XIE. M. FORSTER

"Therefore I bring these rhymes to you,Who brought the cross to me."

Before we have read five pages we realise that here is at last a ballad which is not a spurious imitation. It rings clear, clean and true. We see Alfred beaten to his knees by "a sea-folk blinder than the sea," almost broken-hearted, beseeching the Virgin Mary for a sign.

"'Mother of God,' the wanderer said,'I am but a common king,Nor will I ask what saints may ask,To see a secret thing....But for this earth most pitiful,This little land I know,If that which is for ever is,Or if our hearts shall break with bliss,Seeing the stranger go?When our last bow is broken, Queen,And our last javelin cast,Under some sad, green evening sky,Holding a ruined cross on high,Under warm westland grass to lie,Shall we come home at last?'"

"'Mother of God,' the wanderer said,'I am but a common king,Nor will I ask what saints may ask,To see a secret thing....

But for this earth most pitiful,This little land I know,If that which is for ever is,Or if our hearts shall break with bliss,Seeing the stranger go?

When our last bow is broken, Queen,And our last javelin cast,Under some sad, green evening sky,Holding a ruined cross on high,Under warm westland grass to lie,Shall we come home at last?'"

And she answers:

"'I tell you naught for your comfort,Yea, naught for your desire,Save that the sky grows darker yetAnd the sea rises higher.Night shall be thrice night over you,And heaven an iron cope.Do you have joy without a cause,Yea, faith without a hope?'"

"'I tell you naught for your comfort,Yea, naught for your desire,Save that the sky grows darker yetAnd the sea rises higher.

Night shall be thrice night over you,And heaven an iron cope.Do you have joy without a cause,Yea, faith without a hope?'"

Stirred by this message, Alfred sets out yet again to stir zeal in his chiefs for the causeless cause.

"Up across windy wastes and upWent Alfred over the shaws,Shaken of the joy of giants,The joy without a cause....The King went gathering Christian men,As wheat out of the husk;Eldred, the Franklin by the sea,And Mark, the man from Italy,And Colan of the Sacred Tree,From the old tribe on Usk."

"Up across windy wastes and upWent Alfred over the shaws,Shaken of the joy of giants,The joy without a cause....

The King went gathering Christian men,As wheat out of the husk;Eldred, the Franklin by the sea,And Mark, the man from Italy,And Colan of the Sacred Tree,From the old tribe on Usk."

We are first given a picture of Eldred's farm fallen awry, "Like an old cripple's bones," with its purple thistles bursting up between the kitchen stones. But Eldred, the red-faced, bulky tun is sick of fighting.

"'Come not to me, King Alfred,Save always for the ale....Your scalds still thunder and prophesyThat crown that never comes;Friend, I will watch the certain things,Swine, and slow moons like silver rings,And the ripening of the plums.'"

Alfred merely repeats the message of the Virgin Mary, tells him where to meet him and goes away certain of his help. He next goes to Mark's farm, the low, white house in the southland, inhabited by the bronzed man with a bird's beak and a bird's bright eye.

"His fruit trees stood like soldiersDrilled in a straight line,His strange, stiff olives did not fail,And all the kings of the earth drank ale,But he drank wine."

Alfred gives his message and the Roman answers:

"'Guthrum sits strong on either bankAnd you must press his linesInwards, and eastward drive him down;I doubt if you shall take the crownTill you have taken London town.For me, I have the vines.'"

But Alfred is certain of his help too and goes on to the lost land of boulders and broken men, where dwells Colan of Caerleon:

"Last of a race in ruin—He spoke the speech of the Gaels;His kin were in holy Ireland,Or up in the crags of Wales....He made the sign of the cross of God,He knew the Roman prayer,But he had unreason in his heartBecause of the gods that were....Gods of unbearable beautyThat broke the hearts of men."

"Last of a race in ruin—He spoke the speech of the Gaels;His kin were in holy Ireland,Or up in the crags of Wales....

He made the sign of the cross of God,He knew the Roman prayer,But he had unreason in his heartBecause of the gods that were....

Gods of unbearable beautyThat broke the hearts of men."

He ridicules Alfred until he hears the warning:

" ... that the sky grows darker yetAnd the sea rises higher."

Then he tosses his black mane on high and cries:

"'And if the sea and sky be foes,We will tame the sea and sky.'"

And so Alfred is sure too of his help.

Alfred is then taken by the Danes as he is playing on his harp to the camp of Guthrum and there is made to sing and play again:

"And leaving all later hates unsaid,He sang of some old British raidOn the wild west march of yore.He sang of war in the warm wet shires,Where rain nor fruitage fails,Where England of the motley statesDeepens like a garden to the gatesIn the purple walls of Wales."

"And leaving all later hates unsaid,He sang of some old British raidOn the wild west march of yore.

He sang of war in the warm wet shires,Where rain nor fruitage fails,Where England of the motley statesDeepens like a garden to the gatesIn the purple walls of Wales."

He sang until Harold, Guthrum's nephew, snatched the harp from him and began in his turn to sing of ships and the sea and material delights:

"'Great wine like blood from Burgundy,Cloaks like the clouds from Tyre,And marble like solid moonlight,And gold like frozen fire.'"

Elf the minstrel then took the instrument:

"And as he stirred the strings of the harpTo notes but four or five,The heart of each man moved in himLike a babe buried alive."

He sang of Balder beautiful, whom the heavens could not save ... and finishes with these two peerlessly beautiful verses:

"'There is always a thing forgottenWhen all the world goes well;A thing forgotten, as long agoWhen the gods forgot the mistletoe,And soundless as an arrow of snowThe arrow of anguish fell.The thing on the blind side of the heart,On the wrong side of the door,The green plant groweth, menacingAlmighty lovers in the spring;There is always a forgotten thing,And love is not secure.'"

"'There is always a thing forgottenWhen all the world goes well;A thing forgotten, as long agoWhen the gods forgot the mistletoe,And soundless as an arrow of snowThe arrow of anguish fell.

The thing on the blind side of the heart,On the wrong side of the door,The green plant groweth, menacingAlmighty lovers in the spring;There is always a forgotten thing,And love is not secure.'"

