The Best British Short Stories of 1923

Front matter

Rie Best Batch Short Stories of 1923

| EDWARD J. O'BRIEN — JOHN COURNOS

Loe VA By ze

Introduction

THE SMELL IN: THE Liprary. By Michael Arlen .

(From The Sketch)

Miss BRraAcreciIRDLE Dors Her Duty. By Stacy

Aumonier

(From The Strand Magazine and The Pictorial Review)

A QUEER FELLow. By Clifford Bax . (From The Beacon)

MELANCHOLY ADVENTURE. By D. F. Boyd . (From The Manchester Guardian)

Tue Mote. By Gerald Bullett (From The London Mercury)

Brack Country. By Thomas Burke . (From Lioyd’s Story Magazine)

Aas, Poor BottrncTon! By A. E. Coppard .

(From The Saturday Review)

SINDBAD OF “SuNNY Lea.” By Norman Davey .

(From John o’ London’s Weekly)

DEATH OF THE JESTER. By W. L. George . (From The Century Magazine)

. Pa Tue Strancer. By Richard Hughes (From The Weekly Westminster Gazette)

1The order in which the stories are published is alphabetical by authors, and is not to be regarded as an indication of relative merit. ‘ 1x x CONTENTS

PAGE “Some TALK oF ALEXANDER.” By A.S.M. Hutchinson 106

(From The Sphere)

Comrort. By F. Tennyson Jesse... . . . . . 443 (From The London Magazine)

Oxtp Gapcett. By Sheila Kaye-Smith . . . . 165 (From Cassell’s Weekly and Harper’s Magazine)

THE Horse DEALER’s DAauGHTER. By D. H. Lawrence 175 (From The English Review)

He Fry, By Katherine Mansheld=. .. ; 7.) sagtgs (From The Century Magazine)

THE Taran. By W. Somerset Maugham. . . 200

(From Pearson’s Magazine, London)

Srripes. By Ethel Colburn Mayne. . . . . 208 (From The Golden Hind) —

ANOTHER TEMPLE GonE. By C. E. Montague . . 216 (From The London Mercury)

Tue InsprreD ’BusMAN. By Elinor Mordaunt . . 234 (From The Saturday Review)

THE Sniper. By Liam O'Flaherty . . . . . 242 (From The New Leader)

ContTRarRY Mary. By Edwin Pugh. . . . . 247 (From The English Review)

THE Mayor’s Dovecote. By Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch 254 (From Cassell’s Winter Annual)

Tue PropHetic CAMERA. By L. De Giberne Sieveking 267 (From The English Review and The Strand Magazine)

Tue Macuine Breaxs Down. By Osbert Sitwell . 279 (From The English Review)

CONTENTS xi

THE ENEMy. By Hugh Walpole. . . 290 (From The Strand Magazine and The Merropolitan) Buessep ARE THE MEEK. By Mary Webb. . . 302 (From The English Review)

THE YEARBOOK OF THE BRITISH SHORT Story. . 311 PMOVECVIGtONS = ery) DC wegen ith yo ol Nake ial Addresses of Periodicals . . . . . . « 315 abe.Best British Short Stories ~.. 2)... 2/319 Articles onthe Short: Story . .: 02° a. 2) a 324

Volumes of Short Stories Published . . . . 331

INTRODUCTION iF

Certain critics, as well as individual readers, of the first issue of this series have done us the embarrassing honour of presenting a demand for a set of principles governing the art of the short story.

At first sight this demand would seem to be a legitimate one, seeing that, in making our compilation, my colleague and I have, in the words of a distinguished contemporary, set ourselves up as “self-appointed authorities” on the art of the short story.

To this serious charge, I, for my part, plead guilty, but on good grounds beg to be recommended to mercy. ‘There is the extenuating circumstance which I could put into the inevitable retort: ‘But can you tell me, sir, of any authority in this profession of Arts and Letters which is not self-appointed?”

