SOURCE: "The Novels," in Norman Douglas, Twayne Publishers, 1965, pp. 121-58.

[In the following excerpt, Lindeman examines Douglas's novels, discussing their plots and main themes, and relating some of the critical commentary they generated.]

Douglas' three novels—South Wind, They Went, and In the Beginning—are usually considered satirical. Satire is difficult of definition. Its tone is one of disapprobation; its tools are irony, wit, humor, and exaggeration. And it is theoretically didactic, since its implied purpose is the renovation of society. Douglas' novels are witty and humorous, employing the kind of exaggerated characterization associated with satire and striking at human foibles and self-delusion. Certainly Douglas would have been scandalized by the suggestion that he intended to reform society. And such a suggestion needs qualification. But it is clear that he held values which he believed to be better than those of most of his fellow men and that the approach of his novels—indeed, of everything he wrote—was designed, consciously or otherwise, to influence the intelligent reader to his way of thinking. Like all satirists, he saw clearly that men fall short of the moral and social standards to which they profess allegiance; and, like all satirists, he scorned the hypocrisy with which men pretend to lofty ideals while they live lives based on selfishness and egotism.

Of course Douglas hated the selfishness and egotism less than he hated the hypocrisy.… [He] believed that the individual should be self-sustaining and that pleasure was a justifiable end. He advocated an approach to life in which few values were absolute and in which actions were deemed good or bad in relation to their ends; whatever did not conduce to a leisurely, undisturbed existence and to a controlled exploitation of the senses was humbug. What he deplored most was that intelligent men should fail to recognize these facts and hence sacrifice the natural pleasures to a set of absurd and outmoded ethical values to which the great majority of people paid only lip service. Disapproving attitudes, expressed in a tone and manner that would probably be called satiric, had appeared incidentally in the travel books, but they first received full treatment in satiric fiction in South Wind.

I South Wind: a Bishop Mediterraneanized

The material of South Wind (1917) was a remarkably felicitous selection, and Douglas was never again to find a subject so perfectly suited to his talent and temperament. Its themes were ideas that Douglas had long cherished—the relativity of morals, the futility of false ideals, the importance of climate as a factor in social and cultural conditions. Its setting enabled him to exploit his practiced ability to describe Mediterranean scenery. And its plot was such that atmospheric factors, which Douglas always handled adeptly, played a more important role than narrative or dramatic action, which did not come so easily for him.

Joseph Conrad had written Douglas in 1908: " … think seriously of writing a novel.… Place it in southern Italy if that will help.… Don't make it a novel of Italian peasant life—not yet! … Place European personalities in Italian frame. European here means an international crowd. Try and make it a novel of analysis on the basis of some strong situation" [Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters, edited by G. Jean-Aubry, 1927]. Some years later, when Douglas undertook South Wind, he followed Conrad's advice almost entirely. He wrote a novel of analysis with a setting that fit Conrad's suggestion, although perhaps the situation was not so strong as his friend might have desired. The scene was a fictitious island named Nepenthe, a Mediterranean island with an Italianate populace and near a mainland on which there was a volcano. It was peopled with a cosmopolitan crowd, mostly English. Its model was plainly Capri.

On Nepenthe, Douglas created his own kind of Utopia—a device familiar to the satiric tradition—where people lived, for the most part, a casual, leisurely existence, doing the things they wanted to do and attaching importance only to things that Douglas thought important. Many of the characters represented aspects of Douglas' own personality—one was a hedonist, one a Classicist, one a recluse-scholar, one a geologist. It was as if the author's own personality had been passed through a spectrum and separated into its various components.

Perhaps the most important character in South Wind is the atmosphere of Nepenthe, which seems to have a life of its own. By deft handling of the geological features of the island, exaggerated from those of Ponza which he had described in Summer Islands, and by clever allusions to the sirocco which blew incessantly, Douglas created a strange and infectious mood, at once attractive and sinister, salubrious and debilitating. But whatever the ambiguous properties of the climate and the south wind, the salient feature of Nepenthe's atmosphere was its power to induce clear-sightedness. As Mr. Keith explained:

This coast-line alone—the sheer effrontery of its mineral charm—might affect some natures to such an extent as to dislocate their stability. Northern minds seem to become fluid here, impressionable, unstable, unbalanced—what you please. There is something in the brightness of this spot which decomposes their old particles and arranges them into fresh and unexpected patterns. That is what people mean when they say they "discover themselves" here. You discover a mechanism, you know, when you take it to pieces.

Into this atmosphere comes Mr. Heard, English Bishop of Bampopo in Africa, who is stopping over on Nepenthe to visit his cousin and to escort her back to England, since her second husband, Mr. Meadows, cannot leave his post in India. A reasonable and intelligent man, Mr. Heard cannot become overly perturbed about the waywardness and the ethical eccentricities of the African natives. But he still labors under some "serious delusions": he idealizes women, and he clings to the beliefs of his church.

Don Francesco, a genial but lascivious priest met on the boat, introduces the Bishop to the American Mrs. Steynlin, called the Duchess of San Martino, a leader of Nepenthean society who is about to become a Catholic through the influence of Don Francesco, and to her guest Denis Phipps, a pleasantly naëve and impressionable English student. Bishop Heard subsequently meets other unusual Nepentheans, such as Mr. Keith, a wealthy hedonist with a penchant for exotic cookery; Count Caloveglia, a Classicist and antiquarian who professes Hellenic values; Eames, an amiable and innocuous bibliographer of the island's literature; Edward Marten, an indigent Jewish minerologist; Freddy Parker, supposedly the Commissioner of Finance from Nicaragua but actually the devious proprietor, along with his "barn-like" step sister, of the local drinking club; the Commissioner's friend, the red-headed, Mephistophelian magistrate, Malipizzo; and the alcoholic Englishwoman, Miss Wilberforce, who undresses in public.

The first days of the Bishop's fortnight visit to Nepenthe are filled only with leisurely conversation in which the distinctive qualities and interests of the various inhabitants are revealed. He attends the colorful festival of the local saint, St. Dodekanus, and calls on his cousin, who is strangely displeased to see him. Then he discovers that "things are beginning to happen." There are ominous reports that one of the island's springs has dried up and that unusual births have occurred; Freddy Parker's stepsister dies of a mosquito bite and that suspicious personage learns that his patron in the Nicaraguan government has also died and that his empty but esteemed title of Commissioner of Finance may be revoked. Finally, the volcano begins to erupt, raining ashes on the island. Miraculously, further catastrophe is averted by a procession in honor of St. Dodekanus proposed by Commissioner Parker, who is not even a Catholic.