Earl Ogier of the Stone and Sling next took the harp and sang in praise of "Fury, that does not fail":

"'There lives one moment for a manWhen the door at his shoulder shakes,When the taut rope parts under the pull,And the barest branch is beautifulOne moment, while it breaks....And you that sit by the fire are young,And true loves wait for you;But the King and I grow old, grow old,And hate alone is true.'"

"'There lives one moment for a manWhen the door at his shoulder shakes,When the taut rope parts under the pull,And the barest branch is beautifulOne moment, while it breaks....

And you that sit by the fire are young,And true loves wait for you;But the King and I grow old, grow old,And hate alone is true.'"

Guthrum in his turn takes the great harp wearily and sings of death:

"'For this is a heavy matter,And the truth is cold to tell;Do we not know, have we not heard,The soul is like a lost bird,The body a broken shell....Strong are the Roman roses,Or the free flowers of the heath,But every flower, like a flower of the sea,Smelleth with the salt of death.And the heart of the locked battleIs the happiest place for men....Death blazes bright above the cup,And clear above the crown;But in that dream of battleWe seem to tread it down.Wherefore I am a great king,And waste the world in vain,Because man hath not other power,Save that in dealing death for dower,He may forget it for an hourTo remember it again.'"

"'For this is a heavy matter,And the truth is cold to tell;Do we not know, have we not heard,The soul is like a lost bird,The body a broken shell....

Strong are the Roman roses,Or the free flowers of the heath,But every flower, like a flower of the sea,Smelleth with the salt of death.

And the heart of the locked battleIs the happiest place for men....Death blazes bright above the cup,And clear above the crown;But in that dream of battleWe seem to tread it down.

Wherefore I am a great king,And waste the world in vain,Because man hath not other power,Save that in dealing death for dower,He may forget it for an hourTo remember it again.'"

And then Alfred seizes it again and triumphantly, scornfully, sings his pæan in praise of his own creed:

"'But though I lie on the floor of the world,With the seven sins for rods,I would rather fall with AdamThan rise with all your gods.What have the strong gods given?Where have the glad gods led?When Guthrum sits on a hero's throneAnd asks if he is dead?...... Though you hunt the Christian manLike a hare on the hill-side,The hare has still more heart to runThan you have heart to ride....Our monks go robed in rain and snow,But the heart of flame therein,But you go clothed in feasts and flames,When all is ice within; ...Ere the sad gods that made your godsSaw their sad sunrise pass,The White Horse of the White Horse Vale,That you have left to darken and fail,Was cut out of the grass.Therefore your end is on you,Is on you and your kings,Not for a fire in Ely fen,Not that your gods are nine or ten,But because it is only Christian menGuard even heathen things.'"

"'But though I lie on the floor of the world,With the seven sins for rods,I would rather fall with AdamThan rise with all your gods.

What have the strong gods given?Where have the glad gods led?When Guthrum sits on a hero's throneAnd asks if he is dead?...

... Though you hunt the Christian manLike a hare on the hill-side,The hare has still more heart to runThan you have heart to ride....

Our monks go robed in rain and snow,But the heart of flame therein,But you go clothed in feasts and flames,When all is ice within; ...

Ere the sad gods that made your godsSaw their sad sunrise pass,The White Horse of the White Horse Vale,That you have left to darken and fail,Was cut out of the grass.

Therefore your end is on you,Is on you and your kings,Not for a fire in Ely fen,Not that your gods are nine or ten,But because it is only Christian menGuard even heathen things.'"

Alfred then goes away and is struck by the woman in the forest for letting her cakes blacken.

"'He that hath failed in a little thingHath a sign upon the brow;And the Earls of the Great ArmyHave no such seal to show....... I am the first king known of heavenThat has been struck like a slave.'"

"'He that hath failed in a little thingHath a sign upon the brow;And the Earls of the Great ArmyHave no such seal to show....

... I am the first king known of heavenThat has been struck like a slave.'"

He takes the blow as a good omen:

"'For he that is struck for an ill servantShould be a kind lord.'"

He collects his followers and they go roaring over the Roman wall and fall upon the Danes at Ethandune. In the first phase we see Alfred's men waking to the realisation of the high folly of the fight and despair clawing at their hearts.

"For the Saxon Franklin sorrowedFor the things that had been fair,For the dear dead women, crimson clad,And the great feasts and the friends he had;But the Celtic prince's soul was sadFor the things that never were."

Alfred asks for his people's prayers and the Roman Mark proudly says:

"'Lift not my head from bloody ground,Bear not my body home,For all the earth is Roman earthAnd I shall die in Rome.'"

Harold then comes forward in gay colours smoking with oil and musk, and taunts the ragged Colan with the rusty sword: he takes his bow and shoots an arrow at Colan, who sprang aside and whirled his sword round his head and let it sweep out of his hand on to Harold's head. The Dane fell dead and Alfred gave his own sword to Colan and himself seized a rude axe from a hind hard by and turned to the fray.

In Book VI., "The Slaying of the Chiefs," we are firstshown Eldred breaking the sea of spears "As a tall ship breaks the sea."

"But while he moved like a massacreHe murmured as in sleep,And his words were all of low hedgesAnd little fields and sheep.Even as he strode like a pestilence,That strides from Rhine to Rome,He thought how tall his beans might beIf ever he went home."

"But while he moved like a massacreHe murmured as in sleep,And his words were all of low hedgesAnd little fields and sheep.

Even as he strode like a pestilence,That strides from Rhine to Rome,He thought how tall his beans might beIf ever he went home."

But in the end the sword broke in his hand and he falls to the seventh "faerie blade" of Elf the minstrel.

"Six spears thrust upon EldredWere splintered while he laughed;One spear thrust into Eldred,Three feet of blade and shaft."

But he was soon avenged by Mark:

"Right on the Roman shield and swordDid spear of the Rhine maids run;But the shield shifted never,The sword rang down to sever,The great Rhine sang for ever,And the songs of Elf were done."

Ogier in his turn avenges Elf:

"But hate in the buried OgierWas strong as pain in hell,With bare brute hand from the insideHe burst the shield of brass and hide,And a death-stroke to the Roman's sideSent suddenly and well.Then the great statue on the shieldLooked his last look aroundWith level and imperial eye;And Mark, the man from Italy,Fell in the sea of agony,And died without a sound."

