LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3557, 16 May 1922, Page 54

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES. ‘The Oppidan.” By Shane Leslie. London : Ohatto and Windus.

“The Oppidan” is primarily a book for old Etonians; secondarily one for all who may be interested in paining inner knowledge of one of the great English public schools which have played such a great part in training Englishmen for public life and in forming the standards of upperclass Englishmen. It is not a boy’s story, but in thl form of something between a chronicle and a novel gives a minute ac--count of Eton life as Eton was in the years 1899-1904. Those were the days of Hornby and Wane, of whom the author says in his preface, “It seems impossible that Eton can hold again the prestige of power she held under Hornby and Warre, who have themselves become legendary. To have been at Eton at the turn of the century was to drop into the mould which their rather narrow genius imposed on the school. Theirs was an Eton differing as profoundly from the Eton of Keate and Ilawtrey as from the Eton of the future. Following the feeble interregnum of Balston and Goodford, the school fell into the hands of two successive rulers, whose rule was that of the Philistine and Philathlete, but who, nevertheless, made modern Eton great.” Theirs was the ideal of the sane mind in the sound body, “an honourable tradition, but it levelled more than it elevated.” At the beginning of this century the influence of Warre’s rule showed itself fully. “No literary giants were bred. Arthur Benson and Bridges’ poetry, Rosebery and Curzon’s speeches, the novels of Robert Vansittart and Gilbert Frankau fill a lonely front rank. But, on the other hand, the great prizes of the State fell steadily to Eton. Etonians seemed to inherit the Empire their forefathers had made. Etonians were paramount in diplomacy, statecraft, and consulship. They were commanders of the army till the Boer War, which was the climax of Warre’s Eton. With the reign of Edward YII military and political power began to be more equally divided with other schools. The solid Eton phalanx which was returned to the Commons in 1900 was considerably dispersed in the Radical sweep of 1906'. After Roberts came no Eton marshal in the field, and Balfour sounded the knell of the long-held Eton Premiership.” Mr Leslie’s chronicle gives the history of the Eton life of a boy of exceptionally studious proclivities, Peter Darley, commencing with his arrival at the college. At the 1 entrance examination he scores, taking “remove” instead of the anticipated Lower Fourth, and soon is made to realise he has done a most unpopular thing. Schoolboys are the most conventional of human beings, the Eton variety appears to be conventional above all others, and one of its conventions classes the “ sap ” as a most despicable creature. Only in a few boys like Darley and Ullathome were native ' intellectual inclinations powerful enough to withstand this convention. Later on Peter confides his scholastic ambitions to a special comrade, apropos of the great question of Eton boating. “ I think I would rather get a Trials prize than a colour to begin with,” he confesses. “I would rather get the Newcastle than make a century at Lord’s.” S'ocston looked at him for a moment as a Mahommedan looks at a Hindoo. A faint ineffable disgust a,s of caste swam into his consciousness. Their friendship trembled in the sudden balance. As a successful runner and a growing favourite, he knew he had every right to despise and relinquish this queer boy, who was not above confessing such odious taste on Windsor bridge.’’ In his desire to tell fully everything about the Eton of his day Mr Leslie is sometimes open to the charge of prolixity ; nevertheless there are lively interludes, and the characters of housemasters, tutors, boys, and the various subsidiary officials have the air of being drawn from life, as presumably they are. Regarded as a novel the book is scarcely a success, but it has the interest of a document preserving knowledge of an Eton which is rapidly being transformed, or, indeed, as the author says, has alreadv passed away. “Since Cezanne.” By Clive Bell. London : Chatto and Windus. This is a book for artists and art connoisseurs, consisting of essays on modern artists and modern art theories which have previously appeared in various British literary and art journals. To read the book with full comprehension obviously demands knowledge of art and particularly of recent art developments, and among the comprehending there will doubtless be diversity of judgment as to the cogency of Mr Bell’s artistic pronouncements. But to all who do read them these essays will be interesting; Mr Bell writes with a brilliance that commends his work to those possessing a literary sense. The artists whom Mr 801 l writes about are chiefly French, but one contemporary British painter, Duncan Grant, is given high praise. His works, says Mr Bell, have been little exhibited, so he is almost unknown to the public. Eight illustrations in black and white are given, each being a reproduction of a work of one of the artists dealt with. Cezanne was a French artist of the latter half of last century. He began his career, says Mr Bell, as an impressionist, but gradually came to think that the Impressionists were wrong ; that their work was flimsy and their theory misleading, that they failed to “realise.” He was a painter and nothing else; lie had no notion of being anything else, and the whole of him went into his painting. It is characteristic that he played the part of deserter during the. Franco-Prussian War. “Pendant la guerre f'ai beaucoup travaille sur le motif a l’Estaque,” said he later to an inquirer. Renoir is confidently pronounced by Mr Bell to be the greatest painter of our days ; he died after the

essay on him was written, aged 78. Mr Bell is absolutely decided as to the superiority of modern French art over British. “To talk of modern English painting as though it were the rival of modern French is silly. _ At any given moment the best painter in England is unlikely to be better than a first-rate man in the French second class. Whistler was never a match for Renoir, Degas, Seurat, and Manet, but, with Steer and Sickert, may profitably be compared with named 1* rench artists of the second order.” The British art lover may place more reliance on this pronouncement since Mr Bell shows himself no indiscriminate French worshipper. In general, he says, the French show a singular incapacity for comDrehending and appreciating what is not- French. “They a Pply to all things the French measure, they have no universal standards, and, what is worse, they take for such their own conventions.” This narrowness is shown especially in literature. “To read a I rench critic on Shakespeare or Ibsen or Dostoevsky or Goethe is generally a humiliating experience for one who ioves France. As often as not you will find that he is depending on a translation. It seems never to strike him that there is something ludicrous in appraising nicely thp qualities of a work written in a language one cannot understand. Rather it seems to him ludicrous that books should be written in any language but his own, and until they are translated for him they do not exist.” One chapter is on negro sculpture—mostly in wood,—which °is highly praised. But it seems that this native art is now moribund owing to European influences. Mr Bell is very contemptuous of sentimental and “literary” pictures (the latter term implying apparently pictures where the subject and its significance are the chief things considered) instead of the purely sensory qualities of form, colour, composition, and handling. It is an old quarrel. Mr Bell’s is the “art for art’s sake” view, while the ordinary picture lover demands sentiment and what he considers good rendering of a subject worth treating. Some of the essays, as those on Standards and on Criticism, are of general interest to an intelligent reader apart from his acquaintance with art. Mr Bell finds that a great danger of our day is its lack of standards—in manners and conduct as well as in art and literature. The war has been a main factor in causing this; but decline of standards had set in before. On the essential question of cogency of standards he is not quite consistent. Are there permanent values, or is everything relative, and aesthetic judgment a matter of individual liking? The function of the critic, says Mr Bell, is to point out what he likes, and explain why he likes it. The final pronouncement is’ in favour of definite standards, of knowledge rather than mere feeling. “One thing is not as good as another, so artists and amateurs must learn to choose. . . . The age of easy acceptance of the first thing that comes is closing. Thought rather than spirits is required, nualitv rather than colour, knowledge rather than irreticence, intellect rather than singularity, wit raher than romps, precision rather than surprise, dignitv rather than impudence, and lucidity above all things.” “The Love Match: A Play in Five Scenes.” By Arnold Bennett. Chatto and Windus. Mr Arnold Bennett appears to have abandoned novel-writing for the production of plays, of which several have been very successfully staged. This one is very slight in material, and its actors number only six. The chief characters are Hugh Russ, a millionaire, and Nina, who in the first scene is shown sitting alone in Russ’s study. He enters, puts on an air of forced geniality and good humour on seeing her, and the following dialogue ensues :—“Nina: ‘ You’re late.’ Russ: ‘lt's the first I’ve heard of it.’ Nina: “Look at vour watch.’ Russ tlooking) : ‘Well? Not a bad-looking watch.’ Nina: ‘You said you’d be back at nine,’” etc., etc. And Nina reveals that she has forgotten it is his birthday. The reader, or the spectator seeing the play for the first time, will probably assume that Russ and Nina are a married couple, and not so very lately married either. But Mr Arnold Bennett, to be quite un-Victorian and up to date, has thought it desirable to begin with an intrigue and a divorce. The two are lovers: Nina is a married woman. -4 s the leading motive of the plav is the divergence of masculine and feminine temperaments, the clashes between man and woman in domestic intimacy, one does not see why the pair could not have been introduced as husband and wife. An interval of 15 months takes place between the second scene and the third, in which Nina, having been divorced, appears as veritably Russ’s wife. Now she has ampler opportunities for displays of feminine inconsequence and meddlesomeness. She insists on Russ coming home early to meet her sister, and when he comes he finds that “to make his studv really comfortable” she has moved his desk from the nlace where it suited him and disturbed his telephone. By wav of teaching her a lesson, he feigns a sudden loss of fortune, and the foutr scene shifts into apartments on a scale conformable to the pretence. Finally things are cleared up ; Nina forgives the deception and Russ accepts her with all her imperfections on her head. Another modern touch is the end of the love affair of ,4nne (sister of Nina) in the discovery that her fiance is married, and has already served two years for bigamv. There are some pointed savings in the dialogues and a general up-to-date smartness throughout. The piece is lively enough, but its commonness of tone and moral vulgarity make one regret that Mf Arnold Bennett can give us nothing better in the way of contemporary drama.