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A Critical Study Of Some Early Novels (1911-1920) Of Sir Compton Mackenzie: The Growth And Decline Of A Critical Reputation

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A Critical Study Of Some Early Novels (1911-1920) Of Sir Compton Mackenzie: The Growth And Decline Of A Critical Reputation

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Content This dissertation has been 65-3102 microfilmed exactly as received ERLANDSON, Theodore Roy, 1918- A CRITICAL STUDY OF SOME EARLY NOVELS (1911-1920) OF SIR COMPTON MACKENZIE: THE GROWTH AND DECLINE OF A CRITICAL REPUTATION. University of Southern California, Ph. D. , 1965 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan A CRITICAL STUDY OF SOME EARLY NOVELS (1911-1920) OF SIR COMPTON MACKENZIE: THE GROWTH AND DECLINE OF A CRITICAL REPUTATION by Theodore Roy Erlandson A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English) January 1965 U N IV E R S IT Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L IF O R N IA T H E G R A D U A T E S C H O O L U N IV E R S I T Y PA R K L O S A N G E L E S . C A L I F O R N I A 9 0 0 0 7 This dissertation, ivritten by T.heQdc>re. Roy..RrIsuidjs.o.n.................. under the direction of his.....Dissertation C o m mittee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by the Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y D a te J a n u a ry , 1.9.65 DISSERTATION COMMITTEE TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ....................................... iii Chapter I. THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT (1911): AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY COMEDY ROMANCE .... 1 II. CARNIVAL (1912): A NOVEL OF THE LIFE OF A BALLET-GIRL...................... 67 III. SINISTER STREET (1913-14): A NOVEL OF THE EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF A MODERN YOUTH OF THE UPPER CLASS.............. 131 IV. GUY AND PAULINE (1915): AN IDYLLIC ROMANCE . . 236 V. THE ADVENTURES OF SYLVIA SCARLETT (1918-19) A PICARESQUE ROMANCE ...................... 291 VI. THE VANITY GIRL (1920): AN EDWARDIAN ROMANCE.............................. 367 MACKENZIE IN RETROSPECT...................... 406 BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................... 423 ii INTRODUCTION Henry James in his now famous two-part article on "The Younger Generation," which appeared in The Times Literary Supplement (London) in 1914,^ selected nine writers as representative of certain new tendencies in the novel. He carefully distinguished the younger men--Hugh Walpole, Gilbert Cannan, Compton Mackenzie, and D. H. Lawrence--from their older contemporaries--Joseph Conrad, Maurice Hewlett, John Galsworthy, H. G. Wells, and Arnold Bennett. He felt that "two or three" of the latter group were "sufficiently related to the still newer generation 2 in a quasi-parental way." Of particular interest is the inclusion of Compton Mackenzie in this selection of repre sentative modem authors, because by the date of the articles Mackenzie had published only two and a half *March 19, pp. 133-134 and April 2, pp. 157-158. The article was expanded and retitled "The New Novel" for in clusion in James's Notes on Novelists (New York, 1914). 2 James, Notes on Novelists, p. 318. iii novels: The Passionate Elopement (1911), Carnival (1912), and the first volume of Sinister Street (1913). James cited only the latter two in his review, but on their promise tentatively exempted Mackenzie from some of the strictures he had passed on the other writers.^ Devoting the last section of his essay to an analysis of Mackenzie's two books, he accounted him perhaps the most complex and promising of the younger men. He was attracted by the brilliance of the "rounded episodes" in Sinister Street. But he believed the best augury for the future was Mac kenzie's developing sense of style, his care for expres sion. ^ The Passionate Elopement would not have been relevant to the argument James was developing in his essay. But James undoubtedly knew of the book though he may never have read it. Mackenzie tells us that his mother asked James to bring the manuscript of the novel to the attention of William Heinemann the publisher and James promised to do so (Compton Mackenzie, Echoes [London, 1954], p. 95). 4 "If we do not include Mr. Compton Mackenzie to the same extent in our generalization [that Gilbert Cannan and Arnold Bennett have written works which belong 'to the order of constatations pure and simple'] it is really be cause we note a difference in him in favour of his care for application. Preoccupations seem at work in Sinister Street, and withal in Carnival, the brush of which we in other quarters scarce even suspect ...” (James, p. 337). James, p. 361. iv Time has not confirmed James's opinion of the sig nificance of these novelists. Today only Conrad, Lawrence, and, perhaps, Wells appear of major importance. Yet James was not alone in estimating the potential achievement of Compton Mackenzie so highly. Frank Swirmerton says of the period immediately before and after World War I: It became a favourite pastime for critics to compile lists of young novelists destined for greatness. Gradu ally it was established that Mackenzie, Cannan, Walpole, Forster, Lawrence, and Beresford were the coming boys. As Richard Church observes, it was Mackenzie in particular who came to be regarded as the spokesman of his gener ation --that generation of Oxford and Cambridge youth who went to war in 1914. ^ After the war, in the 1920*s, although Mackenzie con tinued to write popular novels, his critical reputation plummeted. He was generally dismissed as a writer of entertaining light novels or tiresome serious ones who had signally failed to live up to his early promise. Despite ^The Georgian Literary Scene, rev. ed. (London, 1951), p. 223. See also W. L. George, A Novelist on Novels (London, 1918), p. 65. ^British Authors (London, 1948), p. 91. v this evaluation, he still commands a reading public, both for his fiction and non-fiction. Almost every year from 1911 to 1960 has seen the publication of one or more new Q books by him. It is true, however, that he has never enjoyed in the United States the popular success he has had in the British Isles, although his second novel, Carnival. was very well received and made his name known to the American reading public- All twenty-six of his novels published down through 1934 were issued in American edi tions. Since then, only selected books have appeared. Dodd, Mead, and Company brought out his long novel The Four Winds of Love in six volumes between 1937-1946. But only three of the twelve other novels he wrote from 1936 to i960 o have been published in this country. g During the period 1951-60 inclusive, he published nineteen new volumes, as well as reissues of earlier work. 9 Largely because of the success in 1949 of the English film Whisky Galore, which was made from Mackenzie's novel of the same name (1947), Houghton Mifflin published an American edition in 1950 (in America both the film and the book were titled Tight Little Island). In 1951 Houghton Mifflin brought out another of the Scottish novels, The Monarch of the Glen, originally published in 1941. In 1957 Putnam Issued Thin Ice (1956). vi Because of the general absence of critical Interest in much of his work since the 1920fs, most serious dis cussion of him has centered upon his early novels. Sinister Street (1913-14) remains his most famous and in fluential work. Mackenzie has described its theme as "the youth of a man who presumably will be a priest. More importantly, it is the detailed yet poetic evocation of the childhood, school and college life, and final preparations for maturity of an upper-class Englishman of the pre-World War I generation. Mortimer R. Proctor in The English University Novel says: It was . . . the first penetrating and comprehensive attempt in literature to evaluate the profoundly sig nificant effects of university life upon the under graduate. And more than that, it is in Sinister Street that the university novel at last emerged with its answer as to what a university should be.H Sinister Street remained in print from its publication to 10 "The Epilogical Letter to John Nicolas Mavrogor- dato," appended to the second volume of Sinister Street (New York, 1914), p. 656. ^(Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1957), pp. 197-198. vii 12 just before World War II, and has been read, at times surreptitiously, by several generations of English stu dents. It has spawned countless imitations, of which perhaps the best known American example is F. Scott Fitz- 13 gerald*s This Side of Paradise. So well known has it been that it is used for casual illustration in such spe cialist studies as Gilbert Norwood's Greek Comedy^ and C. S. Lewis's The Allegory of Love■ ^ But if Sinister Street is his best-known work, it is Mackenzie remarks in the Foreword of the 1949 edi tion published by Macdonald that "until Sinister Street . . . was allowed to go out of print just before the Second World War, it was still selling at its original price at least 1,000 copies a year" (pp. x-xi). Since the war, it has been published by Macdonald in 1949 and by Penguin Books in 1960. 13 See Arthur Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise (Boston, 1951), pp. 59, 97-98, 167. Also Edmund Wilson, The Shores of Light (New York, 1952), p. 28. 14 Norwood says of The Clouds of Aristophanes: "Much of that intoxicatingly beautiful*novel, Mr. Compton Mac kenzie's Sinister Street, might be called a vast commentary on the whole speech of the AfKotro? AoVot " (Boston, 1932), p. 220. 0 ^Lewis speaks of a change he finds taking place in the form of the novel, "that the novel, which we saw becoming so biographical in works like Sinister Street . . . is even now transforming itself . . . into the imaginative biography" (London, 1946), p. 233. viii likewise true that Mackenzie has had almost fifty years of varied writing experience since he wrote that book. By the end of 1961 he had published eighty-three volumes, not including his stories for children. He has written poetry, drama, novels, essays, literary and musical criticism, biographies, histories, memoirs, children’s stories, short stories, and travel accounts. There is a similar variety among his forty-three novels. He has written historical romance and comedy of manners, the realistic novel and the sentimental romance, the life novel and the picaresque, the farce comedy and the religious novel, the humorous satire and the novel of adventure, the discussion novel and the Balzacian sequence novel. Because of the amount and variety of his work, Mac- Kenzie does not readily fit into a convenient pigeon-hole for critical labeling. Eric Moon has observed: "The critics have never known quite how to classify Compton 16 Mackenzie as a novelist." Sheila Kaye-Smith sums up the critics* dilemma: ^"Success from the Very Start," Books and Bookmen (London), II (September 1957), 5. ix The modem critical tendency is all for comparison and classification, but what are you to do with a man who one year writes a trilogy founded entirely on religious experience, and the next produces a serial for a penny daily.17 W. L. George, writing in 1918, complained of Mackenzie that "He is a man difficult of assessment because of his di- 18 versity." And George knew only his first three books- The problem has been compounded during the past forty-odd years. Mackenzie has always looked on himself as a man of letters, earning his livelihood by the pen. His versa tility is that of the professional. He is not above such ad hoc writing as The Vital Flame (1945), which is a de tailed account of the history of the gas industry, or I Took a Journey (1951), which describes the work of the National Trust. In an article on Francis Brett Young, Mackenzie once wrote: I confess that I like a book to be readable; it seems to me that a capacity for entertaining a certain num ber of people is the chief justification for writing ^"Compton Mackenzie and His Work," The Bookman (New York), LXII (December 1925), 391. 18 A Novelist on Novels, p. 79. x novels. It Is a low-browed ambition, but I shall persevere in it myself. From Fielding to Dickens and Stevenson few novelists would take issue with such a statement. Yet times change, and Edmund Wilson has recently commented that he believes Mackenzie does himself a disservice by always describing himself as an entertainer. Wilson thinks that at their best even the later books express a coherent attitude which is meaningful for the times: A good many of his books, actually, since his early period, are meant to convey a "message." But I never remember to have seen a review of one of these later novels that gave any indication of what Mackenzie was driving at. On the other hand, Mackenzie has shown a propensity for the potboiler. He has always needed a considerable income to maintain the style of living he wants, and he has been successful in the financial aspect of his authorship. Because of his fertility of invention and his essentially non-idealistic view of his art, he can produce a newspaper 19 "Francis Brett Young," The Bookman (London), LI (August 1920), 638. 20 An Interview with Edmund Wilson," The New Yorker June 2, 1962, p. 121. xi serial like Coral (1925), which is almost completely void 21 of any artistic interest. With the publication of his first completely comic novel, Poor Relations, in 1919, Mackenzie again posed a problem for the critics. Despite the comic elements in his first six volumes, they were accepted as "serious" novels. But the farce of Poor Relations was too much altogether. How are you to regard such a writer? For some critics the problem was now solved. Douglas Goldring in Reputations pronounced judgment: "Mr. Mackenzie has found himself-“not as a serious novelist, but as that very 22 valuable thing, an entertainer." Katherine Mansfield welcomed Poor Relations for its genuine comic spirit, though she accurately described its probable effect upon Mackenzie*s reputation: To be taken seriously in England, a novelist must be serious. Poets may be as gay as they please, story tellers ... as light-hearted as they wish, but if a young man desires to be told that he is in the front 21 It began as a serial in The Daily Mirror (London) in November, 1924, and was published in book form in 1925. 22(New York, 1920), p. 51. xii rank, the head of, leading, far out-stepping, im measurably in advance of, all other novelists of the day, he must be prepared to father fiends hid in clouds. 3 More recently L. A. G. Strong has said apropos of the later comic novels that one thing particularly must be kept in mind "if any attempt is made to measure Compton Mackenzie's work and the ways in which it has developed." He says: [There] ... is the belief that being funny in print is on a lower level than being serious, and therefore that a writer who began seriously has in a sense gone off, become less worthy of critical attention, when he writes to amuse. This belief . . . has worked badly for Compton Mackenzie and prevented many readers from seeing how his technique has become surer as the years went by.^4 When reviewers had finally decided that Mackenzie was only an entertainer, a farcical humorist or sentimental romantic, he began in 1937 a major work which was to be an assessment of the intellectual and cultural development of the early twentieth century. The Four Winds of Love was published in six volumes over the period 1937-1945. In a Novels and Novelists (New York, 1930), p. 92. The review appeared originally in The Athenaeum (London), October 17, 1919, p. 1035. ^"Books and Writers," The Spectator (London), CLXXXVII (September 14, 1951), 336. xiii million words it followed its hero, John Ogilvie, from 1900 to 1937, chronicling through his experience the changing patterns of life and thought during those years. It was a fresh experiment in form for Mackenzie: a discussion or 25 "intellective" novel, as it has been called. Because of its great length and its piecemeal method of publication during the war years, it has never received the attention which it possibly deserves. Leo Robertson, among others, has called it "by far his greatest work," and has declared that "the full measure of his achievement as the author of it has yet to be taken. "2^ With equal justification it might be said of Compton Mackenzie himself that the full measure of his versatile achievement in the world of letters has yet to be taken. Though to be sure he is still, happily, adding to the canon of his work, for aesthetic as well as historical reasons his published work deserves more detailed critical exami nation than it has yet received. In 1922, when his 25 Leo Robertson, Compton Mackenzie: An Appraisal of His Literary Work (London, 1954), p. 223. 2^Robertson, p. 223. xiv reputation was already falling from its pre-war high, T. S. Eliot could write with gentle condescension that "Mr. Mackenzie is better worth reading than many more pre tentious and sophisticated writers." He added that al though Mackenzie is not admired by the intellectuals, he would, on the other hand, never have a popularity which would be based on a meretricious success like that of 27 A. S. M. Hutchinson's If Winter Comes. Recently Edmund Wilson wrote of Mackenzie's reputation in the following terms: The trouble is that he is both a professed Scot and some thing of a crypto-American, so he is always at an angle to English society. They don't understand him or don't want to understand him, and I suppose they resent such a comic portrait as that of Captain Waggett in the Scot tish series--which is so lightly done but so deadly in intention--more than anything in Bernard Shaw. And nobody is able to bring himself to give Mackenzie credit for being the fine artist that at his best he is. Most of his recent novels have not even been published in America, and I can't imagine why. In my youth he was extremely popular. But now people . . . laugh their heads off over P. G. Wodehouse and pretend to take him "London Letter," The Dial (New York), LXXIII (September 1922), 330. Hutchinson's novel came out in 1921. Mackenzie has described it as "the first best-seller of the American influenza type which appeared in this country" (Literature in Mv Time [New York, 1933], p. 224). xv seriously as a writer and speak with respect of Somerset Maugham, a bad writer with none of Mackenzie's distinc tion, when they have often never heard of Mackenzie. The only volume devoted exclusively to his work has been by Leo Robertson, Compton Mackenzie: An Appraisal of His Literary Work (London, 1954). Though a useful suranary of the man and his work, it is superficial and uncritical in its approach. One critic has written of it: There is little in this book which rises above the level of hero-worship, still less that might be termed con structive criticism. Yet the fact that such a book has been written at all shows that the world of letters can not go on ignoring the existence of Sir Compton. The time is long overdue for an attempt at an evaluation of his true w o r t h . 9 In the present study I have limited myself to six novels of Compton Mackenzie. With the exception of the earliest, The Passionate Elopement, these novels comprise a more or less homogeneous group, using reappearing charac ters and depicting various levels of English life in the period immediately preceding World War I. They are the works upon which Mackenzie built and subsequently lost 28 "An Interview with Wilson," pp. 121-122. 29 Francis Fytton, "Compton Mackenzie: Romance versus Realism," The Catholic World (New York), CLXXXII (February 1956), 358. xv i his reputation and which have attracted the most informed critical comment. In them we can see his qualities as a novelist--both his strengths and his weaknesses. We can also evaluate his achievement, which gives him a secure place in English literary history. The six novels treated are; The Passionate Elopement (1911), Carnival (1912), Sinister Street (1913-14), Guy and Pauline (1915), The Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett (1918-19), and The Vanity Girl (1920). I shall discuss the origin and background of these novels, examine the thought and narrative technique, and give an account of the critical reputation of these volumes in the British Isles and the United States from publication to the present. Finally, I shall summarize my findings and, on the basis of these, evaluate the achievement of Sir Compton Mackenzie in the so-called "serious" novel. In the preparation of this study I am particularly indebted to Sir Compton himself for the opportunity to discuss his work with him during a visit of two weeks to Edinburgh in the summer of 1961. I had his permission to microfilm what I wished from the sixty-six volumes of press xvii clippings of a remarkably extensive collection of reviews of his work and of articles about him and by him in news* papers and periodicals. Much of this journalistic material is not available in this country, and my survey of his work and its critical reception would necessarily have been less complete without Sir Compton's kind cooperation. xviii CHAPTER I THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT (1911): AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY COMEDY ROMANCE The early literary career of Compton Mackenzie is aptly summarized by the title of an article written about him, "Success From the Very Start.For him there was no long apprenticeship in learning the art of the novelist. Nor was there a long period of waiting for popular recog nition after he had begun. His reputation was established in 1911-1912 with the publication of his first two novels: The Passionate Elopement (1911) and Carnival (1912). As Frank Swinnerton has remarked of these two books, "The Passionate Elopement . . . made a reputation for both author and publisher," while "Carnival ran away with ^Eric Moon, Books and Bookmen (London), II (September 1957), 5, 26. 2 Swinnerton: An Autobiography (New York, 1936), pp. 178-179. 1 3 the English public.” In both England and the United States Mackenzie became recognized as one of the most promising of the younger novelists. Yet the dissimilarity in style and subject matter of these two works puzzled many reviewers. The Passionate Elopement is a period novel combining romance and comedy of manners; whereas Carnival is a realistic novel of con temporary life. Among his works so far, The Passionate Elopement stands apart. Sir Compton has not again attempted the historical or period novel. Leo Robertson states the generally accepted opinion that Mackenzie's "first novel differs toto coelo from those that followed 4 it." This, however, is to overstate the matter, for there is a continuity of development as well as points of simi larity between this work and the later ones, as shall be described hereafter. Compton Mackenzie was twenty-eight when The Passionate 3 The Georgian Literary Scene, rev. ed. (London, 1951), p. 233. ^Compton Mackenzie: An Appraisal of His Literary Work (London, 1954), p. 58. Elopement was published on his birthday, January 17, 1911*^ This beautifully printed volume, bound in light blue cloth and lettered in gilt, was to have a determining influence on his subsequent career. To be sure, there was a slim volume of verse to his credit,^ and a play of his had been successfully produced.^ But, as he was to say, it was the Q novel which decided his future. One should know certain facts about the personal back ground of Compton Mackenzie if he is to understand clearly the genesis of this first novel. If heredity had had its way, the stage should have claimed Mackenzie for her own. Frank Swinnerton has observed: "Mackenzie is related to half the theatrical families of England. The theatre ^It had been written three years earlier in 1908. See Compton Mackenzie, "My First Novel," The Listener (London), XLIX (March 19, 1953), 474. This radio talk was reprinted in Echoes (London, 1954), p. 94. The article hereafter will be cited as Echoes. ^Poems (Oxford, 1907). The volume was published at Mackenzie*s expense by B. H. Blackwell (see Faith Compton Mackenzie, As Much As I Dare [London, 1938], p. 201). ^The Gentleman in Grey. See below for an account. Q Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, eds., Twen tieth Century Authors (New York, 1942), p. 884. is thus in his blood, a fact which should not be forgotten o in any consideration of his work.**7 both his father and paternal grandfather were actors. His father, Edward Compton, was the actor-manager of the Compton Comedy Com pany, which specialized in the classics of eighteenth- century comedy, but which also produced the work of modems like Henry James, whose own dramatic version of his novel The American was presented by the Company in 1891. His mother, Virginia Bateman, came from a distinguished American theatrical family, connected by marriage with some of the great names of the English stage like the Siddonses and the Murrays. Compton Mackenzie himself has considerable acting ability. He once said, "The only other profession in which 1 could have felt sure of being as successful as I have had the good fortune to be in my own would have been the stage. At Oxford, he was an active member of the Uni versity Dramatic Society (OUDS). He has written that in ^The Georgian Literary Scene, p. 224. ^Robertson, pp. 21-22. ^Compton Mackenzie, "Confessions," The Saturday Book (London), IX (1949), 120. 5 the summer term of 1903 "after a performance of Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice I had refused an offer from Arthur Bouchier of a seven years* contract as his jeune premier at the Garrick Theatre, when I had taken my degree. 13 Acting as a profession did not interest him. He was later to say, "The stage I had firmly rejected as a future 14 career before I was three." But at one time he did want 15 to be a playwright. He decided against spending a fourth year at Oxford to read English literature because he wanted to work on his "blank verse play about Joan of Arc."^ 12 Compton Mackenzie, "Sidelight," The Spectator (London), CXCI (November 20, 1953), 578. 13 On two occasions he acted on the professional stage for short periods. In 1910 he played the role of a French priest shipwrecked on the Isle of Man in The Bishop*s Son by Hall Caine in its run of one week. In 1912 he came to New York to produce his own dramatic adaptation of his second novel Carnival for the American impresario William Brady. When they were unable to secure a satisfactory male lead, Mackenzie played the part opposite Grace George. The play opened in Toronto and went to Detroit and Montreal, but it was not a success and failed to appear in New York (Faith Mackenzie, pp. 209, 225). ^Compton Mackenzie, "1900," Life and Letters To-Day, XXXIV (July 1942), 21. "i never intended to be a novelist; I always meant to be a playwright"--Mackenzie, Echoes. p. 92. ^^Mackenzie, "Sidelight," p. 578. We do not hear of this play again. Apparently it expired with the "enormous number of plays" he said he had on hand in a letter he wrote about this time to his father.^ But we do have a record of at least two plays written at this time. Kis wife in her autobiography speaks of his drama tization of H. G. Wells’s Kipps: "Mr. Wells was surprised and delighted by the scenario which Monty submitted to him, and, when the play was finished, appeared to be even more surprised and delighted. But it was never produced." The second play, which was actually produced, is The Gentleman in Grey. It is "an eighteenth-century highwayman 19 romance," as his wife described it, or "an eighteenth- 20 century comedy," w as he has termed it. The play was 21 written in two weeks, we are told, for his father’s ^Faith Mackenzie, p. 183. ^®Faith Mackenzie, p. 191. ^Faith Mackenzie, p. 191. ^^Mackenzie, Echoes, p. 92. He has also referred to it as "an eighteenth-century romance"--Compton Mackenzie, "Sidelight,” The Spectator. CXCI (December 25, 1953), 762. ^^"Talks With Writers," The New York Evening Sun, October 19, 1912 (clipping in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks, No. 31). Hereafter references to the Scrapbooks will merely state Scrapbook and give the appropriate volume number). 22 birthday in January, 1906. It was first .presented at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, at the beginning of March, 19107. It was well received and remained in the repertory 23 of the Company for three or four years. Although the play has not been printed, we perhaps get an idea of the story from the account given in The Bath Chronicle for August 10, 1924. Mackenzie had revised the play in 1923, and retitled it The Passionate Elopement, undoubtedly to take advantage of the popularity of the novel which grew out of the earlier play.^ It was presented by Miss Nell Compton, Mackenzie's sister, and the Compton Comedy Com pany . In its review The Bath Chronicle said: ^Faith Mackenzie, p. 191. 23 Mackenzie, Echoes, pp. 92-93. ^^How extensively it was revised we do not know. From the evidence of the review given in the text, I suspect it was little altered as far as the main story is con cerned. Mackenzie's general practice in the matter of re visions for his published writings is that indicated in the following passage which prefaces a collection of his articles: "It is always a temptation to revise work like this in the light of added experience; but I never thought this was playing the game. Everyone of these articles was as good as I could make it at the time and ... no attempt has been made to improve the manner or the matter"--Unconsidered Trifles (London, 1932), pp. 7-8. 8 It tells of a daughter of a gentleman who agrees to elope with an unscrupulous libertine. He steals her valuable pearls and Inveigles the girl to a lonely Inn. The little lady has, however, an unknown champion, who having held up the stage coach for a wager, enters the same Inn In time to save the heroine's honor. The entire action of the play Involves only one day and events move swiftly. Without a doubt Mr. Mackenzie has caught the atmosphere of the period and reveals the fact In much delicious dialogue.25 Mackenzie has described on several occasions how The Gentl«*m»n In Grey developed into his first novel The Passionate Elopement. In a radio talk he once said: I never saw a performance of it [The Gentleman In Grevl that did satisfy me. That autumn of 1907 I went to live with a parson friend Sandys Wason at Cury in Cornwall . . . and one evening in November I sat down after tea at a small table lighted by a couple of candles with red shades and started to write the ideal performance of The Gentleman in Grey in the shape of a novel called The Passionate Elopement.26 While it is not unusual for a successful novel to be adapted for the stage (we have, for example, Mackenzie's 9 c Clipping in Scrapbook No. 8. ^^Mackenzie, Echoes. p. 93. In an article he wrote earlier for T. P.'s Weekly, he said: "A sentence of de scription kept running in my head, and one evening toward the end of November, in a Cornish vicarage, I sat down before dinner to elaborate The Gentleman in Grey into a long eighteenth-century novel, to be called Curtain Wells. Very soon the play, except for a few characters, vanished from my mind and I became interested by the book as I had never been interested by the comedy"--Compton Mackenzie, "How I Began," January 3, 1913, p. 3. own dramatization of his Carnival), the reverse process is much rarer. Moreover, it may. seem strange that a play which he confesses did not strongly interest him should be the inspiration for his first novel. Familiar with his later versatility, we might suspect he would wish to make a fresh beginning. But his imagination seems to have been stimulated by the setting of his play rather than by its plot. To use that setting adequately required more scope than a play permitted. And the cream of the jest would be to make his "long eighteenth century novel" imitate the conventions and physical characteristics of*the Georgian novel. For such an attempt he had considerable background. He had long been conversant with the literature of the eighteenth century: "In earliest boyhood I had read volume after volume of Georgian comedies, novels, essays and 27 memoirs." In Literature in My Time, Mackenzie wrote: I could not read enough of Smollett and Fielding, par ticularly of Smollett. Roderick Random seemed to me the best book that was ever written, and I must have read it a dozen times before I was thirteen. The second favourite was Peregrine Pickle. Smollett's best novel, Humphrey Clinker. I cared for* less, so one may presume 27 Mackenzie, "How I Began," p. 3. 10 that it was the knockabout life of the first and second which delighted the growing boy. This was equally true of my enjoyment of Tom Jones. There was nothing knock about in Clarissa Harlowe and still less in Sir Charles Grandison. Yet I read both these long novels without missing a page, and of Clarissa Harlowe I read a good deal two or three times over.^8 As for plays, "I had from the age of two been familiar over the footlights with Sheridan, Goldsmith, Coleman, Foote, 29 and a dozen others." In addition, "almost every play written in English up to 1870 was in my father’s library, 30 and before I was twelve years old I had read the lot." Besides this early experience with the literature and atmosphere of the eighteenth century, Sir Compton found at his friend’s house in Cornwall where he was staying when he began his novel some additional spurs to the imagina tion: . . . a couple of scrapbooks with many original letters, bills, and other odds and ends of the days of the Georges. Finally, I had a copy of Anstey’s enchanting satire in verse, The New Bath Guide, which was of inestimable service for evoking the atmosphere of the imaginary spa called Curtain Wells.31 ^®(New York, 1933), p. 38. ^Mackenzie, "How I Began," p. 3. Mackenzie, "1900," p. 20. ^Hlackenzie, Echoes, p. 94. 1! The setting of The Passionate Elopement, as mentioned, is the imaginary Curtain Wells, and the novel exhibits various aspects of the fashionable life of the spa and the Exquisite Mob who frequent it. Beau Ripple, like Beau Nash of Bath, is the king of the spa. Among his subjects are Mrs. Courteen, the widow, and her two suitors, Major Tarry and Mr. Moon, the judge, who have followed her from the country. Also accompanying her is her seventeen-year-old daughter Fhyllida, the heroine of the tale, who is pursued by both the gambler Mr. Francis Vernon and his rival Mr. Charles Lovely. The first half of the book is largely devoted to a description of the life of the spa, its activities and its manners: the rule of Beau Ripple; the morning ritual of the Pump Room; the public breakfasts; the cock-fighting, gaming, and wenching of the young men; and the fashionable balls and masquerades. Against this background slowly unfolds the story of Fhyllida and her gradual involvement with the two young men. The latter half of the book centers directly upon Fhyllida*s love affair and follows it to its unhappy conclusion. The dis reputable Vernon by a trick gets Fhyllida to agree to an elopement and to bring with her the jewels she has in herited. Vernon as a card-shark has won a considerable 12 amount of money from his rival Charles Lovely. To make money to pay his debts, Lovely writes a satirical poem on the people at the Wells, in which all the characters are easily identifiable. Later he discovers that in the col lection there is a poem dealing with Fhyllida which he never wrote. This is the work of Vernon with the con nivance of the bookseller. Vernon had planted the poem to induce Phyllida to flee from the scene of her disparage ment . The final chapters concern the pursuit of the eloped pair. Major Tarry, the first to follow the coach in which Phyllida is eloping, is shot down by the Magg brothers, the villainous coachmen. Charles Lovely and his friend Anthony Clare also set out, after Beau Ripple and Mrs. Courteen are already in pursuit. Phyllida has left Curtain Wells in the coach by herself, and is to meet Vernon at The Basket of Roses Inn on the London Road. On arrival at the Inn, she meets Sir George Repington, the uncle of Charles Lovely, who is going down to the Wells to visit his nephew, from whom he had long been estranged. Sir George becomes interested in Phyllida, who resembles his dead sister, the mother of Charles; but Vernon arrives and the two depart. During the night's travel, the coach drivers attempt to rob the pair, but without success, for the horses run away. The driverless coach finally breaks down, and during the night spent together Vernon comes under the spell of Phyllida. He resolves to marry her and mend his own life. But at dawn Charles and his friend find them. In a duel Charles kills Vernon. There is now no possibility of a love-match between Phyllida and Charles. So Charles, in course of time, becomes the successor of Beau Ripple at Curtain Wells. Beau Ripple himself is revealed to be Belladine, the friend and com panion of Sir George Repington in their youth. Having been disappointed in love, he had changed his name and become a beau. Now the two friends settle in Wells to enjoy a placid old age in each other's company, entertained by the antics of the new Beau Lovely. So bald a summary of the story gives, of course, little idea of the particular flavor of a book like The Passionate Elopement, which depends less on plot incident than on style and tone for its effect. It is essentially a tour de force--the springtime exercise of the young man of talent who is familiar with the literature of the eighteenth century and has come under the spell of French 14 and English aestheticism. ‘ The artistic purpose of the book might be described as an attempt to write an eighteenth- century romantic comedy which would be accurate in its reproduction of the modes and manners of the period and its use of the conventions of that novel, yet with a sophisticated modem awareness primarily reflected in the 32 style and tone of the work. It. is a pastiche in which the principle of imitation is extended even to the actual appearance of the text, which Martin Seeker, the publisher, made as much like that of an eighteenth-century book as modem taste would warrant. The type, spelling, and format are in keeping with earlier practice. There is the deep black print, the wide margins, the lashing of the "c" and "t." There is a profusion of capital letters. There is the eighteenth-century spelling of words like "risque," 32 Reviewers, in general, saw the theme of the novel to be that described in The Pall Mall Gazette (London): "An attempt ... to reproduce the life at an inland spa in the days of hooks, sedan chairs, powder, patches, and quadrilles"--January 27, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook NO. 31). The Morning Post (London) detected "special plead' ing for the importance of social ritual and its high priests"— January 20, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). Punch (London) stressed the literary antecedents of the book: "Mr. Mackenzie has set out to achieve a most original and daring purpose, to write a novel acceptable per se to a modem public, and yet in frank and wholesale imitation of Henry Fielding"--CXL (March 15, 1911), 180. 15 "sattin," or "pacquet"; and the use of the final ”k" in words like "publick" or "romantick." And there is the catch-word in the lower right-hand comer of the page. Mackenzie, moreover, in his treatment of character ization, plot, point of view, and style in The Passionate Elopement follows certain conventions of the eighteenth- century novel, and in particular the practice of Henry Fielding, as shall be described hereafter. In keeping with the artificial nature of the pastiche the author calls attention to resemblances between characters or incidents in his novel and those in the fiction or drama of the period.^ 33 A number of reviewers commented on the resemblance of The Passionate Elopement In style and manner to the work of eighteenth-century writers. The Leicester Mail found in it "a return to the style of Fielding, but without any, coarseness in plot or language"--April 7, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). Frederick Niven in T. P.fs Weekly (London) actually preferred Mackenzie to Fielding because of the latter*s "vulgar buffoonery"--February 24, 1911, p. 231. On the other hand, The Sunday Times and Sunday Special (London) stated: "The Passionatd Elopement has no kinship with Fielding. It is rather in the manner of Sheridan's plays. . . . And . . . there is a certain flavour of Sterne in places"--January 29, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). * \Z Fhyllida is compared to Clarissa Harlowe on two occasions (pp. 233, 281), and Francis Vernon is described as having to be either "a Lovelace or a Joseph Andrews" (p. 234). Major Tarry is associated with Mr. Hardcastle 16 Likewise In keeping with the tradition of the Georgian novel, the story has Its moral or message. Of particular interest is the fact that it expresses a fundamental con viction of the author. For it is not perhaps to break a butterfly upon the wheel to find in this moral an attitude central to the thought of Mackenzie, though of greater importance in his later work. Essentially it is a belief in the inherent sacredness of the human personality and the necessity for freedom from external interference if the individual is to fulfill himself--"romantic humanism" as 3 5 his friend Eric Llnklater has called it. Charles Lovely of She Stoops to Conquer (p. 140). With reference to Betty, t;he Courteens* maid, the literary uses of the con fidante are described (p. 196). All page references are to the.following edition of the novel: Compton Mackenzie, The Passionate Elopement (Daily Express Library of Famous Books [London, no date]). 35 The Man on My Back: An Autobiography (New York, 1941), p. 308. So important does Mackenzie regard this question of personal freedom that it has led him into innumerable literary and political fights. his convictions have led him to attack literary censorship and to defend the cause of Scottish nationalism. His wife speaking of the latter has said: "His enthusiasm for the cause was an earnest of his loathing of standardization, his deep sense of Individualism, of the Integrity of small nations. It was the first principle ... of his life from earliest days"--Faith Compton Mackenzie, More Than I Should (London, 1940), p. 227. 17 seems to have some hint of this truth after he has killed Vernon In their duel. As he and his friend Anthony Clare walk apart from the scene, leaving Phyllida with her dead lover, he asks: "What right had I to interfere between lovers?" "You did it for the best." "I know, I know, but what a d d number of silly actions are done for the best." (The Passionate Elope ment. pp. 378-379) Beau Ripple, however, makes the point most clearly and emphatically in the lesson he draws from the ill-fated love affair: My lords, ladies and gentlemen, never meddle with other people's business when it happens to concern the heart or the soul of a human creature. . . . Admonish the erring child, warn the impetuous young woman, chide the libertine, reproach the gamester, set an example of con tinence to all the world, but abstain from direct inter ference; and if an unpleasant doom overwhelms the object of your interest, pray do not suppose that you would have been able to avert it. My lords, ladies and gentle men, you are one and all the genteelest of companions, but so far as my theology has taken me, you are none of you gods or goddesses, except in the hyperbole of poetick dedications. (The Passionate Elopement. pp. 383-384) The dominant effect of The Passionate Elopement, how ever, is decorative rather than didactic or dramatic. There is considerable stress upon costume, period, setting, picture. The setting in time of the story is given by the narrator in round figures as "a hundred and fifty 18 36 3 7 years ago," or roughly in the 1750*8. Although Mac kenzie has called the physical setting "an imaginary spa," Curtain Wells obviously is patterned after the Bath of Beau 38 Nash. Since the exterior trappings of life occupy such importance in the thematic framework of the novel, critical comment on the setting has been extensive. Most reviewers mentioned as one of the notable features of The Passionate Elopement the success of its evocation of the details, manners, and atmosphere of eighteenth-century life. Country Life (London) said: 36 The Passionate Elopement, p. 196. 37 There was a certain range of conjecture among re viewers as to the exact time depicted. Although The Daily Chronicle (London) was content to describe the period as "early Georgian" (April 11, 1911 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 31]), The Scotsman (Edinburgh) analyzed the problem: "The period is sufficiently advanced in the reign of George III, to make the'Jacobite uprisings a memory, and for the bruit to have reached a fashionable watering-place of the wild doings of the Heir-Apparent, although now and then we are reminded of the earlier manners and phraseology of Clarissa Harlowe and Sir Charles Grandison"--January 19, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 38 The Sketch (London), for example, called Curtain Wells "an echo of Bath"--February 8, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). The Liverpool Post and Liverpool Mer cury said: "Probably no book within reach of the average reader gives a truer appreciation of the attractions and gaieties of Bath in the days of its splendour"--March 1, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 19 "This novel must be hailed as a real triumph. It Is not a copy of the fashion of a past period--it is an actual reproduction of a period."^9 The Pall Mall Gazette (London) spoke of "photographic accuracy, while The English Review (London) observed: Mr. Mackenzie is so perfectly at home in the eighteenth century that his ease is communicated to the reader. He has read beyond the obvious until he can write you occasional verse of the time that would deceive Profes sor Saintsbury. ^ The Westminster Gazette (London) felt that the book in creased understanding of the great eighteenth-century writers like Richardson or Fielding: Writing for their own times, their mise-en-scene had no value for them, but Mr. Mackenzie recreates it so admirably that it is no exaggeration to say that thanks to his brilliant scene-painting we shall gain an even more vivid appreciation of the work of his great fore runners . * In recreating the details of life in an eighteenth- century fashionable spa, Mackenzie achieves authenticity 39 March 4, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^January 27, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 41VII (February 1911), 580. 42 February 4, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 20 / Q without pedantry. With off-hand ease ]>e presents routs, ridottos, and masquerades; and he describes the rich cos- tumes and millinery of the Exquisite Mob: their watered silks and brocades and satins.- He speaks knowingly of the card games of the period: quadrille, ombre, picket, and escarte. He also treats some of the less attractive aspects of the age: the bloody cruelty of a Welsh main in cockfighting or the abortion mill and baby farm of Mother Mawhood at Blackhart Farm. Mackenzie shows considerable skill in the firmness of construction and vividness of detail in the extended descriptions which characterize the novel, as notably in the account of the Chinese masquerade in Chapter XVI. The following passage which begins a description of Blackhart Farm indicates his skill in selecting detail to convey atmosphere or mood as well as picture: He [Francis Vernon] followed the roadway for about a quarter of a mile between tall, damp hedgerows, 43 Robert Ross said: "Mr. Compton Mackenzie shows . . . a very wide knowledge of eighteenth-century side issues-- - its furniture, its costume, and those other appurtenances which go to make up atmosphere. You do not feel he has called in Mr. Percy Macquoid to check the Chippendale and scrutinize the Sheraton"--The Bystander (London), no date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 21 dismounted at a small wicket-gate, and, leading his horse, turned aside through a plantation of close-set, withered larches under which the grass grew pale and thin, with a sweet unhealthy odor of fungus. Blackhart Farm appeared in view--a long, long building with slated roof, trim enough, but repulsive and barren. From a pile of chimney stacks smoke was rising hardly through the heavy atmosphere. (The Passionate Elope ment, p. 199) * A special feature of his descriptive technique in this book is his use of the weather to counterpoint plot incidents. The beginning of the novel is bathed in warm sunlight, as the scene opens upon an eventful, happy Valentine’s Day. When the Exquisite Mob stays away from the Pump Room that morning of "The Great Rebellion," there is a torrential rain; and the heavens lower when Beau Ripple comes to warn Mrs. Courteen of the behavior of her daughter. During Phyllida’s elopement the sky begins to darken as ominous prelude to the death of Major Tarry. When the Major has been shot by the coach-drivers, "Raindrops began to fall, deliberately at first, but soon fast enough, while the earth was slowly blotted out by storm and rain and twi light" (p. 291). Then, A flash of lightning illuminated the dead body of the veteran lying face downwards in the mud of an English highroad, and a distant volley of thunder accorded military honours to his somewhat grotesque death. (p. 292) 22 Critics and reviewers have been more sharply divided on the effectiveness of the characterization in The Pas- sionate Elopement than on the success of the eighteenth- century setting. The North Mail (Newcastle) observed: "In such a work characterization counts for little. But Mr. Mackenzie's characters all act their little parts in /,/■ satisfactory fashion." Other reviews, however, empha sized the realism of the characterizations. The English Review stated: He [Mackenzie] knows nearly as much about men and women as about the eighteenth century; all his characters are real and warm with life. They talk neither the greasy lime-lit jargon of the novelettes, nor yet the modem Oxford slang. (February, 1911, p. 580) J. M., writing in The Living Age (Boston), said: It is not a "costume" novel because the characters are not dummies; they are, indeed, so very much alive that we seem to know the whole thread of their lives and not only the particular skein that enters into the knot of the story. That of course is the supreme test, and the minor characters pass it even more successfully than the hero.45 Douglas Goldring, however, expresses the completely 44 February 9, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 45 "Compton Mackenzie," CCLXXXVIII (January 29, 1916), 283. 23 opposite point of view: "It was 'costume drama,* inten tionally artificial, with no serious attempt at psychology or characterization."^ Arthur St. John Adcock admits the artificiality, but finds it graceful and appropriate; the characters have "the charm and fragile daintiness that belong to old minuets and Dresden china shepherds and A 7 shepherdesses." C. R- S. in The Oxford Magazine saw the 48 characters as puppets, but vivid ones. S. H. in The Manchester Guardian observed: He [Mackenzie] thought at first, and so did we, that they [the characters] were puppets, but when passion begins to stir he can pretend to treat them as puppets no longer; he is interested and must impart a touch of realism to the story.^ The Passionate Elopement, however, is not a novel which requires realistic characterization. In fact, as Scofield Thayer points out, "the author lays emphasis upon the unreality of his people and their lives. If they 46 Reputations (New York, 1920), p. 42. 47 Gods of Modern Grub Street (London, 1923), p. 185. ^February 23, 1911, p. 225. 4Q January 25, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^"Compton Mackenzie," The Dial, LXV (November 30, 1918), 477. 24 lack depth, if they do not afford psychological interest, they are yet vividly .conceived, like figures in a panto mime. They owe their existence to being part of a social milieu and characters in an elaborate pastiche. That they seemed realistic to many of the reviewers must be attrib uted to the naturalness of the dialogue and to the accuracy of detail which surrounds them. Despite the studied pathos of the story’s ending, human passion and action are not of central concern. The characters are inseparable from a richly described background of the manners and fashions of a highly artificial and sophisticated social system. The hall-mark of the Exquisite Mob is its artifici ality. Conventions and fashions, modes and manners, are of paramount importance to this society. Mackenzie brings them before us in their elaborateness, their absurdity, yet also with a quaint and sentimentalized attractiveness. The characters, as creatures of artifice, are often repre sented as figurines, puppets, dolls, or actors in a panto mime. Thus Curtain Wells is described as "a tolerably attractive stage for the marionettes who postured and declaimed upon its boards" (p. 25). Beau Ripple alludes to the flight of Fhyllida: "Some one has stolen a porcelain 25 shepherdess from my booth in Vanity Fair" (p. 348). As a minuet dies out, "Fhyllida felt . . . that she was a doll whose gestures served to amuse a genteel but unearthly audience of monocled Gods” (p. 109). Later at the Masquer ade she thought she had become a member of the pantomime: "Now she had joined that whimsical procession which capers across the draughty sheet" (p. 186). Artificiality and unreality are not qualities we normally associate with the eighteenth century. And in deed, except for certain externals, this is not the robust eighteenth century of Swift and Fielding and Dr. Johnson, but the eighteenth century strained through the pages of The Yellow Book. Mackenzie wisely limited the scene to a fashionable spa, with its self-conscious ritual of health and pleasure, an artificial world within a world. The fact that the characters are regarded as puppets, that the plot "^John Freeman has commented on the importance of aestheticism in Mackenzie's treatment of the eighteenth century: ". . . the origin of our novelist's inspiration need be sought no further back than the 'nineties*"-- English Portraits and Essays (London, 1924), p. 206. Philip Guedalla in speaking of the book's popularity says that "exquisite young gentlemen caught in The Passionate Elopement a flattering echo of their own affectation"— A Gallery (London, 1924), p. 176. 26 is melodramatic, and that we are reminded that 150 years separate the age from our own, all increases the reader's feeling that he is viewing "a whimsical procession which capers across the draughty sheet." Such awareness is necessary for the particular blend of humor and sentimen tality which characterizes the tone of the book. Artifice, formality, and a beauty which haunts because of its strangeness and remoteness to ordinary experience were 52 qualities prized by the aesthetes of the Nineties. And these were qualities evidenced both in the subject matter and the style of The Passionate Elopement. Mackenzie observes eighteenth-century practice in the unrealistic names he gives many of his characters, vrtiich likewise emphasize their artificiality. His tradespeople include Mr. Crumpett the confectioner, Mr. Trinket of the toyshop, Mrs. Leafy of the flower-shop, and Mr. Filigree 52 One thinks, for example, of Aubrey Beardsley's prose fragment Under the Hill (1896). There is also Max Beer- bohm's interest in the eighteenth century, as in his essay on "Dandies and Dandies," with its account of "the un bridled decorum of Mdlle. Hullin" or "the rigid perfection" of Beau Brummel's linen (The Works of Max Beerbohm [New York, 1896], p. 5). In his essay on "The Pervasion of Rouge," Beerbohm says: "The old signs are here and the por tents to warn the seer of life that we are ripe for a new epoch of artifice" (The Works, p. 102). the goldsmith. The Exquisite Mob has its Earl of Squall, Lord Augustus Wind, the Earl of Vanity, while Lady Bun- butter herself comes out of the pages of Anstey's The New 53 Bath Guide. Then there is the artificial elegance of * the name Valentine Lovely for Charles's father, or the pun involved in the name "Courteen" for the nubile Phyllida and the amorous widow her mother. Similarly in the conven tion of the older novel is the revelation the author gives of what happens to the various characters once the story proper has been ended. We learn, for example, that Phyllida later marries and has "a flock of rosy children," while her mother does not marry again but lives on for many years at Courteen Grange. And the Maggs brothers, the villainous drivers of the elopement carriage, "were hanged at Tyburn for a peculiarly atrocious robbery and brutal assault upon a blind rat-tamer" (p. 302). Beau Ripple, the little monarch of the Wells, has been called the central character of the novel.^ Certainly he is the most original character in the pastiche, and "*^3rd ed. (London, 1766), p. 97. 54 The Spectator, CVI (February 4, 1911), 185. 28 reviewers, in general, found him successfully drawn.^ He was frequently identified with Beau Nash of Bath, and there are points of similarity as we see when we compare Beau Ripple with the Nash depicted by Oliver Goldsmith in his Life of Richard Nash and by Anstey in The New Bath Guide. Of chief significance is the fact that, according to Goldsmith, it was "the constant practice" of Beau Nash to protect young girls from "the fatal consequences of rash and inconsiderate love" by warning their parents or guar dians.^ Goldsmith illustrates as follows: One night when I was in Wiltshire's room Nash came up to a lady and her daughter . . . and bluntly told the mother she had better be at home . . . the old lady, wisely conceiving there might be some hidden meaning couched under this seeming insolence, retired, and For example, The Liverpool Courier said: "The por trait of this social autocrat would suffice to make the book notable"--April 28, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). The'Times Literary Supplement (London) said that "We catch a glimpse of the man beneath the Beau"— Febru ary 10, 1911, p. 57, col. 1. "^Anstey makes the same point in Letter XI of The New Bath Guide: Long reign'd the great NASH, this omnipotent Lord, Respected by Youth, and by Parents ador'd; For Him not enough at a Ball to preside, Th' unwary and beautiful Nymph would he guide; Oft tell her a Tale, how. the credulous Maid By Man, by perfidious Man is betray'd. ... (p. 82) 29 coming to her lodgings found a coach-and-six at her door, which a sharper had provided to carry off her eldest daughter. In this passage we have a suggestion not only of the chief plot incident of The Passionate Elopement but also of Beau Ripple*s visit to warn Mrs. Courteen of her daughter's secret meetings with an unknown gallant. The characterization of Beau Ripple is both comic and sentimentalized, and is thus representative of Mackenzie's treatment of the other major characters in the novel. We first see the Beau at his toilet, groping for a button under his bed; and it Is as a humorous figure that he is introduced to us. Later we learn that in his youth he had been unhappy in love and had turned Beau in desperation. As the reviewer for The Scotsman said, we are made aware C D of "a heart hidden away under the fripperies.' Nowhere is the inspiration of the Nineties more clearly seen than in the sensuous yet sentimental description which the Beau gives of his manner of life when the season is over at Curtain Wells. The passage Is reminiscent of the 57 The Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Peter Cunningham, IV (New York, 1881), 87. CO January 19, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 30 cadenced prose of Walter Pater and the Goncourts* Ideal of l*ecriture artiste. As portrait it is rather suggestive of Pater*s Marius or Huysmans* Des Esseintes than of an eighteenth-century beau: I meditate, George, I meditate in a charming rural retreat which I possess in the green heart of Devonshire. There I spend leafy days in pastoral seclusion. I have my plane tree, my jug of old Falemian. I have my spaniel, Lalage, and an impoverished female cousin who performs very engagingly upon the spinet. I sit in the austere musick-chamber with shadowy white walls, empty save for two or three tall black oaken chairs and the curiously painted instrument. I listen to the cool melodies of Couperin and admire his unimpassioned sym bols of the Passions where a purple domino is the most violent, the most fervid emotion. I hear above the chirping of the crickets, the faint harmonies of Arch- angelo Corelli and the fugues of Domenico Scarlatti, whose name is so vivid, but whose musick like the morning is a mist of gold. X sit in a library hung with faded rose brocades and tarnished silver broideries. There I meditate upon the bloody deaths of Ehiperors and the grey hairs of Helen of Tfoy., .There I move serenely from shelf to shelf and hark to the muffled thunder of volumes clapped together to exclude the odorous dust. I ponder Religion and Urn Burial and pore over the lurid histories of notable comets. At dusk of a fine day, I step out into the dewy garden to watch the colours fade from the flowers and the stars wink in the lucent green of the western sky. Presently I step indoors, light a tall wax candle set in a silver candlestick, go sedately to bed and fall asleep to the perfume of roses and jasmine and the echo of a cadence from the Anatomy of Melancholy. (pp. 360-361) The other major characters are essentially paste-board figures of conventional romance, though they are painted in fresh and glowing colors. Phyllida is innocent seventeen, 31 caught in the transitional state from hoyden to young lady.^ Charles Lovely, in turn, is the conventional hero,^^ while Francis Vernon is the conventional villain, though, as G. N. A. in The Oxford Chronicle and Berks and ' Bucks Gazette observed, his "villainy consists largely in the fact that he is not quite a gentleman. The minor characters, who are vividly and amusingly sketched, are stock figures of much eighteenth-century fiction. Part of their interest for the cultivated reader lies in the literary echoes and overtones which accompany them. As previously mentioned, Mackenzie himself may draw attention to some literary parallel to his characters. 59 The Standard (London) remarked of her: "She does not, in truth, exist one-half so vividly as does her swans- down muff. In intention she might have seemed, like Mrs. Gaskell*s Molly or Mr. Meredith’s Lucy, a gentle, loving girl whose ignorance of ’horrid man' betrayed into indiscretion, but her portrait is set against so soft and minute a background that her heart is the size of a pea and she is placed on Mr. Mackenzie's shelf--another Dresden shepherdess to be looked at but never touched"--January 27, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^®The narrator of The Passionate Elopement says: "Pray judge Mr. Lovely, not as a man, but as a hero, for I think you'll do me the justice to admit I never tried to conceal his position" (p. 227). ^February 3, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 32 So in speaking of Betty the maid as the confidante of her mistress Fhyllida, he muses upon her literary antecedents: Mr. Sheridan could laugh at Mr. Cumberland through this artful, artless medium, but he too had his Lucy. Mr. Smollett depended upon Miss Williams ... in order to help his Narcissa to reveal herself and you, Mr. Gold smith, whose name, like inxnortal Madame Blaize, is ' ’ bedizened and brocaded,” you had your dearest Neville. (p. 196) -More often, however, the reader will readily supply his own parallel. So Thomas, the Bible-quoting servant of the Courteens, calls to mind that other Thomas, the cross- grained footman of the Brambles in Humphrey Clinker. Mrs. Mawhood of Blackhart Farm strongly suggests Moll Flanders' governess, who likewise^ was bawd, fence, baby- farmer, and abortionist. And Mrs. Courteen herself is sister to innumerable spinsters and widows of a certain age in eighteenth-century fiction whose lives are devoted to fashion and a gentle amorous intrigue with widowers or retired Army officers. Mackenzie's most effective device of characterization is his convincing dialogue. This achievement undoubtedly owes something to his experience with the stage and his general familiarity with drama. But from whatever source, it lends a freshness and realism to characters otherwise 33 deliberately artificial. An example of the dramatic realism Mackenzie can achieve in his dialogue is found in the scene in which Charles Lovely recalls the singla occa sion in his early youth when he met Sir George Repington. He has just been led into the room where his uncle is sitting. "What the d l's this?" asked the grey gentleman jumping up. "Your honour's nephew," said the yellow gentleman. "Eh! What! leave us, sirrah," and "What do you want?" he said, turning to Charles. . . . "Please, sir, my father sent me to see you." "Who’s he?" "Valentine Lovely, sir." "Good G““! Good G--!" muttered the old gentleman. "And Mrs. Lovely? Did she send you too?" "Mrs. Lovely's dead, sir." The grey gentleman looked across the room at a large painting of a girl in a white dress skipping with a rope of roses. "Please, sir," said young Charles, "I think that is Mrs. Lovely." "It was, boy; it was." "I wish I had known her then," said Charles. "Is your name George, boy?" inquired the grey gentle man in a tone that was half eager. "No, sir, *tis Charles--after'the Prince of Wales." "A Papist, eh?" said the grey gentleman bitterly. "George was too honest a name for that scoundrel. Well, boy, you can stay." "Please, sir, I'd rather go back to my father," said the boy. "He*s waiting for me." "Then go and be d----d," said the grey gentleman, and he walked over to the window. (pp. 131-132) In the novel the dialogue ranges from the studied elegance of Beau Ripple to the coarse country speech of 34 Mrs. Tabrum. There are perhaps overtones of Oscar Wilde in the portrait of the Beau, who is capable of a pseudo- Wildean epigram such as "Nothing matters, but everything is of the greatest importance" (p. 359). Moreover, the Beau's invitation to Charles Lovely to attend the breakfast for Sir Jeremy Dummer is couched in terms not inappropriate to the characters of The Importance of Being Earnest: "Tut, tut, I insist. My old friend Lord Cinderton arrives today with his invalid son, George Harthe- Brusshe. I should like the young man to see your cherry and trout-pink cuffs." (p. 43) A different world is reflected in the language with which Mrs. Tabrum of The Basket of Roses Inn speaks to a servant girl: "What for are 'ee standing there, lolloping thy great cap, dollop. Be off, great clockface, be off, pundle, to Mary Maria, and tell her to keep the fowls a-turning and a-turning." (p. 299) Mackenzie uses dialect on occasion for humorous as well as realistic effect, as when he gives us the speech of Farmer Hogbin of Baverstock Bam or briefly contrasts the Hamp shire accent of Betty, Fhyllida's maid, with the broad Dorset of Miss Morton's maid.^^ Yet whatever the social 62 Betty speaks of "the gauldren sun" and says that "Tammas would prefar yaller" (p. 16). Miss Morton's maid remarks, "Tes a Valentoine surely. . . . And who'd ha' thought she had a bow and her to be so spoitful" (p. 31). 35 class presented, the dialogue has almost always the authen- 63 tic ring of spoken language. Most reviewers of The Passionate Elopement were in agreement with the critic of The World (London) who said, "The plot is secondary to the atmosphere."^ C. R. S. writing in The Oxford Magazine said: The Passionate Elopement itself is only a rather irri tating plot to connect the various scenes; and though it serves its purpose well enough, it indicates Mr. Mackenzie's unnecessary diffidence in his power of holding a reader's attention without threading scene to scene. (February 23, 1911, p. 225) The Outlook (London) substantially agreed: "Mr. Mackenzie only gets his drama in patches. But as a series of eighteenth century studies his chapters are invariably 65 admirable." The Times Literary Supplement (London) believed that the incidents were largely improvised: "As to the plot, we doubt if he knew the end of it, at starting, 63 Speaking of the dialogue in the book, J. M. in The Living Age said that it seemed to solve the great problem of dialogue in fiction: "... the problem of find ing a compromise between Meredithean dialogue, frankly idealized, with no more claim to verbal realism than if it were written in blank verse, and the Kodak realism of a stenographic report" (p. 283). 64 No date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^^No date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 36 any more than the actors themselves. If the plot or the pattern of Incident, however, does not seem as Important to the artistic purpose of the book as setting or characterization, that Is perhaps to lose sight of the novel as a pastiche. The Incidents are not only reminiscent of eighteenth-century sentimental drama and romance, buf also in their artificiality they con tribute to the over-all tone of the work. Moreover, even a cursory examination reveals that The Passionate Elopement Is very carefully and deliberately structured in time and tempo. It is not by accident that the action begins on St. Valentine's Day and reaches its fatal conclusion on April Fool's: the inclusive dating is sufficient cosmentary on the love intrigue. There is also a definite progression in tempo, from the carefully elaborated set scenes at the beginning to the chase of the elopers and the chances of the duel at the end. The contents of the book fall into two well-defined divisions, separated at almost the exact center of the volume by Chapter XX, "In Which Everything Grows But The Plot." The emphasis upon setting and description of ^February 10, 1911, p. 57, col. 1. the first half of the book is adequately suggested by the titles of the first five chapters: I. The Toilet II. The Pump Room III. The Blue Boar IV. Curtain Maze v. The Publick Breakfast Indeed the first nineteen chapters constitute a series of tableaux illustrative of life at Curtain Wells.^ From the ritual of the morning toilet and the visit to the Pump Room, we are introduced to the various amusements and activities of the inhabitants of the Wells, ending with the account of the cockfight at Blackhart Farm in Chap ter XIX- With Chapter XXI the love intrigue moves into the foreground. Curtain Polls, Charles Lovely’s satiric poem, is published; and within six chapters the elopement and the chase, which occupy nine of the remaining eleven 67 They are also functional in developing the plot situation. In Chapter I, for example, "The Toilet," we are introduced to Beau Ripple, Mr. Francis Vernon, Mr. Charles Lovely, Mrs. Courteen, Phyllida, and the two servants of the Courteens, Betty and Thomas. At the same time Phyllida and Charles Lovely meet for the first time, and the prin cipals of the love intrigue are defined. And this is all done in but little over nine pages. 38 chapters, have begun. In imitation of the eighteenth-century novel, The Passionate Elopement makes use of two plot situations com mon in earlier fiction. The first is the centering of the love intrigue on a seduction, a device popular in the novel from Richardson to Goldsmith. Lest the point be missed, Mackenzie expressly associates his heroine with Clarissa Harlowe. When Phyllida slips out of the house to elope, she carries ”a small parcel of cloaths wrapped up in brown paper.” We are told: "If you are anxious to know what was inside, I will refer you to Miss Howe, Mr. Richardson’s Miss Howe, to whom Miss Clarissa Harlowe confided a parcel of much the same dimensions and contents" (p. 281). The second situation is more reminiscent of the practice of Fielding than of Richardson. It involves the solution of a mystery in a final scene of recognition. As the parent age of Joseph Andrews or Tom Jones is ultimately revealed, so the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Belladine, the friend in youth of Sir George Repington, is cleared up when Beau Ripple is shown to be that same Belladine in the meeting at The Basket of Roses Inn. The ending of the novel particularly has attracted unfavorable critical attention. The Leicester Mail found 39 the elopement itself "a trifle melodramatic."^ The Graphic (London) timidly confessed: "We incline to think the conclusion somewhat too forcedly dramatic for the 69 delicacy of what precedes." The point at issue is whether the note of pathos or tragedy struck at the end is in keeping with the artificial mood of comedy established at the beginning. So the Liverpool Courier commented: "The mood of the tale is really a preparation for another conclusion.The Manchester Guardian analyzed the prob lem in some detail and rather tepidly declared in favor of the originality of the ending: . . . it is a case of new wine in old bottles--much, indeed, as if Mr. Granville Barker were to rewrite the last act of "The School for Scandal." Surely when the surface or veneer is a reconstruction the characters to be in keeping should be reconstructions too; when the comedy is artificial the people should be less living people than elegant non-moral shadows. . . . Mr. Mackenzie's experiment places him in the amusing dilemma, for he was forced either to round off the tale to a conventional sentimental conclusion or to let the new wine burst the old bottle. And though the symmetry of his reconstruction is hopelessly spoilt, it is not 68 April 7, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 69 No date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^April 28, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). to his discredit that the new wine bursts the old bottle. (January 25, 1911 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 31]) But if originality is shown by the avoidance of a happy ending, there is no lack of sentiment. Charles Lovely is left only with his memories and a white swans - down muff, while Vernon dies in as designedly sentimental a manner as Clarissa Harlowe. At the touch of his dear one, Vernon opened his dark eyes. "Here's a bunch of primroses," he murmured, "not daisies. I picked them, Phyllida . . . for you . . . not daisies . . . primroses. ..." And so with thoughts of flowers, Mr. Francis Vernon died. Pray let that sentence be his epitaph. (p. 378) The Daily News (London) observed: The duel scene is one of those pretty pieces of sentimentality to which Stevenson was inclined when he found it necessary to send a villain into the next world. Like the scissors duel in "St. Ives," it gives us a blackguard on the edge of death redeemed by a fine attitude.?1 The narrative is straightforward if leisurely, in keeping with its eighteenth-century antecedents. A flash back is used only once--when Charles Lovely recalls two scenes from his childhood--and that is to prepare us for his later meeting with his uncle Sir George Repington. As noted earlier, incidents which have little to do with ^February 8, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 41 the love Intrigue are accomnodated by the artistic design of the book. Thus the scene at the Pdbllck Breakfast for Sir Jeremy Dummer, the dance at Baverstock Bam, the Great Rebellion, and the cockfight at Blackhart Farm have only a peripheral significance for the main action of the plot, but have their Importance in recreating the atmosphere of an eighteenth-century spa. In his method of telling the story, Mackenzie gener ally follows the practice of Fielding in the novel but with some significant differences. Basically it is third-person narrative, with the frank admission that the author- 72 narrator is telling a story.A relationship is estab lished with the reader by means of asides and a rather pervasive moral comnentary. Except for scenes which are presented dramatically and advanced largely through dia logue, we do not for long lose sight of the omniscient narrator. But whereas Fielding describes events contempo raneous with himself as narrator, the author-narrator of The Passionate Elopement is describing events of * ’a hundred and fifty years ago." Moreover, with an elaborate coyness, 72 So in speaking of Beau Ripple the narrator remarks that "since he will preside over this story of mine, we shall learn more about him as we go along” (p. 12). 42 the narrator on occasion places himself in the scene he is describing: "Coming, dear mamma," says Phyllida . . . just as we step out of Mrs. Choke's front door thinking it can no longer be indiscreet to follow our Muses to the scene of Mrs. Courteen's toilet. As we cross the road glittering in the sunshine with last night's rain, we see a tall young gentleman writing busily on a set of ivory tablets as he strolls quietly along the pavement. (p. 14) With equal coyness the narrator draws attention to his omniscience: "Such a merciless regard as ours penetrates to the heart and we know that Mr. Vernon is wondering what on earth will come of his affair with Miss Courteen" (p. 14). Moreover, since the narrator spans a period of a hundred and fifty years, he can freely mingle the present with the past. Thus he may comment: "As all roads are commonly reputed to lead to Earl's Court, so here at Curtain Wells all roads led to the Pump Room" (p. 19). Generally Mackenzie achieves a sentimental effect by such contrast, emphasizing the transiency of life and the inevi tability of change (the Ubi Sunt theme, which will be dis cussed later). But on occasion the contrast has a slightly ironic tone, as in the following reflection on the passing of the confidante: After all, what's the ultimate difference between sweet sensibility a hundred and fifty years ago and 43 sweet sensibility to-day? We should consider it demode for the latter to gossip with her maid. Now every schoolboy and schoolgirl knows how to spell psychology, and has been awarded a sub-conscious self to enliven the lonely hours. And this sub-conscious self, what is it, under analysis? Why, nothing more than the old confidante in ghostly guise with as long a tongue and as rich a store of bad advice. (pp- 196-197) The result of such self-conscious narrative techniques as those described above is to heighten the sense of artifi ciality, which is so strongly pervasive in the entire book. The decorative, mannered style is a central feature 7 0 of The Passionate Elopement. Although it found many admirers among critics and reviewers,^ it was perhaps reminiscent of the immediate past rather than character istic of its own day. William C- Frierson in his study of The English Novel in Transition, 1885-1940 observes the 73 Sir Arthur QuiHer-Couch, for example, included the first two-and-a-half pages of Chapter XXIX, "The Basket of Roses," in The Oxford Book of English Prose (Oxford, 1925), pp. 1057-1060. ^ The Sketch commented that the author "has used prose to evoke the material, self-conscious beauty of the eighteenth century"--February 8, 1911 (clipping in Scrap book No. 31). The Bystander said: "The author . . . de veloped a style--still more unusual with novelists--a style that is not Wardour Street"--no date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). The Daily Chronicle observed: "It is artificial and affected, but the artificiality and the affectation are delightful"— April 11, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 44 significant change which came over the novel during the years 1900-1915. There was a greater concern with ideas and a preoccupation with both social and individual prob lems . He states: "There was much more interest in what was said than in how the author said it. The aesthetic* move ment of the past century was dead."7^ Mackenzie*s style, however, reflects the literary enthusiasms which had developed during his school and college years. And these enthusiasms were largely directed toward writers with a highly colored and carefully wrought style, in which the how something was said was of engrossing interest. The chief influences in the formation of Mackenzie's style were, perhaps, George Meredith and, moire importantly, the exponents of English and French aestheticism. Some reviewers found The Passionate Elopement suggestive of Meredith. Clement Shorter called the book "a compound of Meredith and water," and John Freeman found it "casually spangled with Meredithean brightness. "77 In a published 7"*(Norman, Oklahoma, 1942), p. 143. 