COURTSHIPS OF CLISSOLD
AT first this part of Mr. Wells's three-decker novel seems to be sailing to no visible haven. There is no hand on the helm: the story' is caught in stays, purposeless, drifting, and only relieved from dullness by a kind of summer- lightning and sense of expectancy that the Clissold brain- storms induce upon the inward eye. Something cosmic is afoot. When will the raindrops of emotion fall, and the thunder break ? By the time one reaches page 359 (the book starts at page 255) one begins to despair of ever getting out of the doldrums of Dickon and his boring business, or away from the crowded canvases of the War, from inchoate descriptions of how "we followed the inertias of our early successes," from Mr. Balfour depicted as a Madonna-lily, growing where he is planted, Mr. Lloyd George (" Just a magnificent weed. In flower. Where one might have a great tree.") and Finance as "not a malignant conspiracy but a malignant stupidity."
Mr. Clissold repeats himself, which is not uncommon in old gentlemen but unworthy of his creator. A propos de belles come some acute remarks about Americans (" They're lit up differently, inside and out. And what is life but a
consequence of illumination ? "), a terribly graphic description of an old lady on the Riviera and a Henry Fordian observa-
tion on the dignity of the human hand. So ends "Essence of Dickon," as this half of the volume is called, the essence _being a mere cupful of cleverness strained from a waste of words. There is an essay on advertising which a clever journalist might have written as well as Mr. Wells (but it is amusing and true), some epigrams, of course, and some interesting observations on the late Lord Northcliffe, with his genius, his "dark moods" and his pitiful end. "But what is all this mess about ?" one exclaims after the manner of Clissold.
A friend answered the question : her reply is recorded in the belief that it represents the opinion of those who read for entertainment, as, after all, a novel should be read : "The first part is piffle. The second part—' Tangle of Desires '—is better, but it is a tangle! Clissold behaved rottenly to Clara ; the story of Sirrie is unconvincing, but • the pages given to the affair with Helen are good : I wish
, we had had more of her. Clissold is trying to make love without giving too much away—he'll give sixpenxiyworth of feeling for sixpennyworth in return, and when he only gets fourpence-halfpenny he feels cheated. That is so like a man ! And so true to life ! The best thing in the book is the description of this commercial aspect of sex relations— making a business of it, so to speak, and not a very good business either, in spite of temporary satisfactions and successes. As- to Clementina, whom he picked up in the
. Champs Elysees and who is a sort of macidoine of mixed • creeds and races, she is so indefinite, so obviously to he • 'continued in our next,' that one hardly knows what to make of her—neither does Clissold, apparently. Will she help him to forget himself.? That's what he needs, to make him happy."
Clissold is an egotist endowed with vision beyond the nasty world of material success and complaisant women.
' (" Somewhere beyond sex and hunger. you must find the thing you need.”) The universe and his soul are at war- Clissold cannot reconcile himself to cosmos. Of his later intrigues; one can say that they arc a stark story of muddle and mischance, too true to life to be pleasant, too plotless to be entertaining, yet salutary stuff for the serious
• reader. And why shouldn't there be serious readers for ' Clissold ? Why call this book a novel at all, instead of a . Norunt Organum, an instrument of the new renaissance that , shall help us a little to hew a path through the night of age-old fears and superstitions ?
, Mr. Wells reveals his strength and slapdash methods in • an amusing but inaccurate paragraph about wagon-ills. Clissold curses that little mauve night-light which refuses to go out when the switch is turned full off. Hell must be • lit like this, he writes, and taste like a train. He :thinks that , the mauve light cannot be extinguished ; but it can. Clissold was heavy-handed and hasty. At the centre of the switch is a neutral point, whieh every traveller may find for himself (in wagon-lit or along the way of life) • where the current is interrupted and there is peace and kindly darkness. You may switch on to• full power, or switch off to the darkness visible of distracted thought, but there is also a central point, alike in Clissold's mind
• and in those lighting arrangements that disturb him, where Nirvana is. Clissold sees what he sees very clearly, and tells'. us about it with uncommon vigour, but he always switches past the central self. And in this, as in much else, he is a reflection of the mind of his time. This is not cavilling criticism ; much else in the book, such as the ridiculous sneers at Royalty, is cheap and careless.
Yet, when all is said, in spite of its faults and its form- lessness and initial dullness, there is a real quality of greatness about Clissold's confessions, and they should he read and marked by the "adult minded." Parts of them are well worth inwardly digesting also.
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