Norbert's cry against artists, "We'll be the thing they look at. Let Rubens there paint us!" There is a sureness of psychology about all that Mr. Watson has written, and he has a keen eye for the accessories of life. He has, though he seldom uses it, a humour that grows out of situation and has little to do with words. He has—his own words tell it best—"that leanness and alertness of mind that come from sharp criticism." Then his love for nature with which he endows Susan is a solace for most ills. His pictures of wintry woods, the downs in early spring, and of Susan's glee in escaping into the first flood of August rain after a drouth, are poetic and satisfying.
And if he had nothing else, he would be sure to win recognition for the sheer beauty of his workmanship. It is hard to see how his first two books managed to fall upon the world so silently, except that in nineteen-seventeen and eighteen, when they were published, the world's interest was concentrated on the Hindenburg line. But Mr. Watson has as easy a mastery of technique as though he were Heifetz playing the violin. You forget technique in the effect of it. There is abundant detail in his three books, not one stroke of it insignificant. Construction becomes simply natural growth. Preparation, suspense, action, and result, all are unhurried, inevitable, woven but never tangled by any influence of character or the seasons. His diction is the outgrowth of the story he has to tell. Here is none of that massing of words, each groping a little way towards the meaning, tossed together to let you draw a gradual sense from the heap. No Jean Christophe here! There is an inspiration of phrase that is like the lion's easy drop of padded paws as he melts into the forest with a graceful, unconscious sureness.
Indeed it is easier to quarrel with some of the natural results of his process of spiritual emancipation than with his illustrations of it in characters, or with his manner of setting it forth. There is no doubt that life in its final reductions is ruthless and often disconcerting. But this man is too big to fit into any pattern. He took a running leap into first rank with Where Bonds Are Loosed, held his record and bettered it in The Mainland. We miss their largeness of movement, their sweep and tropical colour in Deliverance, but the charm of Susan, and of winter and spring at Swaystead, are unforgettable.
