Chapter C: A. Tait (19)

Sometimes it seems to me he loses sight of the whole in the elaboration of expressive detail. In the bust of Lord Fisher in the War Museum Exhibition he has obviously attempted to produce the leathery, wrinkled texture of an old man's skin, because he saw it as a significant feature. But in the effort to get this difficult effect he has lost sight of the significance and produced a mere verisimilitude of wrinkledness. Similarly in his _Christ_, the feature which arrests us most is the clay-like gruesomeness of the loosened wrappings. We shudder at the faint suggestion of decomposition and we are wounded by the slit in the opened palm of the hand. But practically the whole force of the composition has spent itself in these subsidiary details.

Paintings by Duncan Grant: Wm. B. Paterson and Carfax & Co. Ltd., 5 Old Bond Street

This is a very important exhibition, and confirms the report which has been current for some time that Mr. Duncan Grant is an artist of unusual originality. I am deliberately emphatic, not only because I am very enthusiastic about some of these pictures, but also because I feel sure that many people will have been "put off" from the first by a few of them, in which Mr. Duncan Grant, under the influence of the modern abstractionist and pattern-making theories, has taken undue liberties with the human body. Even in these pictures there is much that is very fine, but it is quite independent of the stupid distortions which only have a marring or comic effect. But consider, for instance, the Still Life No. 23, _Bowl, Skull, and Jar_. Whatever other criticism may be levelled against it, it is immune from the charge of arbitrariness. Personally, I have nothing but praise for it, as being a magnificent piece of lyrical painting. There are several other pictures--landscapes, still lives, interiors--possessing the same exquisite qualities, notably Nos. 2, 4, 7, 9, 12, 21. The last named, styled _Juggler and Tight Rope Walker_, which is in many ways the most brilliant of the whole collection, does evince here and there a certain exaggeration. This, however, can be overlooked because it does not rivet our attention.

On the other hand, in No. 29, _Venus and Adonis_, the placing of the lady's neck on her left-hand shoulder, with the consequent elongation of the right-hand shoulder, stirs up in our minds a whole swarm of general reflections, so that our æsthetic enjoyment of other real values in the picture is practically swamped. It is true that in caricatures we allow without cavil all sorts of liberties. But only because the result is expressive, and actually where we appreciate the caricature we do not notice any distortion, we see the work as convincingly _true_.

The Black Country. Drawings by Edward Wadsworth: The Leicester Galleries. (January.)

Mr. Wadsworth has almost found himself in his Black Country pictures, or better he has found a real object which coincides with his particular "vorticist" predilection. Continually is he obsessed with a certain forked-lightning pattern which zigzags over the world. Where it does not he often puts it there and, partially removing the world, leaves a pattern. However, in the slag heaps and belching chimneys and curved canals and splintered roofs of the Black Country, at any rate sometimes, this pattern comes back to earth, and the result is a striking picture. Vorticism and Futurism, in so far as they are art tendencies, represent the scientist and business man of the nineteenth century emerging painfully into emotional expression. Mr. Wadsworth and the "Futurists" have not been the first to discover science and industry artistically, but hitherto stress has been laid on the general impressiveness, the mystery and atmospheric volume of the subject. Mr. Wadsworth's particular contribution concerns the sheer joy in brutal mechanical movement and in the deadly bulk and solidity of industrial products and by-products. His best drawings are of ladle slag heaps, consisting of metallic-looking boulders hurled out into a desolation that yet teems with the energy that made and discarded them.

* * * * *

We have to congratulate Mr. D. Y. Cameron and Mr. George Henry on their election as Associates of the Royal Academy.

HOWARD HANNAY

MUSIC

THE RESURRECTION OF AN OPERA

It was Dr. Vaughan Williams who, sometime about 1912 or 1913, suggested Purcell's opera _The Fairy Queen_ for performance at Cambridge. In 1911 Mr. Clive Carey and a few others had organised at Cambridge a performance of _The Magic Flute_. Mozart's last and greatest work for the stage was in those days not so familiar to English audiences as it is now. It had not been seen in this country, as far as I am aware, since it was given by the students of the Royal College of Music about twenty years ago. That it should be attempted by Cambridge amateurs was regarded as preposterous--even Covent Garden had shied at it. But the promoters of the Cambridge opera were less nervous. If they had confidence, it was a confidence in Mozart and in the opera rather than in themselves. They knew the opera intimately enough to have convinced themselves that the chief difficulty of _The Magic Flute_ lay not in the extreme compass of the two parts of Sarastro and the Queen of Night, but first in the necessity for a clear and logical exposition of the story, secondly in the complication of the ensemble numbers, and thirdly perhaps in the psychology of what is really the most difficult part of all, the Orator (Der Sprecher). If singers could be found who were prepared to sing the parts of Gabriel and Raphael in _The Creation_, they could make at least a decent show of Sarastro and the Queen. Ensemble singing was merely a matter of musicianship and hard work; the personality of the Orator was of necessity a question largely of luck in finding the right man and coaching him intelligently. The producers of the Cambridge performance were guided by two principles, to aim at clearness and unity of style rather than at magnificence, and to pin their faith to a great dramatic composer rather than to a star cast.