7^A review of Carnival in The Sphere. March 23, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). Likewise quoted in The Bookman (New York), XXXV (May 1912), 227. 77English Portraits and Essays, p. 200. 45 interview in 1912 Mackenzie rejected the suggestion that his work was patterned on that of Meredith: It has been a wonder that so many reviewers have traced the influence of Meredith in the books. Why, . . . I never stood before Meredith, say, as Keats stood be* fore Chapman's Homer. There was no peak in Darien for me in Meredith. Yet in Literature in My Time (p. 46) Mackenzie admits he was completely bewitched by the novels of Meredith from the age of seventeen to twenty. But this reading of Meredith does not seem to have had any traceable effects upon his style beyond possibly intensifying his early pre occupation with the refinements of expression and a desire to write a prose of polish and distinction. In The Passionate Elopement the style seems to owe more to the mood and techniques of the writers of the so- called decadence of the Nineties than to the lyrical ambiguities of Meredith. Before Mackenzie went to Oxford in 1901 his aestheticism was intense, and, he tells us, he was well acquainted with the work of the leading French and English writers of the fin-de-sifecle.^ He speaks of 78 The Boston Advertiser, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^ Literature in Mv Time, p. 95. 46 buying Yellow Books and Savoys, plays by Maeterlinck, symbolist poets like Mallarme, and binding up a com plete edition of Verlaine in a special shade of green buckram that took a week to meditate over. (Literature in Mv Time, p. 129) He was already familiar with Walter Pater, "but I now bought his complete works, and read and re-read them until I could quote pages by heart of Marius the Epicurean and all the others." He says that before he was eighteen he had read Mademoiselle de Maupin and X Rebours, the Mephistophela of Catulle Mendfes, Gabriele d’Annunzio's Trionfo della Morte, as well as works by Rollinat, Maeter- 81 linck, and Baudelaire. He remarks in summary: A preoccupation with aestheticism while developing one side of my taste had left it too exclusively attracted to the bizarre and fantastic for the acquisition of a balanced judgment. (Literature in My Time, p. 117) Mackenzie had outgrown this preoccupation by the time he wrote The Passionate Elopement, but the influence of Pater, Wilde, Beardsley, and other fin-de-sifecle writers is apparent in the book. It is, first of all, manifest in a desire for the striking phrase or the unusual verbal effect. Thus the narrator speaks of "the domino passion ^ Literature in My Time, p. 129. ^ Literature in My Time, p. 118. 47 of the night" (p. 53), or Beau Ripple says "I listen to the cool melodies of Couperin and admire his unimpassioned symbols of the Passions where a purple domino is the most 82 violent, the most fervid emotion" (p. 360), Moreover the sedulous cultivation of the "Purple Patch" was, as Holbrook Jackson has observed, a characteristic of the aesthetic 83 style. Perhaps the most successful of these set pieces ' in The Passionate Elopement is the description Beau Ripple gives of his off-season life in Devonshire (I have quoted it in full on page 30). But there are many other passages of elegantly labored and carefully cadenced prose. The following, which introduces an account of "The Chinese Masquerade," aims at a comic effect: The Chinese Masquerade of Curtain Wells was something far more grand than ... a great national act of homage to the beverage of Tea. Of old, Bacchus was saluted in Samothrace, and the festival of wine was celebrated with all the absence of restraint that might be expected from 82 Holbrook Jackson has said that "Several of the most striking verbal effects of the time were obtained by the transposition of words from one set of ideas to another, after the manner of Baudelaire *s theory of correspondences" --The Eighteen Nineties (New York, 1922), p. 143. Such seems to be the intention in Mackenzie's phrases: "domino passion," "cool melodies," and "purple domino ... is the most fervid emotion." ^^The Eighteen Nineties, pp. 135-136. 48 the past. Nymphs raved, Satyrs danced, and garlanded leopards jigged to one wild inspiration. Phrenzy footed it; troops followed troops, broke and dissolved in flashes of white limbs when Dionysus of the sly smile and rosy cheeks bewitched thousands with his strange madness. In fact, the whole affair was an intolerable concession to Nature. At Curtain Wells you saw the centuries at work. There the Bacchantes were corseted and hooped to primness; the Satyrs had high red heels for hoofs, silken breaches for the fur of goats. Instead of velvety leopards that used to amble over tuffets of fragrant thyme, each with a hussy astride his supple back, went greasy chairmen in lurching escort of dowagers and misses. Dionysus himself was changed. He had kept his sly smile and rosy cheeks, but his vine wreathes were become ruffles and ties, while his body glittered, not with youth and health and immortality, but with paste buckles and brooches and solitaires. The crashing cymbals of Thrace found a thin echo in the delicate tinkle of tea-spoons and frail sounds of porce lain. To be sure, the whole of the difference between the worship of Wine and the worship of Tea was expressed by the fact that to honour the former, society took off its cloathes, whereas in order to celebrate the latter, all the world dressed itself up. (pp. 170-171) The interest of the aesthetes in language for its own sake led them to plunder the dictionaries for rare and exotic words and to give fantastic catalogues as the result of their researches. One thinks of Huysmans in X Rebours with his catalogues of precious stones, liqueurs, perfumes, and books. Similarly Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray lists the precious stones which Dorian would often spend a day poring over: the cymophane with its wire-like line of silver, the pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow 49 topazes, carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, flame-red cinamon stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts. . . . 4 Such passages seem to be the inspiration for the fantas tic catalogue of flowers in The Passionate Elopement. Here Mackenzie gives the names of sixty-one flowers to be found in the garden of The Basket of Roses Inn, but with out the magic to be found in Wilde or Huysmans. Indeed part of the purpose of the passage in Mackenzie one suspects is a parody of the catalogue technique. It is perhaps indicative of the nature of Mackenzie's reaction to the decadents that his catalogue is merely of flowers and those given their homey, country names. I begin at flower thirty-five: There was Venus' Looking Glass and Flower of Bristol and Apple of Love and Blue Helmets and Herb Paris and Campion and Love in a Mist and Ladies* Laces and Sweet Sultans or Turkey Cornflowers, Gillyflower Carnations (Ruffling Bob of Westminster amongst them) with Dittany and Sops in Wine and Floramor. ... (p. 295) However much Mackenzie was indebted to writers of the decadence for developing his interest in style and the problems and resources of language, The Passionate 84(New York, 1925), 247. 50 Q c Elopement is by no means a decadent book. It does not take itself so seriously. Its rather fantastic humor and self-conscious fun derives ultimately from the personality of the author, and Mackenzie, one feels, thoroughly en joyed the pastiche he was concocting. When he was writing the novel, he was asked why he bothered to write a story with a setting in the past. He replied that there are three choices for the first novel of a too exuberant writer— a tale of the Georges, a tale of the Crusades, or a tale of Bagdad. ° In no other milieu could restraint and extravagance be so admirably mingled. Much in the book is clearly extravagant, but the formal structuring reveals artistic restraint. Although his style Q C Holbrook Jackson describes the chief characteristics of the decadence as (1) Perversity, (2) Artificiality, (3) Egoism, and (4) Curiosity (The Eighteen Nineties, p. 64). Only the note of artificiality is strongly evi denced here. 86 In mentioning "a tale of Bagdad," Mackenzie is perhaps referring to the fact that George Meredith began his career as a novelist with The Shaving of Shagpat. which is such a tale. Meredith in a prefatory note ex plained that he was "imitating the style and manner of the Oriental story-tellers"--quoted by Lionel Stevenson, The Ordeal of George Meredith (New York, 1953), p. 47. In similar fashion Mackenzie set out to write an imitation of an eighteenth-century novel. ^Mackenzie, "How I Began," p. 3. 51 was to become less ornate in his work after World War I, Mackenzie has consistently cultivated a prose of both accuracy and distinction. In The Passionate Elopement the decorative prose in its self-conscious artificiality is in keeping with the tone and spirit of the work as a whole. On occasion in this work, however, there are stylistic lapses. In his striving for effect and his search for the vivid, startling phrase, he is liable to such lapses of taste as appear in his description of a dice game: The irresponsibleness of the dice annoyed Clare. They tumbled and rolled so gaily, and it was mortifying to see a man enslaved by acrobats of ivory. The bodies, too, with their absurd waists were like women whom ex travagant stays had driven to vomit sweetmeats. (p. 127) The distinctive tone of The Passionate Elopement is primarily a blend of humor and sentimentality. The reader today is perhaps especially conscious of the sentimen tality, which is expressed more directly than modern taste countenances. Echoing the eighteenth-century novel of sentiment in its apostrophes and addresses to the reader, it balances between parody and the frankly and designedly sentimental. The humor helps leaven the sentiment while providing its own flavor to the subject-matter. Oddly enough, the reviewers had little to say about the humor 52 of the book. The Standard spoke of ”a really charming, 88 captivating humour." But most comments on this aspect of the book were made in retrospect. Thus Alec Waugh observed that "humour, quiet, penetrating, interpretative humour, was the first thing the reader had learnt to 89 expect of the author of The Passionate Elopement." An anonymous writer in The Liverpool Courier called Mackenzie "a child of Dickens," and said that "With Mackenzie, as with Dickens, the difficulty is to know whether he be humourist turned sentimentalist, or sentimentalist turned humourist. The humor of the novel, superficial and unsophisti cated as much of it is, is largely in keeping with approved eighteenth-century practice. Humorous characterizations are plentiful amid these one-dimensional, "humours" charac ters, who range from old Sir Jeremy Dunner, who ate himself to death at the public breakfast in his honor, to Beau ®®January 27, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 89 7A review of Poor Relations in The Venturer, N.S. I (November 1919), 74-75. ^"Compton Mackenzie," August 17, 1922 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 34). 53 Ripple himself who, we are told, had such a nice sense of his own dignity that he would never condescend to take snuff from any one under the rank of Viscount or younger than forty~five. There is also the humor of farce incident or situation: Beau Ripple extricating himself from beneath the bed, Major Tarry using the furniture to give the dis position of troops in his story, or the whimsicality of the gorgeously costumed dancers at the Chinese Masquerade doing English country dances. Much of the humor is verbal and exhibits a certain variety. The pun is a favorite device. The narrator asks: ’ ’You doubt anybody can be a Burgundian hero? So he can; there has been more than one Charles the Bold of Burgundy” (p. 227). There is Mrs. Courteen*s observation on seeing her two suitors standing on a comer reading a book "like Methodies”: "I detect Methodism in their madness” (p. 215). Beau Ripple shows his wit in his elegant circumlocution for the "bottle" which the young blades at The Blue Boar had thrown at the Watch, "the unconsumed but necessary concomitant of a quart of Burgundy" (p. 42). The narrator wittily observes of the effect of Phyllida upon her mother in company: "The presence of Phyllida made her mother*s 54 blood so much rennet. Conversation became mere curds and whey" (p. 94). Particularly effective as humor are the imitations of eighteenth-century satirical verse which Mackenzie wrote for Charles Lovely’s Curtain Polls. Major Tarry and Mr. Moon, the suitors of the Widow Courteen, are each pilloried. The following couplet concerns the Major: Like a lap-dog he’s fed with a second-best spoon, And bays as he should at the sight of the Moon. (p. 214) The following verses are directed at Moon: Do not tarry, M * * n, but marry, While you’re still upon the wax, Though above her, You can love her, And avoid the window tax. For that coat of Him we wrote of Will be in your parlour soon, And be reigning When you’re waning And we whisper homhd M * * n. (p. 214) It was, however, the sentimental qualities of the story rather than the comic elements which impressed many reviewers. So The Times Literary Supplement could say of Mackenzie, "We are grateful to him for wringing our hearts 91 with 'the tears and laughter of spent joys.*" This sentimentality is in keeping with the book's antecedents in the sentimental comedy and romance of the eighteenth century. But it goes beyond mere imitation in the highly artificial and self-conscious cultivation of feeling for its own sake. Pathos is deliberately sought by emphasizing the heart beating beneath the satin waistcoat, as in the case of Beau Ripple, or by having Vernon awaken to the power of love just before, his death. But the sentimen tality of the novel is more a matter of style than of characterization and incident. We see it at work in the adjectives of the first sentence of the description of the inn: "The Basket of Roses was the fairest, dearest inn down all that billowy London road" (p. 293). We note it especially in the apostrophes to the characters and to the reader and in the lush descriptions. The reader is invited to drop a tear for Phyllida (p. 381), and even Vernon is invoked as "Poor villain!" (p. 367). A typical device is the description which contrasts the unhappy present with a happy past, as in the following extended apostrophe ^February 10, 1911, p- 57, col. 1. 56 to Phyllida: Poor foolish child! Why should you fall in love? Untenanted, your dearest gate swings in the wind tonight, but you will not mount again upon its topmost mossy bar. You will never again view with the same excitement the huntsman over the hill-top; they will mean less to you; their pink coats will be quite dingy when next you say good morning to old Nick Runnals the Whip. For my part, I do not believe that hot buttered apple-pies will taste so sweet when next you eat them in the long cool kitchen with its pot of marjoram and shaded sunlight. (p. 234) This contrast of the present with the past, the Ubi Sunt motif, becomes a significant sub-theme of the book. For Mackenzie disturbs the brightness and humor of his scene by a vivid awareness of the transiency of all youth, beauty, pleasure, of life itself. Thus when Beau Ripple announces the advent of the Chinese Masquerade to the Exquisite Mob in the Assembly Rooms, the narrator quickly interjects a continent on the inevitability of death and change: And you, beautiful women and fine gentlemen, roses and carnations of an older century, nothing remains of you for us. Your very perfume is but a name. You are no more to the world of today than those glossy candles that sputtered to death in gilt sockets. And yet, from the ruin of elegance, one relick of that famous evening remains; for the silver wire of the bottle of cham pagne, flung heedlessly to the ground, caught in a flounce of some Beauty*s petticoat. Long ago the gos samer stuff mouldered, long ago was Beauty herself a skeleton, but the wire cherished by Beauty's family 57 may still be seen in a glass-topped table in the comer of a quiet library somewhere in the broad Midlands. 0 insignificant wire, you are more durable than the flowers who despised you! (pp. 121-122) In a long footnote in Chapter XXIV, the narrator in the present visits the building which had housed "Daish's Rooms," the scene of Lady Bunbutter's rout, in the earlier age. The only purpose of the passage is to contrast the grace and beauty of the past with the "bleak utility" of the present and to lament the sad necessity of change and decay: "I shall not visit Daish's Rooms again; the ghosts have too much power to wring my heart with the tears and laughter of spent joys" (p. 241). Time itself is adjudged the villain of this human pageant. Beau Lovely acknowledged this fact by gradually varying his attire from light-colored clothing at the beginning of the month to black by month's end: When asked by somebody the reason of this mode he re plied that ne was mourning the flight of time: when asked farther why he was not perpetually funereal in his costume he replied that the first day of the month always revived his hopes of immortality. (p. 390) Vernon at the very moment of his first sincere passion for Phyllida on the night before his duel and death is seized by a sudden awareness of decay and mortality: 58 MtTis monstrous," he declared, "a fearful thought that you and I should ever grow old and die. I cannot bear to think of your brown hair growing white. Phyllida, you cannot grow old." (p. 367) Perhaps the most remarkable of these passages which import the serious and the real into the artificial world of Curtain Wells is the short exchange upon death by Beau Ripple and Sir George Repington: The two old friends took each a candle, and went upstairs to bed. From the corridor casement they looked out. "What a laugh she [Charles Lovely's mother] had," says Sir George. A gust of wind extinguished his candle, and he shuddered. "That is the way I shall go out." "That is the way we shall all go out," said Mr. Ripple. "And nothing afterwards?" "Darkness." "And nothing else?" "Perhaps a hand in the darkness." (p. 362) So the tone deepens, and a serious, solemn note is struck, perhaps incongruously, amid the humor, the farce, the artificial posturings and sentimentalism of the style. At the same time, this medley of elements is in keeping with the book as a whole, where extravagance and artifi ciality are the hall-marks. It is a pastiche, an eighteenth-century sentimental comedy told with a bril liant evocation of the atmosphere of the past while pre serving an essentially modem point of view. The artifi ciality of the performance is heightened by various means 59 which emphasize the manner, and thus the bravura quality of .the achievement. The characters are not intended to be taken seriously, but, as Arthur St. John Adcock has said, as though "they had walked out of an eighteenth century pastoral . . . with the charm and daintiness that belong to old minuets and Dresden china shepherds and shepherdesses."^ Yet the dialogue is largely convincing, and during the latter half of the book Mackenzie seeks to awaken a sentimental interest in the characters in order to sharpen the note of pathos intended at the end. There is a somewhat similar dichotomy in the attitude toward the eighteenth century itself. Because of the em phasis on the colorful and exotic trappings and manners of the age, we cannot take this century seriously. Artifi ciality is too insistent a quality of the scene. Yet at the same time the charm of the fashions and the rituals of the age are communicated with a detail intended to appeal to us aesthetically. The drabness of the present is con trasted with the vision of a romantically beautiful past. Although the motif of Ubi Sunt is sounded to heighten 92 Gods of Modem Grub Street, p. 185. 60 the sentimental pathos of the fate of the characters, It deepens to Include more sincerely felt reflections on the passing of all youth and beauty before the reality of death. So serious a note is perhaps inappropriate In so lightly treated a subject. But, at the same time, all things seem fitting as preserved in this amber world of romantic fantasy. Mackenzie is seeing what he can do in this first novel, and he is enjoying his virtuosity. As he has said in evident answer to those who took the book too seriously, "The Passionate Elopement is a fantastic and sentimental story of the eighteenth century; it is a 93 wedding cake, not a decree nisi." The story of the publication of The Passionate Elope- QA ment is well-known. It began not only Compton Mac- kenzie*s career as a novelist but also that of Martin Seeker as a successful publisher. When the novel was finished in the spring of 1908, the search for a publisher began. By 1910 the book had been rejected by eleven ^^Mackenzie, "My First Novel," The Evening News (London), October 28, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). QA See, for example, Swinnerton, The Georgian Literary Scene, pp. 241-242. 61 publishers, and the author had determined not to write another novel until his first had been accepted. In Its wanderings, the manuscript had come to the attention of a # young reader for the firm of Eveleigh Nash who recommended its acceptance. The recomnendation was not followed, but shortly thereafter the reader, Martin Seeker, inherited a thousand pounds and set up as a publisher on his own. Seeker remembered the manuscript of Mackenzie he had read, got in touch with the author, and arranged publication. Seeker did not like the original title of Curtain Wells and wished to change it. Mackenzie has commented: . . . though I still think that Curtain Wells was a more truthful title for my book, I was not going to let a mere title worry anybody, and so, after a number of sug- gestions, I proposed to call it The Passionate Elope ment. The volume was published on January 17, 1911. It received its first reprinting on February 3, and was re printed four times by the end of the year. Although 95 Mackenzie, "How I Began," p. 3. Some reviewers agreed with Mackenzie's strictures on the revised title. The Birmingham Daily Post said that "The Passionate Elope ment" was a poor title "for his clever picture of fashion able life”— February 3, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). The Observer (London) felt that "The Beau of Curtain Wells would have been a better title"--January 29, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). Mackenzie has said that "The Passionate Elopement did not bring me or my publisher a fortune,his career had been auspiciously launched. The critical reception was very favorable. Mackenzie has remarked: "For my first novel I received thirty reviews within a month and another forty during the next two months.My own study of the re views in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks substantiates these figures and confirms the account of the success of the 98 volume. An American edition was issued by the John Lane Company in March, 1911. Although American critical com ment, like the British, largely centered on the eighteenth- century setting of the novel, a note of Yankee superiority is found in the moral judgments voiced on the society depicted. Thus the New York Herald spoke of "this edifying society," and commented: ^^Mackenzie, "How I Came to Write Coral," The Daily Mirror (London), November 1, 1924 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 13). ^Mackenzie, "Sidelight,” December 25, 1953, p. 762. no ^ This conclusion is based on the analysis of fifty- seven reviews in newspapers and periodicals in England and Scotland, and twelve reviews in American publications. Reviews with any critical significance are listed in the b ib1iography. 63 Mr. Mackenzie's pages reveal a profligate, card playing, snobbish, vapored society. . . . They are quite without morality, and to steal a man's wife or daughter is as much of a frolic as to break the head of the watch with a bottle of burgundy.^9 The Boston Transcript was somewhat more liberal in ack nowledging the attractiveness of the mise-en-scfene: "It was a gay, selfish existence, as viewed from an ethical stand point, but looked back upon from the twentieth century it appears wonderfully picturesque."*®^ Later critics have tended to regard The Passionate Elopement, if they treat it at all in the canon of Compton Mackenzie's work, as a tour de force--the extravagant first book of a talented young man, distinguished more for manner than for matter. The failure of Henry James to mention it in his essay on "The New Novel" is indicative of the opinion that it is an anomaly, essentially different from and of less significance than what was to follow. When before and immediately after World War I Mackenzie was regarded by many as in the realist camp (largely on the basis of Carnival and Sinister Street), one could speak qq March 25, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). *®®June 14, 1911 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 64 like Reginald Auberon of his "false start in the bastard- romanticism of The Passionate Elopement. But now that he is generally spoken of as a romantic, the contrast between The Passionate Elopement and his later work is not perhaps as complete as it was once thought to be. We find, moreover, that certain of his qualities and characteristics evidenced in this first book make their appearance in his later ones. There is the bias for the sentimental, the descriptive, the melodramatic, but also a concern for beauty and distinction of style. There is the realisti cally effective dialogue and the facility of comic inven tion. And there is the artistic interest in evoking the atmosphere of a particular time and place. Although The Passionate Elopement has not received 1 02 much critical attention, it has always had admirers and has been re-published on three separate occasions ~^*The Nineteen Hundreds (London, 1922), p. 222. 102 And some who have written of it have apparently not read it. Cornelius Weygandt, for example, mentions The Passionate Elopement with Carnival and Youth's En counter (the title of Sinister Street, vol. I in the American edition) as "in the young man's habit of writing about himself"--A Century of the English Novel (New York, 1925), p. 442. 65 since 1911. In 1916 one critic wrote: I doubt if it has ever had quite the appreciation it deserves. To begin with it is no easy task to set your romance in an eighteenth-century spa, and embroider every page of it with exquisite detail without letting a single anacronism slip into the pattern. An exer cise of course it is, but one comparable to Flaubert’s Salammbo. written, that is, for the practice of concen tration and flexibility. There is no better gymnastic for the imagination that the task of putting life into a piece of deliberate erudition; and in this particular task I am not afraid to say that The Passionate Elope ment is more successful than Salammbo. In 1925, R. Ellis Roberts said: His [Mackenzie’s] first novel was frankly a pastiche, and to those who do not like pastiche The Passionate Elopement is not an entertaining book; but I would ask even them to compare this of Mr. Mackenzie’s with others in the same genre. ... I know nothing to put beside Mr. Mackenzie’s book except that equally elegant and patched trifle, Mr. Tarkington's Monsieur Beaucaire.105 L. A. G. Strong writing in The Spectator in 1951 called it "an essay in bravura with unforgettable touches of senti- 1 0 6 ment. Leo Robertson in his book on Compton Mackenzie A second American edition was issued in 1916 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. It was printed in England as one of The- Daily Express Library of Famous Books, and in 1953 there was a new edition by Macdonald and Company, Inc. ^^\j. M., "Compton Mackenzie," p. 282. 105"Compton Mackenzie," The Manchester Guardian, February 13, 1925 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 8). 106"Books and Writers," CLXXXVII (September 14, 1951), 336. 66 described The Passionate Elopement as "imbued with the spirit of youth, yet in its quiet irony, its well- controlled humour, its sensitiveness, and its firmness of treatment the product of a mature and disciplined artistic mind."107 The Passionate Elopement is a fantastic medley of contrasting elements. It is an attempt at writing an eighteenth-century comedy romance in the aesthetic style favored by the Nineties. There is humor and sentimen tality, the comic and the serious. There is accuracy of detail in recreating the past, but artificiality in the manner of presentation. The characters are puppets, who become endowed at times with true human feeling and inter est. And it is all done with grace and charm and good- humor. The Passionate Elopement is a virtuoso achievement. Carnival, his next work, Compton Mackenzie was to write a more conventional modern novel. 107Compton Mackenzie, p. 58. CHAPTER II CARNIVAL (1912): A NOVEL OF THE LIFE OF A BALLET"GIRL Robert Ross concluded a favorable review of The Pas~ sionate Elopement with the request that the author eventu ally write a story about his own age: Mr. Compton Mackenzie . . . will not, I hope, always dally in the artifice of escaped conventions; the sturdy feeling for romance and his style . . . will surely be brought to good account for some story and manners of our own time. That is more difficult, but it is usually better art.1 This novel of contemporary life was not long in forth coming, for Carnival was published on January 17, 1912, exactly one year after The Passionate Elopement. It was one of the outstanding successes of the season. The con trast between The Passionate Elopement and Carnival is striking. Whereas the former is a historical romance which The Bystander (London), no date (clipping in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks, No. 31. Hereafter references to the Scrapbooks will merely state Scrapbook and give the appro priate volume number). 67 68 imitates the conventions of an eighteenth-century novel, the latter is a realistic study in the modern manner. As the reviewer in The Globe (London) observed: ’ *Instead of the easy luxury of the days of Sheridan and the pleasures of Bath, we have the mean streets of Islington and the monotonous and unlovely existence of the lower working 2 class.'* The artificialities of the Exquisite Mob are exchanged for the realities of the life of a London ballet- girl in one of the great music-halls at the beginning of the century. Although Carnival strikes a more serious note than the earlier book, there are resemblances in tone. Both books are a blend of humor, romance, pathos, and melo drama. And there are other similarities in point of style and technique. Mackenzie has said that he began Carnival on Janu ary 18, 1911, the day after The Passionate Elopement 3 appeared. Much of the new book grew out of his experience in writing and rehearsing a Follies revue for H. G. Pelis- sier at the Alhambra Theatre during the fall and winter ^January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 3 The Foreword of the new edition of Carnival published by Macdonald (London, 1951), p. vi. 69 of 1910-11. While awaiting publication of The Passionate Elopement, Mackenzie had played a part in Hall Caine's The Bishop's Son. When it ended after a week's run, a member of the cast arranged a meeting between Pelissier, the impresario of the then-famous Follies, and Mackenzie. The subsequent interview led to the engagement of Mackenzie for work on the Follies. Mackenzie not only wrote lyrics and "potted plays" (short burlesques of current plays) for the revue, which was called All Change Here, but also selected and trained the chorus. The girls of the corps de ballet had a difficult rSle in the revue, because they had to sing and act as well as dance. Yet Mackenzie managed it all with success. His wife wrote his mother after the first night: There were tremendous calls for author at the end. Pelissier took two calls. The management wouldn't allow Monty to go on. But a sweet thing happened. About thirty ladies of the ballet got hold of Monty, and not in fun, but like furies, tried to force him on to the stage. He had to cling to ladders and things to stop it. He was nearly tom to pieces. They simply adore him and every one says that no one has ever been able to make the ballet do so much with no grumbling and every thing going smoothly the whole time.^ 4 Faith Compton Mackenzie, As Much As I Dare (London, 1938), p. 215. 70 Mackenzie was already familiar with the music-halls and their promenades, but the intimate knowledge of the life of ballet-girls that he acquired from his work for Pelis sier gave solidity to his picture of the life of one of these girls. The actual idea for the story came from twd separate incidents. The first occurred while he was living in Cornwall, where he heard the story of the marriage of a fanner he knew. The farmer had gone up to London on busi ness, and, having stayed a fortnight, returned home with a bride. As if the sudden choice was not sufficiently remarkable, it turned out that the girl herself was a bar maid from a notorious cafe in Leicester Square. Mackenzie had tea with the pair at their farm. He tells us: "I made up my mind to write a play one day in an attempt to provide an explanation for the state of mind which led a barmaid in the Leicester Lounge to marry a dour Cornish fanner after a week's wooing.The second incident took place in London while he was working on the revue: One afternoon I came out from a long rehearsal during which I leaned back in the dim, empty stalls, watching ^The Foreword of Carnival, p. v. 71 the corps de ballet flit like gay ghosts about the shadows of the stage. I came out just before the shutting in of a rainy autumn dusk and noticed an in quisitive figure waiting by the stage door. He was not unlike my Cornish farmer of three years ago as he stood there to eye the girls hurrying home to rest before the evening performance, and suddenly I fancied one of them, gay and lovable, transported by circum stance to a storm-beaten farmhouse. The story of Carnival began to take shape in my imagination.” Carnival is the life-history of Jenny Pearl Raeburn, detailing the important events in her life from her birth in Islington to her death on a cliff in Cornwall at twenty- four. Her mother is a woman of some beauty and a warm vitality who has married beneath her. Her father, Charlie, is a carpenter whose chief delights are his beer and the social life of the neighborhood pub. There are two older children, Alfred and Edith, and, after Jenny, the little hunchback May. When Jenny is six, Mr. Vergoe, an old clown who is a roomer in the Raeburn house, sees her dancing to a street-grinder1s tune. He recognizes her natural ability and urges her mother to have her trained as a dancer. Although Mrs. Raeburn at first indignantly refuses, in time she consents to put Jenny under the tutelage of Madame Aldavini. Jenny shows considerable promise at ^The Foreword, p. vi. 72 ballet school, though she becomes impatient of the disci pline. By the time she is eighteen, she is a member of the chorus of both Covent Garden and Drury Lane; with diligence she might in time even become a Prima Ballerina Assoluta. Yet she gives up hope for such a career by acting on the whim of the moment to become a ballet-girl in a music-hall, The Orient Palace of Varieties. Though quickly bored by the life of a music-hall dancer, she and her friend Irene Gale enjoy the gay dinner parties with the men they meet at the stage-door. Jenny does not become seriously involved with any of the men because she thinks love is "soppy.” Her mother, however, worries about her. But Jenny, proud and insolent, rejects any attempt to regulate her personal life. One evening Jenny meets a young dilettante, Maurice Avery, who plays at being a sculptor in a studio on Gros- venor Road. She is much attracted to him, and that autumn and winter see the progress of their love affair. Despite entreaties, Jenny refuses to become his mistress. After a quarrel with her mother, Jenny leaves home to live with her friend Irene Dale. When Maurice is summoned to Spain by the death of an uncle, he writes Jenny to come out to him. Though she loves Maurice, she refuses because she cannot bring herself to hurt her mother. As a result, Maurice decides to remain abroad and forget her. Jenny suffers much from this abandonment. She briefly dallies with the suffragettes, but when she is almost arrested in a march on Parliament she quits them. In time she begins to go out with men again. She meets Jack Danby, a sinister roue; and one evening, on a whim, she consents to spend the night at his apartment. In aftermath, the disgust she feels is deepened by learning that on the night she had spent with Danby her mother had become insane and was taken to an asylum where she dies. Smitten with remorse and worried about the future for herself and her crippled sister May, she meets Zachary Trewhella, the Cornish friend o'f a roomer in their house. Trewhella is a crude, unprepossessing farmer who has come to London on business and is enraptured with Jenny after a visit to The Orient Palace of Varieties. He proposes, and Jenny finally agrees to marry him. Although she quickly comes to fear and despise the fanatically religious Zachary, she and her sister worship the baby boy whom Jenny bears. When Frank Castleton, a former friend, 74 turns up to see how she is getting on, her husband proves insanely jealous. Not long thereafter Maurice Avery him self tries to see her. Jenny no longer feels anything toward him, but finally agrees to a meeting to get rid of him. At this interview on a fog-shrouded Cornish cliff, her husband tracks her down and shoots her. Carnival differs in an important way from its pre decessor in that it focuses attention upon a single charac ter rather than diffuses it throughout various members of a social class or milieu. For Carnival is the story of Jenny Pearl from her birth to her death. It is the first of Mackenzie's life-history or chronicle novels.^ Mac kenzie has described his fictional technique in Carnival as "an attempt at the Flaubertian method of never allowing 8 the chief character off the page." The novel, then, pro vides a study or revelation of the life and character of a London ballet-girl. There is considerable emphasis ^William C. Frierson has written of Mackenzie: "He may be called the virtuoso of the life-novel. The form pleased him. He wrote at least three different life- novels, two of which extended through several volumes"-- The English Novel in Transition, 1885-1940 (Norman, Okla homa, 1942), p. 207. o Compton Mackenzie, Literature in Mv Time (New York, 1933), p. 170. 75 upon psychological analysis and the presentation of forma tive influences. These influences are conceived largely according to the conventions of naturalism, and the deter mining effect of childhood experience is stressed. Although Mackenzie was alone in citing his use of the artistic method of Flaubert in the writing of Carnival, some reviewers and critics compared the novel to the work of the French naturalists. The Boston Globe was reminded of Maupassant,^ and Abel Chevalley in The Modern English Novel said that it was after the manner of the Goncourts. George Moore as a channel for French naturalism into English letters may also have been an example for or an influence on Mackenzie.^ Indeed The Evening Standard (London) compared Jenny in Carnival with Kate Ede in Moore's A Mummer's Wife, though the review stated "any ^April 22, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 10(New York, 1925), p. 225. ■^In Literature in Mv Time Mackenzie speaks of the importance of Moore's novels of the 1880*s: "They are the first novels in English which show evidence of an author's awareness of European tendencies, and they are an attempt to apply the lessons of Parisian life and Parisian letters to English life and English letters" (p. 41). 76 12 mention of that book must damage Carnival by comparison." There are points of comparison In the two books, though the tone is markedly different. Both are indebted to Flau bert’s Madame Bovary for their technique, but Kate Ede is drawn closely in imitation of Madame Bovary, whereas Jenny is not. Both books have a theatrical background, and both end unhappily for their heroines. But the humor of Carnival and Mackenzie's frank liking of Jenny find no parallel in the grim, objective naturalism of Moore. It has always been a strong conviction of Mackenzie that the years of childhood and early adolescence are of supreme importance in shaping the life of an individual. Guy in Guy and Pauline speaks the thought of his creator when he says: Personally I very much doubt if any impressions after eighteen or nineteen help the artist. As it seems to me, all experience after that age is merely valuable for maturing and putting ipto proportion the more vital experiences of childhood. 12 No date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 13 So S. P. B. Mais has said that Mackenzie has made his own the gospel which runs, "Childhood makes the instrument, youth tunes the strings, and early manhood plays the melody"--Books and Their Writers (London, 1920), p. 19. ^(London, 1952), p. 313. 77 So in Carnival, as well as in Mackenzie's third novel Sinister Street, there is the painstakingly detailed account of the childhood incidents, often trivial, which mold or influence personality and character. Jenny, in Carnival, was two years and eight months old when there occurred an event which was decisive in its effect upon her. Perhaps the first real struggle for self-expression happened on a muddy day, when she discovered that, by letting her podgy hand droop over the edge of the perambulator, the palm of it could be exquisitely tickled by the slow and moist revolutions of the wheel. ^ Her nurse-maid slapped her hand to make her stop; then shortly thereafter her mother took her from the pram and shook her severely without apparent reason. We are told: "From that moment she [Jenny] was alert to combat author ity. From that moment to the end of her days, life could offer her nothing more hateful than attempted repres sion" (p. 23). In the emphasis given to the factual dating of epi sodes in Jenny's life (as instanced just above), Carnival ^ Carnival (New York, 1912), pp. 21-22. All subse quent page references to Carnival will be to this edition. 78 approaches the case-history method popular in naturalistic fiction. But there are other evidences of Mackenzie's use of certain features of the naturalist novel. Heredity seems operative in the life of Jenny, and environment is clearly shown to have had its share in the making of Jenny. Leo Robertson correctly observes that "Jenny is shown not only in her natural setting but as growing out of it and conditioned by it.""^ Moreover, in its picture of London theatrical life about the turn of the century, Carnival resembles to a certain extent the social novel as practiced by Zola among others.^ For, in attitude and psychology, Jenny is representative of the class of girls who go on 18 the stage. Although Mackenzie invests this night-world of the music-halls and their promenades with a certain romantic glamor through the heightening of his style, 16 Compton Mackenzie: An Appraisal of His Literary Work (London, 1954), p. 63. ^So Frierson describes the Zolaesque novel: "A par ticular phase of society is exposed through the delineation of a life history" (p. 29). 18 See, for example, Sheila Kaye-Sraith, "The Glamour of Life and Love: A Study of Compton Mackenzie," T. P.*s & Cassell's Weekly (London), February 27, 1926, p. 646. 79 he yet realistically mentions, but does not linger over, the uglier, more sordid aspects of this life. Thus he describes the prostitutes who roam the Orient Promenade: Their eyes are coins; their hands are purses. At their heels patter old men like unhealthy lap-dogs; beefy provincials stare at them their foreheads glistening. Above all the frangipani and patchouli and opoponax and trefle incamat steals the rank odor of goats. . . . The night wears on. The women come in continually from the wet streets. They surge in the cloak-room, quarrel over carrion game, blaspheme, fight and scratch. A door in the cloak-room . . . leads into the passage outside the dressing-room, where Jenny changes five or six times each night. Every foul oath and every vile experience and every detestable adventure is plainly heard by twenty ladies of the ballet. (p. 122) The naturalist novel in its aspect as social study also, and traditionally, embodies social criticism. So in Carnival there is the attempt to indicate society’s respon sibility for the tragic life of a working girl like Jenny. We have passing reference to the unsatisfactory conditions 19 under which music-hall entertainers have to work. But the major indictment is delivered against the kind of edu cation the working classes receive. Mackenzie has said 19 After a description of dressing-room forty-five, the passage concludes with the statement that ''The inspectors of the London County Council presumably never penetrated as far as Room 45, a fact which seems to show that the ex tent of municipal interference has been much exaggerated" (Carnival, p. 123). 80 of the melodramatic conclusion of his novel that it was not the sudden death which made Jennyfs life tragic: "For me the pistol shot through the mist that ended Jenny's 20 life was loaded in the London School Board years before." The charge is that nothing is done to develop and enrich the imaginative and intellectual life of the student: the only attempt is to stuff him mechanically with facts. As Mackenzie further remarks: "The life of every girl or boy who sets out to earn a living in London is an odyssey, for which they are armed not with Knowledge and Romance and 21 Faith, but with Information and Sentiment and Doubt." Jenny was a sufferer from the period of transition through which educational theories were passing, and might have been better off under the old system of picturesque misapprehensions of truth, or even with no deliberate education at all. It is important to understand the stark emptiness of Jenny's mind now and for a long while afterwards. Life was a dragging, weary affair unless she were being amused. There had been no mental adventures since, flashing and glorious, the idea of dancing came furiously through the night as she lay awake thinking of pantomime. The fault was not hers. She was the victim of sterile imagi nations. Her soul was bleak and cold as the life 20 Compton Mackenzie, "How I Wrote Carnival," The New York Times Saturday Review, June 9, 1912, p. 344. ^*"How I Wrote Carnival." p. 344. 81 of man in the days before Prometheus stole fire 'from heaven. Carnival, however, is not exclusively a social study a la naturalisme. It is also the account of Mthe vie O'* intime of a girl passing from childhood to maturity" and her awakening through a first and momentous love affair. The ecstasies, the despairs, the awkwardnesses of young love are portrayed with an imaginative and sympathetic insight. Characteristically in these early novels, which are all written with a close identification with the view point of youth, Mackenzie presents love as a beautiful, intense, but essentially transient experience. He empha sizes this quality of transiency by treating of first love and by assuming the impossibility of marriage between the lovers. In Carnival, Jenny first discovers love with Maurice Avery. But because of the great difference in background between the lovers, both agree that their love could not survive the perils of a mesalliance. The exis tence of a passionate love which is destined never to be 22 Carnival. pp. 79-80. Further reflections on Jenny's education are to be found on pages 110 and 315-316. ^ The Eye-Witness (London), February 1, 1912, p. 218. 82 perfectly fulfilled gives a poignancy to Mackenzie's treat ment of young love. The intensity and the beauty of the experience are emphasized by making the love live under the shadow of inevitable change. So Vanity Fair (London) could observe that though the novel contains many of the elements of joy and beauty, its pervading note is one of strange, unquiet pessimism, not inevitable or profound enough to give us pure tragedy, but quite sufficient to make us painfully and often, it seems to us, needlessly aware of the fleeting quality of all human p l e a s u r e . ^4- It has already been mentioned that in Carnival Mac kenzie attempted the Flaubertian technique "of never 25 allowing the chief character off the page." But, some what surprisingly, there has been little critical comnent 26 on Mackenzie's handling of the point of view. Leo Robertson seems to believe that both Carnival and Madame Bovary are told solely from the perspective of the central ^January 31, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^^Mackenzie, Literature in My Time, p. 170. 2 6 Of the reviews consulted, cursory recognition of the technique is to be found in the following periodicals: The Bystander, January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31); The Outlook (London), January 27, 1912, p. 137. The Academy (London) gave a full and significant account of the point of view, which will be treated below. 83 27 character. The Nation (London), even more strangely, was apparently unaware of the obvious intrusion of the author's point of view into the narrative when it says of Jenny that "her words, her actions, her thoughts, along with the words and actions of others, are all the com- 2 8 mentary that Mr. Mackenzie vouchsafes. It is true that Jenny is consistently in the fore front of the book: she never really leaves the stage. Even on the few occasions when she could not have had direct experience of the things done or the words spoken, as notably in the circumstances surrounding her birth, the matter has clear reference to her. Flaubert in Madame Bovary does not seek such complete concentration of atten tion. For example, at the beginning and end of that book Charles Bovary occupies the center of the stage. The Academy, however, has defined what seems to be the specific artistic intention and special technique of Carnival: "All the other characters are grouped about her [jenny]; we are 27 Compton Mackenzie, p. 61. Percy Lubbock, among others, has described how Flaubert varies the point of view in Madame Bovary, but skillfully, "without awkwardness, without calling attention to it"--The Craft of Fiction (New York, 1955), p. 87. 28X (February 17, 1912), 824. 84 never permitted to enter to the other characters save through her."29 Although this concentration on Jenny results in an Impressive portrait, artistically the book suffers from certain inconsistencies in handling the point of view and from the author's too obviously and inappropriately ob truding himself and his opinions into the narrative. The review in The Academy gave a sound analysis of the incon sistencies in Mackenzie's treatment of his method and of the effect of these inconsistencies upon his book. It pointed out that there are four characters who are par ticularly important, at different times, for Jenny's life: her mother, Maurice Avery, Jack Danby, and Zachary Tre- whella. The first we never see through her daughter's eyes; and consequently Jenny's leaving of home does not capture our sympathy because it seems so inexplicably violent. With Maurice the author has a clear difficulty. First we see him through Jenny's eyes, and, for all his wordi ness, we are kindled to him. . . . But there is his desertion of Jenny to be prepared for; and consequently Mr. Mackenzie begins to intrude his own sight of Maurice, with the result that Maurice as a person becomes jumbled and confused--he lacks conviction. As for Jack Danby, if Jenny saw him as he is presented to us we are quite 29LXXXII (March 2, 1912), 272. 85 convinced that she would never have stayed that night with him at his flat. And for Zachary Trewhella? Well, it is obvious that we see him all the time through the eyes of the author. He is absolutely a gargoyle. His name, his religious devotion, his language, the very figure of him, now seen as of ordinary build, now loom ing large and grotesque--everything indicates him not as a man, but as a gargoyle. In fact, we are seeing him always through Mr. Mackenzie's eyes. But by the technique of the book he is considered as having been seen through Jenny's eyes. So when we find her marrying him--she, London-bred ballet girl, accustomed to suppers with elegants . . .--why, we stand up in revolt of that, and the whole latter part of the book is ruined for us. And the fault is all one of a new venture in technique without a realization of its restrictions. (The Academy, pp. 272-273) A further difficulty lies in the fact that Mackenzie at times awkwardly and unnecessarily injects himself as narrator into what is described as Jenny's reflections or thoughts, attributing to her a range of idea and reference of which she is incapable. For example, at a suffragette meeting we are told that "Jenny's attention was chiefly occupied by her neighbors": She thought that never before was such a collection of freaks gathered together. Close beside her, dressed in a green djibbeh embroidered with daisies of terra-cotta silk, was a tallowy woman who from time to time let several books slide from her lap on to the floor--a piece of carelessness which always provoked the audience to a lullaby of protest. In front of this lady were two Hindu students with flowing orange ties. . . . Then came a group of girl students, all very much alike, all full of cocoa and the binomial theorem. . . . (Carnival, p. 261) 86 While this passage purports to be the scene as present to Jenny's consciousness, we are aware of several false notes. For example, the phrase Ma lullaby of protest" has a sophistication characteristic of the writer's, but not of Jenny's way of seeing things. Similarly, in describing the entering group of girl students as full of the binomial theorem, Mackenzie attributes to Jenny a familiarity with the higher mathematics that is obviously beyond her. Also, a number of somewhat inappropriate and unneces sary reminders of the presence of the author are to be found in the many allusions to classical deities and figures which are scattered throughout the book. We are told on the birth of Jenny that "Perhaps Mrs. Raeburn ex perienced an elation akin to that felt of old by wayside nymphs who bore children to Apollo and other divine philan derers" (p. 17), and Mackenzie remarks that Jenny's view of suffragism had "something of Myrrihine's contempt" (P- 271). On occasion Mackenzie seems to forget that Jenny is supposed to have the stage, and he gives us his own views on education or the suffragette movement. Although his comments on the shortcomings of the educational system 87 is thematically relevant to his purpose, his vignette of the suffragette movement in Chapter XXVI seems adventitious and contrived--not integral to the experience of Jenny. Moreover, at times Mackenzie is not content to let the facts speak for themselves but must editorialize his atti tudes and opinions. Thus in what purports to be only an objective account of the suffragettes* march on Parliament and the subsequent rioting, we are told, "The police were behaving with that magnificent want of discrimination which characterizes their behavior in a crisis of disorder" (p. 268). Since Carnival is a detailed character study, Mac kenzie's presentation of his heroine has received extensive critical comment. Henry James felt that the life of a ballet-girl could not sustain so elaborate a treatment without monotony, but he added, according to Mackenzie, "I should say the same of Flaubert's Madame Bovary." Reviewers, in general, praised the realism and accuracy of the portrayal. Thus The English Review (London) commented, 31 "Jenny is real," and The Athenaeum (London) found "the 30 The Foreword of Carnival, pp. vi-vii. 31x (February 1912), 548. 88 development of her character as Inevitable as reality itself.The Pall Mall Gazette (London) said that "The study of Jenny . . . reveals rare and penetrating insight 33 into that baffling mystery, the heart of a girl." Some critics cited Jenny as a brilliantly delineated Cockney 34 type, and Frank Swinnerton has described Mackenzie as "one of the few writers able to dramatize the Cockney 3*5 scene." Negative criticism of Jenny centered around two chief points. The first point is that there was an exces sive preoccupation with detail in Mackenzie’s presenting her character and development. The Liverpool Courier said, "A little unnecessarily, Jenny Raeburn ... is introduced to us at birth. N. H. VJ. in T. P. * s Weekly (London) observed that "it is hard not to get wearied at times with January 20, 1912, p. 63. "^January 19, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^So The Liverpool Courier, January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). Also The Sheffield Daily Telegraph. January 19, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 35 The Georgian Literary Scene, rev. ed. (London, 1951), p. 224. 'to. January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 89 37 the descriptions of her feelings and her outlook.” The second point is that Jenny is a failure as a characterize- tion because she is essentially a puppet to whom develop ment is impossible. The Eye-Witness stated: "Mr. Mackenzie has worked hard to make Jenny a tragic figure of flesh and blood, but the lasting impression is of a pathetic shadow O Q in a puppet show." The Standard (London) developed the criticism: Jenny speaks, moves, and has her being, but there is no development, no unlocking of her secrets. She is touched, it will be noticed, by the will of her author, never of her own volition. Her episodes with Maurice, Danby, and Trewhella leave her at the end of it all as she was at the beginning, and to crown this emphasis of her puppet existence, Mr. Mackenzie kills her by a sudden re-sunmoning of an old lover--her tragedy is en tirely accidental, in no way determined by the character of her development. The intent of the book is obviously to give a con vincing account of the life and character of Jenny. It is a study offered in depth. Long passages are devoted to the psychological examination of her character and motiva tions. The forces that shaped her and the important stages 37"The Ballet Girl in Fiction," January 19, 1912, p. 69. 38February 1, 1912, p. 218. ■^January 26, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 90 of her development are treated in detail. The forces which helped mold Jenny are, as mentioned earlier, conceived substantially in naturalistic terms. The Evening Standard called Carnival ’ ’the conscientious study of a girl in relation to heredity and environment."4^- T. P.fs Weekly saw Jenny as "swayed by the forces of heredity, training, association, and the sense of woman- 42 hood." From her father Jenny seems to have inherited the lack of self-discipline and the disposition to follow the easiest course. These lead her to abandon her career in serious ballet and give her the much-used phrase, "Who cares?" From her mother Jenny receives her good looks, her vitality, and her capacity for laughter and the enjoyment 40 Calvert Alexander has remarked on Mackenzie's "almost painful preoccupation with details--the details especially of childhood, chosen not primarily for their interest but for their bearing on the psychological de velopment of Character. He [Mackenzie] believes that only through a faithful recording of the impressions and en vironmental incidents of a man's early life can character accurately be given. ... He wants his readers to know his characters as thoroughly as he knows them. And those who persevere certainly do"--The Catholic Literary Revival (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1935), pp. 338-339. 41 No date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 42"The Ballet Girl in Fiction," p. 69. 91 t ^ of life. This inheritance is ironically underscored by the way crucial incidents and choices in Jenny's life parallel those of her mother's. Both refuse to run away and become the mistress of men they love because of a sense of responsibility. Jenny refuses to go to Maurice in Spain partly because she dimly remembers her mother's refusal of Mr. Timpany.^ Both mother and daughter marry out of whim, without any strong feeling of love for their prospective husbands, and live to regret their choice. And just as Mrs. Raeburn found some compensation for the failure of her own marriage in the birth of Jenny, so does Jenny herself in the birth of young Frank. Environment also had its share in the making of Jenny. A desire to escape from the "mean streets" of Islington and the restrictions and limitations of her home leads her to the gay life of the stage. Once the novelty had been 43 We are told, for example, of the mother: "She had . . . the merriest laugh in the world till Jenny grew older and made it sound almost mirthless beside her own. It was this capacity for laughter which made her resent the aunts' attempt to capture Jenny for melancholy" (Carnival, p. 16). 44„The strength which long ago enabled Mrs. Raeburn to refuse the nice little house and the Ralli car seemed to find a renewed power of expression in her daughter" (Carnival, p. 240). 92 exhausted, the theater meant only an aimless, drifting existence of perpetual search for pleasure. Her love for Maurice might have provided her life with a sense of pur pose and direction, but with the failure of this relation ship and the subsequent emotional shock she had no defense against "the ennui of life": "A gigantic futility clouded her point of view, making effort, enjoyment, sorrow, disappointment, success equally unimportant" (p. 314). As the author observes of her condition: "Without an edi fice of love or religion or art or philosophy, there seemed no refuge from decay" (p. 315). And here Mackenzie singles out Jenny’s education as being responsible for her intel lectual emptiness, her failure to be adequately prepared for life. When the body finds existence a mock, the mind falls back upon its intellectual defences. But Jenny had neither equipment, commissariat or strategic position. She was a dim figure on the arras of civilization. . . . Therefore at school she was told that William the Con-# queror came to the throne in 1066, that a bay is a large gulf, a promontory a small cape. She had been a play thing for the turgid experiments by parrots in education on simple facts, facts so sublimely simple that her mind recorded them no more than would the Venus of Milo sit down on a bench before a pupil teacher. . . . Yet she might have been useful in her beauty, could some edu cationalist have perceived in her youth that God as well as Velasquez can create a thing of beauty. She lived, however, in a period of enthusiastic waste, and now 93 brooded over the realization that nothing in life seemed to recompense one for living, however merrily, however splendidly, the adventure began. (pp* 315-316) In keeping with his belief in the importance of child hood experiences, Mackenzie begins his study of Jenny's relationship to her surroundings when she is "two years and a few months" (p. 18). The account given in Chap ter III of the stages in Jenny's mental life from two to six is written with a sure touch.^ The Nation (London) found these early chapters a "nuisance" and "boring" and adds: "The psychology of the child is, in the present case at any rate, sheer guess-work; it is a forced anticipation of developed character; it has the effect of begging the question.Rupert Brooke, on the other hand, said: In recreating this child's world, Mackenzie draws heavily upon his own vivid and detailed memories of child hood. In a recent interview on B. B. C. he reaffirmed the precociousness of his famed memory. He said that his memory goes back to when he was seven months old: "The earliest thing I remember is, when I was seven months old, being taken out by a nurse, whose name was Bush. I can see her now--and she left when I was a year old--in a blue cloak with a bonnet (at Keswick, this was) picking me out of the pram and holding me up, and black rabbits and white rabbits romping about in a field"--"Sir Compton Mackenzie 'Face to Face,'" The Listener, LXVII (January 25, 1962), 167. See also Compton Mackenzie, Mv Life and Times: Octave One (London, 1963), p. 30. ^February 17, 1912, p. 824. 94 ’ ’The account of the child*s mind at the beginning is astonishingly good."^ Arthur St. John Adcock has remarked of Jenny: "The story of her childhood is narrated vividly; her character is developed with remarkable subtlety and skill--you see in the child the woman that is to be."^® Although it was generally agreed that Jenny was vividly and realistically drawn, many reviewers were dis turbed by apparent inconsistencies in her conduct. It was felt implausible that she would give herself to Jack Danby, whom she did not particularly like, after she had refused Maurice. Similarly, her marriage with Trewhella was re garded as grotesquely inappropriate. The Birmingham Daily Post expressed the point at issue: The Jennie [sic] we know, the Jennie painted so labori ously, with so many fine and intimate touches, in the preceding chapters, does not strike one as the sort of person who would have been likely to do such things, even in a mood of depression, revolt, and disgust with things in general.^ But as The Academy in its review pointed out, the problem 47 The Saturday Westminster Gazette (London), June 8, 1912, pTT: 48 "The World, the Church, and the Ballet," Madame (London), February 3, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). AQ January 26, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 95 is chiefly in the careless handling of the point of view. Danby and Trewhella are not presented through the eyes and consciousness of Jenny. Yet in his analysis of both inci dents, Mackenzie substantially justifies the actions as consistent with the character and previous experience of Jenny. The supporting characters in the novel come in for mixed critical comment. The Outlook said, "The book is full of characters that are memorable,"^1 an(j Ralph Straus in The Bystander felt that "every character in the book is a delicate, inimitable picture. On the other hand, R. C. in The Manchester Guardian, while praising Jenny, thought that the other characters were "somewhat shadowy. The Standard found all the characters to be gilded puppets, modem novelist might treat more explicitly Jenny’s sexual nature in dealing with her relationship to Danby. The reason for her spending the night with him Mackenzie explains more obliquely: "All that was left of Maurice was the fire he had kindled, the fire of passion that, lying dormant since his desertion, was now burning luridly in Jenny's heart" (Carnival. p. 281). January 27, 1912, p. 137. January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^January 24, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 96 with the exception of Mr. Raeburn and Trewhella: "they, and they alone, have escaped the prettiness that clings like pink gauze about the bodies of the other characters."^ As with The Passionate Elopement, critics and re viewers alike were almost unanimous in their praise of the naturalness and realism of the dialogue. Ralph Straus C C spoke of the "unstrained, masterful dialogue." The Times Literary Supplement (London) said, "The talk is true, and The Nation (London) observed: "The major part of it [the story] is conversation, and the conversation might S 7 have been taken down direct from the original." Some found the talk too slangy and realistic to be wholly admirable. N- H. W. in T. P.*s Weekly cautiously warned that "the language in which Maurice and Jenny try to reach a coitmon ground of understanding is not that of the 58 conventional drawing-room." The Liverpool Daily Post 54 January 26, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 5 5 JJThe Bystander. January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrap book No. 31). 6January 18, 1912, p. 26, col. 3. 57February 17, 1912, p. 824. co "The Ballet Girl in Fiction,” p. 69. 97 complained that "the book is full of a slang, meaningless 59 and necessarily unfamiliar to the general reader." Without resorting to typographical oddities of spell ing, Mackenzie catches the tone of Cockney speech. The family conversation of the Raeburns or Jenny’s speech with the girls at the Orient Palace of Varieties is filled with slangy sparkle and humor. As an example of Cockney ir reverence and impudence there is the exchange between Jenny and her Irish admirer, the young officer Terence O'Meagh, as he drove her home from the theater. "You know," Terence would say, leaning gracefully over the division of the car, "you know, Jenny, our regiment . . . was absolutely cut to pieces at Drieu- fontein; and at Riviersdorp they held the position against two thousand Boers." "Who cares?" said Jenny. "You might take a little interest in it." "Well," said Jenny, "how can I?" "But you might be interested because, after all, it is my regiment, and I’m awfully fond of you, little girl." "Don’t be soppy," Jenny advised him. "You're so cursedly matter-of-fact." "Eh?" "So--oh, well, damn it, Jenny, you don't seem to care whether I’m with you or not." "Why should I?" "Any other girl would be fond of me." "Ah--any other girl would." 59 January 24, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 98 "Then why aren’t you?" "Oh, you'll pass in a crowd." "Dash it, I'm frightfully in love with you," vowed Terence. "What's the good of spoiling a fine day by being silly?" (Carnival, p. 99) Mackenzie has attributed his ability to write Cockney dialogue to his attempts to reproduce Cockney for the dramatic version of Wells's Kipps which he had done some years before.^ As there was considerable critical discussion of the characterization of Jenny, so also Mackenzie's handling of the plot provoked much comment. In general, the incidents of the plot, with several exceptions, were regarded as realistic and typical of the life of a girl like Jenny. Thus T. P.'s Weekly praised Mackenzie for the courage of not having his heroine end up as ”a premiere danseuse" (p. 69). The Globe said of the author, "He is perfectly truthful, and describes things as they might happen. There have been, however, certain notable areas of debate about the plot and considerable negative criticism. Some reviewers complained that the book was too long and that ^°Compton Mackenzie, "Sidelight," The Spectator (London), CXCIII (October 22, 1954), 494. ^January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 99 Mackenzie was too unselective in his use of detail. So The Nation (London) said: "Mr. Mackenzie relies on the method of giving us a life-history in its entirety, scene by scene" (p. 826). Henry James was unable to make up his mind whether Carnival proceeded "from the theory of the 62 slice or from the conception of the extract." Rupert Brooke commented: "The details are delicious, but the big things do not stand out."^ Examination of the incidents of the novel indicates a functional selectivity at work in a more definite manner than James acknowledged. There is, however, one notable exception, and that is the suffragette episode in Chap ter XXVI, whose inclusion seems determined by other than plot requirements. On the other hand, the first thirteen chapters of Carnival, which trace the development of Jenny from her birth to her meeting with Maurice, impress by their chronicling with selectivity and precision significant 62 "We literally find it not easy to say if there may not lurk in Carnival ... a selective sense more appre hensible, to a push of inquiry, than its overloaded sur face . . . would at first lead us to suspect"--Notes on Novelists (New York, 1914), p. 356. 63 The Saturday Westminster Gazette, June 8, 1912, p. 6. 100 stages in the life of the girl. Even seemingly trivial circumstances are shown to be indicative of steps in her development and reveal information about Jenny and her motivations which help us to understand more fully the 64 Jenny of the latter part of the book. There is also divided opinion as to whether the book is an effective artistic whole or not.^ Some critics have felt that the changing of the scene from London to Cornwall destroyed the essential unity of tone and action that had been built up. The English Review said of the book: "It misses the unity of a work of art. It breaks in the middle, so that in retrospect one sees it as two differ ent flowers awkwardly if eagerly . . . wired upon one stalk1 ' (February, 1912, p. 547). The Athenaeum agreed: "All her London life and her motherfs life are true; but her marriage and her existence in Cornwall strike a dis cord. These last chapters . . . seem somewhat to be out ^See above for example, p. 77. ^ The Observer (London) commented: "Whether the book is a perfectly artistic whole or a series of excellently imagined tableaux in the life of a ballet-girl has yet to be decided"--January 28, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 101 of tune” (January 20, 1912, p. 63). The Dally Telegraph (London) observed: "To take Jenny out of London and away from all the surroundings that have moulded her, and set her in the heart of the country as the wife of a farmer, is to begin a new tale, and the new tale is too long drawn. On the other hand, J. M. , writing in The Living Age (Boston), said that on rereading Carnival he came to the conclusion that "the break in the structure is more than compensated" by "the incomparable beauty of the Cornish scenes" and the dramatic effectiveness of Maurice's 67 return and Jenny's rejection of him. The fatal ending of the story has also been criticised as forced and adven titious. Although The Outlook spoke of the "tragic but 68 inevitable close" and The Portland Oregonian could praise 69 "the cruel ending, like Hardy's Tess," more often it has been regarded as contrived. The Liverpool Courier said: Mr. Mackenzie, one suspects, does not find it easy to end his stories. The Passionate Elopement was a comedy ^April 12, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^"Compton Mackenzie," CCLXXXVIII (January 29, 1916), 286. January 27, 1912, p. 137. ^March 31, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 102 that ended unsatisfactory in tragedy. Carnival is not a comedy: it may even be in the mood of tragedy, but the "curtain" is accidental rather than natural. The Westminster Gazette (London) observed: "The close of the story is fortuitous; a tardy and by no means inevitable poetic justice arising, from no fault of Jenny's, to wind up her account by moral judgment. The Evening Standard bluntly stated: "Jenny seems to be killed because Mr. Mac kenzie or Mr. Seeker [the publisher] thought the book was 72 long enough." The plot of Carnival is clearly organized into four segments. The first, comprising chapters one to fourteen, depicts in 140 pages the growth and development of Jenny till her meeting with Maurice when she is nineteen. The second, in chapters fourteen to twenty-five, portrays the love affair with Maurice, covering a period of seven or eight months in a little over 100 pages. The third, in chapters twenty-five to thirty-four, occupies about 60 pages and describes the year and a half in which Jenny ^January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^January 20, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 72 No date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 103 is at loose ends, the period between the failure of Maurice to return to her from Spain and her marriage to Trewhella. The fourth, in chapters thirty-four through forty-eight, treats of the two and a half years of her married life in less than 100 pages. We note that the longest section is the first (140 pages), which indicates the importance Mackenzie attaches to the formative career of Jenny. The centrality of the affair with Maurice is shown by the fact that the author devotes a little over a hundred pages to the events of about seven months. The third episode, in order of impor tance, is the marriage, which covers a period of two and a half years and uses almost a hundred pages. In other words, we find the operation of a definite artistic prin ciple in the selection and arrangement of plot material. The change of scene from London to Cornwall does not in itself constitute an artistic breach in the construction of the novel. The vivid personality of Jenny is capable of bridging the gap. But it does point up the fact that Mackenzie did not solve all the problems attendant upon his conception of the plot and his manner of telling the story. The ending, unfortunately, does strike a false note. The emphasis was too long on the representative quality 104 of Jenny’s experience and on the establishment of a realistic convention to prepare us for the melodrama of the ending. The humor of the book and the romantic realism of the style do not clearly provide a tragic atmosphere or signal a tragic effect. Mackenzie twice uses the device of foreshadowing to suggest the murder, but it is not really convincing. In so far as the conception of the story requires a conclusion which will accentuate the tragic waste and failure of what could have been a very promising life, a purer realism demands a less melodramatic ending. An Arnold Bennett might have described the effect of a cheerless country life upon Jenny by presenting her loss of earlier gaiety and sprightliness. Such is the way George Moore, in A Mummer’s Wife, has portrayed his hapless Kate Ede, who lapses into alcoholism and eventual death. But to observe closely the effect of her marriage upon Jenny might well be a new tale--indeed, perhaps, a 73 Jenny’s insolence to the young men who take her out and buy her presents prompts the following comment from her sister May: "’Somebody’ll shoot you one day,* prophesied May" (p- 111). The thought is awkwardly repeated on the following page where Alfie, Jenny’s brother, likewise criticizes her conduct and says, "You’ll get a bullet in your chest one of these days. You'll get shot" (p. 112). 105 repetition of that of her mother. Mackenzie wanted an unhappy ending, and found it in melodrama. He is not above such theatrical tricks to underline a sentiment or to extricate himself, as here, from plot difficulties. As an example of the former one might cite his use of coincidence in having Mrs. Raeburn go mad on the very day that Jenny so foolishly gave herself to Danby. An additional weakness in the plot structure of Carni val, as has already been mentioned, is the suffragette episode in Chapter XXVI• Rupert Brooke thought that Jenny’s foray into the suffragette movement was both ir relevant and an awkward, unnecessary intrusion of Macken zie's own views into the story.^ L. F. U. in The Isis (Oxford) detected plagiarism, conscious or not, of the similar episode in H. G. Wells' Ann Veronica, which was published in 1909-^ Certainly the parallels are close. Both Ann and Jenny become suffragettes after an unhappy love affair. The leaders of the movement, Kitty Brett ^ The Saturday Westminster Gazette, June 8, 1912, p. 6. Robert Lynd in The Daily News and Leader (London) found the episode unbelievable--February 8, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^February 26, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 106 in Ann Veronica and Constance Ragstead in Carnival, are shown to be bright, persuasive women. In both books the heroines take part in a march upon the House of Commons, and as the result of their experiences they become disil lusioned and leave the movement. Similarly both authors are critical of the movement, though Wells sees the neces sity of women being legally and economically free if they are to avoid being subject to the wrong men. Mackenzie is particularly critical of the stupidity of the governments handling of the problem. The significance of the episode in Carnival, however, is that it is awkwardly introduced into the novel, apparently to give Mackenzie opportunity to express his impressions of the suffragette movement. Here and in his direct comments on the education of the period we have the first indications of a practice which becomes later more extensive in Mackenzie: the insertion of his own political, social, and religious views into his novels irrespective of their appropriateness. Only in The Winds of Love is such commentary effectively provided for by the nature and structure of the novel. The setting of Carnival was praised by The Oxford Magazine for its originality: "Mr. Mackenzie takes us into 107 some strange places— Madame Aldavinifs dancing school and the dressing room of the Orient and Trewhella's Cornish 76 farm with its oppressive atmosphere of Methodism." But it was his description of the life of the music-halls which particularly struck reviewers as effectively authentic. Ralph Straus observed that "it is obvious that Mr. Macken zie knows as much about the music-hall of today as he knows about the eighteenth-century folk [of The Passionate Elopement 1."