Much of the following Odd Volumes installment focuses not on a book that has been written, but upon a book that should be written. Here is a reference to the Sidney-street siege, which was still fresh on the public’s mind. (See also The Last Dread Sentence.) Arthur Machen had been on the scene of that famous and violent stand-off, and so, he was one of the reporters who provided an eyewitness account. It clearly affected him. This is all the more interesting since that he considered himself only a mere reporter, not the creative genius that should write the “true story” of the tragic event. Additionally, we see Machen’s interest in Eastern art on display. This would manifest again many years later when he provided an introductory note to Civilization and Art of China (1936) by F. T. Cheng.
Odd Volumes:
Unanimity Among the Conversationalists
by
Arthur Machen
January 7, 1911
I have been talking to all sorts and conditions of men during the last few days; I have been a chance listener at all kinds of casual conversations at street corners, on ‘buses, trams, and trains. And there has been one topic of conversation, and only one. “Houndsditch,” “Clapham,” “Sidney-street”—those are the words that are uttered and reiterated in every place where one man meets another.
Other topics may be started, but the old refrain returns. One is reminded of Mark Twain’s description of the Southern States in 1880: People talked of one thing, and of one thing only—“the war.” You might begin to speak of the moon; in five minutes a man would say:
“By the way, talking of the moon reminds me what an old darky woman said the other night. We were admiring the full moon, and she said: ‘Ah, honey, you should have seen dat moon befo’ de waw.’”
Instantly “de waw” resumed its usual place in the conversation.
So it has been with us since last Tuesday. I feel sure that even in the highest artistic circles this brutal subject has crushed to nothingness the most elegant dissertations.
Who, for example, could speak of “Post-Impressionism” without thinking of painting; and (for these few days) what painter is there, save one whose name is Peter?
And I propose to shout with the crowd, to put on one side the fair garland of originality. It would be quite easy to ignore utterly the events of the last week—it would be quite easier, still, by the way, to maintain Fritz and his friend were noble fellows, and that the police are a cowardly set of brutes—but for once let us be tame and commonplace and talk of that matter which occupies everybody.
Opening the daily papers a day or two ago, I saw such headlines, as “The Scarlet Letter” and “The Sign of ‘S.’” We all know about the horrible and mysterious murder with which this sign is connected; by the time these words appear in print the enigma of the “S” may or may not be solved.
But I want to use this dreadful “S” cut on a dead man’s face to point a moral which I have often urged before. I want to protest once more against the constant misuse of the word “natural.”
Suppose this story of Houndsditch and Clapham and Sidney-street has been, not in these newspapers, but—within red and green covers, gilt, and had been offered to the public as a novel at the price of six shillings.
We may be quite certain that a powerful school of critics would have denounced the tale as “wild,” “improbable,” and, finally and decisively “unnatural.”
Well, it won’t do. When a thing happens, it cannot be unnatural, though it may well be unusual. But that is a very different thing. The critics of whom we are talking are requested to remember for the future that secret societies of murderers, mystic signs cut on murdered men’s bodies, furious battles in London streets are all as natural as cups and saucers and that which is called “psychotic.” And psychology, it may be said usually means in this connection any talk about the whims of silly women.
The other day a friend of mine complained to me that the real story of Sidney-Street had not been written at all.
“The journalists,” he said, “have described the scene from the outside and that is all very well, but the real tale would be the story of the inside. What did that house look like behind the curtains? What would you have seen if you could have wandered invisible from floor to floor, as assassins leapt up and down on the swift path of fire? And, above all, what was in those men’s heart and minds?”
I stopped him here. I said coldly that you cannot hire men of the highest creative genius to have bullets shot through their tweed caps at street corners, not even to encounter the minor discomfort of horseflesh sandwiches, consumed between paragraphs on the parapet of the Rising Sun, Sidney-street. The men of supreme genius and imagination were, presumably, busy elsewhere; so the papers had to put up with reporters.
All the same, my friend was right. The story of the inside of 100, Sidney-street, is the real story. Who is going to write it?
. . . .