After all, my distinguished contemporary, who happens to be a novelist, has, in his excellent books, appointed himself an authority on human nature. One may be sorry that human nature is like that, and no better than he has depicted it, but that is surely not his fault. To decree otherwise would require at least an authority on authorities, but as that also must needs be self-appointed we would not be any nearer to solving the problem of the novelist’s truth, accuracy and precision. That is the worst of the standardized existence which this novelist in particular is fond of depicting: standardized life does not appear to make for standards in art.

Limitations imposed upon human nature by the machine have produced Curious effects in that the artists, the first to react, have sought escape in a riot of individualism. As often, in times of physical danger, the individual sees prospect of escape in personal initiative, in fending for himself, so in time of social danger the artist instinctively

xiii xiv INTRODUCTION gropes to save his soul in his own way. Close formations are not to be anticipated when a house is on fire and its occupants are trying to make their escape. They are almost sure to do this through as many doors and windows as are open to them. There may be only one starting point, but many directions of departure.

One man finds escape in presenting pictures of life as antithetic to the life the artist has escaped from as it is possible to attain. This has been called “romantic escape,” or “wish fulfilment.”

Another finds escape in the act of escape itself. This is not such a paradox as it sounds. It merely means that the artist finds an exhilaration, a joy, in presenting types who are in revolt against the status quo imposed upon society by a mechanical order. Such an artist sees the only pleasure of existence in struggle, and makes of this struggle an end in itself,

A third finds escape in acceptance, from which, indeed, the espouser of rebels, just mentioned, is an inevitable reaction. And by acceptance I do not mean the artist’s acquiescence in the conditions of life, but quite another thing, his acceptance of them as objective materials for his art. An objective picture need not be less but more potent as a criticism of life, inasmuch as detached truth, free of preconceptions, is the more likely to stir the spectator’s, or the reader’s, imagination to active participation in the unspoken protest. It was, surely, no accident that Chekhov’s appearance synchronized with the introduction of mechanical industrialism in Russia; and it was equally inevitable that Gorky’s rebel heroes should follow, barefoot but proud and blatantly bitter, Nietzschean philosophers and supermen “spitting” on life, as the Russian phrase goes. Still Gorky’s heroes would possibly never have spat but for Chekhov’s characters preceding them, lamb-like, holy and resigned. The meek truly shall inherit the earth, especially in art.

There is another kind of acceptance,—hardly an escape —which, unfortunately, is only too prevalent both in England and America; that is, the pragmatic acceptance, acquiescence in art toward that commercial device known as the law of demand and supply, which covers a multitude of

INTRODUCTION | XV sins. For such as accept, and conform to this law,—not that, at heart, they believe in the picture,—life is a rosy affair, in which, in the end of things, every hero comes - home to roost with his heroine. I said, this was hardly an escape. Certainly not for the author, who obtains his personal escape with the money which such profitable fantasies enable him to earn.. On the other hand, it is easily conceivable how such romantic yarns serve as an escape for the standardized multitudes, and how it must be something of a solace to them to know that even a shop-girl can get away with a peer. Art is a drug, even bad art, and it would be folly to be contemptuous of this aspiration in the common man for the “romantic” and the “heroic,” however degraded the romantic and the heroic may have become in ratio to the degradation of life itself.

Hence we arrive at the strange paradox: the man who caters to the multitude succeeds only by merging his own personality with it: he does not contrive at his own escape (except in the material sense); while the man who is motivated by a deep, often subconscious desire, or need, to find a spiritual escape, succeeds only at a great price: by differentiating himself from his fellows, or better, by expressing his personality to the full, regardless of his fellows. This individualization, while it has its compensations, has also patent disadvantages, since it implies that there is no real unity in the modern world, and that the artist worthy of the name may produce his finest work only by going against the stream, not with it.

There is something wrong about this, and it was surely not always so. Unity in the arts did once exist. Agathon had an audience of thousands before which to recite a prize lyric poem; today a poet is lucky to get a small roomful. The unity of architecture could be studied in old Florence, but not in new London. The unity of decorative art could have been studied not so long ago in old Japan, but the new mechanized, commercialized Japan appears to be going the way of the western world in its artistic disunity. Dearly has humanity paid for its servitude to the machine. Standardization has established in the arts the law of action and reaction. And so we have at the opposite poles the mechanxvi INTRODUCTION ism of Picasso and the savage abandon of Matisse, the optimism of H. G. Wells in “Men Like Gods” and the utter nihilism of James Joyce in “Ulysses.” The Fascisti and the Bolsheviks exist in the arts as in politics, and between them various gradations of personal individual impulses.

