Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/149

123 COMMONSENSE OF MR. ARNOLD BENNETT 123 tracing causes with such exquisite clarity, is that they may fail to convey the sense of the fantastic element in life, the untamed force that pounds through the fabric so incalculably, dishevelling and exalting the neat systems. Two and two make five in real life ; in Clayhanger perhaps they too often add neatly up to four. It is this Gothic element in things that makes such a jolly gargoyle as The Grand Babylon Hotel a more faithful symbol of reality than some much sterner stuff ; and it is this heightened irrational strain that one wants to see swaggering through the cool symmetry of Clayhanger like organ-music throbbing through a church. Artists of another type (Mr. Henry James, for instance) can give us the equivalent in the form of coloured metaphors and vaulted imagery and the evocative music of words. Mr. Bennett, who has no turn for oratory and stained-glass window work, can give it us supremely well in the shape of a stalking impersonal plot. This is what one means by saying that Clayhanger might borrow a trick or two from The Card. Its author's masterpiece will be a blend of savoir-faire papers and shockers and Clay- hangers — a thrifty utilization that appeals to the provincial mind. And, of course, since two-thirds of it are still unborn, that masterpiece may prove to be Clayhanger itself, II This morning sees Mr. Arnold Bennett playing Cards again ; ' and the rapid snap, whirr, and snick with which he cuts, deals, and then goes off, irrepressibly trumping trick after trick, is a process quite conspicu- ously unconnected with prosody. Not, indeed, that that itself isn't a circumstance possessing a certain amount of significance. In fact, to be quite fair to it, ' The Regent. By Arnold Bennett (Methuen, 1913).