as does Sir J. M. Barrie, because I find it suffering a little from that kicking against the pricks which is the great sin of modern egotism. We are faithless, and condemn faithlessness in our friends; untruthful, and turn swiftly on the liar; dishonest and cry 'Police' at the petty pilferer; cruel, and shriek if our own toes are trodden. Nothing can make me really like Conrad himself. His quest is for his own selfish youth, the youth which took, not the youth which gave, the youth which was worshiped rather than that which paid homage. No doubt he is deceived by himself, but he is at too great pains to deceive others; and the terrible, hectic effort to beat up his passion for Mrs. Adaile has in it something of cruelty, which I do not expect in Mr. Merrick's works. IV Except Sir J. M. Barrie's bold parallel to Hardy I have seen no effort to compare or contrast Merrick with contemporary novelists. He has been highly praised by some judges, but there has not been much effort, so far as I am aware, to see him in relation to other novelists. And such a judgment is difficult. He does not suggest comparison with others. There are points when his work has affinities with that of Mr. St. J. Lucas, and there is in his humor at times something which recalls Mr. Barry Pain. But Mr. Merrick's most characteristic work say, The Quaint Companions, The Actor-Manager, The Position of Peggy Harper, Cynthia, One Man's View, and some dozen or so short stories, have a quality not easily paralleled in English fiction. One feels a little like the man who tried to describe the taste of an olive. 'Oh! it tastes . . . well-it tastes, damn it - it it tastes like an olive!' Yet one can get, perhaps, a little farther . than that. The first and last thing which marks Mr. Merrick off from all other living English novelists, except possibly Mr. Charles Marriott, is his preference for intellectual truth. I do not know if Mr. Merrick dabbles in philosophy; if he does, his opinion of James, or of Bergson, should be amusing. He has nothing of the pragmatist in him. And this gives him an astonishing loneliness. Even those of our authors Mr. Shaw, or Samuel Butler, or Vernon Lee - who profess to value intellectual truth, rarely if ever take their truth neat. It is laced with all kinds of old prejudices or outworn methods. As for the realists, whether they are simply disguised romantics as Mr. Wells, or idealists with a crusade like Mr. Wells again and Mr. Bennett, they never see truth intellectually. They have too great a respect for facts. But Mr. Merrickand in this he is almost purely French - will not look at a problem, even a sentimental one, except from the standpoint of intellectual truth. It is his weapon against humbug; his spear of Abdiel. This helps us, I think, to find his real parallel. It is not with novelists it is rather with the French moralists of the eighteenth century that I should compare him, Rochefoucauld, or Vauvenarges. Their wisdom is worldly, no doubt, and narrow in scope. Such a sentiment as 'Le plaisir de l'amour est d'aimer, et l'on est plus heurex par la passion que l'on a, que par celle que l'on donne''Love's pleasure is in loving; and a man is happier in the passion he feels than in that he inspires' is at least half a lie; but it has a strict intellectual truth for the world which acts upon it, and it is the very motto, in some ways, for Conrad in Quest of His Youth. It is the salt quality, the tang of brine in his wit which is responsible for Mr. Merrick's being disregarded still in some quarters. As the war makes the world wiser and sadder, and as the peace that is coming makes nations better known to each other, The Bookman perhaps the British public will give a greater hearing to one who has never flattered its prejudices, or tried for its edification. SPECTATORS BY CLARA SMITH AND T. BOSANQUET XV MRS. JOHN WYCHWOOD TO MR. NICOLAS ROMER Greenways, near Dorking, My dear Nicolas, When I had seen your train off to Rye on Friday, and realized that I had at least half an hour for reflection before Betty and my own train to Gomshall would arrive, I felt miserably forlorn and out of love with the future that I'd thought so nice. And if once you feel forlorn in Charing Cross there is no hope of recovery, or indeed of anything but a deepening gloom as long as you stay there; so I made the porter, against his wishes, take sole responsibility for my possessions, and came out myself into the Strand to look for tea. You won't think that a particularly wise plan, and I did in the end have to compromise with iced coffee at Appenrodt's, as he lives so conveniently near; but it was much better for my temper than solitary meditation beside my luggage, although, for one moment, I thought I'd made a very grave error in judgment, and that Providence was most decidedly not on my side, for, at the only table near the air, sat Hilda. And she is a person whom you can only afford to meet when your confidence in life is practically perfect; her touch is too heavy for the uncertain extremes of conscious happiness or despair. She won't find out your attitude in either case; but perhaps the latter is the safer state as she probably can't make you more dismal than you already are, though Heaven help you if you have any official excuse for sorrow she will then offer you all the direct sympathy in her power. However, on this occasion my explanations of my presence seemed a fairly sound beginning. 