Now the whole matter comes down to this. The individual impulses which go toward creating the modern short story are many and various. How, in the face of this obvious disunity, any one can expect a set of principles governing the art of the short story I frankly do not see. To the critic who complained of last year’s selection that it had no unity, I can say that in a thoroughly representative collection of modern short stories unity is the last thing possible. As many tendencies exist as there are individuals writing, and as many seis of principles can be noted.

If by principles one means structure, style and technique, then it is possible to say that the writer’s point of view, his outlook on life, his manner of escape, all go towards their formulation. It is a truism that if any one has anything to say he will find a way of saying it. There is far more connection between life,—moral or social motivation, hidden though it be,—and an author’s artistic principles than is generally admitted. Even “pattern’”-making, devoid as it would seem to be of all ulterior purpose, is an escape, perhaps the most desperate, most potent escape of all. Oscar Wilde’s profound manifesto, “All art is useless,” is only another way of saying that to him all values were useless but that of art. He might have also said, “Love is useless,” which would have been equally true and equally valuable. He certainly would have said, “Machines are useful,” and they are the less valuable for that. There is high “moral purpose’—hateful phrase, through abuse—in that saying of Wilde’s, though its author would have denied it.

In but one great modern literature, the Russian,—possibly because Russia is the one country which has not wholly surrendered to industrialism—is this moral or social purpose evident, giving it a kind of unity. For that reason an effort could feasibly be made to establish some sort of principles which animate all Russian fiction, just as it might be possible to establish the principles which governed Eliza-

INTRODUCTION _ xvii bethan drama. The difference between the methods employed by Tolstoy and Garshine, Korolenko and Chekhov, Gorky and Andreyev, Kuprin and Sologub, is not so great that it could not be bridged by some common principle. But how, in heaven’s name, is one to apply the same principles to the short stories of Henry James and O. Henry, . Rudyard Kipling and Katherine Mansfield, Walter De La Mare and Neil Lyons, George Moore and Ernest Bramah, Jack London and Nathaniel Hawthorne? Shuffle these names as you will, inter-relate them as you choose, the result is the same.

In short, there are as many principles in the art of the short story as there are artists, and to set down the various principles it would be necessary to compile a dictionary of definitions, a sort of Who’s Who in the Short Story. My collaborator, Mr. O’Brien, and I may do this in a future

issue of this anthology.

_ The twenty-five stories collected in this volume, from periodicals of one year, will, I think, go a long way toward substantiating my argument. If it is a kind of Noah’s Ark in the variety of its contents, it is not for us to apologize. Noah, as the first Anthologist, had his troubles. We have had to chase through the modern jungle for our short stories as Noah for his kangaroo; the right short story was often elusive. And we had to follow the same principle, and get into our Ark the best available of each kind. While congratulating ourselves on what we have managed to get in, it is quite conceivable that, unknown to us, the big whale may be all the time cutting wild and amusing capers on the outside, all around the Ark. But, if reports are true, the whale is a creature that is nowadays extinct or nearly extinct, though, in any event, we strongly suspect that the White specimen, which obsessed Captain Ahab in “Moby Dick,” is still subject to pursuit and should be in all ages to come to all prepared to pay Ahab’s price.

JOHN COURNOS.

Oxford, June, 1923.

XVili INTRODUCTION II

J

For the benefit of readers unacquainted with the first volume of this series, I repeat here a brief summary of the principles which have governed our choice of stories. We have set ourselves the task of disengaging the essential human qualities in our contemporary fiction which, when chronicled conscientiously by our literary artists, may fairly be called a criticism of life. We are not at all interested in formule, and organized criticism at its best would be nothing more than dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead. What has interested us, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh living current which flows through the best British and Irish work, and the psychological and imaginative reality which writers have conferred upon it.

