The Blue Review, 3

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Volume I Number II I J U L Y 1913 One Shilling N et

C O N T E N T SPoetry Rupert Brooke, W .H .D av ies, Iolo Aneu rin WilliamsSister Barbara G ilbert CannanDaibutsu Yone NoguchiMr. Bennett, Stendhal and the ModeRN Novel

John Middleton MurryAriadne in Naxos Edw ard J. De ntEpilogue I I I : Bains Turcs Katherin e Mansfield

CHRONICLES OF THE MONTHThe Theatre (Masefield and Marie Lloyd), Gilbert Cannan ;The Novels (Security and Ad venture), H ugh Walpole :General Literature (Irish Plays and Playwrights), FrankSwinner ton; German Books (Thomas Mann) , D. H.Lawrence ; Italian Books, Sydney Waterlow; Music(Elgar, Beethoven, Debussy), W, Denis Browne; TheGalleries (Gino Severini), O. Raymond Drey.

M A R T I NN U M B E R

S E C K E RF I V E J O H N

P U B L I S H E RSTREET A D E L P H I

THE BLUEREVIEWLITERATURE DRAMA ART MUSIC


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June 17th, 1913R E P R O D U C T I O N S IN P H O T O G R A V U R EP I O N E E R S O F P H O T O G R A V U R E : By D O N A L DC A M E R O N - S W A N , F . R . P . S .P L E A F O R R E F O R M O F P R I N T I N G : By T Y P O C L A S T E SO L D BO OK S & T H E I R P R I N T E R S : By I. A R T H U R H I L LED W A R D A RB ER , F .S .A . : By T . ED W AR DS JON EST H E P L A I N D E A L E R : V I. By E V E R A R D M E Y N E L LD E C O R A T I O N & ITS USES: VI . By ED W A RD JOH N ST O NT H E BOOK P R E T E N T I O U S A N D O T H E R R E V I E W S :By J . H. MASONT H E H O D G M A N P R E S S : By D A N I E L T . P O W E L LP R I N T I N G & P A T E N T S : By G E O . H . R A Y N E R , R . P .A .PR IN T E R S ' DEV ICES: By the Rev .T . F . DIB DIN . P A R T VI .R E V I EW S , N O T E S A N D C O R R E S P O N D E N C E .

P r i c e O n e S h i l l i n g n e tOffices: 11 H en rie t ta S t reet, Cove nt G ard en , W .G.

T he Im print


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J U L Y C O N T E N T S PagePost Georgian By X . Marcel Boulestin FrontispieceLove By Rupert Brooke 149T he Busy Heart By Rup ert Brooke 150Love's Youth By W. H . Davies 151When We are Old , are Old By Iolo Aneurin Williams 152Sister Barbara By Gilbert Cannan 153Da ibutsu By Yone Noguchi 160Mr. Bennett, Stendhal and the Modern NovelBy John M iddleton M urry 164Ariadne in Naxos By Edw ard J. Dent 175Epilogue : I I I . Bains Tu rcs By Ka therine Mansfield 181

C H R O N IC L E S O F T H E M O N T HThe Theatre : Masefield and Marie LloydBy Gilbert Cannan 186T he Novels : Security and Adven ture By H ug h Walpole 189General Literature : Irish Plays and PlaywrightsBy Frank Sw innerton 194Germ an Books : Tho m as M ann By D . H . Lawrence 200Italian Books By Sydney Waterlow 207T h e Galleries : Gino Severini By O. Raymond Drey 213Music : Beethoven, Elgar, Debussy By W . Denis Browne 215

Editor : John Middleton MurryAssociate Editor : Katherine MansfieldEditorial Office : 57 Chancery Lane, W.C.Telephone 2132 Holborn


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T H E G O L D E N J O U R N E YT O S A M A R K A N DB y J A M ES ELR O Y F L EC K E R , A u t h o r of " F o r ty - tw o P o e m s , "2S. 6d. net . Postage 2d . Ready June 30th.Also an edit ion de luxe on handmade paper, numbered andsigned by the Auth or. Lim ited to f if ty copies. 7s . 6d. ne t .M r. Fleck er's wo rk is now eagerly looked for by all wh o reallycare for poetry and can appreciate what The Nation has describedas his " strict and beautiful a rt ." T h e new volu me m arks a freshstage in Mr. Flecker's development, and contains some of hismost striking verse. It has also been furnished with a preface onthe present state of English Criticism, which is likely to attract

considerable at tention.If you experience any difficulty in obtaining this booksend direct to th e Pub lishers :MA X GOSCHEN, LTD. 20 G reat RussellStreet W.C.

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T H I R T Y - F I F T H T H O U S A N Dii

20 GREAT RUSSELL I S T R E E T , W . C . I


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" Post Georgian " By X. Marcel Boulestin


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L O V ELove is a breach in the walls, a broken gate,Where that comes in that shall not go again ;Love sells the proud heart 's citadel to Fate.

They have known shame, who love unloved. Even then,When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking,And agony's forgot, and hushed the cryingOf credulous hearts , in heavensuch are but takingTheir own poor dreams within their arms, and lyingEach in his lonely night, each with a ghost.Some share that night. But they know love grows colder,Grows false and dull, that was sweet lies at most.Astonishment is no more in hand or shoulder,But darkens, and dies out from kiss to kiss.All this is love ; and all love is but this. R U P E R T B R O O K E .

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T H E B U S Y H E A R TNow that we've done our best and worst, and parted,I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend.(O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted)

I'll think of Love in books, Love without end ;Women with child, co nt en t; and old men sleeping ;And wet strong ploughlands, scarred for certain grain ;And babes that weep, and so forget their weeping ;And the young heavens, forgetful after rain ;And evening hush, broken by homing wings ;And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy,T hat live, we dead . I would think of a thousand things,Lovely and durable, and taste them slowly,One after one, like tasting a sweet food.I have need to busy my heart with quietude.R U P E R T B R O O K E .

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LOVE'S YOUTHN ot only is my love a flowerThat blooms in broad daylight,Bu t, like the Evening P rimrose, it

Will bloom again at night.Though I this day have reached my prime,My heart's still fresh and young ;I tremble at young Beauty's glance,And love is still my song.At thy bright smile I burn and shake,Though treated as thy brother ;Canst thou not see my eyes have twinsThat laugh and call thee mother ?

W ILLIAM H . DAV IES.

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WHEN WE ARE OLD, ARE OLDAge is a large, untidy hallWith a little fire and a draughty door,Where the great beginnings of nothing-at-allHobnob on the littered floor.And they chatter over the rags, the old,With " This was a flaming kiss,"Or, " Men would dream were this thing told,And men would weep were this."And thither shall you and I come, too,And walk in the chilly place ;And I shall still be praising you,Though the young men laugh in my face.And the broken words of the once sweet tongueShall feel about in the gloom,And echoes of all that we said when youngGo racketting round the room.

I O L O A N E U R I N W I L L I A M S .

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S I S T E R B A R B A R A By G I L B E R T C A N N A N

GE N E R A L B R IE R LE Y had very def in ite ideas asto how a gentlem an shou ld live, and in th erealisation of them had surrounded himself withm any possessions, two house s, a wife, twodaughters and a son who should follow in hisfootsteps. When he retired and found his income reduced by two-thirds, he clung to all his possessions, for with out th em he felt th at he could not m ainta inhis position as a gen tlema n. H is son m arried early andwisely and, when his father looked to him for assistance in thosedifficulties which beset a gentleman, quarrelled with him, transferred himself to another regiment and went to India. Of the two

daughters, one was pret ty and at tract ive to men, and to her whimsand desires the other, Barbara, was sacrificed. When the General 'sdifficulties grew to such proportions that he had to rid himselfof one of his possessions, he decided that Barbara must go outinto the world to earn her living. She had had only the mostfoolish kind of education and possessed no craft nor art normarketable accom plishment. F urth er, she was a lady and thereforecut off from the practice of many trades. She was very religiousand solved the problem by returning to a girlish aspiration andbeco min g a nu n. She thoug ht no ill of her father, wh o protes tedhis affection and bemoaned their harsh necessity. He took her tothe station and paid for her third-class ticket.I I

She was in the convent for eleven years. In the beginning shefound it a little difficult to fall in with the monotonous routine ofthe place and to overcome her repulsion from the rough domesticlabours which she had to undertake. She learned to cook and sewand darn and mend and clean, and when she was entrusted withthe care of the children her education began. Her refinement andsensitiveness made her successful with them and lit t le by lit t lethe Mother Superior promoted her to full control of that part of

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The Blue Reviewthe co nven t 's act ivity . She was so absorbed an d busy that she ha dli tt le t ime for thou ght of the ou tside world an d she rarely com municated with her family. She heard that her sister was married " a splendid posi t ion " and wro te to congratulate her. T h enshe did not wri te again for years. She was nei ther very happy norvery un ha pp y : her b usy life left no roo m for violent variations ofmoral temperature and she was puzzled and distressed by theemotional fervour which some of the sisters brought to the practiceof their religion.