"But hate in the buried OgierWas strong as pain in hell,With bare brute hand from the insideHe burst the shield of brass and hide,And a death-stroke to the Roman's sideSent suddenly and well.

Then the great statue on the shieldLooked his last look aroundWith level and imperial eye;And Mark, the man from Italy,Fell in the sea of agony,And died without a sound."

The Danes in their triumph sing:

"'No more shall the brown men of the southMove like the ants in lines,To quiet men with olivesOr madden men with vines.'There was that in the wild men back of him [Ogier],There was that in his own wild song,A dizzy throbbing, a drunkard smoke,That dazed to death all Wessex folk,And swept their spears along.Vainly the sword of ColanAnd the axe of Alfred plied—The Danes poured in like brainless plague,And knew not when they died.Prince Colan slew a score of them,And was stricken to his knee;King Alfred slew a score and sevenAnd was borne back on a tree."

"'No more shall the brown men of the southMove like the ants in lines,To quiet men with olivesOr madden men with vines.'

There was that in the wild men back of him [Ogier],There was that in his own wild song,A dizzy throbbing, a drunkard smoke,That dazed to death all Wessex folk,And swept their spears along.

Vainly the sword of ColanAnd the axe of Alfred plied—The Danes poured in like brainless plague,And knew not when they died.

Prince Colan slew a score of them,And was stricken to his knee;King Alfred slew a score and sevenAnd was borne back on a tree."

The King was beaten, blind, at bay, and we are taken on to Book VII., "The Last Change," where Alfred is compared to a small child building one tower in vain, piling up small stones to make a town, and evermore the stones fall down and he piles them up again.

"And this was the might of Alfred,At the ending of the way;That of such smiters, wise or wild,He was least distant from the child,Piling the stones all day.For Eldred fought like a frank hunterThat killeth and goeth home;And Mark had fought because all armsRang like the name of Rome.And Colan fought with a double mind,Moody and madly gay;But Alfred fought as gravelyAs a good child at play.He saw wheels break and work run backAnd all things as they were;And his heart was orbed like victoryAnd simple like despair.Therefore is Mark forgotten,That was wise with his tongue and brave;And the cairn over Colan crumbled,And the cross on Eldred's grave.Their great souls went on a wind away,And they have not tale or tomb;And Alfred born in WantageRules England till the doom.Because in the forest of all fearsLike a strange fresh gust from sea,Struck him that ancient innocenceThat is more than mastery."

"And this was the might of Alfred,At the ending of the way;That of such smiters, wise or wild,He was least distant from the child,Piling the stones all day.

For Eldred fought like a frank hunterThat killeth and goeth home;And Mark had fought because all armsRang like the name of Rome.

And Colan fought with a double mind,Moody and madly gay;But Alfred fought as gravelyAs a good child at play.

He saw wheels break and work run backAnd all things as they were;And his heart was orbed like victoryAnd simple like despair.

Therefore is Mark forgotten,That was wise with his tongue and brave;And the cairn over Colan crumbled,And the cross on Eldred's grave.

Their great souls went on a wind away,And they have not tale or tomb;And Alfred born in WantageRules England till the doom.

Because in the forest of all fearsLike a strange fresh gust from sea,Struck him that ancient innocenceThat is more than mastery."

And so Alfred began his life once more and took his ivory horn unslung and smiled, but not in scorn:

"'Endeth the Battle of EthanduneWith the blowing of a horn.'"

He collects his remnants and incites them to a last desperate effort:

"'To grow old cowed in a conquered land,With the sun itself discrowned,To see trees crouch and cattle slink—Death is a better ale to drink,And by high Death on the fell brink,That flagon shall go round.' ...And the King held up the horn and said:'See ye my father's horn,That Egbert blew in his empery,Once, when he rode out commonly,Twice when he rode for venery,And thrice on the battle-morn.'"

And the King held up the horn and said:'See ye my father's horn,That Egbert blew in his empery,Once, when he rode out commonly,Twice when he rode for venery,And thrice on the battle-morn.'"

" ... the last charge went blindly,And all too lost for fear:The Danes closed round, a roaring ring,And twenty clubs rose o'er the King,Four Danes hewed at him, halloing,And Ogier of the Stone and SlingDrove at him with a spear."

But the Danes were careless, and Alfred split Ogier to the spine: the tide miraculously turned and the Danes gave way and retreated clamouring, disorderly:

"For dire was Alfred in his hourThe pale scribe witnesseth,More mighty in defeat was heThan all men else in victory,And behind, his men came murderously,Dry-throated, drinking death."

So at last the sign of the cross was put on Guthrum and

"Far out to the winding riverThe blood ran down for days,When we put the cross on GuthrumIn the parting of the ways."

And in the last book, "The Scouring of the White Horse," we see Alfred at peace again.

"In the days of the rest of Alfred,When all these things were done,And Wessex lay in a patch of peace,Like a dog in a patch of sun—The King sat in his orchard,Among apples green and red,With the little book in his bosomAnd the sunshine on his head."

"In the days of the rest of Alfred,When all these things were done,And Wessex lay in a patch of peace,Like a dog in a patch of sun—

The King sat in his orchard,Among apples green and red,With the little book in his bosomAnd the sunshine on his head."

And he gathered the songs of simple men, and gave alms, and "gat good laws of the ancient kings like treasure out of the tombs"; and men came from the ends of the earth and went out to the ends of the earth because of the word of the King.

"And men, seeing such embassies,Spake with the King and said:'The steel that sang so sweet a tuneOn Ashdown and on Ethandune,Why hangs it scabbarded so soon,All heavily like lead?'"

They asked: "Why dwell the Danes in North England and up to the river ride?"

"And Alfred in the orchard,Among apples green and red,With the little book in his bosom,Looked at green leaves and said:'When all philosophies shall fail,This word alone shall fit;That a sage feels too small for life,And a fool too large for it.Asia and all Imperial plainsAre too little for a fool;But for one man whose eyes can see,The little island of AthelneyIs too large a land to rule.... But I am a common king,And I will make my fences toughFrom Wantage Town to Plymouth Bluff,Because I am not wise enoughTo rule so small a thing.'"

