[Sidenote: Laurence Housman in _Now and Then_]
The brief essay is a friendly form of literature; it enables the writer
to say zestfully just what is in his mind to say, and no more. The moment
his zest diminishes he can leave off, and another day start fresh on
a new subject. So, in small measure, it gives us the man, the natural
everyday furnishings of his brain, the room he lives in, the mental
paraphernalia with which his taste for life has surrounded him.
The brief essay is, therefore, a personal test of character. Its writer
need not make you, or even wish to make you agree with his opinions, he
may have that type of minority mind which prefers to annoy people; he may
be unlovable, provocative, sceptical, superstitious—I could string you
any number of unvirtuous qualities from which a good brief essay may be
compounded—but he must be himself, he must be interesting, and he must
have a point of view.
I have not the pleasure, or the pain, of Mr Machen’s personal
acquaintance. I do not know whether I should like him; but I do know
that he would interest me—that he is himself, and that he has a point of
view. I think that often we should differ and sometimes quarrel, that
his point of view occasionally invites as much ridicule as it casts on
others, that it is now and then inconsistent. But the inconsistency is
all of a piece with the character: he has a mind with a certain focus,
outside which the view becomes blurred, perhaps a little distorted. It
is the kind of mind which Mr Chesterton invented for himself, the better
to attract attention to the good which God had given him: he has a mind
credulous toward folk-lore and the past, incredulous toward modern
history and science; but he does not explain why folk-lore should be
believed and modern history rejected—beyond giving us a few instances
where folk-lore has been proved true, and modern history proved false; as
to which one need only say that the means for correcting modern history
are more abundantly to hand than those for correcting folk-lore. He
is a romantic, and has a romantic detestation for the impossibilities
of Euclid, whom he therefore dismisses as unworthy of the wise man’s
consideration. But I could be just as romantic in favour of Euclid, on
those very same grounds. It is only by giving it impossible things to
believe that Euclid provides the human brain with foothold for clear
logical thinking. It is only, as Mr Chesterton might say, by accepting
the impossible that man can attain to true belief. It is on those lines
that theology has provided us with a spiritualised Euclid of its own: and
only by believing in its impossibilities shall we ever get to eternal
life—which in itself is to the human mind an impossible condition, unless
miserable science, through the theories of Einstein, is now going to
help us to accept it. It is quite possible to be as romantic in one’s
acceptance of science as Mr Machen is in his acceptance of folk-lore.
But it is when Mr Machen is sceptical of human nature’s ability to
recapture the good it has let go that I quarrel with him most. As surely
as I could train an intelligent child to be superstitious about going
under a ladder, so surely could I train it to enjoy the bracing and
rhythmical exercise of the Morris dance, on which Mr Machen throws a
black and a wicked doubt for which I do not readily forgive him.
This only means that in his twenty-eight essays, his _Dogs_ and his
_Ducks_, Mr Machen has not always scored a complete “Duck,” and brought
his point home with conviction. For the meaning of which I refer
the reader to the first essay, which gives the book its unexplained
title. But every one of them is interesting and attractive, even when
provocative.
[Sidenote: _New York Herald_]
Some twenty-odd little essays by Arthur Machen have been gathered into
a book carrying the title of the first essay, “Dog and Duck” (Knopf),
on its cover. This singular combination refers to an ancient game that
is still played in a Georgian setting in London, but before Machen gets
through describing the game he takes the reader through a famous criminal
trial of the eighteenth century. Carl Van Vechten says for the publisher
that these essays are “in the Dickens manner,” but we found little of
that savour in “Roast Goose” or “Martinmas” or “Christmas Mumming,” just
the kind of subjects Dickens wrote about but in a so different manner and
spirit. But, on their own merits, they make very agreeable reading.