T h e c onvent belonged to a world-wide sisterhood, and twicethe Mother Superior sent Sister Barbara over to houses in Franceand Belgium. She displayed excellent tact and business capacityand the supreme authori ty marked her out for diplomatic missions.Far ra ther would she have stayed with her chi ldren, but obediencewas an element in her vow and she obeyed. She was sent to NewYork, to South Africa, to Manila, and she saw the activity of theoutside world and was excited by i t . She counted her exci tementfor a sin and her conscience scourged her, but it was not longbefore she saw that the business organisation of the sisterhoodwas nei ther bet ter nor worse than other commercial undertakings,and therefore in flat contradiction to the principles of religion.In the simplicity and directness of her nature she hated to have herlife broken up into two portions, between profession and practice.

When she consulted the Mother Superior on her scruples,she was told that the Mother Church must be maintained andhad to fight for her ex istence : was she not th e C hu rc h M ilitant ?Sister Barbara procured a promise that she should not be sentabroad again for some t ime, and she re turned to her chi ldren.Then, however, she found herself thinking of them in a new way.Not as l i t t le units in the Church, but as individuals, who wouldgrow up and go out into the warm, bright , mult i-coloured movement of the world. I t was that , or the pure white radiance of thecloistered life. But the cloistered life, as she could not but admitto herself, was nei ther pure nor white .

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Sister BarbaraA girl who had come to the convent to hide away from hergrief and shame in an unhappy love-affair, confided in her, toldall the story of her love. She did n ot tell the tr ut h and it was not

a beautiful story, but there was warmth in it and a tiny spasm ofpassion. It fil led Sister Barbara 's thoughts and she was very unhappy. She found herself going over the eleven years, wipingthem out as though they had never been and living again in herfather 's hou se. If she had stayed . . . If she had stayed ? . . .She to ld the Mother Super ior tha t she must re turn . Therewas no room for argumen t : she m ust re tu rn to the wo rld.

II IShe found no welcome. Nothing had changed in her home.Still her father was spending twice his income. Still her motherwas ruled by her sister, who had left her husband and taken upher old position at home, fill ing the house with men, young andold, seeking pleasure a t every turn. She found no welcome. Theywere in the midst of a financial crisis and by way of retrenchmenthad dismissed two of their servants. The cook demanded morewages and was dismissed. Barbara undertook the cooking andthe housekeeping. The waste, the extravagance offended her, andshe could not but t ry to reform the household. The greatestleakage was through her sister, who always seemed to have moneyfor her every w him . W here before she was indulged on the prospectof a successful marriage, now she was humoured on the score ofher conjugal failure. She was stil l spoiled and pretty and therewas no al terat ion in her character or her conduct . Barbara foundher fa ther every day more pompously querulous, her mother morefoolish, her sister self-willed and th ou gh tless . Ac custo m ed as she

was to the acute economy of the convent, the thriftlessness of thishousehold appalled her and she could not see how a catastrophehad been averted. Her fa ther did not know ei ther, but he supposedthat the danger would be avoided as others had been avoidedbefore . Certa in reforms Barbara was able to accomplish. On the155


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The Blue Reviewstrength of them her fa ther bought a motor-car, which her sistermonopol ised .M ore even than he r changes, Barba ra 's family resented hercompetence and thoroughness. A storm gathered, grew, brokeand Barbara 's mother declared that one or other of the sistersmust leave the house. I t was Barbara who went , and she took aroom in a cheap Bloomsbury boarding-house, her fa ther makingher an allowance of one pound a week until she should be in aposition to maintain herself. She set herself to learn type-writingand shorthand, and often she told herself that i t had been folly toleave the convent, that l ife in the world was impossible and meanand dull . Her co-inhabitants in the boarding-house were a l l inas poor a plight as she, and they were shy and awkward with eachother or took refuge in the traditional humour of the place.

When she had mastered her new work she was faced withthe impossibility of finding a situation. Always the youth or pretti-ness of her competi tors thrust her into the background. She tookherself in hand, watched other women for the tricks she hadforgotten or never acquired, recollected her sister 's ways for thedetails and subtle refinements which had gone to the making ofher charm. She imita ted these things but despised them becausethey were not part of herself. Her luck did not turn and she beganto think that something of the nunnery must c l ing about her.She was too vigorous to feel that her age might be a handicap.In four months she had not earned a penny and her familyseemed completely to have forgotten her, except that once hersister drove up in the mo tor-c ar a nd left he r a parcel of clothes that" might be useful to her." She saw the car as she was comingwearily home in the afternoon and waited until her sister had gone.Three days later she had the excitement of finding a letter onher pla te a t breakfast . The other boarders eyed her as she openedit. She felt them watching her and gave no sign, folded it up andlaid it on the table. It was short, and a bare statement from hermother that her fa ther was so stra i tened for money that i t would

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Sister Barbarabe impossib le to cont inue her a llowance. . . . In her purse shehad five shillings and threepence halfpenny. She gulped downher breakfast and one by one the other boarders went away untilshe was left alone except for the quiet man with the brown eyeswho always sat at the other end of the table. With her eyes staringin front of her she sat and she felt hard and withered. It was thetone of her m oth er 's le t ter that h ad hu rt her so, that she couldhardly realise its contents.

The quiet man came towards her, s tood by her side and said :" We seem to be in the same boat. I should like to be able tohe lp you ."She resented his intrusion but she could make no reply. Evenan impertinence was something to fill the emptiness about andwithin her. He went on :" You can't talk about trouble straight off. At least, I can't.W ill you dine w ith me to- nigh t at the T ellier in Soho ? You canget a very good dinner there for a shilling."She looked up at him and there was a twinkle in his eyes andm uc h friendliness. A shilling din ner seem ed a good joke a ndinstinctively they agreed to laugh at i t together, and so use it tobrush aside awkwardness and embarrassment and the savageegoism of loneliness.

Yes. She would dine with him that night a t seven." I, too," he said, " am going to look for work."T ha t also was a joke and it appealed to h er as a hu m oro us coincidence that ano ther crea ture should s pend th e day in looking for w ork .The day passed quickly and she was punctual, to find himwaiting for her at the Tellier." An y luck ? " he said." N o . "" Nei ther had I . How much money have you got ? ' '" Five shi l l ings."" I have fourteen and sixpence. We'd bet ter pool i t and thenit will go farther for both of us."

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The Blue ReviewShe agreed and he said :" Now I' l l tell you my story. I was married until a year ago.I was in business in Leicestershire and we had a fine house, land,

horses, people we called friends and all that. I 'd been marriedeight years. For various reasons, the most fundamental of whichwere probably physical and therefore impossible for my wife toface, we drifted apart, so far that we shared nothing but the habitof marriage. That was deadly. My wife couldn ' t or wouldn ' t see i tand was outraged when I suggested a separat ion. She didn ' t wantto lose her position. She cared about the people we called friendsand the money and the house, and as I couldn ' t make her see thereason for throwing it all up and trying another arrangement, ina fit of desperation I said she could keep all that if she'd only letme go. She couldn ' t see why I wanted to go, but she did feel thatto keep me m ight b e dan gerous , so she agreed to tha t . I k ept m yw or d. I took ju st eno ugh to keep m e for a year, for I had an ideathe best thing for me was to make my own way and not to goon l iving padded in with stocks and shares in other people 's work.I cut away pret ty thoroughly, perhaps too thoroughly. Anyhow,here I am . I have n' t got any work . I shan ' t be able to pay my rent ,but I 'd ra ther sleep on the Embankment than appeal to anyonefor money. The only thing I miss is the horses. I walk in the Parksometimes and hate the people who have got them."

She told her story." The only thing I miss is the children. I was always learningfrom them. You know, growing."" I know."He took her hand in his.That night they walked miles through the streets of London.She was the first to procure work at thirty shillings a week,and with the confidence this gave her she pocketed her pride andworried her fa ther 's dist inguished and busy fr iends unti l they

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Sister Barbararooms in a shabby distr ic t, high up w ith a view of Ham pstead fromher windows. She saw her fr iend every day. Every night theydined together and very soon, thro ug h her, he too obtained asituation . Th ey pooled all the ir earning s and it was at her sugge stionthat he came to lodge in her rooms.

For long they hovered in the outer dreamland of unspokenlove, bu t love was theirs and w ould no t be denied . Ou t of the irm isery grew w ond ers and the y were bor n again, his old life and he rslost in the new life they had together builded.Often they walk together in the park and gaze at the horses,and every penny they can save is put by for the purchase of al i t t le house in the country where they can keep a horse and trap.

That is a l l his desire and with his happiness she wil l be content .

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D A I B U T S U By Y O N E N O G U C H IT HE valley, a snug basin forgotten by consciousness,was filled with the autumnal sunl ight of gold, whichshone up to the t remendous face of Daibutsu (famousholiness at Kamakura ) who, l ike thought touched byemotion, appeared as if vibrat ing ; Nature there wasin the last stage of all evolution, having her energyand s trength vaporised into repose. The trees, flowers andgrasses in the sacred ground calmed down, to speak somewhathyperbolically, into the state of Nirvana . The thought tha t I was asea-tossed boat even with all oars broken, formed itself then in mymind ; it was natura l I felt at once that it was the only place, atleast in Japan, where my sea-wounded heart would soon be healedby the virtue of my own prayer , and by the air mist-purple fillingthe valley most volup tuously. I cannot forget my impression whenI heard there the evening bell ring out and the voice of sut ra-reading from the t emple , and how I lost my human th i rs t andpride , becoming a faint soul, a streak of scent or a wisp of sigh ;I was a song itself which grew out from my confession. Such wasmy first impression on finding myself in Daibu t su ' s g round , thehaven of peace and heavenly love all by itself, soon after I re turnedhome from my long foreign sojourn, that is quite many years agonow ; but it seems it was only yesterday that I, like a thousandwaves hurrying toward the Yuigahana shore of Kamakura , hurr iedto Daibutsu wi th my own soul of wave-like song of prayer ; canour human souls ever be more than the waves of the sea ?