No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination than we display at present.

The present record covers the period from July, 1922, to May, 1923, inclusive. During this period we have sought to select from the stories published in British and American periodicals those stories by British and Irish authors which have rendered life imaginatively in organic substance and artistic form. Substance is something achieved by the artist in every creation, rather than something already present, and accordingly a fact or a group of facts in a story only attain substantial embodiment when the artist’s power of compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth. The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected facts or incidents. This test may be conveniently called the test of substance.

INTRODUCTION. xix

But a second test is necessary if the story is to take rank above other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skillful selection and arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization.

We have recorded here the names of a group of stories which possess, we believe, the distinction of uniting genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven pattern with such sincerity that they are worthy of being reprinted. If all of these stories were republished, they would not occupy more space than six or seven novels of average length. Our selection of them does not imply the critical belief that they are great stories. A year which produced one great story would be an exceptional one. It is simply to be taken as meaning that we have found the equivalent of six or seven volumes worthy of republication among all the stories published during the period under consideration. In compiling this book we have permitted no personal preference or prejudice to consciously influence our judgment. The general and particular results of our study will be found explained and carefully detailed in the supplementary part of the volume. Mr. Cournos has read the English periodicals, and I have read the American periodicals. We have then compared our judgments.

EDWARD J. O’BRIEN.

THE BEST BRITISH SHORT STORIES OF 1923

Notr.— The order in which the stories are published is alphabetical by authors, and is not to be regarded as an indication of relative merit.

THE SMELL IN THE LIBRARY’

By MICHAEL ARLEN (From The Sketch)

iE

ONE night we were at a party, George Tarlyon and I,

and there were also present some other people. It was not, however, a good party, and we left it before eleven o’clock. I cannot remember now how it was that one had gone there so early, but it is of no significance. As we passed out, a misguided fellow said it would get better later on, but I extracted him from Tarlyon’s teeth, and so out into the street. A long string of cars stretched from the door towards Park Lane, and here and there chauffeurs stood in sombre groups, and we wondered if they thought they were missing anything. The heat of the crowded rooms had put us in a fever, the night air penetrated our flimsy evening-coats, and we shivered and murmured. From the open windows of the house we had left there followed us down the length of Green Street that asinine blare which is the punishment of England for having lost America; and George Tarlyon muttered that there ought to be a law to prevent people from giving fat-headed parties full of crashing bores and plain women, the joints of whose knees cracked in trying any dance which their mothers had not danced before them. I tried to soothe him and myself by saying that parties were not what they were, but he would not be soothed, for he had been given a glass of cider-cup in mistake for champagne, and he who touches cider-cup in

1 First published as “Red Antony.”

Copyright, 1923; by Michael Arlen. }

Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Curtis Brown, Ltd. From “These Charming People,” published by W. Collins & Son, Ltd. and George H. Doran Co.

the watches of the night may neither forget nor forgive.

We walked up Park Lane aimlessly, for we knew not what to do nor whither to go. We were further elated by the fact that we could sum up only one cigarette between us.

I suggested that one might do worse than go to bed, but Tarlyon said it was too early for that. “It is never too early,” I said morosely, “to go to bed.”

“Pah!” said Tarlyon, and so we walked down Park Lane.

Now it is frequently said that Park Lane is full of Jews, but very few met our eyes and they might quite well have been Gentiles. There are many illusions prevalent in the provinces about life in the great metropolis of London: such as (a) that it is gay: (0) that it is wicked: (c) that boys will be boys: (d) that there is plenty to do when it rains: (e) that you have only to go for a walk to see many “well-dressed women in costly furs”; but the one which has even less foundation in fact than any of these is that, life in a great city being what it is, there is never an hour of the twenty-four when the great streets are not, to a student of life, full of matter for observation. But, as George Tarlyon said, you might be a student of life until you burst and still find no matter for observation—though here we were in Park Lane and the hour not yet eleven!

