WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET
by
GRANT OVERTON
Author of "The Women Who Make Our Novels"
New York
George H. Doran Company
Printed in the United States of America
Copyright, 1922,
by George H. Doran Company
WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET.
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
FOR
GEORGE H. DORAN
WHO HAD THE IDEA
PREFACE
I have borrowed my title from two remarkable novels.
_If Winter Comes_, by A. S. M. Hutchinson, was published in the autumn of
1921 by Messrs. Little, Brown & Company of Boston.
_Main Street_, by Sinclair Lewis, was published in the autumn of 1920 by
Messrs. Harcourt, Brace & Company of New York.
I have not before me the precise figures of the amazing sales of these two
books--each passed 350,000--but I make my bow to their authors and to
their publishers and to the American public. I bow to the authors for the
quality of their work and to the publishers and the public for their
recognition of that quality.
These two substantial successes confirm my belief that the American public
in hundreds of thousands relishes good reading. Without that belief, this
book would not have been prepared; but I have prepared it with some
confidence that those who relish good reading will be interested in the
chapters that follow.
As a former book reviewer and literary editor, as an author and, now, as
one vitally concerned in book publishing, my interest in books has been
fundamentally unchanging--a wish to see more books read and better books
to read.
From one standpoint, _When Winter Comes to Main Street_ is frankly an
advertisement; it deals with Doran books and authors. This is a fact of
some relevance, however, if, as I believe, the reader shall find
well-spent the time given to these pages.
Grant Overton.
19 July 1922.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE 15
II HALF-SMILES AND GESTURES 33
III STEWART EDWARD WHITE AND ADVENTURE 55
IV WHERE THE PLOT THICKENS 68
V REBECCA WEST: AN ARTIST 78
VI SHAMELESS FUN 88
VII THE VITALITY OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 102
VIII THEY HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME 118
IX AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT 133
X A CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN 152
XI COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION 166
XII PLACES TO GO 187
XIII ALIAS RICHARD DEHAN 196
XIV WITH FULL DIRECTIONS 212
XV FRANK SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS 225
XVI AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS, WITH NOTES ON THE NOVELISTS 244
XVII THE HETEROGENEOUS MAGIC OF MAUGHAM 270
XVIII BOOKS WE LIVE BY 293
XIX ROBERT W. CHAMBERS AND THE WHOLE TRUTH 308
XX UNIQUITIES 321
XXI THE CONFESSIONS OF A WELL-MEANING YOUNG MAN,
STEPHEN MCKENNA 334
XXII POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 347
XXIII THE BOOKMAN FOUNDATION AND THE BOOKMAN 366
EPILOGUE 372
INDEX 373
PORTRAITS
PAGE
HUGH WALPOLE 17
STEWART EDWARD WHITE 57
REBECCA WEST 79
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 103
ARNOLD BENNETT 135
IRVIN S. COBB 167
FRANK SWINNERTON 227
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM 271
STEPHEN McKENNA 335
WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET
CHAPTER I
THE COURAGE OF HUGH WALPOLE
=i=
Says his American contemporary, Joseph Hergesheimer, in an appreciation of
Hugh Walpole: "Mr. Walpole's courage in the face of the widest scepticism
is nowhere more daring than in _The Golden Scarecrow_." Mr. Walpole's
courage, I shall always hold, is nowhere more apparent than in the choice
of his birthplace. He was born in the Antipodes. Yes! In that magical,
unpronounceable realm one reads about and intends to look up in the
dictionary.... The precise Antipodean spot was Auckland, New Zealand, and
the year was 1884.
The Right Reverend George Henry Somerset Walpole, D.D., Bishop of
Edinburgh since 1910, had been sent in 1882 to Auckland as Incumbent of
St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral, and the same ecclesiastical fates which took
charge of Hugh Seymour Walpole's birthplace provided that, at the age of
five, the immature novelist should be transferred to New York. Dr. Walpole
spent the next seven years in imparting to students of the General
Theological Seminary, New York, their knowledge of Dogmatic Theology. Hugh
Seymour Walpole spent the seven years in attaining the age of twelve.
