Sourceson Robert W. Chambers
Sources
on Robert W. Chambers
Hugh Walpole: An Appreciation, by Joseph Hergesheimer,GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY.
English Literature During the Last Half Century, by J. W. Cunliffe,THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
A Hugh Walpole Anthology, selected by the author.LONDON:J. M. DENT & SONS.NEW YORK:E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY.
Hugh Walpole, Master Novelist. Pamphlet published byGEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY. (Out of print.)
Who’s Who[In England].
Chapter XXUNIQUITIES
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Each of these five is a book which, either from its subject, its authorship, or its handling, issui generis. I call such books “uniquities”; it sounds a little less trite than saying they are unique. I think I will let someone else speak of these books. I will look to see, and will let you see, what others have said about my uniquities.
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First we haveOur Navy at Warby Josephus Daniels. W. B. M’Cormick, formerly of the editorial staff of the Army and Navy Journal, reviewing this book for the New York Herald (28 May 1922) said:
“Josephus Daniels always was an optimist about navy affairs while he was Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1921, and now that he has told what the navy did during the world war he demonstrates in his narrative that he is a good sport. For in spite of the many and bitter attacksthat were made on him in that troubled time he does not make a single reference to any of them, nor does he wreak any such revenge as he might have done through this medium. In this respect it may be said that truly does he live up to the description of his character set down in the pages of Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske’s autobiography, namely, that ‘Secretary Daniels impressed me as being a Christian gentleman.’
“In its general outlines and in many of its details there is little in Mr. Daniels’s story that has not been told before in volumes devoted to single phases of the United States Navy’s war operations. For example, his chapter on the extraordinary task of laying the great mine fields, known as the North Sea barrage, from Norway to the Orkneys, is much more fully described in the account written by Captain Reginald R. Belknap; the story of ‘Sending Sims to Europe’ is also more extensively presented in that officer’s book,The Victory at Sea, and the same qualification can be applied to the chapter on the fighting of the marines in Belleau Wood and elsewhere, and the work of our destroyers and submarines in European waters.
“But Mr. Daniels’s history has one great merit that these other books lack. This is that it tells in its 374 pages the complete story of the work of the navy in the world war, giving so many details and so much precise information about officers and their commands, ships of all classes and just whatthey did, the valuable contributions made to the winning of the war by civilians, that it makes a special place for itself, a very special place, in any library or shelf devoted to war books.”
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Leslie Haden Guest, a surgeon of wide experience and secretary of the British Labour Delegation to Soviet Russia, is the author ofThe Struggle for Power in Europe (1917-21), “an outline economic and political survey of the Central States and Russia,” of which E. J. C. said in the Boston Evening Transcript (4 March 1922):
“The author writes from personal observation in Russia and discloses much of the life of the day in that country which heretofore has remained undisclosed to the world. He has met and interviewed Lenine and Trotsky themselves, shows us the individuality of these great Bolshevist leaders and tells us much of the life of the people and of the social conditions and tendencies in that distressful country.
“Next he crosses to Poland, another undiscovered country, and shows us the new Poland, its aims and its struggles to emerge from a state almost of anarchy into one of a rational democracy. Very little do we of this country know of the new nation of Tcheko-Slovakia, but Dr. Guest has travelled through it also and shows us the two sections, one cultured, the other morebackward, but both working together to form a modern democratic nation.
“The distressful condition of Austria and the Austrians now suffering for the sins of the Hapsburgs, is next shown forth. Vienna, once the capital of a vast empire and the seat of a great imperial court, was suddenly reduced to the level of the capital of a small agricultural, inland state, a condition productive of great suffering. The conditions here are shown to differ much from those in other countries, for the dismemberment of Austria was not brought about by the act of the Allies, but of their own people. The causes of the suffering are fully explained, as are also the causes of similar conditions in Hungary, in Roumania, in Bulgaria and in other countries affected by the economic and political upheavals following the war. That democracy in Europe will finally triumph Dr. Guest feels certain and he gives lucid reasons for the faith that is in him. He gives a broadly intelligent analysis of the entire situation and finds that the essential conditions of success of a democracy are peace, education and adequate nutrition. But he shows that a great problem exists which must be worked out; and he shows how it must be worked out. Dr. Guest is not alone a thinker, but an observer; not a theorist, but a man of practical understanding, who has studied a problem at first hand and shows it forth simply but comprehensively and with an eye single to the needs of humanity.”