The mysterious dangers past, the life of Nepenthe becomes again a series of friendly gatherings and rambling conversations. Bishop Heard hears about Van Koppen, the American millionaire who yearly visits Nepenthe on his yacht, which is always the scene of disreputable parties. He learns of Denis Phipps' inability to find a purpose in life, and of the plan to build a clinic for Miss Wilberforce, a project disapproved by Mr. Keith, who believes everyone should be permitted to do as he pleases. He watches Count Caloveglia, dignified pronouncer of virtuous principles, sell a fake antique statue to the millionaire Van Koppen, who knows that it is a fake but admires the Count's ability to dupe the experts. And finally, while sitting among the cliffs with Denis, Mr. Heard sees his cousin, Mrs. Meadows, walk out of her house with a man he recognizes as one Mr. Muhlen he met on the ship and has since learned is actually a blackmailer named Retlow. And he sees his cousin push this man off the cliff. Remembering how unpleasant Retlow had been and remembering that Mrs. Meadows' first husband had been named Retlow, the Bishop concludes that his cousin has been the victim of an obnoxious blackmailer and that her act was justified.

Unfortunately, a native boy is accused of the murder when a gold piece that had belonged to Retlow is found in his possession. The evil Malipizzo hopes, by convicting the native, to discredit the Church, since the boy's cousin is the village priest. But a lawyer named Morena, famous as a member of the Black Hand, is called in by the priest to defend the boy and is successful through his sentimental eloquence. And under these conditions, despite the ostensible immorality of the events, the Bishop does not feel it necessary to divulge his knowledge of the matter.

Denis, having also been worked upon by the atmosphere of the place, is "beginning to know his own mind," and asserts himself to stop the windy harangues of Mr. Keith, thus performing "the first virile achievement" of his young life.

Heard's stay on Nepenthe produces the necessary change. The provocative conversation of the articulate Mr. Keith, who insidiously propounds his rationalistic hedonism, has its effect. And Bishop Heard watches various situations which mellow his point of view. But most important of all, the magical atmosphere of the place permeates him, and the south wind sweeps the cobwebs from his mind. The transformation is complete when he is able to face the act of murder, performed by one whom he considers an epitome of the English womanly ideal, and not only overlooks it as a trivial matter but justifies it as a moral necessity.

In Late Harvest Douglas described the purposes of South Wind as follows: "South Wind was the result of my craving to escape from the wearisome actualities of life. To picture yourself living in a society of such instability, of such 'jovial immoderation' and 'frolicsome perversity' that even a respectable bishop can be persuaded to approve of murder—this was my aim." The "wearisome actuality"—the stodgy, complacent social mores and the impractical ethical code upon which they were supposed to be based—is the true target of the satire. Thus Douglas sets up a society which flouts stability and respectability—a society which is his kind of utopia. Bishop Heard, "respectable but rather drab … whose tastes and needs are fashioned to reflect those of the average drab reader," is introduced into this society, and it is demonstrated that such a person cannot resist its influence. The Bishop—the observer and interpreter of the events—sees, as the reader is expected to, that a reasonable person should live a reasonable existence in a carefree pursuit of civilized pleasures with no pretense of subscribing to outmoded and false conceptions. The reader is being asked, implicitly, "Could you resist?"

H. M. Tomlinson, discussing South Wind, concludes that the only practical suggestion which the book makes is:

that the more likeable of us should migrate to the sunny south, to be thawed out—loosened from the frost of the north, and Christianity and other inhibiting elements. The suggestion approaches the diabolical, for we know it cannot be only a matter of climate; he himself notes elsewhere the mortification of the flesh, which to him is the sin against the light, may be witnessed as frequently under the warmer skies of the south as where northern blasts chill us into a miserable apprehension of our sins.

And, of course, the theme should not be interpreted as the insistence that only a Mediterranean sun can make possible the kind of rebellion against Christian morality which South Wind sympathetically depicts. That the southern climate is no complete panacea is part of the irony, and it is a "diabolical" irony because it includes the unstated but always plausible possibility that nothing is really of much help. The atmosphere is artificial; Nepenthe is as unreal as Erewhon. But that it is more like Italy than like any place else is not surprising, since Douglas assuredly believed that the sunny south was the best hope of civilized men; other men—most men—had no hope.

While Douglas may have been under no illusions as to the possibility of universal amelioration, his Mediterraneanism was deep seated. It was to be expected, as Conrad saw, that this attitude would form part of Douglas' first serious effort at fiction. As we have already noted, Douglas believed that climate and region influenced the human outlook. In Siren Land he had written: "The landscape… and not only the hour and the man, plays a part when gods are to be created." And now in South Wind: "But certainly the sun which colours our complexion and orders our daily habits, influences at the same time our character and outlook. The almost hysterical changes of light and darkness, summer and winter, which have impressed themselves upon the literature of the North, are unknown here." He had likewise spoken in Siren Land of the cathartic properties of the southern Italian regions:

Here, on these odorous Siren heights, far removed from duty's sacred call—for duty has become the Moloch of modern life—it may not be amiss to build a summer hut wherein to undergo a brief katharsis, of purgation and readjustment. For we do get sadly out of perspective with our environment in the fevered North, out of touch with elemental and permanent things.…

… many of us would do well to mediterraneanise ourselves for a season, to quicken those ethic roots from which has sprung so much of what is best in our natures. To dream in Siren Land, pursuing the moods and memories as they shift in labyrinthine mazes, like shadows on a woodland path in June; to stroll among the hills and fill the mind with new images upon which to browse at leisure, casting off outworn weeds of thought with the painless ease of a serpent and unperplexing, incidentally, some of those "questions of the day" of which the daily papers nevertheless know nothing—this is an antidote for many ills. There is repose in Siren Land; there is none of that delirious massing-together in which certain mortals, unable to stand alone, can lean up against one another and so gain, for a moment, a precarious condition of equipoise.

This is the atmosphere Douglas attempted to recreate in South Wind—the repose, the solitude, the naïve light, the nearness to elemental things. By following the process of the mediterraneanizing of Bishop Heard, we can learn something of how Douglas managed his problem.