'I suppose you can't let Greenways,' was her comment. 'It must be such a nuisance to have a regular house in the country. If John had been my husband, I should have resented it very much if he had left me Greenways and that charming house in Queen's Gate to his mother. Why you never asked him about his will, I can't imagine.' My beginning had betrayed me after all, and I hastily inquired when she wanted me to come and see her. 'On the 10th of August,' she said promptly, and I hope you've no silly ideas about people's social posi tion. Miss Watson is coming the same week. Such a sensible, brave woman, earning her living without any of this nonsense about wanting to get married.' I wished she had n't prejudiced the outlook by that word 'sensible,' it made me nervous about Miss Watson's sense of humor; but I consoled myself by the thought that Hilda is just as bad a judge of other people's character as of her own, also that the unmarried have very often much more time and spirit to sharpen the edge of their interest in life. And I said aloud that it sounded a very nice prospect. 'Well, I never care,' went on Hilda, 'whether a girl is the postman's daughter or not; provided she has the manners of a lady she can be my friend.' I like a heap of other qualifications, don't you, Nicolas? But I did n't describe them, as she would have agreed with me on almost every theoretical detail, and never, never in actual practice would our friends be the same. I let her wander on through the need for a recognizable business uniform for professional women 'something in the nature of a gymnastic costume, of soft blue or green' to the traveling habits of the poor: "They go about far too much, with their dirty clothes in the vehicles we all have to use. They should stay at home and save their 'bus fares.' It was charming to be told in the next five minutes that, politically, she was more in sympathy with the Socialists than any other party, and by the time I had got back to my luggage and found Betty, I liked my life just as much as ever and thought of my week-end party with the Danes as the nice plan it had always seemed. They did n't come until Saturday afternoon, and Rosamond looked so -- white that I seriously considered sending her to bed at once; but she met my suggestions with derision and insisted that she had merely faded, like all colored things, in the sun. So I had to let her do as she would-I imagine that everyone has to follow my example in that respect and her programme certainly did n't include going to bed early, and was full of energy for Sunday morning. Nobody else had any more definite views, so we let hers stand provisionally until we found we had taken too long over breakfast for them to be practicable. You can take a long time over breakfast if it begins late enough and is outdoors. I'd offered it to them indoors and alone, whenever they liked, but they all chose it in the garden some time after nine o'clock. 'I like people at any hour of the day, and I don't mind being cross myself,' was Rosamond's answer to my tactful inquiry; and Mr. Dane said all that mattered to him was the other person's temper. So we sat in the very green garden in the sunlight and discussed the creative arts and butterflies and eternity. I can see you raise your eyebrows in holy horror, but you know it is much more possible to mix conversations than drinks, and if you are to talk about eternity at all which I agree is an open question it must, at any rate, be outdoors in the sunshine, otherwise it does n't begin to be intelligible. As a matter of accurate fact it was rather the next stage in existence we considered than eternity qua eternity, but I think they can both be classed under the same heading. Mr. Dane said, 'I don't know much about it' (we all agreed with him there), 'but I should like to stay myself, and I don't want to stop altogether.' 'I should n't mind losing part of myself,' said Rosamond; 'it's given me a great deal of trouble, but I want to keep all my friends. I can't start afresh somewhere else being improved without them. It's too lonely a prospect.' I don't think I mind alterations in my own personality at all, but I don't like being 'somewhere else.' I do want to stay in touch with this world. 'I won't be born again as Georgina's sister instead of Nanda's,' said Betty. And the possibility was so horrid that we quickly talked of butterflies instead. There were some little blue ones to match the larkspurs, and white ones for the jasmine, but my garden has really too many colors in it to compete with the study in yellow at the Villa Madama. It was very still and hot and sunny, and Mr. Dane was the only one of us who proved in the least energetic. He settled down with paper and paints, because, he said, the sunlight through the leaves on Betty's white frock was so jolly, and he never got a chance to try that kind of effect in London. So he worked really hard, and gave us an unselfish excuse for our laziness. Rosamond looked a little wistfully at his preparations and said, 'But you will let us go into the woods some time, won't you?' I felt instant remorse, and offered her a long walk at once if she really wanted it, only it was much too hot, and she would like it better after tea; to which she agreed, if I could promise