[Sidenote: _Boston Transcript_]
This collection of rambling essays represents a late phase of its
author’s work and presents an interesting contrast with some of the
earlier books recently reissued as the result of the growth of a Machen
cult in this country. The newer Machen is revealed as a less eccentric,
healthier, but not less sensitive writer than the old. There is in “Dog
and Duck” and its companion essays little trace of the author’s former
prepossession with things occult and ghastly, while his more pleasing
qualities as a writer are fairly well represented. When Machen writes
with a gentle regret for things past or passing, such as old sports and
old enjoyments, or the disappearance of the vulgar Valentine and the
“fogs of yesteryear,” he is altogether charming.
A number of the essays have a satiric tinge, often sharply pointed
and telling, as in “Simnel Cakes,” wherein Machen pays his respects
to the professional etymologist, or “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with
its observations of the development of the popular idea of a fairy.
Elsewhere there is a good deal of matter that is trite and obvious, as
when the author demonstrates that Shakespeare was a practical man of the
theatre rather than a university “don,” or that the Victorians were not
strait-laced on all occasions. Briefly, in a number of the essays one
perceives the journalist writing to fill space. There is much in the
book that will not enhance Machen’s reputation as a man of letters.
[Sidenote: _The Manchester Guardian_]
The suspicion which assails the reader who is familiar with the present
state of the “first edition” market as he takes up Mr Machen’s new
book of essays is very natural. In a note on the dust-cover is the
announcement that the issue is limited to less than a thousand copies,
and that the author has autographed a considerable number of them. This,
taken in conjunction with the news from America that at the auction
of Mr John Quinn’s library two first-edition copies of Mr Machen’s
earlier works were sold at impressive figures, irresistibly suggests
that one, at all events, of the immediate purposes of “Dog and Duck”
has been to “catch the market.” If this be so, then the modern craze
for book-collecting has for once been useful. The essays are selected
from the author’s most recent journalism, and the reader will have rich
enjoyment in them. A characteristic corn-cob atmosphere is created in the
very first pages, describing with a quiet and mellow humour the ancient
pastime of “Dog and Duck,” which is so simple, we are assured, that only
a soft india-rubber ball and a garden surrounded by an unbroken path
are needed; yet it takes a lifetime for the player to become an expert.
Dissertations on valentines, simnel cakes, old port, the only good way to
make chocolate, fogs in November, and Shakespeare, Bacon, collops, and
astrology follow handsomely; and through them all we have ample evidence
that Mr Machen has kept intact his creed that, in his own language,
“it is the love of splendour—the splendid robe, the splendid word, the
splendid picture—which constitutes the vital distinction between man and
brute. Many beasts have reason, the faculty of using means for a certain
end. But only man has art, which is the love of splendour and the desire
to create it.” The wistful note introduced a year since into his “Things
Near and Far” develops occasionally into a page-long phase of sighing
ostentatiously and regretting angrily, for he cannot help remembering the
glories of his own youth in London that are no more.—T. M.
[Sidenote: _The Times Literary Supplement._]
About most of the essays in Mr Arthur Machen’s “Dog and Duck”: A London
Calendar et cetera, there is a graceful tenuousness which compares
interestingly with the fiercer note of the other few. While he is
gravely and reflectively tuning his discursive pen to the changing
seasons of the year, he is grave, tenderly reminiscent, a trifle elderly.
He discourses of the New Year and French influence in Scotland, of bygone
valentines in February, of March and simnel cakes, of May and the decay
of joy, of July and why young men row races at Henley, of roast goose in
September, of first fogs in October, and so forth. These essays, with
the charming account of the (we suspect) apocryphal game of Dog and Duck
which constitutes the first, are nearly all in the wistful note which is
characteristic of this author.