I t was the next summer tha t I had many many more occasionsto lay my body and soul under the blessing of Daibutsu 's val ley(Oh, what a scent that is the Lord Buddha ' s !) as I had m a n yweeks to spend there at K a m a k u ra : S u m m e r , the m o n t h of mylove, with the burning ecstasy that would soon be intensified intothe greyness of Oriental desolat ion. I like the Summer hea t , youunders tand , not from the fact of heat itself, but from the reasonwe have to thank its presence for the sweetening of the shadowsof trees, where I will build, while looking at the delicious white

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Daibutsufeet of passing breez es, my ow n kingd om with sighing ; to speakplainly, dream old Kamakura of the Middle Age, that is , of artand religious faith. To-day, it is in truth a common sort of countrytown of m od ern Ja pan , of stereotyped pat tern with other s ; ifthere is a difference, it is only in its appearing less individual andfar sadder because it has had such a great history, when we observethat i ts general ambit ion now points toward commercial ism.But it is during those summer weeks only that we can fairly wellconnect it with the old art and prayer, let me say, with the trueexistence of D aib utsu the wo nd er, as we see the n with ourl iving eyes the thousand pilgrims in white cotton, bamboo mushroom hats on head and holy staff in hand, and sacred little bellsaro un d the ir w aists (wh at deso late voices of bells !) sw arm ing her emainly to kneel before Daibutsu from every corner of the countrywhere all winds come from ; I was glad to see the whole townreligiously changed at once. How often I found myself with thosepilgrims, muttering the holy words in Daibutsu 's val ley, where thenature, not unlike that of the former October of rest, was in allits spiritual ascetiscism with repentance and belief; the giganticdivinity in bronze, of folded hands and inclined head in heavenlymeditat ion, over whom time and change (summer heat , of course)have no power to stir its silence, is self-denial itself. Oh, le t myheart burn in storm and confession like the hearts of a thousandcicadas who se songs almost shake the valley and trees ; w e m igh tget the spiritual ascende ncy out of physical exhaustion ; i t makesat least one step nearer our salvation. The autumnal rest or silencecan only be gained after having all the summer heart-cry ; isn'tD aib uts u's self-denial the heart-c ry stren gthe ned into silence ?

There is in this statue a great subtlety, speaking of it as acreation of art, which might result, let me define it arbitrarily,from a good balance of the masses of idealism and what wegenerally understand as realism ; as the latter is indeed so slight,even our modern imagination whose rush is a lways proved to bedis turbin g, has enough room here to play to i ts conten t . T h e proof

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The Blue Reviewthat the said idealism and realism melt into one another in such aperfection is clearly seen in its external monotony, or, let me say,in its utt er sacrifice of gross effect; wh ile it , on the othe r ha nd ,has gained the inward richness most magically. To call i t anaccident is not quite satisfactory, although I do not know how farit is explained by saying that it is the realisation of magic or powerof pray er which ou r ancestors placed in bro nze ; ther e is nodenying, I think, that it is the work of prayer to a great measure.Tradit ion says :

I t was I tano no Tsubone, one of the wait ing ladies to ShogunYo ritomo , w ho underto ok, wh en he passed away w ith unfulfil leddesire to have an object of worship at Kamakura, his own capital,similar to the Daibutsu at Nara, to collect a general contributionand fund, with the assistance of the priest Joko ; the first imagewhich was of wood was finished in 1238 or the first year of Rekinin.She was again called to action, when in the autumn of the secondyear of Hoji (1248) the image, also the chapel, was overthrown bya s torm, this t ime assis ted by the Shogun Prince Munetaka, andsuccessfully restored the image in bronze. The artist who executedit was Goroyemon Ono of Yanamura of the Kadzusa province.

Put t ing as ide the ques tion who was Ono and I tano no T sub on e ,the significant point is that it was created by a thousand peoplewhose religious longing and hope were fulfilled in this Daibutsu.It is not our imagination alone to think that the statue lives as it isthe real force of pray er ; w he n we see it , we build th e most m usicalrelation one with another at once, because we forget ourselves inone soul and body, we might say, in one sound and one colour,perfectly wedded with it . After all , i t is nothing but our ownemotion and yearning personified.I believe that it might not have been so great an art as it isif i t had been made in our day, mainly because i t would expresstoo delicate details ; and the temple light from the opening of thedoors , when i t used to s tand within, must have often played withi t unjust ly. But i t became a great art when the s torm and t idal

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Daibu t suwaves destroyed the temple and washed the statue in 1355 andagain in 1526, and left i t without ever since, with the rustling treesbehind, the l ight and winds crawling up and down, against whoseundecidedness its eternal silence would be doubly forcible. Is i tnot that our human souls often grow beautiful under the baptismof misfortune and grief ? So Nature once unkind to the sta tueproves to be a blessing to-day ; i t looms with far greater divinityout of the ra in, wind, l ights of sun and moon, whose subtle contribution it fully acknowledges. Where are the foolish peoplewh o wish to bu ild th e temp le again to pu t the im age in ?

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M R . B E N N E T T , S T E N D H A L A N D T H E M O D E R N N O V E LBy J O H N M I D D L E T O N M U R R Y

IT m ay easily seem im per tine nt for one w ho has no claimto the title of no velist, wh ose wr itings in all wo uld m akeonly a slender book, to criticise an article up on " W ritingNovels " b y M r. Arno ld Ben nett , who m ight w ith reasonclaim to be a represen tative E nglish novelist, who se w ritingsare encyclopaedic in volume and variety. It may seemparticularly impertinent, when, as is actually the case, the articlein question is among the best of the multifarious deliverances ofthe author upon the science and practice of the writer 's craft.It is , however, exactly this extremity of impertinence which isin itself the justification of the critical attitude in a writer of the

you nger genera tion ; for if the you nger gen eration (for w hich ,even though i t be probably non-exis tent , I am the self-consti tutedspokesman) has ideas or principles to put forward which are togovern i ts own at t i tud e towards such an imp ortant l i terary quest ionas the essentials of the great novel, no better occasion could befound than the presentat ion by one of the most accomplishednovelists of the present day of his own matured conceptions ofthe subject. In brief, I wish to use Mr. Arnold Bennett ' s art ic leas a point d'appui for my own considerat ions upon the novel ,not as an object of critical attack." J 'appart iens ," as Charles Louis Phil ippe wrote to Barres in

1903 , " a une generation qui n'a pas encore passe par les livres " ;and for this reason though my ideas can have but litt le authority,I am in equally little danger of finding my theory confronted andshattered by my practice.W ith M r. Arn old B enn ett ' s obiter dicta I have bu t l it t le co ncern.T h e y are generally illum inating ; and th ey are evidence of abreadth of reading which must be rare among modern novelis tsin England, i f we may jud ge by the i r produ ct ion . Th ere a re ,however, two statements in the article which touch the very vitalsof the modern conception of narrative fiction, and these must beexamined ; for it is probable that in the analysis may be found

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Mr. Bennet t , S tendha l and the Modern Novelsome reason for the conviction that modern English novelists areon the wrong track.There is the simple flavour of an axiom in the assertion that" The novelist is he who has seen life and is so excited by it thathe absolutely must transmit the vision to others. . . . Only hediffers from most artists in this, that what most chiefly strikes himis the indefinable humanness of human nature, the large generalmanner of existing." The fundamental of the great novelist is" to have an impassioned vision of life." It is so concise and sovague that it seems to be self-evident. It is hardly fruitful. To feelpassionately about life is characteristic of a great many peopleother than novelists. The philosopher, the politician, above all ,the social reformer, feel very passionately about life. The feelingis certainly the very germ of the social reformer's activity, and inorder to feed the flame of his passionate feeling, he finds it necessary to comprehend more and more of the whole of life, by usingalgebraical symbols for its constituent parts.

