FRANK SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS
=i=
It is as an analyst of lovers, I think, that Frank Swinnerton claims and
holds his place among those whom we still sometimes call the younger
novelists of England.
I do not say this because his fame was achieved at a bound with
_Nocturne_, but because all his novels show a natural preoccupation with
the theme of love between the sexes. Usually it is a pair of young lovers
or contrasted pairs; but sometimes this is interestingly varied, as in
September, where we have a study of love that comes to a woman in middle
life.
The unique character of _Nocturne_ makes it very hard to write about
Swinnerton. It is true that Arnold Bennett wrote: "I am prepared to say to
the judicious reader unacquainted with Swinnerton's work, 'Read
_Nocturne_,' and to stand or fall, and to let him stand or fall by the
result." At the same time, though the rule is that we must judge an artist
by his finest work and a genius by his greatest masterpiece, it is not
entirely just to estimate the living writer by a single unique
performance, an extraordinary piece of virtuosity, which _Nocturne_
unquestionably is. For anyone who wishes to understand and appreciate
Swinnerton, I would recommend that he begin with _Coquette_, follow it
with _September_, follow that with _Shops and Houses_ and then read
_Nocturne_. That is, I would have made this recommendation a few months
ago, but so representative of all sides of Swinnerton's talent is his new
novel, _The Three Lovers_, that I should now prefer to say to anyone
unacquainted with Swinnerton: "Begin with _The Three Lovers_." And after
that I would have him read _Coquette_ and the other books in the order I
have named. After he had reached and finished _Nocturne_, I would have him
turn to the several earlier novels--_The Happy Family_, _On the
Staircase_, and _The Chaste Wife_.
=ii=
_The Three Lovers_, a full-length novel which Swinnerton finished in
Devonshire in the spring of 1922, is a story of human beings in conflict,
and it is also a picture of certain phases of modern life. A young and
intelligent girl, alone in the world, is introduced abruptly to a kind of
life with which she is unfamiliar. Thereafter the book shows the
development of her character and her struggle for the love of the men to
whom she is most attracted. The book steadily moves
[Illustration: FRANK SWINNERTON]
through its earlier chapters of introduction and growth to a climax that
is both dramatic and moving. It opens with a characteristic descriptive
passage from which I take a few sentences:
"It was a suddenly cold evening towards the end of September.... The
street lamps were sharp brightnesses in the black night, wickedly
revealing the naked rain-swept paving-stones. It was an evening to make
one think with joy of succulent crumpets and rampant fires and warm
slippers and noggins of whisky; but it was not an evening for cats or
timid people. The cats were racing about the houses, drunken with primeval
savagery; the timid people were shuddering and looking in distress over
feebly hoisted shoulders, dreadfully prepared for disaster of any kind,
afraid of sounds and shadows and their own forgotten sins.... The wind
shook the window-panes; soot fell down all the chimneys; trees
continuously rustled as if they were trying to keep warm by constant
friction and movement."
The imagination which sees in the movement of trees an endeavour to keep
warm is not less sharp in its discernment of human beings. I will give one
other passage, a conversation between Patricia Quin, the heroine, and
another girl:
"'Do you mean he's in love with you?' asked Patricia. 'That seems to be
what's the matter.'
"'Oho, it takes two to be in love,' scornfully cried Amy. 'And I'm not in
love with him.'
"'But he's your friend.'
"'That's just it. He won't recognise that men and women _can_ be friends.
He's a very decent fellow; but he's full of this sulky jealousy, and he
glowers and sulks whenever any other man comes near me. Well, that's not
my idea of friendship.'
"'Nor mine,' echoed Patricia, trying to reconstruct her puzzled estimate
of their relations. 'But couldn't you stop that? Surely, if you put it
clearly to him....'
"Amy interrupted with a laugh that was almost shrill. Her manner was
coldly contemptuous.