“The whole thing is a ramp,” we said. “Now take this matter about the Jews. We have been distinctly given to understand that this Lane is full of Jews—but what do we see? Two ’buses and a policeman. But that leads to an interesting speculation: can a policeman be a Jew? Has such a thing as a Jewish policeman ever been seen or heard of? And if not, what is it that prevents a policeman from being a Jew? Is the religious feeling among policemen stronger than that among Privy Councillors?”

“Let’s ask him,” I suggested. The policeman was decorating’ the corner of Upper Brook Street. Tarlyon asked him, and the policeman said that Vine Street Police Station was not so far off as all that, while as for Marlborough Street, it was even nearer. He wasn’t there to be accosted, he wasn’t, said the policeman wickedly.

“Ho!” said Tarlyon.

“Good-night, constable,” I said hurriedly.

“Good-night, sir,” said he—a discreet man.

“Pah!” said Tarlyon.

We walked up Park Lane.

And suddenly Tarlyon gripped my arm, and waved his stick and whispered—

“Look at that! Ralph, just look at that!”

Ten yards or so ahead of us loomed the back of a giant. He was striding on with huge steps, a black cloak was flung about him, and he wore no hat. Maybe it was the cloak, swaying this way and that and one end flapping over a shoulder, that made the man seem taller than he really was— but it was a colossal back.

“It’s reminiscent,’ Tarlyon murmured. “I can’t help a feeling about that back—it’s reminiscent.”

“Tt’s reminiscent,” I whispered, “of a back I once lent money to. One hundred pounds it was. ce

We quickened our pace. The huge figure passed under the light of a lamp, and the light fell on his bare head, and his hair flamed up like fire.

The huge figure, the arrogant walk, the flaming ginger a

“Red Antony!” I murmured.

“And we thought he was dead!” muttered Tarlyon—as though Red Antony could have died without the noise of his death-rattle confounding the thunder of the guns that killed many better men! Could a man who lived so noisily die as other men? And yet, because the lean years of peace had passed without sight or sign of him, we had believed the rumour that had had it that Sir Antony Poole had risen to be sergeant in a Canadian storm battalion and had then died; which had seemed natural in a kind of way, for the worst German shot couldn’t, one thought, have consistently missed six-foot-four under a crown of flaming hair.

If there was a man who did not know, or know of, Antony Poole in the careless years before ‘the war, then there must have been something the matter with his eyes or ears. For Red Antony was a famous sight in every crowded place in London, and achieved considerable nonentity as the noisiest and worst- tempered rascal since Fighting Fitzgerald of the Regency. He crashed, did Antony, in furious idiocy from row to row and roguery to roguery, so that the day inevitably came when no decent man or woman would be seen speaking to the man. Oh, a calamitous pair, the brothers Poole! For one night his brother, the great Sir Roger, brilliant and sardonic Roger, dark and successful Roger, good sportsman and lovable fellow—one night our Roger put a bullet through his head, and at the inquest the amazed world heard that he had done this unbelievable thing because the police were hammering at the door with a warrant for his arrest on a charge of fraud. This we, his friends, did not believe. The police may have been hammering at the door, we said, but the police are notoriously promiscuous about the doors they hammer at. “Fraud be damned in connection with Roger Poole!’—that is what we said. Why, he was fine, that Roger—fine/ Thus we mourned him, once the wealthiest and wittiest of our company, and we defended his memory against the few who dared impugn it. But the disappearance of the red giant who was now Sir Antony Poole we did not mourn, for from the day of the inquest, at which he broke down and wept like a stricken child, he had not been seen in London until this night in Park Lane.

II

“Go quietly,” Tarlyon restrained me. “We'll learn Red Antony to walk up Park Lane without a hat.”

. pay we approached, one on each side of the colossal ack.

“Oi!” we cried.

A wrench, and he faced us. We are tall, but we were as children beneath him.

“Oi to you!” snarled Antony. “Who the blazes are you, anyway?” And the great red expanse which was given to Antony for a face surveyed us intolerantly. Never what you might call an easy-tempered man, Red Antony.

“We be friends,” said Tarlyon sombrely.

