitudes, she takes a position as cook at a salary of eighteen pounds a year, becomes very proud of having a fat policeman in her kitchen, devours servants’ novelettes, and on her marketing jaunts is thrilled to the marrow by salmonpink dinner-blouses in a dingy draper’s. Good-bye to the land. Here is the area gate – the butcher’s boy and the baker’s boy. Here’s for high tragedy the fact she can’t get all the sugar she wants for her tea. There is a last act when, finding she does not really love the policeman, she hands him over to the housemaid, and returns to the farm to find Eugene’s old father dead, and Eugene a changed man – a whole man, the biggest man in the district, and still wishful to marry her. Kate found it difficult to realize she had got back to the old life, and that her future would be lived with the man who walked beside her, this man who was so beautiful, so gentle, and yet so strong.
We find it incredibly difficult to understand why Mr. Cummins ruined so promising a book by ever taking her away from it.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4657, 1 August 1919, p. 687. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. ‘Mr.’ Cummins was, in fact, Geraldine Dorothy Cummins (1890–1969), an Irish spiritualist medium, novelist and playwright, whose fiction at this period focused on a naturalistic account of Irish working-class life.
A Backward Glance THE ARROW OF GOLD. By Joseph Conrad.1 (Fisher Unwin. 8s. net.)
As we read Mr. Conrad’s latest published book we find ourselves wishing once again that it were a common practice among authors to let us know the year in which a book is begun and ended. This, of course, applies only to writers whose work does show very marked signs of progression, development, and expansion. The others, that large band who will guarantee to produce the same thrill with variations for you once, twice, or thrice yearly, do not count. For their great aim is never to show a sign of change – to make their next novel as good as their last, but no better – to take their readers for an excursion, as it were, but always to put up at the same hotel, where they know the waiters’ faces, and the way to the bathroom, and the shape of the biscuits that accompany the cheese.
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But perhaps your real writer would retort that this was precisely the business of the critic – to be able to see, at a glance almost, what place this or that novel filled in the growing chain. Our reply would be that the spirit of the age is against us; it is an uneasy, disintegrating, experimental spirit, and there are moments, as, for instance, the moment after reading the ‘Arrow of Gold,’ when it shakes us into wishing that Mr. Conrad had just added those four figures, thereby putting out once and for all that tiny flicker of dismay. But – away with it! It is impossible not to believe that he has had this particular novel in the cellar for a considerable time – this sweet, sparkling, heady mixture in the strange-shaped bottle with the fantastic label. How does it stand being held up to the light, tasted, sipped, and compared with those dark foreign beverages with which he has made us so familiar? The tale is told by a young man who confesses to being, at the time, ‘inconceivably young – still beautifully unthinking – infinitely receptive.’ Lonely and sober, at Carnival time in Marseilles he chums up with two remarkable gentlemen; one Captain Blunt: ‘eminently elegant,’ and the other a robust, fair little man in clothes too tight for him, a Mr. Mills. They are both connected with the plot to put Don Carlos on the throne of Spain – Blunt as a soldier, and Mills as a gun-runner; and the talk between these three comparative strangers is of the ship loaded with contraband which Mills brought from the Clyde, how it was chased by a republican gunboat and stranded, and whether it would be possible to escape the vigilance of the French Customs authorities and salve the cargo for the cause. The French Customs cannot be bribed, but a mere hint from high quarters . . . and here Captain Blunt ‘let fall casually the words, “She will manage it for you quite easily.”’ ‘She’ is the femme fatale, the woman of all times, the Old Enchantress, the idol before whom no man can do aught but worship, the Eternal Feminine, Donna Rita, woman. During the night the two friends tell their young acquaintance her incredible story, and even arrange that he shall meet her next day at luncheon. This is her incredible story. When scarcely more than a child she was found in a robe à deux sous with a hole in her stocking, sitting with her feet in the damp grass, by an eccentric personality, a man of immense wealth and power, a collector of priceless possessions, and a painter. In something less than a year and a half he brought her to Paris, and the first morning he took her riding an old sculptor greeted her and asked if ‘I might finish my artist’s life with your face; but I shall want a piece of those shoulders too . . . I can see through the cloth they are divine. . . Yes, I will do your head and then – nunc dimittis.’ ‘These,’ says Captain Blunt, ‘are the first words with which the world greeted her, or should I say civilization did . . .’
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For four years she holds her court in the pavilion at Passy, treated, as she says, ‘as if I had been a precious object in a collection, an ivory carving, or a piece of Chinese embroidery,’ and all the great ones of the modern world pass in review before her. Then her protector dies, leaving her his fortune, his collections, his four houses, but not one ‘woman soul’ to whom she might turn, who would at least ‘have put her on her guard.’ There is a tragedy out of which she emerged, unspotted but more famous still, and a great, great power. Why is she, too, anxious Don Carlos should have his crown? We are not told. The new young man, who takes the name of Monsieur George, joins the conspiracy, and lays his life at Donna Rita’s feet. From the moment he sees her coming down the crimson staircase all is over with the young man. He cannot find words big enough, bright enough, strong enough with which to describe that vision – ‘the delicate carnation of that face, which, after the first glance given to the whole person, drew irresistibly your gaze to itself by an indefinable quality of charm beyond all analysis, and made you think of remote races, of strange generations, of the faces of women sculptured on immemorial monuments. . . . . . She said to us, ‘I am sorry I kept you waiting.’ Her voice was low-pitched, penetrating, and of the most seductive gentleness. . . . . . . Next moment she caught sight of some envelopes lying on the round marble-topped table . . . She seized one of them, with a wonderfully quick, almost feline movement. . . . Her widened eyes stared at the paper. Mr. Blunt threw one of the doors open, but before we passed through we heard a petulant exclamation accompanied by childlike stamping with both feet, and ending in a laugh which had in it a note of contempt.
We have quoted this to show how complete a femme fatale Donna Rita was, how absolutely true to type. Where shall we look for a creature more richly equipped with all the allurements and fascinations? The plot moves on. Blunt flashes his teeth, Mills disappears, Donna Rita’s inscrutable maid grows in inscrutability, a group of preposterous creatures move within its circle – they are there – they are gone – Monsieur George succeeds in adventure and almost succeeds in love – until there is a crisis so fantastical that we cannot but fancy Mr. Conrad of to-day smiling at its stage horrors. Out of the murderous clutch of a little man who loved her in her wild childhood and has haunted her ever since, a little man with whiskers ‘black and cut somewhat in the shape of a shark’s fin, and so very fine that the least breath of air animated them into a sort of playful restlessness,’
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Monsieur George bears her away to a villa ‘embowered in roses,’ and to six months of happy love. But then Monsieur George is called upon to fight a duel with Captain Blunt, and when he recovers of his wound it is to find that the femme fatale, simply because she is a femme fatale, has forsaken him, leaving behind her for remembrance the arrow of gold. This example of Mr. Conrad in search of himself, Mr. Conrad, a pioneer, surveying the rich untravelled forest landscape of his mind, is extraordinarily revealing. When we think of his fine economy of expression, his spare use of gesture, his power of conveying the mystery of another’s being, and contrast it with: She listened to me, unreadable, unmoved, narrowed eyes, closed lips, slightly flushed face, as if carved six thousand years ago in order to fix for ever that something secret and obscure which is in all women. Not the gross immobility of a sphinx proposing roadside riddles, but the finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful figure seated at the very source of the passions that have moved men from the dawn of ages . . .
– we are amazed to think of the effort it has cost him to clear that wild luxurious country and to build thereupon his dignified stronghold.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4658, 8 August 1919, p. 720. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. The Polish author Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) published The Arrow of Gold in 1919 but also in serial form in Lloyd’s Magazine between December 1918 and February 1920. He was renowned as the author of such innovative, darkly comic and penetrating novels as Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and The Secret Agent.
Mr. Walpole in the Nursery JEREMY. By Hugh Walpole.1 (Cassell. 7s. net.)
‘I am determined,’ says the author, ‘to give the truth and nothing but the truth about the years of Jeremy’s life that I am describing.’ Jeremy Cole is a normal little English boy of eight. ‘Sausages!’ He was across the floor in a moment, had thrown off his nightshirt, and was in his bath. Sausages! He was translated into a world of excitement and splendour. They had sausages so seldom, not always even
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on birthdays, and to-day, on a cold morning, with a crackling fire and marmalade . . . Oh, he was happy.
Later that same day he is told that next year he is to go to school. . . . ‘School!’ he turned upon her, his eyes wide and staring. ‘School!’ he turned on them all. The word tumbled from him. In his soul was a confusion of triumph and dismay, of excitement and loneliness, of the sudden falling from him of all old standards, old horizons, of pride and humility.
A week or two passes, and he is punished for telling a lie by not being allowed to go to the pantomime. At that judgment a quiver for an instant held Jeremy’s face, turning it, for that moment, into something shapeless and old. His heart had given a wild leap of terror and dismay. But he showed no further sign . . . The day dragged its weary length along . . . Once or twice the Jampot tried to penetrate behind that little mask of anger and dismay.
Spring comes. Our eight-year-old leans from the window; ‘beneath the rind of the soil he could feel the pushing, heaving life struggling to answer the call of the sun above it.’ And Summer. When, as he drove to the holiday farm, ‘the wind blew across the moor, with the smell of sea-pinks and sea gulls in it.’ When, upon his arrival, his happiness was almost intolerable; he could not speak, he could not move, and in the heart of his happiness there was a strange unhappiness that he had never known before . . . so that he felt like a stranger who was seeing his father or his mother or his aunt for the first time.
We confess we had no idea, until Mr. Walpole put it to us in such good round terms, that a perfectly normal little boy of eight thought and felt like this, especially when, as in the case of this little hero, his external existence was so insufferably dull, tepid, and stodgy. Jeremy and his sisters spent half their time going for walks with an imbecile old nurse and later with an imbecile old governess, and the other half sitting in the nursery either being good or not being good. Their father, the Rev. Herbert Cole, was an ‘excellent father,’ but ‘the parish absorbed too much of his time to allow for intimacies’; their mother, ‘the most placid woman in Europe,’ they saw for half-an-hour before bedtime. We are given no sign that the children had any part in the life of the house or any real rich life of their own. Their little thrills, excitements and alarms all seem
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to have happened between meals, between bacon and strawberry jam, or treacle pudding, or fish pie, or the famous sausages, or saffron buns – a difficult diet to be gay upon. No wonder there are moments when poor Jeremy forgets his spring fancies and sighs – ‘I’d like to eat jam and jam – lots of it,’ he thought. ‘It would be fun to be sick . . .’ But for all the author’s determination, ‘the truth and nothing but the truth’ does not shine through the small heart he would explore. There is, however, no doubt that he enjoyed writing his book. He positively gambols. Her teeth clicked as always when her temper was roused, the reason being that thirty years ago the arts and accomplishments of dentistry had not reached so fine a perfection as to-day can show. She had, moreover, bought a cheap set. Her teeth clicked.
As for the publisher, he will stand no nonsense from anybody. Jeremy is, indeed, one of the finest child characters ever presented, and in him Mr. Walpole has achieved a triumph.
What is our appropriate geste as we bow ourselves out?
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4659, 15 August 1919, p. 752. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Hugh Walpole (1884–1941) was a New Zealand-born novelist who enjoyed popular success but whose critical reputation declined in the 1930s.
Sans Merci THE TENDER CONSCIENCE. By Bohun Lynch.1 (Secker. 7s. net.)
To be a young man with agreeable manners, a tender heart, a large unearned income, and a passion for nothing in particular, is to be a young man doomed. . . . . . Here he comes, sauntering along the sunny side, laughing, looking his fill at the queer things and the delightful things displayed, making friends at a glance, sunning himself, wondering as he jingles the money whether or no he shall spend it, and blissfully unaware of Life, peering at him from behind the lifted blind, waiting for the moment when, all at once, some one’s shouting, he’s
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been cheated, he’s being accused, they are pointing at him, the sun’s gone in. Until there comes a grim figure to lead him away and she lets the blind fall, muttering in her wicked old triumph: ‘I knew it. I could have told you from the moment I set eyes on him. . . .’ This is an everyday occurrence in fiction as well as in life. But while we do not expect the victim to know, at any rate until long after the event, how or why he was captured, we do ask of our author that he should have been on the spot and the witness of every slightest move. Here, surely, is his golden opportunity of engaging our sympathetic attention, of conveying to us the innocence or the stupidity of his hero, of, at least, presenting him to us in the very centre of the stage, and making us feel how tremendously important it is that he should escape. Mr. Lynch, who has chosen this theme for ‘The Tender Conscience,’ withholds the account of his young hero’s capture until chapter seven. Then he relates it, retrospectively, we must confess, to our extreme confusion. The book opens with an account of the convalescence after shell-shock of Jimmy Guise at his sister’s home in the country. Bathing, and chopping down trees, and playing with the houseful of small children bores Jimmy’s wife, who wants – ‘London, chocolates – and some cushions . . . . and papers first thing in the morning, and air raids, I expect.’ So back her adoring husband goes, and because there is a war on, he, who has never done a stroke of work in his life, enters a Government department – again for Blanche’s sake. . . . . Blanche with her lovely helplessness, her charming ennui, her delicious clothes, her exquisite refinement, her loveliness.
Time passes. With the death of one of his friends at the front Jimmy is reminded of a very horrible episode which happened before he and Blanche were ‘properly’ married. They had supper one Boat-Race Night with three of Jimmy’s friends, and under the influence of the wine, he confessed that Blanche was not really his wife. Blanche had never noticed, but ever since then, ‘for her sake,’ he has been haunted – which brings us to chapter seven and the episode in Athens where Jimmy, travelling alone, picks up with a guide who gives him the history of the little lady with dark-red hair married to an obese old Greek. The guide does not spare her, even to a description of how he’d met her in London when she had a ‘very fine mash,’ and there is no hint that the lady is anything but bored. But fine, sensitive, lovable, chivalric Jimmy is determined to save her, and she to catch him. They engage a lawyer (the old Greek is only too willing), and while the entanglement is dissolved they live together in Provence and Paris and London. Thus, to the dismay of all his friends, is Jimmy captured by a woman who, for all that bewildering description of her charms, does
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not want a home, hates children, enjoys the society of women of filthy reputations, and talks in this strain: ‘I must finish that fatuous book. Such tripe you never! I think I shall slip on a cloak and go for a walk, and I shall probably get off with a nice young man.’
He suggests she should accompany him, and she is agreeable. ‘It’s no good being so mighty particular in these days – so long as I don’t meet hairy men who smell of beer.’ Frankly, there is not a single hint given why this promiscuous little rowdy should ever have captured this young man; and the idea that she should care whether four young men knew she was not churchmarried is so preposterous that Jimmy in his agony becomes a figure in the laughing-stocks of our imagination. Mr. Lynch cannot pretend there is a key in such a prison-door; there is indeed no prison – but only a lady with orchids, who never ought to have been there, disappearing to the right, and a thin girl with a baby carriage entering timid.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4660, 22 August 1919, pp. 782–3. Signed: K. M. 1. John Gilbert Bohun Lynch (1884–1928) was a caricaturist, and wrote on art and on boxing, as well as writing novels in a range of genres including science fiction.
Hand Made STORM IN A TEACUP. By Eden Phillpotts.1 (Heinemann. 7s. net.)
There were two suitors for Medora’s hand: one, Jordan Kellock, a sober, earnest-minded young Socialist, who ‘wanted to leave the world better than he found it’; the other, Ned Dingle, a simple, happygo-lucky fellow, fond of a laugh, and of fishing and shooting. Medora chose Ned Dingle, and chose quite rightly; he was her very man. But she would have liked to have Kellock, too. For she was one of that vast number of young women who have no real individual being and no convictions – save that they could be an inspiration and a star to any number of entirely different young men. What tragedy, then, to be married to one who is arrogant (and loving) enough to imagine that he has the whole of her, who would even laugh to scorn the notion of those undiscovered mines of varied treasure . . .
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Such simplicity and uprightness not only exasperated Medora, but succeeded in pushing into the free air and light her preposterous flowers of longing. Ned wasn’t good enough for her, and Kellock was a saint of a man and far above her. This changed, as she brooded over it, into: Ned was horrible to her, and Kellock alone could save. Up they came, the false feelings, so strong and so sturdy that they seemed out of her control; they seemed real and none of her planting. Until Ned Dingle was a villain who beat his wife and all Kellock could do was to take her away and promise her marriage as soon as they were ‘free.’ But instead of the fine adventure she had anticipated, the going away proved a rod that beat Medora back into her senses. For Kellock held her in such reverence as a poor martyr with the almost divine courage to leave all and come to him that it was easy for him to treat her as a sister while they waited for their freedom. Then Medora turned and twisted, threw him the ugly mask she had worn and went back to her husband, positively refreshed by the affair, with the renewed love of life and gaiety and gentleness of a convalescent. The ‘Storm in a Teacup’ rages in a little village on a hillside, on the banks of the river Dart. The little village is full of life, for above the small neat houses lying in their gardens and smothering apple orchards there rises a huge building – Dene Mill – where beautiful hand-made paper is produced. The conditions necessary to its production are good air, sunlight, running water, exquisite cleanliness, and above all honest workmen who not only take a pride in their craft, but are eager for the reputation of their mill. This engaging state of affairs sounds fantastic, nowadays, yet Mr. Phillpotts, by describing every separate stage of manufacture, bringing us in touch with the men and women engaged, showing us how beautiful is a vat-man’s fine ‘stroke,’ what disaster it were to lose it, succeeds in making us believe in its existence. His three central figures are workers at the mill, and their comedy of character is acted before a shrewd, exacting audience of fellow-workers, admirably portrayed. What an oasis is this in the sooty desert of novels whose milieu is the factory – powerful novels, slices of life, reeking, bawling novels, where the heroine is none the worse for a fight with hatpins against her mother, for preference, and the hero breaks up the home for a burnt bloater!
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4661, 29 August 1919, p. 815. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Eden Phillpotts (1862–1960) wrote many novels set on Dartmoor, and novels set on a background of a particular trade or industry.
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The ‘Sex-Complex’ THE SLEEPING PARTNER. By M. P. Willcocks.1 (Hutchinson. 7s. net.)
If there is one character in modern English fiction whom we wish with all our heart the Boojum2 would call for, it is the man or woman who from childhood up has suffered from what our psycho-analytical skimmings have taught us to call the sex-complex. It were foolish to deny that a large number of young persons have been severely handicapped, not so much by their parents telling them of the cabbage and the angel with a black bag in reply to their infant speculations as by their healthy adolescent curiosity being treated as a disease so disgusting that they must be kept in the dark at all costs and never told the unpleasant – if sacred – truth. But it were equally foolish to deny that the progress towards light of these unfortunate ones makes heavy reading. What we do not know about it is not for want of telling; it has been during the past few years the pet subject of our young writers to break a pen upon. But there is a rarer version: that of the sensitive child cursed with dissolute sex-ridden parents whom only to watch is poison enough, and this it is that Miss Willcocks has chosen. At the age of thirteen, her hero, Silas Brutton, was taken by his foxy old father, Nicky Brutton, the publisher, to see the prisoners at Portland Gaol. And a peculiarly odious servile convict was pointed out to them as having on one and the same evening received chapel membership and criminally assaulted a child. This story Brutton père found admirable . . . ‘as a man of the world the character of the crime tickled his sense of humour . . .’ but the episode infected the boy with the disease which was to ruin more than half his life. From that day he was fit for nothing but to be sickened by what he saw and heard. Life to him was so odious with its ‘human spawning’ and ‘tide of birth’ that when his father died, leaving him the publishing business, he let all slide because of his horror of the kind of stuff – ‘the goat’s foot among the vine leaves’ – that the old man had built his house upon. ‘Warped’ (he cries), ‘of course it’s left me warped. But the worst of it is that in publishing there seems to be no mean between Sunday School piffle and this painted harlotry’ . . .
It is curious that the author seems to find something extraordinarily fine, pitiful and ‘lovable’ in Silas. As for his brother Ned, who wrests the business from him, we are dismally conscious of failing to share the approval of his proper masculinity, his passion for ‘comfort’ (which being interpreted is a natty little woman, rather red in the face, taking a pie out of the oven), his recklessness and jolly way of seeing
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things through. We are to believe that Ned is the kind of man that women adore; he is the big child beating on the table with his spoon who is and ever shall be irresistible. We confess that after we have been forced to watch him at table the whole book through, and then come upon: ‘he had been looking anxiously for that slight ooziness in the middle of the omelet that makes its perfection,’ we wish him dead. But to return to Silas. He finds salvation in a brave, splendid little girl, Nan Carey, whose passion is biology. ‘Look,’ cried she, ‘at the way science gets her own back – after silly vapouring: there she shows the processes of birth and burgeoning, of begetting and conception, from the dance of the atoms to the birth . . . of a child-animal.’ . . . Silas found himself taken right into the inner chamber of his own fears, of his own disgusts. To Nan, the blind principle of fecundity from which he shrank . . . was . . . the ocean of life in which she sported . . .’
This, and a very great deal more of it, convinces him; the stream of life runs fair, ‘while before, as far as he was concerned, it had been stifled in slime.’ ‘And,’ to quote Miss Willcock’s final words, ‘the moon and the stars carried on till the dawn once more snuffed them out.’
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4661, 29 August 1919, p. 816. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Mary Patricia Willcocks (1869–1952) was a suffragette, novelist and biographer who lived in Exeter. 2. ‘Boojum’ is taken from Lewis Carroll’s long poem The Hunting of the Snark – An Agony in Eight Fits (1874). The final fit, ‘The Vanishing’, eads: ‘In the midst of the word he was trying to say, / In the midst of his laughter and glee, / He had softly and suddenly vanished away – / For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.’
Mr. De Morgan’s Last Book THE OLD MADHOUSE. By W. de Morgan.1 (Heinemann. 7/- net.)
At the conclusion of ‘The Old Madhouse’ there is a very illuminating little note by Mrs. de Morgan explaining her husband’s method of working. She relates how he prepared no plot beforehand, but ‘created his characters and then waited for them to act and evolve their own plot . . . he waited, as he expressed it, “to see what they
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would do next.”’ It is not that we consider the method itself unusual or remarkable; but what is peculiar to Mr. de Morgan is the length of time he was prepared to wait, not only his unlimited patience at spiritual railway stations, but the feeling he produces that the waiting, with all its little disturbances and attractions, is really more agreeable than the arrival. In fact the longer he can stave off what Henry James has called ‘the august emergence’2 of his travellers the better he is pleased. Even when it is so long overdue as to cause anxiety and then alarm and then apprehension, he cannot surrender himself fully to these emotions so as to be overcome, but rather, as it were, takes an occasional ‘nip’ at one or the other of them to refresh his excitement and revivify his sense of anticipation. This, of course, makes it impossible for his words to be serious in ‘the grand style’; but his sense of humour is extremely engaging (especially as directed towards youth), his curiosity very reckless and unrestrained, he knows just how large a pinch of sentimentality will stimulate our jaded sympathies, and he has a taking way with the lower orders, with small children and pet animals. Added to these he has a habit, which either you like, or dislike very much, of taking the reader into his confidence, halfnaïvely, half-slyly . . . a kind of ‘But aren’t you yourself completely floored by this disappearance of Doctor Carteret? Can you, for the life of you, imagine what has happened to the old fellow?’ At that the young wild horses will stamp their hoofs and break away from the leisurely hand, but those of us who are inclined to enjoy an occasional small bout of mental convalescence – a day in bed, watching the lights chase the shadows – will suffer this gladly. ‘The Old Madhouse’ is Mr. de Morgan’s last bouquet; Death beckoned before the final blooms had been gathered. How long the novel would have been it were rash to suggest, for there are five hundred and fifty-five pages of it and still the character who disappeared on page twenty-three is not accounted for. He is the Rev. Drury Carteret, a man six foot high, weighing twenty stone, headmaster of a grammar school; a very difficult figure to cause to melt into thin air. Nevertheless the author manages it and most convincingly; now he is there, standing in a passage at The Cedars (commonly known as The Old Madhouse because its last tenant was a doctor who took mental patients), and now he is not there – gone, vanished, never to be seen in the solid flesh again. His only relations appear to be Frederic Carteret, a nephew, whose trustee he is, and Fred’s mother, his sister-in-law, with whom he has been for twenty years and more romantically and hopelessly in love. It was on Fred’s behalf that he was at The Cedars; for Fred (a handsome young fellow of whom all were agreed that if he would only concentrate he could do anything) was about to be married and had chosen the long-deserted house with
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its vast apartments, eighteen bedrooms and dismal reputation as an ideal premier nid – especially when he hits upon the superb idea of sharing it with his great friend Charlie (or Nosey) Smith, who is similarly bound to a beautiful young creature whom he burns to watch walking up and down their own stairs. But Fred’s dream disappears, too, though not so mysteriously. His young woman feels, and quite rightly, that after he has set eyes on Nosey Smith’s Lucy he is never wholly hers again. This is preposterous, but it is true. So Charlie and Lucy buy the Old Madhouse, and Fred, who is, of course, perfectly safe because of his great love for Charlie, spends there all the time that he does not devote to his mother and the search for Uncle Dru. What has happened to him? Why was the body never found? But the only one of them whose anxiety is not mainly curiosity is Mrs. Carteret. Fred feels through her when he is with her, but when he is absent even his interest seems to flag. How, otherwise, could he hear a loud voice calling in the passage where the Doctor was last seen: ‘Come back, Fred!’ and be content with ‘any’ explanation, even when the phenomenon occurs three times? How could he know that the doctor’s ghost, his substantial back view, is seen by nearly everybody, at the same spot, and never attempt to investigate any farther? The truth is that the poor young man is bewitched by a ravishing serpent. Gradually, dreadfully against his will, he is drawn nearer and nearer. There comes a moment when he just escapes being swallowed, and manages to tell his mother, who rushes him to Switzerland, but it is only for a moment. The serpent follows, Fred is eaten, Charlie’s happiness and faith in life destroyed, and Mrs. Carteret’s unhappiness immeasurably increased. In this evil hour the ghost of the lost man not only appears, but is ushered into a little study by the housemaid who takes him for real. He has come, too late, to warn the absent Fred, but it is Charlie who takes the message and is as certain of his reality as the housemaid. His conclusion is that the doctor is mad and must be watched as he leaves the house, but while he is away for three minutes, giving orders to the gardeners to be on the look-out, the inevitable happens. No one is there on his return – no one . . . and here Mr. de Morgan laid aside his pen. So there is in the middle of the picture this immense old hero, avuncular, obese and kindly, leaning on his umbrella, blowing a sostenuto blast on his nose and saying ‘char-char!’ to all the stupid questions. Everything is grouped round him, dependent on him; he is the figure who causes the roundabout to swing and glitter and turn, and yet he is a man of air. His fate is made known to us by Mrs. de Morgan; but how much pleasanter it is to ignore the trap-door, the lunatic bath and the grating, and remain in the dark!
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Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4662, 5 September 1919, p. 846. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. William de Morgan (1839–1917) is best known as a potter and tile designer, who worked for a while with his friend William Morris. He published his first novel, Joseph Vance, in 1906. 2. A quotation from Henry James’s The Golden Bowl (1904), Chapter 42: ‘even going down, for all his princedom, to meet, on the stopping of the chariot, the august emergence’.
A Landscape with Portraits TAMARISK TOWN. By Sheila Kaye-Smith.1 (Cassell. 7s. net.)
Were Miss Kaye-Smith a painter, we should be inclined to say that we do not feel she has yet made up her mind which it is that she wishes most to paint – whether landscape or portraits. Which is it to be? Landscape – the blocking-in of a big difficult scheme, the effort required to make it appear substantial and convincing, the opportunity it gives her for the bold, sweeping line – it is plain to see how strongly this attracts her. Portraits – there is a glamour upon the human beings she chooses which fascinates her, and which she cannot resist. Why should she not be equally at home with both? What is her new novel ‘Tamarisk Town’ but an attempt to see them in relation to each other? And yet, in retrospect, there is her town severely and even powerfully painted, and there are her portraits, on the same canvas, and yet so out of it, so separate that the onlooker’s attention is persistently divided – it flies between the two, and is captured by neither. Her theme is the development of a small Sussex town into a select seaside resort, patronized by the wealthy and aristocratic, not on account of its natural beauties alone, but because of the taste and judgment with which its reformation has been achieved. There is a time when it seems established in its enchanting prosperity for ever, but the hour of its triumph contains the seeds of its downfall. Very gradually, and then more swiftly, it is attacked by vulgarians, who are allowed to have their way, until at the end, wretched, shoddy, decayed little place that it is become, it is the scene of a brawl between drunken trippers. Sic transit gloria Marlingate. It is, of course, absurd to imagine that Marlingate could grow, come to flower, blow to seed, without the aid of man, and yet at the moments when Miss Kaye-Smith is least conscious of the forces that govern it, she is at her happiest. Wandering at will in the Assembly Rooms, in the beautiful little Town Park, along the white, gleaming
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parade, in the woods at French Landing, her style is very natural and unforced, and, until the beginning of the disintegrating process, her touch is light. But, after all, this is only the landscape half. Let us examine the ‘portraits.’ The chief is Edward Monypenny, creator of Marlingate, who, at the age of twenty-eight, is in a position powerful enough to determine the future of the town. This curious young man, with his shock of white hair, coal-black eyes and black side whiskers, is, for all his cynical aloofness, in love with Marlingate; we are to believe that, until he meets with the little wild governess, he has never known what it was to feel for anything more responsive than a new block of houses or a bandstand. But she, Morgan, Morgan le fay,2 running out of the wood with dead leaves in her hair, very nearly makes havoc of his resolute ambition in the old, old way. . . . She had crept towards him, drooping like a wild hyacinth in her blue gown. Then suddenly she flung her body straight, flung back her head, her arms were round him soft and strong as fox-glove stalks, and her hair, falling loose, trailed on his lips till it tasted sweet as syllabub.
But while she is still a woodland elf, his old love wins: He turned back to Marlingate, as a man who has left his work to watch from the window an organ-grinder with a performing monkey turns to his desk again.
Years pass, and all his dreams are realized. Royalty has put its special blessing upon Marlingate, and Monypenny is Mayor, in cocked hat and black and crimson robes. And this is the hour chosen by the enchantress for her return – in scarlet. ‘Crimson and silky, a peony trailing its crinkled petals . . . it came.’ This time the long, slanting eyes eat him up with their spells, and she has her way with him. Then she dropped her sunshade, which rolled in a whirl of scarlet down the slope, like a poppy falling, and stretching out her hands, took his white, struggle-worn face into their cool palms, drawing it down to her silent mouth.
It is a matter for wonder that, in spite of all the many pages describing the progress of their guilty love, in spite of the tremendous pains taken by the author to depict the agonies of Monypenny upon his discovering that sweet Morgan le fay holds in contempt, nay hates, his beloved Marlingate, and the other tremendous pains taken to show Morgan’s despair upon realizing that Edward will not flee with her to foreign
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parts – we are never once moved by these two creatures. Marionettes they are, and marionettes they remain, jigging in a high fierce light that Miss Kaye-Smith would convince us is the fire of passion, until the last puppet-quarrel and the last glimpse of the heroine, ‘half under the water, half trailing on the rock . . . something which, from the top of the cliff, looked like a dead crimson leaf.’ This extreme measure is for love of Monypenny, who, at first, is properly grateful for his freedom. Again he is a man like a town walking, until one day he is filled with the idea that his first love is fattening upon the dead body of his second love, and that, after all, a woman is more to be desired than bricks and mortar. This starts working passion number three – he will kill that which killed her, and so have his revenge. Here, to our thinking, the book ends. All that is going to happen has happened; we are at the top of the hill. Below us lies Marlingate, in its prosperity, ‘lying there licked by the sun,’ and gazed upon by the man who has made it, and is about to unmake it. But the author is, if we may be pardoned the expression, as fresh as when she started. New characters appear – a wife for Monypenny, a little wooden son who has time to grow up and marry the daughter of Morgan le fay (so like, yet so unlike) and to live his father’s history all over again before Marlingate is destroyed. And the years roll by, unbroken, heavy, like waves slapping against the promenade, the vulgar pier, before Miss Kaye-Smith is content to leave Marlingate to its fate. How does it happen that a writer, obviously in love with writing, is yet not curious? This is the abiding impression left us by Miss KayeSmith; she is satisfied to put into the mouths and the hearts and minds of her characters the phrase, the emotion, the thought that ‘fits’ the situation, with the result that it does not seem to matter whether they speak, feel or think. Nothing is gained by it. They are just what they are. The plot’s the thing – and having decided upon it she gets her team together and gives out the parts. There is but to speak them. And into the hand of Morgan le fay she thrusts a scarlet umbrella, she throws a cherry cloak about her and clothes her in a scarlet dress – and sets her going.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4663, 12 September 1919, p. 881. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Sheila Kaye-Smith (1887–1956) was a novelist and poet who lived in Sussex. 2. Morgan le Fay, King Arthur’s half-sister, is a powerful sorceress in the Arthurian legend.
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Lions and Lambs SUSAN LENOX. By David Graham Philips.1 (Appleton. 15s. net.)
It would seem to have been the desire of Mr. Graham Philips to do for his subject, ‘Susan Lenox,’ the same service that Tchehov declared to have been his intention to perform for the subject of ‘Ivanov.’ 2 With his ‘Ivanov’ he wanted to put an end, once and for all, to a typical character – that of the suppressed, melancholy man, the failure, the half-cynical unfortunate, rejected by life, but acclaimed by modern Russian literature as the child of the age. The method he chose was to write a play whose hero was the embodiment not only of all these known characteristics, but of all possible developments of which they might be the fruitful soil. Feeling as he did that ‘Ivanov’ was the vague, easy temptation for Russian writers to yield to, he wished to leave nothing undiscovered, nothing unremarked, so that this subject at least, after his treatment of it, should be ‘out of court.’ Now the chief concern of modern American fiction, as far as our knowledge of it goes, is sex. It is not treated humorously, as in France, or intensely, as in England; it is treated seriously. There are many moments when our American cousin makes us feel we are only foolish, inexperienced children as far as this great subject is concerned. We are David and Dora,3 giving each other bouquets, and laughing and loving, and kissing the little dog and kissing each other, and America is the grim Julia with her ‘Play on, ye may-flies.’ 4 But, after all, the cause of Julia’s disillusionment was never quite plain, and the reason for America’s is right there, to be picked up in the next magazine you open: it is the ferocity of man. Make no mistake about it, man, whatever disguise he may affect, however young, husky and brilliant he may be, however old, senile and ugly, from the millionaire downwards, is nothing but a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. It is not his fault; he may resist it; he may put up the most devastating fight while the lights of little old New York burn as brightly as ever; he may read poetry, weep, or, grim-faced, in his revolving chair with telephone attached, before his immense roll-top bureau, he may make a vow, before the photograph of a sweet-faced little woman with white hair, to see this thing through. A lion or a lion manqué he remains. On the other hand, he may not resist it; and then his wildness and capacity for devouring are more terrific than anything Europe has encountered. As is usual in such cases, to get the full fine flavour of the hunting you must sing the innocence and tenderness of the prey. The American young girl – the Bud – the Millionaire’s daughter who has never grown up – how well we know her! How exquisite she is! how
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fresh! how new to the light! What a sight, growing and blowing in Momma and Poppa’s garden, for the wicked lion as he peeps through a hole in the garden wall! All this the magazine and the novel are founded on. But, after all, they have never done more than treat of one particular example at a time of villainy and innocence. Each American writer has been content with his corner of the hunting field, and disinclined to wander, though all have been united into one great company over the choice of subject, the lamb fleeing the lion. We imagine that Mr. Graham Philips, after a grand survey, has sickened of modern America’s typical characters as Tchehov wearied. And so he has given us, in two packed volumes, Susan Lenox. He has taken his time; he has not faltered. There is not a corner of the vast ground, not a pit, not a slimy ditch, not a stinking heap, not a glittering restaurant, that he has left unprobed. Man, the lion, roars, and Susan, sweet, pure, with her white swelling bosom, her alluring ankles and eyes that are now grey, now deepest violet, flees. . . . There may be perhaps a question whether Tchehov has succeeded in doing what he set out to do. But in the case of the American author there can be no doubt, no shadow of doubt whatever.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4664, 19 September 1919, p. 915. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. David Graham Phillips (1867–1911) was an American investigative journalist and novelist whose name is misspelt in the review; he was shot by a paranoid violinist who imagined that his family was being traduced in one of Phillips’s novels. Phillips’s sister arranged for the posthumous publication of Susan Lenox, which was made into an MGM film in 1931 starring Clark Gable and Greta Garbo. 2. A four-act play first performed in 1887. 3. The central character, his first wife, Dora, and her dog, Jip, in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850). 4. Julia Mills, Dora’s stern friend.
Dea Ex Machina A MAN AND HIS LESSON. By W. B. Maxwell.1 (Hutchinson. 6s. 9d. net.)
Those readers who are accustomed to, and, indeed, confess a fondness for, the delicate preliminaries of a performance – the light rush of arpeggios, the few inquiring chords, the little silence – will find
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themselves strangely shaken and surprised by the first chapter of ‘A Man and his Lesson.’ Alas, poor souls! they will barely have settled themselves, barely have furled their fans and opened their programmes before p. 14, and there is the hero standing up and bowing, the heroine looking back at him from the doorway, kissing the tips of her fingers, their grande passion, that only began on page 5, enjoyed and resigned, and the first item on the programme, in fact, over and done with. Certainly, the circumstances were exceptional. Bryan Vaile, playwright and barrister, did not start life until the age of thirty-three. ‘Till then all had been colourless.’ Then, for no reason he could explain, the world smiled and he plunged – into the blue-blooded sea of London aristocracy. The mermaid, the siren who lifted a white arm to him, was Diana Kenion, the greatest beauty and the most celebrated young woman in Mayfair. Tall, slender, exquisite – a nymph in blue gauze, charming the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury, painters and poets, alike, she had but to beckon. After being with her ‘he was like a mortal emptied and exhausted by divine excesses. He was not an ordinary young man going home to bed – he had fallen from Olympian heights . . .’ But she cannot understand why he has not a telephone. He has one installed. And sometimes she rings him up very early in the morning, and ‘while he listened he thought of her standing with sandled feet among daffodils . . . with the sunbeams touching her bare arm and neck . . .’ And her telephone? Or late at night when ‘he heard her give a little sigh that was like a breath of air in the foliage of the dark grove where she was lying down to rest.’ With her telephone? And she cannot understand why he has no money. If he had made a real success . . . ‘Oh, how I would shove you along!’ But he has not made it and she loves money, so ‘Good-bye’ it must be, and ‘Good-bye’ it is. With the exit of Diana the pace becomes more normal. The scene is Bournemouth and the heroine is Mabel, warm and plump and brown. This time he is her Diana, her hero, her knight who cuts the cords that bind the young girl to the tree, and he treats her as Diana had treated him. No, for at heart he is ‘not a bad sort really,’ and so they marry, and acquire children, money, success, a house in Regent’s Park and quite a number of friends. ‘On a warm July Sunday there would be sometimes as many as a hundred and fifty or two hundred people in the garden.’ We do not know to what extent Mabel and Bryan enjoyed these parties, but the author simply cannot tear himself away. ‘The Man and his Lesson’ fade and are forgotten while he shows us round the garden, introducing, explaining, and crying the delightful news that ‘Mr. Odo Mainz, the composer, with his wife and clever, charming daughters, came frequently, but never as frequently as his
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hosts would wish,’ etc., until, nobly sacrificing his enjoyment, he produces ‘on a patch of gravel in front of the verandah’ Diana again, now the wife of the Duke of Middlesborough. But this time there is Mabel, the sanctity of home life, his reputation, the good opinion of London’s dramatic critics to be considered; Diana has to use her telephone quite desperately before he is won back. Four days and nights of bliss, and he returns to Mabel and the children a ruined man, determined to take veronal before his disgrace is made known. But in that dark hour the housemaid brings in the Daily Mail – and war is declared between England and Germany. Hurrah for August, 1914! He is saved. Off he goes to be honourably killed. Off he goes to the greatest of all garden parties – and this time there is no doubt as to his enjoying himself. War has its black side, but the lessons – the lessons it teaches a man! Where else shall a man learn the value of brotherly love, the wisdom and friendliness of the generals at the Base, the beauty of Mr. Lloyd George’s phrase ‘the War to end war,’ the solid worth and charm of a London restaurant, a London club, a London theatre? Diana died while the garden party was at its liveliest, and Vaile was thus freed to live, to be wounded, to confess his fault to Mabel, and to be forgiven. So, after having ‘come out again to the grand old task,’ to ‘strike another blow for England and the cause,’ Bryan Vaile is free to go home, having learned his last and greatest lesson, which is never to answer the telephone again.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4665, 26 September 1919, p. 948. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. W. B. Maxwell (1866–1938) was a prolific novelist who enlisted in 1914 and served in the First World War until 1917, when he was over 50.
Sensitiveness DESIRE AND DELIGHT. By F. E. Penny.1 (Chatto & Windus, 7s. net.)
She was known at the hospital in Poona as Nurse Mary, and nobody but Jimmy Dumbarton, the young surgeon-in-charge, knew that her real name was Rosemary Edenhope, and that she was a married woman. This was her story. At the beginning of the war, at her lover’s calling, she had come out to India with ‘a wedding costume complete with veil and orange blossom,’ to find, on the morning of her arrival, that her beloved is ordered to start for Egypt the very afternoon of that day. Why can’t they go to the Cathedral straight away? ‘She had
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to be informed there were still certain preliminaries that must be effected before the marriage could take place.’ ‘My own love! I must go!’ A year passes. To tide over the waiting she turns hospital nurse. Then he returns – but not the handsome, well set-up, clean-shaven officer to whom she had clung in her ‘abandonment of love and grief ’; a gaunt bearded man, with haggard face and semi-scorched eyes, stood before her. But, bravely believing that it is only fatigue, she tells him she has arranged for their marriage on the morrow, and for their honeymoon in the hills. But the change is more than beard deep. Maurice is silent, sombre, giving her no return for her kisses, waking to animation only to wonder whether lunch is ready. After a gloomy lunch, afternoon, and dinner, she asks him if he would like to postpone to-morrow’s ceremony. Her sweetness and love, her readiness to sacrifice herself for him, should have been an irresistible appeal. It left him colder than ever.
Nevertheless, his answer is ‘No, no!’ And so she takes him to the church, finds Jimmy Dumbarton to give her away, sees that he is married to her, buys his railway ticket for him, and starts him off on their honeymoon to the bungalow called ‘Desire and Delight.’ All that a loving, brave, right-minded young woman could do Rosemary has done, but the poor wretch continues woe-begone and dreary, moving like a man in a dream. What can have happened to him? Could a year at Gallipoli spent among the dead and dying account for it? His eyes had definitely altered. . . . ‘Other eyes had looked into his with the coming of death, and seemed to have left their reflection.’ And when the adoring Rosemary asks him if he would like the bungalow rearranged (for there are two single bedrooms at present), pinched, haggard and listless, he signifies ‘No.’ She bears it for a month. Then: ‘You are a wicked man and I hate you! I hate you! . . . I would have given you my life as I gave you my love . . . I go out of your life, bearing your hated name, thanking you for nothing, and cursing you for having spoiled my life.’
They part at this, and she resumes her V.A.D. work, where she finds ‘scope for the generous sympathy and warm affection towards suffering humanity that was her second nature.’ Another interval – we are not told how long – and the news comes that Maurice Edenhope is appointed commandant of the hospital where she is working. What shall she do? How shall she meet him?
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Has she forgiven him? Does a woman ever forgive such a blow to her – pride. Jimmy Dumbarton puts off the uncomfortable day for her. In the same hospital there is a fine young native officer whose convalescence is retarded by his longing for his young wife. Nurse Mary is appointed to take him home to his palace and to stay with him until he is well, and her disaster with Edenhope is almost forgotten in her heroic attempts to overcome the intrigues of the harem and to bring the ardent young man and his bride together. Alone, single-handed, she fights the superstitions, powers, poisons, mock-tigers, attempts at murder, which are her daily portion, and at last succeeds, and has the satisfaction of hearing the door bolted and barred upon the fortunate ones. But their bliss looks in her face; its name is Might-have-been. And when Colonel Edenhope calls to inquire after nurse and patient, though, of course, her love is still quite, quite dead, she overdoes her free-and-easy indifference. The beard has gone, too. He is soigné as of old, and full of that vitality which once upon a time compelled her. He, on his side, is more attracted than ever. ‘She was the embodiment of perfect womanhood upon whom no man could look without admiration and no husband or lover without desire.’ ‘Sweetest woman on earth . . . Am I going to have any luck? It won’t be a walk-over. . . .’ Yes. For in an expansive moment he confides in Jimmy Dumbarton the history of his illness caused by his awful sufferings in Gallipoli, and how he had been driven half mad and was cured by open-air treatment in Scotland. Books, the latest novels, flowers and kindness, have failed to soften Rosemary, but this tale melts her. And he kisses her to ‘Maurice! husband! kiss me! again! again! I am starving for want of your love.’ Back once more to the bungalow, and this time there has been an alteration in the arrangement of the rooms with Colonel Edenhope’s most ardent approval. Throughout this novel the author is at great pains to assure us of the heroine’s charm. She is the best type of young English womanhood; it is, indeed, she, and women like her, who have made the British Empire what it is. Women like Rosemary, once they have secured their Edenhope, will send him off to the wars without a murmur, hear of his being wounded with a thrill of pride, and confide in their best friend that ‘even if Maurice died I suppose I should just have to carry on.’ They might, also, nurse in hospitals for months on end, and mark the terrible things that happen to a man’s mind as well as his body, and still be capable of acting towards another as this newly-wedded wife acted. Why not? Surely love is stronger than warshock? Surely, faced by a fine blooming young woman, a man should be able to forget everything else? ‘Her sensitive nature,’ says Mrs. Penny. But, no! That we cannot
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allow. She is as true to life as you like; as common, as popular; we are ready to believe she may be found any day in Society Faces or the Lady’s Magazine. But sensitive – never! Pray take away the word, Mrs. Penny. For her strength depends upon her denial of it.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4666, 3 October 1919, pp. 976–7. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. The earlier fiction of Fanny Emily Farr Penny (1847–1939) concerned the Anglo-Indian community and questions of miscegenation in India.
Portraits and Passions SEPTEMBER. By Frank Swinnerton.1 (Methuen. 7s. net.)
Perhaps it is owing to the composure and deliberation of Mr. Swinnerton’s style in this his new novel that we are sensible of a slight chill in the air long before Marion Sinclair discovers that she is in the September of her life. We are given, at the very outset, a full-length and highly finished portrait of her: Portrait of a Lady, Ætat. thirtyeight – blond, beautiful, extraordinarily reserved, ‘completely, it seemed, mistress of herself in every emergency.’ She has been married for fifteen years to a wealthy City man whom she knows thoroughly well and is clever enough not to despise. She is childless and without relatives or intimate friends, but in the country, where she spends the greater part of the year, her neighbours find her mysterious enough and sympathetic enough to make them wish to confide in her, even while they feel ‘rather ashamed in her company of their own silliness and passion for excitement.’ Fond of flowers, enthusiastic over her bees, a good tennis-player, playing the piano with a sensitive touch, though without technical equipment enough for Chopin’s Ballade in A Flat – does the author mean to be cruel or to be kind in thus describing her? We are never wholly certain, but having her thus framed and glazed, we are rather acutely conscious of his task when he proceeds to turn the lady into flesh and blood. The first shock administered is a slight but unexpected one. Offering her husband the cigarettes one evening: ‘What are they?’ he demanded. ‘Two-toed-Twins?’ And she realizes almost immediately that the silly name is a joke he has with another woman, and that he is being unfaithful to her . . . ‘She is a little resentful.’ Then some neighbours come to dinner, bringing with them a nephew, Nigel Sinclair, a handsome young man of twenty-six, with a very ardent, naïve way of
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talking that stirs her strangely . . . Finally, two young people come to visit her, one of whom, Cherry Mant, a girl of twenty, is of the very nature of Spring. She is not gentle May, but rather early April, or even late March – for there are moments when she is wild and treacherous – a little savage, trying to destroy her own flowers, a little fury, with a needle of ice unmelted in her heart. But there are other moments when she is Beauty, untouched and unbroken, smiling at the sun and at Marion and Marion’s husband. The ideas, emotions and suggestions that she evokes in Marion seem inexhaustible; she might be the first young woman whom the older woman had ever encountered. Every glance of hers is a surprise and a wonder, and when Marion discovers her locked in her husband’s arms, her astonishment is not particular; it is all a part of her endless astonishment. Cherry, on her side, is drawn to Marion. She has a longing to confide in the older woman, to try and explain her puzzling self, to try and find out why she is Cherry, but nothing comes out of these intense, emotional dialogues; Cherry is still baffling, and Marion is still wise: ‘Aren’t I funny!’ whispered Cherry. ‘You’re not funny.’ ‘At any rate I’m not unfunny,’ protested Marion.
These words occur at the close of one of their most poignant interviews. There is no hint from the author that he does not mean them to be taken au grand sérieux, but we shudder to consider how many female conversations have ended on precisely that note. On the very day that Cherry and Howard are discovered together, to comfort Marion’s pride comes Nigel Sinclair. He is young, he is twenty-six, and he admires her. He never thinks of her as old – only as ‘wonderful’ – and so September defies Spring. Love comes to Marion, ardent, burning love; her quiet untroubled summer is over. The leaves are touched with gold, but it is not yet Autumn; there is a brilliance in these late flowers that mocks the other blossoms of the year. And yet there is an anguish, too, a bitterness. Through it all she is haunted by the vision of Cherry. How can Cherry live so lightly – love so lightly? Be one thing to-day and another to-morrow? Is she evil, is she ‘a wanton,’ or just a child, or just a young creature helpless because there has never been anyone to help her? Marion cannot decide, but it is as though Cherry has stolen her peace of mind and will not say where she has hidden it away, and Marion is too proud to ask. And in some strange way it is because of Cherry that Marion denies Nigel when he asks her to prove her love. Then begins her real agony. She has never known what it was to love ‘like this.’ How could she have known. It is September love – the late love that women are supposed to long for and to dread. And when her
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misery is at its height, Nigel comes to tea and she offers him one of the fatal cigarettes. ‘Hullo!’ he cried in a puzzled way. ‘Do you smoke old Two-toedTwins?’ It is Cherry’s name for them. When Marion recovers from this final shock, she begins, as it were, to step back into her frame. She decides, after ‘a frenzy of jealousy,’ that Cherry and Nigel are meant for each other, and it is only through her recovered sympathy and understanding that they are saved from drifting apart. ‘So marriage will be very difficult for you, and it’s only if you try hard to be considerate, and find your happiness in Nigel’s happiness, that the marriage will succeed . . . .’
These are among her final words, and we feel they are just what she would have spoken before she stepped out of her frame. They are the words of advice given by the Portrait of a Lady, Ætat. thirty-eight, blond, beautiful, and with enough air of mystery to invite confidences . . . In her frame she could not be more convincing, but out of it – do such ladies ever escape? Do they not rather step into other frames? Portrait of a Lady in Love, Portrait of a Jealous Lady – and then a whole succession of ‘problem’ portraits: Nigel lighting a Two-toedTwin cigarette with Marion looking on, and Howard and Cherry embracing in the wood with Marion looking through the leaves. They are most carefully, most conscientiously painted, but we are not held. What has happened to Marion, to Nigel, Cherry and Howard? Nothing. They have weathered the storm, and dawn finds them back again in the same harbour from which they put out – none the worse or the better for their mock voyage. We cannot help recalling the words of an old-fashioned Music Professor: ‘My child, leave the “expression” out, you are playing a study. One does not put “expression” into studies.’ Is it possible that Mr. Swinnerton even ever so slightly agrees with him – or would like to agree with him? And what do we mean exactly by that word ‘expression’? Can we afford to leave it out of a page, of a paragraph – after Tchehov?
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4667, 10 October 1919, p. 1002. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Frank Swinnerton (1884–1982) was an English novelist, critic and biographer, and a friend of JMM and KM.
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Humour and Heaviness POOR RELATIONS. By Compton Mackenzie.1 (Secker. 7s. 6d. net.) TIME AND ETERNITY. By Gilbert Cannan.2 (Chapman & Hall. 7s. net.)
Why is it those favoured few whose privilege it is to be invited, like fairies, to pronounce a blessing or a curse upon the new novel are invariably condescending and even a trifle contemptuous if the babe be a smiling babe? There are times, indeed, when from their manner one would imagine they half-suspected the innocent radiant creature of being the result of a youthful folly, – a love child. And though, of course, as broad-minded men of the world, they can excuse – nevertheless: ‘Now that you have had your little flutter we hope that you will settle down and produce something serious.’ To be taken seriously in England a novelist must be serious. Poets may be as gay as they please, story-tellers (especially as nobody will publish short stories) as lighthearted as they wish, but if a young man desires to be told (and who does not?) that he is in the front rank, the head of, leading, far outstepping, immeasurably in advance of, all other novelists of the day, he must be prepared to father fiends hid in clouds. Perhaps another reason for the cool reception of the novel that is not serious is that English people, as a whole, would a great deal rather feel interested, critical, moved and excited than amused. A really serious novel by a brilliant young man flatters them almost as greatly as if that brilliant young man were to appear before them and to beg them to listen to the story of his life. They feel he presupposes them to possess powers of sympathy and of discernment so extraordinary that it would be ridiculous and below their mutual dignity to waste his time and theirs upon anything that did not call those powers into action. This is very gratifying, but it does not contribute to the gaiety of letters. May we never be amused in our own day? Must we always turn to those words which have been blessed by time or are come from France? We confess to moments when we long to find ourselves at a feast or at a fairing instead of accompanying our young Hamlet to the graveyard and watching and listening while he picks up his first skull and wonders at it . . . A glance at the press opinions published at the back of Mr. Mackenzie’s latest novel suffices to show the position he occupies among these, our young masters. Each new book of his has provoked his literary godfathers to a fresh shower of blessings, a heavier rain of gifts. From the very first, they recognized him as one of the young men who were going to count, and nobly has he repaid that recognition, passing from strength to strength, from intensity to intensity until
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with his adventures of Sylvia Scarlett3 he reached the pitch of high seriousness they had prophesied he should. But instead of remaining there, instead of preparing for an even sterner climb, he has descended from his cloudy, thunderous eminence into a valley where we hope he may be tempted to linger. Here, to our thinking, is his proper climate, and here he has every appearance of being most admirably at home; and his enjoyment of the scene is so evident that we are inclined to hope he does not look upon it as a mere picnic ground, a place of refreshment from which he will turn now that the holiday is over. ‘Poor Relations’ is an account of the dreadful sufferings that were put upon Mr. John Touchwood, the highly successful playwright, by his highly unsuccessful family. He was a bachelor and he was family-ridden. By nature he was highly romantic, sentimental, overgenerous and over-sensitive, and liable on the slightest provocation to ‘rosify’ events and persons. This rosification, until he met Miss Hamilton, had prevented him from ever looking upon his relatives with a critical eye. It was enough that Mama was Mama, Edith was Edith, and even Hugh was Hugh. But that calm, self-possessed young woman sitting opposite to them in the saloon of the Murmania, by a chance remark to her travelling companion made him see them, just for one moment, as they really were. He had barely finished reading ‘five delightful letters, really, every one of them full of good wishes and cordial affection’; but after her ‘I’ve never been a poor relation yet, and I don’t intend to start now,’ he read them through again, and this time they were the letters, the unmistakable letters, of poor relations. John had a house in Hampstead where he was completely looked after and bullied in a mild but insistent way by his housekeeper, Mrs. Worfolk. He had another, a country house ‘kept’ for him by Mama and his widowed sister, Hilda, and Hilda’s dear little boy, Harold. What he wished to do, upon his return from America, was to divide his time between his two houses and write an extraordinarily fine play on the subject of Joan of Arc. But he had no time to divide. He only had a family – determined in their several ways to get out of him all there was to be got, and had it not been for Miss Hamilton’s remark, we see no reason why he should not have been the innocent and halfwilling victim. She saved him. She becomes his confidential secretary and, at the happy ending, his wife. But what he endured before that was reached makes the most excellent and amusing reading. The Touchwood family is one of those detestable, fascinating families that we cannot have enough of. From the moment they are seated round the dining-room table, –
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at the head of which John took his rightful place; opposite to him, placid as an untouched pudding, sat Grandmamma. Laurence said grace without being invited, after standing up for a moment with an expression of pained interrogation. Edith accompanied his words by making with her forefinger and thumb a minute cruciform incision between two of the bones of her stays . . . Harold flashed his spectacles upon every dish in turn . . .
we are held – and especially by Harold. He is, perhaps, the most unpleasant little boy imaginable; but, at this safe distance, he is a joy. We cannot bear to part with him. When he is not there, like children at a pantomime, we long to know when he is coming on again, with his questions and his information and his spectacles, and his lantern that he loses control of, and flashes in the face of everybody. Very different is Mr. Cannan’s little book with the big name. Could it be called ‘serious’ even by his most patient admirers? Yet we dare to say it would be hard to find a book more wanting in a sense of humour. The hero is ‘as usual.’ He is Mr. Cannan’s same young man, who is on the point of saving England, of bringing back the times of Shakespeare and Fielding, of killing off the old and giving the young the government of everything and the run of the Italian restaurants in Soho. Like his twin brother in ‘Pink Roses,’ this new hero avoids the war, but his reasons are more fully given. He is saving himself; he is waiting for his soul to burn its way out ‘in a clear flame that will not be denied,’ when he will, as his friend tells him, ‘turn the stream of life back into its course.’ This young man’s particular time of waiting is passed between what we might call a looking-glass parade, a love affair, and conversations with a Russian. It is a habit with dentists who wish to put young patients at their ease to say to them, as they open wide,’ I can see what you have had for your breakfast.’ There is nothing in ‘Time and Eternity’ to prevent Mr. Cannan’s public from making the same remark once again.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4668, 17 October 1919, p. 1035. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972) was born into a theatrical family and became a prolific writer in a variety of forms. He was a founding member in 1928 of the Scottish Nationalist Party. His popular novel, Whisky Galore (1947), was made into a film by Alexander Mackendrick. 2. Gilbert Cannan (1884–1955), a dramatist and novelist, was a close friend of JMM and KM. He gave them the nickname ‘The Tigers’, taking it from
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a woodcut of a tiger stalking a monkey in the first number of Rhythm. His Pink Roses is reviewed above on pp. 464–6. 3. Compton Mackenzie published a novel called The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett in 1918.
A Plea for Less Entertainment THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN. By F. Brett Young.1 (Collins. 7s. net.)
How do you write your novels? It is a question we are often on the point of putting to novelists, and then we remember that it is the question above all others that authors dislike answering. Why is this? They look into the void, they are, beyond words, vague. Would they have us believe that their books spring, fully bound, out of their heads, or that they are visited by angels? Yet we live in an age of experiment, when the next novel may be unlike any novel that has been published before; when writers are seeking after new forms in which to express something more subtle, more complex, ‘nearer’ the truth; when a few of them feel that perhaps after all prose is an almost undiscovered medium and that there are extraordinary, thrilling possibilities . . . Never was there a moment when the question was more fascinating. How do you write your novels? Do you have a definite plan before you begin? Do you know exactly what is going to happen and would it be possible for anything else to happen instead? And do you think a plot is necessary? And do you really write all you know, or do you still hold back a little, just a little . . . and why? It is that last question that we should like, with all respect, to put to Mr. Young. His new novel ‘The Young Physician’ is the life history of Edwin Ingelby from the age of about fifteen until he is ‘grown up.’ The early part is yet another description of life at a public school – the miserable arrival of the new boy, interview with the miserly, cynical Head, ragging in the ‘dorm.’ at night, secret biscuit eating, cricket matches, ‘footer,’ ‘meaty bits’ out of the Bible, discussion of the facts of life, discovery of impurity among the boys, and the whole school assembled before the irate Head – we know, we dreadfully know it all. Nor does the ‘spirit’ of Mr. Young’s account differ from the ‘spirit’ of all those other accounts. The next week was the most sensational that had ever shaken the placid life of St. Luke’s. The fall of Griffin was no startling matter – deliberately he had been asking for it and the escapade of the fair in race week was no more than a crowning glory. Still it was an impressive affair. Immediately after breakfast . . . it was whispered that Griffin had been sent to the infec-
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tious ward of the sanatorium, which was always devoted, by reason of its size, rather than any conscious attempt at symbolism, to the isolation of moral leprosy . . .
Here is the peculiar high note of enthusiasm – the ‘Boy’s Own’ note with which we have become so familiar. Nevertheless St. Luke’s is not all the world to Edwin; he arrives loving his mother, and his love for her, instead of changing as a normal boy’s should into a love of cricket bats and ‘strawberry specials,’ grows and deepens into a childish adoration. In his account of the relations between these two Mr. Young carries us far away from the public school world. Edwin at school, in spite of his love of literature, his passion for historical dreaming and the fact that he cares more for poetry than games, is no more individual than those other school heroes. He follows in their steps, indeed, is bullied like them, comes to his own like them, and is in and out of favour with now the masters, now the boys. But at home, we begin to see an extremely sensitive, loving, imaginative little boy. His mother is a little delicate creature living on dreams and the love of flowers and music, but she feels her hold on life is frail, and unconsciously, imagining that she is the protecting one, she turns to her only child to save her. No child should be made to bear the subtle, difficult, derided emotions of pitying love. ‘Oh, Mother, why can’t I carry you?’ he cries. He does carry her and she clings, telling him of her dreams and of how unhappy she has been and how he is her baby. Then, with her death and burial, the chapters telling of their love seem to fall away as the school chapters did. They break, like the two halves of a bud and are shrivelled and forgotten before the open flower. What was the need of them? Have they helped us in the least to understand the boy who goes home to find his perfect little mother dying? No. Reading these chapters, we know all that has gone before; this Edwin is not different from the Edwin with his first tuck box, he is the same, but realized, seen, felt and given. It is at this moment that he comes to life, and it is not without a thrill of excitement that we read on. But with the very first words of the new chapter the thrill subsides: From this emotional maelstrom the current of Edwin’s life flowed into a strange peace.
‘Emotional maelstrom’ – this is very cold water indeed for an author to fling at his little hero, and it does not take us long to discover that however refreshed he may be he is again, in the reader’s eye, a trifle blurred. And though, in the latter half of the book, when
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he is studying to be a doctor, there are occasional, brilliant glimpses of that beautifully realized little boy, they are never prolonged and they are always followed by a fresh douche. Each time that Edwin feels deeply and is overcome, as youth is overcome, by the unimaginable mystery of life, the author, instead of telling us all he knows (and we feel that he does know), still holds back, or excuses, the emotional maelstrom. Added to this, he has a way of interrupting our vision of his hero by causing other characters to cross his path. We are not referring of course to those with whom he comes into real contact, to those who have something to give him that increases his knowledge of life, but to others – why are they there? – who pass in front of the camera, as it were, for the sake of passing. And finally there is his love affair with a frail delicate girl who awakens that tender protective love in him that he felt for his mother. Like his mother ‘she is little and perfect and beautiful’ and he must defend her, he must carry her away out of the ugly world. Almost, that early glow returns, but this time the douche is heavy and final. His love ends in a fight with an old enemy of his schooldays whom he knows to be diseased and whom he tracks down into Rosie’s bedroom. And Mr. Young leaves him, having signed on as ship’s doctor, facing the open seas . . . Readable, yes, eminently readable – readable to a fault. If only Mr. Young could forget the impatient public and let himself be carried away into places where he thinks they do not care to follow!
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4669, 24 October 1919, p. 1067. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Francis Brett Young (1884–1954) was a novelist, poet and playwright. Like Edwin in his novel, he lost his mother when he was still a child.
A Standstill SAINT’S PROGRESS. By John Galsworthy.1 (Heinemann. 7s.6d. net.)
So there is a ‘new school’ of fiction after all! We had come to believe that the phrase ‘to belong to the new school’ had entirely lost its facemeaning, and was nothing but a despairing, lift-of-the-eyebrow joke between the critic and his public, a ‘Heaven knows what the young man or the young woman is driving at, I certainly don’t, and I defy you to.’ But no. These wandering students have their roof-tree and their bell. They are a definite body enough for Mr. John Galsworthy to delay his easy progress in the well-sprung carriage on what we
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might call the early afternoon of his journey, for as long as it takes him to give them a good beating. But while we are all gratitude to Mr. Galsworthy for putting us out of our doubts by conducting us to the positively resounding portals, we cannot help feeling it is over-severe on his part so to thrust the whole school under the stick. . . . When once in a while some literary work of the new school came their way, with its self-conscious exhortations to complete self-consciousness, its doctrine of pure and utter selfishness, or of a hopelessly self-conscious unselfishness, with the querulous and thin-blooded passionateness of its young heroes and heroines, bent on nothing but realizing their unrealizable self through a sort of brain-spun arrogance and sexuality.
Even when we take into account the lively sense of responsibility which a famous and elder author must feel towards the new generation, these are formidable blows, and we are at a loss to call to mind the names of those works, numerous and noteworthy enough to form a new school, which have provoked them. It is certain, however, that Mr. Galsworthy would not have adopted these Draconian methods were he not confident that nothing less would answer. Alas! then, it would seem that we have discovered the new school only to cry ‘Hail and farewell’ to it – only to turn aside, with a shudder, to the old school for our consolation and reward. The hero of Mr. Galsworthy’s new novel is a clergyman, the Rev. Edward Pierson. Let us imagine him seated at his little piano, for his life is divided between love of music and religion. On either side of him stands a daughter. Gratian, the elder, turns from her father to a dark, downright, shrewd doctor of a husband with a passion for argument; Nollie, aged eighteen, leans over a perambulator containing a war-baby – her left hand, shamelessly and proudly uncovered, wears no ring. A dark, lean, travelled Englishman, with a game leg (caused by the war), looks towards Nollie and longs, but there is a woman between them, bent on distracting his attention. Leila (Delilah, as Nollie calls her), in a black silk gown such as Malay women wear, holds up her white arms and presses a gardenia against Jimmy Fort’s mouth. She is forty-four, with touched-up hair, and reddened lips, and she is making her last bid for love. Then we have a couple, Aunt Thirza and Uncle Bob – Aunt Thirza in a lilac-coloured gown, like a painting of ‘Goodness’ by an old master, restored by Kate Greenaway . . . Her inexpugnable tranquillity, unsentimental tenderness, matter-of-fact busyness, together with the dew in her eyes, had been proof against twenty-three years of life on a tea plantation . . .
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– Uncle Bob, who grew like a cork tree, and acted like a sturdy and well-natured dog. His griefs, angers and enjoyments were simple as a child’s, or as his somewhat noisy slumbers. They were a notably well-suited couple. . . .
Further off there stands a Belgian refugee, a painter, in a broadbrimmed slouch hat and ‘a black stock and seemingly no collar.’ He, too, gazes admiringly and sadly at Nollie. Then, compassing them all about, there is a ghastly company of faces; faces he had thought friendly, of good men and women whom he knew, yet at that moment did not know, all gathered round Noel with fingers pointing at her.
They are Edward Pierson’s parishioners. Two more figures and the stage is complete. Upon a back cloth, leading his men, the boy-father of the war-baby spins round, shot through and through; and up in the air, fifteen years away, there floats the sweet vision of Edward Pierson’s dead wife. He and not his daughter is the central figure of the book, the ‘saint’ whose pitiful progress Mr. Galsworthy traces. Sincere, sensitive, wistful, dreamy, emotional, we meet him first at Bob and Thirza’s country house, where he is enjoying a well-earned holiday. Nollie is there, too, and ‘a handsome boy with a little golden down on the upper lip of his sunny, red-cheeked face.’ Even then, when her innocence is little short of prodigious, when she might almost be eighteen months old rather than eighteen years – ‘Daddy, your nose is burnt!’ ‘My dear, I know.’ ‘I can give you some white stuff for it. You have to sleep with it on all night. Uncle and Auntie both use it.’ ‘Nollie!’ ‘Well, Eve says so . . .
– he is distressed for her; he feels she has become ‘a great responsibility’ and sighs that his dear wife is not there to help him. Judge then how his distress passes to dismay when she tells him she ‘can’t afford to wait, she “must” marry the young man.’ He has barely signified his disapproval when the elder daughter Gratian telegraphs him to come to her; her husband is desperately ill. He arrives home, and immediately his daughter informs him, in the room where her husband lies between life and death, that she no longer believes in immortality, no longer believes in God. This is a frightful blow to him. Three days later, the husband, out of danger, challenges him ‘to show me where
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there’s any sign of altruistic pity, except in man,’ and, after a most painful fight, . . . going to the little piano in the corner, he opened it, and began playing the hymn. He played it softly on the shabby keys of his thirty-year-old friend, which had been with him since college days, and sang it softly in his worn voice . . .
