BOOKS OF THE WEEK
The Enemy in Ambush
FULLY to appreciate how remarkable an achievement is Mr. Hart- Davis's biography of Hugh Walpole, it is necessary to read the book. No summarised comment can convey the complexity of the task accomplished or the narrative skill, restraint and self-effacement with which it has been carried through. If (as we learn) " Hugh often felt like a man trying to keep twelve glittering balls in the air at once," his biographer juggles with twice that number of spinning and vari-coloured plates, symbolising not only the facets of Walpole's intricate psychology, but also the impacts on that psychology of his few real intimates and his myriad acquaintances. Hart-Davis starts with two or three plates ; with mounting dexterity adds another, two more, half-a-dozen more ; reaches a breathless climax when the air seems full of kaleidoscopic discs ; gradually relinquishes first one and then another, until, with the passing of his friend's tempestuous spirit, he sinks into the immobility of a dignified finale.
Hugh Walpole was born in 1884, and died in 1941. He was the eldest; of the three children of the Reverend G. H. S. Walpole, and his wife Mildred, née Barham. His father became Bishop of Edinburgh in 1910, and was a prolific writer on religious subjects. Between 1909 and his death Hugh Walpole wrote thirty-four novels, six volumes of short stories, twelve non-fiction books or pamphlets, a number of prefaces, countless articles and several plays. He formed an immense collection of pictures, drawings and objets d'art, mostly of high quality. He also, and on as lavish a scale, collected books and manuscripts ; but his library was more indiscriminate than his art-collection because book-hunting, if you care for condition and abjure "doctored" copies, takes time, and Walpole was always in a hurry.
He went to every worth-while play, opera or concert. He was intensely sociable and loved paying visits and dining out. He made innumerable speeches and delivered hundreds of lectures. He travelled Europe and America—sight-seeing, frequenting Bayreuth (where he saw Hitler), paying two protracted visits to Hollywood as a screen-writer. With his own hand he wrote endless letters. He kept a daily diary from 1904 to his death and a voluminous but intermittent journal from 1923 onward. He founded (and presided over) the Society of Bookmen, and was the first chairman of the Book Society.
And as if all this were not enough, he carried, outwardly with beaming geniality, inwardly with torment and soul-searching, the burden of his temperament. How well Hart-Davis, touch by touch, paints in the portrait of that temperament—its contradictions, its exuberance, its absurdity, its pathos, its heroism ! Behind the shop-window socialite—the " apple-cheeked Hugh " with a multi- tude of friends, the cheerful enthusiastic Hugh seen everywhere, knowing everybody—was a timid, self-distrustful, lonely spirit perpetually in search of an ideal friendship and at the same time insisting on its counterpart—deliberate enmity. He makes a new acquaintance ; and at once the diary cries : " This is the man for me ! " or " This is my kind of man ! " He gives or takes some trivial offence. " So and So is my enemy." " That group is mocking me, for all their false smiles of friendly admiration."
But underneath this morbid sensitivity lay yet another layer of character and impulse which, as his biographer convinces us, was the fundamental Walpole. From his mother he' inherited a deep- down shyness, from his father a childish lack of guile. " With Hugh, as with a child," says Hart-Davis, " passion was violent but short-lived. He was quickly moved to enthusiasm, rage, despair ; but once the mood was past the sun shone again, and Hugh's natural goodness shone out with it."
As a tale of literary ententes and détentes ; as the story of a novelist who never lost his popularity and sold in increasing numbers right up to the end ; as an anthology of the outpourings of one to whom writing and speaking became as natural as breathing, this work will remain a permanent source-book for its period. The two outstanding relationships, expressed in letters or diaries, are those with Henry James and Arnold Bennett. After them come Conrad, Galsworthy, Virginia Woolf. Among portrait sketches of persons encountered are vivid presentations of Elizabeth Russell (Elizabeth and her German Garden), A. C. Benson, Drinkwater and Sickert ; there are brief but telling vignettes of Agate and Alfred Douglas.
Between James and Bennett each reader will choose according to his taste. There is genuine emotion in the affectionate-letters elaborately over-written by the former—an Old Lion rejuvenated by the eager admiration of an up-growing youngster. But unless you are already an addict to the involutions of the Jamesian style you will, I think, prefer the tart admonitions of Arnold Bennett. Bennett spared no feelings and embroidered no fault-finding. As time went on and his success grew greater, Walpole was tempted to the rashness of argument, only to get by return of post a retort like .the crack of a whip.
And the " enemies " ? They flush and fade, into reconciliation or into oblivion. So at various times they are represented by a couple of women reviewers ; two successful writers—contemporaries and therefore rivals—on Martin Seeker's pre-1914 list ; St. John Ervine (though neither side was very clear what started the trouble) ; H. G. Wells and George Moore (" not good-hearted men • male- volence lurks in Wells, just as impotence checks Moore ") ; and, though very temporarily, the author of Cakes and Ale. In this connection, discussing the counterblast Gin and Bitters, Hart-Davis says : " The book was not published in England." Yet in 1931 was published in L6ndon a novel called Full Circle, bearing Elinor Mordaunt's name as author, and conforming very closely to what we are here told about Gin and Bitters.
This rapid survey of Hart-Davis's 500 rich and crowded pages can only end as it began—with urgent recommendation of the entire work. Quite half the story I have not even touched on ; and a phenomenal story it is, from the miseries of the unhappy little schoolboy, unstable and afraid, to the obstinate courage of the plump diabetic of 57, who deliberately left his home on Derwent- water to share the perils of the London blitz and, as events turned out, paid with his life for the nerve-strain and over-exertion which
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