“That’s uncommonly original of you,” drawled Antony. “I didn’t know I had any.” And he pretended not to recognize us—for Antony must always act, always play cussed.

“You haven’t,” Tarlyon grinned. “But mine was just a manner of speaking.” He knew his man; and there passed over Red Antony’s face that earthquake and tornado which was given him for a smile and a laugh.

“Hell! Always the same Tarlyon! How are you, George?”

“Monstrous,” says George.

“But there is no sensation in matter,” boomed Red Antony, crushing his hand.

“And this,” said Tarlyon, waving his other towards me, “and this, Sir Antony, is your old friend Ralph Wyndham Trevor, whom you may quite well have forgotten, since you owe him a hundred pounds.”

Another earthquake across that vast red expanse, so that I feared for the sleep of those mythical Jews. .. .

“Dear old Trevor—fancy having kept you waiting all this time! Here you are, man, here you are.” And from somewhere inside his cloak he jerked a pocket-book into my hand and crushed it against my palm. ‘You can keep the change, old boy, as you’re younger than I am and look as though you need it. Always take vegetables with your meat, Trevor.”

“T hate to take money from an impoverished baronet,” I got in, just to goad him.

“Tmpoverished nothing!” he boomed, and swung on Tarlyon, who backed a step. ‘“D’you remember, George, that Roger always said I had a flair for making money 2

“But he added,” Tarlyon said, “that you hadn’t got the brain of a louse to back that flair up with.”

Boomed Antony: “I have studied the ways of lice for five years on end and must inform you, George, that my brain, though moth-eaten, is certainly superior. I have made mints of money. I am fat with money. I roll in money. .. .” He was working himself up into that state of chronic excitement in which he might twist the lamp-post. Breakable or twistable things had always a fascination for Red Antony. :

“There, there!” I soothed him, “And we thought the little man was dead!”

Te09s

YOUNGSTOWN COLLEGE

“There, there!” said George. ‘Did he make money, now! And we thought he was lying in some forgotten foreign field with a German bullet in his heart.”

Bother the man! He simply had to make a noise each time he opened his mouth. The policeman who had talked Vine Street to us approached.

“Dead! Me dead!” And the sweep of his arm flung wide his cloak, and indeed he looked a mighty man of wrath. “As though a Prooshian bullet could kill me!”

“You are no doubt reserved for a more terrible end,” said Tarlyon.

Blessed if the man didn’t wilt! That roaring red giant —he wilted.

“Don’t say that, George,” he begged hoarsely. “It’s a fool remark to make, that. You didn’t mean it, did you?” And he put the question seriously! We gaped at him.

“He was only being funny,” I exclaimed. “He tries his tbeste

“T wish you well, Antony,” said Tarlyon, out of his surprise.

“God, I need it!” Antony growled surprisingly.

And then I laughed—remembering Red Antony’s old way of acting cussed, just to surprise and annoy. He’d do anything to make a fool of some one, that man, even if he had to make a fool of himself in doing it. But as I laughed, Antony looked at me with furious, haggard eyes, and I stopped laughing.

I saw Tarlyon looking at him queerly. He knew Antony much better than I did, for many and many a year ago he was a junior subaltern in the mess when Antony threw a bottle at the head of an extremely superior officer. The bottle was full, the aim was true, and Antony was cashiered with all due pomp and dishonour. But, through all his sub-_ sequent follies, Tarlyon had liked him. One couldn’t, of course, defend Antony; but the very few who had once liked Red Antony always, somehow, went on liking him. There was something about the man, a sort, of tremendous gallantry, an air of shameless bravado, a thunder of individuality, which might have made him a simple and lovable giant—but for a grain of rottenssubtlety somewhere in him.

Fine timber worm-eaten, Tarlyon said. Not, of course, said Tarlyon, that himself was anything to write home about.

“What’s the matter, old Antony?” Tarlyon asked kindly. “You’ve changed enormously. . . .”

Now I had noticed no particular change, except, perhaps, that handsome Antony looked his forty years and more; but Tarlyon knew him better.