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OfHerman Melville: Mariner and Mystic, by Raymond M. Weaver, Carl Van Vechten, writing in the Literary Review of the New York Evening Post (31 December 1921), said:
“No biography of Melville, no important personal memorandum of the man, was published during his lifetime. It is only now, thirty years after his death and one hundred and two years after his birth, that Raymond M. Weaver’sHerman Melville: Mariner and Mystichas appeared.
“Under the circumstances, Mr. Weaver may be said to have done his work well. The weakness of the book is due to the conditions controlling its creation. Personal records in any great number do not exist. There are, to be sure, Melville’s letters to Hawthorne, published by Julian Hawthorne, in hisNathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife. There are a few references to Melville in the diary of Mrs. Hawthorne and in her letters to her mother. There remain the short account given by J. E. A. Smith, a man with no kind of mental approach to his hero, a few casual memories of Richard Henry Stoddard, whose further testimony would have been invaluable had he been inclined to be more loquacious, and a few more by Dr. Titus Munson Coan and Arthur Stedman; but both these men, perhaps the nearest to Melville in his later years, were agreed that heceased to be an artist when he deserted the prescribed field ofTypeeandOmoo, and they harassed his last days in their efforts to make him perceive this, much as if an admirer of Verdi’s early manner had attempted to persuade the composer that work on ‘Aida’ and ‘Otello’ was a waste of time that might much better be occupied in creating another ‘Trovatore.’ In desperation, Melville refused to be lured into conversation about the South Seas, and whenever the subject was broached he took refuge in quoting Plato. No very competent witnesses, therefore, these. Aside from these sources, long open to an investigator, Mr. Weaver has had the assistance of Mr. Melville’s granddaughter, who was not quite ten years old when Melville died, but who has in her possession Mrs. Melville’s commonplace book, Melville’s diary of two European excursions, and a few letters.
“Generally, however, especially for the most important periods and the most thrilling events in Melville’s life, Mr. Weaver has been compelled to depend upon the books the man wrote.
“The book, on the whole, is worthy of its subject. It is written with warmth, subtlety, and considerable humour. Smiles and thoughts lie hidden within many of its pregnant lines. One of the biographer’s very strangest suggestions is never made concrete at all, so far as I can discern. The figure of the literary discoverer of the South Seas emerges perhaps a bit vaguely, his head inthe clouds, but there is no reason to believe that Melville’s head was anywhere else when he was alive. Hawthorne is at last described pretty accurately and not too flatteringly.The Scarlet Letterwas published in 1850;Moby Dickin 1851. It is one of the eternal ironies that the one should be world-famous while the other is still struggling for even national recognition. There are long passages, well-studied and well-written, dealing with the whaling industry and the early missionaries, which will be extremely helpful to any one who wants a bibliographical background for the ocean and South Sea books. Melville’s London notebook is published for the first time and there is a nearly complete reprint of his first known published paper ‘Fragments From a Writing Desk,’ which appeared in two numbers of The Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser in 1839 (not 1849, as the bibliography erroneously gives it). Mr. Weaver is probably right in ascribing Melville’s retirement from literature to poverty (it was a fortunate year that brought him as much as $100 in royalties and his account at Harper’s was usually overdrawn), to complete disillusionment, which made it impossible for him to say more than he had already said, even on the subject of disillusionment, and to ill-health.
