Chapter XV
FRANK SWINNERTON: ANALYST OF LOVERS
i
It is as an analyst of lovers, I think, that Frank Swinnerton claims and holds his place among those whom we still sometimes call the younger novelists of England.
I do not say this because his fame was achieved at a bound with Nocturne, but because all his novels show a natural preoccupation with the theme of love between the sexes. Usually it is a pair of young lovers or contrasted pairs; but sometimes this is interestingly varied, as in September, where we have a study of love that comes to a woman in middle life.
The unique character of Nocturne makes it very hard to write about Swinnerton. It is true that Arnold Bennett wrote: “I am prepared to say to the judicious reader unacquainted with Swinnerton’s work, ‘Read Nocturne,’ and to stand or fall, and to let him stand or fall by the result.” At the same time, though the rule is that we must judge an artist by his finest work and a genius by his greatest masterpiece, it is not entirely just to estimate the living writer by a single unique performance, an extraordinary piece of virtuosity, which Nocturne unquestionably is. For anyone who wishes to understand and appreciate Swinnerton, I would recommend that he begin with Coquette, follow it with September, follow that with Shops and Houses and then read Nocturne. That is, I would have made this recommendation a few months ago, but so representative of all sides of Swinnerton’s talent is his new novel, The Three Lovers, that I should now prefer to say to anyone unacquainted with Swinnerton: “Begin with The Three Lovers.” And after that I would have him read Coquette and the other books in the order I have named. After he had reached and finished Nocturne, I would have him turn to the several earlier novels—The Happy Family, On the Staircase, and The Chaste Wife.
ii
The Three Lovers, a full-length novel which Swinnerton finished in Devonshire in the spring of 1922, is a story of human beings in conflict, and it is also a picture of certain phases of modern life. A young and intelligent girl, alone in the world, is introduced abruptly to a kind of life with which she is unfamiliar. Thereafter the book shows the development of her character and her struggle for the love of the men to whom she is most attracted. The book steadily moves