Part 3

Mr. Marshall published with _The Graftons_ an exceedingly interesting Introduction, containing a defense of his methods which is not needed by intelligent readers, but which may enlighten those who do not understand what he is about. In a personal letter, however, he expressed himself in words that I like better than his printed apologia. "The Grafton family isn't so rich in varied interest as the Clinton family, but I hope they will make their friends. I think they are as 'nice' a family as any I've drawn. I set out simply to show them in their country home, and make their country neighbours display themselves in the light of their critical humour, without much idea of a story. It turned into something rather different, and I'm not quite sure about it yet. And it has taken two books to work it out."

Now the reason why I like this ink-epistle better than the formal preface is because in the latter Mr. Marshall seemed to think it necessary to reply to those critics who said he ought to discuss in his novels the economic questions concerned with the tenure of the land. If he should by some evil temptation make economic questions the basis of his stories of English country life, he would commit the cardinal sin that has corrupted so much of contemporary fiction, the sin that I condemned at the outset of this essay. The most conspicuous element in his art is Charm. If some one should persuade him that he ought to become more "serious," his novels would lose their atmosphere; and he might find himself writing like that earnest student of modern movements, Mrs. Humphry Ward.

I am aware that the most insulting epithet that can be applied to a book, or a play, or a human being is the word "Puritan"; and I remember reading a review somewhere of _Abington Abbey_ which commented rather satirically on the interview between Grafton and Lassigny, and most satirically of all on the conclusion of the interview, which left the stiff, prejudiced, puritanical British parent in possession of the field. But once more, Mr. Marshall is not trying to prove a thesis; he is representing the Englishman and the Frenchman in a hot debate, where neither is right and neither is wrong, but where each is partly right and partly wrong. Each says in the heat of the contest something injudicious, even as men do when they are angry. But when Lassigny literally takes French leave, we do not care who has scored the most points; the real winner is the one who is not present--the girl herself. For when two men fight about a woman, as they do somewhere every day, the truly important question is not, which man wins the fight? The only real question is, does the woman win?

It will never do to make generalizations from merely one of Mr. Marshall's novels. If we had only _Abington Abbey_, we might imagine that he detested the clergy, for the clergyman in this book is surely detestable; but in _The Greatest of These_ there are two clergymen who are admirable characters, and a third who is by no means wholly or even mainly evil. Like an honest student of life, Mr. Marshall never considers a man as a representative of a business, but as a human being. No man is good because he is a clergyman; but it would be well perhaps if every member of that highest of all professions were a clergyman because he was good.

VIII

There is an unconscious double meaning in the American name given to the novel published in 1914, _The Greatest of These_, for it can be taken not only in the Pauline significance, but as the greatest of these books we are considering. It is the most ambitious and on the whole the most effective of its author's productions, containing also the essence of his religion--charity contrasted with opinions. We have an illustration of his favourite method of portraying the shade and shine of human character by placing in opposition two leading representatives of two large classes of nominal Christians--a clergyman of the Church of England and a minister of the Dissenters. Mr. Marshall never wrote a better first chapter. The reader is instantly aware that he has in his hands a masterpiece. Every leading character is introduced in the opening chapter either in person or in allusive conversation, and we know that Mr. Marshall has what most novelists seek in vain--a real plot. This book, which eventually rises to the highest spiritual altitude attained thus far by its author, begins on a note of sordid sex-tragedy, as unusual in the stories of Mr. Marshall as a picture like the Price household is in the work of Jane Austen; here it serves to bring forward the forthright and self-satisfied Anglican, who little dreams of his approaching humiliation; he is brought into conflict with a kind of Zeal-of-the-land Busy, whose aggressive self-righteousness is to be softened by the very man who he hoped would harden it. Here too, as in _Exton Manor_, we come as near as we ever come in Mr. Marshall's books to meeting a villain--in each case it is a woman with a serpent's tongue.

The time-element in _The Greatest of These_ is managed with consummate skill. So far as the novel has a hero, it is the Rev. Dr. Merrow. He does not appear in Roding until the one-hundred-and-sixty-third page, but there is so much talk, for and against him, that the reader awaits his arrival at the railway station with fully as much eagerness as any of the village gossips. And then, owing to the Doctor's fatigue from the journey, the reader is as baffled as the parishioners. It is quite impossible to discover what manner of man he is. The author refuses to help us, preferring to let his leading character reveal himself without any manipulation behind the scenes. This revelation is gradual, made up of many little details of speech and behaviour, as it would be in real life.

