Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/199

173 THE REAL STANLEY HOUGHTON 173 stars in the sky of a clear night "). But Hankin, Wilde, and Shaw are the chief assistants. These were the fastidious cooks Houghton employed to help him to create the consomme which was shortly to be hailed as genuine Lancashire brose ! IV Maybe Manchester knew better — Mr. Brighouse seems to say so (with perhaps a certain severity). But indeed Manchester played her own dubious part; it is to the consideration of her influence that we now come. For we have traversed three of the ante-chambers, and the next is the crucial one into which Houghton stepped when success set him free. It is represented in these books by a series of Manchester Guardian back-pagers, little semi-narrative choses vues, and by the first six chapters of an unfinished novel. Life — this being the book he was working on in Paris, the last piece of work beneath his hand (" I am quite absorbed in it, and work at it as I haven't done at anything since Hindle Wakes "). The change of key is profound. It is true that he is still using models— the influence of George Moore, for instance, is very marked — of George Moore via Arnold Bennett perhaps in the novel, of George Moore with a touch of Max — the pensive, exquisite Max of Yet Again — in such a little crepuscular prose-impression as 2'he Teashop : — It does not look quite like a teashop outside ; but how attractive is the great heap of hollow yellow cakes, the colour of ripe corn, piled unevenly in the right-hand window, and when you go inside you do, indeed, find that tea may be had in the back part of the shop, a place imperfectly screened by a wide curtain composed of threaded beads and reeds. But you feel that the choice, instead of being now the carefully considered one of the aspirant, is the