Part 8

Literature and the journalist do not always rub shoulders nowadays; at all events few people look to find anything claiming to be prose in the misprinted, smudgy sheets of our raucous evening Press, unless, perhaps, in newspapers published North of the Trent. So that it does not promise well to read in Mr Machen’s preface that his new book appeared seven years ago in one of the best-known London evening papers under the title “Confessions of a Literary Man.” It sounds like Mr Bennett all over again, and misgiving increases when he adds that the confessions were written to editorial order when he was a reporter. It is an old truth that Fleet Street has ruined more good writers than Fleet Street ever made. Only at a first glance does Mr Machen appear to be an exception, for in spite of the extraordinary quality and power of his present book, though it challenges comparison with Gissing’s best work and surpasses it in parts, Mr Machen is quite clearly not the writer he might have been. “Far Off Things” is one of the most entertaining and familiar books one remembers; a vivid autobiographical chapter, condensed and complete in much less than two hundred pages, but it is without that distinctive art that makes Mr Gosse’s “Father and Son” one of the great pieces of autobiography of this or any time, and it has not just that sense for the right word in the right place which knits language into abiding literature. He cannot wrestle with the conventional:—

Now winter has its splendours; but with what joy do we welcome the yearly miracle of spring. We and the whole earth exult together as though we had been delivered from prison, the hedgerows and the fields are glad, and the woods are filled with singing; and men’s hearts are filled with an ineffable rapture. Israel once more has come out of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

That is the prose of the best journalism, but not the prose of the man who is, first and foremost, expressing the pure content of his mind with all his mind’s power through the power of words.

But the real charm of the book lies elsewhere, chiefly in the zest with which he describes the places he has loved and the people he remembers, the curious, quiet anecdotes, his sense of poetry in all things, and, especially, his literary enthusiasms. Cervantes and Scott come into his range, and even De Quincey, who “wrote in the great manner because he thought in the great manner.” He is inspiriting about Carlyle, and there is a tone of voice meant for the detractors of that great man in the quiet statement: “I know not any man of these days that is worthy to dust Carlyle’s hat or to clean his pipe for him.” But the journalist comes out badly in that sentence. The best thing in the book is his description of the Strand as it was in the ’eighties, and there is a curious parallel with one of Mr W. H. Davies’ best poems when he writes of Gwent and Twyn Barlwm. He is equally happy proving that the Rosicrucians never existed as in describing the conventional garret of authorhood’s infancy, and there is one magnificent anecdote of a lesson in Welsh pronunciation:—

I said, “Yn oes oesodd”—from ages to ages. “That is right,” said my Welsh friend, “speak it so that it makes a sound like the wind about the mountains.”

And, as he says himself, the spirit of that sentence is very near to the heart of true literature. Mr Machen knows what true literature is. There is a good critic in the man who can define realism as “the depicting of eternal, inner realities—the ‘things that really are’ of Plato—as opposed to the description of transitory, external surfaces; the delusory masks and dominoes with which the human heart hides and drapes itself.” Though he is digressive he is never garrulous, even when he writes about food and drink, and he does that well enough to whet the reader’s appetite.

“Far Off Things,” if it is not a great book, is a book too good to be read lightly. It contains a great deal of wisdom and more than a little humour. The author throws out hints of a book yet to be written, in which hills and valleys, woods and rivers, sunrise and sunset will be described so that a story is suggested to the reader; something of Wordsworth’s method, and certainly a method of poetry, though Mr Machen does not seem to realise it in that way. Such a book he has in his mind, and if, when it comes, it improves on “Far Off Things,” Mr Machen will have done his work better than he knew.

[Sidenote: _Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury_]

Mr Arthur Machen is a modest man: he says so himself; but his modesty is of that most profitable kind—to the world, we mean, of course—which inspired Montaigne, Cowley, “Elia,” and other famous “egoists.” In “Things Near and Far” he continues the tale he began in “Far Off Things,” published a few months ago, the tale of his life, outer and inner, public and private. He is, it is increasingly evident, a man of letters, a complete man of letters, and nothing but a man of letters. The landmarks of his life are either one or other of his books, or one or other of the events out of which a book is to grow. He has a positive flair for making literary capital out of life. He is a very appreciative collector of experiences, and always has plenty to say on any point; he is fairly fertile in ideas, though no great thinker; and he is interested and can communicate his interest—even in his own books and the reviews they called forth. That notable modesty of his takes on, by the way, in presence of those reviews, an aspect too like self-complacency to leave us quite assured of his ingenuousness. There are, however, many books less worth 7s. 6d. than this.