On page 19, when Edward Pierson is still in the country, Mr. Galsworthy describes his visit to a church – how it was so long since he had been preached to, so long since he had had a rest! The words came forth, dropped on his forehead, penetrated, met something which absorbed them, and disappeared.
At the time, these words seemed to us remarkable in themselves, but a closer acquaintance with the padre’s life immeasurably heightens their significance. Those words dropping, penetrating, being absorbed, disappearing – must have been a rare treat to him. For it seems that never again throughout the book do they do aught but wound him, stab him, perplex him, or grievously upset and bewilder him, and never again is he preached to; it is he only who does the preaching. Always on the threshold of his lips there trembles a ‘Let us pray.’ What was his life indeed but one long shower of arrows, into which he stepped, bravely, but with ever the wistful thought: ‘Ah, if only I had my dear wife with me now!’ Indeed, if he were not so tragic we would say he is like a man who has lost a beloved umbrella fifteen years ago and counts it sin to buy another. But with Noel’s baby the air becomes too thick. He feels it his duty to have the perambulator in his hall, but the parishioners will not bear it. And he is forced to resign. The saint’s progress is over. We see the stage slowly darken. All the other actors are gone. The temptress has returned to South Africa; Gratian and her husband, happy undisturbed pragmatists, are at work to improve this world. Nollie, even though she has, as her family so gracefully put it, ‘burnt her wing,’ is married to Jimmy Fort; Uncle Bob and Aunt Thirza are – but why need we go any further? The stage is empty. The stage – the stage . . . the actors are gone. . . .
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4670, 31 October 1919, p. 1123. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. John Galsworthy (1867–1933) was best known as a dramatist and novelist; he was the author of The Forsyte Saga. He won the Nobel Prize
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for Literature in 1932. His Moods, Songs and Doggerels is reviewed on pp. 429–30. Here his target is fiction that focuses on consciousness, such as the novels KM reviews by Dorothy Richardson. KM’s satirical tone is consonant with the essays in which Virginia Woolf attacks Galsworthy and Arnold Bennett for sneering at the new movement in fiction.
Three Approaches THE GREAT HOUSE. By Stanley Weyman.1 (Murray. 7s. net.) THE SPLENDID FAIRING. By Constance Holme.2 (Mills & Boon. 6s. net.) RICHARD KURT. By Stephen Hudson.3 (Secker. 7s. 6d. net.)
The citizens of Reality are ‘tied to town’ and very content to be so tied, very thankful to look out of window on to a good substantial wall, plastered over with useful facts and topped with a generous sprinkle of broken bottle glass. Nevertheless, they are for ever sighing to travel. Not that they are prepared for long and difficult journeys. On the contrary. What they cannot have enough of is the small excursion, the timid flight just half-way to somewhere, just so far that Reality and its wall is out of sight while they picnic in the unfamiliar landscape, which distracts, but does not disturb. A glance at the inside title-page of Mr. Stanley Weyman’s new novel tells us that he has provided many such a festa, and another at the list of chapter headings assures us how expert he has become at his particular form of entertainment. The chapter headings are curiously revealing; they are like a list of stations on a particular railway line from which we learn the kind of country the train passes through, as well as its starting point and its destination: The Hotel Lambert –Homeward Bound – The Gatehouse – The Yew Walk – The Great House at Beaudelays – My Lord Speaks – Mary is Lonely – Missing – A Footstep in the Hall – Mary makes a Discovery – My Lord Speaks Out – A Turn of the Wheel – ‘Let us make others thankful.’ Here is the little touch of historical France of which the author is so fond, then the lonely heroine brought to England by her kinsman, Lord Audley, to the house of his cousin and his enemy. Why his enemy? His cousin lays claim to the title. If a certain Bible could be found and certain papers . . . My Lord is fair without and false within. He woos and wins Mary by his masterfulness. The cousin is old and wicked, dying of heart disease and revenge; his faithful servant listens at keyholes and behind bushes. And there is another, a good silent man who sees it all and says nothing – but acts. The will is found, the cousin dies, Mary breaks off her engagement and re-engages herself to the silent one, and burns the will into the bargain. If wills are as agile as novelists and playwrights would have us believe,
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it is no wonder they provide an inexhaustible subject . . . According to them, the soul no sooner flies from the body than the will takes parchment wings unto itself and flies also – up the chimney, down into the cellar, or behind the portrait with the piercing eyes. Miss Constance Holme makes her appeal to a very different public. Whereas Mr. Weyman impresses us as an author who is as conscious of his audience as is a producer of plays – he has his eye upon it all the time, heightening an effect here, keeping this back, putting in a pair of branched candlesticks or the muffled tramp of many feet for its delight, never for his – we are certain Miss Holme would go on writing if every publisher in England (which Heaven forbid) forsook his calling and ran away to sea. We have not seldom remarked the curious naïve pleasure that many women take in writing for writing’s sake. The mind pictures them half wonder, half joy, to find that they can put these lovely tender-coloured words together – can string these exquisite sentences out of a morning’s ramble in the garden or the meadow or gathering cold seashells . . . But it is a dangerous delight, for what so often happens is that they are quite carried away, forgetting all about the pattern they intended to follow or embroidering it so thickly that none but themselves can discover its original outline. Something of this fate has overtaken ‘The Splendid Fairing.’ The pattern is yet another peasant drama, ‘Perhaps it never would have happened but for the day,’ says the authoress, and she goes on to describe the kind of day that would have put it out of the question, and finally the day that brought it to pass. . . . Everywhere . . . there was mist – that strange, wandering thinking mist that seems to have nothing to do with either earth or air; and when the slow dark drew back there would be mist everywhere again.
So thick are its dropping veils that Miss Holme’s novel is at times completely hidden; is, as it were, frayed away, spun away in a delicate white woolliness. She has her story to tell of a little feud between two families. Each family has a son, like each other as two peas, and they run away to Canada. When one comes back his half-blind mother takes him for the other, and to revenge her lifelong hatred sends him out at night to what she knows is his certain death ‘by the white tide horses.’ It is an improbable story at best, and Miss Holme’s attention is well-nigh persistently divided between the telling of it and all the wavy shapes and shadows, the gull, the heron, and the marsh, that she finds irresistible, until at last she would seem to believe that the attention of the peasant is equally divided, and that he, too, hears ‘the messenger from the deep, sweeping its garment over the head of the crouched waste as it sped to deliver its challenge at the
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locked gate of the sea wall.’ But this is a little pit lying at the feet of all who write about peasants . . . The attitude of the author of ‘Richard Kurt’ to his audience is a far more complex affair. Reading the first chapter we were under the impression that this was a sequel to a former novel in which Richard’s childhood, marriage, and life had been described, with such a wave of the hand were these events mentioned and dismissed. Then on page 3 there occurred an extraordinarily minute description of Richard’s father: ‘He wore a short, square-cut beard which, originally red, had turned gradually, with years, to a golden-grey. The hair, though thinned, was yet uncommonly plentiful for a man approaching sixty, and curled away from its central parting in large, crisp, grey-brown waves above a forehead unusually high and broad and white. The eyes, nearly always averted save for swift glances, were dark and small and very piercing . . .’ and so on, down to ‘the hand . . . slender and symmetrical, with long fingers . . . covered with red hair.’ The whole tone of that is of an introduction; it reads indeed like the beginning of a first novel; there is a kind of over-eagerness to make Mr. Kurt vivid in the abundant use of the adjectives. This tone is more or less maintained until, with the second chapter, we find ourselves – certainly not introduced to – but asked to accept most fully and freely – the fact of Elinor. It happens sometimes, perhaps, that sitting in a railway carriage at night, or sleeping in a steamer cabin, we overhear a long conversation about a third, and the conversation is punctuated with: ‘Well, you know what she is like’ or ‘You can imagine what she said to that’ – and we find ourselves, nodding and smiling and shaking our head – we can indeed! Thus it is that Mr. Stephen Hudson conveys this brilliant and horrible little personality to us – as though he were talking to someone who knew all about her from the beginning – and we, his readers, are overhearing what they have to say. Gradually we learn that she is dark and slender, with tiny feet and long eyelashes; that she loves to dress in pale blue; that she has a passion for minute dogs. This is the outward Elinor. But her temper, her jealousy, her boundless vanity and extravagance – this is Elinor as we know her after we have listened. There is no plot to the novel; it is an account of how Richard Kurt wasted, idled through several years of his life, now happily and now unhappily. He is never more than a shadow; but first Elinor and then Virginia, the second woman of the book, are amazingly real.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4671, 7 November 1919, p. 1153. NN. Signed: K. M.
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1. The romantic novels of Stanley Weyman (1855–1928) were admired by Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson and Graham Greene. 2. Constance Holme (1880–1955), a novelist and playwright, won a literary prize for The Splendid Fairing. 3. Stephen Hudson was the pseudonym of Sydney Schiff (1868–1944), a wealthy patron of the arts and a novelist. KM knew him but was unaware when she reviewed his book that it was his pseudonymous publication. In 1922 she had what she experienced as a humiliating encounter with Wyndham Lewis, who was contemptuous of her work, at the Schiffs’ house.
A ‘ Real’ Book and an Unreal One IF ALL THESE YOUNG MEN. By Romer Wilson.1 (Methuen. 7s. net.) LIVING ALONE. By Stella Benson.2 (Macmillan. 6s. net.)
Whereas Miss Stella Benson declares that hers is not a real book – it does not deal with real people nor should it be read by them – we feel that Miss Romer Wilson would say the exact opposite of her novel, ‘If All these Young Men.’ Both are about the war. We suppose it will be long and long before the novelist, looking about him for a little wood wherewith to light his fire, does not turn instinctively to that immense beach strewn with wreckage. But Miss Stella Benson gives us the impression of having found herself there by chance, and being there she has picked up her charming broomstick, Harold; while Miss Romer Wilson, unable to keep away, has discovered a magnifying glass which, while enlarging her characters to a great deal more than life size, has a trick of making them appear incredibly small. Miss Wilson’s theme is the effect the war has upon the minds and hearts of a number of highly modern young persons living in England during the terribly critical months of 1918. There is no plot, but there is a principal character, Josephine Miller, the ‘star’ of the company, who, at a word from here, a wave from there, and a glance at the scenery, gathers the scattered emotions of the moment into her bosom and pours them forth in song. If the reader can accept Josephine, can believe in her equipment of thoughts, feelings, emotions and dreams – the rest is easy. Then, everybody else and everything will doubtless appear quite possible, quite probable. He will have accepted, as it were, the magnifying glass, and such phrases as ‘butterflies of waste paper fluttered in the streets,’ ‘the lanes were full of lovers as they could hold,’ ‘the green ribbon of intellectual intolerance,’ will not shake him. Let us put this faith to the test a moment. Josephine is discovered walking up and down
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her small white room brooding over the war, the tide of battle, the continuity of resistance, the danger to England, annihilation and . . . so on. Suddenly darkness clapped down over everything, and receding an immeasurable distance into space she saw the blaze of war smoulder upon the earth’s surface like soot sparks in a chimney grate, and then go out. Instantaneously she passed through a sensation of the paradox of human greatness, and found herself again in her own home, returned to her common senses. . . .
One might imagine that this last experience, which might be compared to a mental conflict with the old woman of the bathing machine, would be enough to give any young woman pause. But it is nothing to Josephine; it is a commonplace, little eleven o’clock in the morning experience, a mean little flight – passons! In a moment she is higher, deeper, further – until it is time to go out to lunch. Or, let us watch her for one moment returning from the office, passing between the people ‘like God in Hades.’ ‘If I could only fight,’ and her spirit flew up. She heard the bayonet go in; phantasmagorically she enacted the utmost brutalities of war, then phantasmagorically she went through the pantomime of conversion to human sanity. Finally, she emerged cleansed, and reinstated herself in the dull monotony of endurance . . .
We are not given to understand that the young woman is in any degree remarkable. She is typical of her generation – the voice crying for many. True, her friends dislike her at times because she will insist on talking about the war, but that is only because her greater honesty and truthfulness puts them to shame. She belongs to a set – ‘detestable intellectual snobs’ she calls them in a moment of pessimism – whose lives are spent in and out of each other’s houses, in and out of Soho restaurants, in and out of the country, the opera, the craze of the hour, love. Through her magnifying-glass the author sees them as creatures full of the finest feelings, who are prevented from contributing to the gaiety and the beauty of life by a monster which, just when the fun is fastest, sets up an ugly roar. Why should they be plagued with it? What have they done to deserve it? It is so out of the picture – so terribly, terribly remote from what she calls ‘Sohoism,’ and cherry and gold coloured chairs on a shining black floor, and spring pictures. Josephine Miller could dream perfectly well without its aid. Lying in bed she found herself in Europe and saw all its small life at a glance, enacted simultaneously, in the colour and detail of its times and the emotions of its
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tendencies . . . All Rome fell out of Heaven rich with the noonday rape of Sabine wives . . .
Does this mean anything? Breathes there the reader who is at home in this country of the mind? Who can believe in the suffering and the potential greatness of little people whose distaste for life was typified ‘in the recurring demands of the toilet’? Here the magnifying glass has turned diminishing glass with a vengeance, and though Miss Romer Wilson may move a mountain she cannot reconcile us to these two equally distorted visions. The heroine of Miss Stella Benson’s novel is as subject to flights as Josephine, but she has her justification. She is a witch. She has also her broomstick, Harold, a very faithful, helpful creature. ‘Witches,’ according to Miss Benson, ‘are people who are born for the first time . . . Remembering nothing, they know nothing and are not bored. . . . Magic people . . . are never subtle, and though they are new they are never Modern.’ Their common behaviour is, in fact, like that of people who are in love for the first time and for ever. This little alien book describes the adventures of Angela and the adventures of those with whom she comes in contact while she is caretaker of a small general shop which is also part convent and monastery, part nursing home and college, and wholly a house for those who wish to live alone. She is an out-and-out, thorough witch, a trifle defiant, poor, always hungry, intolerant of cleverness and – radiant. It is her radiance above all which pervades everything, chasing over the pages like sunlight. For the minority who are magically inclined it is impossible to resist, and, since she has expressly told the real people that they are not invited to her party, what does it matter if they pass the lighted windows with a curl of the lip? We have said that ‘Living Alone’ is a book about the war. There is an Air Raid described, from below and from above, together with a frightful encounter which Harold has with a German broomstick, and one of the inmates of the house of Living Alone is Peony, a London girl who is drawing her weekly money as a soldier’s wife – unmarried. The story that Peony tells her fellow-lodger Sarah Brown of how she found the everlasting boy is perhaps the highwater mark of Miss Benson’s book. It is full of most exquisite feeling and tenderness. We hardly dare to use the thumb-marked phrase, a ‘born writer’; but if it means anything Miss Stella Benson is one. She seems to write without ease, without effort; she is like a child gathering flowers. And like a child, there are moments when she picks the flowers which are at hand just because they are so easy to gather, but which are not real flowers at all, and forgets to throw them away. This is a little pity, but exuberant fancy is rare, love of life is rare, and a writer who is not ashamed of happiness rarer than both.
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Text: Athenaeum, 4672, 14 November 1919, p. 1187. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Romer Wilson (1891–1930) was a novelist and collector of fairy stories from around the world. 2. Stella Benson (1892–1933) was a travel writer, feminist and novelist.
A Ship Comes into the Harbour NIGHT AND DAY. By Virginia Woolf.1 (Duckworth. 7s. net.)
There is at the present day no form of writing which is more eagerly, more widely discussed than the novel. What is its fate to be? We are told on excellent authority that it is dying; and on equally good authority that only now it begins to live. Reviewers might almost be divided into two camps. Present each camp with the same book, and from one there comes a shout of praise, from the other a chorus of blame, each equally loud, determined and limited. One would imagine from a reading of the press notices that never in the history of the world was there such a generous distribution of the divine fire together with such an overwhelming display of ignorance, stupidity and dreariness. But in all this division and confusion it would seem that opinion is united in declaring this to be an age of experiment. If the novel dies it will be to give way to some new form of expression; if it lives it must accept the fact of a new world. To us who love to linger down at the harbour, as it were, watching the new ships being builded, the old ones returning, and the many putting out to sea, comes the strange sight of ‘Night and Day’ sailing into port serene and resolute on a deliberate wind. The strangeness lies in her aloofness, her air of quiet perfection, her lack of any sign that she has made a perilous voyage – the absence of any scars. There she lies among the shipping – a tribute to civilization for our admiration and wonder. It is impossible to refrain from comparing ‘Night and Day’ with the novels of Miss Austen. There are moments, indeed, when one is almost tempted to cry it Miss Austen up-to-date. It is extremely cultivated, distinguished and brilliant, but above all – deliberate. There is not a chapter where one is unconscious of the writer, of her personality, her point of view, and her control of the situation. We feel that nothing has been imposed on her: she has chosen her world, selected her principal characters with the nicest care, and having traced a circle round them so that they exist and are free within its confines, she has proceeded, with rare appreciativeness, to register her observa-
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tions. The result is a very long novel, but we do not see how it could be otherwise. This leisurely progression is essential to its manner, nor could the reader, even if he would, drink such wine at a gulp. As in the case of Miss Austen’s novels we fall under a little spell; it is as though, realizing our safety, we surrender ourselves to the author, confident that whatever she has to show us, and however strange it may appear, we shall not be frightened or shocked. Her creatures are, one might say, privileged; we can rely upon her fine mind to deliver them from danger, to temper the blow (if a blow must fall), and to see their way clear for them at the very last. It is the measure of Mrs. Woolf’s power that her ‘happy ending’ could never be understood as a triumph of the heart over the mind. But whereas Miss Austen’s spell is as strong upon us as ever when the novel is finished and laid by, Mrs. Woolf’s loses something of its potency. What is it that carries us away? With Miss Austen, it is first her feeling for life, and then her feeling for writing; but with Mrs. Woolf these feelings are continually giving way the one to the other, so that the urgency of either is impaired. While we read we scarcely are aware which is uppermost; it is only afterwards, and, specially, when recalling the minor characters, that we begin to doubt. Sally Seal of the Suffrage Society, Mr. Clacton with his French novel, old Joan in her shabby dress, Mrs. Denham peering among the cups and saucers: it is true that these characters are not in any high degree important – but how much life have they? We have the queer sensation that once the author’s pen is removed from them they have neither speech nor motion, and are not to be revived again until she adds another stroke or two or writes another sentence underneath. Were they shadowy or vague this would be less apparent, but they are held within the circle of steady light in which the author bathes her world, and in their case the light seems to shine at them, but not through them. ‘Night and Day’ tells of Katharine Hilbery’s attempt to reconcile the world of reality with what, for want of a better name, we call the dream world. She belongs to one of the most distinguished families in England. Her mother’s father was that ‘fairest flower that any family can boast’ – a great poet. Katharine’s father is an eminent man of letters, and she herself as an only child ‘had some superior rank among all the cousins and connections.’ Grave, beautiful, with a reputation for being eminently practical and sensible beyond her years, she keeps house for her parents in Chelsea, but this activity does not exhaust Katharine. She has her lonely life remote from the drawingroom in Cheyne Walk, and it is divided between dreams ‘such as the taming of wild ponies on the American prairies, or the conduct of a vast ship in a hurricane round a promontory of rock,’ and the study of mathematics. This last is her half-conscious but profound protest
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against the family tradition, against the making of phrases and (what Mrs. Woolf rather curiously calls) ‘the confusion, agitation and vagueness of the finest prose.’ But it is only after she has contracted an engagement which is in every way highly suitable with William Rodney, a scholar whose knowledge of Shakespeare, of Latin and Greek, is not to be disputed or denied, that she realizes in so doing she has in some mysterious way betrayed her dream world – the lover on the great horse riding by the seashore and the leaf-hung forests. Must life be for ever this lesser thing, this world as we know it, shapely, polished and secure? Katharine had no impulse to write poetry, yet it was the poet in her that made her see in Ralph Denham the man for whom she could feel that strange great passion which is like a fire lighting up the two worlds with the one exultant flame . . . It would be interesting to know how far Mrs. Woolf has intended to keep this dream world of Katharine’s and of Ralph’s a deep secret from her readers. We are told that it is there, and we believe it; yet would not our knowledge of these two be wonderfully increased if there were something more than these suggestions that are like delicate veils hiding the truth? . . . As for the real world, the world of Mr. and Mrs. Hilbery, William Rodney, Cassandra Otway – there we appreciate to the full the author’s exquisite generosity. It is so far away, so shut and sealed from us to-day. What could be more remote than the house at Cheyne Walk, standing up in the night, with its three long windows gilded with light, its drawn velvet curtains, and the knowledge that within a young creature is playing Mozart, Mrs. Hilbery is wishing there were more young men like Hamlet, and Katharine and Rodney are faced by the incredible sight of Denham, outside in the dark, walking up and down . . . We had thought that this world was vanished for ever, that it was impossible to find on the great ocean of literature a ship that was unaware of what has been happening. Yet here is ‘Night and Day’ fresh, new, and exquisite, a novel in the tradition of the English novel. In the midst of our admiration it makes us feel old and chill: we had never thought to look upon its like again!2
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4673, 21 November 1919, p. 1227. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) used a more conventional narrative style in Night and Day than that in her first novel The Voyage Out. She hoped that KM would not review it. KM, who admired The Voyage Out, was
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disappointed by Night and Day: ‘My private opinion is that it is a lie in the soul. The war has never been, that is what its message is’ (CLKM, 3, p. 82). Woolf wrote of the review in her diary: ‘A decorous elderly dullard she describes me; Jane Austen up to date’ (Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie, eds, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 1 (London: Hogarth Press, 1978), p. 314). Woolf’s ‘Kew Gardens’ is reviewed on pp. 473–5. 2. An echo of Hamlet’s speech about his father to Horatio: ‘I shall not look upon his like again’ (I, ii, 395).
Some Aspects of Dostoevsky AN HONEST THIEF: AND OTHER STORIES. By Fyodor Dostoevsky.1 Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett. (Heinemann. 6s. net.)
If we view it from a certain angle, it is not at all impossible to see in Dostoevsky’s influence upon the English intellectuals of to-day the bones of a marvellously typical Dostoevsky novel. Supposing we select London for his small provincial town and his arrival for the agitating occurrence – could he himself exaggerate the discussions he has provoked, the expenditure of enthusiasm and vituperation, the mental running to and fro, the parties that have been given in his honour, the added confusion of several young gentlemen-writers declaring (in strict confidence) that they were the real Dostoevsky, the fascinating arguments as to whether or no he is greater than Jane Austen (what would Jane Austen have said to the bugs and the onions and the living in corners!), the sight of our young egoists puffing up like undismayed frogs, and of our superior inner circle who are not unwilling to admit that he has a considerable amount of crude strength before returning to their eighteenth-century muttons?1 Ohé Dostoevsky! Où est Dostoevsky? As-tu vu Dostoevsky?2
Few indeed have so much as caught a glimpse of him. What would be the end of such a novel? His disappearance without doubt, leaving no trace but a feeling of, on the whole, very lively relief. For if we do not take him superficially, there is nothing for us to do but to take him terribly seriously, but to consider whether it is possible for us to go on writing our novels as if he never had been. This is not only a bitterly uncomfortable prospect; it is positively dangerous; it might very well end in the majority of our young writers finding themselves naked and shivering, without a book to clothe themselves in. However, the danger is not a real one. There are signs that the
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fashion for him is on the wane. How otherwise can we interpret the avidity with which opinion seizes upon the less important, extravagant side of Dostoevsky, making much of it, making much of that and ignoring all else, than that it has had its fright, as it were, but now has been assured that the monster at the fair will not remain? But a remarkable feature of this parade of intellectual snobbishness, this laughing at the Russian giant, is that the writers appear to imagine that they laugh alone – that Dostoevsky had no idea of the exquisite humour of such a character as Stepan Trofimovitch, with his summer sickness, his breaking into French and his flight from civilization in a pair of top-boots, or that he regarded the super-absurdities of Prince K. as other than quite normal characteristics. It is true that especially in some of the short stories we may find his sense of humour terribly jars on us, but that is when the humour is ‘false’; it is exasperation disguised, an overwhelming nostalgia and bitterness disguised or an attempt at a sense of fun, in which never was man more wanting. Then, again, to laugh with Dostoevsky is not always a comfortable exercise for one’s pride. For he has the – surely unpardonable – habit of describing at length, minutely, the infinitely preposterous state of mind of some poor wretch, not as though he were ‘showing us a star,’ but with many a familiar nod and look in our direction, as much as to say: ‘But you know yourself from your own experience what it is to feel like this.’ There is a story, ‘An Unpleasant Predicament,’ in this collection which is a terrible example of this. It relates how a young general, exasperated by an evening with two elder colleagues whom he suspects of treating him like a schoolboy and laughing at him because of his belief in the new ideas, in humanity and sympathy with the working classes, yields to the temptation on the way home of putting himself to the test, of proving to his Amour Propre that he really is the fine fellow she thinks him to be. Why should he do anything so dangerous? He knows in his heart that he does not believe in any of these things, and yet isn’t it possible for him to impose this idea of himself on anybody he chooses? And why should he not slay reality as an offering to his goddess? The revenge that reality takes upon Ivan Ilyitch Pralinsky is wild and violent and remote enough from our experience, and yet who can read it and not be overcome by the feeling that he understands only too well . . . Perhaps Dostoevsky more than any other writer sets up this mysterious relationship with the reader, this sense of sharing. We are never conscious that he is writing at us or for us. While we read, we are like children to whom one tells a tale; we seem in some strange way to half-know what is coming and yet we do not know; to have heard it all before, and yet our amazement is none the less, and when it is over, it has become ours. This is especially true of the Dostoevsky
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who passes so unremarked – the childlike, candid, simple Dostoevsky who wrote ‘An Honest Thief’ and ‘The Peasant Marly’ and ‘The Dream of a Queer Fellow.’ These three wonderful stories have all the same quality, a stillness, a quiet that takes the breath. What have they to do with our time? They are full of the tragic candour of love. There is only one other man4 who could have written the death of Emelyanouska, as described by the poor little tailor: I saw Emelyanouska wanted to tell me something: he was trying to sit up, trying to speak, and mumbling something. He flushed red all over suddenly, looked at me . . . then I saw him turn white again, whiter and whiter, and he seemed to sink away all in a minute. His head fell back, he drew one breath and gave up his soul to God.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4674, 28 November 1919, p. 1256. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. This work by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81), the Russian novelist and short-story writer, was translated by Constance Garnett (1861–1946); Garnett also translated the work of such major Russian authors as Turgenev, Tolstoy and Chekhov. JMM published a critical study of Dostoevsky’s work in 1923. KM’s co-translations of Dostoevsky’s letters to his wife are included in the Translations section of this volume. 2. ‘Revenons à nos moutons’ is a phrase that literally means ‘Let’s return to our sheep’ but the popular idiomatic expression is used in conversation to mean ‘Let’s get back to the subject.’ It shows KM’s subtle grasp of French; the expression implies comic irony. 3. ‘The Crocodile’, a story in the book reviewed here, begins: ‘Ohé Lambert! Où est Lambert? As-tu vu Lambert?’ 4. Possibly KM is referring to Chekhov.
Control and Enthusiasm TRUE LOVE. By Allan Monkhouse.1 (Collins. 7s. net.) CHILDREN OF NO MAN’S LAND. By G. B. Stern.2 (Duckworth. 7s. net.)
Mr. Monkhouse is an author who drives a pen well under control. It is, we feel, a trained obedient pen, warranted neither to idle nor to
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run away, but to keep up a good round pace from the first moment of the journey until the last. While it has long since been broken of any inclination to shy at an occasional accidental object it is by no means wholly devoid of playfulness. This playfulness serves to illustrate how nice is the author’s control in that he can afford not only to tolerate, but even to encourage it, while maintaining an easy equable measure. There is a moment when Geoffrey Arden, the hero, dismissing the reasons for his confidence in the success of his new play, exclaims to his sister, ‘I’m a bit of a pro. at this game, Mary.’ And that, with all respect to Mr. Monkhouse, is the abiding impression he leaves on us. He is a professional novelist, quietly confident, carefully ironical, and choosing always, at a crisis, to underrate the seriousness of the situation rather than to stress it unduly. Admirable as this temper undoubtedly is, it nevertheless leaves the reader a great deal cooler than he would wish. He is interested, stimulated, and even, towards the latter half of the book, moved, yet with what reservations! There is a title which the amateur novelist shares (but how differently!) with the true artist: it is that of experimentalist. However deep the knowledge a writer has of his characters, however finely he may convey that knowledge to us, it is only when he passes beyond it, when he begins to break new ground, to discover for himself, to experiment, that we are enthralled. The ‘false’ writer begins as an experimentalist; the true artist ends as one; but between these two there are a small number of writers of unquestionable honesty and sincerity who do not feel the impulsion toward unknown issues. It follows that in novels of this kind there is room for most delicate distinctions, but high excitements are out of place; all is, as it were, at second-hand, and while we are not expected to share the experience with the author, he would seem, by the care he takes never to make an unguarded statement, to expect of us a kind of intellectual running commentary. ‘True Love’ is an extremely good example of this peculiar kind of novel. We are conscious throughout of the author’s attitude, of his vein of irony which gives an edge to what might otherwise appear a trifle ‘simple,’ and of his generous appreciation of all the possibilities of a man like Arden. His scene is Manchester, its journalistic circles and its small theatrical world. The time is before the war and during it. Geoffrey Arden, a young man of thirty, on the staff of the Herald, is one of those divided souls whose mind is in literature (he is the author of several novels and two plays), but whose heart is in life. Neither satisfies him. When he gives way to one the other calls; when he answers the other, again he is beckoned away. He is like all men in such case, deeply interested in himself and in what is going to happen to him. But this interest is not in the least abnormal or morbid; it is the interest of the looker-on, almost one might say of the Geoffrey Arden that was to be, tolerant, amused and wise.
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In the months before the war he comes to know and, slowly, to love, an actress who takes the principal part in his play. In her he sees perhaps the delicate spirit who will bring him into harmony with Life. But the war breaks out, and when he asks her to marry him she tells him she is a German. ‘German father, German mother. Born in Germany.’ ‘I love you.’ ‘Your impulses are beautiful, and yet you’re thinking all the time.’
And she was right. If his heart triumphed it was for the briefest instant. And then his mind is attacked by the most curious mixture of doubt, suspicion and criticism. Here is the old battle again in a new guise, and perhaps his heart would have lost if Sybil Drew had allowed him to fight it alone. She loves him; she cannot let him go, and cleverly in her desperation she makes her appeal to his heart through his mind, with her ‘wonderful idea.’ ‘Listen! It’s this. We cannot agree. We must not agree. . . You shall be English. And I am partly English too. But I am German. Listen with sympathy. You shall champion your nation, I mine. We must be generous with one another and help one another. . . . That means that you must help me. . . . You must think of things that I ought to say . . . Cannot we be chivalrous enemies and lovers too?’
This, then, is the task they set themselves – to love and to be loyal. But Geoffrey goes to the war and is killed while they are still trying, and she, left in England, dies in childbed, hunted to death by the antiGermans. There is nothing left of them but – two men talking their tragedy over in a teashop. . . . Would their lives have been splendid? Would Arden have found his abiding place in the heart of Sybil? We are left uncertain, but Mr. Monkhouse, in choosing so brave a title for his book, would seem to believe that all would have been well; it rings like his profession de foi. It would be hard to find a style more unlike that so consciously practised by Mr. Monkhouse, than that (shall we say?) so recklessly enjoyed by the author of ‘Children of No Man’s Land.’ Mr. Stern flings his net wide; he brings it in teeming, and which are the important fish, which are to be thrown back into the sea, if those funny monsters are fish at all, or alive, or good for anything – it takes the reader a long book to discover. London is his ocean – Jewish London, Bohemian London, the London of strange boarding-houses and strange foreigners. His knowledge of it is almost mystifyingly complete, and it is poured out for us with a queer mixture of enthusiasm, love of human beings and cunning understanding of them.
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His central figure, the solid little rock above and about which all this beats and froths and bubbles, is Richard Marcus, a typically English boy of German parents, who does not discover until the war that he is legally a German – a child of no man’s land. It does not matter that he has spent all his life in England, that he hates the Germans, hates everything about them, and loves England and the English. He is not asked what his own feelings are, but a set of alien horrible false feelings are provided for him by those same English, and, far from letting him fight for them, they only wait until he is of age to send him to an internment camp. The story of this little fifteen-year-old boy’s gradual coming to consciousness through this, of his struggle first to be allowed to be English, and then to escape from the English whom he loves, of his nightmare journey across no man’s land with the English hunting him down, and then on the last day of his freedom, his eighteenth birthday, his strange revelation that nothing that man can do to you really matters . . . is the chief story of the book. All the others, intricate and many-coloured, and some of them bewildering in their strangeness, are variations upon the same theme. They seem to depart so far from the noble childish simplicity of Richard that at times they are well-nigh lost. The character of Deborah, for instance (who is perhaps the most convincing ‘modern’ girl we have ever encountered in fiction or in life), becomes so involved and difficult that we are on the very point of thinking her gone when the theme of Richard returns, and she is explained and, as it were, made whole. It is a strange world, a bewildering world, but there is no doubt that Mr. Stern makes it absolutely convincing.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4674, 28 November 1919, p. 1259. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Allan Monkhouse (1858–1936) was a dramatist and novelist who worked on the Manchester Guardian. 2. The English writer Gladys Bronwyn Stern (1890–1973), known as G. B. Stern, is referred to in this review as a man. KM’s mistake was corrected by JMM in NN.
A Revival LEGEND. By Clemence Dane.1 (Heinemann, 6s. net.)
Were it not for the dates (October, 1917–April, 1919) printed on the last page of ‘Legend’ we should have been inclined to believe that
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Miss Clemence Dane had taken twenty years over the writing of her quaint old-fashioned little story. The spirit, the temper, the manner, all seem to belong to that curious little collection of novels and stories by women and – one really couldn’t help fancying – for women that appeared about a score of years ago. In recalling them we are amazed to discover how similar they were. It was as though the writers shared a common spirit – the spirit of sex antagonism; a temper that was half extravagant cynicism, half extravagant sentimentality; and a manner, more often than not like that of dramatic reciters, which caused us to burn with embarrassment – as if we were overhearing something which we not only had no right to hear, but which it positively was not fair to listen to. . . . Their world was in very truth a woman’s world. If it held a genius, the genius was a woman, so was the creature of strong personality, good or bad; and of men there existed, roughly, two types; one, the brute at the mercy of his sexual appetites, and the other, the big simple child unable to feed himself or clothe himself without a woman’s aid. To read ‘Legend’ is to become acutely conscious of the great gulf that separates us from this woman’s world. It is an account of how a small set of literary people living in London who are met together for one of their monthly ‘nights’ are suddenly informed that the leading spirit of their group is dead – she has died in child-bed. Thereupon Anita Serle, a great critic – ‘the finest judge of style in England, so Jasper Flood says’ – and the dead woman’s most intimate friend, announces the fact that she is going to write a life – a Life of Madala Grey. All the facts are hers; she is the keeper of Madala’s manuscripts and letters, and all through their friendship she has ‘Boswellized.’ 2 Now, she tells them, is her hour. This Life is to be her great achievement. Fame she has, respect she has, but all through the years the critics and the public alike have denied her the title of creator; but at last – ‘I tell you I’ve got her, naked, pinned down, and now I shall make her again. Isn’t it fair? She ought to thank me. “Dead,” he says. Who’s to blame. She chose to kill herself. What right had she to take risks? I – I’ve refrained, she couldn’t. She threw away her lamp. But I – I take it. I light it again. Finding’s keeping. It’s mine.’ Her voice ripped on the high note like a rag on a nail and she checked, panting. . .
And so they sit through the November evening, Madala Grey’s friends, discussing her life, her books, her career, and wondering how she could possibly have come to marry a commonplace country doctor who cared not a jot that everyone in England had read ‘Eden Walls.’ There is Jasper Flood, seated on the floor, a brilliant cynical
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ultra-modern poet, who tosses us airy trifles as ‘Enlighten our darkness, dear Lady,’ or ‘Delightfullest, my thoughts are thistledown.’ At one moment the tip of his red tongue showed; at another, when childbirth was mentioned, his gaze travels slowly over Anita. . . . He leans against the knees of a blond lady very much made up, wearing a white shawl creeping with dragons, whose chief perplexity is how Madala managed to describe passion as she did without experience. Her voice is a purr, ‘Jasper,’ and he leans against her, playing with her rings, her draperies brushing him intimately. On a ‘pouf’3 sits the Baxter girl, reeking of scent; she is a protégée of Anita’s, but although she knows it is as much as your literary life is worth to admire ‘sentiment,’ she is still youthful enough to love Madala Grey apart from her books. Another lady, a gushing lady – ‘Damn husbands, damn publishers’ – whose ‘Sir Fortinbras’ America has just rejected, is divided between admiration and love. In the background is great-aunt Serle, the ‘gaffer’4 of the piece, with a prophetic forefinger, a chuckle, the air of a wise bird, a ravel of knitting. At the crisis it is she who listens for the ghostly cab-wheels bearing the ghostly Madala – and hears them. Over by the window, his beautiful hands toying with the tassel of the blind, is a famous Royal Academy painter, Kent Rehan, who had loved Madala the woman. And in the shadows, Jennie Summers, the teller of the tale, a simple country girl who, bewildered and confused by these brilliant mechanical dolls, is hearing of Madala for the first time. The high problem that vexes the group round the fire is how Madala Grey could have turned traitor to Art, could have thrown away her genius and delivered herself into the arms of a mere man. They cannot solve it, but Anita thinks she can explain. She has a letter, a passionate love letter written by Madala to ‘someone.’ This she thinks proves that Madala was on the point of eloping ‘without benefit of clergy,’ as she says, and that when the elopement fell through she fled to the other man for refuge. But the letter, which is to be the heart of the book, is seized by Kent Rehan, who takes it over to the fireplace, lifts a block of coal with naked hands, thrusts the paper down, and then, replacing the block of coal with naked hands, keeps it there till all is burned. This crisis is followed immediately by another in which the ghost of Madala appears to Rehan and Jennie. Her eyes as she listened to the group by the hearth were sparkling with amusement, and that tolerant deep affection that one keeps for certain dearest, foolish friends. . . .
And the story ends with the collapse of the artist and a small scene in which we are given to understand that he and Jennie are going to find happiness together.
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If Jennie Summers, the simple country girl who tells the tale, had never come to London, if she had gone on living in the tiny country place where they were ‘too poor to afford Mudie’s’5 and ‘the vicar’s wife sent mother the Royal Academy catalogue after she had been up to town,’ it is extremely probable that this would be her idea of the way literary people in mysterious London lived and moved; nor would it seem strange to her that a great woman should feel for them ‘that tolerant deep affection that one keeps for certain dearest, foolish friends.’ But ‘Legend’ is not a dream of Jennie Summers. Miss Dane would have us believe that the characters are important, the problem is real. Not that she asks us to admire her precious little crew round the fire; her pen is acid as she describes Anita, Jasper and his blond lady of the dragons, Miss Howe swooping and kissing the Baxter girl with open incredulous mouth; but she does demand of us that we shall believe in them. That we cannot do. Did they even exist twenty years ago, outside those passionate pages – these writers who are for ever prating about the public, their duty to the public, what the public has the right to know, and who look upon themselves as creatures dedicate for whom the common loves of husband and children could not be? Did not Miss Dane say: ‘This is what people think writers are like’ – and so draw them, and ‘This is what people think a genius is like’? For her Madala is most certainly the complete genius. Young, radiant, painted by Kent Rehan in a Liberty scarf6 with cowslips in her hands as ‘The Spring Song,’ she wrote her books on her own confession as the bird sings, as the wave breaks. ‘One just sits down and imagines,’ says she, and when after the publication of ‘Eden Walls,’ which is a superb realistic study of a prostitute, some unfortunate wrote to her, she was terribly distressed, because she had never thought of it being ‘real’; it was just a story! Her second book, ‘Ploughed Fields,’ contained (her friends agreed) ‘the strongest love scene of the decade,’ but for her writing was just scribbling. Away from it she was absolutely simple, childish, wanting to be loved for her self alone, talking of going ‘for a wander,’ explaining her interest in the friend of her childhood by ‘he belongs in, you know.’ And then she throws her great blazing gift away by falling in love with a man who quarrels with her for cutting a parcel string with his razors, and kisses her, while lifting her off his bicycle, in front of the kitchen windows. A genius – who could mistake her? – but a woman, too! Ay, there was the rub – there’s what those hungry creatures round the fire whom she had been wont to feed with her sympathy, her genius, cannot understand; only Kent and Jennie and great-aunt Serle are capable of realizing that real love will not be denied. But can we believe for one moment in this Royal Academy portrait
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of a genius? Is she not of a piece with the others? To our thinking the real problem of ‘Legend’ is why Miss Clemence Dane, turning aside from life, should have concentrated her remarkable powers upon reviving, redressing, touching up, bringing up-to-date these puppets of a bygone fashion.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4675, 5 December 1919, p. 1289. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Clemence Dane (1888–1965) was the pseudonym of Winifred Ashton, a novelist, dramatist and script-writer. 2. James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) was based on Boswell’s friendship with Johnson, and his ability to recount their conversations. 3. A round ottoman or footstool, sometimes spelt ‘pouffe’. 4. Overseer. 5. A well-known lending library. 6. An elegant department store on Regent Street, London.
A Foreign Novel OLD PEOPLE AND THE THINGS THAT PASS. By Louis Couperus.1 (Thornton Butterworth. 7s. net.)
To those who have read ‘Small Souls’ it will not come as a surprise that ‘Old People’ is a study of a family. For one could not but feel after reading the former novel that the chief gift of the author must lie in his power of presenting a group of individuals each of whom, when seen apart, has a separate, different life, but all of whom when viewed together are found to be but the parts that go to make up one mysterious creature – the family. He proved indeed that small souls are not really capable of a separate existence; they may rebel against the family, defy it, laugh at it, but they are bound to recognize at the last that they cannot run away without longing to run back and that any step taken without its knowledge and approval is a step in the air. There is passion in ‘Small Souls,’ but the note is not deep or greatly troubled. It is full of gentle satire. Perhaps its quality is best expressed in the chapter where the little girl sits practising her scales, up and down, up and down the piano, always so carefully sounding the wrong note, on a windy morning. Her back is turned to the window. But outside everything is fresh and flying. Outside, in the sun and wind, life is on the wing, and inside there is the sound of doors shutting, the tinkle of the bell and the grown-up people walking up
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and down the stairs, talking as they go – and always very carefully sounding the wrong note. . . In ‘Old People’ we have again a family, clinging to its houses, visiting, immensely absorbed in its family affairs, a whole little world of its own – but there the resemblance ends. The family in ‘Old People’ is not united by small scandals, little jealousies, wars and spites; through it there flows, like a dark underground river, the memory of a crime. . . Sixty years ago, on a pouring wet night in Java, the beautiful Ottilie Dercksz was discovered with Mr. Takma by her husband. The husband had a native knife; Ottilie managed to hold him while Takma got it from him. ‘Give him a stab!’ she cried. ‘Better him than you!’ When it was over, helped by a native, they carried the body out into the storm and flung it into a river. Nobody discovered their crime except the young doctor who signed the death certificate, and Ottilie bought his silence with her beauty. She was mad for love of Takma at the time. Now it is late autumn sixty years after. The beautiful Ottilie is ninety-three, Mr. Takma is eighty-nine and Doctor Roelofsz is eighty-three – and they are haunted. They have lived freely and fully; they have been successful and important; each of them believes that the secret is safe. It is as though life has purposely waited until they are defenceless, powerless to resist or to seek forgetfulness. They are too old; it is time for them to die; they ought to be at rest, but like dreadfully tired children who are not allowed to go to bed, but must stay downstairs among the hateful, tormenting guests, these old, old people are kept out of their graves and forced to live over and over again that stormy night in Java in all its horror and detail. They are not right in thinking that the secret is kept. One of Ottilie’s sons, who was with them at the time, woke up and, standing in his little nightshirt on the verandah, saw what was done; his foot slipped in something horrible; it was his father’s blood. But he kept silence. Another son suspected, and a grandchild has a suspicion. Even all those of the family who do not know are tainted; they are marked by the crime, set apart by a dark stream of sensual blood which flows in their veins like the counterpart of that dark river, and will not let them be calm. In the shadow, on a high chair like a throne, her small brittle body hidden in the folds of her cashmere gown, her fingers, transparent, wand-like in the black mittens, her face a white porcelain mask, sits the old, old woman. She spends her days receiving the visits of her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, her greatgreat-grandchildren–down to little two-weeks’-old Netta: ‘a bundle of white and a little pink patch for a face, and two little drops of turquoise eyes, with a moist little munching mouth.’ To her they are all children passing and repassing before her weary old eyes, while all
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the time, over by the china cabinet, or near the door, or outside the window near the park railings, there is something white . . . mistily rising. Mr. Takma comes every afternoon to sit with his old friend. He too is small and slender, but wonderfully keen for such an old man, because he is always on his guard. His voice like a breeze, airy, light, rustling: ‘I’ve no appetite, child, I’ve no appetite’ is always the same. Only, sometimes in the middle of a conversation, his eyes grow glassy, his head falls and he drops asleep for a moment or two. ‘Nobody sees the inward shock with which he wakes.’ Very often when he is there old Doctor Roelofsz comes stumping up the stair on his stiff leg, his dropsical paunch hanging sideways, his bald pate with its fringe of ‘moth-eaten hair’ shining, and he limps into the room muttering his eternal: ‘Well – well – well. Yes, yes. Well – well!’ These are the three ancient criminals, whom life will not let go. And while they wait and suffer there is a kind of terrible race going on between the desire of the children who know and who long for the old people to die before the secret is discovered, and the curiosity of those who do not know and who burn for the secret to be revealed before the old people die. Never once does the dark river burst above ground, but as the year deepens to winter it seems to grow loud and swollen and dreadful. Then quite suddenly, before the year is out, Mr. Takma dies, and the old doctor, and last of all the old woman – and the river subsides. ‘Old People’ is one of those rare novels which, we feel, enlarge our experience of life. We are richer not only for having studied the marvellously drawn portraits of the three aged beings, but because we have marked their behaviour as they played their parts against this great half-hoop of darkening sky. But it is only when we think over the various members of that strange family that we realize how great is our gain. New people have appeared in that other world of ours, which sometimes seems so much more real and satisfying than this one. That they have a life and being of their own we do not question; even that they ‘go on’ long after the book is finished – this we can believe. What is it then that differentiates these living characters from the book-bound creatures of even our brilliant modern English writers? Is it not that the former are seen ever, and always in relation to life – not to a part of life, not to a set of society, but to the bounding horizon, life, and the latter are seen in relation to an intellectual idea of life? In this second case life is made to fit them; something is abstracted – something quite unessential – that they wouldn’t in the least know what to do with . . . and they are set in motion. But life cannot be made to ‘fit’ anybody, and the novelist who makes the attempt will find himself cutting something that gets smaller and
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smaller, finer and finer, until he must begin cutting his characters next to fit the thing he has made. It is only by accepting life as M. Couperus accepts it that the novelist is free – through his characters – to question it profoundly.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4676, 12 December 1919, p. 1336. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Louis Couperus (1863–1923) was a distinguished Dutch novelist and poet. He published The Book of Small Souls in 1902 and Old People and the Things that Pass in 1906; both were translated into English by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
A Post-War and a Victorian Novel COUSIN PHILIP. By Mrs. Humphrey Ward.1 (Collins. 7s. net.) BENJY. By George Stevenson.2 (Lane. 7s. net.)
Those gentle readers who fell some years ago under the fascinations of Delia Blanchflower,3 an ardent feminist, aged twenty-two, who was placed at her father’s dying wish under the guardianship of a still youthful, courteous English gentleman of caressing manners, but stamped by a mysterious sorrow, will find a very similar thrill waiting for them to-day in the person of Helena Pitstone, heroine of ‘Cousin Philip,’ an ardent ‘modern’ aged nineteen, who was placed at her mother’s dying wish under the guardianship of a still youthful, courteous English gentleman of caressing manners, but stamped by an even more mysterious sorrow. In both cases the extremely beautiful young ladies resent bitterly this interference with their personal liberty and declare war against their guardians; both desire to be friendly with a gentleman who has been mixed up in an unpleasant divorce case, both reluctantly fall in love with the enemy, and both come to recognize the old, old charm of man’s strength and woman’s weakness. Delia, tripping on a flight of steps, falls and is caught by quick strong fingers; Helena, stepping out of a boat, falls and has the like experience. But in order delightfully to confound those readers who have put white strings in their bonnets against a second, similar wedding, Mrs. Ward gives her new heroine to Another. We are not satisfied. Helena ought to have married Cousin Philip and filled his house with the clamour of innocent children. She ought to have removed the pucker from that distinguished brow, given him back his old enthusiasm
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for life, and perhaps even, by and by, persuaded him to take up his sketching again – but it was not to be. What was in Mark Winnington the gentle sorrow of seeing the girl to whom he was engaged pine away and die becomes in the case of Cousin Philip the agony of a wild Bohemian wife returning to die in the Vicarage at the very gates of his Park, leaving a mentally defective child of whose existence he had hitherto been unaware. And strangely, Mrs. Ward makes us feel that the larger tragedy is not of her choosing; it cuts across the flowing lines of her book, spoiling the pattern. How much more suitable if the wife were well and truly dead in a foreign town, and the little boy just pathetically lame enough to discover in the eyes of Helena the shadow of a brooding tenderness! But the war, widening our horizons, demands the wider view. ‘Cousin Philip’ is from first to last a post-war novel. As we have suggested, it is the story of a wild girl’s taming. For from the moment of her entrance, complete even to khaki leggings, driving the great Rolls-Royce and roundly scolding the discomfited chauffeur at her side, it is Helena alone who carries the book upon her radiant shoulders. She is, we are given most clearly to understand, the kind of girl that the war has produced and – what is to be done with her, in fine, now that the canteens are closed and there are no more wounded soldiers to fetch from the railway stations? Here is this dazzling, imperious creature, the living image of one of the Romney sketches of Lady Hamilton as a bacchante,4 talking slang with the ardour of a small boy after his first term at school, snubbing her elders, laying down the law, having as many ‘boys’ as she pleases, and demanding that she shall be told why a bad man is bad. What is to be done with Helena Pitstone, defying the world, crying that: The chauffeur here is a fractious idiot. He has done that Rolls-Royce car of Cousin Philip’s balmy, and cut up quite rough when I told him about it?
No wonder Cousin Philip and the chaperone, ‘a person of gentle manners and quiet antecedents,’ whom he has chosen to help him, are martyrs to misgivings; no wonder Mrs. Ward cannot resist piling delicate agony upon delicate agony until we are brim full of anticipatory shudders. And then quite suddenly we are aware that the author is quietly laughing at her creation and our tremors. What is all this bother about? What is all this nonsense about freedom and life on one’s own? There is the good old-fashioned remedy ready to hand that never fails, even in the most serious cases – marriage and children. It will be a supreme consolation for distracted parents to read that their young people are just like any other young people. True, they have been through a trying experience at a critical period, but
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there is no reason why it should have any lasting effect. Think once more of Delia Blanchflower and the dreadful part she played in the Militant Suffrage Movement – and yet love won the day. Once they find the right man to look after them and are kept busy and out of mischief furnishing the little nest, modern women will be as safe as their grandmothers once they find the right partners. But suppose, we find ourselves asking as we lay the book aside, there should not be enough partners to go round? In the world of ‘Cousin Philip’ such questions are not asked, much less answered. ‘We go not, but we are carried; as things that float; now gliding gently; now hulling violently; according as the water is either storm or calm.’ These words, which Mr. Stevenson quotes as a heading to Part IV. of his ‘Benjy,’ might well be applied to the whole. In them is contained the spirit of the book – a something gentle that neither protests nor demands, but bows before the inevitable and is resigned. It is an account of the lives and fortunes of a country doctor and his family from the year 1859, when Johnnie marries his Priscilla, to 1914, when ‘Benjy,’ one of the younger children and now a middle-aged man, bids his favourite sister ‘good-bye’ the night he leaves for France. The author’s demands upon us are very gentle. He invites the reader to accompany him to where the little spring first outgushes, to follow its course over difficult stony ground to where it flows wide and shallow through fields of childhood, on, ever-widening and deepening until it breaks into many tiny rivulets that lose one another, meet again, part, but never again mingle. A curious mixture of reminiscence and quiet speculation is characteristic of the author’s style during his pious pilgrimage. He pauses, broods over this and that, reaches forward and looks backward, until we feel it would make little or no difference were we to read the book from the end to the beginning, rather than the common way. But this leisurely style has its special temptations. It affords the author far too many opportunities for poking sly fun at tiny incidents that will not bear being thus isolated, for involving them in nets of fantastical words (in which they quite disappear from sight) until, carried away by the amusing exercise, he finds it very difficult to recapture the thread of his story. But as long as the twelve little Ainsworth children are at home and running about in their father’s fields and their mother’s house, ‘Benjy’ is not without a certain charm. It is difficult to make the memories of an early childhood spent in a fine freedom from surveillance uninteresting. We like to hear about their special ways, to wander over the old-fashioned house, to be shown their secret haunts and to be told that the sheep were called Mrs. Flop, Mrs. Slop and Mrs. Nan. It is only when they grow older and come into touch with the world that Mr. Stevenson fails lamentably. The quaint, old-fashioned children
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are replaced by plain, strange young men and women, and the author in his effort to convince us of Benjy’s purity of heart pours over him such a great pale flood of sentimentality that he is drowned before our eyes.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4677, 19 December 1919, p. 1371. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Mary Augusta Ward (1851–1920), who wrote under her married name and was the niece of Matthew Arnold and the aunt of Aldous Huxley, was a prolific novelist; she also created and edited the Anti-Suffrage Review. 2. George Stevenson (1875–?), whom KM assumes to be a man, was in fact a woman. 3. Delia Blanchflower (1914) was an anti-suffrage novel by Mrs. Humphry Ward. 4. Emma Lady Hamilton is best known as the mistress of Horatio Nelson. She was the muse of George Romney, who frequently drew and painted her with vine leaves in her hair, as a bacchante, a worshipper of the Greek god of wine, Bacchus.
A Collection of Short Stories THE GARNET BRACELET. By Alexander Kuprin.1 (Duckworth. 7s. Net.)
In his introduction to this volume of short stories Mr. Lyon Phelps, Professor of English Literature at Yale University, has seized the opportunity to inform, caution, and put ‘right’ American opinion upon the whole subject of Russian Literature. His manner in so doing is unfamiliar to English readers. It makes us feel that while we read we are, like Alice,2 dwindling away in height; by the end of the first page we are much too young even to attend a University; by the end of the second, and especially when that tiny little joke is popped into our baby mouths, we are of a size to spell out maxims at a learned knee: A novel is not great simply because it is written in the Russian language, nor because its author has a name difficult to pronounce.
Or: A slavish – no pun intended – adoration of Russian novels is not itself an indication of critical intelligence.
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Or: A pessimist is not necessarily a profound thinker, nor is uncleanness in itself a sign of virility.
But surely Mr. Phelps exaggerates the extreme innocence of American literary opinion; he must surely be mistaken in not realizing that it has long cut down these modest flowers of thought with its little hatchet. Nevertheless even Kuprin is described in terms that remind us of those infantile dogmatics about the cat and the mat, and ‘run, fox, run’: ‘He soars and he sinks. . . . He is holy and he is coarse; he is sublime and he is flat.’ Between this introduction and the preface contributed by the translator, Mr. Pasvolsky, who is at naïve pains to inform us when Kuprin is at his best, and why he is at his best, the author makes a difficult bow. But happily the first story, which gives the title to the book, is wonderfully successful, and so the bow is a triumphant one. ‘The Garnet Bracelet’ is a story of hopeless love. It tells how a poor official fell in love with the beautiful Princess Vera Nicolaeyna. For seven years he wrote to her, and then on her birthday he sent her the bracelet. At this her husband and brother interfered. They sought the man out, and he, after giving them to understand that he fully realized the impossibility of the situation, promised them to disappear. Next day the Princess read of his suicide. She received from him a letter written just before he had shot himself, expressing his happiness in having loved her, and begging her to ask someone to play for her, in his memory, the Largo Appassionata from Sonata 2, Op. 2, of Beethoven. From this old-fashioned plot, oldfashioned like the poor bracelet with its ill-polished stones, its green stone in the middle with the five deep red ones surrounding, there come rays of deep quivering light, and all that they reveal is linked together just for one moment, becomes part of the tragic life-story of the strangely simple man for whom ‘to love was enough.’ ‘May nothing transient or vain trouble your beautiful soul!’ he writes. But the life of the Princess is composed of what is transient and vain; the society in which she lives is transient and vain; real love could have no part in it. But being a woman her secret dream is of a love that shall fill her whole life; it has come near her, and now it is gone for ever. The other stories in the book do not approach the first. ‘Horse Thieves’ and ‘The Jewess’ are, we imagine, written under the influence of Tchehov. The first, which is an account of a little boy’s association with beggars and thieves, and contains a hideous picture of mob violence, has many a touch which puts us in mind of the great writer, but only to marvel, before Kuprin’s heaviness, at the delicacy and surety of the other. In ‘The Jewess,’ again, it is easy to see in what
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soil the idea has been nourished. But a sorry weed has grown, coarse, straggling, with no flower at all for all the author’s urging, until at the last he has propped it up with an old stick of allegory which never for an instant deceives us. A word must be said about ‘An Evening Guest.’ In a letter giving a list of the works he considers his most successful the author places it first. This is very interesting, as showing the extraordinary difference between the Russian consciousness and ours. To us ‘The Evening Guest’ is quite impossible; it is very nearly absurd in its ingenuousness. One evening somebody knocks at the writer’s door. It sets him wondering who is there, who might be there, and how unknown is the future. He compares life at great length to a game of cards, and then imagines that some madman should hit upon the idea of a lottery of life. On an appointed day there would stand an urn filled with cards, one of which we must draw. And then what is life except this drawing of lots out of an urn of fate? And so on until he falls to wondering whether he will be able to make certain sounds to which that other person on the other side of the door will respond. Until finally, when we are almost inclined to call it childish, he cries, ‘Every time that I think of the vastness, complexity, darkness, and elemental accidentality of this general intertwining of lives, my own life appears to me like a tiny speck of dust tossed in the fury of a tempest.’ What more is to be said?
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4678, 26 December 1919, p. 1399. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Alexander Kuprin (1870–1938) was a writer, pilot and explorer. He was the author of ‘Captain Ribnikov’, which was co-translated by KM and Koteliansky (see Translations, pp. 151–81). William Lyon Phelps (1865– 1943) taught the first course in the modern novel at an American university. Leo Pasvolsky (1893–1953), born in Russia, became a journalist, economist and bureaucrat in the USA. 2. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) Alice’s height fluctuates dramatically and unpredictably.
The Plain and the Adorned THE OUTLAW. By Maurice Hewlett.1 (Constable. 6s. net.) EVANDER. By Eden Phillpotts.2 (Grant Richards. 6s. net.)
‘The Outlaw’ is the fifth volume of Mr. Hewlett’s ‘Sagas Retold.’ It is the story of how one Gisli, a quiet, peace-loving man, was forced
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for honour’s sake to take part in quarrels that were not his, to fight other people’s battles, and to waste all the strength and resourcefulness of his manhood in escaping from his enemies. For a long time he is successful, but there is one foe – and that is a spear called Grayflanks – from whom there is no hiding, and he comes to a tragic end. This spear had been fashioned out of a sword that was taken away from its lawful owner and used against him, and so there was a curse upon it. Perhaps, according to Norse ideas, it was not enough that a man should live snugly and peacefully as Gisli desired to do with his wife Aud. And yet he was by no means an idle man. Even in his very young days he was ‘ forever at work, building, smithying, quarrying, timberfelling.’ When Norway got too hot to hold his family he made a great ship and took them to Iceland, and, once there, he it was who built a fine roomy house for them all. We should have supposed that there was place and to spare for such a man in a world of fighters, but he made the fatal mistake of asking no credit for what he did, and ‘as for his temper – it was perfect.’ It was, doubtless, this last characteristic that egged them on against him, for a perfect temper is as aggravating to witness as a fire that burns brisk and quiet, never needing the bellows or the poker, never roaring away and setting us at defiance or – reduced to a melancholy flutter – imploring our aid. In reconstructing the ancient story Mr. Hewlett has chosen to couch it in a style of great simplicity. He explains in a prefatory note that his version is based on a literal translation published in 1869 and a dramatic version published some thirty years later. ‘I have added nothing to the substance, and have left out many of the accidents, including (without exception) all the bad verses.’ We cannot help wishing that he had been a great deal more lenient with himself – that he had added materially to the substance and included a number of good verses. For the tale, as it stands, is so exceedingly plain, and the fights, murders, escapes and pursuits described upon so even a breath, that it is hard to believe the great, more than life-size dolls minded whether they were hit over the head or not. It is as though one hero deals another a tremendous blow that sends him crashing down like a tree, and as he dies he says: ‘This is a bad day for me.’ And the murderer replies: ‘And for me, too,’ and goes off to tell his wife: ‘So-and-so is dead.’ ‘Did you kill him?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well!’ said she, and her face got red.
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This is, of course, an exaggeration, but there are passages in ‘The Outlaw’ which are very nearly as bald. There is no doubt that the very large number of words of one syllable help to keep the tone low. They have a curious effect upon the reader. He finds himself, as it were, reading aloud, spelling out the tale, and this is helped by such sentences as: ‘He was quiet, shy, what we call a dark horse.’ That ‘we’ seems to belong to a god-like world of pastors and masters who are explaining the dark horse to us for the very first time. The story itself is full of incident, but it moves us as little as a pageant without music or colour. True, we cannot expect these huge heroes, with their peaked helmets, their heavy shields and spears, to break into a dance; but were the horns of warm wine never tossed down to a vocal accompaniment, or did the ladies never sing as they served? Even in the account of the great game upon the ice our chief impression is of the solemnity of the participants rather than their skill. From these lean days we turn to the days full of fatness described in Mr. Eden Phillpotts’ new book, ‘Evander.’ The scene is Italy, and the time – perhaps the early spring of every year. Not the wild, boisterous early spring that leaps over the winter fields in England, but early spring in the South, and if we were not too timid to say so – in the heart of man. There is a moment when, stepping into the air, we are conscious that the earth is young again and glittering with little flowers and streams and laughter; our soul flies out of its hidingplace, looking for a playfellow, and it refuses to be nourished any longer upon serious foods. It wants to be talked to in the language of Fancy, and it fully expects a song or a dance, or at least a few verses, in the course of the smallest conversation. Modern writers for whom a new exercise-book means perforce a new novel look with a cold eye upon the creature while it is in this giddy state of exuberance, and refuse to give it their attention until it has sobered down; but Mr. Phillpotts has taken exquisite pity on it, and provided a festa where those superfluous and enchanting things for which it hungers are given their rightful importance. The story is simple. Livia, the daughter of a peculiarly engaging washerwoman, is married to a young woodman, Festus. One day while she was carrying his dinner she stopped in the forest, playing with the panisci,3 and she was attacked by wolves. The tiny creatures, who realized they would get no more little honey-cakes if she was eaten, urged her to call upon Apollo4 to save her. And in a moment the God of Light appeared, marvellously beautiful, frightened off the animals, and rescued her. But when she explained to him that she didn’t really worship him at all – that before her marriage she had worshipped Venus,5 and since she had adopted her husband’s god, Bacchus6 – he was extremely offended, and commanded her to
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tell her husband that he expected both of them to worship him in future, and ‘if you would hear more concerning me, command my servant, Evander, to your humble board.’ This last piece of advice nearly proved the undoing of Livia, for she found Evander so attractive that, after making Festus’ life a perfect misery, she ran away with him. Evander was an intellectual. Young, ardent, not unlike Apollo in looks, a great talker, and a man held in high esteem by the village people for his learning and his dignified behaviour, he was nevertheless as cold-hearted as a trout and totally lacking in a sense of humour. Livia bore with him as long as she could, then she escaped, and swimming across the lake returned to her aged mother’s cottage. This so infuriated Apollo that he set forth to kill her, but Bacchus, to whom Festus had explained the whole situation, waylaid him, and after a long argument dissuaded him from his purpose. Livia and Festus thereupon took up their life together and were happier than before. But Evander, although he derived some comfort from the composition of pessimistic verses, was left disconsolate, not because of Livia’s forsaking him, but because of the way the affair had gone. This takes place upon the borders of a lake among purple mountains covered with chestnut bloom and carpeted with flowers. Little baby fauns7 run in and out of the story; an oread,8 a minor poet, wanders through, always looking for somebody to whom she can recite her verses; in the moonlight the naiads,9 tired of the water springs, come down to the lake to swish and sing. But the delicate, bright atmosphere in which this enchanting book is bathed must be left for the reader to enjoy.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4679, 2 January 1920, p. 15. Signed: K. M. 1. Maurice Hewlett (1861–1923) was a historical novelist, poet and essayist. 2. Eden Phillpotts (1862–1960) wrote many novels set on Dartmoor, and novels set on a background of a particular trade or industry. His Storm in a Teacup is reviewed on pp. 499–500. 3. Panisci are putti, cherubs, who are associated with the woodland god Pan. 4. The Greek and Roman god of the sun, and of music and poetry. 5. The Roman goddess of love and sexuality. 6. The Roman god of wine. 7. Fauns are half-human, half-goat. 8. A nymph who lives in the mountains or valleys. 9. Naiads are freshwater nymphs.
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Dragonflies BLINDMAN. By Ethel Colburn Mayne.1 (Chapman & Hall. 7s. net.) NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES. By Eleanor Mordaunt.2 (Hutchinson. 6s. 9d. net.) INTERIM. By Dorothy Richardson.3 (Duckworth. 7s. net.)
