child's mind, coarseness of phrase only or more significant coarseness
of invention. I say more significant, for whether that worse coarseness
is intended or involuntary must be immaterial, save as indicating the
particular code against which the offence is primarily committed, the
code of manners or the code of art. There is here no such gentleness
in the treatment of childhood as distinguishes the earlier chapters of
_Carnival_.... The point need not be stressed. I dislike the current
practice of setting one's wits against the author whose work happens
to be the subject of discussion; I don't want to produce an artificial
dilemma and pretend that Mr. Mackenzie is inevitably trapped by it. Put
it, then, that there are certain obligations of civilised life, and
certain obligations of that flower of civilised life which we call art;
put it that coarseness of phrase or incident outrages the former, and
that an intention to commit that outrage, or an insensibility of having
committed it, is equally an offence against the less assertive but not
less imperative obligations of art. In a word, the sin is vulgarity,
two-edged vulgarity it may be, an offence against both canons or, if
you will, both conventions; and the further weight hangs on the charge
that it is here committed in the person of a child, and is, therefore,
wanton. Shall I add that the immanence of farce just spoken of does in
a little degree mitigate the cruelty by generalising the vulgarity?
Here is rude, healthy Smollett out-Smolletted, reduced to the uncostly
and only half-odious horseplay of a music-hall:
The encouragement put a fine spirit into Danny's blows; he hammered
the unfortunate Cohen round and round the room, upsetting table
and chairs and washstand until with a stinging blow he knocked him
backwards into the slop-pail, in which he sat so heavily that when he
tried to rise the slop-pail stuck and gave him the appearance of a
large baboon crawling with elevated rump on all fours. Danny kicked
off the slop-pail, and invited Cohen to stand up to him; but when he
did get on his feet, he ran to the door and reached the stairs just
as Mrs. Gonner was wearily ascending to find out what was happening.
He tried to stop himself by clutching the knob of the baluster,
which broke; the result was that he dragged Mrs. Gonner with him in
a glissade which ended behind the counter. The confusion in the shop
became general; Mr. Gonner cut his thumb, and the sight of the blood
caused a woman who was eating a sausage to choke; another customer
took advantage of the row to snatch a side of bacon and try to
escape, but another customer with a finer moral sense prevented him;
a dog who was sniffing in the entrance saw the bacon on the floor and
tried to seize it, but getting his tail trodden upon by somebody, he
took fright and bit a small boy, who was waiting to change a shilling
into coppers. Meanwhile Sylvia, who expected every minute that Jubie
and her pugilistic brother would come back and increase the confusion
with possibly unpleasant consequences for herself, took advantage of
Danny's being occupied in an argument with Cohen and the two Gonners
to put on her hat and escape from the shop. She jumped on the first
omnibus and congratulated herself when she looked round and saw a
policeman entering the eating-house.
Sylvia herself is capable enough as well as universally attractive.
The citation just made is from a passage following the second amorous
attack upon her, when Danny Lewis threatens her with a knife, and she
parries with the water in her bedroom. An earlier lover had retired
from a similar contest with his underlip bitten through. When, some
time after the knife-and-water episode, Sylvia meets the Oxford type
in Philip Iredale, she is sent by him (being still but sixteen) for a
year's schooling and then marries him. Coquetting with the Church is
followed by flight--alone, it must be added; and indeed Sylvia's whole
recorded life is fugitive, a pilgrimage between this world and some
other. Three months later her husband's Oxford composure is shocked by:
"You _must_ divorce me now. I've not been able to earn enough to pay
you back more than this [ten pounds] for your bad bargain. I don't
think I've given any more pleasure to the men who have paid less for
me than you did, if that's any consolation."
Adventures repeat themselves. A huge Russian officer bursts into
Sylvia's room one night and is pitched out of the window by a
couple of acrobats. The war begins and spreads itself over Europe
as a background for her passages and parleyings; and maybe the
Commander-in-Chief and the General Staff of the Mediterranean
Expeditionary Force have beguiled many a tiresome after-war hour in
pursuing Sylvia's wanderings between places familiarised by their late
anxieties. Sylvia is differentiated from the other women of these
novels, not only by her superior capacity for experiences, but even
more by her superior volubility. She is, consciously, mind as well
as body, and as the narrative goes on and on she develops a passion
for monologue--terrifying in any woman, and rare among women whose
occupation Sylvia Scarlett's own name is perhaps meant assonantally
to suggest. These monologues, recurrent as the farce and more deadly,
might be called shortly the jargon. "I represent the original
conception of the Hetaera," she asserts.
