M RS. FANE, having momentarily lifted the veil that all these
years had hidden her personality from Michael and Stella,
dropped it very swiftly again. Only the greatest emotion could
have given her the courage to make that avowal of her life.
During the days that elapsed between the revelation and the
reading of Lord Saxby’s last letter, she had lived very much
apart from her children, so that the spectacle of her solitary
grief had been deeply impressed upon their sensibility.
Michael was reminded by her attitude of those long vigils
formerly sustained by ladies of noble birth before they
departed into a convent to pray, eternally remote from the
world. He himself became endowed with a strange courage by the
contemplation of his mother’s tragical immobility. He found in
her the expression of those most voiceless ideals of austere
conduct that until this vision of resignation had always seemed
doomed to sink broken-winged to earth. The thought of Lily in
this mood became an intrusion, and he told himself that, even
if it were possible to seek the sweet unrest of her presence,
beneath the sombre spell of this more classic sorrow he would
have shunned that lovely and romantic girl. Michael’s own
realization of the circumstances of his birth occupied a very
small part of his thoughts. His mind was fixed upon the aspect
of his mother mute and heavy-lidded from the remembrance of
that soldier dead in Africa. Michael felt no outrage of fate in
these events. He was glad that death should have brought to his
father the contentment
of his country’s honour, that in the grace of reconciliation
he should be healed of his thwarted life. Nor could Michael
resent that news of death which could ennoble his mother with
this placidity of comprehension, this staid and haughty mien
of sorrow. And he was grateful, too, that death should upon
his own brow dry the fever dew of passion.
But when she had read that last letter, Mrs. Fane strangely resumed her
ordinary self. She was always so finely invested with dignity, so
exquisitely sheathed, in her repose, Michael scarcely realized that
now, after she had read the letter, the vision of her grief was once
more veiled against him by that faintly discouraging, tenderly
deliberate withdrawal of her personality, and that she was still as
seclusive as when from his childhood she had concealed the sight of her
love, living in her own rose-misted and impenetrable privacy.
It was Stella who by a sudden request first roused Michael to the
realization that his mother was herself again.
“Mother,” she said, “what about my first concert? The season is getting
late.”
“Dearest Stella,” Mrs. Fane replied, “I think you can scarcely make
your appearance so soon after your father’s death.”
“But, mother, I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded. And after all very few
people would know,” Stella persisted.
“But I should prefer that you waited for a while,” said Mrs. Fane,
gently reproachful. “You forget that we are in mourning.”
For Michael somehow the conventional expression seemed to disturb the
divinity of his mother’s carven woe. The world suddenly intervened.
“Well, I don’t think I ought to wait for ever,” said Stella.
“Darling child, I wonder why you should think it necessary to
exaggerate so foolishly,” said Mrs. Fane.
“But I’m so longing to begin,” Stella went on.
“I don’t know that anybody has ever suggested you shouldn’t begin,”
Mrs. Fane observed. “But there is a difference between your
recklessness and my more carefully considered plans.”
“Mother, will you agree to a definite date?” Stella demanded.
“By all means, dear child, if you will try to be a little less
boisterous and impetuous. For one thing, I never knew you were ready to
begin at once like this.”
“Oh, mother, after all these years and years of practising!” Stella
protested.
“But are you ready?” Mrs. Fane enquired in soft surprize. “Really
ready? Then why not this autumn? Why not October?”
“Before I go up to Oxford,” said Michael quickly.
Stella was immediately and vividly alert with plans for her concert.
“I don’t think any of the smaller halls. Couldn’t I appear first at one
of the big orchestral concerts at King’s Hall? I would like to play a
Concerto ... Chopin, I think, and nothing else. Then later on I could
have a concert all to myself, and play Schumann, and perhaps some
Brahms.”
So in the end it was settled after numberless interviews, letters,
fixtures, cancellations, and all the fuming impediments of art’s first
presentation at the court of the world.
The affairs and arrangements connected with Stella’s career seemed to
Michael the proper distraction for his mother and sister during his
last two or three weeks of school, before they could leave London. Mrs.
Fane had suggested they should go to Switzerland in August, staying at
Lucerne, so that Stella would not be hindered in her steady practice.
