Shadowland (Sep 1919-Feb 1920)

PEAKS AMONG BOOKS {Continued from page 54) erers of Strickland, which serves to bind him much more securely than if the writer had said at the beginning of the book, "Now I tell you this man is a great artist and that's all there is to it. You must accept my judgment in the matter." Maugham is too shrewd for that. He tells the story thruout in the first person using various characters to give varying points of view about Strickland. But the chief story teller is one of the chief skeptics. The fullest report which he gives on the art of Strickland is as follows: "I will not describe the pictures that Strickland showed me. Descriptions of pictures are always dull, and these, besides, are familiar to all who take an interest in such things. Now that his influence has so enormously affected modern painting, now that others have charted the country which he was among the first to explore, Strickland's pictures, seen for the first time, would find the mind more prepared for them; but it must be remembered that I had never seen anything of the sort. First of all I was taken aback by what seemed to me the clumsiness of his technique. Accustomed to the drawings of the old masters, and convinced that Ingres was the greatest draughtsman of recent times, I thought that Strickland drew very badly. I knew nothing of the simplifications at which he aimed. I remember a still-life of oranges on a plate, and I was bothered because the plate was not round and the oranges were lopsided. The portraits were a little larger than life-size, and this gave them an ungainly look. To my eyes the faces looked like caricatures. They were painted in a way that was entirely new to me. The landscapes puzzled me even more. There were two or three pictures of the forest at Fontainebleau and several of streets in Paris: my first feeling was that they might have been painted by a drunken cab-driver. I was perfectly bewildered. The colour seemed to me extraordinarily crude. It passed thru my mind that the whole thing was a stupendous, incomprehensible farce." Naturally enough, the reader will align himself on the other side and say, "Why the simpleton doesn't know a great artist when he sees one." At least that was our attitude and we almost felt like a successful art critic when we read how people came forward to bid for Strickland's canvases after his death. The book takes Strickland from Paris to Tahiti, where he comes to an obscure and fearful death, but thruout Maugham has managed to show a glint of a spirit, however harsh and selfish, struggling toward an idealistic goal. Mingled with the praise of the book, there has been some comment that the novel is immoral since Strickland's conduct thruout is strictly anti-social, but after all, the book lays down a course of life for geniuses only which will not affect the morals of most of us. More than that, it seems to us that Maugham has maintained an impartial attitude thruout. He neither attacks Strickland nor defends him. He merely presents him and leaves the rest to the readers. But tho "The Mcon and Sixpence" is perhaps a more engrossing and unusual novel than ''Saint's Progress", Maugham can hardly challenge Galsworthy's position as the great neutral among novelists. Perhaps it would be fair to make the title include playwrights, for everybody remembers "Strike" as the most perfect example of evenhanded justice which a playwright ever bestowed on warring characters. "Saint's Progress" is a beautiful piece of work. Even character has his due, but in spite of the impartiality of the book there is no lack of passion. Certain scenes are emotionalized to a point where they all but hurt. The story concerns a clergyman who tries to meet all the various war problems, particularly the changes in sex morality, with the formula of the Church of England. In the novel the formula proves inadequate, but Galsworthy does not commit himself as to whether the fault lies with the formula or with the folk who disown it. We found "Saint's Progress" a singularly moving story and an engrossing one tho it is by no means crowded with incident. And yet we hankered sometimes to have Galsworthy choose between his characters and say, "This one is right and this one, for all his logical talk, is wrong." But when we wrote that there were times when his impartiality made one want to shout "Dont be so damn fair. Pick a side; take off your coat; and get in it," Keith Preston of Chicago countered by remarking that on the other hand he always felt like advising the excitable Wells to "Keep your shirt on." Certainly, Wells has never become quite so much wrought up about anything as religion. His work, whether better or worse, is much more intense since he discovered God the invisible king. "The Undying Fire" is among the most vehement of his books. Galsworthy may remain in doubt as to a religious formula for the problems of the da)-, but not so Wells. He has a faith to meet all facts. And he has small patience for skeptics. In "The Undying Fire" he by no means plays fair, for all the characters whom he sets up as opponents of his theories are so broadly burlesqued that they are hardly capable of giving an effective battle. As a result, all the good talk goes to the character who acts as the mouthpiece of Wells. The book has the merit, however, of great eloquence. Tho it is mostly talk, it is talk of a surprisingly brilliant sort. The plot is the merest formula, for Wells has taken the story of Job and used it as the frame work for a modern story. There is very little evidence that he is interested in what his characters do, but plenty to prove that he does care what they say. Another brilliant partisan in the literary field is Blasco Ibanez. He is less interested in talk than Wells, for he traces not so much the careers of individuals as man in the mass. "La Bodega," for instance, is a fine, colorful, passionate story of social revolution in Spain. It is also a book of propaganda for prohibition, but this is incidental. Blasco Ibanez thinks that red revolution will come only when the peasants of Spain are no longer distracted by red wine. Leonard Merrick is on the high tide of a revival which has brought back to the reading public his "Conrad In Quest of His Youth," one of the most pleasant defenses of philandering ever written. Merrick grows as moral as many another literary preacher in "The Actor Manager" and "The Position of Peggy Harper," but "Conrad In Quest of His Youth" is a gay flight with all the moral ballast left in the hangar. Joseph Conrad has gained even more popularity than usual with his flaming romance, "The Arrow of Gold," in which he has discarded his usual literary device of beginning on the roof and working down to the cellar and then back to the roof again. This tale begins at the beginning and goes straight on to the end. E. V. Sackville West has won a high position for herself with a first novel called "Heritage," which has a fine feeling for the sight and sound and smell of things. Another book which gives us much of the influence of external things on man is John Walter Byrd's "The Born Fool." Of the non-fiction books of the last few months the most amusing which we have read is "Set Down In Malice," by Gerald Cumberland. In this a young English journalist writes all the things about his literary acquaintances which nobody should tell and which evervbodv wants to know. THE DOLL'S HOUSE {Continued from page 73) about a really exquisite sport skirt she has. It only cost her, she said frankly, about seven dollars. "We were invited to an affair at the Hollywood Hotel. I worked until half -past five and then when I came home found that I hadn't a thing to wear. I haven't had time to take care of my clothes; everything was mussed or torn or had something wrong with it. So I went to a little store down here on the Boulevard. The only thing they had that fitted was a last-year's sports skirt. This is it. They took two pleats at the sides and you see the result!" It was truly remarkable. "But just wait until you see some of the things I am going to get — after 'Peg.' ' It was almost one o'clock when I left but the Hawleys — both of them — took me all the way home in their car tho they were both very tired. Such happy, ambitious youngsters, not merely selfishly ambitious, but ambitious for each other! You have seen newspaper articles that began by asking what was of most importance to a woman, beauty or brains, fame and money or love in a cottage. Have you ever thought that it could be possible for one person to have all of these things? No? Well, it is, for here is Wanda Hawley, who came out of rainy, foggy Seattle, lives in a cottage in Hollywood, and is known all over the world, ready to prove it for you by the genuine smile in her eyes. Page Seventy-Four