VMR. CLUTTON-BROCK
Mr. Clutton-Brock is a critic with an unusual equality of interests. He seems to be the centre of an almost perfect circle, and literature, painting, religion, philosophy, ethics, and education are the all but equal radii that connect him with the circumference. Many writers have been as versatile, but few have been as symmetrical. He has all his gifts in due proportion. He is not more æsthetic than moral, or more moral than æsthetic. His idealism and his intellect balance each other exactly. His matter and his manner are twins. He produces on us the effect of a harmony, not of a nature in conflict with itself. Had he lived in the ancient world, he would probably have been a teacher of philosophy. He has gifts of temper as well as powers of exposition and understanding that make him a teacher even to-day, whether he will or not. He does not speak down to us from the chair,but he is at our elbows murmuring with exquisite restraint yet with an eagerness only half-hidden the “nothing too much” of the Greeks, the “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty” of Keats, the good news that the flesh and spirit are not enemies but friends, and that the Earth for the wise man is not at odds with Paradise.
Those who shrink from virtue as from a split infinitive sometimes speak in disparagement of Mr. Clutton-Brock’s gifts. He is the head of a table at which the virtues and the graces sit down side by side, and they are dressed so much alike that it is not always easy to tell which is which. He is always seeking, indeed, the point at which a virtue passes into a grace, and he knits his brows over those extreme differences that separate one from the other. The standard by which he measures things in literature and in life is an ideal world in which goodness and beauty answer one another in antiphonal music. His ideal man is thekalos k’ agathosof ancient Athens. He goes among authors in quest of this part-song in their work. He misses it in the later Tolstoy: he discovers it in Marvell and Vaughan. He is not to be put off, however, with a forced and unnatural antiphony. He is critical of the antiphony of body and soul that announces “All’s well!” in Whitman’s verse. Hefinds in Whitman not organic cheerfulness but functional cheerfulness—“willed cheerfulness,” he calls it. And he says of Whitman with penetrating wisdom: “He was a man not strong enough in art or in life to do without that willed cheerfulness; it is for him a defence like irony, though a newer, more democratic, more American defence.” He writes with equal wisdom when he says that Whitman “has got a great part of his popularity from those who were grateful to him for saying so firmly and so often what they wished to believe.” But might not this be said of all poets of hope? Might it not be said of Shelley and of Browning? I am not sure, indeed, that Mr. Clutton-Brock does not do serious injustice to Whitman in exaggerating the element of reaction in him against old fears as well as old forms. His discovery of the secret of what is false in Whitman has partly blinded him to the secret of what is true. Otherwise, how could he ask us whether there is anything inLeaves of Grassthat moves us as we are moved by Edgar Allan Poe’sThe Sleeper? Can he have forgottenOut of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, to name but one of Whitman’s profoundly moving poems? Mr. Clutton-Brock does, indeed, end his essay with fine if tempered praise of Whitman’s genius. But his essay as a whole isa question-mark, expressing a doubt of something false, something even “faked.”
His essay on Poe is more sympathetic. He finds in Poe, not a false harmony, but a real discord—a pitiable discord. “There was a fatal separation,” we are told, “between his intellect and his emotions, except in a very few of his poems, because he could not value life or human nature in comparison with the life and the nature of that other planet for which he was homesick. So he exercised his intellect on games, but with a thwarted passion which gives a surprising interest and beauty even to his detective stories.” This is well said, but, as we read the essay, we become aware of a curious ultra-fastidiousness in Mr. Clutton-Brock—a lack of vulgarity, in the best sense of the word. We see this in his attitude to Poe’s most popular work; he dismissesThe RavenandThe Bellsas “fit to be recited at penny readings.” That certainly has been their fate, but it does not prevent them from being masterpieces in their kind—thejeux d’espritof a planet-struck man. They are not, however, we may admit, the poems that reveal Poe as an inspired writer. It is a much more serious thing for Mr. Clutton-Brock to omitAnnabel Leefrom the list of the six poems or so, on which Poe’s reputation as a poet rests.AnnabelLeeis a work of genius, if Poe ever wrote a work of genius.Helen, Thy Beauty is to Me—which has none of its faults—is the only one of his poems that challenges its supremacy, perhaps successfully. Mr. Clutton-Brock’s essay on the other hand, will be of service to the general reader if it gives him the feeling that Poe is to be approached, not as a hackneyed author, but as a writer of undiscovered genius. He does not exaggerate the beauty ofThe Sleeper, though he exaggerates its place in Poe’s work. The truth is, Poe is a neglected poet. The average reader regards him as too well known to be worth reading, andThe Sleeper,The City in the SeaandRomanceare ignored becauseThe Bellshas fallen into the hands of popular reciters.