N o t only does th e social refo rm er's passion ate feeling ab ou t lifeburst through the fe t ters he has imposed upon himself by hisunit-treatment of individuals, but this very process is essential topro lon g and intensify his pas sion . By it he include s infinitelymore in his vision. Yet no one would for a moment doubt that thecomprehensive passion of the social reformer is something whichdiffers not only in degree, but in kind, from the consciousness ofthe novelist . Life is a simple word, and a very big word ; and itis easy to convince yourself that you have said something veryprofound when you have made a simple assertion about life.Ju st as we object to one nove list w ho tells us " Life is all very jolly,i f you only knew," that he doesn ' t know very much about i t ;so we object when another novelist tells us that the essential to agreat novel is a passionate vision of life. It is so vague that it isme aningless ; if it m eans an ythin g, the expression of that m ean ingis to be sought in social propaganda, and not in the novel.The great novelist is passionately interested in individuals.165


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The Blue ReviewTake the three who are , in my opinion, the greatest , Stendhal ,Tols toy, and Dostoievsky. They are remembered by their creat ionof great individual characters , Sanseverina, An na K aren in,Raskolnikoff; and it is characteristic of such created ind ividualsthat they cannot be recognised in " real life." I never hope tomeet a Sanseverina, a Comte de Mosca, or a Mlle, de la Mole.However limited in its field were my passionate feeling about lifeI should never f ind any individuals who represented in them-selves so completely the highest possibilities of humanity. Theirsupreme individuality is the novelist 's creation, coming from thenov elist 's own bra in, in a certain vagu e sense the " objectification "of his own personality. The work of the great novelist consists inthe creation of such characters, not in recognising them in life,for they cannot be recognised, and even if it were by a miraclepossible, the artist could never " get inside " them and retain hispower of conscious analysis in the very act of their willing andfeeling. Yet these characters are the end and justification of thenov elist; in them we acknowledge the greatness of the great novelist.In creating one of these supreme individuals the novelistseems to reveal som ething of the h um an soul, and th e essence ofrevelation is to tell us something that we did not know before.The point a t which we begin to appreciate the creat ion is thepoint a t which our own knowledge of the human soul is exhausted.We follow the hero to a crisis in tense intellectual and emotionalexcitement and we are nonp lussed, knowing nothing of how hewill act, how he will feel or develo p. W e could , were we in theframe of mind, suggest alternative lines of action, yet none isinevitable ; the logic which we obey is the logic of the type, andwe are dealing w ith an indiv idua l. T h e great novelist takes aline of action or of feeling, either among the alternatives we our-selves might have imagined or something completely outside ourreckon ing ; and from the very mo m en t it is chosen we see itsinevitability. W e recognise the good logic, w hich , as Sten dha lsays, is at the bottom of every genius. Looking back in the newly

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Mr. Bennet t , S tendhal and the Modern Novelcreated light we can see wherein the character possessed realindividuality, wherein he differed from the type to which wem om entarily assimilated him . In the ind ividuality of the charac terlies its humanity, not in its approximation to type; and the creationof an individual character is a revelation of hum an ity, an addition tothe knowledge of the human heart .

If it is possible in any degree to discover the conditions of thisrevelation we may be reasonably certain that in them is to befound something essential to the greatest achievement in narrativefiction. Accepting as we do, though in a restricted sense, that therevelation must be in the last resort the author's revelation ofhimself, the novelis t must be what Taine cal led Stendhal , un espritsuperieur. If he is to follow the analysis of the finest sentimentsand emotions of the finest individuals beyond what we alreadyknow to a poin t at wh ich we are dazzled by the illumin ationsuddenly cast upon a human mind, then he must be of this f inemould himself, with an infinite capacity for analysing his ownconsciousness with definiteness and lucidity. T he re is a h int ofsnobbishness in the term esprit superieur ; but the snobbishnesscorresponds to a reality, for a capacity for self-analysis is theaccom panim ent of the conviction tha t the self is fine and im po rtan t.Aristocracy of the intellect is inevitable in a great novelist. " J 'aihorreur du bas peuple," says Stendhal in one form or anotherthroug hou t his Journ al and his autobiography ; bu t Stendh alis not horrified because the proletariat is dirty and does not foregath er in salons, b u t beca use it is " infinim ent p la t," ineffablydull. T h e novelist cann ot be interested in chrysalis hu m an ity. W henTolstoy abandoned this a t t i tude, he abandoned also the writ ingof masterpieces. Dostoievsky was aristocratic by reason of his veryinfirmity; and we know from the opening chapters of the " Ho useof the Dead " how congenial he found the bas peuple of Siberia.

Aristocracy of the intellect is no less inevitable in the createdcharac ter. A part from th e fact that the relation of the creationto the creator is definite it is impossible to reveal the human heart167


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The Blue Reviewunless a character is chosen which is itself the realisation of someof the finest possibilities of humani ty . The power of rationalanalysis of motive and action, a clear vision of the working of hisown mind,these are the capacities which belong to the finecharacter . The working of ins t inct , or rather the unconsciousnesstha t it is ins t inct which is working, is typical of a lower plane ofexistence, in which the novelist cannot find the elements of hissupreme individuals . For a revelation of the human soul in acharacter of fiction demands what philosophers call the continuityof the self, and demands that this continuity should be m a d eexpl ic i t . Throughout its development the soul must be self-conscious, analysing its motives and feelings, making the psychological evolution plain to us at the same t ime that we are carriedto a point beyond our knowledge and learn more than we knewof the human hea r t . If instinct breaks into this continuity the herom u s t be conscious of the fact that it is ins t inct which breaks in,fo r to in te rrupt the evolution of a soul by some unconsciousinstinctive reaction, would be l ike interrupting a chain of goodmathematical reasoning by the assertion that 2 + 2 = 5. Oncecontinuity is lost the creation is annihilated. Not a step can beomit ted in the bonne logique au fond de tout genie. It is plain thenthat this continuity of consciousness cannot be expressed in anycharacter save one of an " aristocratic " type . It is not an aristocracy of externals ( though it is worth remembering tha t what Iconsider to be the finest novel ever written, La Chartreuse deParme, is in such a setting), but an aristocracy of soul , and thecharacter must have realised the main elements of this loftypossibility before the action begins . Otherwise whence can theinternal lucidity of consciousness, which makes the working of asoul clear, be derived ? We need to see the character in the very actof willing and feeling ; and we are grown a little tired of watchingour modern novelis ts urge their undis t inguished puppets to anunattainable perfect ion. Even the half-instinctive gropings of thehalf-distinguished in divine discontent with the existing social

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Mr. Bennet t , S tendhal and the Modern Novelorde r have lost their fascination for us ; and pe rha ps we w ereasking a question of a more critical importance than we knewwhen we asked Mr. Wells and Mr. Bennett where it was all leadingto . We were impatient that their characters should realise themselves and begin. So much of modern novel wri t ing amounts tonothing more than a mere skirmish with prel iminaries . Sparringis all ver y w ell, an d helps to m ake th e fighter fit to ba ttle forworld 's championships; but too much sparring is not only tedious,as habitues of the Wonderland know, but destroys the ability tofight in real earnest. Perhaps our novelists have spent so muchtime in sparring that they have forgotten, if they ever knew, howto fight.

One of the manifestations of sparring which we deplore inmodern novelists is the preoccupation with the lower middle-classas such. This preoccupation, never more in evidence than it isat the present, is probably due to two influences the prevalenceof autobiographical fiction, and the fact that the greater part ofmodern intellectual unrest centres in the middle classes. Autobiograp hical fiction is no t only th e re sult of an entirely falsededuction from the constant relation between the writer and thecreated character, but an evidence of an extraordinary self conceit ;for in the first place the fact that a writer is bound to create fromhis own experience does not, cannot, mean that he merely recordsthe things that he saw and felt in the surroundings and the circum stances in wh ich he actually saw and felt th em . After all,the essential of the great novel is creation. In the second place, toconsider that the order, the circumstances and the time in whichhis experiences occurred to him bears the mark of the finger ofGod so manifestly that his reader will be bound to consider hisautobiography a creation, is an unwarrantable piece of conceit.As to the intellectual unrest of the middle classes, it is veryprobably true that the insurgence of individuality against thetradition of the family and the obtaining social order is moreactive here than elsewhere in society. The problem of the family

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The Blue Reviewis certainly more acute in the middle classes. But that is in itselfno reason why the gropings of the emergent individual towardsthe larger life, the helpless shaking of despairing hands before afreedom half-experienced, should be the re curren t the m e of them od ern nov el. At any rate, if we are to be kep t in the m iddle classes,and th ere is no t the slightest reason w hy w e should no t b e, w ehave a right to expect that the characters should be the " aristocrats " of their own class, esprits superieurs. Why are we cont inually presented with the spectacle of human beings waveringbetween unconsciousness and consciousness , much as though thefinest intellectual development of humanity were held to be thepsych ology of a child of three ? T h e rea son is as difficult to fathomas it is certain that su ch chara cters absolutely preclud e the achievem en t of th e finest results of w hich th e novel is cap able . Su ch aconcep tion of the novel leads now here a nd th e stigma of loutishnessis printed on the books. Th ey deal with the hobbledehoys ofmodern society. They are hobbledehoy books. There is a touchof vulgarity inseparable from such characters and such books;and we resent the caricature of humanity even more than thevulgarity. It is time we had passed on to the grown man, developednot in s tature nor in s tatus , bu t in m ind , the m an of wh om a truehero can be made.

It wo uld be useless to deny that th e tend enc y of m od ern fiction,and that too of a generation later than Mr. Wells and Mr. Bennett,is against me, and it is probable that the question will be raised :" To w hich g eneration do you belon g, and on w hose behalf doyou speak ? " I can only reply w ith the phr ase of Ch -L ou is P hilippewh ich I have used befo re. It is a virtu e, as I cou nt virtueto-day, not to have written a novel at the age of twenty-three.An age which is so richly endowed as the present with criticsprolific in visions of pro mise is a supe rhea ted atm osph erefor the nascent novelist. His flowering is sudden and hisdecay catastrophic ; and th ou gh it il l befits a write r of the youn gestgenerat ion to indulge in unctuous proverbs concerning s tony

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Mr. Bennet t , Stendhal and the Modern Novelground, it is certain that the novelists to-day are legion who havelost the opportunity of something which they will never capturethrough their lack of restraint in production. Seeing that there is ayearly production of over two thousand novels, and that theyou ng novelist is mo destly co nten t to acknowledge tha t he doesnot as yet write as well as the d ozen w riters wh o have arrived , it isso easy for any young man of parts to write a novel better, a greatdeal better, than the average, that it is almost as certain that hewill get a great conceit of himself from the critics, as that thecritics will groan in mechanical raptures concerning the permanence of his ephemeral work. It would probably be a great dealmore fortunate if the young writer to-day had to face the uncomprehending but sturdy bludgeonings of Jeffreys instead of thesickening eulogy of the newspaper reviewers.