To begin with, Bishop Heard is not a hopeless case; if he were, Douglas would not be interested in him. Having spent considerable time in Africa, the Bishop is somewhat mellowed. The natives there had something of the same "spirit of unconquerable playfulness in grave concerns" that he now notes in the Nepentheans. His favorites were the Bulanga: "And the Bulanga.… Really the Bulanga were the worst of the lot. Not fit to be talked about. And yet, somehow or other, one could not help liking them.… " Bishop Heard is a reasonable man; and he is ripe for Nepenthe. When he has been on the island only a few days he is already reflecting on the new, open-minded attitude of which he has become aware:

Happiness—an honourable, justifiable happiness—how was it to be attained? Not otherwise, he used to think than through the two-fold agency of Christianity and civilization. That was his old College attitude. Imperceptibly his outlook had shifted since then. Something had been stirring within him; new points of view had floated into his ken. He was no longer so sure about things. The structure of his mind had lost that old stability; its elements seemed to be held in solution, ready to form new combinations. China had taught him that men can be happy and virtuous while lacking, and even scorning, the first of these twin blessings. Then had come Africa, where his notions had been further dislocated by those natives who derided both the one and the other—such fine healthy animals, all the same! A candid soul, he allowed his natural shrewdness and logic to play freely with memories of his earlier experiences among the London poor. Those experiences now became fraught with a new meaning. The solemn doctrines he had preached in those days: were they really a panacea for all the ills of the flesh? He thought upon the gaunt bodies, starved souls, and white faces—the dirt, the squalor of it! Was that Christianity, civilization?

Before long the Bishop feels himself on the verge of something:

Whatever it was he seemed to be no longer his own master, as in former days. Fate had caused his feet to stray towards something new—something alarming. He was poised, as it were on the brink of a gulf. Or rather, it was as if that old mind of his, like a boat sailing hitherto briskly before the wind, had suddenly encountered a bank of calm, of utter and ominous calm; it was a thing spellbound; a toy of circumstances beyond human control. The canvas hung in the stagnant air. From which quarter would the quickening breeze arrive? Whither would it bear him?

The influence of new and unusual friends, of a new sense of leisure, and of the omnipresent south wind makes of his mind a pliable and impressionable thing, giving his own good sense a chance to operate. Old conceptions are beginning to vanish, the rigid sense of duty to dissolve, and an insidious doubt to enter:

He tried to get himself into perspective. "I must straighten myself out," he thought. Assuredly it was a restful place, this Nepenthe, abounding in kindly people; his affection for it grew with every day. Rest without; but where was that old rest within, that sense of plain tasks plainly to be performed, of tangible duty? Whither had it gone? Alien influences were at work upon him. Something new had insinuated itself into his blood, some demon of doubt and disquiet which threatened his old-established conceptions. Whence came it? The effect of changed environment—new friends, new food, new habits? The unaccustomed leisure which gave him, for the first time, a chance of thinking about non-professional matters? The South Wind acting on his still weakened health? All these together? Or had he reached an epoch in his development, the termination of one of those definite life-periods when all men worthy of the name pass through some cleansing process of spiritual desquamation, and slip their outworn weeds of thought and feeling.

Soon afterwards we find him entertaining a new realization of the importance of the individual and of the inevitability of individual weakness. He thinks to himself that perhaps the American millionaire Van Koppen, who reportedly keeps a number of young ladies on his yacht, cannot help being what he is; perhaps this very coarseness in Van Koppen has helped him to become a renowned philanthropist. And most startling of all, perhaps even ladies have such coarse impulses:

Certain human attributes were mutually exclusive—avarice and generosity, for instance; others no doubt mysteriously but inextricably intertwined. A man was an in-dividual [sic]; he could not be divided or taken to pieces; he could not be expected to possess virtues incompatible with the rest of his mental equipment, however desirable such virtues might be. Who knows? Van Koppen's doubtful acts might be an unavoidable expression of his personality, an integral part of that nature under whose ferocious stimulus he had climbed to his present enviable position. And Mr. Heard was both shocked and amused to reflect that but for the co-operation of certain coarse organic impulses to which these Nepenthe legends testified, the millionaire might never have been able to acquire the proud title of "Saviour of his Country." [Van Koppen's fortune was the result of his monopoly of certain ingeniously contrived rubber goods.]

"That's queer," he mused. "It never struck me before. Shows how careful one must be. Dear me! Perhaps the ladies have inevitable organic impulses of a corresponding kind. Decidedly queer. H'm. Ha. Now I wonder.… And perhaps, if the truth were known, these young persons are having quite a good time of it—"

Various other incidents and impressions have their effect on Bishop Heard. There are the Russians, the simplehearted sect of "Little White Cows," and their demagogic leader who show him what incredible "chi-maeras" the "hyperborean mists" of northern Europe can engender. And there is the murder trial, with its comic opera confusion, which shows him how unde pendable is the justice of organized society. Everything prepares him for the climactic situation in which he witnesses the murder and, far from being outraged, he is able to take the matter in stride and to attribute it to the "immutable instincts of mankind." "One dirty blackmailer more or less; what on earth did it matter to anybody?… A contemptible little episode! He decided to relegate it into the category of unimportant events."

His conclusive view is that Nepenthe has done him good:

There was something bright and diabolical in the tone of the place, something kaleidoscopic,—a frolicsome perversity. Purifying, at the same time. It swept away the cobwebs. It gave you a measure, a standard, whereby to compute earthly affairs. Another landmark passed; another milestone on the road to enlightenment. That period of doubt was over. His values had righted themselves. He had carved out new and sound ones; a workable, up-to-date theory of life. He was in fine trim. His liver—he forgot that he ever had one. Nepenthe had done him good all round. And he knew exactly what he wanted. A return to the Church, for example, was out of the question. His sympathies had outgrown the ideals of that establishment; a wave of pantheistic benevolence had drowned its smug little teachings. The Church of England! What was it still good for? A stepping stone, possibly towards something more respectable and humane; a warning to all concerned of the folly of idolizing dead men and their delusions. The Church? Ghosts!

