Mr. Marshall published with The Graftons an exceedingly interesting Introduction, containing a defense of his methods which is not needed by intelligent readers, but which may enlighten those who do not understand what he is about. In a personal letter, however, he expressed himself in words that I like better than his printed apologia. "The Grafton family isn't so rich in varied interest as the Clinton family, but I hope they will make their friends. I think they are as 'nice' a family as any I've drawn. I set out simply to show them in their country home, and make their country neighbours display themselves in the light of their critical humour, without much idea of a story. It turned into something rather different, and I'm not quite sure about it yet. And it has taken two books to work it out."
Now the reason why I like this ink-epistle better than the formal preface is because in the latter Mr. Marshall seemed to think it necessary to reply to those critics who said he ought to discuss in his novels the economic questions concerned with the tenure of the land. If he should by some evil temptation make economic questions the basis of his stories of English country life, he would commit the cardinal sin that has corrupted so much of contemporary fiction, the sin that I condemned at the outset of this essay. The most conspicuous element in his art is Charm. If some one should persuade him that he ought to become more "serious," his novels would lose their atmosphere; and he might find himself writing like that earnest student of modern movements, Mrs. Humphry Ward.
I am aware that the most insulting epithet that can be applied to a book, or a play, or a human being is the word "Puritan"; and I remember reading a review somewhere of Abington Abbey which commented rather satirically on the interview between Grafton and Lassigny, and most satirically of all on the conclusion of the interview, which left the stiff, prejudiced, puritanical British parent in possession of the field. But once more, Mr. Marshall is not trying to prove a thesis; he is representing the Englishman and the Frenchman in a hot debate, where neither is right and neither is wrong, but where each is partly right and partly wrong. Each says in the heat of the contest something injudicious, even as men do when they are angry. But when Lassigny literally takes French leave, we do not care who has scored the most points; the real winner is the one who is not present—the girl herself. For when two men fight about a woman, as they do somewhere every day, the truly important question is not, which man wins the fight? The only real question is, does the woman win?
It will never do to make generalizations from merely one of Mr. Marshall's novels. If we had only Abington Abbey, we might imagine that he detested the clergy, for the clergyman in this book is surely detestable; but in The Greatest of These there are two clergymen who are admirable characters, and a third who is by no means wholly or even mainly evil. Like an honest student of life, Mr. Marshall never considers a man as a representative of a business, but as a human being. No man is good because he is a clergyman; but it would be well perhaps if every member of that highest of all professions were a clergyman because he was good.
VIII
There is an unconscious double meaning in the American name given to the novel published in 1914, The Greatest of These, for it can be taken not only in the Pauline significance, but as the greatest of these books we are considering. It is the most ambitious and on the whole the most effective of its author's productions, containing also the essence of his religion—charity contrasted with opinions. We have an illustration of his favourite method of portraying the shade and shine of human character by placing in opposition two leading representatives of two large classes of nominal Christians—a clergyman of the Church of England and a minister of the Dissenters. Mr. Marshall never wrote a better first chapter. The reader is instantly aware that he has in his hands a masterpiece. Every leading character is introduced in the opening chapter either in person or in allusive conversation, and we know that Mr. Marshall has what most novelists seek in vain—a real plot. This book, which eventually rises to the highest spiritual altitude attained thus far by its author, begins on a note of sordid sex-tragedy, as unusual in the stories of Mr. Marshall as a picture like the Price household is in the work of Jane Austen; here it serves to bring forward the forthright and self-satisfied Anglican, who little dreams of his approaching humiliation; he is brought into conflict with a kind of Zeal-of-the-land Busy, whose aggressive self-righteousness is to be softened by the very man who he hoped would harden it. Here too, as in Exton Manor, we come as near as we ever come in Mr. Marshall's books to meeting a villain—in each case it is a woman with a serpent's tongue.
The time-element in The Greatest of These is managed with consummate skill. So far as the novel has a hero, it is the Rev. Dr. Merrow. He does not appear in Roding until the one-hundred-and-sixty-third page, but there is so much talk, for and against him, that the reader awaits his arrival at the railway station with fully as much eagerness as any of the village gossips. And then, owing to the Doctor's fatigue from the journey, the reader is as baffled as the parishioners. It is quite impossible to discover what manner of man he is. The author refuses to help us, preferring to let his leading character reveal himself without any manipulation behind the scenes. This revelation is gradual, made up of many little details of speech and behaviour, as it would be in real life.
But although the personality of the man is not clear until more than half of the book has passed, the ninth chapter, which shows him in action in London as a public institution, is one of the most powerful pieces of prose Mr. Marshall has ever composed. He writes as if inspired by the theme. Not only is it a magnificent description of a great occasion, its dramatic power is immensely heightened because we see it through the eyes of a young ritualist, to whom it is as strange—and at first as repellent—as some vulgar heathen observance. But gradually distaste changes to interest, and interest to enthusiasm. Such passages as the following are entirely unlike the ordinary current of Mr. Marshall's style, but it is a proof that he can reach the heights when the occasion calls.