“It is a pleasure, moreover, to find that Mr. Weaver has a warm appreciation ofMardiandPierre, books which have either been neglected orfiercely condemned since they first appeared, books which are no longer available save in early editions. They are not equal toMoby Dick, but they are infinitely more important and more interesting thanTypeeandOmoo, on which the chief fame of the man rests. It is to his credit that Mr. Weaver has perceived this, but a great deal more remains to be said on the subject.Mardi,Moby Dick, andPierre, as a matter of fact, form a kind of tragic trinity:Mardiis a tragedy of the intellect;Moby Dicka tragedy of the spirit, andPierrea tragedy of the flesh.Mardiis a tragedy of heaven,Moby Dicka tragedy of hell, andPierrea tragedy of the world we live in.
“Considering the difficulties in his path, it may be said that Mr. Weaver has solved his problem successfully. The faults of the book, to a large extent, as I have already pointed out, are not the faults of the author, but the faults of conditions circumscribing his work. At any rate, it can no longer be said that no biography exists of the most brilliant figure in the history of our letters, the author of a book which far surpasses every other work created by an American fromThe Scarlet LettertoThe Golden Bowl. ForMoby Dickstands with the great classics of all times, with the tragedies of the Greeks, withDon Quixote, withDante’s Infernoand with Shakespeare’sHamlet.”
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A man who is certainly an authority on naval subjects tells me thatThe Grand Fleetby Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa is the masterpiece of the great war. He does not mean, of course, in a literary sense; but he does most emphatically mean in every other sense. I quote from the review by P. L. J., of Admiral Jellicoe’s second book,The Crisis of the Naval War. The review appeared in that valuable Annapolis publication, the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute for April, 1921:
“This interesting book is the complement of his first volume,The Grand Fleet,1914-16. Admiral Jellicoe, the one man who was best situated to know, now draws aside the curtains and reveals to us the efforts made by the Admiralty to overcome the threat made by the German submarine campaign. The account not only deals with the origin ashore of the defence and offence against submarines, but follows to sea the measures adopted where their application and results are shown.
“The first chapter deals at length with the changes made in the admiralty that the organisation might be logical and smooth working to avoid conflict of authority, to have no necessary service neglected, to provide the necessary corps of investigators of new devices, and above all to free the first Sea Lord and his assistants of a mass of detailthat their efforts might be concentrated on the larger questions.
“The appendices are of value and interesting because they show the organisation at different periods and emphasise the fact that the Naval Staff at the end of the war was the result of trial and error, natural growth, and at least one radical change adopted during the war.
“Chapters II and III deal with the Submarine Campaign in 1917 and the measures adopted to win success. The gradual naval control of all merchant shipping with its attendant difficulties is clearly shown. The tremendous labour involved in putting into operation new measures; the unremitting search for and development of new antisubmarine devices is revealed, and above all the length of time necessary to put into operation any new device, and this when time is the most precious element, is pointed out.
“That a campaign against the enemy must be waged with every means at hand; that new weapons must be continually sought; that no ‘cure-all’ by which the enemy may be defeated without fighting can be expected; that during war is the poorest time to provide the material which should be provided during peace, the Admiral shows in a manner not to be gainsaid.
“Chapters IV and V deal with the testing, introduction, and gradual growth of the convoy system. It is shown how the introduction of this system was delayed by lack of vessels to performescort duty and why when finally adopted it was so successful because it was not only defensive but offensive in that it meant a fight for a submarine to attack a vessel under convoy.
“Chapter VI is devoted to the entry of the United States. The accurate estimate of our naval strength by both the enemy and the allies, and our inability upon the declaration of war to lend any great assistance are shown—and this at the most critical period for the Allies—a period when the German submarine campaign was at its height, when the tonnage lost monthly by the Allies was far in excess of what can be replaced—when the destruction of merchant shipping if continued at the then present rate would in a few months mean the defeat of the Allies.”
