There is one thing that I hope I may be spared, that is the
comment of the Oriental Occult Ass.... I do hope nobody will
say, “Why, this is only Ruja-Puja! You get it all in the
first chapter of the Anangasataga Raja! It’s all perfectly
elementary. Little Hindu children learn their A.B.C. out of it
in the Svanka Visatvara.”
Despite his contempt for the physical phenomena of the Spiritists, Mr
Machen concedes their possibility. His one question remains: Is this of
consequence? And he puts the same question concerning his own experience.
During a fit of the most uncontrollable melancholy, he sat down in his
apartment in London, and attempted, by some mental process which he does
not describe, to rid himself of depression. Suddenly the pictures on the
wall
trembled, dilated, became misty in their outlines; seemed on
the point of disappearing altogether, and then shuddered and
contracted back again into their proper form and solidity; that
is the closest description of what I witnessed: with a shaking
heart, and with a sense that something, I knew not what, was
also being shaken to its foundations.
He was filled with dread, yet, at the same time, with an almost
unendurable ecstasy. For a moment the fear of death was upon him. Then
gradually the fright passed, leaving him in an exalted and serene
frame of mind that lasted for an entire year. Concerning the physical
phenomenon of the pictures, he remarks:—
This is all wonderful? I suppose that it is; but let me here
say firmly that I consider an act of kindness to a wretched
mangy kitten to be much more important.
But the year of peace that followed was, decidedly, of consequence,
since he was lifted above the petty emotions that degrade and destroy
humanity, and he saw life in its true colours. His implied conclusion is,
therefore, that no occult experience is of any consequence in itself; its
sole value is to enhance the dignity, decency and happiness of the human
race.
All of Mr Machen’s fiercest satirical passages against humanity are
dictated not by hatred but love of humanity. Nothing is so maddening as
to behold a beloved being or race of beings degenerate into Yahoos. We
observe the same quality in Swift, who was the most virulent of satirists
because he was, fundamentally, the tenderest of humanitarians. When Mr
Machen is at his bitterest, we find no desire for vengeance; merely an
infuriated, baffled perplexity that his fellows should sink so low. And
even this emotion he reserves for types; for individuals he exhibits a
friendliness, a conviviality, an understanding, which are worthy of the
rich variety of his nature.
Indeed, though the mystical side of his character is the most interesting
and the satirical the most entertaining, his Rabelaisian gusto for the
good things of life sets them both off to advantage. He can recreate
London or Touraine with a phrase or give us the play of sunlight on the
brim of an old cup filled with clear wine. All phases of life interest
him, since he has entered into more of them than most men. For example,
in the opening years of the present century he was one of a company of
strolling players. The single chapter he devotes to this pilgrimage might
well be expanded into a sort of Thespian Lavengro. And in literature, all
of whose halls, ante-rooms and little dark corridors are known to him, we
always find him where we should wish to find him—on the side of rapture
and care against emotionalism and slovenliness. For to him “Literature is
the sensuous art of causing exquisite impressions by means of words”:—
To win the secret of words, to make a phrase that would murmur
of Summer and the bee, to summon the wind into a sentence, to
conjure the odour of the night into the surge and fall and
harmony of a line; this was the tale of the long evenings, of
the candle flame white upon the paper and the eager pen.
His style approaches the gift of music, and will repel such readers as
consider words to be utilitarian vessels for measuring out their quart
or bushel of meaning. But those who find reality in “Kubla Khan,” “The
Fall of the House of Usher,” or the “Dream Fugue” will find it also in
the books of Arthur Machen, who is of that small group of Coleridge,
De Quincey, Sir Thomas Browne, Poe and Malory—a group where each is a
master. In a vision we use the language of vision, and if on waking
we would interpret what we have seen and heard into the language of
waking, we can only suggest. If we state, the magic slips out between the
syllables. By the marvellous orchestration of his prose, its undertones
and overtones, Mr Machen has suggested to us his vision of the battle
between Light and Darkness—a vision that is far more real than this
seeming reality which shifts with the passing years. It is not strange
that he has been misconstrued as the artist of Terror and of Madness;
he has seen so clearly the titanic war in the troubled spirit of the
world, compared to which all the wars that have scarred the body of the
world are but as the twitching of a sleeper in whose brain the nightmare
rages. And, because of the same limitation which makes Dante’s “Inferno”
infinitely more convincing than his “Paradiso,” Arthur Machen’s lurid
darkness shines with a grander beauty than his open day. For this reason
the superficial minded will persist in calling that great book “The Hill
of Dreams” a “morbid” piece of work.
Objections of this sort, which entirely overlook the real robustness of
the author’s nature, grow fainter and fainter as the world swings around
to his point of view. In brief, Mr Machen’s outlook on life is similar to
his opinion of occult phenomena: external facts, valueless in themselves,
are only important as they affect the imagination or spirit of man. They
are merely the symbols of the great sacrament that lies behind them. For
him, literature became the escape from circumstance, and he could not, if
he would, relinquish it or write what was not in him.
And my total receipts for these eighteen volumes, he says,
for these forty-two years of toil, amount to the sum of six
hundred and thirty-five pounds. That is, I have been paid at
the rate of fifteen pounds and a few shillings per annum.
It seems dear, then, that my literary activities cannot be
adequately accounted for on the hypothesis of mere greed and
money-grubbing.
It is this kind of devotion that gives us our masterpieces, this
slow-burning, indomitable desire, independent of all consideration
but the building up, phrase by phrase, of an enduring structure. That
America, long the source of uninspired materialism, should recognise so
fully the value of Mr Machen’s work, is a happy augury for the future of
our literature.