"'You _are_ priceless!' she cried. 'You say the most wonderful things.'
"'Well, _I_ should.'
"'I wonder.' Amy moved about, collecting the plates. 'You see ... some day
I shall marry. And in a weak moment I said probably I'd marry him.'
"'Oh, Amy! Of _course_ he's jealous.' Swiftly, Patricia did the young man
justice.
"'I didn't give him any right to be. I told him I'd changed my mind. I've
told him lots of times that probably I sha'n't marry him.'
"'But you keep him. Amy! You do encourage him.' Patricia was stricken
afresh with a generous impulse of emotion on Jack's behalf. 'I mean, by
not telling him straight out. Surely you can't keep a man waiting like
that? I wonder he doesn't _insist_.'
"'Jack insist!' Amy was again scornful. 'Not he!'
"There was a moment s pause. Innocently, Patricia ventured upon a
charitable interpretation.
"'He must love you very much. But, Amy, if you don't love him.'
"'What's love got to do with marriage?' asked Amy, with a sourly cynical
air.
"'Hasn't it--everything?' Patricia was full of sincerity. She was too
absorbed in this story to help Amy to clear the table; but on finding
herself alone in the studio while the crockery was carried away to the
kitchen she mechanically shook the crumbs behind the gas-fire and folded
the napkin. This was the most astonishing moment of her day.
"Presently Amy returned, and sat in the big armchair, while, seated upon
the podger and leaning back against the wall, Patricia smoked a
cigarette.
"'You see, the sort of man one falls in love with doesn't make a good
husband,' announced Amy, as patiently as if Patricia had been in fact a
child. She persisted in her attitude of superior wisdom in the world's
ways. 'It's all very well; but a girl ought to be able to live with any
man she fancies, and then in the end marry the safe man for a ... well,
for life, if she likes.'
"Patricia's eyes were opened wide.
"'I shouldn't like that,' she said. 'I don't think the man would either.'
"'Bless you, the men all _do_ it,' cried Amy, contemptuously. 'Don't make
any mistake about that.'
"'I don't believe it,' said Patricia. 'Do you mean that my father--or
_your_ father...?'
"'Oh, I don't know. I meant, nowadays. Most of the people you saw last
night are living together or living with other people.'
"Patricia was aware of a chill.
"'But _you've_ never,' she urged. 'I've never.'
"'No.' Amy was obviously irritated by the personal application. 'That's
just it. I say we _ought_ to be free to do what we like. Men do what they
like.'
"'D'you think Jack has lived with other girls?'
"'My dear child, how do I know? I should hope he has.'
"'Hope! Amy, you do make me feel a prig.'
"'Perhaps you are one. Oh, I don't know. I'm sick of thinking, thinking,
thinking about it all. I never get any peace.'
"'Is there somebody you _want_ to live with?'
"'No. I wish there was. Then I should _know_'
"'I wonder if you would know,' said Patricia, in a low voice. 'Amy, do you
really know what love is? Because I don't. I've sometimes let men kiss me,
and it doesn't seem to matter in the least. I don't particularly want to
kiss them, or to be kissed. I've never seen anything in all the flirtation
that goes on in dark corners. It's amusing once or twice; but it becomes
an awful bore. The men don't interest you. The thought of living with any
of them just turns me sick.'"
=iii=
The analysis, in _The Three Lovers_, of Patricia Quin is done with that
simplicity, quiet deftness and inoffensive frankness which is the hallmark
of Mr. Swinnerton's fiction. And, coming at last to _Nocturne_, I fall
back cheerfully upon the praise accorded that novel by H. G. Wells in his
preface to it. Said Mr. Wells:
"Such a writer as Mr. Swinnerton sees life and renders it with a
steadiness and detachment and patience quite foreign to my disposition. He
has no underlying motive. He sees and tells. His aim is the attainment of
that beauty which comes with exquisite presentation. Seen through his art,
life is seen as one sees things through a crystal lens, more intensely,
more completed, and with less turbidity. There the business begins and
ends for him. He does not want you or anyone to do anything.
