It would hardly be possible to find two more different books on the same subject than these two. Hence it is extraordinarily instructive to read them together. Sir Geoffrey Butler is an academic international lawyer, a lecturer in International Law and Diplomacy in the University of Cambridge. He is therefore well qualified for the task which he has undertaken, a short and elementary treatise, "which tries to place the League in its historical perspective." He traces the history of international relations and shows that the League is a development of the idea of a Concert of Europe as opposed to the idea of a Balance of Power. He then explains the constitution and machinery of the League as it appears in the Paris Covenant, gives the text of the Covenant, and adds a commentary or explanation of its various clauses. Sir Geoffrey does not possess a light or facile pen, and occasionally his meaning is singularly obscure. The book is academically cautious and unoriginal, but it sticks to its object, which is to explain the kind of international instrument which the victorious statesmen fashioned in Paris. Hence it will be useful to those who do not possess technical knowledge but wish to understand the significance of the clauses, or bare bones, of the Covenant.
Lord Eustace Percy is not concerned with bare bones, but with the flesh and blood which may or may not one day clothe the skeleton which the victorious Powers produced at Paris. No one could call the author or his book cautious; they are always trying to get back to fundamentals. To Lord Eustace the Covenant of the League is a "revolution," and he endeavours to show the revolution in British policy which it implies—the ultimate, fundamental responsibilities which, with the signature of the Covenant, the nation and its statesmen assumed. In order to do this, he not only examines the League and Covenant; he gives a most interesting account of the previous international positionand policy of Britain, the United States, and the chief Continental Powers; he analyses and criticises the terms of the Paris peace treaties; he deals with Labour unrest; the epidemic of revolution, Bolshevism. The whole forms a restless, brilliant, and often paradoxical essay on international relations. Its great merit is that the natural reaction to it in the reader is thought. It is true that the author's own political thinking is frequently much less deep than it would appear to be on a cursory examination; but at least if he cannot himself go to any great depths, he always tries to go as deep as he can, and he carries his reader below the obvious surface of political platitudes. His method is to appear at first to go almost to the extreme limits of "progressiveness" and unorthodoxy, and then, by the help of a paradox, to double on his tracks and to show that after all the "progressives" are out of date, and nothing much could have been done other than has been done. Thus he begins by writing about such terms of the Peace as the Saar, the Balkans and Austria, Shantung, the Adriatic, and the economic clauses, in language which we might expect from the extreme Left, and then, when the reader is beginning to feel that he has been robbed of his last illusion, he is headed back from despair with the paradox that "in a sense, the strength of the Treaty lies in its weakest parts—in those provisions which are the least workable in practice."
For some tastes there will be too much of this kind of paradox in this book. Lord Eustace is, perhaps, at his best when he is dealing either with past history or with the immediate subject of his book, the Responsibilities of the League. The League, in his view, is "the one novel contribution made to the settlement by the Conference at Paris"; it creates the conditions and machinery necessary if the family of nations is to realise a "policy of joint responsibilities," and to deal continuously in a spirit of friendly co-operation with "the standing common interests of nations." This thesis is explained, worked out, and illustrated with very great ability. Lord Eustace obviously considers that those who framed the Covenant produced the best international framework and machinery which at the moment it was possible for practical statesmanship to produce. Those who expected or asked for more are, in his opinion, impractical idealists, or, what is worse, they do not see that the whole object of the League is to continue and develop the existing international system of absolutely sovereign States. His treatment of this extremely difficult and important question of sovereignty is the least satisfactory part of his handling of the League. He holds that the doctrine of communal society "applied to the League of Nations clearly rules out first of all any encroachment upon the sovereignty of its members." But sovereignty does not consist solely, as he seems to imply, in "the claim of the State against any of its members," and surely the League might limit or "encroach upon" the sovereignty of its members without necessarily creating a Super-State. It is a pity that Lord Eustace has not dealt more thoroughly with this question, for it is vital to another important opinion held by him, namely, that the League must be the enemy of and bulwark against Bolshevik or Communist Governments.
This is not a mere list of criticisms and reminiscences written by a carpet-bagger. Mr. Macdonald was in India as a member of the last Public Services Commission. He has studied numerous official and unofficial books and documents, and has met and heard the views of representatives of all classes and schools of political thought. He has stayed with Provincial Governors, Indian leaders, district officers, and heads of native institutions, such as the Gurukul of Hardwar and the Rabindranath Tagore school at Bholpur.
The result is a book of great interest, written with an insight and moderation whichwill commend it to many who do not agree with all its conclusions. It was written, Mr. Macdonald tells us, before the Montagu-Chelmsford Report was published; but it is none the worse for this. References and comments on the Report have been added, and every line may be read with profit alike by the extreme reformer, the moderate constitutionalist and the firm conservative.
Mr. Macdonald begins with an account of the rise of Nationalism and a sketch of the history of European penetration and the advance of the East India Company in India. This enables the British reader at once to understand the remainder of the book, and places him in possession of a store of knowledge which may help to foster that interest in India and her problems so lacking in British electors and politicians alike.
The pronouncement of August, 1917, the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, and the passing of the Government of India Act of 1919 are first steps towards the establishment of self-government for India; but the real difficulty to be solved is the representation of the mass of the people. Mr. Macdonald holds that "The democratic forms of the West are not the only forms in which democracy can take shape.... India is not a nation of equal citizens so much as an organisation of co-operating social functions." The question of diversity of race and language will remain even when primary education has become general, and Mr. Macdonald might have made clearer his views of the lines on which genuine popular representation can be secured. He does, indeed, in his account of the 50,000,000 "outcastes" of India give us a dim vision of his hopes that with education will come leaders of ability to represent them; but this does not solve the main problem of ascertaining and giving expression to the will of the people. With the Councils and reformed administration India will be somewhat in the position of England in 1832, and whether she is to develop under British tutelage, or to be left to work out her own salvation under her own bourgeois Government, is a question which statesmen will be called on to decide in the near future.
The chapters on finance and on religion and Nationalism are among the best in the book, while the pithy accounts of the ceaseless toil of a Lieutenant-Governor and of a District Officer should disabuse the minds of those who have been accustomed to regard Indian civilians as comfortable overpaid loafers.
Colloid chemistry, for which Dr. Wolfgang Ostwald claims to have established the right "to existence as a separate and independent science," is a study of very recent development, which has come to its own during the past twenty years. In many respects its development offers a close parallel to that of catalysis, a branch of chemistry recently noticed in these columns. In both cases we have a few brilliant, isolated studies, succeeded by a long period during which little attention was paid to the subject; in both cases this century has seen a large body of chemists, especially the younger men, attracted to the investigation, the phenomena in question, and results have been rapidly attained which have proved of great theoretical interest, and have already found wide application in industry. Just as the old idea that there were a few special catalysts has been succeeded by the belief now held that every substance can be made to act as a catalyst in suitablecircumstances, so it is now stated freely that, instead of there being a small class of colloids, any substance can be prepared in a colloid state. Incidentally, colloidal preparations are widely used as catalysts.
