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LORD DUNSANY: A MODERN DREAMER

BY C. E. LAWRENCE

From The Bookman, July
(ENGLISH LITERARY MONTHLY)

THE march of the suburbs, the victory of the factories, the growth of those systems, utilitarian, commercial, material, which feed the pocket and often starve the heart, render it necessary more and more that the imagination should have fuller, wider play in art, in sympathy, in life. The world has fallen into sad and sordid ways. Now and then in history a man has arisen to break the crusts of convention and reestablish principles and a new ideal, bringing back, as it were, the reflection of the stars to our gutters; but where now is that pioneer, reformer, idealist? The thing called progress, the dark blessing known as prosperity, veils and clouds the world; and humanity spends its opportunity in admiring dross and drivel.

It is therefore right that we should be grateful to Lord Dunsany, and to such others as he, who, amid the welter of this costermonger hustle, see something of the truths beyond the sunset and remind us of them in prose or poetry worthy of the theme. For surely, after sympathy, imagination is the quality most necessary to our condition. Dunsany touches topmost things. In his vital dreams he wanders among the stars, stands with triumph often at the very Edge of the World, where 'gluttering' beasts in haunted cavities frown, and granite cliffs tower, threatening to overturn, yet ever enduring-linked with a multitude of wayward stairs.' The very extremity of this dreaming, its ever-desperate endeavor to comprehend

infinity from the brink of the ultimate, is, in truth, a vehement protest against the sordid worldliness of a groping mankind.

Lord Dunsany's work, whether expressed through essay-form, true narrative (as in Unhappy Far-Off Things), or in fable, parable, or play, is throughout distinctively his. Other writers in prose and verse have attained similar heights, have as surely recognized the irony of human ambition under the splendid indifference of eternity; have also heard some whispering of the laughter of the gods. Tomlinson, Omar, The Ancient Mariner, Thirza, The Opium-Eaterit needs no more than a hurried handful of memorable names to prove that Lord Dunsany's particular form of the ironic imagination, raising up mockery on immortal wings, has been shared by several. But other writers have won to these heights only sometimes. It has been one aspect only of their work. All Dunsany's endeavors, however, belong to this especial group; and, strangely, the only comparison to himself is to be found in his colleague, Mr. Sime, whose genius that right word-places him at the absolute forefront of artists in ironic imagination and the perfection of black-and-white. For such work as Mr. Sime has given and still can give us, we ought to go down thankfully on humble knees, hoping for more and much more from his inspired pencil.

As is to be expected, considering its challenge, Lord Dunsany's work is uneven. As a whole, it is true to an exalted

standard, and is deeply touched with the subtle, rare humor that holds a secret pity; but sometimes the vision threatens to overtopple, though never does it positively overtopple, or fall to the ludicrous. He is best in his short things as in the two Books of Wonder and the Fifty-One Tales, as well as in the volumes of Plays. Brevity and variety are his safeguards, the good fairies that prevent his falling to bathos and tediousness. For Eternity, his province, while stimulating to the imagination and helpfully awful to the heart, is indeed a gaping opportunity to boredom. The Gods of Pegana and Time and the Gods, leaving aside the wonderful drawings of Mr. Sime, are so determinately exalted-those deities among the mountains are far removed from the human — and so successfully resist the tendency to be natural, that reading them makes them seem like a new pagan service, all litany; one shares the wish of the nicely naughty child, who declared that rather than go to the orthodox joys of heaven she would prefer having the little devils to play with. When irony is over-sustained, it loses its effect; when the imagination rises to, and remains at, heights beyond the range of human sympathy, it becomes very like a goose with labored wings flying over a wilderness. Beauty, wit, immortality, are divorced from their estate. And that is all that need be said of the defects of Lord Dunsany's great qualities.

How good those qualities are! No one can tell a tale more deftly; no one has a greater sense of the sufficiency and economy of words. His parables and tales are a mosaic in which the right verbal coloring is generally aptly, exactly used. He is fond of the quest of stolen jewels, with the inevitable hunter following on and on, through valleys and over mountains, along dizzy precipices and up dazzling heights, until

the divine vengeance leaps, and the mortal life is spilled to the tune of shadowy mirth. If it is not a great jewel stolen, it is something else of an equal mystic quality, as the contents of the golden box 'conveyed' by the three literary men, Slith and Slorg and Sippy, which contained 'fifteen peerless odes in the alcaic form, five sonnets that were by far the most beautiful in the world, nine ballads in the manner of Provence that had no equal in the treasuries of man, a poem addressed to a moth in twentyeight perfect stanzas, a piece of blank verse of over a hundred lines on a level not yet known to have been attained by man, as well as fifteen lyrics on which no merchant would dare to set a price.'