"He'll think of me, if he ever thinks of me at all, as one of the
great multitude of wronged women. I shall think of him, though as a
matter of fact I shall avoid thinking of him, either as what might
have been--a false concept, for, of course, what might have been is
fundamentally inconceivable--or as what he was--a sentimental fool."
She meditates upon the art of Botticelli, whose appeal she seems
to think is only childlike, upon the conflict of nationality with
civilisation. She reads Tolstoi and Dostoieffsky, putting Apuleius
by, goes to confession, analyses her sensations, details the errancy
of her parentage, and seeks to shock the priest who, when Sylvia
acutely suggests that God is "almost vulgarly anthropomorphic," can
only murmur, "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not
one of them is forgotten before God?" But here is a brief specimen of
the almost unbroken monologue to which the priest of the wisest of the
churches can make no answer but a profession of the power of the Church:
"I suppose my running away was the direct result of my bringing up,
because whenever I had been brought face to face with a difficult
situation I ran away. However, this time I was determined from some
perverted pride to make myself more utterly myself than I had ever
done. It's hard to explain how my mind worked. You must remember
I was only nineteen, and already at thirty-one I am as far from
understanding all my motives then as if I were trying to understand
somebody who was not myself at all. Anyhow, I simply went on the
streets. For three months I mortified my flesh by being a harlot.
Can you understand that? Can you possibly understand the deliberate
infliction of such a discipline, not to humiliate one's pride but to
exalt it? Can you understand that I emerged from that three months of
incredible horror with a complete personality?..."
Sylvia did not wait for the priest to answer this question, partly
because she did not want to be disillusioned by finding so soon that
he had not comprehended anything of her emotions or actions, partly
because there seemed more important revelations of herself still to
be made.
--Farce at least is unpretentious, but this crude jargon, this
retroverted intellectualism, is offensive beyond farce, odious beyond
"delicate indecency."
It may not be wholly due to perversity if the characteristics of
these long biographical novels should overshadow the sharp merits
of, say, _Carnival_. _Carnival_, even better than _Guy and Pauline_,
may serve as a measure of Mr. Mackenzie's decline from his promise;
since although its conclusion is a disharmony, its best chapters are
good enough to cause a reader to sigh over the later novels. Was it,
indeed, quite a worthless aim to follow in the footsteps of George
Gissing? _Carnival_ suggests that a new Gissing might have grown up
before our eyes, with a touch of the same veracity, the same mordancy,
and a little less than the same humourless and dishumoured regard
for what is wry and hapless; but _Carnival_ stands alone, and the
exactions of that difficult sincerity have been put by.... Or take,
again, _Poor Relations_, the latest of Mr. Mackenzie's inventions. With
its ease and brilliant vivacities, with the comedy of its conception,
what a delightful play it would make! But might not the comedy have
depended--as comedy must--more surely upon character and less upon
incident? The author of _Sylvia Scarlett_, however, has imposed a
too-swift facility upon the author of _Poor Relations_. If practice
makes perfect, then nothing was wanting to the completeness of _Poor
Relations_--but how much is wanting! Admirable are the opening notes,
but of the rest too much is a brisk _falsetto_. There is excess in the
situations, excess in the characterisation, excess in the style:
When he looked at the old lady he could not discover anything except
a cold egotism in every fold of those flabby cheeks where the powder
lay like drifted snow in the ruts of a sunless lane.
It is equally the virtue and the fault of Mr. Mackenzie that he
provokes melancholy regrets, even in the middle of frequent chuckles;
and when the chuckling has died away the shadow of _Sylvia Scarlett_
falls upon the book, just as with the same unhappy denigration it is
flung backwards over the better qualities of the earlier _Carnival_.
Yet _Poor Relations_, like _Guy and Pauline_, is free from the worst
flaw of the longer novels, the crude determination to shock, which
breaks most starkly through the superficialities of _Sylvia Scarlett_.