in return. that people would n't come and call on me in the afternoon and waste all the available time and that was easy enough, because all the possibilities think me still out of England. Mr. Dane then began making difficulties about woods; he said he wanted the common and a view. So I promised him that, too, in order to avoid disharmony, and we did finally give them both their hearts' desire, because you can't, without taking a great deal of trouble, go anywhere here that does n't fulfill all three conditions. English woods are very nice things, are n't they? Yesterday they were delicately cool and dark and green, and out on the common the rowan berries flaunted their lovely gay orange in the sun. We sat on the heather at the edge of the pine trees and looked across to the blue line of the Downs against a sky from which the blue had been almost burned out, and listened to churches ringing bells in the eager hope that some puzzled mortals would turn aside to consider explanations of it all; but we did n't ourselves get beyond feeling sorry for anyone indoors on such a heavenly day. We had n't any of us the kind of character that tackles the problem of why the world is made—it's quite enough that it is there, and there won't be nearly time enough to see it all. Once when I gave some carnations to a ragged little Londoner she said, 'Ain't they just too pretty to be real?' It rather broke my heart to think how many ugly things must have brought her to that point of view; but sometimes, I admit, it's my own not for carnations in particular but for the world in general I'm childishly afraid that it is almost too lovely to be true. However, it's not a fear that lasts; Eaton Square, or Tottenham Court Road, and a hundred other things can always be relied on to crush it out! I hope you had just as charming a day with your blue sea at Rye, and were just as sorry when it came to an end. The Danes went back to London this morning, and Betty and I are going to-morrow until Friday, when we come here again. Yours ever, Nanda. XVI MR. NICHOLAS ROMER TO MRS. JOHN WYCHWOOD The Second Bungalow, My dear Nanda, You were n't at all in the proper state for clairvoyant vision if you saw my eyebrows raised in horror at the mixture of your breakfast-table conversations. "The creative arts and butterflies and eternity' what could be more harmonious? The first and the third are so closely linked that I won't insult you by expanding or expounding the connection. And as for butterflies surely you have n't forgotten old Mr. Whitehead's Easter sermon that we must have listened to for about ten successive years? Don't you remember how the fact that the beautiful butterfly started life as a nasty-looking grub was a positive proof that man was not only immortal but certainly destined to grow real wings in the next world? I think I must have taken the allegory very hard, for I can still recall the bewilderment and uneasiness it caused me. People—especially thoroughly grown-up people seemed so great seemed so great and glorious that I could n't bring myself to regard them as grubs. And it would be still more impossible now, although the grandeur and the glory that was humanity has been a good Ideal tarnished. So you don't mind the prospect of leaving off being your recognizable self? I think I feel with Peter Dane that I'd like to keep a bit of my own consciousness to go on with though though I quite agree with his sister that I could cheerfully part with a lot of troublesome pieces. But why should n't one? We're changing at such a pace in this mortal life that it does n't VOL. XI-NO. 574 seem very reasonable to expect the process to stop short let alone the horror of such a fate! Life means change, does n't it? wherever it is. That's what makes it so unceasingly amusing an adventure for self-conscious creatures like men and women. And if you're going to say that you are acquainted with plenty of people who are thoroughly bored with their lives-well, so am I; but I think it's mainly because they don't realize that they're never-ending experiments. They see themselves, by some optical delusion, as unchanging and permanent, and try, like your sisterin-law, to live with a graven idol that they suppose represents them. No wonder it's dull! I'm afraid the bored are in the majority in our generation, but I have much more hope of the next. I can't help believing that many of those rather vague but very vitalizing ideas which are enjoying a considerable vogue among the middleclass parents of to-day may, in spite of destructive criticism, have a good chance of really influencing the minds of their children. Our own unconscious absorption of the Darwinian theories is an example of the kind of influence I mean. However much shocked and startled our grand-parents were by the new revelations of biological science, I don't suppose their everyday outlook on life was much affected. They probably continued to live inside the circle of their old system of ideas. But we've grown up with Darwinism inside our circle of ideas from the beginning, and we could n't possibly think in terms that don't include those mid-Victorian discoveries. They may not represent the final truth, but that does n't matter. There are plenty of extremely clever and competent critics of M. Bergson's theories, but they have n't affected his immense popularity, and |