Then, in 1896, the family returned to England. Perhaps a tendency to
travel had by this time become implanted in Hugh, for now, in his late
thirties, he is one of the most peripatetic of writers. He is here, he is
there. You write to him in London and receive a reply from Cornwall or the
Continent. And, regularly, he comes over to America. Of all the English
novelists who have visited this country he is easily the most popular
personally on this side. His visit this autumn (1922) will undoubtedly
multiply earlier welcomes.
Interest in Walpole the man and Walpole the novelist shows an increasing
tendency to become identical. It is all very well to say that the man is
one thing, his books are quite another; but suppose the man cannot be
separated from his books? The Walpole that loved Cornwall as a lad can't
be dissevered from the "Hugh Seymour" of _The Golden Scarecrow_; without
his Red Cross service in Russia during the Great War, Walpole could not
have written _The Dark Forest_; and I think the new novel he offers us
this autumn must owe a good deal to direct reminiscence of such a
cathedral town as Durham, to which the family returned when Hugh was
twelve.
[Illustration: HUGH WALPOLE]
_The Cathedral_, as the new book is called, rests the whole of its effect
upon just such an edifice as young Hugh was familiar with. The Cathedral
of the story stands in Polchester, in the west of England, in the county
of Glebeshire--that mythical yet actual county of Walpole's other novels.
Like such tales as _The Green Mirror_ and _The Duchess of Wrexe_, the aim
is threefold--to give a history of a certain group of people and, at the
same time, (2) to be a comment on English life, and, beyond that, (3) to
offer a philosophy of life itself.
The innermost of the three circles of interest created in this powerful
novel--like concentric rings formed by dropping stones in water--concerns
the life of Archdeacon Brandon. When the story opens he is ruling
Polchester, all its life, religious and civic and social, with an iron
rod. A good man, kindly and virtuous and simple, power has been too much
for him. In the first chapter a parallel is made between Brandon and a
great mediæval ecclesiastic of the Cathedral, the Black Bishop, who came
to think of himself as God and who was killed by his enemies. All through
the book this parallel is followed.
A certain Canon Ronder arrives to take up a post in the Cathedral. The
main thread of the novel now emerges as the history of the rivalry of
these two men, one simple and elemental, the other calculating, selfish
and sure. Ronder sees at once that Brandon is in his way and at once
begins his work to overthrow the Archdeacon, not because he dislikes him
at all (he _likes_ him), but because he wants his place; too, because
Brandon represents the Victorian church, while Ronder is on the side of
the modernists.
Brandon is threatened through his son Stephen and through his wife. His
source of strength,--a source of which he is unaware--lies in his
daughter, Joan, a charming girl just growing up. The first part of the
novel ends with everything that is to follow implicit in what has been
told; the story centres in Brandon but more sharply in the Cathedral,
which is depicted as a living organism with all its great history behind
it working quickly, ceaselessly, for its own purposes. Every part of the
Cathedral life is brought in to effect this, the Bishop, the Dean, the
Canons--down to the Verger's smallest child. All the town life also is
brought in, from the Cathedral on the hill to the mysterious little
riverside inn. Behind the town is seen the Glebeshire country, behind
that, England; behind England, the world, all moving toward set purposes.
The four parts of the novel markedly resemble, in structure, acts of a
play; in particular, the striking third part, entirely concerned with the
events of a week and full of flashing pictures, such as the scene of the
Town Ball. But the culmination of this part, indeed, the climax of the
whole book, comes in the scene of the Fair, with its atmosphere of
carnival, its delirium of outdoor mood, and its tremendous encounter
between Brandon and his wife. The novel closes upon a moment both fugitive
and eternal--Brandon watching across the fields the Cathedral, lovely and
powerful, in the evening distance. The Cathedral, lovely and powerful,
forever victorious, served by the generations of men....