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I will give you what Admiral Caspar F. Goodrich said in the Weekly Review (30 April 1921; The Weekly Review has since been combined with The Independent) regardingA History of Sea Power, by William O. Stevens and Allan Westcott:
“Two professors at the Naval Academy, the one a historian, the other a close student of Mahan, have written a noteworthy volume in theirHistory of Sea Power, published in excellent form, generously supplied with maps, illustrations, and index. The title suggests Mahan’sclassic which is largely followed in plan and treatment. It will be remembered that his writings covered in detail only the years from 1660 to 1815. While not neglecting this period, this book is particularly valuable for events not within its self-assigned limits. Practically it is a history of naval warfare from ancient times to the present day. Each chapter deals briefly, but ably, with one epoch and closes with an appropriate bibliography for those who care to go more fully into the question; a commendable feature. The last chapter, ‘Conclusions,’ deserves especial attention. Naturally, considerable space is devoted to the story and analysis of Jellicoe’s fight. Few will disagree with the verdict of the authors:
“‘It is no reflection on the personal courage of the Commander-in-Chief that he should be moved by the consideration of saving his ships. The existence of the Grand Fleet was, of course, essential to the Allied cause, and there was a heavy weight of responsibility hanging on its use. But again it is a matter of naval doctrine. Did the British fleet exist merely to maintain a numerical preponderance over its enemy or to crush that enemy—whatever the cost? If the Battle of Jutland receives the stamp of approval as the best that could have been done, then the British or the American officer of the future will know that he is expected primarily to ”play safe.“ But he will never tread the path of Blake, Hawke, or Nelson,the men who made the traditions of the Service and forged the anchors of the British Empire.’
“One factor in the success of the antisubmarine campaign is not mentioned, important as it proved to be. This was the policy adopted by the Allies of not giving out the news that any U-boat was captured or otherwise accounted for. Confronted with this appalling veil of mystery the morale of the German submarine crews became seriously affected; volunteering for this service gradually ceased; arbitrary detail grew necessary; greatly lessened efficiency resulted.
“The authors are to be congratulated on producing a volume which should be in the hands of all naval officers of the coming generation; on the shelves of all who take interest in the development of history; and of statesmen upon whom may eventually rest the responsibility of heeding or not heeding the teachings of Mahan as here sympathetically and cleverly brought up to date.”
Chapter XXITHE CONFESSIONS OF A WELL-MEANING YOUNG MAN, STEPHEN MCKENNA
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In a sense, all of Stephen McKenna’s writing has been a confession. More than any other novelist now actively at work, this young man bases fiction on biographical and autobiographical material; and when he sits down deliberately to write reminiscences, such asWhile I Remember, the result is merely that, in addition to confessing himself, he confesses others.
He has probably had more opportunity of knowing the social and political life of London from the inside than most novelists of his time. InWhile I Rememberhe gives his recollections, while his memory is still fresh enough to be vivid, of a generation that closed, for literary if not for political purposes, with the Peace Conference. There is a power of wit and mordant humour and a sufficiency of descriptive power and insight into human character in all his work.
STEPHEN McKENNA
STEPHEN McKENNA
While I Rememberis actually a gallery of pictures taken from the life and executed with the technique of youth by a man still young—pictures of public school and university life, of social London from the death of King Edward to the Armistice, of domestic and foreign politics of the period, of the public services of Great Britain at home and abroad. Though all these are within the circle of Mr. McKenna’s narrative, literary London—the London that is more talked about than seen—is the core of his story.