Michael’s last week at school was a curiously unreal
experience. As fast as he marshalled the correct sentiments
with which to approach the last hours of a routine that had
continued for ten years, so fast did they break up in futile
disorder. He had really passed beyond the domain of school
some time ago when he was always with Lily. It was impossible
after that gradual secession, all the more final because it
had been so gradual, to gather together now a crowd of
associations for the sole purpose of effecting a violent and
summary wrench. Indeed, the one action that gave him the
expected pang of sentiment was when he went to surrender
across the counter of the book-room the key of his locker. The
number was seventy-five. In very early days Michael had been
proud of possessing, through a happy accident, a locker on the
ground-floor very close to the entrance-hall. His junior
contemporaries were usually banished to remote corridors in
the six-hundreds, waiting eagerly to inherit from departed
seniors the more convenient lockers downstairs. But Michael
from the day he first heard by the cast of the Laocoön the
shuffle of quick feet along the corridor had owned the most
convenient locker in all the school. At the last moment
Michael thought he would forfeit the half-crown long ago
deposited and keep the key, but in the end he, with the rest
of his departing contemporaries, callously accepted the more
useful half-crown.
School broke up in a sudden heartless confusion, and Michael for the
last time stood gossiping outside the school-doors at five o’clock. For
a minute he felt an absurd desire to pick up a stone and fling it
through the window of the nearest class-room, not from any spirit of
indignation, but merely to assure himself of a physical freedom that he
had not yet realized.
“Where are you going for the holidays, Bangs?” someone asked.
“Switzerland.”
“Hope you’ll have a good time. See you next—oh, by
Jove, I shan’t though. Good-bye, hope you’ll have good luck.”
“Thanks,” said Michael, and he had a fleeting view of himself relegated
to the past, one of that scattered host—
_Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks_
_In Vallombrosa_ —
Old Jacobeans, ghostly, innumerable, whose desks like tombstones would
bear for a little while the perishable ink of their own idle epitaphs.
Lucerne was airless; the avenue of pollarded limes sheltered a
depressed bulk of dusty tourists; the atmosphere was impregnated with
bourgeois exclamations; the very surface of the lake was swarming with
humanity, noisy with the click of rowlocks, and with the gutturals that
seemed to praise fitly such a theatrical setting.
Mrs. Fane wondered why they had come to Switzerland, but still she
asked Michael and Stella whether they would like to venture higher.
Michael, perceiving the hordes of Teutonic nomads who were sweeping up
into the heart of the mountains, thought that Switzerland in August
would be impossible whatever lonely height they gained. They moved to
Geneva, whose silverpointed beauty for a while deceived them, but soon
both he and Stella became restless and irritable.
“Switzerland is like sitting in a train and travelling through glorious
country,” said Michael. “It’s all right for a journey, but it becomes
frightfully tiring. And, mother, I do hate the sensation that all these
people round are feeling compelled to enjoy themselves. It’s like a
hearty choral service.”
“It’s like an oratorio,” said Stella. “I can’t play a note
here. The very existence of these mobs is deafening.”
“Well, I don’t mind where we go,” said Mrs. Fane. “I’m not enjoying
these peculiar tourists myself. Shall we go to the Italian lakes? I
used to like them very much. I’ve spent many happy days there.”
“I’d rather go to France,” said Michael. “Only don’t let’s go far.
Let’s go to Lyons and find out some small place in the country. I was
talking to a decent chap—not a tourist—who said there were delightful
little red-roofed towns in the Lyonnais.”
So they left Switzerland and went to Lyons where, sitting under the
shade of trees by the tumbling blue Rhône, they settled with a polite
agent to take a small house near Châtillon.
Hither a piano followed them, and here for seven weeks they lived, each
one lost in sun-dyed dreams.
“I knew we should like this,” Michael said to Stella, as they leaned
against tubs of rosy oleanders on a lizard-streaked wall, and watched
some great white oxen go smoothly by. “I like this heart of France
better than Brittany or Normandy. But I hope mother won’t be bored
here.”
“There are plenty of books,” said Stella. “And anyway she wants to lie
back and think, and it’s impossible to think except in the sun.”
The oxen were still in sight along the road that wound upwards to where
Châtillon clustered red upon its rounded hill.
“It doesn’t look like a real town,” said Michael. “It’s really not
different from the red sunbaked earth all about here. I feel it would
be almost a pity ever to walk up that road and find it is a town. I
vote we never go quite close, but just sit here and watch it changing
colour all through the day. I never want to move out of this garden.”
“I can’t walk about much,” said Stella. “Because I simply must
practise and practise and practise and practise.”
They always woke up early in the morning, and Michael used to watch
Châtillon purple-bloomed with the shadow of the fled night, then hazy
crimson for a few minutes until the sun came high enough to give it
back the rich burnt reds of the day. All through the morning Michael
used to sit among the peach trees of the garden, while Stella played.
