CLOAK AND SWORD

Evening Star, Issue 21717, 11 May 1934, Page 13

CLOAK AND SWORD

BOYHOOD ROMANCES THE GOOD THINGS GQHE HARRYAT AND HENTY I have been asked whether I cannot say something about “ the good old cloak-and-sword novel ” represented particularly by James, Grant (writes Allan Monkhouse, in the ‘ Manchester Guardian’). I can believe that many of my readers have never heard of such a person, and I may confess that I have not read 1 The White Cockade ’ and ‘ Mary of Lorraine.’ But 1 do recall that ‘ The Romance of War ’ was a prime favourite of the schoolboys of my time, though whether it was about the Battle of Waterloo or some earlier conflict I cannot remember. 1 thought that Grant Was extinct, but my correspondent, having read the hooks named above, asks for more. It appears that forty or more have been published—they have heartening titles such as * Bothwell ’ and ‘ The Yellow Frigate ’ -—but I suppose that, they are out of print. I fear that they belong to the ephemeral in literature; and war as a subject lor romance is a little out of fashion. Messrs Rontledge Will hardly see their way to a new edition of Grant’s novels; it Would, indeed, be a rash enterprise. Looking-backward, some sentimental regrets may be permitted. It is not only Grant that has gone. Where is G. I’. ;R. James? Or Harrison Ainsworth? If I am not mistaken Ainsworth was a Manchester man; at least, he wrote about Lancashire. He did not confine himself to cloak and sword, but his themes were Very different from those of onr Manchester authors of today, Messrs Tilsley and Greenwood and Halcott Glover give us the grim realities. They have done well, but it is some relief to have a fresh outlook in Mr T. Thompson’s new novel, ‘ Blind Alley.’ This is certainly not roses all the way, but it does give a proiid exposition of Lancashire's indomitable spirit. We nlay claim for it something of historical Value, though it is not quite the accepted type of history, interests of boys. There was a time when the historical novel was written very much in the interests of high-spirited boys. ' Have Lever’s novels endured any better than Grant’s? Where are ‘Charles O’Malley’ and ‘Tom Burke of Ours’? And what has become of Smedley,. who, I think, wrote three unwarlike navels much Valued by schoolboys? Captain Mayne Reid is now little’more than a name, and the great sequence of Marryat, Ballantyne, Henty, Strang is a memory. I used to know an old gentleman who swore by Scott and Jane Porter. Scott, of course, is another matter; Scott remains, and the solid volumes that contain him are carefully dusted every spring. He is a Colossus, an institution, a part of the scheme of things. If he bores us sometimes it is on a great scale; to depreciate or to decry chtild hardly make a difference. Let us suppose the unlikely case of a Scottish iconoclastic critic who spread the rumour that Scott is not so very good after all. This cotild not have the slightest effect on Scott’s statue in Princes street, Edinburgh. Scott cannot be downed, You might pliiy havoc with contemporary poets and novelists, but not with Scott and Burns. We may thank Heaven for that. Men of a lesser stature have to go. Even Stevenson has seemed a little shaky on his pedestal,, though I think 1 lie ,is worth all the cloak-and-sword school together. There is always Dumas; will not he do as well as James Grant? My correspondent should get on well with Stanley Weyman’s ‘ Gerttleinan of France ’; doubtless it is second-rate, but perpetual first-rateness is oppressive to modest folk. AWAY FROM YOUTH. I sympathise with iny correspondent; he wants to be a boy again, blit it can hardly be done. Arid new the boys are anxious to get away from boyhood—or is it only a pioneering minority of them ? The other day I heard of a boy of seventeen who had read ‘The Fountain ’ with avidity, and was looking out for Mr Charles Morgan’s next novel. I suppose I was reading Dickens at that-age and looking Upon George Eliot as an adventure. Perhaps we are to have a reversal of the usual processes; our boys and girls may concentrate on Proust and Henry James while we return to Dickens and Thackeray. Yet we shall hardly get back to the Levers and Grants or Oven, I fear, to Fenimore Cooper; there are boys who do not know who Hawkeye is. There are some people whose reading is a progress, who got through an author and pass on to the next. 1 do not envy their advance. When you become a man you may put away childish things, hnt 4 i think you should retain some communication with your old self and those who contributed to it. One could not conceive the possibility of a stupendous literature which* would sweep aside Wordsworth and Browning. Who wants to be born again? ROMANCE OF HISTORY. We may agree that not only rubbish has to go but the vast accumulations of the middling. Perhaps a few of the best specimens of the coak and sword may survive a little longer. They might be banded over to the cinema, but probably they have bad their turn there already. The historical novel and the historical film are having an innings now, and they attempt something beyond the cloak and sword. Perhaps their relation to history is not very close; perhaps modern criticism will lend to regard history as a chronicle which might receive many interpretations and is commonly confined to one ; the historian, when he is a man of character and strong will, lays a heavy hand on history. So possibly a romance of history might fluke its way to something more authentic than the current version. Perhaps some of the clok-and-sword episodes were very much like what occurred. Some day, perhaps, there will be romantic novels about Mr Bernard Shaw or Mr Baldwin, and these may be of the overcoat-and-umbrella school. It is too early for them yet, though Mr Max Beerbobm did introduce Mr Balfour as an affable member of a houseparty. It is customary to write semibiographical studies of famous living people, and it would be only a step farther to make them heroes of fiction. It would have to he high-class fiction, as the interest would concentrate on mental processes of some obscurity. Cloak and sword are but textile and metal, and the economic adventures of these may ho very interesting.