Who can tell, watching the dragonfly, at what point in its swift angular flight it will suddenly pause and hover, quivering over this or that? The strange little jerk – the quivering moment of suspension – we might almost fancy they were the signs of a minute inward shock of recognition felt by the dragonfly. ‘There is something here; something here for me. What is it?’ it seems to say. And then, at the same instant, it is gone. Away it darts, glancing over the deep pool until another floating flower or golden bud or tangle of shadowy weed attracts it, and again it is still, curious, hovering over. . . . But this behaviour, enchanting though it may be in the dragonfly, is scarcely adequate when adopted by the writer of fiction. Nevertheless, there are certain modern authors who do not appear to recognize its limitations. For them the whole art of writing consists in the power with which they are able to register that faint inward shock of recognition. Glancing through life they make the discovery that there are certain experiences which are, as it were, peculiarly theirs. There is a quality in the familiarity of these experiences or in their strangeness which evokes an immediate mysterious response – a desire for expression. But now, instead of going any further, instead of attempting to relate their ‘experiences’ to life or to see them against any kind of background, these writers are, as we see them, content to remain in the air, hovering over, as if the thrilling moment were enough and more than enough. Indeed, far from desiring to explore it, it is as though they would guard the secret for themselves as well as for us, so that when they do dart away all is as untouched, as unbroken as before. But what is the effect of this kind of writing upon the reader? How is he to judge the importance of one thing rather than another if each is to be seen in isolation? And is it not rather cold comfort to be offered a share in a secret on the express understanding that you do not ask what the secret is – more especially if you cherish the uncomfortable suspicion that the author is no wiser than you, that the author is in love with the secret and would not discover it if he could? Miss Ethel Colburn Mayne is a case in point. In these short stories which she has published under the title of ‘Blindman’ we have the impression that what she wishes to convey is not the event itself, but what happens immediately after. That is, one might say, her moment – when the party is over and the lights are turned down, but the room
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is still left just as it was with the chairs in little groups, with somebody’s flowers left to wither, with a scrap of the paper on the floor that somebody has dropped. One might almost fancy that there still lingered in the air the vibration of voices and music – that the mirrors still held the shadows of shadows. To reconstruct what has happened without disturbing anything, without letting in any more light and, as far as possible, adding nothing – that would seem to be the author’s desire. But she is so fearful lest the atmosphere of her story be broken by a harsh word or a loud footfall that she is ever on the point of pulling down another blind, silently locking another door, holding up a warning finger and tip-toeing away until the reader feels himself positively bewildered. His bewilderment is not decreased by the queer sensation that he shares it with the author and that she would not have it less. ‘There is something here – something strange . . .’ But does she ever get any nearer to the strange thing than that? We feel that she is so content with the strangeness, with the fascination of just hinting, just suggesting, that she loses sight of all else. Mrs. Eleanor Mordaunt’s latest book, ‘Old Wine in New Bottles,’ is a collection of short stories likewise. But never, never could she be accused of dropping the bone to grasp the shadow. This is a book without a shadow, without – for all its obese Chinamen, foul opium dens, prostitutes, negroes, criminals, squalid cafes, murders at sea and lecherous Prussian officers – a hint of strangeness. It would be interesting to know Mrs. Eleanor Mordaunt’s opinion of these stories. Are they merely the expression of her contempt for the public taste? We cannot think so. She has catered for it too lavishly, too cunningly – she has even set new dishes before it with unfamiliar spices. But on the other hand she can hardly agree with the publishers’ announcement that these pretentious, preposterous stories are ‘vibrant with the common passions of humanity.’ Let us examine one which is typical of them all. It is called ‘Peepers All.’ Rhoda Keyes is a girl in a jam factory. She is beautiful ‘with her yellow hair . . . the creamy pillow of her neck, the full curve of her breast in the flimsy blouse, the shapely hips beneath the tight sheath skirt.’ She lives with her man, who is a sailor, in a first-floor room opposite a Chinaman’s shop. Every afternoon at five o’clock she comes home, strips to the waist, carefully washes herself, and then changes her clothes before going off for a lark in the street with her pals. Now it happens that the filthy fat old Chinaman can see into her bedroom, so every afternoon he sits looking through the blind. ‘More than once he put out the tip of his tongue and licked his lips; the hands lying on his fat knees opened and shut.’ He is not the only spectator. Unknown to him his two friends, Fleischmann, a German Jew, in the White Slave Traffic, and Ramdor, a Eurasian, share the exhibition, and all three of them determine to
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seduce the innocent, careless, heedless Rhoda. They are repulsed, and in their anger confide in each other and arrange that she shall be lured to the Chinaman’s room and discovered there by her husband. But at the last moment her place is taken by a poor cripple, wearing her hat and coat, who receives the blow meant for Rhoda, and dies murmuring: ‘Greater love – eh, dearie me, ’ow does it go, I’ve lost a bit – but summut – summut o’ this sort – ter lay down ’is life fur – fur ’is pal.’ 4 We protest that such a story, such a mixture of vulgarity, absurdity and ugliness, is an insult to any public that can spell its letters. ‘Interim,’ which is the latest slice from the life of Miriam Henderson, might almost be described as a nest of short stories. There is Miriam Henderson, the box which holds them all, and really it seems there is no end to the number of smaller boxes that Miss Richardson can make her contain. But ‘Interim’ is a very little one indeed. In it Miriam is enclosed in a Bloomsbury boarding-house, and though she receives, as usual, shock after shock of inward recognition, they are produced by such things as well-browned mutton, gas jets, varnished wallpapers. Darting through life, quivering, hovering, exulting in the familiarity and the strangeness of all that comes within her tiny circle, she leaves us feeling, as before, that everything being of equal importance to her, it is impossible that everything should not be of equal unimportance.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4680, 9 January 1920, p. 48. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Ethel Colburn Mayne (1865–1941) was an Irish writer of fiction, biography and translations. 2. Eleanor Mordaunt (1872–1942) was an English writer who lived in Melbourne for about eight years. Her Lu of the Ranges is reviewed on pp. 437–8. 3. Interim is another volume of Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson (1873– 1957). The Tunnel is reviewed on pp. 444–7. 4. A reference to: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’ (John, 15: 13).
Words – Words – Words RESPONSIBILITY. By James E. Agate.1 (Grant Richards. 7s. net.)
Mr. James Agate’s new novel, ‘Responsibility,’ put us in mind of a conjurer whose performance we witnessed many years ago at a little
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tin theatre up country. The curtain rose upon a stage bare except for a small table. On the table there were an egg, a glass of water, a fan – and a pistol. The conjurer walked rapidly on to the stage, and without so much as a bow or a good evening, he seized the pistol and fired. This was by way of capturing our attention; our attention was caught. Whereupon, after roundly denouncing those of his profession whose intention it was to hold us in suspense and deceive us, he swore that with him there was positively no deception. What he proposed to juggle with lay upon the table plain to see – an egg, a glass of water and a fan. But ‘pray do not imagine . . . he for his part absolutely refused to promise . . . if we were fools enough to suppose . . . .’ Away he flew into rapid, extravagant speech, never pausing for one moment, but now and again in the thick of it, when the fun was at its highest, seizing the pistol and firing a shot or two. Until suddenly – down came the curtain. Up it rolled again. There were the egg, the glass of water, and the fan, untouched, unaltered. On page 1 of the introduction the hero of Mr. Agate’s novel rushes on to the stage and seizes the pistol. On page 2 he cries: ‘I hate to hold you, sir, in suspense: a dénouement which depends upon the element of surprise is essentially a disappointment at the second reading – and who is the writer who will be content with a single taste of his quality? . . . So I lay my cards on the table. They consist of a sorry hero, a mistress adored and abandoned, and a son.’. . . And then – away he flies through forty-four pages of introduction plentifully sprinkled with pistol shots – faster and faster, until on page 339 down comes the curtain, the performance is over, and there are the cards lying on the table – the sorry hero, the mistress adored and abandoned, the son – untouched, unaltered. Well, what matter? Is not this soliloquy brilliant enough positively to exhaust our capacity for attending? What should we have done if, plus the pistol shots, Mr. Agate had juggled with a plot as well? Nevertheless we are left with the queer suspicion that there is some deception after all. We are not his enemies, neither are we dumbfounded and dismayed by the excessive novelty of his opinions, nor can we discover any need for him to exhort us to ‘calm yourselves, good readers.’ Why, then, does the hero think it necessary to shout so loud, to be so defiant, so sure we are bound to disagree with him, so scornful whether we do or whether we don’t, so eager to shock us, so determined to stand no nonsense from us – why does he, in fine, protest so much? This manner of his sets us wondering what it is all about – what it all amounts to. It sets us searching for the real Edward Marston without his table and his audience. If we were led to expect no more than entertainment our search would not be justified, for there are
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parts of ‘Responsibility’ which are entertainment of a very high order; but the author, if we read him aright, flies a great deal higher. His hero is not content to take life as it comes; he goes towards it urgently, loving, hating, wanting ‘to know a million things,’ but accepting nothing. It is never merely a question of Edward Marston living in Manchester in the nineties; it is the case of Edward Marston v. The Universe. It is a brave theme, but the author’s treatment of it is a deal too confident to be successful. He cannot resist his hero’s passion for display. And this passion is so ungoverned that we cannot see the stars for the fireworks.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4681, 6 January 1920, p. 79. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. James Agate (1877–1947) was an influential diarist, drama and film critic, and the author of three novels.
The Stale and the Fresh ALL ROADS LEAD TO CALVARY. By Jerome K. Jerome.1 (Hutchinson. 6s. net.) INVISIBLE TIDES. By Beatrice Kean Seymour.2 (Chapman & Hall. 7s. net.)
‘All Roads Lead to Calvary’ is another novel. It is not more; it is one of that enormous pile of novels . . . ‘Are they fresh?’ ‘Yes, baked to-day, Madame.’ But they are just the same as those that were baked yesterday and the day before – and the day before that. So much flour, a sprinkle of currants, a smear of sugar on the top. Melancholy, melancholy thought of all those people steadily munching, asking for another, and carrying perhaps a third one home with them in case they should wake up in the night and feel – not hungry, exactly – but ‘just a little empty.’ Joan Allway comes to London to be a journalist. She meets a great many people. She has an immediate success, first with a series of articles on Old London Churches and then with Sermons, which are published every Sunday in a famous paper, the editor making it a condition that her photograph appears at the head of each. For she is a great beauty. She falls in love with a married man who may well be Prime Minister one of these days, if the breath of scandal never blows him into the mire. He turns to her for help, for with all her beauty and womanliness she has a Man’s Mind. And then, because his pitiful wife, who paints her face and wears a wig and tries to smoke cigarettes, attempts to poison herself, so that her husband and Joan
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may be happy, Joan makes the great sacrifice. Comes the war. Again she loves – this time the editor who found her ‘Old London Churches’ had the Stevensonian3 touch. She is a nurse. She goes to France. She cuts off her hair and puts on man’s uniform and really sees what a front-line trench is like. And comes home, and is found by the editor turned airman, ‘beneath the withered trees beside the shattered fountain.’ Here is the last mouthful: ‘Perhaps you are right,’ she admitted. ‘Perhaps that is why He made us male and female: to teach us to love.’ A robin broke into a song of triumph. He had seen the sad-faced ghosts steal silently away.
Mrs. Seymour’s first novel, ‘Invisible Tides,’ is of a very different quality. It has its weaknesses, but it is full of feeling. If the author were not so conscious that she is writing a novel, she would be a great deal more successful. She is over-anxious to fit all together, to explain, and to make us part of that little world which she has found so passionately interesting. The early part of the book, which describes the childhood of the hero, Hilary Sargent, and of the heroine, Helena, is, to our thinking, unimportant. Hilary is quite a nice little boy, and his mother, telling him about the man who wrote ‘Treasure Island,’ is an attractive mother, but even the tragedy when this same gay young mother drowns herself does not really affect the later life of Hilary. As to Helena’s childhood, it is the familiar childhood of our young person who is shaping to be a heroine. She is ‘not understood’; she is ‘difficult’; her mother wishes she were more like other girls. But when these two meet, in spite of Mrs. Seymour’s leaning towards sentimentality, they do become individual, and we are convinced that they love each other. The war enters into their lives, and from this moment there is a great quickening of the emotion, and the description of how these two lives are laid waste is very moving. With the war, all the pretty, delicate, ‘quaint,’ fanciful flowers that grow too thickly in Mrs. Seymour’s garden and that she is far too ready to make into garlands wherewith to adorn her pages, are withered. We feel it is unbearable for her to see them gone, but we assure her that the hardy roots which remain are those she ought to cultivate.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4681, 6 January 1920, p. 79. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) is best known for his novel Three Men in a Boat (1889).
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2. Beatrice Kean Seymour (1886–1955) was a prolific novelist. 3. This presumably refers to the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose Treasure Island is mentioned in the review.
Amusement SIR LIMPIDUS. By Marmaduke Pickthall.1 (Collins. 7s. net.)
‘Come hither, all who love a merry jest!’ cries the small boy who discovers that Limpidus Fitzbeare has made no end of an ass of himself. His words might be taken as Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall’s advice to his readers while he unfolds, with immense gusto and high spirits, the tale of one whose success in life was the result of his quite remarkable talent for doing and saying the asinine thing. And the asinine thing is, in this connection, the right thing, the sound thing, the kind of thing which stamped an Englishman as superior to the whole rest of the world, as a being whose life was divided (and rightly divided) between enjoying his vast preserve, England, and keeping the foreigner, the outsider, and the man whom one did not know, in his rightful place. Sir Limpidus Fitzbeare was born at Clearfount Abbey in the sixties under a cloudless sky, and he might be said to have basked his life through in the same brilliant weather. He was the heir to vast estates; his income was seventy thousand pounds a year, and his excellent father, Sir Rusticus, so ordered his constitution that by the time he came of age he was capable of enjoying to the full these by no means paltry advantages. From a ‘priver’ he passed to the famous old school which, in his father’s words, ‘takes the corners off a man and forms him on the proper pattern for an Englishman of our condition who doesn’t want to be stared at in the streets of London.’ A fellow who has not been through it is handicapped in life, especially one who has been brought up by women who give too much importance to religion . . . You’ll find out what is done by people of your sort, and learn to do it naturally. You’ll learn to put religion, art, learning and literature, and all such matters in their proper place, and not attach too much importance to ’em . . .
It was while there that his remarkable talent for discovering the right thing first pushed into the light, and, the conditions being perfectly congenial, grew at such a rate that by the time he was ready for Cambridge, it had attained to its full height. Indeed, such was its
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power that he became absorbed into it – part of it – and could not be seen, except for a moment or two, for its flowers and leaves and fruits. So that in spite of Cambridge, London, the diplomatic service, a seat in Parliament, fame, lovely women, and finally a place in the Cabinet, he remained the boy he was, walking in the middle of the street ‘with a certain swing, the chin in air, the elbows raised and managing a tightly-rolled-up umbrella in a certain way.’ Had the perfect weather continued, we see no reason why Sir Limpidus should not have been one of the most successful Prime Ministers England has ever had. But, alas! a year or two before the war the glass began to fall, and there was such an ugly look in the political sky, such a disagreeable sense of an impending storm, that he and his colleagues welcomed wholeheartedly the Supreme Diversion. Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall’s energy never flags. He carries his book along at a great pace, yet he misses nothing on the way that will give point to his story. But – time – time! Have we the time to spare for it all? Once we have been given the sum – once we have added it up and found it comes to ‘Sir Limpidus’ – have we the time to go on proving and proving it, and finding, with a chuckle that lasts through two hundred and fifty-four pages, that ‘the answer is always the same’? We are the children of an ungracious and a greedy age. Perhaps it is not so much that we are difficult to amuse, but we are quickly tired. Repetition – the charm of knowing what is coming, of beating the tune and being ready with the smile and the laugh at just the right moment, no longer has the power to soothe and distract us. It wakes in us a demon of restlessness, a fever to break out of the circle of the tune, however brilliant the tune may be.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4683, 30 January 1920, p. 143. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Marmaduke Pickthall (1875–1936) was a convert to Islam and a noted Arabic scholar. His translation of the Qu’ran, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, 1930, was hailed as a literary and linguistic triumph.
Portrait of a Child COGGIN. By Ernest Oldmeadow.1 (Grant Richards. 7s. net.)
We have more than once entertained a suspicion that Mary hated her little lamb2 and could not bear the way it persisted in running after
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her, rocking along on its little grey-white legs, stopping dead for a moment, and then rocking along again. As to the time when it followed her to school, we imagine that really was the last straw, and no doubt she joined the other children laughing and sporting at sight of the silly little thing standing in the doorway with its blue bow and its mild eyes . . . But of late years we have been called upon to play the pet lamb to so many young authors that the tables are turned – so much so that our bleat is become a positive groan of dismay when Mary or her little brother drags us off to school. And if that school be moreover a public school, and the child a well-fed, chubby little child fresh from the bosom of his upper middle-class family – if we are called upon to share once more the feelings of the new boy – why, then we are hard put to it not to turn into lions and devour our leaders. But Mr. Oldmeadow makes no such demands on behalf of his little hero, Harry Coggin, aged ten years and eleven months, son of William Coggin, marine-store dealer, the Canal Bank, Bulford-onDeme. It is true Harry does go to school and he is a new boy, but there his resemblance to those other children ends. This strange, extraordinarily attractive little personality is Mr. Oldmeadow’s discovery, and from the moment we meet him talking to George Placker, we are prepared to follow him to school or anywhere he may like to take us. Coggin is an only child. His father calls himself a marine-store dealer, but he is in fact a rag-and-bones man, and – the time being 1851, and school inspectors unknown plagues – his son is more or less a working partner in the firm. But among the rubbish there were often torn books and papers, and these attracted little Coggin – so much so that he got a man at the sawmills to teach him to read for a shilling, paid for out of his pocket money of one penny a week. Having learned to read he becomes his own schoolmaster, and at the time he talks to George Placker at the canal-side he knows enough to be eligible for the Samuel Robson Scholarship which would admit him to the Bulford Grammar School. Placker is the leader of the atheists, Chartists,3 infidels and traitors in the town, and he determines that Harry Coggin shall win that scholarship to spite the governing classes and give the rich a fright. So the unprecedented thing happens. Harry enters for the scholarship; is examined, in the absence of the headmaster, by the rector, and, in the face of the most violent opposition on the part of the same headmaster and three-fourths of the town, the rector judges him the successful candidate. There follows a strange, deep disturbance in the town, and all caused by little Coggin, with his white face and large grey-blue eyes, his boots that are much too big, and his clothes that are too heavy. He is thrown by Placker and Company into the quiet
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pool, and great, widening ripples flow away and away from him, and are not quietened when the book ends. But it is Coggin who matters – Coggin, meeting the rector the morning after the scholarship and explaining that he taught himself writing and Latin. What made you skip the first declensions? . . . And why did you skip the cardinal numbers? . . . and you seem to have passed over the fourth conjugation of verbs.
In his desire to be deferential Coggin rose from his seat and stood beside the pile of planks: I am very sorry, sir [he said]. I could not learn the parts of the book you mention because these pages were torn out . . . When books come to our yard my father lets me look at them, and if they are very old and torn I can keep them. My Latin grammar has no covers, but I think it would be a very good one if eleven pages were not torn out. . . .
The novel as a whole lacks proportion. The closing scenes, with the rector for principal figure, are far too drawn out; they are, to our thinking, a grave blemish. The author throws all restraint to the winds, and indulges in such an outpouring of sentimentality that it is a wonder his hero is not submerged. But the waters do not touch him, and he remains in our memory a child unlike other children, a careful, solitary little figure, forlorn on the fringe of life.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4683, 30 January 1920, pp. 143–4. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Ernest Oldmeadow (1867–1949) was an author, journalist, wine merchant and editor of the Tablet. 2. A reference to the nursery rhyme: Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow; And everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go. It followed her to school one day, Which was against the rule; It made the children laugh and play To see a lamb at school.
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And so the teacher turned it out, But still it lingered near, And waited patiently about Till Mary did appear. Why does the lamb love Mary so? The eager children cry; Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know, The teacher did reply. 3. In 1848, the Year of Revolutions in Europe, Chartist leaders in Britain delivered to Parliament a petition championing the political rights of ordinary people.
The Easy Path FULL CIRCLE. By Mary A. Hamilton.1 (Collins. 7s. net.)
There is no doubt that the author of ‘Full Circle’ has faced her difficult subject with courage and sincerity. But it is the novelist’s courage, the novelist’s sincerity. These are good, sound, familiar weapons which in a world of turn-tails and sentimentalists we cannot affect to despise, but it is just because her handling of them is so dexterous that we find ourselves wishing to Heaven that Mrs. Hamilton would throw both away and begin all over again without them. It is, we realise, a rude measure to propose, for it would mean the sacrifice of the charming composition of her novel; and this would not be easy for an author whose mind delights in a sense of order, in composing for each character and scene the surroundings that are appropriate and adequate to it. What is the result? The result is another extremely able novel, written with unerring taste and sentiment, well informed, interesting. . . . It is a great deal better than the average novel – but is that enough? Just for the reason that in taking the easy accepted path Mrs. Hamilton has looked towards the difficult one, we say it is not enough and that ‘Full Circle’ is by no means the novel it might have been. Her difficult subject is this. Here we have the Quilhamptons, a family of brothers and sisters, passionately united by the tie of blood and by their affection for a beautiful home. They are met together on the occasion of the eldest sister’s marriage, and the meeting is overshadowed by the fact that they realise the time has come when the ‘home life’ must end and they must go their various ways and risk losing themselves in life. We are made to feel that in their case the risk is by no means small. Spontaneous, rich, gifted, original
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creatures that they are, they are, somehow, a shade too fine for life; there is a doubt whether, at the last moment, the habit to withdraw, to seek shelter, will not prove too strong. Of them all, Bridget is the one who, the others feel, is most likely to win through and be happy. Staying with them is a Socialist friend of their brother Roger, one Wilfred Elstree. This strange creature is a herald (but against all the rules carrying a trumpet) whom life has sent to parley with them on the eve of the battle. Bridget not only listens; she goes over to him. She accepts life as her swell friend as personified in rough, crude, harsh, hideous, selfish Elstree. At his touch her blood catches fire; at his glance she swoons. They live together until he tires of her and throws her away, to snatch from Roger’s arms a little doll of a creature, and, after breaking her, to disappear for four years. On his reappearance he asks Bridget to marry him, but she begs him to wait for six weeks, and at the end of that time he is, of course, engaged to another. Now, if Bridget had really loved Elstree, if he had not been such an outand-out ranting, roaring stage-Socialist, if their relationship had been important, and yet there had been in his nature some queer brutal streak, some lack of imagination which drove him to seek in another only the means of renewing himself – if Bridget had recognised this and yet won through. . . . But Love? We have a most convincing account of her physical reactions, of her enjoyment of him and the anguish she suffered when he left her and she waited for the bell to ring – for a letter – a sign – hoped and gave up hope. But Love? Why, on his reappearance after four years Mrs. Hamilton sacrifices the feelings of her heroine to a description of the room by firelight in which Elstree is sitting. Fatal gift of the pen, fatal sincerity of the novelist! How can we believe in Bridget unless we have the whole of her? How can we accept the fact that she did win through if we are not told to what? – if we are put off, cleverly, indeed, with a description of the fascination of London? We realise in writing this we are too severe upon the author, but it is her fault. If she did convey the impression that she might have written ‘Full Circle’ from within, how can we be content with her view of it from without?
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4684, 6 February 1920, p. 179. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Mary Agnes Hamilton (1884–1966) was part of Ottoline Morrell’s anti-war group, becoming a political journalist and speaker, and the Labour MP for Blackburn (1929–31).
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Promise GOLD AND IRON. By Joseph Hergesheimer.1 (Heinemann. 7s. net.)
Mr. Joseph Hergesheimer is a writer whose few books have been hailed by the generous critic as masterpieces of their kind. Perhaps it is owing to the fact that he comes from America that their praise has been more formal, less familiar, less – may we say? – avuncular than that which they are accustomed to bestow upon our very own young men. In the latter case, it is their habit upon the appearance of a first novel, however superb they may consider it, to acknowledge the fact that the writer is a young writer. ‘These young men have grown up in our midst. They have attended our schools, they have been to our universities and come down. While we do not dispute their genius for one moment, we question whether the finest flower, the ripest fruit is yet within our hands.’ But Mr. Hergesheimer has been allowed no youth. They have been to the woods for him already; they have returned with an armful of those strange branches that look and smell like laurel, and there is nothing more to be said except to say it over again. Nevertheless it is just this quality of ‘promise’ which we venture to think he possesses. It is more noticeable than ever in the stories collected under the title ‘Gold and Iron.’ These three stories are all most obviously the work of a writer who feels a great deal more than he can at present express. They are in form very similar. In the long, slow approach to the ‘crisis,’ he writes well and freely; he takes his time, one has the impression that he feels, here, at this point he is safe, and can afford to let himself go. But when the heart of the story is reached, when there is nothing left to depend upon – to cling to – then he is like a young swimmer who can even swim very well, disport himself unafraid and at ease as long as he knows that the water is not out of his depth. When he discovers that it is – he disappears. So does Mr. Hergesheimer. But watching sympathetically from the bank, we hope the disappearance is only temporary.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4684, 6 February 1920, p. 179. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Java Head by Joseph Hergesheimer (1880–1954) is reviewed on pp. 475–7. He was a wealthy American novelist from Pennsylvania.
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Simplicity SHEPHERD’S WARNING. By Eric Leadbitter. (Allen & Unwin. 7s. net.) ELI OF THE DOWNS. By C. M. A. Peake. (Heinemann. 7s. net.)
The author of to-day who chooses to write a peasant novel sets himself a by no means easy task. We have grown very suspicious of the peasant ‘as he is seen,’ very shy of dialect which is half prophecy, half potatoes, and more than a trifle impatient of over-wise old men, hot-blooded young ones, beauties in faded calico, and scenes of passion in the kitchen while the dinner is hotting up or getting cold. The psychological novel, the novel of manners and what we might call the experimental novel, inspires no such distrust; its field is wide, there would seem to be no limit to the number of its possible combinations, and we have not that strange sense that the author has committed himself to a more or less limited and determined range of experiences. There is, moreover, in the latter case, no temptation to overemphasize the relation of the peasant to the earth; to make of him a creature whose revolutions are so dependent on the seasons that it is impossible for him to fall in love out of May, or to die except at the year’s end. But more difficult still to resist is the inclination to overstep the delicate boundary between true simplicity and false. True simplicity is hard, reluctant soil to cultivate, and the harvest reaped is small, but it wants but a scatter of seed flung broadcast over the false light soil to produce an appearance of richness, of growing and blowing which mocks the patient effort of the honest cultivateur. Mr. Eric Leadbitter’s latest book, ‘Shepherd’s Warning,’1 is, however, an example of the peasant novel wherein these several difficulties are overcome. They cease, indeed, after the first few pages, to have any reality in the reader’s mind. In this extremely careful, sincere piece of work, the author makes us feel that he knows every step of the ground he treads, and that his familiarity with it prevents him from wasting time over anything that is not essential to the development of his story. There is not a moment’s hesitation; Mr. Leadbitter moves within the circle of his book, easy, confident, and yet in some curious way impressing us as one who is very reticent and not given to exaggeration. He would rather let things speak for themselves, and tell their own tale. What is it all about? It is the life story of Bob Garrett, a farm labourer, from the moment he reaches the top of the hill until – down, down, slowly down – he is an old man with just strength enough to creep into the sun and call his cat. It is an account of how his three orphaned grandchildren, who live with him, grow from little children to young people in the prime of life. It tells how little Sally Dean, whose father murdered his wife because she was a bad woman
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with wandering blood and wild ways, grew up with the curse on her and went to the bad herself, and, fascinating Bob Garrett’s two grandsons, made one marry her that her unborn child, by another man, might have a father. Sally is the wild strain in the book; the thing that can’t be accounted for, that seems to be good for nothing; she is the lovely poisonous weed that Bob Garrett can’t abide to see growing among his plants, and yet he cannot stamp it out. She feels herself that she ought not to be as she is; but there it is, she can’t get away, she can’t make herself different, she must live. And we are shown how little by little she is accepted, and with that acceptance she changes in spite of herself; she is no longer an exotic running dark and bright in the hedges for any man to gather. As the story moves, changes, deepens, gathering new life into it, and yet keeping the old, reaching out toward new issues, and then accepting those new issues as part of it, so the village, Fidding, goes through an identical experience. When Bob Garrett is head ploughman and the finest worker on the farm, it is a self-contained, solid, old-fashioned little place and remote even from the nearest town, Pricehurst. But gradually, like Bob Garrett, it becomes inadequate to the needs of the restless rising generation. They do not sweep it away, but they ignore it until it falls into the background, a small bundle of ancient cottages with nothing but the traces of their former pride and solidity. But what is there in New Fidding to compare with Old Fidding, where every man could have told you his neighbour’s garden down to a row of radishes, and where, in spite of their differences, they were held together by an implicit acceptance of life; but not of ‘the fever called living’? ‘Eli of the Downs’ is another novel that has its roots in the English country-side, but Mr. Peake is a writer who has not yet succeeded in putting a rein on his ambitions. In his eagerness to make a great figure of Eli he cannot resist picking him out, even when he is a very small one and scarce more than knee high, and overloading him with all the ornaments which are handed down as the heirlooms of childhood extraordinary. He hears tunes, sees colours, has a vision in church. ‘I did see it, grandmer,’ he ended. . . . ‘And what then, deary?’ ‘I . . . I don’t know. I fink . . . I came back.’
Even though years afterwards, in a Japanese temple, his vision comes true, we highly suspect that ‘I came back.’ But this fault, which is apparent in the first pages of the book, persists throughout. The author, unlike Mr. Leadbitter, cannot leave his characters to speak their mind; he must speak it for them, and even reinforce their statements with a kind of running commentary and explanatory notes
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which are very tiring to keep up with. He seems, until he carries his simple shepherd overseas and sets him among highly embroidered scenes and persons, to expect our attention to flag. In that he is right, but the chief cause of our fatigue is precisely this habit of endeavouring to capture and recapture it. But the truth is that ‘Eli of the Downs’ ought to have been a short story of – certainly not more than five thousand words. We do not wish to be unkind to Mr. Peake; but we wish he would be a little less kind to himself, wish that he would slay a great many of his sheep and let us have one uninterrupted view of the shepherd.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4685, 13 February 1920, p. 211. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. The title is taken from the rhyme: ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning’.
Orchestra and Solo PETER JACKSON. By Gilbert Frankau.1 (Hutchinson. 7s. 6d. net.) THE DARK RIVER. By Sarah Gertrude Millin.2 (Collins. 7s. net.)
In the old untroubled days before the Great Hunting, when London – Heart of Empire – still allowed her sleeping children to be served with meat and drink by spies, murderers, pimps and panders, before the Spirit of England was awake, while yet the Sea, which is England’s mother, and Thames, who is the father of England (‘and these twain mate in London Pool for all the world to see’), were the playground of youth, in – let us be honest – the stale old days before 1914, Peter Jackson was a cigar merchant with an almost passionate interest in cigarettes,3 and Patricia, his wife, was his pal. Not more than that? Reason cried (for she was the daughter of Dr. Heron Baynet, brain specialist, Harley Street, who had taught her to think): ‘Is not that enough?’ Instinct whispered ‘No.’ They had three thousand a year, a house in Lowndes Square, five servants, two children, a governess. Life was made up of family parties, theatre-going, a summer holiday, mornings at home and afternoons at the skating rink, and yet – and yet – all was not well with Patricia. She was thirty, and she wanted something more. As for Peter, he was too absorbed in business to think of Life. He thought in terms of cigars, he dreamed in cigarettes. It was not that money quâ money mattered so much – it was that
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Peter Jackson could not bear to be a failure. ‘Weaklings to the wall, to the strong man the fruits of his brain . . .’ But while Patricia, still unaware of matehood denied, wondered, and the tide in Peter’s affairs rose and rose, the ‘Beasts in gray, murder, rape and plunder in their swinish eyes,’ came out of their lair and roared so that civilization might hear. For a month and three days Peter Jackson refused to answer the ‘eternal Questioning,’ tried to ignore ‘the khaki blossoming now like a brown flower at every street corner.’ But one evening, after dinner, after telling his wife a little of what giving up the cigarettes would mean to him, he made her see – ‘her eyes kindled at the prospect’ – that he must go. And from that moment Patricia’s problem was solved, her cup was full and brimming. For now she loved him utterly, beyond friendship. ‘At a word she had become his mate, his woman to do with as he would.’ But from Peter Jackson these things were hidden. On the strength of having been at one time Corporal Jackson of the Eton Dog-potters4 Peter got a commission, and gradually, with a man’s job to his hand, the city faded. He became absorbed in the care of his men. . . . These men! For of the officers one does not write. The well-educated, the well-off, the comfortable classes must needs defend the country from which they draw their riches and their education, and he who did not do it – voluntarily, without compulsion or fear of compulsion – whatever his fancied responsibilities to his profession, to his business, to his house, to his women or his children, is surely anathema maranatha, the moral leper, the pariah among his kind. . . .
Can we not hear, dear reader, an echo of the applause which the Peters and Patricias of that time would have lavished upon such words? Nevertheless, throughout the year’s training before he left for France, Peter was troubled by business; there was a big drop on the cigars, and, bitterer still, the cigarettes had to go. Patricia saw his suffering. She suffered, and suffered damnably. . . She even grew to resent her own children, their perpetual ‘Daddy’s going to France to kill Germans.’ But neither the mate nor the mother in Patricia flinched as pal or as playmate; she did her duty, laughter on her lips, gold head high.
Mr. Gilbert Frankau has called his novel a romance of married life. But why not of war – dreadful, bloody, glorious, stinking, frightful, magnificent war? The middle of his novel is, if one examines it, nothing but a roaring hymn in praise of killing, for killing is the Job
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of Jobs. True, poor bloody Tommy was blown to bits, men went mad, died in their thousands, filled the lamentable night with their shrieks and groans, but according to Mr. Frankau they died a man’s death, and little children to-day, who look with wistful eyes upon their father’s sword, may be taught to hope. His hero came out of it with shell shock, neurasthenia, the fear of consumption, a broken man, enfin – but only for the time. In the country house that Patricia had ‘made’ for him, thanks to Heron Baynet, brain specialist, he soon recovered, and, cigars and cigarettes thrown to the winds, fell in love with his wife. The war had been unto him and unto that woman whom he took for his mate a cleansing fire. And (courage, mes enfants, courage) in a vision that comes to Peter’s cousin God promises that: Never while earth endured would the Beast utterly perish: for God had created the Beast [Germany] even as he had created Man [the Allies] to subdue the Beast. Without this menace of the Beast, man’s finest attribute – the very manhood of him – would atrophy. He would become flabby, emasculate; and in his flabbiness he would perish. . .
Well, Mr. Frankau knows his public and we know it too. ‘Peter Jackson’ will go the round of that vast family the Hun-Haters, and the men will say: ‘Stout chap, that writing fellow,’ and the women: ‘My dear, it is too marvellous for words – it brings all the old thrill back again.’ But we find ourselves wishing that he had kept his talent in a napkin5 rather than put it to such uses. To read ‘The Dark River’ is, after so much wind and brass, to listen to a solo for the viola. Running through the book there is, as it were, a low, troubled throbbing note which never is stilled. Were that note more deliberate – not louder, or more forced, but, musically speaking, firmer – it would be a great deal more effective. This low, throbbing note is essential to Miss Millin’s novel; and we must be very certain it is there, for though the story plays above and below it, that which gives it significance and holds our attention is the undertone. Perhaps a novel is never the novel it might have been, but there are certain books which do seem to contain the vision, more or less blurred or more or less clear, of their second selves, of what the author saw before he grasped the difficult pen. ‘The Dark River’ is one of these. Very often, when Mrs. Millin just fails to make her point, we feel it is not because she does not appreciate the point that is to be made, but because she is so aware of it herself that she takes it for granted on the part of the reader. It is a fascinating, tantalizing problem, how much an author can afford to leave out without robbing the characters of the ‘situation’; but that is not quite Miss
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Millin’s difficulty; she has rather misjudged a little what she has ‘put in.’ The scene of the novel is South Africa, and the first nine chapters describe the life of John Oliver, diamond digger. It may seem, as the story unfolds itself and is found to be not so much concerned with John Oliver as with the Grant family, and Alma Grant in particular, that these chapters are disproportionately long, but Miss Millin knew what she was about when she wrote them. They give a sudden view of a country and of an experience that the Grants could not understand, even though they lived in its very midst. But the heart of the book is Alma Grant and how she, who seemed so made for life, somehow just missed life, just missed the fineness of everything. This girl waiting, at first because she could so well afford to wait – the best was bound to be kept for her – and then gradually realizing that, after all, others had pushed in front of her, they were choosing and taking and sharing, until there was nothing for her – nothing but Van Reede – is an unusual and fascinating character.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4686, 20 February1920, p. 241. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Gilbert Frankau (1884–1952) was a popular novelist and war poet; he served in the First World War as a captain with the Royal Field Artillery. 2. Sarah Gertrude Millin (1889–1968) was a South African novelist and biographer. In NN, JMM changes the name of Miss Millin to Mrs. Millin. 3. Frankau was managing director of his family’s cigar business before he signed up for action in the First World War. 4. The Eton volunteers. Frankau was an Old Etonian. 5. ‘To bury one’s talent in a napkin’ is a phrase meaning ‘to keep one’s talent a secret’.
The Wider Way THE WIDER WAY. Hutchinson [1920]. 7½ in. 304 pp., 7/6 n.
Miss Diana Patrick1 is a new aspirant to the chorus of young authors who live in the hope of writing their way into the great heart of the public. Whether she has any original talent, whether she will one day find herself playing a small part, remains to be seen. In ‘The Wider Way’ her behaviour does not for a moment depart from the accepted behaviour of all the other young aspirants: it is harmless and pretty and silly.
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Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4686, 20 February 1920, p. 258. Unsigned. 1. Diana Patrick was the pseudonym of Mrs. Desemen Newman Wilson.
Mystery and Adventure THE DEATH OF MAURICE. By Barry Pain.1 (Skeffington. 7s. 6d. net.) THE ANCIENT ALLAN. By H. Rider Haggard.2 (Cassell. 8s. 6d. net.)
In the publishers’ announcement which accompanies ‘The Death of Maurice’ there is a suggestion that the reader may well be surprised to find that a humorist is capable of writing a really well-designed and cleverly worked-out mystery novel. But we should have thought that humorous writing depended almost entirely for its success upon the author’s sense of design, and his ability to give it adequate expression. He, of all writers, cannot afford to leave anything en l’air, anything to the imagination, for it is not to the imagination that he makes his appeal, but to the reader’s sense of fancy and delight in invention. With all due respect we might liken him in the world of letters to the music-hall artist in the theatrical world, whose performances appear to be spontaneous, accidental almost, whereas there is not an action, movement, glance which is unrelated to the expert whole. ‘The Death of Maurice’ is a very good example of the high level of Mr. Barry Pain’s technical accomplishment. From the opening chapter it might almost be said to ‘play itself,’ so easy and sure is the author’s touch, and yet he has guarded against monotony by giving us a great deal more of real characterization than is usual in such stories. Who killed Maurice Carteret is never a tragic question; it is not even a startling one. A moment or two after his death, his friend, while he waited for the man-servant to fetch the police, heard, beyond the garden, someone playing the flute – a fragment of ‘Solveig’s Song.’ It was a still, clear night. Maurice lay dead on the garden path, and then there came the sound of the flute. Who killed Maurice Carteret? Who could it be playing the flute? It is not that these questions seem to fall hard on one another in the mind of the reader; but they seem to be of precisely equal importance and interest. They suggest that there is, in either case, a little problem to be solved, and, if you are sufficiently interested in human nature to care to study the widely different reactions of a certain circle of people to either of these questions . . . ‘come with me, dear reader,’ says Mr. Barry Pain. Thus, very cleverly, the author keeps us in two minds. While we
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accompany him on his search he presents each character in so intriguing a way that we forget what we are after until, the moment our curiosity is fully aroused, we are made aware that, after all, our real business is to find the murderer. Is the murderer ever really found? And who was it, finally, who played the flute? Some readers will find a perfectly satisfactory answer to both these questions, but others will be left wondering. ‘The Ancient Allan,’ Sir Rider Haggard’s new novel, is a far simpler variety of the pastime novel. It opens on a familiar note: Now, I, Allan Quatermain, come to the weirdest (with one or two exceptions perhaps) of all the experiences which it has amused me to employ my idle hours in recording here in a strange land, for after all England is strange to me.
This is the kind of thing to settle down to when the destination is Devonshire, if it is not Cornwall; but, alas it needs – it dreadfully needs – the flying interruptions outside the carriage window – the mysterious interruptions of people’s sandwiches – the indignant emotion aroused by the tea-basket, and the blissful sight of the train making a great scallop round the blue edge of the sea – to enable us to swallow such a very dusty dose of ancient Egypt. Here is battle, murder and sudden death, wheels within chariot wheels, villains and heroes and black slaves, who in their land were kings; here is the mighty battle with the crocodile, the torture of the boat – all the ingredients that once upon a time, only to get a whiff of, knew us hungry. But nowadays, to read of how one was placed in an open boat and another boat put on top, so that only the head and hands remained outside – to be launched on a river and allowed to linger – awakes no response in us at all.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4687, 27 February 1920, p. 274. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Barry Pain (1864–1928) was a journalist, poet and novelist admired by Robert Louis Stevenson. 2. Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925) was a best-selling novelist, known particularly for King Solomon’s Mines (1885), in which the protagonist is Allan Quartermain.
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A Party UNCLE LIONEL. By S. P. B. Mais.1 (Grant Richards. 7s. 6d. net.)
Has it ever happened to the reader to be ushered into a room where there are a large number of persons who know one another so well, so incredibly well, who are upon such charming, familiar terms that he would imagine they had been at one golden time all babies together in a common nursery, leaping about in the firelight while good Nanny prepared their baths? It is not the most comfortable experience for the stranger. Man may be an adaptable creature, but to slough off a skin, acquire a protective colouring, equip himself with a hood and sting or velvet paws, is not an affair of five minutes. The only possible adjustment in the circumstances is to adopt an air of keen animation and plunge – listening, taking it all for granted, knowing it all inside out. The reader to whom this has happened will remember, perhaps, how he smiled until he felt himself in yellow stockings cross-gartered2; how, finally he was conscious of that air of animation withdrawing from him, beam by beam, until it set in his bosom like a declining sun. ‘Uncle Lionel’ puts us in mind of this experience, but with the difference that this time we are buttonholed by the person who really does know more about everybody else than they could know about themselves, though he is for ever telling us in the same breath that this world is not his world any more than it is ours. This estrangement is valuable because it frees him from the necessity of explaining ‘why.’ These are the facts – make of them what you please – and if you must have a Kaiser to hang, there is always the modern spirit lurking over there in the corner and calling the tune. So we find ourselves in the midst of Patricia and Michael and Joan and Renton and Phyllis and Wreford and Hélène and Trefusis, and where they met each other or how long they have known each other we cannot make out. Suffice it that they are all talking at once and squabbling and going off with one another, and falling in and out of love for no earthly reason we can discover. There is no plan and Michael and Patricia are only more prominent than the others because they are more extravagant. Who is Patricia? A collection of ugly, shrewish, slangy remarks delivered at Michael, who adores her, and has the habit of disappearing – to be discovered by Uncle Lionel in surroundings that are of a decidedly Russian blend. But they have no more body or soul than the rest of their ‘set.’ Again we find ourselves wondering at the author’s patience – nay, it is more than that – at the ease with which he can amuse himself, for that he is roundly, soundly amused from cover to cover is plain to see. For him
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there are still traces of dew upon the old story of innocent little Phyllis taken to Brighton3 by the villain, only to find out at the last possible moment that his bedroom key is the same as her bedroom key. It is sorry fun to watch Mr. Mais gathering this shop-soiled old flower with quite an air and putting it in his pages. But we should have been prepared by the remark of a minor heroine a little earlier: ‘Hélène,’ snorted Beatrice, ‘do preserve some sense of decency.’ ‘But I shall. We’ve thrashed it all out. We’re going to have strings and strings of babies . . .’
It is a nice question which of these two emotional moments is the more faded. But come, let us slip away. The party is still going on. The party is going on for ever; but so, thank God, are the sky and the moving sea.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4687, 27 February 1920, p. 274. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Stuart Petre Brodie Mais (1885–1975) was a writer of travel books and a few novels, and a journalist and broadcaster. 2. Malvolio, a haughty steward in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, is tricked into making a fool of himself in front of his mistress, Olivia. A letter purporting to come from her contains the lines: ‘Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered’ II, v, 152–4). He is humiliated when he realises that she finds him a laughingstock. 3. Notorious as a venue for extra-marital affairs.
On the Road PILGRIMS OF CIRCUMSTANCES. By G. B. Burgin.1 (Hutchinson. 7s. 6d. net.)
‘Pilgrims of Circumstances’ is Mr. Burgin’s fifty-ninth novel. We have not read the fifty-eight which preceded it, but, if we may judge by this one, the author is not concerned with anything more serious than to amuse, or, perhaps it were truer to say, to distract his readers. For a long acquaintance with pastime novels forces us to make the distinction between amusement and distraction. By far the greater number of them aim at nothing more positive than a kind of mental knitting – the mind of the reader is grown so familiar with the pattern that the
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least possible effort is demanded of it, and yet this ravel of wool is just enough to keep one from facing those grim uncomfortable creatures who are only too ready to stare one out of countenance. O Life! why is it that so many of thy children are homeless, for ever doomed to have a little time to spare between the stages of the tedious journey? What can they do? They cannot spend the time staring out of windows. Is there nothing to go to see or hear or buy? Are there no books? Up and down the miles and miles of bookstalls range the uneasy travellers. There are so many books that the cities are darkened, the country is buried, the sky is blotted out by them. And somewhere on the shelves there are Mr. Burgin’s fifty-eight novels, and a hand hovers, slipping in the fifty-ninth. ‘It must be wonderful to write novels,’ says somebody. ‘It must be the most wonderful feeling, even if you don’t take it desperately seriously, to be able to sit down and first create a small world of your very own, where anything can happen that you choose to let happen, where the most enchanting beings can meet one another. There needn’t be a soul in it whom you don’t want; you can just, being God, remove people by one of those dreadfully unfair “Acts of God.” I think the moment you sit down to a fresh notebook and decide whom you’ll have and where you’ll put them must be more thrilling even than sitting down to a Bulb Catalogue. . . .’ Well, let us see whom Mr. Burgin, after fiftyeight essays, has chosen: . . . the comic landlady, the swearing parrot, the ranting old actor roaring of Shakespeare and whiskey glasses, the handsome young man whom the bright girl loves, but whom the reckless beautiful woman, married to a brute of a husband, adores. . . . ‘Mrs. Pipples, I’m not sure, but I think I’m on my legs again.’ ‘I’m glad to hear it, sir. And though I’m a widow woman as says it, you don’t offen see such legs as yours, sir.’ . . . Polly screaming another comprehensive oath that would have delighted the soul of a buccaneer. . . . Said the Wreck sarcastically . . . ‘I have a devilish thirst upon me which is but partially slaked.’ . . . She turned for a moment, faced him, then walked slowly down the mossy path, an occasional sunbeam filtering . . . upon her beautiful face and equally beautiful hair. . . . ‘Take me away from him. I would be your slave, your mistress, anything to get away from the awful degradation of my present life.’
Breathes the reader who, furnished with these quotations, could not imagine ‘Pilgrims of Circumstance’ for himself? But that is not the question. Come, let us begin at the beginning and go on to the end, and then stop. Let us discover that there are even two comic
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landladies and the second is called Mrs. Wanks, and she lives at daggers drawn with Mrs. Pipples. Let us hear how the parrot uses ‘un’oly langwidge’ to the butcher. Softly – softly, dear reader, and perhaps by the time we have finished, and if we are still waiting, Mr. Burgin will have made the grand choice again, and his sixtieth volume will be ready for our empty hands.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4690, 19 March 1920, p. 369. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. G. B. Burgin (1856–1944) was, as is evident from the review, a prolific novelist.
‘My True Love Hath My Heart’1 A MAN’S HONOUR. By Violet M. Methley.2 (Hurst & Blackett. 7s. 6d. net.)
Underneath the price of this novel there is a blue hand sinister pointing to the words: ‘Read first turn-over of cover.’ We are obedient, and here is the cream: Valentia Carland, misunderstanding husband, follows him England, Ceylon. Native rising; hunted like wild animals in tropical woods by native prince; end, happiness cost sister’s life, heroic self-sacrifice. Fine story finely told, great ability, tense situations, thrilling, grim, interesting. . . What is the misunderstanding between Valentia and Charles? In seeking for the answer we are confronted once again by the Law by which all popular novelists are governed, and it is – whatever comes in at the door, let the door but be shaken, the handle rattled, a voice heard without – Love flies out of the window. It would seem there is no other adventure in life but hunting the sweet terrible boy. Shall we be amazed then if one or the other of his captors, their first fine fatigue over, tiptoes to the window and softly opens it? Alas! we are so far from the world of faëry to-day that the only satisfactory ending to our stories is – ‘they lived unhappily ever after.’ They never became King and Queen and lived in the castle beyond the blue mountains. Always, at the last moment, some happy accident awakened his suspicions or hers, and away flew Love and the chase began all over again. Who of us can believe that Valentia Carland, cutting roses in the old-world garden, singing ‘in a low, sweet voice’ the old-world song, blushing and burying her face in the flower-filled basket, regardless of possible thorns in the old-world way, was only terrified by that sharp
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report like the crack of a whip shattering the peace of the afternoon? She never for a moment feared anything but the worst. His heart in me keeps him and me in one, My heart in him his thoughts and senses guide.
The words, she felt, described exactly what she and Charles were to each other, and then ‘bang’ and she rushed into the parlour to find her husband and her sister struggling together for the possession of the newly-fired revolver. What had happened? Little shrill hysterical Letty cried that Charles had tried to kill himself. Is that true? He will not say ‘Yes,’ and he will not say ‘No.’ Then, of course, it is true. ‘Don’t you understand that I would rather have found you dead – yes, rather that! – than know you to be so utterly callous – utterly heartless, as you are!’
Any woman a shade less blissfully married might, at least, have asked her husband if he were unhappy or had lost his fortune, but there were too many roses in Valentia’s garden, and so she flings the window open and out flies Love. Charles’s regiment is ordered to Ceylon. Before he leaves he feels it his duty – after all, he is her husband – to explain to Valentia that he was not trying to commit suicide; it was Letty. Oh, her burning scorn that he should try to shield himself behind a helpless girl! There is nothing to be done but to let him go to Ceylon without so much as ‘good-bye,’ and when he is gone and Letty has explained that his story was the true one, to follow him there and ask his pardon. But by the time she arrives at Colombo, Charles has gone with an expedition to Kandy, and by the time she has followed him there he has met with a femme fatale, and as Valentia raises the curtain over the door of his room he stoops to kiss the ‘smiling provocative lips.’ As if this were not enough, at this point the native prince enters upon the scene and begins his evil, unsleeping pursuit of her; and then, until the end of the book, we are in the thick of horrid native warfare, grim enough in all conscience, culminating in a hideous massacre and a blood-curdling description of death by the elephant. At the darkest hour the native prince demands that Valentia shall be given him and Charles set free as payment. But Letty goes instead, kills herself before the Old Spider has caught her, and before Charles, rushing into the Private Apartments, kills him. And as, no doubt, always happens, with the dead still unburied, the ‘indescribable’ horrors scarcely a day old, Valentia and Charles shut the door and shut the window again, and vow that they and Love shall dwell together until . . .
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Text: Athenaeum, 4691, 26 March 1920, pp. 415–16. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Part of the opening line of a song from Arcadia by the Elizabethan courtier and poet Sir Philip Sidney. Two further lines from it are quoted in the review. 2. Violet M. Methley (1882–1953) was an author who wrote for children as well as adults. She set several of her books in Australia.
Short Stories THE CLINTONS AND OTHERS. By Archibald Marshall.1 (Collins. 7s. net.) THE SURRENDER, AND OTHER HAPPENINGS. By Mary Gaunt.2 (Werner Laurie. 7s. net.) A BIT AT A TIME. By Dion Clayton Calthrop.3 (Mills & Boon. 7s. net.)
In our infant days we never thought to charge the teller of the story with being in league with the Dustman. They were two separate visitors, and the former was our friend, and the latter, who never failed in coming, was our enemy, but a gentle enemy. True, the teller of the tale always saw him coming long before we did, and informed us it was no use ‘going on’ ages – it seemed – before the soft poppy-dust descended. Still, we imagined that he hated to be overtaken as much as we did, and was trying his utmost, as we were, to ward off the fatal blow. But with ‘The Clintons’ Mr. Archibald Marshall is Dustman to his own stories. They flow along so gently and so smoothly that the reader’s mind is put to sleep, and asleep it stays while one episode merges into another. There is not a single jar or jolt in the whole book; there is not even an angle or a sharp outline. All is gently blurred as though we floated at twilight on a placid river through venerable English meadows, with many an ancient home of England half-glimpsed through the trees. For Mr. Marshall takes an especial delight in lingering over the mildly exquisite problems of family pride and family tradition, in tracing the fine inevitable line that divides your aristocrat from your common man, and in noting with almost a sympathetic shiver of apprehension what must happen when that line is invaded. ‘Kencote,’ ‘In That State of Life,’ ‘The Squire and the War,’ all belong to this kind; and even ‘Audacious Ann’ depends for its full success upon the fact that the little lady is high-born. The other two stories – one about a builder and the other about a disappointed bookkeeper – are so subdued in tone, we gain the impression that the
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author is determined to keep them in their place. He is lenient with them because they are poor, plain folk; the builder is not to blame because he puts up ‘abominations of desolation’ where the old houses used to stand – he knows no better; and the meek bookkeeper, sorrowing over one blot on the fair page of the great ledger, is a pitiful example of the ‘small man’ . . . ‘Thus the stream glideth.’ Far different is the climate of ‘The Surrender, and other Happenings.’ In these exciting stories it is not only we who are kept awake; the characters sleep at their peril. If they are not fighting snow, there is a pack of timber-wolves, or an African swamp, or a mob of furious Chinamen or a horde of savages to be overcome. Mrs. Gaunt’s method is – more or less – to think of an extraordinary background, double it, add one man, multiply by one terrible danger, keep on multiplying, subtract all possible means of escape, draw a line, add one absolutely unexpected means of escape and one sweet gentle girl. The result is extremely readable, for the author is far more interested in the surroundings of her stories than in the characters themselves – and so are we. . . . Forty-five degrees below, perhaps it was more than forty-five degrees below, and he spat because he had read somewhere that spittle would crack as it hit the ground at fifty degrees below. But there was a sharp little sound almost under his nose, and he stood still for a second. It had cracked in the air! What did that mean? Nanook looked up at him gravely . . .
If such trimmings as these be provided the plainest of plain stories will content us. But does it really matter so little whether one loses one’s toes or whether one doesn’t? Mrs. Gaunt’s heroes seem to shed them as light-heartedly as the Pobbles.4 Mr. Dion Clayton Calthrop has chosen a happy title for the finest, best assorted tales contained in ‘A Bit at a Time.’ One cannot see the play for the chocolate box, but he must be a sweet-toothed reader who does not quarrel with the quality of the sweets, or who does not find the row of war-time specialities positively nauseating. Here is a small ‘humorous’ sample from the diary of an American airman: If I’d found a Hun then I’d have boiled him alive in bread sauce and trussed him with red-hot skewers, tied him down to a white ants’ nest and put a jug of water out of his reach.
Another shake of the box produces the war-time bride: If you had put a pink rosebud to bed in silk handkerchiefs and put golden foam for hair, and a crumpled leaf for a hand, you could get nothing fairer
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It is the confectioner’s mystery that, though the one should be so hard and the other so soft, the flavour of both these samples is identical.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4692, 2 April 1920, p. 446. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Arthur Hammond Marshall, pen-name Archibald Marshall (1866–1934), was an English author whose work was popular in the USA. 2. Mary Gaunt (1861–1942) was an Australian novelist and travel writer who emigrated to Europe. 3. Dion Clayton Calthrop (1878–1937), an artist, illustrator and writer, was the grandson of the Irish dramatist Dion Boucicault. 4. ‘The Pobble who has no toes’ is a nonsense poem by Edward Lear (1812–88).
Two Modern Novels AN IMPERFECT MOTHER. By J. D. Beresford.1 (Collins. 7s. net.) TWO SISTERS. By R. H. Bretherton. (Allen & Unwin. 7s. 6d. net.)
Mr. Beresford and Mr. Bretherton, two of our more thoughtful writers, turning from the crowded noisy town where everybody knows everybody else, and there is not a house to be had or even a room that is bare of associations, turning equally from the vague outlines and spaces of the open country, have chosen to build their new novels in what might be called the Garden City of literature. It is only recently that the possibilities and the attractions of this desirable site have been discovered by the psychoanalysts, and the houses are still scattered and few, but there is no doubt as to its dawning popularity with the novelists. They do not seem to mind the chill hygienic atmosphere of a Garden City; the gardens in which poor Adam and Eve never could find a hidingplace from the awful eye of God or man; the asphalt roads with meek trees on either side standing up, as it were, to an ‘artistic’ dance; the wire receptacles ready to catch the orange or banana peel of some non-resident savage, and the brand-new exposed houses which seem to breathe white enamel and cork linoleum and the works of Freud and Jung, which seem to defy you to find in them a dark corner or a shadowy stair, which seem to promise you that there never shall be a book upside down on the shelves or an unclaimed toothbrush in the bathroom, or a big summer hat – belonging to whom? – on the top of the wardrobe, or a box under the bed. All is ‘carefully thought out,’
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‘arranged for,’ all is in admirable order, and we imagine Mr. Beresford and Mr. Bretherton throwing open the doors of their new houses and declaring them ready for inspection. . . ‘An Imperfect Mother’ is an account of the youth and early manhood of Stephen Kirkwood, a pleasant, diligent boy whose ambition is to be a successful builder. His father is a bookseller; he has two sisters, one with spectacles and one without, and his imperfect mother is an artist. She plays the piano, she has a charming talent for telling little stories, and she is – we are told – gay, laughing, beautiful in a way that shocks the staid cathedral city of Medboro’. Up to the time the story opens she and Stephen have been, it is suggested, all in all to each other, but now she has fallen in love with the organist and her heart is divided. Stephen, too, smiled upon by the fourteen-year-old Margaret Weatherby, feels the stirring of a new affection, and thus it happens that when his mother puts his loyalty to a final test he fails her and she runs away from home. It is only later that we realize the significance of the scene when Stephen follows her, begs her to come back – and she laughs. Her cruel, hysterical laughter shocks him profoundly, and she lets him go. Seven years pass and Stephen, highly successful in the building trade, is sent up to London to supervise a £150,000 job on the Embankment. There, in his loneliness, he seeks out his mother, and relations of a kind are renewed. But at the very moment of their meeting Margaret Weatherby reappears and again smiles. . . . There is a repetition of the old conflict under a new guise. His mother, again on the point of running away, turns to him; but this time he is in love, and this time when he shows his heart to Margaret, she it is who laughs hysterically, cruelly. This is not to be borne, and in Stephen’s despair he flings the problem at his mother. Why does he mind so much? Now we have the explanation. She remembers how when he was ‘a little bit of a toddling thing’ he had got into one of his rages with her, and she had laughed, wildly, hysterically, cruelly, until he banged his head against the wall to stop her and had ‘a kind of fit.’ This has left a dark place in his mind, and it is this that accounts for his extreme susceptibility to callous laughter. . . But, continuing the explanation, she tells him that the second time she laughed it was a sign of her despair. ‘I couldn’t keep you off. That laugh was the best effort to defend myself.’ And – doesn’t he now see that Margaret’s laughter had the same meaning? He does, and his imperfect mother brings them together, even though she realizes that in so doing she loses Stephen for ever. But has she ever had him? Mr. Beresford does not allow us one single glimpse of their life together, in the early days, and in the ‘seven years after’ meeting there is not a trace of real emotion. At his mother’s demand to know why he wanted to know
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her we are told Stephen ‘plunged after essentials.’ This is a very cold plunge and, as far as we can see, a useless one. He brings nothing from the vasty deep. And does that explanation, which is intended, evidently, to warm and light up the whole pale book, do anything more than reveal its essential emptiness? The house is not furnished at all; nobody lives there. We should not be surprised if Mr. Beresford had written ‘To Let’ on the last page. . . In the opening chapters of ‘Two Sisters’ the temperature is still depressingly low. There were two sisters; one was Ethel and one was Nell. Ethel was very, very good, but a prig; Nell was very, very bad and painted her face and waved at soldiers in passing trains, but she was not a prig. Ethel was married to Jim, a very architectural architect, and a modern house with all conveniences, but Nell was not married. ‘Oh, Nell, why are you so wicked?’ ‘Don’t bother me, Ethel!’ ‘You must not talk to Ethel like that,’ says Jim. This goes on for a long time. Then the father of the two sisters loses all his money, and Nell goes away to start a music school and so help to keep her parents in their old home, but Ethel refuses to help them because they will not give up the old home. ‘Can Ethel be a little cold-hearted?’ thinks Jim, and is ashamed of the thought. Nell, finding herself with a Bohemian brother and sister for partners, discovers that she is not really fond of wickedness. She turns over a new leaf and becomes, in no time, a pattern young woman. But when her female partner decamps and leaves her alone in the house with Leonard, Ethel interferes. Up to this point we have been led so gently and by such easy stages, that it is surprising to find Mr. Bretherton means to make an example of that priggish Ethel. Virtuous matron that she is, she refuses to believe in Nell’s transformation, and after accusing her of living in sin, because the same roof sheltered her and Leonard, Ethel ruins her sister’s character by making her accusations public. To the pure all things are impure,2 and poor Nell has only to return home, ill and shattered as a result of Ethel’s campaign, for the virtuous sister to diagnose her illness as ‘going to have a baby.’ Oh, how the reader hates Ethel when she makes her discovery known to her mother and to the family doctor, and how disappointed he is when the doctor lets Ethel off so lightly after all! Even Jim, the architect, when he appreciates the full extent of his wife’s guilt, is not really angry. He could not be angry. There is, as it were, no place for him to be angry in. The author himself is in the same dilemma. Having placed Ethel in the Garden City and the modern house, he must, at all costs, keep her within bounds. And so we find ourselves positively ashamed of our little spurt of rage and only too ready to believe that Ethel will learn to be – not more charitable in future – but a great deal more careful!
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Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4693, 9 April 1920, p. 479. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. J. D. Beresford (1873–1947) was an early science fiction writer. 2. A play on ‘Unto the pure all things are pure’ (Titus, 1: 15).
Butterflies THE BLACK CURTAIN. By Douglas Goldring.1 (Chapman & Hall. 7s. 6d. net.)
If we may know an author by the books he writes we should not hesitate in saying that Mr. Douglas Goldring’s hobby, enthusiasm and passion is collecting superficialities. He is revealed in ‘The Black Curtain’ as an ardent and highly successful hunter. For there are displayed in its pages not only all the ‘common’ ones – particularly large, fine specimens in an excellent state of preservation – but a complete set of those superficial opinions and ideas which enjoyed a brief flutter in the art circles of London between the years 1913 and 1920. These are the cream of the collection, and although we remember seeing them in a cloud over Chelsea, over Bloomsbury, over Soho, it does not lessen our astonishment that the author should have captured them so successfully, pinned them down, made of them such a great, brave show. His characters are compact of them. Here is the Russian revolutionary, with the blue eyes of a child and the short black beard of a fanatic, crushing strength, crushing sweetness out of his violin, talking of the earth as ‘my mother’s breast,’ crying the stranger ‘friend,’ appearing and disappearing in the Russian way we have learned to accept, making the discovery – and announcing it – that human beings are like sheep, their true leaders are shepherds and their enemies may be compared to wolves, and plucking out of the air at the appropriate moment that steaming glass of tea with a slice of lemon floating in it. It says much for the superficiality of the hero, Philip Kane, writer, cosmopolitan, a little weary of Barcelona and Madrid, Vienna and Paris, that he should be at first glance entirely overwhelmed by Ivan Smirnoff. Years of foreign travel, loneliness, wrestling with and overcoming ‘inward dissatisfactions,’ and the development of ‘that rich inner life in which alone there was peace’ had left him unprepared for the encounter. They might have met in the Oxford train rather than the funicular from Tibidabo2 . . . Is it not strange that a citizen of the world ‘who was, he felt, equipped at all points for the battle to preserve his own freedom against the world’s encroachments,’ who believed in the ideal of
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human brotherhood, who was rid of many early prejudices,’ should on the occasion of that meeting with Smirnoff ‘first, dimly, realize that the common people who worked with hand and brain were not quite so contented as, to the careless eye, they looked’? But Mr. Goldring is very tender to his hero and does not seem to find it strange at all; he leads him out of the wilderness, via Paris, into the heart of London. The time has come, we are given to understand, when Philip Kane must live. ‘He was filled with the impatience of the trained athlete eager to be put to the test.’ . . Anne Drummond, her bobbed head bent over two boxes with the word ‘Fuller’s’3 printed on them, is the first human being he meets among the tiresome would-be Bohemians. When the absurd pictures are handed round she looks up with a grin and says she likes peppermint creams best. But at heart she is a Socialist, an internationalist, a scarlet revolutionary, desperately sincere, spontaneous, ‘with a hint of fresh sexuality,’ longing to live for the people, to dedicate her life to the Cause, to go to the Venetian Ball, to smoke cigarettes. No wonder he finds her a ‘joyous enigma.’ Holy matrimony and the toddling feet of a bevy of little strangers? Heaven forbid. The snare was too obvious.
And so they love and are happy, except for those intervals when Philip ponders over the idea of ‘that monstrous figure round which the London pleasure-maniacs revolved . . . that invisible altar on which they were pouring their libations of dry Monopole.4 When would the great idol become thirsty again for a salt and crimson wine?’ This, bien entendu, is the cue for the Great War, and he stalks on while Philip calls him ‘humbug’ and points the finger of scorn at indifferent England. But Anne is tossed to the monster, and the end of it all finds Smirnoff and our hero contemplating the ‘red Dawn – cold, terrible, relentless, but bearing with it the promise of the new day.’ If the reader shuts his eyes at this point he will have no trouble in imagining the last superficiality. ‘Come, my friend,’ said Smirnoff . . . ‘let us rest now, for we must work.’
Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.
Text: Athenaeum, 4694, 16 April 1920, p. 511. NN. Signed: K. M. Douglas Goldring (1887–1960) was an editor, writer and journalist. A mountain overlooking Barcelona. A company producing high-quality cakes and chocolates. One of the oldest champagne firms.
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Kensingtonia A REMEDY AGAINST SIN. By W. B. Maxwell.1 (Hutchinson. 8s. 6d. net.)
The author who sets out deliberately to write a novel with a purpose must content himself with being a little less than an artist, a little more than a preacher. To accept life, and by thus accepting it to present us with the problem – that is not his chief concern. He is the brilliant lawyer who is bound to look at life from the point of view of his case – who cannot therefore afford to inquire into the evidence that would make the guilty less guilty, or, always with the success of his case in mind, to despise the ridiculous excess of painting the lily and throwing a perfume on the violet. In ‘A Remedy against Sin’ Mr. W. B. Maxwell has chosen to obscure his talents under a wig and gown that he may deliver a tremendous attack against the monstrous injustice of our present divorce laws. His description of the ‘typical’ upper-middle-class family, of which the heroine, Clare, is the younger daughter, is very skilful and amusing. As we read of old Mrs. Gilmour drifting through her large, desirable family residence, always looking for something, or wondering what she has lost or forgotten or ought to have remembered; as we encounter fullblown Emily, the married daughter with the hard laugh and chaffing ways, and all the various members down to Clare, the young girl, just ‘out,’ whom nobody wants – who fits in nowhere, we feel it could hardly be better done. It is an admirably painted portrait of what we might call an old-fashioned modern family. Then comes the adventurer, Roderick Vaughan, who makes up his mind to win Clare, and because she is lonely and vaguely unhappy and feels herself unwanted, he succeeds to the extent of her running away from home one afternoon and putting herself under his protection. The young man, trading upon the family sense of honour and horror of anything approaching a scandal, plays his cards so cleverly that they are forced to acknowledge him and to arrange for a fashionable wedding, even though he is almost a complete stranger and they know nothing of his past or his present and ignore the fact that he is vulgar, ill-bred and loud. Now, of course, comes the awakening for the poor heroine, and Mr. Maxwell spares her nothing. She is married to a beast, a bully, a torturer, and there is no escape. Up to this point we must admit that ‘A Remedy against Sin ‘is a great deal better than the majority of novels. The character of Roderick Vaughan – his disposition, which is, as it were, a series of bounds and rebounds – the whole temper and feeling of the book, place it far above the average. But then, more or less suddenly, we are conscious of the purpose. Clare, from being an innocent, rather charming creature, changes into a martyr; she disappears, and is from henceforth a soft cheverel2
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conscience, submissive to her lord, boundlessly forgiving, less than the dust, in fact, beneath his chariot wheels.3 We cannot imagine a more effectual goad to a bold bad man than the sight of so great meekness. The purpose becomes dreadfully clear. There is a child – of course there is a child – delicate, tender, born to wring our hearts and die. And as the book sets, the shadow of the Divorce Court grows larger and larger, darker and darker. Of course, the case is defended. Women of England – ye who have the vote4 – of course Roddy wins, and there is naught for the lily-white, white-as-snow Clare but to go out into the dark, a branded woman, with her innocent friend, a ruined man, at her side. But – hold! Why did Clare’s family let her marry the man? Why, having married, did she submit? Which was her greater tragedy – the loss of her innocence or seeing her name in the newspapers? And if the opinion of the lady shoppers in Sloane Street mattered so awfully – what was her worth? Why, when the case was decided against her, did not her strong, splendid friend say: ‘Look here, darling, if people are so vile, let’s go away and leave them to their vileness and be gloriously happy together’? Instead of which, she pinned on an hysterical hat and raved about being his mistress and ‘they went out into the darkness hand in hand.’ It is 1920, ladies and gentlemen! If we must have a novel with a purpose, let our novelist remember. Let him send them into the light hand in hand – with Kensington behind them for ever!
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4695, 23 April 1920, p. 543. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. W. B. Maxwell (1866–1938) was a prolific novelist who enlisted in 1914 and served in the First World War until 1917, when he was over 50. His novel A Man and his Lesson is reviewed on pp. 509–11. 2. Soft, elastic kidskin. 3. A line from a popular poem by Laurence Hope, the pen-name of Adela Florence Cory Nicholson, in her India’s Love Lyrics (1901): ‘Less than the dust beneath thy chariot wheel / Less than the rust, that never stained thy sword’. 4. In Britain women over thirty acquired the right to vote in 1918.