All through the morning he used to read novel after novel of ephemeral
fame that here on the undisturbed shelves had acquired a certain
permanence. In the afternoon Stella and he used to wander through the
vineyards down to a shallow brown stream bordered by poplars and
acacias, or in sun-steeped oak woods idly chase the long lizards
splendid with their black and yellow lozenges and shimmering green
mail.
Once in a village at harvest-time, when the market-place was a fathom
deep in golden corn, they helped in the threshing, and once when the
grain had been stored, they danced here with joyful country-folk under
the moon.
During tea-time they would sit with their mother beneath an almond
tree, while beyond in sunlit air vibrant with the glad cicadas
butterflies wantoned with the oleanders, or upon the wall preened their
slow fans. Later, they would pace a walk bordered by tawny tea-roses,
and out of the globed melons they would scent the garnered warmth of
the day floating forth to mingle with the sweet breath of eve. Now was
the hour to climb the small hill behind the peach trees. Here across
the mighty valley of the Saône they could see a hundred miles away the
Alps riding across the horizon, light as clouds. And on the other side
over their own little house lay Châtillon cherry-bright in the sunset,
then damson-dark for a while, until it turned to a velvet gloom pricked
with points of gold and slashed with orange stains.
Michael and Stella always went to bed when the landscape had
faded out. But often Michael would sit for a
long time and pore upon the rustling, the dark, the
moth-haunted night; or if the moon were up he would in fancies
swim out upon her buoyant watery sheen.
Sometimes, as he sat among the peach trees, a thought of Lily would
come to him; and he would imagine her form swinging round the corner.
The leaves and sunlight, while he dreamed of her, dappled the unread
pages of his book. He would picture himself with Lily on these sunny
uplands of the Lyonnais, and gradually she lost her urban actuality;
gradually the disillusionment of her behaviour was forgotten. With the
obliteration of Lily’s failure the anguish for her bodily form faded
out, and Michael began to mould her to an incorporeal idea of first
love. In this clear air she stood before him recreated, as if the
purifying sun, which was burning him to the likeness of the earth
around, had been able at the same time to burn that idea of young love
to a slim Etruscan shape which could thrill him for ever with its
beauty, but nevermore fret him with the urgency of desire. He was glad
he had not spoken to her again after that garden interlude; and though
his heart would have leapt to see her motionable and swaying to his
glances as she came delicately towards him through the peach trees,
Michael felt that somehow he would not kiss her, but that he would
rather lead her gravely to the hill-top and set her near him to stay
for ever still, for ever young, for ever fair.
So all through that summer the sun burned Michael, while day by day the
white unhurried oxen moved, slow as clouds, up the hill towards the
town. But Michael never followed their shambling steps, and therefore
he never destroyed his dream of Châtillon.
As the time drew nearer and nearer for Stella’s concert, she
practised more incessantly. Nor would she walk now with Michael
through the vineyards down to the shallow poplar-shadowed
stream. Michael was seized with a reverence for her tireless
concentration, and he never tried
to make her break this rule of work, but would always wander
away by himself.
One day, when he was lying on a parched upland ridge, Michael had a
vision of Alan in green England. Suddenly he realized that in a few
weeks they would be setting out together for Oxford. The dazzling azure
sky of France lightened to the blown softness of an English April.
Cloistral he saw Oxford, and by the base of St. Mary’s Tower the
people, small as emmets, hurrying. The roofs and spires were wet with
rain, and bells were ringing. He saw the faces of all those who from
various schools would encounter with him the greyness and the grace of
Oxford, and among them was Alan.
How familiar Oxford seemed after all!
The principal fact that struck Michael about Stella in these days of
practising for her concert was her capacity for renouncing all
extravagance of speech and her steady withdrawal from everything that
did not bear directly on her work. She no longer talked of her
brilliance; she no longer tried to astonish Michael with predications
of genius; she became curiously and impressively diligent, and, without
conveying an idea of easy self-confidence, she managed to make Michael
feel perfectly sure of her success.
During the latter half of September Michael went to stay with Alan at
Richmond, partly because with the nearness of Stella’s appearance he
began to feel nervous, and partly because he found speculation about
Oxford in Alan’s company a very diverting pursuit. From Richmond he
went up at the end of the month in order to pass Responsions without
difficulty. On the sixth of October was the concert at King’s Hall.
Michael had spent a good deal of time in sending letters to all
the friends he could think of, inviting their attendance
on this occasion of importance. He even wrote to Wilmot and
many of the people he had met at Edwardes Square. Everyone
must help in Stella’s triumph.
