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When Winter Comes to Main Street, a non-fiction book by Grant Martin Overton |
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Chapter 15. Frank Swinnerton: Analyst Of Lovers |
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_ CHAPTER XV. FRANK SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS =i= It is as an analyst of lovers, I think, that Frank Swinnerton claims and holds his place among those whom we still sometimes call the younger novelists of England. I do not say this because his fame was achieved at a bound with Nocturne, but because all his novels show a natural preoccupation with the theme of love between the sexes. Usually it is a pair of young lovers or contrasted pairs; but sometimes this is interestingly varied, as in September, where we have a study of love that comes to a woman in middle life. The unique character of Nocturne makes it very hard to write about Swinnerton. It is true that Arnold Bennett wrote: "I am prepared to say to the judicious reader unacquainted with Swinnerton's work, 'Read Nocturne,' and to stand or fall, and to let him stand or fall by the result." At the same time, though the rule is that we must judge an artist by his finest work and a genius by his greatest masterpiece, it is not entirely just to estimate the living writer by a single unique performance, an extraordinary piece of virtuosity, which Nocturne unquestionably is. For anyone who wishes to understand and appreciate Swinnerton, I would recommend that he begin with Coquette, follow it with September, follow that with Shops and Houses and then read Nocturne. That is, I would have made this recommendation a few months ago, but so representative of all sides of Swinnerton's talent is his new novel, The Three Lovers, that I should now prefer to say to anyone unacquainted with Swinnerton: "Begin with The Three Lovers." And after that I would have him read Coquette and the other books in the order I have named. After he had reached and finished Nocturne, I would have him turn to the several earlier novels--The Happy Family, On the Staircase, and The Chaste Wife. =ii= The Three Lovers, a full-length novel which Swinnerton finished in Devonshire in the spring of 1922, is a story of human beings in conflict, and it is also a picture of certain phases of modern life. A young and intelligent girl, alone in the world, is introduced abruptly to a kind of life with which she is unfamiliar. Thereafter the book shows the development of her character and her struggle for the love of the men to whom she is most attracted. The book steadily moves through its earlier chapters of introduction and growth to a climax that is both dramatic and moving. It opens with a characteristic descriptive passage from which I take a few sentences: "It was a suddenly cold evening towards the end of September.... The street lamps were sharp brightnesses in the black night, wickedly revealing the naked rain-swept paving-stones. It was an evening to make one think with joy of succulent crumpets and rampant fires and warm slippers and noggins of whisky; but it was not an evening for cats or timid people. The cats were racing about the houses, drunken with primeval savagery; the timid people were shuddering and looking in distress over feebly hoisted shoulders, dreadfully prepared for disaster of any kind, afraid of sounds and shadows and their own forgotten sins.... The wind shook the window-panes; soot fell down all the chimneys; trees continuously rustled as if they were trying to keep warm by constant friction and movement." The imagination which sees in the movement of trees an endeavour to keep warm is not less sharp in its discernment of human beings. I will give one other passage, a conversation between Patricia Quin, the heroine, and another girl: "'Do you mean he's in love with you?' asked Patricia. 'That seems to be what's the matter.' "'Oho, it takes two to be in love,' scornfully cried Amy. 'And I'm not in love with him.' "'But he's your friend.' "'That's just it. He won't recognise that men and women can be friends. He's a very decent fellow; but he's full of this sulky jealousy, and he glowers and sulks whenever any other man comes near me. Well, that's not my idea of friendship.' "'Nor mine,' echoed Patricia, trying to reconstruct her puzzled estimate of their relations. 'But couldn't you stop that? Surely, if you put it clearly to him....' "Amy interrupted with a laugh that was almost shrill. Her manner was coldly contemptuous. "'You are priceless!' she cried. 'You say the most wonderful things.' "'Well, I should.' "'I wonder.' Amy moved about, collecting the plates. 'You see ... some day I shall marry. And in a weak moment I said probably I'd marry him.' "'Oh, Amy! Of course he's jealous.' Swiftly, Patricia did the young man justice. "'I didn't give him any right to be. I told him I'd changed my mind. I've told him lots of times that probably I sha'n't marry him.' "'But you keep him. Amy! You do encourage him.' Patricia was stricken afresh with a generous impulse of emotion on Jack's behalf. 'I mean, by not telling him straight out. Surely you can't keep a man waiting like that? I wonder he doesn't insist.' "'Jack insist!' Amy was again scornful. 