"Mr. Swinnerton is not alone among recent writers in this clear detached
objectivity. But Mr. Swinnerton, like Mr. James Joyce, does not repudiate
the depths for the sake of the surface. His people are not splashes of
appearance, but living minds. Jenny and Emmy in this book are realities
inside and out; they are imaginative creatures so complete that one can
think with ease of Jenny ten years hence or of Emmy as a baby. The fickle
Alf is one of the most perfect Cockneys--a type so easy to caricature and
so hard to get true--in fiction. If there exists a better writing of
vulgar lovemaking, so base, so honest, so touchingly mean and so
touchingly full of the craving for happiness than this, I do not know of
it. Only a novelist who has had his troubles can understand fully what a
dance among china cups, what a skating over thin ice, what a tight-rope
performance is achieved in this astounding chapter. A false note, one
fatal line, would have ruined it all. On the one hand lay brutality; a
hundred imitative louts could have written a similar chapter brutally,
with the soul left out, we have loads of such 'strong stuff' and it is
nothing; on the other side was the still more dreadful fall into
sentimentality, the tear of conscious tenderness, the redeeming glimpse of
'better things' in Alf or Emmy that could at one stroke have converted
their reality into a genteel masquerade. The perfection of Alf and Emmy is
that at no point does a 'nature's gentleman' or a 'nature's lady' show
through and demand our refined sympathy. It is only by comparison with
this supreme conversation that the affair of Keith and Jenny seems to fall
short of perfection. But that also is at last perfected, I think, by
Jenny's final, 'Keith ... Oh, Keith!...'
"Above these four figures again looms the majestic invention of 'Pa.'
Every reader can appreciate the truth and humour of Pa, but I doubt if
anyone without technical experience can realise how the atmosphere is made
and completed, and rounded off by Pa's beer, Pa's meals, and Pa's
accident, how he binds the bundle and makes the whole thing one, and what
an enviable triumph his achievement is.
"But the book is before the reader and I will not enlarge upon its merits
further. Mr. Swinnerton has written four or five other novels before this
one, but none of them compares with it in quality. His earlier books were
strongly influenced by the work of George Gissing; they have something of
the same fatigued greyness of texture and little of the same artistic
completeness and intense vision of _Nocturne_.
"This is a book that will not die. It is perfect, authentic and alive.
Whether a large and immediate popularity will fall to it, I cannot say,
but certainly the discriminating will find it and keep it and keep it
alive. If Mr. Swinnerton were never to write another word I think he might
count on this much of his work living, when many of the more portentous
reputations of today may have served their purpose in the world and become
no more than fading names."
=iv=
Arnold Bennett has described Swinnerton personally in a way no one else is
likely to surpass. I will prefix a few elemental facts which he has
neglected and then will let him have his say.
Frank Arthur Swinnerton was born in Wood Green, England, in 1884, the
youngest son of Charles Swinnerton and Rose Cottam. He married, a few
years ago, Helen Dircks, a poet; her slim little book of verse,
_Passenger_, was published with a preface by Mr. Swinnerton. His first
three novels Swinnerton destroyed. His first novel to be published was
_The Merry Heart_. It is interesting to know that Floyd Dell was the first
American to appreciate Swinnerton. I make way for Mr. Bennett, who says:
"One day perhaps eight or nine years ago I received a novel entitled _The
Casement_. The book was accompanied by a short, rather curt note from the
author, Frank Swinnerton, politely indicating that if I cared to read it
he would be glad, and implying that if I didn't care to read it, he should
endeavour still to survive. I would quote the letter but I cannot find
it--no doubt for the reason that all my correspondence is carefully filed
on the most modern filing system. I did not read _The Casement_ for a long
time. Why should I consecrate three irrecoverable hours or so to the work
of a man as to whom I had no credentials? Why should I thus introduce
foreign matter into the delicate cogwheels of my programme of reading?