^ The Birmingham Daily Post stated: "Every thing he writes upon the subject of the Orient, its 78 dancers, its patrons, has the ring of truth in it." The Glasgow Herald called this aspect of the book "an admirable study ... a compelling picture of ballet conditions, and 70 it must be admitted they are not alluring." The Church Times (London) felt that the book had a salutary moral effect: "The underworld of our amusements needs to be described; we need to see at what bitter cost we are ^March 7, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 7 7 The Bystander, January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrap book No. 31). 78 January 26, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^January 18, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 108 80 entertained by night.*' Though Mackenzie's account of the intimate life of the music-halls captured the attention, in a larger sense it is London itself which provides the setting for three- quarters of the book. Clement Shorter in The Sphere (London) said: ’ ’Perhaps the strongest charm of Carnival Q1 is in the London atmosphere that it provides." x London scenes and seasons appear prominent in the background of Carnival, and Mackenzie presents them with the eye not of the realist-naturalist but of the romantic. The first paragraph of the book gives a romantic view of London, in which even Islington of "the mean streets" is touched with glamor: All day long over the gray Islington Street October, casting pearly mists, had turned the sun to silver and made London a city of meditation whose tumbled roofs and parapets and glancing spires appeared hushed and translucent as in a lake's tranquillity. (Carnival, p. 1) London itself is transmuted into a world of beauty and romance, and urban scenes are characteristically described in terms of the country and of natural beauty: 80 February 2, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^^March 23, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 109 There exist in the heart of a London dawn a few minutes when the street lamps have just been extin guished, but before the sun has risen, when the city cannot fail to be beautiful even in its meanest aspects. As such an hour the Bayswater Road has the mystery of a dew-steeped glade; the Strand wears the frail hues of a sea shell; Regent Street is crystalline. Even Pica- dilly Circus stands on the very summit of the world, wind-washed and noble. (Carnival, p. 166) With similar emphasis we are told that "Like mountain echoes street cries haunted the burnished air, while a muffin-man, abroad too early for the season, swung his bell intermittently with a pastoral sound" (p. 1). The Orient Palace of Varieties is touched with the same magic of romance and "blazed upon the vision like an enchanted cave" (p. 120). What might appear uniformly ugly or conxnonplace is transformed by Mackenzie's imagination and romantic sensibility much as the prostitutes of the Orient Promenade are by moonlight. Under the stars, the Picadilly courtesans affect the onlooker less atrociously. Night lends a magic of soft ness to their fretful beauty. The sequins lose their garishness; the painted faces preserve an illusion of reality. Moonlight falls gently on the hollow cheek; kindles a spark of youth in the leaden eye. The Pica dilly courtesans move like tigers in a tropic gloom with velvet blazonries and a stealthy splendor that masks the hunger driving them out to seek their prey. (Carnival, pp. 121-122) In the way that Mackenzie romanticizes London and London life, he is again reflecting the mood of the 110 Eighteen Nineties. Holbrook Jackson observes that "during the Eighteen Nineties . . . art threw a glamour over the town." He adds: Poets . . ■ did not abandon the pastoral mood, but they added to it an enthusiasm for what was urban. Where, in the past, they found romance only in wild and remote places, among what are called natural things, they now found romance in streets and theatres, in taverns and restaurants, in bricks and mortar and the creations of artificers. Richard Le Gallienne expressed the new attitude in "A Ballad of London," which describes the artificial city in terms of the natural: Ah, London! London! our delight, Great flower that opens but at night, Great City of the Midnight Sun, Whose day begins when day is done. Lamp after lamp against the sky Opens a sudden beaming eye, Leaping alight on either hand, The iron lilies of the Strand. Holbrook Jackson has said that "it was characteristic of the decadence not to sing the bloom of Nature but the bloom of cosmetics" (p. 106). But Mackenzie is not a decadent. His feeling for the romantic aspects of modern *^The Eighteen Nineties (New York, 1922), p. 105. 83 "Robert Louis Stevenson, An Elegy," and Other Poems. Mainly Personal (Boston, no date), p. 26. Ill life and its urban setting does not dim his even keener appreciation of natural beauty. In transferring the scene from London to Cornwall, Mackenzie gives free play to his bent for natural description in long, detailed passages portraying the Cornish landscape. T. P. *s Weekly felt that "Some of the best chapters in the book, and surely the most sympathetic, deal with the Cornish people and scenery" (p. 69). Rupert Brooke, on the other hand, believed that scenery was a special temptation to Mackenzie, who enjoys natural beauty and likes to describe it. But he rarely rises to the high spiritual and intel lectual effort of grasping just how the human being and the background fit together. It is easier to slap the wealthy colours on, and trust to luck; and it makes pretty reading. (The Saturday Westminster Gazette, p. 6) Mackenzie, however, in his descriptions is interested not merely in "effect," but also in the truth and accuracy of his picture. He reflects his extensive knowledge of natural phenomena in sentences like the following (from p. 352): "Life of a kind was always present in the scud of rabbits, in the song of larks and click of stonechats, in the dipping steelblue flight of the wheatear and ruffled chestnut feathers of the whinchat." Although there are passages in the Cornish scenes in Carnival which might 112 be regarded as excessively detailed, part of the author1s purpose is to show the contrast between Jennyfs environ ment in London and that of Cornwall. He largely fails, however, to depict convincingly and in any depth the effect Q I which the new surroundings had on Jenny. Although Carnival is carefully and specifically located in its physical setting, the setting in time is not worked out with the precision or detail which marks his next book, Sinister Street. The only external events which help us to date the action are the references to the O C Jack-the-Ripper murders of 1888 and to the Boer War. ^ If Jenny is between five and six in 1888, then she was born probably about 1883, Mackenzie^ own birth-date. However, since the Boer War seems to have broken out when she is thirteen or fourteen, the chronology is thrown out. This apparent confusion is in contrast to the care with which the events in Jennyfs life are related to her chronological age. We know with considerable exactitude how old Jenny 84 It is interesting to note that Jenny at times con ceives natural objects in urban terms: "She could smell in the sea air wood pavement and hear in the scurry of rabbits passengers by the Picadilly Tube" (p. 386). ^See Carnival, pp. 28-29 and p. 79. 113 was when the events narrated happened to her, though we do not know the actual year when they are supposed to have occurred--and Indeed there is no necessity for our knowing. The style of Carnival attracted considerable favorable comment, as had that of The Passionate Elopement earlier. Punch (London) said of the style that "it gave . . . the same blissful feeling of security that one has in listening to a great musician--the knowledge that every tone will be 8 exquisitely right." Everybody's Magazine (New York) conmented that "the delicate prose in which it is written, full of contrasting shades and blinding flashes of passion, Q is a perfect joy." The Standard observed that although "The prose is beautiful ... it is, we feel, to Mr. Mac- 88 kenzie of more importance than are any human beings." It is, however, in connection with the style that an interesting conflict of critical opinion occurred. The Spectator summed up the problem when it stated of Carnival that "there is a strange contrast between the matter and 86CXLII (January 24, 1912), 72. 87XXVII (July 1912), 139. ®®January 26, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 114 QQ the style.’ * Essentially the difficulty seems to be that, although Mackenzie's subject matter was that favored by the realist school and his purpose seemed to be that of a realistic study, his attitude and style were those of the romantic. G. M. A. in The Oxford Chronicle and Berks and Bucks Gazette described the situation as follows: Mr. Mackenzie has started out to play the realist, and if the frequent inequalities between manner and method . . . produce a departure from design, the break ing down of the method is invariably the inroad for a manner picturesque and beautiful. Mr. Mackenzie is a Romantic: and though he may intend to dissect, the body is no sooner uncovered than in an onrush of revulsion he covers it with a robe of sumptuousness. Most reviewers, however, saw Carnival as essentially a novel of the realist-naturalist school. The Glasgow Evening Times, for example, found the book "all realism. Hearth and Home (London) said that it "ought to settle Mr. Compton Mackenzie's place for good and all among our 92 'human document' novelists," The Times Literary Supple ment also found it representative of "the slice of life 89CVIII (February 17, 1912), 278. 9®February 2, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 9Hlay 11, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^February 1, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). H5 93 school" and "all quite properly sordid and depressing." There were some, on the other hand, like The Daily Mail (London) who felt that Mackenzie aimed at a realistic effect which he did not attain: "But somehow there is a touch of artificiality about Carnival which prevents it from being the ’human document' that Mr. Mackenzie seems 94 to have intended to make of it." Those who felt that Carnival was a realistic novel often compared Mackenzie to Arnold Bennett in his "meticu- 95 lous treatment of detail." The Westminster Gazette, however, disagreed: "Here, then, is a plain piece of realism which might have been treated in the Arnold Bennett manner. But Mr. Mackenzie's manner is quite other than 96 this." Mackenzie, it was observed by some, transcended a narrow, unimaginative realism with a heightened, essen tially romantic view of reality. The Globe remarked of the Mackenzie manner: ^January 18, 1912, p. 26, col. 3. ^February 23, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 9 5 Vanity Fair. January 31, 1912 (clipping in Scrap book No. 31). ^January 20, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 116 The author paints his picture not with the "unimaginative realism" of a Zola, but with all the imaginative reality of a poetic and sympathetic writer. He is perfectly truthful, and describes things exactly as they might happen, yet he conceals something of the ugly crudity of his theme in a gossamer-like garment, fashioned of his own poetic feeling.”' The Saturday Review (London) agreed: "Of actuality, sordid enough at times, there is abundance. . . . And yet Mr. Mac kenzie contrives to transmute his cinema records into something that, looked at as a whole, is the reverse of ugly."98 In Carnival Mackenzie brought to bear what is essen tially a romantic imagination and style upon subject matter long associated with the realists. The result was a cer tain discordancy to those expecting a consistent realism. The Athenaeum, however, regarded this variety of tone as constituting the special originality of Carnival. Although it was "not so complete a work of art as The Passionate Elopement" and superficially resembled the work of de Morgan and Bennett, yet The originality of Mr. Mackenzie lies in his possession of an imagination and a vision of life that are as 97January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 98CXIII (May 11, 1912), vi. 117 peculiarly his own as a voice or a laugh, and that reflect themselves in a style which is that of no other writer. (January 20, 1912, p. 62) It was not long, however, before critics became aware in Mackenzie and in other contemporary writers of similar romantic or idealistic tendencies. So Arthur Waugh came to speak of "The New Realism," by which he meant a "new school of realists working in the atmosphere of ideal- 99 ism." Hugh Walpole in discussing the work of Joseph Conrad used the term "Romantic-Realism,"10° and John W. Cunliffe adopted it to describe certain characteristics of "The New Novelists."101 J. M., seeking to define the special quality in the early work of Mackenzie, said it was "the power to trans- 102 figure ordinary life," to find poetry even in the sordid and the conmonplace. Mackenzie himself in a lecture on "Poetry and the Modern Novel" delivered before The Poets' 9^Tradition and Change (London, 1919), p. 211. 100Joseph Conrad, new and rev. ed. (London, 1924), p. 109. 101English Literature During the Last Half Century (New York, 1923), p. 308. 10^"Compton Mackenzie," p. 288. 118 Club on March 2 . 8 , 1912, gave an important statement of his artistic creed, only two months after the publication of Carnival■ He distinguished between the realistic novelist and the poetic novelist, and said that the poetic novelist 103 will give a sense of wonder to his readers. He con- t inued: I am convinced that the modem novel lives only by the poetry which gives it life. It is not enough to trace, however accurately, the contours of the surface. It is not enough to record a chronicle of facts. It is not enough to reflect in a work of art the observation of the commonplace mind of the majority. Truth is always beautiful, but truthfulness may be often very ugly. The realistic novelist might accurately see in the coal strike merely the misery of the unemployed, the gauntness of starvation, the dislocation of traffic, the obstinacy of the miners and the owners, the effec tiveness or fatuity of Mr. Asquith. But another real istic novelist [the true realist or poetic novelist] might imagine the muttering of Labour as it turns rest lessly after centuries of dull sleep, and the force of Capital at bay. He might laugh at the vanities and follies of all statesmen, the ecstasies and lamentations of divergent opinions. (Unconsidered Trifles, p. 265) Actually Mackenzie is impatient with the use of such terms as "realism" and "romanticism" as convenient critical labels to describe the work of a writer. Since Carnival he has delighted in showing the inexactness of the terms. 103printed in Unconsidered Trifles (London, 1932), p. 264. Originally published in The English Review, II (May 1912), 269-279. 119 So in an interview appearing in The New York Evening Sun he said: I call myself a romanticist . . . but I am called a realist. I do not argue with the use of these terms. It does not make a story romantic to set it back two centuries. It would be far more romantic to set it ahead a couple of generations. Real romance is in the zest of modem life, and one is romantic in so far as one enjoys the beauty and pleasure of living and is sensitive to it. It seems to me that every romantic writer must use the material of his own time. And so I consider my book Carnival romantic because it is about life today. Whereas A Passionate Elopement, which deals with life in the eighteenth century, is realism, because it is a careful study of the life and customs of that time. ^ Irrespective of the debate over "realism” and "roman ticism" in Carnival, the book does have certain stylistic weaknesses. Although clever phrasing and a rather ornate prose were in keeping with the spirit of The Passionate Elopement, they seem on occasion inappropriate to the sub ject and method of Carnival. A preciousness of diction does not successfully transmute the ugly or the common place into the beautiful. Mackenzie placed, perhaps, too great emphasis upon a prose artificially fashioned of "beautiful words and the beautiful arrangement of words ^^"English Novelist's Views of Romance in Life and Books," October 19, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 120 solidified by precision and judgment in their application” (Unconsidered Trifles, p. 262). But he believed the poetic novelist would manifest his "instinct for decoration,” even though "Many critics view decorative prose in the same way as certain mistresses observe the feathered hat of the parlour-maid en f§te and free” (Unconsidered Trifles. p. 261). The diction of Carnival was singled out by some re viewers for favorable comment. The Birmingham Daily Post 10 5 spoke of "an almost Swinburnian . . . choice of words." The Athenaeum said that every word is right, and each appears to have come with out care. To enshrine exactness of statement in an atmosphere of sympathetic imagination is precisely the achievement toward which modern fiction is straining, and here is Mr. Mackenzie . . . attaining it at once, and, as it seems, so easily. (January 20, 1912, p. 63) There are, however, some examples of the faux bon in the diction. We note the tendency to mix sensations in the manner of the Nineties, which we have already observed in The Passionate Elopement. There is "the melodious twi light of the oration" (p. 262) and "the arpeggios of the misted violins" (p. 143). We are told that "The odor ^^January 26, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 121 of stephanotis, mingled with the sharper perfume of carna tions, seemed almost visible" (p. 143). There is also some exploitation of exotic words like "frangipani," "jicky," and "phulnana," and there is excessive and inap propriate classical allusion. Compton Mackenzie began writing Carnival in London on January 18, 1911, the day after The Passionate Elopement was published. He finished it in Cornwall in January, 1912, racing against a deadline, for the book was scheduled to come out in a fortnight and the printers were awaiting the final copy.^^ It appeared on Mackenzie's birthday, January 17, 1912. As with The Passionate Elopement there had been some difficulty about the selection of a title. The novel was originally to be called London Pride, but a play with that name was announced and Mackenzie relin quished the title. It was next called Colunibine, but this was finally rejected in favor of Carnival. H. Vincent Brorae in an article on "What’s in a Title?" stated: "When he [Mackenzie] was planning the book his wife took to ^^The Foreword of Carnival (Macdonald), p. vi. 107,rhe Foreword, p. vi. 122 playing Schumann's 'Camaval, * and it suddenly came to Mr. Mackenzie that the name might aptly fit his own 108 novel." There was some speculation as to the applica tion of the title to the contents. The Liverpool Courier said: To apply the title "Carnival" to it is a pitiless irony. The fact is that Mr. Mackenzie strips from off "Carnival" its tinsel and its gold, its glamour and light joy, and reveals it a gaunt, feverish, and comfortless spectre.109 Richard Fletcher in The Weekly Budget (London) conmented: "Doubtless the writer intends to symbolize the one love- dream of a life as a Carnival, only to be followed by aching penitence and sacrifice. "HO Mackenzie used the phrase "the carnival of London life," in his article "How I Wrote Carnival," to refer to Jenny's London career.m There is a further application of the title to the action of the book, which is seen in the rather daring use of the etymology of the word for the punning name of the last ^^The Bookman (London), LXXXIII (January 1933), 393. ■^^January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^■^April 7, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^*The New York Times Saturday Review, June 9, 1912, p. 344. 123 chapter which depicts Jenny's murder--"Carni Vale." The reviewers were generally surprised by Carnival. They had not expected so different a novel to follow The Passionate Elopement. Writing in retrospect, Sheila Kaye- Smith has said, "Carnival had been received with almost 112 unanimous applause." ■ L Although such claims have been made for the book's reception, a study of the reviews indi cates that there was somewhat more critical qualification about Carnival than about his first novel. Twelve per cent of the British reviews I have surveyed expressed preference 11 3 for The Passionate Elopement over Carnival, and there was much incidental criticism of the subject as well as the treatment of the later book. But that it was widely regarded as a significant book is seen in the large number of reviews which it received. And although there were 112..The Glamour of Life and Love," p. 646. 113That is, 10 out of 81 reviews. Mackenzie has com mented of Carnival: "It was successful, though I don't think people liked it very well because it was so different from the eighteenth century Passionate Elopement"--The New York Evening Sun. October 19, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). Reviews with any critical significance are listed in the bibliography. have surveyed 135 reviews, of which 81 were from newspapers and periodicals in England and Scotland and 54 were from American publications. The reviews of any criti cal significance are listed in the bibliography. 124 critical reservations about aspects of the book, there is no doubt of its popular success. Faith Compton Mackenzie has described how her husband thought the book was a failure when on looking into The Times Literary Supplement the day it was published he found Carnival dismissed in only five lines. But the fears were unjustified. She wrote: In a week the book was the talk of the town. It was headline and front-page news in nearly all the London papers. Monty had arrived. An invitation from a famous London hostess to have lunch at the Ritz was as sure an indication as a reliable weather vane. “ In England Carnival reached a fifth edition in less than three months, and when it was published in March in the United States by D. Appleton and Company the first edition 116 was exhausted within two days after publication. Mac kenzie has summarized the publishing record of Carnival in the Foreword of its latest edition: The book has been published in various editions by some eight publishers and the total sales in Britain and America were over half a million when it went out of print during the last war. It has been translated twice into French, and into several other languages. (p. vii) 115As Much As I Dare, p. 222. 1 16 The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer (New York), May, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 125 The range of critical comment in the book's reception was extensive. The Morning Post (London) found it "a much more ambitious book than its predecessor ... it certainly marks a big stride upwards in Mr. Mackenzie's career as a novelist. The Athenaeum observed that "Carnival is not faultless, but (which is a far better thing) it is alive" (p. 63). Ralph Straus in The Bystander welcomed it on the day of publication as a classic: "Carnival will be the one novel you will naturally think of when speaking of the 118 literature of the music-hall." The most hostile reviews generally took exception to the subject matter or the moral tone of the book. The Glasgow Herald merely cautioned 119 that it was "not for 'the young person." But other reviews were much more outspoken on this question. The Liverpool Daily Post said the book was "a sad disappoint ment": In the first place, despite all Mr. Mackenzie's efforts to avoid it, the whole tone of the book is un pleasant and leaves a bitter taste. . . . Why a writer such as he should choose the eternal sex question, and ^■•^January 22, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^®January 17, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). •^^January 18, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 126 should further elaborate his theme with all that is least commendable in the realism of the modern sex story, is hard to understand.120 The New Age (London) was more severe in its indictment: The author, evidently believing the British public cares for nothing so much as sport, whether it is of a sexual character or otherwise, treats us to long scenes between Jenny and Maurice, containing a deal of jargon strongly reminiscent of that recorded in medical case books gathered from the lips of adolescents suffering from sexual mania.121 The American critical reception paralleled that of the British. The New York Times Saturday Review said: • 'Carni val can be recommended as about the best novel published this season," and added, "With the publication of this novel, Mr. Mackenzie can be counted among the foremost of 122 the younger school of English novelists." The Chicago 121 Record-Herald called it "a drab masterpiece." But, as in the British Isles, the moral aspect of the novel attracted considerable unfavorable comment. Perhaps the most extreme attack was that of the Portland (Oregon) Telegram: 120 January 24, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ^2Hlarch 31, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 122XVII (April 21, 1912), 249. 123 March 27, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 127 There are so many good books published that nobody should waste his time reading such a trashy story as this. It is not the sort of book which should adorn the home library shelf. Although there is a semblance of a moral to the story, yet the vulgar and coarse predominate to such degree as to make it disgusting. It is not fit reading for those of mature minds, let alone the young. Certain difficulties Americans had with the novel may have originated from lack of familiarity with English codes and manners, particularly with the nature of English social differences. Thus Lucian Cary of The Chicago Evening Post did not see why Maurice did not marry Jenny: One is left with clear pictures of the gayety in which Jenny and her lover, to whom she never gave herself because of her mother, indulge, but not with a perfect understanding of why this love was the peculiarly desperate failure their creator makes it.125 Carnival has been published in various editions over a period of fifty years, from 1912 to 1951.^^ Such a record may indicate a vitality in the work apart from any imperfections in the conception or execution of the novel. "^^No date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). ■^^April 19, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 31). 126 In addition, Mackenzie has twice made it into a play (in 1912 and again in 1922, the latter version called Columbine); it has been made both into a radio play and into a short opera; and three motion pictures have been made of it (see Foreword of Carnival, p. vii). 128 L- A. G. Strong has said: "Carnival contains passages which 1 07 those who read it early in life will never forget.” A reviewer in The Graphic (London) wrote in 1927: "It is a pity that whenever Mr. Compton Mackenzie publishes a new book these days, one's thoughts turn regretfully to the earlier ones: Sinister Street and, even more regretfully, Carnival.” And even more recently Carnival has been called Mackenzie's "most poignant, most remembered novel."129 Nostalgia has played its part in keeping Carnival alive for many earlier readers, yet as Wilfred Rooke-ley has observed: "It is not often that a novel--which mirrors so faithfully as Carnival a particular moment of contempo rary life--survives the generation about whom and for whose 1 3(1 delight it was written." L. A. G. Strong has said that 127 "Books and Writers," The Spectator, CLXXXVII (September 14, 1951), 336. 128 A review of Vestal Fire, November 5, 1927 (clip ping in Scrapbook No. 20). 129 Joyce Weiner, "Seventy Happy Years," John O'Lon don's Weekly, LXII (January 23, 1953), 61. "On Re-Reading Carnival," Radio Times (London), November 1, 1929 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 17). 129 despite the great merits of the book, "To the reader of today it is as much a period piece as The Passionate Elope ment" (p. 336). The fact is that Carnival is a period piece which has managed to survive two world wars and a publishing history which has extended over half a century. Perhaps its appeal is compounded of two elements. First, it lives because of the vivid realization of the character of Jenny. But, secondly and more importantly, it lives because of its success in capturing the mood and moment of an age. It succeeds as glorified social history. It depicts the life of the great music-halls at the turn of the century. It offers a romanticized yet realistic pic ture of an age and a generation which were to be swept away by the first World War. It is, in the words of one writer, "a delightfully convincing pen portrait of Edwardian London. " Carnival was the first of Mackenzie’s novels to deal with the world of his own youth, and it was to be followed by the much more artistically effective Sinister Street. 131 Rachel M. Whitfield, [a review of a reprinting of Carnival], The Birmingham Weekly Post, October 12, 1937 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 52). 130 Mackenzie himself early became aware of the imperfections in the technique of Carnival. He once told Henry James that he intended to rewrite the novel when he came back 132 from World War I. Although he wisely never attempted such rewriting, what he learned from Carnival he was to apply to the composition of Sinister Street. 132 The Foreword of Carnival, p. viii. CHAPTER III SINISTER STREET (1913-14): A NOVEL OF THE EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF A MODERN YOUTH OF THE UPPER CLASS The publication of the first volume of Sinister Street on September 1, 1913, was again a departure for Compton Mackenzie. It was the most ambitious undertaking of his young career. It evidenced his characteristic willingness to attempt something new. Yet he did not make a complete break with the past. Rather we notice a process of organic development taking place in his first three books. Sinis ter Street, for example, is similar to Carnival in several ways. It manifests Mackenzie*s interest in the formative experiences of a central character, and its central charac ter, though individualized, is so representative of a class or social group that the novel becomes a "study” of the group in its setting in time and place. But, unlike Carnival. Sinister Street delineates the world of the 131 132 leisured upper-class; and, although the last quarter of the book is concerned with an affair between the hero and a demimondaine, it is the girl, this time, who proves unworthy. Sinister Street, moreover, exhibits certain sig nificant innovations both in the form and content of the novel--innovations with reference not merely to Mackenzie's earlier novels but also to the standard English novel of the day. The decade immediately preceding the first World War saw a number of changes taking place in the novel. Mackenzie remarks of this time: It may have been the influence of the Russians, it may have been the reaction against the deliberately contrived tale, it may have been a sudden awareness that the de velopment of external circumstances was forcing the novelist to extend his scope, or it may have been simply Plato's something in the air which produced almost simultaneously right across Europe a kind of novel which was beginning to be absolutely different from any kind of novel that had preceded it.^ Although Mackenzie may exaggerate the originality of these developments, the changes were well defined. Novels became longer. Authors made extensive use of autobiographical detail, and subjective experience was recounted with un usual frankness. And the many-volumed chronicle novel or ^Literature in My Time (New York, 1933), p. 187. 133 roman fleuve became popular as a vehicle for conveying the complexities of modern life. In the early years of the twentieth century, impor tant novels began appearing in western Europe distin guished by their unusual length. For example, in 1913, the year which saw the publication of the first volume of Sinister Street, both Romain Rolland and Marcel Proust had new volumes featured on the book-stalls of Paris. Rolland had just published in book form the tenth and final volume of Jean Christophe, and Proust made his appearance with Du cote de chez Swann, the first of the seven volumes which comprise X la recherche du temps 2 perdu. In England, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, William de Morgan, and J. D- Beresford were writing sub stantially longer novels than was customary since the 2 In the Foreword to the new edition of Sinister Street, published by Macdonald & Co., Ltd. (London, 1949), Mackenzie says that Edmund Gosse gave him a copy of Proust’s Du cSte de chez Swann in October, 1914. Gosse is quoted by Mackenzie as having commented: "I seem to discern an expression of the same spirit in your Sinister Street, though I am not suggesting any positive resem blance between the two books" (p. ix). All subsequent page references will be to the above edition of Sinister Street, except as specifically noted. 134 3 1890*3. The two volumes of Sinister Street contained some 350,000 words in over eleven hundred pages in the original editions.^ Yet the story dealt with the hero*s life up to only his twenty-fourth year. The novel was essentially an account of the childhood and youth of an upper-class Englishman elaborated with far greater detail Michael Sadleir has described the evolution of the long novel in England at this time. The Victorian three-decker gave way to a shorter average novel during the 1890*s. Sadleir observes that this "was not directly due to any public demand for shorter novels. It was due to a change of technical procedure, brought about by a public demand for greater cheapness and greater con venience. . . . [Moreover] it happened that under French influence the short psycho-analytical novel had recently become an intellectual fashion. . . . But before long certain novelists began to chafe against a limit of 100,000 words; and, finding publishers unsympathetic to ward any alteration in the one-volume habit, were com pelled to disguise their prolixity by dividing what was really one book into two or three or even more"--"Long Novels," The London Mercury, XX (September 1929), 507. 4 Keble Howard in his review of the first volume for The Daily Mail (London) said that it alone was more than twice the length of the average novel. He quoted Mac kenzie as saying, "I simply couldn*t get all 1 had to say into one book, long as it is. . . . Besides, in a way, it is getting back to the days of the three-volume novel, which is the only hope for the author"— September 1, 1913 (clipping in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks, No. 24. Hereafter references to the Scrapbooks will merely state Scrapbook and give the appropriate volume number). 135 and frankness than had hitherto been done.^ Sinister Street, moreover, was in large part auto biographical, drawing heavily upon the personal experi ences of the author in childhood, school, and college. It significantly contributed to the vogue of the semi- autobiographic BiIdungsroman or what William C. Frierson calls "the 1ife-novel.Frierson defines the life-novel as it appeared in England between 1910-1917: The life-novel is virtually a new form or mode of writing in England since it is a semi-autobiographic account dealing with a person’s life from birth to his discovery of the world. Early influences and the pain of youth are stressed. Generally the central character achieves, in some measure, an understanding of life. (pp. 133-134) He further says that the separate influences of Samuel Butler, H. G. Wells, and Remain Rolland especially In the Foreword to the Macdonald edition, Mackenzie said: "When the second volume of Sinister Street was pub lished on November 11th [1914] Henry James wrote to tell me that I had emancipated the English novel. No doubt that will seem extravagant to my young contemporaries of to-day who will hardly be able to understand why Sinister Street could ever have shocked anybody. Henry James’s congratulations were premature, for in the Spring of 1915 D. H. Lawrence’s book Women in Love was suppressed by the police" (p. ix). ^The English Novel in Transition. 1885-1940 (Norman, Oklahoma, 1942), chapter XIII, "The Life-Novel in England." 136 contributed to its creation.^ The earliest of the life- novels was J. D. Beresford's The Early History of Jacob Stahl, which appeared in 1911, the first of a trilogy which included A Candidate For Truth (1912) and The Invisible I Event (1915). In 1913 there came the first volume of Sinister Street. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, and Fortitude by Hugh Walpole. To Frierson the life-novel is essentially a manifesta tion of subjectivism in the novel. The author describes his own early life and development and deals with the ideas he has wrung from his experience. It is opposed to the objectivity and impersonality of the naturalistic-realistic tradition. Frierson says: Obviously the life-novel is the vehicle for thought and philosophy. If a writer has not found some meaning Frank Swinnerton likewise observes that the publica tion of Samuel Butler's Notebooks in 1912 intensified interest in his novel The Way of All Flesh. A comparison of the two emphasized the autobiographical approach to novel writing (The Georgian Literary Scene, rev. ed. [London, 1951], p. 211). The ten volumes of Rolland*s Jean Christophe was of great importance to the English life-novel. Frierson says that its popularity "awakened English writers to the possibilities of a less restrained fiction, a fiction which might deal candidly with the theme of youth and its struggles with itself and the world" (P- 193). 137 or significance in life, or if he has not completely satisfied himself that life has no meaning or signifi cance, we would assume that he would choose another mode of narration. (p. 207) Apparently as a result of this too arbitrary restriction on the possible artistic uses of subjective experience, he dispraises the achievement of Mackenzie in the genre, Q though calling him "the virtuoso of the life-novel." Mackenzie did not use the life-novel primarily as a "vehicle for thought and philosophy," as Frierson inter prets them; but there is perhaps more of both in Sinister Q Street than Frierson perceives. Mackenzie, moreover, has always disclaimed a purely autobiographic impulse in the use of autobiographical material. Recently he has written: "I have used [the] memory of childhood in my novel Sinister Street. but every incident in that novel was reshaped O / Frierson adds: "He writes with verve, eclat, and precision. He is one of the most engaging writers of fic tion that England has produced and one of the most incon sequential. The surface brilliance of his volumes is everywhere evident; but he rarely gives us anything more than a surface brilliance" (p. 207). q It is not irrelevant in this connection to point out two errors of fact Frierson makes in writing of Sinister Street. He refers, for example, to the novel as a trilogy on page 134. Later he says, "The reader is not at all convinced about Michael's living in the slums to find Sylvia" (pp. 207-208). He, of course, means Lily, not Sylvia. 138 to suit the narrative. He continues: Some of the experiences of Compton Mackenzie were given to Michael Fane as his own, but most of the experiences of Compton Mackenzie were impossible for Michael Fane if he was to be presented as Everyboy with a similar social and educational background to that of Michael Fane. (My Life and Times: Octave One, pp. 13-14) In Sinister Street, as elsewhere, autobiographical material gives Mackenzie a framework and a factual basis for a nar rative or the re-creation of a particular milieu. His artistic purpose seems not to present an idealized or realistic portrait of the author but to create a character or characters who will embody what is interesting, uni versal, or representative in his personal experience. The popularity in England of the roman fleuve or what Elizabeth M. Kerr in her useful study has called "the sequence novel"^ dates from this period. The form, ■^Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times: Octave One (London, 1963), p. 13. The latter part of this statement is not accurate, as shall be shown hereafter. ^Miss Kerr defines "the sequence novel" as follows: "The term is applied to those works of fiction which, though published in two or more volumes, are primarily a unit, composed of several component parts, each complete in itself. The sequence novel is distinct from the many- volumed works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which a single story, narrated at great length, is pub lished in separate volumes only because of the bulk of material. It is also, though less obviously, essentially 139 however, has proved more Important in France and on the 12 continent generally than in England- In the nineteenth century Thackeray approached it and Trollope was its most popular exponent. In the early twentieth century the genre is perhaps best represented in the work of Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, and Compton Mackenzie. Arnold Bennett with his Clayhanger Family is first in the field. His plan required him to tell the stories of two people who become man and wife. In Clayhanger (1910) Bennett details the youth of Edwin Clayhanger and his love for Hilda Lessways until the time she breaks off their engagement. In Hilda Lessways (1911) he describes the early life of his heroine different from a large body of popular fiction commonly called 'sequels,' in which a story is continued and favorite characters reappear merely as the result of the success of certain books with the reading public. The vital point to be considered in distinguishing between sequel and sequence novels is the original intention of the author. Did he have a definite aim in view from the begin ning, so that there is a fundamental unity underlying the various works in the series, a serious plan as the founda tion of the structure, or has he added wings and ells to his literary edifice as an afterthought, or upon the sug gestion of others?”--"The Sequence Nbvel: Fictional Method of a Scientific Age," unpublished thesis [Univ. of Minn., 1927], p. 1. 1 9 ^Joseph Warren Beach speaks of "that predilection for novels in series which has been a leading feature of the early twentieth century"--The Twentieth Century Novel (New York, 1932), p. 246. and gives again an account of the affair with Edwin, but this time from her point of view. In These Twain (1915), the concluding volume of the trilogy, the story is taken up ten years later after the couple eventually marry. John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga was not in its inception a chronicle or sequence novel. The Man of Property appeared in 1906. But it was not until 1917 with the publication of his short story "An Indian Summer of a Forsyte" that Galsworthy saw the possibilities of 13 continuing the family history. In Chancery came out in 1920, and the concluding volume, To Let, in the fol lowing year. Compton Mackenzie, according to what he has said, envisioned a work larger in scale than that attempted by Bennett or Galsworthy. Sinister Street was to be the first of a series of related novels to be grouped under the general title of "The Theatre of Youth." In scope and intent as well as in format, "The Theatre of Youth" novels are related more directly to the work of 13 Although The Forsyte Saga was not planned as a sequence novel, the continuations were not merely sequels but became part of a closely knit design. See, for example, Beach, p. 249. 141 14 Balzac, Zola, or Trollope than to Mackenzie's English contemporaries. Like the work of the former, the indi vidual volumes of the series were to be independent, each telling a complete story with a different set of princi pals. At the same time the novels, taken together, would be related as a detailed picture of a generation. Although we are told that Sinister Street was designed as the first novel of the intended series, it is to be noted that it likewise was deliberately related to Macken zie's preceding novel Carnival. A number of the characters In Carnival appear in Sinister Street, which shows them in a period earlier than that covered in Carnival.^ 1 / Balzac's Comedie humaine was, apparently, the most important single source in shaping the objectives and the techniques of Mackenzie's series. So he said to me in conversation, June 19, 1961. In an interview in The Nottingham Journal and Express for October 20, 1922 en titled "The Future Novel," he is reported speaking of his series as "The Comedy of Youth" (clipping in Scrapbook No. 34). Mackenzie was early acquainted with the work of Balzac and a fervent admirer. In Literature in My Time he describes the effect that reading Eugenie Grandet had on him, and adds, "But the adventures of a boy of seven teen with Balzac's novels would make a book in itself" (p. 119). ^In addition to Maurice Avery, who is mentioned below, there are Frank Castleton, Ronnie Walker, and Cunningham, forever lacking a given name. 142 In the first volume this relationship Is Implied, for surely no readers of Carnival would have Identified the Avery (without a given name, in accordance with the stem code of school life)--who is seen for three pages in Chapter VIII where he taunts Michael Fane, the central character, with having a governess--with the Maurice Avery who was to waken Jenny Pearl to love in Carnival. In the second volume, now given his full name, we see much of him at Oxford with Michael. Our last view of him connects directly with Carnival. He has just taken a studio in Grosvenor Square and has agreed to write a series of articles on the ballet for a literary journal. He says: "I'm going to begin with the Opera: then the Bmpire and the Alhambra: and in September there will be the new ballet at the Orient. The new ballet at the Orient was, of course, the Ballet of Cupid in which Jenny appeared, and it was opening night, September 21, that Jenny and Maurice met for the first time. Mackenzie has described the scheme underlying his series of related novels: "My original plan was to take ^ Sinister Street, p. 877. the subsidiary characters of Sinister Street, one after another, and make them principals in other books” (p. xi). So Guy Hazlewood, "about the most brilliant man in the Varsity” (p. 464), is the central figure in Guv and Pauline (1916). Sylvia Scarlett, whom we likewise meet in Sinister Street as Lily Haden's friend, is the heroine of The Adven tures of Sylvia Scarlett, which was published in two volumes as The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett (1918) and Sylvia and Michael (1919). And still other characters from Sinister Street and The Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett are seen in The Vanity Girl (1920). Al though the fact has not, to my knowledge, been coranented on, the novels in the series are likewise varied by having each successive volume represent a different genre. Thus, Sinister Street is a life-history, Guy and Pauline is idyllic romance, the Sylvia Scarlett novel is picaresque, and The Vanity Girl might be described as an Horatio Alger love story. There are three major ways by which the individual novels of the series are connected: the setting in time, the use of reappearing characters, and the use of reappear ing incidents. The setting in time is that of Mackenzie's 144 own generation of the 1880's, shown In their youth and young maturity. The novels are likewise related by means of reappearing characters. We have already seen how Mac kenzie connects Sinister Street with Carnival by the presence of Maurice Avery in both books. As different characters in Sinister Street are each given their own stories, there is "an ever widening development of groups and persons always related to one another.The main effect is to suggest the interrelationships and the homo geneity of the social group as well as the forces and influences which produce and characterize it. Moreover, just as characters reappear in these novels so do inci dents. The technique is similar to that of Arnold Bennett ■ I Q in the first two volumes of his Clayhanger trilogy, but whereas Bennett is telling much the same story over again from a different point of view in Clayhanger and Hilda ^Scofield Thayer, "Compton Mackenzie," The Dial (New York), LXV (November 1918), 474. ^^Mackenzie has commented on Bennett's practice un favorably. "The technique he used in the Clayhanger trilogy of telling a story over again from another point of view has been attempted by several other novelists, and all of them seem to have found a single experiment suf ficient to discourage them from repeating it" (Literature in My Time, p. 160). 145 Lessways. Mackenzie merely repeats isolated Incidents, yet IQ in ways that often prove unexpected and ingenious. In Literature in My Time Mackenzie stated his original purpose in "The Theatre of Youth" novels: "I . . . had designed Sinister Street to be one of two preludes to a complete survey of contemporary society in which the per sonages of a large and complicated series of books were to be shown in youth" (p. 186). World War I, however, doomed the series. As Mackenzie said: "The war came, and if I had continued with my scheme the war would have had to appear in every successive volume. The edifice would have crashed with the foundations I had prepared to sustain 20 it." He later added: "Moreover, my own experience in ^Scofield Thayer cites two examples of this dove tailing. A reception in honor of the Legitimist Emperor of Byzantium is seen through the eyes of Michael Fane in Sinister Street and through the eyes of Sylvia Scarlett in The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett. In the same two novels is the scene in which Michael rings the bell at Mulberry Cottage where Lily and Sylvia are living. In the later novel we experience it with Mrs. Gainsborough on the other side of the door ("Compton Mackenzie," p. 474). ^ Literature in My Time, p. 186. Alec Waugh has fur ther specified the problem created by the war to the writing of the long chronicle novel of contemporary life: "However far back the . . . novel may be begun, sooner or later the year 1914 must be reached. And the war in such 146 that war had left me at the end of It as Impatient of the mood of Sinister Street as any man in his mid-thirties should be of his * teens. "21 One doubts whether Mackenzie would have been able, under the most favorable circumstances, to realize the ambitious project of "a complete survey of contemporary society." One suspects that the experiences of youth alone would not provide a sound basis for so grandiose a plan. But it is also true that Mackenzie has a penchant for large-scale enterprises. We have only to recall his so- called religious novel dealing with the life of Mark Lidderdale, which, because of its length, had to be pub- 22 lished in three volumes; or the four volumes of his war 23 memoirs; or the six published volumes which comprised a novel is an effect without a cause; it is a deus ex machine that can simplify any situation at will. It is an unfair way out"--"The Post-War Novel," The Independent (London), CXIII (September 27, 1924), 195. o 1 Sinister Street, p. xi. ^ The Altar Steps (1922), The Parson’s Progress (1923), The Heavenly Ladder (1924). ^ Gallipoli Memories (1929), Athenian Memories (1931), Greek Memories (1932), Aegean Memories (1940). 147 The Four Winds of Love. ^ Moreover, Mackenzie's first two novels, disparate as they are, offer evidence of his artistic interest in social history. In The Passionate Elopement there was the attempt to convey a picture of an age and a social group, just as in Carnival there was a detailed account of a particular segment or stratum of modem society. With the publication of Sinister Street, Mackenzie's work was increasingly described by the critics as a "study,” in which considerable attention was devoted to establishing the setting and atmosphere of the period treated through the use of abundant authentic detail. Since The Passionate Elopement is Mackenzie's only attempt at a conventional historical novel, one may not realize in estimating his work how much the interests and the perspectives of the historian have contributed to their creation. Yet his academic training was that of the his torian. Unwillingness to work for an Oxford scholarship seems to have motivated his celebrated transfer when he was fifteen from the classical side of St. Paul's School The East Wind (1937), The South Wind (1937), The West Wind (1940), West to North (1940), The North Wind-- Vol. I (1944), The North Wind--Vol. II (1945). 148 2S to the historical. But at Oxford he read modem history and took second-class honors in it. In 1924 he stated, "My chief ambition at present is to be able to give up 26 writing novels and write history instead." In the 1930*s he increasingly devoted himself to the writing of history and biography. His specifically historical writing has ranged in time from Marathon and Salamis (1934) to Eastern Epic, whose two volumes (1951 and 1954) dealt with the campaigns of the British in the East in World War II. In his use of factual detail and in his striving for accuracy in his presentation of a time or a place or a social group in his novels, Mackenzie manifests the concern of the his- 2 7 torian for his material. It is on grounds of such 25 See, for example, the incident as rendered in Sinis~ ter Street, pp. 227-228. Also Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, Friends, Foes, and Foreigners (London, 1957), pp. 238-239. ^Compton Mackenzie, "My Ambition in Life," T. P.1s and Cassell's Weekly (London), October 25, 1924, p. 10. 27 There is much testimony of his passion for accuracy. For example, his wife describes his preparation to write Vestal Fire: "The moment had come for Vestal Fire. He spent the evening looking up notes on various personali ties, and I wrote to J. E. Brooks with a long list of requests for dates, epitaphs and details which he could give better than anyone"--Faith Compton Mackenzie, More Than I Should (London, 1940), p. 197. 149 truthfulness and accuracy that he writes of Sinister Street in 1949: Sinister Street is so exactly dated that it remains alive, and although the public-school and university therein depicted may seem unimaginable to the Jacobeans and the St. Mary’s men of to-day, contemporary school boys and undergraduates can feel sure that at the beginning of this century life at a big London day school and life at a fashionable Oxford college were just as I have depicted them. (p. xi) John Betjeman has commented on this aspect of Mackenzie's work: He is so faithful an illustrator of his times that to re-read his earlier work is like looking through back volumes of Punch or the Illustrated London News. It has the true period flavour. It is so much of its time that like Trollope and Sherlock Holmes, it will continue to be appreciated when more pretentious writers are for gotten . 2° Although old-fashioned in much of their sentiment and uneven in quality, "The Theatre of Youth" novels have a vitality indicative of how congenial their plan was to Mackenzie's talents and interests. They evidence consider able originality of conception, and remain one of the most ambitious of English sequence novels. The series is a remarkable evocation of the mood of youth as well as 2 8 A review of The Rival Monster. The Daily Telegraph (London), January 18, 1952 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 45). 150 a portrait of an era. Yet it has received little critical attention. Two articles published in 1922, only a few years after Mackenzie had abandoned his design, indicate, however, the diversity of critical reaction. May Bateman asks: How is it that a writer who has travelled so widely and has, withal, such sensitive perceptions, can become thrall to an obsession, and write and rewrite part of the same story so continually? Over and over again in his different books, we find allusions to the same thing which happened to the same people--Michael and Sylvia, Michael [sic] Avery and Jenny, Guy and Pauline, Dorothy Lonsdale and Lily Haden, as the case may be, until he ends by provincializing the half-world i t s e l f . 9 George N. Shuster speaks of "the beauty of these books" and finds a significant theme running through them: No other English novelist . . paints from so rich and varied a palette the complex dreams and realities of clear and clouded youth. He feels instinctively without saying it, of course, that the cancer of modem civiliza tion is city-life and the industrialism underlying it. . . . His satire, deadening when he attacks artistic coteries, underworld adventures, and easy, aimless edu cation, becomes cheerful, radiant, nearly Dickensian when it migrates into the open. Theatrical life, also, under lies a great deal, not only of Mackenzie's narrative, but of his point of view as well. Jenny Pearl, Stella Fane, Sylvia Scarlett, are all people of the stage, 29 "Compton Mackenzie," The Catholic World (New York), CXV (September 1922), 741-742. 151 almost to the extent of typifying a protest against living in industrial bondage. Whatever opinion be held of the series as a whole, it does contain one possibly classic work, Sinister Street, still in print after some forty-eight years. As Andre Maurois has written of it: Quand un roman montre cette vitalite, apres quarante annees, on peut penser qu’il en train de devenir un classique et de prendre place,*avec la modestie qui con- vient, a cote de 1'EDUCATION SENTIMENTALE, de PfcRES ET ENFANTS, de DAVID COPPERFIELD, peut-Stre de SWANN, ce qui amfene le lecture a se demander pourquoi cet ouvrage a, plutot que tel autre, gagne sa niche au porehe de nos cathedrales litteraires. Sinister Street is the story of Michael Fane, whom we first meet at the age of three, when he and his sister Stella are Installed in a new house in West Kensington under the care of a harsh and unsympathetic nurse. Except for occasional visits home, his mother lives outside England during most of his childhood. It is only when his mother’s friend Lord Saxby dies in South Africa during 30 "Compton Mackenzie’s Novels," America (New York), XXVII (April 15, 1922), 617. 31 From the preface of the French edition of Sinister Street, entitled L*Impasse. Quoted in Leo Robertson, Compton Mackenzie: An Appraisal of his Literary Work (London, 1954), p. 70. 152 the Boer War that Michael learns he and his sister are the children of Saxby by an irregular union with their mother. Though Lord Saxby had wished to marry Mrs. Fane, his wife had refused to divorce him, and Mrs. Fane had devoted her life to traveling and living with him on the continent. As a result, the children are brought up by a succession of nurses and governesses until Michael goes to public school and Stella to Germany to train as a concert pianist. The loneliness, terrors, and oppressions of Michael’s childhood are dispelled after Miss Carthew becomes gover ness when he is seven. That same year he goes to St. James' Preparatory School and begins the active life of school- time with its games and hobbles and collections. When he is eleven he enters the great public school of St. James, the youngest boy in his class by two years. He enjoys to the full the greater freedom of life at St. James. He plays football, and he discovers girls. He is awakened to a sense of the past by Mr. Neech, one of his schoolmasters. He forms a close friendship with a classmate, Alan Meri- vale. At the same time he becomes much interested in the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Anglican church. He makes the acquaintance of Mr. Viner, a sympathetic curate, and 153 a group of intense young Anglo-Catholics. At an Anglican monastery where he spends a vacation, he, unfortunately, encounters Henry Meats, alias Brother Aloysius, who in* flames his imagination with tales of vice in the London underworld- On returning to school, Michael decides to change from classics to history. Though losing interest in his former Anglican friends, he extends his social life by meeting Arthur Wilmot, a prominent aesthete of the Nineties. He becomes for a time a hanger-on of the circle around Wilmot, but finally grows disgusted and breaks with them. Near the end of his school life, when he is seventeen, he begins to frequent the Earl's Court Exhibition. There, one evening, he sees Meats again, and through his agency has his first sexual experience with a prostitute. That same year he falls in love with Lily Haden, a girl whom he met in Kensington Gardens. Ecstatically happy, he is unable to see the essential weakness and vulgarity of Lily. But one evening after he has kept her out too late, he agrees not to see her for some months. During this period Michael learns that Lily has been flirting with others. Hurt and angry, he resolves to give her up. That winter 154 he becomes a commoner at St. Mary's, Oxford. Michael remains at Oxford for four years. He seeks a variety of acquaintance and desires to enter fully into the spirit of Oxford. He embraces no causes, but samples opinions and points of view, enjoying the graceful, culti vated leisure of pre-war Oxford. In his fourth year he shares rooms with his old friend Alan Merivale and reads for honors in history. When Stella comes for commencement, Alan and she fall in love, shortly to marry. Michael's romantic education begins when he goes up from Oxford. One evening in town he learns from a former school friend that Lily Haden has become a prostitute. Feeling that he may be somewhat responsible for her fate, he plunges into the quixotic attempt to find and then marry her. He takes rooms in a slum area of London and searches for Lily in the night-time world of the music halls. He acquires friends among the girls of the promenades and, innocently, enjoys their company. Eventually, he finds Lily, who is living with another girl, Sylvia Scarlett. Although Sylvia tries to keep them apart, he persuades Lily to marry him and to stay in the country with Alan and Stella until he can make the necessary arrangements for 155 their marriage. His family and friends are aghast at his decision. Under pressure, he promises his mother not to marry for three months. To make this period easier for Lily, Michael installs her in an apartment in London, while he goes to visit his college friend Guy Hazlewood at Plashers Mead. Returning to town unexpectedly to intro duce Guy to Lily, he discovers that Lily is with a man in the bedroom. The break is now complete, but he persuades Sylvia to take Lily back into her protection. Michael then leaves England to visit Rome for the first time. He feels that his youth and his period of education and prepa ration for life are coming to an end. The past has been but prologue to the future, wherein Michael apparently intends to become a Roman Catholic priest. To recount the story of Sinister Street baldly as I have done is to suggest the episodic nature of the chronicle-like narrative. Readers of the first volume, which ends shortly before Michael is to go to Oxford, were often confused as to the purpose or theme of the apparently formless work. The Bystander, for example, complained that "It has--as yet--no one theme. . . . It is merely the detailed account of young Michael's 156 32 life. . . ." In an attempt to answer such criticism and to explain his purpose and objectives in the novel, Mac kenzie appended to the second volume of Sinister Street an "Epilogical Letter to John Nicolas Mavrogordato." In it he said that "The theme of these two stories (i.e., the two volumes) is the youth of a man who will presumably be 33 a priest." Somewhat more helpfully, he continued: My intention . . . was not to write a life, but the prologue of a life. He [Michael] is growing up on the last page, and for me his interest begins to fade. . . . I have given you as fully as I could the various influ ences that went to mold him. Your imagination of him as a man will be determined by your prejudice gathered from the narrative of these influences. I do not identify myself with his opinions: at the same time I may believe in all of them. He is to me an objective reality: he is not myself in a looking-glass.^ In Sinister Street Mackenzie set himself to depict with psychological realism and historical accuracy the growth and complex development of a boy of the upper-class who achieves his majority in the first years of the twen tieth century. Youth itself is the theme or focus of ^September 10, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 'lO Compton Mackenzie, Sinister Street (New York, 1914), p. 656. Hereafter this edition will be cited as the New York ed. ^Sinister Street, New York ed. , p. 657. 157 the book. As Henry James remarked, "Youth clearly has been 35 Mr. Mackenzie's saturation." In Carnival we have seen the emphasis he gave to the childhood and adolescence of Jenny Pearl--an emphasis which many then felt excessive. In Sinister Street he treats the youth of his hero in far greater detail. Mackenzie seems artistically preoccupied with youth for several reasons. First, there is his belief, which has already been alluded to, that the child truly makes the man, or, as Holbrook Jackson observes, "A man in after life is but the extension of what he has been up to the age at which Michael Fane passes out of 3 6 fiction." Secondly, Mackenzie could claim that little had been done in English fiction to portray modern youth frankly and realistically. The strange, rather frighten ing world of childhood, the joys and agonies of adoles cence, and the search for identity of young manhood had not 3 7 yet become commonplace in the novel. Thirdly, he could ^^Notes on Novelists (New York, 1914), p. 358. 36 T. P.'s Weekly (London), November 21, 1914 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 37 That they did so in the English and American novel is due in large part to the influence of Sinister Street. Richard Church says: "The book started a new vogue. From that time novels poured by the dozen from the press, all 158 draw upon his own remarkably comprehensive memories of his own childhood and youth. He has often stated that his earliest vivid memory dates from about seven months and that he has almost total recall from approximately the age of two. Recently he offered as one justification for writing his autobiography "the exceptional memory I have of my childhood": So far I have not met anybody who could claim a practi cally continuous memory of his life from before he was two years old, and not merely of incidents in that life but of what he thought about those incidents at the time.38 Sinister Street, however, is more than a recollected re-creation of boyhood and youth. It is, also, a study of Michael Fane, in which the author set out to show "as fully 39 as I could the various influences that went to mold him." The novel gives a generally convincing account of Michael*s claiming to reveal the inner workings of the adolescent soul during its desperate adventures at public school and university"--British Authors: A Twentieth Century Gallery, new ed. (New York, 1948), p. 94. A. C. Ward also observes that Sinister Street "set a fashion for long and detailed books dealing with childhood, adolescence, and under graduate experience"--Twentieth-Century Literature, 1901- 50, 3rd ed. (London, 1956), p. 55. ^^Mackenzie, My Life and Times, p. 13. 39 Sinister Street, New York ed., p. 657. 159 changing patterns of thought and experience.^ We mark his growth In various significant areas: Intellectual, moral, emotional, spiritual, aesthetic, and social. There is, likewise, a meaningful continuity of development in the formation of his character and values, obscured though it may be at times by the comprehensiveness of the design. Sinister Street is, moreover, a portrait and a study which is founded upon social and historical reality. For Michael is intended by the author to be representative of his class, of his generation, and of his times. Mackenzie has from the beginning taken exception to the denigration of his book as glorified autobiography. As we have seen, he makes the distinction that in Sinister Street he uti lized personal experience but did not construct a self- portrait. He has said in this regard of Michael Fane, "I was simply trying to express a young man of the 41 period." Likewise, he has described his hero as 40 "Roderick Random" in The Wolverton Express com mented: "Each year finds the boy Fane thinking differently and acting differently, and always as one would expect him to" (November 3, 1913 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). 41 Louise Morgan, "Compton Mackenzie Hits Out," Every man (London), November 13, 1930, p. 489. 160 "Everyboy with a similar social and educational background to that of Michael Fane."^ Sinister Street, as was early realized, is a brilliant evocation of the atmosphere of pre-1914 England. It is imaginatively written social his** tory of the young men who went to Oxford and Cambridge about the turn of the century and then off to war in 1914. As Ford Madox Hueffer wrote: "Sinister Street is really history--the history of a whole class, in a whole region, / Q during a whole period of life.” But Sinister Street is not only the portrait of an age. It becomes, perhaps necessarily, an interpretation and criticism of the times.^ On one level, Mackenzie directs attention to the movements in art, religion, and politics within his purview. Thus, with light but deadly ^ ^Mackenzie, Mv Life and Times, p. 14. ^"Mr. Compton Mackenzie and * Sinister Street,*" The Outlook (London), no date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). ^Holbrook Jackson pointed out that "Sinister Street is really an interpretation of our own times’ *--T. P. *s Weekly. November 21, 1914 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). F. T. Cooper has also observed that in the novel Mackenzie "has analyzed and criticized in a wide, sweeping way the complex social life of present-day England"--The Bookman (New York), XL (February 15, 1915), 677. 161 touch, he depicts artistic decadence in Arthur Wllmot and faddish religious ritualism in Mr. Prout. On a deeper level, Mackenzie conducts through the odyssey of Michael Fane an examination into the English social ideal of the gentleman--the end product of typical upper-class educa tion. The result of his examination is a certain ambiva lence. He is attracted to the ideal because of its respect for the past and for tradition, and because of its instinct for quality and beauty. At the same time, he is aware of its limitations as a secular code of conduct unpropped by religious belief. And he condemns as shortsighted and misdirected its exaltation of responsibility and service for others. Thus the misadventure with Lily occurs because Michael seeks unrealistically to impose his code of conduct and his social ideals upon her. At story’s end, Michael has learned his lesson. He says: God has only offered to the individual the chance to perfect himself, but the individual is much more anxious about his neighbour. . . . Soon will come a great war, and everybody will discover it has come either because people are Christians or because they are not Christians. Nobody will think it is because each man wants to inter fere with the conduct of his neighbour. (Sinister Street, p. 879) Mackenzie’s reservations about the English ideal of the gentleman parallel his criticism of English education, 162 which defines and perpetuates the type. Mackenzie's quarrel with formal education is carried on from Carnival. In that novel, we recall, he blames the London School Board for Jenny's intellectual and cultural impoverish- 45 ment. In Sinister Street he attacks more subtly the public^school system itself on much the same grounds. In his account of St. James', he describes the emphasis on mechanical and pedantic scholarship and the complete dis regard of the cultural development of the individual. The object of such education, as Mackenzie sees it, is merely to turn out specialists in the classical languages who can compete for university exhibitions. In the process, they are expected to acquire from the associations of school life certain standards of conduct. As George N. Shuster has remarked, Mackenzie is for "a more vital and individual education that works for the culture of character as dis- tinguished from the formation of character.” Oxford and the colleges, of course, are largely exempted from these strictures. They offer freedom and leisure for the 45 Compton Mackenzie, Carnival (New York, 1912), p. 110. ^"Compton Mackenzie's Novels,” America, p. 617. 163 individual to achieve his own education according to his wishes and abilities. If they err, it is in the assump tion, growing more widespread, that education should pre pare one for the service of society. Mackenzie in an Address delivered on the occasion of his installation as Rector of Glasgow University in 1932 warned against en croachments on the freedom and integrity of the individual. He said in part: Even education is being made an implement of servi tude. The life of every human embryo performs in the womb the drama of evolution. The life of every human creature performs after birth the drama of social development; but the point capable of being reached varies with every individual, and the object of educa tion is to ensure that every individual shall be given a chance to develop himself to that point. This if anything may be postulated as a birthright, and it may strike you as a truism not worth enunciating. Yet at the back of every contemporary system of education lies the intention to educate a man to be of service not to himself but to others.^' By the time Compton Mackenzie began Sinister Street he was apparently aware of the artistic lapses in Carnival. In the new novel, at any rate, he handles the point of view with greater consistency than he had achieved in the previous one. In Sinister Street the story is told in 47 Compton Mackenzie, Address, Glasgow Univ. Publica tions, No. 24 (Glasgow, 1932), p. 18. the third person, but is limited strictly to the con sciousness of Michael. The artistic problem Mackenzie set for himself was not merely to portray the experiences of youth but also to convey those experiences, as it were, from the inside. As he has said, "The scheme of the book demands from the reader that he should identify himself with the principal character through whose eyes he is com pelled to look at life."^® Elsewhere he has observed that the technique of the book "aimed to keep the reader at the same age as the principal characters. Such a plan has its inherent difficulties and dangers. It requires the reader to assume points of view, attitudes, and feelings, which, having once outgrown them, he may be impatient with. It is inevitable that the mature reader will find Michael egotistical, callow, sentimental, and much else that is objectionable, for so of necessity he is. At the same time, such detailed exploration of his youthful experiences requires him to be taken seriously. Is the portrait of Michael cynically realistic or sentimentally idealized? Since the author could not directly comnent, because of 48 Sinister Street, p. x. 49 ^Morgan, "Compton Mackenzie Hits Out," p. 489. 165 the limitations of his artistic method, confusion was inevitable. Mackenzie, however, has defended the realism of his narrative technique: The whole point [of the book] is that it's limited by the experience of a young man. "This shallow book," they've called it. But what else would a man of twenty* two be but shallow? He couldn't be wise or grown up. One couldn't laugh at him, and only up to a point with him. One had to take him at his own solemn word. His profundities would be only in his own emotions. There'd be no value in my seeing him from my point of view at thirty. I had to give him as he was.^O The major difficulty of Mackenzie's handling of the point of view lies in the nature of Michael Fane himself. The reader is expected to identify with Michael: to see through his eyes, to experience through him. Yet the entity which is Michael is not clearly focused. As we have seen, he is intended to be Everyboy of his class and gener ation. At the same time he reflects the experiences and the awareness of the author--the author as a young man both exceptionally capable and possessed of the added in sight of maturity (not to mention the undoubted advantages of hindsight). We are perhaps most conscious of this split sensibility in Michael's abnormally informed awareness of ^^Vlorgan, p. 489. 166 the present— his highly sophisticated sense of the passing moment and of impending change.^ Although it is difficult to exemplify this quality briefly, the following excerpt from a long passage in which Michael muses over a recently published undergraduate journal may indicate it: Knowing Maurice to be a chameleon who consciously acquired the hue of his surroundings, Michael was sure that The Oxford Looking-Glass by this earnest tone indi cated the probable tendency of undergraduate energy in the near future. . . . Nothing anywhere seemed as yet to hint that the traditional flippancy of Oxford which was merely an extension of the public-school spirit was in danger of dying out. Oxford was still the apotheosis of the amateur. It was still surprising when the head of a house or a don or an undergraduate achieved any thing in a manner that did not savour of happy chance. It was still natural to regard Cambridge as a provincial university, and to take pleasure in shocking the earnest young Cambridge man with the metropolitan humours and airy self-assurance of Oxford. (Sinister Street. pp. 541-542) The most extreme expression of the manner is to be found in the last chapter, when Michael is in Rome. According to the chronology of the action, this would be in the The reviewer for The Evening Standard (London) seems to have somewhat the same criticism in mind when he says of the first volume of Sinister Street that the atmosphere of the novel is not the atmosphere of boyhood: "Boyhood passes almost unperceived because the power of sensation is latent, and it is only in sentimental conceptions that a boy deliberately enjoys his feelings, whether they are the feelings proper to boyhood or the feelings proper to manhood"--September 1, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 167 summer of 1906. Standing in a deserted square looking over a parapet at groups of ruined columns, he falls into a meditation and prophesies: "Soon will come a great war, and everybody will discover it has come either because people are Christians or because they are not Christians" (p. 879). The specific technique of the story did not excite much comment among reviewers. But those who spoke of it tended to be favorable. Lascelles Abercrombie remarked of the first volume: "We start as a little boy and we end up as a comparatively big boy--Yes, Mr. Mackenzie really does 52 make his reader become this particular boy." T. M. P. in The New Witness (London) agreed: Throughout the book--from the first page to the last-- the story is viewed subjectively. . . . Here the boy actually lives his boyhood over again. The mystery and wonder of childhood, its imperfect apprehension of fundamental truths, its vain guessings, questionings, perplexities, the slow, painful dawn of knowledge--all these things are faithfully conveyed. The reader shares to some extent the bewilderment of the boy. Whatever he may suspect, he knows no more than the boy him self.53 The method of publication of Sinister Street put con siderable strain on reviewers as well as on the ordinary 52 The Manchester Guardian. September 3, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 53September 4, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 168 reader. Appearing in two volumes, with a year’s interval between, the book was difficult to assess as a whole. Much in the first volume was forgotten before the second was read. Moreover, the sheer length of the novel and the profusion of detail tended to obscure whatever coherence or definiteness of structure the book possessed. A common criticism was that the book was formless, that it lacked a meaningful artistic unity. 