'Not he!' "There was a moment s pause. Innocently, Patricia ventured upon a charitable interpretation. "'He must love you very much. But, Amy, if you don't love him.' "'What's love got to do with marriage?' asked Amy, with a sourly cynical air. "'Hasn't it--everything?' Patricia was full of sincerity. She was too absorbed in this story to help Amy to clear the table; but on finding herself alone in the studio while the crockery was carried away to the kitchen she mechanically shook the crumbs behind the gas-fire and folded the napkin. This was the most astonishing moment of her day. "Presently Amy returned, and sat in the big armchair, while, seated upon the podger and leaning back against the wall, Patricia smoked a cigarette. "'You see, the sort of man one falls in love with doesn't make a good husband,' announced Amy, as patiently as if Patricia had been in fact a child. She persisted in her attitude of superior wisdom in the world's ways. 'It's all very well; but a girl ought to be able to live with any man she fancies, and then in the end marry the safe man for a ... well, for life, if she likes.' "Patricia's eyes were opened wide. "'I shouldn't like that,' she said. 'I don't think the man would either.' "'Bless you, the men all do it,' cried Amy, contemptuously. 'Don't make any mistake about that.' "'I don't believe it,' said Patricia. 'Do you mean that my father--or your father...?' "'Oh, I don't know. I meant, nowadays. Most of the people you saw last night are living together or living with other people.' "Patricia was aware of a chill. "'But you've never,' she urged. 'I've never.' "'No.' Amy was obviously irritated by the personal application. 'That's just it. I say we ought to be free to do what we like. Men do what they like.' "'D'you think Jack has lived with other girls?' "'My dear child, how do I know? I should hope he has.' "'Hope! Amy, you do make me feel a prig.' "'Perhaps you are one. Oh, I don't know. I'm sick of thinking, thinking, thinking about it all. I never get any peace.' "'Is there somebody you want to live with?' "'No. I wish there was. Then I should know' "'I wonder if you would know,' said Patricia, in a low voice. 'Amy, do you really know what love is? Because I don't. I've sometimes let men kiss me, and it doesn't seem to matter in the least. I don't particularly want to kiss them, or to be kissed. I've never seen anything in all the flirtation that goes on in dark corners. It's amusing once or twice; but it becomes an awful bore. The men don't interest you. The thought of living with any of them just turns me sick.'" =iii= The analysis, in The Three Lovers, of Patricia Quin is done with that simplicity, quiet deftness and inoffensive frankness which is the hallmark of Mr. Swinnerton's fiction. And, coming at last to Nocturne, I fall back cheerfully upon the praise accorded that novel by H. G. Wells in his preface to it. Said Mr. Wells: "Such a writer as Mr. Swinnerton sees life and renders it with a steadiness and detachment and patience quite foreign to my disposition. He has no underlying motive. He sees and tells. His aim is the attainment of that beauty which comes with exquisite presentation. Seen through his art, life is seen as one sees things through a crystal lens, more intensely, more completed, and with less turbidity. There the business begins and ends for him. He does not want you or anyone to do anything. "Mr. Swinnerton is not alone among recent writers in this clear detached objectivity. But Mr. Swinnerton, like Mr. James Joyce, does not repudiate the depths for the sake of the surface. His people are not splashes of appearance, but living minds. Jenny and Emmy in this book are realities inside and out; they are imaginative creatures so complete that one can think with ease of Jenny ten years hence or of Emmy as a baby. The fickle Alf is one of the most perfect Cockneys--a type so easy to caricature and so hard to get true--in fiction. If there exists a better writing of vulgar lovemaking, so base, so honest, so touchingly mean and so touchingly full of the craving for happiness than this, I do not know of it. Only a novelist who has had his troubles can understand fully what a dance among china cups, what a skating over thin ice, what a tight-rope performance is achieved in this astounding chapter. A false note, one fatal line, would have ruined it all. On the one hand lay brutality; a hundred imitative louts could have written a similar chapter brutally, with the soul left out, we have loads of such 'strong stuff' and it is nothing; on the other side was the still more dreadful fall into sentimentality, the tear of conscious tenderness, the redeeming glimpse of 'better things' in Alf or Emmy that could at one stroke have converted their reality into a genteel masquerade. The perfection of Alf and Emmy is that at no point does a 'nature's gentleman' or a 'nature's lady' show through and demand our refined sympathy. It is only by comparison with this supreme conversation that the affair of Keith and Jenny seems to fall short of perfection. But that also is at last perfected, I think, by Jenny's final, 'Keith ... Oh, Keith!...' "Above these four figures again looms the majestic invention of 'Pa.' Every reader can appreciate the truth and humour of Pa, but I doubt if anyone without technical experience can realise how the atmosphere is made and completed, and rounded off by Pa's beer, Pa's