Mr. Clutton-Brock has the happy gift of taking his readers into the presence of most of his authors in the spirit of discoverers. It is not that he aims at originality or paradox. He is always primarily in search of truth, even when he gets on a false scent. His essay on Meredith is a series of interesting guesses at truth, some of which are extremely suggestive, and some of which seem to me to miss the mark. The most suggestive is the remark thatLove in the Valleyis not only written on “a theme that inspired the music of the first folk-songs,” but that the verseitself has “for its underlying tune” a folk-measure—the old Saturnian measure of the Romans. Macaulay, it may be remembered, was startled to learn that his ballad of “brave Horatius” was written largely in the Saturnian metre, and still more startled when he was unable to find any perfect example of this metre in English verse, except:
The Queen was in her parlour, eating bread and honey.
The Queen was in her parlour, eating bread and honey.
The Queen was in her parlour, eating bread and honey.
The Queen was in her parlour, eating bread and honey.
It comes as something of a shock to be told that thelines—
Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweepingWavy in the dusk lit by one large star;
Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweepingWavy in the dusk lit by one large star;
Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweepingWavy in the dusk lit by one large star;
Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping
Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star;
are musically akin to:
Lars Porsena of Clusium,By the nine gods he swore.
Lars Porsena of Clusium,By the nine gods he swore.
Lars Porsena of Clusium,By the nine gods he swore.
Lars Porsena of Clusium,
By the nine gods he swore.
And Mr. Clutton-Brock would be the last man to pretend that it is the same music we find in both. Meredith’s variations on the old tune are, he makes clear, as important a part of the music as is the old tune itself. “It is folk-song with the modern orchestra like the symphonies of Dvorák, and it combines a singing rhythm with sharpness and fullness of detail as they had never before been combined in romantic poetry.”Criticism like this is not merely a comment on technique; it is a guess of the spirit, emphasising the primitive and universal elements which makeLove in the Valleyprobably the most enduring of Meredith’s works.
I do not think Mr. Clutton-Brock is so happy when he writes of Meredith as a novelist. He goes too far when he suggests that Meredith’s witty characters, or mouthpieces, are “always subsidiary and often unpleasant,” like the wise youth inRichard Feverel. Meredith, he declares, “does not think much of these witty characters that he cannot do without.” He “would never make a hero more witty than he could help, for he likes his heroes to be either men of action or delightful youths whom too much cleverness would spoil. He himself was not in love with cleverness, and never aimed at it.” This is only partly true. It is partly true in regard to Meredith’s men, and not true at all in regard to his women.Diana of the Crosswaysalone is enough to disprove it. Meredith’s heroes were conventions; his heroines were creations; and he liked his creations to be witty. He loved wit as his natural air. HisEssay on Comedyis a witty dithyramb in praise of wit. Mr. Clutton-Brock seems to me to make another mistake in regard to Meredith when he says that “if he had hadless genius, less power of speech, less understanding of men, he might have been an essayist.” As a matter of fact, Merdith was too proud to be an essayist. There are no proud essayists, though many vain ones. Mr. Belloc is the nearest thing to a proud essayist that one can think of, and his pride is really only a fascinating arrogance.
It will be seen that Mr. Clutton-Brock excites to controversy, as every good critic who attempts a new analysis of an author’s genius must do. Were there space, I should like to dispute many points in his essay, “The Defects of English Prose,” in which, incidentally, he accepts the current over-estimate of the prose—the excellent prose—of Mr. Hudson. The purpose of criticism, however, is to raise questions as much as to answer them, and this Mr. Clutton-Brock continually does in his thoughtful analysis of the success and failure of great writers. He is an expositor with high standards in life and literature, who worships beauty in the temple of reason. His essays, though slight in form, are rich in matter. They are fragments of a philosophy as well as comments on authors.