Whatever may be the treasures in his tales, which tempt the dishonest heart, be sure there is an ironic vengeance inevitably following. The best example of this favorite subject of Lord Dunsany is found in his play, A Night at an Inn, wherein four merchant-sailors, having stolen the solitary ruby eye of the idol Klesh, are dogged by three priests who, despite dodging, hiding, and subterfuge, follow infallibly the thief who holds the jewel. The robbers, led by a broken 'toff' with brains and foresight, at this desperate juncture hire an inn in a wood, purposing to entrap and murder their pursuers. The plot is successful. The priests are tricked and slain; and then then, when victory is won, the ominous tramping of heavy feet is heard, and Klesh himself comes in. The monstrous idol, groping, finds his eye, restores it to his forehead, and then goes out, to call the murderers one by one to their doom. The play has humor, insight, and the surprise which brings the thrill. Its very grotesquerie enhances the verisimilitude.

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With all Lord Dunsany's predilection for the supernatural and supernormal, - for those mighty powers, Time and

Death, with Pan, the Sphinx, elaborate idols, rattling dragons, and the infinite deities of his own creation, - he manages, even in his lofty flights, generally to remain in touch with humanity. He recognizes towns and the factory system as the institutions they are horribly destructive to beauty and the kindnesses of life; though he also sees the assured finality, even of enormities. We are given a glimpse of Pan reproving the flowers and saying, 'Be patient a little, these things are not for long.' He brings this truth further home by his sketches of, and references to, London. This facet of his irony finds happy play in A Tale of London, wherein the hasheesheater, sitting cross-legged upon a purple cushion before his Sultan, blinks seven times, and describes London with its golden balconies and sand-strewn alabaster ways, lighted with lanterns of chrysoprase; its Thames bearing ships with violet sails, bringing incense for the braziers that perfume the streets, silver for the statues of heroes, sapphires to reward their poets. If only our county councillors would read this gentle satire, and our members of Parliament study Gibbon!

To choose the happiest story and the best from such an abundant treasury is a task for the hero of a fairy tale; but three I must mention, for they have the highest qualities of imagination, humor, and that sweet essential, wistful pathos. The Wonderful Window belonged to Mr. Sladden, who bought from a strange man in the street a little window in old wood, with small panes set in lead. Sladden fastened the window over a small cupboard in his poor bed-sittingroom and found that he could see through the window an ancient city, with towers, archers and troubadours, and many little flags showing golden dragons on a silver field. Every hour that he could spare from business he spent at his magic window, watching

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Thirteen at Table, the third of these gems, or plums, or what-you-please-tocall-'em, is one of the best ghost-tales put into printer's ink. A huntsman, after a vigorous chase, rides far, very far, and comes to a strange house in a neglected park, where he demands and, after hesitancy, receives shelter. His host, a recluse, confessed to having lived a wicked life. As the men talked, the door opened again and again, when the carpet and the hangings flapped from the draught; but no one seemed entering, though always the guest was introduced by his host to a new invisible to eleven women. And so they dined thirteen at table, two men and the others ghosts. And that is enough for this telling.

Lord Dunsany is a hope in British literature, a necessary influence against the commonplaces of popular fiction. Until If took the town by storm at the Ambassador's, a month ago, he cannot have received much encouragement for his work; but I hope he will take this tribute as an appeal to continue his star-strewn and deity-haunted ways; for the world badly needs imagination, irony, and sympathy such as his.

GANDHISM

BY B. NATESAN

From East and West, June

(BOMBAY INDIAN ECLECTIC POLITICAL AND LITERARY MONTHLY)

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.A. LINCOLN.

His politics were a vehement battle, not a game, no affair of a career. -J. MORLEY.

In viewing these intestine and civil broils of ours, who doth not exclaim that this world's vast frame is near unto a dissolution, and that the day of judgment is ready to fall on us? - MONTAIGNE.