5^ Sheila Kaye-Smith said: It is not so well constructed and satisfactory a work of art as Carnival ... in the necessary discarding of plot Mr. Mackenzie may have too defiantly ignored rules of construction. It was urged that there was no selectivity in the massing of incidents and details and impressions. Abel Chevalley corrmented: But what disorder, what over-abundance, what a pell- mell in these two volumes! One would say that in Compton Mackenzie's judgment everything is fit to print. He permits himgelf neither the faculty nor the leisure of selection.56 Mackenzie remarked in his "Epilogical Letter," "I am tempted to hope that with the publication of the second volume many irrelevancies have established their relevancy" (Sinister Street. New York ed., p. 657). ^"Compton Mackenzie and His Work," The Bookman (New York), LXII (December 1925), 392. ~*^The Modern English Novel (New York, 1925), p. 226. 169 F. G. Bettany in his review of the first volume observed: If the second half, like the first, is but a big basket into which he [the author] may throw any thought or feeling that occurs to him, or has occurred to him, or might occur to him, the whole will be a scrap-album, not a novel.^7 And The Nation (London) counseled: "If a hundred pages or more were cut bodily away, Sinister Street would gain 5 8 greatly in artistic force." Other critics, though de finitely a minority, have specifically praised the struc ture of the book. J. M., writing in The Living Age (Boston), called Sinister Street "an artistic whole com posed with an almost pedantical care for ’form* and The Sunday Times and Sunday Special (London), Sep tember 7, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). The Daily Express (London) said: "Mr. Mackenzie revels in details. He leaves nothing untold" (September 1, 1913 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). The Glasgow News greeted the second volume with the comment, "Sinister Street has proved a long thoroughfare" (November 26,1914 [clipping in Scrap book No. 24]) . co October 1, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). There were, however, dissenting voices. The Times Literary Supplement (London) said of the first volume: "We do not wish it any shorter, for it is almost wholly delightful in itself" (September 4, 1913, p. 362, col. 1). The Daily Graphic (London) said: "It says much . . . for his art that no reader could possibly wish the book to be shortened by a single page” (September 5, 1913 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). 170 59 * selection.*" He emphasized a principle of selectivity at work in the construction of the book: "Michael’s life is not a random collection of reminiscences, every incident in the book having been carefully chosen for its psycho logical value" (p. 285). He added: Those critics who preach "selection" are apt to forget that selection does not necessarily imply paucity; a thousand incidents may be an artistic selection, or ten may be a chaotic jumble. (p. 285) And Frederick Cowles, writing in 1940, declared that the novel was "structurally perfect. Integral to the criticism of the book's structure was the belief that the novel lacked a conventional plot. Lascelles Abercrombie felt that Sinister Street might represent a new genre in the novel--"the novel of tire less expatiation of detail, of minute biography rather 9"Compton Mackenzie," CCLXXXVIII (January 29, 1916), 286. Earlier in the article he had said: "I believe, indeed, that Sinister Street can claim to be a consistent whole, and that every one of its eleven hundred pages could be organically justified--the function if not neces sarily the form of every incident could be defended" (p. 284). ^"Some Contemporary Novelists: Compton Mackenzie," Publishers* Circular (London), July 28, 1940, p. 2. 171 than of plot."^ C- C. Martindale said of the first volume: "Sinister Street has no plot. Michael Fane is just born and grows up till it is time for him to go to Ox- 6? ford." The Nation (London) spoke of "the cinematographic method" of the plot, "with its endless string of events, incidents, gestures," of which one does not receive any 63 more emphasis than the next. Except for such random comments, there has been no critical consideration of the problems of structure and plot in Sinister Street. Upon examination, the basic structure of the book is seen to be clear and functional-- characteristically so, one is tempted to add.^ Sinister Street is divided into four chronological groupings or books, two to each volume of the original edition. Book I, ^^The Manchester Guardian, September 3, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 69 "Psychology in the Concrete," The Living Age (Boston), CCLXXX (March 14, 1914), 676-677. 63 October 1, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 6 Z l S. P. B. Mais has remarked on this aspect of Mac kenzie's early work. Mais says of Mackenzie: ". . . he is a consunmate architect. . . . Mackenzie plans on a colossal scale, but rarely makes a mistake: his edifice is not only beautiful . . . but it is utilitarian"--Books and Their Writers (London, 1920), p. 22. "The Prison House," describes the childhood of Michael Fane from age three to seven. Its 140 pages, in the original edition, make it the shortest of the four books. Book II, "Classic Education," treats the eleven years of school life, from age eight to eighteen. It is the longest of the four books, at 356 pages. Book III, "Dreaming Spires," portrays the four years Michael spent at Oxford, from nineteen to twenty-two. It is the second-longest book, at 331 pages. Book IV, "Romantic Education," is the second-shortest book, at 300 pages. It gives the events of the year when Michael is twenty-two to twenty-three- In all, about 1130 pages are devoted to twenty-one con secutive years in the life of a young man, who is only at the threshold of maturity when the book ends. What obviously disturbed certain reviewers was the fact that 496 pages were allotted to the events of a boy's life from age three to eighteen. Such concentration of attention on formative years was, at the time, markedly unusual in the English novel.^ But, perhaps logically, an even closer ^~*The Daily Telegraph was moved to observe: "The tin- kind saying, vLittle boys should be seen and not heard' might also read, 'Little boys have their place, but it is not in the centre of a novel*"--September 10, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 173 attention was directed to the five years in Michael's life from nineteen through twenty“three, for it took some 630 pages to cover the events of those years. Likewise to be noted is the symmetry of Mackenzie's general design: the division of the novel into four books, with the longest and the shortest grouped in one volume. The chronicle form of the novel, together with the comprehensiveness and detail of Mackenzie's narrative method, does undoubtedly obscure the fact that a universal pattern of youthful experience constitutes the central plot 66 organization of the book. This pattern of experience is essentially that of the quest. It is not by accident that the basic literary symbol of the book is Don Quixote. When Michael was five, we are told, "he discovered the large volume of Don Quixote illustrated by Dore that influenced ^Lascelles Abercrombie expressed the opinion that "There is not a page of Sinister Street that is not in one way or another engaging, and many of them are pro foundly moving; and the story is most decidedly a formal whole. But it is not altogether our fault, we believe, that it is easier to remember the story as one fine thing after another than as a single effect"--The Man chester Guardian, November 11, 1914 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 174 6 7 his whole life." It and other editions he acquired remained constant companions to him. At Oxford he speaks of the book which with every year's new reading seemed to him to hold more and more certainly all that was most vital to life's appreciation. He no longer failed to see the humour of Don Quixote, but even now tears came more easily than laughter, and he regretted as poignantly as the Knight himself those times of chivalry which with all the extravagance of their decay were yet in essence superior to the mode that ousted them into ignominy. Something akin to Don Quixote's impulsive dismay Michael experienced in his own view of the twentieth century. He felt he needed a constructive ideal of conduct to sustain him through the long pilgrimage that must ensue after these hushed Oxford dreams. (Sinister Street, p. 530) Indeed this quest of "a constructive ideal of conduct" pro vides the basic thematic framework of the plot. The quest 6 7 Sinister Street, pp. 45-46. Mackenzie says of his own discovery of Don Quixote: "i cannot help feeling that this preoccupation with the story of Don Quixote when I was five years old was at any rate partly responsible for my being all my life a natural minority man, unable to accept majority opinion as necessarily the right opinion to hold"--My Life and Times, p. 158. 68 Reviewers have commented on the similarity between Michael and Don Quixote. The Evening Standard, for example, spoke of "the quixotic adventures of Mr. Compton Mackenzie's half-priggish, half-disarmingly human Michael, in his search for the right method of attack against the windmills of civilization. . ." (November 11, 1914 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). The Scotsman (Edinburgh) sums up its comparison by remarking, "Michael Fane's temperament is distinctly Quixotic" (September 8, 1913 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). 175 may be described as two-fold, of seemingly antithetical elements, yet perhaps substantially true to the psycho logical experience of men: a quest for freedom and a quest for commitment. The coherence of the plot with its pattern of incident may best be shown by discussing the novel in some detail. The theme of the first book is announced by its title, "The Prison House." Mackenzie vividly evokes the world of childhood from his own memories. ^ While not unresponsive to the delights of childhood--"the wonder inherent in everything" (p. 60)--he does emphasize the fears, the frustrations, the dawning awareness of evil, cruelty, and injustice which are part of the child's experience. Michael soon desires to be grown up and to achieve the freedom which he envies: "The desire to be grown up sus tained him through much" (p. 66). At four this desire for freedom was symbolized by the figure of a poor boy walking in the rain: Presently round the comer a boy appeared, walking jauntily. He had neither coat nor waistcoat nor shoes 6Q For Mackenzie's use of autobiographical material in this first book, see the first volume of his memoirs, My Life and Times, passim. 176 nor stockings, his shirt was open In front, and a large piece of it stuck out behind through his breeches; but he did not seem to mind either the rain or his tattered clothes. He whistled as he walked along, with one hand stuck in his braces and with the other banging the wooden fence. He went by with tousled hair and dirty face, a glorious figure of freedom in the rain. (p. 38) With the schooldays of boyhood, as narrated in Book II, the quest becomes more complicated. While en during the constraints of school, Michael seeks acceptance into a wider world of associations. Through games and sports, he achieves friendship and recognition. In public school, with a larger field of action, he further experi ments with life. He goes through cycles of enthusiasms and disillusionments. His spiritual and moral nature develops and manifests itself in his genuine interest in religion as well as in modish ecclesiastical controversy. His intellectual and artistic curiosity is excited by the latest cultural fads, notably by the Nineties* aestheticism of Arthur Wilmot. At the same time, his physical and emo tional development troubles the private world of sexual impulse. He navigates these difficult shoals, but is left with the perennial question of youth: ?t*What do I want?* Michael asked himself. . . . *1 don*t know,* he muttered" (p. 275). The Boer War accentuates his mood of discontent 177 and of disillusion with ready-made ideals and values. Speaking to his mother of the vulgar excitement in the masses at the spectacle of war, he says: M0h, mother, I am fed up with the rotten core of everything that looks so fine on the outside" (p. 272). Later he sums up his adolescent aspirations in the following terms: Oh, I want to be calm and splendid and proud of myself, but I want to understand life while I'm alive. I want to believe in inmortality, but in case I never can be convinced of it, I want to be convinced of something. Everything seems to be tumbling down nowadays. What's so absurd is that nobody can understand anyone else, let alone the universe. . . . I'm determined to under stand everybody . . . even if I can't have faith. (P- 333) But Michael, like his class and his generation, has come through the years of school with a certain set of standards and values. For Michael at eighteen they were embodied in Mr. Neech, the history teacher at St. James', who became for Michael "a grotesque symbol of public-school education” (p. 392). The influence of Neech manifested itself in the qualities he demanded from his pupils: "a stoic bearing, a sense of humour, a capacity for inquisitiveness, an idea of continuity" (p. 393). At Oxford, in Book III, Michael sets out consciously to obtain the best that Oxford traditionally has to offer 178 questing youth on the threshold of the active life. According to Mortimer R. Proctor in The English University Novel, Oxford offers profitable leisure, lessons of what becomes the gentleman, companionship with the past, and serene contemplation of the future.^® To these he might have added free association with one's peers. To Michael, in the adjustment to the ritual of Oxford life and its informal intellectual atmosphere, there came further growth in his quest for self-realization. Perhaps what Oxford most essentially gave him was the sense that he shared in the past.^ It clarified and reinforced the role of con tinuity and tradition in human life: that the individual is part of a continuing and meaningful process. At Oxford, also, he came to see the traditional con cept of the gentleman as a social and moral ideal. This realization is dramatically expressed for Michael when ^(Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1957), p. 158. ^^■"Oxford seemed to him to provide an opportunity, and more than an opportunity--an inexpugnable command to wave with most reluctant hands farewell to the backward of time, around whose brink rose up more truthful dreams than those that floated indeterminate, beckoning through the mist across the wan mountains of the future" (Sinister Street, p. 502). 179 he visits his sister Stella, who is studying music in Paris. Coming from the "Dreaming Spires" of Oxford into the Bohemian artistic environment of his sister, he is quick to contrast her friends with his. His friends possess a clearly recognizable common code which sets them apart from other social groups, according to Michael. The basic distinction is that they are gentlemen, or, less formally, "Good Eggs." In conversation with Stella, Michael describes the importance of the gentleman to society: My theory is that a gentleman leavens the great popular mass of humanity, and however superficially useless he may seem, his existence is a pledge of the immanence of the idea. Popular education has fired thousands to prove themselves not gentlemen in the present meaning of the term, but something much finer than any gentleman we know anything about. And they are not, they simply and solidly are not. The first instinct of the gentle man is respect for the past with all it connotes of art and religion and thought. The first instinct of the educated misfit is to hate and destroy the past. Now I maintain that the average gentleman, whatever situ ation he is called upon to face, will deal with it more effectively than those noble savages who have been armed with weapons they don't know how to use and are there fore so much the more dangerous, since every weapon to the primitive mind is a weapon of offence. (p. 497) A belief in the stoic ideal of the gentleman as being one who by training is prepared to face up to any situation was shaken for Michael by the suicide of his father's friend Prescott, who was in love with Stella. Michael 180 reflects that Prescott's life was surely a tragedy, and his death was only not a tragedy because it had violated all the canons of good-form and had falsified the stoicism of nearly fifty years. (p. 568) He is forced to admit "that mere austerity unless supported by a spiritual encouragement to endure was liable at any moment of break up pitiably into suicide" (p. 569)- 9 From his school years, Michael had acquired the tradi tional ideals and values of his class as expressed in the code of the gentleman. But as yet his ideals and his beliefs were untested. Moreover, he lacked any sense of commitment to something which could give his future life purpose or direction. As Michael explains it to Mr. Viner: "I'm groping in the dark after a hazy idea of subordi nation. That's something, you know. But I haven't found my own place in the scheme. ... I want to surrender myself, and I'm not going to surrender anything until I'm sure by faith that I'm not merely surrendering the wastage of myself." (p. 538) Freed from the necessity of earning a living by his in heritance from Lord Saxby, Michael was faced with the still larger question of what to do with his life. He came to realize finally, after he had left Oxford, "It was obvious that his education lacked something, though his academic education was finished" (p. 666). It is in Book IV, 181 "Romantic Education," that Michael both tests his assump tions about life and completes his preparation for entering into it. Book IV resembles Carnival in its use of a threatened mesalliance as a plot device. Michael, having left Oxford, learns by chance that his former love, Lily Hadon, has become a prostitute. Shocked, he sets out at once to find and marry her. Ostensibly he does so because he feels he may have been instrumental in her fall. But the situation is shown to be complex, and various strands of Michael's previous experience are woven around the figure of Lily. He sees, for example, in his behavior toward her a crucial test of himself and his beliefs, "an opportunity which Oxford denied to test academic values on the touchstone of human emotions" (p. 666). He reflects: He had accepted marriage as a law of his society. Well, then that law should be kept. He would test every article of the creed of an English gentleman. He would try in the fire of his purpose honour, pride, courtesy and humility. All these must come to his aid, if he were going to marry a whore. (p. 660) His desire for some total comnltment of his life seems about to be satisfied. There is, moreover, the example of his mother's life: "Surely such a realization doubled his obligation to atone by rescuing Lily, out of very 182 thankfulness to God that his own mother had escaped the evil which had come to her” (p. 843). Despite such ratio nalizations, deeper impulses are shown also at work. Thus, his desire to live amid ugly surroundings in debased dis tricts of London while he hunted for Lily is prompted, as he had to confess to himself, by "that ancient lure of the shades” (p. 672). This is not merely romantic fascination with the abnormal and the squalid--though we remember Arthur Wilmot*s observation that "Squalor is the Parthenope of the true Romantic” (p. 236). What basically he sought was a certain confrontation with absolute evil--not just evil as a dimly apprehended shadow passing over human life, such as he had hitherto known. For He could not remember any period in his life when the speculum of hidden thought had not reflected for his fear that shadow of evil which could overcast the mani festations of most ordinary existence. (p. 672) He wanted to experience the reality behind the shadow, to stand up to it, and to defeat it. His crusade for Lily, therefore, was of special importance to him: "He would bring back Lily from evil, not from any illusion of evil” (p. 672). And in saving her at his own sacrifice, he could justify the standards and values of his code as a gentleman. 183 Like Don Quixote, Michael seemed to reap only failure and disillusionment from his efforts. Lily could not be saved on his terms. But the quest had not been in vain. For Michael has, apparently, learned compassion, a certain humility, a respect for human freedom, and the primacy of the command to self-perfection. I say that Michael "appar ently" learned these lessons because the ending of the book is inconclusive, and designedly so. As Mackenzie says in his "Epilogical Letter," his intention was to write only a prologue to a life: "He [Michael] is growing up on the 72 last page, and for me his interest begins to fade." Mackenzie says further that Michael will "presumably" be come a priest. It so happens that he does not, as we learn from The Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, though he spends some time in a monastery. The religious development of Michael is, however, a major theme in the story. This aspect of the book provoked only random comment from the reviewers and critics. The Yorkshire Observer, for 73 example, called the novel "a spiritual biography." C. C. Martindale said: ^ Sinister Street. New York ed., p. 657. ^January 5, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 184 Sinister Street is a religious document of the first quality. It may not be a book for young ladies, but it is emphatically a book for priests, tlarely anywhere have I seen even attempted this portrayal of the mystical eclosion in a boy * s soul.^ At fourteen Michael first became interested in reli gious worship. He felt strongly the intellectual and emotional appeal of Anglo-Catholicism, the beauty of whose ritual was in harmony with his dawning recognition of the past and the need for tradition and continuity in life. At sixteen he grew bored with ecclesiastical business and with his Anglo-Catholic friends. "Michael himself ascribed this apostasy to his perusal ... of Zola’s novel Lourdes with its damaging assaults upon Christian credulity" (p. 233). Yet on a sunnier tour of French cathedrals with Mr. Viner, Michael "recaptured some of that emotion of uni versal love which with sacramental force had filled his heart during the wonder of transition from boyhood to adolescence" (pp. 252-253). During a vacation at Oxford he went to Spain, and at Burgos Cathedral felt again the power of faith and the influence of the church upon the lives of people down through the ages. At home he finds i the mission of Viner dreary after the atmosphere of Burgos, ^"Psychology in the Concrete," p. 678. 185 4 and at the same time he finds the religious men at college objectionable: "too self-conscious, too congregational" (p. 540). Instead of religion, Michael in his last years at Oxford subscribed to the gentlemanly religion of Good Eggery: Good Eggery had really become a religion. It was not inconsistent with Christianity: indeed it probably derived itself from Christianity through many raailclad and muscular intercedents. Yet it shrank from anything definitely spiritual as it would have shrunk from the Salvation Army. . . . Michael . . . made up his mind quite finally that Good Eggery would carry him through his existence, however much it were complicated by the problem of Bad Mannery. (pp* 583-584) The suicide of Prescott showed Michael the essential failure of Good Eggery as an inclusive philosophy of life. Michaelfs former governess, Miss Carthew, had become a Roman Catholic, and she wrote him on the death of Prescott: "When your friend Mr. Prescott killed himself, I felt very much the real emptiness of such a life that on the surface was so admirable, in some ways so enviable" (p. 612). At the end of the book, Michael is apparently on his way to becoming a Roman Catholic.^ But Mackenzie The Standard (London) observed: "It is impossible to help admiring the skill with which Mr. Mackenzie has indi cated how many roads may lead to Rome, but his methods are too delicate to convey more than a faint suspicion that 186 obviously does not want to carry him so far for the pres ent. He hints at it as a development of that future to which the book is but a prologue.^ Yet throughout he has emphasized that Michael has animam naturaliter Catholicam, with a strong sense of continuity and tradition as forces in religious as well as in social life.^ After his trip to Spain and the lesson of Burgos Cathedral, Michael there is propaganda in the novel” (November 13, 1914 [clip ping in Scrapbook No. 24]). The New York Sun commented: "Men and women have gone over to Rome for the strangest of reasons or for no reason, but seriously to take such a step because Lily refused to be decent is to hint that one's stay in Rome would be a tourists' trip” ("A Few New Chap ters in the Life Story of Michael Fane,” December 26, 1914 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). 76tt»Are you a Catholic?* the priest asked. 'No; but I fancy I shall be a Catholic,' Michael said; and as he spoke, it was like a rushing wind” (Sinister Street, p. 876). ^During Michael's first period of religious enthusi asm, we are told, "Michael was a Catholic [i.e., Anglo- Catholic] because Catholicism assured him of continuity. . . ." (p. 209). His trip to Spain was particularly impor tant in showing him the ancient glory and the continuing power of Roman Catholicism. Thus at Burgos Cathedral, "A realization of the power of faith was stirred in him by these Masses that every day of every year were said without the recognition of humanity” (p. 534). Moreover, ”he came away curiously fortified by his observation of the mouldy confessionals worn down by the knees of so many penitents. This much power of impression at least had the individual on this cathedral" (p. 534). 187 evidences a growing dissatisfaction with Anglo-Catholicism in its failure to reach the masses and influence their lives. "But do you get the real sinners?" Michael asked his two old school friends now working in a slum parish in London. They confess they do not, and Michael tells them they are in a "spiritual backwater" (pp. 742-743). Yet Michael’s conversion to Catholicism, if we may call it that, though motivated, remains curiously unconvincing. Mackenzie fails to show it as an interior, subjective ex perience. We are told that it happens, but we do not experience it with Michael. Perhaps the difficulty lies in the author's imperfect assimilation of personal experi ence. For Mackenzie himself was formally received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1913 at Sorrento, while he was writing the first chapters of the second volume of 7 Q Sinister Street. He may have been too close to the actual event itself to have the detachment necessary to incorporate this material into his novel successfully. 78 Faith Compton Mackenzie, As Much As I Dare (London, 1938), p. 241. Sir Compton dislikes the term "conversion" applied to what happened to him. As he told me in con versation on June 27, 1961, he had always been a Catholic. In 1913 he just made the logical step of becoming a for mally professed Roman Catholic. 188 The difficulty with the structure of Sinister Street is not that it is formless--its plot, for example, is highly organized and complex--but .that the design is too comprehensive. The discursiveness of the chronicle form makes the novel seem somewhat unfocused. In the very breadth and detail of the narrative method, the themes and unifying forces which thread the mass are at times ob scured. Arthur Waugh, indeed, has described the book as resembling a panorama painted by a Pre-Raphaelite artist, with every detail in high relief, so full of design and colour that the main outline of the picture is apt to be obscured by its elaboration.^9 Critical opinion of the characterization in Sinister Street has observed an interesting pattern. Although Mac kenzie's technique is designed to keep the focus steadily on Michael and his thoughts and sensations, comment on the character has been surprisingly unfavorable, especially in view of the general approval the book has enjoyed. On the other hand, the subsidiary characters, especially the women, have been well regarded. The novel, on its recep tion, was frequently described as a psychological study ^ Tradition and Change (London, 1919), p. 214. 189 (today it is more often treated as the picture of an era). Ford Madox Hueffer said: "I have never read a more care fully documented study of real life in boyhood and in early 80 adolescence." u A number of reviewers compared it to Remain Rolland's Jean Christophe. C- C. Martindale cited 81 both as examples of "the psychological novel." Holbrook Jackson said that "Michael Fane is John Christopher with 82 a public school accent." Darrell Figgis, however, in The Nineteenth Century and After (London), felt that Michael Fane was far inferior to John Christopher in in- go terest and profundity as a character study. Some critics found the character of Michael completely unrealistic or, at best, unsubstantial. R. Ellis Roberts QA , r Mr. Compton Mackenzie and 'Sinister Street, *" The Outlook (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). Arthur St. John Adcock wrote: "If there has ever been a more revealing study of the heart and mind and every-day life of a boy than that of Michael Fane, I have never read it"--Gods of Modem Grub Street (London, 1923), p. 187. ^"Psychology in the Concrete," p. 674. ^^T. P.'s Weekly, November 21, 1914 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 0 9 Some Recent Notable Novels," LXXIV (October 1913), 794-795. 190 commented that, although what happens to Michael Is real, "he is never real. He is a ghost of Sentimental Tommy. . . Scofield Thayer said of Michael and Stella: "They are the decorative and mobile objects which the mature imagination loves to dress up in the sweet guise of child- Or hood." The Evening Standard specified in what regard it found him unreal: He is beset by evil thoughts, but his conversation remains on a high level--in other words, he is the exact opposite of all the schoolboys we have ever known, whose talk is often indescribably foul, but whose minds, even the worst of them, have a fundamental innocence and healthiness. (September 1, 1913 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]) One wonders about the reaction if Michael had spoken like all the schoolboys whom that reviewer knew. The criticism, also, was widely made that Michael lacked a definite, individualized personality in which to believe. By the end of the first volume, according to The Academy (London), Michael had not yet begun to exist: He is but a name that serves as an excuse for an elabo rate description of childhood and school affairs . . . ®^"Compton Mackenzie," The Manchester Guardian, Febru ary 13, 1925 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 8). ®^"Compton Mackenzie," p. 475. 191 the characterisation is not worked out whether in terms of action or psychology. The Morning Post (London) complained of Michael that "he has been to a great extent the passive recipient of im pressions, a little too plastic for us to be quite sure of his individuality."^ Of particular interest is the hostility with which some critics reacted not to the characterization as such but to the type of person Michael represents. One suspects that Michael may be more successful as a characterization than such critics might allow. The Observer (London), thus, objected to Michael as "a callow youth" who is made "detestable" by his response to Prescott's suicide. Yet 88 "It cannot be said that these moods are false. . . ." S. P. B. Mais condemned Michael and his Oxford companions as shallow snobs. He says: I have seen Mackenzie compared with Thackeray, for what reason I cannot fathom. But this gallery of callow 86LXXXV (September 20, 1913), 365. ^September 1, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 88„The Novel of Detail," November 15, 1914 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 192 undergraduates might well be included in the modern Book of Snobs. Douglas Goldring goes perhaps farther than any in his per sonal quarrel with Michael and his world: He [Michael] is the consummate prig. His jejune sexual self-importance, his snobbishness, his airs of the in tellectual coxcomb, his imperviousness to the spiritual side of life, infect nearly all the hundreds and hun dreds of pages which the author has devoted to his portrayal. . . . (Indeed, if the War has succeeded in blotting out of English life for ever young men of the type of Michael Fane, if it has succeeded in changing the average Englishman's attitude towards this type from admiration into one of contempt, it will not have been fought for nothing).90 But here the criticism passes beyond literary into social criticism. The minor characters were generally more favorably regarded than the principals. MA long gallery of living portraits," said The Sheffield Daily Telegraph. The Athenaeum (London) stated: "There is nothing approaching a failure in the delineation of the minor characters. The Nation (London) said: ^ Books and Their Writers, p. 21. ^ Reputations (New York, 1920), p. 47. q i 7 No date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). ^September 6, 1913, p. 225. 193 It may be remarked that the characters who are pre sented in profile, such as the graceful, elusive Mrs. Vere . . . and the minor characters are more subtly drawn than are Alan and Michael, whose doings and say ings are recorded so exhaustively.^3 The characterization of the women was especially praised. The Westminster Gazette (London) observed that a remarkable feature of this first [sic] novel is its treatment of women, and the differentiation of the characters of Michael’s mother and of the various mem bers of the Carthew family, as well as Michael’s various loves, Muriel, Winnie, Kathleen, and Lily is admirable. C. C. Martindale said of the feminine characters that ’ 'not alone is this author accurate as to fact, and in word, but as to the mentality which interprets the facts and seeks expression in words. To Compton Mackenzie characterization has always been the primary ingredient of the novel. As he has said, "The object of the novel, as I see it ... is to present character against a background of place."^6 Certainly this seems the basic concern of Sinister Street. Yet one ^October 1, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). ^September 6, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). ^"Psychology in the Concrete," p. 677. ^R. Barry O'Brien, "A Talk with Sir Compton Macken zie," The Wiltshire Herald and Advertiser. September 18, 1953 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 61). 194 may admit that Michael Fane is not as vivid a character ization as Jenny Pearl in Carnival. Part of the difficulty lies with Michael himself. He is not, as his creator has acknowledged, a "particularly exciting young man."^ He is a person to whom experiences happen. Some of the dimness about Michael as a personality may be occasioned by the fact that he inhabits the borderland between autobiography and objective creation of character. Mackenzie has said of Michael, "He is to me an objective reality: he is not myself in a looking-glass. Yet Michael*s environment, both mental and physical, and his experiences are essen tially those of Mackenzie himself. The author has de scribed his method in Sinister Street as the selection of incidents from his past and the reshaping of them to suit the narrative and the character of the hero.^ Thus, in Mv Life and Times: Octave One, Mackenzie tells how he used in Sinister Street an incident which actually happened to him at seven. In the novel it was assigned to Michael 9^See Cecil Roberts, "Readers and Writers," The Liver pool Daily Courier, October 12, 1922 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 34). ^ Sinister Street, New York ed., p. 657. ^ My Life and Times, pp. 13-14. 195 at nine, ’ ’ because I did not think it would sound plausible for a child of seven" (p. 219). Frank Swinnerton, speaking of the autobiographical novels of Oliver Onions, describes a weakness in the characterization of such novels which may explain the curious lack of individuality in Michael. He says: . . . the biographical method has a serious defect. It has always, in the work of every writer who has essayed it, had this defect. A novelist vising, with however much skill and finesse, the skeleton of his own life and memory, tends to leave his central figure a colourless nonentity, a something to which experience occurs. For himself, that central figure is filled in by substantial memory--by egotism; but for his reader the central figure, a name only, represents vacuum. He has traits, but no character. He may suffer; but he is not objec tively present. That is a cause of loss of interest in the progress of the book; for unless every detail has importance of its own (which it has for the writer) the book ceases to hold attention. It is the same whether the book is a narrative or an introspective study of personality; for unless the author deliberately creates for his chief actor a personality larger than life, there is nothing upon which the reader can fix his eye or his imagination. (The Georgian Literary Scene p. 220) A further difficulty with the characterization of Michael lies in the role which Mackenzie intends for him as Everyboy of his class and generation. For Mackenzie does not always succeed in reshaping incidents from his own life to achieve verisimilitude for Michael. Although we are not told that Michael taught himself to read at 196 twenty-two months as Mackenzie himself did,we do learn that at about three years of age "Michael read many books in a strange assortment" (p. 32). Michael*s religious development and conversion to Roman Catholicism might like wise be regarded as a singular aberration for a representa tive young man of the period. One feels that it is in cluded because it is autobiographically true of Mackenzie, not representationally true of Michael Fane. The subsidiary characters in Sinister Street are vividly delineated. Mackenzie has a Dickensian zest for capturing the essentials of character in a set description or a few lines of dialogue. And, again like Dickens, he is perhaps at his best with the humorous eccentric character. As an example, there is the conversation of Annie the housemaid and Mrs. Frith the cook. Mrs. Frith has just described how daring she was as a young girl. "I expect you enjoyed yourself," said Annie. "I was one of the quiet ones, I was. Any little trip, and I was sick." "Couldn't bear the motion, I suppose?" Cook enquired. "Oh, it wasn't the travelling as did it. It was the excitement. I was dreadfully sick in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral." ^■^See Mackenzie, My Life and Times, pp. 39-40. 197 "What a grand place it is, though," said Mrs. Frith, nodding. "Oh, beautiful. So solemn. I've sat there with my late husband, eating nuts as peaceful as if we was in a real church. Beautiful. And that whispering gallery! The things you hear. Oh--well, I like a bit of fun, I do. I remember--" (Sinister Street, p. 36) Just as Mackenzie used real incidents from his child hood in Sinister Street, so the characters seem, for the most part, to be portraits or adaptations of real indi viduals. Perhaps this is the source of their greater vitality as compared to Michael. As H. G. Wells has writ ten, Every "living" character in a novel is drawn, frankly or furtively, from life--is filched from biography whole or in scraps, a portrait or patch up, and its actions are reflections upon moral conduct.1^1 Such, at least, seems the practice of Mackenzie. In My Life and Times: Octave One we learn that Mrs. Frith--the cook described in the scene above--was actually the Mac kenzies' cook during the years depicted in the narrative. Moreover, her real name was Mrs. Frith. Mackenzie says: I called her Mrs. Frith in Sinister Street because I could not find a name that did not somehow detract from the invaluable service she performed for me by letting fresh air into that house and lightening the oppression of my old nurse's rule. (p. 194) ^~^An Experiment in Autobiography (New York, 1934), p. 415. 198 Sinister Street abounds in such set portraits of real people drawn to the life, though, unlike the case of Mrs. Frith, Mackenzie generally changes the name. So Mac kenzie tells us that Venner, the steward of the Junior Common Room, in the novel was in real life Richard Gun- stone, or "Gunner" of Magdalen College, Oxford: "I tried to paint his portrait as 'Venner' in Sinister Street, and the old man himself was always good enough to say that it 102 was a recognizable portrait." w Mackenzie's dialogue in his first two books was highly praised both for realism and gracefulness. The dialogue in Sinister Street was generally not found to be so real istic or effective. C. C. Martindale. however, said that Mackenzie's "conversations are exact." He can write as boys talk: . . . he speaks not only with Michael’s lips, and those of his boy friends, but with his sister Stella's. The six pages of conversation between Michael and Stella at Compiegne are, to my feeling, as perfect in comedy and in psychology as anything in English. I remember Richard Feverel, and Lucy and Clare, and do not feel ashamed of my belief that this boy and girl scene among the bracken makes for laughter and for meditation and for melancholy as potently as any page of Meredith's masterpiece. ("Psychology in the Concrete," p. 677) 102 Compton Mackenzie, First Athenian Memories (London, 1931), p. 72. 199 Other critics disagreed, and judged the dialogue as defi cient in realism. Robert Lynd, for example, said: It is especially in his dialogue that the author seems not to have troubled himself sufficiently about real things. It is clever, easy, entertaining, but it is again and again the speech of mere figures of saw dust. Gerald Gould thought the conversation of the undergraduates too mannered and self-conscious to be real: Let Mr. Mackenzie search his memory and his conscience and ask himself if such elaborate and rhythmical con structions [as those he has just cited], are the authen tic utterance of his Castleton or of anyone else he ever knew at Oxford or anywhere else.10^ There is, perhaps, a greater variety of dialogue in Sinister Street than in any other of Mackenzie’s books. It ranges from the speech of boyhood to that of servants, from the calculated felicities of the aesthete and the jargon of the school and college to the cockneyisms of the half-world. There are the banalities of Michael and Alan at twelve upon the conclusion of a sentimental song by the Pierrettes: i ni The Daily News and Leader (London), September 1, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 104The New Statesman (London), IV (November 14, 1914), 141. 200 "It’s frightfully decent, isn’t it?" murmured Michael. "Ripping," sighed Alan. (p. 143) There is also the idealized discourse of serious if prig gish undergraduates: "Oh, I'm not grumbling at what Oxford is," Castleton went on. "I simply suggest that the Smitherses have the right, being in a small minority, to demand courtesy from the majority, and after all, Oxford is serving no purpose at all, if she cannot foster good manners in people who are supposed to be born with a natural ten dency toward good manners. I should be the first to regret an Oxford with the Smitherses in the majority, but I think that those Smitherses who have fought their way in with considerable difficulty should not go down with the sense of hatred which that poor solitary creature must surely feel against all of us." (p. 475) And there is the sharply accurate exchange between Michael and Poppy, a fellow lodger at Neptune Crescent: "You're on the stage, aren’t you?" "I usually get into panto," she admitted. "Aren’t you acting now?" "Yes, I don’t think. You needn’t be funny." "I wasn’t trying to be funny." "You mind your business," she said bitterly. "And I’ll look after mine." "There doesn’t seem to be anything very rude in ask ing if you’re acting now," said Michael. "Oh, shut up! As if you didn’t know.” "Know what?" he repeated. . . . "It's five years since I went on the game," she said. (p. 676) Because of the autobiographical method, Sinister Street is more exactly located in time and place than the two earlier books. And Mackenzie is at some pains to make 201 the factual background as accurate as possible. Like Arnold Bennett, he half conceals real places behind pseudo nyms. Thus St. James* School is in actuality St. Paul’s, and St. Mary's is Magdalen College, Oxford--both are Mac kenzie's own schools. The device, however, is clearly transparent. It makes inevitable the assumption that Compton Mackenzie is similarly disguised as Michael Fane. It is, however, Mackenzie's practice to weave his narra tive, whenever possible, around real places and actual settings, though to some critics such realism implies a deficiency of imagination.The setting of Sinister Street is principally London and Oxford, and, except for the third Book, London scenes are dominant. Clement Shorter has remarked that "the real joy of Mr. Macken zie’s book to me is that it is the best modem novel of ^®"*For example, we learn that Mackenzie went up to Oxford at the end of July, 1914, to check some reference for use in the second volume--Compton Mackenzie, Galli poli Memories (London, 1929), p. 393. ^^Gerald Gould, for example, has complained of Sinister Street that "the photographic reproduction of the setting is as easy to discern as it must have been to do"--The English Novel of To-Day (New York, 1925), p. 43. 202 London life--the London that I know.”^^ Mackenzie knows well the charm which the familiar has when it is transmuted by freshness of vision and portrayed in a work of art. And in taking the streets of West Kensington and St. Paul's School as the scene of his first volume, he had achieved a certain novelty, or, as The Westminster Gazette observed, 1 f)8 "broken new ground." u In Sinister Street, Mackenzie's strong sense of place receives more play than his flair for natural description. Holbrook Jackson has observed: . . . the result of the novel is a clearer view of things than of people. Thus the memorable incidents are often, perhaps generally, descriptions of Oxford and London under the excitement or stress of emotional changes. Mackenzie inherits Dickens' gift of giving personality to streets and buildings. Perhaps that is why he has given his prose epic the name of a street which is never mentioned in the book itself. ^9 The setting for the greater part of the novel is the world of upper-class education, and Mackenzie has assured his readers of its accuracy: ". . .at the beginning of this century life at a big London day school and life at Literary Letter," The Sphere (London), UC (January 23, 1915), 110. ^^September 6, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 1Q9t. P.'s Weekly, November 21, 1914 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 203 a fashionable Oxford college were just as I have depicted them."^^ The English Review (London) would agree: "A more faithful picture of public-school life than anything we know in English fiction." The Aberdeen Free Press said: "Seldom if ever has anyone captured the atmosphere, the very life, of a big day-school as Mr. Mackenzie has 119 done." It was, however, the Oxford section of the novel which attracted the most consnent. The consensus is that the undefinable spirit of Oxford has never been so bril liantly evoked. Mortimer R. Proctor has called Sinister Street "in almost every way the best of all university 113 novels." The Times Literary Supplement said of the Oxford scenes: To one . . . who knows Oxford the full and minute study of each of Michael's four years there brings back the atmosphere and spirit of the place with vivid insistence; we believe that in its grave and patient way it must have as much to tell those who do not know Oxford as Mr. Max Beerbohm's jesting but profoundly true Zuleika Dobson. ^^Sinister Street, p. xi. 1;L1XV (October 1913), 472. •^^"A Banned Book," September 25, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 11 ^ The English University Novel, p. 154. H^November 12, 1914, p. 506, col. 1. 204 Philip Guedalla disagreed with the comparison to Zuleika Dobson: "To read Zuleika Dobson was to see Oxford: to read Sinister Street is to hear under-graduates: and under graduates should be seen and not heard.Although Mac kenzie does let us hear much Oxford talk, it is given against the detailed background of the ritual of Oxford life. The three chapters on "The First Day," "The First Week," and "The First Term" convey accurately much of the tenor of pre-war Oxford, its manners and mores. And in passages like the following, Mackenzie evoked memories of college for a whole generation of Oxonians: Nothing had ever quite equalled those damp November dusks, when after a long walk through silent country Michael and Alan came back to the din of Carfax and splashed their way along the crowded and greasy Corn- market towards St. Giles, those damp November dusks when they would find the tea-things glinmering in the fire light. Buttered toast was eaten; tea was drunk; the second-best pipe of the day was smoked to idle crack lings of The Oxford Review and The Star; a stout land lady cleared away, and during the temporary disturbance Michael pulled back the blinds and watched the darkness and fog slowly blotting out St. John’s and the alley of elm-trees opposite, and giving to the Martyrs’ Memorial and even to Balliol a gothic and significant mystery. The room was quiet again; the lamps and the fire glowed; Michael and Alan, settled in deep chairs, read their History and Philosophy; outside in the November night ^•^The Daily News and Leader. November 11, 1914 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 205 footsteps went by; carts and waggons occasionally rattled; bells chimed; outside in the November murk present life was manifesting its continuity; here with in, the battles and the glories, the thoughts, the theories and the speculations of the past for Michael and Alan moved across printed pages under the rich lamplight. (pp- 607-608) Sinister Street has as exact a setting in time as in place. As Mackenzie has remarked: t , Sinister Street is so exactly dated that it remains alive" (p. xi). And the action of the novel occurs in a real historic time. In keeping with the factual-chronicle design of the novel is the care taken with chronology. Every year in the twenty- one covered by the novel is treated in some detail. Refer ences to months and seasons emphasize the passing of the individual years. When Michael is seventeen, for example, ten of the twelve months of the year are cited in connec tion with events narrated. This novelistic time-sequence is also related to historic time. Though no great emphasis is placed on such correspondency, we can place the action in its historical setting. So clear is the chronological development that from such hints as the dating of a letter or from such historical events as the Jack the Ripper murders or Mafeking night we can cast the historical time. According to this scheme we learn that Michael was three 206 in 1886, when the book opens; he began Oxford in 1901; and is last seen in Rome in June, 1906. This would imply that Michael was bom in 1883--the same year as his creator. Although Mackenziefs primary purpose was to write a novel and not autobiography, he was yet clearly aware of the chronological sequence of events in Sinister Street. And the autobiographical method was, in general, a con venient means of ensuring accuracy of chronology as well as accuracy of fact.'*'^ Sheila Kaye-Smith once observed that there was "a distinct and different” style in each of Mackenziefs first 118 three books. Although she failed to elaborate the Mention has already been made on pp. 194-195 of the text of the incident which occurred when Mackenzie was seven, but which in the novel he gave to Michael at nine for greater plausibility. ^^Mackenzie makes only a few errors in his time scheme which I have been able to detect. He apparently misdates once, when Michael at thirteen is said to be fourteen and a half (perhaps as a result of confusion between the autobiographical time sequence and the fic tional time sequence). Again Mackenzie seems to lose grasp of his fictional chronology when he has Michael say of Lily, ”It would be six years this month since first they met, and she was twenty-two now" (p. 736). Actually it was five years since they had met. 118„The Glamour of Life and Love, " T. P. *s and Cassell*s Weekly, February 27, 1926, p. 647. 207 statement, I believe there Is considerable truth in it. The prevailing style of Sinister Street, for example, is less incongruously ornate and less determinedly poetic than that of Carnival. Ford Madox Hueffer spoke of "the hard ness of the handling" in "the continual definition of 119 material objects." In general, however, the style of Sinister Street did not provoke as much comment as had that of Carnival. And the comment was not uniformly favorable. The Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal straightforwardly 120 condemned "the lack of style," and W. L. George com plained of "the great congestion of words and interminable 121 catalogues of facts and things." The Nation (London), likewise, was not impressed by the style of the first volume: "The style is effective for its purpose, but it is undeniably wordy and not distinguished by beauty or 122 subtlety.” 119 "Mr. Compton Mackenzie and * Sinister Street,*" The Outlook (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). The Nation (London) found the "style much richer, much more deter mined, more flexible, than it used to be" (November 28, 1914 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). ^^January 25, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 121 A Novelist on Novels (London, 1918), p. 80. 122 October 1, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). There is, however, considerable variety of effect within the two volumes, as Mackenzie seeks to adapt his expression to the age and general awareness of his central character. There is, for example, simplicity, as well as psychological accuracy, in the way Mackenzie defines the material world of the child and the boy through exactly delineated detail. There is simplicity, also, in the restraint and naturalness of metaphor, particularly in the first volume. Metaphors, when they occur, are generally in keeping with Michael’s perceptions, and not strained after the fashion of the classical allusions in Carnival. So we are told the emotion that arises in Michael upon beholding his mother talking to Miss Carthew, his gover ness, for the first time: "They were both so tall and slim and beautiful: they were both so straight and clean that they gave him the glad sensation of blinds pulled up to admit the sun" (p. 70). In the presence of nature, espe cially, the decorative quality of his style manifests itself. He conjures with "azure-footed dusk in unfamiliar lanes" (p. 207), and the evanescent mood of a sunmer’s day is described luxuriantly with full appeal to image and sound: 209 Those cloud-enchanted days of late suraner made him list lessly aware of fleeting impulses, and simultaneously dignified with incommunicable richness the passivity and even emptiness of his condition. On the wide spaces of the downs he wandered luxuriously irresolute; his mind, when for a moment it goaded itself into an effort of concentration, faltered immediately, so that dead chival ries, gleaming down below in the rainy dusk of the val leys, suffered in the very instant of perception a transmutation into lamplit streets; and the wind's dull August booming made embattled drums and fanfares romantic no more than music heard in London on the way home from school. (p. 210) The second volume, particularly in its descriptive passages, becomes somewhat more mannered after the fashion of the Nineties. This change, however, is in keeping with the aesthetic development of Michael himself. We are told of Michael's reading during his second year at Oxford that "Mere words came to possess Michael so perilously that under the spell of these Jacobeans he grew half- contemptuous of thought less prodigally ornate" (p. 502). It is, accordingly, in a melange of the Jacobean and the Nineties' style that the following passage describes Michael's 1ibrary: If among these ambassadors of learning and literature was to be distinguished any predominant tone, perhaps the kindliest favour has been extended towards the more unfamiliar and fantastic quartos of the seventeenth cen tury, those speculative compendiums of lore that though enriched by the classic Renaissance were nevertheless more truly the eclectic consummation of the Middle Ages. The base of their thought may have been unsubstantial, 210 a mirage of philosophy, offering but a Neo-Platonic or Gnostic kaleidoscope through which to survey the uni verse; but so rich were their tinctures and apparels, so diverse was the pattern of their ceremonious com mentary, and so sonorous was their euphony that Michael made of their reading a sanctuary where every night for awhile he dreamed upon their cadences resounding through a world of polychromatic images and recondite jewels, of spiritual maladies and minatory comets, of potions for revenge and love, of talismans to fortune, touchstones of treasure and eternal life, and strange influential herbs. (pp- 501-502) Such a passage, however, is a perfect example of Macken zie^ gift for imitation and parody. It is only a page removed from the mindless small talk of the undergraduates themselves. So Lonsdale winds up a conversation: "Oh, I say, have you chaps toddled round to my new rooms yet? Rather decent. I'm quite keen on them. I've got a dining-room now. Devilish convenient. Thought of asking old Wedders to lay in a stock of pic tures. It would buck him up rather." (p. 500) Modern taste calls for the depiction of sentimental attitudes or moods with ironic detachment, but Mackenzie's technique requires him to reveal his emotionally immature and sentimental hero from within. Ironic awareness would be a falsification of the method employed. Mackenzie, accordingly, uses style to mirror psychological states and interior patterns of experience. At Oxford Michael savors the Nineties' mood, as we have seen, in his cultivation of language and exotic thought. Similarly, Michael's 211 feverish and sentimental pursuit of Lily is reflected in prose which captures the sentimental twistings of his mind. Take, for example, Michael's thoughts after hearing that Lily had "gone gay": It was foredoomed that Lily should come into his life again. Yet there was no reason why she should. There was no reason at all. Men could hardly be held respon sible for the fall of women, unless they had upon their souls the guilt of betrayal or desertion. It was ridiculous to argue that he must bother because at eighteen he had loved her, because at eighteen he had thought she was worthy of being loved. No doubt the Orient Promenade was the sequel to kissing objection able actors in the back gardens of West Kensington. Yet the Orient Promenade? That was a damnable place. The Orient Promenade? He remembered her kisses. Sitting in this cab, he was kissing her now. She had ridden for hours deep in his arms. Not Oxford could cure this relapse into the past. Every spire and every tower had crashed to ruins around his staid conceptions, so that they too presently fell away. Four years of plastic calm were unfashioned, and she was again beside him. Every passing lamp lit up her face, her smoulder ing eyes, her lips, her hair. The goblin took her place, the goblin with sidelong glances, tasting of scent, powdered, pranked, soulless, lost. What was she doing at this moment? What invitation glittered in her look? Michael nearly told the driver to turn his horse. He must reach the Orient before the show was done. He must remonstrate with her, urge her to go home, help her with money, plead with her, drag her by force away from that procession. (pp- 654-655) It is, in some ways, Mackenzie's very success in portraying youthful sentimentality which was to turn critics against Sinister Street after the war. An impatience with the mood itself became an impatience with the literary expression 212 of the mood. As a result, Mackenzie's realism in this regard has, perhaps, not received critical recognition. With the publication of the second volume of Sinister Street, there is a marked change in the diction. Poetic, exotic, and archaic words are, to quote John Raymond, "stuck like plums in a pudding."123 This is in contrast with the more conventional vocabulary of the first volume. In Book III, the Oxford section, we encounter poetic and exotic usage like "rathe mornings" (p. 617), "the zareba of illustrated papers" (p. 520), and "the desquamating backs of the magazines" (p. 640). But it is in the last Book, dealing with Michael's London adventures, that these 1 o # oddities of diction are most common. It is somewhat difficult to account for this sudden explosion of vocabu lary. Perhaps it is designed to foster the illusion of a nightmare experience, a romantic descent to the 12^ "Books in General," The New Statesman and Nation. XLVIII (December 25, 1954), 861. ^^Mention might be made of the following phonic," "feculent," "fulvid," "tintamar," "mucid," "falci form," "fum," "reasty," "tristfulness," "rutilant," "inspissate," "crepuscule," "inseverably," "nacreous," "circumnatation," "inquinating," "arcuated," "ruching," "caducity." 213 IOC underworld, after the placid Oxford idyll. J Mackenzie, in his "Epilogical Letter," defends his use of archaic and rare words on the grounds that they at times are the most accurate ones available for conveying his precise meaning. He cites the two words "reasty" and "inquiline" as examples of such exactness of signification for the effect in- 126 tended. It is also of interest to note that in Litera ture in My Time Mackenzie recommended Doughty’s use of archaisms in Travels in Arabia Deserta to those who are now trying to evolve a new verbal coinage in English that will displace the currency of words and phrases so trite with usage as to become meaningless and no longer fit to serve as a medium for the exchange of thought. (p. 179) Mackenzie’s desire in his use of old or little used words may be substantially to secure freshness of effect with greater exactness of meaning. But there is also the suspicion that on occasions he uses words for their deco rative value, and not merely as a precise adjustment of language to meaning. 12 5 John Raymond observes that "strangely enough it is the very weighted preciousness of the language in Sinister Street that helps the illusion" ("Books in General," p. 861). ^ ^ Sinister Street. New York ed., pp. 657-658. 214 Reviewers, in general, were favorably disposed toward what has been called Mackenzie's "delicate verbal scholar- 12 7 ship." John O'London's Weekly said approvingly: "Mr. Compton Mackenzie's Sinister Street probably contains the largest variety of all kinds of words than any other 128 novel. His vocabulary seems to be illimitable." The Liverpool Daily Post and Liverpool Mercury defended Mac kenzie from the charge of preciosity and pose in his use of language: He believes in the splendour and opulence of the English tongue, and is willing to devote a fastidious and ela borate care to the using of it in his "own carved, per fect way."^29 Yet in his expression Mackenzie is capable of such care lessness as phrases like "most ultimate refinement of meditation" (p. 356) or "perdurable for ever" (p. 698). Then there are pretentious infelicities like "blonde gold fish in ceaseless dim circumnatation" (p. 673). And Robert Lynd has commented on certain aberrations in his spelling: l^J. M. , "Compton Mackenzie," p. 283. 128'»xhe Study of Words," John 0*London's Weekly, April 3, 1921 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). 129jjovem] 5er n t 1914 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 215 "Mr. Mackenzie is an author quite out of the common. He 130 always spells ’surprised* with a 'z.*" There is a considerable range of tone in Sinister Street, as I have perhaps suggested. Although the basic scheme of the novel requires us to identify for the moment with adolescent immaturities, there is a leavening in the humor and satire which pervade the book. Michael himself is humorless, but fortunately his creator has a highly developed sense of humor and a keen appreciation of the comic aspects of life. Critics have, perhaps, taken Michael too seriously because he takes himself and his world seriously. But the realism and artistry of Mackenzie is far different from that of a Bennett or a Galsworthy. As Lascelles Abercrombie observed, "Mr. Mackenzie’s humour 1 o-l is equal to all occasions." In Sinister Street the humor basically arises out of character. Mackenzie is at his best in the portraiture of Dickensian eccentrics like Mrs. Frith or old Mrs. Carthew or Mrs. Gainsborough. 130 The Daily News and Leader, September 1, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 13Lrhe Manchester Guardian, September 3, 1913 (clip ping in Scrapbook No. 24). There is even Michael's mother, who, after the death of Lord Saxby, immerses herself in good causes, such as join- ing a society for the prevention of premature burial. There is also the wry humor of recognition in the account of youthful follies and contretemps. Michael at eleven plots to steal a kiss from Dora. Or, at seventeen, he manifests his broken-hearted devotion to Kathleen McDon nell, who is in her twenties, by helping her arrange trysts with her salesman fiance. And there are the wonderfully comic incidents and scenes from undergraduate life. The humor is invariably good-natured and sympathetic, and even the satirical sketches lack malicious bite. Schoolmasters, decadents, and ritualistic young men are all exposed to caricature. Mackenzie's favorite device is to allow the intended victim to reveal himself and his preoccupations by his own speech. Thus Mr. Prout is overheard when Michael comes to have tea with him: ’ ’ That's St. Bemardine of Sienna,” he [Prout] ex plained, pointing to a coloured statuette. "My patron, you know. Curious I should have been born on his day and be christened Bernard. I thought of changing my name to Bemardine, but it's so difficult at a Bank. Of course, I have a cult for St. Bernard too, but I never really can forgive him for opposing the Immacu late Conception. Father Monneypenny and I have great arguments on that point. I'm afraid he is a little bit wobbly. But absolutely sound on the Assumption. 217 Oh, absolutely, I'm glad to say. In fact, I don't mind telling you that next year we Intend to keep It as a Double of the First Class with Octave which, of course, it Is.." (p. 187) Compton Mackenzie apparently had the idea for Sinister Street a number of years before he started work on it. In 1912 he told a reporter In New York, "I've had the idea for it eight years."132 This would date its inception to about 1904, the year he graduated from Oxford and with Christopher Stone, his future brother-in-law, rented a large house in Burford, and worked desultorily on his volume of poetry. Mackenzie has supplied an account of the composition of Sinister Street in the foreword to the 1949 edition of * | o / the book. He says that the novel was begun in London in July, 1912, but work on it was interrupted by his "Author of 'Carnival' Did Book 'On the Side,*" The New York Sun. October 19, 1912 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 34). 133 JJCompton Mackenzie substantiated this early date for the conception of Sinister Street in a conversation with me on June 19, 1961. He said he realized that it could be a major work, and he felt he needed detachment and distance to do it justice. He resolved not to attempt it till he thought he was ready for it. ^^See pp. vii-ix. 218 dramatizing of Carnival and his trip to the United States to produce the play. After he became ill in the United States, he left for Italy in March, 1913, and commenced work on the novel in Sorrento and Capri. He finished the first volume at Fhillack in Cornwall that summer under considerable pressure of the deadline, for the publication date was set as September 1. In order to get the book out that autumn the printers started setting it up before I had finished writing it. Indeed, I corrected the proofs of the last chapter at Brendons in Plymouth and was able to watch the presses start printing off the final sheets as soon as my cor rections were made. (p. vii) The second volume was to be published six months after the first, but it was over a year before it finally appeared. Mackenzie was ill most of the winter of 1913-14, and the spring and simmer on Capri proved too delightful for steady work. On June 28 Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo, and Mackenzie hurried back to England. Knowing war was coming and anxious to be rid of his writing com mitments, he worked twelve hours a day during July, and by the time England declared war in August he had finished half the second volume. Determined to get into the war, he worked "harder than ever." He finished the volume on October 20, and it was published on November 11, 1914. The publication of Sinister Street in two volumes with an interval between was regarded as a risky experiment. Yet there were several reasons for undertaking it. Mac- kenzie wished to follow up the success of Carnival with a new book. But the book he had planned would be much longer than the conventional novel of the day and would take longer to write. Moreover, because of the great length, a publisher could not be expected to sell it for the usual price of a novel, that is 6s. Mackenzie discussed the pos sibility of bringing the novel out in two volumes with William Heinemann, the publisher, who was pessimistic.^^ Heinemann had had a bad response to his own attempt to issue William de Morgan's It Never Can Happen Again in two volumes, and the circulating libraries were opposed to such practice. Martin Seeker, however, approved the plan, and the scarlet-colored first volume of 496 pages made its appearance on September 1, 1913. Mackenzie has described how the editor of The Daily Mail (London) had picked up a review copy to read on the train and had been so impressed that he gave orders for ^^Mackenzie, "Sidelight," The Spectator (London), CXCI (December 25, 1953), 762. 220 a column review on the leader page on the day of publica tion (Sinister Street, p. vii). Since The Daily Mail only rarely took such notice of a book, it augured well for its success. Although the review was highly favorable, Keble Howard, who wrote it, expressed points of view which un doubtedly did work to the ultimate disadvantage of the book’s reputation. He was the first to categorize Mac kenzie as a ’ ’subjective” rather than ’ ’objective” novelist. Moreover, he said: He [Mackenzie] set to work on Sinister Street with no particular scheme or plot in his head. He just wrote and wrote of everything that he had experienced from the age of three or thereabouts.136 Subsequently the book was often to be attacked as formless and merely autobiographical. In general, reviews were favorable, though there were many reservations about aspects of the book. ' The most frequent complaints were of the length and the excessive detail. ^^September 1, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 137 This is based on a study of 69 reviews of the volume which appeared in British newspapers and magazines, as included in Mackenzie Scrapbook No. 24. Only 10 of the 69 were basically negative in their attitude. Reviews of any critical significance are listed in the biblio graphy . 221 The title offered a problem to reviewers of this first volume. The Graphic (London) decided that it was "a sym bolic title, which bears no reference to an heraldic euphemism."138 t. M. P. in The New Witness observed that "Sinister Street is no known thoroughfare. It is a region of the spirit."139 The actual title seems to have come from an etching by Muirhead Bone.1^ The etching, pos sibly only a sketch, was subsequently either lost or destroyed.1^1 It is interesting to note that Mackenzie himself used the phrase earlier in his poem "The Childfs Epic of the Night" in depicting the night-time fears of his childhood: And so he moved with beating heart Along this sinister, unknown, Deserted street, where never cart Rattled; and he remained alone. ^^September 13, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 139september 4 ^ 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). l^H. Vincent Brome, "What's in a Title?" The Bookman (London), LXXXIII (January 1933), 393. *^So Mackenzie told me in conversation on June 16, 1961. I/O See the poem as reprinted in Mackenzie, My Life and Times, p. 169. 222 The phrase of the title is suggestively appropriate for the fears and mysteries which hedged the childhood world of Michael as well as for Michael's exploration of the London underworld in the second volume. Although only a few reviewers commented unfavorably on the moral tone of the volume, it was on grounds of morality that the book received a "Class B" rating by the Circulating Libraries Association. As a result, the so- called Banned Book War erupted in the newspapers for about a fortnight. A "Class B" rating meant that the powerful circulating libraries would subscribe to only a limited number of copies, would not put it on display, and would lend available copies to customers only on direct request. Not only did the libraries buy fewer copies of the "banned" book, but by their listing they placed a certain moral stigma on the book and its author. In August of 1913, Hall Caine's The Woman Thou Gavest Me was "banned" by the libraries. Then in September W. B. Maxwell's The Devil's Garden as well as Mackenzie's volume was accorded the same treatment. Mackenzie wrote a letter of protest to The Daily Mail, which had also just received a similar letter on his own behalf from W. B. Maxwell. The Daily Mail 223 published the two letters and the battle was on. Macken zie, in his letter, charged that the censorship was inspired more by finance than by morality: Another book of mine, Carnival, was subjected by Smiths to restricted circulation last year. That is to say, it was only procurable on order. Yet when the same firm had a chance to stock the shilling edition, on which they made 5 3/4d. a copy profit, i.e., twice as much as the author and publisher combined, they accepted on terms which allowed all unsold copies to be returned. In addi tion to this the "immoral" book was given a show-card wherever my publisher chose to pay 6s. 6d. a month for the hire of it. As The Athenaeum observed at the conclusion of the debate: . . . there will assuredly be many persons ready to surmise that the appearance or non-appearance of a book in "Class B" may depend less upon the nature of its contents than upon the percentage of discount which its publishers may be willing to allow to the libraries. There was some speculation as to just why Sinister Street was "banned." Dixon Scott in The Liverpool Courier rather frivolously suggested it was perhaps because Michael's mother was not married and that the word "ankles" I / r appeared in a description of a girl. The English 143,, To the Editor of 'The Daily Mail,'" The Daily Mail, September 9, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 27). 144tt^e are Tradesmen," September 20, 1913, p. 282. 145"a problem and a Novel," September 25, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 224 Review, more accurately, said that it was because the book dealt "in a sincere and philosophic spirit" with "the supremely important effects upon character of the awakening of the sex impulse in youth": This is very far from being the whole of his theme. . . . But it is a fact that he does give it a preponderance such as has probably never been assigned to it before in an English novel. The chief offending section of the volume, though it never was specifically cited in the reviews, was the three pages which described Michael's defense before the Headmaster of St. James' of two younger boys who were threatened with dismissal because of an apparent homosexual attachment. Hearth and Home (London) observed primly that "what is a natural side-allusion when made in French, becomes a hinted nastiness in English." It felt that the book would prove 148 "wearisome to any but a student of neuropathy." C. C. Martindale, however, defends Michael: "Unhealthy? For my part, I should have thought Michael, with his home-training or lack of it, and his school environment, was a singularly 1460ctober, 1913, p. 472. ^4^See Faith Compton Mackenzie, As Much As I Dare, pp. 239-241. September 4, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). 225 149 clean-minded boy." The experiment in the publication of Sinister Street seemed destined for failure when some fourteen months passed before the second volume appeared. In the meantime, war had broken out, and a reader might be forgiven for a certain impatience with a leisurely account of Oxford life and romantic London adventure. The new volume, moreover, began at page 499, a method of numbering which emphasised that it was the second volume of a single novel and not a sequel. Clement Shorter in The Sphere commented that the trouble is that one forgets all about the contents of the first volume when one is sitting down to read the second.^ 0 With these handicaps, it is not surprising that somewhat less attention was paid to the second volume than to the first: there were fewer reviews and less space devoted to them.^^^ Holbrook Jackson in his review of the completed 149 "Psychology in the Concrete," p. 677. Literary Letter," p. 110. 1ST There are 55 reviews of the second volume which appeared in British newspapers and magazines as included in Mackenzie Scrapbook No. 24. This is in contrast to the 69 reviews of the first volume. Only 35 newspapers or magazines of the 69 who reviewed the first volume reviewed the second. Some sources did not review the first volume 226 work for T- P.'s Weekly called Sinister Street "a prose epic of adolescence.” He said that "from whatever point of view you regard it, you must see that it is a master- 152 piece." While the Oxford section was generally approved, there were criticisms of excessive detail and lack of selec tivity. There was also considerable adverse comment on Michael as a characterization. Some disliked the last section with Michael's descent to the underworld. Ladies' Field (London) found it "nauseating" (December 26, 1914 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]), and The Daily Graphic but waited for the appearance of the completed work, such as The New Statesman. T. P.'s Weekly, and The Sphere. About half of the 35 sources who reviewed both volumes kept the same general judgment of the second volume as they had expressed for the first. The remainder were almost equally divided between those who found the second volume better than the first and those who found it worse. The reviews with any critical significance are listed in the biblio graphy . ^■■^November 21, 1914 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). H I The Daily Telegraph felt that "His character has evaporated. . ." (November 20, 1914 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). The Times Literary Supplement thought that Michael had not developed "a definite character” (Novem ber 12, 1914, p. 506, col. 1). To The Outlook. Michael became "common" (November 14, 1914 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]), and to The Observer he is a "bore," not worth all the bother (November 15, 1914 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). 