Colloid chemistry may be said to have arisen some fifty years ago in the researches of Thomas Graham, who showed that a large class of liquids or semi-liquids would not diffuse through animal membranes, as do ordinary solutions of salts. Because many of these substances were sticky he gave to the whole class the name which they now hold, colloid. Since then his conception has been extended, and it is now realised that, strictly speaking, we should talk rather of a substance in a colloidal state than of a colloid, since typically crystalline substances, such as ordinary salt, can be prepared in colloidal solution. The characteristic of such a solution is the fineness of sub-division—the dispersion—of the "dissolved" substance. In a true solution, in the ordinary sense, we have, in general, the substance existing as separate molecules dispersed throughout the solvent. In a mechanical suspension, such as may be prepared from exceedingly fine sand and water, the suspended particles, which take some time to settle, can be easily seen with a microscope, if not with the naked eye. In between these two classes of dispersed systems we have solutions in which the particles, while consisting, in general, of a very large number of molecules, are small enough to pass through filter-paper and escape the ordinary microscope, while at the same time they do not diffuse through membranes and can be seen by special optical arrangements,i.e., the so-called ultramicroscope. Such dispersed systems are colloidal systems, which have only recently been investigated in detail, although Faraday prepared colloidal solutions of metallic gold which still exist. Colloidal chemistry has been picturesquely called "the world of neglected dimensions," which is appropriate enough. Of course the exact degree of dispersion which constitutes a colloidal solution is purely arbitrary, since, as Wolfgang Ostwald—the son of Wilhelm Ostwald—insists in the book before us, solutions are known which show all ranges of sub-division of the dissolved substance, from molecular dimensions to visible particles. Various distinguishing tests have led to solutions in which the diameter of the particles lies anywhere between a millionth and a thousandth of a millimetre being conventionally called colloids.
The scientific, industrial, and medical applications of colloid chemistry increase in number daily—we are already confronted with the word colloidotherapy—and there is a growing demand for books on the subject. The two before us are each by authors who are celebrated for their researches in the subject: Zsigmondy invented the ultramicroscope, which has been responsible for the most important recent advances in the study of colloidal solution, and Wolfgang Ostwald has added clearness to nearly every branch of the subject. Ostwald's book, adequately translated by Dr. Martin Fischer (although, we may remark, the word "enormity" is not generally used as a synonym for hugeness), is based on a series of lectures given by him in America just before the war. Publication has been delayed by the war, and it is interesting to note that in the preface, written in 1915 when Germany was apparently in a good position, the author looks to science to form the first bridge between the peoples then at war, and exclaims, "How should I, for example, cease to admire, to adopt, and to develop the labours of a W. B. Hardy, a W. M. Bayliss, a J. Perrin, a P. P. von Weimarn, and others, just because they belong to a people hostile to my own?" The book gives a most excellent sketch of the whole field, by one who is an enthusiast in his subject, and may be thoroughly recommended as an introduction for those who are beginners, even if their general knowledge of chemistry is slight, while even the expert will find much in it to interest him. As a detail we may mention that Ostwald gives a quick receipt for the preparation of red colloidal gold with ordinary distilled water, while other authors, including Zsigmondy, insist that the preparation is a delicate undertaking, requiring specially distilled water and the greatest care. The wonderful range of phenomena now included in the subject is clearly broughtout, and the pictures of Liesegang rings and the ultramicroscopic photograph of a setting cement are beautiful. The treatment of gels, the jelly-like form into which certain colloidal solutions pass, is particularly good, and gives much valuable information not hitherto available in popular form. The last two chapters, or lectures, on scientific applications and technical applications of colloid chemistry are of surpassing interest, as indicating the practical importance which this young science has attained. All life processes take place in a colloid system, and the necessity to physiologists of the study of colloids is forcibly emphasised. Rubber milk, or later, is a colloid, so that all the problems of coagulation of rubber and its subsequent vulcanisation are included in the subject. The setting of cements is a colloidal problem. These, and many other questions, are briefly but clearly discussed. The experiments which accompanied the lectures are described, and are most suggestive.
Professor Zsigmondy's book is more technical, and deals mainly with "hydrosols" and "hydrogels." The author's reputation in this field vouches for the excellence of the treatment of the many expert problems discussed. Naturally the subjects of ultramicroscopy and protective colloids are discussed in detail—the author originated the "gold figure" used to express the protective effect of a colloid. The theoretical discussions are particularly valuable, and physiologists will read with interest the long discussion of protein bodies. There is an appendix on industrial colloid chemistry by the translator, Dr. Ellwood Spear, in which the problems of rubber manufacture, tanning, and other industrial processes are very briefly treated. There is in this section a chapter on smoke abatement, but the methods mentioned scarcely fall within the province of colloid chemistry as generally understood. A final chapter, by Dr. J. F. Norton, deals with the application of colloid chemistry to sanitation.
This book is an exposition of monism, the philosophic theory that asserts the identical nature of mind and matter, as distinct from the dualistic "superstition"—as our author terms it—of matter and spirit. Sir Oliver Lodge, in a recent article, claims that three fundamental things are required to explain our universe: viz., Mind, with its rudiment Life; Matter, with its element the electric charge; and Ether, with its fundamental properties equivalent to elasticity and inertia. Mr. Elliot will have none of this. For him there is no reason to postulate other things than those capable of investigation by physical science—the ether and matter are essentially of the same kind, while all the phenomena of life are, if not at present explained on a physico-chemical basis, yet ultimately explicable in terms of the exact sciences. Life is a name for certain properties of protoplasm, and the chemical reactions of life are more complicated, but not more mysterious, than those of the laboratory. As for "ghosts, gods, souls,et hoc genus omne," our author holds that "these have long been rejected from the belief of most advanced thinkers." He traverses the assertion of Professors Mach and Karl Pearson, that while science can explain "how" things occur it cannot explain "why" (the point under discussion depends, of course, on Mr. Elliot's interpretations of the words), he pours scorn upon Herbert Spencer, Bergson, and all the vitalists. Altogether the book is one of the most pugnacious defences of monism which we have read, and will delight the bitter opponents of all spiritualistic philosophies. At the same time the author maintains that his philosophy is not materialistic, in the ordinary sense, but a form of idealism, and this, of course, is true, in a way, of any form of monism, it being possible either to say that the atom of matter is as full of mystery as life, or that life is as full of mechanism as the atom. It is obviously impossible in the limited space at our disposal to criticise the arguments put forward on a subject so complicated and controversial,but we think that nobody will admit Mr. Elliot to be as unbiassed as he appears to consider himself, judging by his remarks on the bias of the vitalists. His claim for the support of the physiologists reminds us that Dr. J. S. Haldane recently opened a discussion on the question, "Are Physical, Biological and Physiological Categories Irreducible?" by a pronouncement in the affirmative; the physicists also are not all monists. The question is more two-sided than our author will admit. His science is unfortunately by no means beyond reproach: to say that the charge on the electron is "inconceivably immense" is either extraordinary inaccuracy of phrase or extraordinary error, while to state that the electron has weight is to assert something of which we have no experimental evidence. That light is a vibrating motion of the same character as sound is incorrect, and such instances can be multiplied. These things are not of fundamental importance to Mr. Elliot's argument, but they show, to say the least, a deplorable looseness of expression. Nevertheless, the book is worth reading to all interested, either as friends or enemies, in the monistic philosophy, and may lead some of those who talk so freely of souls and mind to be a little more precise as to what they mean by these terms.