The “oldest book in the world” to which I referred last week was one of Mr. Murray’s “Wisdom of the East” series, and I am glad to be informed that the venture is to be vigorously prosecuted in the year 1911.
The first volume announced is a work on the artistic ideals of the Far East. Mr. Lawrence Binyon is the author, and I do not think a better choice could possibly have been made. For, not only is Mr. Binyon a technical authority on the subject, he has, in addition to his exact knowledge, that ideal outlook which is often denied to the expert. And he is in full possession of that rare and curious secret—the art of writing English.
Mr. Binyon will, no doubt, dwell on the fact that the creative spirit in the Far East comes from China. So far as I know, in every department—or almost every department—of art the impulse and the model are Chinese. The Japanese have been a race of clever copyists.
At the same time, it must be acknowledged that the finer Japanese colour prints have a wonderful and singular charm.
Japanese art seems to take the visible show of things—mountains, lakes, trees, flowers, rocks, and waves—and to endeavour to convert them into a decorative pattern; in other words, to turn chaos into order.
As for patterns in art, it is probable that the new musicians, who charge J. S. Bach with writing “pattern music,” are not aware that the phrase conveys a compliment.
. . . .
There are some pleasing examples of the proverb to be found in Dr. Karl Kumm’s “From Hausaland to Egypt” (Constable). Here are a few:
Hope is the pillar of the world.
Property is the prop of life.
If thou give thy heart to a woman, she will kill thee.
I will pay thee when fowls get teeth.
At the bottom of patience there is heaven.
The first and last of these proverbs—the last, above all—indicate a frame of mind which it is difficult to reconcile with savagery, since they approach very near to high and essential wisdom.
“When fowls get teeth” is an amusing variant of the old Scotch saying, “Next Nevermas”—i. e., not at all.
The Weekly Machen
Previous: The Rare Gift of Literary Individuality
Next: Literature for the Boy at the Tail of the Van
darklybrightpress.com 
I find scans of two copies of Dr. Hermann Karl Wilhelm Kumm’s book in the Internet Archive – as well as scans of three more books and two pamphlets by him.
LikeLike
He also has German and French Wikipedia articles.
LikeLike
The Binyon book referred to here is The Flight of the Dragon: An Essay on the Theory and Practice of Art in China and Japan, based on Original Sources – the copy (one of several) scanned in the Internet Archive which I checked is a “June 1935″ reprint which lists the First Edition as “August 1911″.
LikeLike
There are even more books of his books on Asian art scanned in the Internet Archive than those listed in the Wikipedia article you kindly link – including one entitled Pictures by Japanese Artists published in 1908 as “No. 7” in the Gowan & Gray “Humorous Masterpieces” series.
LikeLike
I wonder how soon there was an answer to Machen’s question – “Who is going to write it?” – and just what it was? Most of the numerous works listed in the Wikipedia article, “Siege of Sidney Street” date from the past 40 years or so, while using the name of the article as an Internet Archive search-term adds a couple more – including three apparently more wide-ranging Scotland Yard memoirs from the 1930s.
LikeLike
Thanks for all the bibliographical finds! I know little about the Sidney Street incident, though it would be an interesting study. This event, which AM witnessed first-hand, clearly affected him. Among other things, his consumption of a horse-flesh sandwich would be recounted in more than one future article.
LikeLike
I’d say we enjoy police memoirs as a genre – though we’ve got a lot of Dutch ones I have not yet read – and it might be interesting to browse around in those three. (I wonder how easily one could search LibriVox for police memoirs as a genre?)
We also – to my surprise! – enjoy horse meat, though our good old village horse-meat butcher retired. But I still remember my astonishment at a Belgian butcher shop with a horse’s head bust sticking out of the gable when I was travelling in the fall break of my undergraduate term abroad at Harlaxton College.
LikeLike
So, you’ve experienced that delicacy? Living in the States, I have never seen the option offered. However, I certainly do not have the reticence that most American have toward trying it.
But sorry, I should have been more clear… Machen had tasted horse meat twice in life, and in both instances he did so unintentionally. He disliked it and wrote of it several times. For example, he wrote of it in his article The Personal Element in Criticism:
“Discussing Dr. George Henderson’s “Survivals in Belief Among the Celts” (MacLehose), The Times Literary Supplement says that “Totemism may explain the English abstention from horseflesh.” I suppose the allusion is to the White Horse honoured by the Saxons and cut out by them on chalky hill sides; but I don’t believe that this sacred beast has anything to do with the fact that horseflesh is unpopular. I am very strongly of opinion that we leave horseflesh alone because it is excessively nasty. I have made two experiments in eating the friend of man. The first was at an hotel at Arles, on the Rhone; the second was on the roof of a public-house in Sidney-street, Mile End. In neither case did I know what I was going to eat. At Arles the unholy food pretended to be a beefsteak, in Sidney-street it was disguised as a sandwich. In each case my palate was aware of a horrid, sickly sweetness. Horse is quite the nastiest thing that I have ever tasted.”
Also, he wrote on the subject later in his culinary articles for The Sunday Express in the late 1920s. This can be found on page 56 of At A Man’s Table.
LikeLike
I think I grew up thinking old horses ended up as dog food, and then there’s Boxer in Animal Farm (but I’d need to reread for detail – not off to be murdered to be eaten, as far as I recall).
That question Machen takes up of possible (even ancient) cultural influence is (curiously enough) one I’ve never properly looked into – who-all, in western European history did, or did not, eat horses, and when did they start or stop (if they ever did one or the other)?
In each and every case I did “know what I was going to eat”, and whether nicely smoked and thinly sliced, or in great fresh gobbets to work with, never found it in the least nasty.
LikeLike
Alas, no luck with finding audiobooks at LibriVox or on YouTube with the memoirs of Frederick Porter Wensley, Herbert T. Fitch , or Sir Basil Thomson – but, searching for the latter turned up a short story of his, “The Hanover Court Mystery”, on Tony Walker’s Classic Detective Stories YouTube channel which I mean to try, soon!
LikeLike
Well, I enjoyed that humorous detective story audio! And I see the whole collection of 15 stories, Mr. Pepper, Investigator (1925), is transcribed online in Roy Glashan’s Library, so one could read this, the third story, in context.
LikeLike
I’m big fan of mysteries, so I appreciate you reporting this. It sounds worthy of exploration. Roy Glashan’s Library is a great resource for oddball and rare material.
LikeLike
Following the ‘Thomson’ tangent a bit further, with tantalizing ‘spoiler avoidance’ to boot (!), it occurs to me that it is interesting to compare and contrast “The Hanover Court Mystery” and Dorothy L. Sayers’ Whose Body? (1923). I wonder if there is any conscious interplay by either writer – in whatever direction (and so if there was an earlier magazine publication of Thomson’s story) – and further, if there might be any particular ‘news story’ background. (But perhaps I should reacquaint myself with Stevenson and Osbourne’s The Wrong Box (1889) first!)
LikeLike
Interesting idea!
LikeLike
I also wonder who, at the time, would be – or even already was – finding it “quite easier, still, by the way, to maintain Fritz and his friend were noble fellows, and that the police are a cowardly set of brutes”!
And his request “to remember for the future that secret societies of murderers, mystic signs cut on murdered men’s bodies, furious battles in London streets are all as natural as cups and saucers and that which is called ‘psychotic'” got me wishing I had a better, broader, more detailed sense of the treatment of such-like things in the popular – and ‘sensational’ – fiction of the period.
The Stevensons’ The Dynamiter (1885) – and Machen’s own Three Imposters (1895) in its context – and Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907) set in 1886 come to mind, while Sax Rohmer’s The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu would only begin in serialization in October 1912.
LikeLike
It is appropriate that you bring up Stevenson and AM’s The Three Impostors. That novel would be the climax of Machen’s “Stevensonian” period.
LikeLike
Laurence Binyon wrote the text for The Followers of William Blake, a slender 1925 book with reproductions of art by Samuel Palmer, Edward Calvert, George Richmond, &c. Books with far better reproductions of most of the pieces are available now but this book is of historical interest at least. C. S. Lewis quotes approvingly from Binyon’s poem The Death of Adam on page 117 of A Preface to Paradise Lost.
LikeLike