=ii=
Courage, for Hugh, must have made its demand to be exercised early. We
have the "Hugh Seymour" of _The Golden Scarecrow_ who "was sent from
Ceylon, where his parents lived, to be educated in England. His relations
having for the most part settled in foreign countries, he spent his
holidays as a minute and pale-faced 'paying guest' in various houses where
other children were of more importance than he, or where children as a
race were of no importance at all." It would be a mistake to confer on
such a fictional passage a strict autobiographical importance; but I think
it significant that the novel with which Walpole first won an American
following, _Fortitude_, should derive from a theme as simple and as strong
as that of a classic symphony--from those words with which it opens: "'T
isn't life that matters! 'T is the courage you bring to it." From that
moment on, the novel follows the struggle of Peter Westcott, in boyhood
and young manhood, with antagonists, inner and outer. At the end we have
him partly defeated, wholly triumphant, still fighting, still pledged to
fight.
Not to confuse fiction with fact: Hugh Walpole was educated at Kings
School, Canterbury, and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. When he left the
university he drifted into newspaper work in London. He also had a brief
experience as master in a boys' school (the experiential-imaginative
source of _The Gods and Mr. Perrin_, that superb novel of underpaid
teachers in a second-rate boarding school). The war brought Red Cross work
in Russia and also a mission to Petrograd to promote pro-Ally sentiment.
For these services Walpole was decorated with the Georgian Medal.
What is Hugh Walpole like personally? Arnold Bennett, in an article which
appeared in the Book News Monthly and which was reprinted in a booklet,
says: "About the time of the publication of _The Gods and Mr. Perrin_, I
made the acquaintance of Mr. Walpole and found a man of youthful
appearance, rather dark, with a spacious forehead, a very highly
sensitised nervous organisation, and that reassuring matter-of-factness of
demeanour which one usually does find in an expert. He was then busy at
his task of seeing life in London. He seems to give about one-third of the
year to the tasting of all the heterogeneous sensations which London can
provide for the connoisseur and two-thirds to the exercise of his vocation
in some withdrawn spot in Cornwall that nobody save a postman or so, and
Mr. Walpole, has ever beheld. During one month it is impossible to 'go
out' in London without meeting Mr. Walpole--and then for a long period he
is a mere legend of dinner tables. He returns to the dinner tables with a
novel complete."
In the same magazine, in an article reprinted in the same booklet, Mrs.
Belloc Lowndes, that excellent weaver of mystery stories and sister of
Hilaire Belloc, said: "Before all things Hugh Walpole is an optimist, with
a great love for and a great belief in human nature. His outlook is
essentially sane, essentially normal. He has had his reverses and
difficulties, living in lodgings in remote Chelsea, depending entirely
upon his own efforts. Tall and strongly built, clean-shaven, with a wide,
high forehead and kindly sympathetic expression, the author of _Fortitude_
has a refreshing boyishness and zest for enjoyment which are pleasant to
his close friends. London, the home of his adoption, Cornwall, the home of
his youth, have each an equal spell for him and he divides his year
roughly into two parts: the tiny fishing town of Polperro, Cornwall, and
the pleasure of friendships in London. 'What a wonderful day!' he was
heard to say, his voice sounding muffled through the thickest variety of a
pea-soup fog. 'It wouldn't really be London without an occasional day like
this! I'm off to tramp the city.' It is one of Hugh Walpole's
superstitions that he should always begin his novels on Christmas Eve. He
has always done so, and he believes it brings him luck. Often it means the
exercise of no small measure of self-control, for the story has matured in
his mind and he is aching to commence it. But he vigorously adheres to his
custom, and by the time he begins to write his book lies before him like a
map. 'I could tell it you now, practically in the very words in which I
shall write it,' he has said. Nevertheless, he takes infinite trouble with
the work as it progresses. A great reader, Hugh Walpole reads with method.
Tracts of history, periods of fiction and poetry, are studied seriously;
and he has a really exhaustive heritage of modern poetry and fiction."
Perhaps since Mrs. Lowndes wrote those words, Mr. Walpole has departed
from his Christmas Eve custom. At any rate, I notice on the last page in
his very long novel _The Captives_ (the work by which, I think, he sets
most store of all his books so far published) the dates:
POLPERRO, JAN. 1916,
POLPERRO, MAY 1920.