A criticism to which South Wind is probably open is the weakness of its story line. One reviewer [Arthur Eck ersley, English Review, August, 1917] said, "There is no story, or none that matters." And Richard Aldington is quite severe on this matter:

… there was a theme for an extravaganza or short story of novelette length if properly constructed, but the author doesn't know his trade. True, he has created here and there an ambience and "atmosphere" of genial and irresponsible paganism, for which I praise him. But about one third of his chapters are irrelevant to his theme and therefore from an artistic point of view useless excrescences, however excellent they may be in themselves as essays. The author's real problem was admittedly a difficult one, and, in view of its preposterous nature, the Bishop's conversion from Christianity to low-class South Italian immoral ism could only take place in an extravaganza. The Bishop ought to have been shown by a series of skilfully contrived and interwoven incidents and experiences, gradually condoning one by one breaches of Anglican morals until he arrives at murder.… [Pinorman, 1954]

Douglas, annoyed by the reviewers' charges concerning the weakness of the plot of South Wind, undertook to answer them in Alone with a rather lengthy discussion of the novel:

I see no reason why a book should have a plot. In regard to this one, it would be nearer the truth to say it is nothing but plot from beginning to end. How to make a murder palatable to a bishop: that is the plot. How? You must unconventionalise him and instil into his mind the seeds of doubt and revolt. You must shatter his old notions of what is right. It is the only way to achieve this result, and I would defy the critic to point to a single incident or character or conversation in the book which does not further the object in view. The good bishop soon finds himself among new influences; his sensations, his intellect, are assailed from within and without. Figures such as those in Chapters 11, 19, and 35 [these are respectively the story of Bashakuloff and the Little White Cows, that of the Good Duke Alfred, and that of Commendatore Giustino Morena]; the endless dialogues in the boat; the even more tedious happenings in the local law-court; the very externals—relaxing wind and fantastic landscape and volcanic phenomena—the joval immoderation of everything and everybody; they foster a sense of violence and insecurity; they all tend to make the soil receptive to new ideas.

If that was your plot, the reviewer might say, you have hidden it rather successfully. I have certainly done my best to hide it. For although the personalities of the villain and his legal spouse crop up periodically, with ominous insistence, from the first chapter onwards, they are always swallowed up again. The reason is given in the penultimate chapter, where the critic might have found a résumé of my intentions and the key to this plot—to wit, a murder under those particular circumstances is not only justifiable and commendable but—insignificant. Quite insignificant! Not worth troubling about. Hundreds of decent and honest folk are being destroyed every day; nobody cares tuppence; "one dirty blackmailer more or less—what does it matter to anybody?" There are so many more interesting things on earth. That is why the bishop—i. e. the reader—here discovers the crime to be a "contemptible little episode," and decides to "relegate it into the category of unimportant events." He was glad that the whole affair had remained in the background, so to speak, of his local experiences. It seemed appropriate.… That is the heart, the core, of the plot. And that is why all those other happenings find themselves pushed into the foreground.

There is little that can be said to contradict this explanation—or to support it. Douglas' assertion that everything contributes in some way to the central problem is rather strong, but it could probably be defended. Final recourse must be to the response of the individual reader; and, while the effect of the book is not particularly one of economy, most readers probably find it, in the main, unified. Nevertheless, the structure of the novel is not so strong as that of many less important novels. Almost the entire first half is devoted to exposition, establishment of characters, and development of atmosphere. With the threatened eruption of the volcano, accompanied by various fantastic portents, a tension is created which subsequently snaps. Dramatic things then begin to happen: the Little White Cows riot; Mrs. Meadows murders her first husband; Freddy Parker dies; and finally the Count sells his fake statue. The resolution of the plot takes place within the mind of the Bishop, and the denouement appropriately involves everyone's getting quietly and whimsically tipsy.

II The Gallery of Eccentrics

Douglas was more interested in the souls of places than in the souls of individuals. He preferred to observe life generally rather than to study psychology and individual behavior. As a result, his characters do not have the kind of depth and verisimilitude that we have come to expect in the modern novel, where the naturalistic tradition is strong and where subtle psychology is demanded. One cannot chart their unconscious minds or follow the various hereditary factors and traumatic incidents which make them what they are. In this sense, they might be considered superficial and lacking in realism. V. S. Pritchett writes:

Douglas is an observer of human nature who depends upon his first impression for his effect; he is not a novelist in the sense that he proceeds any deeper into his people. He certainly is not "in" them and has little sympathy. He is a brilliant satirical talker, the egotist who is the unrelaxing circus master displaying his own power as a trainer, not the real power of the animals. How, the human reader asks, have these grotesques been trained to the master's will? There is, unnoticed by him but patent to us, a pathos in their fixed gaze, as they watch the whip.

It may be that Douglas' characters are too contrived to be completely realistic, but it seems clear also that Pritchett has allowed his metaphor to get out of control. The picture of Mr. Keith or Miss Wilberforce gazing pathetically at the Cipolla-like figure of their creator and pleading for more individuality is amusing. It is just as important that characters function harmoniously and effectively in the total scheme of the novel as that they seem to live a life of their own. If all characters ran away from their authors, as Becky Sharp is supposed to have run away from Thackeray, novels would be chaotic affairs. Characters should be what their author wants them to be, or as nearly so as he can make them. Some are created with close attention to subsurface factors and hence give an impression of many dimensions. Others are intentionally and necessarily superficial.

Douglas' characters have the quality of caricature, each representing some particular tendency to an extreme degree. They thus approach the nature of symbols. E. M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel has written astutely about characters of this type, which he calls "flat" characters. He points out that they are built around "a single idea or quality" and can often be expressed in one sentence. He finds two principal advantages to "flat" characters. First, they are easily recognized by the reader: "It is a convenience for an author when he can strike with his full force at once, and flat characters are very useful to him, since they never need reintroducing, never run away, have not to be watched for development, and provide their own atmosphere—little luminous disks of a pre-arranged size, pushed hither and thither like counters across the void or between the stars; most satisfactory."

A second advantage is that such characters are easily remembered by the reader after he has finished the book: "They remain in his mind as unalterable for the reason that they were not changed by circumstances; they moved through circumstances, which gives them in retrospect a comfortable quality, and preserves them when the book that produced them may decay.… All of us, even the sophisticated, yearn for permanence, and to the unsophisticated permanence is the chief excuse for a work of art. We all want books to endure, to be refuges, and their inhabitants to be always the same, and flat characters tend to justify themselves on this account."

Forster cites Dickens as an example of a "big" writer who employed "flat" characters almost exclusively and produced a "wonderful feeling of human depth" through them. Although such characters as Mr. Micawber and Mr. Pickwick are, if looked at edgeways, "no thicker than a gramaphone record," Dickens presented them so ingeniously that the reader never gets "the sideway view." Moreover, Dickens' immense vitality caused his characters "to vibrate a little, so that they borrow his life and appear to live one of their own." Forster concludes that "Dickens' success with types suggests that there may be more in flatness than the severer critics admit."