The reception given to _The Magic Flute_ encouraged them to consider the possibility of performing another opera in 1914. Several operas had been passed in review when Dr. Vaughan Williams made his brilliant suggestion, a suggestion which was very quickly adopted. The opera was prepared for performance and put into rehearsal in the summer of 1914, with a view to bringing it out in December of that year. The musical portions of the first three acts were well in hand and most of the dresses designed at the moment when war was declared. As soon as the war was definitely over, and Cambridge had begun to resume something of its normal aspect, the opera was resumed, although a bare half-dozen of the original cast remained, and _The Fairy Queen_ was finally presented for the first time to a modern audience on February 10th of this year.

Purcell and Shakespeare

It may be of interest to those who witnessed the performance to learn something of the peculiar problems which confronted the producers and of the principles on which they tried to solve them. The only material available at that time was the Purcell Society's full score and a copy of the original libretto of 1692. The British Museum possessed also the second edition of the libretto (1693). The first thing to do was to prepare and print an acting version and a vocal score. It must not be supposed that _The Fairy Queen_ is an opera in the modern sense, like _Dido and Æneas_. It is an abridged and altered version of _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, into each act of which is introduced a sort of _ballet-divertissement_ with songs and choruses. These musical episodes have practically nothing to do with the play. In Act I. Titania enters with her fairies and orders music to entertain the Indian Boy. This is interrupted by the appearance of a drunken poet, who is blindfolded and pinched by the fairies. In Act II., instead of "Ye Spotted Snakes," there is a long allegorical scene introducing Night, Secrecy, Mystery, and Sleep. In Act III. a _divertissement_ of a broadly comic character is commanded by Titania for the amusement of Bottom. In Act IV. Oberon summons up a pageant of Phœbus and the Four Seasons in honour of his reconciliation with Titania, and lastly the fairies provide in Act V. the most magnificent and extravagant show of all to celebrate the nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta. It will be seen that there is a certain amount of dramatic reason and also of artistic unity and contrast about these musical episodes. The first, for the Indian Boy, is fantastic and childlike; the second, for Titania, voluptuous and mysterious; the third, for Bottom, half-comic and half-erotic; the fourth, for Oberon, is a sort of Sun-God's festival; the last, for Theseus and Hippolyta, an epithalamium.

The first difficulty to be faced was that of the Shakespeare dialogue, which is all spoken, not sung. Should the librettist's textual alterations be kept, or the original restored? Had the textual alterations been violent enough to stamp the whole play as belonging definitely and unmistakably to the age of Dryden we should have had no hesitation in sticking to them. We were quite clear from the start that we meant to produce Purcell's opera and not Shakespeare's play. But the alterations to the text of Shakespeare were just enough to be irritating to an audience whom we assumed to be familiar with Shakespeare, and troublesome to actors who were probably in the same case. The chances were that the actors would forget the alterations here and there and return unconsciously to the original, and that the audience would merely suppose that they had not learnt their parts properly. Besides, the opera was so long that drastic cuts were imperative. Here again we at once decided that as far as was practicable it should be Shakespeare and not Purcell that was to be cut. We therefore started by restoring the original text of Shakespeare in all the scenes which had not been cut altogether by the librettist, and then proceeded to prune the Shakespeare down until we had reached either our time-limit or the limit of intelligibility. The latter was reached first, and on that we proceeded to cut down Purcell. An obvious course was to adopt the version of 1692, rejecting the scene of the Drunken Poet, and the two songs, _Ye Gentle Spirits_ and _The Plaint_, which were added in 1693. But the scene of the Drunken Poet was too good to throw away. The two songs we abandoned with some reluctance on account of their singular beauty; but they could easily be spared from the point of view of the stage. Indeed _The Plaint_ would have been impossible to accept; it is dragged in for no reason by special request of Oberon, and is not only extremely long, but profoundly melancholy and totally inappropriate to the cheerful atmosphere of the Epithalamium.

One of the librettist's alterations was to transfer the whole of _Pyramus and Thisbe_ to the rehearsal scene in the wood. The players act it "in our habits as we shall play it before the Duke," and the interruptions of Theseus and the rest are assigned to Puck. Here again we restored the original, if only to save time. The idea then occurred to us to save the play by having it acted in dumb show during the _Entry Dance_ of Act V. This solved the problem of what to do with this particular dance-tune; it gave us additional time to prepare the Chinese scene behind the tableau-curtain, it saved the time occupied by the play, and spared us the very tedious mirth of all the knockabout business which in _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ has now become traditional. Further, it brought the clowns in again at the appropriate moment, and, what was more important, it associated Shakespeare more closely with Purcell's music. The little pantomime was worked out at rehearsal entirely by the actors themselves. They first walked through the directions of the _Pyramus and Thisbe_ play; then the music was played and the action tried with it. No further alteration was needed at subsequent rehearsals, for it so happened that every one of the actors was musical, and they stepped and moved to Purcell's notes by natural instinct.

There remained still a few bits of music to be disposed of. In the seventeenth century people had to sit in the theatre for a long time before the play began, and to pass the time a concert was provided, consisting of a _First Musick_, or _Second Musick_, and lastly the _Overture_. Under modern conditions it would have been more in accordance with the spirit of Purcell to send our orchestra out into the street to play the First and Second Musick to the queue that was waiting to enter the pit and gallery, but since we could not imagine that police regulations would permit this, we utilised the four little pieces at different points as incidental music to the play. In so doing we knew that we were untrue to the strict traditions of Purcell's day; but we did not wish to cut these pieces out altogether, and we further thought that they would help to Purcellize the Shakespeare. We were somewhat surprised to find that several of the audience seemed to expect _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ in its entirety, once the play had started. Our assumption, which apparently was wrong, was that everybody knew Shakespeare's play practically by heart, and that we need do no more than just indicate its outlines, leaving the rest to be filled up by the imagination under the inspiration of Purcell's music.

Purcell and His Orchestra

The opera is scored for the usual Purcell band. In the big instrumental numbers two trumpets, kettle-drums, and two hautboys are added to the string. A few numbers have two flutes, but flutes and hautboys never occur simultaneously, which leads me to think that in Purcell's days the flutes and hautboys were generally played by the same players. The solos are accompanied sometimes by violins and bass in three parts, more often by the harpsichord and bass alone, the other instruments playing no more than the _ritornelli_. On the question of orchestration we never had a moment's hesitation. We were determined from the very first that we would not add a single note to Purcell's score. This meant, of course, that a very serious responsibility would be thrown on the harpsichord. We had experimented once with a harpsichord in a Bach Concerto at a concert, with the very embarrassing discovery that the harpsichord player could hardly hear a note that he played, while the unfortunate conductor could hear nothing else but the harpsichord. To the audience, as a matter of fact, the result was quite satisfactory. The harpsichord in the theatre was a more perilous problem, especially as we were not able to have any rehearsal of any kind in the theatre until the day before the first performance. Would the harpsichord be audible in the audience? Would it be audible on the stage? Would it stay in tune under the very variable conditions of temperature? Would one harpsichord be enough, or ought we to have two, as Hasse had at the Dresden Opera House? Would the harpsichord be monotonous as well as inadequate? Ought we to have in addition a pianoforte or possibly a harp? We decided to do the very best we could with one harpsichord and chance it. In view of the probability that the harpsichord might become amazingly monotonous, the harpsichord part was considered with the greatest possible care and no pains spared to make it as varied, as effective, and as expressive as possible. Once in the theatre, the instrument was tried in various positions until the right place for it was found. It was clearly audible both on the stage and in all parts of the house without ever becoming too insistent. Here I must say how deeply we were indebted to the sensitive musicianship of the player, an undergraduate in his first year, who, although he had never placed his fingers on a harpsichord until about a fortnight before the performance, was gifted with exactly that fine sense of scholarship in music which is the first essential of the complete _maestro al cembalo_.

EDWARD J. DENT

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Vol. I No. 6 April 1920

EDITORIAL NOTES

Last month we referred here to the fact that a deputation was to wait on Mr. Fisher to press the claim of the drama to State encouragement. The deputation, which included critics, actors, and representatives of all the most important societies concerned, was received on March 13th. Whatever may or may not come of it, its mere reception in Whitehall is an event which marks an important step in the evolution of the official attitude towards the drama, which, until recently, was conceived as a thing with which the State had no relations save that of blue-penciller. For this we may chiefly thank the new and vigorous British Drama League and its secretary, Mr. Geoffrey Whitworth. Several resolutions were laid before the Minister. With some of the proposals commended to him he had, as Minister of Education, nothing to do; but his reply to the deputation was very sympathetic in tone and showed full cognisance of the part that dramatic representation might play in national life.

* * * * *

We do not propose to dwell at length upon all the suggestions which, tentatively or confidently, were made by the deputation or the Conference which instructed it. One of them we frankly dislike, and that is the proposal that the Universities should recognise the new status of the drama by establishing faculties of the drama. Those who propose this cannot mean merely that our dramatic inheritance should be studied as literature; for the encouragement of such study falls within the scope of the English schools, which are becoming more important and more intelligently conducted every year. They cannot mean, either, we suppose, that dramatic representation should be encouraged; that is not the job of a faculty unless a Doctorate or Baccalaureate of Histrionics be contemplated. They can only intend that a theoretical and practical training in the dramatist's art should be given, that a scientific study of the principles--technics or some such thing would be the word--of dramatic writing, based on the analysis of admitted masterpieces and (perhaps) admitted failures, should be followed, or accompanied, by the writing, under surveillance, of new dramatic works. It is conceivable. We met recently a lady who had won the Doctorate of Philosophy in an American University. She had nothing about her of the grey sobriety of the metaphysician or the ethicist; and, questioned, she stated that she had taken her degree in the School of Short-Story Writing. Well, we know those American academic treatises on short-story writing: champion instruments for taking the bloom off any work of art and killing the artistic impulses of any student simple enough to surrender himself to them. And though we do not know, and we don't think posterity will know, the plays written by those graduates of American Universities who have gone out into the world as dramatic writers of approved competence, we have seen some of the manuals on which they also have pastured: manuals admirable only as subjects for burlesque. In the teaching of literature criticism of the drama, examination (if you like) of the elements of dramatic construction, has its place with other forms of criticism; the history of the drama with other sorts of history. There is no harm done, and a certain stimulus may be given to the talented, if students are encouraged to write "original" works, and if a certain amount of academic credit is given for such works. But a school of dramatic production, or of novel-writing, or of poetical composition ... may we be saved from that! The way in which teachers may develop dramatic, as other literary, talent is by encouraging the intelligent reading of good literature, and by demonstrating the grand truth that its roots lie in life fearlessly observed and passionately felt.

* * * * *

The more amateur dramatic performance--of works which have some imaginative quality in them--the better. If the Board of Education, which has already (we think) done a good deal to encourage both music and mimetics in the schools, can still further humanise the curriculum, all the richer will be the community, all the more amusing will be the lives of the children, and, in the end, all the richer will be our art. The Universities may probably be left to take care of themselves. Very likely a word of encouragement from a Minister of Education, a Prime Minister, or an Archbishop of Canterbury might in some places remove obscurantist opposition or secure facilities which have not been forthcoming. But young men are not children. They can arrange things for themselves, with the assistance of sympathetic and not necessarily official elders. And that the junior members of the Universities, since the war, have been taking with a new zest to dramatic production is a matter of common observation. If we go no farther than Oxford and Cambridge we have seen during the present term--eight weeks old as we write--the successful production of Mr. Hardy's _Dynasts_ by the O.U.D.S., and at Cambridge the Marlowe Society's production of _The White Devil_ and the revival of Purcell's _Faerie Queene_, organised by Dr. Rootham, Mr. Clive Carey, and Mr. Dent. This last was an imposing operation: a large acting cast, a ballet, an orchestra, dresses and scenery were supplied by junior members of the University and local ladies. Next term the A.D.C. are performing a modern comedy, and _Comus_ is amongst the other things mooted for May Week. Organisation from above is nothing as good as this, especially if it takes the form of organisation of an academic course.

* * * * *

But the place of the drama in education is too large and difficult a subject to be dealt with in detail here: what we do wish to say a few words about is what, after all, was the main object of the deputation's visit to Whitehall, though it had little to do with the Minister of Education, as such--we mean the National Theatre. It was to this that the speakers for the deputation, particularly Dr. Courtney and Sir Sidney Lee, chiefly addressed themselves. Here also we have a subject which invites extended treatment if we begin to contemplate the possible relations between public authorities generally and the drama. It is reported that in South London a Town Council desires to give help out of the rates to the new operatic venture at the Surrey Theatre; and before long we shall probably hear suggestions that where local authorities wish to maintain theatrical enterprises they should obtain grants-in-aid from the Government. That is a large and a complicated, not to say a controversial, matter. But the National Theatre question can be strictly localised. All we need ask is: Ought there, or ought there not, to be a permanently endowed institution in London where the best English plays should be produced regardless of commercial risks, and ought, or ought not, the State to lend its moral and financial support to such an institution? And since there exists already a National Theatre Fund, which has acquired a site for a playhouse, we are faced ultimately with the question whether the Government should take a direct financial and administrative interest in that scheme.

* * * * *

The National Theatre scheme grew out of the preparations for commemorating the Tercentenary of Shakespeare's death--which fell in 1916, during the war. In 1904 a committee was organised, and in 1905 it was resolved, at a Mansion House meeting, to collect funds for an architectural memorial and, if possible, for a small theatre in which Elizabethan and other plays could be performed. In 1908 another Mansion House meeting was held, at which it was proposed to erect a statue in Portland Place (so convenient because it is very wide and nobody ever goes there) at a cost of not less than £100,000. Such an expenditure on such an object horrified a great many people. For some time--notably after the publication of an admirable book by Messrs. Granville Barker and William Archer--interest had been growing in the proposal for a National Theatre. The £100,000 statue scheme naturally led to the suggestion that a theatre would be a better memorial than a statue, and that two birds could be killed with one stone if the National Theatre were to be the Shakespeare Memorial. The notion was accepted; the two movements were amalgamated; and a fund for a Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was opened by a committee of which Lord Plymouth was chairman and Sir Israel Gollancz secretary. The public appeal was not so successful as it might have been. By 1910 the sum of £90,000 had been collected, of which £70,000 came from a single donor, Sir Carl Meyer. The committee spent £61,000 on a site in Gower Street, from which a certain revenue has since been received. Then came the war. The collection of money stopped, and it has not (so far as we are aware) been made clear to the public what the committee has been doing since the Armistice, what it proposes to do in the near future, and when it intends to make a bid for the rest of the four or five or (it may now be) six or seven hundred thousand that is required for the erection and endowment of a theatre.

* * * * *

Now it is evident that sooner or later the project must be resumed and a further appeal made to the public. It is possible that this appeal will be more successful than the last. After all, we hear of twenty new millionaires in Bradford alone, and any one of these could contribute a large portion of the whole sum required, thereby earning fame and, very likely, a public honour better deserved than some. It is obvious on the face of it that if the Government is known to look on the scheme with a benevolent eye its chances of success will be brighter. Is it impossible that, should the whole sum not be raised from private persons, the Government should guarantee a subsidy? This would, of course, involve some measure of Government control, and the presence of Government representatives on the permanent body of Trustees, who would sit there precisely as do the two Government directors recently appointed to the Board of a Cellulose Company. We say this without prejudice to the general question of the relations between the community and the theatre. The idea has been mooted that municipalities should subsidise theatres and that the Government should assist them with grants-in-aid. It is attractive, and a Whitehall Committee might well be appointed to explore it. But the National Theatre is a distinct and peculiar proposal. What we desire is that there should be in the capital one house with a position resembling that of the Comédie Française, or the Old Imperial Opera House in Petrograd, a house devoted to the production of good plays, provided with a stock company, and guaranteed against all the fluctuations of fortune. In brief, the revival of the English classic plays should be systematised. It should not be left to chance whether an Englishman should live and die without having an opportunity of seeing a competent, or indeed any, performance of _Troilus and Cressida_, of Marlowe's _Faustus_, of _The Duchess of Malfi_, of _The Critic_, of _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, of _The Way of the World_, of _The Broken Heart_: to mention but a few of the interesting plays that ordinary managers can scarcely ever be expected to put on. For the ordinary manager must almost always build on hopes of a long run. These plays probably would not hold the stage for long runs; and if one of them did have a long run, it would only mean that during that run no other play would be visible at the theatre where it was being produced. Some of Shakespeare's plays have scarcely any prospect of being produced in our time in a London theatre, save only at the "Old Vic.," which has so finely struggled for existence, and so gloriously (though how far does its permanence rest on the continuance of a single life?) succeeded. Theatres are limited in number. They have become the subjects of violent speculation. Even if a private man with the most ambitious of plans obtained a theatre we should have no guarantee that he would not pass his theatre on next day to somebody who was willing to give him a handsome profit for his lease and hoped to recoup himself by a year's run of revue or American melodrama. We conceive that if publishing houses were like theatres, and could issue only one work at a time, Messrs. Methuen (we hope they will allow us to use their name as an illustration) might well be excused if, as between Shakespeare (of whom they publish admirable editions) and _Tarzan of the Apes_ they chose, at this moment, the latter. There is a public for both kinds, but the smaller at any given moment (though over a long period the larger) is very badly catered for in the theatrical world, where everybody is bidding for the great rewards that the larger public can bestow, and is, at present, under the necessity of paying a "shortage" rent, which will not go down unless some prodigiously rich and adventurous syndicate starts building new theatres wholesale.

* * * * *

How far a National Theatre, especially a State-assisted National Theatre, can be expected, or will consider it its duty, to produce new plays of merit is doubtful. If that is one of its functions it will not be its chief function; were it so its work would be the centre of perpetual tempests of controversy, and its controllers would learn what lobbying means. It will have quite enough to do if it concentrates on the systematic revival, on repertory lines, of the best classic plays, with occasional production of foreign plays and of old plays of historical interest. That, surely, is a thing which should be done, a work which should be continually maintained and developed, a work which should as certainly be maintained at the public expense (if necessary) as should, say, the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ or the _Dictionary of National Biography_, should there ever come a time when no publisher felt able to spare the capital required to keep those great compilations going. After all, what is there to differentiate the cases of these enterprises from that of the British Museum, which nobody, whatever his opinion about public undertakings generally, suggests should be, or ever could be, stablished and maintained on its present scale by private enterprise?

* * * * *

The binding-case for Vol. I. of THE LONDON MERCURY will be ready early in April. The case is of black cloth, with a white label in a sunk panel. It is designed to hold the six numbers plus an eight-page index (which will also be ready early in the month) and minus the six wrappers and the advertisement pages. Binding-cases will be supplied from this office at 3_s._ 6_d._ post free. If readers prefer that we should bind their numbers for them, they may send them here and pay an inclusive 6_s._, which will cover the cost of the case, the work of binding, and the return postage. The volume will be rather a fat one, but we felt that readers would think that twice a year was quite often enough to have this labour imposed on them.

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE

Arthur Henry Bullen died suddenly on February 29th, 1920, in his sixty-third year, at Stratford-on-Avon, where he had lived since 1906. He used to say that in his boyhood, as the son of Dr. George Bullen, Keeper of the Printed Books in the British Museum, he ran about the Library and browsed at pleasure, cultivating in his teens a taste (no doubt inherited) not only for the best in literature, but for the best in books too. He went to the City of London School and to Worcester College, Oxford, as a scholar; but, to judge from his mature habits, he must have been almost completely self-educated. A pleasant glimpse of him at Oxford may be seen in Professor Poulton's _Viriamu Jones_. He was already a man of very wide reading; within a few years of going down from Oxford he began to make himself known as an editor of Elizabethan drama and anthologies. _Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books_ and its sequels no doubt are the most popular of his books; he rediscovered Thomas Campion, and poured out reprints of _Old English Plays_ (two series), and the works of John Day, Marlowe, Marston, Middleton, and Peele. To edit a book, however, did not suffice him. For the last decade of the nineteenth century the firm of Lawrence & Bullen published a large number of remarkable works, ancient and modern, including not only familiar successes like Miss Harraden's _Ships that Pass in the Night_ and Mr. W. W. Jacobs' _Many Cargoes_, half-a-dozen of the novels of George Gissing (a close friend of Bullen's), and early works of Mr. H. G. Wells, Moira O'Neill, and the authors of the _Irish R.M_., but also sumptuous and beautiful books, such as Botticelli's _Illustrations to Dante_, William Strang's _Death and the Ploughman's Wife_, and illustrated translations of Rabelais, Boccaccio, Straparola, Masuccio, and Ser Giovanni. Bullen's special taste was shown in the "Muses' Library," which began with Herrick, and included Keats (with an incomparable introduction by Robert Bridges) and William Blake (edited by W. B. Yeats).

* * * * *

Early in the present century he left the firm to continue publishing under his own name. To this period belong the Irish Plays and _Ideas of Good and Evil_ of Mr. Yeats, whose _Celtic Twilight_ and _Secret Rose_ Bullen took over, with other books, from Lawrence & Bullen Ltd.; and such characteristic contributions to Elizabethan research as Dr. W. W. Greg's edition of _Henslowe's Diary_ and Mr. R. B. McKerrow's _Works of Thomas Nashe_. In 1903 he dreamed one night that some one offered him a Shakespeare "printed at Stratford-on-Avon"; and within a year he had started the Shakespeare Head Press in order to realise the dream, which resulted in the "Stratford Town" Shakespeare in ten finely-printed volumes. Settling in Stratford, he devoted himself to printing and publishing, chiefly scholarly works of Shakespearean lore; but he also printed the handsome Collected Edition of the works of W. B. Yeats. About 1906, in addition to his other labours, he made a gallant effort as editor of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ to revive its ancient glories, and managed to collect a wide variety of excellent articles. The best memorial to Bullen would be the realisation of a scheme long planned and fostered by him to make the Shakespeare Head Press at Stratford-on-Avon a properly subsidised centre of British Shakespearean scholarship.

* * * * *

In person he bore, especially in later years, a striking resemblance to Mark Twain; indeed, at the time of Mark's last visit to London, Bullen humorously complained of the awkwardness of being publicly recognised as someone else. He loved tramping and rambling--not exactly walking--whether in country or town; and as a young man had acquired a knowledge of the high-roads and antiquities of England and Wales that was outdone only by his extensive and peculiar knowledge of various brewages obtainable along the road. Here is a characteristic piece of Bullen's writing--an Editorial Note in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ in 1906:

Sylvanus Urban, then but a boy, had started from Chepstow on a
solitary walking tour, and was soon caught in a rattling thunderstorm
on the Wyndcliff. Tintern Abbey and Raglan Castle are fresh in
his memory to-day. A mile or two out of Monmouth he came upon
some excellent nutty-hearted ale that George Borrow would have
immortalised. As he pursued his way to Raglan Castle he pondered
on the ale--"this way and that dividing the swift mind"--until at
length, in despair of meeting an equal brew, he turned back again
and had another tankard. Heavens, what days were those! In his pack
he carried the _Essays of Elia_ and read them in an old inn at
Llandovery, where the gracious hostess lighted in his honour tall
wax candles fit to stand before an altar. After leaving Llandovery,
he lost his way among the Caermarthenshire hills, and was in very
poor plight with hunger and fatigue when he reached the white-washed
walls of Tregaron. At Harlech he rested for a couple of days, and
then covered the way to Beddgelert--twenty miles, if he remembers
rightly--at a spanking pace; proceeding in the late afternoon to
climb Snowdon, and arriving at Llanberis an hour or so before
midnight. Back to London, every inch of the way, walked the young
Sylvanus. He indulges the hope that he may yet shoulder his pack
again.

He read and re-read unendingly; he loved to talk of men and books with a boon companion, pacing to and fro, ruffling his grey mane and smoking continuously. On such occasions he would stagger his friends with an unexpected display of familiarity with recondite literature, or charm them with impromptu quotations, often at great length, declaimed with a loving appreciation of sound and rhythm. Everything that was old and ripe with goodness he loved, whether literature or furniture; in poetry above all his instinct for the best was infallible. In English, from 1550 to his own day, he seemed to have read and judged everything; but the atmosphere of antiquity that he breathed shut him off from appreciating many contemporary writers. He would keep Epictetus by his bedside, and chant Mrs. Browning's _Pan_ while he dressed; he championed Coventry Patmore and could not admire Meredith. His very craftsmanship was antique; he could not ride a bicycle, infinitely preferring to walk; a typewriter was offensive to one who wrote innumerable letters all in his own hand; he did not even shave himself, finding, no doubt, a daily pleasure in visiting the barber. He was equally sound in his judgments on mezzotints or mutton, and preferred old English fare, with beer, to "Frenchified fuss." A chivalrous and generous scholar and gentleman; those who knew him will call to mind the phrase in which Bullen would refer to a dead friend--"now with God."

* * * * *

Mr. G. D. Smith, the prince of book-dealers, died suddenly in America early in the month. He had but recently been in England, and a few days before his death was cabling to England offers for an important library, which he had tracked down just before leaving. It was he who purchased the famous _Venus and Adonis_ for £15,100 in the winter; he bought largely for the Huntingdon Library, and when he, or one of his millionaire clients, really wanted a book in the English salerooms the prices might break records, but there was no doubt about the book's destination. Mr. Smith was not, to put it mildly, a reading man, but he had a wonderful nose for a good thing, and he was an agreeable man to deal with--a good business man, but not one who attempted to trade unduly upon people's ignorance.

POETRY

_"Skindle's" in Poperinghe_

(_The Salient_, 1917)

Shut the door, Jameson, shut the blasted door--
The whole road's blocked as far as Elverdinghe.
Four Bridge would hold you up an hour or more
So don't go crashing up to-night, old thing--
What weather! Hall-marked Flanders wind and rain!
Come on inside. My groom will take your mare
Round to the smithy on the Market Square.
Let's have a dekko at the carte again.
It's a posh lunch to-day, Suzanne's a vision,
And the room's lousy with the old Division.

Just now MacMartin stopped me on the street
With news from Amiens. (And Marguerite
Sends you her love. Oh, it's a bonzer war
In cushy billets at the Poisson D'Or!)
Mac is the same old swinger--he "mistook"
His indicated route, and lost his bunch,
Jumped on a tender down from Hazebrouck
And blew in here with Willy Braid for lunch.
They're in the bar with Tupper, back from Blighty,
Capping his yarns of Baths and Aphrodite.

Yes--I go back at dawn. We're on the ridge
Over the Steenbeek by the corduroy bridge,
Past the big pill-box with the double cleft
To the main route stumps on the sky-line--then half-left.
It's about an hour from the lorry-stand, unless
You take the duckboards near the R.E. shaft.
Quicker that way, of course, but badly strafed.
You'll see a stranded tank there--that's the Mess.
What is it like now? Smelly, Jim, and muddy--
Under restraint, I call it fairly bloody.

Nothing like Nieuport. Why, it seems an age--
And yet the year is barely four months older,
Since we got rounds up on the narrow-gauge
And visited Belgian outposts in the polder.
That was the life, old Jimmy! Now it's a black
And gory business, slogging away by pack--
Most of it salvage--while the five-nines crump
Our half-drowned hairies staggering from the dump.
(Well, here's luck, Jim! Gone dry? Why, I'd forgotten--
Another brand, Suzanne! This sweet stuff's rotten.)

There's a new mob to-night about the town--
The whole back area's stiff with guns and troops,
And Proven road's chock-full with "heavy groups"
From six-inch up. They've put the tape-lines down
And moved the forward dumps to Poelcapelle.
Battle-headquarters' somewhere near the Bower,
All day and night we're brassing off like hell--
It's going to be a "Brock's" at zero hour!
The Hun's not loafing though--he's getting windy,
Listen! Even from here you can hear the shindy.

Two nights ago we caught it hell-for-leather.
The new relief had just gone on ahead,
Leaving the altered signal "green-over-red."
There was a little mist, and some soft weather--
All quiet at nine o'clock. Hardly a sound.
I took my gum-boots for a last look round.
Nothing was doing beside the usual cracks
Of long-range shrapnel on the duckboard tracks,
And a crooning eight-inch, humping along a load
Meant for the siding on the Pilkem road.

Clusters of Very lights along the line
Flickered and plunged. They helped my eyes to mark
Our barrage-lines across the battery-arc.
The pools were hoared with silver in the shine.
Peaceful it was. I strolled and smoked and stared--
There came a quickened rumble in the East,
Down the battalion front the lights increased.
Machine guns raved and stuttered. A rocket flared--
Scarlet and golden-rain spouted and spread,
Flares and skysigns and stars, and
_Green-over-red!_

_Watch for it, Sentry! There again. Yes!
Battery-Action! S.O.S.!
Shadowy man after man leaps to a gun.
Flash from the centre--five then flash as one.
All round are flashes, lighting the livid
Faces of straining gun-crews.
Vicious and vivid
Fire spirals and cataracts--knives, spikes
Of fire stabbing the dark. Batters and strikes
On the ears the unutterable, profound
Debauchery of sound--
The roar and clutter and whinny--sustained, obscene
As if the dead beasts of the Pleistocene,
Spawned of the essence
Of ravaged earth's womb and her churned putrescence
Were howling over the mud their lusts unclean._

Then--well, when every hollow's a belching mass
Of wrangling guns, guns bellowing to guns--
You cannot tell a burst of ours from the Huns'--
Suddenly through the cordite I smelt the gas.
Down went the warning through the roar and screech--
The spitting splinters ploughed us like a squall,
Half-blinded gunners wrestled with the breech,
Gas-helmeted, smoke-drenched--you know it all--
Then the five-nines began. A salvo came,
And Number Four went up in a gust of flame.

I thought the whole of the line was smashed and finished--
And then, through the reek of the fog and the dropping mire,
From the right flank, steady and undiminished,
Came the assuring crashes of section-fire,
Timed and checked and re-laid. We groped and plunged
To pull the stricken out. Still droned the steady
Voice of the sergeants at the "set and ready."
_Number One, fire!_ The muzzle flamed and lunged.
_Number Two, fire!_
By God, those chaps are stunners!
Search France, you'll find no better than my gunners.

But some good men went West--some of the best.
Horses or men, the best must always go--
Jim, it's a mad-blind, lunatic, filthy show--
Destiny's pitch-and-toss made manifest.
I'm sick to death of it.
And yet--and yet
There's a hold somehow in this crazed eclipse
Of the normal orient--a hold that grips--
Nothing in life, I suppose, lacks credit and debt--
The battered brain may hanker for surcease,
But under the brain--its curious--there is _peace_.

Hold on a bit. Last leave I met a fellow
Who cornered me at the club and hiccupped crude
Optimist zeal and tub-worn platitude--
You know the sort. Slug-bellied, slushy, mellow.
He winked, and wagged his tubby hands, and spouted--
"Break through next time, old boy!" He knew, _he_ knew--
The final trap was laid--the Hun was outed--
He'd had it straight from Jones at G.H.Q.--
And--"Then we'll see you sportsmen back at Dover
Covered with glory--_sorry it's all over_."

So I let fly. I fed the blaze with faggots--
Hinted that on the whole we _liked_ the Hun--
Roughed out a sketch of charnel-heaps and maggots--
The side of war that isn't sport nor fun;
Flung a few phrases chosen from the camps
At itch-struck females dashing about in cars
To pose in sketchy frills at snide bazaars--
At fat old profiteers and statesmen's ramps--
Oh, yes! I piled it on. He loathed the pill,
And barged his way out, rosy round the gill.

But was the swine half-right? It _sounds_ like bliss
To sleep serene o' nights without surmise
Of S.O.S. lights screaming to the skies,
Deep in the warmth of Blighty out of this--
It sounds like bliss to forget the dug-out's reeking,
The bitter fog in the eyes, the life on a thread,
The crazed crescendo of the mortars seeking
Half-callous living and the unheeding dead,
And drowse in everlasting furloughs, under
The placid roofs of peace-time.
Well, I wonder!

If we get through it--if the Immortals choose
To grant a span again, when this be ended,
Of ordered life, impenetrably fended
By small restraints and sanctions and taboos--
Shall the recovered cares and leisures grip
The flabbier soul, or shall desire return
Back to the dug-out's care-free comradeship
And battle-time's magnificent unconcern
For dim to-morrows? Shall we find, once more,
Peace has its surfeits too as well as War?

Not the drab shadows only we'll remember,
But all the colour there was--the browns and blues
Down the deep shaft of Flemish avenues;
The swaying harvests gold-drenched with September;
And frosty mornings in the Spring retreat
When the scrap opened out, and it was good
To choose a gun-park in the greening wheat
And pitch a hidden tent in Holnon Wood--
Jimmy, old son, it made the pulses dance
To see those Devon daffodils in France!

We shall recall the eager clank and jingle
Of gun-teams on the pavé, moving South,
The long off-saddle in the midday drouth,
"Feed" in the cowslips by the wayside dingle;
The journey's welcome end amid the cool
Clutter of sun-warmed barns and straggling pines;
The urgent fuss around the wagon-lines;
Sweat-roughened horses drinking at the pool--
And then the morning start, with head-chains ringing
Swinging along at ease, the drivers' singing....

And moments better still. I thank the gods
For one white, perfect hour at Conteville,
With Bosches massing on the nearer hill,
And open sights as near as makes no odds.
Young Grant was with us then. The boy was daft,
Blind to the snipers, yelling like the damned:
_Oh, good! Oh, bloody good!_ at every waft
Of three-rounds-gunfire. Then left section jammed,
And back the buzzers' private signal rolled:
_Sweat on it, chum! We've got the bastards cold!_