The Novels of Bruce Marshall

Irish Jesuit Province

The Novels of Bruce MarshallAuthor(s): Alexander BoyleSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 76, No. 904 (Oct., 1948), pp. 457-463Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20515876 .

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THE NOVELS OF BRUCE MARSHALL By ALEXANDER BOYLE

IT was said of Proudhon that he fired a musket off in the street to attract attention. Much the same might be said of the pub? cation of Father Malachy's Miracle by Bruce MarshaU in 1931.

The fusillade has been kept up ever since with a series of books of

which the best known are perhaps Yellow Tapers of Paris (1943) and All Glorious Within (1944): aU three pubUshed by Constable, London.

To understand the effect of Father Malachy's Miracle, especially among Catholics, we must glance briefly at the Uterary scene nearly twenty years ago. The banishment of re?gion from the field of the novel was complete. It must be remembered that the novel by this time was not just a type of Uterary expression like the essay or the sonnet. It was the vehicle par excellence for anyone who wished to

express a point of view. Ideas that in a previous age would have

been confined to the narrow Umits of a treatise, a sermon, or a play, all found their expression in the novel. The culmination of the

process, "

the novel to end novels "

had taken place with the publi cation in 1922 of James Joyce's Ulysses which with its 260,430 words

(29,899 all different) endeavoured to describe and comment upon all

the ideas, sensations and activities of its characters during a summer's

day in Dublin. The virtual ostracism of the religious point of view from the novel

(or as in Joyce its virtual annihilation by a combination of satire and

blasphemy) meant that it was not worth considering. If it was

brought in, it was only to be mocked at or misunderstood. Nothing was worth considering but the natural life of the senses and their

impact on the mind.

It is the main thing about Bruce MarshaU that he changed aU this. Not only did he write a novel whose hero is God and whose heroine is the CathoUc Church, but in the course of some dozen or so books between 1931 and 1947 he has given us the same theme. Sometimes, as in George Brown's Schooldays, the heroine is absent or makes

only a brief appearance: but always there is a vivid sense of the

presence of God. It may be argued that the thing had been done before. There is

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IRISH MONTHLY

Canon Sheehan and there is Monsignor Benson. These, however, were writing for a different public and almost for a different civilis

ation. Sheehan had the Catholics of Ireland to whom to address

his books. Benson, a brilliant member of a brilliant family had, after a spectacular conversion, a public curious to know why he

had, in the phrase of the times, "

gone over to Auntie ". Both were

clergymen and it was considered natural that they should treat of

religion even in a novel. But Marshall was merely an unknown

chartered accountant working in Paris. His book did not do so well

here as in the U.S.A. where, perhaps, the lack of familiarity with

the scenes he described gave an interest to his story lacking in the

case of the Englishman who, when it comes to reading about the

doings of a set of characters in Edinburgh, is inclined to ask iron

ically what good can come out of Galilee. In any case the public of

the age in which Benson and Sheehan wrote still considered religion a vital factor in life. Although nearly all the most expert prac titioners in the field of letters were united in ignoring it, the mass of

the people were slow to accept the polite indifference of Bennet and

Galsworthy, let alone the active hostility of George Moore and H.

G. Wells. The poison had not yet spread all over.

Thirty years later it had done its work. Not only was there no

place for religion in the English novel : there was little even for the

natural joy of a pagan society. The school of D. H. Lawrence had turned life into a thing of strain and brooding sadness. The novel

had become the puppet of the middle classes, whose distrust of the

future and anxiety for the present were reflected in their suicidal

birth-rate. The traditional gaiety of the poor, so well described for a previous generation by W. W. Jacobs, was now paralleled in the

national literature by the febrile wit of P. G. Wodehouse, a humorist

of the middle classes who was acute enough to see that humour had

departed from them and could only be portrayed in the person of

irresponsible "

aristocrats "

like Archie and Bertie Wooster. The

spell was broken by the publication of Priestley's Good Companions in 1929 and Linklater's Juan in America in 1931. The spirit of

gaiety in the living of the natural life untouched by religion, of

which the unconquerable humour of the Cockney is the best example, was again abtoad. Critic after critic rushed to hail these works as

the beginning of a renaissance in the novel. Sex, it was announced, was a gay affair and there was really no necessity for the introspect

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BRUCE MARSHALL

tive gloom that had befouled it for so long. But it was stiU the most

important thing in Ufe. Nobody said a word about reUgion. It was left to MarshaU to do this. In Father Malachy*s Miracle

he stated the thesis he was to repeat in novel after novel?that sex is

God-given and therefore fundamentaUy gay: and that reUgion is

the most important thing in the world.

