The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1905. “UNEASY WRITING.”

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 13934, 16 December 1905, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1905. “UNEASY WRITING.”

The one reproach which the modern 'writer has to bring against Shakespeare is that the Bard of Avon was so gluttonous of good things than he practically used up all the available similes and suggestive ideas. In point of fact, any of us might have said exactly the same things as Shakespeare said, had it not been for his good fortune in being born before tbe rest of us. The case against the poet has found expression in the good lady’s complaint that sire, "could not stand Shakespeare; he was so full of quotations.” Of late yeans, however, we seem to have been getting farther and farther from Shakespeare, and there has arisen a literary school which has for its object tbe exploitation of tbe English language upon lines that would have made Shakespeare shudder. Of course, Shakespeare is still to blame, because he left practically nothing’'to be said in understandable language, and the poor author of the hour is obliged to have recourse to the fantastical' if he is to escape the obloquy of a charge of plagiarism; The search for newness has induced what a writer in " The Bookman 7 ’ terms the style of “ uneasy writing.” The main object of this style, he says, is to use words in .as -strained and forced- a sense as possible, and to make the simplest action or , episode an excuse for elaborate phraseology that might befit a world-shaking inch dent. As he observes, almost anything may be expected when the smell of coffee and bacon is described as " swaggering pompously round the corner.” As an instance of the futile striving after undue realism, the “Bookman” quotes the case of a modern novel in which the hero meets his "glorious lady ” in a woodland, and -as he approaches he sees that her eyes are fixed with tragic intentness on on© of the trees. In the language of the novelist, " she was pale, and her Tips were strained; she looked sick and helpless.” But there was no very grave tragedy Ln process. The simple fact ultimately unravelled itself, that the poor girl was fascinated by a cat which was stalking one of “ God’s own choristers,” a starling. The ordinary person would probably have thrown a stone at the cat; but that course would Have obviated the necessity for at least two paragraphs of interesting fiction. This particular lady was quite equal in her person to her conduct, by the way. Her eyes were “star performers,’ ’ her skin was " a covert -rose ’ ’ and her lips, even, when she did not bite them, always showed “ a sanguine red.” It was only natural >that "ropes of pearls” should bedeck her neck, -and that she should be dressed “meticulously” in rose-coloured chiffon, to which she added, with surely shrieking taste, scarlet geraniums and scarlet slippers. It is little wonder, therefore, that the hero was impelled to call upon her to "make a conscientious effort to be a trifle less adorable.” These are but extracts from a lat-ter-day love story, a novel which has quite a vogue, and which has been characterised by the reviewers as being both dainty and idyllic. But in the case of the equally popular romantic novel of tbe hour, the language becomes even more robust. In the “ Fool Errant,” for example, one of the characters is described as a " huge blotch-faced, tumble-bellied man . . . burly, bulky, ,blotched.” Another pretty definition .which is uttered by one of the characters is his description of his enemy as " You fisheyed, jelly-gutted, staring, misbegotten bottle of bile.” Those, who are not toe upset to proceed further will find a* truly-alarming description of a friar in a fury; "He Swore in Corsican, In Piedmontese, in Tuscan. He swore in Venetian; Ligurian, Calabrian, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabian and Portuguese. Ho shook his fists in my face, dangerously -near my astonished eyes; ho leaped at me gnashing his teeth like a fiend; he bellowed injuries, shocking allegations impossible to be proved, horrible guesses at my ancestry; he barked at me like a dog, bayed at me. on all fours; finally whirling his staff over his head he rushed at me as though to heat my-brains out.” But fcl;e waa-making is as nothing to the 1 love-making in the novel. When Virginia and Francis are at last united 1 in this wonderful book, Francis relates that “ She clung to me as if I had been a spar in some stormy sea wherein she drowned; she uttered incoherent cries; she gasped, sobbed, was clean distraught. "When I held nor, when I kissed her, she struggled like a caught bird, fought furiously, used her teeth, her nails. And yet -all the time she was caressing me with every diminutive, every sweet term of love which the most passionate people in tbe world can find as expression of their lovethought.” And this strenuous hero never let the grass grow under his feet. Ho was always doing something. Here are his own words: “ I had been thirtysix hours awake, had hid an everlasting farewell to a mistresej restored, or done my best to restore, a banished ’wife to her husband’s arms, shot a man, saved a virgin’s honour, made matrimonial advances, run for my life. Here was a good day and a half’s work.” Mr Maurice Hewlett has always been an offender in the matter of language, however, and it has to be admitted that the quotations are more startling in kolation than nney are in their proper places. Almost any chapter, not merely of the “Fool Errant ” but even of the "Forest Lovers,” the "Little Novels of Italy” and "Richard Yea-and-Nay” is almost unreadable in parts, and “The Queen’s Quair ” is marred by the same defect. All the English sentimentalists have at one time or other been affected by the desire for effective ’phrasing, but most of them recoveM^gfuickly.

Mr Hewlett, however, seems to bo, straining the language to breaking point. Americans distort the English language in a different way, but the effect is even, more terrible. Of course, with acknowledged stylists like Henry James almost anything is permissible. Mke Marie Corelli, again, after she had achieved fame, must have compelledl her printers to stock notes of exclamation instead of full points. It is the punctuation- that the lady writers abuse as a rule,. but the intention is the same. Tbe desire if always to make the matter appear striking. The habit is seen at itr worst in tbe daily papers, when, "purple patches” alternate withcrude impressionism and cruder realism.