Fiction
BY WILLIAM PLOMER No doubt there are reasons why members of the theatrical profession have in various times and places been obliged to occupy the position of a caste, even a low caste,• in society. Perhaps one of the reasons is that people whose main work in life is to simulate emotion in such a- way as to excite public admiration are in danger of carrying their self-consciousness and narcissism into private life, and of growing shallow and incapable of reserve or of distinguishing between what is true and what is false. An invisible audience haunts the profes- sional charmer, and an ear for ever 'on the alert for applause, for an easy laugh or gasp of surprise, may come to miss alto- gether the significant undertones of which the symphony of life is so laigely composed. Those who secretly cherish a caste-consciousness about actors and actresses cannot be numerous in England at the present day, but they will gloat over the leading lady in The Stream ; they will find her almost an Untouchable. But if they have any heart at all they will find her pitiable as well as unpleasant. That, she should be made to appear both at once reflects great credit on her creator.
Mrs. Beatrice Mayor has written plays, but The Stream is her first novel. It is told in the first person by a young woman, an actress definitely of the second rate; who -is -simply pre- vented by her very nature from making anything of the best that life offers her ; who is so taken up with things that don't matter that she not only loses the power to appreciate those that do, but actually helps to bring about the death of the only fine man she knows. The other characters are deftly suggested ; only this one is allowed to display at length the shoddiness that is her soul. But the insight afforded to the reader calls for no attitude of superiority or contempt ; it is not for him to thank God that he is not as others are ; it is not for him to look down on this unfortunate woman as an out- caste. Her levity and inconsequence, her triviality and weakness, are only the results of a tendency that lurks in every individual and happens to dominate this one. The novel is not one that depends on an elaborate story, but is none the less excellent for that. It is a novel of a situation, and it shows exactly how and why one person failed to live up to that situation. There is one objection that could be made to this admirable character-study. The actress is supposed to be writing the book as an account of herself for a friend. But, being the sort of person she was, could she ever have seen herself so clearly as Mrs. Mayor sees her ? " Rachel," says one of her friends, " do you realize that perhaps every- thing is utterly, utterly different from what we think it is ? " But a Rachel has no time to realize it—she is just off to lunch . with Mrs. Corndrake ; Phil will take her there in his car ; and during luncheon they will discuss Ventley's play.
Miss Helen Waddell, on the other hand, takes us straight into a world of people who feel deeply and behave with dignity, a world in which the volcanic force of , romantic love surges under the tremendous authority of the Christian tradition. It is seldotn that the dust-jacket of a novel is innocent of any recommendation whatsoever, but certainly the author of The Wandering Scholars needs none. It goes without saying that there is nothing quaint in her view of the early Middle Ages. Her characters move in a keen intellectual atmosphere per- vaded with the idea of God and radiant with a morning fresh- ness. From her special angle of knowledge and imagination Miss Waddell is able to give a new and lyrical lease of life to the old story of Abelard and Heloise : " Do you think (cries Heloise) I have not read what the Fathers have said about women,--what men -have said about women— since the beginning of the world ? Do you think it is easy for a woman to read over and oveil again that she is a Man's 'perdition ? Oh, my love, were there ever two great lovers, but they ended :in sorrow ? " - - Sailing Sailing Swiftly is that rare thing, an exuberant frolic that is somehow true to life. Mr. Jack Yeats writes exactly as he draws, and as the illustrations to this book are perfect, it must be admitted that the book itself is, in its way, perfect as well. It immediately puts one in mind of those Victorian pastiches in which Mr. Sicked has excelled, and to hazard a guess that Mr. Sickert might enjoy it is to give a hint as to its quality. ' It is the liveliest comedy, racy, humor- ous, ingenious, and shot through with an appropriate Irish melancholy. With a quarter or less of the bulk, and three times or more of the liveliness and skill, it is comparable in scope to many a stodgy chronicle novel. It begins in the late 'sixties and ends somewhere near the present day, rushing gaily, or rather sailing swiftly, through the lives of a variety of characters. When a writer is so spirited, he has to be forgiven for taking no step that is not a short cut—and not Only forgiven but admired. " At five minutes past three Miss Dunaven came nicely along, putting one foot in front of the other, as if she could keep on doing it for ever . . ." How many of our more ponderous novelists could describe a young woman's gait more neatly, and with the gait the young woman herself ? It is not for nothing that Mr. Yeats has learnt to draw.
Mr. Gathorne-Hardy's new book consists of three carefully- written " histories." It is written in a cool and careful style. First there is a narrative of a voyage to Northern Labrador, which contains descriptions as good as this : " Many of the bergs were crumbling in the warm sun ; the captain, for our benefit, steered the ship close to one of these. Fragments were falling with a sound as of distant guns. The sea was calm, but what little swell there was soared in grey foam up blue chimneys of the ice, and crowned the white cliffs with smoke."
Then at the end of the book there is an allegorical " excursion to regions of unexperience," which seems less successful, perhaps because its machinery of grottoes and demon lovers belongs to a convention associable with Edgar Allan Poe and no longer enthralling. But in between we have a semi- fictional account of life in an English village. This has an original flavour and certainly bears out the author's observa- tion that " no traveller can discover anything so strange as what is to be 'seen about him in his native land." Perhaps we may hope that Mr. Gathorrte-Hardy will choose to continue his travels in the village of Stanton Prignell. Approaching it from an angle of his own, he may succeed in recording some of the inscrutable oddities of village life, whereas 'others have dwelt overmuch on its crudities and cruelties.
To those who feel that the economic structure of present- day society is the most important thing in life; the new novels by Miss Lumpkin and Herr Neumann may seem more import- ant than any of these others. To Make My Bread is a sincere and sad account of working-class life in America. But Miss Lumpkin has made her bread too doughy, and not even her deep sympathy with the sufferings of the poor has been able to leaven her pages, which have a propagandist rather than a literary value. The characters of working people are often complex and sophisticated, and heaven knows why it should be thought necessary to produce " proletarian " literature in the idiotic style of a spelling-book—" One day in the late fall Minnie's boy child came," and so on. The message Miss Lumpkin wishes to deliver is an urgent and terrible one, but it could probably be more effectively delivered by the films. Indeed, a film can at present be seen which symbolizes, in the horrors of the chain-gang, the barbarities of that system, or lack of system; whose victims are so numerous and so doomed.
Herr Neumann assails, in a boisterous satire, the world of international High Finance. An innocent Georgian prince, defeated in a war with Russia in 1929, travels to Vienna.
He has brought with him plates from which Russian money can be printed. Sharks and sharpers close in upon him, and a parade of high spirits and low principles proceeds with unabated energy to the end. The humour is definitely 013 Teutonic variety.
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