Selections from the papers of the author have already appeared under the titles ofScientific Papers (Oceanographical)andComptes Rendus of Observation and Reasoning. This third volume, with an English modification of the title of the latter work, continues the plan of that book. The papers are very varied in character, including chemical studies, accounts of physical determinations, addresses on geography and oceanography, more technical geographical writings, and short articles on topics of general interest, reprinted fromNature, theTimes, and other periodicals. Many of the latter recall events of our generation important, but already half forgotten, such as the stranding of theSultanand the wreck ofSantos Dumont 6. An excellent feature of the author'sComptes Renduswas the detailed summary, with page references, provided for every article, and the same plan is followed in this work. The author's work on oceanography is too well known to need commendation—he was chemist and physicist to theChallengerexpedition. His "Retrospect," the second article in the book, gives a fascinating summary of the work done on that expedition, and the other papers on oceanographical subjects are of great general interest, and incidentally recall the great services of the Prince of Monaco to that science. His general outlook, which lends such freshness to all his writings, cannot be better expressed than in his own words in a former book: "It was conveyed to me through an old friend and former colleague that this contribution... had done much to retard the standardisation of research. I took it as a compliment.To standardise research is to limit its freedom and to impede discovery. Originality and independence are the characteristics of genuine research, and it is stultified by the acceptance of standards and by the recognition of authority."
It throws much light on the recent increase in the expenses of publishing that, whereas theComptes Renduswas published in 1917 at 7s.6d., the present volume of similar size and form is published at 21s.
By J. H. MASON
THEStudiospecial number, "Modern Woodcuts and Lithographs, by British and French Artists," with Commentary by M. C. Salaman, is the first collection, with any claim to comprehensiveness, of the artistic work of the present renaissance of the woodcut. The woodcut has a twofold employment: it may be used for pictorial broadsides or for book illustration. It concerns us here as a means—I wonder if I ought not to write the means?—of book illustration. Notwithstanding the great technical advances made in line and half-tone photo-process engraving, there is a tendency to return to the use of the woodcut for certain kinds of catalogue illustrations, and, to a still greater extent, for book illustration and decoration.
The half-tone process involves the use of so-called "art" paper,i.e., a wood pulp or grass pulp paper as a centre, coated over with kaolin or china clay, with a high finish, the glazed polish of which reflects the light very unpleasantly. This objectionable paper, apart from the incongruity of wash drawings or photographs with typography, relegates this method of book illustration to utilitarian ends. The line process is far preferable for book illustration, but in itself it has no pleasant quality, usually very much the reverse, and pen drawings are no more directly suitable for book illustration than pen lettering is for use with type. The woodcut modifies the character of the drawing with a discipline which produces a character more in sympathy with that which type has acquired at the hands of the punch-cutter and type-founder in its passage from writing; and the same discipline modifies the artist's vision as well as the drawing. Material, too, has its own character, and when the user is not too clever this character becomes active in the work, not merely passive. The wood block itself can contribute a valuable quality, and either the knife or the graver is a responsive tool. The corresponding elements in line process work are the zinc plate and etching acid, and they do contribute something of their quality to the work; but it is not an attractive quality.
The rediscovered qualities of the wood block have attracted many artists to its use. They are producing work of great variety of interest, but it is rather in the pictorial direction than as book illustration. The work of Valloton elsewhere, and of Jane Bouquet and Brangwyn, of Sydney Lee and Verpilleux in thisStudiospecial number are examples of this. The work of Lucien Pissaro, of Charles Shannon, and Charles Ricketts shows the right use of the woodcut as decorative illustration, but their work belongs to the early days of this revival. Dürer, Holbein, and the Polyphilus printed by Aldus are the great exemplars for a pre-Bewick Brotherhood of the decorative woodcut. Where work of a freer quality is desirable, Miss Jackson's on page 13 shows the texture that goes with type satisfactorily. Miss Gribble has given the right degree of formal treatment to the pastoral motives she has chosen for tail-pieces, and makes them decorative without letting them lose their interest and so become vapid conventions. Both Miss Jackson and Miss Gribble are pupils of Mr. Noel Rooke, who has done so much for the right use of the woodcut for decorative illustration.
The lithographs suffer much more than the woodcuts by reproduction. To begin with, they are very much reduced in size, and they are printed by a letterpress method (i.e., from a relief surface) instead of from the plain surface for which they were drawn. The loss which they suffer by these changes can only be appreciated by those who know the originals. Both Mr. and Mrs. Hartrick's fine examples suffer through the loss of the rich lithographic black.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF MODERN AUTHORSG. K. CHESTERTONVerseGREYBEARDS AT PLAY. Brimley Johnson. 1900.THE WILD KNIGHT. Grant Richards. 1900. Enlarged Edition. Dent. 1914.THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE. Methuen. 1911.POEMS. Burns & Oates. 1915.WINE, WATER, AND SONG. Methuen. 1915.[A reprint of the songs fromThe Flying Inn.]ProseTHE DEFENDANT. Brimley Johnson. 1901. Cheap Edition in Dent'sWayfarer's Library, 1914.TWELVE TYPES. A. L. Humphreys. 1902.G. F. WATTS. Duckworth. 1902.ROBERT BROWNING. Macmillan. (English Men of Letters Series.) 1903.THE PATRIOTIC IDEA. Brimley Johnson. 1904.THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL. John Lane. 1904.THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES. Harper. 1905. Cheaper Edition. Hodder & Stoughton. 1912.HERETICS. John Lane. 1905.CHARLES DICKENS. Methuen. 1906. Popular Edition. 1913.THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. Arrowsmith. 1908.ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Methuen. 1908.ORTHODOXY. John Lane. 1908.TREMENDOUS TRIFLES. Methuen. 1909.ALARMS AND DISCURSIONS. Methuen. 1910.FIVE TYPES. A. L. Humphreys. 1910. (Reprinted fromTwelve Types. 1905.)WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD? Cassell. 1910.WILLIAM BLAKE. Duckworth. 1910.GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. John Lane. 1910.THE BALL AND THE CROSS. Wells Gardner, Darton. 1910.APPRECIATIONS OF DICKENS. Dent. 1911. (Prefaces from Everyman Series of Dickens reprinted.)THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN. Cassell. 1911.SIMPLICITY AND TOLSTOY. A. L. Humphreys. 1912.A MISCELLANY OF MEN. Methuen. 1912.MANALIVE. Nelson. 1912.MAGIC: A PLAY. Martin Secker. 1913.THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE. Williams & Norgate. 1913. (Home University Library Series.)THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN. Cassell. 1914.THE FLYING INN. Methuen. 1914.THE BARBARISM OF BERLIN. Cassell. 1914.LETTERS TO AN OLD GARIBALDIAN. Methuen. 1914.THE CRIMES OF ENGLAND. Palmer. 1915.A SHILLING FOR MY THOUGHTS. Methuen. 1916.A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Chatto & Windus. 1917.IRISH IMPRESSIONS. Collins. 1919.[He has also written prefaces to the following:—Carlyle'sPast and Present; Extracts from Boswell'sLife of Johnson;The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table;Sartor Resartus;The Pilgrim's Progress;Creatures that Once Were Men, by Maxim Gorky;Dickens's Works;Essays, by Matthew Arnold;Literary London;The Book of Job;From Workhouse to Westminster;Ruskin's Poems;The Cottage Homes of England;A Vision of Life;Meadows of Play;Selections from Thackeray;Eyes of Youth(an anthology);Extracts from Samuel Johnson;The Book of Snobs;Famous Paintings Reproduced in Colour;The English Agricultural Labourer;Æsop's Fables;Dickens's Christmas Carol;Bohemia's Claim for Freedom.He has also illustrated the following books:—Nonsense Rhymes;The Great Enquiry;Emmanuel Burden;Biography for Beginners;The Green Overcoat.]JOHN FREEMANVerseTWENTY POEMS. Gay & Hancock. 1909.[Out of print.]FIFTY POEMS. Herbert & Daniel. 1911. New Edition, Selwyn & Blount. 1916.STONE TREES AND OTHER POEMS. Selwyn & Blount. 1916.PRESAGE OF VICTORY AND OTHER POEMS OF THE TIME. Selwyn & Blount. 1916.MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD. Morland Press. 1918.[No. 1 ofGreen PasturesSeries. Cover and frontispiece by James Guthrie.]MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD AND OTHER POEMS. Selwyn & Blount. 1919.[Includes the twelve poems published in the last-named.]ProseTHE MODERNS. Robert Scott. 1916.[Critical Studies of Robert Bridges, H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, etc.]
