WHETHER in Chelsea, Greenwich Village, or Carmel, artists of a feather have a way of flocking together. To the uninitiated such a community is invested with glamour; to Shakespeare it was plainly ‘a desert country near the sea.'
THE Honorable Dorothy Brett is the fourth of the women who were intimately associated with D. H. Lawrence to publish her account, of their relationship, Lawrence and Brett (Lippincott, $3.00). Miss Brett met Lawrence in 1915, but it was not till 1923 and the years following that their acquaintance became friendship, or, to put it more accurately, that Miss Brett became Lawrence’s disciple. ’What is it that flows from you?' she asks. ‘It is hard to describe. It is something from the heart, that has nothing to do with upbringing or training. Compassion . . . can it be that? I wonder, watching you. Compassion . . . understanding . . . or both . . . or what? I can find no word.’
Whatever it was, and no writer on Lawrence has yet succeeded, or probably ever will succeed, in completely conveying the remarkable effect, of his personality, it was enough to make Miss Brett, accompany Lawrence and his wife to America, live with them in New Mexico, and to give us, several years afterward, an account of her experiences. She has written a very honest book, not hesitating, when it was necessary, to put herself in a pathetic or ridiculous light. The result is that the two other pictures we have of her, the favorable one given by Mrs. Carswell and the unfavorable one given by Mrs. Luhan, both seem true. And there is something appealing in the devotion to Lawrence which shines through her rather artless narrative.
Consequently those who want to know as much as possible about Lawrence— a fairly large number, for in the curiosity his life has stimulated he is very much the Byron de nos jours — should read this book. But anyone not already interested in the subject will not find it particularly illuminating. It has the defects of its virtues; its ardent, almost naive discipleship prevents it from having much perspective or a wide range of reference, and there are many details which seem, except as material for the author’s personal reminiscence, unnecessary. It is not as good a book as Mrs. Carswell’s or Mrs. Luhan’s; but it is straightforward and direct, and in being so is a further tribute to the influence of its hero.
Lawrence, who read Mrs. Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Intimate Memories (Harcourt, Brace, $3.00) in manuscript, described them as being ‘the most serious confession that ever came out of America, and perhaps the most heart-destroying revelation of the American life-process that ever has or will be produced.’ but Lawrence was very generous in judging the artistic products of his friends, and I fear that most readers will not agree with his opinion. The present volume, to be sure, only describes the author’s life up to the age of eighteen, and hence is largely significant as background for what happened later. Her account is circumstantial, and the picture we get from it of her life in buffalo and elsewhere at the end of the last century is complete and full.
It is a good period picture, and as we read it we can see the red plush furniture, the elaborate dinner parties, the lawns with their iron deer and their brilliant stiff flower beds, and the row of rich-looking houses which were her environment. There are pictures of life in New York, in Lenox, and in Newport, and it is all very proper, very formal, and very dull. Only Mrs. Luhan’s own sensations, which she describes at length, seem human according to contemporary standards of behavior. She was surrounded by a family the members of which were chiefly remarkable for their dislike of each other and for their complete and ironclad selfishness. For example, her father collected flags and detested her mother; he had a large flag made with his initials on it, and whenever his wife went away this flag would be triumphantly hoisted. When she came back, he would lower it to half-mast.
The anecdote is typical of the people Mrs. Luhan describes. Though most of them were more conventional than this would imply, they were equally frustrated, and one thinks of Mrs. Luhan’s frankness about them and herself as to some extent a reaction against their stiffness and almost helpless immobility, But the account does not give the impression of being too prejudiced; it is well written and in many places sharply presented.
The chief trouble with the book, apart from one or two unnecessary lapses from taste, is that there is too much of it, and one feels that the dullness of the subject matter has sometimes communicated itself to the writing. However, the next volumes ought to be of much more interest, and perhaps the fullness of the present one will prove valuable for an understanding of Mrs. Luhan’s later career.
A reference to that career is contained in Albert Parry’s Garrets and Pretenders, A History of Bohemianism in America (Covici, Friede, $3.50). The reference was inevitable, for Mrs. Luhan has been for a generation, in New York, Santa Fe, and at present in Carmel, California, one of the people about whom many artists, bohemian and otherwise, have flocked Nevertheless her circle has only impinged on true bohemianism (if the word ‘true’ can be applied to anything so often shoddy and so almost invariably third-rate); that phenomenon has flourished (I am again using an inaccurate word) in shabbier halls than hers. Mr. Parry’s description of it — and it is chiefly the fault of his subject — leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. People may have had, and did have, a good time in Bohemia, from Poe’s day to our own, but it was a pretty cheap kind of good time, rarely free from physical dirt, which has nothing to do with art, and nearly always contaminated by the kind of false emotional values which makes good art impossible. Mr. Parry describes the life at Pfaff’s, in the middle of the last century; he tells us of the Trilby boom, of bohemianisni in Chicago and Santa Fe. It is a complete account, even though certain details are omitted which might have been included; and if anyone wants to look up the subject, here it all is.
But it is n’t a good book. Mr. Parry has a dry style without any color in it, and he plods along through his material in art inexpert lumbering way that frequently kills the interest, such as it is, which his material contains. The subject needs a light touch and the kind of literary deftness which a good French writer would bring to it, and these characteristics Mr. Parry has not yet developed. However, it may be a good thing that the book has been written. As Mr. Parry is well aware, Bohemianism and good art do not go together, or, if they do, it is an accident; and if Mr. Parry has contributed to making this fact more widely known he will have helped to destroy a romantic illusion that has wasted many a young man’s time.
THEODORE SPENCER