LITERARY SURVEY

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 128, 1 June 1935, Page 24

LITERARY SURVEY

WEITEBS OF THE KEIGN

NEW ZEALAND'S QUOTA

(By Nelle M. Scanlan.)

Two New Zealand-born writers appear in the later groupings of Mr. Swinnerton's Georgian writers. Hugh Walpole, who was born and spent the first few years of his life in Auckland, where his father was curate, and Katherine Mansfield of Wellington. Katherine Mansfield is bracketed with her husband, Middleton Murry, in a list which includes E. V. Lucas, Edward Garnett, Ford Madox Hueffer, Max Beerbohm, and C. E. Montague.

Of Katherine Mansfield the author says: "She was a very fastidious person, a literary person, enamoured ol art. She was herself a simple person. But she tried hard, at one time or another, to be something a little more grandiose. . . . She was a good critic for a paragraph or two, with excellent darts of insight; when she became vague she possibly was inclined to guess. Inner tales, which are her most important work, there are many delicacies of touch and suggestion, and considerable felicity of style. She had a great eye for little things, for simplicities, and tenderness which touch and please the reader. It was not a robust talent, however; and ft was overweighted by an impulsive admiration for the tales of Tchehov. Katherine Mansfield's tales like Tchehov's were records of moods and sensitiveness; smaller moods, less generalised sensitiveness than Tchehov's, but authentic enough. At times they had a trembling beauty very pleasing to taste and.perception. .At other times they were fragilities. Occasionally thsy were sentimental. But she. was a charming, pathetic figure; and this she remains in her work and in her letters."

The author also gives a delightful personal sketch of Katherine Mansfield. "I found myself enchanted by a small, very slim, very dark girl who spoke in a carefully modulated _ murmur, hardly parting her lips, as if she hummed or intoned her words. She sat very still, smiling faintly, and explained in this low voice, with much sweetness, that she did not know, quite what she should do in the future— with her life, she meant, for the alternatives of children, literature, and a career seemed all to be possible . . . The beautiful idol-like quietness of Katherine Mansfield made a great impression on me then, as it always did, she was one of the most enchanting young women I had ever met." Of Middleton Murry, her husband, he says: "Murry has been lampooned in novels, has turned first Christian and then Christian Communist, and has been'one of the chief exponents of what is called psychological criticism, writing of Shakespeare, Keats, and Blake rather as Frank Harris wrote of Shakespeare in 1909, but with something less than Harris's fire. To myself, this kind of criticism is completely exasperating; it seems to me verbose, full of desperate.assumptions, completely unreliable, the application of false principles to the study of art. But it is in vogue at the present time, and it impresses all who in earlier days would have enjoyed bathing with God and Truth and Categorical Imperative in metaphysics, mysticism, and \>ther searches for the Absolute." PRE-WAR POETS. The pre-war poets mentioned in this book are Robert Bridges, W. B. Yeats, Walter de la Mare, John Masefield, James Elroy Flecker, and J. C. Squire, with a careful analysis of the work of each. • . ' ■ He says, "Yeats is not so much austere as pure, and riot so much difficult as lost in a . dream." "Walter de la Mare's poetry and his prose are the writing of a man who lives upon familiar terms with trolls and gnomes, toads and owls, as well as with fairies, ghosts, and smart society women. Such acquaintance is bound to influence a poet's inventions; and sure enough through much of de la Mare's work there passes the air of deserted houses, forgotten ghosts, and the chilling melancholy of tombs and tiread." Of James Elroy Flecker, he writes: "He was at all times, from youth onwards, a joyous and indefatigable talker, was no dreamer but one who had a thousand opinions upon the proper government of the world and the education best suited to the production of wise men, and from excessive readiness as a boy to versify upon every subject he gradually developed into a poet who united great self-disci-pline with a well-considered exoticism." "J. C. Squire," Mr. Swinnerton says, "had and has a drive and assertiveness which distinguishes him from other men, and his personal influence in the war years was so strong that by the end of the war he had great power in London critical journalism Poets of all kinds (excepting the revolutionaries) gathered about Squire during the war and when 'Georgian Poetry' had ended its series. He generously befriended them. ... As to Squire's original work, it is eloquent and vigorous, but not especially unfamiliar in sentiment diction. ... He is boldly sincere iand lacking in finesse) in both writing and speaking. It is to his sincerity and: determination that Squire owes his war-time and post-war dominance of the London literary scene, especially in the department of poetry.", VETERAN YOUNGSTERS. Some of the critics have been amused that Mr. Swinnerton should place under the heading "The Younger Novelists" Bose Macaulay, Sheila KayeSmith, Henry Handel Richardson, Oliver Onions, J. D. Beresford, Gilbert Cannan, Compton Mackenzie, Hugh Walpole, Francis Brett Young, and Mary Webb. To the "Modns" these are veterans. "Rose Macaulay is tall, slender to thinness, very pale blue eyes, fair complexion, and is a lady. .. . She has a strong moral sense, much scepticism, a g?*s»t dislike of those who are cruel, iou^htfes, stupid, and selfish. ... At /the beginning of her life she thought she could lecture these faults of mankind out of existence. Now she hopes -to ridicule them to death. But she has always been mature and wise." Of Sheila Kaye-Smith the author says: "She is more humane, or more pitiful, then her sister-novelist. She is not amused by follies, or exasperated by them, but seriously traces their rise and influence. On the whole, her vision of life is tragic. She is not sceptical, but a devout Catholic. ... I regard ber books as sound work, and I think they will always command respect from those to whom honesty is not necessarily synonymous with dullness."