The temptations in the path of the young writer are manifold.Autobiographical fiction saves him the trouble of writing a novelat all ; unc ritical criticism saves him th e trou ble of w ritin g asecond ; for the second is written rather to satisfy the expectationsof a publisher, and the exigences of a custom requiring at thew riter 's hand s one novel a year, th an to prov e to himself t hat hehad any gift or the grit to realise it . Now a third chasm yawns inthe path. Mr. Arnold Bennett sings like a siren in The EnglishReview his seductively ambiguous music to lure the younggeneration to its complete destruction. " As the years pass I attachless and less imp ortance to techniqu e in f iction. . . . I begin tothink that the great masters of fiction are by the nature of their artorda ined to be more or less amateurs . . . . I do not know whyit should be so, unless because in the exuberance of their powerthey are impatient of the exactitudes of systematic study and them ere bother of repeated at tem pts to arrive at a m inor perfect ion."With the point which Mr. Bennett is anxious to make in these ill-considered words we are in absolute agreement. W hen we com parethe novels of Jane Austen with the masterpieces of Tolstoy,Dostoievsky or Stendhal , we are immediately conscious that there

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The Blue Reviewis in Emma a compact perfection of form against which TheBrothers Karamazov or even La Chartreuse de Parme seem loose-ended, if not actually clumsy. This is a fact which cannot bedisputed, even as the fact that these loose-ended novels are themasterpieces of narrative fiction cannot be disputed, and it isnecessary for the critic to seek some reason for this loss of formin the novelists to whom we owe the supreme creations. But it isabsolutely misleading when Mr. Bennett a t tr ibutes this to an" am ateurishness " inevitable in am ast er,o r " to the great novelis ts 'im patien ce of th e exactitudes of systematic stu dy , or the m erebother of repeated at tempts to arrive at a minor perfect ion."Tols toy and Stendhal were painstaking craftsmen. I bel ieve,though I have no other than internal evidence, that Dostoievskywas continually striving after perfection of form. Stendhal, weknow, after reading the criticism of Balzac that he had no style,re-wrote the whole of La Chartreuse in a style plus Balzacien, andrejected the result. He was preoccupied with questions of styleand form ; and the repeated notes in the marg in of the unfinishedVie de Henri Brulard, " pas de style soutenu," " style un peu plussoutenu," to guide him in the revision which he never accomplished , are proof positive tha t " amateu rishness " at least is no tto be charged to the m asters of the novel. T h e cause is rath er to besought in the very nature of the subject matter of the great novel.It has been already urge d at considerable len gth th at thenovelist is passionately interested in individuals and that hisachievem ent consists in the creation of " superio r sou ls." T h ecreation of an individual demands that he should be presentedin his full individuality ; and we know w itho ut awaiting th ecorroboration of the philosophers that this full individualityconsists not least in relations with other individuals, and theindividuality of these others in their relations with others till thewhole structure of society is bound together with the createdcharacter. The novelistherein lies the truth of his passionatefeeling ab out lifedetaches a por tion of the web of relations wh ich

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Mr. Bennet t , Stendhal and the Modern Novelcon stitute life, because it assumes for him an ov erw helm ingimportance, and inevitably in the portion detached there are acertain num ber of loose ends wh ich, thro ugh out the novel , suggestthe relation to a world beyond. If he neatly rounds off every end,gives everyone his entrance and his exit within the compass of thenovel itself, the inevitable result seems to be a microcosm, such asJane Austen's . But the supreme novelis t , being among otherthings a supremely honest man, by the very honesty of the severance, suggests that there is another world closely bound withthat he creates, and for all he knows, equally valuable and equallycapable of expression. The great novels are loose-ended becauseabsolute tru th is incom patible w ith the smaller perfection. W eenjoy the microcosm that Jane Austen gives us, though we realiseto the full th at she is ultimately to be regard ed as second -rate. T h epessimistic Tu rge nie v had perfection of form because per hap sthe finest expression of p essim ism is to tie all th e en ds of lifetog ethe r. In his books the re is no thin g out of persp ective, andconsequently he never achieves that final creation of characterth at is in the greate st no vels. It is difficult exactly to expressthis conviction of mine in reading Turgeniev. It may be vaguelyconveyed by saying that he is faultless as regards the perspectiveof the individual work of art, but ignores the perspective ofspiritual values which seems to transcen d the m ore academicvirtues of craftsmanship. The great novelist practises these virtuesso long as they are compatible with spiritual truth.

Disc ardin g, the n, M r. Be nn ett 's insidious suggestion of" am ateurishn ess " as a characteristic of the great n ovelist, wewill complete our viaticum for the youngest generation byinclud ing our results in a hard saying. H e m us t be an espritsuperieur; he must create esprits superieurs; he must s tr ivefor perfection of form so long as it is compatible with spiritualtru th . Th ese c om m and m ents are so l i tt le in accord with m ode rnpractice that i t would seem consummate temeri ty to press ouranalysis of the great novel yet further. It is , how ever, impo ssible

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The Blue Reviewto resist the impulse to define the subject matter of the supremenovel even more closely. I think that such novels must deal withthe history of a love-passion ; for that is the passion which intensifies a man's humanity to the uttermost. (The possession of anesprit superieur, being man's highest realisation of himself, is hishum anity. ) O the r passions curtai l this hum anity to varying degrees ,and bring him in one respect or another nearer to the beasts thatperish. Thus though Old Goriot 's passionate affection for hisdau ghters impresses us , we are repelled at the sam e m om ent,con siderin g that he is a m on om ania c. Similarly we conceivethat a passion for power would dehum anise a m an. O nth e othe r han d a m an 's love-passion for a wo m an bring s hisconsciousness to its highest level and maintains it at that levellongest. Moreover, there is always immanent in such a passiona sense of approaching tragedy, for it is by its very nature neverwholly secure. But the love-passion of the supreme novel must bethat of an esprit superieur for an esprit superieur ; for on a lowerlevel of humanity the passion itself becomes grosser, and lessensrather than intensifies a man's humanity. The love-passions of thehob bled eho y boo ks are not love-passions at all ; they are b estdescribed by the misused wo rd Sex, and m erit all the vitupera tionbestowed on that word by the New Age, which, however, notseldom has the misfortune to include and condemn the higherwith the lower. I do not wish to suggest that the novelshould be restricted to the history of a love passionthat is thel imited sphere of i ts highest t r iumphsbut rather to record myconv iction that th e great novelist of th e futu re will be like thegreat novelist of the past, a superior spirit creating superiorspirits, striving after perfection of form so long as it is compatiblewith absolute spiritual truth, and achieving his supreme creationin th e history of a love pass ion. If this were t he critical instru m en tin common use to-day, how many of the first-born would bespared, and how many of the adults held in honour ?

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A R I A D N E I N N A X O S By E D W A R D J . D E N T

A N Y O N E wh o has ever a t temp ted to learn a foreignlanguag e, anyon e wh o has attained a consid erableproficiency in it, kno ws th at the m ost difficult an delusive chapter of his task is the comprehension offoreign humour. There are , of course , certa in thingswhich are comic in any language and perhaps to anytemperament. Jokes which are primit ive and direct we can al lunders tand , and to an Engl ishman who knows German pre t tywell, there is a certain amusement to be derived from such literaryhu m ou r as the parody in Ge rm an of some classic Germ an auth or.But supposing that we are confronted with, say, a German parodyof a French or Italian author, the difficulty is horribly complicated. We may be quite familiar with the original French orItalian, we may be fluent G erm an scholars ; bu t there still remainsa new effort to be made, and one that demands a peculiar agilityof mind. We have got to realise not only what our French authorsignifies to us, but what he signifies to the average German mind ;and we often are inclined to feel that not only is the effort irksome,but that i t is not worth the trouble of making.

T he cur ious en te r ta inm ent presented a mon th ago a t HisMajesty 's Theatre under the t i t le of Ariadne in Naxos gives unlimited scope to those who care to try psychological experimentsof this kind. Ariadne in Naxos is an opera performed by order ofM. Jourda in in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Before we can unders tand Ariadne, then , we mu st unders tand M . Jourd a in ; no t ,however, Moliere 's M. Jourdain, or what we English people thinkto be Moliere 's M. Jourdain, but M. Jourdain as seen by Herr vonHoffmannstha l,and perhaps Herr von Hoffmannstha l 's M . Jourda inas seen by Mr. Maugham and Si r Herber t Tree .Fortunately, however, this is not really the case. It is quiteeviden t that th is so-called " M . Jourd ain " is a m an of straw .What the author and composer wanted was an " induction " andnothing morethat is, an apology for their opera, so as to disarmcriticism by the suggestion that what was apparently serious was

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The Blue Reviewreally meant to be comic, or vice versa. Hoffmannsthal is well readin English literature, and is no doubt as familiar with The Knightof the Burning Pestle as he is with The Taming of the Shrew ; itis quite possible, too, that he is acquainted with the old ItalianDon Giovanni opera which Mozart 's clever librettist adapted to hisown uses . Ha ving borrow ed poor M . Jourd ain to serve the purp oseof a Ch ristop her Sly, the au tho r and com poser soon saw tha t it couldbe easy and effective from the ordinary manager's point of viewto keep the mo st broad ly com ic scenes, and in trod uce a liberaldose of incidental music ; moreov er, M . Jourd ain h aving heldthe s tage both in France and in Germany for a couple of centuries ,those of the audience who might be bored with the opera couldat least be sure of having a good deal of fun for their money out ofa tabloid arrangement of Moliere .