Mr Machen excels at the picturesque-peevish, when he complains that the
joys which he knew in his youth are no more, that joy has vanished like
the fogs and horse-omnibuses, that the race of Englishmen has perished
to give place to a generation of inmates for a convalescent home. Then
all of a sudden he flares up, and the hidden reason seems to be that some
misguided doctor once tried to put Mr Machen on a diet: at all events the
flare-up takes the form of violent diatribes against any interference in
the name of science, health, or intelligence with the freedom of the
stomach to indulge in wine, beer, stout, roast beef, kidneys, oysters,
and other fleshly delights. At one moment he attacks poor old superseded
Euclid under this inspiration, at another he satirically concludes that
on scientific principles we had all better spend Christmas in gaol; and
he will fire off a broadside at any moment against those who object to
self-indulgence, who disbelieve in a primitive roystering Shakespeare,
and who show any tendency to explain away anything at all. They hate
life, says Mr Machen; but apparently he himself confesses to finding the
actualities of life repulsive. One must get away from them somehow, then;
young men do it by rowing themselves blue in the face, pure scientists
by turning to abstractions, applied scientists by interfering with old
ideas, and Mr Machen by imagining that he knew what Merrie England was
like, somewhere about Caerleon in the day of Chaucer. Now he need never
be dull, for he can revile the present in musical language.
[Sidenote: H. P. Collins in _The Outlook_]
Mr Machen has the one great requisite of a popular journalist: he holds
the reader’s attention from the beginning to the end of his article, and
holds it no longer. He is never dull; and he is never profound. To adopt
a simile from the ingenious old game of “Dog and Duck” into which he
initiates us: he brings his ball to rest between the chases without going
to earth in “grounds” or “green,” scores five points or maybe ten—he
never rounds the last corner and attains the Duck for a score of forty.
Mr Machen has a spirited and genial manner; but it does not proceed from
a really robust and consistent personality. He is akin to Mr Chesterton
in his gusto, his love of good fare, and his faith in medievalism and
Merrie England; but he has none of Mr Chesterton’s wit and intellectual
vigour. In “Far Off Things” the author’s mystical attitude brought him
through in a qualified triumph; it has thinned unawares to sentimentality
in these laments for valentines in February, Victorian bonhomie, and the
fogs of yesteryear. He is vexed with Hewlett for his dislike of “the
universe in general and human nature in particular”! It is nothing to
the cheery tribe of Machen that there are and always have been those to
whom history is not a pretty game, those who cannot afford milk-punch and
those who cannot stomach roast goose and sage-and-onion. What Mr Machen,
for all his gestures, cannot stomach is reality. He lives in a world not
of experience but of legend, where it will please many to visit him.
It is with relief, though as must needs be a touch of sadness, that one
turns from Mr Machen to these posthumous essays of Maurice Hewlett. From
rose-coloured and enervating mists we pass to the keen air of Wiltshire
and the keener stimulus of the voice that is now still.
[Sidenote: Richard Church in _The Nation and Athenæum_]
Mr Machen is a good journalist because he writes clearly and simply,
and, for some reason or other, makes us finish reading his articles.
We may think that his god, Commonsense, is often an uncommon fool, a
creature of shallow thought and indolent prejudice, but we read on and
enjoy the author’s company—often with a yawn. It is boring to hear
that the world of to-day is degenerate, that the spirit of joy left
England somewhere about the time of Elizabeth; for such talk recalls the
conversation of the clubs, and the bores who always buttonhole us when
we are particularly depressed by the weather or the political situation.
Mr Machen is inclined to overdo this old “stunt” of the golden days of
thirty, forty, fifty, five hundred years ago. In one article after
another it appears, like the conventional “sea-runs” in the Norse and
Keltic folktales. Our exasperation may be due to the fact that these
articles are read one after another in the book, whereas they should be,
and originally were, scattered in the periodical Press. Mr Machen has a
hearty way with him, and a humorous and observant eye which informs a
mind never weary of the pageant of passing events. In his description of
old scenes and games, of personal adventures, of the flotsam and jetsam
incidental to the daily life of his neighbour—and all the world is his
neighbour—he is delightful and Dickensian. When he dogmatises he tends to
become “lowbrow,” which is equally as unpleasant as being “highbrow.” The
publisher is to be congratulated on the perfect production of this book.