THREE men in our time have added fresh lustre to the genius of our race and given the world a measure of the stature to which Indian manhood could attain: Tagore in literature, Bose in science, and Mr. Gandhi in the sphere of action. It would be profitless to discuss whose is the most enduring mark on the temper of our generation. But of this we may be sure. The case of those who meddle with the affairs of men is the most problematical of all. For public memories are short, and political reputations are charged with the qualities of mercury. They rise and fall in proportion to the density of the popular mind. We have witnessed in our own time the sudden eclipse of statesmen reputed to be 'the pillars of a people's hope.' The name of Wilson was a name to conjure with. He was for a time the undisputed Messiah of the modern world. Yet to-day 'none so poor to do him reverence.' Asquith, who is now relegated to the oblivion of 'back numbers,' was for a time the directing head of the greatest empire on earth. If statesmen who have to look to the continuity of policy and carry the public with them are so liable to the vicissitudes of fortune, how rare it

would be for individualists and hotgospellers to retain the favor of the fitful public! "The contemporaries of superior men easily go wrong about them. Peculiarity discomposes people; the swift current of life distorts their points of view from understanding and appreciating such men.'

Mr. Gandhi cannot escape the inevitable fate of public workers. To be great is to be misunderstood. Who knows whether the people who now are with him may not later turn against him? It is the lot of all powerful minds, not only to shape and mould men, even as a great artist shapes and moulds a piece of marble, but to be teased and tortured by them. And a political career is beset with all the limitations of a transient propaganda. Circumstances alter the conditions of life. Opinions change. A new age brings with it new aspirations, and we overgrow or discard our old beliefs. The best brains of the country respond to a strange call, and men turn their backs on their old leader, whose words become a voice in the wilderness.

New occasions teach new duties,

Time makes ancient good uncouth. Add to this Mr. Gandhi's stubborn will and his persistent defiance of all authority, either of the Government or of the populace. It is only a coincidence that Mr. Gandhi is on the side of the people in the Caliphate question, as in the great struggle for Swaraj. I do not think that he has been guided solely

by popular demands. If by some irony of things, in this world of chances, Mr. Gandhi had ranged himself in a different camp, he would have gone on with the same untiring energy and singleness of purpose. The fact is that men like Mr. Gandhi are for the time completely absorbed in their movements, and their voice is the voice of the cause they represent. In this sense, all great men are the product of their age, either directing the dominant impulse of their generation, or opposing it with the tragic, yet chivalrous spirit of crusaders. Whether Mr. Gandhi is now engaged in a constructive, or a merely destructive, campaign, will be answered differently by different men. After all, they are merely phrases of convenience. The one may not be altogether antagonistic to the other. They often are complementary. A great deal of rubbish must certainly go before we can build aright. But my point is that Mr. Gandhi is not guided purely by popular wishes. He thinks in straight lines; and even if all the people should desert him, he would not budge an inch.

If there is none who comes when you call, walk alone.

If there is none who speaks and they turn aside

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"The world is traveling under formidable omens into a new era very unlike the times in which my lot was cast. There is an old saying that to live is to outlive. It means no more than that Ideals have their hours and fade. The oracle of to-day drops from his tripod on the morrow.'

But Mr. Gandhi has the spirit of eternal youth in his heart. With all the rigidity of his puritanical outlook on life, his genius is so supple that he can quickly enter into the inwardness of the new era. That is a tribute to the alertness of a mind that has not been warped and cramped by the conventions of an indolent and unthinking routine. Without entering into the merits of his latest speculations, one can easily discover the rapid developments in his political opinions. It is an achievement for a man of his age and habits. Nor can one charge him with inconsistency. It is, of course, most dangerous to follow a leader who changes his politics with the frequency of a weather-cock. The sincerity of a new convert is no excuse for the vehemence of his former convictions. He has no

their pale faces, bare your heart and speak right to demand the sudden conversion

alone.

If there is none to share your journey, and they all leave you and go, tread upon the thorns of your path and bleed alone.

If there is none to light the lamp in the stormy night, and they shut their doors against you, light your own heart with thunder flame and burn alone.

That is the spirit in which Mr. Gandhi works; he meets with triumph and disaster and treats those two impostors just the same.'

I have always thought that after fifty a man is seldom open to new ideas, and puts a stop to all adventures of the spirit. I can well understand John Morley's valedictory words the most

of his followers.

'Change of opinion,' said Mr. Gladstone, 'in those to whose judgment the public looks more or less to assist its own, is an evil to the country, although a much smaller evil than their persistence in a cause which they know to be wrong. It is not always to be blamed. But it is always to be watched with vigilance; always to be challenged and put upon its trial.'

More than once has Mr. Gandhi stood his trial, as he is too perfect a gentleman to dissemble his views. I have known none more chivalrous in the exercise of this heroic freedom, even at the risk of personal reputation and

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