A. Neil Lyons
(John Lane Company, New York)
Aroomy garret with a wee dirty window in the sloping roof. Some trunks with old fine clothes and older musty books—books of hymns and sermons, most of them were. Broken limp chairs. A fire that would not “draw.” Bits of worn carpets on the floor. A smelly oil lamp on one of the trunks. Such was the place of my solitary confinement, for rebellion, at least once a week. I admit to having even deliberately whistled and danced a highland fling on dreary Sundays in order to provoke my God-fearing, Sabbath-respecting elders to send me to the garret! How could they, unsuspecting, unimaginative Olympians, know that it was one of the places where I had real joy?
In the smallest trunk there were back numbers ofPunch. Pencils and paper were there also. When the steps sounded no more on the stairs, and I had stopped my stage crying, I would take out my drawing materials and an issue ofPunchand start to copy the easiest drawings I could find.
Among the artists there was none that I liked better than Phil May. His sense of the comic and his economy of line appealed to me and my lack of ability to draw. His Cockney folk gave me more pleasure than any of the staid humans I knew. He....
But I forget myself. I started out to write of Neil Lyons.... All the words I have spun for the prelude are merely to say that during my re-reading of the work of Neil Lyons in the past few months I have been struck again and again by its likeness to the drawings of Phil May: the same joy, the same delight was there in the reading as there was in the contemplation of the drawings.
Now, this likeness not only existed in the handling of the subject, but also in the choice thereof. The Cockney men, women and children that Phil May has drawn Neil Lyons has written about. The pictures of the peasantry that May has left are alike in line and spirit to those Lyons has drawn verbally inCottage PieandMoby Lane.
If you know Phil May’s work think of one of his drawings of a fat middle-aged woman, and then listen to this drawing of another, by Neil Lyons:
“She was forty years old at a venture. She had lots of mouth and a salmon-coloured face and a pretenceof a nose and small watery eyes. All these amenities were built up on a triple foundation of chin, which was matched by an exceeding amplitude of bosom and waist.”
“She was forty years old at a venture. She had lots of mouth and a salmon-coloured face and a pretenceof a nose and small watery eyes. All these amenities were built up on a triple foundation of chin, which was matched by an exceeding amplitude of bosom and waist.”
Don’t you recognize the same swift, sure lines?
But I must get away from this parallel. Never at his best is the artist as great as the writer. There is no line or collection of lines in May’s work to match this in Lyons’:
“Mrs. Godge, who was lately the mother of twin babies, is now the mother of memories.”
“Mrs. Godge, who was lately the mother of twin babies, is now the mother of memories.”
That sentence is only a shadow of the quiet poignancy of the tale that follows it. Oh, the wonder of the man who can see every side of the common people and set them down with such verve, such relish, such keen poignancy and hilarious joy! Let me quote from the story of blind Unity Pike, “the wanton”:
“I imagine poor old Unity at this period of her life as having been a little, fresh, dark-haired maiden of Quaker habit. I know she must have been beautiful becauseALLyoung things are beautiful. I imagine this poor bound soul in the dark with its toil and its thoughts—half-formed thoughts, half-formed memories, half-formed wishes. Nothing real about her or within her save the darkness. And I can imagine how it was, therefore, that——“Yes! They found Jack Munsey in her cottage. They found him in the night. And so, in the name of Christ, whose name they give to all theirwickedness—that Christ, who forgave a woman that was not blind for sins beside which this sin of Unity’s was pure and white—in the name of this God, I say, they seized her sightless, wondering soul and threw it, a sacrifice, to those bloody wolves they call their virtue.”
“I imagine poor old Unity at this period of her life as having been a little, fresh, dark-haired maiden of Quaker habit. I know she must have been beautiful becauseALLyoung things are beautiful. I imagine this poor bound soul in the dark with its toil and its thoughts—half-formed thoughts, half-formed memories, half-formed wishes. Nothing real about her or within her save the darkness. And I can imagine how it was, therefore, that——
“Yes! They found Jack Munsey in her cottage. They found him in the night. And so, in the name of Christ, whose name they give to all theirwickedness—that Christ, who forgave a woman that was not blind for sins beside which this sin of Unity’s was pure and white—in the name of this God, I say, they seized her sightless, wondering soul and threw it, a sacrifice, to those bloody wolves they call their virtue.”
I would fain go on quoting, showing you the wit of this man, gentle, and on occasion barbed and stinging: his humor, kindly, of the soil; his great jollity and high good spirits. I would indeed like to introduce you to “Clara,” the hussy, who is fat and motherly and with a heart and mind unbounded. I would like to take you to “Arthur’s,” the midnight coffee-stall where you would meet with street-walkers and soldiers, scavengers and tramps and hear from the lips of a gutter snipe one of the most perfect and touching love tales ever told.
Oh, but you must read them all yourself. Will you, if I give you the names of the various volumes? Here they are, then:Arthur’s,Sixpenny Pieces,Cottage Pie,Clara,Simple Simon,Moby Lane.
John Lane, he of the Bodley Head Publishing Company, who gave the worldThe Yellow Book, the works of Anatole France and Stephen Leacock, is the publisher.
I wait expectantly your showers of gratitude!
—Allan Ross Macdougall.