Limited Editions
IT is open to argument whether the expensive limited edition is to he unreservedly welcomed. Not long ago, for instance, a reviewer in these columns referred to certain de lure books as being "produced to scrounge as much money as possible for publisher and author from a snob public," and he did not seem to approve of this business. I cannot see why, per- sonally. If a snob public wants to pay, why not let it ? Heaven knows the author of any quality has to scrounge where he can these days, merely to keep alive. It is simply a question of supply and demand, and there is a perfectly good safeguarding rule behind it all—Le., while a good writer 'wears fine print naturally and simply, nothing is more aggra- vating to read than poor stuff fastidiously printed.
The snob public may not be aware of this ; perhaps it doesn't get even as far as cutting the pages ; but what of that? The book is a nice imposing piece of furniture, and literature is not really affected one way or another. Besides, surely book production is an art in itself. Must it languish merely because of a scarcity of genius amongst the story-tellers ?
Of the justification of the first of these three volumes, anyhow, there can be no question. The print, the new Golden Cockerel type, is quite unpretentious, but strong and beauti- fully clear ; and so is Mr. Coppard's prose. The story, a very "long short" one, is told in autobiographical form. It pur- ports to be the reminiscences of a certain Johnnie Flynn, a disillusioned author who, having written about puppets all his life, is now telling the truth about himself. So he rambles on, at first leisurely and inconsequent, with bright illuminating glances at his boyhood : "Our room always had some cages of live birds like goldfinches and linnets, often some jars of wildflowers, and in autumn there was a large crock of home-made ketchup kept under the bed."
Or, again :
"One night it was windily snowing and I waited at a book- seller's shop that had an open window under an awning. I never could afford more than a twopenny purchase. Snow drifted on some of the shelves not covered by a sack, the gas flames roared in the draught. : • .• But Coppard's style is nothing if not economic, and the leisur- liness, after all, is only apparent. It is not long before we are aware that a plot is hatching—indeed, two plots, or one with a double yolk The result is an exciting and swiftly moving tale in which (as a confirmed reader of detective thrillers might complain in disgust) nothing ever happens. It is just ordinary life that happens, falling in love and out again and so forth. The illustrations by Robert Gibbings of squirrels, magpies, &c., are enchanting : a de luxe edition decidedly worth its price.
The same might be said of Miss Stella Benson's Hope Against Hope, if we could look on it merely as a "collector's piece." This production will almost certainly appreciate in value, especially as it is, we are told, the only limited edition of Miss Benson's work so far published. But having recently read Tobit Transplanted, as entertaining and original a book as I had read for years, I must say that I was sadly disap- pointed by these stories. Miss Benson can do so much better that had they been printed anonymously I should not have guessed that they were by Tobies author.
The stuff is thin, not in the least strengthened by the beauti- ful Poliphilus type used. The best story is the shortest, "An Out-Islander Comes In," which is a really amusing little satire on American mass production of husbands. But for the rest, character sketches rather than stories, there are too many easy, obvious people who talk like this :
"'Oh — oh —,' cried Miss Daney. 'How eggstrawdinarily eggciting it all is. So dangerous-looking, kind of. I believe I saw a man's head behind that rock. I suppose the country is crammed with sheikhs."
Or like this, in a different story :
"'Rather a meaningless face, if you know what I mean. . . . always think a interesting face is so much more attractive than a preuy empty face . . . don't you know what I mean ? ' " Indeed we do, only too well. But I really think one would have been enough, if you know what I mean. Still, if people want to pay a guinea for Miss Benson's weakest work so handsomely dressed, I don't see why we should object.
In The Man Who Died, his last story, D. IL Lawrence
expresses himself to his heart's content on a theme which had obviously occupied his thoughts for a long time. Lawrence was, of course, too sincere an artist to care whether or not he shocked people with the following out of what has too often been unimaginatively dismissed as his sex-obsession ; but there is no doubt that this final strange flower of his genius will shock many good Christians profoundly. For, briefly, the idea is that Christ, the mortal man, did not die on the Cross but survived to wander the country and eventually to discover Truth, or perhaps we should say the meaning of earthly existence according to Lawrence, in a temple of a priestess of Isis, by the waters of Lebanon : "His death and his passion
of sacrifice all as nothing to him now The deep, inter- folded warmth, warmth living and penetrable, the heart of the rose I " However, to be brief here is necessarily to be crude and unfair. The tale is beautifully told, whether or not you would call it blasphemous : though there are occasional false and pompous touches, and it is possibly true that towards the end Lawrence's brain became slightly unbalanced—but that is to raise questions with which as a reviewer I have no business. The justification for this book's de luxe style is obvious. If you put it into the hands of the hysterical
popular press moralist he would explode. H. M.
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