But although the personality of the man is not clear until more than half of the book has passed, the ninth chapter, which shows him in action in London as a public institution, is one of the most powerful pieces of prose Mr. Marshall has ever composed. He writes as if inspired by the theme. Not only is it a magnificent description of a great occasion, its dramatic power is immensely heightened because we see it through the eyes of a young ritualist, to whom it is as strange--and at first as repellent--as some vulgar heathen observance. But gradually distaste changes to interest, and interest to enthusiasm. Such passages as the following are entirely unlike the ordinary current of Mr. Marshall's style, but it is a proof that he can reach the heights when the occasion calls.

There came more of these sentences. The spark had caught; the furnace was beginning to glow. George gazed at the preacher with his own face alight. His surroundings were forgotten.... If this was the kind of preaching that had brought Dr. Merrow his great reputation, then he understood its appeal, and was himself moved by it. It came from something beyond creeds, far beyond differences in methods of worship. It had been heard in all ages of the Church, amidst the splendours of mediæval superstition, as in the crude barrenness of modern revivalism. The spirit moved on the face of the waters; the stagnancy of mere words was broken; there was life and healing in them.

The words came faster. The voice grew stronger, and took on a different tone, as if on an organ a touch of reed had been added to diapason. The slightly bent figure became straighter, the worn face younger. The preacher began to use his hands--thin, flexible, nervous hands, which seemed to clutch at deep truths, and fling them out for the world to take hold of. Soon the burning words came in a torrent, as of a rushing mass of water of irresistible force, yet bound within its directing channel. Every now and then they sank to a deep calm, but were still infused with the same concentrative power. Such words had stirred men's minds and souls in long past ages. Spoken on bare hillsides underneath the symbol of faith, they had converted kingdoms. Flung forth over throngs of rough fighting men, they had turned bloodshed and rapine into righteous crusades. Their power was older than that of Christianity itself. In the dim ages of religious history it had singled out Aaron for the priesthood, and put him above Moses, the warrior leader. Later, it had burst the bonds of the priesthood itself, and winged the utterances of great prophets.

Every page that we turn in this extraordinary book lessens the distance not only in time but in sympathy between the Rector and the Pastor. The orthodox evangelical chapel orator is drawn with just the insight one would superficially _not_ expect from a man of Mr. Marshall's birth, breeding, and environment. He is certainly the author's finest achievement, even finer than Squire Clinton, for he is more difficult to draw. The Rev. Dr. Merrow must be added to Chaucer's Poore Persoun and to Goldsmith's Village Preacher as one more permanent clerical figure in imaginative literature.

Lesser personages in this story are given with the same care in detail, until we feel their presence as personal friends. The curate, the Rev. George Barton, so completely misunderstood by Mrs. Merrow, is an almost flawless portrait. His healthy, athletic outdoor nature and the development of his inner life are both presented with subtle, delicate strokes of the pen possible only to an artist of distinction.

It is interesting to contemplate side by side in the reader's mind the wife of the Rector and the wife of the Pastor. Both are good women--their only similarity. Lady Ruth, a born aristocrat, with a "temperamental inability to comport herself as the busy wife of a busy clergyman" is one of the most gracious and lovely figures created by our novelist, which means that her charm is irresistible. The less admirable, but more energetic wife of Dr. Merrow is so perfect a representative of the busy city pastor's helpmate that we can only wonder how it is possible to put on paper any creation so real. There is not a false touch in this picture. William Allingham wrote in his diary after reading one of Browning's poems, "Bravo, Browning!" Upon finishing _The Greatest of These_, which I confidently call a great novel, I could hardly refrain from a shout of applause.

IX

Mr. Marshall is a twentieth century novelist, because he is happily yet alive, and because he writes of twentieth century scenes and characters; but he is apart from the main currents of twentieth century fiction, standing indeed in the midst of the stream like a commemorative pillar to Victorian art. He has never written historical romance, which dominated the novel at the beginning of our century; he has never written the "life" novel--beginning with the hero's birth and travelling with plotless chronology, the type most in favour since the year 1906; he has never written a treatise and called it a novel, as so many of his contemporaries have done. Every one of his novels, except the two unfortunate burlesques, is a good story, with a good plot and living characters; and he has chosen to write about well-bred people, because those are the people he knows best.

It is also well to remember, that although his best novels are parochial, he himself is a citizen of the world. He has seen the North Cape, he has lived in the Australian bush, in various European cities, and has traveled extensively in America. One reason why he can describe English country life so clearly is because he sees it in the proper perspective. He is at home in any community on earth.