The interpretation of humanity produced by Douglas' characters may be, in some senses, a shallower and less adequate one than that of Dickens, even though it has in some ways, greater complexity. Yet, in the main, Forster's observations about Dickens apply to Douglas. Douglas' characters are memorable, despite their flatness; and they do embody some of their creator's intellectual vitality. The kind of world that Douglas' fiction created—and all three novels bear this out—is a stylized world. It contains, somehow, one dimension less than the worlds of Henry James, D. H. Lawrence, or James Joyce—to cite diverse examples. Douglas' characters are at home in this world, as "rounder" characters would not be. They serve his purposes. He will not "pry" into them beyond a certain depth, as he would not "pry" into himself for his reader's benefit.

It is ironic that Forster chooses to quote, as an example of critical disapproval of the kind of flat characters that he is defending, "one of our foremost writers, Mr. Norman Douglas." The passage which he quotes is from A Plea for Better Manners. Douglas is taking to task writers like D. H. Lawrence who, he claims, place their friends in novels and falsify them with "the novelist's touch." He defines this as follows:

It consists, I should say in a failure to realize the profundities and complexities of the ordinary human mind; it selects for literary purposes two or three facets of a man or woman, generally the most spectacular and therefore "useful" ingredients of their character, and disregards all the others. Whatever fails to fit in with these specially chosen traits is eliminated; must be eliminated, for otherwise the description would not hold water. Such and such are the data; everything incompatible with those data has to go by the board. It follows that the novelist's touch argues, often logically, from a wrong premise; it takes what it likes and leaves the rest. The facts may be correct so far as they go, but there are too few of them; what the author says may be true, and yet by no means the truth. That is the novelist's touch. It falsifies life.

This is in some ways shortsighted criticism; perhaps it reflects Douglas' chagrin at Lawrence's characterization of him in Aaron's Rod and certainly it reflects the conviction which he often expressed that the individual's privacy should always be respected. Douglas should certainly have realized that the artist can never disclose everything but must choose the details which serve his artistic ends. A large part of the dramatis personae of any novel must consist of characters who are considerably less than completely developed. The novelist's art should not photograph life but epitomize it.

In violation of the principles Douglas had announced in his attack on Lawrence's methods, he seems to have put living people into his own novels. There is hardly an important character in South Wind who did not have a living counterpart. And, although Douglas claimed that all of them were idealized and that no one was maligned or offensively depicted, some characters, such as Malipizzo and Freddy Parker, have been construed as rancorous attacks on their models.

Mr. Heard must be considered the protagonist of South Wind, for it is to him that the important things happen. He is a good deal "rounder" than most of Douglas' people—as a protagonist must necessarily be—and does undergo a development. As a protagonist he has not been well received by all readers. Those critics who disapprove of Mr. Heard seem to do so on the absurd basis that if he had been another kind of bishop, instead of the kind he was, the story would have had a different outcome. Elizabeth Wheatley, [in "Norman Douglas," Sewanee Review, January, 1932] for instance, calls him a "flexible dummy instead of a man." "It is child's play to knock down a dummy. Had Mr. Douglas faced a real bishop with his golden absurdities, he would have met an impasse. For it is the business of bishops to forgive and forget more terrible crimes than murder." And Pelham Edgar in The Art of the Novel, [1933] complains that, by making Heard an easy target for the island's message, Douglas had stacked the cards. Edgar says that, though Heard is the only character in the book "capable of a critical reaction," he is "an unsatisfactory reagent." Needless to say, a better bishop would have been another story; but it would not have been written by Norman Douglas. These are actually criticisms of Douglas' values rather than of his characterization. Bishop Heard is the kind of bishop that Douglas' purpose required. A "real" bishop would be out of place in South Wind, or in any other satire for that matter.

Among the characters in South Wind is the confused student, Denis Phipps. He comes to Nepenthe unsure of his values—timorous, idealistic, and too English. The atmosphere takes its effect:

All was not well with Denis. And the worst of it was, he had no clear notion of what was the matter. He was changing. The world was changing too. It had suddenly expanded. He felt that he, also, ought to expand. There was so much to learn, to see, to know—so much, that it seemed to paralyse his initiative. Could he absorb all this? Would he ever get things into order once more, and recapture his self-possession? Would he ever again be satisfied with himself? It was an invasion of his tranquillity, from within and without. He was restless.

Like the bishop, Denis too has been somewhat prepared: "The novel impressions of Florence had helped in the disintegration. Nepenthe—its sunshine, its relentless paganism—had done the rest. It shattered his earlier outlook and gave him nothing in exchange. Nothing and yet everything." Denis supplements the Bishop because, being younger, he can have a love affair and give Douglas an opportunity to comment on this aspect of things. Thus Denis falls in love with a sensuous and amoral servant girl, the essence of southern beauty; but he is crushed when the less idealistic and more aggressive Edgar Marten wins her promiscuous love. Then Denis receives advice from Mr. Keith:

"He said I made a mistake in paying attention to what human beings said and did, and that I ought to forsake mankind for a while, and art and books, and so on. You know the way he talks! He said it would give me a stronger individuality if I came into contact with nature and thought things out for myself instead of listening to other people. He advised me to sit among the rocks at midnight and in the hot afternoons, conversing with the genii of earth and air. It would correct my worldly perspective."

Having followed Keith's advice, Denis, like Bishop Heard, is regenerated at the end the story.

Of the several characters who seem to represent aspects of Douglas' own point of view, Mr. Keith is the most important. He is a rationalist, a pagan, an individualist, a hedonist—and he is strikingly articulate. He also has Douglas' reverence for nature, his hunger for knowledge, and his worship of facts:

Keith was a pertinacious and omnivorous student; he sought knowledge not for a set purpose but because nothing was without interest for him. He took all learning to his province. He read for the pleasure of knowing what he did not know before; his mind was usually receptive because, he said, he respected the laws which governed his body. Facts were his prey. He threw himself into them with a kind of piratical ardour; took them by the throat, wallowed in them, worried them like a terrier, and finally assimilated them. They gave him food for what he liked best on earth: "disinterested thought." They "formed a rich loam." He had an encyclopaedic turn of mind; his head, as somebody once remarked, was a lumber-room of useless information. He could tell you how many public baths existed in Geneva in pre-Reformation days, what was the colour of Mehemet Ali's whiskers, why the manuscript of Virgil's friend Gallius had not been handed down to posterity, and in what year, and what month, the decimal system was introduced into Finland. Such aimless incursions into knowledge were a puzzle to his friends, but not to himself. They helped him to build up a harmonious scheme of life—to round himself off.

Mr. Keith further has Douglas' liking for solitude: he contended "that no garden on earth, however spacious, was large enough for more than one man." He even shows the note of pagan melancholy which we have seen Douglas display. A kind of chorus, Mr. Keith serves to develop the moral implications of the plot. And, though his long and frequent conversations about human conduct might easily have become tedious, Douglas has made him sufficiently eloquent to avoid this danger.

