"A Mummer's Wife" is a powerful story, told in a skilful and impressive
fashion, but it leaves the reader less conscious of life than of
mechanics. As a piece of construction it is a better novel than "The
Brook Kerith," but as a piece of literature it is not. The quality
of life is dusty and arranged in the early book, but it is alert and
vibrant and natural in the later one. One notable feature of "A
Mummer's Wife" is the display of knowledge by Mr. Moore of things
and of places with which one would not expect him to be familiar.
His acquaintance with grooms and horse-racing, manifested in "Esther
Waters," is understandable in a man who was reared in a country-house
where the language of the stable must have been familiar. But how did
Mr. Moore obtain his intimacy with the interior of a small draper's and
milliner's shop in one of the Five Towns in Staffordshire, together
with his knowledge of the details of life lived by a touring theatrical
company? Mr. Arnold Bennett's knowledge of the Five Towns and the
interior of a small shop is explained by the fact that he was born in
such circumstances in one of the Five Towns. Mr. Leonard Merrick's
intimate knowledge of the life of a travelling theatrical company is
explained by the fact that he was once an actor in such a company.
But how did Mr. Moore, the son of a prosperous Irish landowner of
aristocratic origin, acquire his close intimacy with the details of
such life? It is this aspect of the book which reveals the existence
in Mr. Moore of a high faculty which was absent from the mind of his
first master, Zola, the faculty of imagination. Zola made his novels
out of things actually witnessed or learned from books, but Mr. Moore
made his novels out of his own imagination. Zola could only write about
life in a small shop in a small town after he had actually lived in it,
but Mr. Moore wrote "A Mummer's Wife," with no more knowledge of Hanley
than a person passing through it might possess, and gave his readers an
impression of deep intimacy with it.
This book, notable in itself, had a notable result. It was read by a
young writer, named Enoch Arnold Bennett, then engaged in journalism
and the production of semi-sensational novels. Bennett was a native
of "the Five Towns" district, born in a place called Shelton to the
north-east of the town of Hanley which is the scene of "A Mummer's
Wife." Mr. Bennett himself told me that until he read "A Mummer's Wife"
he never thought of writing about "the Five Towns." The Staffordshire
people had no literary significance to him until that significance
was revealed by "A Mummer's Wife." Mr. Bennett probably exaggerates
the extent of his debt to Mr. Moore. He would, sooner or later, have
explored the rich mine from which he produced the ore of "The Old
Wives' Tale" and "Clayhanger"--it is ludicrous to imagine that but for
the happy accident of reading "A Mummer's Wife" he would never have
done so--but it is not improbable that Mr. Moore's story brought him
to his proper milieu earlier than he might otherwise have reached it.
The reader can profitably entertain himself by comparing "the Five
Towns," the places and the people, of "A Mummer's Wife" with "the Five
Towns," places and people of "The Old Wives' Tale" and "Clayhanger."
The difference between Mr. Moore's account and Mr. Bennett's is the
difference between careful and acute observation by an intelligent
stranger, alien in birth and tradition and training, and the knowledge,
inherited from his forefathers and acquired in childhood and youth, of
a native. Mr. Moore had to "mug up" his subject, as schoolboys say,
but Mr. Bennett was born with most of it. The description of Hanley
in the first chapter of "The Old Wives' Tale" (where it is named
Hanbridge by Mr. Bennett) contrasts remarkably with the description
of the same town in "A Mummer's Wife," as does the description of a
pottery seen through Mr. Bennett's eyes in "Leonora" with that of
a pottery seen through Mr. Moore's eyes in the fourth chapter of "A
Mummer's Wife." These differences of description are, of course, the
result of a difference in temperament between the two men which is
perhaps most clearly revealed in the way in which they portray old
women in their books and deal with scenes of suffering. An intelligent
reader of "A Mummer's Wife" and "The Old Wives' Tale," having made
allowance for the fact that the first-named was written by a young man
beginning his career, and the second by a man approaching middle-age
and the apex of his power, could draw up a fairly accurate statement
of the character of each of the authors by comparing the figure of
old Mrs. Ede in Mr. Moore's novel with that of old Mrs. Baines in Mr.
Bennett's. The contrast between the scene of suffering pictured in
the first chapter of "A Mummer's Wife" and that in the first chapter
of "The Old Wives' Tale" would considerably assist him in making the
statement. The painful insistence on the details of the asthma which
afflicted Mr. Ede is in sharp opposition to the almost jocular fashion
in which Mr. Povey's toothache is described. Both books end with the
death of the principal figures. Kate Ede dies disquietly. One might
say that Constance and Sophia Baines also die disquietly. But there
is a difference in the disquiet. Constance and Sophia had had their
share of disappointment and trouble and had lost their illusions, but
at least they had had their fill of life, each as she desired it, and
if there had been disappointment, there had also been satisfaction:
the illusions were lost, but while they lasted they were agreeable.
Kate died before she had had her fill of life, without illusions and
also, which is worse, without agreeable memories. Youth insists that
life is either very gay or very dismal--and "A Mummer's Wife" was
written by a young man; but Maturity knows that the colours of life are
mingled rather than uniform, and that even when the end is a dismal
one, the journey to it has not been without moments of fragrance
and pleasure--and "The Old Wives' Tale" was written by a man in his
maturity. The similarities between these two books are as interesting
as their differences, and a close study of them leaves the reader at
once aware of very dissimilar personalities and with enhanced respect
for both of them.