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Mr. McKenna’s latest novel,The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman, is a series of monologues addressed by one Lady Ann Spenworth to “a friend of proved discretion.” I quote from the London Times of April 6, 1922: “In the course of them Lady Ann Spenworth reveals to us the difficulties besetting a lady of rank. She is compelled to live in a house in Mount street—for how could she ask ‘The Princess’ to visit her in Bayswater?—and her income of a few thousands, hardly supplemented by her husband’s directorships, is depleted by the disbursements needed to keep the name of her only son out of the newspapers while she is obtaining for him the wife and the salary suited to his requirements and capacities. Mr. Stephen McKenna provides us with the same kind of exasperating entertainment that we get at games from watching a skilful and unscrupulous veteran. Her deftness in taking a stepor two forward in the centre and so putting the fast wing off side; her air of sporting acquiescence touched with astonishment when a penalty is given against her for obstruction; her resolution in jumping in to hit a young bowler off his length; the trouble she has with her shoe-lace when her opponent is nervous; the suddenness with which every now and again her usually deliberate second service will follow her first; the slight pucker in her eyebrows when she picks up a hand full of spades; the pluck with which she throws herself on the ball when there is nothing else for it; her dignified bonhomie in the dressing room! We all know Lady Ann and her tricks, but nothing can be proved against her and she continues to play for the best clubs.
“In this story Lady Ann is playing the social game, and it is a tribute to the skill of Mr. McKenna that at the end we hope that the Princess will be sufficiently curious about her new ‘frame and setting’ to continue her visits.... We have used the word ‘story’ because Lady Ann reports her machinations while they are in progress and we are a little nervous about the issue. Her main service, however, lies in the pictures she draws of her own highly placed relatives and of a number of people who at house parties and elsewhere may help ladies of title to make both ends meet. Chief among them is her son Will, who even as seen through her partial eyes, appears a very dishonest, paltry boy. Her blind devotion to him humanisesboth her shrewdness and her selfishness. It is for his sake that she separates her niece from the fine young soldier she is in love with and that she almost succeeds in providing the King’s Proctor with the materials for an intervention that would secure to him the estates and title of his fox-hunting uncle. There is always a plain tale to put her down and always the friend of proved discretion is left with the impression that the tale is the invention of malice; at least we suppose she must be, for Lady Ann is allowed by people to whom she has done one injury to remain in a position to do them another. The difficult medium employed by Mr. McKenna entitles him, however, to count on the co-operation of the reader; and it is to be accorded the more readily that to it we owe the felicity of having her own account of the steps she took to prevent an attractive but expensive widow from running away with her husband, and of the party which she gave, according to plan, to the Princess and, not according to plan, to other guests let loose on her by her scapegrace brother-in-law.”
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Stephen McKenna, the author ofSonia, not to be confused with Stephen McKenna, the translator of Poltinus, belongs to the Protestant branch of that royal Catholic sept which has had its home in the County Monagham since the dawn of Irish history. Some members, even, of this branchhave reverted to the old faith since the date of Stephen McKenna’s birth in the year 1888 in London.
He was a scholar of Westminster and an exhibitioner of Christ Church, Oxford. After he had taken his degree, his father, Leopold McKenna, an elder brother of the Right Honourable Reginald McKenna, K. C., the last Liberal Chancellor of the British Exchequer, made it possible for him to travel desultorily and to try his luck in the great literary adventure.
On the outbreak of the war, as his health, which is delicate to the point of frailness, debarred him from entering the army, Stephen McKenna first volunteered for service at his old school, and, after a year, joined the staff of the War Trade Intelligence Department, where he did valuable war work for three and a half years. He represented his department on the Right Honourable A. J. Balfour’s mission in 1917, to the United States, where he enjoyed himself thoroughly and made himself very popular; and he did not sever his connection with the government service until February, 1919, four months after the conclusion of the armistice.
Stephen McKenna’s first three novels—The Reluctant Lover,Sheila IntervenesandThe Sixth Sense—were written and published before their author was 27 years of age! ButSonia, the story that made him widely known, was written entirely during the period of his activities on the staff ofWestminster School and at the War Trade Intelligence Department. The book won the public favour more quickly than perhaps any other novel that has appeared in our time.
The success ofSoniawas largely due to its description in a facile, popular and yet eminently chaste and polished style, of the social and political situation in England for a half generation before and during the early stages of the war. This description Stephen McKenna was peculiarly well-equipped to produce, not only as the near relative of a prominent cabinet minister, but also as an assiduous frequenter of the leading Liberal centre, the Reform Club, on the committee of which he had sat, despite his youthful years, since 1915. The political interest, indeed, is revealed in the subtitle,Between Two Worlds, which was originally intended for the actual title.