I call him a realistic novelist, because his realism is of the highest and most convincing kind--it constantly reminds us of reality. I cannot see why a well-constructed story, that deals mainly with attractive men and women, and ends on a note of robust cheerfulness, should have any less right to the adjective "realistic" than an ill-arranged transcript of the existence of creatures living amongst poverty, filth, and crime. And so far as Mr. Marshall's Victorian reticence on questions of sex is concerned, this strengthens his right to the title Realist. As Henry James said, the moment you insist that animalism must have its place in works of art, there almost always seems to be no place for anything else. If a novelist is to represent real life, he must make subordinate and incidental what in some novels dominates every page. If a writer is to describe events as they really happen, to portray men and women as they really are, to create living characters that can be recognized in modern society, he ought to emphasize in his art what life itself emphasizes--the difference between man and the lower animals. The curious thing is that in many so-called realistic novels it is impossible to distinguish between human beings and the beasts of the field; the well-understood likeness is stressed so heavily that not only the individual, but even the type is lost. One can hardly call so total an absence of discrimination true art. Even the most elementary man or woman is less elementary than a beast; and is it not true that the greater the complexity, the greater the skill required to report it truly?

And here is a strange thing. It is only in stories of human beings that our would-be realists insist that animalism should be most frankly and most minutely portrayed. When we come to dog-stories--of which there are many--the element of sex is as a rule wholly omitted. Yet surely this is more salient in the life of a dog than in the life of a man.

Archibald Marshall is a realist. He represents cultivated men and women as we saw them yesterday, and as we shall see them tomorrow. He seldom disappoints us, for among all living novelists, whilst he is not the greatest, he is the most reliable. It is difficult to analyse the extraordinary charm of his stories, for they are simpler than simplicity. He takes us literally into the bosom of a family, where each member has a distinct individuality, and the novel progresses like beautiful voices with orchestral accompaniment--each individual in turn singing an air, while the family fortunes supply the harmony. To read his books is to associate with people whom it is highly important to know--not because of their social standing, but because of their solid worth. His good characters are fundamentally good. They are seldom brilliant, and almost never reformers. They are more altruistic than philanthropic. They possess the fine old virtues of purity, wholesomeness, generosity, loving-kindness, honesty, loyalty, tact, consideration; such persons are always lovable in life, which is why they are lovable in these books. His heroes are not saviours of society, they are simply good companions, be the weather fair or foul; and we are never sickened by the diaphanous veneer of sentimentality. His villains seldom break the law of the land, and do not reek of melodrama. They are inconsiderate, garrulous, inopportune, stupid, meddling, officiously helpful, which is sometimes worse than deliberate hostility. Mrs. Prentice in _Exton Manor_ is his most offensive specimen, and according to the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs, she is one of the four things for which the earth is disquieted--"an odious woman when she is married." These respectable villains, who often cause more suffering than professional criminals, receive the punishment of unpopularity. But in most of his characters the elements are more kindly mixed. We have on every page the delight of recognition--the figures are so perfectly drawn that we are under the illusion that they are alive.

Although these stories are never explicitly didactic, they are ethically as well as artistically true. Beneath the surface of light conversation and trivial incident we find an idea that works for righteousness. This idea is so variously and so frequently illustrated that I think it must be the foundation of the author's philosophy of life and conduct. He would have us believe that different individuals, different social classes, different communities dislike and distrust each other mainly through ignorance. He would not say in the old phrase, to understand is to forgive, he would say something without any taint of condescension, something finer and more fruitful--to understand is to respect, to admire, to love. The inefficient aristocrat and the pushing millionaire despise each other, the haughty Churchman and the pious Dissenter distrust each other's motives until they are brought by the force of circumstances into an unescapable daily intimacy; the result of which to both is surprising and agreeable. Apparently what we all need is more imagination, more intelligence. These novels make a combined attack on the last infirmity of both noble and ignoble minds, that last citadel of stupidity--Prejudice.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

English publication American

Peter Binney, Undergraduate 1899 .... The House of Merrilees 1905 1905 Richard Baldock 1906 1918 Exton Manor 1907 1908 Many Junes 1908 1919 The Squire's Daughter 1909 1912 The Eldest Son 1911 1911 Sunny Australia (_sketches of travel_) 1911 .... The Mystery of Redmarsh Farm 1912 .... The Honour of the Clintons 1913 1913 The Terrors (_short stories_) 1913 .... The Greatest of These (Roding Rectory) 1914 1914 The Old Order Changeth (Rank and Riches) 1915 1915 Upsidonia 1915 1917 Watermeads 1916 1916 Abington Abbey 1917 1917 The Graftons 1918 1918