At the beginning of October Mrs. Ross arrived at the Merivales’ house,
and for the first time since their conversation in the orchard she and
Michael met. He was shy at first, but Mrs. Ross was so plainly anxious
to show that she regarded him as affectionately as ever that Michael
found himself able to resume his intimacy at once. However, since
Stella was always uppermost in his thoughts, he did not test Mrs. Ross
with any more surprizing admissions.
On the night before the concert Mr. and Mrs. Merivale, Mrs. Ross, Alan
and Michael sat in the drawing-room, talking over the concert from
every point of view.
“Of course she’ll be a success,” said Mr. Merivale, and managed to
implicate himself as usual in a network of bad puns that demanded the
heartiest reprobation from his listeners.
“Dear little girl,” said Mrs. Merivale placidly. “How nice it is to see
children doing things.”
“Of course she’ll be a success,” Alan vowed. “You’ve only got to look
at her to see that. By gad, what an off-drive she would have had, if
she’d only been a boy.”
Michael looked at Alan quickly. This was the first time he had ever
heard him praise a girl of his own accord. He made up his mind to ask
Stella when her concert was over how Alan had impressed her.
“Dear Michael,” said Mrs. Ross earnestly, “you must not worry about
Stella. Don’t you remember how years ago I said she would be a great
pianist? And you were so amusing about it, because you would insist
that you didn’t like her playing.”
“Nor I did,” said Michael in laughing defence of himself at
eight years old. “I used to think it was the most melancholy
noise on earth. Sometimes I think so now, when Stella wraps
herself up in endless scales. By Jove,” he suddenly exclaimed,
“what’s the time?”
“Half-past eight nearly. Why?” Alan asked.
“I forgot to write and tell Viner to come. It’s not very late. I think
I’ll go over to Notting Hill now, and ask him. I haven’t been to see
him much lately, and he was always awfully decent to me.”
Mr. Viner was reading in his smoke-hung room.
“Hullo,” he said. “You’ve not been near me for almost a year.”
“I know,” said Michael apologetically. “I feel rather a brute. Some
time I’ll tell you why.”
Then suddenly Michael wondered if the priest knew about Lord Saxby, and
he felt shy of him. He felt that he could not talk intimately to him
until he had told him about the circumstances of his birth.
“Is that what’s been keeping you away?” asked the priest. “Because, let
me tell you, I’ve known all about you for some years. And look here,
Michael, don’t get into your head that you’ve got to make this sort of
announcement every time you form a new friendship.”
“Oh, that wasn’t the reason I kept away,” said Michael. “But I don’t
want to talk about myself. I want to talk about my sister. She’s going
to play at the King’s Hall concert to-morrow night. You will come,
won’t you?”
“Of course I will,” said the priest.
“Thanks, and—er—if you could think about her when you’re saying Mass
to-morrow morning, why, I’d rather like to serve you, if I may. I must
tear back now,” Michael added. “Good night.”
“Good night,” said the priest, and as Michael turned in the doorway his
smile was like a benediction.
Very early on the next morning through the curdled October
mists Michael went over to Notting Hill again.
The Mission Church stood obscurely amid a press of mean
houses, and as Michael hurried along the fetid narrow
thoroughfare, the bell for Mass was clanging among the fog and
smoke. Here and there women were belabouring their doorsteps
with mangy mats or leaning with grimed elbows on their sills
in depressed anticipation of a day’s drudgery. From bed-ridden
rooms came the sound of children wailing and fighting over
breakfast. Lean cats nosed in the garbage strewn along the
gutters.
The Mission Church smelt strongly of soap and stale incense, and in the
frore atmosphere the coloured pictures on the walls looked more than
usually crude and violent. It was the Octave of St. Michael and All
Angels, and the white chrysanthemums on the altar were beginning to
turn brown. There was not a large congregation—two sisters of mercy,
three or four pious and dowdy maiden ladies, and the sacristan. It was
more than two years since Michael had served at Mass, and he was glad
and grateful to find that every small ceremony still seemed sincere and
fit and inevitable. There was an exquisite morning stillness in this
small tawdry church, and Michael thought how strange it was that in
this festering corner of the city it was possible to create so profound
a sense of mystery. Whatever emotion he gained of peace and
reconciliation and brooding holiness he vowed to Stella and to her fame
and to her joy.
After Mass Michael went back to breakfast with Mr. Viner, and
as they sat talking about Oxford, Michael thought how various
Oxford was compared with school, how many different kinds of
people would be appropriate to their surroundings, and he began
with some of the ardour that he had given hitherto to envy of
life to covet all varieties of intellectual experience. What a
wonderfully suggestive word was University, and how exciting it
was to see Viner tabulating introductions for his benefit.