meals, and Pa's accident, how he binds the bundle and makes the whole thing one, and what an enviable triumph his achievement is. "But the book is before the reader and I will not enlarge upon its merits further. Mr. Swinnerton has written four or five other novels before this one, but none of them compares with it in quality. His earlier books were strongly influenced by the work of George Gissing; they have something of the same fatigued greyness of texture and little of the same artistic completeness and intense vision of Nocturne. "This is a book that will not die. It is perfect, authentic and alive. Whether a large and immediate popularity will fall to it, I cannot say, but certainly the discriminating will find it and keep it and keep it alive. If Mr. Swinnerton were never to write another word I think he might count on this much of his work living, when many of the more portentous reputations of today may have served their purpose in the world and become no more than fading names." =iv= Arnold Bennett has described Swinnerton personally in a way no one else is likely to surpass. I will prefix a few elemental facts which he has neglected and then will let him have his say. Frank Arthur Swinnerton was born in Wood Green, England, in 1884, the youngest son of Charles Swinnerton and Rose Cottam. He married, a few years ago, Helen Dircks, a poet; her slim little book of verse, Passenger, was published with a preface by Mr. Swinnerton. His first three novels Swinnerton destroyed. His first novel to be published was The Merry Heart. It is interesting to know that Floyd Dell was the first American to appreciate Swinnerton. I make way for Mr. Bennett, who says: "One day perhaps eight or nine years ago I received a novel entitled The Casement. The book was accompanied by a short, rather curt note from the author, Frank Swinnerton, politely indicating that if I cared to read it he would be glad, and implying that if I didn't care to read it, he should endeavour still to survive. I would quote the letter but I cannot find it--no doubt for the reason that all my correspondence is carefully filed on the most modern filing system. I did not read The Casement for a long time. Why should I consecrate three irrecoverable hours or so to the work of a man as to whom I had no credentials? Why should I thus introduce foreign matter into the delicate cogwheels of my programme of reading? However, after a delay of weeks, heaven in its deep wisdom inspired me with a caprice to pick up the volume. "I had read, without fatigue but on the other hand without passionate eagerness, about a hundred pages before the thought occurred suddenly to me: 'I do not remember having yet come across one single ready-made phrase in this story.' Such was my first definable thought concerning Frank Swinnerton. I hate ready-made phrases, which in my view--and in that of Schopenhauer--are the sure mark of a mediocre writer. I began to be interested. I soon said to myself: 'This fellow has a distinguished style.' I then perceived that the character-drawing was both subtle and original, the atmosphere delicious, and the movement of the tale very original, too. The novel stirred me--not by its powerfulness, for it did not set out to be powerful--but by its individuality and distinction. I thereupon wrote to Frank Swinnerton. I forget entirely what I said. But I know that I decided that I must meet him. "When I came to London, considerably later, I took measures to meet him, at the Authors' Club. He proved to be young; I daresay twenty-four or twenty-five--medium height, medium looks, medium clothes, somewhat reddish hair, and lively eyes. If I had seen him in a motorbus I should never have said, 'A remarkable chap'--no more than if I had seen myself in a motorbus. My impressions of the interview were rather like my impressions of the book: at first somewhat negative, and only very slowly becoming positive. He was reserved, as became a young author; I was reserved, as became an older author; we were both reserved, as became Englishmen. Our views on the only important thing in the world--that is to say, fiction--agreed, not completely, but in the main; it would never have done for us to agree completely. I was as much pleased by what he didn't say as by what he said; quite as much by the indications of the stock inside the shop as by the display in the window. The interview came to a calm close. My knowledge of him acquired from it amounted to this, that he held decided and righteous views upon literature, that his heart was not on his sleeve, and that he worked in a publisher's office during the day and wrote for himself in the evenings. "Then I saw no more of Swinnerton for a relatively long period. I read other books of his. I read The Young Idea, and The Happy Family, and, I think, his critical work on George Gissing. The Happy Family marked a new stage in his development. It has some really piquant scenes, and it revealed that minute knowledge of middle-class life in the nearer suburbs of London, and that disturbing insight into the hearts and brains of quite unfashionable girls, which are two of his principal gifts. I read a sketch of his of a commonplace crowd walking around a bandstand which brought me to a real decision as to his qualities. The thing was like life, and it was bathed in poetry. "Our