That is a breach of the code of art rather than the code of morals,
an eruptive _épatism_ which would disfigure a better book, if it
could be found there. Can you conceive a more attractive subject,
if you are but three-and-twenty, than the philosophic harlot? Or an
easier? I do not suppose that it is less interesting to be on the
streets than to be in the Ministry of Food; neither occupation can be
objectionable as subject of a novel. It would be untrue to say that the
subject of a novel is a thing of complete indifference, and that the
treatment is everything; for a writer would not do wisely to forfeit
the advantage which a subject might offer him. But neither would he
do wisely in exploiting a subject only to excite the curiosity or
astonish the simplicity of his reader. Merely adventitious at best
is the gain. It is to reduce subject and treatment to their lowest
terms, and reject the implicit conditions which confront every writer
who would explore the imaginative world where there can be no laws
save honour, loyalty, and delicacy. The scientific writer is secured
against deceiving himself or his readers for long; his assumptions can
be verified, his deductions precisely analysed, his whole professions
rationally weighed. The imaginative and the quasi-imaginative writer
have no such security, nor their readers such protection. Traditional
values may be inapplicable; it is hard to discriminate novelty from
originality. A book that shocks may be as profoundly conceived as _Jude
the Obscure_, as cheaply fashioned as _Sylvia Scarlett_. Incident
may be prodigal equally in Dostoieffsky and Mr. Compton Mackenzie,
but significance of incident may vary infinitely. Mr. Mackenzie's
incidents have no significance; they remain incidents. His thoughts are
insignificant except in so far as they indicate a modern intellectual
disvertebration. His view of character is insignificant except in so
far as it betrays an adolescent apprehension. Who is Sylvia? you ask,
and your author is silent. What is she? and the answer is dispersed
among eight hundred garrulous pages.
Yet, it must be repeated, Mr. Mackenzie has conspicuous gifts, and, as
the letters with which _Sinister Street_ opens and closes indicate,
he is aware of them, and has not undertaken these enormous fictions
without a sense of his task. But he has accepted the easier way. He
can invest his scene with an illusion of activity, if not of reality,
but he is unable to picture reality, for he does not distinguish;
neither does he create a reality, a world for himself, amenable to its
own laws, establishing its own consistency. That would be a wonderful
but a hard thing. Amid the booths of his Vanity Fair he moves, not
soberly and critically as Christian and Faithful moved, but as one
swiftly enchanted by externals. He approaches the field of imaginative
art, and I cannot say that his powers and pretensions are such as
must discourage entry; but for imagination he learns to substitute
invention, chooses the superficial, and does not even trouble to secure
the consistency of his characters; Michael Fane's mother, for instance,
being declined from an irregular great lady in Volume One to a parish
imbecile in Volume Two. He might have chosen otherwise. His alertness,
his preoccupation with externals, his fullness of incident, his soft
fluency of style might have been flogged into subordination; he need
not have been very serious to have taken his work seriously. But all
that he promises now is, if the tempting derangement of a line by a
modern poet be pardonable:
A torment of intolerable tales.
Mr. Mackenzie has divagated. The task of presenting reality is left to
the scientific mind, and the task of creating another reality is left
to the poetic mind.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND NEWS
_Correspondence from readers on all subjects of bibliographical
interest is invited. The Editor will, to the best of his ability,
answer all queries addressed to him._
GENERAL NOTES
Mr. Septimus Rivington's recently published book, _The Publishing
Family of Rivington_ (Rivington, 1919; 10_s._ net), contains a certain
amount of interesting information about the eighteenth-century book
trade. Charles Rivington started publishing in 1711. His successor,
John, succeeded Jacob Tonson (great-nephew of the original Jacob Tonson
who published Dryden's works) as managing partner of the institution
known as the "Conger," the association of booksellers formed to share
the risks and the profits of publishing ventures. In this volume Mr.
Rivington has printed a number of Conger documents in his possession.
It is interesting to learn the trade value of well-known books of the
period. Thus, one-eighth of Archbishop Tillotson's works is bought by
Tonson in 1711 for £87 10_s._ In 1738 a third part of Watts's _Hymns_
is worth £70.
* * * * *
Mr. Rivington prints several extracts from old catalogues in his
possession, which show that a book sale in the eighteenth century was
a convivial affair. The catalogue of Thomas Osborne's stock-in-trade,
consisting of books, copyrights, and shares in publications, is issued
"to a select number of booksellers at the Queen's Head Tavern, in
Paternoster Row, on Thursday, the ninth day of February, 1743/4, at
Eleven of the Clock in the Forenoon. DINNER will be served on the table
exactly at One of the Clock, consisting of Turkies and Chines, Hams and
Chickens, Apple-pies, etc., and a Glass of very good Wine."
* * * * *
Another recent book by a member of one of our great publishing families
is Mr. John Murray's brief memoir of his father, John Murray the Third,
the inventor of what was in his day an entirely new literary form, the
_Guide Book_. Murray's first guide was issued in 1836. Three years
later Karl Baedeker published a _Handbüchlein_ of the same districts.
