Journal of Small Things

JOURNAL OF SMALL THINGS
Other Books by Helen Mackay
Accidentals Stories for Pictures The Cobweb Cloak Half Loaves Houses of Glass London one November
BY HELEN MACKAY
New York DUFFIELD AND COMPANY 1917
Copyright, 1917, by DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
FOR MARGARET
Those who have read Mrs. Mackay's book, which she entitled Accidentals , will know exactly what to expect from her new book, Journal of Small Things . Like the early one it consists of a series of little sketches more or less in the form of a diary, vignettes taken from a very individual angle of vision, pictures in which the hand of the painter moves with exquisite fineness. They are singularly graceful, very delicate and also very pathetic, these random memories of a sympathetic friend of France, who describes what she saw during the opening stages of the war in Paris and in provincial towns. The precise quality of them is that they are extremely individual and intimately concerned with little things—episodes half observed, half forgotten, which cluster round a big tragedy. The author's mind is bent on the record of such little things as might escape some observer's notice, but which to her give all the salt and savour to her experiences.
Listen to this. I want to make notes of things, not of the great things that are happening, but of the little things. I want to feel especially all the little everyday dear accustomed things, to take hold of the moods of them, and gather up their memories, to be put away and kept, and turned back to from always afterwards. It is as if they were things soon to be gone away out of the world and never to be again.
Wherever she moves, Mrs. Mackay carries with her this exquisite sensitiveness to things which we might rashly call insignificant or unessential, and it adds immensely to the poignancy of her sketches and to the truth of her record. How valuable is her method we can judge from another extract concerned with The River. I know why the river goes so slowly, lingering as much as ever she can, and a little sadly. It is because just here she leaves behind her youth and wildness of great mountains, her mood of snows and rocks, cascade and woods and high rough pastures, cow-bells and mountain-horn. Going down into the classic countries, infinitely old, those deep, rich countries, she pauses here, between the high clear lift and lilt and thrill of mountain music and the cadenced melody of Provence.