acquaintance proceeded slowly, and I must be allowed to assert that the initiative which pushed it forward was mine. It made a jump when he spent a week-end in the Thames Estuary on my yacht. If any reader has a curiosity to know what my yacht is not like, he should read the striking yacht chapter in Nocturne. I am convinced that Swinnerton evolved the yacht in Nocturne from my yacht; but he ennobled, magnified, decorated, enriched and bejewelled it till honestly I could not recognise my wretched vessel. The yacht in Nocturne is the yacht I want, ought to have, and never shall have. I envy him the yacht in Nocturne, and my envy takes a malicious pleasure in pointing out a mistake in the glowing scene. He anchors his yacht in the middle of the Thames--as if the tyrannic authorities of the Port of London would ever allow a yacht, or any other craft, to anchor in midstream! "After the brief cruise our friendship grew rapidly. I now know Swinnerton--probably as well as any man knows him; I have penetrated into the interior of the shop. He has done several things since I first knew him--rounded the corner of thirty, grown a beard, under the orders of a doctor, and physically matured. Indeed, he looks decidedly stronger than in fact he is--he was never able to pass the medical examination for the army. He is still in the business of publishing, being one of the principal personages in the ancient and well-tried firm of Chatto & Windus, the English publishers of Swinburne and Mark Twain. He reads manuscripts, including his own--and including mine. He refuses manuscripts, though he did accept one of mine. He tells authors what they ought to do and ought not to do. He is marvellously and terribly particular and fussy about the format of the books issued by his firm. Questions as to fonts of type, width of margins, disposition of title-pages, tint and texture of bindings really do interest him. And misprints--especially when he has read the proofs himself--give him neuralgia and even worse afflictions. Indeed he is the ideal publisher for an author. "Nevertheless, publishing is only a side-line of his. He still writes for himself in the evenings and at week-ends--the office never sees him on Saturdays. "Frank Swinnerton has other gifts. He is a surpassingly good raconteur. By which I do not signify that the man who meets Swinnerton for the first, second or third time will infallibly ache with laughter at his remarks. Swinnerton only blossoms in the right atmosphere; he must know exactly where he is; he must be perfectly sure of his environment, before the flower uncloses. And he merely relates what he has seen, what he has taken part in. The narrations would be naught if he were not the narrator. His effects are helped by the fact that he is an excellent mimic and by his utter realistic mercilessness. But like all first-class realists he is also a romantic, and in his mercilessness there is a mysterious touch of fundamental benevolence--as befits the attitude of one who does not worry because human nature is not something different from what it actually is. Lastly, in this connection, he has superlatively the laugh known as the 'infectious laugh.' When he laughs everybody laughs, everybody has to laugh. There are men who tell side-splitting tales with the face of an undertaker--for example, Irvin Cobb. There are men who can tell side-splitting tales and openly and candidly rollick in them from the first word; and of these latter is Frank Swinnerton. But Frank Swinnerton can be more cruel than Irvin Cobb. Indeed, sometimes when he is telling a story, his face becomes exactly like the face of Mephistopheles in excellent humour with the world's sinfulness and idiocy. "Swinnerton's other gift is the critical. It has been said that an author cannot be at once a first-class critic and a first-class creative artist. To which absurdity I reply: What about William Dean Howells? And what about Henry James, to name no other names? Anyhow, if Swinnerton excels in fiction he also excels in literary criticism. The fact that the literary editor of the Manchester Guardian wrote and asked him to write literary criticism for the Manchester Guardian will perhaps convey nothing to the American citizen. But to the Englishman of literary taste and experience it has enormous import. The Manchester Guardian publishes the most fastidious and judicious literary criticism in Britain. "I recall that once when Swinnerton was in my house I had there also a young military officer with a mad passion for letters and a terrific ambition to be an author. The officer gave me a manuscript to read. I handed it over to Swinnerton to read, and then called upon Swinnerton to criticise it in the presence of both of us. 'Your friend is very kind,' said the officer to me afterward, 'but it was a frightful ordeal.' "The book on George Gissing I have already mentioned. But it was Swinnerton's work on R. L. Stevenson that made the trouble in London. It is a destructive work. It is bland and impartial, and not bereft of laudatory passages, but since its appearance Stevenson's reputation has never been the same." THE MERRY HEART
Who's Who [In England]. Frank Swinnerton: Personal Sketches by Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells, Private Information. _ |
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