GREYBEARDS AT PLAY. Brimley Johnson. 1900.
THE WILD KNIGHT. Grant Richards. 1900. Enlarged Edition. Dent. 1914.
THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE. Methuen. 1911.
POEMS. Burns & Oates. 1915.
WINE, WATER, AND SONG. Methuen. 1915.
[A reprint of the songs fromThe Flying Inn.]
THE DEFENDANT. Brimley Johnson. 1901. Cheap Edition in Dent'sWayfarer's Library, 1914.
TWELVE TYPES. A. L. Humphreys. 1902.
G. F. WATTS. Duckworth. 1902.
ROBERT BROWNING. Macmillan. (English Men of Letters Series.) 1903.
THE PATRIOTIC IDEA. Brimley Johnson. 1904.
THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL. John Lane. 1904.
THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES. Harper. 1905. Cheaper Edition. Hodder & Stoughton. 1912.
HERETICS. John Lane. 1905.
CHARLES DICKENS. Methuen. 1906. Popular Edition. 1913.
THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. Arrowsmith. 1908.
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Methuen. 1908.
ORTHODOXY. John Lane. 1908.
TREMENDOUS TRIFLES. Methuen. 1909.
ALARMS AND DISCURSIONS. Methuen. 1910.
FIVE TYPES. A. L. Humphreys. 1910. (Reprinted fromTwelve Types. 1905.)
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD? Cassell. 1910.
WILLIAM BLAKE. Duckworth. 1910.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. John Lane. 1910.
THE BALL AND THE CROSS. Wells Gardner, Darton. 1910.
APPRECIATIONS OF DICKENS. Dent. 1911. (Prefaces from Everyman Series of Dickens reprinted.)
THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN. Cassell. 1911.
SIMPLICITY AND TOLSTOY. A. L. Humphreys. 1912.
A MISCELLANY OF MEN. Methuen. 1912.
MANALIVE. Nelson. 1912.
MAGIC: A PLAY. Martin Secker. 1913.
THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE. Williams & Norgate. 1913. (Home University Library Series.)
THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN. Cassell. 1914.
THE FLYING INN. Methuen. 1914.
THE BARBARISM OF BERLIN. Cassell. 1914.
LETTERS TO AN OLD GARIBALDIAN. Methuen. 1914.
THE CRIMES OF ENGLAND. Palmer. 1915.
A SHILLING FOR MY THOUGHTS. Methuen. 1916.
A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Chatto & Windus. 1917.
IRISH IMPRESSIONS. Collins. 1919.
[He has also written prefaces to the following:—Carlyle'sPast and Present; Extracts from Boswell'sLife of Johnson;The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table;Sartor Resartus;The Pilgrim's Progress;Creatures that Once Were Men, by Maxim Gorky;Dickens's Works;Essays, by Matthew Arnold;Literary London;The Book of Job;From Workhouse to Westminster;Ruskin's Poems;The Cottage Homes of England;A Vision of Life;Meadows of Play;Selections from Thackeray;Eyes of Youth(an anthology);Extracts from Samuel Johnson;The Book of Snobs;Famous Paintings Reproduced in Colour;The English Agricultural Labourer;Æsop's Fables;Dickens's Christmas Carol;Bohemia's Claim for Freedom.
He has also illustrated the following books:—Nonsense Rhymes;The Great Enquiry;Emmanuel Burden;Biography for Beginners;The Green Overcoat.]
TWENTY POEMS. Gay & Hancock. 1909.
[Out of print.]
FIFTY POEMS. Herbert & Daniel. 1911. New Edition, Selwyn & Blount. 1916.
STONE TREES AND OTHER POEMS. Selwyn & Blount. 1916.
PRESAGE OF VICTORY AND OTHER POEMS OF THE TIME. Selwyn & Blount. 1916.
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD. Morland Press. 1918.
[No. 1 ofGreen PasturesSeries. Cover and frontispiece by James Guthrie.]
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD AND OTHER POEMS. Selwyn & Blount. 1919.
[Includes the twelve poems published in the last-named.]
THE MODERNS. Robert Scott. 1916.
[Critical Studies of Robert Bridges, H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, etc.]
THEhold of the Pantomime on the affections of the public is possibly as strong as ever it was, but the character of those entertainments has been slowly changing and with it the character of the audience. Professedly I suppose the Pantomimes are for children, but except that almost any entertainment will amuse children, owing to their extreme curiosity, there is little in the modern Pantomime that seems to have been devised for them. In fact, the Christmas Pantomime has of late years come to have a particularly sophisticated and adult savour, which is to be noticed in the treatment of the old fairy-tales—one or other of which, in name at least, still forms the basis of every Christmas Pantomime, although in a shape that would scarcely be recognised by the compilers ofGrimm's Fairy Tales.
This is particularly noticeable in the metamorphosis of the Witch who, fatigued by the possession of mysteriously terrible powers, dwindles into the obscene-faced mother-in-law. The sere old woman who turned the seven white-horsed princesses into low stones, over which the moss crept slowly, has become a gin-inoculated Widow Twankey, who dances like a man and gloats over the highly-successful love-affairs of her son as leading to more and better drink.
Pantomimes have always been less concerned with the imaginative, the more-than-human, than with the extraordinarily actual. Some will remember the artillery bombardment which was introduced one Christmas during the war into a Pantomime at Drury Lane, which was, if I remember rightly, superficially the story ofThe Sleeping Beauty. It was good fun that bombardment, much better fun than are the majority of these topical excrescences, but one felt that it had been introduced because the principal comedian had got bored with the comparative sober quietness of that land of imagination in which the inhabitants of a fairy-tale progress as if seen in a glass darkly. He had, therefore, deliberately pulled the story out of its semi-supernatural country into the limelight, and was rewarded by instant mirth and vociferous applause from nine-tenths of the audience. Only a few children hesitated, feeling the pangs of a violent up-rooting, a being torn out of a land, through which they had been slowly but with intense delight travelling, into a mass of gesticulating faces ranged in circles watching the elaborate and apparently comic contortions of two small grotesque figures on what was obviously the stage.