Michael sat by himself at the concert. During the afternoon he had
talked to Stella for a few minutes, but she had seemed more than ever
immeasurably remote from conversation, and Michael had contented
himself with offering stock phrases of encouragement and exhortation.
He went early to King’s Hall and sat high up in the topmost corner
looking down on the orchestra. Gradually through the bluish mist the
indefinite audience thickened, and their accumulated voices echoed less
and less. The members of the orchestra had not yet entered, but their
music-stands stood about with a ridiculous likeness to human beings. In
the middle was Stella’s piano black and lifeless, a little ominous in
its naked and insistent and faintly shining ebon solemnity. One of the
orchestra threaded his way through the chairs to where the drums stood
in a bizarre group. From time to time this lonely human figure struck
his instruments to test their pitch, and the low boom sounded hollowly
above the murmurous audience.
A general accession of light took place, and now suddenly the empty
platform was filled with nonchalant men who gossiped while they made
discordant sounds upon their instruments. The conductor came in and
bowed. The audience clapped. There was a momentary hush, followed by a
sharp rat-tat of the baton, and the Third Leonora Overture began.
To Michael the music was a blur. It was soundless beside his
own beating heart, his heart that thudded on and on, on and on,
while the faces of the audience receded farther and farther
through the increasing haze. The Overture was finished. From
the hall that every moment seemed to grow darker came a sound
of ghostly applause. Michael looked at his programme in a
fever. What was this unpronounceable German composition, this
Tonic Poem that must be played before Stella’s turn would
arrive? It seemed to go on for ever in a most barbaric and
amorphous din; with
corybantic crashings, with brazen fanfares and stinging cymbals
it flung itself against the audience, while the woodwind howled
and the violins were harsh as cats. Michael brooded
unreceptive; he had a sense of monstrous loneliness; he could
think of nothing. The noise overpowered his beating heart, and
he began to count absurdly, while he bit his nails or shivered
in alternations of fire and snow. Then his programme fluttered
down on to the head of a bald violoncellist, and the ensuing
shock of self-consciousness, that was mingled with a violent
desire to laugh very loudly, restored him to his normal calm.
The Tonic Poem shrieked and tore itself to death. The world
became very quiet.
There was a gradual flap of rising applause, and it was Stella
who, tall and white, was being handed across the platform. It
was Stella who was sitting white and rigid at the black piano
that suddenly seemed to have shrunk into a puny insignificance.
It was Stella whose fingers were causing those rills of melody
to flow. She paused, while the orchestra took up their part,
and then again the rills began to flow, gently, fiercely,
madly, sadly, wildly. Now she seemed to contend against the
mighty odds of innumerable rival instruments; now her own frail
instrument seemed to flag; now she was gaining strength; her
cool clear harmonies were subduing this welter of violins, this
tempest of horns and clarionets, this menace of bass-viols and
drums. The audience was extinguished like a candle. The
orchestra seemed inspired by the angry forces of Nature
herself. The bows of the violins whitened and flickered like
willows in a storm, and yet amid this almost intolerable
movement Stella sat still as a figure of eternal stone. A faint
smile curved more sharply her lips; the black bows in her hair
trembled against her white dress; her wonderful hands went
galloping away to right and left of her straight back. Plangent
as music itself, serene as sculpture, with smiling lips
magically crimson, adorably human, she finished
her first concerto. And while she bowed to the audience and to
the orchestra and the great shaggy conductor, Michael saw
ridiculous teardrops bedewing his sleeve, not because he had
been moved by the music, but because he was unable to shake by
the hand every single person in King’s Hall who was now
applauding his sister.
It was not until Beethoven’s somber knock at the opening of the Fifth
Symphony that Michael began to dream upon the deeps of great music,
that his thoughts liberated from anxiety went straying into time.
Stella, when for a little while he had reveled in her success, was
forgotten, and the people in this hall, listening, listening, began to
move him with their unimaginable variety. Near him were lovers who in
this symphony were fast imparadised; their hands were interlaced;
visibly they swayed nearer to each other on the waves of melody. Old
men were near him, solitary old men listening, listening ... old men
who at the summons of these ringing notes were traversing their past
that otherwise might have stayed forever unvoyageable.