Alms THE MARBECK INN. By Harold Brighouse.1 (Odhams. 7s. net.) LIGHTING-UP TIME. By Ivor Brown.2 (R. Cobden-Sanderson. 7s. net.)
No, no; our case is not really as desperate as this great number of authors would seem to believe. We are not standing on the back-door
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step with an empty bag, ready for anything as you may care to part with, sir; we are not sitting at the window of the dead drawing-room, wondering whether the couple on the opposite pavement is engaged or married or likely to be engaged and married. It is true that we have a lean and hungry look, but, oh, that our sympathetic entertainers would realize it is not to be changed by the crusts and the leavings they are so boundlessly willing to bestow! Nothing will satisfy us but to be invited as guests to the whole rich banquet – but to feel that our host is, for the wonderful time, our new discovered and yet mysterious friend. We open novel after novel, we turn page after page, and there are the authors rummaging in dusty cupboards, turning over heaps of discarded garments to find something to fling at us; but our pity for their misguided impulse is shot with suspicion at the sight of so much cheerfulness. Can it be – is it possible that they are enjoying themselves? We can understand the noble satisfaction derived from the performance of an act of charity, but the confidence, the buoyancy, the assurance which is the keynote of these novels is different and tempts us to cry, ‘Danger.’ It is so fatally easy, in giving away what one does not need, to delude oneself that the gift really, after all, is no mean one – to find as one brings it into the light and dusts it down and hands it over a quite surprising freshness and newness. How otherwise are we to account for the ‘air’ with which Mr. Brighouse and Mr. Ivor Brown present their heroes, Sam Branstone of ‘The Marbeck Inn’ and Peter Penruddock of ‘Lighting-up Time’? Now Sam Branstone was the son of a railway porter and a strong, silent mother. He lived in a mean street in the city of Manchester. In Chapter I. we are told how, through his saving a boy’s life, the father of the rescued boy gives Sam his first start in life by sending him to the Grammar School. He is ambitious, and his mother is ambitious for him. You are to picture Anne, with her forty years of a working woman’s life behind her, wrestling with algebra and trigonometry, blazing a trail for Sam to follow. It was heroic, and by some mental freak, successful . . . Day after day, in the intervals of cooking, cleaning, washing, she studied the text-books which so puzzled him . . . She had no education in particular, nothing but a general capacity and a monstrous will . . .
So with his mother’s aid he succeeds at school, and leaves to enter the office of an estate agent. Meantime, he grew in knowledge of the world, and education came to Sam, not in the cloistered freedom of the Isis,3 but where in Manchester he
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went collecting rents . . . His eye for the main chance had always a useful squint which could see money round the corner as well as on the straight high road . . .
In course of time Sam falls in love with Ada, ‘whose intimate clothing was flannelette,’ and marries her against his mother’s will. He makes money by scoring off persons, institutions and things, and finally owns a publishing business. The mud of Manchester, we are told, is thick upon him. Enter Effie, a real woman who determines to save him, to rid him of the mud and to reveal him a sparkling Sam, which she accomplishes by taking him away with her to the Marbeck Inn, sacrificing herself to him, and making him bathe in pools and rivers and tarns and all places where water is, that the physical act of cleansing may be unto him a symbol. She succeeds, but not before there has been a struggle between the lawful wife of Sam and his mother, who reappears upon the scene to wrestle with more complicated algebraical problems. And the end is Marbeck Inn again with the prospect of an infant Samuel. ‘There you are. That’s Sam. That’s Sammy Branstone for you,’ cries Mr. Brighouse, handing us this lifeless figure in a frock coat with a moustache that droops over his mouth. ‘And there’s Anne. There’s Sam’s mother. There’s a woman for you,’ he declares, setting down before us a pair of elastic-sided boots, an umbrella and a black bonnet. But his generosity does not stop at that. He goes on measuring yard upon yard of Manchester goods until – we had rather go empty-handed away than burdened with such a parcel. Mr. Ivor Brown’s charitable dole takes the form of a theatrical novel. It tells how Peter Penruddock took pity on Mary Maroon, an actress whose success was on the wane, and engaged himself as her advance agent for a tour in the provinces. We have no doubt, of course, that the tour is going to be a remarkable success, owing to the remarkable ingenuity of Peter. There will be occasional setbacks: Monday nights which are ‘frosty,’ little difficulties among the company, occasional displays of the familiar theatrical jealousy, and so on. We are not in the least surprised when a Lord appears on the scene, but we are mildly surprised at his immense importance in the author’s eyes. There is also an Honourable Cynthia who has had a family scrap with her papa and is come to Peter for a job. ‘I wasn’t constructed for use. You see, I was educated at a most frightfully expensive school. . . . I believe it cost hundreds to get through the doors . . .’ ‘Did you get your money’s worth?’ ‘I learned comportment,’ she said, and, putting her legs against the fireplace, lit another cigarette.
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‘Not a blue stocking then?’ ‘No, black milanese. Of course the price is awful, but then the cheap ones ladder straight away.’
Here is a typical example of Mr. Brown’s humour. After ‘sampling’ it the reader will not be surprised to know he makes play with tinned salmon and boarding-house ham and a bottle of stout, and that there is a comic lift-boy and . . . But enough. Were we the beggars that these authors and their kind suppose us to be, we should not weep and make our moan for what we lack, but for what is ungrudgingly, unblushingly thrust upon us.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4696, 30 April 1920, p. 573. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Harold Brighouse (1882–1958) was a dramatist and novelist, best known for his play Hobson’s Choice. 2. Ivor Brown (1891–1974) was a journalist, author and critic who wrote for the New Age, then for the Manchester Guardian in this period. 3. The Isis is a river in Oxford.
Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Last Novel HARVEST. By Mrs. Humphry Ward.1 (Collins. 7s. net.)
If we attempt to analyse the feeling of respect with which we regard the large body of conscientious work produced by Mrs. Humphry Ward, we find that it springs from the fact that the angel who handed her the pen was never other than the ‘stern daughter of the voice of God.’ 2 She recognized the problems with which her generation was faced; she felt it was her duty so to state, so to explain those problems that men and women who were thrown into confusion at the thought of strange ideas and theories escaping from their cages and running loose in society should be comforted and calmed by the spectacle of many a noble man, many a gracious lady bringing them to heel, teaching them to bear harness and to carry them up heights too steep for the pedestrian, too narrow for the easy carriage. In her early novels and in those of her prime we are never for a page unconscious of the deliberate task which she has set herself; the plot, the story, is the least important thing. What is important is the messages that her characters have to deliver; she sees herself, we fancy, as the person at the great house, receiving these messages and
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translating them to the eager, inquiring crowd about the gates, and then – returning to the library. For who can imagine Mrs. Humphry Ward away from that decorous apartment, that discreet and dignified room with its heavy door shutting out the unmeasured tones of existence, its high windows letting in the pale light of the English country? Here she interviewed Life, polished and agreeable Life with an intellectual brow, an easy carriage, thoughtful eyes; ardent, rebellious Life, Diana3 in a plumed hat ready to die for the Cause; timid, underfed Life, coughing behind a thread glove; and honest, stupid Life, twisting a cap, grinning and pulling a forelock.4 The light gleams upon the books and upon the table with its paper and pens. One by one, or so many of them together in a prearranged order, the figures enter, yield the information they are expected to yield and depart, or are, more properly, removed, conducted, seen off the premises, with a quiet firm sentence or two . . . But the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time passed and repassed, and the problems which had seemed to her so worth the solving seemed to dissolve, and with them her intense intellectual efforts. With the disappearance of the rich difficulties came the unbaring of the plot. She seemed to see how weak it was, how scarcely it held, and her later books rely upon the story. They are failures for this reason. She had no idea of what happened to those people when they had left the library; her imagination was poor – her sympathy did not extend beyond a kind of professional sympathetic interest. The modern world came streaming through the library, making all sorts of strange demands, ceaseless, careless, changing even as she watched it. And the spectacle of the no longer youthful, of the woman tired and unflagging, trying to keep pace with the mood of the moment, is not without pathos. She cannot be judged by ‘Harvest.’ It is a plain mystery novel; it bears the impress of her desire to emerge from the library and to walk in the cornfields – in the new land which is war-time England. But she is unhappy in such surroundings, and her serenity is gone.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4697, 7 May 1920, p. 606. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Mary Augusta Ward (1851–1920), who wrote under her married name and was the niece of Matthew Arnold and the aunt of Aldous Huxley, was a prolific novelist who created and edited the Anti-Suffrage Review. Her Cousin Philip is reviewed on pp. 547–50. 2. The opening line of William Wordsworth’s ‘Ode to Duty’.
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3. The virgin goddess of the hunt. 4. A gesture of respect.
Pressed Flowers A LOST LOVE. By Ashford Owen.1 (Murray. 3s. 6d. net.)
This little book was first published in 1854. In the monograph which precedes it we are told by the author how she was not above the age of twenty-four when she wrote it, and how it brought her famous friends and fame. Browning, Tennyson and Swinburne she kindled; as to the Carlyles, she gives us not only a glimpse of them ‘at home’ – was ever a couple more spied upon? – but a view of Carlyle, alone, in the South of France, standing, as it were, in flowery fields, in the shadow of lemon trees, and shaking his fist at the bare mountains – ‘those starved pantries.’ If ‘A Lost Love’ had been a gentle carrying on of the monograph, if it had been permitted us to go on turning over the author’s album, listening to her account of where the sprig of holly was pulled, and who was by when she gathered the aster, we should have found it more beguiling than the formal, rather dark little novel which kind hands have brought into the light again. It is pleasant to think of the grave young girl choosing a pen to her liking, sitting down in her grave young way, and steeling herself for the great moment when the hero, brilliant and flashing creature, asks his affianced bride whether she cannot yet make up her mind to call him by his Christian name; it is pleasant, but the pleasure is a trifle pale. We read of the uncomfortable house where Georgy Sandon lived and made brown-holland covers for her nagging aunt, and went on a visit to a house where she met the most perfect man who ever took a young girl down to dinner; we read of how she ran away to London and was found by that same young man outside a pastrycook’s, where she had been for a glass of water, and of how he carried her to his mother’s house, where she begged most pitifully to be allowed to go to Brighton before she swooned away. And while we follow the course of their loves we realize that ‘it is not to be.’ The charmer whose letter has never reached James Erskine reappears and Georgy makes the supreme renunciation. We are not spared her pining away and dying, leaving James Erskine’s only present to her to his little daughter; we are not spared the child’s running up to her papa to show the bright thing and his touching the fair curls while memories . . . memories . . . These are pressed flowers: the fashion for them is no more. They
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are not to be laughed at or condemned, but we have too little time to languish over them. Nevertheless, now and again, when Miss Ashford Owen forgot how solemn a thing it is to be a writer and to know all there is to know about Love and Death, she gives us a delicious little scene, as when Constance Everett runs up and down the passage in her ravishing little nightcap.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4697, 7 May 1920, p. 606. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Ashford Owen was the pseudonym of Anne Charlotte Ogle (possibly1802–?), also author of The Story of Catherine.
Mr. Mackenzie’s Treat THE VANITY GIRL. By Compton Mackenzie.1 (Cassell. 8s. 6d. net.)
We will not deny that we have had our doubts before. We have imagined that too many pastries went in at the door and too much conversation came out of the window; but with ‘The Vanity Girl’ there can scarcely be more than one mind about the matter – Mr. Compton Mackenzie has set the pot boiling and invited all the flappers2 in the United Kingdom to tea. It is not so easy at any time to make the pot boil, even when the author is content with a delicate crackle or two, a handful of sparks, a jet of quick flame – and the whole ending in half-a-dozen bubbles and a plume of waving steam. But here’s a great ‘wessel’ filled with heavy cream and slow-melting chocolate slabs, and here’s, while they slowly dissolve, such a spread of pastry and general jamminess and stickiness that ’tis a sight, as Betsy might declare, ‘to make the Evings themselves look down!’ 3 Nothing is missing; we hardly dare think how those mock appetites will be gorged, or of what Mr. Mackenzie, with his talent extraordinary for producing chocolate-pot boilers, will have left to put upon the table next time. It was our fortune some time ago to overhear the following conversation: ‘Is that a new one, dear?’ ‘Well, yes, dear, I suppose it is.’ ‘How far have you got, dear?’ ‘Chapter twenty-seven.’ ‘Make room, dear; let’s read the synopsis.’ ‘Oh, that’s not new, dear. That’s just the same as usual.’
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The heroine of Mr. Mackenzie’s novel is too beautiful for words – hair, teeth, ankles, figure, style – all are perfect. Her mother is meek, her father is horrid; she is the eldest of a family of nine, and they live in the wilds – Oh, those wilds – of West Kensington. We are told that Norah is clever, but she is not real enough to be clever; perhaps she has a little maid – Pert, Sly, – call her what you will, who is willing to do the answering back, and the getting on. Her friend Lily’s mother – who has ‘a complexion like a field of clover seen from a passing train’ and ‘a coiffure like a tinned pineapple’ – dies, so Lily is free to go on the stage with Norah. On page 54 Lily and Norah, whose stage name is Dorothy Lonsdale, find themselves in the train from Manchester to Birmingham, and Sylvia Scarlett is in the same carriage with them. Oh, what a surprise for Mr. Mackenzie’s readers! However, it is Dorothy’s book this time, and not Sylvia’s. Soon, beautifully soon, they arrive at Oxford, and there is the tall young man ‘whose immediately conspicuous feature was a pair of white flannel trousers down the seams of which ran stripes of vivid blue; but when he was introduced to Dorothy as Lord Clarehaven she forgot about his trousers in the more vivid blue of his name.’ We are given almost four whole pages of Debrett to blow our excitement into flame, and then Dorothy goes back to London and makes a new friend, Olive, and the two share a flat in Half-Moon Street which is provided for them by a very great man of high rank, who does not make love to them, but likes to have a little simple girlish gaiety to turn to when he gets tired of . . . Buckingham Palace. And then Clarehaven returns, and Olive puts into Dorothy’s head the amazing notion that he might marry her. ‘“But why not?” thought Dorothy in bed that night, “He’s independent . . . Countess of Clarehaven,” she murmured . . . The title took away her breath . . . and it seemed as if the very traffic of Piccadilly paused in the presence of a solemn mystery.’ Of course, after the usual trouble, she marries him, and is in no time the idol of his family, of the ancient villagers, retainers, and the M.F.H.4 We have a sample of every kind of delicious triumph a young girl from West Kensington could dream of, to Tony in pink silk pyjamas and Dorothy ‘in a deshabille of peach bloom,’ and for background the dark panelled walls. The coming of the child provides a very orgy of emotion, even to . . . ‘The grace and beauty with which she expressed her state [compared with most women] was that of a seedling daffodil beside a farrowing sow.’ And then the confinement, and the child is born dead, and the husband turns gambler and gives up the cards for horses, and loses all, and she has a miscarriage, and he goes to the war and is killed, and she finds herself with child again, and this time all is well, and she marries the man who had
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always loved her and had purchased Clarehaven from her husband ... In whatever contempt Mr. Mackenzie may hold his public – how is it possible that he should dare to invite them to partake of such sickly food? We should not waste space upon so pretentious and stupid a book were it not that we have believed in his gifts and desire to protest that he should so betray them.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4698, 14 May 1920, p. 639. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Poor Relations by Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972) is reviewed on pp. 517–20. He was born into a theatrical family and became a prolific writer in a variety of forms. He was a founding member in 1928 of the Scottish Nationalist Party. His popular novel, Whisky Galore (1947), was made into a film by Alexander Mackendrick. 2. Young women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, smoked, drank, wore make-up and danced to jazz music. 3. Betsy Prig, Mrs. Gamp’s friend in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit. 4. Master of Fox Hounds.
A Woman’s Book THE BOOK OF YOUTH. By Margaret Skelton. (Collins. 7s. net.)
‘The Book of Youth’ is one of those novels which appear from time to time and set the critic wondering what it is in its essential quality that makes him feel so impatient on the one hand and so anxious to deal gently with it on the other. We are impatient with its sentimentality, its quaint, impossible views of the relationships between man and woman, and its determination that through woman only the wicked world will be saved. We find very hard to bear this trick of simplifying everything, not by making clear, but by faintly blurring – not by taking away, but by adding to. And is it easy to tolerate the author’s love for her heroine? – that soft boundless love which sees everything about her glorious, and almost makes us feel that no one woman should ever see another woman cry. We have remarked, in these novels, that the hero is never over-strong. He is an artist, in most cases – a poet, a musician, a painter – and he is pale, with ‘queer’ eyes, easily pleased, easily hurt – a child. We would put our hand upon our heart and swear that he has a tragic, humorous mouth.
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For all that, it is difficult to remain cold before the author’s enthusiasm. This is her book, these are her people; she is having, as it were, so much the time of her life in describing it all that our withers are wrung at the thought of saying a too-unkind word. If ‘The Book of Youth’ had been half as short; if Miss Margaret Skelton had been content with lakes instead of seas, and storms that threatened rather than broke; if Monica had possessed more of a sense of humour and less of a bubbling laugh – why, then it would not have been ‘The Book of Youth.’ Many thoughts great and small are stalking through the land. We are informed by the cultivated minds of our day that this is no time for artists. Unless a man is willing to sell his soul he will never have the wherewithal to feed and clothe his poor body. We are told also that we are on the eve of a literary renascence. True, no star has been seen in the sky, but the roads are thronged with shepherds.1 This is the moment of attention. There never has been such a curious hour, when to-day is not. There was yesterday – there may be to-morrow, but we are assured that is as much as any man dare say. But Miss Margaret Skelton and her sister writers will go on producing longer and longer books of their kind, with many a serious chapter in them about sex and social evils, and slumland, and ‘the storm that broke over Europe,’ for ever and ever.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4698, 14 May 1920, p. 639. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. A reference to the star of Bethlehem (Matthew, 2: 9-10) and the shepherds to whom the angels foretold the birth of Christ (Luke, 2: 8–16).
A Tragic Comedienne ‘Night and Day.’ By Virginia Woolf.1 (Duckworth. 7s.)
Imagine a comedy, witty in phrase, exquisitely ‘mounted,’ stagemanaged so that all its scenes move with a life-like ease – and wrongly cast, and you will have some idea of the faults and virtues of Mrs. Woolf’s novel. It used to be said of Mrs. Siddons2 that she drank tea as if she were drinking poison. That did not mean that Mrs. Siddons was not a wonderful person: it meant that a tea-party was not her proper environment. We find the same fault with Mrs. Woolf s heroine, Katherine Hilberry. She is a Webster3 strayed among Sheridans,4 a Balzac among Jane Austens. She is too great for her
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company, altogether too beautiful and remarkable for them. She spoils the perfection of the whole. She is wasted. That is the queer thing about ‘Night and Day,’ its chief fault is also its greatest ornament. Katherine Hilberry moves through the sheltered places of the book with an air of tragedy. Her stars, we feel, shine darkly over her. It is not towards the defection of a lifelong admirer whom she does not love and a match with a young man of low origin that she is moving. Mrs. Woolf tells us that story as hers, but we do not believe it. We see her in Mrs. Woolf’s pages as we might see her in the street, and just as we should remember her and speculate about her there, so we do here. What Mrs. Woolf tells us in her 500 pages does not satisfy us. About the rest of the cast we have not these doubts. Mrs. Hilberry, that changing amateur of every pleasant thing, with her amiability, her ineffective brilliance, her sweetness of soul, thought and behaved exactly as Mrs. Woolf says she did. Mr. Hilberry, with his handsome profile, his beard and his punctiliousness, is as real as if we were sitting in the same drawing-room with him. But Katherine’s cloak, her ruby ring, her beauty and softness as of ‘a large snowy owl,’ her dislike of books (how keenly one sympathizes with that trait), her desire for such firmly ordered things as mathematics and astronomy, the wild, romantic country of sea and forest to which she hastened in her day dreams – these we maintain tended to other things than even the stormiest tea-cups. To say that character is destiny is usually to say that two interesting things have become one dull thing. In Katherine’s case it would have been easy to make two interesting things into a third interesting thing. We do not believe that the happenings here were her destiny. We feel, in this book, that Mrs. Woolf has deliberately restrained her own tragic powers. She has created a vessel for them in spite of herself as it were, and she has left it unfilled. In ‘The Voyage Out’ she gave us a death that we remember as one of the few moving scenes in modern fiction, that we remember better than most of the moving scenes that have enveloped us in life. It appears in our memory as a woman standing by a table, picking up a letter and dropping it again. That woman and that attitude were significant. In ‘Night and Day’ the woman and the attitude are there; but Mrs. Woolf has refrained from making them significant. She has turned the panther of her natural gift into a plump, domestic pussy-cat. She could more fitly have called her book ‘Nightlight and Day,’ for the intensity and the fears of night have been shut out. Mrs. Woolf has written a delightful comedy; but her leading lady’s heels should have been a little lighter for her part. When Katherine is on the stage we look for something sadder and stranger that her
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promise yields. There is a scene, for instance, of an interfering aunt’s coming in by the backstairs to warn Katharine that the man to whom she is engaged is paying attentions to her friend Cassandra. The emotion that this news arouses must, in the circumstances of the novel, be quite trivial. Rodney, the fiancé, is a ridiculous person whose being fallen in love with by anyone seems to us highly improbable. Katherine has become accustomed to his devotion, but the prospect of marriage with him is so unattractive that she assists him in transferring his affections to her friend. For an aunt to interfere in anything is bound to be annoying; but Mrs. Woolf banks the fires of feeling out of all proportion to the size of her emotional room. Katherine, arranging her flowers in the sunlight and hearing this disagreeable news, should, we feel, be a deceived wife, a superseded mistress, above all else, a creature wounded to the heart. As it is we have the sensation, as we read, of the people who found, instead of the Humbert millions,5 a button in the safe. This defect keeps us from being absorbed and carried away by the story. We can put the book down at any moment without impatience. We take it up again, however, with unfailing pleasure and admiration. Its innumerable details reveal themselves to us with ever-increasing delight. Mrs. Woolf writes of landscape as Dorothy Wordsworth wrote of it. She paints in words with the freshness and precision of a pre-Raphaelite.6 She has chosen beautiful scenes to describe and she describes them beautifully. Candle-lit interiors, Kew Gardens, the river, London at night, country fields – if it were for its landscape alone ‘Night and Day’ would be a book to praise and treasure. Its beauties are never dragged in or irrelevant. They are part of the pattern. Her people are interwoven with the visual beauty of the world. Mrs. Woolf sees what she describes with scientific exactness and poetic rapture. She sees with equal clearness the emotions and ideas that flit through the human soul. She contrives to give to each of her characters a private spiritual life as well as a public one. They speculate about themselves, about one another; they appear to us as they are in their own eyes and in other people’s. Ralph Denham, with his love for Katherine, is perhaps the most alive person in the book. He has a real existence for us. He is not a type, and as an individual he is rare – we have known young men who kept accounts and young men who gave silver to beggars; and we have not commonly found these two excellences in one body – but he is convincing. The fact that he is kind to animals is no less a characteristic of his than the fact that he feels hostile and resentful among his social superiors, and that his consciousness of greater mental vigor makes him long to bully them. ‘Night and Day’ is, above all things, the expression of an original
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and powerful mind. We rejoice more in the accessibility of Mrs. Woolf’s mind than in her story. She has, we think, in writing pure comedy deliberately sacrificed part of her genius. She has entered into the artist’s struggle with her material with one hand tied behind her. Luckily in writing this handicap matters less than in some other occupations. Mrs. Woolf’s talent is so splendid in its richness and fine in its quality that half of it will go as far as the talents of ten less gifted writers. There is one anachronism in ‘Night and Day’ to point out however; is it possible to buy buns for the bears at the Zoo on Sunday?
Notes Text: Nation, 27: 7, 15 May 1920, pp. 228–30. Unsigned. Note by Sydney Janet Kaplan: This review is attributed to Robert Lynd in Anne Olivier Bell, ed., The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Volume 2 – 1920–1924 (London: Hogarth Press, 1978) p. 38, n14. Robert Lynd also wrote the review of The Rainbow that drew the attention of the censors that led to its banning. He was an acquaintance of JMM’s and contributed to the Athenaeum. KM refers to Lynd on 7 December 1920, CLKM, 4, p. 141. Apparently he had referred to JMM’s writing as ‘highbrowism’. Woolf writes in her diary on 20 May 1920: ‘I have written to Katherine. No answer. Mr Lynd reviewed me in the Nation’ (p. 41). 1. For detail about KM’s attitude to reviewing Night and Day see ‘A Ship Comes into the Harbour’, pp. 532–5. In this review ‘Katharine’ is misspelt ‘Katherine’ throughout. 2. Sarah Siddons (1755–1831) was born into an acting family and became the most famous actress of her generation. She was renowned for her role as Lady Macbeth. 3. John Webster (1580–1634), the Jacobean author of such tragedies as The Duchess of Malfi. 4. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816), the Irish politician and dramatist, author of The School for Scandal. 5. Charles Humbert, a French politician and journalist (1866–1927), was court-martialled in 1918 for involvement in a corruption scandal, but was acquitted. 6. The mid-Victorian group of painters including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, who were supported by the critic and thinker, John Ruskin.
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A Japanese Novel AN ADOPTED HUSBAND. Translated from the Japanese of Futabatei1 by B. Mitsiu and Gregg M. Sinclair. (Hutchinson. 7s. 6d. net.)
The introduction to this charming novel seems to have been written with the express purpose of assuring us that it is a very serious work of art and that, whatever absurd eggshell notions we may have of life in Japan, they will be broken for ever by this presentation of modern Japanese domesticity. It is even suggested that the problem stated is not by any means unlike one of our own. . . There is at any rate a jealous wife, a weak husband, an annoying mother-in-law, a stupid servant, and a very gentle lovely girl who is the wife’s sister and, fatally for her own and the husband’s peace of mind, lives with this family. But there, it seems to us, the resemblance ends – if it has ever really existed. For the persons of the story are caught in the delicate net that is flung over their lives and are only seen through its meshes. Their loves, their sufferings, their jealousy and their anger are all somehow exquisite, touched with faery, and wonderfully, beautifully remote from the commonplace complications of our London and provincial novelists. Consider, for instance, Tetsuya, coming home from his lecturing at the University and being met by his sister-in-law. She caught sight of him, put her lamp by her side, placed her delicate hands on the floor, the muslin-de-laine sleeves hugging her forearms, and bowed her head; a ribbon of some colour indistinguishable at night fluttered; and her decidedly fair neck appeared through the screen of some back hair. She said, ‘I am glad to have you home again.’
It were impossible not to become deeply enamoured of this exquisite little creature, Sayo-ko, and there is in the description of her love for Tetsuya a grace, a lightness of touch, as though the author were afraid of her vanishing under his pen. And poor little Tetsuya, so cruelly treated by his wife and mother-in-law, plays the lover with a kind of awkward grace which makes us smile as though he were a doll. What could be more delicious than the description of their first meeting in the little ‘room of six mats’ above a shop that he has taken for her? He entered the store, saying ‘Pardon me.’ The landlady with good sense called from the bottom of the stairs, ‘Miss, he’s come.’ She then stepped aside and Tetsuya began to climb; it was not an easy task . . . ‘Please be careful,’ said the landlady, from below. ‘All right . . . ‘But his posture did not look at all right. He reached the
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top with great difficulty, and found waiting at the entrance of the room – Sayo-ko.
Later, they decide to go out for the evening. ‘To-day let us return to our school-days and have whole-hearted fun.’ Sayo-ko was pinning her plush shawl with a butterfly buckle. She smiled. ‘All right; I will be a romping girl.’ ‘Romping?’ Tetsuya exclaimed, in a sudden flush of joy. ‘Capital. If you will be a romping girl I will be’ – he could not find a corresponding word – ‘I will be riotous.’
The temptation to quote from ‘An Adopted Husband’ is very great, but it is not fair to a novel which is, like so few of our English novels, seen as a whole, and then worked out – so we gain the impression – with deliberate and fastidious care. We could not for the life of us take the tragic happenings tragically – and perhaps we are not meant to, for the author keeps putting little touches as though he too smiled at the little creatures who were caught in such an unpleasant storm, whirled about, so cruelly separated and sent flying in all directions. But let us not convey the impression that ‘An Adopted Husband’ is not a serious work of art – it is. But after a long rolling on the heavy seas of our modern novels the critic feels as though he had stepped into a blue paper boat and was sailing among islands whose flowery branches overhang the water.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4699, 21 May 1920, p. 671. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. The second novel by Futabatei Shimei (1864–1909), whose first, Floating Clouds (1887), is regarded as Japan’s first modern novel.
An Enigma PASSION. By Shaw Desmond.1 (Duckworth. 7s. net.)
Well, if the truth were known – are we not curious about everybody we meet? What do we mean when we say that he or she does not interest us? ‘A bore a frightful bore, I shouldn’t care if I never set eyes on him again.’ But how many of us would run away if the rejected one suddenly proposed to tell us what he had never before told anybody – the real, true story of his life? . . . We are wary, aloof, and on our guard – Heaven forfend2 we should be heard crying, like
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Whitman, ‘Passing stranger, you do not know how longingly I look upon you’3 – nevertheless human beings, ever mysterious and strange, are our passion. . . One might turn to us and say: ‘What a feast you must have nowadays, when every third book that is written is a confession!’ And every author who does confess is consumed with the desire to leave nothing untold – to take us over the house of his being as it was in the beginning and is now, without any preparations that might create in our minds a false impression of orderliness or comfort. Here is Mr. Shaw Desmond, for instance, simply determined, we feel, from the very first paragraph, to let nothing of importance pass. From the moment he cut his ‘pringling’ teeth – in his grandmother’s blue-veined hand – we shall have the whole of him. We shall brood with him over the time when he was not long out of tartan frocks and ‘his mind was virgin; ductile; expansive; fluid to the impress of the Power beyond.’ He will have us cry with him: ‘Why did it change? Why should sclerosis infiltrate the soul-arteries as Time, the silter, the cramper, the definer, does his work?’ Why? Why? These questions go running through the book, losing their way, for certain, were it not for the three main passages into which they are directed – passages and sets of chambers which Mr. Shaw Desmond inhabits one after the other and which are called Love and Money and Power. For according to our author it is not possible to tell a human story unless one adopts some such system of division. The whole house cannot be occupied at once; some rooms are bound to be shuttered and dark while the others are in use. He almost asks us, in fine, to forget their existence, while we make our prodigious, solemn rummage in those of the moment. The result is depressing in the extreme. We feel as though we have been conducted over a house wherein three young gentlemen of promise have been attacked by, dreadfully suffered from, and finally died of three youthful complaints. There is not a black pin to choose between their agonies, but – alas the day! – why are they recorded by the author with such dark and fearful relish? Even in the moments of more or less relief, when the poor three-in-one hero very shakily takes the air, apes lurk behind the innocent trees, and girls with the paint dripping on their cheeks in ‘encarmined lines.’ ‘Passion’ fails for the reason that so many of these novels of confession fail. Our curiosity about human beings, our longing to know the story of their lives springs from the desire to ‘place’ them, to see them in their relation to Life as we know it. But Mr. Shaw Desmond and his fellows are under the illusion that they must isolate the subject and play perpetual showman. He has the key, the inventory, the plan for everything. ‘Turn to the right, Ladies and Gentlemen, and you will
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observe me at the age of sixteen “battling with the after-appetite” and dashing out “nefariously into the powdery face and black humorous eyes of Mr. Belomo . . . to . . . spend a whole sixpence on a madeira cake.” To your left you have me “haunted by the sex-shadows that Sherlingham had sterilized”’. . . No, the voice is too loud, the gesture too crude. Better a half-truth, beautifully whispered, than a whole so solemnly shouted.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4699, 21 May 1920, p. 671. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Shaw Desmond (1877–1960) was an Irish dramatist and novelist with an interest in spiritualism. 2. William Shakespeare, Othello, V, ii, 32: Othello to his wife Desdemona. 3. Walt Whitman, ‘To a Stranger’ in Leaves of Grass (1900).
Two Novels MADELINE OF THE DESERT. By Arthur Weigall.1 (Fisher Unwin. 7s 6d. net.) THE LONELY HOUSE. By Mrs. Belloc Lowndes.2 (Hutchinson. 7s. 6d. net.)
Of these two novels the first only is by an inexperienced hand. In the way in which it is written – in its composition – the author has been at no great pains to discover a path that is less trodden than the familiar, popular route. We glance at the opening sentence and read: ‘The blazing orb of the Egyptian sun had passed behind the rugged hills of the Western Desert when Father Gregory, tall and gaunt . . .’ And then here follows a description of the retreat which he has made for himself and other souls in need of peace and – enter the heroine, ‘beautiful beyond the ordinary conception of beauty,’ riding a donkey, smoking a cigarette in a long amber holder, with something of the Russian Hussar, something of the boy and yet something ‘essentially feminine’ in her appearance. Her white slender hands are like those he has seen in the Florentine paintings of the Madonna. She has, of course, come to tell him the story of her life, while the light changes from gold to grey, the smoke rises from the evening fires, and the shepherds return with their flocks. She is, of course, very naïve, very bitter, very indifferent as to what the end will be. Her mother was an English dancer in a café in Port Said; her father, so they told her, an Irish revolutionary. At sixteen she ran away with a kind man, who, kinder still, died, and left her a fortune. So she came to London, educated herself,
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played the Magdalene in a pageant, and then drifted – drifted. Now she is sailing down the Nile with an Italian Prince. Why does she tell him all this? Because she has heard him preach in London, because she wants him to look at her as he looked at his congregation then, ‘with all that blessedness in your face. Oh, man, don’t you see that I’m miserable, miserable? . . .’ This for the hardened reader is a by no means promising beginning. And when, a few days later, the holy man receives a letter from her telling him she intends to commit suicide in Port Said, and we are informed at the same time that his nephew has arrived from England and is occupying a room on the same landing as she; when we are forced to trace his growing fascination for the half-gay, half-tragic girl, which culminates in his rescuing her from the moment of despair when she tries to throw herself over the balcony, and to listen to his ‘God sent me to you just in time,’ we feel that our worst fears are realized. Here is a new novel that never was new – a new carriage hitched on to the same old engine, making the same journey, stopping at the same stations and running into the same sunset. But no, this first novel cannot be dismissed so lightly. Under its appearance of superficiality there is a quite unusual and remarkable understanding of the character of Madeline. However absurd it may seem in this workaday world, it is nevertheless true that there are these little delicate creatures who drift through life until they fall in love as she fell in love with the rescuer. She fell in love and she was born again. The description of her relationship with this ordinary, rather stupid young Englishman is entirely convincing. We wish that Mr. Weigall had been content to write their story without introducing the labour party and their absurd, extravagant behaviour. As to Madeline’s speechmaking and public appearances – they seem to us irrelevant. In our opinion he should have concentrated on the story of her relationship with Robin and developed the highly amusing character of Daisy Jones. In fact, he should trust himself more and free himself from the idea that a novel is not furnished if it does not contain all the furniture mentioned in all the catalogues. The case of Mrs. Belloc Lowndes is very different. She belongs to yesterday, and her latest novel is written with such expertness that we feel it were impossible that anything could have been described differently. She has her certain rules; she follows them and she arrives at a certain conclusion. There is something determined and resigned in her manner which reminds us of your carver who has carved chickens for the past – how many – years. There is only one question which suggests itself to the admiring reader. How seriously does she mean us to take these dreadful murders? How shocked are we expected to feel by the spectacle of Lily, that ‘delightfully pretty, happy-hearted,
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simple-natured, old-fashioned English girl,’ on her way to the English church and finding her way barred by the decomposing body of a very nice man whom she had dined with only a short time ago? Whenever incidents of this kind occur, the author has a trick of saying that never in all her life would Lily forget – this or that tragedy of the moment. Wouldn’t it be a trifle surprising if she did? The story is simple. Lily is sent to stay with some relations who are not really relations at their villa above Monte Carlo. The household is three in number – Aunt Cossy, the Count, her husband, and an ancient servant, Cristina. From the moment of her arrival we are prepared for the worst, but Lily can face mystery after mystery without having the slightest suspicion that she is living with arch-criminals. Their habit is to invite wealthy men to dinner, give them delicious food, drug them, and then take them off to some quiet spot, shoot and bury them. In this way their son, a young man of fashion in Roman society, is kept supplied with pocket money. If Lily had not gone to stay at the villa, ten to one they would never have been discovered, unless the trio had become so careless about disposing of the bodies that they had left them like fallen fruit under the trees. Their lack of precaution is one of the most entertaining features of the book. For the reader is entertained and thrilled throughout. His suspicions being awakened from the moment the Countess told Lily she could only have a boiled egg and a piece of bread on her arrival, his eyes are big to see something sinister in everything – even in the bath towel with a hole in it that the heroine finds, later, is used for drying the dishes. Perhaps, after all, this discovery, for the modest young girl, is more dreadful than the finding of that dead body.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4700, 28 May 1920, p. 702. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Arthur Weigall (1880–1934) was a British Egyptologist, journalist and novelist who was involved in the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. 2. Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes (1868–1947), the sister of Hilaire Belloc, was a prolific novelist and biographer.
Looking On ONE AFTER ANOTHER. By Stacy Aumonier.1 (Hutchinson. 7s. 6d. net.)
It would seem nowadays that there is some readjustment going on in the general mind between the importance of feeling and the impor-
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tance of thought. Was feeling ever simple? We doubt it, and yet we find some of our younger writers looking back upon it as something which it was not impossible to live by in other times, but which, owing to the immense complication of modern existence, has been proved inadequate. They remind us, in fact, dismally enough, of a party of men who realize that unless something is done, and done pretty quickly, they will find themselves winter-bound, ice-bound. So this is no time for feeling; they must think a way out. But what is the use, to your artist at any rate, of thought that is not the outcome of feeling? You must feel before you can think; you must think before you can express your-self. It is not enough to feel and write; or to think and write. True expression is the outcome of them both, yet a third thing, and separate. ‘One after Another’ is a novel which lies as it were half way between the two. Now it inclines towards feeling, and now towards thought. And so it divides and subdivides. It is rich and poor, cold and hot, dull and deeply interesting. There are moments of fusion, as, for example, the death of Laura, which give us a glimpse of this book as it might have been, and set us wondering what other author to-day is capable of such sincere and powerful work. But the impression of the whole is of something which has just not succeeded. There are times when Mr. Aumonier’s hero reminds us of that strange character in Tchehov’s story ‘My Life.’ He is, in the same way, obedient to Life, and content to be used. Some things move him, and move him profoundly at the time, but the feeling that everything passes is his strongest feeling of all. He begins life as the son of a publican in Camden Town and brother to the famous Laura, a dark, passionate girl who is determined to live, to have a career, to escape from all that she dislikes through music. At the end of his life-story we feel that he is still the son of that simple, living father, that all that has happened to him has been a kind of prolonged looking-on at the queer people who came and went. But Laura has, in some strange way, become the dark, passionate music in which she desired to lose herself.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4700, 28 May 1920, pp. 702–3. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Stacy Aumonier (1877–1928) was a fiction-writer and essayist.
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A Model Story THE THIRD WINDOW. By Anne Douglas Sedgwick.1 (Secker. 6s. net.)
It takes but a page or two of Mrs. Sedgwick’s new book for the reader to be aware that she has chosen to set herself a delicate, difficult task. The form of ‘The Third Window’ is that of a prolonged short story, and she has divided it into ten parts – ten stages of a story that begins in pale high silvery light and ends in darkness. In the problem the author has chosen, and in her manner of stating it, there is something essentially modern. Indeed, so strongly does the reader feel this that he can hardly imagine it being written yesterday or to-morrow; it is to-day – Spring, 1920. One might even go so far as to say that it is exquisitely, eminently fashionable. But what is our emotion as we lay the book down – what effect has it produced upon us? Has it quickened our perception, or increased our mysterious response to Life? Do we feel that we have partaken of the author’s vision – that something has been revealed that we are the richer for having seen? Is there ever one single moment when it seems to us that she herself, for all her careful control, is borne away so that she is as unconscious of her audience as are we of the stage and the setting? . . . The door shuts upon us without a sound; we walk on velvet. There is never a jarring note, or one clash of colour that was not intended. What should be polished is revealed and beautifully spaced; yet is our attention never challenged. So discreet, so watchful is the light that we play with the idea that it has been captured by the author and made to do her bidding. Nothing is missing; there are even real flowers, wind-flowers in glasses showing their rosy stems; there is even a sock with the needles left in and a morsel of embroidery lying on a citron-and-white striped chintz chair in this model story. Even without the people the setting is – is it not? – charming, highly civilized, suggesting in all its appointments and perfections a background for a drama in which high reserves will take the place of simple avowals. But here we pause. Here we begin to wonder whether real people could survive these surroundings. We remember finding ourselves in the boudoir of a model flat, and hearing our companion whisper in the voice that is reserved for those occasions: ‘No, it won’t do, it won’t do. If he put down his gloves the whole scheme would come tumbling about their ears. And supposing she took off her hat. . . The risk – the risk!’ There are three characters in ‘The Third Window,’ two women and a man. Very carefully Mrs. Sedgwick draws them for us – Antonia, the young war widow, tall, pale and opulent, with the mark on her eyelid that looked like the freaking of some lovely fruit; Bevis, her
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husband’s friend, thin, wasted, one-legged since the war; and Miss Latimer, sister of the dead man, the virgin who will at all costs keep the lamp he treasured so fondly on earth still burning for him and for him alone. The third window is the window that overlooked the flagged paths, the ancient cedar, the white fritillaries planted by Malcolm, and the fountain he loved to stand beside. It was when Antonia confessed her dread of that window and of seeing the ghost of Malcolm there that Bevis asked her to marry him. And the day after she told him fully of her fear that there should be immortality, her fear or her delight – either, both. Bevis ‘believes,’ and their happiness, which is on the point of dawning, clouds over. Miss Latimer is certain, when Antonia questions her. Finally, in a queer, half-desperate, half-defiant mood, Antonia persuades them to play at table-turning, and, naturally with Miss Latimer as the medium, the fatal message is rapped out. Two days later, after a long talk with her lover, after Bevis has had a white, blazing, baring scene with Miss Latimer, Antonia kills herself. She cannot face the difficulty. And we have Miss Latimer, like a priest, very content with the sacrifice, and the twice-broken man . . . Here is a plot, you see, which has great possibilities. There are, if one might say so, the bones of a real problem in such a situation. But we do not think Mrs. Sedgwick has faced it. For all her cleverness and brilliance and faintly exotic vocabulary will not help her to make living, breathing, human beings out of these three portraits to fit a scene. They do fit it; indeed, they are so enveloped and enfolded that the scene and the tragedy close over their heads. Let us give a small sample of Mrs. Sedgwick’s way of writing. Antonia suspects Bevis of seeing in her ‘induced emotions.’ I rather like induced emotions in you . . . They suit you. They are like the colour of a pomegranate, or the taste of a mulberry, or the smell of a branch of flowering hawthorn; something rich, thick and pleasingly oppressive.
In our opinion this is ‘model’ conversation as well.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4701, 4 June 1920, p. 736. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Anne Douglas Sedgwick (1873–1935) was an American-born novelist who lived most of her life in Britain.
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A Springe to Catch Woodcocks1 POTTERISM. By Rose Macaulay.2 (Collins. 7s. 6d. net.)
In this new novel by Miss Macaulay it is not only her cleverness and wit which are disarming. It is her coolness, her confidence, her determination to say just exactly what she intends to say whether the reader will or no. We are conscious, while the dreadful truth escapes us, of a slightly bewildered feeling, of, almost, a sense of pique. After all, what right has the author to adopt this indifferent tone towards us? What is the mystery of her offhand, lightly-smiling manner? But these little, quick, darting fishes of doubt remain far below our surface until we are well into the book; we are conscious of them, and that is all. The rest of us is taken up with the enjoyment of ‘Potterism,’ with the description of the Potter Press and what it stands for. It is extraordinarily pleasant to have all our frantic and gloomy protestations and furies against ‘Potterism’ gathered up and expressed by Miss Macaulay with such precision and glittering order – it is as though she has taken all those silly stones we have thrown and replaced them with swift little arrows. ‘How good that is, how true!’ we exclaim at every fresh evidence of Potterism and every fresh exposure of a Potterite. . . . But then there is her plot to be taken into account. It is very slight. She has simply traced a ring round the most important, the most defined anti-Potterites and Potterites. Potterism is the strongest power that rules England to-day; the anti-Potterites are that small handful of people, including ourselves, whose every breath defies it. And what happens to them? Here those small fishes begin to grow very active, to flirt their fins, flash to the surface, leap, make bubbles. This creates a strange confusion in our minds. For the life of us we can’t for the moment see, when all is said and done, which are which. Is it possible that we ourselves are only another manifestation of the disease? Who has won, after all? Who shall say where Potterism ends? It is easy to cry: ‘If we must be flung at anything, let us be flung at lions.’ But the very idea of ourselves as being flung at anything is an arch-Potterism into the bargain.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4701, 4 June 1920, p. 736. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, iii, 115. Polonius warns his daughter Ophelia of traps to catch the unwary. 2. Rose Macaulay (1881–1958) was a prolific writer and feminist intellectual. Her What Not is reviewed on pp. 447–50.
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A Norwegian Novel GROWTH OF THE SOIL. By Knut Hamsun.1 (Gyldendal. 9s. net.)
It is difficult to account for the fact that ‘Growth of the Soil,’ the latest novel by the famous Norwegian writer, is only the second of his works to be translated into English. Knut Hamsun is no longer young; he has fulfilled his early promise and his reputation is assured, and yet, except for ‘Shallow Soil,’ which was published some years ago, we have had nothing but the echo of his fame to feed upon. Perhaps this is not wholly lamentable. How often we find ourselves wishing that we had the books of some writer we treasure to read for the first time, and if the novel before us is typical of Knut Hamsun’s work – as we have every reason to believe it is – there is a feast before us. Here, at least, are four hundred and six pages of small type excellently translated, upon which we congratulate the Norwegian publishers and the translator, whose name does not appear. If ‘Growth of the Soil’ can be said to have any plot at all – any story – it is the very ancient one of man’s attempt to live in fellowship with Nature. It is a trite saying when we are faced with a book which does renew for us the wonder and the thrill of that attempt that never was there a time when its message was more needed. But solitude is no cure for sorrow, and virgin country will not make anyone forget the desolation he has seen. Such a life is only possible for a man like the hero, Isak, a man who has known no other and can imagine none. Nevertheless, there remains in the hearts of nearly all of us an infinite delight in reading of how the track was made, the bush felled, the log hut built, so snug and warm with its great chimney and little door, and of how there were animals to be driven to the long pastures, goats and sheep and a red and white cow. In the opening chapter of ‘Growth of the Soil,’ Knut Hamsun gives us the picture of an immense wild landscape, and there is a track running through it, and we spy a man walking towards the north carrying a sack. This or that, he comes; the figure of a man in this great solitude. He trudges on; bird and beast are silent all about him; now and again he utters a word or two speaking to himself. ‘Eyah – well, well . . .’ so he speaks to himself. Here and there, where the moors give place to a kindlier spot, an open space in the midst of the forest, he lays down the sack and goes exploring; after a while he returns, heaves the sack on his shoulders again, and trudges on. So through the day, noting time by the sun; night falls, and he throws himself down on the heather, resting on one arm . . .
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The man is Isak. It is extraordinary, how, while we follow him in his search for the land he wants, the author gives us the man. His slowness and simplicity, his immense strength and determination, even his external appearance, short, sturdy, with a red beard sticking out and a frown that is not anger, are as familiar as if we had known him in our childhood. It is, indeed, very much as though we were allowed to hold him by the hand and go with him everywhere. The place is found; the hut is built, and a woman called Inger comes from over the hills and lives with him. Gradually, but deeply and largely, their life grows and expands. We are taken into it and nothing is allowed to escape us, and just as we accepted Isak so everything seems to fall into place without question. ‘Growth of the Soil’ is one of those few novels in which we seem to escape from ourselves and to take an invisible part. We suddenly find to our joy that we are walking into the book as Alice walked into the looking-glass2 and the author’s country is ours. It is wonderfully rich, satisfying country, and of all those who dwell in it, gathered round the figures of Isak and Inger, there is not one who does not live. At the end Isak is an old man and his life is ebbing, but the glow, the warmth of the book seems to linger. We feel, as we feel with all great novels, that nothing is over. Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4702, 11 June 1920, p. 767. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Knut Hamsun (1859–1952), Norwegian novelist, poet, dramatist and social critic, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. Growth of the Soil was translated into English by W. W. Worster. 2. In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871).
Echoes THE TALL VILLA. By Lucas Malet.1 (Collins. 7s. 6d. net.)
‘But I haven’t been alone.’ And even this meagre morsel of confession eased; so that there she would, how gladly, have let things rest. For all the encompassing of a thorough and detailed confidence sprang glaringly into evidence directly her cousin made that attemptedly rallying answer:– ‘Not alone, darling Fan? So very much the better – but how exciting! And who, if I’m not too impertinently inquisitive in asking, was your much-to-be-envied guest?’
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‘Ah, my dear, if I could tell you,’ Frances, after an instant’s hesitation, said as she rose, all of a piece, to her feet’. . . .
This quotation from ‘The Tall Villa,’ though nicely typical of the author’s latest style of writing is, we assure the reader, a by no means extravagant example. For the first fourteen pages we are not particularly conscious of any peculiarity, but then with a sentence that finishes: ‘so that there really remained to her, as means of locomotion, only bus, Underground, the elusive taxi or her own slender, high-instepped feet,’ this vague reminiscent perfume, as the author might say, begins to unbottle itself. On page forty-one the odour is become so pungent that we do not know whether to laugh or to cry. The heroine, startled by a sound which she takes for a pistol shot and her husband for a motor tyre, is in his arms. He is observing her eyes which are wide open. Not as he felt that they foolishly or affectedly stared, least of all stared at him – he could, indeed, have put up with a far larger share of their glances, which were notably exquisite just now to his thinking – but searched, looking through, rather than at, all objects presented to them, as though striving to wrest an answer, wrest knowledge, from some not readily penetrable medium.
This is the second short novel within the past three weeks which is an experiment in the manner of Henry James, but while Mrs. Sedgwick dipped her pen with a kind of fastidious caution in the outer edge of the illustrious ink-pot, our present author finds restraint extremely difficult. We are not certain even now whether she means us to take her au grand sérieux. Her Frances Copley, poor pale lady in her silver and greys, playing the piano every afternoon to the ghost of an exquisite young man who haunts her drawing-room, is far too shadowy to be real, and Charlie Montagu, the bloated monster who has assisted her husband, slapping his thigh and crying ‘Congrats,’ is immensely too substantial to be anything but a bad caricature. And yet the last page, ending on a note of high tragedy, contains one convincing paragraph which the author could hardly have written if she had not meant us to be carried away.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4702, 11 June 1920, p. 767. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Lucas Malet was the pseudonym of the novelist Mary St Ledger Kingsley (1852–1931), the daughter of the popular Victorian novelist Charles Kingsley.
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The Books of the Small Souls THE LATER LIFE. – THE TWILIGHT OF THE SOULS. – DOCTOR ADRIAAN. By Louis Couperus.1 Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d. net.)
Those of us who are seriously interested in contemporary fiction cannot afford to disregard these admirably translated novels by the famous Dutch author. It is stated in an explanatory note that they can be read independently and separately, but that is, we think, to miss the peculiar interest of Mr. Couperus’ achievement. True, the first book, which was published some years ago and which bears the covering title of the series ‘Small Souls,’ may be considered as complete in itself, but it is also the key to these three that follow after; and although apart from them, it may and it does strike us as very brilliant, very sensitive and amazingly vivid and fresh, it is only when we look back upon it and see it in its rightful place in relation to the others that we recognize the full significance of the qualities we admire. We do not know anything in English literature with which to compare this delicate and profound study of a passionately united and yet almost equally passionately divided family. Little by little, by delicate stages, yet without any preliminary explanations or reserves, we are taken into the very heart of the matter. The troubling question which would seem to lie so heavy upon the pen of many a modern writer: ‘How much can I afford to take for granted? How much dare I trust to the imagination of the reader?’ is answered here. We are too often inclined to think it may be solved by technical accomplishment, but that is not enough; the reason why Mr. Couperus can afford to dismiss the question, to wave it aside and to take everything for granted, is because of the strength of his imaginative vision. By that we mean it is impossible in considering these books not to be conscious of the deep breath the author has taken; he has had, as it were, a vision of the Van Lowe family, and he has seen them as souls – small souls – at the mercy of circumstance, life, fate. He has realized that that which keeps them together, the deep impulse which unites them through everything, is apprehension. The real head of the family, the grim, ghostly shadow whose authority they never question, is Fear. So, as we speak of the idea underlying a poem, we may say that fear is the idea underlying these novels. If we listen deeply enough we can hear this unquiet heart of the Van Lowe family throbbing quickly, and it is because it is never for a moment still that the author succeeds in keeping our interest passionately engaged. We are constantly aware of the vision, the idea; it is the secret that he
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permits us to share with him, and in the end it seems to give way to a deeper secret still. In the first of these four great glimpses of the Van Lowe family the home is already empty. Some of the children are married with families of their own, and all are scattered, but the mother still has the power of calling them all under her wing every Sunday evening; and here it is that we meet them all quickened, all stirring because Mamma has asked them to take back Constance, a sister who disgraced them and who has just come back from abroad because her homesickness was worse than she could bear. She has come back because she cannot exist without family life, that precious exchange of tenderness and sympathy, intimacy and ease. Her sin was that years ago, in Rome, she betrayed her elderly husband with a young Dutch nobleman, and there was a divorce. But he has been her husband for years and their son is now a big boy: Constance imagines that all is long since forgotten and forgiven. Her own family, her own sisters and brothers, could not nourish a grudge against her. In their reaction to her presence among them we have the measure of the Van Lowe family, and we learn too that her real reason for returning was not her love of them all, but that she had failed to find happiness in her second marriage and was not strong enough to face unhappiness alone. It is astonishing with what power and certainty the author gives us, in this book, the whole complicated Van Lowe family, how he suggests their weakness under their apparent strength, their wastefulness under their apparent reserve. Paul, the exquisite, with his mania for order, and his sense of the exquisite wasted upon ties and the arrangement of his wash-handstand; Ernst, who lavishes his pity and sensitiveness upon ancient pots and books; Dorine, whom nobody wants, spending herself upon things that do not matter, and Constance, with her longing to be loved thwarted by her jealousy and pettiness. Apart from them all there is Addie, Constance’s little son, who looks at all that is happening with his grave, childish eyes and sees them as they are. This little boy, who is ten years old in the first book and is the Doctor Adriaan of the last of the series, is the hero, if hero he can be called. It is through him that Constance is received back into her family, and it is he who prevents his mother and father from making a tragedy of their lives. Until the last book he seems to be quite untouched by the terror of life and the weakness of the others. But in ‘Doctor Adriaan,’ just when we imagine that if the burden is to be lifted it will be lifted by Addie, the famous young doctor, the healer, it is quite wonderfully suggested that he too has not escaped. He feels at times a sense of dreadful insufficiency. He does not feel strong enough to stand alone, and turns to his foolish, charming father for support.
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‘The Later Life’ is concerned almost entirely with the blossoming of a late love between Constance and a man as old as she, side by side with the very first early love of one of her nieces, Marienne. Under the spell of her feelings Constance becomes young again, but she does not become a girl again. Marienne, with her recklessness and her small laugh like a shake of silver bells, is cruel and violent. She must be happy; she will be happy. But Constance enters into a silent kingdom where everything is illusion and the air breathes peace. But the end, again, is like a question; it is a chord struck softly which does not close the phrase, but leaves us wondering. In ‘The Twilight of the Soul’ the chief figure is of one of the brothers, Gerrit, a great bluff, burly, healthy brute of a fellow who is haunted by the feeling that there is a worm with legs eating up his marrow. He has a charming little wife, nine little children, and everyone knows him and loves and laughs at him, and there is that worm – confound it – burrowing away with its legs and licking up his marrow. This is an amazing, masterly study in pity and terror. It is the flaming intolerable core of the book, and round it, retreating into the same shadow as he, we have Ernst and Henri and old Mrs. Van Lowe. It is as though the menace that has threatened the family so long, the immense lukewarm family, is realized at last and the Lord spews them out of his mouth. Yet how lingeringly, with what an art are they spewed! It remains in ‘Doctor Adriaan’ to gather up all that are left and to put them in Constance’s care. But with them is Addie’s wife, a great insensitive young woman who has no patience with their tragedies and thinks them all half mad. . . The Van Lowe family has fallen; Mathilda treads it under her heavy foot and it does not stir. Even Addie thinks it is time. But space does not permit us to deal with these books at length. There is an angle from which we seem to see them as the strangest landscapes, small, low-lying country swept continually by immense storms of wind and rain, with dark menacing clouds for ever pulling over and casting a weighty shadow that lifts and drifts away only to fall again.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4703, 18 June 1920, pp. 798–9. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Louis Couperus (1863–1923) was a distinguished Dutch novelist and poet. He published The Book of Small Souls in 1902 and Old People and the Things that Pass in 1906; both were translated into English by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (1865–1921). They are reviewed on pp. 544–7.
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A Prize Novel OPEN THE DOOR. By Catherine Carswell.1 (Melrose. 7s. 6d. net.)
Out of the hundred manuscripts submitted to the publishers in their recent competition ‘Open the Door’ was chosen to receive the prize of two hundred and fifty pounds. The adjudicators are to be congratulated on their decision, for, while this novel is striking and unusual, it is eminently a serious piece of work and does not contain, in our opinion, those qualities which are necessary to a popular success. That is to say, it is head and shoulders above the class of books which are commonly called ‘best-sellers,’ it makes a genuine appeal to the intelligence as well as the emotions, and we do not doubt for an instant that it was inspired by the author’s love of writing for writing’s sake. But when Mrs. Carswell’s novel has been taken down from its small particular eminence and examined apart we must write more warily. ‘Open the Door,’ which is an extremely long novel – it has four hundred pages, that is, about one hundred and eighty thousand words – is an account of the coming of age of a young Scottish girl. By coming of age we mean, in this case, the moment when Life ceases to be master, but, recognizing that the pupil has learned all that is needful, gives her her freedom, that she may, in turn, give it to the man who holds her happiness in his keeping. So, from the age of thirteen to the age of thirty, we find ourselves – how is it best expressed? – in the company of Joanna Bannerman, her family, her friends and her lovers. We are told of the influences that hold back or help to unfold the woman in her; her thoughts, feelings and emotions are described with untiring sympathy and skill; but how much, when all is said and done, do we really know of her? How clearly is she a living creature to our imagination? She is receptive, easily led, fond of the country, especially fond of birds, pools, heather, the seasons and their change, and, since she is almost constantly aware of her physical being, her sexual desires are strong. At eighteen, a little weary of fruitless emotion, a little dream-sick, the conviction had begun to force itself on Joanna that she was without attraction. For the past ten years she had lavished unreciprocated passion on individuals of both sexes. . . .
This persistent and deliberate search is perhaps peculiar to a certain character; but for the rest might not Joanna be anybody? We look in vain for the key to her – for that precious insight which sets her apart from the other characters and justifies their unimportance. The family
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group, for instance, is solidly stated, yet it is conveyed to us that of them all Joanna was the only one that really mattered, because she was the one that broke away. But we never felt her truly bound. And then the men – are they not the shadows of shadows? There is young Bob, who cries when he ought to have kissed her; her sensational Italian husband breathing fire, Pender, the man of the world, and in the background Lawrence, who without her ‘conceived of his life as a seed foiled of its consummation.’ They are men only in so far as they are male to Joanna female. All would be well, in fact, if the author did not see her heroine plus, and we did not see her minus. We cannot help imagining how interesting this book might have been if, instead of glorifying Joanna, there had been suggested the strange emptiness, the shallowness under so great an appearance of depth, her lack of resisting power which masquerades as her love of adventure, her power of being at home anywhere because she was at home nowhere. Mrs. Carswell has great gifts, but except in her portrait of Joanna’s fanatical mother, she does not try them. They carry her away.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4704, 25 June 1920, p. 831. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Catherine Carswell (1879–1946) was a Scottish novelist, biographer and journalist who won the Andrew Melrose Prize for Open the Door. She was a friend of D. H. Lawrence and wrote a biography of him, The Savage Pilgrimage (1932), which JMM tried to suppress.
Wanted, A New Word THE MILLS OF THE GODS. By Elizabeth Robins.1 (Thornton Butterworth, 7s. net.) MY PROFITABLE FRIENDS. By Arnold Palmer. (Selwyn & Blount. 7s. 6d. net.) THE GOLDEN BIRD. By Dorothy Easton. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d. net.)
Suppose we put it in the form of a riddle: ‘I am neither a short story, nor a sketch, nor an impression, nor a tale. I am written in prose. I am a great deal shorter than a novel; I may be only one page long, but, on the other hand, there is no reason why I should not be thirty. I have a special quality – a something, a something which is immediately, perfectly recognizable. It belongs to me; it is of my essence. In fact I am often given away in the first sentence. I seem almost to stand or
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fall by it. It is to me what the first phrase of the song is to the singer. Those who know me feel: “Yes, that is it.” And they are from that moment prepared for what is to follow. Here are, for instance, some examples of me: “A Trifle from Life,” “About Love,” “The Lady with the Dog.” What am I?’ 2 It does not appear from ‘The Mills of the Gods,’ however, that the question has ever troubled Miss Elizabeth Robins. The seven tales in this new volume are of a kind that might have appeared in any successful high-class magazine. They are wholesome, sentimental, and not so inconveniently thrilling that the train carries you past your station. Experience, confidence, and a workmanlike style – the author has all three, and they go far to disguise the hollowness beneath the surface, but the hollowness is there. There is not one of the seven which will stand examination. How is it that the author can bear to waste her time over these false situations which are not even novel? How can she bear to put her pen to describing the great-hearted, fearless, rude, swearing, murdering toughs who frequent the Golden Sand Gambling Hell at Nome? those types whom we know as if they had been our brothers, whose hats are off at the word ‘Mother,’ and who shoot the cook who denies them a can of peaches. And then to add to them a little golden-haired innocent child whose father dies, and whom they adopt and send to Europe to finish her studies, and write to in their huge childish fists, telling her she is never to go out without her chaperone and they all send their love! Oh, Miss Robins! We are very, very weary of this kind of tale, and if we cannot refrain from smiling at the love story of the passionate Italian whom ‘his intimates in Italy and elsewhere’ called Satanucchio, it is not because we are amused. ‘My Profitable Friends’ contains a number of very clever sketches which ought to be more successful than they are. There is over them a strange breath of self-consciousness which blurs the effect of their sensitiveness and interrupts our attention, so that we have the uncomfortable and very cooling sensation that the author may at any moment be at hand to point out the subtleties. The book is not large, but it contains seventeen examples of his work; some of them are very slight, almost negligible, and perhaps it would have been better to cut down their number by half. On the other hand, it is interesting, when an author can write as well as Mr. Palmer at his best, to attempt to discover from the evidence what is his aim. We feel he has not yet made up his mind. In each story he makes it up again. His cleverness is indisputable; but when that matters to him a great deal less he will write a great deal better. At present he leans upon it – as in ‘Eve Follyhampton’ – and it carries him to just before the end; but then, when he has to throw it away and jump, it is kinder not to look.
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It is Miss Dorothy Easton’s happy fortune to be introduced to the public by Mr. Galsworthy in the kindest possible little speech. He describes the sketches in ‘The Golden Bird’ as ‘little pictures, extraordinarily sensitive and faithful, and never dull.’ That is very just criticism, but it does not prepare the reader for the quality of the ‘little pictures.’ The writer gives us the impression of being extremely young – not in the sense of a child taking notes, but in the sense that she seems to be seeing, smelling, drinking, picking hops and blackberries for the first time. She has a passion – there is no other word for it – for the English countryside. The people she meets she, in the frankest possible way, devours. There are still times when she mistakes sentimentality for feeling, and the little paragraphs at the end under the title ‘Moments’ are rather a painful instance of this. But at her best her feeling for nature is exquisite. And for such sketches as ‘An Old Indian’ and ‘From an Old Malt-House’ we have nothing but praise. But while we welcome her warmly, we would beg her, in these uncritical days, to treat herself with the utmost severity.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4704, 25 June 1920, pp. 831–2. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Elizabeth Robins (1862–1952) was a renowned American actress, writer and feminist who moved to London and supported the women’s suffrage movement. 2. Titles of stories by Chekhov.
Mr. Conrad’s New Novel THE RESCUE. By Joseph Conrad.1 (Dent. 9s. net.)
The writer who has achieved more than a common popularity, who has been recognized as one of the very few whose place is not in the crowded and jostled front rank but a delightful airy perch among the mountains, is to be envied – and not to be envied. The distinguished position has its special drawbacks. Whether it is the effect upon him of the rarefied air, or of the dignified solitude, or of the cloud interposing and obscuring the smaller eminences, the valleys and the plains from his, at one time, eager gaze, we do not know, but the books which come down to us from the mountains are no longer the books they were. They are variations upon the theme that made him famous; they are ‘safe’ books, guaranteed to leave unchallenged the masterpiece that put him there. Who would tempt Providence twice?
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And so from timidity or pride, from poverty of imagination, or a high sense of his ‘unique’ duty, he continues to repeat himself, and it is only his memory which is in our flowing cups richly remembered. Mr. Joseph Conrad is a remarkable exception to this lamentable case. Although he has long been recognized as one of our first writers to-day, he has never yet succeeded in satisfying our curiosity. We are always waiting for the next book, always imagining that in the new book he will reveal himself fully; there will come floating in, on a full tide, his passion for the sea, his sense of style, his spectacular view of the universe, his romantic vision of the hearts of men, and we shall have the whole of Conrad – his measure – the bounds of his experience. These are large demands, but we do not think there is any doubt that they are more than satisfied by the appearance of ‘The Rescue.’ This fascinating book revives in us the youthful feeling that we are not so much reading a story of adventure as living in and through it, absorbing it, making it our own. This feeling is not wholly the result of the method, the style which the author has chosen; it arises more truly from the quality of the emotion in which the book is steeped. What that emotion is it were hard to define; it is, perhaps, a peculiar responsive sensitiveness to the significance of everything, down to the slightest detail that has a place in his vision. Even in the sober low-toned beginning the author succeeds in conveying a warning as of an approaching storm; it is as though the silence was made to bear a mysterious implication. And in this heightened, quickened state of awareness we are made conscious of his passionate insistence upon the importance of extracting from the moment every drop of life that it contains, wherewith to nourish his adventure. For ‘The Rescue’ is supremely a novel of adventure in which Mr. Conrad has succeeded in blending the thrilling narrative of why Captain Tom Lingard of the brig ‘Lightning’ fails to keep his promise to recapture for the young Rajah Hassim and his sister Immada their stolen kingdom, and the equally thrilling narrative of the capture of Tom Lingard’s soul by a white woman. The scene is ‘the shallow sea that foams and murmurs on the shores of the thousand islands, big and little, which make up the Malay Archipelago,’ and the strip of coast-line where the rival chiefs, Belareb and Tengga, have their settlements. We cannot but remark how shadowy the land appears throughout this book; it is as though the water were the natural element of man. We see the line of the coast like a dark wing; it is land ‘seen faintly under the grey sky, black and with a blurred outline like the straight edge of a dissolving shore’; or it is the dazzling vision of the settlements seen from the lagoon by Edith Travers . . . ‘the flutter of the streamers above the brown roofs . . . the stir of palm groves, the black shadows inland and the dazzling white beach of coral strand all
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ablaze in its formidable mystery.’ Only on one occasion when Jaffir, the servant of princes, the messenger of great men, is described gliding and dodging through the jungle, ‘between the trees, through the undergrowth, his brown body glistening with sweat, his firm limbs gleaming like limbs of imperishable bronze through the mass of green leaves,’ do we lose the sensation that all is seen from the deck of the brig ‘Lightning,’ or of the old derelict vessel, the ‘Emma.’ As the sea appears to the landsman menacing and threatening, so does the land appear to Lingard. His strength depends upon his perfect knowledge of his little brig and upon a way of life which is, as it were, ruled by the tides. The friendship that existed between Lingard and the Rajah Hassim was the result of a fight ashore when the young chief came to the rescue just in time to save disaster. Both these noble natures recognized the bond that must exist for ever after between them. For their characters, and that of the Lady Immada, sister to Hassim, are such as to give to their adventure a richness and splendour far beyond success or failure. It is right that they should have become united, that the chivalry in Lingard should have responded to the shadowy call of high romance, for King Tom or Rajah Tulla, as he is known to Belareb and his followers, could not have remained a trader. He is the embodiment of that virtue which – we are tempted to believe – Mr. Conrad ranks highest, Fidelity, and the world, even the world of sixty years ago, has no use for such a man. The drama, the conflict begins when an English yacht runs ashore upon some outlying shoals off the coast of Borneo and appeals to Lingard for help. It is, at this moment, most important to his enterprise that nothing shall interfere with his rendezvous with the chief Belareb, who has promised his aid in return for arms and ammunition. Moreover, he realizes that a yacht stranded on a mud-bank is in great danger from the natives. And so he sails to their rescue and offers to take the owner, Mr. Travers, his wife and solitary passenger on board until the danger is past. But Mr. Travers treats him as an impertinent adventurer and orders him off. That same night the two gentlemen, while taking a constitutional on a sandbank, are captured, and there is nothing for Edith Travers to do but to place herself in the hands of Lingard. These three English people are ‘the sort of people that pass without leaving footprints’; they are of the world, worldly. Travers himself is almost the Englishman of caricature, the bald-headed, red-faced, blustering, snobbish fool who imagines he can carry his castle on his back; D’Alcacer is a diplomatist, refined and dispassionate with an emptiness, a reserve that hides nothing at his heart. Each of them is in his way a falsity, an appearance, not a man, and when they are captured, in the magnificently decorative
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scenes where Lingard parleys with the Malays, the barbarians, in their mingled state and squalor and savagery, seem to blot them out of existence. But the woman, who is more false than either of them and emptier, is powerful. She is exceedingly beautiful. Tall, slender, all white and gold, with her strange air of aloofness and strength, with her strange silences, her gift for conveying with a glance an understanding and a sympathy which is almost god-like, she might herself represent Romance, but Romance in her world and not in Lingard’s. She is the flower of corruption, the poisonous vine that can only feed upon the life of another. And Lingard is her perfect, willing prey. The only one who recognizes her for what she is, is the Lady Immada, but it is, from the very first glance that Lingard gives her, too late. Life, Fate chose that she should come sailing out of the blue, that she should wreck his desires and his ambitions and sail away again, leaving no trace upon the sky and sea. Why should this disaster have happened? It is to put the seal of greatness on ‘The Rescue’ that the author gives us no answer.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4705, 2 July 1920, p. 15. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. The Arrow of Gold by the Polish author (1857–1924) Joseph Conrad is reviewed on pp. 492–5. He was renowned as the author of such innovative, darkly comic and penetrating novels as Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and The Secret Agent.