However, after a delay of weeks, heaven in its deep wisdom inspired me
with a caprice to pick up the volume.
"I had read, without fatigue but on the other hand without passionate
eagerness, about a hundred pages before the thought occurred suddenly to
me: 'I do not remember having yet come across one single ready-made phrase
in this story.' Such was my first definable thought concerning Frank
Swinnerton. I hate ready-made phrases, which in my view--and in that of
Schopenhauer--are the sure mark of a mediocre writer. I began to be
interested. I soon said to myself: 'This fellow has a distinguished
style.' I then perceived that the character-drawing was both subtle and
original, the atmosphere delicious, and the movement of the tale very
original, too. The novel stirred me--not by its powerfulness, for it did
not set out to be powerful--but by its individuality and distinction. I
thereupon wrote to Frank Swinnerton. I forget entirely what I said. But I
know that I decided that I must meet him.
"When I came to London, considerably later, I took measures to meet him,
at the Authors' Club. He proved to be young; I daresay twenty-four or
twenty-five--medium height, medium looks, medium clothes, somewhat reddish
hair, and lively eyes. If I had seen him in a motorbus I should never have
said, 'A remarkable chap'--no more than if I had seen myself in a
motorbus. My impressions of the interview were rather like my impressions
of the book: at first somewhat negative, and only very slowly becoming
positive. He was reserved, as became a young author; I was reserved, as
became an older author; we were both reserved, as became Englishmen. Our
views on the only important thing in the world--that is to say,
fiction--agreed, not completely, but in the main; it would never have done
for us to agree completely. I was as much pleased by what he didn't say as
by what he said; quite as much by the indications of the stock inside the
shop as by the display in the window. The interview came to a calm close.
My knowledge of him acquired from it amounted to this, that he held
decided and righteous views upon literature, that his heart was not on his
sleeve, and that he worked in a publisher's office during the day and
wrote for himself in the evenings.
"Then I saw no more of Swinnerton for a relatively long period. I read
other books of his. I read _The Young Idea_, and _The Happy Family_, and,
I think, his critical work on George Gissing. _The Happy Family_ marked a
new stage in his development. It has some really piquant scenes, and it
revealed that minute knowledge of middle-class life in the nearer suburbs
of London, and that disturbing insight into the hearts and brains of quite
unfashionable girls, which are two of his principal gifts. I read a sketch
of his of a commonplace crowd walking around a bandstand which brought me
to a real decision as to his qualities. The thing was like life, and it
was bathed in poetry.
"Our acquaintance proceeded slowly, and I must be allowed to assert that
the initiative which pushed it forward was mine. It made a jump when he
spent a week-end in the Thames Estuary on my yacht. If any reader has a
curiosity to know what my yacht is not like, he should read the striking
yacht chapter in _Nocturne_. I am convinced that Swinnerton evolved the
yacht in _Nocturne_ from my yacht; but he ennobled, magnified, decorated,
enriched and bejewelled it till honestly I could not recognise my wretched
vessel. The yacht in _Nocturne_ is the yacht I want, ought to have, and
never shall have. I envy him the yacht in _Nocturne_, and my envy takes a
malicious pleasure in pointing out a mistake in the glowing scene. He
anchors his yacht in the middle of the Thames--as if the tyrannic
authorities of the Port of London would ever allow a yacht, or any other
craft, to anchor in midstream!
"After the brief cruise our friendship grew rapidly. I now know
Swinnerton--probably as well as any man knows him; I have penetrated into
the interior of the shop. He has done several things since I first knew
him--rounded the corner of thirty, grown a beard, under the orders of a
doctor, and physically matured. Indeed, he looks decidedly stronger than
in fact he is--he was never able to pass the medical examination for the
army. He is still in the business of publishing, being one of the
principal personages in the ancient and well-tried firm of Chatto &
Windus, the English publishers of Swinburne and Mark Twain. He reads
manuscripts, including his own--and including mine. He refuses
manuscripts, though he did accept one of mine. He tells authors what they
ought to do and ought not to do. He is marvellously and terribly
particular and fussy about the format of the books issued by his firm.
