THE BIG STICK
of novelists; one feels throughout that his occultism is the result of study and
not of experience. That is why I say exoteric.
Although the style of the book is comparatively undistinguished, and some-
times lapses into actual slovenliness, Mr. Brodie-Innes frequently attains beauty,
and beauty of a positive and original kind. Some of his sea-pictures are quite
fine. But the magic of style that renders Arthur Machen so marvellous is lack-
ing. “Old as the World” is always interesting; it is never enthralling.
“Old as the World” is much better than “Morag the Seal,” and there is a
marked improvement in the style.
V.B.N.
BLACK Macic. By MARJORIE BOWEN. Alston Rivers. 6s.
Marjorie Bowen knows nothing of the real magic, but she has learnt the
tales spread by fools about sorcerers, and fostered by them as the best possible
concealments of their truth.
Of these ingredients she has brewed a magnificent hell-broth. No chapter
lacks its jewelled incident, and the web that she has woven of men’s passions
is a flame-red tapestry stained with dark patches of murder and charred here
and there with fire of hell.
Marjorie Bowen has immense skill; has she genius? How can a stranger
say? So many nowadays are forced by sheer starvation into writing books that
will sell—and when they have taken the devil’s money, find that it is in no figure
that he has their souls in pawn.
I am told that it is the ambition of W. S. Maugham to write a great play.
A.C.
THE EDUCATION OF UNCLE PAUL. By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD. Macmillan
and Co. 6s.
I read this book on the Express Train from Eastbourne to London (change
at Polegate, Lewes, Hayward’s Heath, Three Bridges, Red Hill, and East
Croydon—they ought to stop to set down passengers at Earlswood), and though
it’s a beautiful story, and I like Nixie,I must confess to being rather bored.
Rather with a capital R and a sforzando ev. I wanted George Macdonald’s
“Lilith,” and Arthur Machen’s “Hill of Dreams”—they have blood in them.
And I was not in my library, but in a stuffy, dog-returneth-to-his-vomit-scented
microbe-catcher labelled 1st Compo. Then, too, Algernon Blackwood began to
remind me of Maeterlinck. There was too much bluebirdiness, and it gave me
the blue devils. And then, again, though I’ve never read J. M. Barrie, I felt sure
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