McKenna’s next book,Ninety-Six Hours’ Leave, appealed to the reader’s gayer moods andMidas and Son, with its tragic history of an Anglo-American multimillionaire, to the reader in serious temper.
In spite of certain blemishes due to Mr. McKenna’s unfamiliarity with American life, I should say thatMidas and Sonis probably his ablest work so far. I think it surpasses evenSonia. Mr. McKenna returned to Sonia in his novel,Sonia Married. His work after that was a trilogy calledThe Sensationalists, three brilliant studies of modern London in the form of successivenovels calledLady Lilith,The Education of Eric LaneandThe Secret Victory.
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Writing from 11, Stone Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn, London, in 1920, Mr. McKenna had this to say about his trilogy:
“Lady Lilithis the first volume of a trilogy calledThe Sensationalists, three books giving the history for a few years before the war, during and immediately after the war, of a group of sensation-mongers, emotion-hunters or whatever you like to call them, whose principle and practice it was to startle the world by the extravagance of their behaviour, speech, dress and thought and, in the other sense of the word, sensationalism, to live on the excitement of new experiences. Such people have always existed and always will exist, receiving perhaps undue attention from the world that they set out to astonish. You, I am sure, have them in America, as we have them here, and in the luxurious and idle years before the war they had incomparable scope for their search for novelty and their quest for emotion. Some of the characters inLady Lilithhave already been seen hovering in the background ofSonia,Midas and SonandSonia Married, though the principal characters inLady Lilithhave not before been painted at full length or in great detail; and theseprincipal characters will be found in all three books of the trilogy.
“Lady Lilith, of course, takes its title from the Talmud, according to which Lilith was Adam’s first wife; and as mankind did not taste of the Tree of Knowledge or of death until Eve came to trouble the Garden of Eden, Lilith belongs to a time in which there was neither death nor knowledge of good or evil in the world. She is immortal, unaging and non-moral; her name is given by Valentine Arden, the young novelist who appears inSoniaand elsewhere, to Lady Barbara Neave, the principal character inLady Lilithand one of the principal characters in the two succeeding books.”
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In person, Stephen McKenna is tall, with a slender figure, Irish blue eyes, fair hair, regular features and a Dante profile. He has an engaging and very courteous address, a sympathetic manner, a ready but always urbane wit and great conversational charm. He possesses the rare accomplishment of “talking like a book.” His intimates are legion; and, apart from these, he knows everyone who “counts” in London society. He is known never to lose his temper; and it is doubtful whether he has ever had cause to lose it.
His one recreation is the Opera; and during the London season his delightful chambers in Lincoln’sInn are the almost nightly scene of parties collected then and there from the opera house.
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A sample ofThe Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman:
“Lady Ann (to a friend of proved discretion): You have toiled all the way here again? Do you know, I feel I am only beginning to find out who my true friends are? I am much, much better.... On Friday I am to be allowed on to the sofa and by the end of next week Dr. Richardson promises to let me go back to Mount Street. Of course I should have liked the operation to take place there—it is one’s frame and setting, but, truly honestly, Arthur and I have not been in a position to have any painting or papering done for so long.... The surgeon insisted on a nursing home. Apparatus and so on and so forth.... Quite between ourselves I fancy that they make a very good thing out of these homes; but I am so thankful to be well again that I would put up with almost any imposition....
“Everything went off too wonderfully. Perhaps you have seen my brother Brackenbury? Or Ruth? Ah, I am sorry; I should have been vastly entertained to hear what they were saying, what they dared say. Ruth did indeed offer to pay the expenses of the operation—the belated prick of conscience!—and it was on the tip of my tongue to say we are not yet dependent on her spasmodiccharity. Also, that I can keep my lips closed about Brackenbury without expecting a—tip? But they know I can’t afford to refuse £500.... If they, if everybody would only leave one alone! Spied on, whispered about....