Count Caloveglia is also a spokesman for the author. He is a Classicist, a Hellenist, a lover of the Mediterranean, and something of a Machiavellian: "There was sunshine in his glance—a lustrous gem-like grace; one realized from his conversation, from his every word, that he had discarded superfluities of thought and browsed for a lifetime, in leisurely fashion, upon all that purifies and exalts the spirit. Nothing one felt, would avail to ruffle that deep pagan content." The crowning achievement of the Count's life is the sale of his faked antique to the American millionaire, Van Koppen; the money will secure a dowry for his daughter. But, even when this success is assured, he does not forget the "golden mean": "The cheque would be in his pocket that night. Three hundred and fifty thousand francs—or nearly. That is what made him not exactly grave, but reserved. Excess of joy, like all other excess, is not meet to be displayed before men. All excess is unseemly. Nothing overmuch. Measure in everything."

Douglas had known people who sold fake antiques as Count Caloveglia did. Orioli describes a man named Martin, whom Douglas undoubtedly also knew, who made a business of such nefarious dealings. Douglas also knew a man who had some of the characteristics of Mr. Eames, the scholar of Nepenthe. This was John Ellington Brooks, to whom Douglas dedicated Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology. Brooks, who lived alone on Capri, never returned to the mainland. He was content to play with his cat, strum his piano, and enjoy his scholarly pursuits. Included in his pile of unpublished manuscripts were, according to Orioli, original poetry and prose as well as translations from Greek, Latin, and French. His only publication, apart from the translations Douglas used in Birds and Beasts was a sonnet which he once sold for a few pounds. Brooks may have contributed to several of the characters in South Wind, but he was clearly a model for Mr. Eames, who is described as "this man of single aim and purpose, this monk of literature.… Happy mortal! Free from all superfluities and encumbrances of the flesh! Enviable mortal! He reduced earthly existence to its simplest and most effective terms; he owed no man anything; he kept alive, on a miserable income, the sacred flame of enthusiasm. To aspire, that was the secret of his life."

Miss Wilberforce, the Englishwoman with an addiction to alcohol and a habit of disrobing in public, is an amusing, sympathetically presented character. In his introduction to the Modern Library edition of South Wind, Douglas said of her creation: "Miss Wilberforce has been put together out of some twelve dames of that particular alcoholic temperament whom it has been my privilege to know, and each of whom has contributed her mite; she is a synthetic lady-sot—a type I fervently pray God may never die out." Miss Wilberforce's sailor fiancé had died at sea. His death had been a "twist," and she had tried to drown herself several times.

Then, gradually, she put on a new character altogether and relapsed into queer ancestral traits, stripping off, like so many worthless rags, the layers of laboriously acquired civilization.

… Staggering about the lanes of Nepenthe in the silent hours before dawn, she was liable to be driven, at the bidding of some dark primeval impulse, to divest herself of her rainment—a singularity which perturbed even the hardiest of social nightbirds who had the misfortune to encounter her. Taxed with this freakish behaviour, she would refer to the example of St. Francis of Assisi who did the same, and brazenly ask whether he wasn't good enough for them?

Douglas had an affection for this sort of gentle, ruined profligate. Miss Wilberforce provides a humorous continuity and allows an opportunity for Mr. Keith to give an exposition of his laissez-faire social attitudes when he eloquently thwarts an attempt of local "do-gooders" to put the poor lady in a private asylum.

Another character, the Duchess, is patterned after an American lady named Mrs. Snow. In referring to this lady in Looking Back, Douglas reiterated his view that novelists should not take their characters from life without thoroughly remodeling them:

Mrs. Snow. She finally returned to America. A vision of her helped me to portray the "Duchess" in a certain story; other ladies contributed their share of suggestion; imagination also played its part. I have never tried to draw a figure from life, as they say. My creed is that a human character, however engrossing, however convincing and true to itself, must be modelled anew before it can become material for fiction. It must be licked into shape, otherwise its reactions in a world of fictitious characters, would be out of focus. No authentic child of man will fit into a novel.

History is the place for such people; history or oblivion.

Freddy Parker and his lady, Douglas confessed to have intended as Mr. and Mrs. Harold Trower. Trower was the author of The Book of Capri and hence a kind of rival of Douglas. Signor Malipizzo ("Ha, the animal! He has the Evil Eye. He is also scrofulous, rachitic") was a magistrate named Capolozzi, who, Douglas said, "very nearly had me in the lock-up once or twice." Orioli calls Capolozzi "a horrible creature…, lame and sickly and red-haired, and hated to such an extent by everybody … that he asked to be transferred to another post in the nick of time to save himself from a stab in the belly.…" Muhlen (or Retlow), the blackmailing husband of Mrs. Meadows, was suggested by Baron Fritz Von Meltheim, who was apparently both a blackmailer and a murderer. And Bazhakuloff was based on Rasputin and other Russian "imposters."

A great part of Douglas' characterization and plot development is dependent upon conversation. Many of the ideas in South Wind receive their development through the dialogue of such "spokesman" characters as Mr. Keith and Count Caloveglia. And the advancement of the plot—that is, the evolution of the Bishop's outlook—is in part effected through the provocative conversation of these characters who insinuate ideas into his mind. Mr. Keith is so astute in his reading of character and so articulate in his explanations that his discussions with the Bishop form a kind of choral commentary on the atmosphere, the incidents, and the other characters. South Wind has been called a conversational novel in the tradition of Peacock.

Douglas' dialogue has been deemed stylized, the criticism being that all characters speak with the same voice and that that voice is Douglas' own. Aldington writes that Douglas "… had a stylized dialogue which was fatal to the living word, so that almost everyone who talks in his books is Douglas-ised into similarity, a monotony of flippantly doggish worldliness." It is true that the dialogue often lacks what might be called "realism," because the characters are all somewhat too eloquent. But realism was not Douglas' object, nor would it have been especially appropriate to his novels. He was not attempting to present a "slice of life" but to produce the well-made novel in which everything contributed to his intentions. In Looking Back, he criticized Lawrence's dialogue, which is ordinarily praised as lifelike: "Lawrence never divined that conversations and dialogue are precious contrivances, to be built up con amore; that they should suggest a clue to character and carry forward the movement instead of retarding it; that they should be sparkling oases, not deserts of tiresome small-talk."