227 thought It objectionable but admitted it had "the stamp of truth" (January 1, 1915 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). John Freeman said: A Guide to Prostitution could add little to the in formation of Sinister Street: the dress, the habitation, even the finances of those who have "gone gay," are meticulously recorded. “ 4 H. T., writing in The Month (London), cautioned: "Sinister Street. volume two, is not a book which Michael Fane him self, which any clean-minded young man . . . would want his sister to read."^"* Whatever difficulties Sinister Street encountered in its English publication were compounded in its American. Carnival had been a success in the Unite<f States, and Sinister Street could expect a favorable hearing. But the publisher, D. Appleton & Company, displayed considerable ineptitude in bringing out the book. It changed the title of the first volume to Youth * s Encounter. and failed to explain that this was the first of two volumes of a single novel. Volume two was issued as Sinister Street, so there was the anomaly of two volumes of the same novel with 154 English Portraits and Essays (London, 1924), p. 209. 155,,A Modem Don Quixote," May, 1915, p. 531. 228 separate titles and nothing to indicate the relationship of the two volumes. No wonder that reviewers were con fused. The American reviews of Youth's Encounter were, as a rule, shorter than the English, and therefore less de tailed. As a group they were somewhat more favorable than 156 the English, and there was less objection to the length. Carl T. Robertson in The Cleveland Plain Dealer called it "the finest book of the year" (November 8, 1913 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). The Pittsburg Post thought that it had "precious little plot," but was a "masterly study" (no date [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). But there was some demurrer. It was too specialized in subject matter and too English for some. As the New York Globe observed, ". . . English school life with its jargon and conven tions will probably always be a bit baffling to American readers" (no date [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). There was, however, almost no objection to the first volume on the score of morality. Only the Chicago Tribune believed it "too much for the ordinary wholesome *^A conclusion based on the 55 reviews or notices in the Mackenzie Scrapbook No. 24. The reviews with any critical significance are listed in the bibliography. 229 reader.”*- ^ Some reviewers saw in Youth*s Encounter an attack upon the English educational system. Augusta Carr in the Chicago Post said: Besides being the history of a boy, Mr. Mackenzie*s book is an indictment of nineteenth century methods of edu cation, an exposure of the results of nineteenth century prudery and cowardice, and, if you want to see it there, a plea for co-education. (September 3, 1913 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]) Similarly, L. M. Field in The New York Times Saturday Review observed of the English schools: . . . apparently they have improved very little since Huxley wrote his scathing arraignment. Teaching certain required subjects so that examinations may be passed would seem to be their raison d*etre; not education. Michael, save for what he had taught himself by observa tion and the reading of such books as he chanced to hear mentioned--they were not very many--must have been a decidedly ignorant youth when he went to Oxford. (XVIII [October 26, 1913], 574) The second volume, with its title of Sinister Street, was reviewed not as widely as the first, and somewhat less 157 November 15, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). The Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal remarked: "His [Michael's] problems of childhood are those of the scions of aristocracy with the exception that a mystery of parentage gives a dubious air to his relations with his juvenile associates. This mystery of parentage is finally cleared up by a rather tawdy [sic] revelation of ille gitimacy" (no date [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]). 230 I C O favorably. The Oxford section was, understandably, less well regarded than it was In England. As F. T. Cooper remarked, it was "too British, too local, to be altogether 159 easy and congenial reading.” Argus (New York) agreed: To American readers this part of the story . . . grows monotonous, and we cannot help thinking that even most English readers will grow tired of so many petty details of university life, the peculiar customs of the students and their rather small affairs. (January 3, 1915 [clip ping from Scrapbook No. 24]) The reviewer of The New York Press confessed that he had not read the first volume. Yet he managed to draw a com placent lesson from the second: Out of this mass of dreary, dull realism and intro spection we can pluck one only fact worth recording in its favor as a literary production. And that is it serves as another milestone in the slow but sure de generacy of contemporary British fiction. (April 1, 1915 [clipping from Scrapbook No. 24]) Despite such adverse opinion, with Sinister Street Mackenzie secured his position as one of the most success ful and talented of the younger novelists. Neither the 158 This appraisal is based upon 34 reviews in Mac kenzie Scrapbook No. 24 and 4 additional reviews which I have discovered. The reviews with any critical signifi cance are listed in the bibliography. 159^6 Bookman (New York), XL (February 15, 1915), 676-677. 231 onslaught of war nor the method of publication impaired its popularity as a best-seller. The Evening Standard said of Mackenzie, "He has passed the critical stage, and whatever happens now nothing can deprive him of the honour of being the author of Sinister Street.Admiration contended with critical caution in the evaluation of Ford Madox Hueffer, who wrote in The Outlook: . . . possibly Sinister Street is a work of real genius-- one of those books that really exist otherwise than as the decorations of a publishing season--along with L*Education Sentimentale, Fathers and Children, Heart of Darkness, and The Purple Land. One is too cautious--or with all the desire to be generous in the world, too ungenerous--to say anything like that, dogmatically, of a quite young writer. But I shouldn't wonder. (No date [clipping in Scrapbook No. 24]) Although, as we have seen, there was much about the book that met with critical disapproval, its impact and influ ence were widespread. It may not have "started a new school in English fiction," as Sheila Kaye-Smith con- 161 tended, but it did significantly contribute to the modern vogue of the Bildungsroman. It particularly fos tered a spate of novels depicting school and college life, ^^September 1, 1913 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 24). ^■^^"Compton Mackenzie and His Work," p. 392. 232 both in England and the United States.1^ During the 1920's the critical reputation of Sinister Street plummeted. The younger critics especially were in reaction to the pre-war world and all its works. Sinister Street was disturbingly accurate in depicting the atmo sphere of the pre-1914 generation. And in its values and manners it represented a past that many wished to see buried forever. Douglas Goldring in Reputations was per haps the most strenuous of the young critics in his repudi ation of Michael Fane and all that he stood for (see p. 192 of the text). Cyril Connolly, also, attacks the book, though confessing his imitations of "the Sinister Street manner" at school and college. Philip Guedalla urbanely assigned Mackenzie to the past, and spoke of Sinister Street as "the most abiding relic of Mr. Mackenzie’s in dustry. Hostility gave way in the 1930's to critical indifference, though the book remained in print until Ivor Brown's Years of Plenty (1915) was the first of these novels in England. A survey of these Oxford novels is given in Proctor, The English University Novel. Chapter IX. Enemies of Promise, rev. ed. (London, 1949), pp. 32, 237. ^^A Gallery (London, 1924), p. 176. 233 shortly before World War II, "still selling at its original price at least 1,000 copies a year" (Sinister Street. p. xi). It became relegated to the literature of youth, and it was so recommended to the young by Peter Quennell in 1937: "Great novel" Sinister Street is not; but it is a book admirably suited to the consumption of an adolescent reader, which, though it may start him off on numerous false trails . . . also leads to the investigation of profitable by-paths. It promotes in the mind a salutary turmoil; and at a certain age what is important is not to read the right books, but to read books by which the imagination is moved and stimulated. ^5 After the Second World War, in 1949, Sinister Street reappeared in a new edition published by Macdonald & Com pany. It attracted new reviews, and was generally well received. L. A. G. Strong in The Spectator said: "Sinister Street, after more than thirty years, confirms all I have ever felt about it. It is a classic."'*'^ There were attempts to see the book in the context of its own age. Thus Raymond Mortimer appraises it in The Sunday Times: The book now seems the culmination of an old manner rather than the first-fruits of a new one. It offers ^^A review of The East Wind of Love. The New States man and Nation, XIII (January 16, 1937), 8 8. 166"Books and Writers," CLXXXVII (September 14, 1951), 336. 234 no hint that I can see of the changes imminent in litera ture. ... He has broken, it is true, from the prevalent naturalism of Bennett and Galsworthy, but his flight is backwards. His vision as well as his style is derived from Pater and Wilde. (September 4, 1949 [clipping from Scrapbook No. 53]) The book now becomes praised as "a valuable contribution to 167 the social history of the period." John Betjeman says that "the atmosphere of pre-1914 England which it conveys 168 has never been bettered." Frank Swinnerton remarks that it is "an important document as well as a romance": ". . . Sinister Street is essential reading as the partial portrait of an age. It could not have been written after the first World War."^^ Literary historians of the English novel do not, in general, have much to say of the work of Mackenzie. Walter Allen sums up the consensus by calling Sinister Street his "best novel. David Daiches says: "Sinister Street remains Compton Mackenzie*s most 167 Francis Fytton, "Compton Mackenzie: Romance versus Realism," The Catholic World. CLXXXII (February 1956), 361. 1 6f t The Foreword of The Altar Steps. Macdonald ed. (London, 1956), p. vii. ^**9Background with Chorus (London, 1956), p. 166. 170The English Novel, Penguin ed. (London, 1958), p. 342. 235 serious work, with its brilliant surface colour and psy chological awareness.M 171 Although Sinister Street has its longueurs. it remains a fascinating study of youth. I believe it to be a more complex picture of youthful development than is generally acknowledged. The romantic elements of Mackenzie's early style are now out of fashion, but much of what he says is still decidedly relevant. For Sinister Street is not merely a portrait of a vanished era. Its criticism of educational methods and its plea for individual freedom and sound humanistic values have importance for our day. Per haps the whirligig of time will lead new readers to explore the meanings in this complex novel. 171rhe Present Age: After 1920 (London, 1958), p. 269. CHAPTER IV GUY AND PAULINE (1915): AN IDYLLIC ROMANCE The second volume of Sinister Street was completed, as we have seen, during the first months of World War I. Compton Mackenzie was impatiently trying to get a commis sion while he was writing the last three hundred pages. But he did not have any success. A soldier friend at the War Office told him: "Go back to your work. You'll be doing more good by keeping us cheerful with your novels. We really do not want married subalterns of thirty-one. At the end of October, during the battle for Ypres, Macken zie and his wife returned to their home on Capri. Although he lamented a fate which kept him from the excitement of war, by the end of the year he had reconciled himself, at least for the moment, to remaining on the sidelines. The immediate result of this decision was a new novel. ^Compton Mackenzie, Gallipoli Memories (London, 1929), p. 2. 236 237 2 Guv and Pauline was begun on New Year's Eve, 1914- Mac kenzie applied himself steadily to work, which was inter rupted only by severe attacks of sciatica. By April 4, 1915, the end of the novel was in sight. But on that day an important letter from Orlo Williams, an old friend, arrived. Williams was a cipher officer on the staff of Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. Sir Ian had been reading the second volume of Sinister Street. When Williams said that he knew the author, who wanted very much to get into service, Sir Ian set the wheels in motion to secure Mackenzie a lieutenancy in the Royal Marines and to get him attached to his staff. Amid the turmoil of being gazetted and obtaining transportation to Gallipoli, Mackenzie finished the last 125 pages of Guy and Pauline on April 30.^ There is an amusing incongruity between the subject matter of Guy and Pauline and the circumstances under which it was written. This love idyll set in the green, flowery world of Oxfordshire is remote in spirit as well as in time O Faith Compton Mackenzie, As Much As I Dare (London, 1938), p. 254. ^Mackenzie, Gallipoli Memories, p. 11. 238 from the strenuous realities of the War. It has no points of contact with the present, except for its dedication to Sir Ian Hamilton and his general staff. It seems almost as though Mackenzie had chosen the subject deliberately for its contrast with the events which, except for his work, were absorbing his attention. Yet the relationship of Guy and Pauline to Sinister Street as one of the planned Theatre of Youth novels is clear and carefully detailed.^ The central male character of Guy and Pauline is Guy Hazle- wood, the Balliol poet, who took part in the action of the second volume of Sinister Street. Guyfs story was already adumbrated in Sinister Street. Indeed there are five episodes in Sinister Street which are repeated in Guy and Pauline, though now from the point of view of Guy or Pauline rather than of Michael. Moreover, Book IV of Sinister Street, entitled "Romantic Education," resembles ^It likewise connects with Carnival. Not only does Guy with Michael Fane visit Maurice Avery at his studio in Westminster, but later when Guy is in Italy he receives a letter from Maurice: "Last night I went to the Orient Ballet and met a perfectly delightful girl. If there is such a thing as love at first sight, I am in love. Jenny Pearl she is called"--Compton Mackenzie, Guy and Pauline (London, 1952), p. 326. Subsequent references to the novel will be to this edition published by Macdonald & Co. Ltd. 239 Guv and Pauline. In the former, Michael descends into the London underworld to complete his "romantic education," just as Guy in the latter completes his in a rural retreat outside Oxford. Both concentrate on the failure of a love affair as a stage of maturation before commitment to the active life. Guy and Pauline has its origin in an incident which occurs in Sinister Street (Book III, chap. XIII). In a chapter called "Flashers Mead" we are told how Michael and Guy on a cycling trip out of Oxford come to the Cots- wold village of Wychford. There Guy discovers the wonder ful old house of Plashers Mead with the river Greenrush winding around it. We learn that he rents it for a year, with the intention of devoting himself to the writing of poetry. With the help of Michael, he moves into the house in the middle of September. Michael then returns to Oxford for his fourth year. The story of Guy and Pauline begins as Guy takes Michael to the train station at Shipcot to see him off, and then returns to spend the first night in his new home. That same evening on a stroll along the Greenrush he meets the three daughters of the Wychford rector Mr. Grey-- Monica, Margaret, and Pauline. As the autumn proceeds, 240 Guy becomes much interested in the girls, but is uncertain as to which one he likes most. Monica is rather too austere, and, he discovers, Margaret is engaged to a young engineer in the East. Pauline is a fey, innocently im pulsive creature of nineteen. The father is an eccentric who lives only for his flower garden. And the mother is charmingly ineffectual, after the fashion of Mrs. Fane. By winter Guy is suffering keenly the pangs of un declared love for Pauline. Before spring, however, he has declared his affection and found that it is returned. During the spring and summer their love ripens, and it is a time of almost unalloyed happiness. With their formal engagement, they spend an increasing amount of time in each other's company. On clear days they walk out into the woods and fields or glide down the branching streams in Guy's canoe. The pastoral idyll seems threatened only by Guy’s father, a school master, who disapproves of Guy’s taking the house and would like him to become an assistant at the school. Mr. Hazlewood contributed 150 pounds to the experiment of the house, but at the end of the year refuses to contribute any more money. He urges Guy to make up his mind about the future. Guy stubbornly decides 241 to continue on at Plashers Mead on his own resources of 150 pounds a year. Soon he is in financial difficulties and has to sell most of his library to pay pressing debts. The hope of an early marriage fades, and Guy in his exas- peration becomes more demanding of Pauline. Soon she is stealing out of the house to meet him for midnight walks or to go canoeing on the streams. The marriage seems finally to depend upon the publica tion and success of his poems. He works industriously, and, having enough poems for a small volume, sends them off to a publisher. Although the publisher is interested, Guy must put up some of his own money to meet the cost of publication. But Guy has to pay some unexpected bills, and is unable to provide the advance required. In addition, tension arises between the lovers over the matter of reli gion. Guy is not a believer, and when he learns that Pauline has discussed their relationship with an Anglican clergyman in confession he quarrels with her. Mr. Grey, at this point, advances the money to have the poems pub lished. Guy, however, has grown dissatisfied with the poems, and permits them to be published only anonymously. In the spring Guy and Pauline seek to relieve the tension developing between them by a period of separation. 242 Pauline goes on a vacation to Scarborough with a spinster friend, Miss Vemey. Michael Fane comes down to Plashers Mead during the period he promised to wait before marrying Lily and stays on into June. When Pauline returns, there is additional friction between the lovers over the presence of Michael, whom Pauline dislikes. Guy goes up to London with Michael to meet Lily, and it is then that Michael learns that Lily has proved faithless. On his return to Plashers Mead, Guy takes Pauline on a night’s canoeing. The tensions and fears which haunt both suddenly generate a quarrel. Pauline grows hysterical and throws herself into the mill pond, from which Guy rescues her. Though Pauline is overcome with remorse, Guy realizes that he must get away and put his affairs in order. He goes up to London and enjoys visiting his college friends. In town, also, he gains a new perspective on his life during the past two years. He feels that he is conmitted to marriage, but he no longer desires it as he had earlier. When Margaret's fiance returns from India to marry her, Guy goes down to Wychford for the wedding. There Guy announces his intention of working at journalism in London to prepare for his own marriage. Pauline, however, senses from his 243 manner that he no longer loves her as he once did. Dis traught, she writes him a short letter breaking the engage ment. Guy leaves at once, and accepts a position in Macedonia. On his way there he meets in Rome Michael Fane, who is going to the'Benedictine monastery at Cava. Pauline remains sadly at home to dream of what might have been. As with Sinister Street, the sources of Guv and Pauline are to be found in Mackenzie's own experiences. But, even more clearly than in Sinister Street, the end result is a novel and not autobiography. In general, Mackenzie seems to be drawing upon a number of separate experiences both from his Oxford days and from the period after he went down from Oxford. Of central importance is the acquisition in 1904 of the fine old Tudor house of Lady Ham in Burford--the original of Plashers Mead in fictional Wychford--by Mackenzie and a college friend, Christopher Stone. In marked contrast, however, to the spell of tranquil retirement which the novel celebrates was the busy social life which characterized the tenancy ^This account of Mackenzie's life at this period is taken basically from his wife's book, As Much As I Dare. chapter 5, except as noted. 244 of the two friends.** Yet during this period, as well as in 1905 after his marriage to Faith Stone when they lived at Lady Ham for a time, Mackenzie, like Guy, was working on a volume of poems and, apparently, some plays.^ If Lady Ham and the country around Burford provided the physical setting for Guv and Pauline, the love affair in the book was inspired by what Mackenzie has called "his first g serious love affair." In addition, the novel reflects Mackenzie's delight in the country and his extensive knowl- g edge of floriculture. Miss Elizabeth Cheatle, who lived next door to Lady Ham as a young girl, told me in conversation at Burford on August 13, 1961, that during Mackenzie's residence there seemed to be a house party always in progress. ^For an account of work on hand during this period see the letter to his father quoted by Faith Mackenzie, p. 183. O So in conversation with me on June 19, 1961. He said that he had presented in the book an account of his first serious love affair, which occurred at Oxford with the daughter of a college provost. Mackenzie remarked that the course of the attachment, though not the actual circum stances, is depicted realistically in the novel. Q Mackenzie has always been an enthusiastic and sue - cessful gardener. While he was sending his first novel, The Passionate Elopement, around to publishers, he "decided that literature was not to be depended upon, and that gar dening could be more profitable" (Faith Mackenzie, p. 207). Accordingly, he devoted himself to growing bulbs for 245 Guv and Pauline as a novel offers considerable con trast to Sinister Street. ^ It is, for example, simpler in theme and more concentrated in setting and plot. Essen tially it is the account of the waxing and the waning of a love affair. Mackenzie depicts with an accurate psycho logical realism--though, at times, in a heightened, con sciously poetic style--the charmed, magic quality of a first romantic love and its foredestined destruction by other demands and realities of existence. Guy and Pauline focuses more steadily on the beauty and the brevity of young love than any other of Mackenzie's three previous books--though this theme is found in each. As John Raymond has observed, ". . .no one can describe first love like Mackenzie. He is a connoisseur of white nights, a master profit. But with the success of the novel, gardening became once again an avocation rather than a business ven ture. ^ Punch (London) said: ”... Guy and Pauline is not in the least the kind of book I was prepared to find it. It reveals Mr. Mackenzie in a quite new manner, as far re moved from the passionate vitality of Carnival as from the realism, perhaps a little aggressive of Sinister Street. Here is miniature painting, more exquisite and delicate in workmanship, devoted entirely to the portrayal of an epi sode in the lives of two persons"--CXLIX (September 22, 1915), 259. 246 of the romantic inarticulate."^^ Yet Mackenzie, in these early novels, never lets us forget that this love is not the stuff that lasts. In Guy and Pauline, as also in the other novels, the failure of love seems due essentially to an incompatibility of background and aspiration between the lovers. Thus Pauline cannot be translated out of the narrow if enchanting world of Wychford into the wider world of action and achievement which is Guy's destiny. From the man's point of view, as Mackenzie presents it in this novel and in Sinister Street, romantic first love is not just an idyll salvaged out of time. It is a test on the threshold of maturity, a danger to be run, a spell to be broken. The underlying assumption is the familiar one that love is everything to a woman, though it is only one aspect of a man's life. Aspiration is thus brought into 12 conflict with love. Man needs an arena in which to act ^"Books in General," The New Statesman and Nation (London), XLVIII (December 25, 1954), 860. 12 So The Daily Telegraph (London) compares Guy and Pauline to Meredith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: "Like George Meredith, Mr. Mackenzie has tried to draw a very young man at that difficult age when a first love is struggling with a dawning ambition. . . (October 13, 1915 [a clipping in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks, No. 30]). Here after references to the Scrapbooks will merely state Scrapbook and give the appropriate volume number. 247 and a varied experience by which to grow, yet woman would confine him to the fireside. It is the ambivalence of a first passionate love--both as incomparable enchantment and subtle menace--which Mackenzie depicts in Guv and Pauline. It is perhaps understandable that critics and re viewers have generally been more impressed by the idyllic or sentimental qualities of the story than by Mackenzie's almost cynical recognition that for man love can be a danger. The attempt to capture the mood of youthful love and the beauty of Oxfordshire scenery obscures the actual implications of the story. Some were impressed by the sentimental and conventional qualities of the love inter- 13 i /■ est. Others were disturbed by the unhappy ending. 13 The Ladies1 Field (London) called it "a simple but poignant idyll of the heart” (October 16, 1915, p. 318). To The Liverpool Courier. "The story is a Victorian romance in a Georgian setting” (October 21, 1915 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 30]). The Outlook (London) grumbled, "Per haps this is the most sentimental book that was ever writ ten” (October 4, 1915 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 30]). ^ Newsagent (London), for example, said that it was "a very charming love story, but one that does not end very satisfactory” (September 24, 1915 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 30]). The Standard (London) felt that Mackenzie "might have safely married his lovers” (September 15, 1915 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 30]). 248 Fewer were those who more nearly perceived Mackenzie's intent. The Birmingham Gazette said: The charm and selfishness of romantic love, its radiant rapture while it lasts and its poor wearing stuff for the practical stress of life, is the theme of Mr. Comp ton Mackenzie's new novel. . . .15 The Westminster Gazette (London) observed: "His [Macken zie* s] theme is erotic biliousness; the temptation, the delight and the reaction, and it is admirably handled. . . ."16 e. S. S. in The New Republic (New York) puts in Mackenzie's mouth the following words: "Plashers Mead" [the American title] an idyll? Why, my whole purpose was to damn the idyllic, to show the self-destructive quality of a romance that feeds too long and too exclusively on mere glows and trances.1? Still other reviewers were quick to point out the salutary moral lesson implied by the action of the novel. Gerald Gould said that . . . one might suppose Guy and Pauline was intended to teach the dangers of a long engagement between two high- strung young people with nothing in the world to do but make love to each other. ® ^September 24, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^September 24, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 17V (December 4, 1915), 129. The American edition was published under the title Plashers Mead. ^ The New Statesman, V (September 18, 1915), 570. 249 Everyman (London) counseled: "It is a book that might be read with advantage by those reckless young people who little understand the weary futility of long, vague en- IQ gagements." The Huddersfield Examiner and West Riding Reporter, however, protested against such moral seeking: The book may be taken by those who seek a moral in their fiction as a warning against long engagements; it may equally well be ££ken as a warning against falling in love at all. ® The plot situation of Guv and Pauline was clearly out" lined in Sinister Street. There are, as I have mentioned, five episodes in Sinister Street which reappear in Guy and Pauline, but from the point of view either of Guy or of o -I Pauline. Moreover, much of the mood and theme of the ^October 29, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^October 2, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 21 The first three episodes are seen through the con sciousness of Guy; the fourth is conveyed through that of Pauline; and the fifth is divided between the two. The five episodes with the parallel pages for each novel is as follows (the references to Sinister Street in this chapter will be to the Macdonald edition [London, 1949]): (I) The opening scene of Guv and Pauline shows Guy seeing Michael off on the train from Shipcot (Guy and Pauline, p. 1 and Sinister Street, p. 601). (II) Guy visits Michael at Oxford (Guy and Pauline, pp. 122-128 and Sinister Street. pp. 617-619). (Ill) Guy discovers that Michael has been to Plashers Mead and has written an inscription on the window (Guv and Pauline, p. 148 and Sinister Street, p. 647). (IV) Pauline meets Michael at Plashers Mead 250 novel was established in Sinister Street. Thus Michael warns Guy of the spell which living at Plashers Mead will cast on him: Wychford is a place of dreams. You'll find that. You'll live on and on at Plashers Mead until everything about you turns into the sort of radiant unreality we've seen to-night. (Sinister Street, p. 601) Although Michael does not regard Guy's difficulties with Pauline as complex as his own with Lily, he yet has to con fess that ". . .it was impossible not to feel that over Plashers Mead brooded a sense of tragedy" (Sinister Street, pp. 768-769). And Maurice Avery, when he meets Guy, who has come up from Wychford with Michael to see Lily, speaks Guy's own thought when he says of London: "This is where you ought to be, if you want to write. . . . It's ridicu lous for you to bury yourself in the country. You'll (Guy and Pauline, pp. 229-231 and Sinister Street, pp. 768 769). (V) Guy and Michael visit at Plashers Mead, and Guy accompanies Michael to London to meet Lily Had on (Guy and Pauline, pp. 294-303 and Sinister Street, pp. 834-843). The only discordancy between episodes in the two books occurs in episode II. In Sinister Street Michael proposes that Guy found a lay monastery at Plashers Mead for artists. In Guy and Pauline Michael opposes the scheme, which is attributed to Guy. The change is apparently moti vated by the desire to leave Guy no way out of his finan cial difficulties. If Michael had been interested in such a plan, he would have had the money to make Plashers Mead such a retreat. 251 expire of stagnation" (Sinister Street, p. 843). In contrast to Sinister Street or Carnival. there is not much emphasis upon plot incident in Guv and Pauline. Very little happens, as far as external action is con cerned, during the two years which the story encompasses. The Bystander (London) complained that no one in the novel ever did "anything more exciting than going out on the oo river when the others were in their bysies." ^ The story, moreover, is about a single situation: the growth and de cline of a love affair. The Oxford Chronicle described the novel as a story of few personages and scanty incident; after the panoramic second volume of "Sinister Street," with its kaleidoscopic pictures of Oxford life and then its in cursion into the lurid half-world of London . . . this tale of Ferdinand and Miranda in an old Cotswold town seems at first narrow, even a little i n s i p i d .^3 The Saturday Review Literary Supplement (London) thought the book was "thin, woefully thin."^ Some reviewers, ^October 27, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^"Ferdinand and Miranda," September 24, 1915 (clip ping in Scrapbook No. 30). 24 CXX (October 16, 1915), viii. 252 25 indeed, denied that it had a definite plot. More accurately, R. Ellis Roberts has observed that Guy and Pauline is not a novel of action. Its real plot is, indeed, the quarrel between meditation and action, between Guy— all impulse, only occasionally choked by sentiment--and Pauline who wishes to be rather than to do. 6 The criticism made of the lack of plot incident in Guy and Pauline fails to take into consideration the artistic objective and technique of the book. Essentially the novel is a "study" of the relationship of two people, of two lovers. The interest resides primarily not in what is done but in the modifications produced in each subjec tively by their emotions and the drama of their inter relationship. The drama or the "action" is thus largely internal and subjective. It is the depiction of a love affair through the consciousness of the two lovers. But love, as all lovers know, is invariably inarticulate. 25 Gerald Gould, for example, said of the book, "There is no plot" (The New Statesman, p. 570). The Sphere (London) commented that "there is not a suggestion of plot or any development of story" (October 9, 1915 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 30]). 26 "Compton Mackenzie," The Manchester Guardian, Febru ary 13, 1925 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 8). 253 It is, at times, an aura of happiness which transfigures commonplace realities. And it is, also, a matter of tremors, of discords and tensions. To communicate success fully this private world of feeling, an ’ ’ objective cor relative” is desirable. Mackenzie finds such a correlative in the use of external nature--its seasons and its variable weathers--to reflect the varying moods and stages of a love affair. Thus, on the one hand, the pageant of the year's seasons becomes the external index of the progress of the affair, which likewise proves cyclic. Love develops amid hesitations during that first autumn and winter, but with the coming of spring the lovers finally confess their love. Their new-found happiness and delight are perfectly expressed by the burgeoning spring and the dream-like sunnier which ensue. The second autumn, however, contains premonitions of their love's decline as well as that of the year's: The sad stillness of the year's surrender to decline admonished them to garner these hours, making a ghost even of the sun as if to warn them of the fleeting world, the covetous and furtive world. (Guy and Pauline, p. 203) That autumn sees the inauspicious visit of Guy's father to Plashers Mead. Also, when there is censure of Guy and 254 Pauline's visit to the Abbey ruins, Guy's alienation from Pauline's family begins. As a further harbinger of change, that November Guy and Pauline meet secretly at night for the first time. The following winter, with its cold and its melancholy rains, ushers in the tensions and conflicts which further threaten their love. Pauline increasingly grows jealous of Guy's associations with the world outside Wychford. Guy himself is in serious financial straits. Then Guy's confessed lack of religious belief becomes an uneasy shadow between them. "Pauline was aware of a wild effort to prepare for sorrow whether near at hand or still far off she did not know, but she seemed to hear it like a wind rising at sunset" (p. 260). The spring is a stormy one, and there is a "month of maddening East wind" (p. 265). Pauline droops in it, and Guy in despair and frustration seems intent on destroying their love. Summer brings back moments of happiness, but now too few and not unalloyed. By the beginning of the third autumn, all is at an end and the lovers have gone their separate ways. Mackenzie uses nature, on the other hand, to help ex press a mood or a feeling. Nature accordingly becomes the external symbol of an internal state. Guy and Pauline, 255 for example, take refuge in the ruins of Wychford Abbey despite Pauline's fears of the place. Her sisters see her there sitting on Guy's lap. Pauline is alarmed and dis tressed by the incident. As she and Guy walk home, the passion and violence of October winds express her own inner turbulence and confusion: Guy divined at once that she did not want to overtake her sisters, and he kept her under the trees, where they watched each assault of the wind tearing at the little foliage that still remained. He guided her tenderly away from the sight of the house; and they walked along the broad path down through the shrubbery, meeting a rout of brown and red and yellow leaves that swept by them. She clung to Guy's arm as if this urgent and tumultuous wind had the power to sweep her into the confusion: such an affraying journey was life beginning to seem. This ghastly elation of the October weather would not allow her breath to examine the per plexity in which she had involved herself. She felt that if the wind blew any louder, she would have to scream out in defiance of its violence or else surrender miserably and be whirled into oblivion. A brown oak- leaf had escaped from the perishable host and was pal pitating in a fold of her sleeve like a hunted creature; but when Pauline would have rescued it at the same moment a gust came roaring up the walk under the hissing trees, and the driven leaf was tom from its refuge and flung high into the air to join the myriads in their giddy riot of death. (Guy and Pauline, pp. 208-209) In this passage, indeed, the brown oakleaf which escapes from Pauline seems to symbolize her as yet unacknowledged fears about Guy. By the end of that winter Pauline's apprehensions coalesce in a premonitory dream, which is 256 reminiscent of the earlier experience with the leaf: Arspeck in that void she saw Guy spinning away from her, and it seemed that unless she prayed he would be spun irremediably out of her consciousness. It seemed that the fierceness of her prayer was like the fierceness of a flame that was granted the power to sustain him, for when sometimes the tongues of fire languished Guy would sink so far that only by summoning fresh forces from the light beyond could she bring him back. Gradually, how ever, her power was waning and with whatever desperate force she prayed he could never be brought back to the point from which he had last slipped. He was spinning away into a horror of blackness. (Guy and Pauline, p. 258) The ending of Guy and Pauline was criticised for several reasons.^ Some reviewers felt that the unhappy ending was inappropriate to the idyllic mood of the novel as a whole. The Evening Standard (London), for example, observed: "Mr. Compton Mackenzie has made himself a cobweb glittering with dewdrops and then put his foot through 28 it." Other reviewers thought the ending was inconclusive. 27 The Glasgow News, indeed, remarked that ". . . the end is unsatisfactory from every point of view" (October 28, 1915 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 30]). ^September 27, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). Punch asserted that ". . . not till the end does it reveal itself as tragedy" (September 22, 1915, p. 259). J. M. also called the story tragic: "For a tragedy it is, one of those quiet tragedies in which nobody dies, nobody is to blame, and only a dream is murdered"--"Compton Mackenzie," The Living Age (Boston), CCLXXXVIII (January 29, 1916), 287. 257 The Aberdeen Free Press wondered if the love affair was really at an end.^ The Times Literary Supplement (London) complained not that the ending was unnatural but that it was depressing because the author does not tell why Guy's 30 love deteriorated. The Atlanta (Georgia) Journal also emphasized the lack of solution to the problems raised by 31 the failure of the love affair. Actually, however, there is no indefiniteness about the ending. Mackenzie intends the love affair to be over, for the meaning of the book is that this love is a brief though beautiful interval that by its nature cannot endure. There is finality in the last paragraph of the novel which pictures the abandoned Pauline: 29 September 27, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). "^September 16, 1915, p. 310, col. 2. 31 There is much in the book that is psychologically accurate; it is delicately written, with a sure touch, but there is that in us which seems to demand of an author, either from habit or our own natures, some solution for the problems which he presents or at least some opinion in the matter"--October 30, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). George N. Shuster finds the endings of all these early novels inconclusive: "There is no such thing as a solution in these novels: one must be content to read them as evi dence, and, taking their accuracy for granted, make up one's own mind"--"Compton Mackenzie's Novels," America (New York), XXVII (April 15, 1922), 617. 258 Her father of course would never speak of that broken engagement, and already she had made her mother promise never to speak of it again. Deep to her inmost heart only these familiar vales and streams and green meadows would speak of it for the rest of her life. (p. 328) * Pauline's fate has been foreshadowed by that of her own Miss Verney. Moreover, the failure of the love has been motivated, as we have seen, by Mackenzie's characterization of the lovers and their different aspirations. If the novel seems inconclusive, it is perhaps because Mackenzie ends each of these sequence novels on a note of change. One period of a life is over, and a new one is about to begin. The nature of that future, however, we may deduce only from what we have seen of the character or characters earlier. Many critics have condemned the so-called formless ness of Sinister Street. But, as J. M. remarked, "I don't think the severest critic could find any structural fault, any so-called 'formlessness' in 'Guy and Pauline.' . . The formal organization of the book is so symmetrical that one suspects Mackenzie may have had his critics in mind. The narrative spans an even two years, from a September to a September. The chapters themselves are organized also ~^The Living Age, p. 286. t . 259 according to a temporal scheme, for each is named for a season of the year. Each chapter is further subdivided into three sections, and each section has the name of the month during which its action occurs for its title. This pastoral-like effect, suggestive of The Shepherd*s Calen dar, is an extension of the chronicle method, already noted in Sinister Street, of marking the passing of time by reference to the months. In Guv and Pauline this method is objectified into a formal structural principle. It is especially appropriate that time should so be commemorated in the novel, for even more essentially than in The Pas- sionate Elopement time is the villain of this human drama. Love, like the year, has its own seasons, and the passing of the months heralds changes in the love relationship. Just as the seasons are cyclic in their movement, so is first love, says Mackenzie the realist. Spring and sunxner must eternally yield their delights to the painful austeri- . ties of autumn and winter. A further principle of structure for this symmetrical novel lies in Mackenzie's handling of the point of view. The story is told in the third-person, but the method is to alternate the point of view from Guy to Pauline each 260 succeeding month. Thus we see the affair presented through the consciousness of Guy one month, and through that of Pauline on the next. This alternating of the point of view is thematically most appropriate, for Mackenzie is present- ing not just ”a slice from the life of Guy Hazlewood," but is telling of a love affair--a relationship, in other words, between two people. The technique is particularly effective in the way it accentuates ironically significant points of contrast in the experience of the two lovers. There has been, however, little critical comment on the special handling of the point of view in the novel. The Westminster Gazette (London) described the method and called it "perfect," and J. M- approved of the way "the tale of love plays itself out, seen alternately through 3 S Guy’s mentality and through Pauline’s. . . . Just as Guy and Pauline does not rely upon plot inci dent for its appeal, so there is also a parallel limitation in the number of characters presented. It has fewer 33Truth (London), September 22, 1915 (clipping from Scrapbook No. 30). ^September 24, 1915 (clipping from Scrapbook No. 30). • ^ ~ * The Living Age, p. 287. 261 characters than any other of these early novels. Attention is concentrated upon the two principals. Guy was generally disliked as a character, and Pauline was widely admired. Interestingly enough, Guy was not regarded as the alter ego of the author, as Michael Fane had been. Guy in his com parative poverty, his poetizing, and his confessed atheism was sufficiently unlike Michael to forestall the charge that Mackenzie was writing autobiography in Guy and Pauline. If Michael Fane was really Compton Mackenzie then it was obvious that Guy Hazlewood could not be. Yet the fact that Mackenzie is drawing directly upon his own ex perience in Guy and Pauline is clear. Mention has already been made of the house in Burford and of Mackenzie's remark that the love affair depicted was in essence, if not in details, a real one. One might also cite the fact that Mackenzie's father, like Guy's, did not "approve of young men idling their time away writing poetry in a country house, with no apparent intention of earning an honest 36 living." The expressed purpose of taking Lady Ham was to have a retreat where Mackenzie could work at his ^^So Faith Compton Mackenzie sums up the father's attitude, p. 172. 262 writing. Despite the gay parties and company from Oxford, "the Magdalen poet," as his future wife has called him (p. 163), did manage to work. Christopher Stone wrote a reassuring letter from Burford to Mackenzie's mother. Designed, probably, to allay any misgivings about her son's activities, it conveys somewhat of the spirit of Plashers Mead: The utter peacefulness of the orchard, with the stream and the willows, the cool hall and the general sense of sunniness, and yet the knowledge that Monty [the family name for Mackenzie] was managing to work and to turn the inspiration of the place to its proper purpose, would have gladdened your heart. Mackenzie, however, does not fashion a self-portrait in Guy and Pauline any more than he did in Sinister Street. Guy's sentimental seriousness is remote from the gaiety and exuberant activity which have ever been the hall mark of Mackenzie himself. Indeed, Guy inamorata is quite other than Guy the Balliol sophisticate whom we met in Sinister Street: As he waited alone in the lamplit nursery, while Margaret and Pauline were dressing, he kissed Pauline in each faded picture stuck in those gay scrapbooks of Varese. Nor did he feel the least ashamed of himself, although 37 Quoted by Faith Compton Mackenzie, pp. 170-171. 263 at Oxford his cynicism had been the admiration even of Balliol, where there had been no one like him for tear ing sentiment into dishonoured rags. (Guy and Pauline, p. 99) The Westminster Gazette thought the change was deplorable: • . . in Sinister Street. [Guy] was a distinct and fascinating person; dragged into the light necessary for a full-length portrait, he becomes a repetition of Mr. Mackenzie's young man— inert, un-moral, emotional, almost a bore. . . . The Oxford Chronicle and Berks and Bucks Gazette, on the other hand, felt that Mackenzie had never created a charac ter "so intimately realised" as Guy Hazlewood. The re viewer went on to say that Guy is "a very human personifi cation of a not infrequent Oxford type which often with all its high ideals tends to futility.The Daily Chronicle (London) would seem to agree, and added that there is "a great family likeness" between Guy and Michael Fane.^® The Westminster Gazette found both Guy and Michael supreme egotists, and sighed, "All this creates a prejudice against Oxford.The New York Tribune. with a certain chauvinis tic complacency, described Guy as "An Oxford man, of course, OO September 24, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ■ ^ S e p t e m b e r 24, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^September 30, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^September 24, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 264 y a for it is thence that come all Mr. Mackenzie’s slackers.” Reviewers quite generally disliked Guy as a person. Gerald Gould asserted: "You have known the man throughout as selfish, idle, futile, invertebrate, egoistic to the verge of mania: but you learn at this late stage, with sur- / ^ prise, that he is a cad."^ The Evening News (London), likewise, objected to the type, though it did not question the accuracy of Mackenzie's portrait. It believed such a character should be treated only in the comic spirit: Guy is essentially funny; and Mr. Compton Mackenzie has treated him seriously. ... He thinks him and his doings and thoughts and his poems matters of moment and consequence.^ Truth took hope that Great events will exterminate that effete race of in tellectual youths who, for want of occupation and grit, waste their energy in manufacturing artificial experi ences to feed their own egotism. ^ The Evening Standard, on the other hand, observed: "Readers will hardly love him; but half-grudgingly, they will ^November 27, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^ The New Statesman, September 18, 1915, p. 570. ^"Pose and Poetry," no date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^September 22, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 265 1 understand. * Guy is not as fully developed a portrait as Mackenzie presented of Michael Fane in Sinister Street. We see him only with reference to his relationship with Pauline, com** pletely absorbed by the love affair. Although the portrait is narrow, it yet impresses as being psychologically exact. Guy is enchanted by the experience of a momentous first love, but Mackenzie suggests, perhaps tenuously, that Pauline could not be a part of the wider world of activity to which Guy is called by training and instinct. She is an interlude for him, and can be no more than that to his own peril. Mackenzie depicts with insight and skill the stages in the relationship. He shows, for example, Guy’s cruelty toward Pauline as a response to his doubts and uncertainties about the future: Partly to plunge himself into a reaction [from his fail ure to get his poems published] and partly to avoid and even to crush their spiritual divergence Guy always made love passionately to Pauline during these days. He was aware that she was terribly tried by this, but the knowl edge made him more selfishly passionate. A sort of brutality had entered into their relation which Guy hated, but to which in these circumstances that made him feverishly glad to wound her he allowed more liberty every day. The merely physical side of this struggle 46 September 27, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 266 between them was of course accentuated by the gag placed upon discussion. He would not give her the chance of saying why she feared his kisses, and he took an unfair advantage of the conviction that Pauline would never declare a reason until he demanded one. He was horribly conscious of abusing her love for him, and the more he was aware of that, the more brutal he showed himself until sometimes he used to wonder In dismay If at the back of his mind the Impulse to destroy his love alto gether had not been born. (Guy and Pauline, pp. 265- 266) In contrast to their view of Guy, reviewers, in general, liked Pauline. The Yorkshire Observer called her "one of the most real and radiant women of recent fic tion. Country Life (London) described the book as "the most vivid and understanding portrayal of a sensitive girl’s awakening to the responsibilities of womanhood that we have yet read."^® R. Ellis Roberts, in 1925, found Pauline the "one imaginatively invented girl" in these early novels: . . . only Pauline has in her that curious breath of inspiration which gives her a reality so vivid that the tragedy of her broken love becomes unbearably poignant. And in telling her story Mr. Mackenzie reaches heights of emotion on which he has never moved quite so cer tainly again. The tragi-comic scene in the canoe, which ends when Pauline throws herself into the river, has ^October 13, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^September 25, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 267 a real affinity with the grand extravagance that we associate with the B r o n t e s . Pauline at nineteen is a picture of girlhood in transition to womanhood under the impetus of a love affair. She is divided between her attachment to her home and family and the force of her passion for Guy. She wants Guy, but at the same time she wants all else to remain un changed. She does not change or grow significantly from the sufferings imposed by her love. Mackenzie, however, is interested only in her youthful experience; with her maturity he does not deal. As Mackenzie depicts her, she seems rather arbitrarily destined not to grow up. She cannot, therefore, be a fit life companion for Guy, the pride of Balliol. Guy early sees her as a briar rose, and as such not capable of being transplanted to another en vironment : "A briar rose she was whose petals seemed to fall at the touch of definition, a briar rose that was waving out of reach, even of thought” (p. 38). To Michael Fane she appears to be both a fairy's child and a wild rose (p. 230). She would not flourish amid new scenes, and Guy could not be happy remaining in the beautiful but ^"Compton Mackenzie," The Manchester Guardian. Febru ary 13, 1925 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 8). 268 narrow world of Wychford. "I only want to live for love," says Pauline (p. 141), but Guy cannot really be content with such an aim. So we watch, as S. P. B. Mais remarks, "the gradual diminution of passion, the gradual realisation on the part of each of them that they were insufficient for each other. . . ."50 To modern taste, Guy is perhaps the more successful characterization. His youthful sentimentality is realisti cally presented, though sympathetically rather than ironi cally. Pauline's elusive girlishness, however, is senti mentalized. For example, the pathetic quality of her experience is unnecessarily emphasized by her friendship with the spinster Miss Verney, who likewise lost a fiance because of money problems. Mackenzie, moreover, uses fore shadowing for sentimental effect when, after a quarrel with Guy, Pauline begs forgiveness and confesses, "I'm really a sort of young Miss Verney" (p. 244). It is perhaps equally a failure of taste to hint, as Mackenzie does, that Pauline remains unhappy for the rest of her life because of the failure of this youthful passion. In essentials •^From Shakespeare to 0. Henry: Studies in Literature (London, 1917), p. 152. 269 the story of Guy and Pauline is seen from a man's point of view. The subordinate characters of the novel are much less well drawn than is usual with Mackenzie. With the single exception of John Hazlewood, a vividly realized portrait, ' they remain one“dimensional "humours" characters— unreal and unconvincing. J. D. Beresford has observed that they are "endowed with the stock catch-phrases that are associ- 51 ated with Victorian farce." Each character is marked by some single eccentricity. Mr. Godbold, the carrier, is an incorrigible gossip. Miss Peasey, Guy's housekeeper, is deaf, and takes amiss whatever is said to her. Miss Verney, the spinster daughter of a naval officer, makes continual reference to the fact that her father was a sailor. The elder Greys themselves seem echoes of charac ters Mackenzie had used in earlier novels. The vicar, Mr. Grey, with his passion for flowers, is a more developed version of Old Tabrun of The Basket of Roses Inn in The Passionate Elopement. And Mrs. Grey in her vagueness and ineffectuality resembles Mrs. Fane in Sinister Street. ^"War and the Novelists," The Standard (London), October 9, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 270 Whereas Mackenzie's minor characters are usually bril liantly individualized, here they are types which suggest they did not represent real people or did not seriously engage the author's attention. The physical setting of Guy and Pauline is the region around the village of Burford in the heart of Oxfordshire. Mackenzie with obvious zest describes the landscape through the changing seasons of the year. The Standard commented: "The author knows and makes known the still enchantment of the Oxfordshire countryside and the babbling magic of its 52 waters." The Times Literary Supplement said: "Those who know the country it describes, who can identify [the actual places] . . .will find Mr. Mackenzie's account of them all 53 to be worthy of the originals." The descriptions of the natural scene were much prized by reviewers. The Aberdeen Daily Journal said: "The story itself is slight; the charm 5 A lies in the artistic setting."J The Athenaeum (London), likewise, observed: 52 September 15, 1915 (clipping from Scrapbook No. 30). ^September 16, 1915, p. 310, col. 2. ^September 21, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 271 Guy and Pauline is a book to enjoy, as one may enjoy the beauty of a perfect and restful landscape-'just such a landscape in fact as the author describes in its many aspects and moods. The story matters little.^5 Mackenzie's care in delineating the natural setting of his story does not usurp the human drama in the foreground, as some of the critical comment might suggest. The setting is thematically functional, as I have explained earlier. But there is some truth to charges of "interminable pas sages of cloying description."56 The fault, however, is largely one of manner rather than of matter. There is, at times, a soft sentimentality in the descriptions as Mac kenzie seeks too strenuously and obviously to convey atmosphere and mood: As they had promised themselves in Summer, they went on moonlit expeditions to gather mushrooms; and at the waning of the moon they rose early on many milkwhite dawns instead, when the mushrooms at such an hour were veritably the spoil of dew, gleaming in their baskets under veils of gossamer. On the serene mornings the sound of autumnal birdsong came to them out of misted trees. . . . There was in this plaintive music of robins and thrushes a regret for the days of Summer spent to gether that were now passed away, and yet a more robust 550ctober 2, 1915, p. 227. ^Edward shanks, "There Were Giants in Those Days," The Queen, September 10, 1921, p. 317. The heroine of Michael Arlen's The Green Hat (London, 1924) refers to the novel as "a garden catalogue" (p. 24). 272 melody might have affronted the wistful air of these milkwhite dawns. The frail notes of the birds hinted at silence beyond, and through the opalescent and transuming landscape Guy and Pauline floated in fancy once more down the young Thames to Ladingford. (Guv and Pauline, P. 203) The action of Guv and Pauline encompasses, as we have seen, exactly two years. Unlike the other novels of The Theatre of Youth group, there are no internal clues which would relate the setting in time to historic time. But because the action of the novel is carefully intermeshed with that of Sinister Street, reference to the historic - time sequence in the latter book does enable us to date the action in Guy and Pauline. Accordingly, we learn that the opening scene takes place in September, 1904, and the volume ends in September, 1906. The absence in the novel of any reference to historic time would seem to be deliber ate. Mackenzie intimates that the enchanted world of first love is the timeless world of subjective experience. The objective world of action and responsibilities exists only as a threat to the self-contained perfection of the time less moment. The realities of historic time would be an inharmonious intrusion, just as much as they would in the land of Thomas Rhymer, for on both worlds the spell of enchantment lies. 273 The style of Guv and Pauline resembles that of the three other early novels. In set descriptive passages, particularly in the first half of the book, Mackenzie writes a decorative, consciously poetic prose. The dia logue and the straight narrative are generally more simply and directly done than are the descriptive passages. Some reviewers appreciated the distinction of the style and overlooked occasional lapses of taste. Gerald Gould ad mired the style, although he found it cloying: Mr. Mackenzie's outstanding merit is the spontaneous, the easy, the fecund beauty of his style. He is in credibly, almost fantastically, rich in novel or delicate phrase. He often seems to convey atmosphere by drenching you with words about it, just as the atmosphere itself would drench you with its suggestiveness of texture and scent. . . . For such richness implies and entails occa sional dullness. you pine for austerity: you pant for economy.^ Other reviewers were less enthusiastic. The Aberdeen Free co Press thought the style "at times ludicrously ornate," and Rebecca West in The Daily News and Leader said of Mac kenzie, "He piles up decorative phrases as the apprentice 5Q might add up his figures." 7 The Westminster Gazette ^ The New Statesman, p. 570. ^September 27, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ■^September 16, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 274 summarized what it considered the chief weaknesses of the style: Mr. Mackenzie has a habit of the precious cliche which has been worn smooth by dropping from verse to verse of minor poetry and a vice of using unusual and uneasy words to poke forced fancies out of their holes, so that we gaze not on a style but on a pathological condition of prose. His visions are all seen through the coloured glass of fancy and he spoils the beauty he invents by loading it with alien images: an honest British vole cannot leap into the water without making a splash like the deep note of a dulcimer. And it appears to be one of the less-known privileges of the older Universities that no young man can ever look out of the window with out seeing the moon engaged in being a metaphor. 60 It is true that when the fit is upon him Mackenzie is capable of calling spring flowers "flowery tokens of hope" (p. 253). But he can also write the effective image by which he describes Guyfs reaction to listening to his father*s rather formal admonitions: Even in his [the father's] speech he was epistolary, and while he spoke Guy was all the time, as it were, tearing him into small pieces and dropping him deliberately into the waste-paper basket. (p. 196) Mackenzie is always at his best in the dramatically con ceived scene. Unfortunately in Guy and Pauline he too often seeks to ornament or refine the simple and the direct and throws over the scene a stifling cloak of words: ^September 16, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 275 Guy watched for a moment the cheek that was closer to his lips write in crimson the story of her love. He wished he could tell his love for her with even the hue~ less apograph of such a signal; and yet* since anything he said was only worthy of utterance in so far as she by this ebb and flow of response made it worthy, why should he trouble that cheek which, sentient now as a rose of the sun, hushed all but wonder. (Guv and Pauline, pp. 91-92) In the passage just quoted, the forced quality of the description is signalled by the unusual phrase "hueless t apograph.” Much of what we find artificial and sentimental in Guv and Pauline is the result of such preciousness of diction, which distracts attention from the object to the manner. In the novel generally, Mackenzie seems to use exotic words and phrases for three different reasons or to achieve three different effects. Sometimes he is success ful, and sometimes he is not. His most important reason seems to be exactness of meaning combined with novelty or freshness of effect. He wants to show something in a new way or under a new aspect. So he describes a prospect covered by a heavy mist: ’ ’ The moon wrought upon the vapours a shifting damascene; and far behind, as it seemed, a rufous stain showed where the candles In his room were still alight" (p. 19). Both "damascene" and "rufous" were carefully chosen to convey a very precise effect. Perhaps 276 not so successful an attempt at a fresh epithet may be seen in his use of "inspissate" in the following clause: ". . . surely that was her shadow tremulous on the inspissate air" (p. 221).61 Mackenzie, moreover, frequently uses the exotic word, phrase, or image in order to make the English landscape Mackenzie's care in the selection of words in Guv and Pauline is seen in the following passages where he has commented on it. The principles by which he is guided seem exactness of meaning, aptness of sound, and novelty of effect. In Gallipoli Memories he tells about coming under fire from the Turkish guns. "I began to worry about the proofs of Guy and Pauline [which he had not yet seen], thinking to myself that the printer's reader would be sure to change 'tralucent* to 'translucent* and that Seeker [his publisher] in the depression caused by the news of my death would never remember how much importance I attached to getting rid of that unnecessary sibilant" (p. 124). In First Athenian Memories (London, 1931) Mackenzie describes how he did find a misprint in the published volume. Where he had written "... while the lamp hummed slowly and olidly to extinction . . .," he found the word "olidly" printed as "oilily." At first he thought he might have made the error himself. "In a rage with my carelessness I dragged myself out of the bunk to fumble in my kitbag for the duplicate proofs of the book. Could I really have passed 'oilily'? No, here it was, 'olidly.' So it was some too zealous printer's readers who at the last moment before passing for press must have changed 'olidly' to 'oilily.' I had spent the better part of a day in the search for that adverb with which I had hoped to convey the very smell of an expiring lamp, and now to find it changed to such a commonplace, unrhythmical, cacophonous adverb as 'oilily* threw me into such despair that I could not read another word" (p. 186). 277 appear to have both familiarity and strangeness. In keep ing with the theme of the book, he suggests at times that this solid Oxfordshire is enchanted ground and that Guy is as thoroughly bewitched as was Thomas Rhymer. His method is seen in its simplest form in a passage like the follow ing where "mushrooms that were tumbled upon the grass" are compared to "an elfin city of the East, so white and cold were their cupolas under the moon" (p. 21). In similar fashion, he says, "The gong sounded upon the luteous air of the evening" (p. 150). Mackenzie, finally, uses the exotic word for humorous effect, somewhat in the style of 0. Henry. Thus on his first meeting with the Grey sisters, Guy fails to learn the name of the youngest but refers to her as "that smallest innominate sister" (p. 23--italics mine). He, likewise, refers to The Pilgrim's Progress as Miss Peasey's "vespertine lectionary" (p. 217). Such usage reminds us of "The Municipal Report," wherein 0. Henry describes Uncle Caesar as an "Afrite" coachman and his coach as a "peripa tetic sarcophagus." fk 9 In conversation with me on June 18, 1961, Mackenzie particularly singled out 0. Henry among American writers for favorable comment. 278- Although the basic story in Guy and Pauline is rela tively simple, the tone of the book is somewhat more complex than may at first appear. As The Pall Mall Gazette (London) observed, a reader might expect a comedy from the initial situation presented: a youthful poet taking a country house in a village where his housekeeper and neigh bors prove eccentrics. But although ". . .we seem to launch off quite propitiously upon a gentle current of quiet fun," by the end we are caught up in a "quiet 63 tragedy." Orlo Williams, on the other hand, referred to the novel as that "luscious pastoral."^ Certainly most reviewers and critics have regarded it only as a senti mental love story in an idyllic setting.^ Yet this study of a first love is perceptively realistic, though the style at times is excessively decorative and self-conscious. 63 September 16, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 64 Mackenzie, Gallipoli Memories, p. 140. 65 When Mackenzie examined the published volume on his way from Kephalo to Athens, he thought of the excitement over Sinister Street and the great "Banned Book War." "There would be little enough excitement over Guv and Pauline, and that Seeker should have chosen crushed straw berry for the colour of its binding was most appropriate, for as I looked at it in the cabin of the Imogen the book seemed no more than that"--Mackenzie, First Athenian Memories, p. 185. 279 Four elements of the tone are especially to be noted: the aura of enchantment surrounding life at Plashers Mead, the humor, the sense of tragedy, and the sentimentality. In Sinister Street we remember Michael had warned Guy about living at Plashers Mead: "Guy, Wychford is a place of dreams. . . . You*11 live on at Plashers Mead until every thing about you turns into the sort of radiant unreality we’ve seen to-night" (p. 601). "Radiant unreality" is an apt description of the life Guy led there before he broke away. Mackenzie consciously created a world which is remote from the common-place and the usual. Wychford is a never-never land of the youthful imagination stimulated by external beauty and the enchantments of a compelling first love. The atmosphere is almost that of the fairy tale. J. M. remarks that ". . . the Rectory itself [is] like a house in a fairy tale where existence is a wise 66 harmony of chamber music and horticultural Latin. ..." Indeed, the characters themselves are "all immanent-like figures seen in a crystal, a magic crystal transfigured and immortal" (J. M., p. 287). Pauline appears to Michael 66 "Compton Mackenzie," p. 287. as a fairy’s child (p. 230). And the "radiant unreality" of the setting transmutes mushrooms, as we have seen, into "an elfin city of the East" (p. 21). The impression that this is an enchanted world, beautiful but somehow ominous, is reinforced by references to the poetry of Keats and Coleridge. On his first night at Plashers Mead, after he has met the three sisters, Guy selects "The Eve of St. Agnes" as appropriate bedtime reading (p. 25). On another occasion he goes to meet Pauline at night after having read the poem (pp. 217, 219). Ominous, however, are the allusions to "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." In the high tide of their love during that first spring, after a per fect day spent together out in the fields, that night the refrain disturbs his sleep: "La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall" (p. 136). The line again recurs to him that autumn, when difficulties begin to gather (p. 213). Guy also sees Pauline as Christabel, and her sisters for a time appear to him sinister like Lady Geraldine in the poem. W. L. George has said of Guy and Pauline that its "romantic earnestness ... is unrelieved by humour. ^ A Novelist on Novels (London, 1918), pp. 80-81. 281 More accurately, in my opinion, Mackenzie attempts humor in the volume, but rarely with complete success. For the most part he relies on humorous characterization of stock types. What value they may have for the central story is, possibly, to heighten the sense of unreality which per meates the atmosphere of Wychford. As has been noted he also uses exotic diction for humorous effect. Moreover he is seldom able to resist a pun, however injected into 68 the story. Thus Pauline and Monica visit the family of Professor Stretton at Oxford for some two pages, largely so that Pauline could tell how at dinner the Professor had turned from his conversation with a don from Balliol to remark to her, "I am afraid, Miss Pauline, that Aramaic roots are not very interesting to you.” As Pauline ex plains it, ”1 got muddled between Aramaic and aromatic, and said that Father had just been given a lot which were very poisonous" (p. 82). 68 Frank Swinnerton, among others, has commented on Mackenzie*s addiction to punning in his familiar conversa tion: "He would be a sick man indeed if his tongue could not twist the doctor’s name, or the name of his ailment, into a pun. . . "— Swinnerton: An Autobiography (New York, 1936), p. 282. If the humor of the novel is eminently forgettable, there is much that is genuinely moving in the presentation of the love that is self“destructive. Once again, Macken zie describes a love that is not destined to last. Accord ing to the experience of Mackenzie's young people in these early novels, love does not last, and the happiness it brings is transient. Seen from the man's point of view, first love is only a stage of development, a resting place. Love may be enough for the woman; it is never enough for the man. He inhabits a more spacious field of action, and love is his refreshment, as Nietzsche said, not his life. Mackenzie's treatment seems to combine the sentimentalist's regret that so beautiful an experience cannot last with the realist's understanding of the necessity for its passing. Just as Mackenzie used Keats and Coleridge to help portray the enchanted world of first love, so he borrowed from Browning to convey the mood of love's failure. Indeed, Mackenzie quotes from three of Browning's poems, which are thematically relevant to the action of the novel. As Guy is falling in love with Pauline, he derives some consolation in quoting the opening half-line of Browning's Pauline: "Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me" (p. 69). After 283 Guy sends his poems off to Worrall, the publisher, he dreams of success and of being able to take Pauline to Italy. A stanza from ' ‘ Two in the Campagna" comes into his mind (p. 236): I wonder do you feel to-day As I have felt since, hand in hand, We sat down on the grass, to stray In spirit better through the land, This mom of Rome and May? Guy, at the moment, is thinking of these lines only as ex pressing an idyllic situation. Dramatically appropriate, however, is the mood of melancholy expressed by the com plete poem, which is concerned with the elusiveness of love. A self-forgetful mutual love does not last, for ". . . the good minute goes." And the speaker of the poem is left with the realization of the mysteriousness of love, of Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn. (11. 59-60) The poem that particularly haunts Guy as hope of an early marriage fades is "The Statue and the Bust" (see pp. 295, 303): So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam The glory dropped from their youth and love, And both perceived they had dreamed a dream. (11. 151-153) 284 Indeed, S. P. B- Mais has said that Guv and Pauline is "simply The Statue and the Bust rewritten. The problem of sentimentality in Guy and Pauline is more complex than may at first appear. The book has been both praised and condemned for its sentimental qualities. But no one denies that they exist. The Outlook (London) observed that "Perhaps this is the most sentimental book that was ever written."^® An article in The Bookman (New York) for 1925 described it "as sentimental as a family album, and as much faded. Yet, as we have seen, al though Mackenzie has a sentimental theme in Guy and Pauline, his attitude is not that of the unqualified sen timentalist. Mackenzie has complete understanding of the sentimental mind and is adroit at depicting it. In certain respects he treats his sentimental lovers realistically: he reveals them, albeit sympathetically, from within; and he shows how their illusion of a great and perfect love is inevitably destroyed. As Leo Robertson has said of Macken zie^ penchant for treating youthful sentimentality: 69 From Shakespeare to 0. Henry, p. 152. ^October 4, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^Simon Pure, "The Londoner," LX (January 1925), 601. 285 The sentimental is as legitimate a subject for the novel- ist's art as the prosaic or the sordid. ... As little then should Compton Mackenzie incur the censure of senti mentalism in this book as a writer depicting child life should be charged with childishness for making his chil dren feel, think and speak as such.72 There is, however, an undeniable strain of sentimen tality in Mackenzie that coexists rather awkwardly with what is realistic in his attitude and technique. Mackenzie is not a sentimentalist because he treats sentimental themes or sentimental people. But he perhaps exposes him self to the charge by the high degree of artistic impor tance he assigns to the ecstasies and failures of young love. In Guv and Pauline, for example, Pauline is senti mentalized into a "quiet tragedy." An aura of pathos hangs over her from the beginning. Her fate is foreshadowed by her irrational fears--of Wychford Abbey and the mill pond-- her dreams, and her close association with her spinster friend Miss Vemey. We feel that she is to become another Miss Vemey only because Mackenzie wills it so. Such an effect is not inherent in the situation. Indeed it would seem premature to assign Pauline to the limbo of unhappy spinsterhood on the basis of her affair with Guy. It is 72 Compton Mackenzie: An Appraisal of his Literary Work (London, 1954), p. 88. 286 a gratuitous fillip to the emotions. In Guy and Pauline, moreover, a further forcing of emotion for its own sake is noticed in some of the diction and imagery of the descrip tive passages, as hitherto observed. Guy and Pauline was published on September 15, 1915. The novel appeared just a week before the ill-fated Loos offensive under General Haig began, and rumors were rife of a great Franco-British offensive which was to shatter the German front. Despite limitations on space allotted book notices in British publications because of the War, Guy and Pauline received sixty-one reviews in newspapers and periodicals.^ Of these, twenty-seven (or 44 per cent) were strongly favorable, fourteen (or almost 23 per cent) were basically negative, and the remainder of the reviews were mixed. Guy and Pauline does not possess the strong flavor of a detailed period setting, which is so important an element 73 It is true, however, that the War of 1914 adds a conclusive note to the love affair. In Sylvia and Michael we again meet Guy in Serbia, and he dies there during the fall of Nish. By his death Mackenzie in a sense emphasizes that the love affair ended when he left Wychford. ^This figure is based on a study of the reviews in the Mackenzie Scrapbook No. 30. The reviews with any critical significance are listed in the bibliography. 287 of appeal in the other early Mackenzie novels. It is essentially a timeless story of a love affair set in the unchanging beauty of the English countryside. Only the sentiment is dated. But it seemingly occupies an assured place in the Mackenzie canon, having been most recently reprinted in 1952. It has been given high praise by many critics. Sheila Kaye-Smith has called the book Mackenzie*s "masterpiece."7^ Gerald Gould in 1925 said that "Mr. Comp ton Mackenzie, in the last resort, must base his claim to 76 fame upon 'Guy and Pauline*. . . . More recently Frank Swinnerton has written that it is "always considered to be his best novel by those who are not troubled by its senti ment. . . . "77 Other critics, though admiring its artistry, 75 "The Glamour of Life and Love: A Study of Compton Mackenzie," T. P.*s and Cassell*s Weekly, February 27, 1926, p. 647. J. M. earlier had said: ". . .1 think Guy and Pauline is the greatest artistic achievement Mackenzie has so far attained: an achievement marking a distinct advance along the whole front held by the English novel" ("Compton Mackenzie," p. 287). 