The Dial (Third Series)/Volume 75/Lust and Hate
LUST AND HATE
The Left Leg. By T. F. Powys. 12mo. 311 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50.
SEVERAL years ago Mr T. F. Powys bade a peremptory farewell to the complex artifices of modern culture, and retired to the country to save his soul. The first fruit of his rustication was a small and mediocre tract called Soliloquies of a Hermit. When that book was written Mr Powys was painfully conscious of his isolation, and the very humility which he practised so diligently testified to the superior contentment of a man who at last was released from the intellectual enigmas of the world. He was glad to get close to the earth, to apostrophize crumbling fences and the waning moon; he was thoroughly sick of the recondite formulas of literature and the barren inhumanities of art—he would look deeply within the hearts of yokels for the secrets of salvation. "It is terrible," he wrote, "to think that the evil smell of modern oil has got to me, and that the vile working-devils would try to pump petrol into my soul." Somewhat in the manner of Papini he began to reread the gospels, but unlike the Italian bigot, he neither inflated nor capitalized his Christian spirit. But his book was a failure—prolix adaptations from the New Testament, and the simple joys of "youths and maidens sporting on the village green." Apparently Mr Powys was only another defeated young man who had discovered in his retirement that he had nothing to say.
The Left Leg, however, has justified the author’s seclusion. It is a much better book than the ridiculous title would indicate; in fact, a work of uncommon beauty, decidedly different from Soliloquies of a Hermit, and possessed of many of the qualities of fine fiction. Mr Powys is no longer the preacher—a more intimate acquaintance with the Dorset villagers has robbed him of his faith; and though he has failed to save his soul, he has taken the raw materials of rural life and shaped them into literary forms, and that, in itself, is one kind of salvation. There is no love in these three stories: the author hates his characters, and the characters hate one another; the book is a shrewd and contemptuous study of the avarice, stupidity, fatalistic lethargy, and bestial obsessions of an ugly peasantry.
The title-story is easily the best. In this narrative Mr Powys gives us a representative and convincing gallery of rustics: the apathetic clergyman; the idiot; the amorous, accessible widow; the praying visionary and his innocent daughter; and the terrible landlord. Farmer Mew, the landed despot, covets the earth, and with silent, iron hand, reduces his tenants to slavery and rapes the visionary's daughter. The scene in which Mr Mew gains full ownership of Mary Gillet is extraordinarily effective; there is no elaborate preparation, no moonlight and dreamy fatigue and long rides, as in the case of Hardy's Tess—it is a sententious description of a cruel and deliberate act of animal mastery. Mr Powys is singularly successful in his handling of sexual matters; the stolid repressions of the Dorset folk are cleverly hinted at, and then suddenly divulged with swift and unexpected fierceness. It is a relief to find a writer who appreciates the significance of sex, and is not afraid to discuss the subject honestly; and yet, at the same time, one who is free from the pathological nastiness of the Freudian school. As a sustained piece of fiction The Left Leg is severely crippled by the preposterous Mr Jar. We are given to understand in the opening paragraph that if this shadowy saint should ever turn up, something would happen. Finally, at the last minute, he does appear, and the story collapses: Farmer Mew, in an inconsistent fit of remorse, blows himself to pieces, and Mr Jar leads the pregnant lass into a strange new land. The second story has to do with a school-mistress who goes into the country to escape the church bells and rats and smells of her native town, and of the tailor lover who follows her—the tailor dies, and the girl returns to the rats and smells. "God had sent her into the sunshine. But was there any sunshine? Surely not." The third story tells of young Luke Bird and the great religious light that strikes him. Luke chucks his job at the brewery, forgets his Winnie, and wanders into the peaceful vales to preach the gospel. But the villagers are as immovable as clods, and Luke finds it expedient to fall in love again. In the end Rose is coarsely possessed in Luke's presence by the Squire; and the young Bird takes the winding road which leads back to the brewery and to Winnie.
Mr Powys has yet to learn the principles of solid construction. The main objection to his work is its fundamental lack of coherent action. For the most part all is clear and definite; but when we might reasonably expect a dramatic culmination of some sort, the narrative becomes tenuous and unimportant, and at length dissolves into vapid fancies resembling the oddities of Mr James Stephens in his less serious moods. The fault is largely the result of an incongruous mixture of genuine realism and whimsicality—the author is unable to control his imagination, and when pressed for a solution drops into unseemly mannerisms—short sentences, illegitimate surprises, and childish personifications. With a little alteration the three stories might be woven into a satisfactory novel; but the book as it stands is immeasurably better than the unreadable crop of pot-boilers. Mr Powys is neither a windy romancer nor a reporter of actualities; in his spiritual groping he has felt deeply and hated bitterly; he has thrown a scorching light on the stingy souls of the Dorset villagers, and has produced a shocking book—shocking, that is, in the aesthetic sense.