Questions as to fonts of type, width of margins, disposition of
title-pages, tint and texture of bindings really do interest him. And
misprints--especially when he has read the proofs himself--give him
neuralgia and even worse afflictions. Indeed he is the ideal publisher for
an author.
"Nevertheless, publishing is only a side-line of his. He still writes for
himself in the evenings and at week-ends--the office never sees him on
Saturdays.
"Frank Swinnerton has other gifts. He is a surpassingly good raconteur. By
which I do not signify that the man who meets Swinnerton for the first,
second or third time will infallibly ache with laughter at his remarks.
Swinnerton only blossoms in the right atmosphere; he must know exactly
where he is; he must be perfectly sure of his environment, before the
flower uncloses. And he merely relates what he has seen, what he has taken
part in. The narrations would be naught if he were not the narrator. His
effects are helped by the fact that he is an excellent mimic and by his
utter realistic mercilessness. But like all first-class realists he is
also a romantic, and in his mercilessness there is a mysterious touch of
fundamental benevolence--as befits the attitude of one who does not worry
because human nature is not something different from what it actually is.
Lastly, in this connection, he has superlatively the laugh known as the
'infectious laugh.' When he laughs everybody laughs, everybody has to
laugh. There are men who tell side-splitting tales with the face of an
undertaker--for example, Irvin Cobb. There are men who can tell
side-splitting tales and openly and candidly rollick in them from the
first word; and of these latter is Frank Swinnerton. But Frank Swinnerton
can be more cruel than Irvin Cobb. Indeed, sometimes when he is telling a
story, his face becomes exactly like the face of Mephistopheles in
excellent humour with the world's sinfulness and idiocy.
"Swinnerton's other gift is the critical. It has been said that an author
cannot be at once a first-class critic and a first-class creative artist.
To which absurdity I reply: What about William Dean Howells? And what
about Henry James, to name no other names? Anyhow, if Swinnerton excels in
fiction he also excels in literary criticism. The fact that the literary
editor of the Manchester Guardian wrote and asked him to write literary
criticism for the Manchester Guardian will perhaps convey nothing to the
American citizen. But to the Englishman of literary taste and experience
it has enormous import. The Manchester Guardian publishes the most
fastidious and judicious literary criticism in Britain.
"I recall that once when Swinnerton was in my house I had there also a
young military officer with a mad passion for letters and a terrific
ambition to be an author. The officer gave me a manuscript to read. I
handed it over to Swinnerton to read, and then called upon Swinnerton to
criticise it in the presence of both of us. 'Your friend is very kind,'
said the officer to me afterward, 'but it was a frightful ordeal.'
"The book on George Gissing I have already mentioned. But it was
Swinnerton's work on R. L. Stevenson that made the trouble in London. It
is a destructive work. It is bland and impartial, and not bereft of
laudatory passages, but since its appearance Stevenson's reputation has
never been the same."
BOOKS BY FRANK SWINNERTON
THE MERRY HEART
THE YOUNG IDEA
THE CASEMENT
THE HAPPY FAMILY
GEORGE GISSING: A CRITICAL STUDY
R. L. STEVENSON: A CRITICAL STUDY
ON THE STAIRCASE
THE CHASTE WIFE
NOCTURNE
SHOPS AND HOUSES
SEPTEMBER
COQUETTE
THE THREE LOVERS
SOURCES ON FRANK SWINNERTON
Who's Who [In England].
Frank Swinnerton: Personal Sketches by Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells,
Grant Overtor, Booklet published by GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, 1920.
Private Information.