Читать книгу The House in Dormer Forest - Mary Webb - Страница 3

Introduction

Many of the best things in life seem to come to us simply by chance, and it was certainly chance which first brought me into contact with Mary Webb. On the eve of departure some years ago for Australia I was given Precious Bane by a friend whose opinion I greatly trust, and it so impressed me that, in addition to recommending it to all my friends, I wrote to the author and told her that I had read nothing more inspiring in modern literature. This started what to me was a most interesting correspondence, and I shall always remember that when I was ill just before I retired from St. Martin-in-the-Fields she brought me a bunch of wild flowers which she had picked herself—it was so expressive of her nature to choose wild flowers instead of the more formal stock-in-trade of the florist. So it is particularly pleasing to be asked to write a foreword to one of her books, though I cannot write as a literary specialist, but only as an ordinary and very grateful reader.

I must confess that modern fiction as a whole gives me little encouragement or pleasure, and therefore when I first read Mary Webb’s novels it seemed to me that I had made a rare discovery. Here was an author who had more than an empty story to tell, whose writing was so sincere and so obviously the unforced product of an unusually sensitive imagination that to read her books was to experience a vivid human contact. She had visions to share with those who cared to follow her, and subsequent re-reading has only strengthened my first impressions of her work.

For the moment I will say nothing of the peculiar beauty of her nature-imagery, since the essential quality of her writing is primarily a passionate sincerity rare in this age of psycho-analytic experiment. This sincerity amounted to genius, and I use that word fully conscious that it is, in general, most unworthily overworked. But to me genius means the expression of actual truth, of the fundamental verities which lie hidden beneath the ordinary distractions of circumstance. We can all tell the truth about the material facts within our knowledge, but to discover spiritual truths demands an apprehension so unusual that it must rank with the finest manifestations of the human spirit. This apprehension Mary Webb had in high degree, and flashes of truth bring sudden light to her work. She never appeared to force her inspiration, but seemed rather to write as if she were listening to a voice within her, as if she herself, like her own Amber Darke, ‘left the shallows of beauty that is heard and seen, and slipped out into the deep sea where are no tides of change and decay, no sound, no colour, only an essence.’

I do not mean that she neglected the beauty that is heard and seen—indeed, her books, and The House in Dormer Forest as much as any, are alive with that beauty. Listen to this description of a misty plain in the early morning:

‘To the west the mist thinned and was like pale water. Upon it, with delicate dignity, the trees floated, like water birds of faery, gravely and magically tinted. Some were brown-green like grebes, others of the ashy tint of coots, the soft grey of cygnets. The chestnuts, where the sun struck them, were like sheldrakes with their deep bronzes; and the beeches had the glossy green of teal. The white sea was populous with these faery creatures, floating head under wing.’

There is the imagination which is rendered creative by exact observation, and as an outcome we have this:

‘Amber’s ideas of God were vague and shadowy. The moment she tried to materialize them they vanished. But now she felt, with a shock of reality, that there was more here, on this airy hill, than could be seen or touched or heard.’

That is genuine nature mysticism, and it is the essence of Mary Webb’s strength, the foundation upon which all her work was built. She took her inspiration from the sights and sounds of the Shropshire countryside, and it was because there was to her more in those sights and sounds than could be seen or heard that her books have actually deep spiritual qualities.

I feel that The House in Dormer Forest was in a sense autobiographical, for Amber Darke so clearly speaks the mind of Mary Webb, with her intensely spiritual understanding of God. Her sole object in writing, it seems to me, was to formulate that understanding, to explain the abiding reality which lies behind the beauty of nature, and therefore her books cannot be definitely classed as novels. They were essays in the life of the spirit, as readers of The House in Dormer Forest will readily agree, and judged solely as novels they may be open to criticism on the score of ragged technique and construction. But if they are open to such criticism, they should be spared it, for the mechanics of Mary Webb’s work are not ultimately important.

Some writers have so little to say that they must depend on a perfectly worked-out plot, whereas others, and Mary Webb was one, only use a plot because it gives them a rough but necessary skeleton upon which to make concrete their visions. I do not wish to imply that her novels were restricted simply to the expression of that nature mysticism: they were always interesting as stories and as character studies. In this particular book, for example, the contrast between Catherine and Amber, the smug self-importance of Ernest and the independent idealism of Michael, between Jasper and Peter is consistently interesting, while some of the subsidiary characters are drawn with real humour and fidelity. There is Sarah Jowel, for one, the servant who was obliged to break people’s china when they offended her, and grandmother Velindre with her surprising Biblical quotations, two characters who live so vividly that they are evidence of genuine creative insight and power.

Undoubtedly she could tell a moving story, as she so well proved in Precious Bane, but that aspect of her genius I am content to leave to the expert critic. I can only attempt to convey here my personal gratitude for the strength and vision which I found in her work, and to express my belief that since she based her books on the spirit of beauty which is eternal, they may themselves share that immortality.

H. R. L. SHEPPARD.