First Novels A CHILD OF THE ALPS. By Margaret Symonds.1 (Fisher Unwin. 7s. 6d. net.) THE STORY OF A NEW ZEALAND RIVER. By Jane Mander.2 (Lane. 7s. 6d. net.)
We question whether anyone who has not himself written the eighty thousand-odd words realizes to the full the grim importance of the fact that a novel is not written in a day. In the case of the short story it is possible to give orders that, unless the house is on fire – and even then, not until the front staircase is well alight – one must not be disturbed; but a novel is an affair of weeks, of months; time after time the author is forced to leave what he has written to-day exposed to what may happen before to-morrow. How can one measure the influence of the interruptions and distractions that come between?
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How can one be certain of the length of time that one’s precious idea will wait for one? And then, suppose the emotional atmosphere is recaptured and the new link forged, there is always the chance that memory may play one false as to what is already written. The painter places his canvas on the easel; he steps away, he takes a long absorbed look, and it is all there before him from the first stroke to the last. But the author cannot go back to Chapter I. and read again; he has no means of constantly renewing his knowledge of what he has actually written as opposed to what he has come to take for granted is there. And who shall say it is easy, in the final moment of relief and triumph, when the labourer’s task is o’er and he knows all, to begin to be critical on such a point? ‘A Child of the Alps’ and ‘The Story of a New Zealand River’ are two first novels which convey the impression that their authors were by no means sensible to the idea that there might be danger in the leisurely style. Miss Margaret Symonds, in particular, writes with a strange confidence; she has the reader’s attention caught and thrilled by her artless tale of the ‘strange child’ Linda. All flows along so gently, all happens so easily, that we almost feel that we are children lying in our little beds and submitting to the story that the kind grownup is recounting. It is the story of a girl whose mother was English and whose father was Swiss, and of how her true self, which was Switzerland, fought with her false self, which was England, and of how her true self nearly succumbed, but was in the end the conqueror. Linda, the child of the Alps, is a real heroine; she is exceedingly beautiful, with black hair reaching to her knees, great sombre eyes and tiny hands, but in spite of all that Miss Symonds tells us of her external appearance and of the infinite number of her sense impressions she will not materialize. We admit her youthfulness; we realize it was her time of life to flit from flower to flower, from mood to mood, from sensation to sensation, but she is a shadow without a girl. How beautiful is Switzerland in the winter, in the Spring! How divinely lovely is Italy! Sweet sights and pleasant smells, charming pictures of peasant life abound, until we find ourselves in the strange position of skipping the story for the sake of the scenery. England, according to Miss Symonds, is life in the dining-room window of a suburban villa with the coalcart passing outside, and Italy and Switzerland are two heavens. But this excessive simplification does not make a novel, nor should the fact that the novel is not written in a day make the author less conscious of the deserts of vast eternity that lie before us.3 It is, we repeat, as though we listened to this gentle, well-bred book, rather than read it, and we close it with the feeling that the unknown plants and flowers are far more real to us than the unknown people. The case of Miss Jane Mander is very different. Her ‘Story of a
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New Zealand River,’ which takes four hundred and thirty-two pages of small type to tell, has none of Miss Symonds’ sophistication, or European atmosphere. The scene is laid in the back blocks4 of New Zealand, and, as is almost invariably the case with novels that have a colonial setting, in spite of the fact that there is frequent allusion to the magnificent scenery, it profiteth us nothing. ‘Stiff laurel-like puriris5 stood beside the drooping lace fringe of the lacy rimu6; hard blackish kahikateas7 brooded over the oak-like ti-toki8 with its lovely scarlet berry.’ What picture can that possibly convey to an English reader? What emotion can it produce? But that brings us to the fact that Miss Jane Mander is immensely hampered in her writing by her adherence to the old unnecessary technical devices – they are no more – with which she imagines it necessary to support her story. If one has the patience to persevere with her novel, there is, under all the false wrappings, the root of something very fresh and sturdy. She lacks confidence and the courage of her opinions; like the wavering, fearful heroine, she leans too hard on England. There are moments when we catch a bewilderingly vivid glimpse of what she really felt and knew about the small settlement of people in the lumber-camp, but we suspect that these are moments when she is off her guard. Then her real talent flashes out; her characters move quickly, almost violently; we are suddenly conscious what an agony, what an anguish it was to Bruce when he felt one of his drunken fits coming on; or The Boss reveals his extraordinary simplicity when he tells his wife he thought she’d been unfaithful to him for years. But these serve nothing but to increase our impatience with Miss Mander. Why is her book not half as long, twice as honest? What right has she to bore her readers if she is capable of interesting them? It would be easy to toss ‘The Story of a New Zealand River’ aside and to treat it as another unsuccessful novel, but we have been seeking for pearls in such a prodigious number of new books that we are forced to the conclusion that it is useless to dismiss any that contain something that might one day turn into a pearl. What is extremely impressive to the novel reviewer is the modesty of the writers – their diffidence in declaring themselves what they are – their almost painful belief that they must model themselves on somebody. We turn over page after page wondering numbly why this unknown he or she should go through the labour of writing all this down. They cannot all of them imagine that this book is going to bring them fame and fortune. And then – no, not always, but a great deal more often than the cultivated public would believe – there is a sentence, there is a paragraph, a whole page or two, which starts in the mind of the reviewer the thrilling thought that this book was written because the author wanted to write. How is this timidity to be explained, then?
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One would imagine that round the corner there was a little band of jeering, sneering, superior persons ready to leap up and laugh if the cut of the new-comer’s jacket is not of the strangeness they consider admissible. In the name of the new novel, the new sketch, the new story, if they are really there, let us defy them.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4706, 9 July 1920, p. 49. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Margaret Symonds (1869–1925) was the daughter of John Addington Symonds (1840–93); they collaborated in writing Our Life in the Swiss Highlands (1891). 2. Jane Mander (1877–1949) was a New Zealand novelist and journalist. 3. A reference to a poem by Andrew Marvell (1621–78), ‘To his coy mistress’: ‘But yonder all before us lie / Deserts of vast eternity.’ 4. Pastoral areas of land in Australia and New Zealand remote from rivers or the coast. 5. An evergreen tree native to New Zealand. 6. A coniferous tree endemic to New Zealand. 7. New Zealand’s tallest tree. 8. A shiny-leaved New Zealand canopy tree.
The Old and the New Hand THE FOOLISH LOVERS. By St. John Ervine.1 (Collins. 7s. 6d. net.) THE GREAT LEVIATHAN. By D. A. Barker.2 (Lane. 7s. net.)
‘You can’t expect a man to produce a masterpiece every time. He may not think much of this new book, himself. It’s possible that he was bound to turn one out this season.’ . . . But this gentle rain from Heaven upon3 our indignation in no wise cools it. We do expect each novel that a man writes to be better than the last, to be in fact that novel that we had imagined from the promise of his first books he was capable of writing. A ‘masterpiece’ is, of course, exaggeration. It has come to mean (see any young author’s press notices) a novel which is not as other novels are. But, failing a sign, failing a few explanatory words, or a reproduction of the agreement, say, between publisher and author, which demonstrates how, willy-nilly, the thing had to be finished at a certain date, we shall go on treating each new book as the one that the author considers – or how could he honestly publish it? – an advance upon his last. That being so, the question arises how on earth Mr. St. John Ervine could have imagined ‘The Foolish
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Lovers’ to be a patch upon ‘Mrs. Martin’s Man.’ Not that the latter was a great book, but it had qualities which made it possible for one to understand the admiration it aroused. It had vitality, a spareness, a sharpness of outline, and, more important than any of these, the emotional atmosphere was sustained from cover to cover. But ‘The Foolish Lovers’ has nothing to commend it but a good beginning. While John Macdermott is a boy, living in the shop at Ballyards (which everybody knows is a town in Ulster) with his uncle William, a quiet, understanding man, a lovable ancient whose life is bookreading, and his passionate, hot-headed ‘Ma’ – while he and they talk in the queer, nice, Irish way, and there is a smell of wet earth and of turf fires and the cold smell of brackish water – we are not without hope. But John grows up and goes to London and becomes not a writer, not a young man, but a creature of pen and paper. Enter lodgings at Brixton, the cockney maid, the usual theatricals on the ground floor, the melancholy landlady and the old, old London herring across the trail for comic relief. Enter also, for love interest, a pair of blue eyes. Well, there is this to be said. The author appears to be as bored by this hired furniture as we are, and when at the end John and Blue Eyes are led by baby fingers back to the old home in Ireland he does not scruple to use all the old tags that go to make short work of a story. But why did he write it? Or rather, why did he give up writing it? Perhaps he would reply that what is not worth doing is not worth doing well. It is a possible explanation. We have no other novel of Mr. Barker’s to measure ‘The Great Leviathan’ by. For a first attempt it is a commendable piece of work, but it does not – if one may be permitted the expression – cut any ice. It is pleasantly written, and there are many happy touches, but we are never certain as to what it is that the author is after. If he was after nothing, but merely engaged in showing us these various sketches of Tom, we should understand him better. But there is the title, and scattered here and there are vague intimations that his chief concern is to show us how Tom escaped, or was injured by the monster, Society. We are led to suppose that the early knowledge gained of his mother’s unhappy marriage haunted him through his boyhood, and when he came to fall in love it was because of this that he refrained from making Mary his wife. But it is very unconvincing. Neither does the case of Mary, who was brave enough to live with him ‘in sin’ as she presumably considered it, ring true. The Mary he describes would not have cared a button for the opinions of the cabbies on the rank at the end of their road. And why in Heaven’s name, Mr. Barker, should those cabbies have known? Shall we be detestable enough to say to the new author: ‘And now, having got so far, why not try your hand at something a great deal better?’
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a hymn to youth Notes
Text: Athenaeum, 4707, 16 July 1920, p. 78. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. St John Ervine (1883–1971) was an Irish novelist, dramatist and biographer. 2. Dalgairns Arundel Barker published The Theory of Money in 1913. 3. A reference to Portia’s speech in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (IV, i, 180–2): The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath.
A Hymn to Youth THE HAPPY FOREIGNER. By Enid Bagnold.1 (Heinemann. 7s. 6d. net.)
If Miss Bagnold had chosen that her heroine should lead the most sheltered and protected life that is left for a young woman to endure, we are confident that there would have blossomed within its narrow boundaries flowers as rich and as delicate as those which Fanny gathered on the strange roads of France. For she understands how it is vain to seek adventure unless there is the capacity for adventure within us – and if that is there, may it not be satisfied within four walls or the circle of lamplight? This generation assures us it may. Beauty looks in at the window. Experience knocks at the door. Why should one wander? Nevertheless, though the spirit of adventure may sing, may lament, exult, within our bosom’s cage, there are moments when the old longing comes over us to fare forth, to put ourselves to the test, to lose ourselves in other countries, other lives, to give what we have in exchange for what we want, and thus to acquire strange unfamiliar treasure. But these moments pass very quickly. Few are brave enough to recognize them. They pass, and the wonderful light quivers on the walls, is like a pool of silver in the lampshine, and Beauty mounts guard at the window and Experience stands with a drawn sword at the door. But this sad ending cannot happen to Miss Bagnold, for ‘The Happy Foreigner’ exists for a proof of how she ventured, and to tell how great was her reward. Here is the plot. Fanny, an English girl, goes to France at the end of the war and drives a car for the French Army. She falls in love, but it comes to nothing, and the end might be the beginning. That is all. Who Fanny is, what her life has been up till the moment she is discovered for us
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‘stretched upon the table of the Y.W.C.A.’ in Paris, on her way to Barle-Duc, we are not told. She remains from first to last an unknown young woman, secret, folded within herself, a ‘happy foreigner.’ She is almost without fear; nothing can overwhelm her or cast her down, because it is her nature, and unchangeable, to find in all things a grain of living beauty. We have the feeling that she is, above all, unbroken. Driving in the rain, in the darkness, in the snow, living in a paper cubicle, with the bright eyes of a rat peering at her, enduring cold and vile food, being covered in mud from head to foot – these things happen to her, but she passes them by. They do not matter. They are incidents on the journey, but they are not more. Praise be to Miss Bagnold for giving us a new heroine, a pioneer, who sees, feels, thinks, hears, and yet is herself full of the sap of life. ‘The Happy Foreigner’ ends upon a note of happiness: To-morrow I shall be gone. The apple blossom is spread to large wax flowers, and the flowers will fall and never breed apples. They will sweep this room, and Philippe’s mother will come and sit in it and make it sad. So many things will happen in the evening. So many unripe thoughts ripen before the fire. Turk, Bulgar, German – Me. Never to return. When she comes into the room the apple-flowers will stare at her across the desert of my absence, and wonder who she is! I wonder if I can teach her anything. Will she keep the grill on the wood fire? And the blue birds flying on the bed? It is like going out of life – tenderly leaving one’s little arrangements to the next comer . . . And drawing her chair up to the table, she lit the lamp and sat down to write her letter.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4707, 16 July 1920, p. 78. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Enid Bagnold (1889–1981) wrote many plays, poems and novels, including National Velvet (1935).
The Cherry Orchard THE ART THEATRE. – ‘The Cherry Orchard.’ By Anton Tchehov.1 Translated by Constance Garnett.
We will not insult our readers by supposing, as the critics in other journals are forced to suppose, that they do not know ‘The Cherry Orchard.’ We assume that it is as familiar to them as ‘Hamlet,’ and
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that they know that to see it acted, however inadequately, is to feel that it is one of the most wonderful plays ever written. The lights are put out, the curtain rises, and we are there, invisible, transported without any explanation or preparation, to that place and time. That is the peculiar strangeness of it. In other plays we have the feeling that the author and the actors are allowing for the fact that there is no fourth wall; in ‘The Cherry Orchard’ we feel that more than the fourth wall is removed; the barriers are down between the characters and ourselves – more, the barriers are down between them and their surroundings. All that comes under the author’s spell is bathed, is steeped and saturated in an emotional atmosphere which is compact of silvery whiteness, the pale light of very early morning, the chill of frost, and the mingled fatigue and expectancy that breathes in that hollow room where Dunyasha and Lopahin wait for the sound of wheels. What an amazing idea it is to let the curtain rise upon that homecoming, and to delay the arrival so that we have time to realize the imaginative significance of the ancient house, so soon to be filled again – of the shabby furniture that looks as though it were profoundly asleep; to taste the chill air and to know that, out there, as far as one can see there are white, glittering trees. So that when Dunyasha cries, ‘There they are!’ we run with her to welcome them; we share the emotion; it is only chance that we don’t unbutton somebody’s coat or carry a roll of rugs into the room beyond. And because we have been there before, have, in a moment of time, waited all night long, there is a special, thrilling meaning in all that is said, all that is done – the silence of dawn is broken, is set vibrating and quivering by the returned travellers. It is very late. They ought to be in bed. Yes, all through ‘The Cherry Orchard’ people are up when they ought to be in bed, talking when they ought to be silent, laughing when they ought to be crying, making jokes when they ought to be making contracts. And the critics who have never in their lives left undone any of the things they ought to have done2 glare and say: ‘This is a tragedy,’ or glare and say: ‘This is a comedy,’ or glare and say: ‘This is a bore.’ And some of the actors are as bad as the critics. They cannot conceal their horrible feeling of guilt at the unheard-of conduct that a man of genius has imposed upon them. It is all very sad, and not at all the kind of spectacle which the respectable dramatic justiciars of The Times or the Daily News should be invited to witness. No wonder our colleague of The Times cannot understand why the Art Theatre should have chosen this play to present to a British audience. God forbid that a British family should recognize itself in this mirror, or feel that these creatures from whom the tyranny of the ought has been lifted are of like passions
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with themselves. And how we sympathize with him when he finds that Leonid, the brother, and Peter, the tutor, ‘are frankly bores’! How we envy him! How deeply we realize that if only we could find them boring we should at last belong to that famous bulldog breed that keeps the Empire going and the circulation of The Times at boilingpoint. Alas! we are poor little humans, who hate the ought and feel that it numbs some rich, rare fineness in us, who feel that were it lifted we too might suffer a sea-change and of our bones coral be made3; and we rejoice that there has been one man in our age who has had the wisdom and the vision to see these things in us. If we could only be as true to ourselves as the people in ‘The Cherry Orchard’ are to themselves, come as near to others as Tchehov came near to them, ‘love our stones’ with the same passionate sincerity of the moment as Liubov Andreevna loves hers, admit with the same honesty as they do that they feel freer now the incubus of the home they love has gone, speak to a cupboard with the same flow of sentiment as Leonid does to his – why, then we might not please The Times, but something might be done with us. And as with our souls, so with that crystallization of them which is art. Until a play like ‘The Cherry Orchard,’ so intimate, so real, so beautiful, is felt to be as near and dear to a cultivated British audience as it is to a Russian, there is not much to be done with the English drama. Until our critics feel by instinct that it is to make themselves a laughing-stock to the world to speak of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ and ‘The Skin Game’4 in one breath – and we speak as respecters of Mr. Galsworthy – whatever may be done with the British drama will wither before the stare of polite incomprehension. Until our English actors feel themselves as at home in, as thrilled by and as proud to act in ‘The Cherry Orchard’ as the artists of the Moscow Theatre did in 1904, whatever may be done with the British drama will be stifled at birth. And here lies the hope. A half-dozen of the actors in the Art Theatre production of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ on Monday acted, not perfectly, not consistently, but at times with a real apprehension of their opportunity. They were Miss Edith Evans (Charlotta), Mr. Leyton Canceller (Gaev), Mr. Felix Aylmer (Simemov-Pistchik), Mr. William Armstrong (Epihodov), Mr. Ernest Patterson (Fiers), and to some extent, in what is really the most difficult part of all, Mr. Joseph Dodd as Lopahin. When actors can play as well as these did in the greatest and most delicate of all modern plays for a run of only two nights with rehearsals on the same lavish scale, then we can safely say that it is not for the want of actors that the British drama continues to languish.
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rather a give-away Notes
Text: Athenaeum, 4707, 16 July 1920, p. 91. Unsigned. BJK (p. 150) notes that ‘JMM reprinted this review as by KM in the Adelphi, Vol. 3, No. 3, August 1925, pp. 214–16 (omitting the last four sentences).’ Note by Sydney Janet Kaplan: Stylistically and conceptually, the review is consistent with JMM’s other writings about Chekhov. It also might well have included some phrases and observations that came from conversations with KM. 1. The plays of Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) were greatly admired by Woolf, Mansfield and James Joyce, though they were little appreciated in Britain before the 1920s. His works were translated by Constance Garnett. 2. A reference to the General Confession in The Book of Common Prayer: ‘We have left undone those things that we ought to have done.’ 3. A reference to Ariel’s song in The Tempest, I, ii, 399–403: Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him but doth fade But doth suffer a sea change. 4. John Galsworthy’s play, The Skin Game, was first performed at St Martin’s Theatre in London in 1920.
Rather a Give-Away DAISY ASHFORD: HER BOOK. By the Author of ‘The Young Visiters’.1 (Chatto & Windus. 7s. net.)
While realizing how difficult it must have been to resist – especially as the cupboard was not bare – we think that the author of ‘The Young Visiters’ has been unwise to respond to the greedy public’s desire for more. Her new book was bound to invite comparison with the other; it is not a patch on it; and, more than that, does it not remove a little of the bloom from what was surely the chief charm of the adventures of Mr. Salteena and Ethel – we mean their uniqueness? ‘The Young Visiters’ was funny enough in all conscience, but the source of its funniness was that it was such a find. As we read, the picture was before us of the little girl making it up, saying the absurd things over to herself before she wrote them down with a very special kind of relish,
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and putting in the stops afterwards, especially the exclamation marks, with a heavy hand. But when Miss Ashford tells us in the preface to this new book that the first story was ‘dictated to my father, who took it down faithfully word for word,’ it is a very different affair. Likewise when she tells us that portions of her sister’s story were dictated to her father and mother, ‘and I think the nurse had a hand in it too.’ We do not doubt her sincerity for a moment, but was it possible for those grown-ups to refrain from getting all the fun they could from the amusing child; or could the child refrain, when she saw how they rolled their eyes, from playing down to them, from adding that couple of shrimps to the absurd enough afternoon tea? It is common and humiliating enough to see on the face of a baby a shade of contempt at the things these monsters titter and giggle over. ‘If you will think it is so very funny that I don’t happen to know how babies come,’ we can almost imagine Angela Ashford saying, ‘I’ll write you a whole story about it,’ and she proceeds to compose, ‘The Jellus Governess.’ If we had not been told that nurse, especially nurse, helped with the writing out, we should have been more merry. Perhaps the most amusing passage in this new book occurs in the first story, ‘Love and Marriage.’ A young gentleman is on his way to see his beloved. Just as he was thinking of going up to her house he saw Norah Mackie and Evelyn Slattery coming along together. ‘Your friend,’ they said chaffingly, ‘is picking some old geraniums in the front garden.’ Burke stared at them straight, and, putting out his tongue once or twice, walked on to find his darling pet.
This, we feel, is a true contribution to the number of retorts one can make to a silly, and certainly intended to be rather insulting, remark of that kind. The remaining stories were written between the ages of eleven and fourteen. They are, for the most part, very dull, and dreadfully like the vast number of novels written by ladies whose intellectual life seems to remain for ever in its early ‘teens.’ But – psycho-analysts, please note – it is surely strange for a child between these ages to occupy herself so passionately with the subject of courtship and marriage. The heavy, detailed descriptions of young gentlemen and their true loves read as though they were culled from the covers of servants’ novelettes – those shiny, coloured covers that appear to have a rich varnish on them. In our experience the female child between those ages would have held such horrors in high contempt.
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the luxurious style Notes
Text: Athenaeum, 4708, 23 July 1920, p. 111. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Though Daisy Ashford (1881–1972) wrote The Young Visiters when she was nine years old, it was not published for almost 20 years, preserving her childish spelling and punctuation. It is reviewed on pp. 469–70. KM regards the new book as less successful.
The Luxurious Style LINDA CONDON. By Joseph Hergesheimer.1 (Heinemann. 7s. 6d. net.)
If a novel is to have a central idea we imagine that central idea as a lusty growing stem from which the branches spring clothed with leaves, and the buds become flowers and fruits. We imagine that the author chooses with infinite deliberation the very air in which that tree shall be nourished, and that he is profoundly aware that its coming to perfection depends upon the strength with which the central idea supports its beautiful accumulations. But in the case of ‘Linda Condon’ we have the impression that the author has planted something that never has time to take root, for he cannot resist the temptation to deck it with immediate branches, to clothe it with a multiplicity of exotic splendours. These are all very well in the first part of the book to gaze upon, to smell, to compel our astonishment; but at the end, at the moment when the harvest is to be gathered – ah, then – at that final moment which should be all compact of richness, we are confronted with a little dried-up, withered skeleton. Linda Condon, a small, grave young person aged ten, with ink-black hair, blue velvety eyes, cheeks like magnolia petals and lips carnation-red, is the embodiment of Mr. Hergesheimer’s conception. There is that in her circumstances and in her behaviour which puts us in mind very vividly of Mr. Henry James’s little Maisie.2 Like her, for all her appearance of being adequate to the strange situation, Linda is innocent of all evil; with the same touching and confiding air of understanding everything, she accepts her surroundings. Life is a drifting from one odious hôtel de luxe to another, from one odious gentleman de luxe, who is mamma’s friend of the moment, to another. For Linda’s mother is a gay, golden-haired woman of pleasure, whose days are divided between the mirror, eating, and railing against men, and whose nights are devoted to getting what she can from ‘the beasts,’ and keeping her spirits up with drink. She is a vivid representation of the warm-hearted, vulgar, over-blown animal with whom contemporary fiction has made us as familiar as we wish to
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be, and the touch or two of strangeness which is apparent is due to the author’s precision of detail. Until the age of fourteen Linda is her blind, adoring handmaid, but then, on an afternoon when her mother speaks to her ‘sensibly’ on the subject of marriage, she has for the first time a vague intimation of feelings which she cannot account for or explain away. These feelings recur, and the author reveals what we have called his central idea at a studio orgie, where in the contemplation of a cast of the Winged Victory3 side by side with a leering Chinese God it is explained to her that the one stands for the world of spirit and the other for lust. This time Linda is troubled with a rushing of wings and a feeling as if she were up among the stars. ‘I have left Lao-tze4 for Greece,’ said the sculptor to whom she confessed her vision, and she is his inspiration forthwith. It is through him that Linda discovers that she is not a living woman; she cannot love. It is as though, while she walked in the midst of those dangers that thronged her childhood, an icy finger had touched her, chilled her, so that she would always in experience and feeling remain a child. ‘This child I to myself shall take.’ But the Spirit of Beauty, in claiming her, has taken its revenge on life as well. True, the child (and now we mean that mystical child whom life is for ever threatening) has been saved, but only at the cost of keeping her a child for ever. This takes one hundred and fifty pages to tell – half the book. The scene has been any sumptuous hotel, and after the marriage of Linda’s mother, the house of a wealthy New York business man. There is no important difference between these settings. Either is equally rich in descriptive matter, and it is his passion for registering every pink-silk box of black chocolates, every cocktail, bath extract, perfume, sugared fig, quilted bed cover, web of lingerie, that in our opinion at first obscures, and finally smothers, Mr. Hergesheimer’s central idea. Great brilliant chunks of this repulsive world of the very rich are hurled at us until Linda is scarcely visible, is pale as a pocket-handkerchief. And then, with the second half of the book, which tells of Linda’s marriage and later life, we have the uncomfortable sensation all this does not matter. It is not as though the author has anything more to tell us about Linda; he can only prove, with her marriage, her absence of feeling for her children, her lack of response to her husband, her vague repetition of the old dream of stirring wings, that thus it is and ever shall be. It is a great pity that Mr. Hergesheimer has not faced the difficulties of a more reluctant and a more precious harvest.
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hypertrophy Notes
Text: Athenaeum, 4708, 23 July 1920, pp. 111–12. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Java Head by Joseph Hergesheimer (1880–1954) is reviewed on pp. 475–7 and Gold and Iron on p. 568. He was a wealthy American novelist from Pennsylvania. 2. Maisie Farange is the child protagonist of Henry James’s novel What Maisie Knew (1897). 3. The Winged Victory of Samothrace, in the Louvre, is a marble sculpture from ancient Greece. 4. The first philosopher of the Taoist school, sixth century BC.
Hypertrophy DEVELOPMENT. By W. Bryher.1 (Constable. 7s. 6d. net.)
This book is described as a novel; we should prefer to call it a warning. It is a solemn account of the dreadful fate that befell a young person for whom, at the age of four, ‘the morning was wistful with the halfexpressed desire: “If only I could have lived in an age when something happened.”’ ‘For this egg, imp, sprite, darling of a pigmy size, there are no such things as newborn blisses; her days passed, we are told, unpleasantly free from danger, and ‘she could never remember a time when she had not wanted to go to sea.’ Not in a sieve,2 with her feet on a piece of pink blotting-paper, nor on a door-mat with a white cotton umbrella for a sail, but in a fishing ship that moved ‘bird-like,’ dear reader, among ‘waves, dented blue or curved racing green.’ Well, well, it is sad to consider what sentimental old creatures we must appear to the infants of to-day, timidly asking them if they believe in children, much as thirty years ago they used to ask us if we believed in fairies. Children, indeed! Except for, between the age of five and seven, an unfortunate little affair over the ownership of a tricycle, a misunderstanding which might have culminated in disaster had not the Olympians intervened, there is no visible evidence that the heroine of ‘Development’ did not bid farewell to the childish state with her first bottle. ‘Actual existence,’ says the author, ‘is too complicated to do more than puzzle a child of eight. Nancy, in fact, was not aware that it existed.’ She found the ‘Iliad’3 a great deal more to her taste, and such was her knowledge of life in Troy that ‘she could see it, feel it, till her days passed in a crashing of bronze, a clatter of sandals, till to have seen the sun-browned body of a warrior catch the light at the corner beneath the heavy perfection of his harness . . .’ would have sur-
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prised her a great deal less than the common things of day. Moments that she could spare from her books she passed in one or another museum in Florence and elsewhere, and we catch a wistful glimpse of her drawing aside the veil of years from the whole of antiquity, and cruelly, ruthlessly, throwing over charming Achilles4 for the fresher fascinations of modern-hearted Hannibal.5 ‘The train reeking of Europe rattled on.’ Our heroine at ten is on her way to Egypt. ‘Italy was wonderful, but Naples was still Europe, and Egypt meant Africa.’ What more is there to be said? Let these words suffice: ‘Of all Egyptian history nothing had impressed her sailor mind so much as the expedition to Punt, and was not the tomb of Hatasu herself on the other side of the river? Then there was Rameses, the epic of Pentaur, on the great Karnak wall.’ 6 And so it goes on and on – this absurd autobiography of a poor little stuffed owl, with its beak or its nose in the air. It is all very well for W. Bryher to say that ‘impressions poured into the white and rounded vase’ of Nancy’s imagination, ‘hot and clamorous with sweetness.’ Even if we knew what such a statement meant we should refuse to believe a word of it. It is not meet for little children to dig their sand-pies among the tombs, and Nancy at fourteen is an awful example of what such indulgence may end in. ‘From the delicate bloom of peach the spirit of childhood flushed to the tenderness of a wild rose, it was ready to be one with dream.’ And then her shadowy parents emerged and thrust her into prison for three years where the girls wore white blouses, and were taught drill and nothing by elderly idiots who would not even understand her desire ‘to keep her art free from any taint of school.’ Follows another and a longer voyage to the beloved South of her childhood, and antiquity is recovered before the frescoes of the bullring and the cup-bearer. With the poetry of Verhaeren7 and Mallarmé8 and a touch or two of de Régnier,9 her mental bewilderment, to call it by no harsher name, is complete. Nancy recognizes that she is a writer born. But here we would notice a strange lament on the part of the heroine that she is not a boy. She deplores her long draggled skirt, the fact that, as a girl, she can only ‘write books woven of pretty pictures seen from a narrow window’; that she is sheathed in convention. There is also a nonsensical account of a female tea-party. But there is no longer any need for girls to wear draggled skirts or to sit at narrow windows or to scream and twitter; they have been running away to sea for years – the excuse will not serve. And although we are told she possesses the intellect, the hopes, the ambitions of a man, unsoftened by any feminine attribute,’ what could be more ‘female’ than her passion for rummaging in, tumbling over, eyeing this great basket of coloured words? That she can find no use
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for them; that, lovely as they are, she has nothing to pin them on to, nothing to deck out in them; that la bonne Littérature, in fine, has not bid her bind her hair, is no great marvel. She has been to a feast of languages ever since she was old enough to beat a spoon on the table.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4709, 30 July 1920, p. 144. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Winifred Bryher (1894–1983) was a poet, novelist and film critic who had a longstanding relationship with Hilda Doolittle, the poet H.D. 2. A phrase from Edward Lear’s nonsense poem ‘The Jumblies’: ‘They went to sea in a Sieve they did, in a Sieve they went to sea.’ 3. The ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer. 4. A Greek hero of the Trojan War. 5. The Carthaginian commander during the First Punic War against the Roman Empire. 6. All these are aspects of ancient Egyptian civilisation. 7. Emile Verhaeren (1855–1916) was a Belgian symbolist poet. 8. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–98) was a French symbolist poet and critic. 9. Henri-François-Joseph de Régnier (1864–1936) was a symbolist poet, regarded as one of the most significant in France in the early twentieth century.
A Foreign Novel JENNY. By Sigrid Undset.1 (Gyldendal. 7s. 6d. net.)
Of course we know a great deal better, and laugh at our emotion and refer to it as a foolish weakness on the part of our poor dear heart – who is like the timid old-fashioned wife of that brilliant young surgeon, the mind – but for all that, there is something in the opera ‘La Bohème’ that sets us sighing . . . Yes, yes, of course it was an impossible, unhealthy, draughty life, with all those stairs, and no electric light, and no bathroom, and no cooked vegetables! But the white walls, the bunch of violets in a glass, the long loaf and the bottle of wine in a cupboard, her hat and his coat hanging from two nails. . . Sentimental nonsense – but there you are! The author of ‘Jenny’ has managed to capture this pale lilac sunlight, this youthful atmosphere so successfully that the glaring faults of construction are toned down. Her small group of Scandinavian students living in Rome, care-free, spending whole nights talking
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and whole days taking their fill of the sun and painting and eating and falling in and out of love, is excellently described. She can bring them together round a café table and make us realize how they are related to one another, how they react and respond, the quality of their group emotion; and she can part them, separate them, follow them one by one to that lighted attic where, solitary, they reveal the self that does not change. We are made to feel how the two women, Jenny and Cesca, for all that they are more important, richer, more sensitive than the men, are yet at the mercy of life, are in danger, just because they are women. And yet the book fails as a whole because Miss Undset has been content, as it were, to uncover rather than discover Jenny. We should have known at the end why it was that, in giving herself to the man who she felt would be for ever a stranger, Jenny sins against the deepest impulses of her being – why, from that moment, Life would have nothing more to do with her. But this question, problem, which should be the living support of the novel, the author forgets, or allows to be smothered.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4709, 30 July 1920, p. 144. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) was a Norwegian novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.
Esther Waters Revisited ESTHER WATERS. By George Moore.1 (Heinemann. 7s. 6d. net.)
Although conversation of the kind is seldom very fruitful, while young writers gather together it would be hard to find a topic more suited to their enthusiasm than ‘Who are, when all is said and done, our best writers to-day, and why do we think so?’ Present-day literature consists almost entirely of poetry and the novel, and when it is the latter which has been under discussion; when there has been a furious rage of condemning, admiring, prophesying, upholding; when all is over and the participants have distributed to their satisfaction the laurel and the bay, it is not uncommon to hear, from a corner, an American or a French voice upraised: But what about Mr. George Moore? ‘Of course; how strange! How difficult it is to explain how so distinguished a figure in modern letters comes to be forgotten! And even when we recall him to memory do we not see him dim, pale, shadowy, vanishing round this corner, disappearing behind that door,
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almost in the role of expert private detective to his novels rather than author. . . . This, too, in spite of his detachment and candour, taking into account the delighted retracing, retracking himself down, so to say, for which he is famous. We have no other writer who is so fond of talking of his art. So endless is his patience, so sustained his enthusiasm, we have the feeling that he cannot refrain from confiding in the stupid public, simply because he cannot keep silent. And yet – there is the strange fact. While we are engaged in reading Mr. George Moore’s novels he is ‘there,’ but once they are put back on the shelves he has softly and silently vanished away until he is heard of again. The publication of a new edition of ‘Esther Waters’ provides an opportunity for seeking to understand this curious small problem. It is generally agreed that this novel is the best he has written, and the author himself has expressed his delight in it – ‘the book that among all other books I should have cared most to write, and to have written it so much better than I ever dreamed it could be written.’ ‘Esther Waters’ is, on the face of it, a model novel. Having read it carefully and slowly – we defy anyone to race along or skip – from cover to cover, we are left feeling that there is not a page, paragraph, sentence, word, that is not right, the only possible page, paragraph, sentence, word. The more we look into it, the more minute our examination, the deeper grows our amazement at the amount of sheer labour that has gone to its execution. Nothing from: ‘She stood on the platform watching the receding train,’ until the last pale sentence, the last quiet closing chord is taken for granted. How is it possible for Mr. George Moore to have gained such precise knowledge of the servants’ life in Esther’s first place unless he disguised himself as a kitchen-maid and plunged his hands into the cauliflower water? There is not a detail of the kitchen and pantry life at Woodview that escapes his observation; the description of the bedroom shared by Esther and the housemaid Margaret is as complete as though the author were preparing us for some sordid crime to be committed there. And this intensely scrupulous method, this dispassionate examination is continued without a break in the even flow of the narrative. Turn to the page of the heroine’s seduction: – The wheat stacks were thatching, and in the rickyard, in the carpenter’s shop, and in the warm valleys, listening to the sheep-bells tinkling, they often lay together talking of love and marriage till one evening, putting his pipe aside, William threw his arm round her, whispering she was his wife.
‘Putting his pipe aside’! Could anything express a nicer control, a cooler view of the emotional situation? It is only equalled by: ‘Soon after thoughts betook themselves on their painful way, and the stars were shining when he followed her across the down, beseeching her
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to listen.’ It comes to this. There is not, in retrospect, one single page which is not packed as tightly as it can hold with whatever can be recorded. When we follow Esther to London here is the crown of the book. It is the London of that particular time preserved whole, a true ‘London of the water’s edge’ – a London of theatres, music-halls, wineshops, public-houses. And it is the scene of the struggle of Esther Waters to be a good woman and to bring up her child against fearful odds. The life of a general servant – how sordid, how vulgar, how ignoble! What a trapesing up and down stairs and a turning-out of ugly rooms! Mr. Moore spares us none of it, and when her ‘luck changes,’ and, married to the man who seduced her, Esther has a home of her own, it is the centre of a low-class gambling lot. Could all this be more faithfully described than the author has described it? Could it possibly be more complete, more probable? The technique is so even, it is as though a violinist were to play the whole concerto in one stroke of the bow. And yet we would say without hesitation that ‘Esther Waters’ is not a great novel, and never could be a great novel, because it has not, from first to last, the faintest stirring of the breath of life. It is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage. In a word it has no emotion. Here is a world of objects accurately recorded, here are states of mind set down, and here, above all, is that good Esther whose faith in her Lord is never shaken, whose love for her child is never overpowered – and who cares? In the last year Jackie had taken much and given nothing. But when she opened Mrs. Lewis’s door he came running to her, calling her Mummie; and the immediate preference he showed for her, climbing on her knees instead of Mrs. Lewis’s, was a fresh sowing of love in the mother’s heart.
Do we not feel that to be the detective rather than the author writing? It is an arid, sterile statement. Or this: But when they came to the smooth wide . . . roads . . . she put him down, and he would run along ahead, crying, ‘Tum for a walk, Mummie, tum along,’ and his little feet went so quickly beneath his frock that it seemed as if he were on wheels. She followed, often forced to break into a run, tremulous lest he should fall. . .
The image of the little feet on wheels is impossibly flat and cold, and ‘tremulous’ is never the word for Esther – ‘trembling’ or ‘all of a tremble’ – the other word reveals nothing. What it comes to is that we believe that emotion is essential to a work of art; it is that which makes a work of art a unity. Without emotion writing is dead; it becomes a record instead of a revelation, for the sense of revelation
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comes from that emotional reaction which the artist felt and was impelled to communicate. To contemplate the object, to let it make its own impression – which is Mr. Moore’s way in ‘Esther Waters’ – is not enough. There must be an initial emotion felt by the writer, and all that he sees is saturated in that emotional quality. It alone can give incidence and sequence, character and background, a close and intimate unity. Let the reader turn to the scene where Sarah gets drunk because her horse has lost. It is a fearful scene, and so closely described that we might be at her elbow. But now Sarah speaks, now Esther, now William, and all is as cold and toneless as if it were being read out of that detective’s notebook again. It is supremely good evidence; nothing is added, nothing is taken away, but we forget it as soon as it is read for we have been given nothing to remember. Fact succeeds fact, and with the reflection that Esther and her husband ‘fell asleep, happy in each other’s love, seeming to find new bonds of union in pity for their friend’s misfortune,’ the scene closes. Is that all? No wonder we forget Mr. George Moore. To praise such work as highly as he does is to insult his readers’ intelligence.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4710, 6 August 1920, p. 176. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. George Moore (1852–1933) was an Irish novelist and dramatist who provoked critical outrage in the late nineteenth century because he wrote of such topics as lesbianism, illegitimacy and prostitution. Esther Waters was first published in 1894.
A Holiday Novel *
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*By*
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*(** 7s. 6d. net)
Seated in one of those sealed, sumptuous interiors where the rich, unbridled furniture seems to have gone back to the jungle, and the illusion is heightened by the two immense ebony elephants in full trumpet on the giant sideboard, each bearing on his trunk – inexplicable anomaly – a minute white china vase containing a dead fern, the terrified eye fluttering over the deathly-white page of the illustrated something or other, the terrified ear on the qui vive for that discreet rustle which must be followed up the ominous stairs and into a chair which would seem to have been designed as a smokingroom armchair for a skeleton, the entrapped mind all the time busy composing that sentence which should convey in a breath that we
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had not time to-day, and, indeed, had not come to have anything done, but just to be looked at in case – our attention was arrested by a winning little paragraph of advice which was intended for those of ‘our readers’ who had thought at all seriously of taking away a book with them to read on their holiday. It was distinguished by a note of quiet confidence, infinitely reassuring to a timid unaccustomed reader, to the effect that, provided the holiday was long enough, the print large enough, and the margins sufficiently wide, there was no reason at all why the entire book should not be finished before the hunt for the return half of the ticket began. It was hinted at that the book should have a serviceable cover to protect it from the ravages of wind, wave and tide – that it should not be read while swimming except in the case of a novice, when, an exciting chapter being agreed upon, the teacher should hold the book out of the water on a level with the patient’s eyes, and, walking slowly backward, draw him on, almost literally speaking. Should the book suffer from unexpected immersion (the book indeed!), a brisk drying in the open air, or failing this, on the outside of the bedroom window-sill (should the landlady have no objection), would soon set all to rights again. But while on the subject of accidents it further suggested that if the book should be buried, there is no cause for alarm; a spade should be quietly borrowed, the exact spot ascertained as far as possible, the sand gently removed so as to avoid any bruising of the cover, and upon recovery: ‘Hold the book by the two stiffened sides. Clap together. It is one of the famous charms of sand that it is so quickly and so cleanly capable of removal . . .’ In the case of a picnic, especially where portable liquids were carried, it was strongly advised to place the book, if the reader looked forward to a quiet half-hour with it under a tree while the little folks wandered, on the top of the picnic basket, and, to prevent any fading or curling of the leaves, to make all snug with an old copy of yesterday’s newspaper. We were surprised to read that there were occasions when the presence of a book on a holiday made for selfishness, or perhaps thoughtlessness, rather. The example of reading at meals was given. To read at meals meant that the book was bound to be propped against something, and that something was almost equally bound to be an article of common use such as the cruet, the milk-jug, or even, in very thoughtless cases, a pot of jam. How often the writer had seen a retiring or shy nature’s enjoyment of the meal entirely spoilt by his choosing to go without rather than force himself to break the silence of the table, at the risk of a possible snub or glance of amusement as well. On the other hand, it is not wise to leave the book on the hallstand or thrust into the stairs during dinner. A run up the stairs with it to one’s own bedroom may save many a long hour’s search for it,
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later, or even a more bitter disappointment still. Never read either directly before or after eating; after all, we have come away to give our digestions a rest; and, it is unnecessary to say, never read in bed. One may as well stay at home as risk one’s life with a strange lamp or candle. One word more. It is most unwise to take away an author who is not thoroughly well-known and liked. What could be more unpleasant than to find yourself on a rainy day, in seaside lodgings, with someone whom . . . what indeed?
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4711, 13 August 1920, p. 209. NN. Signed: K. M.
Throw Them Overboard! THE STORY OF THE SIREN. By E. M. Forster.1 (The Hogarth Press. 2s. 6d. net.)
The delightful event of a new story by Mr. E. M. Forster sets us wishing that it had not been so long to wait between his last novel and his new book. He is one of the very few younger English writers whose gifts are of a kind to compel our curiosity as well as our admiration. There is in all his novels a very delicate sense of the value of atmosphere, a fine precision of expression, and his appreciation of the uniqueness of the characters he portrays awakens in him a kind of special humour, half whimsical, half sympathetic. It is in his best-known novel, ‘Howard’s End,’ that he is most successful in conveying to the reader the effect of an assurance that he possesses a vision which reigns within; but in ‘Howard’s End,’ though less than elsewhere, we are teased by the feeling, difficult to define, that he has by no means exerted the whole of his imaginative power to create that world for his readers. This, indeed, it is which engages our curiosity. How is it that the writer is content to do less than explore his own delectable country? There is a certain leisureliness which is of the very essence of Mr. Forster’s style – a constant and fastidious choosing of what the unity shall be composed – but while admitting the necessity for this and the charm of it, we cannot deny the danger to the writer of drifting, of finding himself beset with fascinating preoccupations which tempt him to put off or even to turn aside from the difficulties which are outside his easy reach. In the case of Mr. Forster the danger is peculiarly urgent because of his extreme reluctance to – shall we say? – commit himself wholly. By letting himself be borne along, by wel-
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coming any number of diversions, he can still appear to be a stranger, a wanderer, within the boundaries of his own country, and so escape from any declaration of allegiance. To sum this up as a cynical attitude on the part of the author would be, we are convinced, to do him a profound wrong. Might it not be that his conscience is over developed, that he is himself his severest critic, his own reader full of eyes? So aware is he of his sensitiveness, his sense of humour, that they are become two spectators who follow him wherever he goes, and are for ever on the look-out for a display of feeling. . . . It was the presence of ‘my aunt and the chaplain’ on the first page of ‘The Story of the Siren’ which suggested the tentative explanation above. The teller of the story is in a boat outside a little grotto on a great sunlit rock in the Mediterranean. His notebook has dropped over the side. ‘It is such a pity,’ said my aunt, ‘that you will not finish your work at the hotel. Then you would have been free to enjoy yourself and this would never have happened.’ ‘Nothing of it but will change into something rich and strange,’ warbled the chaplain. . . .
It would be extremely unfair to suggest that Mr. Forster’s novels are alive with aunts and black with chaplains, and yet those two figures are so extraordinarily familiar, that we caught ourselves unjustifiably wondering why there must always be, on every adventure, an aunt and a warbling chaplain. Why must they always be there in the boat, bright, merciless, clad from head to foot in the armour of efficiency? It is true that in this particular story the hero escapes from them almost immediately. He and Giuseppe are left on a rock outside the cave, so that the boatman may dive and recover his notebook. But the mischief is done. All through the enchanting story told by Giuseppe after the book is rescued, we seem to hear a ghostly accompaniment. They ‘had been left together in a magic world, apart from all the commonplaces that are called reality, a world of blue whose floor was the sea and whose walls and roof of rock trembled with the sea’s reflections’; but something has happened there which should not have happened there – so that the radiance is faintly dimmed, and that beautiful trembling blue is somehow just blurred, and the voice of Giuseppe has an edge on it which makes it his voice for the foreigner: the aunt and the chaplain, in fine, are never to be wholly got rid of. By this we do not wish to suggest for one moment that the key of the story should be changed, should be pitched any lower. It is exquisitely right. But we do wish Mr. Forster would believe that his music is too good to need any bush.
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Text: Athenaeum, 4711, 13 August 1920, pp. 209–10. NN. Signed: K. M. The dates of this and the previous review are reversed in NN. 1. Edward Morgan Forster (1879–1970) was a writer of novels, short stories, essays and librettos, notably the novels Howards End and A Passage to India. KM knew him and admired his personal qualities.
Degrees of Reality AMBASSADORS THEATRE.– ‘A Grain of Mustard Seed.’ By H. M. Harwood.1
By what standard shall we judge Captain Harwood’s play? If by that of the average play that finds its way on to a London theatre, then we may say outright that it is well-written, well put together, deserving of its evident success. It has a relative reality which, we can understand, must prove overwhelming in contrast to that of its rivals. But reality is a relative affair. To the ordinary member of the middleclass, who has The Times with his breakfast, and to whom a general election is an event of the same order as the Last Judgment, who reads appreciatively of Mr. Asquith’s mastery of a political situation,2 or of the statesmanlike views of Mr. Austen Chamberlain3 – a glimpse into the world of wire-pulling and vote-catching is a revelation of reality. Quite obviously a world where one very ordinary man says casually to another, ‘Let’s give him a peerage,’ is more real than the world where it is gravely stated that ‘His Majesty the King has been pleased to confer a barony of the United Kingdom upon Sir Joseph Fiftypercent.’ To be admitted into the inner circle for two hours and a half at the price of half-a-guinea for a stall is cheap enough, and how thrilling! And then to see how a member of the great middle-class butts into this nicely adjusted system of mechanics, refuses the comfortable compromise, and wins the game not only of politics but of love by his adherence to principle – principle in this context meaning to promise more than your colleagues intend to perform – that is more flattering still. It is, for the ordinary man, a personal ‘Veni, vidi, vici’4 – to have seen reality only to conquer it – and at the same time to be convinced, by the very shocking goings-on of the daughter of the great political house, that it was high time the seventh trump was sounded outside the walls of Jericho.5 Now the odd thing is that the people who finally decide whether the reality of a play is of that approximately finalkind that will keep it from decay for a generation or so belong to a different order from
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that of the ordinary man. They are the cranks who go to see ‘The Cherry Orchard’6 and other plays of the kind, who know hardly more than the average man about the inside of politics, and yet have the hardihood to decide that it is not really more important than the inside of the Stock Exchange; people who have not actually heard their companions in the smoking-room say ‘Let’s make him a peer,’ but are convinced by the results that that is the way it is done; people who would give their eyes to be admitted to that other secret chamber where someone says casually ‘Let’s make him a genius,’ or, almost as rarely, ‘Let’s make him an honest man.’ Reality for these people begins where Captain Harwood leaves off. If he could tell them, for instance, something convincing about that wicked daughter, instead of leaving all that to Miss Cathleen Nesbitt, who has evidently tried to find out something and decided that there is nothing to go upon; or if he could have given us a glimpse into the turmoil of the manufacturer’s mind instead of leaving Mr. McKinnel finally to impose upon us by what is called a tense and eloquent silence – why, then, we might have stretched ourselves and began to count the birds that would come to lodge in the branches. As it is we can do no more than say that Captain Harwood’s play, though better than the ordinary, belongs to the ordinary – to be precise, it is a kind of theatrical counterpart to Mr. Stephen McKenna’s ‘Sonia,’ 7 and will meet with a corresponding success – and express our admiration of a finely finished piece of acting by Mr. Fred Kerr as the aristocratic Cabinet Minister.
Notes
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Text: Athenaeum, 4711, 13 August 1920, p. 220. Signed M. See BJK, p. 151, for attribution. Harold Marsh Harwood (1874–1959) was a dramatist who also wrote screen plays for film and television. Henry Herbert Asquith was Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916 and Leader of the Opposition from 1920 to 1922. Austen Chamberlain was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1919 to 1921. ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’, attributed to Julius Caesar on his campaign in Britain. In the biblical Joshua, 6: 1-27, Joshua’s Israelite troops marched round the walls of Jericho blowing trumpets until the walls came tumbling down. The Cherry Orchard (1904) is a play by Chekhov. KM reviews a production of it on pp. 631–4. A novel about upper-class life published in 1917.
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Deader Than the Dodo QUEEN LUCIA. By E. F. Benson.1 (Hutchinson. 8s. 6d. net.)
‘Lucia, with her enthusiasms and absurdities, is a delightful creature, worthy to rank with the immortal Dodo.’ These are the concluding words of that paragraph on the paper wrapper which is to tempt the reader to open or not to open Mr. Benson’s new novel. It is a great many years since we read ‘Dodo.’ How immortal does it remain for us? Memory, with some reluctance and hesitation, dives and fetches up . . . a slim creature with a wasp waist preening herself before a mirror, Beethoven, devilled kidneys and cigarette ash, a great, blond, Newfoundland dog of a man on watch beside a cradle, a hunting crop, and over all a high, rapid, ceaseless chatter which may or may not have sparkled then, but which the action of the years has dreadfully dulled . . . But we did imagine that the ‘whole point’ of the novel, as they say, was the charm of Dodo. The author and the reader agreed – did they not? – that she was a delightful creature, with her enthusiasms and absurdities. Lucia, however, in spite of that paragraph, is an extremely unpleasant elderly cat, with eyes ‘like round buttons covered in black leather,’ and ‘hard, neat undulations of black hair.’ Let us take the reader into our confidence. We believe there has been some extraordinary confusion on the part of the author and the publisher and the characters, with the result that the lady to whom the paragraph applies is not Lucia at all, but her rival in the case, the opera-singer, who whistles on her fingers, calls her men friends ‘my dear,’ and tells them not to blush when they mention the fact that babies are born. We are prepared to eat our pen that it is she who is Dodo revived, but how aggravating and tiresome it is that the question should be raised, for at each fresh appearance of Lucia we find ourselves looking for the likeness, and at each new vulgarity of the opera-singer’s we find ourselves recalling the resemblance. There is the fact, however, that the author’s chief concern is with Queen Lucia and her little country town of a kingdom. The silly, vain creature living in her Elizabethan house, with her Shakespeare garden, her ‘amusing’ furniture and her tame cat of a husband who writes prose-poems, is described at immense length. Likewise her immense importance as a leader of culture, a propagator of new ideas, an authority upon Music and the Arts, is drummed into our heads. For from the very first it is clear that Mr. Benson has no opinion of our heads at all. He does not even dream that we shall succeed in seeing his joke at first, but, once he has made it, rushes to try-try-try again as a matter of course. And what jokes they are!
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Then she looked at my pearls and asked if they were genuine. So I looked at her teeth, and there was no need to ask about them.
Or: ‘Oh! it’s so diffy!’ said Lucia, beginning again. ‘Georgie, turn over!’ Georgie turned over, and Lucia, counting audibly to herself, made an incomparable mess all over the piano.
These are small particular stars. But the truth is that the whole book is one over-arching joke. Having succeeded, to his satisfaction, in making clear to us just how great a pretentious fool Queen Lucia was, the author proceeds to entertain us with the spectacle of her pride having fall after fall. The method is to spy upon the lady, to peep through the blind, over the wall, to snigger, to cry, ‘That served her right,’ ‘That was a nasty one for her,’ and ‘She won’t show her face after that in a hurry.’ Her subjects are the comic figures of every comic country town. There is the old lady with the ear-trumpet, the elderly Colonel who feels young, the elderly young ladies who are giddy and slap each other in their playful way. And if we add that they were – Queen and all – taken in by an Indian who pretended to be a great teacher, and was a brandy-drinking burglar in disguise, and afterwards by an elderly ruffian who pretended to be a Russian Princess and a Spiritualist – it will be plain to see what matter for mirth is here! But the dismallest feature of all is that Mr. Benson’s humour should have gone – not to the dogs, but to the cats.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4712, 20 August 1920, p. 241. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940) was a prolific fiction writer and biographer. Dodo: A Detail of the Day was published in 1893.
Victorian Elegance A FOOL IN HER FOLLY. By Rhoda Broughton.1 (Odhams. 7s. 6d. net.)
In the sympathetic short preface which Mrs. Belloc Lowndes has written for this, Miss Broughton’s last novel, she tells us that Miss Broughton was ‘curiously humble about her books. It was almost as if she was content to regard her literary gift as a kind of elegant accomplishment. . .’ Why should this astonish Mrs. Belloc Lowndes?
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It is delightful to think that the author should have been so nice a judge of her talent, for that, after reading ‘A Fool in her Folly,’ is precisely what we feel it to have been – ‘a kind of elegant accomplishment.’ It is far from our desire to be lacking in respect for Miss Broughton’s memory; but why does Mrs. Lowndes trouble to quote the ‘acute modern critic writing for Americans’ when he declares that Miss Broughton ‘seemed to him the nearest thing [sic] in spirit to Jane Austen that we have had in recent times’? There can be no question of comparison between them. That Miss Broughton always put the best of herself into everything she did is undoubtedly true, but that she could have, even if she would have, put all of herself into anything that she did is quite a different matter. We do not think she had any such aim. There is, in this novel at least, a kind of deliberate sustained pose which is deeper than the manner of the tale-teller. Her delicate garrulity, the angle at which she gazes at the tiny storm there, where it tosses, at the bottom of one of Mamma’s delicate teacups; the quaintly flippant gesture with which she dismisses the ultimate disaster – all seem to say: ‘You see for yourself that I am not to be taken too seriously. It is only a story after all.’ If we were certain of living to be as old as Abraham there is no reason why time should not be found for ‘A Fool in her Folly.’ But whirling at the rate we go (and we seem to go faster and faster; we have had scarce time to greet the summer this year, and now the leaves are falling) it is difficult to recommend it to grown men and women. It is a girls’ book. Girls of all ages, from thirteen to eighty-five, will revel in it. It will not bear looking into; it will not tolerate any questions or interruptions. It must be taken whole, just as it is or not at all. Let us try to make our meaning clearer. ‘A Fool in her Folly’ is a story in the Victorian tradition, supposed to be related by an old lady of eighty. It tells how when she was a plump little partridge of twenty she ate of the forbidden fruits in her Papa’s library, and falling into a fever, half indigestion, half curiosity, as a consequence, determined to write a novel herself. It was to be a burning and mighty story of passion, its title was to be ‘Love.’ What she wrote we are not told. The tepidity, almost bordering on idiocy, of her family circle, their politeness, forbearance, gentleness and modesty towards one another, are excellently described, as is the scene between her parents and herself when the fatal manuscript is discovered. For her crime, and to save her family from being corrupted by her very presence among them, she is sent away – to a widowed Aunt, and there, meeting a real live man, who is as wicked as he is handsome, she learns to live her book over again. This time she is saved by a friend of the Aunt’s and sent home – to spend the remainder of her life – i.e., sixty years – repenting. But what had she written? Either it was pestiferous bal-
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derdash or it was all nonsense. Either her parents were idiots or she was a little horror. And what happened between her and the villain thus to destroy her whole life? And was her mind a perfect sink or was she merely the victim of growing curiosity? All these questions are left dans le vague – in that dreamy, faint, dazed world where girls of thirteen and girls of eighty-five laugh and cry over the same book.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4712, 20 August 1920, pp. 241–2. NN Signed: K. M. 1. Rhoda Broughton (1840–1920) was a Welsh novelist whose novels were best-sellers in the 1860s and 1870s but whose reputation waned in the twentieth century.
Hearts Are Trumps ISLAND TALES. By Jack London.1 (Mills & Boon. 7s. 6d. net.)
On the back cover of ‘Island Tales’ there is a list of thirty-four of Jack London’s books which are to be had in a cheap edition. To read the titles is to get a curiously vivid idea of their author, of not only the kind of thing he liked to write about, but even of the way in which he approached his subject. ‘Children of the Frost,’ ‘When God Laughs,’ ‘The Cruise of the Dazzler,’ ‘The Little Lady of the Big House,’ ‘A Son of the Sun’ – they conjure up an impression of a simple-hearted teller of tales who has been up and down the world, who has a fondness for Nature in her extreme moods, and is by no means devoid of sentimentality. We feel as we glance down that long list that here was a genial, warm-blooded fellow, who liked a name to be a name, a snowstorm to be a snowstorm and a man to be a hero. He is one of those writers who win the affection of their readers – who are, in themselves, the favourite book. But this very affection which he inspired is a something sentimental. That which prevented Jack London from ever being one of the real adventurers, the real explorers and rebels, was his heart; there was always the moment when his heart went to his head and he was carried away by passions which were immensely appropriate to the occasion, but which suffered from a histrionic tinge. Then his simplicity, smothered under a torrent of puffed-up words, obscured the firm outlines upon which his story relied, and we were left with the vaguely uncomfortable sensations of those to whom an ‘appeal’ has been made. Jack London at his best was the author of ‘White Fang.’ From the
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first chapter we step straight into the book. There is the immense snowy landscape, spread out unruffled, empty as far as they can see except for the sled, the straining dogs, the two tiny creatures who urge them on, and, as the quick dusk thickens, the moving shapes of shadow which howl after them. In describing at length the hateful fight that went on and on, in making us watch with the tiny creatures and fear for them, in keeping the issue so uncertain that we cannot afford to take our eyes off those starving beasts for a second, the author prepares us for his story. For the first chapter is only a prologue – a taste of what wolves are like, a ‘now you know what wolves can be,’ which precedes the life-story from the birth to the fullness of years of that most beguiling animal, White Fang. White Fang, fat little cub, tumbling through the fourth wall of his mother’s cave and rolling in the sun, is hard to resist. The strange, especial tenderness that men and women feel for small animals is called forth by every fresh activity of this infant wolf, and it is astonishing to what extent he becomes for us an individual creature, a wolf that we could pick out from among other wolves. Only when the love-master (unfortunate, characteristic appellation) comes along and has succeeded in making a kind of Oberhund of him does the image begin to blur. There are no human beings in ‘White Fang,’ except those as seen through a wolf-dog’s eyes – simplifications of human beings, and that is why it is so successful. When we turn to ‘Island Tales’ we cannot help regretting that the gleaners have been so busy in the field where such a teeming crop has been reaped. For there is not a single story in it which is better than the average magazine supplies. True, his admirers would recognize them as having come from the Jack London shop; but they are machine-made, ready-to-read tales which depend for their novelty upon the originality of the Hawaiian ornament. It is a little sad to notice the effect of this ambrosial climate upon his style of writing. Words became hyphenated, bedecked, sentences were spun out until the whole reminded one of the wreaths – the ‘Leis’ or love-tokens – that the gentle savages love to hang about their necks. And then the Hawaiian greeting, ‘Arms around,’ as he describes it so often and with such delight, was no antidote to his sentimentality. It would not, however, be fair to judge him by this book. But it does confirm us in the opinion that his salvation lay in wolves, snow, hardship and toil.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4713, 27 August 1920, p. 272. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Jack London (1876–1916) was a popular American novelist and shortstory writer, and a social activist. White Fang was published in 1906.
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A Witty Sentimentalist IN THE MOUNTAINS. Anon. (Macmillan. 7s. 6d. net.)
It is not difficult to decide who is the author of ‘In the Mountains,’ and the absence of difficulty is part of the proof that it is a good book. Individuality is hard to come by nowadays, and it covers a multitude of sins, as Uncle Rudolph found when he proposed (on about the last page) to Dolly. The sins to be covered by this author’s individuality are none of them very big ones – the worst being a trick of invoking the amorphous God of modern optimism to give an air of seriousness and weight to things that do not really need it. ‘Nothing in winter,’ she writes, describing her mountains, ‘but the ineffable cold smell of what, again for want of a better word, I can only describe as God.’ The God who comes in to help one out of a literary emergency is a fairly familiar figure nowadays; but we don’t like him any the better for that. And we like him the less when he interferes, as he occasionally does in this book, with the expression of an individuality we do like. And how delightful the author of ‘In the Mountains’ can be! To her wit and whimsy is added an irrepressible, palpable delight, which one can feel and share, in the airs and graces of writing. She has a delicate pen that lovingly shapes her phrase, and an instinct that keeps it true to experience, ‘as though one were writing a letter to somebody who loves one, and who will want to know, with the sweet eagerness and solicitude of love, what one does and what the place one is in looks like.’ That is not the whole of her, by any means; there is a detachment and a touch of worldly wisdom added to a fond of femininity that make of her quite definitely an artist. Perhaps the most interesting thing about her equipment, her composition, her make-up, is the slight instability in the mixture of her elements. She is profoundly a sentimentalist, and her sentimentality keeps jumping out in spite of all the ironical detachment she can muster against it. She cannot really control it – ‘God’ is merely one of its temporary disguises – and one cannot help speculating whether she would be a better writer if she could. It is the malign fate of writers with the gift of wit that we should always be asking them to be witty, that they should tighten the firmness of their exquisite control most sedulously there where they want to be free of it for a moment. In the sentimental vein the touch of the author of ‘In the Mountains’ seems a little less than secure. But amusing and entertaining books are so rare that we cannot leave this one with a grumble. The whole story of Miss Barnes and Dolly ‘Jewks’ and Uncle Rudolph (the Dean) is splendidly told, and there is a page at the beginning of that long episode, on the feminine
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theme that ‘what one has on underneath does somehow ooze through into one’s behaviour,’ which is inimitable. In the same genre, peculiarly this author’s own, is a little anecdote of her being discovered by her Swiss handyman, in the fancy dress of a devil, in the act of going into her bedroom to look for her tail. It is perfect.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4713, 27 August 1920, p. 272. NN. Signed: K. M.
Sussex, All Too Sussex GREEN APPLE HARVEST. By Sheila Kaye-Smith.1 (Cassell. 8s. 6d. net.)
‘Green Apple Harvest’ is another of those Sussex-grown novels for which Miss Kaye-Smith has gained a reputation. Its headquarters are a Sussex farmhouse; it wanders through Sussex lanes, fields, meadows, fairs; plays in and out of a Sussex public-house with Sussex farmers as broad as they are long for company; and notes the fact how in Sussex Summer follows Spring, Autumn comes after Summer, and lean old Winter with his beard of ice brings up the rear. As for the manner of speech in Sussex, it is here so faithfully recorded that words with double dots, double vowels, buzzing, humming words, words with their tails cut off, lean words grown fat and stodgy words swelled into dumplings lie so thick upon the page that the reader needs a stout pair of eyes to carry him through. The name of the farmhouse is Bodingmares. It is the home of the Fuller family – Faather and his second wife Elizabeth; Mary and Jim, two children of the first marriage, and Robert and Clem, two halfgrown sons of the second. Mus’ Fuller is a grim ancient with ‘a mouth stretched into a line which might have been a smile if it had not been so thin and tragic.’ He worships at the Methodist Chapel. ‘Then you mean to tell me as you’re praaperly saved?’ Bob wriggled in his chair. ‘I dunno.’ ‘Wot d’you mean – You dunno as you’re saved? I tell you as there aun’t never no mistake about that. As the lightning shineth from one part of heaven to another . . . Wot did you stand up for if you didn’t know as you were saved?’ Robert filled his mouth quite full of pudding, and was silent.
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But Death and Miss Kaye-Smith remove him at a rattling pace on page 37. Thus his epitaph: The years of his health had been spent in brooding on heavenly things, but from the moment his last illness began his mind seemed to concentrate on the small things of the sick-bed. His fight for life was entirely a matter of dose and diet, and his final surrender was not to the Everlasting Arms, but to his own fatigue.
Now for Elizabeth. She is something weak, soft, a creature of physical charms. . . . It was (most surprisingly) ‘her hair flying dustily golden like pollened anthers’ that had snared old Mus’ Fuller. Within six months of his death she is married to Wheelgate, the postman, who takes her to Eastbourne for their honeymoon, thereby proving himself a man of more substance than Jim had supposed him to be, and afterwards to a home of their own, where she has bright chintzes and brasses, and spends the rest of her life cutting out youthful blouses. And exit Elizabeth. Mary and Jim may be dismissed, one as a spiteful voice, the other as a drawl. There remain Robert and Clem. Clem, the meek plodder, has black hair and yellow eyes. Otherwise his face is ‘just the face of a common Sussex lad, with wide mouth and short nose, and a skin of Saxon fairness under the summer tan.’ But Robert. It is he who gives the book its name. ‘Sims to me as Bob’s life lik a green apple tree – he’s picked his fruit lik other men, but it’s bin hard and sour instead of sweet. Love and religion – they’re both sweet things, folks say, but with Bob they’ve bin as the hard green apples.’