=iii=
The demand for the exercise of that courage of which we have spoken can be
seen from these further details, supplied by Arnold Bennett:
"At the age of twenty, as an undergraduate of Cambridge, Walpole wrote
two novels. One of these, a very long book, the author had the
imprudence to destroy. The other was _The Wooden Horse_, his first
printed novel. It is not to be presumed that _The Wooden Horse_ was
published at once. For years it waited in manuscript until Walpole had
become a master in a certain provincial school in England. There he
showed the novel to a fellow-master, who, having kept the novel for a
period, spoke thus: 'I have tried to read your novel, Walpole, but I
can't. Whatever else you may be fitted for, you aren't fitted to be a
novelist.' Mr. Walpole was grieved. Perhaps he was unaware, then, that a
similar experience had happened to Joseph Conrad. I am unable to judge
the schoolmaster's fitness to be a critic, because I have not read _The
Wooden Horse_. Walpole once promised to send me a copy so that I might
come to some conclusion as to the schoolmaster, but he did not send it.
Soon after this deplorable incident, Walpole met Charles Marriott, a
novelist of a remarkable distinction. Mr. Marriott did not agree with the
schoolmaster as to _The Wooden Horse_. The result of the conflict of
opinion between Mr. Marriott and the schoolmaster was that Mr. Walpole
left the school abruptly--perhaps without the approval of his family,
but certainly with a sum of £30 which he had saved. His destination was
London.
"In Chelsea he took a room at four shillings a week. He was twenty-three
and (in theory) a professional author at last. Through the favouring
influence of Mr. Marriott he obtained a temporary job on the London
Standard as a critic of fiction. It lasted three weeks. Then he got a
regular situation on the same paper, a situation which I think he kept for
several years. _The Wooden Horse_ was published by a historic firm.
Statistics are interesting and valuable--_The Wooden Horse_ sold seven
hundred copies. The author's profits therefrom were less than the cost of
typewriting the novel. History is constantly repeating itself.
"Mr. Walpole was quite incurable, and he kept on writing novels. _Maradick
at Forty_ was the next one. It sold eleven hundred copies, but with no
greater net monetary profit to the author than the first one. He made,
however, a more shining profit of glory. _Maradick at Forty_--as the
phrase runs--'attracted attention.' I myself, though in a foreign country,
heard of it, and registered the name of Hugh Walpole as one whose progress
must be watched."
=iv=
Not so long ago there was published in England, in a series of
pocket-sized books called the _Kings Treasuries of Literature_ (under the
general editorship of Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch), a small volume called _A
Hugh Walpole Anthology_. This consisted of selections from Mr. Walpole's
novels up to and including _The Captives_. The selection was made by Mr.
Walpole himself.
I think that the six divisions into which the selections fell are
interesting as giving, in a few words, a prospectus of Walpole's work. The
titles of the sections were "Some Children," "Men and Women," "Some
Incidents," "London," "Country Places," and "Russia." The excerpts under
the heading "Some Children" are all from _Jeremy_ and _The Golden
Scarecrow_. The "Men and Women" are Mr. Perrin and Mrs. Comber, from _The
Gods and Mr. Perrin_; Mr. Trenchard and Aunt Aggie, from _The Green
Mirror_; and Mr. Crashaw, from _The Captives_. The "Incidents" are chosen
with an equal felicity--we have the theft of an umbrella from _The Gods
and Mr. Perrin_ and, out of the same book, the whole passage in which Mr.
Perrin sees double. There is also a scene from _Fortitude_, "After Defeat."
After two episodes from _The Green Mirror_, this portion of the anthology
is closed with the tragic passage from _The Captives_ in which Maggie
finds her uncle.
Among the London places pictured by Mr. Walpole in his novels and in this
pleasant anthology are Fleet Street, Chelsea, Portland Place, The Strand,
and Marble Arch. The selections under the heading "Country Places" are
bits about a cove, the sea, dusk, a fire and homecoming. The passages that
relate to Russia are taken, of course, from _The Dark Forest_ and _The
Secret City_.
Not the least interesting thing in this small volume is a short
introductory note by Joseph Conrad, who speaks of the anthology as
"intelligently compiled," and as offering, within its limits, a sample of
literary shade for every reader's sympathy. "Sophistication," adds Mr.
