Gossip About Books and Authors (1/12/1918)

Introduction

One major focus of Arthur Machen’s periodical work, from his youthful, unsigned bits in 1881 to the final occasional pieces from the late 1930s, had always been the review of books. For the Evening News, he wrote a number of irregular book review columns, including “Among My Books” and “Odd Volumes.” Beginning in October 1917, Machen began another series, entitled “Gossip About Books and Authors.” This month, we will explore five examples with this heading, each describing interesting and obscure books from the late 1910s.

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Gossips About Books and Authors
by
Arthur Machen
January 12, 1918

“Rita” (Mrs. Desmond Humphreys) is, I believe, widely known as a lively novelist. She has now deserted sentiment, manly passion, and loves and fears of happy, youthful people, and has very boldly plunged into the mazes of theology.

“The Wrong End of Religion” (Westall, 2s. 6d. net) is a fervent protest against Creeds and Sacerdotalism and Bigotry and Dogma – more especially against Dogma. And here I part company at once with the gifted author. I am a firm believer in Dogma, but not only in dogma of theology, but in the dogma of the English Sentence.

“Rita,” in holding up Sacerdotalism and its dogma to scorn, has certain references to “esoteric” dogmas or teachings, for which she has a very high esteem. Now, since the early ‘eighties “esoteric” has usually been understood to refer to the ways of Mme. Blavatsky. And since I find the word “Karmaic” in “Rita’s” pages, I think we may fairly conclude that Theosophy is in her mind.

Well, holding esoteric doctrines in theology, our author has apparently come to the conclusion that the principle can be carried farther, and that there is a kind of sacerdotal of English grammar, which should be abolished forthwith. Thus she writes:

          The great uplifting thoughts that delighted and helped its fellow-man: the self-sacrifice and suffering which marked its earthly pilgrimage.
          The shams, the follies, the materiality of six days out of seven in every passing week.

It is to be noted that these meaningless strings of words are supposed to be complete sentences. And as similar meaningless string of words are to be found in every other page of the book, we must assume that the author has written them down deliberately and in protest against the outworn dogmas of the grammarians. In the first sentence quoted “its” is obscure. I look back, and find that it refers to the Christian’s after-life. I do not see how a life can help “its fellow-man.”

There is a fine “and which” on Page 52.

          He has a higher self, drawn from the Spirit of Eternal Life, and which descends from that life for a time, etc., etc.

Well, I am old-fashioned, and, I suppose a dogmatist, but I do not like that “and which,” and I must say that I do like sentences to have verbs in them. A colleague, indeed, suggests that “Rita,” in doing without verbs, is exercising a praiseworthy form of war-time economy; but this suggestion I am forced to regard as frivolous.

The second volume of “The Western Front” (published by authority of the War Offices, offices of “Country Life,” 15s. net) contains a noble series of a hundred drawings by Muirhead Bone, with text by C. L. Montague, and General Headquarters for “G. H. Q.”, signs an extremely interesting discussion and defence of Mr. Bone’s art.

Some critics, it seems, have been saying that Mr. Bone does not draw “war as it is”; that he has used his art to weave “some sort of web of beautiful untruth” over our eyes, lest we should see and believe and tremble.

To this “G. H. Q.” replies with absolute truth that there is no such thing as “war as it is.”

War is one thing to one man and a different thing to another. That much you can learn in a trench, during and after a fight, when men’s natures come out less shyly than at other times. Then you see that to one man war is an epic; a tragedy to another; a romance to a third; to a fourth a comedy; and to a fifth it is drama in a more special sense.

This is true, not only of war, but of all other subjects of human contemplation. The “thing as it is” is not to be seen clearly by mortal eyes; though glimpses and half-lights of reality are sometimes vouchsafed to poets, painters and mystics. Among these Mr. Bone is assuredly to be counted; he has seen the war, not as a series of sordid details, but magnificently, terribly, wonderfully; as the strife of giant forces contending together.

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The Weekly Machen

Previous: Huns in Holy Places

Next: The First Installment of Gossip About Books and Authors

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