Henry Handel Bichardson is an Aus-

tralian woman, wife of a doctor, both of whom have lived in Europe and in England. Her virtues as a writer, Mr. ■ Swinnerton states, are "Steadiness of vision and sobriety of judgment allied to very exceptional imaginative jiower. The touch is unerring." Compton Mackenzie is related to half the theatrical families in England. The author writes of him as being the most vivid personality of all novelists of. the generation young in 1910. "He is a raconteur, a mimic, a born improviser. He has the actor's gift for making any scene dramatically credible, and at the same time fantastically amusing. . . I think that Mackenzie gives so much of his talent to sportive conversation and then to a recital of the plans for future books, that the novels themselves, when written, invariably seem less brilliant. His work is colder than his talk. I think Mackenzie's books suffer from two things. One of these is a changed fashion; fqr Mackenzie belongs quite distinctly to his generation of Oxford which adored the poeticised phrase and a romanticised decadence. The other is his own conception of the novelist's obligation to entertain the reader." Hugh Walpole dallied with the idea of entering the Church before becoming a writer. Here is a'personal sketch of Walpole. "He is capable of great loyalty, ardent championship, candour; and at the same time bottomless suspicion, evasiveness and deep trouble of spirit. The cheerfulness is warrantably genuine; the morbidness is just as genuine; it is an essential characteristic of his work, in which there is a strain of terror as well as much jovial power to interest and amuse. He looks happy, his manner is full of bonhomie; he laughs readily and plunges into a room with massive energy; he talks well and with humour; he is extremely likeable." The author adds: "Apart from all question of post-war fashion,' Walpole has suffered in critical reputation by the popular success of his books. The shillingly fastidious, section of the critical public cannot endure to see an admired author taken to the arms of the mob. At the slightest hint of success it averts its head. Walpole has suffered from the averted head. I think Walpole must have been affected in literary reputation by the conflict between his desire to write well and his desire to: be, liked. Walpole is a professional novelist." Mr. Swinnerton adds here a pungent comment. "Since the war—the arts in that respect . having aligned themselves with sport—t>sre has been much horrified shrinking from professionalism in literature; it being thought that the antithesis of professionalism is quality. The antithesis of professionalism in literature, on the contrary, is dilettantism. No word is more damning in any art or craft than the word amateurish."