Baedeker, like Shakespeare, disdained to invent his own plots. Murray's
eighteen European guides were the _Plutarch_ and _Holinshed_ of the
German's stupendous creations.
Those who hope, by taking advantage of the present rate of exchange, to
secure German books at an eighth or tenth of their value will be sorry
to hear that German publishers are in league to put a stop to such
delightful bargains. They are insisting on being paid at the rate of
about fivepence to the mark; so that your books will cost you as much
as half their real price.
We were surprised, considering the blockade and the general shortage,
at the excellent "get-up" of such recent German publications as we have
seen. Among them were two illustrated volumes, one on Egyptian and the
other on Negro art, published during the war, and produced in the most
magnificent style. Almost more surprising were some exquisite little
volumes of Czech poetry published at Prague, in which print, paper, and
binding were all equally admirable.
A book for which one may search long in vain, but for which it is
worth while to take some trouble, is the _Memorie di Lorenzo da Ponte
da Ceneda_, three volumes, New York, 1829. Da Ponte is well known as
the librettist of a number of Mozart's operas, and should be better
known as the author of some of the most charming of eighteenth-century
memoirs. His memoirs and poetical works were republished at Florence in
1871, and a French translation of the memoirs only was executed by M.
C. D. de la Chavanne (Paris, Pagnerre, 1860). So far as we are aware,
no English translation of this work exists. If this is indeed the case,
it is high time that the defect was remedied. The _Memorie Inutili_ of
Da Ponte's earlier contemporary, Carlo Gozzi (three volumes, Venice,
1797), were translated by John Addington Symonds, and published in a
very sumptuous illustrated edition by Nimmo in 1890.
* * * * *
Another important book on the Italian eighteenth century, and one
which it is not easy to find a copy of in any edition, is the _Lettres
Historiques et Critiques sur l'Italie_ of the Président Charles de
Brosses (Paris, Ponthieu, An VII., and under the title _Le Président
de Brosses en Italie_, Paris, 1858). De Brosses' letters make the best
possible book to take on a voyage to Italy.
* * * * *
Londoners cannot have failed to notice in the past weeks the
presence of numerous posters--we have seen them in every part of the
city--bearing the legend: "The Bishops must open Joanna Southcott's
Box and save the country from ruin." We hope that this faint echo
of a vanished notoriety may arouse among book-lovers an interest in
Joanna's numerous literary works. The first of them, _The Strange
Effects of Faith_, was published at Exeter in 1792, and from that time
onwards she poured forth a stream of prophecies in prose and verse. In
one of the latest of them (the last part of _The Book of Wonder_, if
we remember rightly; but it is some years since we saw the book) is
a superb engraving of a cradle subscribed for by Joanna's disciples
against the birth of Shiloh. Shiloh, unhappily, was never born, and
Joanna Southcott died three months after the presentation of the
two-hundred-guinea cot. Enthusiastic bibliographers will find plenty of
interest in the study of Southcottian literature; first editions are
satisfactorily scarce. As for the box--well, why don't the Bishops open
it? Who knows? it might save us from ruin, more effectually perhaps
than all the politicians together.
* * * * *
An important collection of autograph letters and historical documents,
the property of the late Charles Fairfax Murray, is to be sold at
Messrs. Sotheby's on Thursday and Friday, February 5th and 6th. The
first 163 lots are autographs of famous artists, and include four
letters of Blake, Michelangelo's specification for the tomb of Julius
II., a letter of Benvenuto Cellini, a letter of Albrecht Dürer,
illustrated by charming little sketches, letters of Gainsborough,
Hogarth, Reynolds, and Constable, a letter of Titian written at the
age of eighty-five, and a series of notes by Leonardo on the flight of
birds.
Lots 164 to 280 are of historical, literary, and musical interest. One
of the most interesting items is the MS. of Baudelaire's _La Charogne_,
with a drawing of a woman by the poet. A beautifully written letter
from Lucretia Borgia to Cardinal D'Este is another remarkable piece.
Lots 281-286 are documents which will appeal to collectors of relics of
Mary Queen of Scots. The first is a document signed by Bothwell; four
are letters of John Lesley, Bishop of Ross; and the last a document
signed by William Davison, Queen Elizabeth's agent in Scotland.
ITEMS FROM THE BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES
Messrs. Maggs's catalogue (No. 386) of autograph letters and MSS.
contains a number of items which will be of interest to musicians.