Some further defense can be made against the charge that Douglas' characters are less than real and individualized in their speech. Many of the characters in South Wind—Mr. Keith, Caloveglia, Don Francesco—can be eloquent without being inconsistent to their characters in other respect. Others—the Bishop, Denis, the Duchess, and Mrs. Steynlin—would also be expected to speak as correctly and as well as they do. Edgar Marten, on the other hand, is depicted as somewhat coarse. His language reflects this; notice, for instance, his reaction to the Russian fanatic Bazhakuloff; "He's a beauty! Eyes like a boiled haddock. And that thing has the cheek to call itself a Messiah. Thank God I'm a Jew; it's no business of mine. But if I were a Christian, I'd bash his blooming head in. Damned if I wouldn't. The frowsy, fetid, fly-blown fraud. Or what's the matter with the Dog's Home?" It must be admitted, however, that Douglas himself had several "voices," and that even this was one of them. The expression of Douglas' characters, like their ideas, is usually recognizable as that of the author. The differentiating features are too superficial to hide Douglas' mannerisms, his liking for epigram, and even some of his favorite words. One must be content with the fact that their conversation is usually interesting and witty and that its stylized quality is not out of keeping with the atmosphere in which it is set.

South Wind appears to have been a sort of consummation of Douglas' particular possibilities. Although there are always readers who prefer Old Calabria, Siren Land, or even They Went, most grant South Wind to be Douglas' best book and the most consummate display of his powers. It allowed him to present some of his eccentric Capri friends in an idealized form and to project his own personality into several characters; it permitted him to talk casually and eloquently about many of his favorite topics—geology, history, and even saints' legends.

And amazingly enough, through his felicitous style and ironic wit, he was able to inform the whole with a unity of mood and purpose. Less than a decade after the publication of South Wind, an influential critic, writing in the New York Times [Herbert Gorman, The New York Times Book Review, February 8, 1975], summarized the basis of the critical esteem in which the book had already come to be held: "The high engrossment in atmosphere delineation, the almost flawless projection of character, the steady stream of faintly ironic humor, the philosophical undercurrent, the sense of completeness and, above all, the achievement of a colorful and melodious prose that is both pleasant and fastidious, combine together in a work that has won for itself a small but vociferous body of admirers who insist upon denominating it as one of the smaller classics."

But this critic added, prophetically, that "South Wind is his triumph and vindication as a writer, and somehow one suspects that it will remain so; that another such work would be impossible from him for the simple reason that he has put all of himself in it. He is not a great creative writer, but for once his powers fused at their best and the result is one that should accord him a place in the minds of those readers who love what are termed 'the delicacies of literature.'"

III They Went: Beauty Over Betterment

They Went (1920) Douglas' second full-length novel, was written during the lean years after World War I. Begun at St. Malo, it was "interrupted owing to lack of food," and finished at Mentone after the war "when I was feeling comfortable again" [Late Harvest]. In Looking Back Douglas described the circumstances of its writing and the thoughts which prompted it:

At Mentone I was already drifting away from humanity pure and simple, with its odd little loves and hates and ambitions; into the regions beyond, and saying to myself as I actually wrote later: "How many avenues of delight are closed to the mere moralist or immoralist who knows nothing of things extra-human; who remains absorbed in mankind and its half-dozen motives of conduct, so unstable yet forever the same, which we all fathomed before we were twenty!" There is an infusion of the extra-human in They Went, which depicts the conflict between beauty and betterment, art and morality. Betterment wins, despite the extra-human intervention of Theophilus. It is apt to win. In the shape of priestcraft, it extinguished art and science in Egypt; in the shape of Plato and his followers, it extinguished them in Greece. That city, the thing of beauty, lies drowned under the waves, while betterment remains perched on its granite rock.

They Went is a short, whimsical tale, set sometime in the dim past. Its pseudo-legendary form and austere style produce an effect far different from that of South Wind. Description is kept to a minimum; conversation plays a much less prominent part than in the earlier novel; the mood is less bright and sparkling; and despite a strong humorous element, the tone is more serious and less tolerant.

The setting is a strange, mist-shrouded city on the rugged northern coast, presumably Brittany, in the fifth or sixth century. The heroic age of the city is past; it is in a period of decadence—of splendor, luxury, and immorality. The King, now an old and doddering man, has memories of great conquests over the Vikings; but now the weapons and armor are rusting, and the old smith Lelian is reduced to making trinkets for the beautiful but cruel Princess.

The King's last great victory has been over the sea, for he has caused a mighty sea wall to be constructed by an exiled Roman engineer. The sea has been pushed back, a flooded plain drained, and a city built on a spit of reclaimed land. Now, at the King's belt hangs the key to the sluice gates which hold back the angry ocean that thunders at the city's foundation, eager to take back what was once its own.

The Princess, whom all men adore at first sight, is a lover of beauty and has rebuilt the city, transforming the plain functional buildings of the Roman engineer by adding exotic towers and porticoes. The control of the city is hers, for her personality and intellect are far stronger than those of her senile father or her innocuous mother. It is the Princess who has made the city a center of world commerce and an object of wide interest by bringing skillful craftsmen and artisans from distant lands. She toys with the city as she does with the men who make the mistake of offering her their adulation, and her private tower is known to contain rare secrets and to have been the scene of strange orgies. It has a stairway opening on the great drain; when her lovers begin to bore her, or when her favorites have been gleaned of all their knowledge, they go.

The Princess was not actually the child of the king. Once Aithryn, the great ruler of the north whom people thought to be a sea god, had become jealous of the city beside the sea and had sailed there in his green ship. He did not enter the city, but found the Queen seated on the sea wall embroidering and took her on his ship for a brief visit. Thus the element of discord entered the city; now, nineteen years later, Aithryn's spies carefully watch the maturing of the strong-willed young Princess who seems so unlike the King.

The religious life of the city is dominated by Manthis, a harsh old druidess and worshiper of Belen who keeps a girls' school on an island in the bay and who propagates her doctrines of betterment, social utility, and the superiority of women. The last Christian missionary had been treated tolerantly; but, when he proved to be a bigot and hacked down the sacred druidical grove, the King and Manthis decided that he had to go. He went, but in his dying malediction he had mentioned "retribution from the sea." Manthis scrutinized the missionary's entrails to read the future and promptly moved her girls to the island.

The new missionary, a handsome young man named Kenwyn with a weakness in matters of sex, proves acceptable to Manthis and attractive to the Princess. But even more appealing to this self-willed young lady is a mysterious Greek named Theophilus, who, though ugly and diabolical, has a vast knowledge of architecture and the other arts that the Princess lives for. He is able to make workmen and materials appear as if by magic, and he is the only person whose fate Manthis has been unable to read.