I have no doubt at all that the instincts and judgment of children in these matters is far superior to that of the majority of their elders. The steady vulgarisation in the theatre of fairy-tales originally the inventions of adult minds of phantasy and sensibility superior to the general is a record of the debasing influence of the mass of the inhabitants of our large cities, who are dissatisfied with less than an instant reaction to the efforts of those whom they pay to amuse them. They are too restless to submit to sit quietly and by slow degrees receive the heritage of beauty accumulated by the ambages of minds whose devious and amazed wanderings are like the apparently directionless perambulation of bees who are, without pause, gathering honey.
Sinbad the Sailor,Aladdin,Ali Baba—whatever they be, the essence of these Pantomimes is something grosser than any fairy-tale, and, whether borrowed from the brothers Grimm, or Andersen, or any other source, their fragile and mysterious beauty is roughly obliterated to give place to an obvious rough-and-tumble humour and crude topicalityof the kind that not one in a million could miss. Of course the somewhat "hearty" atmosphere of Christmas-time is not conducive to fineness of vision. The subtler outlines in which resides the beauty of a fairy-tale, a girl, or a mountain are not to be grasped by eyes slightly dazzled with the inner glow of good feeding—that glow which has more heat than light. It is a time when a joke has to be obvious to be seen, and the propensity to enormous girth perceptible in the most popular characters of Pantomime may have a similar origin; but I speak from a painful experience when I declare that for a Christmas Pantomime nothing can be too crude, too stale, too trivial to be funny, and that the best condition in which to go to the Pantomime would be that in which you could see simultaneously the largest number of Moons.
The Pantomime has become a sort of Christmas Revue, and parents in large numbers have ceased taking their children to these entertainments, appealing as they almost exclusively do to the "grown-up." In their place we have had of late years a large number of children's plays, of which Sir James Barrie'sPeter Panis the best known. It is years since I sawPeter Pan, but I was, I remember, greatly taken with it, and went during that season five or six times. Part of the attraction it had for me lay in the charming personality of Peter himself, as played by Miss Pauline Chase, whose postcard portraits I bought in large numbers and gazed on adoringly for long intervals in the seclusion of my own room. But the very fact that the play gave scope to a young actress to embody a figure of such originality and charm as Peter must be accounted as a virtue in the author.
I know there are people who object to fairy-tales. They have lately been greatly cheered by the public confession of Madame Montessori that she belongs to them. Apparently the essence of their and also of her objection to such seemingly innocent and delightful inventions of the human brain is that the most desperate need of children is for a steady inculcation of facts. Having schooled your child in facts—writes in a letter to theObserverthe gentleman who knows the Secret of Human Power—in the pleasantest manner possible up to the age of, say, sixteen, then the lessons to be derived from fiction may be gently and cautiously dealt with. The spectacle of an adult dealing "gently and cautiously" with a fairy-tale is one of those which seem to have been invented as a subject for a Max Beerbohm cartoon; but it is curious that anyone should have such a narrow conception of reality as to think that it is compassed in material facts. How one is to present love, honour, bravery, beauty, virtue, daring, adventurousness, and all the other qualities of the human mind except by imaginative creation, when they are purely creations of men's minds, I cannot see. Perhaps these deluded realists imagine that they are abstract nouns. They would have us say: "Here, dear children, are a number of abstract nouns; contemplate them as you would marbles, but remember that they are not marbles or even peanuts but nouns. You cannot play with them, you cannot eat them, and what good they are nobody knows, but everybody is supposed to know their names, as there is no other way of distinguishing them one from another." This same champion of Madame Montessori's Anti-Fairy-Tale Campaign writes further in his letter to theObserverthat Shakespeare's plays "were not written specially for children, but as morality incentives distinctly for adults." This is a pitiful notion for any intelligent adult to have, and one that no child with a mind not distorted by unnatural virtue could be expected to understand. It is most expressive of that horrible "seriousness" which seizes some minds like a cramp until the sufferer drowns himself in an ocean of blithering nonsense, refusing all the ropes which the onlookers onterra firmathrow him, because their faces are convulsed with laughter. "Morality incentives"—to cling to the shocking expression of Madame Montessori's disciple—are of two kinds. They are either negative or positive. The negative class is the only one that an Anti-Fairy-Tale League could put in its syllabus. It consists of a series of ejaculations: Do not drink! Do not swear! Do not tell lies! etc. Drawn up in an amended form suitable for children, it might read like this:
(1) Do not drink your brother's ginger-beer.(2) and (3), etc. Do not imitate your parents.
It may appear excellent advice, but virtue—as many religious teachers have suspected and modern science is proving—does not reside in turning oneself into a van-load of inhibitions. Virtue is wholly positive, it is an expression of the spirit. He that imagines virtue is virtuous, and no other. It is a fairy-tale that men are trying to live in the world, and it can only be expressed in art. There is no virtue in a mere exhortation to be virtuous. Nobody takes any notice of exhortations, and quite rightly; but men who have seen a vision will try to capture it. What the creative artist does is to give men a vision of virtue, of beauty (for beauty is virtue), and it is just this vision which the Montessori teachers would have us put behind the backs of children while they glue their eyes to material things.
Not only would this practice be pernicious, it would be impossible to carry out, for, brought to its logical conclusion, the theory would demand the abolition of the teaching of mathematics and of science, as well as of poetry and of drama; or rather it would reduce mathematics to the counting of beads, science to the naming of smells (a return to "stinks" from which the schools are just escaping), poetry to this sort of thing:
Last night in pulling off a sockI gave my little nose a knock.To-day in jumping to get upI fell across my brindle pup.
Last night in pulling off a sockI gave my little nose a knock.To-day in jumping to get upI fell across my brindle pup.
Last night in pulling off a sockI gave my little nose a knock.To-day in jumping to get upI fell across my brindle pup.
That is to say, poetry would vanish, and as for drama, the only drama we could have would be by taking a proscenium into the park and putting it up in front of two lovers kissing on a seat; but the moment the lovers saw us the "drama" would cease, and we could not pay them to go on with it for our amusement, for that would be deception, that would be make-believe.
Those of us who are not by infirmity of constitution natural victims to every new fad that is advertised will take pleasure in anticipating a great growth in the supply of and demand for children's plays. They offer great scope for development, and will increasingly appeal to authors who have no desire to write the conventional stage play—a thing without imagination or beauty, a mere artificial contrivance to enable actors to exhibit their charm and skill. There is no possibility of getting literary men of the highest class to write the plays we see succeeding in our London theatres during the greater part of the year. They could not possibly have any interest in work of that kind, and they could not do it well, but the children's play is a much more elastic and adaptable dramatic form. To-day, for instance, even verse is used in successful children's plays, and managers do not demand for this purpose work so conventional and stereotyped as they require ordinarily. This Christmas there were three children's plays produced in the West End:Peter Pan,Once Upon a Time, andWhere the Rainbow Ends. Of these onlyOnce Upon a Timewas new, and it was rather a series of fairy-tales—connected by the device of an elf telling the stories to a goblin who captured her—than an original work; but it was cleverly done by the author, Miss Wildig, and delightfully produced by Miss Edith Craig. I must confess to having enjoyedOnce Upon a Timefar more than most of the plays I had seen during the preceding year, but it was a pastiche not a homogeneous invention, and it contained an absurd and very irritating pseudo-patriotic melodrama calledThe Woman of the Black Mountain, as well as an extremely amusingand rather savage burlesque of certain marriage customs which are not yet quite extinct entitledThe Bone of Contention. This latter would make an excellent sketch for a Revue, or possibly Mr. Oscar Asche will introduce it intoChu Chin Chow.