Conrad, "is the only shade that does not exist in Mr. Walpole's prose." He
goes on:
"Of the general soundness of Mr. Walpole's work I am perfectly convinced.
Let no modern and malicious mind take this declaration for a left-handed
compliment. Mr. Walpole's soundness is not of conventions but of
convictions; and even as to these, let no one suppose that Mr. Walpole's
convictions are old-fashioned. He is distinctly a man of his time; and it
is just because of that modernity, informed by a sane judgment of urgent
problems and wide and deep sympathy with all mankind, that we look forward
hopefully to the growth and increased importance of his work. In his
style, so level, so consistent, Mr. Hugh Walpole does not seek so much for
novel as for individual expression; and this search, this ambition so
natural to an artist, is often rewarded by success. Old and young interest
him alike and he treats both with a sure touch and in the kindest manner.
In each of these passages we see Mr. Walpole grappling with the truth of
things spiritual and material with his characteristic earnestness, and in
the whole we can discern the characteristics of this acute and sympathetic
explorer of human nature: His love of adventure and the serious audacity
he brings to the task of recording the changes of human fate and the
moments of human emotion, in the quiet backwaters or in the tumultuous
open streams of existence."
=v=
There is not space here to reprint all of Joseph Hergesheimer's
Appreciation of Hugh Walpole, published in a booklet in 1919--a booklet
still obtainable--but I would like to quote a few sentences from the close
of Mr. Hergesheimer's essay, where he says:
"As a whole, Hugh Walpole's novels maintain an impressive unity of
expression; they are the distinguished presentation of a distinguished
mind. Singly and in a group, they hold possibilities of infinite
development. This, it seems to me, is most clearly marked in their
superiority to the cheap materialism that has been the insistent note of
the prevailing optimistic fiction. There is a great deal of happiness in
Mr. Walpole's pages, but it is not founded on surface vulgarity of
appetite. The drama of his books is not sapped by the automatic security
of invulnerable heroics. Accidents happen, tragic and humorous; the life
of his novels is checked in black and white, often shrouded in grey; the
sun moves and stars come out; youth grows old; charm fades; girls may or
may not be pretty; his old women----
"But there he is inimitable. The old gentlewomen, or caretakers, dry and
twisted, brittle and sharp, repositories of emotion--vanities and malice
and self-seeking--like echoes of the past, or fat and loquacious, with
alcoholic sentimentality, are wonderfully ingratiating. They gather like
shadows, ghosts, about the feet of the young, and provide Mr. Walpole with
one of his main resources--the restless turning away of the young from the
conventions, prejudices and inhibitions of yesterday. He is singularly
intent upon the injustice of locking age about the wrists of youth; and,
with him, youth is very apt to escape, to defy authority set in years ...
only to become, in time, age itself."
Perhaps this is an anti-climax: The University of Edinburgh has twice
awarded the Tait Black Prize for the best novel of the year to Mr.
Walpole--first for _The Secret City_ in 1919 and then for _The Captives_
in 1920.
BOOKS BY HUGH WALPOLE
Novels:
THE WOODEN HORSE
THE GODS AND MR. PERRIN
(In England, MR. PERRIN AND MR. TRAILL)
THE GREEN MIRROR
THE DARK FOREST
THE SECRET CITY
THE CAPTIVES
THE CATHEDRAL
Romances:
MARADICK AT FORTY
THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE
FORTITUDE
THE DUCHESS OF WREXE
THE YOUNG ENCHANTED
Short Stories:
THE GOLDEN SCARECROW
JEREMY
THE THIRTEEN TRAVELLERS
Belles-Lettres:
JOSEPH CONRAD--A Critical Study.
SOURCES ON HUGH WALPOLE
Hugh Walpole: An Appreciation, by Joseph Hergesheimer, GEORGE H. DORAN
COMPANY.
English Literature During the Last Half Century, by J. W. Cunliffe, THE
MACMILLAN COMPANY.
A Hugh Walpole Anthology, selected by the author. LONDON: J. M.
DENT & SONS. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY.
Hugh Walpole, Master Novelist. Pamphlet published by GEORGE H. DORAN
COMPANY. (Out of print.)
Who's Who [In England].