[Sidenote: _Daily News_]

“Far Off Things,” by Arthur Machen. “Heaven lies about us in our infancy.” Nevertheless, few sensitive men recall a really happy boyhood. Mr Machen is one of them. The only child of the rector of Caerleon-on-Usk, in the romantic solitudes of Gwent, he looks back on his earliest days as a secluded yet intense experience. The power of association is strong; and the vein of mysticism which characterises Mr Machen’s writings both derives from, and is heightened by, the gleam of such fond recollection. With Sir Thomas Browne, he finds those years “a miracle ... which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry.”

We all know that the author of such diversities in unity as “Hieroglyphics,” “The Great God Pan,” and “The Bowmen,” is a thoroughly illogical and genial spirit. The incredibly genuine sense of wonder that runs through his excursions in practical journalism somehow prevents us from being irritated as we ought to be. His new book is good, if not a “piece of poetry.” We are glad to have his apologia, it is oddly convincing. It must be a great and unbalancing thing to find miracles all the way.

When Mr Machen writes of his studies, his early yearning for London, and the hard times he knew in the capital, it is in the same untroubled spirit. His temperament is unchanged through all these years. “Omnia exeunt in mysterium”—the thought brings him the mystic’s consolation. If one loves the unfathomable, why go about to probe it? Yet he demands realism from literature: De Quincey was his first idol by virtue of this possession. The old inference is made clear again. The mystic lives not in experience, but in the aura with which he encases it. To us others this way of acceptance is an illusion, an escape from the perplexed soul. But can we make anything better of life?

THE REFLECTIONS OF A MAN OF SELF-CONCEIT

[Sidenote: _The Boston Evening Transcript_]

An extremely pleasant philosophy harboured by literary folk of a certain class in regard to the stress of bread-winning is that there is monotony about such a humdrum occupation. It is not agreeable to work at something you hate when you long to be literarily productive. Nevertheless, despite Carl Van Vechten’s sympathetic explosions all over the yellow cover of this book, we wonder just how much self-respect and inclination may war with each other in a young man’s soul when the young man lives as Mr Machen did in his youth. A book called “The Anatomy of Tobacco” was an early effort. That achieved, he seems to have lived on his father, a clergyman who had no money. He speaks of the situation thus: “My mother had been a hopeless invalid for fifteen years; my father’s health had failed, and he had become very deaf; the poor living of Llanddewi Fach had grown poorer still through the agricultural smash of 1880; he was in dire and perpetual straits for money; he underwent most of the mortifications which are allotted to the poor. It makes me grieve to this day to remember with what piteous sadness he would lean his head on his hand; he had lost hope.”

Thus Mr Machen summarises his family’s situation financially. He does not appear to have been much comfort to his father. He speaks now of “grieving.” Better indeed if he had done a little honest work. He goes to London. He reads manuscripts for a bookseller. Some intelligent people like that sort of occupation. He calls it a “weary business.” In fact, this book is filled with complaints, constant, unstinted in their outgo, because he, Arthur Machen, could not do exactly what he wished to do, on all occasions. There is a good deal of what we might term the pseudo-classic touch to his style. He likes to pose as an intellectual deserving of immortality. He is not content to be one of our leading contemporaries. He prefers, as in one instance, to “abide by the verdict of M. Octave Uzanne, who is said, I believe, to be a good judge of letters. He said that it (a certain work called ‘The Chronicle of Clemendy’) was ‘le renouveau de la Rennaissance,’ and that I was sure of my place beside Rabelais and Boccaccio, on the serene immortal seats.”

We quote the above from Mr Machen because it is wholly typical of the man. Another remark in reference to George Moore’s “A Mummer’s Wife” shows his attitude toward the age in which he lives equally well. He complains because no good novel of stage life has been written. And then he adds that in the old days, the days of the Crummles Company, it would have been easier. That is nonsense. This age and generation is adequate for all, provided some effort at adaptation is made by those of us who have been too overburdened by the weight of the glorious past. A good novel can be written as well in the twentieth century as in the seventeenth, provided some one has the brains to compass it. The whole book shows the reflections of a conceited man of mediocre ability, who buries his talent in the ashes of the past, mumbles over it incessant Latin quotations, pats himself on the back because he knows so much Latin to quote and then ... is continually irritated because the world hurries by without digging into the ashes, or listening respectfully to his incantations.—D. F. G.