"And Alfred in the orchard,Among apples green and red,With the little book in his bosom,Looked at green leaves and said:

'When all philosophies shall fail,This word alone shall fit;That a sage feels too small for life,And a fool too large for it.

Asia and all Imperial plainsAre too little for a fool;But for one man whose eyes can see,The little island of AthelneyIs too large a land to rule.

... But I am a common king,And I will make my fences toughFrom Wantage Town to Plymouth Bluff,Because I am not wise enoughTo rule so small a thing.'"

He only commands his men to keep the White Horse white. Rumour of the Danes to the eastward, Danes wasting the world about the Thames reaches him, but Alfred only points to the White Horse.

"'Will ye part with the weeds for ever?Or show daisies to the door?Or will you b id the bold grassGo, and return no more?...And though skies alter and empires melt,This word shall still be true:If we would have the horse of old,Scour ye the horse anew....But now I wot if ye scour not wellRed rust shall grow on God's great bellAnd grass in the streets of God.'"

"'Will ye part with the weeds for ever?Or show daisies to the door?Or will you b id the bold grassGo, and return no more?...

And though skies alter and empires melt,This word shall still be true:If we would have the horse of old,Scour ye the horse anew....But now I wot if ye scour not wellRed rust shall grow on God's great bellAnd grass in the streets of God.'"

He has a vision that the heathen will return.

"'They shall not come with warships,They shall not waste with brands,But books be all their eating,And ink be on their hands....By this sign you shall know them,The breaking of the sword,And Man no more a free knight,That loves or hates his lord....When is great talk of trend and tide,And wisdom and destiny,Hail that undying heathenThat is sadder than the sea.'"

"'They shall not come with warships,They shall not waste with brands,But books be all their eating,And ink be on their hands....

By this sign you shall know them,The breaking of the sword,And Man no more a free knight,That loves or hates his lord....

When is great talk of trend and tide,And wisdom and destiny,Hail that undying heathenThat is sadder than the sea.'"

He sees no more, but rides out doubtfully to his last war on a tall grey horse at dawn.

"And all the while on White Horse HillThe horse lay long and wan,The turf crawled and the fungus crept,And the little sorrel, while all men slept,Unwrought the work of man....And clover and silent thistle throve,And buds burst silently,With little care for the Thames ValleyOr what things there might be."

"And all the while on White Horse HillThe horse lay long and wan,The turf crawled and the fungus crept,And the little sorrel, while all men slept,Unwrought the work of man....

And clover and silent thistle throve,And buds burst silently,With little care for the Thames ValleyOr what things there might be."

And the King took London Town.

I have given enough illustrations to show the masculine strength and virility of this amazing poem. We read G. K. Chesterton for his wit, for his brilliance, for his delightful paradoxes, for his sanity and wholesomeness, but we read him most of all for his brave creed, for his defence of Christianity and his love for the eternal values of honour, uprightness, courage, loyalty and devotion, for his steadfast adherence to whatsoever things are of good report.

This is really a chapter about one book, not about a man. It is quite true that Mr Forster has written a number of novels, but he is only remembered by one and that is a decade old. He is a very skilful and careful artist and interested in classical myth rather more than he is in us: he is a scholar with a good deal of the poetic in him; when he lets his thought dwell on us poor moderns his satiric vein appears predominant, though he too, like the rest of us, had to let the autobiographical have its way in two novels:A Room with a Viewand the schoolmaster's book,The Longer Journey, give us, if we want to know them, many facts about himself, but wiser people will plump forHoward's Endand forget the others—only hoping that he will soon give us something more in that vein.

There was a slight flutter in our dovecotes when we saw the announcement of a novel by him early in 1920, butThe Syrenis not a novel and is not new. It is a delicious trifle, artistically perfect ... but from a man who can give us real men of the type of Leonard Bast we want no chatter about blue grottoes, however perfect.

Yes, I fully realise that E. M. Forster publishedHoward's Endin 1910, but he has not written a novel since, and, as W. L. George says, "He is still one of the young men, while it is not at all certain that he is not 'the' young man." "Mystic athleticism" is the phrase that Mr George uses as his label for him, and so far as labels ever fit, this will do.

We readHoward's Endfor its unexpectedness, its elliptic talk, which so exactly hits off the characters he creates, for its manifestation of the Comic Spirit, for passages such as the following, which abound:—

"It will be generally admitted that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. All sorts and conditions aresatisfied by it. Whether you are like Mrs Munt ["I do know when I like a thing and when I don't"] and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come—of course, not so as to disturb the others—or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee ... or like Fräulein Mosebach's young man, who can remember nothing but Fräulein Mosebach: in any case, the passion of your life becomes more vivid, and you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at two shillings."

We readHoward's Endfor the merciless skill which E. M. Forster shows in laying bare the soul of Leonard Bast, the clerk in the insurance office, who reads Ruskin and goes to the Queen's Hall in order to improve himself, who is dragged into the gutter by his loose-living mistress ("she seemed all strings and bell-pulls, ribbons, chains, bead necklaces that chinked and caught——").... We readHoward's Endfor the equally merciless sketch of the millionaire husband of the heroine ("a man who ruins a woman for his pleasure, and casts her off to ruin other men. And gives bad financial advice, and then says he is not responsible. These men are you. You can't recognise them, because you cannot connect. I've had enough of your unweeded kindness. I've spoilt you long enough. All your life you have been spoiled.... No one has ever told what you are—muddled, criminally muddled").

Mr E. M. Forster's eyes are pellucidly clear in their vision both of rich and poor. "Only connect," he says. That is the cause of all the folly and cruelty in the world, lack of power to connect. Think of this picture of Leonard Bast. "Hints of robustness survived in him (he came of Lincolnshire yeoman stock), more than a hint of primitive good looks, and Margaret, noting the spine that might have been straight, and the chest that might have broadened, wondered whether it paid to give up the glory of the animal for a tail coat and a couple of ideas. Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanised the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and philosophic man, so many the good chaps whoare wrecked in trying to cross it. She knew this type very well—the vague aspirations, the mental dishonesty, the familiarity with the outsides of books."