It is a great pity that the Pantomime has so degenerated now when it had got rid of much of the knock-about farcical element, of a great deal of the tyranny of the spectacular, and of the "transformation scene," because it is a form that offers great possibilities to the author, and if a genius came along he could do something wonderful with it. Even without a genius or without waiting for him a great deal could be done. If only those responsible for the annual Pantomimes at Drury Lane and the Lyceum would leave the beaten track for once and get into touch with the younger generation of writers and commission them to produce a Pantomime we might get a valuable addition to our dramatic literature. It involves very little commercial risk, and holds the possibility of an immense financial success, apart from other considerations. It may be asked why do not these young men write a Pantomime on their own initiative? But the answer is simple. Our young writers have no time to spend on work which has no prospect of ever being looked at, much less produced; besides, a Pantomime is essentially a thing for collaboration between two or three of them, and they are nearly all as busy as they can be with bread-and-butter journalism and with individual projects in those few spare hours that remain to them. There is, however, little doubt that they could produce a Pantomime which would draw all London for months, just as there is little doubt that the Pantomime and the children's play are the most promising and flexible of the dramatic forms which confront our young writers. The Revue may be thought to offer almost equal opportunities, and to be capable of development out of its present chaotic state, but it is rather more restricted by the fact that it has such a large public. To have the largest public is to have the least hope of commanding the attention of your audience sufficiently for them to appreciate what is not obvious. Besides, the Revue supplies a definite demand which does not change from year to year. It is a demand for pretty girls, pretty dresses, dancing and humour, and if there suddenly appeared among us a greater dramatic genius than any that has ever lived he would not be able to satisfy that demand as well as Mr. C. B. Cochran, Mr. André Charlot, or Sir Alfred Butt do. It is the minority that is not catered for in drama as it is catered for in literature. Where are the thirty-five thousand readers of theTimes Literary Supplementin the land of theatres? They are scattered in twos and threes here and there, always dissatisfied and disgruntled. Whether at a Pantomime, at a Revue, at a Comedy, or at a Drama they find the entertainment a hundred per cent. below the standard they demand, and their only pleasure is an occasional Shakespearean production or a children's play. But they could be mobilised and brought together to support solidly and without the fickleness of the large public a theatre that gave them what they wanted. If the experiment were made with children's plays they would be reinforced by the thousands of parents who will not submit their children to the vulgarities of the latter-day Pantomime.
*****
The next performance of the Phœnix Society will take place on February 8th and 9th, when Dryden'sMarriage à la Modewill be given.
*****
It is rumoured that Mr. Henry Ainley's next production at the St. James's will be Stephen Phillip'sPaolo and Francesca, in which Mr. Ainley made his first success.
This is a book which can be thoroughly recommended not only to every amateur but to every professional actor and theatre-lover. It is full of the most uncommon sense, and although Mr. Calvert has decided opinions on voice-training, gesture, team-work, scenery, dressing, music, and producing, he does not lay down the law with the evidence of inexperience, but reasons his position from point to point with a quietness that is far more impressive and convincing. Mr. Calvert has also done more than he probably set out to do. The book is, in the first instance, a guide for the young actor or would-be actor, giving him a good deal of wise advice on the technical side of his craft. But in doing this Mr. Calvert has written a book which should be read by every theatre-goer, since it will increase his appreciation of the theatre enormously by opening his mind to detail of which he was, in all probability, completely unaware, although more or less conscious of its cumulative effect. After reading Mr. Calvert's book he will find himself itching to go immediately to the nearest playhouse and regard the drama being enacted there with what he will feel are new eyes; and since the standard of acting and of drama generally is dependent largely upon the level of intelligence of its audience, Mr. Calvert's book will be as beneficial to the theatre when studied by the ordinary public as when studied by the actor. Finally, this book is an attempt to put the actor again in his proper position as the pillar of the drama. On this point I am in absolute agreement with Mr. Calvert. Plays are conceivable in which the actor may be no more than an instrument in the orchestra. I think they will be written, but I have yet to see them. But in the plays of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans the actor is first in importance, and scenery, dressing, music, and everything else must be used simply as a background and a subsidiary to him. Moreover Mr. Calvert makes a claim—which is also made by the late Mr. H. B. Irving in an introduction—to the consideration of the actor in his highest moments as a creative artist. This claim, in my opinion, Mr. Calvert makes good, and if there are any people to-day who still cherish the old superstition that the actor is merely a sort of clever but shallow showman, then unless they are bigoted beyond the reach of intelligence this book will dispel it once for all.
W. J. TURNER
ONEwould have hesitated to predict success for a set of commissioned war pictures: meaning success in the sense of excellence. In commissioning any painting or piece of sculpture with a dictated subject there is always the danger that the subject will be uncongenial to the artist, that it may have no connection with his own intimate experience. This is one of the disadvantages of portrait painting. The artist is supposed to be capable and desirous of depicting all kinds of characters, not to speak of flattering them. The novelist and dramatist are more fortunate. People are anxious to avoid and also tired of their revelations. But Mr. Horatio Bottomley still expects the Poet Laureate to boom out the appropriate ode.
Besides the general objection there was the further feeling that the war was a sufficient preoccupation in itself, and a disagreeable one of such a kind that deliberately to set out to make contemporaneous art about it would be not only superfluous but almost profane. It would amount to gloating. The war was a foul and dirty job that had to be gone through with, and the experience of concentrating on this was enough. It was not without good reason that immediately following the war the most popular forms of art were the Revue and the Russian Ballet.
Again, one rather grudges the large sums of State money spent on war-pictures when one thinks of the comparatively small expenditure on art in peace-time. And those two rich and influential patrons who started the ball rolling with large contributions, did they before the war, will they now after the war, patronise art extensively and seriously? The motive may have been sound, but it was in all probability very mixed.
But doubt and scepticism tend to be quashed by the result, which must be admitted to be a very considerable success. The field appears to have been so wide that the artists have been able to select the themes which had most significance for them, and there is a direct continuity in their present with their past work. Even pure landscapes have not been ruled out. It is, in fact, far the best modern exhibition that has graced the walls of the Academy for some time, and the memory of it will still be fresh in the spring.
It is not meant, however, that the Exhibition is full of masterpieces. It contains work that is representative of much of the best English art of to-day, but the keynote of that art is talent, accomplishment, and not genius. And this judgment does not exclude such well-known painters as Sargent, Cameron, Muirhead Bone, Francis Dodd, Clausen, Orpen, Lavery.
