II

THE GENIUS OF COMPTON MACKENZIE

I

N Sylvia Scarlett Compton Mackenzie carries on his Balzac scheme of economical selection by

continuing the histories of men and women whose acquaintance we have already made in earlier books. In attempting, therefore, a general survey of his work one is bound to come to the conclusion that his first book, The Passionate Elopement, was simply a magnificent tour de force, an exquisite "essay in literary bravura," a piece of loveliness thrown off by the artist as a young man while he was feeling his way.

The six novels which followed it all deal with the same little coterie of principals, and there is no reason why the number should not be extended indefinitely. He himself computes it at thirty.

There is no question of our getting tired of them, once we take into account certain definite limitations that are peculiar to Mackenzie's genius. In the first place, he possesses a memory which is almost Macaulayesque. I know of no author who can re-create our earliest years so accurately or so sympathetically unfortunately this leads him into the error of believing implicitly in a gospel he has made his own "Childhood makes the instrument, youth tunes the strings, and early manhood plays the melody."

"I very much doubt if any impressions after eighteen or nineteen help the artist," says Guy.

"All experience after that age is merely valuable for maturing and putting into proportion the more vital experiences of childhood."

Wordsworthian, but not true. Nevertheless, Mackenzie believes it, and so we have to listen to an interminable noise of hammering at the instrument followed by an extravagantly long tuning-up before the play begins. In spite of the accuracy with which he reveals to us again the golden hours of our infancy, the thick-sighted ambition of our youth, with its quick-changing rhapsodies, and the unhealthy imagination of our adolescence, we get bored. The curtainraiser is too long: the adventure is all prelude.

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His second limitation is even worse! He seems quite unable to create a decent man. Alan can at least play cricket, but none of his other “heroes " has any positive virtue. Maurice is as unstable as Reuben: Jenny's exquisite character crystallises itself into commonness in his eyes when he attempts to get her into proper perspective by leaving her Guy is so inert that he allows trifling debts to destroy one of the most perfect idylls in fiction he is molluscous, jejune, made up of shreds and patches of other men's clichés: "I must be free if I'm going to be an artist," he repeats, parrot-like, to Pauline, understanding not a whit what he means. This is, if you please, the man who was talked of as 66 the most brilliant man of his time at Oxford."

There are many absurdly impossible incidents in all these novels, but there is nothing quite so farcically surprising as Michael Fane's "First" in History. Much might be forgiven him if he had brains; he has nothing but a maudlin affection for Don Quixote, an unhealthy taste for the more licentious classics and low life, a sentimental attitude to religion, and an

astounding ignorance of life. We are led to believe that Sylvia in the end settles down after her picaresque life with this nincompoop for her husband: if our guess is correct she might just as well have remained with her "thoroughly negative" Philip (also an Oxford man).

It is as if Mackenzie definitely set out to prove that a University turned out all its pupils cut to pattern . . . and what a pattern it is! "Shallow, shallow ass that I am," plaintively bleats Maurice with his usual insincere self-depreciation, "incompetent, dull, and unimaginative block." That exactly describes them all. One other trait they have in common which finally places them beyond the pale of our favour. They are, without exception, incorrigible snobs. One could forgive their interminable empty chatter, their futility, even their woodenness; but their appalling self-complacency destroys any possible interest on our part in their welfare. They have money, therefore they are the salt of the earth. I have seen Mackenzie compared with Thackeray, for what reason I cannot fathom. But this gallery of callow undergraduates might well be included in the modern Book of Snobs.

Lastly we come to the limitation of label. It is customary to classify all modern authors. Mackenzie has been hailed as the leader of the "realistic " school. This is no place to enter into a discussion on the connotation of critical labels, but if "realistic " is meant to be synonymous with "actual," Mackenzie is no more a realist than Dickens was. He has the comic spirit much too fully developed (thank God he possesses what none of his heroes has, a sense of humour) to depict life as he sees it. With a gorgeous abandon he gives his nimble wit free play to carica

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ture he has no gospel to preach, no point of view to present he merely strives to entertain . . . and that he is the most diverting prestidigitator and mirthprovoking showman of our age Poor Relations convincingly proves.

Unfortunately, we don't expect Lord George Sangers to be artists. Compton Mackenzie is an artist to the finger-tips, and he has therefore been persistently misunderstood. Disappointment lies in store for those befogged critics who think that Compton Mackenzie is of the family of Hugh Walpole, J. D. Beresford, or Gilbert Cannan.

Is it after all a limitation not to belong to the introspective school? The riddle of the universe is not necessarily to be solved by the novelist. . . . Is it a crime to revert to the tradition of Tom Jones? Mackenzie is in the direct line of Fielding. Is not that enough? Why complain that he falls short of an achievement which he never set out to attain ?

So much for limitations. What has this wayward genius, then, to offer if he has no gospel, and can't paint an endurable well-bred man? In the first place, he is a consummate architect. Young modern novelists for the most part are so taken up with analysing their emotions, and sifting their psychological experiences, that they have eliminated form and technique altogether. They rather pride themselves on their lawlessness. Mackenzie plans on a colossal scale, but rarely makes a mistake: his edifice is not only beautiful (few living writers have quite such a feeling for the best word: his sentences are exquisitely balanced, pellucidly clear, and rhythmical), but it is utilitarian. He has great inventive powers; he is always deeply stirred by beautiful things, and can convey the essence of an impression

more economically and surely than most of his contemporaries.

Guy and Pauline is so beautiful that we are almost drugged by the sweetness of it. Every season of the year, every flower, and every changing light is seized and put on to paper perfectly. When he sets out deliberately to paint a landscape, whether it be of a Cotswold village with its cobbles overgrown with grass, of Cornwall in December with its blue and purple veronicas and almond-scented gorse, or Anasirene with its anemones splashed out like wine upon the green corn, and red-beaded cherry-trees throwing shadows on the tawny wheat, we sit dumb as before a picture by a great master.

It is the presence of beauty that never fails to show Mackenzie at his best. He is one of Nature's great interpreters-and I am not sure that he is not woman's best interpreter. Jenny is not the only pearl to be cast before swine. Pauline, Sylvia, each in her own individual way, is equally precious and adorable.

We have seen two of the inimitable trio giving up their boundless maiden treasures, in each case to a puppet-and in each case so deftly and delicately has their passion been portrayed that we can think of no parallel outside the pages of Richard Feverel.

Mackenzie has an uncanny insight into the hearts of his heroines. Women do shower their love on to the most undeserving men. It is quite true that Pauline will never forget Guy; she is like the nymph on the Grecian Urn . . . it was quite in keeping with passionate, heart-broken Jenny's temperament that she should give herself to a dirty rotter when she found Maurice wanting, though I can never reconcile myself to her marriage; I was not at all surprised