But he should not have permitted an untimely end even to such a man: it is bad artistry to overweight your dice. When any character in a book of this sort goes to prison or dies (except in child-birth) one cannot help feeling that the author has burked the issue or been too lazy to work out his thesis to a reasonable, logical conclusion. Like Margaret inHoward's End, who did not see that to break her husband was her only hope, but did rather what seemed easiest, so E. M. Forster does what seems easiest, and the result is a certain falsity all the more reprehensive because in so many ways this book is head and shoulders above any of its era. Helen's gift of herself to Leonard Bast is absolutely true to life.

"It never occurred to him that Helen was to blame. He forgot the intensity of their talk, the charm that had been lent him by sincerity, the magic of Oniton under darkness and of the whispering river. Helen loved the absolute. Leonard had been ruined absolutely, and had appeared to her as a man apart, isolated from the world.... She and the victim seemed alone in a world of unreality, and she loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an hour."

Notice the last five words—"perhaps for half an hour": that is the secret of E. M. Forster's greatness. He plays the game with the gloves off, he strips bare all the fopperies and artificialities of the world. All these characters have to learn how entirely different from the formal codes they are brought up to believe are the real codes of existence. Listen to Helen:

"'I want never to see him again, though it sounds appalling. I wanted to give him money and feel finished. Oh, Meg, the little that is known about these things.'"

Listen to Margaret's attitude when she finds out that her husband has been unfaithful.

"Now and then he asked her whether she could possibly forgive him, and she answered: 'I have already forgiven you, Henry.' She chose her words carefully, and so saved him from panic. She played the girl, until he could rebuild his fortress and hide his soul from the world. Whenthe butler came to clear away, Henry was in a very different mood—asked the fellow what he was in such a hurry for, complained of the noise last night in the servants' hall. Margaret looked intently at the butler. He, as a handsome young man, was faintly attractive to her as a woman—an attraction so faint as scarcely to be perceptible, yet the skies would have fallen if she had mentioned it to Henry."

It is into Margaret's mind that E. M. Forster puts the ideas that take pride of place inHoward's End.

"Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going."

"It was hard-going in the roads of Mr Wilcox's soul. From boyhood he had neglected them. 'I am not a fellow who bothers about my own inside.' Outwardly he was cheerful, reliable, and brave; but within, all had reverted to chaos, ruled, so far as it was ruled at all, by an incomplete asceticism. Whether as boy, husband, or widower, he had always the sneaking belief that bodily passion is bad, a belief that is desirable only when held passionately. Religion had confirmed him.... He could not be as the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a little ashamed of loving a wife.... And it was here that Margaret hoped to help him ...only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."

If we demand of modern novels that they should portray human character exactly as it is and that the author should have a definite standpoint for his philosopher oflife, one need quote no further to prove that inHoward's Endthese two desirable factors are to be found in profusion.

Mr E. M. Forster is a conscious artist of a very high order and our only quarrel with him is that he writes too little.

We read Sheila Kaye-Smith because she alone among the women writers of to-day writes with the sure touch of a man. This is not to decry other writers of her sex of the stamp of Clemence Dane (though there are very few good women novelists): it is that Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith has a masculine strength; her narrative flows strongly, she has an uncanny knowledge of and kinship with the elemental things of the soil.

We read her for her breadth of outlook, her sense of the beauty of the Sussex that she has made hers as much as Thomas Hardy has made Wessex his, for the dignity and excellent music of her English prose style. She has an accurate sense of history and can with equal ease place her characters at the beginning as at the end of Victoria's reign.

Her dialect (all her novels are full of dialect) is accurate if at times a little literary: there are too many "howsumdevers," "dunnamanys," "vrotherings," "spannelings" and "tediouses," but this is a very little blemish.

Her strength is seen fully fledged inSussex Gorse, in the picture of Reuben battling with the forces of nature.

"He drank in the scent of the baking awns, the heat of the sun-cracked earth. It was all dear to him—all ecstasy. And he himself was dear to himself because the beauty of it fell upon him ... his body, strong and tired, smelling a little of sweat, his back scorched by the heat in which he had bent, his hand strong as iron upon his sickle. Oh, Lord! it was good to be a man, to feel the sap of life and conquest running in you, to be battling with mighty forces, to be able to fight seasons, elements, earth, and nature...."

He hates his son's poetic attitude, the boy who saw in nature a kind of enchanted ground, full of mysteries of sun and moon, full of secrets that were sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying. "It seemed to have a soul and a voice ... and its soul was that ... of a fetch, some country sprite."

But Reuben's hardness becomes his undoing: his hardness kills his beloved wife through overmuch child-bearing; his hardness sends one son to prison for stealing; his hardness makes him turn another son out of the house; his hardness, his strength, his remorseless nature left him to fight his battles with the land alone. He falls under the personality of Alice Jury, who was the first to ask him whether it was worth while fighting so hard to reclaim waste earth, to give up so much for the sake of a piece of land. "'Life is worth while,'" she says, "'in itself, not because of what it gives you.'

"'I agree with you there,' said Reuben; 'it's not wot life gives that's good, it's wot you täake out of it.'"

But in the wrangles which he had with this new type of womanhood he failed ever to convince her of the "worth-whileness" of his aim. Meanwhile through his excessive zeal Reuben had driven his youngest, weakling son to his death and continued to try to "draw out Leviathan with a hook." The cleverest of his sons regarded his father as a primordial gorilla, and Tilly, his daughter, despised him and married his enemy: his ambition drove him to make slaves of his children, and one by one they break the fetters and leave him. Alice tries to make him see reason.... "You don't see this hideous thing that's pursuing you, that's stripping you of all that ought to be yours, that's making you miss a hundred beautiful things, that's driving you past all your joys—this Boarzell...." Nearly, very nearly, he married Alice ... and she would have saved him. "She was utterly unlike anything there was or had been in his life, the only thing he knew that did not smell of earth. The pity of it was that he loved that strong-smelling earth so much."