7^The English Novel of To-Dav (New York, 1925), p. 44. Richard Church in The Growth of the English Novel (London, 1951) links Galsworthy*s Dark Flower. Wharton's Ethan Froroe with Guv and Pauline: "Here are three novels permanent in our literature, as single as perfect lyrics: and as moving" (p. 206). 77The Georgian Literary Scene, rev. ed. (London, 1951), p. 225. 288 confessed they were disappointed by it. So Scofield Thayer has remarked that it is "perhaps the most perfect, if least diverting, of these [early] books.Eric W. Gillett has also compared Guy and Pauline to the other books of Macken zie's early manner: "This is, perhaps, the most delicately beautiful of them all but it is in many ways the most 79 disappointing." Lascelles Abercrombie in The Manchester Guardian felt that the book represented a falling-off from Sinister Street, but it "does not, however, lessen our con viction that the future of the English novel is, to a quite considerable extent, in his hands."®® Rebecca West, on the other hand, was emphatic in her dislike of the work. She particularly condemned it for lack of relevance to the life of the day: ". . .as living work, as a birth of the time, it is more ridiculous than one could have believed of 81 stuff beaten out with such vitality." Douglas Goldring, 78 "Compton Mackenzie," The Dial (New York), LXV (November 30, 1918), 479. ^ Books and Writers (Singapore, 1930), p. 100. ®®The Manchester Guardian, September 30, 1915 (clip ping in Scrapbook No. 30). 81 J - The Daily News and Leader. September 16, 1915 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 289 predictably, judged it "the most tedious of Mr. Mackenzie*s works. There is nothing in the book to distract attention 82 from the inner emptiness of its author's mind." The American edition of the novel was published by Harper & Brothers in October, 1915, but the title, as has been noted, was changed to Plashers Mead. Mackenzie has said that the American publishers suggested the new title, because they said Americans were not well disposed to the 83 name "Guy." There is little of critical interest in the thirty-two reviews from American newspapers and periodicals gathered in the Mackenzie Scrapbook No. 30. They are for the most part short. Seventeen of the reviews (or 53 per cent) are highly favorable, and only four are strongly negative. A typical complaint was of the sameness of sub ject matter in Mackenzie's last three books. The Nation (New York), for example, answers the question as to what the book is about: . . . we can only reply that it is about the same old thing, the thing so dwelt upon in "Carnival" and "Sinis ter Street"--youth, Oxford youth, whether undergraduate 82 Reputations (New York, 1920), p. 50. 83 So in conversation with me on June 16, 1961. or fledgling just "come down"; such youth, moreover, of a single type, the hypersensitive dilettante, the In general, Guy and Pauline was well received by the reviewers, despite critical objection to the sentimental qualities of the story and "the indistinct softness of the in his early manner- Mackenzie returned from the War as impatient with what he had hitherto written as every artist is entitled to be of his early work. His next book, The Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, represents a break in style and technique with the past. with aesthetic and erotic style." 85 It was, however, the last novel Mackenzie wrote 8 4 W CI (December 9, 1915), 690. 85 John Freeman, English Portraits and Essays (London, 1924), p. 203. CHAPTER V THE ADVENTURES OF SYLVIA SCARLETT (1918-19): A PICARESQUE ROMANCE In May, 1915, Compton Mackenzie left his home on Capri for Gallipoli as a Lieutenant in the Royal Marines. In October, 1917, he returned to Capri after having been in valided out of service as a Captain at full pay. During the two and a half years of his war service he had been engaged in intelligence work in the Aegean. He had been Military Control Officer in Athens in 1916, and at the time of his leaving the service he was Director of the Aegean Intelligence Service based on Syra. A week after he had returned home, he set to work on a new novel, Sylvia Scarlett.^ ^See the Foreword to the new edition of The Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett published by Macdonald (London, 1950), p. 8. Subsequent references will be to this edition, which combines in one volume the two books originally published as The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett (1918) and Sylvia and Michael (1919). I shall follow standard 291 During the period of his active duty, Mackenzie had little opportunity to write other than official dispatches and reports. But in the summer of 1916 while stationed in Athens, he had written a novel in twelve episodes called No Papers. This was undertaken to fulfill a contract he had made shortly before the outbreak of the war to provide a serial for a magazine in the United States. The manu script of this novel, however, was destroyed on December 2, 1916, when his house in Athens was attacked and pillaged by anti-Venizelist rioters. The source of this story was the experiences of two cabaret entertainers whom Mackenzie had met in the course of his official duties. One of the girls, Trixie Ellwood, though claiming to be English, was suspected of being actually German and a spy. Mackenzie investigated the charges, and became interested in the plight of the girl, who could not prove her nationality. He resolved at the time to "write the story of this waif practice by referring to the novel as a whole by the abbre viated title Sylvia Scarlett. The pagination given will be that of the Macdonald ed. ^Mackenzie, Sylvia Scarlett, p. 7. 293 3 of the war and call it No Papers." He has since used her as a character in two of his published novels.^ In Sylvia Scarlett she appears as the girl Concetta, whom Sylvia meets first in Spain and finds later in Roumania going by the name of Queenie Walters. Under the latter name she likewise figures in Mackenzie's comic novel of war-time espionage, Extremes Meet (1928). When Mackenzie came back to Capri in 1917, he found himself in serious financial straits. As he has said, The full pay of a Captain in the Royal Marines was not enough to maintain a villa in Capri and by now a long period of earning nothing from my own profession had swallowed up all my money. It was therefore imperative to write a novel. (Sylvia Scarlett, pp. 7-8) Accordingly, he began Sylvia Scarlett on St. Silvia’s Day, November 3, 1917.^ Because of the scarcity of paper, he wrote as much as he could of his new novel on the reverse side of the manuscript of Guy and Pauline. Mackenzie has remarked: 3 Compton Mackenzie, First Athenian Memories (London, 1931), p. 333. 4 Compton Mackenzie, Greek Memories (London, 1932), p. 498. ^Mackenzie, Sylvia Scarlett, p. 8. 294 . . . there cannot be many manuscripts of novels which display by turning them the other way round so complete a transformation of style, or in which one may find that the mere thickness of a piece of foolscap is a bridge between two worlds.° By January 18, 1918, Mackenzie had almost completed the novel. He was half-way through the last chapter but two, when he came down with a severe attack of sciatica which lasted to the beginning of May. In consequence, he did not finish the novel till the end of May.^ Mackenzie has described the two and a half months in which he almost com pleted the novel as one of unremitting labor: I suppose during that time I wrote 25,000 words a week. I got to work each day at eleven, revised what I'd done the day before, and wrote all afternoon and all evening until two in the morning. I never dressed all that time. I never went out, and never saw a soul.® As Mackenzie had conceived it, Sylvia Scarlett was to Q be a single novel organized in three parts or "books.”7 However, since the completed novel would run some 300,000 words in length and since there was still a shortage £ Compton Mackenzie, Aegean Memories (London, 1940), p. 404. 7Mackenzie, Aegean Memories, p. 408. Q Louise Morgan, "Compton Mackenzie Hits Out," Everyman (London), November 13, 1930, p. 490. ^Morgan, p. 490. 295 of paper for publishing in England, Martin Seeker, the publisher, decided to bring out the novel in two volumes.^ Mackenzie's illness before finishing the novel and the urgency of getting something in print as soon as possible reinforced the decision. It was accordingly settled to issue the first two parts as the first volume under the title The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett. 11 This volume finally appeared in August, 1918. The second volume, titled Sylvia and Michael, was not published until * March, 1919- It is significant of the hold the Theatre of Youth novels had on Mackenzie that he should return to his plan when he commenced writing after the war. He has said, "When in October, 1917, I came home from Greece, tired and ill, I had to improvise a book which could be written at 12 top speed during the few weeks of leave that I had." ^Mackenzie, Sylvia Scarlett, p. 8. ^■^Mackenzie, incorrectly, says that the volume came out in March, 1918, in the Foreword to the Macdonald edi tion. He apparently confused it with Sylvia and Michael. which was published in March, 1919. 12 "Compton Mackenzie and Sylvia Scarlett," The Strand (London), LXXVI (December 1928), 600. 296 So he turned to a character he had brilliantly sketched in 11 a few episodes in Sinister Street, undoubtedly with the half-intent at least of writing a full account of her at a later date. Sylvia Scarlett had made her appearance in the second volume of Sinister Street. Book IV, as the friend and companion of Lily Haden. When Michael Fane's search for Lily ended at the masked ball in Redcliffe Hall, he likewise met Sylvia for the first time. When Sylvia raised her mask, we are told, "Michael liked her face. She had merry eyes, and a wide nose rather Slavonic. Next to Lily she seemed almost dumpy. We soon discover that she reads Balzac's Contes Drolatiques and has been married to a Balliol man. She is strangely possessive toward Lily, and attempts to thwart Michael's intention of marrying her.^ But after the breakup between Michael and Lily 13 In its review of Sinister Street. The New York Times Book Review referred to ", . . the girl who is perhaps the most memorable character in the book, Sylvia Scarlett, clever, bitter, resolute, and strong"--XIX (December 13, 1914), 568. 14 Compton Mackenzie, Sinister Street (London, 1949), p. 774. All subsequent references will be to this new edition published by Macdonald. ^-*One wonders if originally Mackenzie intended a sug gestion of lesbianism to surround this association. He is 297 occurs, she agrees to take Lily back. At the conclusion of this strange interview with Michael, Sylvia suddenly draws him to her and kisses him. "How many women have done that suddenly like that?" she demanded. "One--well, perhaps two. ..." "I never have to any man," she said, and vanished through the door in the wall. (Sinister Street, p. 852) So Sylvia disappears until she shows up in her own novel. The relationship of Sylvia Scarlett to the earlier novels of the sequence is clear and detailed.^ Characters from Carnival such as Maurice Avery and Ronnie Walker, who had painted a picture of Jenny, appear in the new novel. Sylvia meets Maurice in North Africa, and he confesses his love for Jenny Pearl and his desire to return from his self-imposed exile and marry her. Later in London elsewhere attracted to inversion as a literary subject. In his two later volumes, Vestal Fire (1927) and Extra ordinary Women (1928), he offered a humorous, satirical treatment of lesbianism. In Thin Ice (1956) he wrote a serious novel about the problem of homosexuality. ^But there have been critics and reviewers who did not understand the relationship. Thus John W. Cunliffe writes: "In ‘Sylvia Scarlett’ he [Mackenzie] made a fresh start, with an entirely new set of characters, but about halfway through the book the old ones begin to come back again. . . "--English Literature During the Last Half Cen tury (New York, 1923), p. 320. 298 Ronnie Walker tells Sylvia of Jenny’s murder. Guy Hazle- wood of Guv and Pauline meets Sylvia in Serbia during the war. Before he dies, Guy gives her a letter addressed to Miss Pauline Grey, Wychford Rectory, Oxfordshire. It is with Sinister Street, however, that Sylvia Scarlett is most closely connected. Indeed, it seems intended to be a kind of companion piece to the earlier novel, with significant points of similarity as well as of contrast. The contrasts are perhaps more obvious than the similarities. Sylvia is a girl of the lower class who must support herself by her wits. Michael Fane is an upper-class youth with few be- setting practical problems. Sylvia’s life is a kaleido scopic series of scenes and incidents without apparent pattern or purpose. Michael moves more conventionally down the carefully prescribed path of his development. Yet, despite such divergencies, both Sylvia and Michael are similarly engaged in searching for the meaning of life and for a satisfying personal fulfillment. Both are tested by love. Both have religious experience which results in their becoming Roman Catholics. Out of diverse backgrounds and experiences, they arrive at similar attitudes, ideals, and beliefs. Mackenzie seems to emphasize that Sylvia 299 represents the parallel but reverse side of the coin by bringing the two worlds together in a love union at the conclusion of the book. Rather unnecessarily, he points up this relationship by finally revealing that Michael and Sylvia are second cousins, each with the same grandfather, Charles Cunningham, the twelfth Lord Saxby.^ Because of the absence of a clearly defined plot in Sylvia Scarlett and because of the multiplicity of charac ters and incidents, the novel is virtually impossible to summarize adequately. The book opens with a "Prelude," which introduces us to Sylvia*s grandmother and grand father --the French coquette Adele and Charles Cunningham. The child bom of this brief liaison is Juliette, who eventually marries an Englishman Henry Snow, employed as a clerk in Lille. Sylvia is their only child. When Sylvia is twelve, her mother dies. Her father, thereupon, goes to pieces; and, having stolen from his employer, is forced to flee France. They change the family name to *^The Prelude, which opens the story with an account of the amorous indiscretion of this Lord Cunningham in France during Mardi Gras in 1847, is relevant only as drawing attention to this familial connection between Michael and Sylvia. Scarlett, and for a time Sylvia disguises herself as a boy called Sylvester. She and her father go to London, where soon her father is involved in a variety of shady oper ations with a James Monkley. On tour of the summer resorts with a singing group called The Pink Pierrots, her father dies and Sylvia is left on her own. She stays with Monkley for a while, but when he becomes overly affectionate, she persuades a young boy, Arthur Madden, to run away with her. Soon he returns home, but after various adventures Sylvia gets a job in the Turkish pavilion of the recently opened Earl’s Court Exhibition. One day as she walks in Brompton Cemetery she meets Philip Iredale, a gentleman of thirty- one, who becomes interested in her. Before long he pro poses, but he suggests that first she spend a year in an academy for young ladies to make up for some of the educa tion she has missed. She spends a happy year at Miss Ashley's, and then at seventeen she marries Philip and settles down in Hampshire as the wife of a dilettante scholar. Life with Philip proves difficult. He is in clined to be stodgy and disapproves of her friendships with neighbors and the eccentric vicar, Mr. Dorward. When Philip receives an anonymous letter accusing her of having an affair with Dorward, he and Sylvia quarrel, and Sylvia suddenly leaves. She supports herself for three months by prostitution, and then notifies Philip of this fact so that he can obtain a divorce. Book II, "Sylvia and Arthur," opens with Sylvia at nineteen joining a musical comedy on tour. She becomes friends with two members of the cast— Lily Haden and Dorothy Lonsdale, whose story was later to be told in The Vanity Girl (1920). At tourfs end, Sylvia and Lily form the Carnival Quartet with Claude Raglan and Jack Airdale. After Lily and Claude split up the group by running away together, Sylvia moves into Mulberry Cottage as the com panion of Mrs. Gainsborough, the long-time mistress of a now-retired major-general. When Lily returns from her affair, she likewise moves into Mulberry Cottage. Michael Fane now finds his Lily, but the intended marriage falls through when Michael discovers her with a man, who we learn is Claude Raglan. At this point Sylvia*s travels begin in earnest. She and Lily and Mrs. Gainsborough go off to Paris. Sylvia begins a tour of the provinces as a music-hall singer, while Lily embarks on an affair in Paris with a wealthy 302 young Frenchman. When the affair ends, Sylvia and Lily book passage for Brazil as cabaret entertainers. In Rio de Janeiro, Sylvia becomes ill with yellow fever, and there also Lily suddenly drops out of the story when she marries a violent Portuguese who is a croupier in one of the casinos. Sylvia goes alone to Sao Paulo, and after some adventures receives 5000 pounds from an admirer, Carlos Morera. With this windfall she returns to France and per suades Mrs. Gainsborough to come from England and go to Spain with her. At Granada, Sylvia meets a little waif, Concetta, who wishes above all else to go to England--the land where she claims to have been born. Currently she is traveling with a juggler named Zozo, who abuses her. Sylvia agrees to take Concetta with her; but as they wait for the train, Zozo manages to steal Concetta away. Sylvia and Mrs. Gainsborough travel over to Morocco, where they meet Maurice Avery, and then return to England. Sylvia, once home, becomes restless and takes a small part in a play which is to tour in the United States. When the tour ends, she stays behind in New York, and eventually goes as an entertainer to a health resort in Indiana. There she surprisingly finds Arthur Madden, with whom 303 she had begun her wanderings after the death of her father. Arthur is a singer with a troup, but was left behind in Sulphurville when he became ill. Sylvia stays on to nurse him and eventually to live with him in New York, though she refuses as yet to marry him. She wishes to see what she is capable of as an artist; so when Arthur starts on another tour, she remains behind to work out a series of dramatic monologues depicting people and incidents of her past. When she and Arthur finally return to England, she successfully presents her Improvisations, as she calls her sketches, in the Pierian Hall. Having now fulfilled her ambition as a creative artist, she decides to marry Arthur. As the date of the wedding draws near, Arthur writes that he has suddenly married a girl in his musical comedy com pany. So that no one will pity her, Sylvia abandons her burgeoning career as an actress and flees to France "with the raggle-taggle gipsies." Book III or the second volume of the novel, originally published as Sylvia and Michael, begins with her arrival in Paris. Her old theatrical agent sends her to Petersburg as a cabaret singer. In Russia she comes down with typhus, and while she is recuperating she learns that war has broken out with Germany. Though she wishes to return to England, a strange impulse seems to pull her to southern Europe. She goes as an entertainer to Odessa, and then on to Warsaw and Bucharest. At a station on the way to Bucharest, Sylvia once again meets Concetta, who now calls herself Queenie Walters. Queenie has left Zozo, and Sylvia takes her to Bucharest, hoping eventually to get her a visa to England. In Bucharest, Sylvia, who had been baptized a Roman Catholic, returns to the Church by making her confession. She also tries to get an English passport for Queenie, but when she goes to the consulate she dis covers that the officer in charge is her ex-husband Philip. Philip believes he cannot in conscience arrange for such a passport, and Queenie is much discouraged by the refusal. When Zozo reappears, the influence of Sylvia is not strong enough to save Queenie, who goes away with him. Sylvia leaves and prepares to head for England. She is detained for interrogation at Nish in Serbia, and there meets Guy Hazlewood, who is stationed there in the military. He tells her that Michael Fane is with a Red-Cross unit in the Balkans and that she may soon see him in Nish. Sylvia had been strangely drawn to Michael from their first meeting, 305 and she feels that it is providence which has brought her to this comer of Europe. As she waits, Guy gets permis sion to go off to the front, from which he shortly returns fatally wounded. Sylvia stays on, though Bulgaria declares war and moves against Serbia. One day she sees Stella, Michael’s sister, struggling in a crowd retreating back on Nish. Sylvia learns that Stella has brought her brother, suffering from typhus, with her. Sylvia persuades her to flee, while she remains behind to nurse Michael. When the Bulgarians capture the city, she and Michael are taken prisoner. On their way to internment in Sophia, Sylvia meets a comitadj i leader of some Bulgarian irregulars. She had befriended him earlier, and now out of gratitude he takes her and Michael with his band, later to let them escape into neutral Greece. The story ends when they finally get safely to Samothrace. There Michael declares his love and Sylvia accepts his proposal of marriage. We are told that Samothrace is the island on which the statue of the Winged Victory was found. Symbolically, the quest of both Sylvia and Michael for love and fulfillment ends likewise in victory. It is evident, merely from the synopsis, that Sylvia Scarlett is not a closely knit, carefully designed novel 306 like Guy and Pauline. It is large in scope and free in form. Understandably, reviewers and critics had difficulty in determining what the novel was actually about, particu larly. since it appeared in two volumes with a half yearTs interval between. When the first volume came out as The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, attempts to describe the author’s purpose ran between two extremes. One view was that the book simply set out to entertain in a non-serious manner. As S. P. B. Mais said: "There is no straining to preach a sermon on human conduct, no attempt to solve the riddle of the universe: there is nothing but 18 the desire to entertain and amuse. . . ." At the other extreme there was the opinion that the book offered a "study" of its heroine, somewhat after the manner of Carni val . Elizabeth Wychoff, for example, said: Sylvia Scarlett is one of the few really serious studies that have ever been made of a woman as a human being. . . . Yet never was a clearer, truer analysis of a modem woman put on paper.^ 1 8 The Evening News (London), September 24, 1918 (a clipping in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks, No. 30). Here after references to the Scrapbooks will merely state "Scrapbook" and give the appropriate volume number. ^ The Publishers' Weekly (New York), XCIV (October 19, 1918), 1300. 307 Reviewers of the second volume, Sylvia and Michael, were even more at a loss in seeking to describe its theme-- especially if they had not read the first volume. Many commented on the promiscuity of the lives of cabaret enter tainers . Robert K. Risk in The Sunday Times and Sunday Special (London) called the volume "a hectic and rococo fantasia whose leading motive appears to be the tragic 20 farce of sex." G. B. in The Liverpool Courier observed that it "seems to have for purpose an intensely scornful and passionate attack upon man for his share in the 21 greatest of social evils." The Philadelphia Inquirer, on the other hand, found the moral of the story far less salutary: The idea of the author seems to be to show that a woman may love all and dare all, do all that is wrong and yet find a haven of pure love at the end, which is not a very good philosophy for young girls and little in accord with human experience.^2 Another theme which some reviewers discussed was what Hamilton Fyte in The Daily Mail (London) called the "note ^^March, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^April, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 22 August 8, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 308 of fierce anger in the book against the stupidities of 23 war." The Westminster Gazette (London), for example, found the volume "remarkable" as £. picture of the war: Without any apparent effort Mr. Mackenzie does make the whole phantasmagoria of senseless confusion, irrelevant cruelty, misery, and disorganization rise before one's eyes in all its vast extension. One sees the odd, cos mopolitan crowd of artists who perform in international cabarets driven like foolish knaves before the mighty blast of war; and from their petty wretchednesses and discomforts, their struggles with managers and passport officials, their helpless, aimless scurryings to and fro one gets a picture, strangely expressive, of the sheer stupidity of the whole affair. No one human conscious ness can take in the hugeness of war's pain and anguish; but it rises up, appalling, from this picture of some of its pettinesses.24 It is true, however, that Sylvia Scarlett does not have any clearly defined thematic unity. Its center of interest, as we shall see, is constantly changing. To be sure, the novel derives a special meaning from its rela tionship with Sinister Street, and Sylvia's general de velopment seems intended to complement that of Michael Fane. But the episodic construction prohibits a more formal unity of effect than that secured by the presence of a central character. Mackenzie deliberately selected 23March, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 2^April, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 309 a format free enough to include a variety of materials and purposes. He has used the term "improvise” to describe his approach to the novel.^ And in a very real sense Sylvia Scarlett is a brilliant improvisation. Mackenzie's purpose in the novel, as a number of re viewers pointed out, seems less serious generally than in the other novels of the series. He made use of his skills as a writer frankly and directly to entertain on a level below theme or artistic integration. His method might be described as expansive rather than intensive. He gave free play to his ability to invent incident and to relate in vivid, fast-moving narrative. Particularly did he manifest his facility at comic invention, and he indulged as never before in humorous characterizations and Dickensian carica tures. Satire became a more prominent motif than in his previous novels. And especially in the last volume, Sylvia and Michael, Mackenzie freely used his characters in soli loquies and conversations to voice his own opinions on modern life and the war which was not yet over. Sylvia Scarlett is in some ways the most personal of his early 2 S See p. 295 of text. Mackenzie, "Compton Mackenzie and Sylvia Scarlett," p. 600. 310 works. In it Mackenzie conveyed that vivid sense of life, that zest for experience, that delight in the human pageant which have always been noteworthy elements of his own per sonality and temperament but which had never before been so fully expressed in his work. In Sylvia Scarlett Compton Mackenzie wrote in a liter ary genre which he had not previously attempted--the pica- resque novel. In purpose as in structure, the form was free enough for him to improvise whatever he wanted. Robert A. Heilman has written of the advantages which the picaresque offers, in terms directly applicable to Mac kenzie : 26 There has been no definitive study of the picaresque form. F. W. Chandler, The Literature of Roguery (Boston, 1907) is the most extensive survey of the literature of the genre, but the study goes only to the turn of the century. William Flint Thrall and Addison Hibbard in A Handbook to Literature (New York, 1936) list seven chief qualities as characteristic of the picaresque novel. I give the listing in abridged form merely as suggestive comparison with Sylvia Scarlett. (1) It chronicles a part or the whole of the life of a rogue. (2) The chief figure is drawn from a low social level and is of "loose" character, according to conventional standards. (3) The novel presents little plot. Rather it is a series of episodes only slightly connected. (4) There is little character interest. Prog ress and development of character do not take place. (5) The method is realistic. (6) Satire is a prominent element. (7) The hero of the picaresque novel usually stops just short of being an actual criminal (pp. 311-312). 311 The writer of picaresque enjoys, apparently, freedom from the most severe imaginative demands; his mind can roam like a picaro, comnenting where and as he will. He need reconcile the free flow of observation and opinion with only slight demands of structure and with the most easily obtainable consistencies of character. ’ In a further passage, Dr. Heilman explains the character istics of the form, which likewise elucidates Mackenzie's practice: The rogue-hero determines not only the treatment of other characters but also the scene and structure. . . . Instead of depth and rigor we have speed and multi plicity: since without "character” a story cannot in definitely be spun out of one set of circumstances, one situation must soon be replaced by another; and since living by wits alone is not conducive to long residence, one scene normally gives way to another without much delay. Picaresque is naturally cinematic and episodic . . . the continual change of scene inherent in pica resque has compensations: the form is made for the travelogue-novel. (p. 552) Reviewers and critics who have commented on Sylvia Scarlett as a picaresque novel have generally compared it with eighteenth-century novels and Mackenzie with English practitioners of the genre. Elizabeth Wychoff has said: "It is more like Defoe's 'Moll Flanders* than any other novel that comes to mind" (The Publishers* Weekly, p. 1300). Antony Sampson in a review of the 1950 reprint ^"Variations of Picaresque (Felix Krull)," The Sewanee Review, LXVI (Winter 1958), 553. 312 said: ". . . in many ways it is a twentieth-century Moll Flanders: but Sylvia has more charm, wit, and vigour than 28 Moll." The Pall Mall Gazette (London) compared Mackenzie 2Q with Smollett, and The Daily Chronicle (London) said the orj novel was "in the Richardson and Fielding way." However, the major influence upon Mackenzie in the writing of Sylvia Scarlett seems not to have been the English picaresque tradition but the example of Stendhal, particularly in La Chartreuse de Parme. During the war Mackenzie read Stendhal for the first O - I time with attention. He has since spoken of him with 28 The Books of To-Day and the Books of Tomorrow (London), December, 1950, p. 26. ^August 23, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ■^August 21, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). Salann in The New Republic (New York) thought that a com parison with Fielding*s Joseph Andrews "makes Sylvia Scarlett look like an oversweet Jack Rose cocktail"--"What to Read," XIX (January 4, 1919), 386. The Glasgow Herald. on the other hand, found more modem parallels: "Could one imagine *The Adventures of Harry Richmond* written by Mr. George Moore . . . the result . . . would not be un like this story"--August 29, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 31 He says: "I had tried to read the Chartreuse de Parme when I was at Oxford and had been bored by it. No body should read the Chartreuse de Parme until he possesses 313 the enthusiasm of an auteur d'une decouverte as "the greatest novelist the world has known.In Sylvia Scar lett Mackenzie seems to have been influenced by Stendhal*s concept of his art, by his narrative method and techniques, and by elements of his style. J Stendhal, for example, customarily regarded the purpose of a novel as entertain ment by means of story.^ Mackenzie seems essentially the experience to appreciate it. It is not even intelli gible to the unversed mind"--Aegean Memories, pp. 241-242. The Charterhouse of Parma was Mackenzie’s favorite among Stendhal*s novels. Elsewhere he has spoken of it as "that immortal guide to worldliness, that supreme novel of man ners. . . "--First Athenian Memories, p. 77. He has called the Duchessa Sanseverina in the novel his favorite charac ter in fiction ("My Favourite Character in Fiction: A Sym posium," John 0*London’s Weekly [London], October 6, 1934, p. 4). ^^Mackenzie, Unconsidered Trifles (London, 1932), p. 75. ■^In speaking of the influence of Stendhal upon the writing of Sylvia Scarlett, Mackenzie has mentioned only the matter of style. He says, for example, that having read Stendhal he was "bewitched by his theory of unneces sary decoration, and the demand that his characters should express so much of themselves in direct speech"--Sylvia Scarlett, p. 9. ^He says, for example: "Le roman est un livre qui amuse en racontant." "La premiere qualite d'un roman doit etre raconter, amuser par des recits." "Le roman doit ra- conter, c'est Ik le genre de plaisir qu’on lui demande. La dissertation, la recherche ingenieuse a La Bruykre sont des degenerations." [Quoted by S. de Sacy, "Le Miroir Sur la Grande Route," Le Mercure de France, CCCVI (May 1949), 69. ] 314 to take a similar non-serious view of the novel-form in writing Sylvia Scarlett. In 1920 he wrote in a spirit suggestive of Stendhal: ,fI confess that I like a book to be readable; it seems to me that a capacity for entertaining a certain number of people is the chief justification for 35 writing novels." More importantly, however, Mackenzie's narrative method in Sylvia Scarlett seems indebted to the practice of Stendhal. The novels of Stendhal, for example, have been described as picaresque (S. de Sacy, p. 65). He him self speaks of his creative talent as that of the impro- viser, and says how impossible he finds it to work from 37 a plan. The picaresque form offered him such freedom 1 c JCompton Mackenzie, "Francis Brett Young," The Book man (London), LI (August 1920), 638. • ^"Mon talent, s'il y a talent, est celui d 1impro- visateur"--quoted by Sacy, p. 78. ^"Je ne fais point de plan. Quand cela m'est arrive, j'ai ete degoOte du roman par le tnechanisme que void: je cherchais h . me souvenir en ecrivant le roman des choses auxquelles j'avals pense en ecrivant le plan, et, chez moi, le travail de la memoire eteint 1 * imagination. . . . Si je fais un plan, je suis degoOte de l'ouvrage (par la necessite de faire agir la memoire)"--quoted by Sacy, pp. 77-78. 315 for improvisation.®® R. P. Blackmur has stated that the structure of The Charterhouse of Parma is like that of Conmedia dell* Arte, and he finds the improvisation in the 39 novel to be either careless or planned. In a famous passage of Le Rouge et le Noir Stendhal compares a novel to a mirror traveling down a highway strapped to a man's pack.^® The mirror reflects whatever comes within its purview without emphasis or distinction. S. de Sacy cites the passage and says that the image is "un symbole excellent du roman picaresque" (p. 65): it well 38 Sacy states in this regard that "le roman pica resque, de toutes les sortes de romans, est toujours celui qui donne l'idee la plus aimable de la condition du ro- mancier. Ni ses personnages ni son sujet ne 1'entratnent; c'est lui qui les m&ne ou il lui platt et comme il lui platt; il garde la route qu'il a choisie, il reste mattre de sa vitesse; son bon plaisir cotnnande, et commande seul" (p. 6 8). 39 7He gives examples of the two types of improvisa tions. "When Mosca met Gina he was already married; that was careless imprdvisation. But when the time comes to marry Gina, the existing wife is readily forgotten, which is planned improvisation" ["The Charterhouse of Parma,” The Kenyon Review. XXVI (Winter 1964), 226-227]. A simi lar distinction might be made of Mackenzie's improvisation of incident in Svlvia Scarlett, as we shall see later. ^ Scarlet and Black, trans. M. R. B. Shaw (London, 1953), p. 367. 316 exemplifies the episodic, anecdotal technique of picaresque narrative, in which incidents are presented in sequence but without necessary connection or special emphasis. M. de Sacy finds such technique characteristic of Stendhal, and, as we shall see, it is also in some measure characteristic of the narrative method of Mackenzie. There are, also, other suggestive similarities between the novels of Stendhal and Mackenzie's Sylvia Scarlett. Both the heroes of Stendhal and Mackenzie are in constant movement and change.^ The authors are sparing in their use of description. Stendhal in The Charterhouse of Parma like Mackenzie possesses "the art with which the writer gives life to secondary actors in his story, even when they / o only make a passing appearance on the stage." Both / ^ authors make extensive use of the soliloquy. And just ^Sacy observes of the picaresque Stendhalian hero: "Ce heros change sans cesse de milieu et de partenaires; c'est un errant; sans feu ni lieu, sans biens ni liens, detache. II est de la race a qui rien n'appartient. . ." (p. 6 8). The same is, of course, true of Sylvia. 42m. r. b. Shaw, "Introduction," The Charterhouse of Parma (London, 1958), p. 10. ^Shaw, speaking of The Charterhouse, comments on "the many soliloquies by which inner workings of the mind are revealed. . ." (pp. 9*10). 317 as the Duchessa Sanseverina and Clelia Conti are contrasted types of character in The Charterhouse, so there are Sylvia and Lily Haden in Mackenzie*s novel. In comparison with Mackenzie's earlier novels, we find the distinguishing feature of the narrative method in Sylvia Scarlett is the concentration upon incident for its own sake as a major source of interest. A number of re viewers compared the technique of the novel with that of the motion picture. Country Life (London) said that the novel was "like nothing so much as the scenario of a cinematographic f ilm. The Liverpool Courier spoke of / C the "kinematographic rush" of events, and Scofield Thayer referred to "the cinematographic Sylvia Scarlett. This presentation of life as a sequence of discontinuous experi ence impressed some readers and critics with its realism. The Pall Mall Gazette, for example, said of the first volume: "There is no plot, as there is no plot in real ^September 21, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). AS September 24, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^"Compton Mackenzie," The Dial, LXV (November 30, 1918), 474. 318 life."^ It is the vivid appearance and flow of life which Mackenzie set out to capture in the book. We are told at one point that life to Sylvia had always offered itself "as a set of vivid impressions that formed a crudely colored panorama of action without any emotional light and 48 shade." This, at least, is the way* it is made to appear in the novel. It is this effect which, perhaps, gave rise to D. H. Lawrence*s conment on the novel: "It*s so like life" (Sylvia Scarlett, p. 10). The rapidity with which incident succeeds incident is especially to be noted. Little opportunity is offered for reflection. There is none of the lingering over scenes and details which is to be found in Sinister Street or Guy and Pauline. All is in movement. The Times Literary Supplement (London) said of the first volume: You can scarcely open the book anywhere without finding a cab bolting down Haverstock Hill with an eloping couple ^August 23, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^ Sylvia Scarlett, p. 97. The New York Globe com mented of this passage: "In other words, life to Sylvia is apparently one long and continuous movie, with about as much rhyme and reason. To the reader the story is hodge podge:. clever, perhaps, but hodge-podge"--September 28, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 319 inside it, or a baboon escaping from Earl's Court Exhibi tion [sic], or an actor dropping dead, or a curtain going up, or a landlady being funny. ^ The movement is of all kinds and in all directions. We see Sylvia, for example, as a girl and then masquerading as a boy. We see her swift transitions from poverty to afflu ence and back to poverty. We see her entangled in romantic adventures of various urgencies and commitments. We see her rising from minor roles in a quartette and musical comedy to success as a monologuist and then to the shadowy life of a cabaret entertainer. And through it all we meet a bewildering array of characters, as Sylvia constantly changes her milieu and her locale. The action passes hectically from provincial France to the London underworld, to a sea-side troup, to a school for young ladies, to a country house in Hampshire. There is travel in Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Morocco, and the United States, as well as in Russia and the Balkans during the early days of World War I. As we have already seen, Mackenzie organized his novel into three "books”--the first two of approximately the ^"The 'Movie' Novel," August 29, 1918, p. 403, col. 3. 320 same length, the last somewhat longer. Romantic interest is suggested by the title of each of the three books--each associates Sylvia with one of the principal men in her life: Philip, Arthur, and Michael. There is structural symmetry in having the first two books each end with the flight of Sylvia from the man referred to in the title. In the last book, Sylvia flees with Michael from Bulgaria into Greece, and the novel ends on the conventional note of love attained. Despite such obvious design, the novel lacks the artistic unity we find in the earlier novels. For the center of interest changes from book to book in a way that impairs a unified effect. -^Reviewers frequently objected to the lack of struc ture and unity in the two volumes of Sylvia Scarlett. Representative is The Nation (London), which said of the first volume: "One cannot pass any comments on its con struction or form, because the author, so far as we can see, has not made any attempt to gather the book up into a unity, emotional, aesthetic, or practical"--September 7, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). When the second volume appeared, the same publication said: ". . . it [the novel] is no more a work of art than an official document. It is not a book at all, but a book-shop, with as little order and as much variety, as little purpose, philosophy, and meaning, and as much inconsequence"--XXV (April 19, 1919), 8 8. ~ * ^ ~ The Morning Post (London) may have some such idea in its comment that "... the episodes themselves do change character somewhat when we pass from the earlier of them to the later"--March 29, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 321 In the first book, "Sylvia and Philip," the center of interest is the early life and adventures of the gamin Sylvia herself to the age of nineteen. Although there is incident in abundance, the adventures do help to define Sylvia and reveal formative influences. Here there is almost none of the analysis accorded Jenny Pearl in Carni val . Sylvia is plunged directly into experience, and the quality of her character and temperament we deduce from what she says and does. There is much less description here than in the early works. Yet, even in this first book, incident is not made subservient to character. It exists as a source of interest in its own right. Charac teristic of Mackenzie1s narrative technique throughout the novel is the following passage. A violent quarrel has broken out between Danny Lewis and Jay Cohen, two friends interested in Sylvia. In the uproar created, Sylvia escapes. The only function of the scene is to allow Sylvia to leave and go on her way to new adventures. Danny and Jay never reappear in the story. But the fight between them occupies some three-hundred words of vigorous, pell- mell narrative. Here is part of the account: They wrangled for some time . . . until suddenly Danny landed his friend a blow between the eyes. Sylvia . . . cried "Bravo." 322 The encouragement put a fine spirit into Danny*s blows; he hanmered the unfortunate Cohen round and round the room, upsetting tables and chairs and washstand until with a stinging blow he knocked him backwards into the slop-pail, in which he sat so heavily that when he tried to rise the slop-pail stuck and gave him the appearance of a large baboon crawling with elevated rump on all fours. Danny kicked off the siop-pail, and invited Cohen to stand up to him; but when he did get on his feet, he ran to the door and reached the stairs just as Mrs. Gon- ner was wearily ascending to find out what was happening. He tried to stop himself by clutching the knob of the baluster, which broke; the result was that he dragged Mrs. Gonner with him in a glissade which ended behind the counter. The confusion in the shop became general: Mr. Gonner cut his thumb, and the sight of the blood caused a woman who was eating a sausage to choke; another customer took advantage of the row to snatch a side of bacon and try to escape, but another customer with a finer moral sense prevented him; a dog, who was sniffing in the entrance, saw the bacon on the floor and tried to seize it, but getting his tail trodden upon by somebody he took fright and bit a small boy, who was waiting to change a shilling into coppers. (Sylvia Scarlett. pp. 133-134) We particularly notice here how the original fight broadens out as Mackenzie exploits the comic possibilities of the action for its own sake. This development of the incident for its anecdotal qualities becomes more widely the rule in Book II, "Sylvia and Arthur." Interest is increasingly focused on the people Sylvia meets and the adventures she has. Sylvia becomes less important than what happens to her--in large part because she does not significantly change from our 323 early understanding of her. The quick succession of epi sodes is marked by rapid changes of scene. The novel takes on further the characteristics of a travelogue, as Sylvia whisks through France, South America, Spain, North Africa, and, finally, the United States. Also in this book and the next, Mackenzie incorporates material about Con- cetta from his lost novel, No Papers. Yet, as the book ends, Sylvia can still say, ’ ’ This time, yes, Ifm off with the raggle-taggle gipsies in deadly earnest!" (Sylvia Scarlett, p. 424). Book III, "Sylvia and Michael," also has somewhat the movement of a travelogue as Sylvia makes her way from Russia south into the Balkans with the war erupting around her. But the changes between this and the two books of the earlier volume are marked. Sylvia here becomes not just an identity to whom adventures happen, but a mouthpiece 52 for ideas which can best be ascribed to her creator. 52 Country Life observed of Sylvia: "At her very best she is an artifice, a vehicle for a thousand and one ideas which belong more to her author than to herself. One has but to open the book at almost any place to find passages brilliant enough in their way but inconceivable as the thoughts of one of Sylvia*s origin and upbringing"--April, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 324 She becomes addicted to soliloquies, as she analyses her self and the world around her. Her confession to the priest in Bucharest occupies nine pages of almost uninter- 53 rupted monologue. She has long conversations about everything from the war to a method of classifying cities. The political situation in the Balkans at the outbreak of war in 1915 is exhaustively reviewed in conversation with the Roumanian officer Fhilidor. Yet, despite all the talk, much of the confusion and human misery and barbarity of war is conveyed. As Mackenzie’s wife was to observe, Sylvia and Michael was ’ ’the first novel of Great War disillu sion. ”54 At times in Sylvia Scarlett Mackenzie seems to be hurrying us along so that we shall not notice the implausi- bilities of the action. The improvisation becomes too ’ ’ careless," in R. P. Blackmur’s phrase, and coincidence is too much strained. The improbable meeting of Sylvia and 53 The Daily Telegraph (London) commented: "One of the most graphic passages of the book is Sylvia’s confession to an unknown Roumanian priest of her past life, as good a piece of introspection as has ever been written"-- March, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^Faith Compton Mackenzie, As Much As I Dare (London, 1938), p. 286. Arthur in Sulphurville could have been more gracefully arranged if it had seemed desirable. But Mackenzie does not seem concerned about such refinements in this novel. At one point Sylvia voices a wish to visit again the island of Sirene. Shortly thereafter, her friend Olive Fanshawe suddenly becomes ill and the doctor advises her to go to the Mediterranean for the winter. Sylvia, of course, accompanies her to Sirene, and there she rather unneces sarily learns that Miss Home and Miss Hobart, Sylvia’s neighbors at Philip’s Hampshire home, are inexplicably living on Sirene. In "Sylvia and Michael" there is the mysterious impulse which drives Sylvia from Russia to the south of Europe instead of returning directly home to England. And in the Balkans there are the coincidental meetings with characters who figured earlier in the series: Sylvia’s ex-husband Philip as Passport Officer in Bucha rest, and Guy Hazlewood with Michael and Stella Fane caught up in the fall of Nish. The Sunday Chronicle (London), however, in its review of the second volume, found in the elements of the plot a realistic, modem note: "Coinci dence, movement, and adventure may be necessary ingredients 326 of a novel of our troubled times."*’' ’ Not since Jenny Pearl of Carnival had Mackenzie created a heroine who excited as much comment as Sylvia Scarlett. Critical opinion of Sylvia was generally un favorable, although there were some notable exceptions. The Pall Mall Gazette called her "one of the few really great women in fiction--can indeed hold her own with CfJ Beatrice Esmond and Becky Sharp." The Tatler (London) found her "modernity personified, a type that hardly existed to write about, even a decade ago."“ ^ Amy Lowell ■ ’" ’March, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ■^August 23, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). Cornelius Weygandt in his account of Mackenzie's early fic tion says that . . once we meet Sylvia Scarlett we are come upon a real characterization. Mackenzie has written too much about her, but she remains an achievement, a cre ation, a personality, a portrait with a definite place among the remembered women of English fiction"--A Century of the English Novel (New York, 1925), p. 443. ■^"She is no Becky Sharp, an adventuress pur et simple, heartless and mercenary, and condemned to collapse as soon as she is found out. Sylvia is that intrinsically present-day kind who can hold her own in two worlds as far apart as the poles--and keep a world of her own to her very own self all the time! A tremendous appetite for life, and an immense longing to give as well as live, plus a brain of the quick, modem, receptive, and imitative type"--”The Letters of Eve," September 18, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). The Nation (New York) also regarded her as a type of the new woman, but certainly not as an 327 described her "as absolute as Hamlet, and she moves with CO the same inevitable freedom from control.Rebecca West, who did not like the book, thought Sylvia herself to be 59 psychologically interesting and her story moving. 7 Nega tive criticism of the characterization centered on objec tions which had already been made of the principal figures advance upon the old: "Sylvia Scarlett is one of those monsters in petticoats, amusing or distressing as one's taste may determine, with whom recent British fiction has made us so familiar— a creature moulded in her maker's image for the most part; mentally cynical, emotionally as hard as nails, negligently sexual on occasion, but never a woman"--CVII (September 21, 1918), 325. 58 "Casual Reflections on a Few of the Younger English Novelists," The Bookman (New York), XLIX (April 1919), 177. 59 ?"It is a moving invention, this strong character who has been prevented by the vagabondish circumstances of her early life from taking up any creative way of life, and so is driven to use her strength in cherishing weak creatures; and just because she is so strong chooses creatures so weak that in the end they betray her and fall back into the dishonour from which it was her passionate aim to lift them. There -is an exquisite consistency in the fate that follows each of her squanderings of sacrifice; in the comfortable persuasion of each of those whom she protects that since Sylvia is so strong she will not feel any pain if they desert her; in the way that she hardens herself against humanity because of her experience of its base ness, and yet craves more and more for human love. This is a beautifully imagined character"--The Daily News and Leader (London), April, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 328 in the earlier novels. To some reviewers, Sylvia is not "real": "She is simply a china doll with a sawdust stuff ing."^® F. S. in The Manchester Guardian, on the other hand, found her "credible,” though "she is not made per sonally interesting."®^- Others accepted her reality but disliked the type. W. R. Titterton asks: "How can you pity a heroine whose business address is Picadilly and whose fsO private address is the Garden Suburb?" The most origi- nal--if, I believe, unwarranted--view of Sylvia was that of Douglas Goldring: Sylvia is, psychologically, perhaps the most interesting of Mr. Mackenzie*s creations when we grasp her secret. For she is not really a woman, but a young man of a type which is the distinctive product of all decadent civili zations. Change Sylvia*s sex and you have a character study of decided pathological interest, well worth serious attention.°3 ®°Louis J. McQuilland, The Sunday Express (London), March, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^September 14, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). The Nation (London) goes further and speaks of "her singu larly metallic, acrid, obtusely clever, arrogant, and repellant personality"--XXV (April 19, 1919), 8 8. ®^The New Witness (London), March, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 63 Reput at ions (New York, 1920), pp. 50-51. 329 Mackenzie has said that he considers Sylvia Scarlett 6& his "most vital contribution to modern letters." He has, likewise, described her as an imaginary portrait: "She was created in the beginning out of nothing, merely to supply a dramatic scene in Sinister Street. . . ."65 Her name was suggested by the title of an unwritten novel of Robert Louis Stevenson, Sophia Scarlet■^ One suspects that Mac kenzie made her true family name "Snow" for the sake of the Biblical pun which he finally uses in Book III (on p. 442): "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." Though the portrait of Sylvia is fic tional, the details of her adventures, however, Mackenzie claims to have drawn from real life from a variety of 67 sources. Sylvia's brief career as a dramatic monologuist ^Mackenzie, "Compton Mackenzie and Sylvia Scarlett," p. 600. 65"Compton Mackenzie and Sylvia Scarlett," p. 600. ^^Mackenzie, Sylvia Scarlett, p. 8 . Stevenson de scribes his "South Sea plantation novel" in a letter to Sidney Colvin on January 31, 1892--The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. Sidney Colvin, IV (New York, 1911), 12. 67 Mackenzie has said of Sylvia: "I had drawn from the lives of various women of my acquaintance the details of her biography, and the more fantastic and improbable readers may think some of these details the more positively 330 in her Improvisations may be indebted to a number of such music-hall artists as Cissie Loftus, Beatrice Herford, or Yvette Guilbert--all popular stars at the turn of the cen- 68 tury. The most suggestive comparison is with Yvette Guilbert, whose work Mackenzie cites in connection with 6Q Sylvia*s. Indeed, details of her life as well as of her art are reminiscent of Sylvia.^ Another interesting can they be sure that such details are taken from what is called real life*'--"Compton Mackenzie and Sylvia Scarlett," p. 600. More recently Mackenzie has written that "some of her adventures in Russia and Roumania were related to me by a French woman from her own experience"--Sylvia Scar lett, p. 9. One wonders if this French woman was the Mariette he mentions as being at Raphina, who is somewhat suggestive of Sylvia herself: "She confessed she had a beguin for me, and she is much more intelligent than the average cabaret girl. She reads. Oh, yes! She reads. . ." --Mackenzie, First Athenian Memories, p. 6. 68 For a brief account of these entertainers see the "Memoir of Ruth Draper" by Morton Dauwen Zabel in. The Art of Ruth Draper: Her Dramas and Characters (London, I960), p. 108. ^ S p e a k i n g Qf Sylvia’s reception by the critics for her Improvisations, Mackenzie observes: "Most of the critics discovered that she was not as good as Yvette Guilbert. In view of Yvette Guilbert*s genius, of which they were much more firmly convinced now than they would have been when Yvette Guilbert first appeared, this struck them as a safe comparison. . ."--Sylvia Scarlett, p. 409. ^Like Sylvia, Yvette Guilbert was French. Sylvia and her mother were needlewomen like Yvette and her mother, who were milliners. Both Sylvia and Yvette read widely; both derived their inspiration for monologues from a volume 331 parallel is to be found between the artistry of Sylvia and that of Ruth Draper, who began her professional career in London on January 29, 1920, with a program of "character sketches" at the Aeolian Hall (one recalls Sylvia’s per formances at "the Pierian Hall").^ Whatever the influences contributing to her character ization, Sylvia Scarlett was intended, I believe, to offer a career parallel to that of Michael Fane. Yet Mackenzie seems to be as much concerned with creating or defining of songs or poems: with Yvette it was a tiny book of songs titled Les Chansons Sans Gene; with Sylvia it was the volume of manuscript poems given her in Paris by a drug- addicted Englishman. Again like Sylvia’s Improvisations, Yvette's sketches were dramatic and realistic as well as comic. "Yvette Guilbert’s range was remarkable. By voice and gesture, she could bring a street-walker to life for vaudeville, but also suggest the awe of the woman of Samaria when she met Jesus at the well"--Ernest Short, Sixty Years of Theatre (London, 1951), p. 214. 71 /J-Zabel, p. 60. Mackenzie was apparently unacquainted with her work, though Ruth Draper had performed her mono logues privately for friends in England since the spring of 1913 (Zabel, p. 40). Mackenzie did see her, however, in 1920, and after the performance wrote her a letter: "I had the great good fortune to reach England in time to see your last performance at the Aeolian Hall. And now a week later in cold blood on a wet night I write to tell you that I have never enjoyed--I won’t say anything of the kind, because there never has been anything of the kind except in the pages of a book called Sylvia Scarlett--but really I don’t think I ever enjoyed sitting in a stall so much. It was perfect"--quoted in Zabel, p. 78. 332 72 a personality as showing the development of a character. The central fact about Sylvia as a person is her vitality and unflagging zest for life and experience. As she once explained to her father, "I don't want to be left out of things.... Not out of anything" (Sylvia Scarlett. p. 62). Her general development is much like that of Michael Fane: at first toward independence and later toward a personal sense of commitment to life. In London, for example, Sylvia loses her fear of being alone by learning to make herself indispensable to others--"a step forward in the development of her character," we are told (p. 67). On the death of her father, she discovers that "for the rest of her life the choice of her companions lay with herself alone. She had become at this moment grown up and free. . . " (p. 94). One result of her freedom, however, is her propensity for going off with the raggle-taggle gipsies whenever a situation becomes difficult. As she wrote in her imaginary epitaph in Brompton Cemetery, 72 The Scotsman (Edinburgh) commented in this regard: ". . . the character of Sylvia remains much the same in her last adventure as in the first . . . each adventure is but a fresh presentation of the same temperament"--Septem ber 2, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). "HERE LIES SYLVIA SCARLETT WHO WAS ALWAYS RUNNING AWAY" (p. 145). Her need for fulfillment or commitment leads her into emotional entanglements with Lily as well as with Philip and Arthur. It likewise spurs her into the cre ativity of the Improvisations. By the third book, "Sylvia and Michael," she can say to the nun in the hospital in Petersburg: "Mere living for the sake of living seems to me as sensual as any other appetite. Sister, can’t you give me the key to life?" (p. 448). Although the nun was unable to help her, Mackenzie seems to suggest that at book's end Sylvia is about to come to terms with existence as the result of achieving a religious view of life as well as a satisfying human love. But this conclusion is sufficiently tenuous and forced so that one can only surmise Mackenzie's intention. Sylvia's religious development is never suf ficiently explained or motivated clearly enough to make her conversion seem more than merely another adventure. As in Sinister Street, Mackenzie seems incapable of a convincing, interior account of spiritual conversion. Similarly, the love affair between Sylvia and Michael impresses as being contrived rather than natural and inevitable. The only attempt to motivate this strangely fated relationship is the making them second cousins and thus premising an inexplicable mutual attraction. There is, moreover, an even more basic objection to Sylvia as a successful characterization. The Birmingham Weekly Post has perhaps summed it up: The depths of her personality-assuming them to exist-- remain hidden from us; and constantly we find con siderable difficulty in harmonizing her crisply epi grammatic speech and mature philosophy either with her youth or with her u p b r i n g i n g .73 She is somewhat too sophisticated, knowledgeable, and well read to be credible from what we learn about her. We do not see her evolve mentally, so we must accept on faith that she could read Petronius at seventeen with the follow ing result: She read it through without skipping a word, applied it to the test of recognition, and decided that she found more satisfactorily than in any book she had read a distorting mirror of her life from the time she left France until she met Philip--a mirror, however, that never distorted so wildly as to preclude recognition. (p. 177) Despite the fast pace of her life, Sylvia has read widely and quotes appositely from writers as diversified as Apuleius, Stendhal, Whitman, Landor, and Browning. Her casual conversation crackles with wit and allusion. ^September 30, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 335 In New York she .defends the headlines of American news papers to Arthur: "They're as much more amusing than the dreary column beneath as tinned tongue is nicer than the dry undula tion for which you pay twice as much. Headlines are the poetry of journalism, and after all what would the Parthenon be without its frieze?" (p. 371) In similar fashion, in Book III, "Sylvia and Michael," Sylvia indulges far too frequently in long, rambling, un- dramatic soliloquies, which express ideas typical of Mackenzie but quite implausible when assigned to her. I quote a passage of some length to show clearly the effect. Sylvia begins by discussing her relationship with Queenie Walters, then lapses into the following introspective reverie, which rapidly passes from personal to social com mentary: Just when I ought to be making the most tremendous efforts to anchor myself to some stable society that will carry me through the years to come, the years that without intellectual and spiritual pleasures will be nothing but a purgatory for my youth, I find myself more hopelessly adrift than ever before. It will end in my becoming a contemplative nun in one last desperate struggle to avoid futility. It is a tragedy for the man or woman who comprehends futility without being able to escape from it. That's where the Middle Ages were wiser than we. Futility was impossible then. That's where we suffer from that ponderous bog of Victorianism. When one pauses to meditate upon the crimes of the Victorian era! And it's impossible not to dread a revival of Victorianism after this war. 336 It's obvious that unless we defeat the Teuton quickly-- and there’s no sign of it--we shall be Teutonized in order to do it. And then indeed, 0 grave where is^ thy victory? Will the Celtic blood in England be enough to save her in ten years' time from a base alliance with these infernal Germans in order that the two stupidest nations in the world may combine to overlay it? Will this war at last bring home to Europe the sin of hand ing herself over to lawyers? Better the Middle Ages priest-ridden than to-d:ay lawyer-ridden. At least if we are going to pay these rascals who exploit their country, let us have it well exploited. Don't let us call in one political plumber after another whose only object is to muddle the State for his successor to muddle it still more that he may be called in again to muddle it again--and muddle--and muddle eternally! When one reads in the papers the speeches of politi cians, of what can one be reminded but of children play ing cat's cradle over the tortured body of their mother? Yet what business have I to be abusing lawyer and poli tician when I lack the strength of mind to persevere in a task which I set myself with my eyes open? Unless I suffer in achieving it, it will not be worth the achieve ment. Surely the human soul that has suffered deeply can never again acknowledge futility? 0 England, per haps it is a poor little pain to be away from you now, a mean little egotistical ache at the best, but away from you I see your faults so much more clearly and love you for them all the more.^ 74 Mackenzie, Sylvia Scarlett, pp. 564-565. Reviewers frequently commented on Mackenzie's use of characters in this second volume, and especially of Sylvia, as mouth pieces for his own ideas. The Outlook (London) said: "It is no longer the fashion for the novelist to thrust his characters off the stage and unburden himself direct to the reader, as Thackeray and Dickens used to do. It was not a good fashion, but it is doubtful if its modem substi tute, whereby the author 'takes cover' behind one of his characters and shouts his views through their lips is any improvement. The result in Sylvia and Michael is to cause the unlucky Sylvia to discourse for pages on the human 337 It is interesting to note that in Sylvia Scarlett Mackenzie forgets the lesson he learned from Carnival about care and consistency in handling the point of view and repeats his early mistake. In the novel the point of view is generally but not exclusively limited to Sylvia her self. As such, it offers no real problems except that, as in the case of Jenny Pearl, we never see the men in her life through Sylvia’s eyes. This is particularly true of Arthur Madden, whose selfishness is made so obvious and odious that we can not really believe in Sylvia’s involve ment with him. For example, when Arthur had become ill in Sulphurville, he wired his mother for fifty pounds. She apparently had trouble in raising it, and when the money finally arrived Arthur had already been "rescued" by Sylvia. Sylvia suggested that the money be immediately returned to his mother, since she herself was well able to lend him what was needed for the time. Arthur, however, was loath to send the remittance back. Sylvia was able to persuade him to do so only by selling him upon the idea soul, on the Roman Catholic Church, on the basis of ethics, while her different admirers expand at equal length on Balkan politics"--April, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 338 of "how jolly it would be for her [his mother] suddenly to receive fifty pounds for herself" (p. 370). We are then told: Arthur warmed to the idea; he could not resist the picture of his mother*s pleasure, nor the kind of in verted generosity with which it seemed to endow himself. He talked away about the arrival of the money in England, till it almost seemed as if he were sending his mother the accumulation of hard-earned savings to buy herself a new piano. . . . Sylvia found his attitude rather boyish and charming. . . . (pp. 370-371) "Boyish” the attitude may well have been, but in a man of thirty it could hardly be "charming." And the effect is for the reader to be puzzled by Sylvia's taking such a man so seriously. If the reader questions certain aspects of the charac terization of Sylvia Scarlett, the subsidiary characters offer little difficulty. In Sylvia Scarlett Mackenzie creates character with the facility he employs as he in vents incident. The minor characters have a vividness and a vitality which usually preclude any questioning of their reality, any more than we would question the characters in a novel by Dickens. And it is true that in Sylvia Scarlett Mackenzie has created a world of Dickensian, larger-than-life eccentrics, often with grotesque names 339 like Mrs. Gowndry, the lavatory man's wife, or Mr. Linthi- cum, the omniscient American traveller, or Fred Organ, the coachman. The Scotsman observed of the first volume that "It is perhaps one of the most densely populated novels of modern times. . . . "^ There are more than 150 characters in the novel with speaking parts, and most are delineated to some extent. So we are introduced to the Dragoman who is seen briefly as a guide to Sylvia and Mrs. Gainsborough in Morocco: . . . he was an undersized man rather like the stump of a tallow candle into which the wick has been pressed down by a snuffer, for he was bald and cream-coloured with a thin uneven black moustache and two nodules on his forehead; his clothes too were crinkled like a candlestick. He spoke French well, but preferred to speak English, of which he only knew two words "all right"; this often made his advice unduly optimistic. (p. 319) Mackenzie excels in such thumbnail portraiture that depends largely upon the selection of characteristic traits in appearance or speech. Particularly memorable are his por traits of landladies--from Mrs. Meares in Lillie Road, Fulham, to Mfere Gontran in Petersburg. Mackenzie's most conspicuous failures in characterization, however, are his ^September 2, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 340 Americans. He cannot get the manner or the idiom right, and the result is awkward burlesque, as in Mr. and Mrs. Lebus of Sulphurville, Indiana, or Under-Sheriff McMorris of New York. As is customary with Mackenzie, many of his characters are portraits of real people. Mr. Dorward, for example, the Anglican vicar in Hampshire, is based upon Mackenzie's eccentric friend Sandys Wason.^ The real-life Concetta or Queenie Walters has already been described (see pp. 292- 293). But Mrs. Gainsborough, perhaps the most uniformly successful of the subsidiary characters, seems to have, been a creation. She is briefly encountered at Mulberry Cottage in Sinister Street, and she unforgettably comes to life in Sylvia Scarlett. Mackenzie contends that she was his own invention and not a portrait (Sylvia Scarlett, p. 9). Reviewers were generally enthusiastic. Country Life called her "easily the most skilfully drawn character in the book."^ The Bookman (London) thought that she "richly 76 Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times: Octave Two. 1891-1900 (London, 1963), p. 202. ^September 21, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 341 73 deserves a book of her own." Lily Haden, also, is one of the most interesting of the secondary characters because of our ability to contrast how she appeared through the eyes of Michael in Sinister Street with her more objective 70 presentation in Sylvia Scarlett. There is a comic irony in hearing Lily’s account of the fatal episode in which Michael discovered that she had a man in the apartment. We learn that the man was Claude Raglan, and that he was enraged because Michael took away his hat--a hat he needed for his job. Effective commentary on Michael's fatuousness in Sinister Street is Lily's explanation why she did not marry Claude: "I liked Claude better than I liked Michael. But Claude had to think about his future" (Sylvia Scarlett, p. 245). Mackenzie uses dialogue in Sylvia Scarlett both as an effective means of characterization and as a delight for its own sake. In the latter connection, The Sketch (London) spoke of "the snap and sparkle of Sylvia's 78"Please, Mr. Mackenzie!" LXXIV (November 1931), 268. 7^The New Statesman (London) in this regard said of the novel, "Lily ceases to be a lovely picture and assumes some of the attributes of life"--"Edward Endless Again," XI (September 7, 1918), 455. 342 80 talk.” The Sunday Chronicle also remarked of the charac ters In Sylvia and Michael, ”their talk is always brilliant 81 and often wise." A More recently Antony Sampson has writ ten: . . . what younger writer (Joyce Cary perhaps?) can equal the virtuosity and fulness of the dialogue, and the amazingly retentive mind and eye of Mackenzie? It is a welcome tonic among the stuffy rooms and taut, tense silences of modern fiction to be allowed out into the wide open spaces, and to listen to people who can talk. (The Books of To-Day and the Books of Tomorrow p. 26) There are a great many instances in the novel of Mac kenzie's talent for conveying character through faithfully delineated speech. There is, for example, Mr. Gustard, a retired gardener, who lives near Hampstead Heath and figures briefly in the story. When he suggests on a fine day to the youthful Sylvia that she should go for a walk on the Heath, she replies that he never takes walks but just sits all day doing nothing. This remark provokes the following outburst, which gives an indelible impression of the man: "I'm different," Mr. Gustard pronounced very solemnly. "I've lived my life. If I was to take a walk around ^September 11, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ***March, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 343 Hampstead, I couldn’t hardly peep into a garden without seeing a tree as I’d planted myself. And when I’m gone, the trees will still be there. That’s something to think about that is. There was a clergyman came nosing round here the other day to ask me why I didn’t go to church. I told him I’d done without church as a lad, and I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t do without it now. ’But you're growing old, Mr. Gustard,* he says to me. ’That’s just it,’ I says to him. 'I’m getting very near the time when if all they say is true I shall be in the heavenly choir for ever and ever amen, and the less singing I hear for the rest of my time on earth the better.' 'That’s a very blasphemous remark,’ he says to me. 'Is it?* says I to him. ’Well, here’s another. Perhaps all this talk by parsons,’ I says, 'about this life on earth being just a choir practice for heaven won’t bear looking into. Perhaps we shall all die and go to sleep and never wake up and never dream and never do nothing at all never. And if that’s true,’ I says, ’I reckon I shall bust my coffin with laughing when I think of my trees growing and growing and growing and you preaching to a lot of old women and children about something you don’t know nothing about and they don’t know nothing about and nobody don’t know nothing about.' With that I offered him a pear, but he walked off very offended with his head in the air. Yoti get out and about, my dear. Bustle around and enjoy yourself. That’s my motto for the young." (Sylvia Scarlett, P- 97) But successful as Mackenzie generally is in the characterization through their speech of types he knows well, an exception must be made, as already mentioned, for his weak attempts to depict Americans and to capture Ameri can dialect. When Sylvia explains to the Lebuses, the proprietors of the Auburn Hotel in Sulphurville, that she knows Arthur Madden, who is stranded ill in their estab lishment, Mr. Lebus says of this interesting coincidence: 344 "Darned if I don’t tell Pastor Gollick after next Sunday meeting. He’s got a kind of hankering after the ways of Providence. Gee! Why, it’s a sermonizing cinch" (p. 367). Such infelicities of idiom show that Mackenzie learned certain dialectical words without mastering the style and rhythm of American speech. The physical setting of Sylvia Scarlett is the least detailed setting of all these early works. The rapidity of the action forbids much description, and in the novel character and incident are paramount. In addition, as we have seen, Mackenzie was under the influence of Stendhal and his "theory of unnecessary decoration" (Sylvia Scar lett, p. 9). In the novel Mackenzie does not seek to embed his characters in a solidly detailed and accurate topographical setting, as he did in his other books. Setting provides only a functional backdrop for the action and is not thematically important to his artistic purposes. At times there is even no attempt to create a setting, but action and dialogue alone carry’ the burden of the story. Thus, in Book II, Sylvia goes for a chapter to South America. Mackenzie does not describe Rio de Janeiro or S3o Paulo and there are virtually no details conveying 345 local color.The action might have occurred anywhere. On the other hand, a detached vignette is sometimes given. But even then the description may be impressionistic rather than factually detailed. Thus, we are told that New York made a deep and lasting impression on Sylvia: no city that she had seen was so uncompromising; so sure of its flamboyant personality; so completely an in genious, spoilt, and precocious child; so lovable for its extravagance and mischief. To her the impression was of some Gargantuan boy in his nursery building up tall towers to knock them down, running his clockwork- engines for fun through the streets of his toy city, scattering in corners quantities of toy bricks in readi ness for a new fit of destructive construction, scooping up his tin inhabitants at the end of a day’s play to put them helter-skelter into their box, eking out the most novel electrical toys of that Christmas with the bat tered old trams of the Christmas before, cherishing old houses with a child's queer conservatism, devoting a large stretch of bright carpet to a park, and robbing his grandmother's mantelpiece of her treasures to put inside his more permanent structures. (Sylvia Scarlett, p. 349) The setting in time, on the other hand, is much more definite and more carefully worked out than that of place. References to actual events, like the Boer War and the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, or to the dating of 82 Of Rio we are told only that the men and women were "over-jewelled" and that "The climate was hot, but a sea- breeze freshened the city after sunset" (p. 276). The only descriptive comment accorded S3o Paulo is that "S3o Paulo was a squalid reproduction of Rio de Janeiro. . . " (p. 285). 346 letters enable us to place the action in a historical framework. Mackenzie is generally accurate in his handling of historic time. When he has Sylvia say, "Today's Tuesday the 28th" (p. 604), he has made certain that September 28, 1915, is a Tuesday in fact. Sylvia Scarlett, however, has a chronological relationship not only to historic time but to the events in the other novels of the sequence and par ticularly to Sinister Street. From the time that Michael finds Lily with Sylvia until, six months later, he asks Sylvia to take Lily back again, the incidents of the affair are frequently paralleled in the two novels. In addition, further information on those crucial months of 1906 is given in Guy and Pauline, so that we have a detailed account of the episode from various points of view. De spite the haste with which Sylvia Scarlett was composed, there are surprisingly few errors in chronology.