I shall, no doubt, be accused of iconoclasm, of indulging in easy destructive criticism; and the term Futurist will be hurled at me with such a lot of prejudicial glue on it that, although it is inapplicable, it will inevitably stick. And I shall be asked if I would consign the whole of the past to the rubbish-heap and abolish all tradition, and so on. The answer is, emphatically and vehemently, no! It is precisely because the past looms so imposing and ever watchful that the late twentieth-century English painters are dwarfed. Place a Muirhead Bone beside a Meryon (the comparison is not irrelevant, because there are definite similarities between the two) and the Muirhead Bone will disappear into the Meryon. Two possible exceptions in the present Exhibition areThe Great Crater,Athies(280) andDeniecourt Chateau,Estrées(284). Place a Sargent beside a Manet, Courbet or Velazquez and Sargent's horses beside those of Géricault, and the Sargent loses all vitality. Or, again, neither Steer nor Clausen will stand very prolongedcomparison with Constable or even Monet. Practically the whole of English late twentieth-century art is derived from Constable and from the French Barbizon and Impressionist schools, and is inferior to it. The latter is the significant point. This may sound too sweeping, and indeed it probably does leave out of account the few gems which a complete collection would reveal. Still, the fact of it being necessary to hunt for these few gems and not rather to eliminate the few failures would confirm the general judgment. We have never had anything like the great constellation of French nineteenth-century art.
In reaction against the tendency of English Impressionism to degenerate into the pleasant but slipshod æstheticism of a Lavery there is the crude Vorticism of Wyndham Lewis and W. P. Roberts. It had once a negative, destructive, rebellious value, but as a permanent constructive effort it surely is acul-de-sac, a mere mechanical formula. Before any theory comes into play the primary test is whether a picture really moves us, appeals to us. If Vorticist or Futurist art did this, then no amount of argument refuting their abstract theory could condemn the actual art. But, at any rate, so far as I am concerned, this art has no appeal to me in a picture-frame. Indeed, it seems to me to be becoming increasingly stereotyped, and it is amazing that Mr. Wyndham Lewis should honestly believe in it himself. Mr. Wadsworth's Vorticist design for a house, which was recently exhibited by the Arts League of Service, absurdly unpractical though it was, had far larger possibilities in it.
The most interesting work exhibited by the younger painters is that painted in the more traditional manner—that is to say it is not abstractionist. It is possible that on seeing for the first time the pictures of the Nash brothers, Meninsky, Schwabe, Elliott Seabrooke, one might mistake them for "Futurist" efforts. This is, however, not owing to any distortion or abstraction, but to the fact that they have in common with the abstractionists a certain restlessness of design. Even when allied to absolute truth in representation, this trait might at first sight appear novel and revolutionary. It is, or tends to be, expressive of a new outlook.
Paul Nash's large picture,The Menin Road, is a distinct achievement. It grips one's attention. Yet it is overloaded, the incident, the drama of the landscape is piled on too thickly. John Nash'sOver the Top, on the other hand, attracts attention because of its very bareness and simplicity. On a small section of a snow-covered front men are stumbling out of a jagged muddy trench into rolling fog cloud. Yet in spite of its success in convincing us that that is exactly how it was, the picture lacks intensity and depth. We are grateful to Mr. Nash, as also to Mr. Sargent, for having spared us the harassing agonies of the typical old-fashioned Academy war-picture. But neither has altogether succeeded in providing the real substitute. What such a picture would be like still remains to be seen. For it has not yet been painted.
The distinctive characteristics of the younger school, its sense of actuality, of lively conflicting movement, its combination of realism with rhythm, are summed up in Stanley Spencer'sTravoys Arriving with Wounded at a Dressing Station at Smoll, in Macedonia. In spite of certain possible faults of perspective, this is a thoroughly good picture. But although about a scene in the war, it is not of the war. It contains an inner civilian joyfulness expressed in unhampered, rhythmical activity. Equal praise must be bestowed on Henry Lamb'sIrish Troops in the Judaean Hills Surprised by a Turkish Bombardment, which possesses the same sense of concrete (not abstract) dynamic form.
There are two large pictures by Stanley Spencer at the New English Art Club Exhibition which confirm the impression that there is an immense promise in his art and already considerable attainment. It has such depth and breadth, such spontaneity andcomprehensiveness. Boggle as we may at certain neo-primitive tendencies in his figures, at certain humorous irrelevancies in their occupations, overriding and almost justifying these eccentricities there is the fact that these two pictures do immediately and irresistibly heighten and intensify our consciousness: they give us a "silent and instantaneous flash of collusion with beauty." The pictureSwan Upping at Cookhamis freer from the static archaistic convention than the pseudo-Biblical composition,The Sacrifice of Zacharias, which is, nevertheless, because of the landscape background, equally fascinating. In the former it is the rigid mask of the woman lifting the cushion out of the punt and the distortion of the shoulders of the dark-faced gentleman that provoke criticism: in the latter nearly all the figures are a little inexplicable, except (and here the realist will demur strongly) the gentleman who is footing it gently towards Zacharias and the Florentine gentleman who is indulging in a graceful and somewhat reminiscent dancing gesture. These two are an inevitable part of that luxuriant and yet refreshing scenery. Pre-Raphaelite will doubtless be the derogatory term applied to Mr. Stanley Spencer, and it is true that he has affinities with that group which started with such promise and then proceeded to develop its vices more fully than its virtues. But Spencer has not got these particular vices, an inordinate love of photographic detail and a languishing sentimentality. His work suggests, rather than actually contains, an infinite wealth of detail, and it is swept with fresh country air precluding any Pre-Raphaelite hothouse languor.
Nor must we fall into the error of demanding realistic character studies from an artist who does not see people from that point of view at all. His outlook is nearer to that of Blake: his people are embodiments of universal emotions, they are penetrated with a sense of religious awe and beauty. Or, rather, this is what they would be if his expression were to reach its full maturity and get rid of its present archaistic obsession. His figures might still be stiff and intense, but we would not notice this because of their profound significance.
HOWARD HANNAY
DURINGthe last few months the Wigmore Hall has been the scene of some very notable recitals given by pianists of the first rank. They had several interesting points in common. Their audiences consisted largely of professional musicians, their programmes were generally of a severe and far from popular type. Yet in spite of the somewhat exclusive character of both programmes and audiences, so well adapted, one might think, to the intimate atmosphere of a small hall, intimacy was exactly the quality that in all cases was entirely absent from the performances. Both with Busoni and Cortôt, and lastly with Mr. Arthur Rubinstein, it was impossible to avoid feeling that one was at much too close quarters. The difference between such players as these and the more intimate type of pianist is moral rather than physical. Some players give the impression that they are playing for themselves alone, and that it is by mere accident that we happen to overhear them; the others seem almost to assume that their audience will not listen to them unless its attention is gripped and consciously dominated by the overmastering compulsion of a powerful personality. If we are soothed and charmed by the intimate players, we may indeed be uplifted and transported by the men of might, but there is at the same time the chance that we may be crushed and exhausted.
Mr. Arthur Rubinstein is certainly to be counted among the great pianists, but not yet among the greatest. He is a player of outstanding ability, but not of outstanding personality. He lacks Cortôt's inspiring animation, and, still more, the monumental intellectuality of Busoni. A conventional programme, or an almost conventional one, was the index of an almost conventional mind. The usual Bach-Somebody, the usual heavy Chopin; no Beethoven (thank goodness!), some modern French and Spanish, a Liszt Rhapsody to end up with. What saved the programme were the Spanish pieces and Liszt'sFunérailles. If Mr. Rubinstein had had the courage to offer a programme as individual as those of Busoni he might have given himself a better chance of asserting his own individuality.