She tells him that she would fight his schemes to the end, in love with him as she is: she would never beguile him with the thought that she could help him in his life's desire ... but she called him, as no woman had ever called him, with all that of herself which was in his heart, part of his own being, and she was within an ace of winning: she was in the act of crossing to where he stood waiting with outstretched arms when he caught sight of Boarzell lying in a great hush, a great solitude, a quiet beast of power and mystery. "It seemed to call himthrough the twilight like a love forsaken. There it lay, Boarzell—strong, beautiful, desired, untamed, still his hope, still his battle." So he turns his back on love and goes back to his lone fight with Nature. Almost immediately afterwards he meets Rose, tall, strapping, superbly moulded, animal Rose, free with her kisses, and experienced and energetic in love: he marries her: she wanted Reuben's love and she got it. "She was a perpetual source of delight to him! Her beauty, her astounding mixture of fire and innocence, her good humour, and her gaiety were even more intoxicating than before marriage. He felt that he had found the ideal wife. As a woman she was perfect, so perfect that in her arms he could forget her shortcomings as a comrade." She smoothed away the wrinkles of his day with her caresses, gave him love where she could not give him understanding, heart where she could not give him brain. She made him forget his heaviness and gave him strength to meet his difficulties, of which there were many. But she wanted no children, and Reuben had set his heart on more. She spent much money on the fastidious care of her person ... so that he "sometimes had doubts of this beautiful, extravagant, irresponsible creature." Gradually he came to realise her uselessness, but when one more grown-up son ran away to sea Rose bore him a child, and her rich near relative died and he began to think that his luck was in. Unfortunately this relative of his wife's left all his money to an illegitimate son of whom no one had ever heard, and the fortune that Reuben had expected to inherit by marrying Rose fell elsewhere.

Shortly after this Rose finds the thirty years' difference between herself and her husband too much for her and she allows herself to love his foreman. Reuben locked her out of his house late one night when she had been out with her lover, so she has no alternative but to go off with him and leave Reuben in the lurch once more. He turns again to Alice: "'Wot sort o' chap am I to have pride? My farm's ruined, my wife's run away, my children have left me—wot right have I to be proud?... She deceived me. I married her expecting money, and there wur none—I married her fur her body, and she's given it toanother.'" This love of Alice Jury's had nothing akin to Naomi's poor little fluttering passion, or to Rose's fascination, half appetite, half game. Someone loved him purely, truly, strongly, deeply, with a fire that could be extinguished only by death or ... her own will. He is sorely tempted to give up his ambitious struggle—all his great plans had crumbled into failure. "Far better give up the struggle while there was the chance of an honourable retreat. He realised that he was at the turning-point—a step further along his old course and he would lose Alice, a step along the road she pointed and he would lose Boarzell.... His mind painted him a picture it had never dared paint before ... comfort ... his dear frail wife ... himself contented, growing stout, wanting nothing he hadn't got, so having nothing he didn't want...." But he turned his back on this with a shudder. Boarzell was more to him than any woman in the world.... Through blood and tears ... he would wade to Boarzell, and conquer it at last. Alice should go the way of all enemies. "And the last enemy to be destroyed is Love." So he tore women out of his life, as he tore up the gorse on Boarzell. Caro, his sole remaining daughter, then gives herself to a sailor and goes off with him as his mistress. She felt very few qualms of conscience, even when the barrier was past which she had thought impassable ... her life was brimmed with beauty, unimaginable beauty that welled up into the commonest things and suffused them with light. Also, about it all was that surprising sense of naturalness which almost always comes to women when they love for the first time, the feeling of "For this I was born." Sheila Kaye-Smith has a wonderful gift for depicting the passion of true love in the most beautiful manner.

"She never asked Dansay to marry her. He had given her pretty clearly to understand that he was not a marrying man, and she was terrified of doing or saying anything that might turn him against her. One of the things about her that charmed him most was the absence of all demand upon him."

But she is remorseless as Nature herself in her processes. A hundred pages later we see her own young brothers attempting to "pick her up" on the Newhaven Parade.She has become a third-rate harlot, a bundle of rags and bones and paint.

"'I'm not happy, but I'm jolly. I'm not good, but I'm pleasant-like.... Mind you tell father as, no matter the life I lead and the knocks I get, I've never once, not once, regretted the day I ran off from his old farm.'"

The Boer War claims his youngest sons and Reuben is left alone at Odiam, except for his brother Harry, who grows more shrivelled, more ape-like every day. "Reuben was not ashamed at eighty years old to lie full length in some sun-hazed field, and stretch his body over the grass, the better to feel that fertile quietness and moist freshness which is the comfort of those who make the ground their bed."

In the end we leave him victorious: out of a small obscure farm of barely sixty acres he had raised up this splendid dominion, and he had tamed the roughest, toughest, fiercest, cruellest piece of ground in Sussex, the beast of Boarzell. His victory was complete. He had done all that he set out to do. He had done what everyone had told him he could never do. He had made the wilderness to blossom as the rose, he had set his foot on Leviathan's neck, and made him his servant for ever.... He knew that not only the land within these boundaries was his—his possessions stretched beyond it, and reached up to the stars. The wind, the rain, dawns, dusks and darkness were all given him as the crown of his faithfulness. He had bruised Nature's head—and she had bruised his heel, and given him the earth as his reward.

"'I've won,' he said softly to himself—'I've won—and it's bin worth while.... I've fought and I've suffered, and I've gone hard and gone rough and gone empty—but I haven't gone in vain. It's all bin worth it. Odiam's great and Boarzell's mine—and when I die ... well, I've lived so close to the earth all my days that I reckon I shan't be afraid to lie in it at last.'"

There is a sense of complete unity, of complete mastery in this long novel that is lacking in nearly all other modern novels. It is a very high achievement for any author; for a woman it is amazing. Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith has given us the inside workings of a rough man's life from his earliest youth to his full four-score years: the secrets ofthe soil lie bare before her scrutiny, and both in characterisation and in descriptive power she shows a power which is nothing short of genius.

All her books deal with a mighty conflict between a man's tugging desires. InTamarisk Townthe conflict is between a man's love of a woman and his ambition to build and develop a seaside town. InGreen Apple Harvestthe conflict lies between a man's love for a woman and his soul's salvation. It is in this last novel of hers that we get perhaps Sheila Kaye-Smith's most telling descriptions.