Michael sometimes craved for Lily’s company, wished that he could clasp
her to him and swoon away upon these blinding chords. But she was
banished from this world of music, she who had betrayed the beauty of
love. There was something more noble in this music than the memory of a
slim and lovely girl and of her flower-soft kisses. The world itself
surely seemed to travel the faster for this urgent symphony. Michael
was spinning face to face with the spinning stars.
And then some thread of simple melody would bring him back to
the green world and the little memories of his boyhood. Now
more than ever did it seem worth while to live on earth. He
recognized, as if suddenly he had come down from incredible
heights, familiar faces in the audience. He saw his mother with
Mrs. Ross beside her, two figures that amid all this
intoxication of speeding life must forever
mourn. Now while the flood of music was sounding in his ears,
he wished that he could fly down through this dim hall, and
tell them, as they sat there in black with memories beside
them, how well he loved them, how much he honoured them, how
eagerly he demanded from them pride in himself.
After the first emotions of the mighty music had worn
themselves out, Michael’s imagination began to wander rapidly.
At one point the bassoons became very active, and he was
somehow reminded of Mr. Neech. He was puzzled for awhile to
account for this association of an old form-master with the
noise of bassoons. ‘_For he heard the loud bassoon_.’ Out of
the past came the vision of old Neech wagging the tail of his
gown as he strode backward and forwards over the floor of the
Shell class-room. ‘_The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, For
he heard the loud bassoon_.’ Out of the past came the shrill
sound of boys ruining The Ancient Mariner, and Michael heard
again the outraged apostrophes of Mr. Neech. He began to create
from his fancy of Mr. Neech a grotesque symbol of public-school
education. Certainly he was the only master who had taught him
anything. Yet he had probably tried less earnestly to teach
than any other masters. Why did this image of Mr. Neech
materialize whenever his thoughts went back to school? Years
had passed since he had enjoyed the Shell. He had never talked
intimately to Neech; indeed, he had scarcely held any
communication with him since he left his form. The influence of
Neech must have depended on a personality that demanded from
his pupils a stoic bearing, a sense of humour, a capacity for
inquisitiveness, an idea of continuity. He could not remember
that any of these qualities had been appreciated by himself
until he had entered the Shell. Michael regretted very deeply
that on the day before he left school he had not thanked Neech
for his existence. How nebulous already
most of his other masters seemed. Only Neech stood out
clear-cut as the intagliation of a sardonyx.
Meditation upon Neech took Michael off to Thackeray. He had been
reading Pendennis lately, and the book had given him much the same
sensation of finality as his old form-master, and as Michael thought of
Thackeray, he began to speculate upon the difference between Michael
Fane and the fourteenth Earl of Saxby. Yet he was rather glad that
after all he was not the fourteenth Earl of Saxby. It would be
interesting to see how his theories of good-breeding were carried out
by himself as a nobody with old blood in his veins. He would like to
test the common talk that rank was an accident, that old families, old
faiths, old education, old customs, old manners, old thoughts, old
books were all so much moonshine. Michael wondered whether it were so;
whether indeed all men if born with equal chances would not display
equal qualities. He did not believe it: he hated the doctrine. Yet
people in all their variety called to him still, and as he surveyed the
audience he was aware from time to time of a great longing to involve
himself in the web of humanity. He was glad that he had not removed
himself from the world like Chator. Chator! He must go down to Clere
and see how Chator was getting on as a monk. He had not even thought of
Chator for a year. But after all Oxford had a monastic intention, and
Michael believed that from Oxford he would gain as much austerity of
attitude as Chator would acquire from the rule of St. Benedict. And
when he left Oxford, he would explore humanity. He would travel through
the world and through the underworld and apply always his standard of
... of what? What was his standard? A classic permanence, a classic
simplicity and inevitableness?
The symphony stopped. He must hurry out and congratulate
Stella. What a possession she was; what an excitement her
career would be. How he would love to
control her extravagance, and even as he controlled it, how he
would admire it. And his mother had talked of taking a house
in Chelsea. What various interests were springing into
existence. He must not forget to ask Alan what train he was
going by to Oxford. They must arrive together. He had not yet
bought his china. His china! His pictures! His books! His
rooms in college! Life was really astonishing.
The concert was over, and as Michael came swirling down the stairs on
the flood of people going home, he had a strange sensation of life
beginning all over again.
THE END OF THE
FIRST VOLUME
_NOTE_
_The second and final volume of_ S INISTER S TREET ,
_containing Book III: Dreaming Spires and Book IV: Romantic
Education, will be published early next year._
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH
AUTUMN
BOOKS
MCMXIII
MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET
ADELPHI LONDON
The Books in this list should be obtainable from all Booksellers and
Libraries, and if any difficulty is experienced the Publisher will be
glad to be informed of the fact. He will also be glad if those
interested in receiving from time to time Announcement Lists,
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Street, will send their names and addresses to him for this purpose.