In a letter to Birchall, the English music publisher, dated October,
1831, Beethoven writes the following sentence: "I have duly received
the 5 £s, and thought previously you would not encrease the number of
englishmen neglecting their word and honor, as I had the misfortune of
meeting with two of this sort." He goes on to offer Birchall a Grand
Sonata for the Pianoforte for £40, and a Trio for piano, violin, and
cello for £50. The letter is priced at £21. There are also four letters
of Wagner, a note in the handwriting of Sir Arthur Sullivan (12_s._
6_d._), a signed autograph piece by Gounod (£3 10_s._), letters of
Berger, Spontini, Balfe, Hiller and Heller, Verdi, Thalberg, Paganini,
Brahms, and Liszt; there is an autograph musical MS. of Mendelssohn
dated 1844 (£10 10_s._), and another of a Scena composed by Haydn for
Signora Banti (£85).
* * * * *
Other pieces of the greatest interest are advertised in the same
catalogue. A beautifully written letter in the hand of Benvenuto
Cellini is priced £105. Another letter of slightly earlier date than
Cellini's is the almost illegible scrawl of Götz von Berlichingen, the
Knight of the Iron Hand (£32). The collection also includes several
very important letters of Byron: one to John Murray (October 29th,
1819), in which he speaks of his Memoirs, entrusted to Moore, and
afterwards solemnly burnt at Murray's house in Albemarle Street (£105):
one to Kinnaird (1822) on the morality of Don Juan.
* * * * *
Mr. Francis Edwards has also issued a catalogue of autograph letters
which contains many items of remarkable interest. _Hrothgar_, a
seventy-eight verse ballad (unpublished), by George Borrow, is a
curious by-product of Beowulf scholarship, which ought to be worth the
thirty pounds at which it is priced. Among the five autograph letters
of Thomas Carlyle we find one addressed to the Bishop of Chester
(August 23rd, 1840), in which Carlyle writes: "May I apply to you for
a charitable service on behalf of a certain Mr. Mazzini, an Italian
neighbour and friend of mine?" Two holograph manuscripts of John Evelyn
are offered for £15 and £25 respectively. Ten pounds is the price of a
letter from Sir William Hamilton (Naples, 1792) to Horace Walpole, in
which Hamilton remarks of his famous wife: "She is ... most grateful
to me for having saved her from the precipice into which she had good
sense enough to see she must, without me, have inevitably fallen, and
she sees that nothing but a constant good conduct can maintain the
respect that is now shown her by everybody. It has often been remarked
that a reformed rake makes a good husband, why not _vice versa_?"
Why not? The answer is to be found in a letter from Nelson to Lady
Hamilton (Yarmouth, 1801; £21). Other Nelson and Hamilton autographs,
the Morrison collection, are on sale at Messrs. Suckling's, of Garrick
Street.
* * * * *
Other interesting letters and manuscripts offered by Messrs. Edwards
are by Dr. Johnson, Samuel Richardson, Swinburne, Meredith, Landor,
Pepys, Lamb, Southey, Thackeray.
* * * * *
We are glad to notice that a manuscript by a young contemporary can
command as big a price as ten guineas. This is the sum asked by Messrs.
Davis and Orioli for the autograph MS. of Mr. Robert Nichols's _The
Faun's Holiday_, published in his volume of _Ardours and Endurances_.
To buy it would certainly be a speculation; but we believe there is a
good chance of the speculation turning out profitably.
* * * * *
Early Editions of Fielding: Messrs. Bowes and Bowes, of Cambridge, are
asking £25 for the first edition (two volumes in contemporary calf) of
_The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his Friend,
Mr. Abraham Adams_. A copy of the second edition, published in the same
year as the first, is offered for 31_s._ 6_d._ by the Ex-Officers' Book
Union, 16 Rathgar Avenue, West Ealing.
* * * * *
Messrs. Pickering and Chatto are offering a copy of _Endymion_ (Taylor
and Hessey, 1818), in the original boards, for £78. Another interesting
Keats relic is the original autograph MS. of a portion of _Otho the
Great_, which is offered by Messrs. Maggs Bros. for £60. The MS.,
entirely in Keats's own writing, is a fragment of the first scene of
the play.
* * * * *
We note that a fine copy of Fulke Greville's _Poems_ (1633), of which
we recently had occasion to speak, is for sale at Messrs. Dobell's, the
price being six guineas.
* * * * *