Passages of this sort abound:

"The moon was climbing up above the mists, and among them huddled the still shapes of the sleeping country, dim outlines of woods and stacks and hedges. Here and there a star winked across the fields from a farmhouse window, or a pond caught the faint, fog-thickened light of the moon. There was no wind, only a catch of frost on the motionless air, and the mist had muffled all the lanes into silence, so that even the small sounds of the night—the barking of a dog at Bantony, the trot of hoofs on the highroad, the far-off scream and groan of a train, the suck of all the Fullers' feet in the mud—were hushed to something even fainter than the munch of cows on the other side of the hedge."

Or this: "The mists had sunk into the earth or shredded into the sky, and the distances that had been blurred since twilight were now almost frostily keen of outline and colour. The air was thinly sweet-scented with the sodden earth, with the moist, golden leaves, with the straw of rick and barn-roof made pungent by dew."

Robert Fuller of Bodingmares falls in love with Hannah Iden, a gipsy, who is not so easy to conquer as the other girls he had made love to.... "'I want her, Clem,'" he says to his brother. "'She's lovely ... her mouth makes my mouth ache ... she smells of grass ... and her eyes in the shadder—they mäake me want to drownd myself. I wish her eyes wur water and I could drownd myself in 'em.'"

Eventually she gives in to his importunity.

"'I love her,' said Robert, 'not because she's sweet, but because I can't help it; surelye ... she'll let me love her—that's all I ask. All I ask is fur her to täake me and let me love her.... She döan't want a boy to loveher—she wants a man.... Hannah wurn't born to mäake men happy—she wur born to mäake them men.'"

Clem, the young brother, is unhappy about Robert and confronts Hannah, who retorts: "'You're afraid of me because I've taught your Bob how to love, as none of the silly, fat young girls in this place have taught him.... I could teach you how to love, little hedgehog, if I hadn't your brother for scholard.'"

"For long afterwards her shadow seemed to lie on the dusk—on the wet gleam of the road, on the twigs and spines of the thorny hedges, on the clear sky with its spatter of yellow rain. Yet it was not her beauty which defiled, but the cruelty in which it was rooted like a rose-tree in dung.... Her crude physical power would not have disgusted him if it had had its accustomed growth out of a healthy instinct.... She was like the bitter kernel of a ripe, sweet fruit—she was the hard stone of Nature's heart...."

All the same she contributed to Clem's own manhood, for it is not long after that he holds his own sweetheart Polly, despite her struggling, and loves her like a man at last with a passion that is not free from fierceness. So he at any rate achieves his happiness in marriage and becomes Polly's "dear Clemmy ... his sweetness and gentleness were fundamental—a deep gratitude stirred in her heart, making her take his dark, woolly head in her hands and kiss it with the slow, reverent kisses of a thankful child, and then suddenly find herself the mother with that head upon her breast."

But Robert finds no such happiness with his gipsy love.

"'Nannie, you're cruel—I can't mäake you out. You let me love you, and I'm full of heaven, but in between whiles you're no more'n a lady acquaintance.'"

To which she replies: "'I'm not one of your Gentile rawnees who loves and kisses all day and half the night.... I love when I feels like it, and I bet I give you more to remember than any silly fat girl in these parts....'"

He has to take her on her own terms ... but she loves his bulk and beauty, and on this occasion she yields and her hardness melts into his passion "as a rock melts into a wave."

But she goes away, and betrays him by marrying one of her own kind and so drives Robert almost out of his mind.

As a reaction he turns to Mabel, an anæmic, town-bred, artificial type of girl who imparted to his "flagging taste a savour as of salt and olives."

"She brought the atmosphere of streets and shops and picture-houses into the stuffy little parlour of a country cottage.... After his country loves, it excited him to touch the novelty of a powdered skin—Mabel's powder and scent were part of a new and very gripping charm...."

"It was June when Hannah came back. The hay had been cut in the low fields by the river, but the high grounds were still russet with sorrel and plantain, and sainfoin waiting for the scythe. The lanes were dim with the warm dust that hung over them and mixed with the cloud of chervil and cow-parsley and fennel that filmed the hedges, making with it a sweet, stale scent of dust and flowers. Down by the watercourses the hawthorn had faded, and the meadowsweet sicklied the still air that thickened above the dykes and at night crept up as a damp, perfumed mist to farmhouse walls."

Suddenly Robert makes up his mind. To forget Hannah he decides to marry Mabel, and does so. "She was a lovely little girl, with her soft, powdered skin and her fluffy hair and her dainty ways." But she does not take kindly to her new life.

"Lying there in bed, in her flimsy, town-made night-gown, staring at the black, star-dazzled sky, listening to the sough of the reeds and the moan of the water ... she would feel strangely and terrifyingly lonely ... the common, homely fields seemed to take on a savage remoteness ... even the man at her side, so familiar and commonplace to her now, by day her playfellow and companion and master, now seemed to take his part in the strangeness of it all ... he belonged to this dark, unfriendly country, he was part of its clay; it had worked itself into him, his very skin smelt of its soil."

She gets jealous lest he should still hanker after his early love, and she taunts him with it. A frequent drinker, one night he returns drunk and has an accident: he is rescued by a frenzied zealot, who frightens him by depicting the terrors of hell and tries to save his soul, with the result that when he is well again he tramps round the country-side trying to convert all those who are not yet "saved."Mabel somewhat naturally looks on his phase as evidence of lunacy. He gives up smoking and drinking and looks on himself as one of God's chosen.

"'I'm säafe, I'll never go in fear of hell no more.... When I think wot I wur—a very worm and no man, as the Scriptures say—and then I think how He has accepted me.... I reckon I'll give all my life to Him, to serve Him and love Him, and reckon as I'll never drink nor smoke nor grumble at Mabel as long as I live.'"

But Clem and Polly are not satisfied about him.

"'I can't help wishing,'" said Polly to her husband, "'as he hadn't got hold of such a Salvation sort of religion—I can't help thinking as he'll find as much trouble on his way to God as ever he found on his way to the devil.'"

People certainly liked him better as an "honest sinner."

"'Wotsumdever ull Bob do next? That's wot I'd lik' to hear,'" said Mary; "'fust it's a woman, and then it's drink, and then it's the devil, and then it's God: reckon he's tried every way to disgrace us as he knows.'"

"'I thought I'd married a man,'" is Mabel's thought, "'and now it seems I've married a Young Man—a Young Man's Christian Association.'"