The plain fact remains , however, that in this entertainmentMoliere does not count artistically at all . M. Jourdain has no moreappropriateness to Strauss ' opera, even as a Chris topher Sly, thanhe would have to Fanny's First Play ; if an induction is wantedat all, i t m us t be an indu ction of our own tim es. T h e dressingup of prologue and opera in seventeenth century costume andlanguage is merely an ingenious way of escape from the difficultieswhich would ensue if the problem presented was taken seriously.Hoffm annsthal, l ike a great m an y literary and artistic peop leat the present day, has fallen in love with the baroque. We are allrather sick of Ruskin and St. Pancras station ; we are all beginningto think it rather amusing to play with ideas which our eldersconsidered to be in bad taste . An d it so hap pen s that Ho ffmann sthalby way of being original, has ju st discovered that th e En glishtheatre of the seventeenth century produced at least one immortal

masterpieceOtway's Venice Preserved. Here le t me say thatHoffm annsthal, as a clever G er m an , has a real and serious advantag eover us English peop le ; he prob ably does not see m uc h differencebetween the f ine poetry and the mere bombast that are both to befound in the serious scenes, and although he can hardly appreciate176


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Ariadne in Naxosthe innermost flavour of the comic scenes, he at any rate hasprobably no scruple whatever (his version of the play is known tom e only at second ha nd ) in translatin g the m literally, wh ereasin England the fantast ic humours of Nacky and her Antonio havebeen banished from the stage since the days of George II.

As a matter of fact the jumble of high tragedy and low comedyfor which Hoffmannsthal so highly comm ends Otway was to befound in practically every Italian opera libretto of Otway's period.Moreover, the comic episodes of the Italian operas were certainlyinfluenced to some extent by the Comedy of Masksthe extemporised comedies of Harlequin and Pantaloon, which were actedat every village fair. Ariadne then, it might be inferred, is really aparo dy of seve nteen th-ce ntury Italian op era. Well, i t is jus t sucha parody as might be writ ten by a man who had read some casualdictionary article about Italian opera and the Comedy of Masks,but had never given a moment 's s tudy to the very copious documents that remain, or even to the very copious literature aboutth em . It is ju st po ssible tha t a clever com poser with an antiq uaria nturn of mind and a keen sense of real scholarship, such as is extremely rare in Germany, might have set Hoffmannsthal 's Ariadneto a fairly amusing parody of old Italian music : but I cannot seethat it would have been worth the trouble, given the fact that amodern audience knows nothing of the s tyle parodical . And evenif it had been worth while, there surely was never a composerless fitted for the task than Richard Strauss.

Now the sense of fine scholarship is by no means the first testof a really great co m pose r. Or rath er, a great com poser m ay possessit, but does not make a parade of it , because the essential greatnessof his thought and the clearness of his expression form a style oftheir own. On the other hand, the moment a composer wisheseither to imitate or to parody some other composer's style, thesense of scholarship becomes indispensable. It is a quality whichfew composers of operas can afford to do without, since it is onlythe very greatest who can sustain the interest of an opera without

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The Blue Reviewrecourse to local colour, or some analogous device. Strauss is notone of these. In spite of all his cleverness, in spite of moments ofreal greatness, there is hardly a work of his which does not breakdown somewhere from want of scholarship. As long as Strauss iswriting his own serious and strenuous style, his cacophony andeven his coarseness of thought can be forgiven him. It is in hismoments of would-be s implici ty and populari ty that he is ut terlyintolerable. The most horrible instance of all , perhaps, occurs inSalome, where by way of contrast to the perversities of Herod andhis court the first followers of Jesus are represented musically byphrases which recall Franz Abt and the res t of the male-voicepart-song school. Der Rosenkavalier is so full of these vulgaritiesthat there is no room for anything to set a higher standard to thelistener. Ariadne is as strange a mixture as Strauss has ever produced. The incidental music to the induction might pass ifMoliere's play were given complete on its own merits ; i t is generally agreeable and occasionally amusing in a heavy-handed sortof way. It is not particularly characteristic of Strauss, and it neverfor a single moment bears the least resemblance to seventeenthcentury music. As a musical induction to Ariadne i t is m ere w asteof t ime.

Had Sir Herbert Tree given us the entertainment al l in onelanguage we might have had the whole of the scene which immediately precedes the opera, a scene which makes the opera a littlem or e intelligib le. It is no t sufficient m erely to see the h or ro r ofthe composer wh en the order is given for the opera and the harle quinade to take place simultaneously. The offended dignity of theprima donna and the pert familiarity of Zerbinetta before the operabegins , go some way towards explaining their behaviours on thestage, for we are apparently meant to realise that the " opera " ismerely an opera, and that the persons taking part in it are reallylive actors and actresses.

It is this wa nt of sincerity, com bine d with the w ant of scholarship th at cons titutes the great blem ish of the wo rk. It is the m ore178


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Ariadne in Naxospainfully noticeable, because the concluding scene of the arrivalof Bacchus and his duet with Ariadne are apparent ly qui te s incereand undoubtedly beaut iful . I t is here i f anywhere that Strausshas developed something of a new style, and a style that is freeboth of commonplace and of obscurity. In the earlier part of theserious opera, where Ariadne is surrounded by the Naiad, theDryad, and Echo, there are some beautiful effects, but they arestudies in the technique of vocal writing rather than the inevitableexpression of genuine emotion, either l i terary or musical. As forZerbinet ta and her crew, they are tedious in the extreme. Thecomposer who could wr i te a symphonic movement on Funiculifunicula in the belief that i t was a genuine folksong could hardlybe expected to differentiate m usically th e individualit ies ofArlecchino, Brighel la and the rest . The ensembles of male voicessuggest no th ing bu t a German Liedertafel. The mere difficulty ofZerbinet ta 's great ar ia has made a sensat ion among those who l iveon " sen sat ion s," bu t wha t does it am oun t to ? I t is preceded by arecitative of real pow er an d ind ividu ality ; a slow aria followswhich osci l lates between sent imental melody of Strauss ' usualtype when aiming at s implici ty , and commonplace scales orcadenzas. After this comes the great rondo, intended apparent lyas a paro dy of Bellini, since the first phra se has a faint rese m blan ceto Ah mon giunge. Bu t Bellini, w he n he set out to w rite a tun e couldat any rate kee p it goin g ; Str au ss sh eer s off into a different styleafter tw o bars. Th e exaggerated coloratura which forms the greaterpart of the rondo is rarely expressive and seldom even effective.When i t is not made up of obviously instrumental phrases, i t is amere st r ing of threadbare tags from Meyerbeer . Of the realdramatic value of coloratura ei ther in comedy or t ragedy Straussappears to know nothin g whatev er . An d he is repu ted to be a greatMozart scholar !

Yet we need not be without hope. One cannot hear Ariadne inNaxos without perceiving that Strauss is at last beginning to realise,however dimly, the expressive powers of the voice. It is a new179 D


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The Blue Reviewmedium to h im, as i t mus t be to any modern German composer ,and he will take some tim e before he can exp ress himself fully in it .He is half ashamed of it at present, and afraid that the critic willlaugh at him ; that is wh y he hopes to get the laugh of them bythrowing al l the blame on the shoulders of poor M. Jourdain.It is not, however, in Zerbinetta 's aria that the conversion isapparent , not in the variat ions on the Rhine-maidens ' songs, norin the hym n-tun e t r io sung towards the end by the three ny m ph s ,but in the scene of Bacchus and Ariadne that Strauss has at lastallowed his voices to be the means by which he expresses his realmusical thought. I t is this duet that may perhaps make Ariadnea work of real imp ortance in the his tory of m ode rn G erm an m usic .

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E P I L O G U E I I I. B A I N S T U R C S B y K A T H E R I N E M A N S F I E L DT|HIRDs toreyto the left , Madame," said the cashier,han ding me a pink ticket . " One mo m ent I w illring for the elevator." Her black satin skirt swished

across the scarlet and gold hail, and she stood amongthe artificial palms, her white neck and powdered facetopped with masses of gleaming orange hairlike anover-ripe fungus bursting from a thick, black stem. She rang andrang . " A thousa nd pard ons, M ada m e. I t is disgraceful . A n ewattendant. He leaves this week." With her fingers on the bell shepeered into the cage as though she expected to see him, lying onth e floor, like a dead b ird . " It is disgraceful ! " T h er e app eare dfrom nowhere a tiny figure disguised in a peaked cap and dirtyw hite cotton gloves. " H ere you are ! " she scolded. " W herehave you been ? W hat have you bee n d oing ? " Fo r answ er thefigure hid its face beh ind one of the w hite cotton gloves and sneezedtwice. " U gh ! Disgusting ! Tak e M adam e to the third s torey ! "The midget stepped aside, bowed, entered after me and clashedthe gates to. We ascended, very slowly, to an accompaniment ofsneezes and prolonged, half whistling sniffs. I asked the top of thepate nt leather cap : " Ha ve you a cold ? " " It is the air, M ad am e, "replied the creature, speaking through its nose with a restrainedair of great relish, " one is never dry here. Third floor if youplease," sneezing over my ten-centime t ip.