Forces in European Uterature had been working blindly for some

time towards a more spiritual view of existence. Nearly a century before, Stendhal had given pain to the admiring Balzac by his con

temptuous description of natura?sm in literature as the record of a

mirror dawdling down a lane. To offset this both Balzac and Zola created what were virtuaUy new landscapes in uterature. The

natura?stic description of detail from which no object, however mean or common, was omitted was a description and at the same time

the whole of life. But graduaUy it was felt by even its most skilful

exponents that description was not enough. Interpretation raised its

ugly head: and in the absence of any given scheme for interpreting the manifold of life the great European writers tended to create their own in the form of symboUsm and myth. Thus Joyce proceeded from

the natura?sm of Dubliners to the symbolism of Finnegans Wake:

and Thomas Mann, describing his Uterary development, said it was "

from the bourgeois and individual to the typical and mythical '*.

All this MarshaU was spared. Myths and parables are only neces

sary where knowledge is imperfect. MarshaU felt he had the key to Ufe in his hand?the doctrines and teachings of the Roman

Cathohc Church. As a convert he was spared that aridity of the

spirit, that deadening familiarity with the Faith, that destroys the

sense of wonder and delight that are the rich soil of uterature. Along with these there went, as with falling in love, the urgent desire to

spread the good tidings abroad. Hence nearly aU our noted CathoUc

authors are converts.

Why then was Marshall, admittedly a slighter ?terary figure than Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, not forestalled by them in his

pork of preaching the Gospel explicitly and without reservations to

the heathen of the modern world? That is a hard question to answer, and before trying to do so it would be as weU to estabUsh the facts.

Waugh began in 1928 with Decline and Fall, foUowed it up with such books as Vile Bodies and A Handful of Dust, and only after seventeen years of writing gave us a book dedicated to a specific

459



IRISH MONTHLY

problem of Catholicism in Brideshead Revisited. Greene starting with The Man Within (1929), Wrote nine more novels before giving us his first Catholic themes in Brighton Rock (1938) and The Power

and The Glory (1940). If we include Cronin, although he is not a

convert, his first book was Hatter's Castle (1931) which was followed

by four more books covering a period of six years. Only in 1942

did we get The Keys of the Kingdom, in which he joins Greene and

Marshall in the attempt to delineate the character of a Catholic

priest. Those are the facts. How are we to explain them? It is not so

much that these authors wrote books that had nothing to do with the Catholic tradition. It is arguable that from internal evidence one

could say about them all that they were in that tradition. But what

could not be said about them when they were busy establishing their

market, so to speak, was that they had dedicated their pens to the

Church. They began as general moralists at the shallow end, per

fecting their methods before making the final plunge. Marshall did more than plunge. He high-dived straight into the perilous waters

of a first novel and came up smiling. From a consideration of the

literary atmosphere of 1930 when he wrote his first book, it will be

plain that he was taking an enormous gamble. We know from his own words that he had already written

" some appallingly amateur

novels which publishers were intelligent enough to reject". Was

this just a last fling in a new milieu, which happened to be successful

and determined the form for his future work? There can be no

definite answer: but there is a fire and lack of compromise about

Father Malachy's Miracle, where we are introduced to God, as it

were, in the very first sentence, that excludes any view of the book

as a mere feeler of the market. The tone is?"This is true: take

it or leave it." It is a tone that permeates every book he wrote from

then on.

There is no space in this review for any account in detail of his novels. The interested reader will find a list under his name in

Who*s Who and will go on from there, it is hoped, to read what he can. A short survey, however, of his career and of his major char acteristics will be of help to those not acquainted with his work.

Bruce Marshall was born of Protestant parents in Edinburgh in

1899. After being educated at Edinburgh Academy and Glenalmond he attended St. Andrew's and Edinburgh Universities. His studies

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BRUCE MARSHALL

were interrupted by the first World War in which he lost a leg. He went to Paris in 1926 as a chartered accountant, married and settled down there until June, 1940, when he left shortly before the Germans

arrived. Since then he h^s been serving in the British Army, first in

the Pay Corps, then in Intelligence. Each of his novels tends to have a principal character who is the

author's mouthpiece and voices his criticism of Ufe. This takes the

form of comparing the activities of a cross-section of the modern world from Edinburgh to Paris with the standards of Christian

behaviour. In this process it is noteworthy that the great, such as

the Cardinal and the Bishop in Father Malachy's Miracle, do not

seem to measure up as well as the lowly, like the Abb? P?cher of

Yellow Tapers for Paris or Father Smith of All Glorious Within.

There is often a secondary character who is the confidant of the

first, but either does not wholly agree with him or, if he does, is

unable by reason of human weakness to put his beliefs into practice. The best example of this is Pigou, the accountant in Yellow Tapers, who ends the book little better than he began it, while MUe NicoUe

becomes a fervent believer. A strong case might be made out for

the view that each of Bruce Marshall's books is a tract, a sermon on

a set text. Indeed the subtitle of Delilah Upside Down is "

A tract,

with a thriU ". If so, the text for Yellow Tapers is obviously "

Because

th?u art neither hot nor cold I will begin to vomit thee out of My mouth ". This applies not only to Pigou but to the whole of Paris,

and indeed of France, of which he is a symbol. All through the novels the conversations and thoughts of the char

acters state the Church's teaching on faith and morals with addenda

by Marshall. These addenda tend to be repeated in different books.