“The papers made such an absurd stir! If you are known by name as occupying any little niche, the world waits gaping below. I suppose I ought to be flattered, but for days there were callers, letters, telephone-messages. Like Royaltyin extremis.... And I never pretended that the operation was in any sense critical....
“Do you know, beyond saying that, I would much rather not talk about it? This very modern frankness.... Not you, of course! But when a man like my brother-in-law Spenworth strides in here a few hours before the anæsthetic is administered and says ‘What is the matter with you? Much ado about nothing, I call it.’ ... That from Arthur’s brother to Arthur’s wife, when, for all he knew, he might never see her alive again.... I prefer just to say that everything went off most satisfactorily and that I hope now to be better than I have been for years....”
Booksby Stephen McKenna
Books
by Stephen McKenna
THE RELUCTANT LOVERSHEILA INTERVENESTHE SIXTH SENSESONIA: BETWEEN TWO WORLDSNINETY-SIX HOURS’ LEAVEMIDAS AND SONSONIA MARRIEDLADY LILITHTHE EDUCATION OF ERIC LANETHE SECRET VICTORYWHILE I REMEMBERTHE CONFESSIONS OF A WELL-MEANING WOMAN
THE RELUCTANT LOVER
SHEILA INTERVENES
THE SIXTH SENSE
SONIA: BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
NINETY-SIX HOURS’ LEAVE
MIDAS AND SON
SONIA MARRIED
LADY LILITH
THE EDUCATION OF ERIC LANE
THE SECRET VICTORY
WHILE I REMEMBER
THE CONFESSIONS OF A WELL-MEANING WOMAN
Sourceson Stephen McKenna
Sources
on Stephen McKenna
Who’s Who[In England].Private Information.
Who’s Who[In England].
Private Information.
Chapter XXIIPOETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS
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I have to tell about a number of poets and, regarding poets, I agree with a very clever woman I know who declares that poetry is the most personal of the arts and who further says that it is manifestly inadequate to talk about a poet’s work without giving a sample of his poetry. So, generally, I shall quote one of the shorter poems or a passage from a longer poem.
John Dos Passos, known forThree Soldiersand forRosinante to the Road Again, will be still more variously known to those who read his book of verse,A Pushcart at the Curb. This book bears a relation toRosinante, the contents grouping themselves under these general headings:
Winter in Castile
Nights by Bassano
Translations from the Spanish of Antonio Machado
Vagones de Tercera
Quai de la Tournelle
Of Foreign Travel
Phases of the Moon
I will select for quotation the sixth or final poem dedicated to A. K. McC. from the section entitled “Quai de la Tournelle,”
This is a garden
where through the russet mist of clustered trees
and strewn November leaves,
they crunch with vainglorious heels
of ancient vermilion
the dry dead of spent summer’s greens,
and stalk with mincing sceptic steps,
and sound of snuffboxes snapping
to the capping of an epigram,
in fluffy attar-scented wigs ...
the exquisite Augustans.
Christopher Morley is too well-known as a poet to require any explicit account in this place. I shall remind you of the pleasure of reading him by quoting the “Song For a Little House” from his book,The Rocking Horse, and also a short verse from hisTranslations from the Chinese.
I’m glad our house is a little house,
Not too tall nor too wide:
I’m glad the hovering butterflies
Feel free to come inside.
Our little house is a friendly house,
It is not shy or vain;
It gossips with the talking trees,
And makes friends with the rain.
And quick leaves cast a shimmer of green,
Against our whited walls,
And in the phlox, the courteous bees,
Are paying duty calls.
But there is a different temper—or, if you like, tempering—to the verse inTranslations from the Chinese. I quote “A National Frailty”:
The American people
Were put into the world
To assist foreign lecturers.
