A Somersetshire Novelist

The Memorial Edition of the Works of Walter Raymond : Vol. I, Life of Walter Raymond, by Evelyn V. Clark, and Somerset and her Folk Movement. 'Vol. II, Gentleman Upcott's Daughter and In The Smoke of War. Vol. III, Young Sam and Sabina and Tryphena in Love. Vol. IV, Two Men o' Mendip. Vol. V, The Book of Simple Delights. (Dent. 5s. each.)

PERHAPS the surest bid a writer can make for immortality is to attach his Work to some particular part of the countryside and make himself its chronicler... Writers whà do this at all successfully fall into three classes. First 'come those whose

record secures the affection of local readers : second; those who succeed in representing and interpreting their chosen ground so well as to give it an artistic significance and engage the attention of readers outside : and third, those whose genius enables them to interpret it in such a way as to impress the imagination of the world. Walter Raymond began in the first of these classes, and was graduating with honours into the second when the Great War made a break in his work from which it never recovered. It can safely be said that he would never have reached the third.

The issue of this inemor.iit edition is an act of piety such as my soul loves. Raymond's best work well merits preserv- ing, and for this reason I could Wish for a better introduction to it and to him than is provided in the first volume of the series. Mrs. Clark's Life May gratify the faithful, but it

will hardly secure converts. She has the necessary enthusiasm and love of her subject, but she huddles her- facts together anyhow, and her manner is adulatory and uncritical. Some

of her paragraphs achieve a quite extraordinary banality :

"Raymond was most attentive to his 'wife in this her last illness, wheeling her out in her chair, and attending to her wants. • She often said to him : How good you are to, me.' He was always very thoughtful and considerate in illness."

And :

"He viewed all aspects of human life with tolerance and sym- pathy, and made all experiences that he encountered a part of himself. The sorrow of the world is very sad,' he wrote to a friend in 1912. 'It seem inevitable that some must endure it.'"

This sort of thing is of little use to us, nor does it help to be told in awe-stricken tones that he took pains with his writing

and was averse from using three words where two would do. Nevertheless, from these jumbled pages does somehow emerge .fr simple and lovable figure, and one passage of Mrs. Clark is worth quoting in- full :

"Because country folk embody and portray the simplicity which he so greatly valued he turned to them not only as 'types' but as comrades. Not merely in the search for copy for his books did he tramp the highways and byways of the West, talking to the people, spending long days with them, watching them at their work in field or coppice, chatting with them in their, homes by a girt 'ood vire ' over a mug of cider—it was from a genuine delight in their lives, their ways, and their speech. In the folk he found the embodiment of all that he held best in life, unspoilt simplicity and downrightness, which only such a subtly simple soul as his own could rightly inter- pret and appreciate. They in their turn loved one who could speak to them in their old-world tongue, who was unhurried as themselves, and valued all that spelt life to them, and because of the mutual understanding between the man of letters and the folk of the coun- tryside he was able to glean much which they hid from those whose interest was solely academic. Perceiving that he understood them and valued them not merely as types, but as friends, they opened their hearts, loosed their tongues, and admitted him into their minds and their lives."

Raymond was born at Yeovil in 1852, in humble surround- ings. At the age of two, he lost his mother, and was sent to live with his grandmother at Marston Magna. He grew up in the country, running wild with the village children. His father married again, and the stepmother was good to the child. In 1875 he entered his father's glove business in Yeovil ; but he did not take kindly to business, and before his fortieth year he had cut loose and embarked upon literature as a career. His successes were modest, but they increased, and by the time the War broke out he was doing well and had made a steady and respectable reputation. After the War, he never seemed to settle down, and his last years were spent in pathetic attempts to get a play put on in London, and in disbelieving the verdict of every London manager who wit- nessed any of its several productions in the provinces. He died in 1931.

Happily, when we come to his books, Raymond turns out to be a much better writer than one would suspect from Mrs. Clark's introduction. Gentleman Upcott's Daughter, for instance, is a thoroughly sound and pleasant piece of work. The river of the story is neither still nor deep, but chatters musically over the pebbles in the sunshine of its creator's' mind. It is homely, shrewd, and faithful to country sights and sounds. True, there are apostrophes irritatiag to the modern reader :

"As she walked she looked upon the ground, being busy with her thoughts. A penny for them, Ruth, a penny. Would they adorned this page, fresh and sweet as the early cowslip budding in the meadow :"

and some of the agricultural similes are ponderously chosen

"The words fell on George's heart like an April shower around a tuberous root, and Love started like something herbaceous which grows quickly."

As a whole, however, the writing is simple and effective, the dialogue lively, and the dialect true. Raymond's charac- terization is clear and vigorous. Upcott himself is excellently studied : his daughter is rather pink-and-white, but real flesh and blood. Miller Biddlecombe, that too suddeniconvert, is the only failure.

Two Men o' Mendip, a story with a tragic conclusion, goes further to prove that its author was always happiest in comedy. The silver lining is very much better than the cloud. Patty Winterhead, a farmer's daughter, secretly marries the man whom of all others her father hates most—Giles Stander- wick, the young " groover " (miner). Giles had murdered a friend of John Winterhead's, out of revenge for the death of his father, whom, for the mere matter of a stolen sheep, that friend had caused to be hanged. John knew that Giles was guilty, but in fear of further revenge stifled his conscience and said nothing. When he sees Giles and his daughter together, he goes into the cave which is their retreat, and kills him.

Patty dies of a broken heart beside the corpse : and John gives himself up.

Raymond's occasional pieces show observation, a kindly temper, but no remarkable depth or grace of style. He re- mained to the end something of an amateur in letters, but, from the countryman's point of view at least, he had the root of the matter in him, and it is good to know that in his chosen corner of English ground his memory will be kept green.

L. A. G. STRONG.