So at long last we come to the hero. Rise up, rise up, young man! It is for you that Bodingmares, that shadowy farmhouse, and the shadowy family have been called into existence. Stand forth, your feet rooted in the dark soil of Sussex, your arms green branches, heavy honey-sweet blossom pushing through your breast. If this is the story of your lusty youth, your broken prime, your bitter harvest, let us, in Heaven’s name, have the truth. . . . But the florid young man in check breeches and gaiters escapes Miss Kaye-Smith’s pen more effectually than all the rest. Violence does not make a man, yet it is the only attribute that the author grants him freely. We are told how at chapel a voice cried to him to stand up and testify, and because that voice made him feel a fool he determines to do all those things ‘as He doan’t hold with’ to serve God out. So he goes after the gypsy girl Hannah – the old, old gypsy girl with her shawl and her feathery
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hat and her wild ways – and drinks and bets. But it is all in vain. God will not let him go and at the end Bob dies for His sake. . . . ‘I’ve got a feeling that if I go to the Lord God I’ll only be going into the middle of all that’s alive. If I’m wud him I can’t never lose the month of May.’ ‘Green Apple Harvest’ is an example of what a country novel should not be. It is a novel divided against itself, written with two hands – one is the country hand, scoring the dialect, and the other is the town hand, hovering over the wild flowers and pointing out the moon like the ‘blown petal’ of a cherry tree. If the novel were ever alive it would be pulled to death between them.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4714, 3 September 1920, p. 304. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Sheila Kaye-Smith (1887–1956) was a novelist and poet who lived in Sussex. Her Tamarisk Town is reviewed on pp. 505–7.
Savoir-Faire LADY TRENT’S DAUGHTER. By Isabel Clarke.1 (Hutchinson. 8s. 6d. net.)
Chapter One. ‘Miss Ardern had just laid aside her knitting because it was getting too dark to see comfortably. . . The evening had followed upon a perfectly lovely day in early June. The morning had begun with a thick white mist. . . And afterwards, when the sun had finally triumphed, there had supervened a golden day with just a hint of crispness in the air at first, but with sunshine that blazed prodigally for nearly a dozen hours. . . . And now the day was done.’ These observations, which occur on page 1, set us dreaming. Just supposing that between two and three the sky had become overcast, and it had looked very much like a shower, or, before luncheon, a nasty little wind had sprung up. How would the sympathetic reader have received such intelligence? Would his jaw have dropped? Would he have shaded his eyes with his hand a moment, murmuring, ‘This climate – this climate!’ Is this first page, in fact, a perfectly devilish piece of insight on the part of Miss Isabel Clarke, or, as this is her thirteenth novel, the result of long practice upon the human heart? Here we are, you see, introduced to Miss Ardern before we know it – the wretched business of presentation got over in the dusk, with her laying aside her knitting at the end of a perfect day. A perfect day – how softly it launches us, how easily we glide away on it! There
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had been that tiny moment of doubt, when the mist was so thick, just to urge our curiosity, but the instant dispelling of it captured our confidence. And pray do not overlook the delightfully – one might almost say cosy relationship that is established between us by ‘the evening had followed upon a perfectly lovely day . . . there had been just a hint of crispness.’ And underlying all this there is the dark, wicked certainty, the pungent relish to the mild dish, that this sort of thing is a great deal too good to last, and would not be mentioned, indeed, if the worst were not going to happen. . . . What does happen is that Miss Ardern’s niece, who is fatherless, and whom she has brought up from babyhood, falls in love with a young man who is already engaged to her absentee mother. This, when the mother arrives on the scene, is, needless to say, very awkward, and might well have ended in catastrophe had not the happy ending intervened to unclasp the wrong hands and join for happy ever the right ones.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4714, 3 September 1920, p. 304. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Isabel C. Clarke (?–1951) was a novelist and biographer, whose Catholic faith was of paramount importance to her fiction.
Letters VERENA IN THE MIDST. By E. V. Lucas.1 (Methuen. 8s. 6d. net.)
It is a fearful thing to have to lie in bed. To be sent to bed, to be commanded to stay there – to gaze from a little valley of humiliation, up, up to that ineffable brow that, wreathed with the mists of discretion and vacancy, bends over one. . . To pipe: ‘When shall I be allowed to get up again?’ and to be answered by: ‘We had rather postpone our answer for the present.’ These are moments which set the soul yearning to be taken suddenly, snatched out of the very heart of some fearful joy, and set before its Maker hatless, dishevelled and gay, with its spirit unbroken. For it is impossible to go condemned to bed in our grown-uppishness without recalling how favourite a remedy it was with our parents and nurses for a spirit that wanted breaking. There, naked between the sheets, prone when all the rest of the world is walking or leaping, conscious, to a hopeless degree, that it certainly isn’t for you that the clocks chime, the cups rattle, the lamps are lighted and the door-bell rings, one wages many a fierce battle. But
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the infants who emerge triumphant are, depend upon it, bound to be attacked by larger nurses and more unyielding parents later on, who will send them back to bed for another tussle, as though it were never too late to break. . . The case of Aunt Verena, the heroine of ‘Verena in the Midst,’ is, however, not all tragic. True, the ingredients are there. She has had a fall upon the ice which has injured her spine, and she must lie still for an indefinite period. And we are told, on page 3, that she lives normally ‘a hundred minutes to the hour.’ Nevertheless, and in spite of two occasions when we are given to understand that her courage failed her completely, her condition is not all tragic, because her spirit is not entirely unbroken. It is, in the most accommodating fashion for her family and friends, charmingly bent. Riches, leisure, freedom from all responsibilities have not smothered her, and, on the other hand, an affair of the heart with an artist has prevented her from losing touch with the young and foolish. She is, therefore, sustained and fortified by friends and relations from the very moment her head touches the pillow. In giving us the pick of her postbag Mr. Lucas has chosen those letters which, read together, fit into one another and form a brightly patterned little story. We are reminded of a pleasant chintz – not too modern, and yet gay – the groundwork, a soft mignonette green, being Aunt Verena, the largest flower (which might be anything) being Mr. Richard Haven, a special splash of attractive colour for the ardent young nephew Roy, and a delicate little border for the nicely behaved amusing children. There are certain characters who are negligible or blurred; there is not one who changes when his part in the design recurs. With one letter from each of them you have the whole of them, and Aunt Verena remains, from first to last, tender and pale. ‘Verena in the Midst’ is not to be taken seriously. With the exception of the nephew Roy, who is quite amazingly made known to us, there has been, on the part of the author, no serious attempt at revelation. We never know the authentic thrill of reading a letter which is meant for the inward ear; we doubt very much if Aunt Verena had one. Mr. Richard Haven’s daily sentimental humours, each carrying a poem like a cut flower – poor flower – between its pages, bore us very heartily, and there is, over all, a kind of tameness, not to say a smugness, which lies heavy. But who shall fathom, who shall explain, the fascination of reading other people’s letters? Aunt Verena, well and hearty, living her own life in precisely these same circumstances, would not have a leg to stand on. But when she is in bed, at the mercy of her postbag, we can sit beside her and await with a great deal more than resignation the glimpse of another letter from poor, dear Louisa.
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Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4715, 10 September 1920, p. 332. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Edward Verrall Lucas (1868–1938) was on the staff of Punch, and wrote essays, verses, novels and plays.
An Imagined Judas THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JUDAS ISCARIOT. By Alfred Tresidder Sheppard.1 (Allen & Unwin. 7s. 6d. net.)
‘The Autobiography of Judas Iscariot’ is a strangely uneven, incalculable novel. The beginning, which tells of the childhood of Judas, is a series of violently seen, savagely felt incidents. There is his fight with the tiny boy who taunts him for being a bastard; then his capture by the robbers on the sea-coast, who try to drown him, his shivering childhood on the fringe of their camp, and his recapture by a rich Arab chieftain, travelling to Baghdad. Here, in the palace, he found favour in his lord’s eyes and lived in the harem until he was sixteen, and then, in another fit of rage, he killed the old eunuch, Hormisdas, and fled to Joppa. I looked upwards; the sky was black and ominous, and in a few seconds rain fell in immense drops. People on the quay scattered; there were left but a few beggars, clamouring for alms. Some were blind, some eaten away by leprosy; all were filthy. A man had been charming snakes; as his audience dispersed, he put the snakes and his reed into a silk bag, and went away cursing.
From the chapter which begins with these words the narrative changes. It is more sustained, and the style settles into – if we may use the expression – a weary stride. It is a kind of half-swinging, half-loping gait, and it seems, somehow, to fit the restless, eager, doubting young Judas. The author makes us feel the tragedy of the man who is chosen for the crime, how he is, in spite of himself, for ever being prepared for his part, and half seeking to escape from it, and half lured on. What had his life been until he met Jesus but a schooling in how to destroy, how to betray, how to sell himself? And those strange moments when he sees himself as a rival of Jesus – is not he too a wanderer, a sufferer infinitely weary, a man who would enter as a king into his own kingdom? – are very powerfully suggested. Judas is the dark mocking shadow of Jesus; the light maddens and exasperates him, and yet he cannot tear himself from
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it. The strongest bond of all, that of the saviour and the betrayer, binds them together. The mistake Mr. Sheppard has made is in allowing our view of this tortured creature to be interrupted so often by giving us his account of the events in the life of Jesus. Here, again, we encounter the strange, flat dullness which seems to brood over these stories when they are retold, and, although the author’s reason for introducing them is to show how Judas never could wholly accept their miraculous explanation, he buries his hero beneath them.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4715, 10 September 1920, p. 332. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Alfred Tresidder Sheppard (1871–1947) wrote short stories and historical romances.
A Dull Monster CALIBAN. By W. L. George.1 (Methuen. 8s. 6d. net.)
The first impression and the impression that abides after reading Mr. W. L. George’s latest novel is that it is so very late indeed. Six years ago, no eight years ago – no, ten – this kind of novel was the height of fashion. The model was new; it suited the young writers of those ebullient days. They could not resist making a copy for themselves, and looking back across the immense interval we picture them tricked out in it, we see them banded together as a kind of Fire Brigade, dashing off at an immense pace and clatter to put out, to destroy, to turn the hose upon, any solid sedate residence which was not and never could be on fire. It was still most amusing and almost novel in those days to laugh at Victorian furniture, to discuss endlessly the fashions of that period and to recall the comic ballads or the tender strains of ‘Come to me, Sweet Marie.’ Leg of mutton sleeves,2 bustles,3 what-nots4 and the fact that you must never stand anything on top of the Bible provoked the merriest peals. There was a feeling in the air that life was such a game, such fun, such a lark, such a rag! And there was, above all, an idea, a kind of nebulous football of an idea which floated and bumped in everybody’s direction and simply asked to be kicked high and sent flying, that the thing to do was to ‘get down to it’ and to be bold. ‘Toujours de l’audace’ – we actually said it then. The model upon which all these copies were fashioned survives, but
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it has become something of a curiosity. We do not admire it less than we did then – but it is impossible for us to recapture the emotional state in which it was presented to us then. To say that the war has changed our attitude to life is not a very useful thing to say, neither is it wholly true. But what it has done is to fix for ever in our minds the distinction between what is a fashion and what is permanent. In spite of all the nonsense that is admired and the rubbish that is extolled we do perceive a striving after something nearer the truth, something more deeply true among a few writers to-day. So it is with astonishment and not a little amusement that we observe appearing in the broadest daylight, complete to the confident eyebrows, the quaint figure of ten years ago – the rather smallish man, not handsome but immensely vital, the man who has thrust upwards, hitting, pushing, smashing the family solidities in Maida Vale, ‘three years before the first jubilee,’ laying about him relentless and determined until he emerges finally into the blazing glare as the author of ‘Zip.’ Richard Bulmer (you mark the punch in the name) from his early youth discovers that what the world wants is Zip, and Zip is a patent food of his own invention which is to be eaten with every newspaper and magazine that he can lay hands upon. His method is to buy the paper, mix so much Zip with it as it will hold and – feed the greedy millions. The greedy millions are fed. Bulmer, rising by swift degrees to Lord Bulmer of Bargo is Lord Northcliffe’s5 rival. He buys papers as other men buy cigars. He buys men, women, houses, Power, but slim, cool Janet, with her graceful untidy hair and her look ‘like warm snow’ he cannot buy. Not even when the war broke out and he rushed into Janet’s flat, and: ‘His brain was fumous, his speech was a lyrical song of slaughter. In mangled sentences he expressed ideas newborn, aspiration to honour for his country that was actually an aspiration to deeds. He grew breathless; his mouth was dry. He was in the grasp of an epic poem. . . . .’ Not even when ‘in silence, muscle against muscle, teeth clenched they fought each other, hard breathing, giving forth the muffled cries of effort,’ and Janet ‘clutched at her hair that was loosening, and pressed her other hand against his chin, bending him back as an arc.’ These cinematographically contested episodes end in Janet’s marrying another (‘For a moment Atlas6 bent under the weight of earth’) and a final scene when our hero creeps back to his humming lair in Fleet Street and hears the boys cry his papers, while he murmurs that tag that used to end them in those days: ‘One doesn’t hitch on to anybody. One just messes about a bit in the middle of life and life sails away.’ But why Caliban?7 What has this to do with Caliban? Shall Caliban come roaring out of his case with a gnawed copy of The Times at the wave of Mr. George’s wand? Caliban is far too real a monster to
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dance to the tune of ‘Hello Life.’ But there again – we recognize the bygone fashion. Of course it would be Caliban!
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4716, 17 September 1920, p. 376. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Walter Lionel George (1882–1926) was a writer of popular fiction who contributed to Rhythm. His novel Blind Alley is reviewed on pp. 471–3. 2. A fashion in the 1890s for women to have sleeves that were exaggeratedly padded at the shoulder, dwindling to a tight-fitting cuff. 3. A late Victorian fashion, the bustle was a framework over which the material of a skirt was draped at the back, sometimes fanning out to create a train. 4. Whatnots were Victorian stands for displaying china and ornaments. 5. Lord Northcliffe was a newspaper baron who owned The Times and the Daily Mail. 6. The Titan in Greek mythology who holds the celestial sphere on his shoulders, and is sometimes depicted as carrying the globe. 7. Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest is described in the cast list as ‘a savage and deformed slave’.
The Case of Mr. Newte THE EXTRA LADY. By Horace W. C. Newte.1 (Mills & Boon. 7s. 6d. net.)
The case of Mr. Horace W. C. Newte is a strange one. In spite of the fact that three million pairs of eyes devoured ‘Sparrows,’ ‘The Extra Lady’ is, we confess, the first of his novels that we have read. Brilliant paper covers on the bookstalls satisfied our curiosity by telling us (so we imagined) all there was to know in their would-be ensnaring subtitles – ‘The Story of an Unprotected Girl’ or ‘The Story of a Tense Human Passion.’ These conjured up a vision of certain theatrical posters of provincial melodrama – girls in the act of being chloroformed and spirited away in malignant-looking cabs by auburn-haired villains in check riding breeches, or, in the case of that Tense Human Passion, two tailors’ dummies – en costume de bal – embracing between a red lamp and a fan. But while we are aware that it is the fashion nowadays among our higher intelligentsia to find in these exhibitions something exquisitely amusing, we must confess, for our part, that to ‘discover’ them deliberately does seem to us to take the edge off their humour. And so we have passed Mr. Newte by. To read ‘The Extra Lady’ is, however, to realize that its author
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cannot be dismissed as a maker of melodrama. For some not easily discoverable reason he has chosen to cloak, to partly disguise his remarkable talent in the ‘regulation get-up’; he is the professional writer as one speaks of the professional actor – the real right-down ‘pro’ who knows the whole affair from A to Z and is never for a moment unconscious of his audience. And since what the great dependable public care about is ‘a good plot,’ a good sound plot they shall have with a happy ending at all costs – ‘quite regardless,’ in fact. His performance is as good as his promise, but the affair, as they say, does not end there. Mr. Newte’s talents come issuing forth from that stage ink-pot, they seize on that flowing pen and impose their will upon it. There are chapters, scenes, episodes, in ‘The Extra Lady’ when a whole peculiar world – the world of Mr. Newte the artist – is shadowed forth, and we are made astonishingly aware of his possession and knowledge of it. His strange, fantastic figures whose lives are spent in the corridors of life, in the dressing-rooms, at the stage-door, whose sole ambition is a good part, and yet whose reply to Mary’s question to poor Lehel: ‘Are you on the stage?’ would have to be his: ‘Infrequently – infrequently’ . . . refuse to be kept within bounds. They talk, they weep, they drink too much, they spend half their lives trying to find somebody who will listen to the secret (which eats them away and is yet their pride) of how they went on the stage and yet never need have gone. They are terrified of the future, but it is never out of their sight. Dark, lean, impoverished, it follows on their heels; it has a trick of leaping and suddenly rushing forward. If we followed Mr. Newte’s plan of pointing the moral, we should say that ‘The Extra Lady’ proved the danger of unselfishness when it is carried too far – it may be a form of weakness, an indulgence which will be the ruin of the lives it sets out to save. But a fig for Mr. Newte’s plan! Why can he not leave the moral alone? What he has very nearly succeeded in doing is giving us an imaginative study of a girl called Mary Bray, who is persuaded that she owes it to her family to go on the stage to ‘keep the home together,’ and who spends all the best years of her life gradually, terribly, giving way, learning the boundless extent of her folly and its everlasting consequences, and in the process becoming unfitted either to withstand those consequences or to accept them. If he had left her on the side of the road, crying bitterly, holding her shabby collapsible basket. . . . How dare that motor-car come along with its eighty thousand a year inside – how dare it! We should understand Mr. Newte if we knew.
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fishing as a fine art Notes
Text: Athenaeum, 4717, 24 September 1920, p. 407. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Horace W. C. Newte (1870–1949) was a journalist, playwright and novelist.
Fishing as a Fine Art THE TRAGIC BRIDE. By F. Brett Young.1 (Secker. 9s. net.)
After reading ‘The Young Physician’ in the winter of last year we were left with the feeling that the author’s next novel would be very ‘significant’; it would show, it could not help showing which way he was going to travel and the degree to which he cared whether it was a question of his readers showing him the direction they preferred him to take. Did he realize how well he had described the relations between the small boy and his mother? There was, under that apparent simplicity, what appeared to be a very honest sincere attempt to face the great difficulty which presents itself to the writers of to-day – which is to find their true expression and to make it adequate to the new fields of experience. That Mr. Young did not succeed in this attempt did not surprise us. But what he did put a keen edge on our anticipation of the next time. Well, the next time has come and we are positively flung into the air along with the author, his line, bait, reel and all. What has happened? What waters are these to be fished? Let us, if we are after the tragic bride, be cast. But no! Our state is one of suspension from beginning to end. ‘The Tragic Bride’ is a fisherman’s reverie; and, fascinating as that may be to the fisherman, rich enough, complete enough to need no excuse; though he may return from it with the memory of a day’s exploration to satisfy him, we, who have been promised fish – wonderful enchanted fishes – are brought to the point of exasperation. If we had not been prepared so carefully for a prize most rare! But the opening pages are full of nothing but such a preparation. If we had been given a hint that after all the outing might have to be ‘all,’ even then we should not have felt cheated. But to follow and to follow and to follow – to listen, to attend, to be ever watchful, and then to have the chase complicated wilfully – so we feel by this time – is too much for the reader to bear. We remain Mr. Brett Young’s disappointed and disheartened admirers.
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Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4717, 24 September 1920, p. 407. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Francis Brett Young (1884–1954) was a novelist, poet and playwright. His The Young Physician is reviewed on pp. 520–22.
New Season’s Novels A TALE THAT IS TOLD. By Frederick Niven.1 (Collins. 7s. 6d. net.) THE AMOROUS CHEAT. By Basil Creighton.2 (Chatto & Windus. 7s. 6d. net.) THE GRANITE HILLS. By C. E. Heanley.3 (Chapman & Hall. 7s. 6d. net.)
The new season has begun, and again we open our papers to read what the reviewers have to say about the new novels. In spite of all the novels and all the reviews we have read, we confess the moment still thrills us. There are, we believe, majestic beings who can pass the new novel by without so much as a swerve, who can ignore the little stir it causes, who dare swear it to be ‘only another poor author having a fit’ – and so to the Masterpieces. But who can be sure? Mightn’t it be – mightn’t it be – and the possibilities are so overwhelming – something brought from a far country, something never dreamed of, something new, marvellous, dazzling – changing the whole of life. . . ‘But really!’ the poor author may cry, tossing a handful of cold water on our trembling, tiptoe flame. ‘Now it is you who are going too far in the other direction. Attention, consideration, an adequate appreciation of what I set out to do – well and good. But whoever said that I claimed my novel to be the startling, extravagant creature you would have it?’ ‘Didn’t you?’ we hear ourselves answering. And then there is a pause, and we hear ourselves whispering, ‘No, I don’t suppose you did.’ (And yet – when the idea was still an idea – before a word had been written – were there not mysterious moments when you felt that naught save a new world could contain your creations?) A glance at such reviews as have appeared, a careful reading of the three novels before us and the author’s protest is felt to be just. There is, at least in so far as these three novels are concerned, nothing new – or rather nothing that was not equally new last season and the season before that. They are new novels within the limits imposed by the old. There is the plain fact, to be wondered at or not, as the reader chooses. But before we examine their merits, might we inquire a little further into this feeling that, in spite of such substantial evidence to
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the contrary, the novel which is not an attempt at nothing short of Truth is doomed? We are leaving out of account for the moment the pastime novel, but how are we to be expected to take seriously – as seriously as we take ‘War and Peace,’ for example – any work which appears to have engaged less than the whole passionate attention of its author? To be fobbed off, at the last, with something which we feel to be less true than the author knew it to be, challenges the importance of the whole art of writing, and instead of enlarging the bounds of our experience, it leaves them where they are. Now the prologue to Mr. Frederick Niven’s ‘A Tale that is Told’ promises a great deal. In it the teller of the tale gives us his reasons for writing it. They are the best reasons in the world: ‘Because I am interested.’ He continues: ‘I think the result is going to be a blend of what that young novelist, Mr. Hugh Walpole, calls “a case,” and at the same time partakes slightly of the qualities of the “slice of life” school. . . What I am I shall not be able to hide even if I try. You will see me between the lines; you will discover me as I discover others to you. . .’ And his hero goes on to tell us how he has been haunted all his life by a feeling that it is only part of a greater life. The prologue ends thus: ‘. . . And I think the best beginning would be to tell how my father ate the sweetbreads shortly before we went for our holiday to Irvine.’ Why should our spirits have fallen so woefully at those last words? Why should we have felt that in their familiar tones we had the whole capacity of the book? Nay, we venture to assure Mr. Niven that, the opening chords given, there is scarce a reader of THE ATHENAEUM who could not pipe a very fair version of the occasion. It is, as he gives it to us, a charming interlude, full of delicate degrees of tone, the accents nicely stressed, the touch sustained. And in it his whole book is contained. The family rises from the table, it goes about its appointed ways. It scatters – the father dies. And all these things happen to the accompaniment of just that blend of sentiment and truth which accompanied the sweetbreads. But that hint of the greater life lies buried in the prologue. It is as though the author realized its importance, and yet could find no other place for it in his quiet book than in the churchyard. ‘The Amorous Cheat’ is the second book of an author whose name is unfamiliar to us. It is accomplished skating over thin emotions; it is highly skilled revolving and turning in champagne air. The author is positively never at a loss for a fresh caper, and the train who follow in the wake of Edward and V. is made up of figures who are pleasantly unusual and lightly fantastic. But there is a dreadful feeling throughout that if the air were to become one whit less brightly cold, not only the ice would melt. The tragedy does not happen; the ice holds; but in spite of our admiration at such a display of virtuosity we are more
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fatigued than is complimentary. If only Edward and V. would be still for a moment; but that is just what, for the purposes of ‘The Amorous Cheat,’ they cannot be. There remains a first novel – ‘The Granite Hills’ – by a writer whose youth looks out of every chapter. The scene is Cornwall; the matter is high passion. Both are so like other examples of their kind that we might almost call them typical Cornish ware. The hills, the granite stones, Curnows and Trevales, splits,4 cream and boiled leg of pork – these are all in the setting. And then there is the gently bred girl who is poor and marries the young farmer for the sake of what he can buy her, and has scarce learned to repent before the handsome stranger of her own class comes along and woos her with talk of Iseult.5 There is the tragedy averted and the slow building of a real heroine at one with the aforetime hostile sea and moor and granite and splits and cream, and the last paragraph dissolves, bathed in sunset light. ‘The Granite Hills’ is naïve because it is a first novel, and it is neatly put together; the turnings are neat, the seams are fair. But we wish the author would cut out a whole new pattern for herself next time.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4718, 1 October 1920, p. 439. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Frederick Niven (1878–1944) was a Canadian novelist and travel writer. 2. Basil Creighton (1885–1989) was a novelist and translator of German texts. 3. Charlotte Elizabeth Heanley (1864–1946) was a novelist who wrote stories about rural life. 4. Cornish splits are small bread rolls served as part of a cream tea. 5. Iseult is a character in the Arthurian legend who is married to King Mark of Cornwall but is in love with Tristan.
Entertainment – and Otherwise THE HOUSE BY THE RIVER. By A. P. Herbert.1 (Methuen. 8s. 6d. net.) LARRY MUNRO. By G. B. Stern.2 (Chapman & Hall. 7s. 6d. net.) THE FOURTH DIMENSION. By Horace A. Vachell.3 (Murray. 7s. 6d. net.)
Hundreds of years hence, we venture to prophesy, the curtains will divide and discover a young man in a check suit with a bow-tie much too big for him and a straw hat much too small, standing with his back to a glade of yellowing beech trees and reddening bracken and saying: ‘A friend of mine came home late one night – early one
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morning, I should say – and his wife’s mother happened to be staying with them at the time. I ought to have mentioned that he hadn’t been married longer than you might have expected. . . What are you laughing at?’ Yes, they will be laughing, and at the word ‘twins’ the laughter will swell into a roar. For – and the reasons are many and curious, and well worth inquiring into – it is the melancholy fact that precious little is needed to amuse and divert people. They are ready to accept almost anything, and really, there are times when it seems that the staler the entertainment the more successful it is likely to be. . . Let the song be – not the same song we heard last time, but a ‘new’ one so like it that we know just when to laugh and beat. Let us be able to recognize the heroine the moment she tosses her bright head, and grant us the flattering sensation of never being taken in by the dark but too good-looking young man. The effect upon popular fiction of this easy acceptance is to fill the book-shelves ninety times nine with the old, old story. After all, if the public is content, why bother to give it the new, new story? And why, when success is so easy, not have it and hold it from this time forth for evermore? It is not as though the pastime novel were out to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. At this dismal juncture we should like to introduce an exception; it is ‘The House by the River’ by Mr. Herbert. Here is a novel which does set out deliberately to be an amusement and a distraction, and, at the same time, its author has succeeded in giving a wonderfully vivid and convincing portrait of a certain ‘type’ of young man – one Stephen Byrne, a young man who has the great misfortune to murder the housemaid almost by accident when he is alone with her in the house one evening. We heartily commend this book to the readers of THE ATHENÆUM; it is excellent entertainment, and it is, in a way not quite easy to define, ‘something new.’ How far does Mr. Herbert intend to deceive us with that high-spirited and rather ordinary beginning? And then, little by little, just when we imagine we begin to see what the picture is like, with a stroke here, a stroke there, a sharpening of this line, an accenting of that – all is changed. Stephen Byrne and his wife Margery emerge – real, brilliantly seen – in the case of Stephen indeed, diabolically real. You see Mr. Herbert’s method is to change nothing, alter nothing, present Life in a cultured little back-water just as it is – rather delightful, rather vain – to keep the surface, in fact, untroubled and yet broken with charming little emotions. And then, just as we are caught in the glow from some old-world dining-room window, we are permitted to see what is inside that ideal house for a poet, and there is the poet strangling the housemaid. The affair was easy enough to explain. He had dined very well, he had come home in a glow himself, and, full of vague kindling feelings, he had watched
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the sun set over the river. Then, because he was not in the humour for writing and there was no one to share his emotion with him, he felt vaguely dissatisfied, and drank a glass of port just as Emily came downstairs, rosy and uncommonly pretty after her warm bath. He said fatuously, ‘Had a nice bath, Emily?’ and ‘he put one arm round her as she passed, lightly, almost timidly.’ Then he did a thing he had never done before – kissed the housemaid – and she screamed; and the scream startling him back to reality and a consciousness of the neighbours, . . . ‘Playfully almost, he put his hands at Emily’s throat.’ But the idiotic girl would take it seriously, would make a noise, bit his hand, maddened him, so that when he let go she was dead. What would you do if you, a successful young poet, with a delightful wife, charming home, delicious little-daughter-and-her-rabbits, and a golden future, found yourself in such an incredibly unexpected ‘hole’? Couldn’t you act well enough, lie convincingly enough to deceive the stupid world? And mightn’t the fact that you were an imaginative writer be an immense help? It nearly saved Stephen Byrne, but then the temptation to see the thing from the writer’s point of view, to ‘use it’ as copy (changed, of course, out of all knowledge, disguised as a romance of chivalry with Emily buried most beautifully, most movingly in a lonely lake instead of thrust into a sack and tipped into the Thames), was too strong for Stephen. He yielded and was undone. As to having murdered Emily, that in itself, Mr. Herbert’s pen makes us feel, was the kind of thing that might happen to any man. It’s the fuss afterwards that matters – the law – hanging – the last morning’s breakfast – that can’t be got over. . . ‘Larry Munro’ is for other readers. Is this Miss G. B. Stern the author of ‘Children of No Man’s Land’? In that novel she packed so many talents that it would not hold together; it flew apart and was all brilliant pieces, but in this! Larry Munro, we repeat, and once again Larry Munro. That is all there is to be said for it. Miss Stern herself strings a quantity of more or less bright little beads in between, but they are scarcely visible for the flashing, all-a-quivering Larry Munros of which her chain is composed. It is not stupid – it is silly; not clever – but bright; and it is so sentimental that it makes the reader hang his head. ‘Within three days she was in the thick of it, slightly befogged but happy. She had told herself she was an outsider, beyond the pale that encompassed these smart London folks. It astonished her how easy it was to get on with them.’ This is your country mouse arrived at the Castle to help the Duchess with her theatricals. ‘Amongst the guests who were not concerned . . . might be found a Cabinet Minister, a famous doctor and a hanging Judge.’ That hanging Judge, who appears from time to time in novels without his black cap, strikes the
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key for us. Mr. Vachell plays the familiar tune. It is entirely without surprises.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4719, 8 October 1920, p. 472. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Alan Patrick Herbert (1890–1971) was a satirical novelist and dramatist, and a Member of Parliament. 2. The English writer Gladys Bronwyn Stern (1890–1973) was known as G. B. Stern. Her novel Children of No Man’s Land is reviewed on pp. 537–40. 3. Horace Annesley Vachell (1861–1955) was a writer of fiction, essays and autobiography.
Observation Only THE CAPTIVES. By Hugh Walpole.1 (Macmillan. 7s. 6d. net.)
If an infinite capacity for taking pains were what is needed to produce a great novel, we should have to hail Mr. Walpole’s latest book as a masterpiece. But here it is – four parts, four hundred and seventy pages, packed as tight as they can hold with an assortment of strange creatures and furnishings; and we cannot, with the best will in the world, see in the result more than a task – faithfully and conscientiously performed to the best of the author’s power – but a ‘task accomplished,’ and not even successfully at that. For we feel that it is determination rather than inspiration, strength of will rather than the artist’s compulsion, which has produced ‘The Captives.’ Still, while we honour the author for these qualities, is it not a lamentable fact that they can render him so little assistance at the last – can give him no hand with this whole great group of horses captured at such a cost of time and labour, and brought down to the mysterious water only that they shall drink? But, alas! they will not drink for Mr. Walpole; he has not the magic word for them; he is not their master. In a word, for all his devotion to writing, we think the critic, after an examination of ‘The Captives,’ would find it hard to state with any conviction that Mr. Walpole is a creative artist. These are hard words; we shall endeavour to justify our use of them. But first let us try to see what it is that Mr. Walpole has intended to ‘express’ in his novel – what is its central idea. ‘If this life be not a real fight in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success. . .’ It is, we imagine, contained in these words of William
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James.2 A real fight – that is the heart of the matter – and waged in this life and for this life that something may be eternally gained. Maggie Cardinal, a simple, ardent creature with a passion to live, to be free, to be herself and of this world, is caught as she steps over the threshold of her Aunt Anne’s house in a burning, fiery trap. Maggie is, we are told over and over, a child of nature, ignorant, simple, rough, but with a loving heart. She has a persistent feeling, however, that she is different from all the rest of the world, and that she will never belong to anyone. Her nineteen years of life have been spent in the wilds with a disreputable father. But at his death she is captured by her Aunt Anne and by the fanatic religious sect to which her Aunt belongs. The head of the Kingscote Brethren is Mr. Warlock, and Martin, his son, is the second captive. Maggie’s father and Maggie’s aunt are determined, with all the passion of their fanatic souls, to offer these two to God when he descends, as they believe he may do at any moment, in his chariot of fire. Hence their cry, torn from them, to be free – to be allowed to fight in this world; hence their struggle. But when, after endless complications and separations, they are released from their fiery bonds, what happens? What has been the significance of all this to them? We are led to believe that both of them are conscious, while they are fighting the world of Aunt Anne and Mr. Warlock, that, nevertheless, they do acknowledge the power of some mysterious force outside themselves – which may . . . some day . . . what? We are left absolutely in the air. Maggie and Martin, together at last – Martin, a broken man, and Maggie happy because somebody needs her – are not living beings at the end any more than they are at the beginning; they will not, when Mr. Walpole’s pen is lifted, exist for a moment. But apart from the author’s failure to realize his idea, the working out of ‘The Captives’ is most curiously superficial. Mr. Walpole acts as our guide to these strange people, but what does he know of them? We cannot remember a novel where we were more conscious of the author’s presence on every page; but he is there as a stranger, as an observer, as someone outside it all. How hard he tries – how painfully he fails! His method is simply to amass observations – to crowd and crowd his book with figures, scenes, bizarre and fantastic environments, queer people, oddities. But we feel that no one observation is nearer the truth than another. For example, take his description of Aunt Anne’s house. The hall, we are told, smelt of ‘damp and geraniums,’ on another occasion of ‘damp biscuits and wet umbrellas,’ on another of ‘cracknel biscuits and lamp oil.’ What did it smell of? And how many times is hissing gas mentioned to make our blood creep? The disquiet pursues us even to the sordid lodgings in King’s Cross, where the hall is lighted by a flickering candle, and yet Maggie, in the filthy little sitting-room, presses the bell for the
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servant-maid. But above all let us take Maggie. She has read practically nothing – ‘that masterpiece, “Alice in Wonderland,”’ and ‘that masterpiece, “Robinson Crusoe,”’ ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho,’ 3 and certain other books. But ‘the child (for she was nothing more),’ as the author countless times assures us, was totally ignorant. Yet entering her aunt’s drawing-room for the first time, and stumbling: ‘They’ll think me an idiot who can’t enter a room properly,’ she reflects. This is a highly sophisticated reflection, surely. And she takes a taxi, pays a call, knows just how to address the London maid at the door – behaves, in fact, like a perfect lady. Yet ‘it is a sufficient witness to Maggie’s youth and inexperience’ that she is startled and amazed by a cuckoo clock. She did not know such things existed! Again, would that girl notice how much stronger and firmer her uncle’s thighs looked when he came to see her in London – would she notice too, at a moment of dreadful stress, the size and plumpness of her husband’s thighs ‘pressing out against the shiny black cloth of his trousers ‘? Are these her observations? No, they are the literary observations of the author. And above all, is it possible that the greenest of young persons would trust the gay, saucy Miss Caroline Smith? In describing Maggie’s relation to Caroline, Mr. Walpole appears to have relied on Dickens for his female psychology and his manner; but Dickens is a false friend to his heroine. And who could have taught Aunt Anne’s parrot ‘Her golden hair was hanging down her back’? And why should Mr. Warlock, in the aunt’s drawing-room, ask Maggie to ‘forgive’ his speaking to her – as though they had met at a pillar-box? And who can accept her marriage with the Reverend Paul, in the ‘shadow of whose heart’ – for all her physical horror of him – she ‘fell into deep, dreamless slumber’? Thus do we receive shock after minute shock, each one leaving us chillier. But in spite of it all, the feeling that remains is the liveliest possible regret that Mr. Walpole should have misjudged his powers – so bravely.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4720, 15 October 1920, pp. 519–20. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Hugh Walpole (1884–1941) was a New Zealand-born novelist who enjoyed popular success but whose critical reputation declined in the 1930s. His novel Jeremy is reviewed on pp. 495–7. 2. From Principles of Psychology (1890) by the American philosopher and psychologist William James, brother of Henry James. 3. A Gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe (1794).
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‘Some New Thing’ THREE LIVES. By Gertrude Stein.1 (Lane. 5s. net.)
Miss Gertrude Stein has discovered a new way of writing stories. It is just to keep right on writing them. Don’t mind how often you go back to the beginning, don’t hesitate to say the same thing over and over again – people are always repeating themselves – don’t be put off if the words sound funny at times: just keep right on, and by the time you’ve done writing you’ll have produced your effect. Take, for instance, the first story of the good Anna who managed the whole little house for Miss Matilda and the three dogs and the underservant as well. For five years Anna managed the little house for Miss Matilda. In those five years there were four underservants. ‘The one that came first . . .’ She was succeeded by Molly; and when Molly left, old Katy came in every day to help Anna with her work. When Miss Matilda went away this summer ‘old Katy was so sorry, and on the day that Miss Matilda went, old Katy cried hard for many hours . . . When Miss Matilda early in the fall came to her house again old Katy was not there.’ At last Anna heard of Sally. If the reader has by this time settled himself, folded his hands, composed his countenance and decided to stay, we can assure him that Miss Gertrude Stein will not disappoint him. She will treat him to the whole of the good Anna’s life from her arrival in America until her death, and to the whole of the gentle Lena’s life from when her kind but managing aunt, Mrs. Haydon, brought her to Bridgepoint until her death also – and in between these patient, hard-working, simple German lives there is the life of the negress Melanctha. Now that simple German way of telling about those simple German women may be very soothing – very pleasant – but let the reader go warily, warily with Melanctha. We confess we read a good page or two before we realized what was happening. Then the dreadful fact dawned. We discovered ourselves reading in syncopated time. Gradually we heard in the distance, and then coming uncomfortably near, the sound of banjos, drums, bones, cymbals and voices. The page began to rock. To our horror we found ourselves silently singing: Was it true what Melanctha had said that night to him? Was it true he was the one who had made all this trouble for them? Was it true he was the only one who always had had wrong ways in him? Waking or sleeping, Jeff now always had this torment. . .
Those who have heard the Southern Orchestra sing ‘It’s me – it’s me – it’s me’ or ‘I got a robe’ will understand what we mean. ‘Melanctha’
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is negro music with all its maddening monotony done into prose; it is writing in real rag-time. Heaven forbid Miss Stein should become a fashion!
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4720, 15 October 1920, p. 520. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was an American writer and a significant patron of modernist writers and painters who settled in Paris in 1903 and lived there for the rest of her life.
Ask No Questions THE ROMANTIC. By May Sinclair.1 (Collins. 9s. net.) THE LAST FORTNIGHT. By Mary Agnes Hamilton.2 (Collins. 9s. net.) THE HEADLAND. By C. A. Dawson-Scott.3 (Heinemann. 9s. net.) THE PASSIONATE SPECTATOR. By Jane Burr.4 (Duckworth. 6s. net.)
It is not possible to doubt the sincerity of Miss Sinclair’s intentions. She is a devoted writer of established reputation. What we do deplore is that she has allowed her love of writing to suffer the eclipse of psycho-analysis. To try to explain – for the author to stand to one side and point out the real difficulties – is that what she sees as her task? But all these four novels might be called studies in explanation. We do not know if the reader will find them as profoundly disconcerting as we have done, but in any case we trust he will not take it amiss if we offer that ‘little advice’ which, as they say, hurts no one. To begin with – in order to read these novels at all it is absolutely essential that the reader should make his mind a perfect blank. If he starts remembering other books he has read, murmuring over great names, recalling scenes that were brighter, freer, words that were longer even – he may count his time lost. If he looks up to wonder whether people are like this, he may never look down again. If the meaning of what he reads is as plain as the nose upon his face, that is not the moment to feel impatience; it is the moment to attend humbly and patiently to the psycho-analytical explanation of that meaning or that nose. But to our muttons.5 ‘The Romantic’ is a study of a coward. John Conway falls in love with Charlotte Redhead: ‘Would you like to live with me, Charlotte. . . . ‘Yes.’ ‘I mean – live with me without that.’
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He explains: ‘Because – you don’t understand, Charlotte – if I know a woman wants me, it makes me loathe her.’ ‘It wouldn’t, if you wanted her.’ ‘That would be worse. I should hate her then if she made me go to her.’
Now Charlotte has already experienced physical love. She is just free of her ‘immense unique passion’ for Gibson Herbert. Even then there was always something beyond it, something you looked for and missed, something you thought would come that never came. There was something he did. She couldn’t remember. . . She saw his thick fingers at dessert, peeling the peaches.
This being so, she is content to share life with John ‘without that.’ But even before the war breaks out her suspicions are being awakened by his curious behaviour when a cow is calving, and again when they are all but run down by a motor-car. Also she has three dreams about him. They are on a farm together; he likes farming. Wounding the earth to sow in it and make it feed you . . . Seeing the steel blade shine, and the long wounds coming in rows; hundreds of wounds wet and shining.
Then the war comes with its larger opportunities, which he straightway embraces. Charlotte and John go out to Belgium – he in charge of motor ambulances, she as a chauffeur. And there it is gradually revealed to her that he is a coward, a bully, a brute. Gradually – but Dr. McClane, commandant of the McClane Corps, which shared their mess, had spotted John as a degenerate from the first moment. It was his business so to do; he was a psychotherapist. And every fresh proof of John’s brutality is only what he expected. When the coward is shot in the back and dead, and Sutton, another member of the Corps, proposes marriage to Charlotte and she tries to explain that it is impossible because of the war, he (Sutton) believes it is the dead man between them and asks Charlotte to get McClane to explain John’s soul. McClane does. He explains how John was forced to behave like that to readjust his power, as the psychoanalysts say. He explains how Charlotte’s dreams were her ‘kicking against’ John. How John’s ‘not wanting that’ was because ‘he suffered from some physical disability.’ He was afraid of women. In fact, he analyses John for Charlotte so that her mind may stop ‘the fight going on in it between your feeling . . . and your knowledge of him.’ When he has finished:
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Then what she had loved was not John Conway, what she had hated was not he. He was this Something, tremendous and necessary, that escaped her judgment. You couldn’t hate it with your loving or hating or your ceasing to love and hate. .
But before we leave ‘The Romantic,’ we should point out Charlotte’s obsession by her sexual experiences. First she wondered what the guests at the inn would think if they ‘knew.’ Then she ‘had to tell’ Gwinnie. Then she ‘had to tell’ John. Then she ‘had to tell’ Sutton. But why? That is another little problem for Dr. McClane. Reader, do you remember a pianoforte solo which was extremely popular fifteen years ago? It was called ‘La Faute de la Pluie.’ Mingled with the dark bass there was a most pitiful treble and a recurring ‘cry,’ which we took at the time for a chime of bells, but which in the light of Mrs. Hamilton’s novel we are inclined to think was the voice of a lost kitten. Mrs. Hamilton as good as tells us that if the weather had not been so dreadful – if it had stopped raining – if her heroine had been less drenched, sopping, wringing wet – if there had been no kitten – her tragedy might never have happened. Here is the story. A mother and son, deeply attached to each other, combine to ruin the life of the son’s wife. The conspirators are slightly common; the wife is exquisitely bred. It is therefore necessary – as the psychoanalysts would say – that to readjust their power they should torture her. So she is bullied, insulted, stormed at, scorned, and doors are slammed in her face. If this were not enough – when the poor creature rescues from death a lame white kitten which, she even goes so far as to explain, is not so much a kitten to her as a symbol of her own misery, they fling it into the water-butt. Whereupon, haunted by its cries, Pauline flings herself after – but into ‘the canals.’ And there is Peace. If the reader’s mind were a shade less blank, he might feel a mild surprise at the husband’s going to bed in a room which he shares with his wife and not noticing that she is not in her bed. True, Mrs. Hamilton has been at pains to let slip that the beds were not side by side – but even so. Nay, more, he wakes, gets up in the morning, and does not notice that – either her bed has not been slept in or Susan has been in and made it! A trifle careless, surely, even for a heartless man. Let us turn to Mrs. Dawson-Scott and the Red Pendragons, that ancient Cornish family that had, ‘like an apple, a spreading brown patch, a patch of decay.’ But we must let the quotations speak for themselves. There are no hard words in this novel, and there are an immense number of dots; they are so many and so frequent that we believe they must mean more than we have understood. Cornwall. Old Mrs. Pendragon is dead.
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‘It was the suddenness . . .’ ‘You must of course believe . . .’ ‘You would, but perhaps not at once.’ ‘To sketch her dead face would help. Yes . . .’
Thus Roma Lennox, who had been the old lady’s companion. Cornwall. Roma sees the ploughman, Tavis Hawke, ‘the man who brought the bread into being . . .’ Cornwall. Richbell Hawke in her kitchen. When baby came! . . . If baby were to come to-day . . . to-morrow, she need not worry. Plenty of food in the house . . . from snout to tail, pig’s meat was good.
Reader, pray, your attention here! Baby has come! Her gesture – bent head, curving body, smile – was ineffable. Eve, mother of all living, had looked like that when the Lord God, still walking – though it was no longer Eden – in the cool of the evening, had lifted the tent flap and asked to see her first-born.
Was it – could it have been the same evening? But about that spot. Hendre Pendragon, the son, knew it was there. Like splashes of red-hot paint on a midnight background, the deeds he had done . . Done them secretly, in corners, in holes. Such a dull existence ...
To readjust his power – as the psycho-analysts would say – he decides to marry Roma, who consents, until she realizes she loves the ploughman and belongs to him. Wonderful! And so simple. No argument needed or possible. A plain duty which spelt happiness. Such utter bliss . . .
But Hendre Pendragon? Happily for her, ‘man and dog went down together into the raging sea.’ Just in time! Miss Jane Burr is out to explain love – ‘the glow of passion.’ ‘I want to tell if I can how that glow was awakened in me.’ She wants to tell her sorrowing sisters that if an attractive gentleman gives them a bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley or ‘a five-pound box of Shaw & Page candy,’ there is no reason why they should not thank him just as adequately as he and they may wish. Why not? Her heroine
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guarantees there is no feeling of guilt next morning. And it is a thousand to one their husbands are doing just the same. But Miss Jane Burr and her explanation disgust us.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4721, 22 October 1920, pp. 552–3. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. May Sinclair (1863–1946) was the author of many novels, short stories and poems. She was also a critic and suffragist, introducing the phrase ‘stream of consciousness’ as a literary term in reviewing the fiction of Dorothy Richardson. Her novel Mary Olivier: A Life is reviewed on pp. 478–80. 2. Mary Agnes Hamilton (1884–1966) was part of Ottoline Morrell’s antiwar group, becoming a political journalist and speaker, and the Labour MP for Blackburn (1929–31). Her novel Full Circle is reviewed on pp. 566–7. 3. Catherine Amy Dawson Scott (1865–1934) was a novelist, dramatist and poet who was the co-founder in London in 1921 of PEN International, a worldwide association created to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers. It fights for freedom of expression. 4. Jane Burr (1882–1958) was an American novelist, dramatist and poet who was an activist for women’s rights. 5. ‘Revenons à nos moutons’ (a favourite of KM’s) is an idiomatic French phrase meaning ‘Let’s get back to the subject.’
The Silence is Broken A GIFT OF THE DUSK. By R. O. Prowse. (Collins. 9s. net.)
It does not matter how many times Life has been compared to a journey; there comes a day when each of us makes that comparison for himself and wonders at the mysterious fitness of it. In the confusion and immediate pressure of modern existence we are borne along, we are carried and upheld until we are half persuaded that we could not escape if we would. Then, suddenly – as though it had all been a dream – the crowd vanishes, the noise dies away, and the little human creature finds himself alone, with time to think of his destination. Well, perhaps the moment need not be grim. Perhaps you will not so dreadfully mind that invisible hand touching you so lightly, that soundless voice whispering so gently: ‘But of course you realize that sooner or later the train is going to rush into a black hole, the ship is going to sink out of sight of land.’ And you really won’t read next morning that
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‘We regret to announce the death of . . .’; you really won’t know, as the last man swings on the box and the horses break into a decent trot, whether it is an adorable wet day – with the sky a waterspout, a soft roaring in the trees, and the first jonquils shaking with flower – or an adorable fine day – when just to walk in the sun and shade is enough. And all your belongings, your cold clothes, all the things you arrange so carefully and love to look at and handle – they will be free once more. Your books . . . the library of the late. Other fingers will rub out the marking under that line and the ‘How true!’ in the margin. A strange voice, which I swear to you, cross my heart, you won’t hear, will say: ‘I do wish people didn’t write in their books.’ After all – who does think so childishly? Who really minds his own death? True, it would be very interesting, very amusing to see what happens to this or that. But – kindly remove your hand, kindly stop whispering – we flatter ourselves we shall be true to our appearance unto the last. And if you don’t mind – we are rather busy – another time, perhaps – Good-bye. Or if the little human creature happens to be an artist he does listen. Is not ‘That Life hath an Ending’ one of the eternal themes for the artist? Yet there is a great, vast difference between a recognition that the destination cannot be escaped and the knowledge that it is upon you. The artist may put on the black cap and condemn himself to death, but he does not say when the sentence is to be carried out. He may terrify himself – and we do not mean it lightly – by crying: ‘I shall never see this almond tree again.’ But even in his cry of despair there is hidden his belief in the beauty of other almond trees. But if judgment has been passed upon him, if it was a Harley Street specialist who wore the cap and tossed off the sentence – ah, then, for the very first time, it is revealed that the Future is contained in the Present. We live that we may live. However rich the present may be, it is a preparation. The writer no sooner finishes his book than he begins to discover what he wants to say. The painter puts the last touch to his picture, thinking that next time he will start off at that last touch. We believe, in spite of the youngest novelists, that lovers see their children in each other’s eyes. . . What is the Present when the Future is removed, when life is haunted, not by Death in the fullness of time, but by Death’s fast-encroaching shadow? In his new novel, ‘A Gift of the Dusk,’ Mr. Prowse tells us the answer. He does not spare us; he tells ‘everything – everything.’ And yet we are so book-hardened to-day, there is a danger that this book may, to the casual glance, seem other than it is. It cannot be read by the clock. Have we time for such novels? Ah, have we time for any others? ‘A Gift of the Dusk’ was created to satisfy the author’s desire to tell the truth about his own secret world. It is written in the form of a confession, but the hero, Stephen, might not equally well have
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confessed to a priest. It is – how shall we explain it? – as though his two selves were transposed. The self which is silent (and yet is never silent) emerges and speaks to that other self in you. It is strange to think of these ceaseless conversations that never languish or fail. We look at our friend, and it were thrilling enough to know what he was thinking of. How much more thrilling to know what he – the secret he – is saying! And here, in ‘A Gift of the Dusk,’ we listen to Stephen, the exile from health put into prison in a Swiss Sanatorium: One tries still to fancy that one is here by some chance of travel, to flavour the experience with some lingering taste of adventure. One tries to fancy one is a little different from the others. They belong to the place; they are part of it; they are an essential part of the intense impression it conveys; they could not really belong anywhere else! But oneself . . . I look at my letters on the table.
But very gradually that sense of separateness leaves him; the background of the past fades away. Whatever our surroundings are – however strange and terrible they may be – it is human nature to try to adjust ourselves to them; even to establish our claims to them, for however short a time. Even so, Stephen is drawn into the lamentable life of ‘Château d’Or.’ The peculiar tragedy of the consumptive is that, although he is so seriously ill, he is – in most cases – not ill enough to give up the precious habits of health. Perhaps if one were worse, if there were still fewer things one could do, if the tide of one’s powers had fallen to a still lower ebb, one might suffer less from the ache of this inner desolation.
Thus the small stricken company, living its impersonal life together among the immense mountains, is for ever mocked by the nearness of those things which are forever out of reach. Even if they recovered: ‘Shall we ever again have quite the free run of the world? – we who have carried in our hearts, if not in our hands, the misery of the warning rattle.’ It is not easy to be heroic in such circumstances; it is infinitely harder to remain true to one’s secret self – to one’s vision, or dream. But Stephen succeeds; he discovers how to bear the ‘silence’; it is to surrender to it: After which I had a conception more intimate still I had a sense of my oneness with it. I had an intensified sense of living, as if I had entered into mystic relation with that inner permanence and continuity of things, which for me – at this moment, at least – would be the meaning of life everlasting. . . There came to me like a draught from the deep wells of being a return of energy and strength and will.
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But ‘A Gift of the Dusk’ is not only a record of suffering – a revelation, rather, of how one is alone in one’s agony; there grows out of this sorrowful soil a friendship with a fellow-sufferer, Mary Rolls. It is the gift that each receives. What a moment to clasp hands with love! But the beauty of their relationship is that, although every dreadful circumstance is against them, it is untouched. Had they met elsewhere the outward show would have been different, but that which was essential – their deep sense of intimacy, of companionship, their belief in a kingdom shared – would have been the same. Almost, at this point, we would beg for a little less than the truth – almost we would have the author lift his book from the deep shadow which – nevertheless – so wonderfully sustains it. But Mr. Prowse knows better. ‘Stephen – I want so intensely to live!’ It was the cry of cries – a cry from the depth of my own life as well as from the depth of hers. ‘I, too,’ I murmured. ‘Ah, you!’ ‘Yes, I too, my dear, I too!’ We said no more for some time. We remained silent and still and near: our nearness was the one sure possession that we had, but at least we knew we should have it to the end.
These are the closing words of a memorable novel.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4722, 29 October 1920, p. 584. NN. Signed: K. M. KM was deeply impressed by the novel, which in many ways mirrored her own experience of tuberculosis. She wrote asking JMM to find out more about him: ‘he must be a wonderful man’ (CLKM, 4, p. 57).
A Batch of Five LADY LILITH. By Stephen McKenna.1 (Hutchinson. 8s. 6d. net.) THE ADVENTUROUS LADY. By J. C. Snaith.2 (Collins. 9s. net.) THE WIDOW’S CRUSE. By Hamilton Fyfe.3 (Parsons. 7s. 6d. net.) INISHEENY. By George Birmingham.4 (Methuen. 8s. 6d. net.) THE PEOPLE OF THE RUINS. By Edward Shanks.5 (Collins. 9s. net.)
In stating that ‘Lady Lilith’ is only Part I. of a trilogy which has for covering title ‘The Sensationalists,’ Mr. McKenna passes a vote of
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confidence in his powers as an entertainer which we should be sorry to have to second. He is doubtless perfectly right in believing there is a public ready to lap up Part II. and Part III., but it is not the kind of fact we are proud to acknowledge. For Mr. McKenna has chosen to cater for those persons who have an insatiable appetite for the spicy crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table – whose supreme happiness it would be, not to have to wait until the feast is over, but to be under the table or behind the door, all the time. Oh, to know more details! To have a fuller, completer account of what goes on when the press is excluded and the Court is not sitting! To hear what they were saying when that photograph was taken! Oh, to be told by one who really knows . . . And here is the cue for Mr. McKenna; here is where he steps in with such a feast of old champagne corks, soiled gloves, ends of ‘goodish cork-tipped Turkish Régies’6 and the like that, even without Lady Barbara Neave, daughter of Lord Crawleigh, ‘little Barbara,’ ‘Babs darling’ to her friends, ‘the haggard Venus’ to other friends and Lady Lilith to Val Arden, the table groans. But she is, after all, the occasion of the feast, the dish of the evening. Take any famous young Society beauty, daughter of one of the ‘great’ families, who at the age of seventeen or thereabouts has been everywhere, met everybody, read everything; who can sing, dance, play better than any professional; give her that fatal charm which knocks the stoutest of us off our legs; let her be so thin, hollow, white-cheeked, ring-eyed, that we ‘would not be surprised to hear she was consumptive’; let her be so wild, so untamed, so reckless that no man or woman can hold her; dip her in and out of poker-parties, scandals, coroners’ courts, heavily scented mysterious tea parties – and you have Lady Lilith. She is the Social Paragraph blown into two hundred and ninety-four pages. If Mr. McKenna’s novels were witty, amusing, an aspect of the Human Comedy, or just nonsense – or even melodrama – we should not protest. But to butcher his gifts to make a Snob’s Banquet is surely a very lamentable pastime. It would be interesting to know whether he has – a dozen, say – readers of his own sex. With Mr. J. C. Snaith we continue to dwell in marble halls. His ‘Adventurous Lady’ is the daughter of a Marquis who changes places in the train with a poor little mouse of a governess. So that the governess goes to the Great House as Lady Elfreda, and the other goes to The Laurels as Miss Girlie Cass. Of course they were the same height, the same size; of course nobody at the Great House had ever met the Marquis’s daughter, and being for the most part newly-rich (and insufferably stupid), they had no familiar standard by which to judge Girlie. And she had Pikey, Lady Elfreda’s maid, a griffon of a female, who nevertheless was determined not to let the honour of the family suffer. The adventures are very little adventures and dreadfully dull.
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How poor Girlie was forced by Pikey to take off her woolly combinations and to submit to having her toe-nails cut before putting on the ravishing clothes of the other, does not, we confess, move us deeply. How the governess superbly ‘squashed’ her employers and won the heart of their guest, the General, does not surprise us. We knew it was bound to come; we knew Lord Duckingfield with his £60,000 a year was bound to marry the governess. We wished very much that Mr. Snaith had not bothered to tell us, especially when we remembered other and very different books of his. Why is it that a spiritualist séance is – always the same séance? There are the same questions, the same medium, the same little awkwardness about the fee. The table gave no answer, but swayed a little, suggesting uneasiness and indecision. ‘Repeat,’ said Lewis in a low voice, and Florence asked her question again. The result was the same. ‘The spirit,’ announced the medium, ‘wishes to make some statement. Call out the letters of the alphabet, please.’ ‘A-B-C-D . . .’ began Lewis, and went on until he got to ‘S,’ the table rapping after each letter.
We have read this kind of thing so often that it produces no impression at all. And yet Mr. Hamilton Fyfe in ‘The Widow’s Cruse’ leads us to this scene as though the very heart of the joke were hidden in it. The truth is that by summoning the spirit of Everard he has caused his never-too-substantial novel to vanish into the vague. The idea which might have filled a story was never big enough for a novel; it had to be stretched very thin indeed to be made to cover such an expanse; it is many a time and oft at breaking-point before the final catastrophe. Florence, fluffy little tame cat of a woman, had never loved or understood Everard. When he died she was only too willing to marry Lewis Dane. But Dane discovered some manuscripts of his dead friend which, when published, raised such a flame of interest that Florence preferred to shine and to warm herself in the rosy reflected glow as ‘the well-known widow’ rather than to remarry. More, she reconstructed her late married life and posed as her husband’s inspiration. Another woman disputes her claim, but Florence triumphs. Those little women always do – in their own little way – but it is hardly enough to make a book about. Time is killed very softly, very mildly, by Mr. Birmingham. There is scarce enough of the sweet poison in ‘Inisheeny’ to render him unconscious, even. He nods while Mr. Birmingham’s hero explains how he was in the orchard teaching his nephew Tommy to spray the
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pear trees with soap and water – but the old fellow needs a more potent charm to carry him past the nodding stage. Mr. Birmingham is famous, and rightly so, for his unfailing sense of humour. But his humour lacks temperature; it stands too often at normal. ‘Inisheeny’ would be a pleasant, nicely-rounded tale of an island off the coast of Ireland and a charming elderly parson and a professor and a boat and a girl and a boy – if only it were a little less mild. We are asked to take too much for granted. Now the professor might have been well worth listening to, and the parson might have been a whimsical semi-philosopher – but they don’t talk. Instead of a long delectable conversation while they rock in the boat together, we are given an account of how Tommy and the girl ate biscuits and golden syrup. This episode should have provided a passing chuckle, to be followed by: ‘True,’ said the professor, but according to Salmacius . . .’ They order these things better in Anatole France.7 The time could not be riper for Mr. Shanks’ novel of the English Revolution – and after. But is not ‘after’ – the year of our Lord 2074 – a trifle too far ahead? But having accepted the fact that Jeremy Tuft has remained in a state of suspended animation for so long, we do expect Mr. Shanks to do something better with him than to let him fall in love. A book of this kind is easy and delightful to plan, but extremely difficult to write. If Mr. Shanks had tapped a rich vein of invention and described existence as a thousand times more difficult, he would have set himself an easier task than this attempt to conjure up an England in which the railways are ceasing to run, and the window-panes have turned green again, and the huge and crudely spiced dishes are passed round the table. At England’s head is the Speaker, an ancient who aspires to manufacture guns, and Mr. Shanks gets a little fun out of the idea. But it is the Speaker’s daughter, and she has grown so dear – so dear to Jeremy Tuft, who cheats us of further adventures, and smooths the author’s path for him. Love never changes. And yet – why is it that in all romances of this kind the females should be so formidable? One thinks of the Lady Eva, for instance, in her gown ‘straight from neck to hem,’ as at least nine foot high. And though she is a noble, selfless, loyal creature, strong as a lion and gentle as a lamb – what a terrifying bedfellow!
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4723, 5 November 1920, pp. 616–17. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Stephen McKenna (1888–1967) was a novelist whose work focused on upper-class life.
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2. John Collis Snaith (1876–1936) was a prolific British novelist whose novel Love Lane is reviewed on pp. 480–2. 3. William Hamilton Fyfe (1869–1951) was primarily a journalist, but also a dramatist, novelist and biographer. 4. George Birmingham (1865–1950) was an Irish priest and novelist. 5. Edward Shanks (1892–1953) was a poet, academic, biographer and literary critic, as well as being a novelist. 6. Fashionable cigarettes. 7. Anatole France (1844–1924) was a distinguished French poet and novelist.
The Magic Door ADAM OF DUBLIN. By Conal O’Riordan.1 (Collins. 9s. net.) FORGOTTEN REALMS. By Bohun Lynch.2 (Collins. 9s. net.)
These two novels have this in common – each is an attempt to re-enter the kingdom of childhood. We confess we are not of those who think all is to be gained by letting the children write for themselves. Poetic peeps from the perambulator, revels among rattles, and picture exhibitions which consist of houses smoking furiously at the chimneys and the behinds of little black cats sitting in front of the fire are very diverting now and again, but how far they restore to us our vision of that other time is quite a different matter. How shall a child express what is for us the essence of childhood – its recognition of the validity of the dream? It is implicit in the belief of the child that the dream exists side by side with reality; there are no barriers between. It is only after he has suffered the common fate of little children – after he has been stolen away by the fairies – that the changeling who usurps his heritage builds those great walls which confront him when he will return. But to return is not to be a child again. What the exile, the wanderer, desires is to be given the freedom of his two worlds again – that he may accept reality and live by the dream. And therefore the childhood that we look back upon and attempt to recreate must be – if it is to satisfy our longing as well as our memory – a great deal more than a catalogue of infant pleasures and pangs. It must have, as it were, a haunting light upon it. Let us take, for instance, Mr. O’Riordan’s novel ‘Adam of Dublin.’ It is the story of a little boy’s life from the age of eight to the age of twelve, yet it is told in such a way that, in spite of the intense vividness of Adam’s personal adventures, they become for us a symbol of the adventures of the child spirit in this bungled world. If ever reality looked loweringly upon a little child, that child was Adam; but what
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power has it over him? For the moment it is real as the nightmare is real; it is, almost, part of the nightmare, like his father’s porter bottle; it is as quickly escaped and forgotten: He went to sleep and dreamed that her ladyship was something between a unicorn and a road-roller, with several tails, to each of which was tied a flaming sardine-tin, and as many heads, crowned by helmets of that fashion affected by the Dublin Metropolitan police. Her ladyship had run him down in Mountjoy Court, and . . . was about to put him into one or more of the sardine-tins when he woke with a scream, was soundly chastised by Mr. Macfadden with the fortunately convenient porter bottle; and, after he had recovered from the shock, fell into a peaceful and refreshing slumber.
And yet if we consider what place it is that Adam escapes into, what is the nature of his other world, it again seems to be contained in reality. The difference is that in the one he is a stranger, in the other – the world in which he prays to ‘Holy Mary her Virgin,’ and kisses Caroline Brady in the tunnel, and reads, by the light of his bull’s-eye lantern, Mr. Yeats’ or Mr. Keats’ poem ‘The Beautiful Lady Without Thankyou,’ or sits in Josephine’s lap while he kisses her – he is at home. What do we mean when we speak of the atmosphere of a novel? It is one of those questions exceedingly difficult to fit with an answer. It is one of those questions which, each time we look at them, seem to have grown. At one time ‘emotional quality’ seemed to cover it, but is that adequate? May not a book have that and yet lack this mysterious covering? Is it the impress of the writer’s personality upon his work – the impress of the writer’s passion – more than that? Dear Heaven! there are moments when we are inclined to take our poor puzzled mind upon our knee and tell it: ‘It is something that happens to a book after it is written. It droppeth like the gentle dew from Heaven upon the book beneath.’ 3 Or to cry largely: ‘You feel a book either has it, whatever it is, or hasn’t it.’ But to be so positive – as one is in the case of ‘Adam of Dublin’ – about the presence of a something so elusive is disconcerting. Let us, however, understand it to mean what we do understand it to mean; among so many dead novels it is a delight to hail one that is so rich in life. For whatever else atmosphere may include, it is the element in which a book lives in its own right. In peopling the two worlds of Adam with appropriate and inappropriate inhabitants there are infinite possibilities for the creative activity of the author. The character of Mr. Malachy Macfadden, the drunken tailor, is a fearful joy to the reader if it is not to his son, and so is that of his somewhat sinister godfather, Mr. Byron O’Toole. As to Father Innocent Feeley, Adam’s
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spiritual adviser, we defy the reader to resist him or his conversation on the top of the tram with Adam regarding the infallibility of the Pope and the infallibility of the Almighty. Adam himself is one of those small boys (why are they always boys?) who occur from time to time in literature to trouble our hearts. Mr. O’Riordan has but discovered a new name for him – and a new place. For throughout this novel one is never forgetful of the background of the city of Dublin; the author presses all his power and charm of writing to the service of ‘what is believed to be the fairest, if not the most extensive, kingdom in Europe.’ His success is so notable that we grudge mentioning his moment of failure. But it is there in Chapter Twenty-eight, when he carries his little hero into Bohemia. Why was this account of a club meeting written? We fear the reason was that the author could not resist the temptation of a portrait or two, but his hero’s life is at stake while he sketches. However, there is so much good to remember that, having mentioned the bad, we can afford to forget it. It is the measure of Mr. O’Riordan’s powers of fascination that we should be so conscious of any weakening of their spell. ‘Forgotten Realms’ is as different a novel as possible, yet, as we have stated, the intention of the author is the same. But Mr. Lynch has chosen a more difficult approach. His hero is a grown man, the husband of a sensible, managing wife, the father of a young family, who is impelled, suddenly, to leave his home and familiar surroundings at the beck of childish memories, to set out ‘as a child might in imagination, to discover, to observe lovely things, to seek adventure.’ The first chapter when he is discovered lying in the grass is a very remarkable one. In a way it may be said to mark the curve of Philip’s journey for us. As he lies there, looking and listening, he is suddenly conscious that the ‘intensely practical modern world has dropped away from him,’ far enough for him to question which was to be desired – constant occupation and forgetfulness or the treasuring of time for contemplation – for coming near to the heart of things: Or was it that moments of intense vision came only by rare chance? Was it not rather an attitude of mind that the perplexities, the unwise activities of usual existence threatened to destroy? Such moments held a child’s attitude towards the universe, induced a child’s vision. Children were much nearer to the secret.