Robert's love for her became more diffident and beseeching, for its glamours and ardours she had no response, for its doubts and hesitations she had nothing but contempt. "'I believe you'd make me as big a fool as yourself, if you could,'" she said. The people in the district get to the point where they "'wöan't täake any more preaching from a chap wot's bin a byword in the Parish fur loosness this five years.'" So Clem tries to make him "höald his tongue," but he has come to look upon himself as an apostle sent to the Gentiles, so he becomes a tramping Methodist, like the hero of Sheila Kaye-Smith's first book.

"On a warm March Sunday, when the hedges were brushed with green bloom, and the willow catkin made creamy splashes in the brown of the woods, Robert went off to Goudhurst."

Getting tired with his long walk, "he suddenly felt that it would be good to turn out of the lane, and lie down on the earth-smelling grass of one of those big, quiet fields, just where the shadow of the hedge was lacy on the edge of the sunshine ... to smell the earth, and feel its sweet, livingstrength as he lay on it ... while round him the primrose leaves uncurled, and the spotted leaves of the field orchid broke the green film of their bract, and the warm daisies breathed out a scent that was the caught essence of spring heat and honey ..." but he pulled himself up short ... this was the devil tempting him. "He distrusted a yearning for the beauty of the fields ... of old times he used never to think twice about the country—but since his conversion he had had ... temptations to turn to mere beauty." The conflict in his mind affected his preaching powers adversely. In the evening he meets a tramp whom he turns from the drink and is seduced by him into sleeping out of doors. "A strange, sweet peace had dropped upon him at last—he had forgotten the rubs and humiliations of his Sabbath ... but he did not sleep till nearly dawn. The night seemed awake ... it was full of a living scent of earth and grass, which mixed strangely with the musty dry scent of the hay. There was a continual flutter and whisper in the hedge, queer muffled sounds came from the next field ... he slept just when the rich blue of the darkness was turning grey."

Mabel was furious with him, but he continued his irregular ministry. "It belonged to the casual nights he spent under the stars—soft purple nights of June, when the horns of the yellow moon burned above the woods, and the air was warm, and thick with the smell of hay. He associated it with the sweet, straggling sunlight of late afternoon or early morning, with village wells, and cool deserted lanes ... he made no wonderful stir among the people, either for good or evil." He was not stoned at the cross-roads, any more than he was thronged by repentant sinners.

These accounts of his wanderings through Kent and Sussex give Sheila Kaye-Smith a chance to describe more wonderfully and in greater detail than elsewhere the beauties of the nature that she knows and loves so well. In the end he falls in again with the gipsies, and is enticed by them to wrestle with Hannah, his first love, for her soul. He is at first averse from undertaking it: in the end, of course, he does.

"'Oh, Nannie,'" he said, "'God loves you. He's never stopped loving you once, for all you've turned against Him, and the cruel things you've done——'"

Then he knew that he was merely declaring his own lovefor her, and calling it God's.... He fell on his knees before her, and taking her in his arms, covered her face with kisses. Her husband immediately appears and threatens to blackmail him: "'This is a fine Gospel, and a damn-fine Gospeller.'" He suggests that five pounds might seal their mouths and then——

"'I call five quid nothing for what you've done,'" said Auntie Lovel. "'The other gentleman had to pay ten, and he scarce got hold of Hannah properly....'"

Robert at last sees the trick and nearly kills Hannah's husband, as a result of which he goes to prison, and Mabel seizes the opportunity to go back to the seaside. When he is released from jail Robert goes to live with Clem, a broken man.

"'Sims to me,'" says Polly, "'as Bob's life's lik' a green apple tree—he's picked his fruit lik' other men, but it's bin hard and sour instead of sweet. Love and religion—they're both sweet things, folks say, but with Bob they've bin as the hard green apples.'"

Robert goes to see Mabel and discovers that she wants to cut him right out of her life, and he decides to kill himself. He goes out in the dead of night to do it ... and finds at last that the love of the soil is too much for him. "The mistrusted earth had been his comfort all through that wonderful year.... Memories came to him of footprints in the white dust of Kentish lanes, of big fields tilted to the sunset, of ponds like moons in the night, of dim shapes of villages in a twilight thickened and yellowed by the chaffy mist of harvest, of the spilt glory of big solemn stars, the mystery and the wonder of sounds at night, sounds of animals creeping, sounds of water, sounds of birds.... The fields and the farms and the sunrise were calling him ... 'I am your God—döan't you know me?... Didn't you know that I've bin with you all the time? That every time you looked out on the fields ... you looked on Me? Why wöan't you look and see how beautiful and homely and faithful and loving I am? I'm plighted to you wud the troth of a mother to her child. You lost Me in the mists of your own mind.' ..."

Once more he is converted. Full of his new Salvation he hastens to enlighten Clem.

"'But now I see as how He's love ... and He's beauty....He's in the fields mäaking the flowers grow and the birds sing and the ponds have that lovely liddle white flower growing on 'em....'" Again he decides to convert the world despite Clem's protests. "'You can't go every time you're convarted preaching the Gospel about the pläace.'" But he goes ... and Hannah's husband stirs up the roughs to duck him in a mill pond: they are more thorough than they mean to be and he dies of his injuries.

'"I've a feeling as if I go to the Lord God I'll only be going into the middle of all that's alive ... if I'm wud Him I can't never lose the month of May.'"

And the last words are fittingly left to Clem and Polly. "'He wur a decent chap, Poll ... he wur a good chap, the best I've known.'

"'Surelye,' said Polly, 'if Bob had only had sense he might have come to be a saint and martyr—who knows? He had the makings of one; but he had no sense—if he'd had sense he'd be alive now.'

"'Reckon he did wot he thought right.'

"'That's why it's a pity it wurn't sense.'"

This study of a man strange, dignified, real and crystal-clear is not likely quickly to perish. Those who have any trace of the passion for the soil that possesses nearly all the characters in Sheila Kaye-Smith's books, and most Englishmen have it in some degree, will not need to look for any further reason why they should read her novels. All lovers of pure art, all lovers of Nature, all lovers of humanity will find in them satisfaction hardly to be found elsewhere in fiction.

Back to Index Next