For example his favourite thesis, that the Church pays too much

attention to drunkenness and fornication and too little to the more

spiritual sins of pride, hate and "drawing profits from armament

factories ", occurs again and again and as often as thrice in one book.

This might almost be caUed his special message. Most of his other

criticisms are answered by characters in the books themselves, but

this one is never answered. The answer is not far to seek. "

Some

times," says the "

heroine "

of Delilah Upside Down, "

I think that

the Stock Exchange is the biggest sin of aU." One wonders what

effect a sermon on these lines would have had on the mixed Italo

Scoto-Irish congregation depicted in All Glorious Within.

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IRISH MONTHLY

Apart from one or two idiosyncrasies like these Marshall's doctrine is sound, and, if it is repeated in various ways from book to book, that is, after all, a familiar trick of the preacher.

The delineation of character tends to suffer because he is inter ested in the Church first and humanity second. Thus his mouth

pieces are often less alive than his unregenerate characters. "

Bruiser "

Winkman in George Brown's Schooldays overshadows both Brown and the earnest but ineffectual Abinger, who is the real channel of

grace in the book. Similarly Audrey in the Red Danube is a certain

type of A.T.S. officer to the life : while Lieutenant-Colonel Nicobar, who voices the Marshallian criticism of life, is astonishingly loquacious. His comments sound strange from the lips of a regular soldier to his Brigadier. Another example that does not quite ring true is the sermon preached by Father (now Canon) Smith to the

extempore "

congregation "

who take shelter in the church from the

impending air-raid. The bizarrerie of the situation tends to detract

from one's enjoyment of the sermon, as it must have done ^*th the

congregation. It must be admitted, however, that Marshall forestalls

this objection by making their spokesman show an almost total

ignorance of what the Canon has been saying. The main thing of

course for Marshall is that he has preached the sermon.

Having said all this we must be generous in our praise. He has,

despite the potential heaviness of his subject, the art of being inter

esting. When a writer has this he can commit all the faults under the

sun. When he lacks it, not all the literary virtuosity on earth can

suppress the reader's yawn. It is impossible to yawn over Bruce

Marshall. He may enrage you. He may shock you. He may

exhilarate you : but the interest rarely fails. When one considers how

this is obtained?by expounding the fundamental doctrines of Chris

tianity through the medium of the novel, even to the extent of quot

ing long passages from the Liturgy and giving a detailed description of the Mass, then the literary skill of the narrator must be acknow

ledged. It is probably at its best in Yellow Papers for Paris, which

may be the book to give him permanence as a novelist. Catholics,

however, a peculiar people, will doubtless retain a soft spot in their

hearts for Father Malachy's Miracle.

Some of the more sensitive of the Faith may wince from the

aggressiveness, not to say the brutality, of the style. Why, they will

ask, can we not produce a writer who will write implicitly like

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BRUCE MARSHALL

Somerset Maugham, who employs the full extent of his formidable

powers to state a view of life totally opposed to our own in book after book, yet seldom comes out into the open to state his beliefs in so many words. His art is a miracle of reticence in his best work.

The maUcious irony of his presentation of a world unillumined by any spark of spirituaUty places him in the top rank of nove?sts while in no way detracting from the clarity of his message. In comparison,

Marshall seems like a showman shouting from outside a tent with

magnificent vulgarity of the unparalleled marvels within. Yet I do not think it can be done in any other way. Waugh, the most subtle

of our Catholic noveUsts, seems to have tried it and failed. The most moving of his descriptions of the world without grace or God, the second section of A Handful of Dust, can do no more than

convey the emptiness of such a world. It cannot fill it. Even he has

been forced to become more explicit in Brideshead Revisited. After

aU, the very characters Maugham uses work for his ends. MarshaU

has an acute remark in All Glorious Within. He makes Father

Smith say: "In old days people pretended to be better than they were, but now they pretend to be worse." Thus all Maugham has to

do is to place before the reader, with a minimum of distortion, people

speaking and acting as they do to-day. The conclusions?that the

world is purely material and there is no such thing as the soul?

follow, with only the slightest necessity for artistic selection. It is not for nothing that Maugham was so popular among the youth of

France before the last war. It is doubtful if there is any possibility of inculcating the truths of Catholicism by merely portraying in a

natura?stic fashion the life of a Catholic community. The old Adam

is apt to emerge at startUngly inapt moments, like the Scottish pass

keeper who, viewing with horror the new ear-trumpet of the most

pious lady in the congregation, advanced and in a whisper that could

be heard throughout the church hissed : " Wan toot an* ye're oot."

Perhaps Marshall's method of blaring forth the truth on trumpets has a lot to commend it. In any case we must extend to him the

courtesy due to the pioneer. It may be said that, among our modern

Catholic noveUsts, some have done the thing better. It cannot be

denied that he was the first to do it at aU.

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The Novels of Bruce Marshall

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