And thus he is led to look back with longing upon the time when the ‘magic door’ was not shut for him, and the purpose of his journey is revealed. Might one then in after years, after searching and much pain, find one’s way back to it, and would they open it when he came again?
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Forward, therefore, his feet carry him into unknown beautiful country, while his mind is for ever seeking the frontiers of its ancient kingdom. And it is only when he has given himself up to the search that he realizes how deep is his restlessness, how urgent his desire to recapture the secret resting-place of his soul. We pass by almost imperceptible nuances from the one adventure to the other; they merge, they are enfolded, they are blended with exquisite skill. We share each fresh prospect as it unfolds before Philip the man, while at the same time we are gathering wild roses with Philip the little boy, or waiting with him in the drawing-room for his father to come home. But gradually the search becomes more difficult; it narrows, and it changes from the reconciliation of childhood and manhood to a deliberate attempt to solve a mystery. In the unending story of adventure which the lonely child Philip made up for himself there was another figure, a wonderful companion, a boy to whom he was ever constant, about whom there could never be any illusion. When he recalls how, as a youth in London, he saw the face, the form of his dreams, he recognized it and ‘guessed at a possible ending to his magic tale’ (what does Mr. Lynch mean there?). And finally we are told that Philip is not setting forth in freedom after all; he has heard that his dream companion is in this part of the country, and he is come in search of him. This is a very curious disappointment for the reader, but there is a greater in store for him. It is contained in Philip’s memories of his mother. She changes, gradually, under the imposition of this ‘real plot,’ from an extremely sensitive, sympathetic figure to a poor creature under a curse that, until it is revealed to us, raises our most fearful speculations. Let us own that there is a point at which we lose all touch with Mr. Lynch, and we simply do not know what he would have us understand. Here is this beautiful writing, this thoughtful, serious style, so chastened and yet so supple – but what does it hide? What is the mystical meaning? Ah, there we imagine Mr. Lynch thinks to have caught us. But we do not think it will do. So long as they are kept apart psychology and mysticism are sweet friends. But put them to hunt together and they turn and rend each other.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4724, 12 November 1920, pp. 652–3. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Conal O’Riordan (1874–1948) was an Irish dramatist and novelist who succeeded John Millington Synge as director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.
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2. John Gilbert Bohun Lynch (1884–1928) was a caricaturist, and wrote on art and on boxing, as well as writing novels in a range of genres including science fiction. His novel The Tender Conscience is reviewed on pp. 497–9. 3. A play on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, IV, i, 181–2, Portia’s speech about the quality of mercy: ‘It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath.’
Old Writers and New MANHOOD END. By Mrs. Henry Dudeney.1 (Hurst & Blackett. 8s. 6d. net.) QUIET INTERIOR. By E. B. C. Jones.2 (Cobden-Sandersen. 8s. net.)
Whatever faults Mrs. Dudeney may possess, she cannot be accused of having kept her talent hid in a napkin. Rather, we receive the impression that the cry of rapture with which she hailed this treasure to be hers has never ceased sounding through her books. It rings again in ‘Manhood End,’ and the note is as high, as astonished, as delighted as ever. Never did a writer gloat more openly over a sweet possession; never was a writer more persistently agog to play with it. But a talent is not – as Mrs. Dudeney seems to believe – a kind of glorified toy. One may perhaps play with it – but warily – as one would play with a young lion without a keeper rather than a mechanical canary. That is not, however, nor has it been, Mrs. Dudeney’s way, and the result is that after eighteen novels, after so prolonged a diet of hard bright seed, chickweed and sugar lumps, nothing remains of her lion but the colour of his feathers – he is turned into a very canary of canaries. As such he shakes, shrills, quivers, flirts through ‘Manhood End’ without a break, without a pause, until we cannot hear the characters speak. When they do they partake of the general jerkiness. Even the plot itself is affected, and hops from perch to swing until the reader is dizzy. The scene is Sussex – a tiny village between Chichester and the sea. ‘If there was a coquette in the whole land of England it was this flat, sheltered bit of South Country – laughing, weeping, just as it chose.’ The time is forty years ago. Freddy Rainbird, Rector of Streetway, calls himself a priest, and does not believe in marriage until he meets Sophia Lulham. Their courtship consists of conversations which culminate in a toasting party by firelight. He watched her scramble up when her slice of bread was toasted. She buttered it, then, laughing again, sat down.
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‘We’ve got to feel for our mouths, haven’t we? But mine’s so big there’s no risk of missing.’
This curious statement, which might very well have ‘pierced through their perfect hour,’ did not prevent him from proposing. And they were married, and such was the intensity of their passion for each other they talked like this. Rainbird was in his dressing-room. She went mischievously to the door and spoke through the keyhole. ‘Bad boy! you’re not washing yourself. There isn’t any splashing.’ He did not answer. She spoke again. ‘Freddy! you are false, you are neglectful. You said you wanted to kiss my arms, and yet you went off without even shaking hands.’
After five years she had tired of this capriciousness, of ‘bubbling . . . with a hundred little springs of fascination.’ ‘Why didn’t we have children? If there’d been a baby waking up to be fed! If little Johnny had a pain in his tummy; if Jane wouldn’t go to sleep . . . I shouldn’t have played the fool down here . . . with you two men if I’d had a nursery. Don’t you see?
So off she goes with a lover, and stays away for five years. Then she reappears and makes the coffee in her bewildering, charming way, and just when she is about to be bored again the baby saves her. But it isn’t a strong baby. She looked up wistfully. ‘I haven’t done it quite properly, Freddy. I’m never perfect. There’s always some sort of a flaw.’ ‘What flaw?’ he seemed puzzled. ‘This.’ Her fingers moved on the fast emptying bottle.
After its death she runs again – to the East – to Bond Street – to anywhere. And her final return is to a broken Freddy who drinks coffee made from ‘some stuff in a tin.’ They die soon after, while planning another honeymoon. It is melancholy to remember, when laying aside ‘Manhood End,’ how, years ago, when the canarification of her talent was still far from complete, we looked forward to a new book by Mrs. Dudeney. The price of novels is a mystery. Why is it that some publishers are compelled to print their books on grey, black-haired paper, to squeeze them between the covers that used to contain ‘ninepennies’ in the old days and to price them at nine shillings, when Mr. CobdenSanderson can produce a volume so attractive in appearance as ‘Quiet
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Interior’ at eight? And do some publishers imagine that the reading public really is tempted by paper-covers which remind one of those dread platefuls in English teashops known as ‘mixed pastries’? We are certain that the book which is adorned with the enigmatic couple or the anaemic girl in coloured margarine and plaster-of-paris on a white icing background starts its career with a severe handicap. It has to prove that it is not what it appears to be, and that is very difficult when the appearance is vulgar, for in that case the chances are the reader will not even begin to listen. How often we have heard the scornful: ‘Don’t bother to open it; it looks the most awful rubbish’! Whereas Miss Jones’ novel in a blue linen-faced cover with the title in plain lettering attracts one immediately. It looks like a novel that is well worth reading, and in this case the reader is not deceived after a closer investigation. ‘Quiet Interior’ is the study of the temperament of an unusual, fastidious girl in surroundings which we vaguely term modern. Her home is in London; her parents are wealthy; her friends are artists and musicians and gay young people who go to parties and dances. She is in fact an emancipated daughter in an upper middle-class family – but not too emancipated for her to possess in a high degree that subtle quality called ‘charm.’ One might say her whole claim to acceptance lies in its possession, but of what it is composed – that is the problem that the author has set herself to solve. Claire Norris is not a simple character. She is one of those who are ‘precious – but not generally prized.’ Her feeling for life is exquisite; she is capable of rare appreciations, rare intensities – but for some mysterious reason life withholds its gifts from her. They go to lesser people who deserve them less and do not so greatly care. Why should this be? What has she done that she, who could cherish so beautifully, should be left emptyhanded? The moment in her life when this question becomes urgent is the moment which is revealed here. There is a young man living in the country, farming his land; his name is Clement. He is shy, difficult, a being apart, himself. With the adorable faith of young persons and children, Claire turns to Life and cries: ‘I know what I want. I want Clement. Give him to me.’ But Life explains Clement is not for her; he is for her pretty sister Pauline. And Claire must be a good girl and not spoil her sister’s pleasure by showing that she minds, but put on a bright face and behave as though nothing has happened. Instead of rebelling she is gravely obedient, but while renouncing Clement she discovers that she has lost one world only to gain another – her inner world, the kingdom of the spirit. Claire realizes that up till now she has lived on the borders of that world; she has never been of it. Yet, because its shadow rested upon her, she was, for all her love of it, strange to the world of reality. Now that she has made her
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choice, even her suffering grows light. Nothing can touch her; she is in harmony with life. The psychology of Claire is sufficiently realized for us to feel the importance of this revelation to her. She strangely compels our admiration by the quality of her adventure. But this whole novel is carried beyond the bounds of commonplace by its distinction of style. We feel that the author has tried to keep faith with Truth rather than with Truth’s ugly and stupid half-sister, Frankness. Her heroine is, of course, the full-length portrait upon which she has lavished her finest care, but Pauline, Henriette and Lucien and Hilary – all are real and convincing. For a first novel it is remarkably well constructed. The weakest part is the beginning. It reads as though the author were determined that we should fall in love with her heroine on the spot. ‘She is like this and this and this,’ we are told. It is only, in fact, when the author has forgotten all about us that Claire begins to emerge. And again there are moments when the author wastes her energy, as it were, over the details; she does not always distinguish between what is fascinating and what is essential. This is an important point. For there are many writers – alas! how many! – who can describe a frock, a conversation, a supper party, or a room as well as she.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4725, 19 November 1920, pp. 694–5. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Alice Dudeney (1866–1945) was a popular novelist. 2. Emily Beatrix Coursolles Jones (1893–1966) was a poet and novelist.
A Set of Four THE COUNTESS OF LOWNDES SQUARE; AND OTHER STORIES. By E. F. Benson.1 (Cassell. 8s. 6d. net.) JUST OPEN. By W. Pett Ridge.2 (Odhams. 7s. net.) A MAN OF THE ISLANDS. By H. de Vere Stacpoole.3 (Hutchinson. 8s. 6d. net.) COLOUR BLIND. By S. P. B. Mais.4 (Grant Richards. 9s. net.)
Mr. Benson is a writer to whom, one imagines, everything comes in useful. He is a collector of scraps, snippets, patches, tid-bits, oddments, which give him such a great deal of pleasure that it is with the utmost confidence he displays his little collection to all the other guests in this immense rambling, very noisy and overcrowded hotel. He knows
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himself to be – his behaviour is that of – a favourite guest. ‘Mr. E. F. Benson is so popular – so entertaining.’ And so in his easy, effortless way out comes another book. Here, he even explains, you’ve got cats, cranks, spiritualistic séances, blackmailers – choose whichever you like; there’s something for everybody. So down drops the knitting; the cards are put away; the picture paper is concealed behind a cushion for another time, and ‘The Countess of Lowndes Square’ is no doubt discovered to be just like Mr. Benson – most entertaining this time. Reader! We are the forlorn guest on these occasions. We are that strange-looking person over in the corner who seems so out of everything and never will mix properly. Spare your knitting-needle; put up your paper-knife, sir. Do not stab us. It is not our fault that we look grim. It isn’t pleasant to be bored. Will you believe us when we say we love smiling, we love to be amused? We always think, until faced by these occasions, that it takes too little to make us smile. But there is an atmosphere of bright chatter, of quick, animated glare which is warm South to Mr. Benson and his admirers while it freezes our risible folds. . . . I had been asked by telephone just at luncheon-time as I was sitting down to a tough and mournful omelette alone, and I naturally felt quite certain that I had been bidden to take the place of some guest.
Or listen to the ‘adorable Agnes Lockett’: . . . If Mrs. Withers had told me any more of what the great ones of the earth said to her in confidence, I should either have gone mad or taken up a handful of those soft chocolates and rubbed her face with them.
But it is perhaps hardly fair to take to pieces what the author himself calls ‘digestible snacks.’ This, we venture to suggest, should have been the title of the volume. And would it not be an admirable idea if there were a covering title for stories of the author’s own description? ‘Snacks,’ for instance, could hardly be improved upon. ‘Digestible Snacks’ is illuminating; it tells us exactly what we are buying. We speak thus openly, for Mr. Benson confesses that in his opinion ‘the short story is not a lyre on which English writers thrum with the firm delicacy of the French, or with the industry of the American author.’ He opines that if the ten best short stories in the world were proclaimed they would be French stories; while if the million worst were brought together, they would be found to be written in America. Chi lo sa!5 as d’Annunzio’s6 heroines were so fond of murmuring. But our eye wanders to the small green volumes of Turgenief7 and Tchehov. Russia is evidently torn out of Mr. Benson’s atlas. A word as to the wrapper. It is of a young lady in a white dress with
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very flowing hair. Behind her is the Egyptian night; before, a pack of gibbering (in the story they are most particularly apish) apes. But the illustrator has drawn French poodles instead. This makes it very hard to understand why she looks so frightened. ‘Just Open,’ by Mr. Pett Ridge, is adapted for a railway journey on which the train stops at all the stations – one of those journeys when one is constantly rearranging one’s knees, saying one does not mind at all having the golf-clubs thrown on to one’s paper of violets, and swearing that it is not – and never was, thank God! – one’s copy of The Daily Mirror on the floor. In these surroundings dips are all the reader is fit for, and dips are all that the author provides – they are sketches of little people who, entangled for ever in the net of circumstance, are yet alive enough to make some protest when they feel an extra jerk. There is a slight commotion, a swimming together, a lashing of tails, a wriggle or two. But it lasts only a minute; with the turn of the blank page there is calm . . . The old theatrical star is tempted to go to see the show one night, and she is recognized and taken behind the scenes and made much of. Again she lifts the glass to her lips, but there is no wine. Just a breath, a sweetness – a memory that she sips – and then all is over. Well – mightn’t that be a marvellous story? Isn’t it one of the stories that we all keep, unwritten, to write some day, when we have realized more fully that moment, perhaps, when she steps out of the theatre into the cold indifferent dark, or perhaps, that moment when the light breaks along the edge of the curtain and the music sinks down, lower, lower, until the fiddles are sounding from under the sea? . . . But Mr. Pett Ridge gives us his version of it as though he expected it to be read between nine forty-five and ten-thirteen. ‘Poor old soul!’ we presume his admiring reader thinks, slapping her book together and asking her neighbour if he would mind not sitting on her coat any longer as this is her station and she can’t afford to jump bodily out of her coat on to the platform? But is that tribute enough? Does that content the author? We wonder because there are ‘hints’ in several stories that lead us to believe he could, if he would, tell it all so differently. Mr. de Vere Stacpoole, to judge by ‘A Man of the Islands,’ still believes he has only to shake a coral island at us to set us leaping. But we have cut our teeth on it so dreadfully often. We have counted the cocoanuts, discovered the square bottle half-buried in the deserted beach, and fished the lagoon of its last false pearl. The only episode that arrested our attention in this book was when Sigurdson saw the front end of Pilcher down on the coral, scrabbling along on its hands like a crab.
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He’d been bitten off below the waist by a shark that had took him just as a child takes a piece of candy and bites it in two!
What a degradation is this when nothing less fearful will draw us to the ship’s side! As to that slender, dark girl with the scarlet hibiscus flower behind her ear and her hand lifted in the familiar ‘Come to Motuaro’8 gesture – she makes us almost inclined to signal ‘full steam ahead’ for the opposite direction. It is not enough to know that the fate of that great, strong man lay in those small, scented hands. What did he feel about it? Did he feel anything? Did they talk together? What did they share? How was his love for her different from his love for a white girl? . . . Or, if the question is all of the scenery, let us feel the strangeness of it. Sigurdson is a Dane. Did he have more of the feelings of an exile? Here, indeed, is our whole point about coral islands, dark blue seas and crescent beaches pale as the new moon. We will not be put off with pictures any longer. We ask that someone should discover the deeper strangeness for us, so that our imagination is not allowed to go starving while our senses are feasted. There remains ‘Colour-Blind,’ a new novel with an old hero, by Mr. S. P. B. Mais. The hero is still that unsympathetic figure, the amorous schoolmaster. She was mine, all mine for the taking! In that moment of triumph I forgot everything but the glory of her . . . but the moment passed and I braced myself to meet my great temptation. ‘Margey, dear,’ I began as gently as I could, ‘it won’t do. Think.’
This is followed by little dinners ‘on the strict Q.T.’ with the fair Evelyn in a yellow osprey – to be followed again by the blackboards and Smith minor next morning. But it is not until little Joan, fragile in her pyjamas, crept into his arms that Jimmy knew the greatest night of his life. Here is Mr. Mais at his brightest, best, most fanciful. Jimmy has rung for the chambermaid, who came in ‘smiling.’ ‘We’re going to have our breakfast in bed as a special treat,’ I said. Grown-up people don’t think it a treat because the crumbs get all mixed up with their bed-clothes, but that’ll be all the greater fun for us. We’ve run away, and we want to do all the things we shouldn’t be allowed to do at school.’
Was the chambermaid still smiling at the end of that speech, we wonder, and didn’t she guess the hero’s vocation without his telling her he had run away from it?
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1. 2. 3.
4.
5. 6. 7.
8.
Text: Athenaeum, 4726, 26 November 1920, pp. 728–9. NN. Signed: K. M. Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940) was a prolific fiction writer and biographer. Queen Lucia is reviewed on pp. 650–1. William Pett Ridge (1859–1930) was a novelist who supported charities for children. The Irish author Henry De Vere Stacpoole (1863–1951) is best known for his 1908 romantic novel The Blue Lagoon, which has been adapted into feature films five times. He also wrote under the pseudonym Tyler De Saix. Stuart Petre Brodie Mais (1885–1975) was a writer of travel books and a few novels, and a journalist and broadcaster. His Uncle Lionel is reviewed on pp. 577–8. ‘Who knows?’ D’Annunzio (1863–1938) was at Italian poet and novelist whose passionate life and work provoked both interest and scandal. Ivan Turgenev (1818–83) was a distinguished Russian writer, author of Fathers and Sons and On the Eve. He and his work feature in the letters of Chekhov and Dostoevsky in the Translations section of this volume. An island mentioned in the account of Captain Cook’s first voyage.
Friends and Foes PERSONAL ASPECTS OF JANE AUSTEN. By M. Austen-Leigh.1 (Murray. 9s. net.)
It seems almost unkind to criticize a little book which has thrown on bonnet and shawl and tripped across the fields of criticism at so round a pace to defend its dear Jane Austen. But even with the undesirable evidence before us of the stupidity, nay, the downright wickedness of certain reviewers, we cannot help doubting the need for such a journey. True, Jane Austen exists in the imagination as a writer who has remained wonderfully remote and apart and free from the flying burrs of this work-a-day world, and it does come as a surprise to learn that so-called friends of hers have said these dreadful things. But, begging Miss Austen-Leigh’s pardon – who cares? Can we picture Jane Austen caring – except in a delightfully wicked way which we are sure the author of this book would not allow – that people said she was no lady, was not fond of children, hated animals, did not care a pin for the poor, could not have written about foreign parts if she had tried, had no idea how a fox was killed, but rather thought
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it ran up a tree and hissed at the hound at the last – was, in short, cold, coarse, practically illiterate and without morality? Mightn’t her reply have been, ‘Ah, but what about my novels?’ Though the answer would seem to us more than sufficient, it would not satisfy Miss Austen-Leigh. Her book is proof to the contrary. Each of these charges can be met – and they are met, though, to be quite candid, it is somewhat quaintly, at times. Take, for instance, the ‘baseless accusation that she always turned away from whatever was sad.’ It cannot, says Miss Austen-Leigh, be allowed to pass unnoticed. And she cites a family letter written by Mr. Austen on the occasion of a young friend’s having been invited to their house to have her attack of measles there: ‘She wanted a great deal of nursing, and a great deal of nursing she had,’ the nurses being Jane, her sister Cassandra and their friend Martha Lloyd. Well, that may go to prove that Jane was willing to face an unpleasant ordeal and to play her part, but we should not like our belief in her tenderness to depend on it. Does it not sound just a little grim? Might not a timid mind picture patient and pillows being shaken together; and, as to escaping one’s medicine, Cassandra and Martha to hold one down, and Jane to administer something awfully black in a spoon . . . . ? Then, again, someone having said that sermons were wearisome to her, Miss Austen-Leigh contradicts him triumphantly with Jane Austen’s own words, ‘I am very fond of Sherlock’s Sermons, and prefer them to almost any.’ But stare at that sentence as we may, we cannot see an enthusiasm for sermons shining through it. It sounds indeed as though Sherlock’s Sermons were a special kind of biscuit – clerical Bath Olivers – oval and crisp and dry. And while we are on the subject of religion we would mention Miss Austen-Leigh’s theory of the novels. It is, we think, quite a new one: Every one of them gives a description, closely interwoven with the story and concerned with its principal characters, of error committed, conviction following, and improvement effected, all of which may be summed up in the word ‘Repentance.’
What could be simpler? Yet we had never thought of it before. But to return for a moment to the foes of Jane Austen. In the majority of cases they are routed in the completest fashion. No one, after reading of her paternal descent from the county family of Kentish Austens or of her maternal descent from the Leighs – a notable ancestor being Thomas Leigh, who in 1558 had the honour of receiving and preceding Queen Elizabeth, ‘carrying the sceptre before her Grace when she first entered the City to take up her residence in the Tower’ – no one could dare say again that she was not qualified to write of
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the English gentry. And he would be an obstinate fellow who would persist in describing Jane Austen’s disposition as calm, unemotional, passionless, after having read her notes written at the age of twelve, in an old copy of Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘History of England.’ 2 These fiery outpourings are the pleasantest reading of all, and we are exceedingly grateful to Miss Austen-Leigh for printing them for us. They do, indeed, revive Jane Austen’s own voice; we can separate them from the comment. For the truth is that every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone – reading between the lines – has become the secret friend of their author.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4727, 3 December 1920, pp. 758–9. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh (1838–1922) was Jane Austen’s great-niece. 2. Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) was an Irish playwright, novelist and poet, author among other works of the play She Stoops to Conquer, the novel The Vicar of Wakefield and a two-volume History of England.
Two Novels BACK TO LIFE. By Sir Philip Gibbs.1 (Heinemann. 9s. net.) THE VALLEY OF INDECISION. By Major Christopher Stone.2 (Collins. 9s. net.)
In his novel, ‘Back to Life,’ Sir Philip Gibbs has attempted to bring home to a callous, indifferent audience the horrors of war. It is not a work of art; we do not imagine, for one moment, that the author intended it to be; but, in spite of his sincerity, it is not a convincing document either. The reason is precisely that he has chosen to appeal to a particular audience rather than an ideal one. For whatever we may say or think or feel about the public to-day, it is surely the supreme duty of a writer to act as though he were confident of being understood by it. It is an act of faith; it demands courage; but nothing else will serve. What is it that we ask of our ideal audience? It is imagination. And is not all our writing a profession of belief in the powers of imagination? . . . But the author of ‘Back to Life’ makes no attempt to call forth those powers; he behaves, indeed, as though they were not. There are people, he would seem to argue, whom neither the bare facts of the war could move, nor a work of art inspired by the war. They are the stones from whom I shall draw blood. It is a desperate task. We
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do not see why he has attempted it. If they are devoid of imagination he cannot hope to change their hearts; all he can expect to do is to create a momentary feeling by as complete an illusion as possible. Nothing must be allowed, for instance, to speak for itself. The author is certain it would not be heard. Here are these callous, indifferent creatures – how can they be made to see, made to feel? Facts, stern hard facts are not enough, and the truth is too much. . . . The result is, to put it baldly, more dispatches from Sir Philip Gibbs, but with a ‘strong human interest added.’ The quick sketch is worked over, filled in; the shadows are pitch blackened, the lights are made dazzling high. Now, when we read of the entry of the British troops into Lille we are allowed to hear the bitter words that were spoken by men who counted the cost. Listen to the hero and his friend, for instance, talking amidst the cheering and the flowers and the kisses. ‘Et tu, Brute?3 After all our midnight talks, our laughter at the mockery of the gods, our intellectual slaughter of the staff, our tearing down of all the pompous humbug which has bolstered up this silly old war.’ ‘I know. But to-day we can enjoy the spirit of victory. It’s real here. We have liberated all these people.’ ‘We? You mean the young Tommies who lie dead on the other side of the canal? We come in and get all the kudos. Presently the generals will come and say, ‘We did it! Regard our glory! Fling down your flowers. . . .’ They will not see behind them the legions they sent to slaughter by ghastly blunders, colossal stupidity, invincible pomposity.’
This makes us, we confess, hang our heads. Is it necessary to force the note to that extent? The author cannot expect us to believe that men did talk like that – and, above all, at such a moment. When we are moved, when we are carried away, when we feel deeply, we do not talk of the ‘intellectual slaughter of the staff,’ above all if we are Englishmen. We are more likely to say: ‘Well, old chap, we’ve got here at last.’ ‘Yes . . . And it’s taken some getting.’ ‘It’s been a bad business – a bad business.’
The other is the sentimental version; it is ‘prepared’ conversation guaranteed to nourish thin, impoverished feelings. We have no faith in it. Or take as the crowning example of this method the death of the innocent young German girl whom a chivalrous Englishman has married. Her death is caused by the vile cruelty of her English relatives. Hate kills her. But the manner of her dying is thus. There is twilight, and a friend playing the piano, and her husband sitting on
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a stool while she lies on the sofa, ‘her fingers playing with his hair.’ She speaks. ‘Love is so much better than hate. Then why should people go to war?’ ‘God knows, my dear,’ said Brand. . . . I heard Elsa give a big tired sigh and say the word ‘Peace!’ Charles Fortune played something of Beethoven’s now, with grand crashing chords that throbbed through the room as the last glow of the sunset flushed through the windows. Suddenly Brand stirred and . . . gave a loud agonising cry.
Merciful Powers! who are these creatures who must have Beethoven and the sunset thrown in before they will pity a dying German girl! One thing is certain. The author who writes for them runs a terrible danger. He can only be ‘true’ to his readers at the cost of being false to himself. ‘The Valley of Indecision’ is another novel which is written within the shadow of the war. It is an extremely skilful study of a young man who returns to life determined that for him, at least, there shall be no forgetting. Whatever the cost, he will keep the vow that he took the night that his father was killed, and that he just escaped death – to live, from henceforward, for Christ. But it is one thing to cry out to God in a moment of exaltation; it is another to confess in your mother’s drawing-room, between tea and dinner, that your idea is to give up your possessions and preach the Gospel. Major Stone shrinks from none of the difficulties of such a position. His Peter Burrage is just what we would imagine such an idealist to be; but Peter’s worldly mother, Colonel March, General Hayling, are not merely worldly. They do not understand, but we are made to feel why they do not. On the other hand, Peter cannot compromise; he dare not remain in the valley of indecision simply because he is Peter. The conflict between them all is convincing; the account of it is strangely thrilling. Nevertheless, our sympathies are never wholly engaged. When Mr. Pearson dared Peter to go to a dance and declare himself – to rush from the garden into the ballroom and cry ‘Woe! woe!’ does he mean us to feel that such a proceeding was right? Can he believe that it is any use for us to walk into the future as itinerant friars? We are always left in doubt.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4727, 3 December 1920, p. 760. Signed: K. M. 1. Philip Gibbs (1877–1962) was a journalist and novelist.
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2. Christopher Stone (1882–1965) was a writer who worked for the BBC and became the first disc jockey in Britain. 3. From Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, III, I, 77, spoken by Caesar as he is killed, meaning ‘And you too, Brutus?’
Family Portraits IN CHANCERY. By John Galsworthy.1 (Heinemann. 9s. net.) THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. By Edith Wharton.2 (Appleton. 8s. 6d. net.)
In his latest novel, which is a continuation of the Forsyte Saga,3 Mr. John Galsworthy gives the impression of being in his real right element. There is a peculiar note, a mixture of confidence and hospitality, struck in the first chapter, which seems to come from the happy author warming himself at a familiar hearth. Here, in the very bosom of the Forsyte family, if any man is at home, he is that man. Its ramifications have no terrors for him; on the contrary, the quick, searching, backward glance he takes before setting out upon this book is yet long enough to be a kind of basking which extends to the cousin furthest removed. A swollen flood of novels has flowed under the bridge since the days of our enthusiasm for ‘The Man of Property’ – that large family piece, admirably composed, closely packed, and firmly related to a background which was never decoration only. ‘In Chancery’ is less solid as a whole – the shell-pink azaleas escape the control of Soames’ conservatory and flower a trifle too freely, as they are also a trifle too shell-pink; the tone is softer. It is not because the author is regarding his subject from another angle, but because all that remains from the deep vein of irony in ‘The Man of Property’ is a faint ironic tinge. In ‘The Man of Property’ what the author made us feel the Forsyte family lacked was imagination; in this new novel we feel it still, but we are not at all certain the author intends us to. He has, as it were, exchanged one prize for another – in gaining the walls he has lost his vision of the fortress. It is a very great gift for an author to be able to project himself into the hearts and minds of his characters – but more is needed to make a great creative artist; he must be able, with equal power, to withdraw, to survey what is happening – and from an eminence. But Mr. Galsworthy is so deeply engaged, immersed and engrossed in the Forsyte family that he loses this freedom. He can see Soames and James and the two Bayswater Road ancients with intense vividness; he can tell us all about them – but not all there is to know. Why is this? Is it not because, au fond, he distrusts his creative energy? There is no question of a real combat between it and his
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mind; his mind is master. Hence we have a brilliant display of analysis and dissection, but without any ‘mystery,’ any unplumbed depth to feed our imagination upon. The Forsyte men are so completely life-size, so bound within the crowns of their hats and the soles of their shoes, that they are almost something less than men. We do not doubt for a moment that it has been the aim of the author to appeal to the imagination; but so strong is the imposition of his mind that the appeal stops short at the senses. Take, for example, the character of old James Forsyte. Is it not amazing how he comes before us so that we see him, hear him, smell him, know his ways, his tricks, his habits as if he were our grandfather? Yet when we think of him – is it as standing at the window of his house watching the funeral of the old Queen, watching his own funeral and the funeral of his time – or as having his few last hairs stroked by Emily with a pair of silver brushes? These events should be of equal importance, at least; but they are not; the hair-brushing is easily first; and the author dwells on it with loving persistence until he almost succeeds in turning James into a lean, nervous, old, old, dog. Or take the occasion when young Val Dartie came face to face with his father, drunk, in the promenade of a music-hall. Before going out that evening he had asked his mother if he might have two plover’s eggs when he came in. And when he does return, shocked, wretched, disenchanted with life, we find our concern for him overshadowed by those two plover’s eggs laid out so temptingly with the cut bread and butter and ‘just enough whisky in the decanter,’ and left to languish on the dining-room table. But perhaps these instances are too simple to illustrate our meaning. Let us examine for a moment the figure of Soames Forsyte, who is the hero of ‘In Chancery.’ His desire to have a son makes him divorce the faithless Irene and thus free himself to marry a healthy young Frenchwoman, the daughter of a restaurant keeper. Now Soames, the passionate, suppressed human animal desiring Irene still because she is unattainable, but satisfying himself with the French girl at the last, is as solid, as substantial as a mind could make him, but he is never real. He is flesh and blood with a strong dash of clay – long before he is a tormented man; and flesh and blood and clay he remains after the torment is on him. But there never comes that moment when the character is more than himself, so that we feel at the end that what should have happened to him never has happened. He is an appearance only – a lifelike image. But when we have said that ‘In Chancery’ is not a great novel, we would assure our readers that it is a fascinating, brilliant book. In ‘The Age of Innocence,’ a novel of the early seventies in New York, we receive the same impression that here is the element in which the author delights to breathe. The time and the scene together
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suit Mrs. Wharton’s talent to a nicety. To evoke the seventies is to evoke irony and romance at once, and to keep these two balanced by all manner of delicate adjustments is so much a matter for her skilful hand that it seems more like play than work. Like Mr. Galsworthy’s novel it is a family piece, but in ‘The Age of Innocence’ the family comprises the whole of New York society. This remote, exclusive small world in itself is disturbed one day by the return of one of its prodigal daughters who begs to be taken back as though nothing had happened. What has happened is never quite clear, but it includes a fabulously rich villain of a Polish Count who is her husband and his secretary, who, rumour whispers, was all too ready to aid her escape. But the real problem which the family has to face is that Ellen Olenska has become that mysterious creature – a European. She is dangerous, fascinating, foreign; Europe clings to her like a troubling perfume; her very fan beats ‘Venice! Venice!’ every diamond is a drop of Paris. Dare they accept her? The question is answered by a dignified compromise, and Ellen’s farewell dinner-party before she leaves for Paris is as distinguished as she or the family could wish. These are what one might call the outer leaves of the story. Part them, and there is within another flower, warmer, deeper, and more delicate. It is the love-story of Newland Archer, a young man who belongs deeply to the family tradition, and yet at the same time finds himself wishing to rebel. The charm of Ellen is his temptation, and hard indeed he finds it not to yield. But that very quality in her which so allures him – what one might call her highly civilized appreciation of the exquisite difficulty of her position – saves them from themselves. Not a feather of dignity is ruffled; their parting is positively stately. But what about us? What about her readers? Does Mrs. Wharton expect us to grow warm in a gallery where the temperature is so sparklingly cool? We are looking at portraits – are we not? These are human beings, arranged for exhibition purposes, framed, glazed, and hung in the perfect light. They pale, they grow paler, they flush, they raise their ‘clearest eyes,’ they hold out their arms to each other ‘extended, but not rigid,’ and the voice is the voice of the portrait: ‘What’s the use – when will you go back?’ he broke out, a great hopeless How on earth can I keep you? crying out to her beneath his words.’
Is it – in this world – vulgar to ask for more? To ask that the feeling shall be greater than the cause that excites it, to beg to be allowed to share the moment of exposition (is not that the very moment that all our writing leads to?), to entreat a little wildness, a dark place or two in the soul? We appreciate fully Mrs. Wharton’s skill and delicate workmanship;
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she has the situation in hand from the first page to the last; we realize how savage must sound our cry of protest, and yet we cannot help but make it; that after all we are not above suspicion – even the ‘finest’ of us!
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4728, 10 December 1920, pp. 810–11. NN. Signed: K. M. 1. John Galsworthy (1867–1933) was best known as a dramatist and novelist; he was the author of The Forsyte Saga. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. His Moods, Songs and Doggerels is reviewed on pp. 429–30. 2. Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist who eventually settled in Europe. She won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence. 3. The Forsyte Saga was begun in 1906 with The Man of Property, followed by an interlude called Indian Summer of a Forsyte in 1918. Another interlude, Awakening, was published in 1920 after In Chancery and the final volume, To Let, appeared in 1921.
The Lost Girl1 I made these notes. Read them – will you? The Lost Girl. It’s important. It ought not to be allowed to pass. The Times2 gave no inkling of what it was – never ever hinted at its dark secret. Lawrence denies his humanity. He denies the powers of the imagination – he denies Life – I mean human life. His hero and heroine are not human. They are animals on the prowl. They do not feel: they scarcely speak. There is not one memorable word. They submit to their physical response and for the rest go veiled – blind – faceless – mindless – this is the doctrine of mindlessness. He says his heroine is extraordinary – & rails against the ordinary – Isn’t that significant? But look at her. Take her youth – her thriving upon the horse play with the doctors – They might be beasts butting each other – no more. Take the scene when the hero throws her in the kitchen, possesses her & she returns singing to the washing up. It’s
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Figure 7 ’The Lost Girl’. Autograph MS by Katherine Mansfield. Ref: MS-Papers-11326-009-1. John Middleton Murry Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
a disgrace. Take the rotten rubbishy scene of the woman in labour asking the Italian into the bedroom – All false. All a pack of lies! Take the nature study at the end – It’s no more than the grazing place for Alvina and her sire. What was the ‘green hellebore’ to her? Of course there is a great deal of racy, bright, competent writing in
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the early part – the ‘shop’ part – But it doesn’t take a writer to tell all that. The whole is false – ashes – The preposterous Indian troupe of four young men is – a fake. But how on earth he can keep it up – is the problem. No it’s not. He has ‘given way –’ why stop there? Oh – don’t forget where Alvina feels a trill in her bowels & discovers herself with child – a TRILL. What does that mean? And why is it so peculiarly offensive for a man? Because it is not on this plane that the emotions of others are conveyed to our imagination – It’s a kind of sinning against art. Earth closets too – do they exist – quâ earth closets? No. I might describe the queer voices coming from one when old grandpa X was there – very strange cries and moans & how the women who were washing – stopped & shook their heads & pitied him & even the children didn’t laugh. Yes, I can imagine that – But that’s not the same as to build an earth closet because the former one was so exposed – NO. Am I prejudiced? Be careful! I feel privately as though L. had possessed an animal & had fallen under a curse. But I can’t say that. All I know is this is bad and ought not to be allowed – I feel a horror of it – a shrinking – But that’s not criticism – But this is life where one has blasphemed against the spirit of reverence.
Notes U Text: Autograph MS, ATL, MS-Papers-11326-009. Also Scrapbook, pp. 182–4. 1. David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930), the author of The Lost Girl, was a poet, fiction-writer, dramatist, painter and critic, and had earlier been JMM’s and KM’s close friend. Described by E. M. Forster as ‘the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation’, he pushed back the boundaries of fiction; The Rainbow (1915) was suppressed and Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not published openly until 1960, long after Lawrence’s death. 2. At the top right of the MS, JMM’s pencilled note records: ‘Copied 17.2.48. I have italicised word l.7 to make the sense clear.’ 3. The novel was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement by Virginia Woolf; see CLKM, 4, p. 139.
The Decay of Mr. D. H. Lawrence THE LOST GIRL. By D. H. Lawrence.1 (Secker. 9s. net.)
There are two ways in which we may approach Mr. Lawrence’s new novel: we may regard it either as one among the many, or as marking
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a phase in the development of one who was by far the most promising, and is still among the most interesting, of the writers of the younger generation. From the former angle it is an interesting book, and there is little more to be said. But when we consider it as a novel by Mr. D. H. Lawrence, it becomes a different thing, which interests us differently. The very fact that it is a well-constructed, competently written tale of a girl who breaks away from the sterility of middle-class life in a mining district to form a passionate marriage with an Italian, has another importance; for if we compare ‘The Lost Girl’ with ‘Sons and Lovers,’ we remark that the increase of control of a kind is set off by a very obvious loss of imaginative power. Mr. Lawrence is now, as a novelist, commensurable with his contemporaries. ‘The Lost Girl’ is certainly a better novel than most of his coevals could write, but it is largely of the same kind as their novels. ‘Sons and Lovers’ was not; neither was ‘The Rainbow.’ In them there were flashes of psychological intuition, passages of darkly beautiful writing, so remarkable that at times they aroused a sense that the latest flowering on the tree of English literature might be one of the most mysterious. There is not very much mystery about ‘The Lost Girl.’ Alvina Houghton springs from the same country as Paul Morel; but it is no longer the country of a miraculous birth. Woodhouse is as real, and real in the same way, as Mr. Bennett’s ‘Five Towns’; there is no garment of magical beauty flung over it, like that which gleamed out of the opening pages of ‘Sons and Lovers.’ And in Alvina herself we catch sight of none of the strange potencies that seemed to hover about Paul Morel. We are interested in her; she is perfectly credible; she is even mysterious: but the mystery in her is not that of a revelation of the unknown, but rather of an ignorance in her creator. She is more the idea of a woman than a woman. It is as though Mr. Lawrence had lost some power of immediate contact with human beings that he once possessed; his intuitive knowledge has weakened under the pressure of theory. But whereas the beauties of ‘The Rainbow’ could be held in the mind very separate from the sex-theory which dominated and falsified the book, the texture of ‘The Lost Girl’ is much more closely knit. We can no longer separate the true from the false; the theory impinges on the imaginative reality at every point. We lose our grasp of the central characters just at the moment when it should be firmest. A phrase like ‘his dark receptivity overwhelmed her’ will intrude at a crisis in the love between Alvina and her Italian lover, Cicio; and the effect is as though the writer’s (and therefore the reader’s) consciousness had suddenly collapsed. The woman and the man are lost in the dark. What we are told of them may be true; or it may be false: we cannot tell with our waking minds. Mr. Lawrence becomes most
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esoteric when he should be most precise, for nothing is more esoteric than the language of a theory peculiar to oneself – and, we might add, nothing is uglier. We are not merely bewildered but repelled when Mr. Lawrence writes in this way of the effect of an actor’s imitation of another man upon his heroine: Louis was masterful – he mastered her psyche. She laughed till her head lay helpless on the chair, she could not move. Helpless, inert she lay, in her orgasm of laughter. The end of Mr. May. Yet she was hurt.
And it is always through language as vague as this, if less positively ugly, that we are made to grope for the reality of the emotional crises of Mr. Lawrence’s story. Mr. Lawrence’s own grasp of the central theme of his story, of the peculiar attraction which held Alvina and Cicio together, despite an amount of ecstatic hatred that would have sufficed to separate a hundred ordinary lovers for ever, may possibly be profound; but he does not convey it to us. He writes of his characters as though they were animals circling round each other; and on this sub-human plane no human destinies can be decided. Alvina and Cicio become for us like grotesque beasts in an aquarium, shut off from our apprehension by the misted glass of an esoteric language, a quack terminology. Life, as Mr. Lawrence shows it to us, is not worth living; it is mysteriously degraded by a corrupt mysticism. Mr. Lawrence would have us back to the slime from which we rose. His crises are all retrogressions. In short, we are nonplussed by Mr. Lawrence’s fifth novel. For a little while we inclined to explain the obvious loss of creative vigour as a paralysis produced by the suppression of ‘The Rainbow’; but the cause proved to be inadequate. Mr. Lawrence’s decline is in himself. Even in the final chapters which describe how Alvina accompanies Cicio to his home in the Italian mountains, we miss some essential magic from the passion of his descriptive writing. We cannot suppose that it was fear of the censor that stayed his hand here.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4729, 17 December 1920, p. 836. Signed: M. Kirkpatrick notes that ‘the marked files of the Athenaeum record KM as the reviewer’ (BJK, p. 151). Note by Sydney Janet Kaplan: There is doubt as to KM’s authorship of this review, which in itself is quite notorious. Catherine Carswell attacked it in her book The Savage
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Pilgrimage: A Narrative of D. H. Lawrence (London: Chatto & Windus, 1932, p. 143, as containing ‘the language of spite’. JMM includes the full review in his own book, Reminiscences of D. H. Lawrence (London: Jonathan Cape, 1933), and it reflects exactly the same complaints about Lawrence that his own journals continually reveal. The fact that the letters ‘KM’ are written next to the review in the marked files does not convince me that she actually wrote it. This has a lot to do with the way that JMM used the marked files to apportion money to the authors, and it might have been a way for him to have the paper pay some extra money to KM. (They both often used pseudonyms for pieces they wrote and JMM had a complicated way of paying themselves.) Another example of the ambiguities of the Athenaeum identifications works in the opposite way when according to O’Sullivan (CLKM, 4, p. 19, n1) Kirkpatrick identified JMM as the reviewer of ‘The Cherry Orchard’, but that JMM published it later in the Adelphi as KM’s! In addition the dating of this Lawrence review is uncertain. During the week before its publication, when she would have been writing it, KM was in the midst of her despair over the Bibesco situation [JMM was at the time involved in an affair with Princess Bibesco, which led KM to pen the excoriating poem ‘The New Husband’ (pp. 130–1)]. There is no doubt, however, that JMM would have been influenced by KM’s outburst about the book in her letter of December 6 (CLKM, 4, pp. 138–9). Only two days later, she writes to JMM that she ‘can’t go on’ and is sending back the books he had given her to review. 1. For details about D. H. Lawrence see the previous review.
More Notes on Tchehov THE SCHOOLMISTRESS; AND OTHER STORIES. By Anton Tchehov.1 Translated by Constance Garnett. (Chatto & Windus. 4s. 6d. net.)
This book contains some of the finest stories that ever Tchehov wrote, stories into which his quintessence was distilled. ‘Exile,’ ‘Misery’ and the ‘Cattle-dealers’ belong to this superlative class. We know this, but to say it in these words seems intolerably crude and meaningless. What does it avail to say that we are haunted by the memory of an exquisite fragrance? We see rainbows through tears, but how shall we recapture them? In what words shall we imprison a beauty such as this? How satisfy the devil that urges insistently: ‘Define, define’? Define, define. Tchehov himself could not define. Not one, not even the wisest, of his characters could define. Old Fyodor the shoemaker, having tasted wealth, refuses the devil’s compact:
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Some were able to drive in a carriage, and others to sing songs at the top of their voice and to play the concertina, but one and the same thing, the same grave, was awaiting all alike, and there was nothing in life for which one would give the devil even a tiny scrap of one’s soul.
The tiniest scrap of one’s soul is precious. That is true; but it is a truth in which Tchehov’s secret is so hidden that it is lost. What is this precious and inalienable soul, what is its colour and quality? How came it to be a window through which a great artist saw life as it never had been seen before? What glass discovered to him these miraculous emanations invisible to other eyes? Why, if he was so tender, were his eyes not blinded with tears? How did he see so exquisitely and so steadily? And what, in truth, did he see? Can we truly say no more than that he saw beauty – beauty one, indivisible, stretched like a wind-swayed gossamer over the vast whole of life; beauty precarious and unique, never pausing, changing incessantly, like the face of that Russian girl on whom all eyes were turned at the wayside station? Standing at the window talking, the girl, shrugging at the evening damp, continually looking round at us, at one moment put her arms akimbo, at the next raised her hands to her head to straighten her hair, talked, laughed, while her face at one moment wore an expression of wonder, the next of horror, and I don’t remember a moment when her face and body were at rest. The whole secret and magic of her beauty lay just in these tiny, infinitely elegant movements, in her smile, in the play of her face, in her rapid glance at us, in the combination of the subtle grace of her movements with her youth, her freshness, the purity of her soul that sounded in her laugh and voice, and with the weakness we love so much in children, in birds, in fawns and in young trees . . . ‘So–o!’ . . . the officer muttered with a sigh when, after the second bell, we went back to our compartment. And what that ‘So–o’ meant I will not undertake to decide. Perhaps he was sad, and did not want to go away from the beauty and the spring evening into the stuffy train; or perhaps he like me, was unaccountably sorry for the beauty, for himself, and for me and for all the passengers . . .
Yes, beauty of this kind lies near to the secret of Tchehov. We have to crowd into the word an infinity of ugliness and pain, for this beauty includes all life; rather it is only visible to one who shuts the gates of his soul to no single experience. It is not the illusion imposed by a trick of vision, but a unique and essential element of life. And what some are pleased to call Tchehov’s pessimism is not
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pessimism at all. Tchehov had no philosophy – no artist has – but an attitude; and it was the attitude of the perfect ideal artist – dispassionate and infinitely tender. His sadness was not the sadness of one who weeps over frustrated human purposes and the pain of mankind; but the sadness inseparable from the contemplation of perfect beauty. For beauty comes to us with a clear prescriptive claim to eternality, yet it is the most fragile of all our visions. The combination of dispassionateness and extreme tenderness is strange, but strange chiefly because it implies the mastery of unusually keen human reactions by an aesthetic impulse that is organic. These rare natures, one might almost say, turn to art because nothing else will save them from being overwhelmed by their experience; they are compelled to detachment by the vehemence of their own sensibility. But their detachment is not philosophic, not intellectual – these detachments are possible only to an impoverished sensibility; they are an attempted justification of an incapacity for experience. The dispassionateness of a Tchehov is of another, and a higher order; it is the necessary condition of maintaining sensibility at its most sensitive, and experience at its most comprehensive. Our human reactions to human experience must quickly become intolerable, unless, like the average man, we forget, or, like the intellectualist, we sterilise them. A Tchehov does neither, not primarily because he is artist, but because he is human, all too human. He is driven to art by the excess of his humanity, and only those are ‘full’ artists who suffer a compulsion of this kind. As Tchehov himself said of the great novelists before him, ‘they had axes to grind.’ He imagined that he himself had no axe to grind. It was the same axe, really, only he ground it differently. Tchehov, by an effort of the creative will, converted his intense human emotions into aesthetic emotions. He held the humanity that desolated him with pity and delight as it were at arm’s length in order that he might feel it all, and that the force of one emotion should not dull him to another. His pity and delight were transformed; his delight in human courage changed to a delight in the contemplation of the beautiful and infinite whole of which human courage is only a fragmentary part; his pity at human frustration changed to the regret that consummate beauty must awaken in the mind which discovers it. It is not by the sense of wasted lives that we are haunted when we read his stories, but by the evanescent perfection of the life which he reveals. When Iona the cabdriver, in ‘Misery,’ after trying in vain to tell his passengers that his son is dead, turns at last to his horse and says, That’s how it is, old girl . . Kuzma Ionitch is gone . . . He said good-bye to me . . . He went and died for no reason . . . Now, suppose you had a little
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colt, and you were own mother to that little colt . . . And all at once that same little colt went and died . . . You’d be sorry, wouldn’t you?
our instant and abiding impression is one, not of sorrow, but of beauty. Our little lives are rounded off by an exquisite and inscrutable harmony. When the Tartar turns on the old Siberian ferryman in ‘Exile’ and stammers in his broken Russian: ‘He is good . . . good; but you are bad! You are bad!’ we feel not that the Tartar is right or wrong, but the last incredible note has been sounded in our scarcebelieving ears by which the delicate pattern is finally revealed.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4732, 7 January 1921, pp. 11–12. Signed: J. M. M. See BJK, p. 151, for evidence that the review was in fact written by KM. 1. Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), who practised as a doctor, is now revered, as he was by modernist writers, for his plays and short stories which pose questions to the audience or reader rather than answering them. The translations by Constance Garnett (1861–1946) brought his work to the attention of English-speaking readers. KM and Koteliansky’s translations of some of his letters and diaries are included in the Translations section of this volume.
The Nostalgia of Mr. D. H. Lawrence WOMEN IN LOVE. By D. H. Lawrence1 (Secker. 8s. 6d. net.)
Mr. Lawrence is set apart from the novelists who are his contemporaries by the vehemence of his passion. In the time before the war we should have distinguished him by other qualities – a sensitive and impassioned apprehension of natural beauty, for example, or an understanding of the strange blood bonds that unite human beings, or an exquisite discrimination in the use of language, based on a power of natural vision. All these things Mr. Lawrence once had, in the time when he thrilled us with the expectation of genius: now they are dissolved in the acid of a burning and vehement passion. These qualities are individual no longer; they no longer delight us; they have been pressed into the service of another power, they walk in bondage and in livery. It is useless for us to lament their servitude; with Mr. Lawrence – and the feeling is our involuntary acknowledgment of his power and uniqueness – we feel we must
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‘let determined things to destiny Hold unbewailed their way.’ 2
Mr. Lawrence is what he is: a natural force over which we have no power of command or persuasion. He has no power of command or persuasion over himself. It was not his deliberate choice that he sacrificed his gifts, his vision, his delicacy, and his eloquence. If ever a writer was driven, it is he. Not that we absolve him from responsibility for his own disaster. It is part of our creed that he must be responsible; but it is part of his creed that he is not. We stand by the consciousness and the civilization of which the literature we know is the finest flower; Mr. Lawrence is in rebellion against both. If we try him before our court, he contemptuously rejects the jurisdiction. The things we prize are the things he would destroy; what is triumph to him is catastrophe to us. He is the outlaw of modern English literature; and he is the most interesting figure in it. But he must be shown no mercy. ‘Women in Love’ is five hundred pages of passionate vehemence, wave after wave of turgid, exasperated writing impelled towards some distant and invisible end; the persistent underground beating of some dark and inaccessible sea aura in an underworld whose inhabitants are known by this alone, that they writhe continually, like the damned, in a frenzy of sexual awareness of one another. Their creator believes that he can distinguish the writhing of one from the writhing of another; he spends pages and pages in describing the contortions of the first, the second, the third, and the fourth. To him they are utterly and profoundly different; to us they are all the same. And yet Mr. Lawrence has invented a language, as we are forced to believe he has discovered a perception for them. The eyes of these creatures are ‘absolved’; their bodies (or their souls: there is no difference in this world) are ‘suspended’; they are ‘polarized’; they ‘lapse out’; they have, all of them, ‘inchoate’ eyes. In this language their unending contortions are described; they struggle and writhe in these terms; they emerge from dark hatred into darker beatitudes; they grope in their own slime to some final consummation, in which they are utterly ‘negated’ or utterly ‘fulfilled.’ We remain utterly indifferent to their destinies, we are weary to death of them. At the end we know one thing and one thing alone: that Mr. Lawrence believes, with all his heart and soul, that he is revealing to us the profound and naked reality of life, that it is a matter of life and death to him that he should persuade us that it is a matter of life and death to ourselves to know that these things are so. These writhings are the only real, and these convulsive raptures, these oozy beatitudes the only end in human life. He would, if he could, put us all on the
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rack to make us confess his protozoic god; he is deliberately, incessantly, and passionately obscene in the exact sense of the word. He will uncover our nakedness. It is of no avail for us to declare and protest that the things he finds are not there; a fanatical shriek arises from his pages that they are there, but we deny them. If they are there, then indeed it is all-important that we should not deny them. Whether we ought to expose them is another matter. The fact that European civilization has up to the advent of Mr. Lawrence ignored them can prove nothing, though it may indicate many things. It may indicate that they do not exist at all; or it may indicate that they do exist, but that it is bound up with the very nature of civilization that they should not be exposed. Mr. Lawrence vehemently believes the latter. It is the real basis of his fury against the consciousness of European civilization which he lately expounded in these pages in a paper on Whitman.3 He claims that his characters attain whatever they do attain by their power of going back and re-living the vital process of pre-European civilization. His hero, Rupert Birkin, after reaching the beginning of ‘consummation’ with his heroine, Ursula Brangwen, is thus presented:– ‘He sat still like an Egyptian Pharaoh, driving the car. He felt as if he were seated in immemorial potency, like the great carven Statues of real Egypt, as real and as fulfilled with subtle strength, as these are, with a vague, inscrutable smile on the lips. He knew what it was to have the strange and magical current of force in his back and loins, and down his legs, force so perfect that it stayed him immobile and left his face subtly, mindlessly smiling. He knew what it was to he awakened and potent in that other basic mind, the deepest physical mind. And from this source he had a pure and magic control, magical, mystical, a force in darkness, like electricity.’
Through such strange avatars his characters pass, ‘awakened and potent in their deepest physical mind.’ European civilization has ignored them. Was it from interested motives, or do they indeed exist? Is Mr. Lawrence a fanatic or a prophet? That he is an artist no longer is certain, as certain as it is that he has no desire to be one; for whatever may be this ‘deep physical mind’ that expresses its satisfaction in ‘a subtle, mindless smile,’ whether it have a real existence or not, it is perfectly clear that it does not admit of individuality as we understand it. No doubt Mr. Lawrence intends to bring us to a new conception of individuality also; but in the interim we must use the conceptions and the senses that we have. Having these only, having, like Sam Weller in the Divorce Court, ‘only a hordinary pair of eyes,’ 4 we can discern no individuality whatever in the denizens of Mr. Lawrence’s world. We
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should have thought that we should be able to distinguish between male and female, at least. But no! Remove the names, remove the sedulous catalogues of unnecessary clothing – a new element and a significant one, this, in our author’s work – and man and woman are indistinguishable as octopods in an aquarium tank. The essential crisis of the book occurs in a chapter called, mystically enough, ‘Excurse.’ In that chapter Rupert and Ursula, who are said to reach salvation at the end of the history, have a critical and indescribable experience. It is not a matter of sexual intercourse, though that is, of course, incidentally thrown in; but it has a very great deal to do with ‘loins.’ They are loins of a curious kind, and they belong to Rupert. Mr. Lawrence calls them ‘his suave loins of darkness.’ These Ursula comes ‘to know.’ It is, fortunately or unfortunately, impossible to quote these crucial pages. We cannot attempt to paraphrase them; for to us they are completely and utterly unintelligible if we assume (as we must assume if we have regard to the vehemence of Mr. Lawrence’s passion) that they are not the crudest sexuality. Rupert and Ursula achieve their esoteric beatitude in a tea-room; they discover by means of ‘the suave loins of darkness’ the mysteries of ‘the deepest physical mind.’ They die, and live again. After this experience (which we must call x):– ‘They were glad, and they could forget perfectly. They laughed and went to the meal provided. There was a venison pasty, of all things, a large broad-faced cut ham, eggs and cresses and red beetroot, and medlars and apple-tart and tea.’
We could not resist quoting the final paragraph, if only as evidence that ‘the deepest physical mind’ has no sense of humour. Why, in the name of darkness, ‘a venison pasty, of all things’? Is a venison pasty more incongruous with this beatitude than a large ham? Does the ‘deepest physical mind’ take pleasure in a tart when it is filled with apples and none when it is filled with meat? We have given, in spite of our repulsion and our weariness, our undivided attention to Mr. Lawrence’s book for the space of three days; we have striven with all our power to understand what he means by the experience x; we have compared it with the experience y, which takes place between the other pair of lovers, Gudrun and Gerald; we can see no difference between them, and we are precluded from inviting our readers to pronounce. We are sure that not more than one person in a thousand would decide that they were anything but the crudest kind of sexuality, wrapped up in what Mr. S. K. Ratcliffe5 has aptly called the language of Higher Thought. We feel that the solitary person might be right; but even he, we are convinced,
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would be quite unable to distinguish between experience x and experience y. Yet x leads one pair to undreamed-of happiness, and y conducts the other to attempted murder and suicide. This x and this y are separate, if they are separate, on a plane of consciousness other than ours. To our consciousness they are indistinguishable; either they belong to the nothingness of unconscious sexuality, or they are utterly meaningless. For Mr. Lawrence they are the supreme realities, positive and negative, of a plane of consciousness the white race has yet to reach. Rupert Birkin has a negroid, as well as an Egyptian, avatar; he sees one of those masterpieces of negro sculpture to which we have lately become accustomed. It is not ‘the plastic idea’ which he admires:– ‘There is a long way we can travel after the death-break; after that point when the soul in intense suffering breaks, breaks away from its organic hold like a leaf that falls. We fall from the connection with life and hope, we lapse from pure integral feeing, from creation and liberty, and we fall into the long African process of purely sensual understanding, knowledge in the mystery of dissolution. ‘He realized now that this is a long process – thousands of years it takes, after the death of the creative spirit. He realized that there were great mysteries to be unsealed, sensual, mindless, dreadful mysteries, far beyond the phallic cult. How far, in their inverted culture, had these West Africans gone beyond phallic knowledge? Very, very far. Birkin recalled again the female figure: the elongated, long, long body . . . the long imprisoned neck, the face with tiny features like a beetle’s. This was far beyond the phallic knowledge, sensual, subtle realities far beyond the scope of phallic investigation.’
There remained this way, this awful African process, to be fulfilled. It would be done differently by the white races. We believe Mr. Lawrence’s book is an attempt to take us through the process. Unless we pass through this we shall never see the light. If the experiences which he presents to us as part of this process mean nothing, the book means nothing; if they mean something, the book means something; and the value of the book is precisely the value of these experiences. Whatever they are, they are of ultimate fundamental importance to Mr. Lawrence. He has sacrificed everything to achieve them; he has murdered his gifts for an acceptable offering to them. Those gifts were great; they were valuable to the civilization which he believes he has transcended. It may be that we are benighted in the old world, and that he belongs to the new; it may be that he is, like his Rupert, ‘a son of God’; we certainly are the sons of men, and we must be loyal to the light we have. By that light Mr. Lawrence’s consummation is a degradation, his passing beyond a passing beneath, his triumph a catastro-
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phe. It may be superhuman, we do not know; by the knowledge that we have we can only pronounce it sub-human and bestial, a thing that our forefathers had rejected when they began to rise from the slime.
Notes Text: Nation & The Athenaeum, 29: 20, 13 August 1921, pp. 713–14. Signed: J. Middleton Murry. See BJK, p. 151, for a description of KM’s involvement in this review. Note by Sydney Janet Kaplan: Stylistically and conceptually, the review is consistent with JMM’s other writings about Lawrence. It also might well have included some phrases and observations that came from conversations with KM. 1. David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930), a poet, fiction-writer, dramatist, painter and critic, had earlier been JMM’s and KM’s close friend. Described by E. M. Forster as ‘the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation’, he pushed back the boundaries of fiction; The Rainbow (1915) was suppressed and Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not published openly until 1960, long after Lawrence’s death. There are reviews of his The Lost Girl on pp. 706–8 and 708–11. Gerald Crich in Women in Love seems to be based on JMM; Gudrun Brangwen is thought to resemble KM in that she is an artist who focuses on miniature works. In a scene in Chapter 28 of Women in Love Gudrun snatches Birkin’s letter from a group that is reading it aloud in a café and mocking it, as KM had retrieved Lawrence’s Amores in similar circumstances in the Café Royal. 2. From Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, III, vi, 84–5. 3. Nation & the Athenaeum, vol. 29, 23 July 1921, p. 617. 4. A misquotation from Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. In the scene in question Sam Weller says: ‘Yes, I have a pair of eyes. . . . If they wos a pair o’ patent double million magnifyin’ gas microscopes of hextra power, p’raps I might be able to see through a flight o’ stairs and a deal door; but bein’ only eyes, you see, my wision’s limited’ (Chapter 37). 5. An English journalist and lecturer on ethics.
A Family Saga MR GALSWORTHY’S NEW FORSYTE NOVEL1 PHILOSOPHY OF FAITH IN LOVE
After reading the last volume of the Forsyte saga we find ourselves wondering what would have been the reception of these books had
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they appeared as translations from the Russian, the Norwegian, or the Dutch. Not that the works of Mr Galsworthy suffer from neglect; his reputation as one of the foremost writers of our time is too securely established. But perhaps there is a danger that, having made up our minds about him, we may, in our English way, cease to be curious. In these days when books are snatched at, glanced at, dipped into rather than read, we crave, as never before, the irritant of novelty. Well, our young writers are prolific enough to satisfy the most urgent appetite, and when their ever-increasing output has been devoured there are always the translations to tackle. But here is a curious fact. In the case of the translations, though the bait may have been novelty, once we are caught nothing can exceed the patience, the absorbed attention, the sympathy with which we read a foreign author. Outlandish names, complicated relationships, have no terrors. And those longueurs which, were they genuine English longueurs, would exhaust our patience immediately, put into a foreign dress are all part of the fascination; we read, as though the age were returned when life was long and books were few. THE FORSYTE BREED
Perhaps, at last, this passion for foreign travel will have its influence upon our behaviour at home. And instead of applying the familiar critical formula – ‘sincere, distinguished, brilliant’ – to the work of Mr Galsworthy, someone will discover how rich, how satisfying, how powerful, take it all in all, is this family piece hanging on our own walls. Between ‘The Man of Property’ and ‘To Let’ there is contained the history of the rise and fall of the Forsyte family, told in such a way that we recognise it as the author’s chosen subject – the subject of his heart, which all writers seek for but do not always find. In describing the Forsyte breed, typical English breed, with its tenacious, jealous, passionately possessive grip on life, his gifts of irony and imaginative sympathy find their full expression. Here, too, his dramatist’s sense of character – so strong in Mr Galsworthy – is abundantly satisfied. But above all, the scope of his subject, the sense of the long time it takes for all these things to happen, enables him to convey his feeling for life. Life, relentless and mysterious, flows on for ever. THE ONE UNBUYABLE THING
It is useless to deny it or to build up defences. It is almost comic to surround our impermanent selves with solidities, to hoard, to guard. We may linger long, we may relish our baked apple and worry about
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Consols to our hundredth year, but die we must. But how are we to bear this knowledge that all things have an end? How are we to accept this sense of the finality of things? His answer would seem to be by faith in nothing less than love. Love, the one thing worth having, was the one thing the Forsyte family could not buy. It flows from our bosoms and becomes part of that larger stream; it is beauty and the only immortality we shall ever know. In ‘The Man of Property’ the heart of the matter is the love of Soames Forsyte for Irene. He bought her; he made her his wife, his possession. And still he did not own her. Baffling and incredible situation for a Forsyte. Soames was, without doubt, the most typical of them all; the source of their power as a family seemed to be gathered up in him. He was close, but he knew a good thing when he saw it. And he was the last man to be suspected of bringing shame upon the family’s sound instinct for a speculation. But so it happened. In Irene he met his foe, and was beaten. ‘In Chancery’ is the period between the battle and the fruits of that battle. In it Soames tries to recapture Irene, fails, and thinks to mend his broken life by marrying a healthy young Frenchwoman whom he expects to provide him with a son. Possessions – he must have possessions! His money and his pictures must feed the family passion. THE SHOT BOLT
But Irene, who is married again to Jolyon, the artist of the Forsyte family, has a son. And the book ends with Soames at his river house hearing that life – for some extraordinary reason – has refused to be bought again. Annette’s child is a girl. The war is over. Soames is 65, with a grown-up daughter; Irene’s boy is 19, with the opening of ‘To Let’. The little house in the Bayswater-road, cradle of the Forsytes, the house of the ‘old people’ of another century, another age, is deserted now, except for Timothy, in his 100th year. For him it has become a second cradle. There he lingers on, like a winter fly, with Smithers and Cook looking after him so beautifully, the last of the old Forsytes. No one goes to visit him now except Soames; the family has forgotten him. For it is strange. In these last years something has happened to that tenacious, solid, compact family. Soames feels its bolt is shot. Its day is over. The possessive instinct is dying out. What has happened to the Forsyte ideal? It has come to nothing. Where are they all? Those warm, long-lived typical English men and women. They are dead or scattered. The family vault at Highgate has only room for Timothy. Soames, after a visit to the Bayswater-road house, after a prolonged tour of that perfect little Victorian museum, thinks of it, too, as a
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mausoleum. He lingers in the hall dreaming that some ‘ghost of an old face might show over the banisters and an old voice say: “Why, it’s dear Soames, and we were only saying that we hadn’t seen him for a week!”’ THE FINAL TRAGEDY
Nothing – nothing! Just the scent of camphor, and dust-notes on a sunbeam through the fanlight over the door. . . . But there is a final struggle before the Forsyte family yields up its breath. While Timothy’s soul is leaving its body Soames’ final tragedy is enacted. His adored and once unwanted daughter, with her French name, ‘Fleur’, meets by chance Joss, the son of Irene, and the two promptly, at first sight, fall in love. The idea is equally terrible to Soames and to Irene. But how are they to make those children of the present understand that it is the undying past that separates them for ever? It is done, and Joss, child of love, chooses his mother, and Fleur chooses another young man. But not before her father realises the bitter truth that he and his money are no use to her if they cannot buy love for her. The book ends with Soames’ last visit to Timothy in his new, neat, grey dwelling at Highgate. ‘He sat there a long time, dreaming his career . . . “To Let” – the Forsyte age and way of life . . . “To Let” – that same and simple creed.’ He is a tragic figure. One does not know which to admire the more – the peculiar readiness and power with which Mr Galsworthy expresses the feelings which are aroused in us by the contemplation of what has been or the exquisite delicacy and freshness with which young love, first love, is depicted. Mr Galsworthy is affected by absent things as if they were present. He can make us feel the past; we ache with it. ‘To Let’ is haunted by ghosts – even the ghosts of port wine and camphor and stuffed humming-birds. ‘To Let.’ By John Galsworthy. Heinemann. 7s. net.
Notes Text: Daily News, 5 November 1921, p. 8. Signed: Katherine Mansfield. 1. John Galsworthy (1867–1933) was best known as a dramatist and novelist; he was the author of The Forsyte Saga. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. His Moods, Songs and Doggerels is reviewed on pp. 429–30, and his In Chancery on pp. 703–6.
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Two Remarkable Novels Aaron’s Rod. BY D. H. LAWRENCE.1 (Secker. 7s. 6d.) Futility. BY WILLIAM GERHARDI.2 (Cobden-Sanderson. 7s. 6d.)