®-* Here once again Mackenzie evidences the historian's passion 83 The most puzzling slip, however, is the difference between the two books as to the exact date when Michael saw Lily at the dance in Redcliffe Hall. In Sinister Street. the meeting occurred on the night of January 1, 1906 (pp. 771-772); in Sylvia Scarlett it took place on New Year's Eve, 1905. Perhaps Mackenzie came to think that an important dance might more logically be held on New Year's Eve than on the following evening. 347 for accuracy in placing his fictional world so carefully in historic time. Perhaps the most striking change between Sylvia Scar lett and Mackenzie's earlier books is in the style. Descriptive passages are used sparingly, and when used they are brief. The decorative prose studded with exotic words is also abandoned. Some reviewers greeted the change as an advance. The New Statesman, for example, congratu lated Mackenzie on "beginning to curb that profusion of material loveliness with which he used too easily to drug both himself and his readers. Punch (London), on the other hand, while praising the "swiftness of action and development and growth of character" confessed that it at times regretted "the prose-poetry of his more leisured moods. Mackenzie himself has attributed this change in style to two factors: the influence of Stendhal and the official writing he did during the war years. He has said in this latter connection: 84 September 7, 1918, p. 455. ^CLV (September 11, 1918), 175. 348 I suppose when I came out after my year at Athens as Military Control Officer I had written in reports, telegrams, and other papers the equivalent of six novels. . . . I’d got over any weakness for the lan guorous and the long-drawn out. I’d lost all desire to look about for beautiful words. The only thing that mattered was to get on with the story. (Morgan, p. 490) He further commented that if one "had written about 10,000 telegrams, as I had, at one and sixpence-halfpenny or some thing a word, you know you’ve got to cut out everything 86 unnecessary." Although in later books Mackenzie modified his practice in Sylvia Scarlett of excluding descriptive passages from his work, his style never reverted to the mannered elegancies of the pre-war period. Although Mackenzie pruned his style of many of its earlier extravagances, the tone of Sylvia Scarlett is in its own way an extravagant picaresque mixture of realism, humor, and satire. John V. A. Weaver said of the book: Apparently Mackenzie suddenly went a trifle mad. Perhaps the war did it. At any rate "Sylvia Scarlett" was like nothing he had ever written before, and like nothing that anyone has written since the days of Cap tain Marryat. It was a picaresque novel like "Peter Simple" or "Peregrine Pickle." It created in me the same impression as the account of a "Cook’s Tour" writ ten by Mack Sennett. The itinerary of the lady covers 86 "Sir Compton Mackenzie ’Face to Face,’" The Listener. LXVII (January 25, 1962), 166. 349 * most of the world west of Russia, and the characteriza tion and humor ranged from Charlie Chaplinism to the Police Gazette. ^ Certainly there is much that is realistic in the inci dents, characterization, observations, and techniques of the novel. Mackenzie has said: During the war I acquired an immense treasure of hard facts about human nature, and Sylvia Scarlett was the first book in which out to spend some of this accumulated treasure. He also draws upon his pre-war experiences for details, Oq characters, and incidents in the story. ^ However fantas tic the incidents may at times appear, they are often based on fact in accordance with Mackenzie's general practice. The New York Herald, for example, found strange and 8 7 The Chicago News, August 6 , 1919 (clipping in Scrap book No. 30). ®®Mackenzie, "Compton Mackenzie and Sylvia Scarlett," p. 600. 89 His extensive knowledge of English theatrical life contributed to his account of Sylvia's career (as it had of Jenny Pearl's). For the general setting of Philip Ire- dale's Hampshire home, Mackenzie drew upon his recollec tions of the family cottage near Alton. For the informa tion about the United States, there were his experiences with the theatrical production of Carnival for the American impresario William Brady. And Sylvia's travels in Spain and Morocco recall the trip which Mackenzie took as an undergraduate to those places. 350 unbelievable the account of the reception for tjie Emperor of Byzantium in the novel. Yet a parallel incident actually took place at which Mackenzie was* presented to the ’ ’Empress of Byzantium” during a'similar reception in the hall of Clifford’s Inn.^ Moreover, the narrative tech nique itself, as already described, is realistic in its episodic portrayal of experience. In Sylvia Scarlett, more fully than in his other books, Mackenzie gives scope to his considerable skill as a writer of comedy. With the exception of The Passionate Elopement, Mackenzie had restrained his natural propensity for a humorous view of life in conformity with a more serious artistic purpose. As a result, too often his attempts to indulge his comic bent were merely tentative or awkward. The artistic conception of Sylvia Scarlett, how ever, was broad enough to accommodate various effects or purposes. For most of the novel the mood is established that life is an amusing adventure to be enjoyed with Qfl August 25, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^Compton Mackenzie, "Sidelight,” The Spectator, CXCII (April 9, 1954), 437. 351 cheef'ful zest. As Sylvia exclaims, ’ ’ What fun everything is!” (p. 367). When she discovers Arthur ill and without money in Sulphurville, he begins to complain about the hard time he has had with "a lot of people against me.” Sylvia replies: ”Yes, but that's such fun. You simply must be amused by life, when you're with me” (p. 366). And it is in this spirit that we are asked to view much of the action of the book. Reviewers, however, did not generally have much to say about the humor. They had perhaps become too accustomed to regarding Mackenzie as a romantic-realist to see him in any significant way as a humorist. Yet Amy Lowell could apostrophize, "The delicious, light, pathetic o2 humor!" And Country Life thought one of the best things about the first volume was "the 'Alice in Wonderland' Q O humour." Humor attends even the deathbed of Mrs. Gains borough, for she tells Sylvia about the clergyman who was summoned and spoke movingly of the crucifixion: "Here, when did all this occur?" I asked. "Nineteen hundred and ten years ago," he said. "Oh, well," I said, "it all occurred such a long time ago and it's all so sad, let's hope it never occurred at all." (p. 342) ^"Casual Reflections," p. 177. ^September 21, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 352 In addition to humorous characterizations, Mackenzie, as we have seen, demonstrates his facility at the invention of comic episodes. As F. H. in The New Republic (New York) commented, Mackenzie sets Sylvia "in every situation known QA to farce and burlesque and vaudeville. . . . As everywhere in Mackenzie, verbal humor has an irre sistible fascination. There are here the usual grotesque puns, for example, on the name "Scarlett” (p. 147), the relationship of the name "Snow" to "Scarlett" (p. 442), or the following incredible exchange between Ronnie Walker and Sylvia: "What shall we drink?" he asked imperturbably. "I've been absinthe for so long that really--" "It's a vermouth point," added Ronald. "Ronnie, you devil, I can't go on, it's too whisky. Dramatic irony operates at various levels in the novel. There is a grotesque, comic irony in Sylvia's un comprehending attendance at the party of homosexuals while she is masquerading as a boy. There is also the irony, 94„The Scarlett Woman," XVII (November 9, 1918), 48. ^ Sylvia Scarlett, pp. 390-391. Later in writing the book Mackenzie apparently thought of another member of the litany, for he had Mr. Porter, a casual acquaintance of Sylvia, advise her that "she must gin and bear it" (p. 600). 353 comic or pathetic, arising from the contrast between epi sodes in Sylvia Scarlett with those of other books of the sequence. Thus we have Lily’s account of the incident in which she was "found out" by Michael, to go with that given by Michael in Sinister Street. There is also a certain pathetic irony in hearing of Maurice Avery’s resolution to return home and marry Jenny Pearl because we know the out” t come of that affair, from Carnival. There is a similar effect in learning of the death of Guy Hazlewood and of his final letter to Pauline Grey. More insistent and comprehensive, however, is the satire which pervades the book. In quality it ranges from the lightly humorous to the cynical to the bitterly denun ciatory. Some of the satire is directed at types of indi- * viduals, like Dorothy Lonsdale, the chorus girl who marries a peer, but who has to shed her past on the way up the social scale. There is satire at such national types as the "lace-curtain" Irish in the person of Mrs. Meares, "whose husband had grown tired of her gentility and left her" (p. 50); or the semi-literate American vulgarian, like one of the Lebuses or Under-Sheriff MacMorris. There is satire directed at such specialized groups as the Monar chists in the episode dealing with the Emperor of Byzantium. 354 Members of fashionable artistic coteries are the target in one of the longest sustained satirical passages in the book. Here Sylvia meets Mr. Morphew the Azurist and learns about the various schools of art of the day, which include Ovism, Combinationism, and Blanchism, the latter of which repudiates color altogether: "their pictures depend on the angle at which they’re hung" (p. 393). Personal satire is likewise introduced with reference to the poet Hezekiah Penny, who is easily decipherable as Ezra Pound (p. 393). In the conversations and soliloquies of the third book, Mackenzie most stridently and directly attacked what he found wrong with the world of his own day and the war that it produced. A hotel room in Avereshti becomes for Sylvia a symbol of the modern condition which led to war: Those red plush curtains eternally tied back in sym metrical hideousness--they had never lived since the time when some starved and withered soul had sewn those pom poms along their edges one after another, pompons as numerous and as monotonous as the days of their maker. Indeed, there was not a single piece of furniture, not an ornament nor a drapery that was not stamped with the hatred of its maker. There was no trace of the crafts man’s joy in his handiwork either in thread or tile or knob. There was nothing except the insolence of profit and the dreary labour of slaves. Yet a world stifled by such ugliness talked with distasteful surprise of men who profited by war. With the exploitation of the herd and the sacrifice of the individual that was called civilisa tion what else could be expected? Nowadays even man’s lust had to be guaranteed pure and unadulterated like 355 his beer. Better that the whole human race should rot on dunghills with the diseases they merited than that they should profit from an added shame imposed upon the meanest and the most miserable tinker's drab. People were shocked at making a hundred per cent upon a shell to blow a German to pieces; but they regarded with equanimity the same profit at the expense of a child's future. Wherever one looked, there was nothing but material comfort set as the highest aim of life at the cost of beauty, religion, love, childhood, womanhood, virtue, everything. Then two herds met in opposition, and there was war; the result had made everybody un comfortable, and everybody had declared there must never again be war. But so long as the individual submitted to the herd, war would go on; and the most efficient herd with the greatest will for war would succeed be cause it would be able to offer greater comfort at the time and higher profits afterwards. (p. 577) in a lighter vein, Mackenzie through the mouth of Guy Hazle wood comments in some detail on the problems of military correspondence and the special qualities of military lan guage. Of the latter he remarks: "I'm sure that the chief reason of a knowledge of Latin being still demanded for admission to Sandhurst is the hope universally cherished in the Army that every cadet's haversack contains a new long Latin intransitive verb which can be used transitively to supplant one of the short Saxon verbs that still disfigure military cor respondence. I can imagine such a cadet saying, 'Sir, I would sooner have been the first man that wrote of evacuating wounded than take Berlin.*" (p. 623) Despite the humor of much of the novel, the tone deepens to the tragic in the last book as Mackenzie por trays something of the human misery which war causes. It is not in scenes of carnage that he depicts the inhumanity 356 of war, but by showing the effects upon non-combatants tossed about in war's wake. The emphasis is not so much on death as on the suffering of the inarticulate. So Queenie Walters becomes a symbol of the rootless and dis placed, a prey to the forces they cannot control. The con fusion and the horror of the Serbian retreat on Nish is sketched in the brutality and suffering of the children: A child was sucking the raw head of a hen; it happened that Sylvia knocked against it in her hurry, whereupon the child grabbed the morsel of blood and mud, snarling at her like a famished hound. Wherever she looked there were children searching on all fours among the filth lodged in the cracks of the rough paving-stones; it was an existence where nothing counted except the ability to trample over one's neighbour to reach food or safety, (p. 640) Such scenes and such an approach to the effects of war upon the non-combatants have become commonplace since the second World War. But the originality of Mackenzie in treating the plight of the innocents rather than of the soldier has not perhaps received adequate recognition. Although the novel did enjoy a certain popular 96 success, with Sylvia Scarlett the critical tide began ^Mackenzie mentions that the first edition of 12,000 copies were sold out within a week or so (Sylvia Scarlett. p. 8). 357 to turn against Mackenzie- Part of the reason, undoubtedly, was the unfortunate method of publication in two volumes with a six-month interval between the volumes. Sylvia Scarlett did not break as well into two parts as did Sinister Street. Separate titles made it appear that the second volume, Sylvia and Michael, was a sequel rather than a continuation. Those who had not read the first volume were at a loss to understand what was going on. One such reader summed up his reactions to the volume as "sheer puzzlement." He continued: On reference to the reviewers, I find . . . that various characters in this book belong also to certain other novels of Mr. Mackenzie's. All these, or most of them, are linked up together. Mr. Mackenzie, in fact, seems to have spent his career writing one brobdingnagian novel, and here I am trying to begin it at the wrong end. It is true that after about a hundred pages or so Sylvia helps me by giving a lively account of her previous career in confession to a priest; but all through the book there is the sense of coming across people that one imperfectly understands. One feels like a shy man at dinner with strangers who ignore him. On the other hand, there were those who had grown tired of the sequence novel with its repetition of characters. They wanted Mackenzie to brealf fresh ground and give "his 07 A Contemporary, "Sequels: A Grumble and Some Sug gestions," The Sheffield Daily Telegraph. April 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 358 beloved * Sinister Street* dramatis personae the benefit QQ of a well-earned rest."7 The reaction against the pre war world was already settling in, and it was upon those years that Mackenzie was centrally concerned. Moreover, the war was still going on when the first volume came out. The times were out of joint, and the world of the imme diate past seemed of little consequence. The Nation (London) in its review of the first volume voiced the feel ings of many: The frame of the world cracks, empires dissolve, there is overcrowding in the next world, God bethinks Him self of recapitulating the first chapter of Genesis-- and Mr. Mackenzie, with supreme impassivity, proceeds with his Hansard of the emotions and adventures of Michael Fane, Sylvia Scarlett, Maurice Avery, and Lily Haden.^9 The first volume entitled The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett was less widely and more negatively Jacob Omnium, The Bookman (London), September, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). Alec Waugh said: "Into the two Sylvia Scarlett volumes is brought practically every character that has appeared in any of the previous books . . . and yet we do not discover a single new thing about any one of them. They have been exploited already sufficiently"--"Life and Letters," The Yorkshire Observer. April 5, 1921 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 26). 99 September 7, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 359 reviewed than any of the other novels.^®® One reason for the fewer reviews was the war-time limitations on newsprint and paper. One suspects also that much of the dissatis- i faction with the novel arose simply out of a dislike of the picaresque form for a modern novel. The chaotic world of fictional experience too closely paralleled the real world to be deeply satisfying. But praise was mingled with the criticism. The Liverpool Courier, for example, while regretting that it lacked "the verbal magic" of the earlier books, yet specified what it liked in the novel: . . . his [Mackenzie*s] amazing inventiveness, his Dickens-like prodigality and humour in characterization, and the clean candour with which once more he has dealt with matters rarely set forth in polite fiction.101 Of special significance is the note of vague disap pointment with Mackenzie's general achievement as a writer which begins to sound with increasing frequency. The Observer (London), for example, spoke of Mackenzie as lOOThere are 26 reviews given in the Mackenzie Scrap books from newspapers and periodicals in the British Isles. Of these 7 were basically favorable, 8 were strongly un favorable, and the remainder were conspicuously negative. The reviews of any critical significance are listed in the bibliography. Sept ember 24, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 360 ’ ’ one of the most vivacious and the most unsatisfying of modem novelists. "102 The - Nat ion (London) said: "Sylvia Scarlett" is entertaining, inventive, sometimes witty, and dextrous, and written in excellent English. And we say what we do at some length because we had justifiably hoped it would be something m o r e . ^-0 3 - The New Statesman summed up the attitude: After every volume by Mr. Compton Mackenzie since his first, one has looked up and asked perplexedly: What is wrong with this distinguished, graceful, and entertain ing writer? He has knowledge, he has charm, he knows how to write; but the reader is not quite convinced. He puts the book down with an uneasy sense that he has been beguiled by the faux bon and with a feeling, equally active, that Mr. Mackenzie is capable of the vrai bon and should have achieved it, this time at any rate. And his new volume leaves one in the same perplexity, asking the same question. The second volume, entitled Sylvia and Michael, re ceived somewhat more reviews than the first in British publications, but the reception was very mixed. 102 September 1, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). •^^September 7, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 104September 7, 1918, p. 455. 105There are 37 reviews given in the Scrapbooks. Of these 15 were basically favorable, with 10 strongly un favorable, and the remainder mixed. The reviews with any critical significance are listed in the bibliography. 361 The Morning Post called it "a brilliant novel, and Rebecca West hailed it as "by far the best thing Mr. Comp ton Mackenzie has done since 'Carnival.1 On the other hand, The New Statesman felt that "It is certainly the least admirable work which Mr. Mackenzie has yet offered X08 to his public. ..." More typical of the general com ment is the review in The Sheffield Daily Telegraph which catalogued both good and bad features of the book: The only conventional thing about the whole book is its happy ending: and the reading of the story leaves one quite unable to decide between admiration for its originality and for the swiftness and sureness of the author's touch, and annoyance at its haste and sketchi ness, its imperfections of character study, and its interminable disquisitions and monologues which are often clean out of touch with the story and its people. The American reception of the two volumes showed some differences from that of the British. The first volume ■^^March 29, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 107The Daily News and Leader, April, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 108XIII (April 12, 1919), 49. ^^April, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 110 The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett was published by Harper & Brothers in August, 1918. Sylvia and Michael did not appear until July, 1919. 362 was rather more favorably received in the United States than in England; but the second volume provoked severe 119 attacks. Of this latter volume, N. M. in The New York Tribune said: ". . .we wish the book had lost itself in 11^ the New York Post Office." The Chicago Tribune called it "actually unreadable, and The New York Times Book Review, more mildly, referred to it as "the least inter esting of Mr. Mackenzie’s novels." Although Sinister Street had been censored in England as immoral, there was little censure of the more "daring" Sylvia Scarlett. Robert K. Risk in The Sunday Times said of Mackenzie that "He leaps from the erotic to the tommy- rotic,"^^ but the novel excited little moral indignation. ^^Of the 31 reviews given of the first volume, 12 were basically favorable, only four were strongly negative, and the rest were mixed. The reviews with any critical significance are listed in the bibliography. 119 Of the 43 reviews given of the second volume, 12 were basically favorable, 14 were strongly unfavorable, and the remainder were mixed. The reviews with any critical significance are listed in the bibliography. ^^No date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^-^August 16, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 115XXIV (August 3, 1919), 390. ^■^^March, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 363 The Tatler regarded this change significant: . . . how very dead poor old Mrs. Grundy is that a book like Compton Mackenzie*s "Sylvia Scarlett" can come out without a single shriek from the censorians, not the faintest protest from the Puritans, not the mildest moan from Mudie’s? Not that it*s got the sort of outspoken ness that goads the properly pure mind to virtuous protestation. But the fact remains that Sylvia does "lead her own life" in a way that would have given the Victorians fits, and even the Edwardians the shivers. The American press, on the other hand, had not objected to Sinister Street, but Sylvia Scarlett was criticised for its low and vulgar moral tone. Dorothy Scarborough in The New York Sun said: "There is overmuch profanity and vulgar conversation, and risque comments come from the lips of the young girl heroine. Rochester (New York) Post Express disapprovingly called the first volume "positively 119 Zolaesque," and The New York Evening Sun observed: The book is somewhat marred by occasional lapses into vulgarity, apparently for its own sake, as in the epi sode of Blanche and the upsetting of the English 117tiThe Letters of Eve," September 18, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 1 1 f t "Compton Mackenzie*s Sylvia Scarlett," Septem ber 22, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). ^^August 22, 1919 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 364 governess, which is, however, discreetly veiled in very idiomatic F r e n c h . ^0 Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, there was very little comment of any kind on the American scenes in the first volume. The New York Times Book Review, for example, merely said that Sylvia*s "New York experiences do not 121 impress one with their veracity." With similar moder ation The Indianapolis Star reacted to the account given of Sulphurville (in fact, French Lick, Indiana): . . . his [Mackenzie*s] picture of an Indiana spa, as they call such places in Europe, uncomplimentary and overdrawn though it is, need not cause irritation, but be taken merely as a proof that foreigners do not see our institutions as we see them. *-22 Although Sylvia Scarlett received many favorable reviews and enjoyed a certain popular success, it proved to be Mackenzie's first signal failure with the critics. The pattern seemed to be that those who liked his early work were inclined to dislike Sylvia Scarlett. Those, how ever, who found fault with the pre-war novels frequently praised Sylvia because of its contrast to them. The ^■^October 12, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 121XXIII (August 18, 1918), 353. 122 September 21, 1918 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 30). 365 critical consensus seems to exist somewhere between the areas marked out by the following quotations. On the one hand, Louis J. McQuilland called it "the very dullest thing 123 in contemporary literature." On the other hand, Arthur St. John Adcock said that neither volume, "admirable and vivid picturesque stories as they are, will compare, either in subtlety of characterization or in grace and strength of style, with the best of his pre-war work."^^ On the occasion of the reprinting of the novel in 1950, Antony Sampson in a review said that it seems to last 1 2 better than Sinister Street. I do not find this to be a generally accepted attitude. Sylvia Scarlett, despite much of interest and of worth, is not a successful novel. Its lack of artistic integration and central focus ulti mately wearies the reader. It attempts too much and at the same time not enough. Perhaps the fault lies with the picaresque form itself, which seems to demand of an author a great simplicity or a great subtlety of conception to be ^■^"Where Are Our Authors?" The Sunday Illustrated (London), September 14, 1921 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 26). ^^Gods of Modern Grub (London, 1923), p. 186. 125 Books of To-Day and the Books of Tomorrow, p. 26. 126 eminently successful. In Sylvia Scarlett one feels that there is merely complexity. But if the novel fails as a whole, there is much that is rewarding to the casual reader. There is, for example, the brilliance of indi vidual episodes and the vivid portrayal of character. There is a true sense of comedy and a pervasive sense of humor. There is also a perceptive commentary on human life and character for those who will look for it. And for those who are familiar with the other novels of The Theatre of Youth sequence, Sylvia Scarlett carries on into the war the stories of those young men and women introduced at earlier stages of their careers. The tragedy of that generation is summed up in the death of Alan Merivale at Ypres and that of Guy Hazlewood at Nish. Before abandoning his Balzac-ian scheme, Mackenzie made one last attempt to use some of this material from the pre-war years: The Vanity Girl appeared in 1920. 1 ? 6 It is possible that for this reason, as Robert A. Heilman has observed, "... the picaresque tradition is a relatively thin and discontinuous one, with few great works and fewer great practitioners"--"Variations of Picaresque (Felix Krull)," The Sewanee Review, p. 547. CHAPTER VI THE VANITY GIRL (1920) : AN EDWARDIAN ROMANCE Compton Mackenzie completed Sylvia and Michael in May, 1918, but before it was published in March of the following year he had begun a new novel. Having recovered from the prolonged attack of sciatica which had interrupted the writing of Sylvia and Michael, he spent the summer and fall of 1918 resting and enjoying the social life of Capri. But with the end of the war in November, he turned at once to the writing which had to support the life he had fash ioned for himself on Capri. He began Poor Relations in November, and finished it in May, 1919- The new novel, accordingly, was begun before the chorus of critical dis approval to Sylvia and Michael, so that his choice of subject was not influenced by the reaction to the former book. Although he had been tempted to write a war novel, prudently he had decided to wait and gain perspective on 367 368 his experiences.^- Meanwhile, he addressed himself to the experiment of writing his first wholly humorous novel. He made a complete break with the characters of the Theatre of Youth sequence. None of them appears in the new work. Poor Relations is a farcical comedy centering around John Touchwood, a successful romantic playwright and un- successful realistic novelist. Touchwood is the financial heart of a large family, who in varying degrees have become dependent upon him. His house in Hampshire is soon over flowing with his relatives and their children. When he flees to a London flat so that he can get some work done on a new play, he finds himself promptly saddled with his 3 brother George’s two children. The story moves effort lessly, as Touchwood tries to cope with one farcical situ ation after another. Finally, he succeeds in marrying ^Compton Mackenzie, Gallipoli Memories (London, 1929), p. x. 2 The English edition was published by Martin Seeker in October, 1919- An American edition published by Harpers appeared in September, 1920. are told that two chapters from the book are in cluded in E. G. Pertwee’s The Reciter’s New Treasury of Prose and Drama, with the prefatory description "the hid eous tricks of disorderly children, and as such will make a universal appeal"--Solomon Eagle, "The Critic at Large," The Outlook (London), XLIX (April 29, 1922), 342. 369 his secretary, Doris Hamilton, despite the opposition and machinations of his family. In a fine act of revenge, before leaving on his honeymoon, he bequeathes his country home to his perpetually quarreling relatives, giving each an equal share in it. Poor Relations was published in September, 1919, and reviewers were generally delighted with it. It was praised as enthusiastically as Sylvia and Michael had been con demned. Rebecca West welcomed it as "a coherent and beautiful farce," created by "an imagination Dickens-like in its abundance."^ W. L- G. in The World (London) spoke of the novel as "a fantastic comedy. It pretends to be nothing else, and it is infinitely more amusing and better done than ’Sylvia Scarlett’ and 'Sylvia and Michael.*"^ Alec Waugh called it "the wittiest and most simply enter taining of all Mr. Mackenzie’s novels."*’ Fleta Campbell 4 "Literature Towards Realism," The Daily News and Leader (London), no date (a clipping in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks, No. 29). Hereafter references to the Scrap books will merely state "Scrapbook" and give the appro priate volume number. The review by Rebecca West was reprinted in The New Republic. XXI (February 18, 1920), 362-363. ^October 11, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 25). ^The Venturer (London), November, 1919, p. 75. 370 Springer in The New York Tribune found the comic novel to be the logical outcome of Mackenzie's development, since so much of his early work had been informed by the comic spirit-^ The Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican saw in it "the gay mood which gave birth to the delightful g 'Passionate Elopement'. ..." The New Statesman (London), on the other hand, thought that the novel "has practically no affinities with his [Mackenzie's] earlier books.... It is frankly an uproarious knock-about o farce. . . ." Despite both popular and critical acclamation, Poor Relations had ultimately an adverse effect upon Mackenzie's reputation as a novelist. It might well have been regarded as additional evidence of his versatility. But a novel of light-hearted humor could not be thought a really suitable venture for a writer for whom such high claims had been made. As Leo Robertson observes, Had not Henry James already hailed him as one of the leaders of the New School of Fiction, and had not ^February 29, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). ®May 7, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 25). o *Mr. Compton Mackenzie's Farce," XIII (September 27, 1919), 656. 371 Lascelles Abercrombie stated that the future of the English novel was largely in his hands?10 So, inevitably, a subtle discounting of Mackenzie*s achievement in the novel occurs in many of the reviews. On the one hand, there was the assumption that Poor Rela tions is an amusing aberration, the novelist at play, relaxing his mind and his art from more strenuous and worthwhile demands. Thus J. R. P. in The Glasgow Evening Times said that the novel "exhibits Mr. Compton Mackenzie on holiday.Katherine Mansfield, likewise, held it to be a holiday excursion, but hoped the holiday could be prolonged, "since he [Mackenzie] has every appearance of 12 being most admirably at home." On the other hand, there was the view that the early novels were the aberration and that Poor Relations represented the achievement. Alec Waugh in John 0*London*s Weekly (London), for example, re marked that "Mr. Mackenzie has got over the green sickness": ^ Compton Mackenzie: An Appraisal of his Literary Work (London, 1954), p. 133. 11"A Novelist Breaking New Ground," no date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). 12 "Humour and Heaviness," The Athenaeum, October 17, 1919, p. 1035. Review reprinted in Novels and Novelists (New York, 1930), p. 93. 372 The shadows of "Sinister Street" are left behind: the dull adventures of conscientious Michael Fane and un conscionable Sylvia Scarlett have had at least temporary surcease. Mr. Mackenzie has, for the nonce, ceased to take himself seriously. "Poor Relations" is a real achievement in simple comedy. The New Statesman more directly continued the process of denigration: This is not comedy of the highest order, but it is good feeling. Mr. Mackenzie started as the hope of the English novel, and he has written a first-rate book for a railway journey. Many a writer who has set out with an ambition no less exalted has come to a far worse end. (September 27, 1919, p- 656) Douglas Goldring summed up the attitude: "Mr. Mackenzie has found himself--not as a serious novelist, but as that very valuable thing, an entertainer."^ Poor Relations was completed early in May, 1919, seven months after it was begun. Although life on Capri was strenuous and exciting that first spring and summer after the war, Mackenzie kept at his writing. No sooner had he finished the one novel than he had started a new one 13 "Our Cleverest Young Novelist--Compton Mackenzie," [n.d.]. The Times Literary Supplement (London) also spoke on this point: "The oppression which has seemed of late to brood over the work of Mr. Compton Mackenzie has cleared away, we hope never to return"--September 25, 1919, p. 513, col. 3. ^ Reputations: Essays in Criticism (New York, 1920), p. 51. 373 on May 10, which he completed three months later in August. Faith Compton Mackenzie writes of that summer: "Though there were plenty of parties, a great deal of work was done, and much too much pain suffered [from recurring bouts of sciatica]. The new novel was titled The Vanity Girl, and it marked Mackenzie*s final return to the sequence which had so long engaged his attention. The story of Norah Caffyn, who used as her stage name Dorothy Lonsdale, had already been told in most essentials in the first volume of Sylvia Scarlett• The only significantly new details we learn from The Vanity Girl are Dorothy*s miscarriage and eventual motherhood, Lord Clarehaven*s death and the means taken to save Clare Court for Dorothy*s son, the 6th Earl. There are, indeed, nine episodes paralleled between Sylvia Scar- 1 fi lett and The Vanity Girl. While some of the episodes ^ore Than I Should (London, 1940), p. 21. ^The edition of Sylvia Scarlett is that published by Macdonald (London, 1950). That of The Vanity Girl is simi larly published by Macdonald (London, 1954). Subsequent references to these novels will be to these two editions. The episodes paralleled in the two books with their respec tive pagination are as follows: (1) Sylvia first meets Dorothy and Lily (Sylvia Scarlett, p. 214; Vanity Girl. 374 are merely the same scene appearing In both novels but from a different point of view, other episodes complete our knowledge of Incidents or situations cursorily presented in the earlier volume. Thus in Sylvia Scarlett (pp. 237- 238) we learn of the successful execution of the plot to put a chimpanzee in Leopold Hausberg's flat, but in The Vanity Girl (pp. 122-126) we discover what happened when Hausberg came to the flat expecting to be greeted by Lily Haden. Mackenzie, also, deliberately links The Vanity Girl with the earlier novels in a number of ways. Arthur Drake, for example, who lived next door to Lily in Sinister Street, reappears in the new novel. Leopold Hausberg occupies the suite in the Albany formerly inhabited by p. 55). (2) Sylvia and Dorothy talk about Lily (Sylvia Scarlett, p. 216; Vanity Girl, p. 63). (3) Sylvia and Dorothy at Oxford (Sylvia Scarlett, pp. 218-220; Vanity Girl, pp. 81-86). (4) Dorothy selected by Mr. Richards for the Vanity (Sylvia Scarlett, pp. 220-221; Vanity Girl, pp. 87-89). (5) Sylvia meets Dorothy and Olive Fanshawe (Sylvia Scarlett, p. 234; Vanity Girl, p. 112). (6) Inci dent of the monkey in Leopold Hausberg* s flat (Sylvia Scarlett, pp. 237-238; Vanity Girl, pp. 122-126). (7) The quarrel between Sylvia and Dorothy (Sylvia Scarlett. p. 238; Vanity Girl, pp. 127-129). (8) Dorothy at her marriage breaks with Olive (Sylvia Scarlett, pp. 242-243; Vanity Girl, p. 147). (9) Dorothy on return to London again meets Sylvia and Olive (Sylvia Scarlett, pp. 331-333; Vanity Girl, pp. 212-214). 375 Richard Prescott, the friend of Michael Fane's father, who had committed suicide after an ill-fated supper with Michael. The most amusing association, however, is between The Passionate Elopement and The Vanity Girl, for the Anthony Clare, Earl of Clarehaven, who figures in the latter novel is shown to be the descendant of the Anthony Clare who was the friend of Charles Lovely at Curtain Wells in the former.^ The Vanity Girl was bom Norah Caffyn and lives on Lonsdale Road in West Kensington, the eldest daughter in a family of nine children. Her father is Secretary to the Church of England Purity Society. Norah at eighteen, when the story begins, is a beautiful girl, discontented with her home life and seeking ways to escape from it. She decides to become engaged to Wilfred Curlew, but quickly gives him up when her father promises to let her study for the stage. She takes elocution lessons from the mother ^In a discussion between Mr. Beadon, the Rector of Clarehaven-Cum-Cherringtons, and the Dowager Countess of Clarehaven, we learn that Sir Anthony, who had completed building Clare Court, had married a Miss Arabella Hopley with a dowry of 10,000 pounds and that "Before his succes sion he had spent a good deal of time at the famous health resort of Curtain Wells" (The Vanity Girl, p. 157). 376 of a friend, Lily Haden. When Lily's mother suddenly dies, Norah auditions with Lily for the chorus of "Miss Elsie of Chelsea," and both girls are accepted. Norah takes as a stage name "Dorothy Lonsdale," a name by which she is subsequently known. On tour she rooms with Lily and Sylvia Scarlett, who also has joined the company. Dorothy habitu ally keeps aloof from the other members of the cast, but she makes friends with David Bligh, the tenor, who gives her some lessons in singing. When the company plays Oxford at the conclusion of the tour, Dorothy and Sylvia meet two undergraduates, Arthur Lonsdale and Anthony Clare, Lord Clarehaven. Lord Clarehaven is much taken with Dorothy. After an outing, Dorothy and Sylvia invite their companions back to their rooms for tea. Dorothy, however, is shamed when her guests, entering the room, find Lily sitting on the lap of a chorus-boy. This incident brings about a break between Dorothy and Lily. As the result of a surprise visit by John Edwards, the famous impresario, to the company, Dorothy is hired for his fall production of the Vanity. She meets Olive Fan- shawe, another Vanity girl, and they share an apartment. Lord Clarehaven reappears in the fall, but Dorothy is 377 enjoying her new status as a Vanity girl and does not in tend to capitulate to Clarehaven without marriage. She leads him a merry chase that winter, while his friend, Arthur Lonsdale, is enjoying the favors of Queenie Moly- neux, another Vanity girl. At this time, Sylvia and Lily once again meet Dorothy and are drawn into her circle. Among the people they meet is a wealthy Jew, Leopold Haus berg. Though repugnant in appearance, he wishes to set up Lily in a flat as his mistress. He has implied that Sylvia is living off her friend Lily, and Sylvia vows revenge. With the help of Arthur Lonsdale and Clarehaven, the girls arrange to put a monkey in the flat as a surprise for Hausberg, who will be expecting Lily. The girls then go off for the weekend with the boys to Brighton. Though the weekend is innocent, Dorothy again breaks with the girls because she is upset over Clarehaven's involvement with the girls. Hausberg, in turn, vows revenge for the trick. The following season, in 1905, Dorothy is featured in the Vanity production of "The Beauty Shop." Clarehaven, who has been abroad trying to forget Dorothy, returns. Finally, in desperation, he proposes marriage, but Dorothy still refuses him. Only when the Countess of Clarehaven 378 herself writes on behalf of her son does Dorothy relent- After a secret wedding, Dorothy and her husband go down to the ancestral home at Clare Court in Devonshire. There, Dorothy is a great success with all the family. She goes fox-hunting, officiates at an agricultural festival, and proves in every way a model countess. In fact, she is so perfect in the rdle that her husband is very discontented. He yearns for London and the pleasures of the city, while she thoroughly enjoys the comfortable respectability of county life. When the much-desired son is stillborn, Dorothy is completely crushed. And when she recovers, she consents to going up to London for the season. Anthony Clare moves in a fast gambling set, and soon he is losing large sums of money. Tufton, a college friend, finally persuades him to give up cards and to build up a racing stable. Soon Anthony is ambitious to win the Derby. Before long his horses are receiving their strongest competition from the stable of Leopold Hausberg. Clarehaven continues to lose money, until, in a final effort to recoup, he gambles all that he owns, including his ancestral home, on the Derby. His horse loses, and too late he learns that his defeat was cleverly engineered 379 by Hausberg, who had pretended to be his friend. It de velops that Hausberg wants Dorothy to be his mistress, and he promises to save Clarehaven and Clare Court if she will consent. Dorothy holds off as long as possible. When she is finally ready to submit, she is unexpectedly saved by Anthony, who shows up at Hausberg*s flat to horsewhip him. Practically destitute, Anthony and Dorothy continue to live on in London. He still hopes to regain his fortune by gambling. But Clarehaven is saved from further humili ation by the war. He goes happily off to serve his country, and Dorothy decides to resume her former career as actress. Anthony, however, is killed in the first months; and Dorothy, at this time, learns that she is going to have a baby. During her pregnancy she remains with her parents in West Kensington. When a son, the sixth Earl of Clare haven, is bom, she takes him down to Devonshire to visit his father*s family. Clare Court has been bought by Haus berg, though he does not live in it. One evening Dorothy pays a visit to the deserted home, and there, by chance, meets its new owner, who has come to see his purchase. Without mention of the past, Hausberg quickly proposes to her. Dorothy just as quickly accepts, on condition that 380 her son, Lucius Clare, inherit the estate along with the title. Thus it is that Dorothy, the ex-chorus girl, saves the earldom and its broad acres from extinction. In attempting to describe the theme or central focus of the novel, reviewers were generally divided between calling it a conventional success story or a character study. To some, the ingredients were standard for one type of popular novel: the poor girl who makes good. The Boston Herald. for example, summed up The Vanity Girl: This is a story of the present-day English stage, and is built around the conventional and even popular theme of the poor but ambitious young girl who becomes a great foot-light favorite and thus captures a title.^ So superficial a judgment overlooks the mordant irony with which Dorothy is treated in at least half of the book, just as it ignores the fact that she is not a ’ ’poor” girl. Yet the majority of reviewers believed that Mackenzie was seek ing to concoct a popular novel out of hackneyed material. Punch (London) saw it as a mixture of two earlier Mackenzie successes, in which is combined the West Kensington of 1 Q Sinister Street with the Bohemia of Carnival. 7 To other ^October 16, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 26). 19CLVIII (May 19, 1920), 399. 381 reviewers, The Vanity Girl was essentially a character study of a particular type of woman. The Daily Chronicle (London) observed: "As a study of a hard, cold woman, Mr. Mackenzie's book could not be better; it . . . shows 20 a real grasp of feminine psychology of a certain order." w C. R. in The Nottingham Journal and Express thought that "Mackenzie has told a difficult story with consumoate skill. A thoroughly detestable heroine invokes admiration 21 by her relentless will." As we have seen, Dorothy Lonsdale's history had al ready been outlined in Sylvia Scarlett. Mackenzie's inter est in providing a more complete account of her career seems, basically, two-fold. First, there is the oppor tunity for the perceptively satirical analysis of a type-- the beautiful, successful show girl--and the personal qualities and the means by which she rises. In this respect the ambiguity of the title is significant. This is the story of a vain girl as well as of a Vanity Girl. The Vanity Girl is in reality a pseudonym for a Gaiety Girl-- a phenomenon in the theater at the turn of the century. ^^May 6, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). ^*May 11, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). 382 As Ada Reeve has said: "Many Gaiety Girls married into the peerage. All this publicity made them the most talked-of girls in London in the 1890*s and the early part of this 22 century." The Vanity Girl thus gives a picture of such 23 a girl and her environment during the Edwardian era. Secondly, there is the problem of the change, psychological as well as social, which a girl like Dorothy faces in the transition from the musical comedy stage to the peerage. The Vanity Girl, also, offers a parallel study to Carnival, just as Sylvia Scarlett provides an obverse pic ture to Sinister Street. Jenny Pearl of Carnival is trans lated from a London music-hall to a Cornish farm; Dorothy Lonsdale goes from musical comedy to a county peerage. The different backgrounds of the two girls, moreover, are 22 Take It for a Fact (London, 1954), p. 80. Mackenzie gives a portrait of Sir George Edwardes, the owner-director of the Gaiety Theatre, as John Richards in The Vanity Girl. The novel celebrates the fact that during the Edwardian decade four of the Gaiety Girls did marry into the peerage. See J. M. Bulloch, "Peers Who Have Married Players," Notes and Queries. CLXIX (August 10, 1935), 93. ^^Mackenzie seemingly emphasizes the novel in its period setting when he speaks of it as an "Edwardian romance" in the re-dedication to his sister, Fay Compton, which appeared in the 1954 re-issue. 383 reflected in the different positions they occupy in the theatrical world of London. Jenny from Islington dances in a music-hall; Dorothy from West Kensington sings in musical comedy. Jenny represents one type of chorine for whom the music-hall becomes a trap and a cage. Dorothy represents another type who uses the stage as a ladder to reach the kind of life to which she aspires. Carnival and The Vanity Girl taken together provide an informative view of Edwardian theatrical life in two of its most prominent forms. Unfortunately, Mackenzie does not hold a clear purpose in the novel; the focus is blurred; and the plot is hurried into an implausible conclusion. Mackenzie seems to change his sights as the story unrolls. As I shall explain, the central failure is the lack of consistency in tone. Per haps this fact indicates that the book was not planned or executed with sufficient care. The Vanity Girl is the story of Dorothy Lonsdale, and her experience and personality are intended to be of para mount concern. The subordinate characters are not de veloped to any extent. Either they have acquired some complexity of character from their treatment in earlier 384 novels, as have Sylvia Scarlett and Arthur Lonsdale, or they exist only in relationship to Dorothy*s own story. The Westminster Gazette (London), for example, said of her family, ". . . they belong to the furniture of the modem novelist and are not authentically seen at all."^ It is Dorothy, therefore, who must carry the story. Some re viewers and critics have thought that she does this successfully. The Globe (London) spoke of the ’ ’ masterly vividness" with which Mackenzie presented "a type only 25 possible in present conditions of life." Cornelius Wey- gandt called her "Mackenzie’s most complete characteriza tion" : Dorothy is your cold beauty, whose every action is determined by her fixed purpose to get on in the world, to be of the first in England. This ambition she attains in the end by a personal sacrifice that would be appalling in one less avid of place. Her every act is consistent, her progress is as inevitable as that of the seasons. Hamilton Fyte in The Daily Mail (London), on the other hand, thought that she had "no clear character," but added, ^^May 27, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 25). ^^May 21, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). Century of the English Novel (New York, 1925), p. 443. 385 ". . . perhaps that is intentional. 'Heroines* seldom 2 7 have." The Westminster Gazette frankly disliked Dorothy as a person: "To be interested in Dorothy is impossible . . . she is a perfect little cad, without the merit of knowing it."2* * Some critics found apparent inconsistency in the characterization of Dorothy. As The Glasgow Citizen observed: "The lofty thought and behaviour of the Countess of Clarehaven are hardly consistent with the scheming snob of the 'variety stage.'"29 The Nation (London) thought that this contrast was the result of Mackenzie's "heroic efforts to sentimentalize Dorothy in the latter part of the book"--efforts, however, which failed, 2^May 14, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). 2 Slay 27, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 25). Other reviewers objected to the moral qualities of the characters in general. The Nation (London) observed: "There is no character in it [The Vanity Girll who is not either silly or disagreeable. . . "--XXVII (August 14, 1920), 620. The Bookman (London) commented: "There is not a decent, vital person in the story, except the Earl's mother and her two daughters, at whom the author carefully sneers"-- June 20, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 25). 2^May 20, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). Rose Macaulay, however, felt that the lack of inconsistencies was a flaw in her portrait--The Daily News and Leader, May 8, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). 386 not because he is in any way unwilling to give conces sions to popular ideas about countesses, but because the hard, metallic, cynical tone of the book is too much even for rosewater.^O « American reviewers, interestingly enough, seemed to find Dorothy a more realistic and sympathetic character than did the English. Leila W. Peattie in The Detroit Free Press commented: "For after all her selfishness, Dorothy was likeable. Her only vice was that of.Caesar-- "ii and just as grievously did she answer it. Nancy Barr Mavity in The San Francisco Chronicle said: There is real growth of character here. . . . She [Dorothy] is not capable of conscious analysis; she cannot investigate the inherent worth of her cause. But in devoting herself body and soul to a principle unconcerned with personal advancement, she achieves a dignity of her own. 2 There is, however, a fundamental artistic weakness in the characterization of Dorothy: the author’s abrupt change of tone with regard to her. In the first half of The Vanity Girl Mackenzie offers a portrait of a young woman who attains personal and social success because of her "^August 14, 1920, p. 620. 31 "Mackenzie's 'Vanity Girl' Is a Feminine Caesar," October 17, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 26). 32 October 24, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 26). 387 beauty, selfishness, and determination. The attitude adopted toward her is variously humorous, satirical, cynical. The reader may laugh at the difficulties of a beautiful girl of eighteen growing up in a large family of younger brothers and sisters. But Dorothy’s unremitting preoccupation with herself makes her a figure of satire. We are told, for example, that ”... the only thing in life that seriously troubled Dorothy was a minute bleb of skin on her left eyelid, and even that could be removed by a beauty doctor" (The Vanity Girl, p. 55). Yet the cruel determination with which she breaks, on her marriage, with her family and her close friend Olive Fanshawe passes beyond satire to cynical commentary. The problem of the characterization, however, comes with this marriage. Dorothy’s struggles to become a proper Countess of Clare- haven, in deed as well as in name, add a new dimension 33 Indeed on her first appearance in Book II of Sylvia Scarlett, Mackenzie had summed up the essentials of her character: "Dorothy possessed a selfishness that almost attained to the dignity of ambition, though never quite, because her conceit would not allow her to state an object in her career for fear of failure; her method was in variably to seize the best of any situation that came along, whether it was a bed, a chair, a potato, or a man: this method with ordinary good luck should ensure success through life" (Sylvia Scarlett, p. 215). to her. The courage and the adroitness she manifests In establishing herself In the new rdle elicit our admiration. There Is no real Inconsistency In the characterization, for Dorothy triumphs by the cold determination to succeed which has ever marked her actions. But the author now wants us to regard her seriously and sympathetically, and we are not prepared for this change of tone. With Dorothy's miscarriage and her subsequent ordeal in London, she attracts a sentimental interest which is foreign to all that has preceded. At the same time, she fades out of the story as a personality and as a source of interest. In her place there develops an emphasis upon incident, as her husband plunges into the gambling life of the fast set. We become involved with Lord Clarehaven's efforts to win the Derby and to save his fortune. We grow concerned about the intentions of Hausberg. Contrasted ironically with Dorothy is her husband, Anthony Clare, 5th Earl of Clarehaven. Although Dorothy, by instinct and by will, plays her elected part of county aristocrat to perfection, Tony, in appearance as in habits, represents the degeneration and probable extinction of a noble house. Mackenzie describes him on his first meeting 389 with Dorothy in the following terms: If Lord Clarehaven was below the standard of aristocracy set by our full-blooded lady-novelists he was equally far removed from the chinless convention of banal carica ture. He had the long legs, the narrow hips and head, and the big teeth of the Norman; but his fair hair was already thinning upon a high retreating forehead, his nose was small, and if the protuberant eyes that one sees in Pekinese spaniels and other well-bred mammals were a faint intimation of approaching degeneracy in the stock, Dorothy was not sufficiently versed in physiognomy to recognize such symptoms. . . . (p. 75) Both he and his friend Arthur Lonsdale in their mindless ness are suggestive of characters in the humorous novels of P. G. Wodehouse (Psmith was published in 1910, but Jeeves and Bertie Wooster did not make their appearance until 1924). It is interesting to note that in the conversation of Lonsdale in Sylvia Scarlett we hear the authentic tones O/ of a Wodehousian peer. The following snatch of monologue occurs as Lonsdale and Clarehaven are driving Lily and Sylvia down to Brighton after having put the chimpanzee 34 Perhaps the prototype for Arthur Lonsdale as well as for Bertie Wooster is to be found in the creations of Edwardian musical comedy as exemplified in the work of comedians like George Grossmith, Junior. W. Macqueen-Pope thus speaks of Grossmith's clever portrayals of "The rather inane, stupid young man about town of the period, with much more money than sense, but always a gentleman and always wonderfully dressed"--Carriages at Eleven (London, 1949), p. 105. 390 in Hausberg's flat (an incident which proves important in The Vanity Girl): "What do you think the jolly old chimpanzee will do? Probably bite his ear off, what? Topping. Good engine this. We're doing fifty-nine or an unripe sixty. Why does a chicken cross the road? No answer, thank you, this time. Must slow down a bit. There's a trap some where along here. . . . Hullo! hullo! mind your hoop, Tonmy! Too late. Funeral on Friday. Colonial papers please copy." (Sylvia Scarlett, pp. 237-238) If there are weaknesses in the characterization of Dorothy, there are also major difficulties with the plot of The Vanity Girl. Reviewers were in general agreement in their dislike of the way Mackenzie managed the story. Much of this criticism had now become standard for any new book by Mackenzie. The Brooklyn Eagle. for example, said that the novel lacked a plot: ". . . it makes no pretence of being anything other than the biography of a London show 35 girl." The Morning Post (London) complained that the book had no "design": the narrative is stretched like a slack line from post to post of inci dent, each such post being driven in just anywhere that seems to offer the writer his chance as he goes, and the line given a final half-hitch round the last one to which his jaded interest in his characters can run.^ 35 No date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 25). ^Slay 7, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). 391 The Dally Telegraph (London) believed the problem was one of proportion: The reader is left with the impression that the author starts upon a synopsis too large for his screen, selects certain incidents upon which to concentrate, and then leaves the others in skeleton outline.^7 The Daily Dispatch (London) thought that the division of the book into two parts--Dorothy before and after mar riage— was awkwardly managed: ’ ’ The join of the two halves is not well done. Indeed, so unstuck does Dorothy become that it is easy to believe she was not studied from a 38 living original." The ending of the story was also re garded as contrived. The Bookman (London) said that by the time the action was beginning to slacken off, "the author bethinks him of that recent godsend for perplexed story-tellers, the war. So the Earl is sent off to die at 30 the front. . . . ’ ’ The Birmingham Weekly Post regarded the intended marriage of Dorothy and Leopold Hausberg, the man who had ruined her husband, as "the final stroke ■^May 8, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). ^®May 6, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). "*^June 20, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 25). 392 of cynicism. Structurally, The Vanity Girl does have design and is clearly ordered into two segments: the period before Dorothy's marriage and the period after. They divide the book almost perfectly in half. No attention such as had been given to Jenny Pearl in Carnival is devoted to an account of Dorothy's formative years. We first encounter Dorothy at eighteen, and we learn only enough of her and her home life to motivate her subsequent development. The latter half of the book is again divided into two parts. The first third chronicles the period from her marriage to her miscarriage. The latter two-thirds treat of the sport ing activities of Lord Clarehaven, his death, and the birth of his son. The plot, however, suffers from apparently careless improvisation and the lack of clear focus which blighted the characterization of Dorothy. In the last third of the novel particularly, incident dominates the reader's inter est, though incident subordinated to character was the rule during the first part of The Vanity Girl. Our attention ^^May 11, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). shifts from Dorothy to the question of whether Tony will win the Derby and whether he will solve his financial dif ficulties. There is also considerable awkwardness attend ant upon changing Dorothy in the latter half of the book from an unsympathetic character to a sympathetic one. Episodes must be improvised to correct the prevailing image of Dorothy. As an attempt to palliate her cruel treatment of her father, Mackenzie invents the completely implausible situation that the father is keeping a mistress in the same apartments where Hausberg intends to keep Lily Haden. Here it is necessary to blacken a character so that Dorothy will appear the less culpable. Mackenzie seeks to compen sate for Dorothy's heartless desertion of Olive Fanshawe by having them make up later in the book. A further weak ness of the plotting lies in the failure to clarify how much Hausberg is responsible for the destruction of Tony and whether or not Hausberg acted solely out of revenge for the trick with the monkey perpetrated upon him years earlier. The matter is blurred so as not to make com pletely incredible Dorothy's capitulation to Hausberg to save the estate of Clare Court for her son. This conclu sion is, at best, false and tasteless. Until the final 394 page of the novel, our last view of Hausberg had been of Tony horsewhipping him into unconsciousness in Dorothy’s presence. So grossly implausible and offensive is this intended marriage as a solution to Dorothy’s difficulties that Mackenzie does not develop the scene of proposal. In less than a page he hurries the story to its quasi-happy 41 conclusion. There was very little critical comment on the setting of The Vanity Girl. Since Carnival and Sinister Street. Mackenzie's London had been featured in numerous novels. As F. W. H. in The Evening Standard (London) noted: "West Kensington has been pretty well worked out; so has life / O behind the footlights in town or on tour." Mackenzie spends time describing Clare Court in Devonshire and manu facturing an amusing history of the Earls of Clarehaven, but county life is here stereotyped to fox-hunting, the agricultural fete, and a surreptitious high-churchman in the neighborhood living. More original is Mackenzie's ^H- W. Boynton in The Weekly Review (New York) com mented on Mackenzie's "quaint and irritating habit of dwelling on the minutiae of a scenelet and then summing up a major episode in six words"--III (October 6, 1920), 296. ^^May 7, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). 395 picture of the fast sporting set in Curzon Street. It is perhaps here and in his account of the environment of a Gaiety Girl that Mackenzie best evokes the atmosphere of the Edwardian era in its smartness, youth, luxury, and gaiety. The physical setting of the novel is in the period from 1902 to 1915; and it was World War I, more than the death of Edward himself, which brought the age to its sudden and tragic end. The style of The Vanity Girl is marked by a certain witty sophistication, which is distinct from the elegancies of Mackenzie's early manner as well as from the relative simplicity of Sylvia Scarlett. The Nation (London) spoke of the "smart, jaunty, epigrammatic tone of the style" (August 14, 1920, p. 620). Something of this quality is seen in the following passage, in which Mackenzie describes a few members of Tony Clare's fast London set. There is a resemblance between these Edwardians and the "Bright Young Things" who abound in the early novels of Evelyn Waugh. Harry Tufton came, and a Mrs. Foster-ffrench, who went everywhere except where she most wanted to go and was always a little resentful that even with her two *f's' she could not hook herself up to some altitudes. How ever, that was Mrs. Foster-ffrench*s private sorrow, and she did not let it mar a jolly evening. The other 396 guests were Captain Archibald Keith, late of the 16th Hussars, who had abandoned the cavalry in order to write the librettos of musical comedies, and a Mrs. Mainwaring, who kept a fashionable hat-shop in Bruton Street and was the widow of poor Dick Mainwaring, a brother of Lord Hughenden. Everybody always spoke about him as "poor Dick Mainwaring," but whether because he had been killed at Paardeberg or because he had married Rita Daubeny varied with the point of view of the speaker. The friends of Mrs. Mainwaring put down any oddness in her behaviour to French creole blood and a childhood.in Martinique: to the former was also attributable her chic in hats, to the latter the dryness and pallor of her complexion; French blood or French brandy, Martinique or Martell, the Honourable Mrs. Richard Mainwaring cer tainly did stimulate conversation just as paprika stimulates the appetite. But, however jocund her life, her hats were chaste, and however sharp her play, her name was honourable. Moreover, so many people owed her money that they had to be pleasant to her. Mrs. Foster- ffrench, in spite of her name, had no French blood to excuse her odd behaviour; in fact she had nothing except a hyphen and those two ff's.' Mr. Foster-ffrench was a younger son who, having failed to grow sisal profitably in the Bahamas, was now experimenting in Mozambique with jikungo or inhambane nut, and liable at any moment to experiment with vanilla in Tahiti or pearls on the Great Barrier Reef; the only experiment he was never likely to make was going back to Mrs. Foster-ffrench. (The Vanity Girl, p. 211) As in the past, Mackenzie continues to sport with language on a very rudimentary level, indulging in phrases like "asperous is the astral road" (p. 50). The purple patch makes its re-appearance, but only occasionally and briefly in a phrase like the following: . .an October night when the still warm body of a dead sumner was being pricked by wintry spears" (p. 207). 397 Though Mackenzie had finished The Vanity Girl in August, 1919, it was not published until May, 1920. It was the first of his novels not to be published by Martin Seeker. Perhaps the rather unusual delay in issuing the volume was the result of the change of publisher from Seeker to Cassell's. When the book finally appeared, it was dedicated to Fay Compton, Mackenzie's sister. Macken zie took the opportunity of the dedication to go on record with a denial that Fay, the actress, had written the whole of Carnival and two chapters of Sinister Street. Faith Compton Mackenzie has written: Absurd though the rumour was, considering Fay's age when Carnival was written, its roots ran under the ground, and for more than two years it defied the firmest pos sible denials from both people concerned. (More Than I Should, p. 43) The reception of The Vanity Girl was, in a sense, mixed. Financially, it was successful--"nearly a best seller," according to Faith.^ Critically, it was sharply 44 attacked. The heading of a review in The Observer ^~Hlore Than I Should, p. 41. ^Of the 37 reviews from British sources included in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks, only 8 were definitely favorable and 19 were strongly unfavorable. The reviews with any critical significance are listed in the bibliography. 398 (London) stunned up the situation: "An Inglorious Success. Mackenzie's reputation as a serious novelist never quite recovered from the blow. Reviewers in the major journals were brutal in their condemnation of Mackenzie and his book. A. N. M. in The Manchester Guardian called The Vanity Girl "a futility ... a surprisingly arid perform ance for a man of talent.The Westminster Gazette said: "The Vanity Girl" bears upon it every mark of library success: it has every passport to a big circulation; but artistically ... it does not exist at all: it represents the abandonment of serious intention alto gether. (May 27, 1920 [clipping in Scrapbook No. 25]) The Nation (London) described it as "a thoroughly bad book written by a clever author who knows what he is about, and so is interesting rather to the student of psychology than of art" (August 14, 1920, p. 620). Underlying the criticism was the belief that Mackenzie had sacrificed artistic integrity for a cheap popular success. The Times Literary Supplement (London) called it a roman de concierge, "in which nothing that would delight a concierge [is] omitted." Mackenzie 45 May 16, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). ^^May 12, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). 399 has written a story of a snob for snobs. . . . And now Mr. Mackenzie having given intense pleasure to thousands whom he despises, may possibly think of fulfilling the expectations of those whom he respects.4? Katherine Mansfield in The Athenaeum stated: . . . Mr. Compton Mackenzie has set the pot boiling and invited all the flappers in the United Kingdom to tea. . . . Nothing is missing; we hardly dare think how those mock appetites will be gorged, or of what Mr. Mackenzie, with his talent extraordinary for producing chocolate pot-boilers, will have left to put upon the table next time.48 To-Day (London) simply referred to it as Mackenzie's A Q "latest and most abandoned condescension. 7 The American reception of The Vanity Girl was gener ally much more favorable than the British.^ The Cleveland Plain Dealer described it as "one of the best of Compton Mackenzie's novels,and The Washington Star said, "This is the best yet." The majority of reviewers found it 47May 6, 1920, p. 283, col. 2. 48May 14, 1920, p. 639. 4^June, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 25). 500f the 29 reviews from American newspapers and periodicals, 11 were very favorable and only 6 were strongly unfavorable. The reviews with any critical sig nificance are listed in the bibliography. ^October 2, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 26). ■^October 31, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 26). 400 inconsequential but entertaining. H. W. Boynton observed that ". . . if it never quite gets anywhere, is at least always amusing on its way."^ The Boston Herald said: Conventional though the material is, the story is exceptionally well told . . . and if it all seems to lead nowhere in particular, it at least leaves a vivid impression of real the stage of life.^ To other critics, however, the novel proved as big a dis- appointment as it had to so many British reviewers. The Springfield (Massachusetts) Union, for example, called it "a superficial study of stage life in England": There are traces of slovenly work throughout, of good ideas partially worked and then dropped for no better reason apparently than unwanted lassitude on the part of the author. ... It is not as good a book by leagues as one is entitled to expect from this author, and an author who does less than his best is cheating.^5 The Dial found it "not meretricious only because it is not quite so pretentious as the novels which followed Sinister Street. The Brooklyn Eagle introduced a nationalistic note in its criticism: "It seems very long, very aimless, ~^The Weekly Review, October 6, 1920, p. 296. ^October 16, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 26). ^November 7, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 26). ->^IXX (January 1921), 107. people who have passed before us on 401 and purely an English creation. One cannot Imagine an American writer, as popular in this country as Mr. Macken zie is in his, writing it."*^ Since the publication of The Vanity Girl, critical opinion has touched but cursorily upon it, if at all. It is generally regarded as an embarrassment, even to those most favorably disposed to Mackenzie's early work. To Arthur St. John Adcock, the novel is essentially a pot boiler, "an essay in picturesque and rather cheap melo- 58 drama." J. W. Cunliffe calls it "a minor appendix" to the other novels in the series.^ A different evaluation is that given by Eve Crosland, who in her review of the new edition published by Macdonald in 1954 affirms those quali ties which particularly interest the modem reader: It is not in the actual story . . . not even in the characters, that the main attraction of the book lies. It is rather in the background, the nuances with which Sir Compton so skilfully evokes the atmosphere and out look of the period. ^No date (clipping in Scrapbook No. 25). ^ Gods of Modem Grub Street (London, 1923), p. 188. 59 English Literature in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1933), p. 237. ^The Yorkshire Evening Press. October 15, 1954 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 53). 402 It should perhaps be noted that the volume gains in significance by being read in conjunction with the other novels of The Theatre of Youth. It offers further ex ploration of the generation coming to maturity in the early years of the twentieth century. And it is not true, as so often asserted by reviewers, that "Mr. Mackenzie has done this same thing b e f o r e . The worlds of musical comedy, of the county peerage, and the Edwardian fast set were not treated in the other books of the sequence. Taken alto gether, these books represent an interesting attempt to portray an era as well as to present an attitude toward life. The reasons for the comparative artistic failure of The Vanity Girl are, perhaps, not difficult to find. It was written not only too rapidly, but, more importantly, it had not been sufficiently thought out. In consequence, too much was carelessly improvised. Rose Macaulay has stated her belief that the book did not give Mackenzie "quite enough trouble, a suspicion which is confirmed by the depressing and undistinguished looseness of some of ^The Liverpool Courier, May 18, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). 403 62 the mere writing." Perhaps it is also true to say that his attention was not given to it as completely as was desirable. Mackenzie says that "'The Vanity Girl' was 63 written in a cloud of worries." One suspects that Mac kenzie was in need of money for any one of several projects that he had in hand at this time. In 1919, for example, he had the idea of taking out a party of pioneers to settle Raoul or Sunday Island in the Kermadic group, 600 miles from New Zealand.^ The scheme, however, was abandoned when he discovered that the island had already been granted to a New Zealander. Unquestionably Mackenzie was debating his future in the year after the war. I believe it not unlikely that he took stock of his work as a writer, evaluated his chances for greatness with his desire to live life as he wished. Perhaps his decision is reflected indirectly in two pas sages of The Vanity Girl. In the first, Dorothy explains 69 The Dally News and Leader, May 8, 1920 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 29). 63"Mr. Compton Mackenzie," The Strand, March, 1922 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 34). ^Foreword to Paradise for Sale (London, 1963), p. vii. This is a re-issue of Mackenzie's 1924 novel The Old Men of the Sea. 404 to herself her resolve to go on the stage rather than marry Wilfred Curlew: "I don’t want to be a great actress . . . I want to be a successful actress" (p. 28). The second occurs at the conclusion of the book, when Dorothy again meets Wilfred: "It’s an awful thing," poor Wilfred groaned, "for a man who knows he can write good stuff never to have an opportunity of doing so. I’m afraid I've sold my soul," he murmured in a transport of remorse. Mackenzie's impatience with such posturings is seen in Dorothy’s reply: "'We all of us do that sooner or later,' she said. *And it’s only when we don’t get a good price for it that we repent*" (p. 296). I suggest that during this period Mackenzie began to think of himself as a professional writer rather than as a poetic novelist. The distinction is perhaps evidenced in Poor Relations as well as in The Vanity Girl. This change of attitude toward himself and his work did not mean that he had abandoned all ambition as a serious writer. But it did mean that he did not expect every book to be taken seriously. He would write as occasion offered and as inspiration dictated, and not worry too much about the result. He would not disdain writing a potboiler, if the price was right. On the other hand, he would persist 405 for three years in writing the three volumes of The Altar Steps despite critical disapproval and limited sales. He wanted to tell this story of the dilemma of modem Angli canism, and he was prepared to sacrifice money and acclaim to achieve his artistic purpose. But by 1919, Compton Mackenzie had become a professional writer. The lines of his future achievement had already been laid, although the dimensions of that achievement were yet in doubt. MACKENZIE IN RETROSPECT F. Scott Fitzgerald met Compton Mackenzie on Capri in 1925- "I asked him," Fitzgerald was later to tell Edmund Wilson, "why he had petered out and never written anything that was any good since Sinister Street and those early novels."^ To many students of the twentieth-century English novel, this seems to be the central question about the work of Mackenzie. Yet, as Mackenzie replied to Fitz gerald, the criticism is not valid. I believe it can be successfully argued that The Winds of Love is as important a work as Sinister Street and one written with a surer touch. His Scottish novels--of which Whisky Galore may be the best--are certainly his most original and satisfying creations in a comic vein. Indeed, Mackenzie's style has become less self-conscious and more flexible with the passage of time. His Thin Ice, published in 1956, is a ■^Arthur Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise (Boston, 1951), p. 167. 406 407 O little masterpiece in a taut, restrained style. It is true, however, that Mackenzie's reputation with the critics was never again to be as high as it had been before he went off to war in 1914. Undoubtedly such de valuation was inevitable, if only because his early reputa tion had been so highly inflated. It could hardly survive the resounding accolade of Henry James or the belief that Mackenzie was the hope of the English novel. The reaction, when it came, was bound to be all the more severe. Yet, Mackenzie's early success is understandable. His con siderable talents as a writer found a suitable medium in his chronicles of modern life. And these books appeared ^ith an eye obviously on his own career, Mackenzie in 1930 described the three periods which a writer goes through: "In his youth he begins enthusiastically, full of things he must say. Then follows a period of fatigue, when others begin to imitate him. Then comes a time when he could vomit at the sight of another rehash of this or that book. But if he really is a writer, he has become a professional, and settled down to the business of writing regardless of critics or imitators or anyone else! . . . Then if our novelist be something more than a capable professional writer he enters a third period in which he combines the passion of his first period with the accom plishment of his second"--Louise Morgan, "Compton Mackenzie Hits Out," Everyman (London), November 13, 1930, p. 489. The first two periods offer clear parallels to Mackenzie's career down into the 1920*s. I believe that he achieved the third period intermittently, from the late 1930*s on. 408 at the right moment, so that Mackenzie became widely re garded as the originator of important new developments in the novel. Gerald Gould, for example, in 1925 sought to define Mackenzie's innovations: Mr. Compton Mackenzie did not invent the English realistic-autobiographic novel. That goes back to Defoe; but Mr. Mackenzie has given it a local habitation and an Oxford accent. He did not invent the picaresque--pica resque, which was flourishing under Elizabeth. But he has adapted it to modem conditions--not very success fully. And he has wedded the two types by the rites of Bohemia.’ If Mackenzie was once, in some quarters, excessively praised, perhaps he has since been too summarily dismissed. Mackenzie the novelist may indeed be an example of promise not completely fulfilled, as so many have asserted; yet his large and varied body of work does deserve critical examination. To evaluate Mackenzie's achievement in the novel--early as well as late--one must take into consider ation a number of separate factors affecting his work and its reputation. Requiring special clarification is Mackenzie's own attitude toward his art. Since World War I, he has habitu ally stressed a non-idealistic view of his profession 3 The English Novel of To-Day (New York, 1925), p. 41. as writer. He describes himself as an "entertainer” rather than as an "artist" or, even, a "novelist." In doing this, Mackenzie seems motivated not by false modesty but by a dislike for what he conceives to have happened to much of literature since the war. He thinks of it as having become self-conscious and pretentious. Poetry, he believes, be came the province of the obscurantists and the poseurs-- chief of whom in England is Ezra Pound. Fiction became falsely intellectualized, after the fashion of Aldous Huxley, and devoted to what was currently fashionable in 4 psychology. Against such tendencies, Mackenzie has con sistently affirmed the traditional view that the function of the novel is "to entertain by the representation of life."^ The fundamental object of the novelist, he has said, is not to express ideas or philosophical attitudes fi but "to present character against a background of place." 4 So in conversation with me on June 16, 1961. ^Mackenzie, "Sidelight," The Spectator (London), CXCIII (October 15, 1954), 468. ^R. Barry O'Brien, "A Talk with Sir Compton Mackenzie," The Wiltshire Herald and Advertiser. September 18, 1953 (clipping in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks No. 61). Hereafter references to the Scrapbooks will merely state Scrapbook and give the appropriate volume number. Such a concept of the novel is, moreover, in accord with the descriptive definition given by Lionel Stevenson in his The English Novel (Boston, I960).7 It is, perhaps, unfortunate that Mackenzie has not made use of some such method of classifying his fiction as that of Graham Greene, who distinguishes between his novels and his entertain ments. Such a distinction would give a more accurate pic ture of the nature of Mackenzie's work than he usually conveys. If Mackenzie seems to denigrate his own work by label ing himself an entertainer, his reputation has been more seriously weakened by the forces of literary and social change. Because Mackenzie's early work expressed so vividly much of the atmosphere, the preoccupations, the conventions of the Edwardian past, it inevitably fell from favor during the reaction of the Twenties and Thirties. The new era was impatient with the mood of the past--of its own youth--with its literary fashions, and with the literary reputations formed before the war. Douglas Goldring in 1918 voiced the sentiment of the times when 7See the introductory chapter, "What Is a Novel?" pp. 3-10. 41X he announced the necessity for "a reconsideration of every opinion, whether aesthetic or political, which was enter- o tained before its [the war's] outbreak." He continued: The war has hung up all literary careers, those of the successful and of the unknown, and it is hard to believe that any novelist will emerge from it with his pre-war reputation untouched. Unfortunately, Goldring, like many other critics, felt that there was some special quality about the mere fact of the war which would make such re-evaluation definitive: For the war has provided a rough-and-ready test for true metal. The popularity of the work which can pass this test should be enhanced, and the popularity of that which fails to pass it must wither. Actually, however, it was to be expected that the war, since it had imposed violent changes upon life and man's conceptual world, would have a corresponding effect upon literature and the arts in general. Conventional subjects and attitudes and techniques perforce gave way to newer. With the Twenties the fashion turned toward the psycho logical, introspective novel, as writers turned inward and away from society, except to satirize it. The social chronicle, which Mackenzie had made his own, was no longer Q "Three Georgian Novelists," The Egoist (London), November-December, 1918, p. 134. 412 in favor. Similarly, Mackenzie's romantic temperament did not match the mood of the moment, which demanded a sterner outlook from its serious writers. If Mackenzie's reputation has suffered from a changed fashion, it is also true that his work as a whole is uneven. Not only has he written an embarrassingly bad serial like Coral, but, as we have seen, there are imper fections of technique even in his best work. He apparently lacks a sufficiently developed faculty for self-criticism. Thus his taste on occasion betrays him. In his early novels, for example, the faux bon manifested itself espe cially in his over-fondness for striking verbal effects. Yet, it must be said in his favor that he has never made a virtue of an unimaginative consistency. Within his limitations, he has always been willing to experiment, to try something new, rather than to play safe with what has already been approved. With similar boldness he has been known to persist in a cherished undertaking, like the three volumes of The Altar Steps, despite critical disapproval and lack of popular success. Writing has been a profession for Mackenzie, not a way of life or a religion. He is not of the school of Flaubert- He does not expect every work to be a master piece. Like a professional, he frequently writes out of the margin of his superfluous talent. On occasion he may be touched with greatness. Yet it is significant that he has never been content to regard himself as only a writer. His curiosity, his vitality, his gregariousness, his beliefs have filled his life with many interests and careers. He eagerly accepted the opportunities and chal lenges of the post-war world, and his enthusiasms generated countless plans and activities. For example, in 1919, Mac kenzie, fascinated by the possibilities of the motion picture, tried to interest D. H. Lawrence in chartering a yacht with him for travel in the South Seas, where they would write and film their own stories.^® But this plan was abandoned in the summer of 1920 when Mackenzie obtained a Crown lease on the two Channel Islands of Herm and Jethou. The next eight years saw Mackenzie expending a great deal of money and effort on the attempt to make ^Morgan, p. 489* ^■®See Lawrence*s letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith writ ten on January 25, 1920--The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Aldous Huxley (London, 1932), p. 498. 414 the Islands self-supporting through agriculture and the raising of cattle. In 1923, moreover, while living on Jethou, he founded The Gramaphone, a magazine which is still in existence, devoted to a discussion of recorded music and the review of phonograph records. Then, in the late 1920*s, Mackenzie's interest in the Scotland of his ancestors led him to return to live in that country and to work for the cause of Scottish nationalism. He was one of the founders of the Nationalist Party, and his political activities led to his election in 1930 to the Rectorship of Glasgow University. W. H. Auden has celebrated Macken zie's political career in the following lines from The Orators: "Scotland is stirring: In Scotland they say That Compton Mackenzie will be king one day." In Mackenzie, the man as well as the writer, vitality and zest are the personal qualities most strongly in evi dence. They are the sources of the fulness and richness of his life as well as of his extensive literary output. Frederick Cowles, for example, says: "Intense vitality is- the dominating impression that one receives from Compton 11, f 0de IV" (London, 1932), p. 102. 415 12 Mackenzie and his work." L. A. G. Strong observes of Mackenzie: He is a talker who writes novels, rather than a novelist who talks. Both talk and novels are by-products of an extraordinary aptitude for being alive, sparks thrown off by a vital flame. ^ Eric Linklater asserts that . . . few authors can spare for their own lives much of the colour, the adventuring, and vivacity of their work. There are exceptions, however: Byron the most redoubt able, Blunt on his Arab saddle, d’Annunzio well known, Graham the hidalgo, and like a plume on Scotland’s dusty bonnet, Compton Mackenzie.^ There is, indeed, a striking harmony between Macken zie’s personality and his work. Those who fail to take Mackenzie seriously as a novelist may miss the fact that the body of his fiction, including the comic novels, ex presses, at times stridently, a coherent philosophy of life. The central concern of his life as well as the dominant theme of his work has been the assertion of the values of freedom and individualism against the forces 12 "Some Contemporary Writers: Compton Mackenzie," Publishers’ Circular (London), July 27, 1940, p. 2. ■^"Books and Writers," The Spectator, CLXXXVII (September 14, 1951), 336. ^ The Man on Mv Back: An Autobiography (New York, 1941), p. 305. 416 of conformity and the tendencies toward the mechanization of human life. Mackenzie has said that from the age of three he was filled with the desire for freedom and that "freedom has been the guiding principle by which I have lived my own life and desired it for the lives of IS others." His change from the classical to the histori cal side of St. Paul's, for example, was motivated by his resolve to avoid the well-worn path of an Oxford scholar ship, academic distinction, and the conventional career of a civil servant. His ambition was to live fully, richly, freely--and this aim, he feels, he has achieved.^ Accordingly, Mackenzie has ever been on the side of the individual, even the eccentric, against the social group, conformity, bureaucracy, or other restrictions on human freedom. As Moray McLaren has said: Through all Mr. Mackenzie's many activities there runs this love of individualism, and no attempt to under stand him or his literary work . . . can succeed unless this fact is held in view. ^■^Mackenzie, My Life and Times: Octave One (London, 1963), p. 122. ■^In conversation with me on June 19, 1961. ^"An Island His Castle," The Daily Record and Mail (Glasgow), February 28, 1931 (clipping in Scrapbook No. 61). 417 McLaren has also remarked of Mackenzie’s propensity for living on islands that "The island is his domestic or geo- 18 graphical proclamation of his rights as an individual." In his opinions and beliefs and espousal of causes, Mackenzie has invariably been a "minority" man. During the period between the two world wars, he sailed consist- IQ ently against the currents of the time. ^ He is a romantic in his dislike of a drab, bland uniformity in life. And he is a humanist in his defence of traditional values, ideas, and practices threatened by the pressures of modem life. With George Moore he believes that Respectability is sweeping the picturesque out of life; national customs are disappearing. The kilt is going or gone in the highlands, and the smock in the south lands .... Too true that universal uniformity is the future of the world.^0 Mackenzie's humanistic individualism is seen when, for *®"An Island His Castle," February 28, 1931. Indeed Mark Longaker and Edwin C. Bolles assert: "By the end of the twenties . . . Mackenzie lost many of his readers, largely because of the increasingly propa gandist character of his novels. He is a man of strong and often eccentric opinions that he has allowed to pervade his work at the cost of its artistic merit"— Contemporary English Literature (New York, 1953), p. 312. ^ Confessions of a Young Man (New York, 1923), pp. 419-420. 418 example, he speaks against Esperanto as a world language i£ it is going to lead to neglect of the traditional lan guages of mankind: ... I shall continue to think that a language like Basque, or even Albanian, will be more worthy of study, because I look in a language for the evidence of humanity*s continuous life, for the lack of which logic and ingenuity are no substitute. Similarly, his principles have led him to campaign vigor ously on behalf of Scottish nationalism. Edmund Wilson sums up this aspect of Mackenzie's "message" as expressed in his post-war work: For years he [Mackenzie] has been trying to plead in his books for the rights of small nations and cultural minorities, as against all the forces that are driving us in the direction of a centralized power that tries to process or crush t h e m . ^ 2 If the values of freedom and individualism have shaped the personal life of Compton Mackenzie, they have equally shaped the vision of life expressed in his novels. From the very first, these values have offered thematic material for him. In The Passionate Elopement, for example, the ^Mackenzie, ’ 'Would the World Be a Better Place?" Radio Times (London), August 22, 1930 (clipping in Scrap book No. 17). 22 "An Interview with Edmund Wilson," The New Yorker. June 2, 1962, p. 121. moral Is drawn that the freedom of the individual to lead his own life is never to be violated— even for the best motives. Beau Ripple is quite explicit in his speech at the end of the book: "My lords, ladies and gentlemen, never meddle with other people's business when it happens to 23 concern the heart or the soul of a human creature. . . In The Theatre of Youth, Mackenzie explores more fully the problem of freedom and the individual. In Carnival, Mac kenzie studies Jenny Pearl, who fails to achieve a neces sary human freedom despite the vividness of her personality. Although the forces of heredity and environment are shown as having weighed upon her, the major indictment is leveled at the education which Jenny had received. That education failed to develop her imaginative and intellectual life and so failed to enable her to live a full, human, respon sible life. Jenny was not perfectly free, because the capabilities of her nature as a human being had never been awakened: "The fault was not hers. She was the victim of sterile imaginations. Her soul was bleak and cold as the life of man in the days before Prometheus stole fire from 23 Mackenzie, The Passionate Elopement (London, no date), p. 383. 420 24 heaven.” In Sinister Street and Sylvia Scarlett, the point is made that freedom is not only a goal, but also a means--a means to self-realization and fulfillment. In those novels, Mackenzie portrays the search that explores, beyond freedom, toward and for commitment. In centering attention upon youth poised on the threshold of the active life, as he does in Guy and Pauline, Mackenzie reveals the tensions created when the desire for freedom and the desire for commitment are in conflict. Insofar as The Vanity Girl seems less centrally concerned with this aspect of youthful development, it has less importance for the sequence. Compton Mackenzie has a number of impressive talents as a writer, as well as some irritating weaknesses. He has a Dickensian ability to create character, and a fer tility of imagination in the telling of story. He has a strong sense of place, and the backgrounds of his novels are solidly and accurately constructed. He has a flair for farce and humorous characterization. He writes, at his best, with distinction; and he has curbed an early tendency towards a purely decorative style. For the sake of the vividness and the vitality of the work as a whole, we may ^^Mackenzie, Carnival (New York, 1912), p. 80. 421 tolerate the Inexactness of technique which mars most of these early novels. Despite two works that are excellent of their kind-- Sinister Street and The Winds of Love--Mackenzie must be judged an interesting minor writer of a transitional age. World War I marked a change in the fashion of literature which set him apart from the main development of the post war novel. Yet his early work should not be dismissed peremptorily. For The Theatre of Youth is one of the most ambitious and engaging sequence novels in English litera ture. Moreover, it offers to modem readers two valuable sources of interest beyond the appeal of story. First, these novels provide a vivid and detailed evocation of the Edwardian past and of that generation which came to ma turity in the early twentieth century and went off to war in 1914. The portrait of that age given in the novels will never be outmoded. Secondly, the romantic humanism which pervades these volumes has its own special significance for our times. Mackenzie*s assertion of the values of human freedom and the rights of individuals may have more meaning for readers today and in the future than for the public of the second decade of the twentieth century. BIBLIOGRAPHY A. Books and Articles hy : ! i r Compton ’’ -ickensie "Lted in the Text >j22 BIBLIOGRAPHY A. Books and Articles by Sir Compton Mackenzie Cited in the Text Address by Compton Mackenzie on the Occasion of His Instal lation as Rector of St. Andrew*s Hall, University of Glasgow. Glasgow: Jackson, Wylie and Co., 1932. (Glasgow University Publications, No. 24.) The Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett. London: Macdonald and Co., 1950. Aegean Memories. London: Cassell and Company, 1940. The Altar Steps. London: Macdonald and Co., 1956. Carnival. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1912. ________. London: Macdonald and Co., 1951. "Compton Mackenzie and Sylvia Scarlett," The Strand (London), LXXVI (December 1928), 600. "Confessions," The Saturday Book (London), IX (1949), 120-121. Echoes. London: Chatto and Windus, 1954. First Athenian Memories. London: Cassell and Company, 1931. "Francis Brett Young," The Bookman (London), LI (August 1920), 635-639. Gallipoli Memories. London: Cassell and Company, 1929- 423 424 Greek Memories. London: Cassell and Company, 1932. Guy and Pauline. London: Macdonald and Co., 1952. "How I Began," T. P.'s Weekly (London), January 3, 1913, p. 3. "How I Came to Write Coral," The Daily Mirror (London), November 1, 1924. "How I Wrote Carnival," The New York Times Saturday Review, June 9, 1912, p. 344. Literature in My Time. New York: Loring and Mussey, 1933. "Mr. Compton Mackenzie," The Strand. March 1922 (clipping in Mackenzie Scrapbook No. 34). "My Ambition in Life," T. P.fs and Cassell*s Weekly (London), October 25, 1924, p. 10. "My Favourite Character in Fiction: A Symposium," John 0*London's Weekly, October 6, 1934, p. 4. "My First Novel," The Evening News (London), October 28, 1919. "My First Novel," The Listener (London), XLIX (March 19, 1953), 474-475. My Life and Times: Octave One. London: Chatto and Windus, 1963. _________________: Octave Two. London: Chatto and Windus, 1963. "1900," Life and Letters To-Day (London), XXXIII (May 1942), 74-85; XXXIV (July 1942), 13-15; XXXIV (August 1942), 92-98. Paradise for Sale. London: Macdonald and Co., 1963 (reissue of Mackenzie's The Old Men of the Sea [1924], with a new foreword by Mackenzie). 425 The Passionate Elopement. Daily Express Library of Famous Books. London: A Daily Express Publication, [n.d.]. Poems. Oxford: B. H- Blackwell, 1907. "Self-Consciousness Blights Modem Life," The New York Sun, November 9, 1912. "Sidelight," The Spectator (London), CXCI (November 20, 1953), 578. __________________________ , CXCI (December 25, 1953), 762. , CXCII (April 9, 1954), 437. __________________________ , CXCIII (October 15, 1954), 468. __________________________ , CXCIII (October 22, 1954), 494. Sinister Street. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1914. _______________. London: Macdonald and Co., 1949. "To the Editor of 'The Daily Mail,'" The Daily Mail (London), September 9, 1913. Unconsidered Trifles. London: Martin Seeker, 1932. The Vanity Girl. London: Macdonald and Co., 1954. "Would the World Be a Better Place?" Radio Times (London), August 22, 1930 (clipping in Mackenzie Scrapbook No. 17). 426 B• Reviews from British and American newspapers and periodicals of the novels discussed in the text. The reviews for each novel are listed together, and are separated into British and American. The re views are alphabetized by name of publication. If complete bibliographical data are not available, the source of the review in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks will be given. THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT (All the following reviews are to be found in Scrapbook No. 31) British Reviews The Athenaeum (London), February 4, 1911, pp. 124-125. The Birmingham Daily Post, February 3, 1911. The Bystander (London), [n.d.] (review by [Robert Ross]). Country Life (London), March 4, 1911. The Crewe Observer, April 15, 1911. The Daily Chronicle (London), April 11, 1911- The Daily Graphic (London), March 18, 1911. The Daily Mail (London), March 14, 1911. The Daily News (London), February 8, 1911. The Daily Telegraph (London), February 3, 1911. The English Review (London), VII (February 1911), 580. The Evening Standard and St. James Gazette (London), February 23, 1911. The Glasgow Evening News. February 2, 1911. The Glasgow Herald, [n.d.] The Globe (London), March 15, 1911. The Graphic (London), [n.d.] Hearth and Home (London), March 4, 1911. The Isis (Oxford), April 15, 1911. Ladles1 Field (London), March 4, 1911. The Leicester Mall, April 7, 1911. The Liverpool Courier, April 28, 1911. The Liverpool Post and Liverpool Mercury, March 1, 1911. The Liverpool Evening Express, April 7, 1911. The Manchester Courier, January 30, 1911. The Manchester Guardian, January 25, 1911 (review by S. H.). The Morning Post (London), January 20, 1911. The Newcastle Daily Chronicle. February 6, 1911. The North Mail (Newcastle), February 9, 1911. The Nottingham Daily Guardian, [n.d.] The Observer (London), January 29, 1911. The Outlook (London), [n.d.] The Oxford Chronicle and Berks and Bucks Gazette, February 3, 1911 (review by G- M. A.). 428 The Oxford Magazine. February 23, 1911, p. 255 (review by C. R. S.). The Oxford Times. [n.d.] The Pall Mall Gazette (London), January 27, 1911. Punch, CXL (March 15, 1911), 180. The Scotsman (Edinburgh), January 19, 1911- The Sheffield Daily Telegraph. February 16, 1911. The Sketch (London), February 8, 1911. The Spectator (London), CVI (February 4, 1911), 185. The Standard (London), January 27, 1911. The Sunday Times and Sunday Special (London), Janu ary 29, 1911. The Times Literary Supplement (London), February 10, 1911, p. 57, col. 1. T. P.*s Weekly (London), February 24, 1911, p- 231 (review by Frederick Niven). Truth (London), February 8, 1911 (review by Desmond B. O'Brien). The Westminster Gazette (London), February 4, 1911. The World (London), [n.d.] The Yorkshire Post, February 22, 1911. American Reviews The Booklist (Chicago), VII (June 1911), 445-446. The Boston Transcript, [n.d.] (review by Charles Marriott). 429 The Boston Transcript. June 14, 1911. The Brooklyn Eagle. April 29, 1911. The Chicago Evening Post. May 12, 1911. The New York Herald. March 25, 1911. The New York Times Saturday Review. XVI (April 16, 1911), 232. The Philadelphia Press. October 21, 1911. The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal. June 8, 1911. Publishers* Weekly (New York), UCXIX (March 25, 1911), 1382. The Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, June 18, 1911. The Washington (D. of C.) Evening Star, May 20, 1911. CARNIVAL (All the following reviews are to be found in Scrapbook No. 31) British Reviews The Aberdeen Free Press. February 2, 1912. The Academy (London), LXXXII (March 2, 1912), 272-273. The Athenaeum (London), January 20, 1912, pp. 62-63. The Birmingham Daily Post. January 26, 1912. The Bookman (London), XXXV (May 1912), 227-228. The Bristol Times and Mirror. March 9, 1912. 430 The Bystander (London), January 17, 1912 (review by Ralph Straus). The Cheltenham Examiner, March 29, 1912. The Church Times (London), February 2, 1912. Country Life (London), January 27, 1912. The Daily Chronicle (London), February 21, 1912- The Daily Mail (London), February 23, 1912. The Daily Mirror (London), January 20, 1912. The Daily News (London), February 8, 1912 (review by Robert Lynd). The Daily Telegraph (London), April 12, 1912. The Dundee Courier, February 8, 1912. The English Review (London), X (February 1912), 547-548. The Evening Standard and St. James Gazette (London), [n . d. ] The Eye-Witness (London), February 1, 1912, p. 218. The Glasgow Evening Citizen, January 26, 1912. The Glasgow Herald, January 18, 1912. The Glasgow News. March 4, 1912. The Glasgow Evening Times, May 11, 1912. The Globe (London), January 17, 1912. The Graphic (London), February 17, 1912. Hearth and Home (London), February 1, 1912. 431 The IsIs (Oxford), February 26, 1912 (review by L. F. U.)* Ladies* Field (London), February 3, 1912. The Liverpool Courier. January 17, 1912. The Liverpool Daily Post. January 24, 1912. Madame (London), February 3, 1912 (review by Arthur St. John Adcock entitled "The World, the Church, and the Ballet"). The Manchester Courier, February 23, 1912. The Manchester Guardian. January 24, 1912 (review by R. C.). The Morning Leader (London), January 17, 1912. The Morning Post (London), January 22, 1912. The Nation (London), X (February 17, 1912), 824, 826. The New Age (London), March 21, 1912. The North Mail (Newcastle), February 16, 1912. The Northern Whig (Belfast), May 18, 1912. The Observer (London), January 28, 1912. The Outlook (London), January 27, 1912, p. 137. The Oxford Chronicle and Berks and Bucks Gazette (Oxford), February 2, 1912 (review by G. M. A.). The Oxford Magazine. March 7, 1912. The Oxford Times, February 10, 1912. The Pall Mall Gazette (London), January 19, 1912. Punch (London), CXLII (January 24, 1912), 72. 432 The Review of Reviews (London), XLV (June 1912), 764. The Saturday Review (London), CXIII (May 11, 1912), vi. The Saturday Westminster Gazette (London), June 8, 1912, fT 6 (review by R[upert] Btrooke]). The Scotsman (Edinburgh), February 5, 1912. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph. January 19, 1912. The Sketch (London), February 7, 1912. The Spectator (London), CVIII (February 17, 1912), 278-279. The Sphere (London), March 23, 1912 (review by [Clement Shorter]). The Standard (London), January 26, 1912. The Sunday Times and Sunday Special (London), March 10, 1912. The Tatler (London), February 26, 1912. The Times Literary Supplement (London), January 18, 1912, p. 26, col. 3. T. P.*s Weekly (London), January 19, 1912, p. 69 (review by N. H. W. entitled "The Ballet Girl in Fiction"). Vanity Fair (London), January 31, 1912. The Weekly Budget (London), April 7, 1912 (review by Richard Fletcher). The Western Morning News (Plymouth), March 4, 1912. The Westminster Gazette (London), January 20, 1912. The Yorkshire Post, March 1, 1912. 433 American Reviews The Atlantic Monthly (New York), CX (November 1912), 686-687. The Bookman (New York), XXXV (May 1912), 312-313 (review by George Middleton). The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer (New York), May 1912. The Boston Advertiser, April 22, 1912. The Boston Globe, April 22, 1912. The Boston Herald. April 27, 1912. The Boston Transcript. May 1, 1912. The Chicago Evening Post. April 19, 1912 (review by Lucian Cary). The Chicago Record-Herald, March 27, 1912. The Des Moines (Iowa) Capital, April 17, 1912. The Detroit Free Press [n.d.] Everybody's Magazine (New York), XXVII (July 1912), 139. The Los Angeles Times. May 26, 1912. McClure1s Magazine (New York), XXXIX (June 1912), 239. Metropolitan Magazine (New York), August 1912. The Nation (New York), XCIV (May 16, 1912), 495. The New Orleans Picayune, April 21, 1912. The New Orleans Times-Democrat. April 14, 1912. The New York Globe. March 23, 1912. 434 The New York Herald, March 23, 1912 (review by James L. Ford). The New York Post. April 3, 1912. The New York Sun, April 20, 1912. The New York Times Saturday Review, XVII (April 21, 1912), 249. , XVII (April 28, 1912), 256. The New York Tribune, March 30, 1912. The New York World, April 20, 1912. The Newark (New Jersey) News, May 4, 1912. The Philadelphia Press, March 30, 1912. The Philadelphia Public Ledger, April 22, 1912. The Philadelphia Record, July 6, 1912 (review by P. A. Kinsley). The Philadelphia Telegraph, April 17, 1912. The Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.), July 14, 1912. The Portland (Oregon) Telegram, [n.d.] The Portland Oregonian, March 31, 1912. The San Francisco Bulletin, April 20, 1912. The San Francisco Chronicle. June 1, 1912. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 6, 1912. The Washington (D. of C.) Star. August 3, 1912. 435 SINISTER STREET. VOLUME I (All the following reviews are to be found in Scrapbook No. 24) British Reviews The Aberdeen Free Press. September 25, 1913 (review entitled "A Banned Book"). The Academy (London), LXXXV (September 20, 1913), 365-366. The Athenacam (London), September 6, 1913, p. 225. The Birmingham Daily Post. September 17, 1913. The Bookman (London), October 1913 (review by M. H. H. Macartney). Book Monthly (London), November 1913 (review by James Milne) . The Bristol Times and Mirror. September 19, 1913. The Bystander (London), September 10, 1913. The Catholic Herald (London), September 27, 1913. The Daily Citizen [n.p.], September 1, 1913 (review by Roy Gordon Gilbert). The Daily Chronicle (London), September 13, 1913. The Daily Express (London), September 1, 1913. The Daily Graphic (London), September 5, 1913. The Daily Mail (London), September 1, 1913 (review by Keble Howard). The Daily News and Leader (London), September 1, 1913 (review by Robert Lynd). 436 The Daily Telegraph (London), September 10, 1913. The English Review (London), XV (October 1913), 472-473. The Evening News (London), September 2, 1913. The Evening Standard (London), September 1, 1913. Everyman (London), September 12, 1913. The Glasgow Herald, September 11, 1913. The Glasgow News. August 28, 1913. The Globe (London), September 3, 1913. The Graphic (London), September 13, 1913. Hearth and Home (London), September 4, 1913. The Illustrated London News, CXLIII (November 1, 1913), 714. Ladies* Field (London), September 6, 1913. The Lady (London), October 23, 1913. The Liverpool Courier, September 25, 1913 (review by Dixon Scott entitled f , A Problem and a Novel”). The Manchester Guardian. September 3, 1913 (review by Lascelles Abercrombie). The Morning Post (London), September 1, 1913. The Nation (London), October 1, 1913. The New Witness (London), September 4, 1913 (review by T. M. P.). The Nineteenth Century and After (London), LXXIV (October 1913), 793-795 (review by Donald Figgis entitled "Some Recent Notable Novels”). The North Mail (Newcastle), September 3, 1913 (review by M. H.). The Observer (London), September 7, 1913. The Outlook (London), [n.d.] (review by Ford Madox Hueffer entitled "Mr. Compton Mackenzie and ’Sinister Street*"). The Oxford Chronicle and Berks and Bucks Gazette (Oxford), September 19, 1913 (review by G. M- A. entitled "Sinister and Dexterous"). The Oxford Magazine, [n.d.] The Pall Mall Gazette (London), September 4, 1913. Public Opinion (London), September 5, 1913. Punch (London), CXLV (September 3, 1913), 217. The Queen (London), October 11, 1913. The Saturday Review (London), CXVI (September 27, 1913), 400. The Scotsman (Edinburgh), September 8, 1913. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, [n.d.] The Sketch (London), October 1, 1913. The Southport Guardian, November 11, 1913. The Standard (London), September 5, 1913. The Sunday Times and Sunday Special (London), Sep tember 7, 1913 (review by F. G. Bettany). The Tablet (London), November 8, 1913. The Tatler (London), September 10, 1913 (review entitled "With Silent Friends"). 438 The Times Literary Supplement (London), September 4, 1913, p. 362, col. 1. Truth (London), September 17, 1913. The Westminster Gazette (London), September 6, 1913. The Wolverton Express. November 3, 1913 (review by "Roderick Random"). The Yorkshire Herald. November 6, 1913 (review en titled "The Space Between"). The Yorkshire Observer. October 7, 1913 (review en titled "Mr. Compton Mackenzie's Perfumed Prose"). American Reviews (The American Title for Volume I is Youth's Encounter) The Baltimore (Maryland) News [n.d.] The Bookman (New York), XXXVIII (December 1913), 414 (review by Frederic Taber Cooper). The Boston Advertiser, [n.d.] (review by S. C. Williams entitled "A Story of Youth Under the Microscope"). The Boston Globe, [n.d.] (review entitled "Picture of School Life"). The Boston Herald. [n.d.] The Boston Transcript. November 19, 1913, p. 24. The Brooklyn Eagle, [n.d.] The Brooklyn Standard Union, [n.d.] (review entitled "The Making of Manhood"). The Charleston (South Carolina) News [n.d.] The Chicago Examiner. [n.d.] (review by Edwin Mark ham) . 439 The Chicago Post. September 3, 19X3 (review by Augusta Cary). The Chicago Record-Herald. [n.d.] The Chicago Tribune. November 15, 1913. The Cincinnati Times-Star, [n.d.] The Cleveland Leader, [n.d.] The Cleveland Plain Dealer. November 8, 1913 (review by Carl T. Robertson). Current Opinion (New York), LV (November 1913), 380. The Des Moines (Iowa) Capital, [n.d.] The Des Moines Register and Leader, [n.d.] The Detroit Free Press. [n.d.] The Dial (New York), LVI (January 1, 1914), 24 (review by William Morton Payne). Life (New York), [n.d.] (review by J. B. Kerfoot). The Living Age (Boston), CCLXXX (March 14, 1914), 674-681 (review by C. C. Martindale entitled "Psychology in the Concrete"--reprinted from The Dublin Review). The Los Angeles Times, [n.d.] (review entitled "An Intimate Revelation"). The Louisville (Kentucky) Courier Journal, [n.d.] The Minneapolis (Minnesota) Journal, [n.d.] (review entitled "A Study of Adolescence"). The New York Post, [n.d.] (review entitled "Minute Autobiography"). New York Evening Sun. October 25, 1913. 440 The New York Globe. [n.d.] The New York Herald. [n.d.] The New York Times Saturday Review. XVIII (October 26, 1913), 574 (review by L. M. Field). The New York Tribune, [n.d.] (review entitled "The First Stage"). The New York World, October 25, 1913 (review entitled "Michael Fane Grows Up"). The Philadelphia Public Ledger, [n.d.] The Philadelphia Record, [n.d.] The Pittsburg Post, [n.d.] The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, [n.d.] The San Francisco Chronicle, [n.d.] The Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, [n.d.] The Syracuse (New York) Post-Standard, [n.d.] The Washington (D. of C.) Star, [n.d.] SINISTER STREET. VOLUME II (All the following reviews are to be found in Scrapbook No. 24, except as specifically noted) British Reviews The Athenaeum (London), November 21, 1914, p. 531. The Birmingham Daily Post, December 12, 1914. The Bystander (London), January 13, 1915. 441 The Cambridge Review, [n.d.] (review by J. F- Harris). Country Life (London), December 5, 1914. The Daily Chronicle (London), December 2, 1914. The Daily Citizen [n.p.], November 20, 1914. The Daily Graphic (London), January 1, 1915. The Daily News and Leader (London), November 11, 1914 (review by Philip Guedalla). The Daily Telegraph (London), November 28, 1914. The Engineering Gazette (London), December 1914 (review by L. R.). The English Review (London), XIX (December 1914), 123-124. The Evening News (London), January 21, 1915 (review entitled "A Modem Yeast”). The Evening Standard (London), November 11, 1914. The Glasgow Herald, November 19, 1914. The Glasgow News. November 26, 1914. The Globe (London), November 12, 1914. Ladies* Field (London), December 26, 1914. The Lady (London), March 6, 1915. The Liverpool Daily Post and Liverpool Mercury. November' 11, 1914. The Manchester Courier. December 12, 1914. The Manchester Guardian. November 11, 1914 (review by Lascelles Abercrombie). The Month (London), May 1915, p. 531 (review by H. T. entitled "A Modem Don Quixote"). The Morning Post (London), November 11, 1914. The Nation (London), November 28, 1914. The New Statesman (London), IV (November 14, 1914), 141 (review by Gerald Gould). The New Witness (London), January 21, 1915 (review T- Michael Pope entitled "The Romantic at Large"). The Observer (London), November 15, 1914 (review entitled "The Novel of Detail"). The Outlook (London), November 14, 1914. The Oxford Chronicle and Berks and Bucks Gazette, November 20, 1914 (review entitled "Paradise and Inferno"). The Pall Mall Gazette (London), November 13, 1914 (review by Pendennis entitled "A Tale Without an End"). Punch (London), CXLVII (November 18, 1914), 427. The Queen (London), May 14, 1915. The Scotsman (Edinburgh), November 19, 1914. The Sketch (London), March 17, 1915. The Southport Guardian, [n.d.] (review entitled "The New Generation"). The Sphere (London), IX (January 23, 1915), 110 (review by C[lement] K. S[horter] entitled "A Literary Letter"). The Standard (London), November 13, 1914. 443 The Sunday Times and Sunday Special (London), January 10, 1915 (review by F. G. Bettany). The Tablet (London), March 27, 1915 (review entitled ’ ’Sinister Street Again”). The Times Literary Supplement (London), November 12, 1914, p. 506, col. 1. T. P.’s Weekly (London), November 21, 1914 (review by Holbrook Jackson). Varsity (Oxford), February 2, 1915 (review by G. E. W. entitled "’OMihi Praeteritos--!"') . The Welsh Outlook (Cardiff), May 1915 (review by A. D.). The Westminster Gazette (London), November 21, 1914. The Yorkshire Observer. January 5, 1915. The Yorkshire Post. January 29, 1915. American Reviews (The American title is Sinister Street) Argus (New York), January 3, 1915. The Baltimore (Maryland) News. December 23, 1914. The Bookman (New York), XL (February 15, 1915), 676-677 (review by Frederic Tabor Cooper). The Boston Globe. January 9, 1915. The Boston Transcript. December 16, 1914, p. 26. The Chicago Post. December 26, 1914 (review by Llewellyn Jones entitled "Wherewith Shall We Be Saved”). The Chicago Record-Herald. December 26, 1914. 444 The Chicago Tribune, November 15, 1914. The Cincinnati Enquirer. December 19, 1914. Current Opinion (New York), LVIII (February 1915), 115"116 (review entitled "Some of Compton Mackenzie's Faults") [Not in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks]. The Des Moines (Iowa) Capital. February 17, 1915. The Dial (New York), LVIII (January 16, 1915), 53 (review by Lucian Cary) [Not in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks]. The Independent (New York), LXXX (December 14, 1914), 404-405 (review by Jeannette L. Gilder entitled "New Names in Fiction") [Not in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks]. The Indianapolis (Indiana) News. February 6, 1915 (review entitled "Fane on Sinister Street"). The Kansas City (Missouri) Star. January 9, 1915. Life (New York), January 14, 1915. The Los Angeles Sunday Times. January 17, 1915 (review entitled "A Mirror for the Underworld"). The Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal, January 25, 1915. The Louisville Post. December 26, 1914 (review entitled "A Study of Youth"). The Nation (New York), C (January 21, 1915), 81. The New Orleans Picayune. January 9, 1915 (review by Laurence Stratford entitled "Modern Novelists and 1The Victorians *"). The New Republic (New York), II (February 13, 1915), 53-54 (review by Cuthbert Wright) [Not in the Mackenzie Scrapbooks]. 445 The New York Post, January 2, 1915 (review entitled "Oxford as It Is Not"). The New York Herald. December 12, 1914 (review by James L. Ford entitled "And the Low Life of London Provides Interest After a Tiresome Oxford Storm"). The New York Press. April 1, 1915. The New York Sun. December 26, 1914 (review entitled "A Few New Chapters in the Life Story of Michael Fane"). The New York Times Book Review. XIX (December 13, 1914), 568. The New York World. December 12, 1914 (review entitled "Fane in Sinister Street"). The Philadelphia Public Ledger, February 13, 1915. The Pittsburg Gazette Times. December 27, 1914. The Providence (Rhode Island) Sunday Journal. January 10, 1915. The Publishers* Weekly (New York), December 19, 1914. The'St. Louis Republic. December 19, 1914. The San Francisco Bulletin, January 11, 1915. GUY AND PAULINE (All the following reviews are to be found in Scrapbook No. 30, except as specifically noted) British Reviews The Aberdeen Free Press. September 27, 1915. The Aberdeen Daily Journal. September 21, 1915. 446 The Athenaeum (London), October 2, 1915, p. 227. The Birmingham Gazette. September 24, 1915. The Birmingham Daily Mail. October 9, 1912. The Birmingham Weekly Post. October 22, 1912. The Bookman (London), October 1915 (review by J. M). The Bystander (London), October 27, 1915. Country Life (London), September 25, 1915. The Daily Chronicle (London), September 30, 1915 (review by E. Desmond Deane). The Daily Hail (London), October 1, 1915. The Daily News and Leader (London), September 16, 1915 (review by Rebecca West). The Daily Telegraph (London), October 13, 1915. The Evening News (London), [n.d.] (review entitled "Pose and Poetry"). The Evening Standard (London), September 27, 1915. Everyman (London), October 29, 1915. The Glasgow Herald. [n.d.] The Glasgow News, October 28, 1915. The Globe (London), October 1, 1915. The Huddersfield Examiner and West Riding Reporter, October 2, 1915. The Illustrated London News. CXLVII (October 9, 1915), 480. The Ladies* Field (London), October 16, 1915, p. 318. 447 Lady * s Pictorial (London), October 2, 1915. Land and Water (London), September 28, 1915. The Liverpool Courier. October 21, 1915. The Liverpool Post and Liverpool Mercury. December 22, 1915. The Manchester Guardian. September 30, 1915 (review by Lascelles Abercrombie). The Nation (London), October 9, 1915. The New Age (London), October 11, 1915. Newsagent (London), September 24, 1915. The New Statesman (London), V (September 18, 1915), 570 (review by Gerald Gould). The New Witness (London), October 29, 1915. North Wilts Guardian (Chippenham), October 22, 1915. The Outlook (London), October 4, 1915. The Oxford Chronicle and Berks and Bucks Gazette, September 24, 1915 (review entitled "Ferdinand and Miranda"). The Pall Mall Gazette (London), September 16, 1915. Punch (London), CXLIX (September 22, 1915), 259. The Queen (London), September 10, 1921, p. 317. The Review of Reviews (London), LI I (November 1915), 429. The Saturday Review Literary Supplement (London), CXX (October 16, 1915), viii. The Scotsman (Edinburgh), October 1, 1915. 448 The Sketch (London), October 20, 1915, The Sphere (London), October 9, 1915. The Standard (London), September 15, 1915. The Sunday School Chronicle and Christian Outlook (London), November 18, 1915. The Tatler (London), October 27, 1915. The Times Literary Supplement (London), September 16, 1915, p. 310, col. 2. Truth (London) September 22, 1915. The Welsh Outlook (Cardiff), October 1915 (review by A. D.). The Westminster Gazette (London), September 24, 1915. The World (London), September 18, 1915. The Yorkshire Observer. October 13, 1915. American Reviews (The American title is Plashers Mead) The Atlanta (Georgia) Constitution, November 21, 1915. The Atlanta (Georgia) Journal. October 30, 1915. The Boston Globe, November 6, 1915. The Boston Transcript. November 6, 1915, p. 1 (review by Edwin Francis Edgett). The Brooklyn Eagle, October 30, 1915. The Brooklyn Standard Union. November 13, 1915- The Chicago Evening Post Literary Review. December 3, 1915 (review by Nellie Poorman). 449 The Detroit Free Press. November 17, 1915. The Hartford (Conn.) Post. November 13, 1915. The Living Age (Boston), CCLXXXVII (December 11, 1915), 701-702. The Nation (New York), Cl (December 9, 1915), 690. The New Republic (New York), V (December 4, 1915), 129 (review by E. S. S.). The New York Times Book Review, XX (November 7, 1915), 425. The New York Tribune. November 27, 1915. The New York World, October 30, 1915. The Philadelphia Press, November 13, 1915 (review entitled "An Idyl in England"). Publishers' Weekly (New York), LXXXIX (January 15, 1916), 192. The San Francisco Bulletin. November 20, 1915. The Washington (D. of C.) Star. November 21, 1915. THE EARLY LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF SYLVIA SCARLETT (All the following reviews are to be found in Scrapbook No. 30) British Reviews The Birmingham Weekly Post. September 30, 1918. The Bookman (London), October 1918 (review by Frank Swinnerton entitled "Harlequinade"). Country Life (London), September 21, 1918. 450 The Daily Chronicle (London), August 21, 1918. The Dally News and Leader (London), August 23, 1918 (review by Rebecca West). The Evening News (London), September 24, 1918 (review by S. P. B. Mais). Everyman (London), September 28, 1918 (review by Olive Heseltine). The Glasgow Herald. August 29, 1918. The Illustrated London News. CLIII (September 28, 1918), 372. The Liverpool Courier, September 24, 1918. The Liverpool Post and Liverpool Mercury, August 30, 1918. The Manchester Guardian. September 14, 1918 (review by F. S.). The Morning Post (London), August 30, 1918. The Nation (London), September 7, 1918. The New Statesman (London), XI (September 7, 1918), 455 (review entitled "Edward Endless Again"). The Observer (London), September 1, 1918. The Pall Mall Gazette (London), August 23, 1918. Punch (London), CLV (September 11, 1918), 175. The Scotsman (Edinburgh), September 2, 1918. The Sketch (London), September 11, 1918. The Tatler (London), September 18, 1918 (review entitled "The Letters of Eve"). 451 The Times Literary Supplement (London), August 29, 1918, p. 403, col. 3 (review entitled "The 'Movie* Novel"). To-Day (London), October 1918, p. 49 (review by S. P. B. Mais entitled "The Genius of Compton Mackenzie"). The Weekly Free Press and Aberdeen Herald, Septem ber 30, 1918. The Westminster Gazette (London), August- 31, 1918. American Reviews The Bookman (New York), XLVIII (December 1918), 482- 484 (review by Henry A. Lappin entitled "Compton Mackenzie the Lesser"). The Bookseller Newsdealer and Stationer (New York), September 15, 1918. The Boston Herald and Journal, September 28, 1918 (review entitled "Mr. Mackenzie and His Sylvia"). The Boston Post, September 21, 1918. The Boston Transcript, September 11, 1918, p. 6. The Boston Weekly Transcript, September 13, 1918 (review by E. F- E.). The Chicago Evening Post Literary Review, October 4, 1918 (review by Llewellyn Jones). The Chicago News. January [n.d.], 1919 (review by Keith Preston). The Hamilton (Ohio) Repub1ican-News. September 14, 1918. The Indianapolis (Indiana) Star. September 21, 1918. 452 The Los Angeles Express, September 22, 1918. The Milwaukee Journal. October 25, 1918. The Nation (New York), CVII (September 21, 1918), 325. The New Republic (New York), XVII (November 9, 1918), 48-49 (review by F. H. entitled "The Scarlett Woman"). The New York Evening Sun. October 12, 1918. The New York Globe. September 28, 1918. The New York Herald. August 25, 1918. The New Y^rl: Post, October 5, 1918. The N«iW York Sun, September 22, 1918, p. 10, cols. 1-2 (review by Dorothy Scarborough entitled "Compton Mackenzie's Sylvia Scarlett"). The New York Times Book Review. XXIII (August 18, 1919), 353. The New York World, September [n.d.], 1918. The Philadelphia Inquirer. September 30, 1918. The Philadelphia Press. September [n.d.], 1918 (review entitled "Temperamental Sylvia"). The Philadelphia Public Ledger. September 28, 1918. The Philadelphia Record. November [n.d.] (review entitled "Erratic Girl's Career"). The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, October 13, 1918. The Publishers' Weekly (New York), XCIV (October 19, 1918), 1300 (review by Elizabeth Porter Wychoff). 453 The Rochester (New York) Post Express. October 22, 1918. The San Francisco Chronicle. November 24, 1918. The Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican. October 13, 1918. SYLVIA AND MICHAEL (All the following reviews are to be found in Scrapbook No. 30) British Reviews The Aberdeen Free Press. May 5, 1919 (review entitled "A Notable Novel”). The Birmingham Weekly Post. April [n.d.], 1919. The Bystander (London), April 30, 1919 (review by R. S.). The Cambridge Magazine. March 1919 (review by E. P. B-). Country Life (London), April [n.d.], 1919. The Daily Chronicle (London), April [n.d.], 1919. The Daily Mail (London), March [n.d,], 1919 (review by H[amilton] F[yte]). The Daily News and Leader (London), April [n.d.], 1919 (review by Rebecca West). The Daily Telegraph (London), March [n.d.], 1919. The Evening News (London), April [n.d.], 1919 (review by Arthur Machen). The Evening Standard (London), March [n.d.], 1919. 454 The Glasgow Herald, March [n.d.], 1919. The Illustrated London News. CLIV (April 19, 1919), 572. Land and Water (London), April [n.d.], 1919. The Liverpool Courier. April [n.d.], 1919 (review by G. B.). The Liverpool Post and Liverpool Mercury, April [n.d.], 1919. The Manchester Guardian. March [n.d.], 1919 (review by F. S.). The Morning Post (London), March 29, 1919. The Nation (London), XXV (April 19, 1919), 8 8. The New Statesman (London), XIII (April 12, 1919), 49. The New Witness (London), March [n.d.], 1919 (review by W. R. Titterton). The Observer (London), March [n.d.], 1919. The Outlook (London), April [n.d.], 1919. The Pall Mall Gazette (London), April [n.d.], 1919. Punch (London), CLVI (April 9, 1919), 291. The Scotsman (Edinburgh), March [n.d.], 1919- The Sheffield Daily Telegraph. April [n.d.], 1919. _____________________________ . April [n.d.], 1919 (article by ”A Contemporary” entitled "Sequels: A Grumble and Some Suggestions”). The Sunday Chronicle (London), March [n.d.], 1919. 455 The Sunday Express (London), March [n.d.], 1919 (review by Louis J. McQuilland). The Sunday Times and Sunday Special (London) March [n.d.], 1919 (review by Robert K. Risk). The Tatler (London), May 14, 1919. The Times Literary Supplement (London), March 20, 1919, p. 150, col. 2. The Westminster Gazette (London), April [n.d.], 1919. American Reviews The Atlanta (Georgia) Journal. October 13, 1919. The Bookman (New York), L (October 1919), 191-192 (review by Constance M. Greene entitled "A Canter Through the Field of Fiction’ *). The Boston Transcript. August 6, 1919, p. 6 (review by E. F. E.). The Boston Herald and Journal. August 9, 1919* The Catholic World (New York), CXI (September 1920), 835. The Chicago News, August 6, 1919 (review by John V. A. Weaver). The Chicago Tribune. August 16, 1919. The Dallas (Texas) Times Herald. December 21, 1919. The Denver Rocky Mountain News. September 16, 1919 (review entitled "A Symposium”). The Detroit Free Press. August 9, 1919. The Detroit News, [n.d.] (review by Jeanette Kiekiutveld entitled "Sylvia and Michael Repentant and Dull”). 456 The Dial (New York), LXVII (October 4, 1919), 314. The Indianapolis Star. October 19, 1919 (review entitled "A Cabaret Singer's War Story”). The New Republic (New York), XIX (May 17, 1919), 91-92 (review by Rebecca West--reprinted from The Daily News [London]). The Newark (New Jersey) News. August 6, 1919 (review entitled "Sylvia Exit"). The New York Evening Sun. August 16, 1919 (review entitled "Hectic"). The New York Post. August 16, 1919 (review entitled "Temperamental Sylvia"). The New York Sun. July 27, 1919 (review entitled "A Mackenzian Describes Mackenzie's Latest"). The New York Telegraph, [n.d.] (review by Baird Leonard). The New York Times Book Review. XXIV (August 3, 1919), 390. The New York Tribune. [n.d.] (review by N. M.). The New York World. August 3, 1919. The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 8, 1919. The Philadelphia Press. August 9, 1919 (review entitled "More Sylvia"). The Philadelphia Public Ledger, [n.d.] (review entitled "Sylvia Scarlett Meets Happiness"). The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal. August 17, 1919. Publishers' Weekly (New York), XCVI (August 16, 1919), 480. 457 The Rochester (New York) Post Express. August 22, 1919. The San Francisco Chronicle, [n.d.] (review by Idwal Jones). The Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican. March 7, 1920 (review entitled "Compton Mackenzie Completes a Trilogy"). POOR RELATIONS (Most of the following reviews are to be found in Scrapbook No. 29 with a few in No. 25. If complete bibliographical data are lacking for an entry whose source is No. 25, I shall indicate the number "25" in brackets at the conclu sion of the item. Reviews not so indicated are located in No. 29. ) British Reviews The Aberdeen Free Press, [n.d.] (review entitled "Mr. Compton Mackenzie’s Comedy"). The Arts Gazette (London), November 8, 1919 (review by F. C. Bettany entitled "Mr. Compton Macken zie’s Joke") [25]. The Athenaeum (London), October 17, 1919, p. 1035 (review by K[atherine] M[ansfield] entitled "Humour and Heaviness"). The Bystander (London), [n.d.] (review by Ralph Straus entitled "A New Literary Log Rolled"). The Daily Chronicle (London), September 25, 1920 (review by Thomas Seccombe entitled "Compton Mackenzie as Humourist"). The Daily Express (London), [n.d.] (review by L[ouis] J. McQ[uilland] entitled "A New Humour ist"). 458 The Dally News and Leader (London), [n.d.] (review by Rebecca West entitled "Literature Towards Realism"). The Daily Telegraph (London), [n.d.]. Everyman (London), [n.d.] (review by Thomas Bodley entitled "Carrying On"). The Fortnightly Review (London), CXIIX (January 1920), 60-70 (review by P. P. Howe entitled "Fiction: Autumn, 1919"). The Glasgow Bulletin, March 8, 1920 (review by A. M. T.). The Glasgow Evening Times, [n.d. ] (review by J. R. P. entitled "A Novelist Breaking New Ground"). John O'London's Weekly (London), [n.d.] (review by Alec Waugh entitled "Our Cleverest Young Novelist — Compton Mackenzie" ) . The Liverpool Courier, [n.d.] (review by G. B.). The London Mercury, I (November 1919), 86. The Manchester Guardian, [n.d.] (review by F. S.). The Morning Post (London), [n.d.] (review entitled "A Novel of Fun"). The New Statesman (London), XIII (September 27, 1919), 656 (review entitled "Mr. Compton Mackenzie's Farce"). The Observer (London), September 28, 1919. Public Opinion (London), November 14, 1919, p. 405 (review by Rebecca West entitled "Why Read What Should Be Sat On?"). Punch (London), CLVII (October 8, 1919), 319. 459 The Queen (London), February 7, 1920 (review by G • B- D • ) • The Review of Reviews (London), LX (November 1919), 364, 366. The Saturday Review (London), CXXVIII (October 4, 1919), 319 (review entitled "The Return of a Prodigal"). The Sketch (London), January [n.d.] 1920 (review by W. Douglas Newton entitled "From the Reader's Point of View”). The Spectator (London), CXXIII (December 20, 1919), 865. The Sunday Times and Sunday Special (London), [n.d.]. The Tatler (London), October 15, 1919 (review by Richard King entitled "With Silent Friends"). The Times Literary Supplement (London), September 25, 1919, p. 513, col. 3. The Venturer, I, new series (November 1919), 73-75 (review by Alec Waugh). The Westminster Gazette (London), [n.d.]. The World (London), October 11, 1920 (review by W. L. G[eorge]) [25]. American Reviews The Bookman (New York), LI (May 1920), 341. The Boston Herald. March 25, 1920 (review entitled "A Dozen of Them Camp Out on a Prosperous Author"). The Boston Transcript. March 6, 1920 (review by E- F. E. entitled "The Humors of an English Family"). 460 The Brooklyn Eagle. March 6, 1920 (review by Harriet T. Comstock entitled "An Author’s Relatives"). The Chicago News, March 17, 1920. The Chicago Evening Post Literary Review, March 12, 1920 (review entitled "Comedy & Farce”). The Chicago Tribune. March 6, 1920. The Detroit News. [n.d.] (review by L. L. Goodnow entitled "Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire"). The Dial (New York), UCVIII (May 1920), 611 (review by Gilbert Seldes). The Hartford (Connecticut) Times. [n.d.] (review entitled "A Novel of Middle-Class English Life") [25]. The Los Angeles Times. June 20, 1920 [25]. The New Republic. XXI (February 18, 1920), 362-363 (review by Rebecca West— reprinted from The Daily News [London]). The New York Globe. March 6, 1920. The New York Times Book Review, XXV (March 7, 1920), 1. ______________________________ , XXV (April 18, 1920), 190. The New York Tribune, February 29, 1920 (review by Fleta Campbell Springer). Publishers* Weekly (New York), XCVII (March 20, 1920), 994 (review by Doris Webb entitled "Mackenzie in a Jocular Vein"). 461 The San Francisco Chronicle, March 21, 1920 (review by Nancy Barr Mavity entitled "Compton Macken zie's New Novel a Friendly Satire of the * Romantics *"). The Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, May 7, 1920 [25]. THE VANITY GIRL (The following reviews are to be found in Scrapbook No. 25, No. 26, or No. 29. If complete bibliographical data are , lacking for an item, the appropriate Scrapbook number will be given in brackets at the conclusion of the entry.) British Reviews The Aberdeen Free Press, October 17, 1920 [25]. The Athenaeum (London), May 14, 1920, p. 639 (review by K[atherine] M[ansfield]). The Birmingham Weekly Post, May 11, 1920 [29]. The Bookman (London), June 20, 1920 [25]. The Church Family Newspaper (London), May 21, 1920 (review entitled "Vanity Road") [29]. The Daily Chronicle (London), May 6, 1920 [29]. The Daily Dispatch (London), May 6, 1920 [29]. The Daily Express (London), May 6, 1920 (review by Louis J. McQuilland) [29]. The Daily Mail (London), May 14, 1920 (review by Htamilton] F[yte]) [29]. The Daily News and Leader (London), May 8, 1920 (review by Rose Macaulay) [29]. 462 The Dally Telegraph (London), Hay 8, 1920 [29]. The English Review (London), XXXI (August 1920), 190-191. The Evening Standard (London), May 7, 1920 (review by F. W. H.) [29]. The Glasgow Citizen. May 20, 1920 [29]. The Glasgow Herald. May 13, 1920 [29]. The Globe (London), May 21, 1920 [29]. The Graphic (London), May 15, 1920 [29]. John 0*LondonTs Weekly (London), May 29, 1920 (review by Pem) [25]. The Liverpool Courier, May 18, 1920 [29]. The Liverpool Echo. June 25, 1920 (review by H. T. G.) [25]. The Manchester Guardian, May 12, 1920 (review by A. N. M.) [29]. The Morning Post (London), May 7, 1920 [29]. The Nation (London), XXVII (August 14, 1920), 620. The Nottingham Journal and Express. May 11, 1920 (review by C. R.) [29]. The Observer (London), May 16, 1920 [29]- Punch (London), CLVIII (May 19, 1920), 399. The Scotsman (Edinburgh), May 10, 1920 [29]. The Sunday Times and Sunday Special (London), May 9, 1920 [29]- The Times Literary Supplement (London), May 6, 1920, p. 283, col. 2. 463 To“Day (London), June 1920 [25]. The Westminster Gazette (London), May 27, 1920 [25]. The Yorkshire Evening Press, October 15, 1954 (review by Eve Crosland of the 1954 reprinting of the novel), [Scrapbook No. 53]. American Reviews The Argonaut (San Francisco), February 26, 1921 [26]. The Bookman (New York), LII (November 1920), 250-253 (review by H. W. Boynton entitled "Ideas and Stories"). The Boston Herald. October 16, 1920 [26]. The Boston Transcript. September 22, 1920, p. 4 (review by E. F. E.) [25]. The Brooklyn Eagle, [n.d.] [25]. The Buffalo (New York) Courier. November 14, 1920 [26]. The Chicago News, October 6, 1920 [26]. The Chicago Tribune. October 16, 1920 (review by Elia W. Peattie) [26]. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 2, 1920 [26]. The Detroit Free Press. October 17, 1920 (review by Leila E. Bracy entitled "Mackenzie's 'Vanity Girl* Is a Feminine Caesar") [26]. The Dial (New York), LXX (January 1921), 107. The Newark (New Jersey) News. October 13, 1920 [26]. The New York Post. September 25, 1920, p. 3, col. 2 (review by Stanley Went). 464 The New York Herald. January 2, 1921 [26]. The New York Times Book Review, XXV (September 19, 1920), 18. The New York Tribune, December 19, 1920 [26]. The New York World. September 26, 1920 [25]. Publishers* Weekly (New York), November 6, 1920 [26]. Salt Lake (Utah) Deseret News, November 27, 1920 [26]. The San Francisco Bulletin. November 13, 1920 [26]. The San Francisco Chronicle. October 24, 1920 (review by Nancy Barr Mavity) [26]. The Springfield (Massachusetts) Union, November 7, 1920 [26]. The Washington (D. of C.) Star. October 31, 1920 [26]. The Weekly Review (New York), III (September 29, 1920), 269 (review by Edmund Lester Pearson). _________________, III (October 6, 1920), 296 (review by H. W. Boynton). The Wilmington (Delaware) Journal, September 18, 1920 [25]. C. Other Books and Articles Consulted A., L. "The Art of Compton Mackenzie," The Scottish Educa tional Journal. March 21, 1930, p. 306. Adcock, Arthur St. John. Gods of Modem Grub Street: Impressions of Contemporary Authors. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1923. 465 Aldington, Richard. Pinorman. London: William Heinemann, 1954. Alexander, S. J., Calvert. The Catholic Literary Revival. Milwaukee, Wis.: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1935. Allen, R. A. ’ ’Letter to the Editor" [concerning The Vanity girl.], The Athenaeum (London), June 4, 1920, p. 746. Allen, Walter. The English Novel. London: Penguin Books, 1958. [Anstey, Christopher]. The New Bath Guide. 3rd ed. London, 1766. Arlen, Michael. The Green Hat. London: W. Collins Sons and Co., 1924. Auberon, Reginald [Horace Wyndham]. The Nineteen Hundreds. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1922. Auden, W. H. The Orators: An English Study. London: Faber & Faber, 1932. "Author of * Carnival' Did Book 'On the Side *" [interview with Mackenzie], The New York Sun. October 19, 1912. Bateman, May. "Compton Mackenzie," The Catholic World. CXV (September 1922), 733-745. Baugh, Albert C., ed. A Literary History of England. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948. Beach, Joseph Warren. English Literature of the Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Centuries. New York: Collier Books, 1962. Originally published as Part IV, A His tory of English Literature, ed. Hardin Craig. Oxford, 1950. ____________________ . The Twentieth Century Novel. New York: The Century Co., 1932. Beerbohm, Max. The Works of Max Beerbohm. New York, 1895. 466 Bentwich, Norman. "A Public School's Boys-of-Letters," The Contemporary Review. CXCVIII (August 1960), 434-436. Beresford, J. D. "War and the Novelists," The Standard (London), October 9, 1915. Betjeman, John. Rev. of The Rival Monster. The Daily Telegraph (London), January 18, 1952. Blackmur, R. P. "The Charterhouse of Parma," The Kenyon Review, XXVI (Winter 1964), 211-231. Bowen, Marjorie. "Compton Mackenzie: A Few Notes of Appreciation," The Glasgow University Nationalist, III [1930], 4-5. "A British Novelist in Indiana," The Indianapolis Star. September 21, 1918. Brome, H. Vincent. "What's in a Title?" The Bookman (London), LXXXIII (January 1933), 393. Brookes, C. "Dulness: A Heretical Study," Future (London), July, 1917, pp. 252-253. Bullett, Gerald W. Modem English Fiction. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1926. Bulloch, J. M- "Peers Who Have Married Players," Notes and Queries. CLXIX (August 10, 1935), 92-94. Bushnell, George H. "Seven Authors in One: The Complexity of Compton Mackenzie," Bazaar (London), CXXV (Novem ber 7, 1933), 7-8. C., B. "Short Studies in Great Reputations: Compton Mac kenzie," The Liverpool Daily Courier. August 17, 1922. "Centenaries of 1921," The Globe (London), January 18, 1921. Chandler, F. W. The Literature of Roguery. 2 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1907. 467 Chesterton, Gilbert K. The Autobiography of G. K. Chester ton. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1936. Chevalley, Abel. The Modem English Novel, trans. Ben Ray Redman. New York: Alfred H. Knopf, 1925. _______________ . "Younger English Novelists," The Living Age (Boston), CCCXI (October 15, 1921), 139-144. (Translation of an article from La Revue de France, August 1, 1921.) Church, Richard. British Authors: A Twentieth Century Gallery, new ed. London and New York: Longman Green and Co., 1948. _______________ . The Growth of the English Novel. London: Methuen & Co., 1951. Collier, Harold. "Compton Mackenzie," The Glasgow Univer sity Nationalist. I [1930], 11-15. Compton, Fay. Rosemary: Some Remembrances. London: Alston Rivers, 1926. "Compton Mackenzie," The Bookman (London), LXV (January 1924), 202. "Compton Mackenzie," The Liverpool Courier, August 17, 1922. "Compton Mackenzie," Newsweek (New York), XI (June 6, 1938), 28. "Compton Mackenzie," Publishers* Weekly (New York), CXLVIII (August 11, 1945), 499. "Compton Mackenzie and Sylvia Scarlett," The Strand (London), LXXVI (December 1928), 600. Connolly, Cyril. Enemies of Promise, rev. ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949- Cowles, Frederick. "Some Contemporary Writers: Compton Mackenzie," Publishers* Circular (London), July 28, 1940, p. 2. 468 Croft-Cooke, Rupert. ’ ’Compton Mackenzie," The Sketch (London), May 23, 1951. Cumberland, Gerald. Written in Friendship. London: Grant Richards, 1923. Cunard, Nancy. Grand Man: Memories of Norman Douglas. London: Seeker & Warburg, 1954. Cunliffe, John W. English Literature During the Last Half Century. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1923. ________________. English Literature in the Twentieth Century. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933. Daiches, David. The Present Age: After 1920. London: The Cresset Press, 1958. Danielson, Henry. Bibliographies of Modem Authors: Compton Mackenzie. London: The Bookman's Journal, 1921. "The Depressed Industry of Novel Writing," The Birmingham Post, January 20, 1920. Dilly Tante [Stanley J. Kunitz]. Living Authors: A Book of Biographies. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1931. Doane, Gilbert H. Compton Mackenzie: A Study of His Earlier Work. Lincoln, Nebr.: Privately Printed, 1927. Douglas, Norman. Late Harvest. London: Lindsay Drummond, 1946. . Looking Back: An Autobiographical Excur sion. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1933. "Dramatizing Novels Successfully: An Interview with William A. Brady," The Dramatic Mirror (New York), November 6, 1912. 469 Draper, Ruth. The Art of Ruth Draper: Her Dramas and Characters, with a Memoir by Morton Dauwen Zabel. London: Oxford University Press, I960. Drew, Elizabeth A. The Modem Novel: Some Aspects of Contemporary Fiction. New York: Hareourt, Brace and Company, 1926. Eagle, Solomon. "The Critic at Large," The Outlook (London), XLIX (April 29, 1922), 342. Eliot, T. S. "London Letter," The Dial (New York), LKXIII (September 1922), 329-331. Elwin, Malcolm. "Knighthood for a Novelist," Everybody1s (London), June 21, 1952. "English Novelist*s Views of Romance in Life and Books," The New York Evening Sun, October 19, 1912. Entwistle, William J., and Eric Gillett. The Literature of England, A.D. 500-1946, 2nd ed. London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1948. Ervine, St. John. "The Younger Novelists," The Globe (London), May 12, 1920. Follett, Helen Thomas, and Wilson Follett. Some Modem Novelists. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1918. j Foster, Jeannette H. Sex Variant Women in Literature: A Historical and Quantitative Survey. London: Frederick Muller, 1958. Fraser, G. S. The Modern Writer and His World. London: Derek Verschoyle, 1953. Freeman, John. English Portraits and Essays. London: Hodder and Stroughton, 1924. _____________. "The Novels of Mr. Compton Mackenzie," The London Mercury. I (February 1920), 448-457. 470 Frierson, William C. The English Novel in Transition, 1885-1940. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1942. "The Future Novel" [interview with Mackenzie], The Notting ham Journal and Express. October 20, 1922. Fytton, Francis. "Compton Mackenzie: Romance versus Realism," The Catholic World (New York), C1XXXII (February 1956), 358-363. G., A. K. "Oxford--A Last Phase," The National Review (London), CII (February 10, 1934), 195-202. * Gaselee, S. "Letter to the Editor" [concerning The Vanity Girl], The Athenaeum (London), May 28, 1920, p. 713. George, W. L. A Novelist on Novels. London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1918. _. "Pages in Waiting," The World (London), March 20, 1920, p. 21. _. "A Painter*s Literature," The English Review (London), XXX (March 1920), 223-234. Gerould, Katharine Fullerton. "British Novelists, Ltd.," The Yale Review (New Haven), n.s. VII (October 1917), 161-185. Gibbs, Philip. "The New Novel," The Daily Chronicle (London), February 21, 1920. Gillett, Eric W. Books and Writers. Singapore: Malaya Publishing House, 1930. Goldring, Douglas. Reputations: Essays in Criticism. New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1920. _________________ . "Three Georgian Novelists," The Egoist (London), V (November-December, 1918), 134-136. Goldsmith, Oliver. The Works of Oliver Goldsmith. ed. Peter Cunningham. IV. New York, 1881. 471 Gould, Gerald. The English Novel of To"Day. New York: The Dial Press, 1925. Green, Peter. Kenneth Grahame. New York: The World Publishing Company, 1959. Guedalla, Philip. A Gallery. London: Constable and Com pany, 1924. Gun, W. T. J. Studies in Hereditary Ability. London: George Allen and Unwin, 192S. * buv and Pauline." Anon. rev. of the 1952 ed. by Macdonald, The Edinburgh Evening News, June 27, 1952. _______________. Anon. rev. of the 1952 ed. by Macdonald, The Sphere (London), June 21, 1952. Habermann, Agnes. Die Bedeutung des Abenteuers bei Compton Mackenzie. Doctoral dissertation, The Uni versity of Bonn, 1933. Hale, Edward Everett. "New Realists," The Independent. LXXXIII (August 30, 1915), 297-299. Hamilton, Cosmo. Unwritten History. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1924. Hart-Davis, Rupert. Hugh Walpole. London: Macmillan and Company, 19 52. Heilman, Robert B. "Variations on Picaresque (Felix Krull)," The Sewanee Review (Sewanee, Tennessee), LXVI (Winter 1958), 547-577. Hoehn, Matthew, ed. Catholic Authors. Newark, N.J.: St. Mary’s Abbey, 1948. Howe, P. P. "Fiction and Perpetual Life," The Athenaeum (London), June 6, 1919, pp. 422-423. Huneker, Josephine, ed. Letters of James Gibbons Huneker. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922. 472 [interview with Mackenzie], The Boston Advertiser. 1912. J., M- "Compton Mackenzie." The Living Age. CCLXXXVIII (January 29, 1916), 280-288. (Reprinted from The Bookman [London], October, 1916, pp. 7-17.) Jackson, Holbrook. The Eighteen Nineties. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922. "Jacob Omnium," The Bookman (London), September 1918 (clipping in Mackenzie Scrapbook No. 30). James, Henry. "The Younger Generation," The Times Literary Supplement (London), March 19, 1914, pp. 133-134; April 2, 1914, pp. 157-158. ____________. Notes on Novelists. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914. Jeffrey, Margaret W. J. "The Trend of the Modem Novel," The Glasgow Herald, November 9, 1933. John 0*London, "Georgian Background," John 0*London’s Weekly. LXII (January 9, 1953), 31. Johnson, R. Brimley. Some Contemporary Novelists (Men). London: Leonard Parsons, 1922. Jordan, Philip. "Compton Mackenzie's Blind Spot," Every man (London), June 9, 1932. Kaye-Smith, Sheila. "Compton Mackenzie and His Work," The Bookman (New York), LXII (December 1925), 391-395. __________________ . "Compton Mackenzie's Wanderings: Lines of Future Development," T. P.'s and Cassell’s Weekly (London), March 6, 1926, pp. 723-724. __________________ . "The Glamour of Life and Love: A Study of Compton Mackenzie," T. P.’s and Cassell’s Weekly (London), February 27, 1926, pp. 646-647. __________________ - "How the War Has Changed Compton Mackenzie," The Sunday Express (London), June 15, 1930. 473 Kelly, Blanche Mary. The Well of English. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1936. Kerr, Elizabeth M. "The Sequence Novel: Fictional Method of a Scientific Age." Unpublished toaster's thesis. University of Minnesota, 1927. Knight, Grant C. The Novel in English. New York: Richard R. Smith, 1931. Knox, Ronald. "He Hath Borne Himself Beyond the Promise of His Age," The Glasgow University Nationalist. II [1930], 8-9. Kunitz, Stanley J., ed. Twentieth Century Authors. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1942. ______________________ . Twentieth Century Authors: First Supplement. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1955. Lawrence, D. H. The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Aldous Huxley. London: William Heinemann, 1932. Le Gallienne, Richard. "Robert Louis Stevenson, An Elegy." and Other Poems. Mainly Personal. Boston, 1895. Legouis, Einile, and Louis Cazamian. A History of English Literature. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1935. Lenrow, Elbert. Reader's Guide to Prose Fiction. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1940. Lewis, C. S. The Allegory of Love. London: Oxford Uni versity Press, 1946. Linklater, Eric. "Contemporary Scottish Literature," The Spectator (London), CL (May 26, 1933), 765. _______________. The Man On My Back: An Autobiography. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941. 474 Lloyd, Roger. The Church of England In the Twentieth Century. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green and Com pany, 1946. Lockhart, Sir Robert Bruce. Friends, Foes, and Foreigners. London: Putnam, 1957. Longaker, Mark, and Edwin C. Bolles. Contemporary English Literature. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953- Lovett, R. M., and Helen S. Hughes. The History of the Novel in England. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932. Lowell, Amy. "Casual Reflections on a Few of the Younger English Novelists," The Bookman (New York), XLIX (April 1919), 173-181. Lubbock, Percy. The Craft of Fiction. New York: Charles Scribner1s Sons, 1955. MacGill, Alexander. "A Saga of Adolescence," The Scottish Educational Journal (Edinburgh), November 29, 1929, pp. 1262-1263. Mackenzie, Faith Compton. Always Afternoon. London: Collins, 1943. _. As Much As I Dare. London: Collins, 1938. _. More Than I Should. London: Collins, 1940. McLaren, Moray. "The Artist of Life," The Glasgow Univer sity Nationalist, II [1930], 10-11. . "An Island His Castle," The Daily Record and Mail (Glasgow), February 28, 1931. _________. "Compton Mackenzie," John 0*Londonfs Weekly (London), TV (April 6, 1961), 375-376. 475 Macqueen-Pope, W. Carriages at Eleven: The Story of the Edwardian Theatre. London: Hutchinson and Company, 1949. McQuilland, Louis J. "Where Are Our Authors?" The Sunday Illustrated (London), September 14, 1921. Mals, S. P. B. Books and Their Writers. London: Grant Richards, 1920. _____________. From Shakespeare to 0. Henry: Studies in Literature. London: Grant Richards, 1917. Mansfield, Katherine. Novels and Novelists. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930. Marble, Annie Russell. A Study of the Modem Novel: British and American since 1900. New York: D. Apple ton and Company, 1928. Mavity, Nancy Barr. "A Word About Realism," The Dial (New York), LXVI (June 23, 1919), 635-637. Millet, Fred B. Contemporary British Literature: A Criti cal Survey and 232 Author-Bibliographies, ed. John M Manley and Edith Rickert. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935. Mitchell, Sir Peter Chalmers. "Not a Publicity Buzzard," The Glasgow University Nationalist, III [1930], 10-11. Mitchell, W. A. "Seventy?--I Feel Forty, Says Sir Comp ton," Aberdeen Press and Journal. January 16, 1953. Mizener, Arthur. The Far Side of Paradise. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1951. Moon, Eric. "Success From the Very Start," Books and Book men (London), II (September 1957), 5, 26. Moore, George. Confessions of a Young Man. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923. Morgan, Louise. "Compton Mackenzie Hits Out," Everyman (London), November 13, 1930, pp. 489-490. 476 Mortimer, Raymond. Rev. of the 1949 ed. of Sinister Street. The Sunday Times (London), September 4, 1949. N. T. "Compton Mackenzie," The Aberdeen Journal, May 12, 1920. Nehls, Edward, ed. D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography. 3 vols. Madison, Wis.: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1957-59. Newman, Frances. Frances Newman*s Letters. New York: Horace Liveright, 1929. Norwood, Gilbert. Greek Comedy. Boston: John W. Luce and Company, 1932. 0*Brien, R. Barry. "A Talk with Sir Compton Mackenzie," The Wiltshire Herald and Advertiser, September 18, 1953. "On Literary Vulgarity," The Nation and Athenaeum (London), XXVIII (March 12, 1921), 813-815. Parker, W. M. "Compton Mackenzie: Realist and Fantastick," The Scots Pictorial (Edinburgh), March 3, 1917, pp. 198-199. Peddie, J. R. "Modern Tendencies in Novel Writing," The Living Age, CCCI (May 10, 1919), 353-355. "Please, Mr. Mackenzie!" The Bookman (London), LXXIV (November 1931), 268-270. Priestley, J. B- The English Novel. London: Ernest Benn, 1938. _______________. "The Younger Novelists," The English Journal (Chicago), XIV (June 1925), 435-443. Proctor, Mortimer R. The English University Novel. Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif.: The University of California Press, 1957. 477 Quennell, Peter. Rev. of The East Wind of Love. The New Statesman and Nation (London), XIII (January 16, 1937), 8 8. QuiHer-Couch, Sir Arthur, ed. The Oxford Book of English Prose. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925. Radclyffe, Raymond. ’ ’Joseph Hergesheimer," The New Witness (London), November 24, 1922, pp. 328-329. Raymond, John. "Books in General," The New Statesman and Nation (London), XLVIII, n.s. (December 25, 1954), 860-861. Reid, Alexander. "An Impression of Sir Compton," Scot land^ Magazine (Edinburgh), May, 1959, pp. 49-51. Reeve, Ada. Take It for a Fact. London: William Heine- mann Ltd., 1954. [Review of the play The Passionate Elopement 1. The Bath Chronicle. August 10, 1924. Roberts, Cecil. "The Man in Our Midst: Compton Macken zie," The Nottingham Journal. July 30, 1920. ______________ . "Readers and Writers," The Liverpool Courier. October 12, 1922. Roberts, R. Ellis. "Compton Mackenzie," The Manchester Guardian, February 13, 1925. _. "The Younger Novelists," The Bookman (London), December 19, 1914 (clipping in Mackenzie Scrapbook No. 29). _. "The Younger Novelists," The Observer (London), September 10, 1922. Robertson, Leo. Compton Mackenzie: An Appraisal of His Literary Work. London: Richards Press, 1954. 478 Rooke-ley, Wilfred. "On Re-reading *Carnival,f" Radio Times. November 1. 1929 (clipping in Mackenzie Scrapbook No. 17) . Rothenstein, William. Twenty-Four Portraits: With Critical Appreciations by Various Hands. 2nd ser. London: Chatto & Windus, 1923. "Russian Novelists and English," The Nation (New York), C (February 25, 1915), 214. S. "Mr. Compton Mackenzie and His Imitators," The Shef field Daily Telegraph. September 23, 1923. de Sacy, S. "Le Miroir Sur la Grande Route: Les romans de Stendhal et le roman picaresque," Le Mercure de France. CCCVI (May 1949), 64-80. Sadleir, Michael. "Long Novels," The London Mercury, XX (September 1929), 506-513. Salann. "What to Read" (comment on Sylvia Scarlett), The New Republic (New York), XIX (January 4, 1919), 286. Sampson, Antony. Rev. of the 1950 ed. of The Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett. The Books of To-Day and the Books of Tomorrow (London), December, 1950, p. 26. Scott-James, R. A. Fifty Years of English Literature, 1900-1950. London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1951. Shanks, Edward. "London, October 14," The Dial (New York), LXV (November 16, 1918), 421-422. _. 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Creator Erlandson, Theodore Roy (author)

Core Title A Critical Study Of Some Early Novels (1911-1920) Of Sir Compton Mackenzie: The Growth And Decline Of A Critical Reputation

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Werkmeister, William H. (committee chair), Lecky, Eleazer (committee member), Van Alstyne, Richard W. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-358410

Unique identifier UC11359140

Identifier 6503102.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-358410 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 6503102.pdf

Dmrecord 358410

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Erlandson, Theodore Roy

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA