THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3610, 22 May 1923, Page 61

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

[All Rights Reserved.]

HALF HOURS IN A LIBRARY.

By

A. H. GRILLING.

lx— ON ARTHUR MACHEN. The death of Lord Carnarvon in connection with the exhumation of the treasures contained in Tutankhamen’s tomb set me thinking and reading about superstition and the like, and among other books on the subject, I glanced at Mr Edward Clodd’s pamphlet on “Occultism.” I have a great regard for Mr Clodd, since in his “Memories’ 1 he recalls a side of London life in the late “sixties” and early “seventies” which I remember well. “In the matter of church and chapel,” says Mr Clodd, “my Sundays were usually well spent . . . friendship with Mark Wilks, Allanson Picton, Moncure Conway and Charles Voysoy drew me, as the phrase goes, to sit under them occasionally. To tell of this is to recall a time when the spacious Nonconformist chapels of London were crowded with eager hearers. There was then no need of posters or hoardings or of limelight shows to draw men and women to places of worship now kept going by these and other artificial attractions.” Mr Clodd tells us in these “Memories” that he was brought up most strictly and religiously, and was destined for the Baptist ministry; hut he evolved by way of Theism into the frankly agnostic position. To-day he may be regarded as the high-priest of an old-fashioned and almost outworn materialism, all the more uneomproimsing because of his early religious training. Accordingly it is not surprising to find J»lr Clodd contending that “believers in Occultism do not act as reasoning beings”; in support of which contention he cites iVir .nrthur Machen and his book, “The Bowmen.”

Both religiously brought up, a greater contrast than that presented by Edward Clodd and Arthur Machen can scarcely be imagined. Clodd was an Englishman, born at Margate; Machen, a Welshman, “born in that noble, fallen, Gaerleon-on-Usk in t'ne heart of Gwent.” In due time both young men gravitated to London; Clodd was 19 when Darwin published the “Origin of Species,’’ a reading of w.nch book, followed by “Essays and Reviews” in 1860 and “Ecce Homo” in 1865, did effectual work. “My waning belief in the Bible as in any sense a revelation,” says Mr Clodd, “was shattered by reading Jowett’s article on ‘The Interpretation of Scripture’ in ‘Essays and Reviews.’ ‘lnterpret it like any other book,’ was the counsel.” Acting on which advice and fortified by Huxley, Mr Clodd presently came to the point which impelled him to publish his wellknown work on “The Childhood of the World.’’ As his “Memories” reveal, Mr Clodd has spent his life in getting rid of the fairy stories which, in his opinion, have hindered the progress of mankind and clogged his onward footsteps, thereby dissipating what he deems the mists of superstition. How different with Arthur Machen. “The older I grow,” he exclaims, “the more firmly am I convinced that any thing which I may have accomplished in literature is due to the fact that when my eyes were first opened in childhood, they had before them the vision of an enchanted land.” To which ho adds :

I would lay stress on my doctrine that in the world of imagination the child is indeed the father of the man, that the man is nothing more than the child with an improved understanding, certainly, with all sorts of technical advantages in the way of information and in the arts-' of expression, but, on the other hand, with the disadvantages of a dimmed imaginative eye and a weakened vision. There have been a few men who have kept the awe and the surmise of earlier years, and have added to these miraculous gifts the acquired accomplishments of age and instruction; and these are the only men who are entitled to the name of genius. I have said already that in my boyhood and youth I was a deep and learned student of the country about my home, and that I always saw it as a kind of fairyland. And crossexamining my memory, I find that I have in no way exaggerated or overcoloured these early and earliest impressions. ... I came into a strange country and strange it ever remained with me, so that when I left it for ever there was still hills within sight and yet untrodden lanes and paths of which I knew the beginning but not the end. In pursuit of the argument that “believers in Occultism do not act as reasoning beings” Mr Clodd cites what be considers “a couple of familiar examp.es of common incapacity to judge of the value of evidence in the simplest mattea-s and of the power of credulity ” The first of the examples 'was the rumour so widely prevalent in 'August-September, 1914, of the arrival in England of a large number of Russian soldiers en route to the Western front. I heard the rumour in Edinburgh towards the end of August and talked with those who positively declarer! they had seen the Russians passing through Edinburgh by special train from the North cf Scotland going south. A fortnight later I saw posted in a bookseller’s window at Fort William a telegram from a man at Salisbury Plain, who stated definitely that the Russians ’ were there encamped. And only just before leaving London in October,’ 1914, on my return journey to New Zealand, was I able to ascertain officially that the whole thin? was a myth. Coupled with this Mr Clodd takes the legend of the Angelbowmen at Mens, who. led by St. George, aided in the retreat of the British troops, and in this connection he calls upon Mr Arthur Machen to give evidence; but Mr Machen’s evidence as cited by Mr Clodd is not exactly the same as that given by Mr Machen himself in his little book “The Bowmen.’’ The actual facts are similar, but the atmosphere by which

they are surrounded is very different, as might be expected from the differing temperaments of the two writers. Mr Machen says : This affair of ‘The Bowmen” has been such an edd one from first to last, so miny queer complications have entered into it, there have been so many and so divers currents and cross-currents of rumour and speculation concerning that I honestly do not know where to begin. My excuse for these pages must be this; that though the story itself is nothing, it has yet had such odd and unforeseen consequences and adventures that the tale of them may possess some interest. And then again there are certain psychological morals to be drawn from the whole matter of the tale and its sequel of rumours and discussions that are not, I think, devoid of consequence. It is worth while devoting some attention to Mr Arthur Machen, the man and his method of writing as throwing light on the reason why stories such as the Russians in England and the Bowmen at Mons, <*ain such wide credence and also as explaining the reason of the outburst of superstitions fears which followed Lord Carnarvon’s death. Mr Machen gives more than a glimpse of this in the preface he has written to “The Ghost Ship and Other Stories” of Richard Middleton. He dubs it “an extraordinary book,” and says that “all the work in it is full of a cux-ious and distinctive quality,’’ and he proceeds to analyse, the “secret of the strange charm” which the “Ghost-ship” possesses, and which he terms “the magic wand.” This preface should be carefully studied by those who desire to understand the attitude to life and literature adopted by men of the stamp of Arthur Machen, John Davidson and Algernon Blackwood, and which is at the antipodes of the strictly rationalistic standpoint of writers of the school of Edward Clodd. These conflicting attitudes or standpoints Mr Machen skilfully illustrates by two extracts from the stories of Middleton, the first from “The Story of a Book,” the second from “The Biography of a Superman” : He could not help noticing that London had discovered the secret which made bis intellectual life a torment. Ihe streets were more than a mere assemblage of. houses. London herself was more than a tangled skein of streets, and overhead heaven was more than a meeting place of individual stars. What was this secret that made words into a book, houses into cities, and restless and measurable stars into an unchanging and immeasurable universe? Possessed of an intellect of great analytic and destructive force, ho was almost entirely lacking in imagination, and he was therefore unable to raise his work to a plane in which the mutually combative elements of his nature might have been reconciled. His light moments of envy, anger and variety passed into the crucible to come forth unchanged. He lacked the magic wand, and his work never took wings above his conception.

Mr Machen insists, and this is the key note, to all that he writes, and constitutes the mp readability of his position, not only that the universe is a great mystery, but that it must necessarily remain a mystery, it will never be perfectly solved, since a perfect solution spells the end of the universe. This leads him to exclaim, in respect of “The Ghost-ship.” “I declare I would not exchange this short, crazy, enchanting fantasy for a whole wilderness of seemly novels, proclaiming in decorous accents "the undoubted truth that there are milestones in the Portsmouth Road.” He elaborates his theme in a couple of illuminating paragraphs : Man is so made that all his true delight arises from the contemplation of mystery, and save by his own frantic and invincible folly, mysteiy is never taken from him; it rises within his soul, a well of joy unending. Hence it is that the consciousness of this mystery, resolved into the form of art, expresses itself usually (or always) by symbols, by the part . put for the whole. Now' and then, as in the case of Dante, as it was with the great romance cycle of the Holy Graal, we have a sense of completeness. With the vision of the Angelic Rose and the sentence concerning that Love which moves the sun and the other stars, there is the shadow of a catholic survey of all things; and so in a less degree it is as we_ read of the translation of Galahad. Still the Rose arid the Graal are but symbols of the eternal verities, not those verities themselves in their essences; and in these later days when we have become clever—with the cleverness of the Performing Pig—it is a great thing to find the most obscure and broken indications of the things which really are. In othe-- words, Mr Arthur Machen is a true mystic, i>t ;;f how unlike the popular conception of a mystic. He lives in Tendon, with occasional escapes to his beloved Wales and his address is Carmelite House, where he occupies the exalted position as star w'riter’’ for the Evening News, for which journal he composes “articles on anything and everything that interes'ts his medieval mind.” In the course of a variegated career—his apprenticeship to journalism, after he left school at 17, extended over nearly thirty years for a racy account of which see “Far Off Things”—Mr Machen donned tho sock and buskin and for a while was a member of the Benson Shakespearean Repertoire Company. I have it on the authority of Mr Allan Wilkie, who was also a member of the same company that Arthur Machen was known as the “Beerking of London”; he had a more extensive knowledge of the various brews of beer retailed in London than almost any other man, at the same time preserving the delicacy of palate enabling him to distinguish one brew from another. This in contradistinction to the “yarn about beer” entitled “A Son of Consolation,” the first of the sketches in the new book by “Bartimeus” called “Seaways.” In “Far Off Things” Mr Machen refers to his first book—published in 1884—as “The Anatomy of Tankards” ; its real title was “The Anatomy of Tobacco” ; it has

been long out of print, and “simple hearted American collectors are now willing to give four pounds for a corn- of it.” Concerning this first literary achievement Mr Machen says - Then came the reviews, and they did me some good, for as far as 1 can remember them, they were kindly and indulgent. I think the critic ol the St. James’s Gazette, then in its glory, under the editorship of Greenwood, spoke of “this witty and humorous book,” while he said with absolute justice that I had ruined the popularity of my parodies by their prolixity. Then the publisher, despairing, I suppose, of getting any ideas out of me, produced a notion of his own. He sent me three or four French texts °e the “Heptamoron” and bade me render them into tho best English I had within me; and so I did forthwith for the sum of twenty pounds sterling. I wrote every night when the house was still, and every day I carried the roll of copy down the lane to meet the postman on his way to Caerieon-on-Usk. Tlius it comes about that “The Great God Pan and Tho Inmost Light,” published in the “Key Notes’ 7 series in 1895, is described as by the translator of “The Hept-ameron.” It is an education to turn to the end of the book and scan the List of Books in Belles Lettres,” then being published at The Bodley Head. Among the young authors who, in the ear.y “nineties”, were being introduced to the reading public by Mr John Lane, were Grant Allen with “The Woman Who Did’’; John Davidson, George Egerton, Edmund Gosse, Kenneth Graham, Henry Harland, Richard Le Gallienne and "Mrs Meynell (Alice C. Thompson). In the same list was announced “The Art of Thomas Hardy: Six Essays,” by Lionel Jofinson, a book which, out of print for years and years, is only just now being republished. In such distinguished company did Arthur Machen make his debut with “The Great God Pan.” He relates most interestingly the inception of that book; living in London, a solitary bytemperament arid disposition, he was in the habit of taking long walks in an endeavour to “pass that sad zone of destruction disgrace that always lies just beyond the furthest point of the suburbs.” In Harlcsden or the outposts of Willesden he was suddenly confronted by a red row of brand new villas, which impressed him “as a wholly new and un forseen horror.” He continues:— I had never lived in a world that might have prepared me for such things; in Gwent,- in my day, at all events — there was no such phenomenon as this sudden and violent irruption of red brick in the midst of a green field; and thus, when I came round the corner of a peaceful lane and saw in the midst of elms and meadows this staring spectacle, I was as aghast as Robinson Crusoe when he saw the track of the foot in the sand of his desert island. And here I would make a parenthesis, and say that so long as my writing habits had any concern with the imagination I never departed from the one formula. This not consciously; in fact, I have a secret doctrine to the effect that in literature. no imaginative effects are achieved by logical predetermination. I have told, I think, how I was confronted suddenly ana for the first time with the awe and solemnity and mystery of the valley of the Usk, and of the house called Bartholdy hanging solitary between the deep forest and the winding esses of the river. This spectacle remained in my head for years, and at last I transliterated it, clumsily enough, in the story of “The Great God Ban, ’ which, as a friendly critic once saio, “does at least make one believe in the devil, if it does nothing else.” Here, of course, was my real failure; I translated awe, at worst awfulness, into evil; again, I say, one dreams in fire and works Hi clay. But at all events, my method never altered. More legitimately than in the instance of “The Great God Pan,” I made the horrid apparition of the crude new houses in the midst of green pastures the seed of my tale “The Inmost Light.” which was originally bound up with “The Great God Pan.” And so the man in my story, resting in green fields, looked up and saw a face that chilled his blood gazing at him from the back of one of those red houses that once had frightened me. when I was a sorry led of twenty wandering about the verges of London. The doctor of my tale lived in Harlcsden. I would not have written of Arthur Machen, "were it not for the announcement of the re-issue of his books, for lonv out of print and unprocurable. As intrew auction of those books I counsel a reading of “Far Off Things,” which reveals the man himself besides giving reasons for his writings, the book is illuminated bv many delightful literary recollections and pictures of the London of a past day. Next in order should come “Heiroglyphics • A Note on Ecstacy in Literature,” a monologue in literary valuations by an “obscure literary hermit.” Mr Machen gives a characteristic account of the books he read in his boyhood and youth the list is too long a one to recount —prominent among these being the Waverley Novels. “They are of vital literature,’’ he declares, “they are of the heart of true romance! What is vital literature? What is true romance? These are difficult questions which I once tried to answer, according to my delights in a book called ‘Hieroglyphics. _ In that book Mr Machen defends the thesis that all the arts being glorious, the literary art is tho most glorious and wonderful of all” ; he also declares in a fine phrase which has been much quoted that great literature is composed in a withdrawal from life not in a' participation in life. The line of argument adapted in _ the book may be illustrated in one brief extract:— If ecstacy be present, then I say there is fine literature, if it be absent, then, in spite of all the cleverness, all the talents, all the workmanship and observation and dexterity you may show me, then, I think we have a product (possibly a very m teresting one) which is not fine literature. . . . We have tracked ecstacy by many strange paths, in divers strange disguises, but I think that now and only now, we have discovered its full and perfect definition. For Artifice is of Time, but Art is of Eternity.

Mr C. Lewis Hind described Mr --rthur Machen’s stories as a mixture of medievalism, introspection and borderland imagination, and this is particularly true of what may be considered his greatest books “The Hill of Dreams” and “The House of Souls. ” In “The Secret Glory” will be found a story of English schoollife far removed from “The - Loom of Youth” yet having in it something of the quality of “Mr Perrin and Mr Traill.’’ Indeed, in some respects Mr Hugh Walpole and Mr Arthur Machen have real affinity; just as points of resemblance may be discovered between Mr G. K. Chesterton and Mr Machen, and Mr Machen and Mr H. G. Wells. Of several of Mr Macben’s books I have no knowledge, notably “The Chronicles of Clemency,” “Dr Stiggins” and “The Great Return’’; but I was much impressed with “The Terror” on its appearance about five years ago, and written, be it remembered, during the war period. “The Terror” was something in comparison with which the strange legend ol “the Russians” became shadowy, and the mythology of the “Angels of Mons” dwindled into nothingness. It was supposed to have descended on England as the outcome of the war, and to be responsible for outrages and horrors which fil.ed the ppople with panic and alarm. It is in the explanation of “The Terror” as well as in the story itself that Mr iuachen displays his psychological power : —- And finally, there coines the inevitable “Why?” Why did the beasts who had been humbly and patiently subject to man or affrighted by his presence, suddenly know their strength and learn how to league together and declare bitter war against their ancient master? It is a most difficult and obscure question. I give what explanation I have to give with very great diffidence, and an eminent disposition to be corrected, if a clearer light can be found. Some friends of mine, for w-hose judgment I have a very great respect, are inclined to think that there was a certain conspiracy of hate. They hold that the fury of the whole world at war, the great passion of death that seems driving all humanity to destruction, infested at last these lower creatures, and an place of tbejr Jiative insitinct of submission gave them rage and wrath and ravening. This may be the explanation. I cannot say that it is not so, because I do not profess to understand the working of the universe. But I confess that the theory strikes me as fanciful. There may be a contagion of hate as there is a contagion of small-pox; I do not know, but I hardly believe it. In my opinion, and it is only an opinion, the _ source cf the great revolt of the beasts is. to be sought in a much subtler region of inquiry. I believe that the subjects revolted because the king abdicated. ... The beasts have within them something which corresponds to the spiritual quality in man—we are content to call it instinct. They perceived that the throne was vacant —not even friendship was possible between them and the s'df-deposed monarch. If he were not king, he was a sham, an impostor, a- thing to be destroyed. Hence, I think, the Terror. They have risen once—they may rise again.