Fiction
Armchair Fiction
Angel Pavement. By J. B. Priestley. (Heinemann. 10s. -fid.)
WITH remarkable industry, when one considers how short a time has passed since the publication of The Good Companions, Mr. Priestley has produced another long novel to the tune of six hundred pages. It is necessary to state the length because Mr. Priestley appears to be rationalizing his fiction-producing business and to be turning out the furniture of English comedy on mass-production principles ; there is a standard kind of humorous or sentimental description of every character and every scene he draws. But his method is generous, his sentiment appropriate and his shrewdness highly enter- taining. English middle-class comedy has traditionally demanded plenty of leg and elbow room, a good comfortable arm-chair with sound springs to carry its weight, and solid arms Which it can thump without hurting itself. It is essential that there shall be no discomfort in laughter. In Angel Pavement, Mr. Priestley fills these requirements until the final chapters. Then he repents and the tragedian, who lurks behind the heartiest comedian like a shadow, has persuaded him that his breezy satirical nature must have its antidote. Angel Pavement, narrower in scope, less varied in its incident than its predecessor, is more severe in form and ends in cheerfully observed catastrophe. There is something dis- concerting in this disaster ; it is as disconcerting as if we had suddenly discovered Nero burning while Rome fiddled. If we are to accept Mr. Priestley's ruthlessness, his cheerfulness will seem reprehensible, insensitive. Actually we can accept the catastrophe only. with great difficulty, for the book does not contain either man or circumstance strong enough to impel catastrophe.
Mr. Priestley's answer, no doubt, is that trouble was certain once the mysterious Mr. Golspie arrived in the Thames from the Baltic States. The firm of Twigg and Dersingham, run in accordance with the most woolly and slangy public school tradition in a poky set of offices east of Moorgate, was on its last- legs when Mr. Golspie appeared smoking his exotic cigars and displaying his seductive samples, Mr. Dersingham wearing the old Worrelian tie, could see at once that Mr. Golspie was not a gentleman, and Mr. Golspie could see that Mr. Dersing- ham was a fool. For a time, under Mr. Golspie's brusque hand, the business prospered and then he decamped leaving it in ruins. It is Mr. Priestley's task to trace the effect of Mr. Golspie on the business and private life of the staff. Smeeth, the terrified cashier, was suspicioui, but too timid to interfere. Miss Matfield, the lady secretary, who was in the habit of countering advances with " a stare like a high wall with broken glass along the top," went through all stages of turmoil from scorn to humiliation. Turgis, the thwarted, philandering clerk was miserable until he met the swift Miss Golspie, and then was ready for anything including murder. Stanley, the office boy, was more and, more convinced of the importance of " shaddering," and only Miss Sellars the new typist and an admirable character, did not progress from her original verdict " I do like hint and. I don't." All these office- bound characters, their shop-talk, their hopes and grievances, are well observed and knowingly exploited, though continually
one sighs amid their domestic ramifications and echoco the words of Algernon in The Importance of being Earnest, " I don't know that I am much interested in your family life, Lane."
The fundamental difficulty is Mr. Golspie. He makes a magnificent entrance in the glowing manner of a great comic character and leaves with the cynical coldness of a villain. There seem to be two Mr. Golspies, three in fact ; the third being a shadowy creature who wanders about the book and represents Mr. Priestley's inability, as a realist, to kick over the traces and create a great comic character or a great villain. Endowed with a confident vitality and a humorous eye, he goes about with camera and notebook. " Here is a pathetically funny creature," he says ; " I will snap him and find out how he lives." The films and notes accumulate and in such an overwhelming heap that background soon tumbles into foreground. But with a summary skill in evoking atmosphere, Mr. Priestley gives us an essayist's picture of the London of mean streets, stale offices, quaking clerks, telephone calls, crowded buses, and the medley of people existing in them which, brought to life by a humour that ranges from the shrewd to the facetious, we can recognize as dreadfully real. He pretends to no intimate knowledge of his people's souls, but can suggest a great deal by a continuous series of knowing prods and nudges at their manners and surfaces. There is a great deal of monotony in the prods and nudges, but his dialogue is redolent and exact : " 0o, Mrs. Matfield," Miss Sellars began, staring at her, " d'you reely like the country this weather t 1 don't know how you bear it. I couldn't, not now, when its winter. It's not as if it was summer, is it Y "
The really interesting part of Mr. Priestley, because vigorously suppressed at the moment by the good and complacent com- panions, is the ravage. But will he ever get his chance to smash that ca•zlera, or to murder that essayist ?
V. S. Parreurrr.
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