A year ago, reviewing Mr. Lawrence’s last novel, which seemed to us full of a noxious exasperation, we said that he was an elemental force, perhaps the only one in modern English literature. With him criticism was unavailing and irrelevant; we must ‘let determined things to destiny Hold unbewailed their way.’ 3 Well, they have held their way for another year, with a result that we could not have prophesied. Mr. Lawrence’s sun shines forth after the darkness of eclipse. The exasperation, the storm and stress are gone. He has dragged us with him through the valley of the shadow4; now we sail with him in the sunlight. Mr. Lawrence’s new book ripples with the consciousness of victory; he is gay, he is careless, he is persuasive. To read ‘Aaron’s Rod’ is to drink of a fountain of life. Mr. Lawrence is like the little girl. When he is good, he is very, very good; and when he is bad, he is horrid.5 Now we feel that he will never be horrid again, but go on from strength to strength, until the predestined day when he puts before the world a masterpiece. For Mr. Lawrence is now, indisputably, a great creative force in English literature. We have always believed he was that potentially; even when we have crusaded against him, we have merely been paying tribute to his power. No other living writer could drive us to a frenzy of hostility as he has done; no other fill us with such delight. ‘Aaron’s Rod’ is the most important thing that has happened to English literature since the war. To my mind it is much more important than ‘Ulysses.’ Not that it is more important in and for itself than Mr. Joyce’s book. No doubt it is a smaller thing. But ‘Ulysses’ is sterile; ‘Aaron’s Rod’ is full of the sap of life. The whole of Mr. Joyce is in ‘Ulysses’; ‘Aaron’s Rod’ is but a fruit on the tree of Mr. Lawrence’s creativeness. It marks a phase, the safe passing of the most critical phase in Mr. Lawrence’s development. He has survived his own exasperation against the war. We did not doubt that if he did survive it, he would survive it splendidly; but after ‘Women in Love’ we doubted deeply whether he would survive at all. ‘Women in Love’ seemed to show him far sunk in the maelstrom of his sexual obsession. ‘Aaron’s Rod’ shows that he has gained the one thing he lacked: serenity. Those who do not know his work may read it and wonder where the serenity is to be found. They must read all Mr. Lawrence’s work to discover it fully. They must allow themselves to be manhandled and shattered by ‘The Rainbow’ and by ‘Women in Love’ before they can appreciate all the significance of his latest book. For
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the calm is but partly on the surface of ‘Aaron’s Rod,’ it lies chiefly in the depths. As before, Mr. Lawrence offers a violent challenge to conventional morality; as before, he covers us with the spume of his ungoverned eloquence. But the serenity is there. Mr. Lawrence can now laugh at himself without surrendering a jot of his belief in the truth he proclaims. It is as though he looked back whimsically at his own struggling figure in the past, saw all his violence and extravagance, and recognized that he could not have become what he is if he had not been what he was. Not that ‘Aaron’s Rod’ is a perfect book; it is very far from that. It is indeed, in some ways an extremely careless book. A lady who is Josephine Hay on one page becomes Josephine Ford – for no reason – in the next. At another moment the author clean forgets that Lilly, who is, with Aaron Sisson, the chief character in the book, has not been through the war. Then it has a positive carelessness, also, which is purely refreshing. Mr. Lawrence breaks off a couple of pages of splendid psychological presentation with this: ‘Don’t grumble at me then, gentle reader, and swear to me that this damned fellow wasn’t half clever enough to think all these smart things, and realize all these fine-drawn-out subtleties. You are quite right, he wasn’t, yet it all resolved itself in him as I say, and it is for you to prove that it didn’t.’
It takes a big man to be able to do that nowadays without breaking the spell. Mr. Lawrence’s spell is not broken: he is a big man. He exults in his strength. He is so exultant that he really doesn’t trouble to carry on his book – after page 200. When he has brought us to the point at which we are completely absorbed in the relation between Aaron and Lilly, he fobs us off with a passionate adventure of Aaron’s, important enough in its way, but of which we know the conclusion beforehand, and three or four pages of conversation between them. We could riddle the book with criticism, but not one of the shafts would touch its soul. It is real; it is alive. We have seen it said of ‘Aaron’s Rod’ by a well-known critic that whereas the presentation of the characters is vivid, the author’s philosophizing is (as usual) esoteric and portentous. That is not true. Mr. Lawrence’s philosophizing in this book is as vivid and vital as the rest. He is tackling a real problem and offering a real solution, and we think the philosophizing is, if anything, even better than the characters. Perhaps that is because we happen to agree with it. But to talk of Mr. Lawrence’s philosophizing at all is misleading; he is not and never has been a philosopher; he is and always has been a moralist. Sometimes we have thought him a pernicious one. In the light of ‘Aaron’s Rod,’ we see
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him as a man who has experimented deeply and sincerely with human relationship in the determination to find some bedrock on which to build. Sometimes, in the torment of his search, he has wrapped up his experiences in the jargon of a mystical metaphysic. Now, having found what he sought, with the solid simplicity of conviction beneath his feet, he speaks plainly and persuasively. That, we think, is the word for ‘Aaron’s Rod.’ With all its imperfections, all its carelessness, all the host of minor characters who refuse to become properly substantial – we judge them by Mr. Lawrence’s own standards of achievement – it is persuasive. The style rings with the same clear truth as the message. Mr. Lawrence offers happiness; he points a way to security, and his words have the carelessness of confidence. No longer, as has been the case with his books of late, have we to content ourselves with sudden brief visions of shining beauty in the midst of inspissated and writhing darkness, like the shimmering rush of the bride out of the wedding carriage at the beginning of ‘Women in Love.’ There is beauty everywhere in ‘Aaron’s Rod,’ beauty of the thing seen, beauty of the seeing spirit; and everywhere the careless riches of true creative power. ‘Aaron’s Rod’– truly symbolic name – satisfies Arnold’s test of magic of style. It is life-imparting. After all that, it is most irrelevant to mention what the book ‘is about.’ It is simply the story of the effort of a man to lose the whole world and gain his own soul.6 Aaron Sisson leaves his wife, though he loves her and knows that he loves her, because he feels instinctively that she is engulfing him. He never returns to her in the book; neither does he ever deny the reality of the bond between them. Aaron is the instinct to which Lilly supplies the consciousness; and we are left with an indication that between these two men there is eventually to be a profound and lasting friendship. Mr. Lawrence’s theme is the self-sufficiency of the human soul. The book convinces us that he at least is within a measurable distance of having attained it. Mr. Gerhardi’s ‘Futility’ belongs to a different order; but it is, for a first novel, a very remarkable book. It is vivid and amusing, and its substance is most unusual. Imagine the Russian reality that is reflected to us in the glancing mirror of Tchehov’s sensibility, seen by an English observer, whose vision is delicate and discriminating enough to distinguish what is there beneath the paradoxical appearance, but whose temperament is sufficiently alien and detached for him to be keenly aware of the practical absurdity; and you will have some notion of the individual flavor of ‘Futility’. It is not an imitation Russian novel, of the kind with which we have, alas! become familiar of late. Mr. Gerhardi succeeds most admirably in seeing all round the fantastic little microcosm which, like an iridescent bubble, he conveys into his pages; he perceives its queer beauties, he laughs at
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its bizarre coloring, and he laughs not least at the futility of his own efforts to penetrate and live within it, or to make it amenable to his own notions of how life should be lived. The spectacle he presents to us would be incredible but for the convincingness of his presentation. He grapples with the elusive mystery of the life of the Russian intelligentsia, and instead of being romantically vague about it, keeps his eyes alert and his perceptions keen. The consequence is that he has written a book which is in itself delightful, and casts a small but clear and shrewd light upon the strange complexion of the Russian spirit and the imbecility of our own efforts during the war to make it subservient to our purposes.
Notes Text: Nation & The Athenaeum, 31: 20, 12 August 1922, pp. 655–6. Signed: J. Middleton Murry. See BJK, p. 151 for evidence of KM’s involvement in this review. Note by Sydney Janet Kaplan: Stylistically and conceptually, the review is consistent with JMM’s other writings about Lawrence. It also might well have included some phrases and observations that came from conversations with KM. 1. David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930), a poet, fiction-writer, dramatist, painter and critic, had earlier been JMM’s and KM’s close friend. Described by E. M. Forster as ‘the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation’, he pushed back the boundaries of fiction; The Rainbow (1915) was suppressed and Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not published openly until 1960, long after Lawrence’s death. There are reviews of his The Lost Girl on pp. 706–8 and 708–11, and of Women in Love on pp. 714–19. 2. William Gerhardi (1895–1977), a novelist and playwright, was supported by KM in his early attempts to find a publisher. She corresponded with him, writing one of her most revealing letters to him on 23 June 1921 (CLKM, 4, pp. 248–9) about the reception of ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel.’ 3. From Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, III, vi, 84–5. 4. Psalm 23: ‘I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.’ 5. An adaptation of a nursery rhyme by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 6. Mark, 8: 36: ‘For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’
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Aaron’s Rod AARON’S ROD. By D. H. Lawrence.
There are certain things in this book I do not like. But they are not important, or really part of it. They are trivial, encrusted, they cling to it as snails to the underside of a leaf – no more, – and perhaps they leave a little silvery trail, a smear, that one shrinks from as from a kind of silliness. But apart from these things is the leaf, is the tree, firmly planted, deep thrusting, outspread, growing grandly, alive in every twig. All the time I read this book I felt it was feeding me.
Notes U Text: Taken from a note in K. M.’s copy of the book, 1922. For biographical information about Lawrence see the previous review.
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Essays: Introduction
The essays included in the volume fall into two distinct parts. The first essays show KM and JMM collaborating with the excited vigour of young writers who have found their milieu. With Anne Estelle Rice, J. D. Fergusson, Michael Sadler and Frederick Goodyear, among others, they were plunged into an creative and intellectual ferment that gave them assertive confidence. The two essays for Rhythm, with their contempt for both the journalist as an ‘arch democrat’ and the tradesman in 1912, contrast strikingly with the weary tone of the essays written in 1920. At this time KM was championing Chekhov’s plays, and lamenting the fact that a production of The Cherry Orchard was only staged for a few days. Here she satirises the audience’s adulation of American film stars and of the political and aristocratic glitterati – ‘The poor we have always with us, but the eminent, the great, the high-born, how seldom!’ Just as Mary Pickford’s barley-sugar curls and Douglas Fairbanks’ swashbuckling athleticism are prized above the work of actors committed to a challenging art, so the good books, the books that are written by honest writers, men and women of talent, sincere artists, or a genius even’ are disparaged by critics in favour of cliché-ridden and sentimental trash. Disillusion and disgust are powerfully communicated in the last three essays.
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Essays
The Meaning of Rhythm The History of Art has been the history of a misunderstanding of a minority by a majority. The standing confession of this inability to comprehend is the word ‘inspiration.’ Men have been forced to realize that the work of art is alien to them, and they have attempted to justify the limitations of their vision by denying the artist his own. ‘Inspiration’ is the eternal protest of democracy against aristocracy. It paralyses the effort to comprehend and the effort to create. It is of all words the most unreal, for it denies the ultimate supremacy of personality. It asserts that the triumph of individuality is a gift and not a conquest. The artist, the leader, wins his victories for himself and alone. Like inspiration, intuition, a finer and a truer word, has fallen into the hands of the mob. It is used to cloak every form of ignorance and imbecility. It has become a synonym for the hallucination of religious mania, the anticipations of pregnant women, and the cocksure dogmas of intellectual incompetence. Intuition is a purely aristocratic quality. It is the power of divining individuality in other persons and other things. This divination brings with it a boundless admiration for the individuality divined. This admiration is never the admiration born of poverty but of riches. It is absolutely generous, as freedom is generous. It is the wealthier by its own lavishness. It is the utter understanding of one perfect individual by another, and only by this understanding and this generosity does the artist create, for in this admiration alone does he realize himself. He recognizes his own absolute freedom in divining the freedom of others. He has found reality, for we measure the reality of things by measuring their freedom. Freedom, reality, and individuality are three names for the ultimate essence of life. They are the three qualities of the artist. They are the three qualities of this work of art. Freedom in the artist is a consciousness of superiority. It is a security born of the conviction that he is creative. He has a certainty 729
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Figure 8 ‘The Meaning of Rhythm’ by John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield. Rhythm, 2: 5, June 1912, p. 18.
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of knowledge that he sees the reality of things, which frees him for everything. He knows his own power and is without fear or care. He is so secure that he can give himself wholly up to the delight of living. At every moment he finds some newness of life. He is intimate and at one with all that he meets. He is in love with life. He has all the careless self-surrender of the lover. He has all his careless self-assertion. The more absolute his conscious surrender to life, the more powerful and intimate his impulse towards self-assertion. This conscious surrender to life means for the artist the surrender to freedom, reality and individuality, it is these three qualities in himself which he gives to them and takes back again a thousand times stronger, a thousand times more purified for this surrender. For the life of the artist is one long princely giving and princely taking back again that which is his by right of giving. The only true creation comes from the overflow of his riches. Freedom in the work of art is the expression of the essentials. It demands the immediate rejection of all that does not help to make the expression the adequate symbol of the idea. It protests against the incursion of machine-made realism into modern literature. In its attempt to reproduce art democracy has succeeded in producing journalism. The journalist himself is the arch-democrat, for he denies his own individuality. In his work facts triumph over truth. He is the prince of democrats because for him all things have equal values, that is, no value at all. The journalist himself cannot even dream of freedom, for he is the slave of the unreality of his own making. The artist frees himself by the realities he creates. Reality in the work of art demands true intuition in the artist. It demands that the artist shall have seen the ultimate through the externals; it is an inevitable and infallible directness of vision. It is not selection, for there are not a thousand things from which the artist may select, there is always only one, the one fact among a million which is true and therefore the artist’s own and part of his personality. Individuality in the work of art is the creation of reality by freedom. It is the triumphant weapon of aristocracy. It is that daring and splendid thing which the mob hates because it cannot understand and by which it is finally subdued. Only by realizing the unity and the strength of the individual in the work of art is the mob brought to the knowledge of its own infinite weakness, and it loathes and is terrified by it. Art and the artist are perfectly at one. Art is free; the artist is free. Art is real; the artist is real. Art is individual; the artist is individual. Their unity is ultimate and unassailable. It is the essential movement of Life. It is the splendid adventure, the eternal quest for rhythm.
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seriousness in art Notes
Text: Rhythm, 2: 5, June 1912, pp. 18–20. Signed: John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield. This is the first collaborative essay published by JMM and KM at the time at which she became Rhythm’s assistant editor. The emphasis on intuition is an assertion of the magazine’s Bergsonian principles. The context for the attack on the mob and on journalism is the ongoing rivalry between Rhythm and the New Age, edited by A. R. Orage. KM stopped writing for the New Age and became the victim of its lampoons in which she was satirised as ‘Marion’ or ‘Marcia Foisacre’.
Seriousness in Art To-day the craft of letters in England is become a trade instead of an art. It is in vain that we seek for any evidence of artistic seriousness in the gigantic output of modern English literature. It is impossible to deny that the majority of our writers are intensely serious in their effort to reach a comfortable competence. They are serious as any tradesman is serious. This attitude of mind is to them their principal commercial asset. Literature for them is at best a somewhat disreputable means to a purely commercial end, means only to be justified by ultimate financial success. For the English public a writer becomes serious when he becomes ‘a gentleman,’ organized and respectable. ‘Seriousness’ supervenes on the death of adventure. The man whose personality is sunk in a refined home, a baby in a white perambulator and a plate-chest, has attained to ‘seriousness.’ He has taken the mob seriously. He has adopted their trademarks. He will give quiet little champagne dinners, and be accounted the equal of the most villainous South African financier. He is serious and successful, having cornered Prostitution, or Adolescence, or Murders on Moors where his new friends merely dealt in Kaffirs. Certainly the labourer is worthy of his hire; but in art the hire is never the end of the labour. Artistic seriousness is concerned with the labour and not with the hire. Without it the artist can achieve nothing; for it is just the appreciation of this seriousness that makes him artist. It is the profound enthusiasm of the artist for his art. It is the essential distinction between creativeness and mere production, between art and journalism. Art is a perpetual striving towards an ever more adequate symbolic expression of the living realities of the world. It is by virtue of his seriousness that the artist works toward deepening his understanding of these realities and perfecting his expression. Thus seriousness is a conviction of values. At every moment of creation the artist is convinced of one supreme reality which he endeavours to
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express with the utmost of his power. By virtue of this capacity for utmost endeavour the mould of each successive idea which the artist seeks to express grows more all-embracing, and thus more perfect. Thus seriousness is the very rock on which the supreme creations of art are builded. For the bagmen of letters, the book financiers, ‘seriousness’ has a purely external value. They put it on with their evening dress. In this word are summed up all those social virtues so painfully acquired, all those exercises of discipline and self denial whereby the mob regiments its own personality into impotence. It is absolute conformity to the democratic ideal of monotonous millions of mean and petty men. The life of democracy depends upon the absence of enthusiasm and true seriousness. For these two qualities wedded together are the hall-mark of aristocracy, the essentials of the leader. The ‘seriousness’ of the tradesman is mechanical and based on monotone. True seriousness is a thing alive and spontaneous, liberating the artist for his art, and consciously expanding into ever wider rhythms. It demands an ever wider sweep for its experience and sees therein profounder and profounder meanings, whereas the false seriousness denies the newness of life and finds safety in every limitation imposed upon its experience. True seriousness is an assertion, a courageous acceptance of the unexplored; the false is a negation, a cowardly clinging to the outworn known. The mob treads over this patch of threadbare ground with mechanical regularity, so poverty-stricken in itself that it asks for nothing but the tokens of poverty and is only comfortable and at ease when it finds nothing further. The land whereon these people live is barren and desolate, lying parcelled and monotonous in the midst of an unknown sea. The artists sail in stately golden ships over this familiar and adventurous ocean. Their gay flags of greeting stream in the sunlight; and far-off winds blow in their great sails and in their hair, as they go sailing by. The tiny land folk call to them and beckon them to shore; but the artists see the land that it is barren and miserable, and they sail onwards. Then the little people are frightened, and cry out to them in rage, and abuse them. Their voices are drowned in the mighty swishing of the green waves. But clean and true rings back their answer, the singing of the sailors, the joyful laughter of serene delight.
Notes Text: Rhythm, 2: 6, July 1912, pp. 46, 49. Signed: J. Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield. This is another implicit comparison between the alleged avant-garde credentials of Rhythm and the journalistic
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the stars in their courses
commercialism of the New Age, this time with an anti-colonial inflexion in its reference to the South African financier.
The Stars In Their Courses One expects queer things to happen on the twenty-first of June. It is not the longest day in the year for nothing. So much extra space might well be packed with a prodigy or two. The prodigy was there. Sedate, heat-wearied Londoners were bemused in the late afternoon by a newspaper poster bearing the strange device: ‘Mary and Douglas arrive.’ They were bemused, then puzzled. Neither Her Majesty the Queen nor the Princess Mary had been abroad. And even if these things had been we are not yet become so radical that we print Mary tout court on the hoardings. The Daily Herald, perhaps, but not the Evening News. And this was the Evening News. Nothing remained but to buy the paper, and with it the shock of discovering how remote we are from the great, warm heart of England. Miss Mary Pickford1 and Mr. Douglas Fairbanks2 had descended upon us. We are not of those who think shame to be seen flitting into the plush darkness of a cinema; we confess to a taste for it. And so it were idle to pretend that these eminent people are unknown to us. Have we not seen Mr. Fairbanks leap over the railway train on to the roof through the skylight into the cellar, at a breath? Do we not know Miss Pickford with her heart-breaking eyes and barley-sugar curls3 as the lily of the Wild West valley? People cannot keep their eyes on the agonies of Europe; it is too much to ask. Who shall blame them for seeking sensational distractions from the strain of living? But that this particular distraction should monopolize the hoardings; that there should be presumed an intimacy of affection for two cinematograph actors seldom felt for any man or woman within living memory – that gives us pause. Had it been Charlie Chaplin4 it would have been easier to understand, for within his province he is one of the first actors of the world; he has a universal significance. This great little comedian who suggests the background of tragedy is the under-dog, the waif of humanity, the plaything of Fate. That he should be popular is a tribute to the people who love him. But what do Douglas and Mary stand for? The one for Adventure, the other for Sentiment? Together for Romance? To the people who exult and weep over them they must be symbols of something beyond themselves, something beyond the reality of themselves. Yes, it must be Romance – the inevitable progeny when Adventure
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stop press biography
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and Sentiment are linked together by the appropriate chain of a marriage in Nevada. ‘Mary and Douglas’ are the escape from the dingy to the brilliant, from poverty to riches, from Canning Town to California. It is difficult for the starved imaginations whom that poster was designed to satisfy to see Romance as other than ‘the dream come true.’ And if the youthful clerk cultivates a fine ‘Fairbanks’ smile and boards the omnibus as if he were a highwayman – shall we blame him? Or if another ‘Mary’ trips to the office in a hat she might have borrowed from a baby – shall we not admire her? But let us still lament the poverty and meagreness of entertainment in our cities, the lack of personality in our actors and actresses that makes it possible for these American shadows to deceive the substantial public. Surely the sight of the people of whom the average audience is composed prostrate before the Ritz Hotel must be bitter to our own theatrical stars. What is the lesson to be learned from such a spectacle? Mr.Tagore5 passed shuddering, murmuring of the strange Gods we worship. Would it not be nearer the truth to say that Mary and Douglas are worshipped because we have no Gods at all?
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4705, 2 July 1920, p. 5. Unsigned leader. 1. Mary Pickford (1892–1979) was, with Charlie Chaplin, the most highly paid actor in Hollywood at the end of World War I; with long blond curls and coquettish charm she was known as ‘America’s Sweetheart’. After divorcing her first husband in Nevada she married Douglas Fairbanks in 1920 in California, not Nevada as the essay implies. 2. Douglas Fairbanks (1883–1939) was a swashbuckling superstar, hero of such films as The Mark of Zorro (1920). 3. Golden barley sugar was sold in long curling twists, like a ringlet. 4. Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977), a friend of Pickford and Douglas, was the internationally known comic actor and film-maker of the period. 5. Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), born in Calcutta, was a writer, thinker and composer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. He travelled widely, living for a while in Hampstead in 1912.
Stop Press Biography The publication of Mrs. Asquith’s private memoirs1 while the famous lady is still in her prime, and her distinguished husband has still who knows what rosy future before him, sets us musing whether the day is
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at hand when even her precedent will be eclipsed. Why, in the name of our civilization in the breaking, if the doors of the celebrated mansion are to be flung open to us so soon after the feast that the murdered supper-table still lies in its pallor and gore before the carelessly grouped chairs that are like irreverent undertakers – why should we be forced to wait at all? What, in fact, is there to prevent our celebrated personages from giving their private diaries to the newspaper press as they are written, smoking hot, day by day? Times are hard. It is not the poor who are affected by the high prices, it is the rich. It is the distinguished few whose income is £5,000 and over who really feel the pinch. It is they who really suffer. For how can they be otherwise than aware that they are the bright, brilliant beauties, the exquisite and puzzling exotics, the sight of which is the poor man’s refreshment and pride? After all, the workman must not be denied something to gaze at, to wonder over. His is the right to press his poor dull nose on the pane, and theirs to shine. Is it to be wondered at, therefore, if they seize upon a way of turning a golden penny which is not only marvellously simple to turn, but has the added charm of keeping them fresh and glowing in the public eye? The poor we have always with us,2 but the eminent, the great, the high-born, how seldom! Surely if our suggestion were adopted and the newspaper had its column devoted to the journal intime of this or that Cabinet Minister, Royal Prince, Lady-in-Waiting, there is no reason why the East should not meet the West over the breakfasttable every morning. And on what terms! The mind faints before the possibilities. Proven journalist though our Secretary of State for War has shown himself to be,3 how heartened should we find his narrative if it were enriched with a flashing glimpse or two of his personality! ‘Back from House early last night; spent half-hour trying on my hats. Cannot see what B. P. finds to laugh at in them. True, my forehead is immense, but can that be wondered at?’ Or suppose we read in the Court Circular of a Royal visit to Brighton and a stroll along the pier; how thrilling to turn to the diary of the Illustrious One and read that she ‘could not help thinking of Longfellow’s lovely poem, “Break, break, break, on thy cold grey stones, O sea,” while she strolled’!4 But these are timid half-glances, the barest hints at what might be. Let us try to imagine the fashion grown really popular and the spirit of competition – that most all-pervading of spirits – entered in. What would fetch the largest sum? Would the desire to cut a dash in the diary turn many a plain life into a coloured? And is it possible that at the time of a general election Y might write on Tuesday, ‘Met X to-day outside the club. Very doddery,’ and X reply on Wednesday, ‘Saw Y in the club yesterday. Afraid he can’t last long’?
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the critics’ new year
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Away with politics! But pray let the first Diary begin to-morrow. Let . . . . open the ball, and tell us what we really want to know, what we have always wanted to know – Why – Whether – If – Just supposing. Could they – would they? And do we really care?
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4712, 20 August 1920, p. 229. Unsigned leader. Note by Sydney Janet Kaplan: KM’s letters suggest to me that its unlikely that she wrote this Leader, but rather that her conversational remarks to JMM about it had been incorporated into the essay itself. In a letter of 30 October 1920 (CLKM, 4, p. 91), KM tells JMM that she had just learned he was ‘reading Mrs Asquith’ for his review of her memoir that would appear in the Athenaeum on 5 November. In that letter she describes her reaction to Mrs Asquith in such a way that gives no hint even that she might have written about it two months earlier. 1. Margot Asquith (1864–1945) was married to H. H. Asquith, a British Prime Minister. She was renowned as an outspoken socialite, hostess and patron of the arts. Her daughter Elizabeth married Prince Antoine Bibesco and had a romantic entanglement with JMM in 1920, while KM was in Menton. Margot Asquith published three parts of her autobiography in the same year. 2. A reference to Matthew, 26: 11: ‘For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.’ 3. Winston Churchill was the British Secretary for War in 1920. 4. ‘Break, break, break, / On thy cold grey stones, O sea!’ was not actually written by Longfellow but by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and was first published in 1842. Possibly KM is imputing ignorance to the Illustrious One or perhaps she herself made a mistake.
The Critics’ New Year The month of August is the last month of the Critics’ year. By the time it is come the publishing season is so exhausted that there is nothing for these gentlemen to do but to sit about and bite their pens, waiting for the end. While the occasion is not one to call for a display of violent feeling, for it were too much to hope that they found this year’s company so thrilling that they would fain enjoy it over again, or that they strain towards the first of September with ‘What does the coming year bring to me?’ upon their eager lips, we should like,
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nevertheless, to imagine them not insensible to the gravity of the hour. The month wanes; the month nears its end. Does it happen to them on August the thirty-first at five minutes to midnight to take the salute of their entire writing year as it marches past at lightning speed; do they, mounted upon a chastened Pegasus,1 gallop into the New Year, equipped cap a pie2 with a new shining armour of resolutions? We venture, with an esquire’s modesty, to offer them a stout resolution to buckle on. It is that they should harden their hearts; that they should have a little less charity, a little less tenderness and sympathy and desire to help the weak. For to such extremes has their tenderness carried them that it really would seem that they cannot turn aside from a single bad book. We would not complain if they were content, as it were, to administer first-aid, and to pass on. But is it necessary to expend the whole force of their energy, their enthusiasm, their ability in proving that the bad book is the book that matters? Pour oil into its wounds, throw a cloak over it, set it upon an ass – that we could understand and applaud. But our gallant critics are not content until they have proved that Mr. Snuppock in his ‘Gambols and Gambits’ has produced a first book that Dostoevsky would have been proud to sign his name to, a great book, a book that once read will be forgotten never by man or woman, a book that leaves our literature richer than it found it . . . . a masterpiece by a master. Perchance they imagine Mr. Snuppock is crushed to earth by the badness of his book. He knows, he feels it all. And yet, such as it is, he cannot but offer it upon the altar of literature as his pathetic wretched little gift (or his immense hideous overpowering bunch in execrable taste, more likely) to lie among the proud bouquets and the heavy garlands. The critics’ hearts are wrung at the sight. The pathos of it, the high courage, the naive simplicity of Mr. Snuppock, to think it worthy of any kind of publication! Come then, here is a chance for lifting a man to high heaven. Are not these books the very books to single out and praise, royally, lavishly, without question? Here are poems that reek of sentimentality, here is a costume novel, bombast and blarney, that we have read a hundred times, here are humorous essays whose humour lies too deep for tears,3 and a study so boring that we simply cannot hold it open. Alack the day! What poor rubbish is this! Let us be very tender, very pitiful. Nay, let us do more. Why stop at kindness? Crowns are cheap. As for the good books, the books that are written by honest writers, men and women of talent, sincere artists, or a genius even – surely they can afford to look after themselves. If they are good, they are bound to be recognized sooner or later. We are content to ignore them, to leave them to Time.’
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But perhaps it is too much to ask of these gentle hearts that they should steel themselves.
Notes Text: Athenaeum, 4713, 27 August 1920, p. 261. Unsigned leader. 1. In Greek mythology, the winged horse of the gods. 2. From head to toe. 3. An ironic reference to the last lines of William Wordsworth’s ‘Ode on the Intimations of Immortality: ‘To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’
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Index of First Lines of Poems and Songs
A beam of light was shaken out of the sky, 129 A doctor who came from Jamaica, 123 A gipsy’s camp was in the copse, 76 A gulf of silence separates us from each other, 109 Across the red sky two birds flying, 110 After all the rain, the sun, 38 Ah! never more again, 32 All through the Winter afternoon, 67 Almighty Father of all and Most Celestial Giver, 121 And again the flowers are come, 127 And Mr Wells has got a play upon the English stage, 90 And so she lay upon her bed, 88 And which do I love most my dear, 63 At break of day the Summer sun, 64 Babies must not eat the coal, 48 Baby Babbles – only one –, 47 Breath and bosom aflame, 79 But a tiny ring of gold, 134 But Ah! before he came, 97 But then there comes that moment rare, 102 By all the laws of the M. & P., 133 By my bed, on a little round table, 107 Cabbage Tree, Cabbage Tree – what is the matter –, 47 Come, let us all sing very high, 51 Countess Julia rowed over the Rhine, 114 Dark dark the leaves of the camellia tree, 88 Darling Heart if you would make me, 131 Day took off her azure mantle, 12 Deafening roar of the ocean, 67 Dear friend, when back to Canada you go, 23 740
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index of first lines of poems and songs
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Dear Half-past-six you know, 42 Dear little book, farewell, 20 Diamonds are for grown up ladies, 25 Dim mist of a fog-bound day . . ., 61 Evening is come, 10 Fair Water Nymph, I pray of you, 28 Fight on, weary pilgrims, fight, 16 Floryan sits in the black chintz chair, 74 For me, O love, thine eyes like stars are shining, 15 From the other side of the world, 74 From the towering, opal globes in the street, 113 Granny taught us how to make them, 42 Grant me the moment, the lovely moment, 127 Half-Past-Six and I were talking, 54 He sat by his attic window, 7 He sat by his attic window (2), 8 Heavens above! here’s an old tie of yours –, 84 Her little hot room looked over the bay, 103 Here in the sunlight wild I lie, 27 Hinemoa, Tui, Maina, 40 How I love to wake in the morning, 33 How we have spoken of Pan together, 60 I am quite happy for you see, 60 I am sitting in the darkness, 18 I blow across the stagnant world, 72 I climbed up the karaka tree, 108 I constantly am hearing, 26 I could find no rest, 36 ‘I get on best with women’, 121 I have a little garden plot, 35 I ran to the forest for shelter, 109 I saw a tiny God, 101 I seem to spend half my life arriving at strange hotels –, 120 I will think no more of the sea!, 84 I wish I had not got a cold, 48 If you have never been a girl, 21 If you have never been a girl (2), 55 In an opal dream cave I found a fairy, 82 In the church, with folded hands she sits, 66
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index of first lines of poems and songs
In the middle of our porridge plates, 105 In the profoundest Ocean, 77 In the students’ room the plain and simple beds, 24 In the very early morning, 80 In the wide bed, 135 Into the world you sent her, mother, 79 Is love a light for me? A steady light, 128 ‘It is cold outside, you will need a coat –, 68 It was Mr Lun’s ‘At Home’ day, 45 Last night for the first time since you were dead, 96 Last night for the first time since you were dead (2), 96 Life is hard, 20 Little star, little star, 44 Lo I am standing the test, 32 London London I know what I shall do, 31 Love! Love! Your tenderness, 125 Lovest thou me, or lovest me not, 14 Most merciful God, 93 My Babbles has a nasty knack, 39 My bird, my darling, 134 My darling Anne, 124 My lady sits and sings, 9 Now folds the Tree of Day its perfect flowers, 125 Now I am a plant, a weed, 112 Now it is Loneliness who comes at night, 76 Now the Dustman’s reached our door, 52 Now this is the story of Olaf, 57 Now’s the time when children’s noses, 59 Nuts, 86 O, a Queen came to visit our country, 19 O Flower of Youth!, 36 (O little white feet of mine), 50 O the beauty, O the grandeur of the sea, 12 O, the old inkstand on the table stays, 7 Oh, valley of waving broom, 34 One dreadful day, you hurried in, 21 Our quarrel seemed a giant thing, 70 Out here it is the Summer time, 30 Out in the fog stained, mud stained street they stand, 70 Out in the garden, 113
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index of first lines of poems and songs
743
Out to the glow of the sunset, brother, 87 Outside is the roar of London town, 25 Outside the sky is light with stars, 98 Ping Pong, thy charms have captured ladies fair, 17 Playing in the fire and twilight together, 126 Rain and wind, and wind and rain, 46 Red as the wine of forgotten ages, 72 Said the snail, 116 Shadow children, thin and small, 56 She handed me a gay bouquet, 129 She has thrown me the knotted flax, 89 She is little and grey, 120 Since leaving New Zealand, 16 Sing a song of men’s pyjamas, 38 Sleep on, little one, 17 Sleeping together . . . how tired you were! . . ., 69 So that mysterious mother, faint with sleep, 114 Some one came to me and said, 130 Strange flower, half opened, scarlet, 89 That deaf old man!, 94 The baby in the looking glass, 55 The branches of the lilac tree, 66 The candle is a fairy house, 52 The clock is always going round, 41 The Cupid child tired of the winter day, 59 The fields are snowbound no longer, 78 The further the little girl leaped and ran, 99 The gulls are mad-in-love with the river, 78 The Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child, 49 The little boy went to sleep in the car, 24 The man in the room next to mine, 119 The pillar box is fat and red, 43 The Sea called – I lay on the rocks and said:, 82 The shades of night had fallen fast, 6 The sunlight shone in golden beams, 24 The world began with music, 13 The world is beautiful tonight, 77 There is a solemn wind to-night, 113 There was a child once, 86 There was a man lived quite near us, 106
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index of first lines of poems and songs
These be two, 93 This is Angelica, 35 This is just a little song, 30 This is my world, this room of mine, 22 To and fro, to and fro, 45 To the little, pitiful God I make my prayer, 81 To those who can understand her, 25 Toujours fatiguée, Madame?, 95 Twenty to twelve, says our old clock, 95 Underneath the cherry trees, 104 We sang ‘Up In the Cherry Tree’, 54 We sat in front of the fire, 106 We sat on the top of the cliff, 118 We started speaking, 92 We stood in the veg’table garden, 53 We were so hungry, he and I, 63 What a day to be born!, 117 What thing, more beautiful, more fair, 14 What, think you, causes me truest joy, 23 When her last breath was taken, 113 When I was quite a little child, 41 When my birthday was coming, 105 When shall I tell you it, 19 When the shadows of evening are falling, 137 When the two women in white, 119 When we were charming Backfisch, 122 White, white in the milky night, 110 Winter without, but in the curtained room, 64 Writes Dorothy, 91 You ask me for a picture of my room, 62
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General Index
Agate, James E., Responsibility, 558–60 Allen, Grant, 384–5 Alpers, Antony, xxii, 92n, 201n, 382n, 401n Andersen, Hans Christian, ‘The Red Shoes’, 51n Anderson, Farquar Campbell, 106n Ashford, Daisy, 427 The Young Visiters, or Mr Salteena’s Plan, 469–70 Daisy Ashford: Her Book, 634–6 Asquith, Margot, 737 Athenaeum, xxiii, xxv, 145, 425–6, 668, 711n Attwell, Mabel Lucie, 3 Aumonier, Stacy, One After Another, 608–9 Austen-Leigh, Mary Augusta, Personal Aspects of Jane Austen, 698–700 Austin, Alfred, 389–90, 392n Bagnold, Enid, The Happy Foreigner, 630–1 Baker, Ida, 35n, 38n, 51n, 69n, 70n, 76n, 77n, 80n, 82n, 84n, 86n, 92n, 105n, 106n, 107n, 108n, 109n, 110n, 412n; see also Moore, Lesley Bandol, France, 98n Barker, Dalgairns Arundel, The Great Leviathan, 628–30 Beauchamp, Charlotte Mary (‘Chaddie’, sister to KM), 26n Beauchamp, Leslie Heron (‘L.H.B.’, brother to KM), 3, 4, 88n, 96, 104, 109n, 110n
Beauchamp, Vera Margaret (sister to KM), xxii, 26n, 62n Bendall, Edith, 44n Benjamin, René, Le Major Pipe et son Père, 440–2 Bennett, Arnold, 90, 90n, 390–1, 392n, 410n, 461, 462n, 526n, 709 Benson, E. F. Queen Lucia, 650–1 The Countess of Lowndes Square, and other Stories, 694–8 Benson, Stella, Living Alone, 529–32 Beresford, J. D., An Imperfect Mother, 584–7 Birmingham, George, Inisheeny, 683–7 Blake, William, 4, 478, 480n Book of Common Prayer, 96n Borrow, George, 61n Brendon, Anthony, The Bonfire, 482–3 Bretherton, R. H., Two Sisters, 584–7 Brighouse, Harold, The Marbeck Inn, 590–3 Broughton, Rhoda, A Fool in Her Folly, 651–3 Brown, Ivor, Lighting-up Time, 590–3 Browning, Robert, 134n Bryher, Winifred, Development, 638–40 Burgin, G. B., Pilgrims of Circumstances, 578–80 Burke, Thomas, Out and About, 463–4 Burr, Jane, The Passionate Spectator, 676–80 Butler, Samuel, 473–4 Calthrop, Dion Clayton, A Bit at a Time, 582–4
745
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746
general index
Cannan, Gilbert Pink Roses, 464–6 Time and Eternity, 517–20 Carroll, Lewis, Through the LookingGlass, 97n Carswell, Catherine, Open the Door, 619–20 cello, 22, 138n Chaplin, Charlie, 734 Charnwood, Dorothea Mary Roby Thorpe, The Dean, 477 Chekhov see Tchehov Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 388, 392n childhood, 3, 417, 455–6, 483, 549, 687–91 Clarke, Isabel, Lady Trent’s Daughter, 658–9 Conrad, Joseph, 427, 462 The Arrow of Gold, 492–5 The Rescue, 622–5 Couperus, Louis Old People and the Things That Pass, 544–7 The Later Life. — The Twilight of the Souls. — Doctor Adriaan, 616–18 Creighton, Basil, The Amorous Cheat, 667–9 Crippen, Dr Hawley Harvey, 383–4 Cummins, Geraldine Dorothy, The Land They Loved, 491–2 Curnow, Allen, 4 Dane, Clemence (pseudonym of Winifred Ashton), Legend, 540–4 Dawson-Scott, Catherine Amy, The Headland, 676–80 De Morgan, William, The Old Madhouse, 502–5 De Vere Stacpoole, Henry, A Man of the Islands, 694–8 Dehan, Richard (pseudonym of Clotilde Graves), A Sailor’s Home, 488–9 Dickens, Charles, 397, 455 Dickinson, Emily, 4 Doré, Gustave, 22, 482n Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 143, 147–9, 306–78 An Honest Thief, and Other Stories, 535–7
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Dowson, Ernest, 4 Dudeney, Alice, Manhood End, 691–4 Easton, Dorothy, The Golden Bird, 620–2 Edwards, A., Herbage, Paris Through an Attic, 439–40 Eliot, George, 426 Eliot, T. S., 4 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 61n epistolary novel (parody of), 407–10 Ervine, St. John, The Foolish Lovers, 628–30 Evans, Howel, Crabtree House, 489–90 Fairbanks, Douglas, 734–5 Fergusson, J. D., xxv, 124n, 728 Forster, E. M., 410, 427, 412n The Story of the Siren, 646–8 Foster, Stephen, 32n Frankau, Gilbert, Peter Jackson, 571–4 Futabatei, Shimei, 603–4 Fyfe, William Hamilton, The Widow’s Cruse, 683–7 Galsworthy, John, 622, 633 In Chancery, 703–4 Moods, Songs and Doggerels, 429–30 Saint’s Progress, 522–6 To Let, 719–22 Gaunt, Mary, The Surrender, and Other Happenings, 582–4 George, Walter Lionel Blind Alley, 471–3 Caliban, 662–4 Gerhardi, William, Futility, 725–6 Gibbs, Philip, Back to Life, 700–3 Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson, 393–5 Glyn, Elinor, 384–5 Goldring, Douglas, The Black Curtain, 587–8 Goodwin, Ernest, The Caravan Man, 480 Goodyear, Frederick, xxv, 87, 728 Hamilton, Mary Agnes Full Circle, 566–7 The Last Fortnight, 676–80 Hamsun, Knut, Growth of the Soil, 613–14
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general index Hanson, Clare, xxiv–xxv, 410n Hardy, Thomas, 4 Hare, Kenneth, The Green Fields, 431 Harper, Barbara, 6–7 Harwood, Harold Marsh, A Grain of Mustard Seed, 648–9 Hastings, Beatrice, xxiv, 381, 421 Hay, William, The Escape of Sir William Heans, 486–8 Heanley, Charlotte Elizabeth, The Granite Hills, 667–9 Heine, Heinrich, 114–16, 398 Herbert, Alan Patrick, The House by the River, 669–72 Hergesheimer, Joseph Gold and Iron, 568 Java Head, 475–7 Linda Condon, 636–8 Herrick, Robert, 60n Hewlett, Maurice, The Outlaw, 552–5 Hinemoa and Tutanekai (Maori legend), 40n Holme, Constance, The Splendid Fairing, 526–9 Housman, Laurence, 393–5 Hudson, Stephen (pseudonym of Sydney Schiff), Richard Kurt, 526–9 Huxley, Aldous, xxvi Hyacinthus, 127n Ibáñez, Vicente Blasco, The Four Horsemen, 483–6 Jerome, Jerome K., All Roads Lead to Calvary, 560–2 John, Gospel of, 445n Johnston, Sir Harry, The GayDombeys, 455–7 Jones, Emily Beatrix Coursolles, Quiet Interior, 691–4 Kaye-Smith, Sheila Green Apple Harvest, 656–8 Tamarisk Town, 505–7 Kennedy, Bart, 388, 391n Konstantin, Leopoldine, 385–7 Koteliansky, S. S., xxiii–xxiv, xxvi, 142–5, 147–8, 149n, 150n, 181n, 205n, 206, 210, 212, 215, 218, 224, 227, 230, 233, 236, 239, 242, 257, 262n, 306n
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747
Kubasiewicz, Dr Mirosława, xxii, xxiv, 194n, 195–6n Kuprin, Alexander, xxiii, 142, 144–5 ‘Captain Ribnikov’, 151–82 ‘The Garnet Bracelet’, 550–2 Lawrence, D. H., xxiii, 145, 149n, 181n, 427, 620n, 719n Aaron’s Rod, xxvi, 723–6, 727 The Lost Girl, 708–11 Women in Love, 112n, 714–19 Le Gallienne, Richard, 389, 392n Leadbitter, Eric, Shepherd’s Warning, 569–71 limericks, 123 London, Jack, Island Tales, 653–4 Looe, Cornwall, 119n Lowndes, Marie Adelaide Belloc, The Lonely House, 606–8 Lucas, Edward Verrall, Verena in the Midst, 659–61 Luke, Gospel of, 96n, 133n, 599n Lunn, Arnold, Loose Ends, 460–2 Lynch, John Gilbert Bohun Forgotten Realms, 687–91 The Tender Conscience, 497–9 Macaulay, Rose Potterism, 612 What Not, 447–50 McKenna, Stephen, Lady Lilith, 683–7 Mackenzie, Compton Poor Relations, 517–20 The Vanity Girl, 596–8 Mcnaughtan, Sarah Broom, My War Experiences in Two Continents, 452–5 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 27n Mahupuku, Maata, 15n, 36n Mais, Stuart Petre Brodie Colour Blind, 694–8 Uncle Lionel, 577–8 Malet, Lucas, The Tall Villa, 614–15 Mander, Jane, The Story of a New Zealand River, 625–8 Mansfield, Katherine (KM) APHORISMS
‘Bites from the Apple’, 416–21 ESSAYS
‘Seriousness in Art’, 732–4 ‘Stop Press Biography’, 735–7
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748
general index
Mansfield, Katherine (KM) (cont.) ‘The Critics’ New Year’, 737–9 ‘The Meaning of Rhythm’, 729–32 ‘The Stars in Their Courses’, 734–5 PARODIES AND PASTICHES
‘A Paper Chase’, 383–4 ‘A P.S.A.’, 387–92 ‘Along the Gray’s Inn Road’, 392–3 ‘Bavarian Babies’, 382 ‘Jack & Jill Attend the Theatre’, 402–4 ‘Love Cycle’, 393–5 ‘North American Chiefs’, 384–5 ‘Pastiche. At the Club’, 395–7 ‘Pastiche. Fragments’, 410–12 ‘Pastiche. Green Goggles’, 399–401 ‘Pastiche. Miss Elizabeth Smith’, 412–13 ‘Pastiche. Puzzle: Find the Book’, 397–9 ‘Perambulations’, 413–15 ‘“Sumurun”: An Impression of Leopoldine Konstantin’, 385–7 ‘Sunday Lunch’, 404–7 ‘Virginia’s Journal’, 407–10 POEMS
‘A Common Ballad’, 25–6 ‘Across the Red Sky’, 110 ‘A Day in Bed’, 48–9 ‘A Fairy Tale’, 57–9 ‘A Few Rules for Beginners’, 48 ‘A Fine Day’, 38 ‘A Fragment’, 14 ‘A gipsy’s camp was in the copse’, 75–6 ‘A Joyful Song of Five!’, 51 ‘A Little Boy’s Dream’, 45–6 ‘A Little Girl’s Prayer’, 127–8 ‘And Mr Wells’, 90 ‘An Escapade Undertaken by A Green Raspberry, & A Kidney Bean’, 6–7 ‘A New Hymn’, 38–9 ‘A Quarrel’, 53 ‘Arrivée’, 120 ‘A Sad Truth’, 63–4 ‘A Song for Our Real Children’, 54 ‘A Song of Summer’, 64 ‘Autumn Song’, 59 ‘Ave’, 32 ‘A Version from Heine’, 114–16
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‘A Young Ladies Version of The Cards’, 25 ‘Battle Hymn’, 16 ‘Butterflies’, 105 ‘By all the laws of the M. & P’, 133 ‘Camomile Tea’, 98–9 ‘Caution’, 116 ‘Covering Wings’, 125–6 ‘Dame Seule’, 120–1 ‘Dear friend’, 23 ‘Et Après’, 133 ‘Evening’, 10–12 ‘Evening Song of the Thoughtful Child’, 56–7 ‘Fairy Tale’, 125 ‘Farewell’, 20 ‘Firelight’, 126 ‘Florian nachdenklich’, 74 ‘Friendship’, 7–8 ‘Friendship’, 122–3 ‘Friendship (2)’, 8–9 ‘Grown Up Talks’, 54–5 ‘He wrote’, 131–2 ‘Hope’, 20–1 ‘I am quite happy for you to see’, 60 ‘I constantly am hearing’, 26–7 ‘I could find no rest’, 36–7 ‘I have a little garden plot’, 35 ‘In the Church’, 66 ‘In the Darkness’, 18–19 ‘In the Rangitaiki Valley’, 34–5 ‘In the Tropics’, 33–4 ‘Jangling Memory’, 84 ‘Last night for the first time since you were dead’, 96–7 ‘Little Brother’s Secret’, 105–6 ‘Little Brother’s Story’, 106–7 ‘Lo I am standing the test’, 32–3 ‘London London I know what I shall do’, 31 ‘Loneliness’, 76 ‘Love’s Entreaty’, 14 ‘Malade’, 119 ‘Men and Women’, 121–2 ‘Mirabelle’, 79 ‘Most merciful God’, 93–4 ‘Music’, 13 ‘Night’, 14–15 ‘Night-Scented Stock’, 110–12 ‘Now I am a Plant, a Weed’, 112 ‘October (To V.M.B.)’, 61–2
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general index ‘Old-Fashioned Widow’s Song’, 129 ‘On a Young Lady’s Sixth Anniversary’, 47 ‘One Day’, 21 ‘On the Sea Shore’, 67 ‘Opposites’, 49–50 ‘Out here it is the Summer time’, 30–1 ‘Out in the Garden’, 113 ‘Out to the glow of the sunset, brother’, 87–8 ‘Pic-Nic’, 119–20 ‘Red as the wine of forgotten ages’, 72 ‘Revelation’, 67–8 ‘Sanary’, 103–4 ‘Scarlet Tulips’, 89 ‘Sea’, 82 ‘Sea Song’, 84–5 ‘Secret Flowers’, 128–9 ‘She has thrown me the knotted flax’, 89–90 ‘Sleeping Together’, 69–70 ‘Song by the Window Before Bed’, 44 ‘Song of Karen the Dancing Child’, 50–1 ‘Song of the Camellia Blossoms’, 88 ‘Song of the Little White Girl’, 47 ‘Sorrowing Love’, 127 ‘So that mysterious mother, faint with sleep’, 114 ‘Spring Wind in London’, 72–3 ‘Stock’, 110 ‘Strawberries and the Sailing Ship’, 118–19 ‘Sunset’, 129–30 ‘Tedious Brief Adventure of K.M.’, 123 ‘The Arabian Shawl’, 68–9 ‘The Awakening River’, 77–8 ‘The Bath Baby’, 28–30 ‘The Birthday Present’, 42–3 ‘The Black Monkey’, 39–40 ‘The Butterfly’, 117–18 ‘The Candle’, 107–8 ‘The Candle Fairy’, 52 ‘The Chief’s Bombay Tiger’, 16–17 ‘The [. . .] Child of the Sea’, 27–8 ‘The Clock’, 41–2 ‘The Deaf House Agent’, 94 ‘The Earth-Child in the Grass’, 80
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‘The Family’, 40 ‘The Funeral’, 45 ‘The Grandmother’, 104 ‘The Gulf’, 109–10 ‘The Last Lover’, 88–9 ‘The Last Thing’, 52–3 ‘The Letter’, 42 ‘The Lilac Tree’, 66–7 ‘The little boy’, 24 ‘The Lonesome Child’, 55–6 ‘The Man with the Wooden Leg’, 106 ‘The Meeting’, 92 ‘The New Husband’, 130–1 ‘The Old Inkstand’, 7 ‘The Opal Dream Cave’, 82 ‘The Pillar Box’, 43–4 ‘The Quarrel (2)’, 70 ‘There is a solemn wind tonight’, 113 ‘There was a Child Once’, 86 ‘The Ring’, 134 ‘The Sea’, 12 ‘The Sea-Child’, 79–80 ‘These be two countrywomen’, 93 ‘The Secret’, 77 ‘The Song of My Lady’, 9–10 ‘The Springtime’, 19 ‘The Storm’, 109 ‘The Students’ Room’, 24 ‘The sunlight shone in golden beams’, 24–5 ‘The Three Monarchs’, 12–13 ‘The Town Between the Hills’, 99–100 ‘The Trio’, 70–2 ‘The Winter Fire’, 64–5 ‘The world is beautiful tonight’, 76–7 ‘The Wounded Bird’, 135–6 ‘This is just a little song’, 30 ‘This is my world, this room of mine’, 22 ‘To a Little Child’, 17–18 ‘To Anne Estelle Rice’, 124–5 ‘To God the Father’, 81 ‘To Grace’, 19–20 ‘To L.H.B.’, 96 ‘To M’, 15 ‘To Pan’, 60–1 ‘To Ping Pong by J.E.C.’, 17 ‘To Stanislaw Wyspianski’, 74–5
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750
general index
Mansfield, Katherine (KM) (cont.) ‘To those who can understand her’, 25 ‘Toujours fatiguée, Madame?’, 95 ‘Tragedy’, 113–14 ‘Twenty to twelve, says our old clock’, 95 ‘Verses of Little Q’, 21 ‘Verses Writ in a Foreign Bed’, 121 ‘Very Early Spring’, 78 ‘Vignette’, 35–6 ‘Villa Pauline’, 97–8 ‘Voices of the Air!’, 102–3 ‘Waves’, 101–2 ‘What, think you, causes me truest Joy’, 23 ‘When I was a Bird’, 108–9 ‘When I was little’, 41 ‘Where did you get that hat?’, 86–7 ‘Why Love is Blind’, 59–60 ‘Widow’s Song’, 129 ‘William (P.G.) is very well’, 91–2 ‘Winter Bird’, 134–5 ‘Winter Song’, 46 ‘Words for T.W.T.’, 63 ‘You ask me for a picture of my room’, 62–3 ‘Youth’, 36 ‘You won’t understand this – ’cause you’re a Boy’, 55 REVIEWS
‘Aaron’s Rod’, 727 ‘A Backward Glance’, 492–5 ‘A Batch of Five’, 683–7 ‘A Bouquet’, 464–6 ‘A Child and Her Note-Book’, 469–70 ‘A Citizen of the Sea’, 450–2 ‘A Collection of Short Stories’, 550–2 ‘A Dull Monster’, 662–4 ‘A Family Saga’, 719–22 ‘A Foreign Novel’, 544–7 ‘A Foreign Novel’, 640–1 ‘A Frenchman’s Englishman’, 440–2 ‘A Holiday Novel’, 644–6 ‘A Hymn to Youth’, 630–1 ‘A Japanese Novel’, 603–4 ‘A Landscape with Portraits’, 505–7 ‘Alms’, 590–3 ‘A Model Story’, 610–11
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‘Amusement’, 562–3 ‘An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry’, 436–7 ‘An Enigma’, 604–6 ‘An Exoticist’, 471–3 ‘An Imagined Judas’, 661–2 ‘Anodyne’, 489–90 ‘A Norwegian Novel’, 613–14 ‘A Novel of Suspense’, 486–8 ‘A Novel Without a Crisis’, 466–9 ‘A Party’, 577–8 ‘A Plea for Less Entertainment’, 520–2 ‘A “Poser”’, 491–2 ‘A Post-War and a Victorian Novel’, 547–50 ‘A Prize Novel’, 619–20 ‘A “Real” Book and an Unreal One’, 529–32 ‘A Revival’, 540–4 ‘A Sailor’s Home’, 488–9 ‘A Set of Four’, 694–8 ‘A Ship Comes into the Harbour’, 532–5 ‘A Short Story’, 473–5 ‘Ask No Questions’, 676–80 ‘A Springe to Catch Woodcocks’, 612 ‘A Standstill’, 522–6 ‘A Tragic Comedienne’, 599–602 ‘A Victorian Jungle’, 455–7 ‘A Witty Sentimentalist’, 655–6 ‘A Woman’s Book’, 598–9 ‘Butterflies’, 587–8 ‘Confession of a Fool’, 433–4 ‘Control and Enthusiasm’, 537–40 ‘Deader Than the Dodo’, 650–1 ‘Dea Ex Machina’, 509–11 ‘Degrees of Reality’, 648–9 ‘Dragonflies’, 556–8 ‘Echoes’, 614–15 ‘Elsie Lindtner’, 432–3 ‘Entertainment – and Otherwise’, 669–72 ‘Esther Waters Revisited’, 641–4 ‘Family Portraits’, 703–6 ‘First Novels’, 625–8 ‘Fishing as a Fine Art’, 666–7 ‘Flourisheth in Strange Places’, 480–2 ‘Friends and Foes’, 698–700 ‘Glancing Light’, 475–7
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general index ‘Hand Made’, 499–500 ‘Hearts Are Trumps’, 653–4 ‘Humour and Heaviness’, 517–20 ‘Hypertrophy’, 638–40 ‘Inarticulations’, 457–60 ‘Kensingtonia’, 589–90 ‘Letters’, 659–61 ‘Lions and Lambs’, 508–9 ‘Looking On’, 608–9 ‘Lu of the Ranges’, 437–8 ‘Moods, Songs and Doggerels’, 429–30 ‘More Notes on Tchehov’, 711–14 ‘Mr. Conrad’s New Novel’, 622–5 ‘Mr. De Morgan’s Last Book’, 502–5 ‘Mr. Mackenzie’s Treat’, 596–8 ‘Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Last Novel’, 593–5 ‘Mr. Walpole in the Nursery’, 495–7 ‘Mystery and Adventure’, 575–6 ‘My True Love Hath My Heart’, 580–2 ‘New Season’s Novels’, 667–9 ‘Observation Only’, 672–4 ‘Old Writers and New’, 691–4 ‘On the Road’, 578–80 ‘Orchestra and Solo’, 571–4 ‘Out and About’, 463–4 ‘Paris Through an Attic’, 439–40 ‘Portrait of a Child’, 563–6 ‘Portrait of a Little Lady’, 452–5 ‘Portraits and Passions’, 514–16 ‘Pour Toi, Patrie’, 443–4 ‘Pressed Flowers’, 595–6 ‘Promise’, 568 ‘Rather a Give-Away’, 634–6 ‘Sans Merci’, 497–9 ‘Savoir-Faire’, 658–9 ‘Sensitiveness’, 511–14 ‘Short Stories’, 582–4 ‘Simplicity’, 569–71 ‘Some Aspects of Dostoevsky’, 535–7 ‘Some New Thing’, 675–6 ‘Sussex, All Too Sussex’, 656–8 ‘The Books of the Small Souls’, 616–18 ‘The Caravan Man’, 480 ‘The Case of Mr. Newte’, 664–6 ‘The Cherry Orchard’, 631–4 ‘The Dean’, 477
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‘The Decay of Mr. D. H. Lawrence’, 708–11 ‘The Easy Path’, 566–7 ‘The Great Simplicity’, 483–6 ‘The Green Fields’, 431 ‘The Happy Family’, 434–6 ‘The Lost Girl’, 706–8 ‘The Luxurious Style’, 636–8 ‘The Magic Door’, 687–91 ‘The New Infancy’, 478–80 ‘The Nostalgia of Mr. D. H. Lawrence’, 714–19 ‘The Old and the New Hand’, 628–30 ‘The Plain and the Adorned’, 552–5 ‘The Public School Mixture’, 460–2 ‘The “Sex–Complex”’, 501–2 ‘The Silence is Broken’, 680–3 ‘The Stale and the Fresh’, 560–2 ‘The Triumph of Pan’, 430–1 ‘The Wider Way’, 574–5 ‘Three Approaches’, 526–9 ‘Three Women Novelists’, 444–7 ‘Throw Them Overboard!’, 646–8 ‘Two Modern Novels’, 584–7 ‘Two Novels’, 606–8 ‘Two Novels’, 700–3 ‘Two Novels of Worth’, 447–50 ‘Two Remarkable Novels’, 723–6 ‘Uncomfortable Words’, 482–3 ‘Victorian Elegance’, 651–3 ‘Wanted, A New Word’, 620–2 ‘Words – Words – Words’, 558–60 SONGS
‘Love’s Entreaty’, 137 ‘Night’, 137–8 TRANSLATIONS
A Letter of Anton Tchehov, 245–50 Anton Tchehov – Biographical Note, 250–4 Anton Tchehov – Biographical Note II, 254–7 ‘Captain Ribnikov’ (by Alexander Kuprin), 151–82 F. M. Dostoevsky’s Letters to His Wife Anna Gregorevna Dostoevsky, 347–78 Letters of Anton Tchehov, 201–6 Letters of Anton Tchehov II, 206–9 Letters of Anton Tchehov III, 210–12
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752
general index
Mansfield, Katherine (KM) (cont.) Letters of Anton Tchehov IV, 212–15 Letters of Anton Tchehov V, 215–18 Letters of Anton Tchehov VI, 218–24 Letters of Anton Tchehov VII, 224–6 Letters of Anton Tchehov VIII, 227–30 Letters of Anton Tchehov IX, 230–3 Letters of Anton Tchehov X, 233–6 Letters of Anton Tchehov XI, 236–9 Letters of Anton Tchehov XII, 239–42 Letters of Anton Tchehov XIII, 242–5 ‘M. Seguin’s Goat’ (by Alphonse Daudet), 196–201 ‘Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyev’ (by Leonid Andreyev), 264–304 The Creative History of ‘The Devils’ (‘The Possessed’) (by F. M. Dostoevsky, with a Foreword by N. I. Brodsky), 306–47 The Diary of Anton Tchehov, 257–64 ‘The Dream’ (by Leo Tolstoy), 304–6 The Judges (by Stanlisław Wyspian´ski), 182–96 Maori culture, 12n, 40n, 90n, 457 Margueritte, Paul, Pour toi, Patrie, 443–4 Mark, Gospel of, 434n, 726n Marshall, Archibald, The Clintons and Others, 582–4 Matthew, Gospel of, 239n, 415n, 599n, 737n Maugham, William Somerset, The Moon and Sixpence, 457–60 Mayne, Ethel Colburn, Blindman, 556–8 Maxwell, W. B. A Man and his Lesson, 509–11 A Remedy Against Sin, 589–90 Mazzinghi, Joseph, ‘The Wreath’, 72n Meredith, George, 61n
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Methley, Violet M., A Man’s Honour, 580–2 Michaelis, Karin, Elsie Lindtner, 432–3 Millin, Sarah Gertrude, The Dark River, 571–4 Monkhouse, Allan, True Love, 537–40 Morrell, Lady Ottoline, 112n, 143, 475n Morrison, Arthur, 393n Moore, George, Esther Waters, 641–4 Moore, Lesley (pseudonym for Ida Baker), 412n Moore, Thomas, 27n Mordaunt, Eleanor Lu of the Ranges, 437–8 New Wine in Old Bottles, 556–8 Mourant, Chris. xxiv, 381, 420–1 Murry, John Middleton (JMM), xxiii, xxiv, 4, 87n, 98n, 99n, 145, 195, 440n, 537n, 620n, 728, 732n, 737n and KM as book reviewer, 425–6, 442n, 444n, 711n, 719n, 726n as editor of KM’s writing, xix, 3, 35n, 38n, 44n, 93n, 94n, 103n, 105n, 109n, 110n, 129n, 131n, 142–3, 150n, 387n, 540n, 574n, 634n, 708n music hall, 87n Music of the Spheres, 13n Nesbit, E., 393–5 Neuberg, Victor, The Triumph of Pan, 430–1 New Age, xxiv, 381, 382n, 410n, 421n, 732n, 734n Newte, Horace W. C., The Extra Lady, 664–6 Niven, Frederick, A Tale That Is Told, 667–9 nursery rhymes, 4, 25n, 55n, 132n, 415n, 427, 565n, 726n occult wisdom, 77n Oldmeadow, Ernest, Coggin, 563–6 Orage, A. R., xxiv, 381, 401n, 410n, 421n, 732n O’Riordan, Conal, Adam of Dublin, 687–91
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general index Orton, William, relationship with KM, 86n Owen, Ashford (pseudonym of Anne Charlotte Ogle), A Lost Love, 595–6 Pain, Barry, The Death of Maurice, 575–6 Patrick, Diana (pseudonym of Desemen Newman Wilson), The Wider Way, 574–5 Peake, C. M. A., Eli of the Downs, 569–71 Penny, Fanny Emily Farr, Desire and Delight, 511–14 Petrovsky, Boris (pseudonym for KM), 4, 78n, 80n, 81n, 84n, 86n Phillips, David Graham, Susan Lenox, 508–9 Phillpotts, Eden, 392n Evander, 552–5 Storm in a Teacup, 499–500 Pickford, Mary, 734–5 Pickthall, Marmaduke , Sir Limpidus, 562–3 Poe, Edgar Allan, ‘The Raven’, 32n Prowse, R. O., 427–8 A Gift of the Dusk, 680–3 Queen’s College, London, xxii, 7, 11n, 22n, 23n, 26n, 38n, 138n Rhythm, xxv, 83, 124, 142, 404n, 425–6, 428, 730, 732n, 734n rhythm, 144, 729–32 Rice, Anne Estelle, xxv, 124, 728 Richardson, Dorothy, 426, 480n, 526n Interim, 556–8 The Tunnel, 444–7 Rickard, Jessie Louisa, The House of Courage, 444–7 Rider Haggard, Henry, The Ancient Allan, 575–6 Ridge, William Pett, Just Open, 694–8 Rintoul, Ida S., 49n Robins, Elizabeth, The Mills of the Gods, 620–2 Ruddick, Marion, 23n Russian culture, Anglophone reception of, 144, 146–7
KIMBER & SMITH PRINT (M3440) (G).indd 753
753
Sackville-West, Vita, Heritage, 466–9 Sadler, Michael, xxv, 728 Sanary, France, 104 Sedgwick, Anne Douglas, The Third Window, 610–11 Selver, P., An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry, 436–7 Seymour, Beatrice Kean, Invisible Tides, 560–2 Shakespeare, William, 126, 223n, 425, 578n, 606n, 612n, 630n, 664n, 691n, 703n, 719n, 726n Shanks, Edward, The People of the Ruins, 683–7 Sheppard, Alfred Tresidder, The Autobiography of Judas Iscariot, 661–2 Sinclair, May Mary Olivier: A Life, 478–80 The Romantic, 676–80 Skelton, Margaret, The Book of Youth, 598–9 Snaith, John Collis Love Lane, 480–2 The Adventurous Lady, 683–7 Sobieniowski, Floryan, xxiv, 74n, 75n Stanley, Elizabeth (pseudonym for KM), 4, 125n, 126n, 127n, 128n, 129n, 130n, 131n, 132n, 133n Stein, Gertrude, Three Lives, 675–6 Stern, Gladys Bronwyn Children of No Man’s Land, 537–40 Larry Munro, 669–72 Stevenson, George, Benjy, 547–50 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 3 Stone, Christopher, The Valley of Indecision, 700–3 Strindberg, August, 426 Confession of a Fool, 433–4 Swinnerton, Frank September, 514–16 The Happy Family, 434–6 Symonds, Margaret, A Child of the Alps, 625–8 Synge, John Millington, The Well of the Saints, 402–4 Tchehov, Anton, xxiii–xxiv, 142, 143, 145–6, 714n PLAYS
The Bear, 218
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754
general index
Vachell, Horace Annesley, The Fourth Dimension, 669–72 von Armin, Elizabeth, Christopher and Columbus, 447–50
Ward, Mrs. Humphrey (Mary Augusta Ward) Cousin Philip, 547–50 Harvest, 593–5 Weigall, Arthur, Madeline of the Desert, 606–8 Wells, H. G., 90, 90n, 391, 392n Wesley, Charles, 53n Weyman, Stanley, The Great House, 526–9 Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 703–6 Wilde, Oscar, 4, 421n Willcocks, Mary Patricia, The Sleeping Partner, 501–2 Wilson, Romer, If All These Young Men, 529–32 Wood, Clara Finetta, 7n Woolf, Leonard, xxiii, 174 Woolf, Virginia, xxiii, xxv, 72n, 147, 150n, 174, 223n, 410n, 447, 526n, 708n ‘Kew Gardens’, 427, 473–5 Night and Day, 532–5, 599–602 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 4, 91–2n, 601 Wordsworth, William, 91, 91–2n, 739n Worth, Patience (Pearl Curran), Hope Trueblood, 444–7 Wyspian´ski, Stanisław, xxiv, 74–5, 75n, 81n The Judges, 182–96
Walpole, Hugh Jeremy, 495–7 The Captives, 672–4
Young, Francis Brett The Tragic Bride, 666–7 The Young Physician, 520–2
Tchehov, Anton (cont.) The Cherry Orchard, xxv, 631–4, 649 The Seagull, 262n Uncle Vanya, 236n STORIES
‘About Love’, 621 ‘A Trifle from Life’, 621 The Bet and Other Stories, xxiii ‘The Lady with the Dog’, 621 The Schoolmistress and Other Stories, 711–14 Tennyson, Alfred, 4, 18 theosophy, 77n Tolstoy, Leo, xxvi, 215n, 217, 258, 260, 262 ‘The Dream’, xxiv, 147, 304–6 Tomlinson, Henry Major, Old Junk, 450–2 Trowell, Arnold, 138n Trowell, Garnet, 4, 64n, 69n, 70n Trowell, Thomas Wilberforce, 63n tuberculosis, 119, 136n, 223n, 428, 683n Tynan, Katherine, 393–5 Undset, Sigrid, Jenny, 640–1
KIMBER & SMITH PRINT (M3440) (G).indd 754
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KIMBER & SMITH PRINT (M3440) (G).indd 755
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KIMBER & SMITH PRINT (M3440) (G).indd 756
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