Any book in this List may be obtained on approval through the
booksellers, or direct from the Publisher, on remitting him the
published price, plus the postage.
Telephone 4779 City
Telegraphic Address:
Psophidian London.
The Complete Dramatic Works of
Gerhart Hauptmann
AUTHORISED EDITION
I T is generally conceded that Gerhart Hauptmann is the
most notable dramatist of the present day. His work
combines literary, psychological and dramatic interest in
greater measure than that of any other contemporary writer,
and the award of the Nobel prize in literature was a public
recognition of his genius. An authorised translation of his
dramas makes it possible at last for English people to
study and enjoy Hauptmann. Excellent translations of a few
plays had already been made, and these, by arrangement with
the respective translators, will be adapted to the present
edition; but new translations will be made whenever it
seems necessary in order to maintain the highest standard.
The editor of the edition is Professor Ludwig Lewisohn. He
supplies a general introduction to Hauptmann’s works in
Volume I, and a briefer introduction to each succeeding
volume. The contents of the volumes are given on the next
page.
The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann
CONTENTS
Volume I
_Social Dramas_
Volume II
_Social Dramas_
Before Dawn
The Weavers
The Beaver Coat
The Conflagration
Drayman Henschel
Rose Bernd
The Rats
Volume III
_Domestic Dramas_
Volume IV
_Symbolic and Legendary Dramas_
The Reconciliation
Lonely Lives
Colleague Crampton
Michael Kramer
Hannele
The Sunken Bell
Henry of Aue
Volume V
_Symbolic and Historical Dramas_
Volume VI
_Later Dramas in Prose_
Schluck and Jau
And Pippa Dances
Charlemagne’s Hostage
The Maidens of the Mount
Griselda
Gabriel Schilling’s Flight
Each Volume Crown 8vo. (7½ in. by 5 in.)
Price 5s. net.
Vie de Bohème:
A Patch of Romantic Paris
By ORLO WILLIAMS
T HE phrase “Vie de Bohème” is one in very frequent use,
but few of its users recognize its implication. At the time
when the term originated in French literature it had a very
special meaning. That time was the Romantic period, one of
the most brilliant in all the history of French artistic
achievement, and the phrase denoted the life of an
important section of Parisian Society between the years of
1830 and 1848. It was called into being by special
circumstances and conditions in 1830; reached its golden
age in 1835, and slowly declined till the revolution of
1848 reduced it to a mere excrescence on the life of art
students, as it now is. “La Bohème” was strictly Parisian,
as Henri Murger said it must be; it arose through the
literary and social revolution of 1830; it flourished
because of the universality of the Romantic spirit of which
it was a flower; it declined because its second generation
had neither the enthusiasm nor the talent of its first. Mr.
Orlo Williams surveys the period very thoroughly, and his
book is illustrated in colour and half-tone, from
contemporary pictures and prints.
Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5½ in.)
Fully Illustrated. Price 15s. net.
The
Art of Silhouette
By DESMOND COKE
I N the popular belief a silhouette is something snipped
from black paper on a pier for sixpence. Mr. Desmond Coke,
as a fourteen-year collector of the fine eighteenth century
profiles painted upon chalk, glass or paper, has set
himself to correct this fallacy. The reproductions of
miniature likenesses in silhouette by Miers, Charles,
Rosenberg, Mrs. Beetham, and the other profilists who set
Bath beaux and belles in black outline for ever, will
probably surprise most readers by their delicate
craftsmanship and life-like quality. The book is lightly
planned: more an essay than a history or treatise. The joys
of collecting—the charm of silhouette—the men who practised
this short-lived art, including the tragi-comic Edouart, a
man whom Dickens would have loved—the humours of their
labels—the horrors of Victorian decadence—groups—some
famous silhouette collections—fancy subjects cut in
paper—Cupid and this set of shadows—a plea for austerity,
addressed to modern artists—such are a few points covered
by a book which (to quote the author’s foreword) is
intended for “collectors, artists, lovers of the past, and
all such as think nothing human or curious alien from
themselves.”
Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5½ in.)
Fully Illustrated. Price 10s. 6d. net.
Personality in Literature
By R. A. SCOTT-JAMES
I N the third and longest part of this book, Mr.