I walked along a tiled corridor decorated with advertisementsfor lingerie and bust improverswas allotted a tiny cabin and ablue print chemise and told to undress and find the Warm Roomas soon as possible . Through the matchboard walls and from thecorridor sounded cries and laughter and snatches of conversation." Are you ready ? " " Ar e you com ing ou t now ? " " W ait til lyou see me ! " " Ber the Berthe ! " " O ne m o m en t! One m om ent!Im m ediate ly ! " I u ndr essed quickly an d carelessly, feeling likeone of a troupe of litt le schoolgirls let loose in a swimming bath.T h e W arm Room was not large. I t had terra cotta painted wallswith a fringe of peacocks, and a glass roof, through which one

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The Blue Reviewcou ld see the sky, pale and unreal as a pho togra phe r 's backg roundscreen. Some round tables s trewn with shabby fashion journals ,a marble basin in the centre of the room, filled with yellow lilies,and on the long, towel enveloped chairs , a number of ladies ,apparen tly languid as the f lowers . . . . I lay back with a clothover my head, and the air, smelling of jungles and circuses andda m p washing m ade me begin to dre am . . . Yes, i t mig ht havebeen very fascinating to have married an explorer . . . and livedin a jun gle , as long as he d idn 't shoot any thing o r take any thingcap tive . I detest perform ing bea sts. Oh . . . those circuses atho m e . . . the tent in the pad dock and the children sw armingover the fence to stare at the waggons and at the clown makingup with his glass stuck on the waggon wheeland the steam organplaying the Honeysuckle and the Bee much too fast . . . overand over . . . . I know what th is a ir reminds m e ofa game offollow my leader among the clothes hung out to dry. . . .

T h e d oor opene d. Tw o tall blond e wom en in red and whitecheck gowns came in and took the chairs opposite mine. One ofthem carried a box of mandarins wrapped in s i lver paper and theother a manicure set. They were very stout, with gay, bold faces,and quantities of exquisite whipped fair hair.Before sitting d ow n th ey glanced rou nd the roo m , looked th eother wo me n up and down, turned to each other, grimaced, wh is-pered something, and one of them said, offering the box, " Have am and arin ? " A t that they s tarted laughing they lay back andshook, and each time they caught sight of each other broke outafresh. " Ah, that was too good," cried one, wiping her eyes verycarefully, just at the corners. " You and I, coming in here, quiteserious, you know, very correctand looking round the roomandand as a result of our careful inspectionI offer you a man-darin. No, i t ' s too funny. I must remember that . I t ' s good enoughfor a mu sic hall . Hav e a m and arin ? " " But I can not im agin e,"said the other, " why women look so hideous in Turkish bathslike beef steaks in chem ises. Is it the w om en or is it the air ?

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Epi logue I I I : Bains TurcsLook at that one, for instancethe skinny one, reading a bookand sweat ing at the moustacheand those two over in the corner ,discussing whether or not they ought to tel l their non-existentbabies how babies com e and . . . He avens ! Look at th is on ecoming in . Take the box, dear . Have al l the mandarins."The newcomer was a short s tout l i t t le woman with f lat , whitefeet and a black mackintosh cap over her hair. She walked up anddown the room, swinging her arms, in affected unconcern, glancedcontemptuously at the laughing women and rang the bel l for theat tendant . I t was answered immediately by " Berthe," half nakedand sprinkled with soapsuds. " Well , what is i t , Madame. I 've not ime . . ." " Please bring me a hand towel ," said the MackintoshCap, in German. " Pardon ? I do not un der stan d. Do you speakFre nch ? " " N o n ," said the m ackintosh cap . " Ber the ! "shrieked one of the blond e wo m en, " have a m and arin . O h, mo nDieu, I shal l d ie of laughing." The Mackintosh Cap went througha pantomime of finding herself wet and rubbing herself dry." Verstehen Sie." " Mais non , Ma da m e," sa id Ber the , w atch ingwith round eyes that snapped with laughter, and she left theM ackintosh C ap, winked at th e blonde w om en, came over , felt th emas though they had been a pair of prize poultry , said " You aredoing very well ," and disappeared again. The Mackintosh Capsat down o n the edge of a chair, snatche d a fashion journ al, s m ackedover the crackl ing pages and pretend ed to read and the blonde wo m enleaned back eat ing the mandarins and throwing the peel ings intothe li ly basin. A scent of fruit , fresh and p ene trating , hu ng on th eair . I looked round at the other women. Yes, they were hideous,lying back, red and moist, with dull eyes and lank hair, the onlylit t le energy they had vented in shocked prudery at the behaviourof the two blond es. Sudd enly I discovered M ackintosh Cap star ingat me over the top of her fashion journal, so intently that I tookflight an d w ent into the h ot room . But in vain ! M ackintosh C apfollowed after and planted herself in front of me.

" I know," she said, confident and confiding, " that you can183


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The Blue Reviewspeak G erm an . I saw i t in you r face jus t now . W asn' t tha t a scandalab ou t the a tten da nt refusing m e a towel ? I shall speak to t hemanagement about that and I shall get my husband to write thema let ter this evening. Things always come better from a man,do n' t they ? N o ," she said, rubb ing h er yellowish arm s, " I 'vene ver be en in suc h a scandalous placeand four francs fifty to pay !Natural ly, I shall not give a t ip. You wouldn' t , would you ? Notafter that scandal about a hand towel. . . . I 've a great m ind tocomplain about those women as well . Those two that keepon laughing and eat ing. D o you know wh o they are ? " Sheshook her head. " They're not respectable womenyou can tel lat a glance. At least I can, any married wo man can. The y'r e noth ingbut a couple of street women. I 've never been so insulted in mylife. La ug hin g at me , m ind you ! T h e great big fat pigs like tha t !And I haven' t sweated at a l l properly, jus t because of them.I got so angry that the sweat tur ne d in instead of o u t ; it doesin excitement, you know, sometimes, and now instead of losingmy cold, I wouldn' t be surprised if I brought on a fever."

I walked round the hot room in misery pursued by the Mackin-tosh Cap unti l the two b londe wom en came in, and seeing he r,burs t into another f i t of laughter. To my rage and disgustM ackintosh Cap s idled up to me , smiled meaningly, and drew dow nher m ou th. " I don ' t care ," she said, in her hideous Ger m an voice." I shouldn't lower myself by paying any attention to a couple ofs treet women. If my husband knew he 'd never get over i t .Dreadfully particu lar he is. W e've bee n m arried six years . W ecome from Salzburg. I t ' s a nice town. Four children I have l iving,and it was really to get over the shock of the fifth that we cameh e r e . The fifth," she whispered, padding after me, " was born, afine healthy child, and it never bre athe d ! W ell, after nin em on th s, a wom an c an' t help be ing disappointed, can she ? "

I moved towards the vapour room. " Are you going in there,"she said. " I w ould n' t if I were you . Th os e two have gone in.T he y may th ink you want to s tr ike up an acquaintance wi th the m .184


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Epi logue I I I : Ba ins Tu rc sYou never know , wom en l ike th at . " At that m om ent they cameout, wrapping themselves in the rough gowns, and passingMackintosh Cap like disdainful queens. " Are you going to takeyou r chemise off in the vapou r room ? " asked she . " Do n 't m indm e, you know . W om an is wo ma n, and besides, if you 'd ra ther ,I won't look at you. I knowI used to be like that. I wouldn'tmind betting," she went on savagely, " those filthy women hada good look at each other. Po oh ! wo me n l ike that . You can ' tshock them. And don't they look dreadful. Bold and all that falsehair . That manicure box one of them had was f i t ted up with gold.Well, I don't suppose it was real, but I think it was disgusting tobrin g it . On e m ight at least cut one's n ails in priva te, do n't youthink ? I cannot see," she said, " what men see in such women.N o , a husband and children and a home to look after, that 's whata wom an needs. T ha t 's what my husb and says. Fanc y one ofthese hussies peel ing potatoes or choosing the meat! Are yougoing already ? "

I flew to find Be rthe a nd all the tim e I was soaped an d smackedand sprayed and thrown in a cold water tank I could not get outof m y mi nd the ugly, wretched figure of the litt le Ge rm an w ith agood husband and four children railing against the two freshbeauties who had never peeled potatoes nor chosen the right meat.In the anteroom I saw them once again. They were dressed inblue. One was pinning on a bunch of violets , the other buttoninga pair of ivory suede gloves. In their charming feathered hats andfurs they stood talking. " Yes, there they are," said a voice at myelbow. And M ackintosh Cap, t ransformed, in a blue a nd w hitecheck blouse and crochet collar, with the lit t le waist and largehips of the G erm an wo m an and a terr ible bird ne st , wh ich Salzburgdoubtless called Reise Hut on her head. " How do you supposethey ca n afford clothes like that ? T h e h orrib le, low crea tures .N o , they 're enough to make a young gir l think twice." And asthe tw o walked out of the anteroo m, M ackintosh Ca p stared afterthem, her sallow face all mouth and eyes, l ike the face of a hungrychild before a forbidd en tab le. 185