[Sidenote: Maurice Hewlett in _The Evening Standard_]

... “To be in the Strand,” he says, sighing, “was like drinking punch and reading Dickens.” So it was—but one can read Dickens the better without the punch, either within or without the pages. It was a strange chapter of literary history where human happiness could not be imagined or pictured without too much to eat and too much to drink. I will be sentimental with almost anyone, for the mingling of tears is as wholesome a vent as the chiming of laughter—but I cannot cry over the bad smells of yesteryear to save my life. When I remember Holywell Street I turn with thanksgiving to Charing Cross Road. It is nothing to write home about—but you can feel the wind in it. So much for that....

DOG AND DUCK

[Sidenote: Laurence Housman in _Now and Then_]

The brief essay is a friendly form of literature; it enables the writer to say zestfully just what is in his mind to say, and no more. The moment his zest diminishes he can leave off, and another day start fresh on a new subject. So, in small measure, it gives us the man, the natural everyday furnishings of his brain, the room he lives in, the mental paraphernalia with which his taste for life has surrounded him.

The brief essay is, therefore, a personal test of character. Its writer need not make you, or even wish to make you agree with his opinions, he may have that type of minority mind which prefers to annoy people; he may be unlovable, provocative, sceptical, superstitious—I could string you any number of unvirtuous qualities from which a good brief essay may be compounded—but he must be himself, he must be interesting, and he must have a point of view.

I have not the pleasure, or the pain, of Mr Machen’s personal acquaintance. I do not know whether I should like him; but I do know that he would interest me—that he is himself, and that he has a point of view. I think that often we should differ and sometimes quarrel, that his point of view occasionally invites as much ridicule as it casts on others, that it is now and then inconsistent. But the inconsistency is all of a piece with the character: he has a mind with a certain focus, outside which the view becomes blurred, perhaps a little distorted. It is the kind of mind which Mr Chesterton invented for himself, the better to attract attention to the good which God had given him: he has a mind credulous toward folk-lore and the past, incredulous toward modern history and science; but he does not explain why folk-lore should be believed and modern history rejected—beyond giving us a few instances where folk-lore has been proved true, and modern history proved false; as to which one need only say that the means for correcting modern history are more abundantly to hand than those for correcting folk-lore. He is a romantic, and has a romantic detestation for the impossibilities of Euclid, whom he therefore dismisses as unworthy of the wise man’s consideration. But I could be just as romantic in favour of Euclid, on those very same grounds. It is only by giving it impossible things to believe that Euclid provides the human brain with foothold for clear logical thinking. It is only, as Mr Chesterton might say, by accepting the impossible that man can attain to true belief. It is on those lines that theology has provided us with a spiritualised Euclid of its own: and only by believing in its impossibilities shall we ever get to eternal life—which in itself is to the human mind an impossible condition, unless miserable science, through the theories of Einstein, is now going to help us to accept it. It is quite possible to be as romantic in one’s acceptance of science as Mr Machen is in his acceptance of folk-lore.

But it is when Mr Machen is sceptical of human nature’s ability to recapture the good it has let go that I quarrel with him most. As surely as I could train an intelligent child to be superstitious about going under a ladder, so surely could I train it to enjoy the bracing and rhythmical exercise of the Morris dance, on which Mr Machen throws a black and a wicked doubt for which I do not readily forgive him.

This only means that in his twenty-eight essays, his _Dogs_ and his _Ducks_, Mr Machen has not always scored a complete “Duck,” and brought his point home with conviction. For the meaning of which I refer the reader to the first essay, which gives the book its unexplained title. But every one of them is interesting and attractive, even when provocative.

[Sidenote: _New York Herald_]

Some twenty-odd little essays by Arthur Machen have been gathered into a book carrying the title of the first essay, “Dog and Duck” (Knopf), on its cover. This singular combination refers to an ancient game that is still played in a Georgian setting in London, but before Machen gets through describing the game he takes the reader through a famous criminal trial of the eighteenth century. Carl Van Vechten says for the publisher that these essays are “in the Dickens manner,” but we found little of that savour in “Roast Goose” or “Martinmas” or “Christmas Mumming,” just the kind of subjects Dickens wrote about but in a so different manner and spirit. But, on their own merits, they make very agreeable reading.

[Sidenote: _Boston Transcript_]

This collection of rambling essays represents a late phase of its author’s work and presents an interesting contrast with some of the earlier books recently reissued as the result of the growth of a Machen cult in this country. The newer Machen is revealed as a less eccentric, healthier, but not less sensitive writer than the old. There is in “Dog and Duck” and its companion essays little trace of the author’s former prepossession with things occult and ghastly, while his more pleasing qualities as a writer are fairly well represented. When Machen writes with a gentle regret for things past or passing, such as old sports and old enjoyments, or the disappearance of the vulgar Valentine and the “fogs of yesteryear,” he is altogether charming.