To begin with the two extremes: the Bach transcription at the beginning and the Liszt Rhapsody at the end are long out of date. Liszt's arrangements of Bach's organ works may have been very wonderful fifty years ago or more when there were not many organs in England on which the originals could be played, even if there were the organists to play them. To-day they are familiar to all of us. Moreover, the modern big pianists play them too easily. They seek to reproduce, as far as they can, the effect of the organ, and sometimes achieve a very remarkable uniformity of tone, as faultlessly regular as any given row of pipes can produce. But this uniformity of the organ's tone-colour is just the obvious deficiency of that instrument, and the exact reproduction of it on the pianoforte very easily tends to reproduce no more than the relentless accuracy of the mechanical piano-player. Mr. Rubinstein played his Bach-Liszt with intelligence and skill, and even succeeded in suggesting a certain organ-like effect of sonority by means of an ingenious method of pedalling; but in these days we should prefer either a more astounding miracle of transcription or, still better, the direct simplicity of Bach unadorned. Again, if it is still necessary to end a recital with a display of fireworks there are surely more showy things available now than Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies; and if we want Liszt for his own musical thoughts, we want something that represents him in a more serious mood. For theFunéraillesMr. Rubinstein deserves sincere gratitude.
Liszt's Hungary is only less difficult to believe in than Chopin's Poland. It is true that Hungary exists, and true that in Hungariancafésone may still hear the tunes which Liszt embellished, but such underlying truth as the Rhapsodies possess is completely disguised by their tawdry romantic theatricality. As for Poland, "if she had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent her," for Paris of the eighteen-thirties. That Poland, populated entirely by devout and amorous aristocrats, is the musician's Mrs. Harris—no, his Countess Harricka. Certainly the robust vigour of Mr. Rubinstein's playing make short work of the languor and swagger of the Scherzo in B flat minor and the Polonaise in A flat. All pianists are expected to play Chopin; but there are not many works of Chopin that will stand the strain of interpretation in the modern virtuoso's manner. The Barcarole is one of the few which by virtue of its serene and classical beauty has still been able to survive it.
One composer stood out with unexpected prominence from Mr. Rubinstein's programme—Isaac Albeniz. Albeniz is hardly to be counted among the moderns. His training as a composer was mainly German, and he came to a certain extent under English influences as well. Like Chopin, he was primarily a pianist and a composer for the pianoforte. His songs, a few of which have been heard recently in London, are pianoforte pieces with a voice thrown in. He lives almost entirely by virtue of the volume of Spanish pictures entitledIberia. Mr. Rubinstein has spent a considerable time in Spain, and it is clear that he has succeeded to a wonderful extent in absorbing the musical spirit of the country. There was a depth of poetry and passion about his playing of theEvocationandTrianawhich he never attained in any other item of his programme. Spanish music has at last begun to come into its own. We can trace its development clearly in the successive stages represented by Albeniz, Granados, Turina, and De Falla. Granados, like Albeniz, writes on a harmonic system that is predominantly German, in that German influences are the foundation of almost all nineteenth-century music. Turina, a pupil of Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum, has affinities with the French intellectuals. He is the chief Spanish representative of chamber music. De Falla is more definitely one of the moderns. All four are pianists—Turina less obviously so than the other three.
It is easy to see the Spanish element that is common to the whole group. Anyone can recognise the rhythms and turns of phrase that are derived from Spanish national song and dance, the more so as all four have drawn their principal inspiration from popular sources. But it is to us foreigners that the Spanish local colour is most insistently obvious. In listening to the music of any particular school we may approach it in two ways. At first we are conscious of the school as a homogeneous group; we notice similarities and look out for more of them. This may easily lead us into error, for we are tempted thus to regard as essential characteristics things that in reality are only tricks of manner or stereotyped conventions of a particular place or period. If we are to form a reasonable judgment we must be prepared to ignore these and keep our ears open for differences. We must note not so much the local theme that is common to all the group as the diverse treatment of it which each separate composer affects. If there is anything really Spanish about these four composers that is of vital importance, it should be not the mere choice of a Spanish melody or rhythm as the foundation of their music, but the method on which the complete structure is designed and built up.
Here begin the difficulties of understanding even Albeniz and Granados. The Spanish themes appeal directly to the foreign ear, almost too directly; we might even dismiss them as cheap and obvious. It is the treatment of them that is individual. One's first impression ofIberiaand theGozescasis that they are rambling and incoherent—yet itwould be strange if a Latin composer should lapse into a Celtic indifference to form and logic. Mr. Rubinstein succeeded in making the Albeniz pieces not only poetical but lyrical. They tempt a pianist at first to play them at top speed; their style of piano-forte-writing suggests the rattling brilliance of the virtuoso. Mr. Rubinstein avoided the error; but it takes a very skilful pianist to do so.
It is not the local colour about Spanish music that we must respect, but its grave seriousness of intention. Spain has always remained artistically somewhat behind other countries, just as England has done; and Spain at the present moment, unlike England, is not anxious to be in a hurry over progress. Hence even De Falla, the most modern of the group, is possibly a little old-fashioned as compared with the modern French and Italian composers. Yet he is modern, in the sense that he is intellectual and anti-sentimental, as compared with Albeniz. This was very evident in his ballet,The Three-cornered Hat, which the Russians performed all too seldom. But his intellectuality and anti-sentimentality are distinguished and serene. He makes no experiments with the purely grotesque, he has no desire to make a complete and irrevocable breach with the art of the past, as some of the French and Italians appear to do. Even in a traditional idiom he has something genuinely new to say.
If anyone could have converted me to Scriabin it should have been Mr. Edward Mitchell, who gave a whole afternoon of his works on January 17th at the Westminster Central Hall, ranging from Op. 8 to Op. 72. Mr. Mitchell is a player of extraordinary persuasiveness. He evidently understands Scriabin, and is determined to make his audience understand him. He has a very efficient and vigorous technique, and plays with remarkable accuracy and assurance. No one could listen to his programme without learning a great deal about the composer to whom it was devoted. Yet in spite of a very well-chosen selection of pieces, in spite of considerable variety of touch and style, the concert left only an impression of deadly and morbid monotony. An afternoon of Scriabin recalled at once to memory the effect of a concert of Hugo Wolf's songs, or of Elgar'sThe Apostles. It was morbid and narcotic, a perpetual command to abrogate reason and abandon one's brain to feeling, to emotion, to a mystical trance. The emotional force of such music is at times undeniable; what it sets out to achieve, the representation of moods and emotions, it achieves overwhelmingly. Scriabin has in the main three moods, a mood of violence and pain, a mood of comatose oppression, and a mood of struggle, the last of which is well illustrated byVers la flamme. Perhaps this is all that some people require of music. Others demand a sense of dignity and nobility, with a conscious beauty of formal design.
Technically Scriabin can be summed up in a few words. His outlook on music is purely harmonic. Even in his early works he shows a partiality for certain well-known discords which he gradually comes to use so often that the resolution of them becomes superfluous. By this road we lead on to Stravinsky, Casella, and Malipiero. Melodic tone there is none. This melodic poverty is very apparent and easily demonstrable in the early works. Here Scriabin is obviously building, or trying to build, on Chopin. But while comparing Scriabin with Chopin, compare Chopin with Field. Chopin is clearly an advance on Field in every way—he has a much stronger melodic line, and a much deeper sense of harmonic values. But Scriabin is no advance on Chopin, only a retrogression from him. He can only imitate Chopin's emotional climaxes. He appears to be more interesting harmonically, because he keeps Chopin's discords and omits his concords, roughly speaking.
EDWARD J. DENT