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C H R O N I C L E S O F T H E M O N T HT H E T H E A T R E By G I L B E R T C A N N A NMasefield and Marie Lloyd.IT is tolerably certain that Marie Lloyd has never read a wordof Masefield, nor could her art gain anything from the studyof his . M r. Masefield, on the oth er han d, could gain con siderably in the technique of the theatre by a critical examinat ion of the greatest of com edienn e 's rende ring, as M otherEve, of the couplets :

" When once I ate an apple the whole universe was stirred,Now girls can eat bananas and no one says a word."The suggestion is not , of course, that such words should be putinto the mouth of Nan or that Nan should be turned into a f igurein any way resembling Marie Lloyd, though, for the purposes ofburle sque , that wo uld be an excellent expedient . T h e reason forthis apparently grotesque juxtaposition of names is that I left theperformance of Nan with a certain amount of dissatisfaction andfound, or thought I found, the explanation of it when I listened toMarie Lloyd a few nights la ter . Years ago, when I a t tended thefirst performance of Nan at the Royalty Theatrethe play havingbeen rejected even by the Stage Society, God bless itI had thissame feeling of dissatisfaction, though perhaps in a greater degree,and I suffered from it more because I was unpractised in theanalysis of stage effects an d m iscalc ulatio ns. I felt the be au ty ofthe play, its curious athletic leaps into beauty, but I also feltthat this beauty was withheld from me, not artfully, so as to leadme on to higher and purer realms, but inadvertently. Then theplay was not particularly well acted, and its dramatic quality wasruthlessly sacrificed to the Gaffer, whose description of the tideboring up the Severn was treated as the highest point of thetragedy, rather like building a house for the sake of an ornamentover the drawing-room window. At the Court Theat re , the o therday, the play was in m uch better focus and the p art of N an w as

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T h e T h e a t r esuperbly played by Miss Irene Rooke, with a beauty of tone andgesture and a skill in skating over the sentimental passages thatI cannot remember to have seen equalled. The rendering of thenoblest scene in the play, the love-passage between Nan and DickG urv il is surely th e finest, almos t th e only real achiev em ent inthe modern English theatre ( leaving Ireland out of account) ,and the names of M r. M ilton R osmer and Miss Irene Rooke shouldmark a stage in the revival of English acting, as that of Mr. Mase-field marks a stage in the renaissance of poetry and the drama.I would like to leave it at that, but I must work back to MarieLloyd and my thesis, which has grown out of the feeling of disgustthat followed on the moment of delight occasioned by that sceneand its ren der ing . T h e love scene in Nan is followed by one ofthe worst scenes in modern drama, that between Dick and Mrs.Pargetter . I t is incompetent and throws the audience back intolistlessness and bewilderment. It comes, I fancy, from distrustof the em otional and im aginative force of the play and inabilityto shake off the old superstition that a play's technical machineryis something entirely separate from its contents. That is only truew hen a play has no conten ts and is bo rn of no imaginative n ecessity.Nan is a strange play in that it is streaked with imagination rathertha n informed with it . It seem s definitely to belong to a transitionalperiod an d to be half art, half old conv ention s. H ow ever, if i t is no tcompletely beautiful in itself, it is the occasion of much beautifuland really moving acting. Actors, of course, ask no more ofdram atis ts than tha t . Audiences ask a great deal m ore , and theyget it in the music-halls at the hands of the best and, be it noted,the most successful performers. Marie Lloyd's work for instance,is simply astonishing in its finish and subtlety and ease. He rmaterial is often very poor, but she never utters a word nor makesa gesture that does not contribute in the minds of her audienceto the general impression of wit. It is not en oug h for her, she know s,s imply to be Marie Lloyd, but she must be from moment tomoment Marie Lloyd in the terms of her audience 's general

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The Blue Reviewanticipation of pleasure. A reputation helps, of course. Jack Pointhas only to say " Pass the mustard " to be greeted with roars oflaughter, bu t he has to say it in Jack Poin t's way, with no technicalfumbling. A first-rate artist will recognise that his reputation isother people's affair and not his own, and will not regard it as apart of his equipment. A second-rate artist will and nearly alwaysdoes regard his reputation as a fetish, and devotes all his energiesto feeding it, sacrificing everything, even his art, even his audienceto it. Marie Lloyd is a first-rate artist. She has real wit and spontaneity and is therefore a touchstone for o ther works of art, evenin a different kind, even for tragedy and poetry. I commend herwork to the study of Mr. Masefield. It does throw light on dram aticwork of all kinds, even on the works of William Shakespeare, whowould have loved her and added her to his splendid collection offunny females. She would have called him " Bill " and he wouldhave liked it. I should love to see her call Mr. Masefield " Jack,"and to see him enjoy it.

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T H E N O V E L S By H U G H W A L P O L ESecuri ty and Adventure .

I

M R . W I N S T O N C H U R C H I L L i n h is n ov el " T h eInsid e of the C up " has given his m any read ersprecisely what his many readers desire.Mr. Churchill has, for a number of years, nowbeen heavily lumbering along in his slow-moving,solid and practical conveyance and we have greetedhis very solidity as a relief. H e has given u s , once in every two ye ars,a hard chunk of American social history, introducing us to menand women whose boots and overcoats are admirably convincing ;with heavy, solemn tread, no smile upon his face, his gaze a littleanxious, his chin confidently raised, Mr. Churchill has solemnlydisplayed his histories. . . .

I had shared for a number of years in that comfortable armchair reality that had pleased so many of my acquaintances.There was, for one thing, no danger, no startling imagination,no ironic phrase, no beauty suddenly revealed could jump thenervesonly, always, I knew that that sedate and companionablevoice wou ld mu rm ur on for m y slothful entertain m ent.Now, suddenly, with " The Inside of the Cup " the desire forthat security has vanished. I am bored, indifferent, impatient.Perhaps in this account of American religious disturbances, Mr.Churchill is heavier, more solid, than ever before ; perhaps theneed for anothe r " Ro bert Elsm ere " has passed ; pe rha ps s entences like " Hodder's eyes were arrested by a crowd, barring thesidewalk on the block ahead " or vivid description like " Behindthe house, in the sunlight, were massed spruces of a brilliantarsenic green with purp le cones " had an unsymp athetic effect ;

perhaps the frontispiece that shows us Mr. Hodder 's anguishas he is asked by a lady friend, " Can't you feel that you are anindividual, a personality, a force that might be put to great uses,"told me that Mr. Hodder 's his tory would be unsatisfactory.It is enough that Mr. Churchill has allowed his interest in189


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The Blue Reviewquestions of modern theology to overwhelm both his sense ofhumour and his knowledge of human nature. His book is dull ,lifeless, void.

Nevertheless there is this interesting fact about it that its solidsecurity is precisely what a very great number of people desire.Mr. Churchill is , in his books, so safe, so sure, so certainly to berelied upon that there can never be any kind of question as tohis success. If he wants to tell us about a sidewalk or an arsenicgreen house he tel ls us without a tremor, without exaggerat ion,or extravag ance. If he wan ts to tell us ab ou t the troubles in a clergyman's soul or the unhappiness of a lady of pleasure he tel ls usquite simply with words exactly suited to his vision. This placidperfection, this assured definition is as near to art as the EiffelTower is to Chartres Cathedral, but it is always visible, alwaystangible, a lways assured of i ts importance. What would happen toMr. Churchil l did he have a sudden revelat ion, were he to beholdpigs flying or the statu e of Lib erty floating hap pily do wn N ew Yo rkharbour it is terrible to consider.

M eanw hile he is mag nificently safe . . .I I

With what an anxious eye would he gaze upon Miss SheilaKaye-Smith or Mr. D. H. Lawrence, were he informed of theirperilous existences. Such works as " Isle of Thorns " or " Sonsand Lovers " mus t seem to him the madd est and mo st i rresponsible adventures. He would, in fact, be quite justified inconsidering that the Raphael of Miss Kaye-Smith or the PaulMorel of Mr. Lawrence were dim and uncertain figures besidehis own Mr. Hodder. Mr. Hodder 's c lerical hat is as certainas the days of the week ; Raphael and Paul are dimly and moststrangely clothed . . .

The dividing-l ine is here. Mr. Churchil l has his public , hismessage, his sure reward. Miss Kaye-Smith and Mr. Lawrencehave, in comparison, a small public , no message, and a reward190


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The Novelsthat is their own private affair. Meanwhile they are engaged uponmost thri l l ing adventures .

" Is le of Thorns " is the fourth of Miss Kaye-Smith 's novelsand is worthy to stand with its predecessors. Perhaps " Starbrace "is still the most satisfying of these volumes, and I am not sure that" The Tramping Methodis t " did not , f ive years ago, carry oneas far along the road as " Isle of Th or ns " do es now, bu t to anyo newho does not kn ow th e earlier novels " Isle of T h o rn s " m us tcome as a fine shining experience, a work that, with some faultsand a number of uncertainties, arrives very nearly as a greatromance of the first class.

I t is , I bel ieve, the very uncertainty of Miss Kaye-Smith 'stouch that is the mo st hopeful element in her wo rk. Am ongstthe younger novelists she stands alone for the inspirationof her vision. That inspiration sometimes fails her, but sheis less dependant than any of her contemporaries , on her ownpast experiences. She creates simply by the fine energy of he

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