A number of the essays have a satiric tinge, often sharply pointed and telling, as in “Simnel Cakes,” wherein Machen pays his respects to the professional etymologist, or “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with its observations of the development of the popular idea of a fairy. Elsewhere there is a good deal of matter that is trite and obvious, as when the author demonstrates that Shakespeare was a practical man of the theatre rather than a university “don,” or that the Victorians were not strait-laced on all occasions. Briefly, in a number of the essays one perceives the journalist writing to fill space. There is much in the book that will not enhance Machen’s reputation as a man of letters.

[Sidenote: _The Manchester Guardian_]

The suspicion which assails the reader who is familiar with the present state of the “first edition” market as he takes up Mr Machen’s new book of essays is very natural. In a note on the dust-cover is the announcement that the issue is limited to less than a thousand copies, and that the author has autographed a considerable number of them. This, taken in conjunction with the news from America that at the auction of Mr John Quinn’s library two first-edition copies of Mr Machen’s earlier works were sold at impressive figures, irresistibly suggests that one, at all events, of the immediate purposes of “Dog and Duck” has been to “catch the market.” If this be so, then the modern craze for book-collecting has for once been useful. The essays are selected from the author’s most recent journalism, and the reader will have rich enjoyment in them. A characteristic corn-cob atmosphere is created in the very first pages, describing with a quiet and mellow humour the ancient pastime of “Dog and Duck,” which is so simple, we are assured, that only a soft india-rubber ball and a garden surrounded by an unbroken path are needed; yet it takes a lifetime for the player to become an expert. Dissertations on valentines, simnel cakes, old port, the only good way to make chocolate, fogs in November, and Shakespeare, Bacon, collops, and astrology follow handsomely; and through them all we have ample evidence that Mr Machen has kept intact his creed that, in his own language, “it is the love of splendour—the splendid robe, the splendid word, the splendid picture—which constitutes the vital distinction between man and brute. Many beasts have reason, the faculty of using means for a certain end. But only man has art, which is the love of splendour and the desire to create it.” The wistful note introduced a year since into his “Things Near and Far” develops occasionally into a page-long phase of sighing ostentatiously and regretting angrily, for he cannot help remembering the glories of his own youth in London that are no more.—T. M.

[Sidenote: _The Times Literary Supplement._]

About most of the essays in Mr Arthur Machen’s “Dog and Duck”: A London Calendar et cetera, there is a graceful tenuousness which compares interestingly with the fiercer note of the other few. While he is gravely and reflectively tuning his discursive pen to the changing seasons of the year, he is grave, tenderly reminiscent, a trifle elderly. He discourses of the New Year and French influence in Scotland, of bygone valentines in February, of March and simnel cakes, of May and the decay of joy, of July and why young men row races at Henley, of roast goose in September, of first fogs in October, and so forth. These essays, with the charming account of the (we suspect) apocryphal game of Dog and Duck which constitutes the first, are nearly all in the wistful note which is characteristic of this author.

Mr Machen excels at the picturesque-peevish, when he complains that the joys which he knew in his youth are no more, that joy has vanished like the fogs and horse-omnibuses, that the race of Englishmen has perished to give place to a generation of inmates for a convalescent home. Then all of a sudden he flares up, and the hidden reason seems to be that some misguided doctor once tried to put Mr Machen on a diet: at all events the flare-up takes the form of violent diatribes against any interference in the name of science, health, or intelligence with the freedom of the stomach to indulge in wine, beer, stout, roast beef, kidneys, oysters, and other fleshly delights. At one moment he attacks poor old superseded Euclid under this inspiration, at another he satirically concludes that on scientific principles we had all better spend Christmas in gaol; and he will fire off a broadside at any moment against those who object to self-indulgence, who disbelieve in a primitive roystering Shakespeare, and who show any tendency to explain away anything at all. They hate life, says Mr Machen; but apparently he himself confesses to finding the actualities of life repulsive. One must get away from them somehow, then; young men do it by rowing themselves blue in the face, pure scientists by turning to abstractions, applied scientists by interfering with old ideas, and Mr Machen by imagining that he knew what Merrie England was like, somewhere about Caerleon in the day of Chaucer. Now he need never be dull, for he can revile the present in musical language.

[Sidenote: H. P. Collins in _The Outlook_]

Mr Machen has the one great requisite of a popular journalist: he holds the reader’s attention from the beginning to the end of his article, and holds it no longer. He is never dull; and he is never profound. To adopt a simile from the ingenious old game of “Dog and Duck” into which he initiates us: he brings his ball to rest between the chases without going to earth in “grounds” or “green,” scores five points or maybe ten—he never rounds the last corner and attains the Duck for a score of forty.