Scott-James estimates the work of some of the more
prominent modern authors. But he presents these criticisms
as the sequel to a general consideration of what it is that
readers at all times look for in the best literature, and
secondly, what are the special conditions of modern life
that are having their effect upon men of letters.
Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5½ in.)
Price 7s. 6d. net.
Walter Pater
A Critical Study
By EDWARD THOMAS
T HIS is a combined character study and criticism. The
man’s life is used to elucidate his books, which in turn
contribute many unquestionable touches of character. All
his published books and scattered essays are considered
from a practical and æsthetic standpoint. His fundamental
ideas and tendencies, his purpose and effect, his style and
his theory of style, are examined in a book for which there
should be a distinct demand.
Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5½ in.)
With Portrait. Price 7s. 6d. net.
Walt Whitman
A Critical Study
By BASIL DE SELINCOURT
M R. DE SELINCOURT’S object has been to show that, when all
deductions have been made and elements of crudeness,
reaction and extravagance fully allowed for, Whitman’s
contribution to literature has the uniqueness and the
solidity claimed for it by his admirers and by himself. The
book differs from others in endeavouring more explicitly to
exhibit the relation of Whitman’s form and style to those
of conventional literature and to justify his apparent
anomalies. Whitman’s peculiar use of language, his love of
specification and cataloguing, etc., are explained in
reference to the underlying purposes of language generally.
His identification as a man with humanity, as an artist
with America, are shown to have been genuine forces in him,
available for expression and the real spring of his work.
Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5½ in.)
With Portrait. Price 7s. 6d. net.
Dramatic Portraits
By P. P. HOWE
T HROUGHOUT this book a particular point of view has been
adhered to, from which the drama is looked upon as a
separate art from literature, and from which especial
attention is paid to the manner of its practice. Thus
nearly all the plays of the dramatists passed under review
are to be studied in book form, but they are spoken of
here, as far as possible, in terms of their actual
presentation in the theatre. The dramatists include Pinero,
Henry Arthur Jones, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Bernard Shaw,
Barrie, Granville Barker, Hankin, Galsworthy and Masefield.
It is a book for all playgoers who have done their
playgoing in the English theatre of the past twenty-five
years. The portraits which illustrate it are from camera
studies by Mr. E. O. Hoppé, reproduced by a new process
which does full justice to his original prints.
Crown Octavo (7½ in. by 5 in.)
Illustrated. Price 5s. net.
Speculative Dialogues
By LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
T HESE dialogues are the work of a poet and critic who has
rapidly achieved distinction, and although their primary
purpose is to suggest a philosophic attitude towards modern
metaphysical problems, they stand to be judged as
literature as well as philosophy. Mr. Abercrombie’s
attitude, one of individualism and Pyrrhonism, makes itself
clear in the course of a series of dialogues between such
personified abstractions as Famine and Pestilence, War and
Murder, Science and the World; Philosophy and an Angel.
Wide Crown Octavo (7½ in. by 5 in.)
Price 5s. net.
New Fiction
I.
SINISTER STREET
By COMPTON MACKENZIE
Author of “Carnival,”
Now in its 35th Thousand.
II.
THE STORY OF LOUIE
By OLIVER ONIONS
Author of “The Debit Account.”
III.
HANDS UP!
By FREDERICK NIVEN
Author of “The Porcelain Lady.”
Martin Secker’s Series
of Modern Monographs
J. M. SYNGEBy P. P. Howe HENRIK IBSENBy R. Ellis Roberts WALTER PATERBy
Edward Thomas THOMAS HARDYBy L. Abercrombie WALT WHITMAN By Basil
de Selincourt GEORGE GISSINGBy Frank Swinnerton WILLIAM MORRISBy John
Drinkwater A. C. SWINBURNEBy Edward Thomas
Each volume Demy Octavo, Cloth Gilt, with a
Frontispiece in Photogravure. Price 7s. 6d. net
_The Athenæum_ says: “We congratulate the publisher.”
_The Spectator_ says: “Mr. Secker’s excellent series of
critical studies.”
_The Yorkshire Observer_ says: “Mr. Secker’s admirable
series.”
_The Manchester Courier_ says: “This excellent series.”
_The Illustrated London News_ says: “Mr. Martin Secker’s
series of critical studies does justice to the publisher’s
sense of pleasant format. The volumes are a delight to eye
and hand, and make a welcome addition to the bookshelf.”
MARTIN SECKER PUBLISHER
Number Five John Street Adelphi
AUTUMN
BOOKS
MCMXIII
MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET
ADELPHI LONDON
End of Project Gutenberg's Sinister Street, vol. 1, by Compton Mackenzie