Mrs. Barclay sees it through
Reading edition
Over the turmoil of a world in arms There floats a rich indomitable coo ... ’Tis Barclay.... Though excursions and alarms Torture the firmament, though Wilhelm II In shining armour waits his Waterloo, Though on all sides the blood rains down in torrents Love’s interests still are in safe hands with Florence. What though the rest of us are turning tail, Assured by those who have a right to speak That only Patriotism has a sale? She knows Love’s drawing-power remains unique; Her books need never be postponed a week; Sure of her subject, certain of her vogue, She has no need to adjourn, much less prorogue. Business as usual. Yet who knows, who knows Whether she has not chosen the better part, Swelling the proud full sail of her great prose Still with the gentler zephyrs of the heart, Rather than seize an Amazonian dart, Leaping into the middle of the fray Like certain other poets of the day. Has Robert Bridges’ success with fighting Been such as to encourage emulation? Or Dr. Watson’s “bit them in the Bight”-ing? Or the same author’s other lucubration (Yet one more blow for a disthressful nation) In which, dead gravelled for a rhyme for “Ireland,” He struggled out with “motherland and sireland”? Did even the voice from Rudyard Kipling’s shelf Say anything it had not said before? And was not Stephen Phillips just himself? And was not Newbolt’s effort on the war Distinctly less effective than of yore? And would not German shrapnel in the leg be Less lacerating than the verse of Begbie?
When the Muse seized me, in this manner, by the hair, it was three o’clock in the morning, and I had just finished the new novel by the author of The Rosary. Had it been earlier I should have written more. But next day the mouse of inspiration had fled to its hole; the spell of the book had been dissipated; my vision had faded into the light of common day; and I resumed my consideration of the position of Przemysl, a place of which, until this week, I had never heard. But what a fascination the book exercised while one was reading it! I can well understand why Mrs. Barclay commands a greater audience than perhaps any other living writer. She can beat the basilisk at its own game.
The reader is swept away with a rush of strong emotion at the very start. A tall, reticent, bronzed man arrives by the boat train at Charing Cross. Thrown over by a woman, he has been abroad for ten years, nursing his grief and creating a reputation as a novelist. No sooner does he get to the station than he extracts from the coy bookstall clerk a confession that to him the books of Rodney Steele are the best in the world. Lump in the throat number one; and a sovereign in the pocket of the clerk. Steele leaves the station to drive to a flat a friend has left him. Oh, the fragrance and glitter of dear old smoky London! Oh, the beauty of the Queen Victoria Memorial!
“Mysterious through the gloom, he saw the nation’s fine memorial to a deathless memory. The gush of green waters, the golden figure at the summit, needed sunlight for their better seeing. But clear through the orange darkness gleamed the white marble majesty of England’s Great Queen.
“Rodney Steele lifted his hand in reverent salute as he passed....
“‘Lest we forget!’ quoted Rodney Steele as he looked at the majestic marble figure, throned outside the palace above the rushing waters. ‘Yet—could we, who really remember, ever forget?’”
The rest of the book tells how he was wooed and won by his old love, now a widow. She had deserted him under a misapprehension and was resolved to recover him. She therefore took the next flat to his—or rather to her brother’s, which Steele was occupying. She had heard that owing to a change of telephone numbers her brother was constantly being rung up by mistake for a Hospital. One night therefore Steele was rung up and a Kind Voice asked for the Matron. The voice reminded him of Madge. He began to feel so lonely that he willed, with all his will, that the unknown Kind Voice should ring him up again.
“‘Speak to me again,’ he said, ‘you, you spoke to me last night. Speak to me again. What wait I for? I wait for you! Just now—in my utter loneliness, in my empty solitude—I wait for you.’...
“The distant clock slowly chimed a quarter past the hour of ten; and—as that sound died away—the bell of the telephone rang.”
This time he made the Kind Voice promise to ring him up nightly in order to console him in his loneliness. The Kind Voice consented. Ultimately on the telephone they discussed (he not revealing his identity or knowing hers) his novels. This is the kind of thing they say over the telephone:
“‘The thing of first importance is to uplift your readers; to raise their ideals; to leave them with a sense of hopefulness, which shall arouse within them a brave optimism such as inspired Browning’s oft-quoted noble lines.’”
When finally he confesses to the Kind Voice that his life has been ruined by a girl with whom he is still in love, Madge thinks the time ripe for an appointment. They meet. He finds that the Kind Voice has been Madge all the time and he steels his breast against the woman who has added deception to her previous crime. But her “gracious gracefulness” and other qualities win in the end, and we finish at Christmas with Herald Angels and wedding-bells.
Mrs. Barclay certainly has skill. Nobody else can write a silly story half so well as she. Her English is fluent and vivid, although loose; her humour is genuine if not subtle; and she handles her dialogue, such as it is, very cleverly. But, above all, she knows how to serve out the glamour and the pathos with a ladle. The hero of this book is as generous as he is clever. He can conjure; he can make seagulls settle on his shoulder; and he does kind actions to widows. There are also an heroic ex-soldier who saved a man’s life at Spion Kop; a bishop’s window brimming over with love and reminiscences; and an honest, stupid Englishman with no thoughts of self. The only bad character dies, and the end is a pæan of joy. As long as she can keep this up Mrs. Barclay will never lose her hold. In spite of the war, this book, I should think, will sell in millions and millions.
Vorwärts reports that Dr. Ludwig Frank, a member of the Reichstag, has been killed in battle near Lunéville. Dr. Frank, who sat for Mannheim, was one of the leaders of the Southern Revisionists. I had tea with him at the Reichstag last May. He took me into the Strangers’ Gallery of the House, where I heard Dr. Liebknecht makes one of his anti-armament speeches, the one in which he incidentally accused a Prussian general of negotiating sales of decorations. It seems very remote now. Dr. Frank was barrister; a big Jew with a heavy, handsome face—sallow skin, aquiline nose, black moustache, strong chin, dominating eyes. His romantic air—he was supposed to resemble Lassalle—made him very popular in the rich Jewish salons of Berlin. He was a strong man, and one would have said an ambitious one. But a middle-class man who enters the German Socialist Party sacrifices so much that he ipso facto clears himself of the suspicion of mere ambition.