CREATURES AND CREATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21627, 23 April 1932, Page 4

CREATURES AND CREATIONS

CHRONICLERS OF LONDON LIFE Mr Osbert Sitwell has recently been acting as the advocate of Charles Dickens. He advances the plea that it is necessary for a novelist, if he is to hold the attention of the public, to draw his characters a little more than life size, or to colour them more brilliantly than is the wont ot the realist. This is a plea for which we may or may not, according to our individual Judgment, find refutation m the work of other writers. No doubt it is a sign of Dickens’s triumph that the mention of his characters should cause the rude forefathers of the hamlet to i start out of sleep in the course of the penny reading. Never since the days of Samuel Richardson, when the news of Clarissa Harlowe’s triumph was actually received with the ringing of church bells in parts of England, has the popular imagination been swayed so powerfully ny a teller of tales. Our forefathers fought for possession of the paper-covered ** ments of “Oliver Twist’ and Da\u Copperfield ”■ with a ferocity and courage that is only equalled to-day by the customers at a .bargain sale. Dickens bewitched liis public, and it is Just because of this bewitchment that his character-drawing is suspect today. He was compassed about, not by a crowd of his fellowraen and women, but byli host of fantastic creatures, whom it was tho custom of our mothers and our aunts to depict upon the "borders of tablecloths, or for a more commercial uncle to limn upon the crockery from the sale of which he made one of those .comfort-, able Victorian fortunes. No doubt someone could inform us as, to the identity ot that anonymous genius who gave being to Ally Sloper, to Sunny Jim, or to those other heroic mammals in the realm of comic fiction and advertisement who. have done so much to brighten our civilisation, it we insist upon this side of the novelist s achievement we will necessarily belittle his work as a whole. Nevertheless, it is this element of showmanship in Dickens that deters many readers to-day. He attracts the sightseer in us. He encourages our faculty for make-believe.' He does not invariably convince us as to the actuality of his creatures. Later novelists have been able -io follow where lie has led the way with the big druinj and have proffered us studies of London life that render its essence with a greater fidelity. Every reader will have some name to advance in this connection.

Jerome and.de Morgan The present writer proposes to cite only two, Jerome K. Jerome and William de Morgan. There is irony in the thought that Jerome K. Jerome is known to the world as the author of “ Three Men in a Boat,” and that William de Morgan’s name is chiefly associated with ceramics in the Pre-Raphaelite afterglow. Jerome K. Jerome migrated from a clerkship in a railway office to the stage,, and thence onward to journalism. ■ Hires Men in a Boat ” and “ The Passing of the Third Floor Back ” brought him fame and a competence, but “Paul Kelver must have brought him the satisfaction; of knowing that he had rescued from oblivion a series of scones and faces tna are almost more actual than the components of a kiiicma picture, they arc idealised, but their humour and their pathos is never grotesque. There is one passage in which Paul Kelver, the man who wanted to he a painter of lifes tragedy, and had in the end to accept the role of verbal clown, actually encounters Dickens in Kensington Gardens. With the possible exception of Peter Pan, it is doubtful if this historic pleasaunce has ever served so well as a setting for_ a novelist’s theme. Dickens is old. and inclined to endorse Solomon’s saw concerning the making of books. Vhat does his great achievement amount to aftci all, They do not arrive at the conclusion of the whole matter, however, for over the carden is borne the melancholy cry or the keepers, “All Out,” a'cry you may still hear to-day amid all the increase of mechanical noises. London in Flux

Dickens was concerned with a London that you may cover in the course of two or three observation tours. Some of his London disappeared with the Old Ounosity Shop, when the destroying angel went in advance of the what is no longer the new highway between the Strand pnd Holborn. But Jerome and de Morgan write of a London in flux. Old \ancc-, the adventurous bricklayer turned builder, played his part the Reneraj metamorphosis, and played it to the life. It is strange that Old Vance has never come into his own with the reading public. He is as true to his type as Jess Oakrovd in “The Good Companions. We have actually met him, which is more than can be said of Mr Pickwick or Scrooge. Jess Oakrovd has been likened to Mark Tapley. There is no one in the whole population of the Dickens novels whom we may set beside Old Vance. lor his sake we suffer de Morgan s prolixities gladly. And even if there were no Vance Senior, there would be Vance Junior, and Lossie. Lossie has never been celebrated according to her merits. 1 erhaps it is as well. Dickens s creatui es suffer from the multiplicity of their admirers, and it is possible that ' Lossie might suffer likewise. So let her remain within the pages of that monumental novel which is the outcome of an old man s Indian summer. William tie Morgan had reached the allotted span when he tried his ’prentice hand at fiction. He had spent all hia life designing and producing pots and tiles in obedience to the call of William Morris. He fell ill and to allay Ins depression he began to write Alice tor Short.” He wrote upon any casual deposit of paper he could lay hands on. A washing list book was requisitioned among other things. Someone who knew’his way about the literary market read some ot the manuscript, and advised de Morgan to have it typed. Later the typist was found in tears, not on account of de Morgan’s caligraphy, but on account of his power to tell a story. “ Joseph \ ance followed the triumph of ‘ Alice for Short. It is incomparably a better book, he Morgan lived to write three other books at least, “When Ghost Meets Ghost, “Somehow Good,” and “It Never May Happen Again.” With respect of the latter Mr Punch expressed himself glad of the implied reassurance.. But the really significant thing about William de Morgan, whose portrait you may find on the right wall as you enter the studio in Leighton House, off Kensington High street is that he created old Vance. C. R. A.