When I visited them
They filled crowded halls
To hear me tell them Great Truths
Which they might as well have read
In their own prophet Thoreau.
They paid me, for this,
Three hundred dollars a night,
And ten of their mandarins
Invited me to visit at Newport.
My agent told me
If I would wear Chinese costume on the platform
It would be five hundred.
In speaking of the late Joyce Kilmer, the temptation is inescapable to quote his “Trees”; after all, it is his best known and best loved poem—in certain moments it is his best poem! But instead, I will desert his volume,Trees and Other Poems, and from his other book,Main Street and Other Poems, I will quote the first two stanzas of Kilmer’s “Houses”—a poem written for his wife:
When you shall die and to the sky
Serenely, delicately go,
Saint Peter, when he sees you there,
Will clash his keys and say:
“Now talk to her, Sir Christopher!
And hurry, Michelangelo!
She wants to play at building,
And you’ve got to help her play!”
Every architect will help erect
A palace on a lawn of cloud,
With rainbow beams and a sunset roof,
And a level star-tiled floor;
And at your will you may use the skill
Of this gay angelic crowd,
When a house is made you will throw it down,
And they’ll build you twenty more.
Mrs. Kilmer is the author of two volumes of verse which have sold rather more than John Masefield usually sells—at least, until the publication ofReynard the Fox. Candles That Burncreated her audience andVigilshas been that audience’s renewed delight. FromVigilsI take the poem “The Touch of Tears.” In it “Michael” is, of course, her own son:
Michael walks in autumn leaves,
Rustling leaves and fading grasses,
And his little music-box
Tinkles faintly as he passes.
It’s a gay and jaunty tune
If the hands that play were clever:
Michael plays it like a dirge,
Moaning on and on forever.
While his happy eyes grow big,
Big and innocent and soulful,
Wistful, halting little notes
Rise, unutterably doleful,
Telling of all childish griefs—
Baffled babies sob forsaken,
Birds fly off and bubbles burst,
Kittens sleep and will not waken.
Michael, it’s the touch of tears.
Though you sing for very gladness,
Others will not see your mirth;
They will mourn your fancied sadness.
Though you laugh at them in scorn,
Show your happy heart for token,
Michael, you’ll protest in vain—
They will swear your heart is broken!
I think I have said elsewhere that J. C. Squire prefers his serious poems to those parodies of which he is such an admitted master. It seems only decent to defer, in this place, to the author’s own feeling in the matter. Mr. Squire is the author ofThe Birds and Other PoemsandPoems: Second Series. My present choice is the beginning and the close of the poem, “Harlequin”—which is in both books:
Moonlit woodland, veils of green,
Caves of empty dark between;
Veils of green from rounded arms
Drooping, that the moonlight charms:
Tranced the trees, grass beneath
Silent ...
Like a stealthy breath,
Mask and wand and silver skin
Sudden enters Harlequin.
Hist! Hist! Watch him go,
Leaping limb and pointing toe,
Slender arms that float and flow,
Curving wand above, below;
Flying, gliding, changing feet;
Onset merging in retreat.
Not a shadow of sound there is
But his motion’s gentle hiss,
Till one fluent arm and hand
Suddenly circles, and the wand
Taps a bough far overhead,
“Crack,” and then all noise is dead.
For he halts, and for a space
Stands erect with upward face,
Taut and tense to the white
Message of the Moon’s light.
He was listening; he was there;
Flash! he went. To the air
He a waiting ear had bent,
Silent; but before he went
Something somewhere else to seek,
He moved his lips as though to speak.
And we wait, and in vain,
For he will not come again.
Earth, grass, wood, and air,
As we stare, and we stare,
Which that fierce life did hold,
Tired, dim, void, cold.
Milton Raison is a young writer, known especially to readers of The Bookman, whose verse has appeared in various magazines. A Russian, Milton Raison went to sea as a boy—he is scarcely more than a boy now. His first book of verse,Spindrift, carries a preface by William McFee. I quote: