American nights entertainment
people have found themselves unable to keep straight faces. Yet, not
long ago, writing in the London Sphere, Clement K. Shorter declared he
had never read a single one of the more than twenty Wodehouse yarns.
He had never read _Jeeves_, or that new one, _Leave It to Psmith_, or
_Mostly Sally_, or _Three Men and a Maid_, or _The Little Warrior_,
or A _Damsel in Distress_, or _Piccadilly Jim_--think of it! Or no,
don’t think of it. It won’t bear thinking of, it won’t really. The
Wodehouse novels, though in most respects like those jolly things he
writes to go with music by Jerome Kern, have now and then a page that
dips far below the surface of fun into something very deep and true
to the inwardness of human nature. Such are some bits in _The Little
Warrior_, and such are the more tragic moments for Sally in _Mostly
Sally_; and yet Mr. Wodehouse brings his story up again quickly like a
diver clutching a pearl and rising up through clear water to sparkling
and sunlit air. It is the prettiest talent imaginable, and I can think
of no other contemporary writer of light fiction who has the same
dexterity.
iii
There is no formula for achieving breathlessness. Those who are most
susceptible to what may be loosely called Plot will find an enviable
difficulty in breathing while they peruse, besides the stories already
mentioned, some of the following tales:
JOHN BUCHAN’S _Midwinter_ and his _Huntingtower_. Buchan is a master
of suspense and a humourist of very exceptional quality. His stories
are rightly called “the grandest of grand yarns.” Have you ever read
_Greenmantle_? The literary merit of these books (quite incidental) is
far above the average of their kind.
FRANK L. PACKARD’S _The Four Stragglers_, an “unguessable” story with a
steady acceleration of excitement, and his new one, _The Locked Book_.
WILLIAM GARRET’S _Friday to Monday_, which will give you the liveliest
week-end of your possibly rich experience. Black pearls, a Chinaman,
torture, a fight in the dark, a rocky cavern of the sea and an
airplane are used.
WILLIAM JOHNSTON’S _The Waddington Cipher_.
H. C. MCNEILE’S _The Dinner Club_. The six members had each to tell two
stories worthy of the dinner, and did! Also H. C. McNeile’s _The Black
Gang_, with its further adventures of Bulldog Drummond.
ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE’S _The Amateur Inn_, remarkable not only for its
mystery puzzle but for the presence of an irresistible maiden lady who
says: “A person not ashamed to lock a door with a key, need not be
ashamed to lock his mind with a lie.”
CAROLYN WELL’S _Wheels Within Wheels_, another story with Penny Wise as
the detective. The village idiot is a protagonist.
C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON’S _The Lady From the Air_ and their _The
Night of the Wedding_.
When Ghost Meets Ghost.
The “borderland” in F. BRITTEN AUSTEN’S _On the Borderland_ is the
region between the conscious and the subconscious, assuming that such a
neutral zone exists. The book offers twelve weird stories striking in
their ingenuity.
E. F. BENSON’S _Spook Stories_.
Ordeal by Water.
TRISTRAM TUPPER’S _Adventuring_ is entirely off the beaten track of
adventure fiction--the story of a middle-aged, ordinary man whose love
for the songs of the Grecian Sappho quickens his imagination to a dream
of her beauty and leads him into an homeric sea adventure.
A. HYATT VERRILL’S _The Real Story of the Pirate_. A fascinating book
about those fellows whose colouring is perhaps a little faded in spite
of their being scoundrels of the deepest dye; although (as you may not
know) Kidd was by no means so black as he was hanged for being.
A. HYATT VERRILL’S _The Real Story of the Whaler_. More thrills for all
of us who had ’em as we watched the film, “Down to the Sea in Ships.”
Almost Anything by HAROLD MACGRATH.
His _The World Outside_, or, if you haven’t read them:
_The Ragged Edge_
_The Pagan Madonna_
_The Man With Three Names_
_The Drums of Jeopardy_
iv
Let us approach the subject of humour circumspectly. In addition to
the Works of DON MARQUIS, _passim_, as the reference books say, and
the Works of P. G. WODEHOUSE, both before-mentioned, and the Works of
DONALD OGDEN STEWART (see Chapter 13, “A Parody Outline of Stewart”),
and the Works of IRVIN S. COBB in many places, the reader may be well
advised to consult at the outset _Tom_ _Masson’s Annual for 1923_, a
humorous anthology; KATHARINE DAYTON’S _Loose Leaves_, IRVIN COBB’S
collection of the best humorous stories he has ever met, _A Laugh a Day
Keeps the Doctor Away_, and--oh, yes!--the Works of OLIVER HERFORD,
including _Neither Here Nor There_ and _This Giddy Globe_. A word of
warning in regard to a couple of others:
FRANCIS B. KEENE’S _Lyrics of the Links_. This is not a humorous book
on days when you are off your game. Still, you can’t afford to miss
Grantland Rice’s foreword to the lyrics.
THOMAS L. MASON’S _That Silver Lining_, although written largely in a
humorous vein, is an honest-to-goodness book about new thought, mental
healing, psycho-analysis and so forth, by a survivor of twenty-eight
years of Life.
_4. In the Kingdom of Conrad_
i
“I once knew such a man,” declared Marlow. I don’t believe any of us
felt moved to reply. To have indicated, by a syllable or two, a polite
interest, would have been fatal. Marlow, in the presence of anything
but an aloof skepticism or a cynical reserve, becomes tiresome in
his pursuit of metaphysical abstraction. He seems to think it can be
caught in the butterfly-net of words.... Now he sat, sucking his pipe
(he always cools it before re-filling) and looking attentively at each
of us as the sparks of cigars momentarily threw a faint gleam on our
faces. At length:
“You all know him, too,” he pronounced. “Chap named Conrad, Joseph
Conrad. Teodor Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski. That Polish sailor; writes
novels. But he has a master’s ticket. Got blackwater fever or something
down at the Congo; he was out East before that. Then he settled in
Kent, in a little house, where I once went to see him. Of course you’ve
read _Lord Jim_; I don’t think a lot of it. Give me _Victory_ or
_Youth_, or, best of all, _Nostromo_----”
“Personally, Marlow, I always look at the end first, to see how it
comes out. Since you are beginning in the middle----”
“I? I’m not, but Conrad was. Did you ever read _Nostromo_? Talk about
beginning a story in the middle!”
“Well, if you want to talk about _that_,” sighed a voice. “My
impression was, Marlow, that you were undertaking to tell us about a
man who knew himself--shall we say?--singularly well.”
“Exactly.” Marlow uttered the word with something that might have been
reluctance. He repeated it, “Exactly.” It was time to re-fill his pipe
and he made a long job of it. When he had it drawing nicely and began
to speak again his voice was veiled, his choice of words was frequently
made with a certain hesitation, and we listened without comment or any
other interruption than the occasional shifting of a foot on the deck.
At least, I can recall nothing; and I know we borrowed our matches by
signs--when we thought to borrow them.
ii
“As you have heard something of him, I won’t waste my breath on the
bare biographical record,” Marlow informed us. “I believe you all know
he was born in the Ukraine in 1857; sixth of December happened to be
the day. His father and mother were Polish patriots and Russian exiles
and their death left the boy in the hands of his mother’s brother,
who used him affectionately and engaged a very capable tutor to fit
the young Korzeniowski for the University of Cracow. It is pertinent,
I think, that the father had been a man of scholarly tastes and
occupation. He had succeeded in translating Shakespeare into Polish.
The legendary figure of a great-uncle, whom, however, the boy had seen,
made a great impression. Mr. Nicholas B., as Conrad calls him in his
book, _A Personal Record_, was in the retreat from Moscow and had the
strange misfortune to share in eating a Lithuanian dog. Did you ever
read _Falk_? Mr. Nicholas B. transmuted into fiction, I should say. The
one had eaten a dog, the other was credited with having eaten human
flesh; but the effect is the same. Then there’s that other story,
_Heart of Darkness_--the one all the authorities acclaim as among the
half-dozen greatest stories in English. I have heard Conrad narrate the
actual incident as it befell him down at the Congo; I have also read,
and heard him read aloud, his tale. Very interesting. Let us admit that
truth is frequently stranger than fiction; what then? Why truth is so
often unintelligible, void of significance, without meaning. Whereas
fiction is the real truth--all we can grasp, anyway. How we abuse
words! It is facts, or apparent facts, that are stranger than so-called
fiction. Not truth! Let us save that word for finer purposes. The
conquest of brute facts? Well, maybe.
“This Polish boy I am telling you about had an incomprehensible
wish. I understand that nowadays there is no such animal as an
incomprehensible wish. All wishes are fulfilled, or something of the
sort. The boy’s wish I am speaking of was fulfilled, safe enough, but
its comprehensibility is still in doubt. At any rate, he wanted to go
to sea. As almost all boys wish urgently to go to sea, this might not
appear abnormal. Perhaps, after all the oddity lay chiefly in the
attitude of his uncle and tutor, which was strongly adverse; also,
to some extent, in the fact that Poland is (or then was) purely an
interior country without ships or the enticing sight of sailors to
tempt a boy. A country of farmers. And he left it. He has told in _A
Personal Record_ of the last stand made by the tutor and his uncle.
The sight of an Englishman in the Alps had the mysterious effect of
making the lad more set in his purpose than ever. Why, as I say, is not
comprehensible, unless by those serious scientists who exist in Vienna
and play jokes on the rest of the world.
“When he had got clean away, with a sorrowful blessing, he fared
to the Mediterranean. He wanted to become not merely a sailor but
a British sailor; he knew no English. French, of course, he knew,
as befitted a Pole of a good family and some education. It was not
so difficult to get berths on Mediterranean vessels. Being in his
teens, he was looking for excitement and adventure. This, too, _mare
nostrum_ provides. It does not really matter, I take it, where one
sows his wild oats, provided only he sows thickly; and the waters of
the Mediterranean received a bushel or two from Poland (a strictly
agricultural land). One harvests such a crop from the sea uncertainly
and at a long interval, but the sea’s return is often curious and
beautiful. Fragments, if you like, but of a loveliness not yielded by
the soil of the shore; mother-of-pearl’d, glistening. And out of that
uncouth time and those bizarre experiences the man Conrad has got back
certain pages in _The Mirror of the Sea_, pages that we all remember.
_The Arrow of Gold_, also, is the return of those years when he was
irregularly employed in smuggling and gun-running out of Marseilles to
the loosely-guarded shores of Spain.
“There is a woman in _The Arrow of Gold_, Rita, you know ... but it
is useless to speculate about women. In a preface provided for the
new uniform edition of his works, J. C. explains that the slightly
demure Antonia Avellanos, in the pages of _Nostromo_, sprang from the
recollection, tenderly cherished, of a young girl, a schoolmate of his
back there in Poland. But I would like to know where he got Lena, in
_Victory_. If I were Somerset Maugham and came unexpectedly upon Lena
in another man’s novel there would be no limit to my jealousy. One does