With Theophilus, whose resources of knowledge are unlimited, the Princess is happy for the first time in her life. Together they make the city beautiful. From him she learns not only new methods and crafts, but also new qualities of kindness and mercy that temper her former callousness; for the pragmatic Theophilus knows well that nothing is accomplished by unnecessary cruelty. But now the Princess is to learn the meaning of sacrifice as well, for Theophilus finds it necessary to ask recompense for his help. He explains to her that people like them, lovers of beauty, have dangerous enemies—,the forces of betterment and the All-Highest. He explains that Aithryn, her real father, is now leagued with the All-Highest. Suffering a kind of senility as a result of an old head wound, Aithryn has fallen under the power of the Christians, who promise him a future life in return for extensive grants of land to the Church. And now the Christians insist that Aithryn destroy the evil city by the sea, whose Princess, rumor has it, has sold her soul to the evil one. The first measures which Theophilus requires the Princess to take are the disposal of the Christian missionary and the securing of the great key from her irresponsible father.

The Princess, half in love with Kenwyn, at first refuses Theophilus' request; but, when he threatens to leave, she complies. The lovesick young missionary is easily lured to her tower at night, as others before him have been; and, like them, "he went." The great drain tells no tales. Now the Princess, who has shed tears for the first time in her life, knows what it means to sacrifice for something one loves. But she has failed to secure the key to the sluice gates. The green ship comes again; Aithryn enters the palace during the nightly revelry; the Queen is so excited that she forgets to put the old King to bed when he reaches "high water mark"; and Aithryn leaves with the key.

The ocean surges over the city. Aithryn is waiting outside the tower for his daughter, but Theophilus easily destroys him. Theophilus is dejected to see his magnificent work destroyed, but he is accustomed to such disappointment. The All-Highest, who prefers a preacher to a portico, is always ready to destroy thousands of innocent people in order to accomplish his whims. But Theophilus will take the Princess to his own land, where they can rear a new city without the interference of the forces of betterment. The princess is happy and willing. "They went."

Manthis, safe with her girls on the island, realizes that her hopes of some kind of an alliance with Christianity were futile because they depended on men, and Kenwyn has proved that men are too weak for such high purposes. She is happy in the realization that the sinful city is gone and, with it all, the annoyances and frustrations. Now she will be able to develop her own ideas of betterment: "She felt like some sagacious gardener who holds in his hands a seed scarcely visible, and already contemplates, with the mind's eye, the tall and seemly growth which must inevitably spring therefrom."

The loss of the city's population—and hence of all the men—disturbs Manthis' pupils, who ask, "If all the men are drowned, and even the young ones, and even the tiny little boys, how shall we ever—" But Manthis is undisturbed. "Belen will provide," she announces gravely. And thus "the thing of beauty lies drowned under the wave, while betterment remains perched on its granite rock."

The book received some favorable reviews. The Athenaeum [8 October 1920] said, "… Mr. Douglas has developed and transformed the Peacockian novel, carrying it to a point far beyond that charming if uneven writer.…" And Rebecca West wrote in the New Statesman [2 October 1920] that Douglas' talent had found a more appropriate expression than in South Wind or in Old Calabria. A few other critics have since echoed this preference. Raymond Mortimer [in Nation and Athenaeum 22 September 1928] considers They Went Douglas' best novel, and Elizabeth Wheatly considers it "finer" than South Wind and "more severely patterned."

Some reviewers were confused about the interpretation of the story. The American Bookman [21 May 1921] said:

Perhaps Mr. Douglas is taking a crack at family life.… perhaps it is love that annoys him. Maybe he means her [the Princess] to be woman incarnate.

Let me warn you against this novel if you are the sort of person who must know the exact meaning of your story books.

And another review:

Perhaps it is the tragedy of a womanhood that is simply the will to have and to enjoy, and which so becomes in the end its own victim. Or is the princess a symbol of paganism successfully resisting the lures and the threats of a religion of sacrifice? Or do you take her (with me) as the child with the dormant soul whose interest for the cold and cruel destruction of warm things has carried her so far that the moment of possible awakening has come too late? [H. W. Boynton, in Weekly Review, 30 April 1921]

Light is thrown upon the meaning of the novel, or at least upon the intention of its author, in the prefatory letter which Douglas prefixed to the third printing. He explained that while visiting Brittany he had discovered that the country was saturated with legends and had decided to "dissect a handful of these for a scientific purpose." His goal was to prove the theory that a myth is "the slow product of ages … a kind of palimpsest … overscored at various periods of its growth by the fresh experience of the race." Although Douglas makes no claim for the absolute originality of these views of the nature of myth, he seems to have considered them more startling than they were. He chose the Roi d'Ys story, the drowned city motif which had appeared in a number of plays and poems, as well as in the "melodiously saccharine opera by Lalo." Working with the Breton variant of the legend, he found "that primordial or autochtonous note—the domineering and lustful woman, as well as another aboriginal feature which I proposed, just for the sake of the theory, to attribute to the old dolichocephalous inhabitants of Brittany: the personification of wild nature forces—in this case a revengeful ocean." Next he discerned "the brach ycephalic contribution" (in the metals, craftsmanship, and so on); then a Roman element; and last, the "Christian patina—the intervention of a saint." Thus, six thousand years of accretions, "Q. E. D. Pure guess work, you perceive."

In considering these legends, Douglas was disturbed—as might be expected—by the intrusion of saints and angels and by the admixture of Christian values: "It dulls their pristine vigour and originality and even, by appearing as deus ex machina at a critical moment, renders them almost jejune—nonsensical.…" He relates that he tried to strip off these "adventitious wrappings" and to reconstruct the legend in "pagan garb." But he soon lost sight of his original problem and began to wonder what version offered most artistic merit, what improvements might be made, which characters were superfluous, and what new ones might be added. And thus They Went came into being. Douglas called it therefore "… not a phantasy of my own, but an adaptation from a familiar legend which keeps alive, maybe, the memory of some actual historical occurrence, some inroad of the sea destructive to the works of man."

As to the meaning of his novel Douglas wrote:

In this little allegory of beauty versus betterment into which the Roi d'Ys has developed (you see what happens when I take a legend in hand for "scientific purposes") I have tried to remain aloof and to hold the balance evenly. It is true that the All-Highest wins by a rather tortuous device. He does; and not for the first time in history. For this exalted personage would be unendurable had he not likewise his curse, his tragedy, his cloven hoof. He is omnipresent and yet not invariably wise; he blunders now and then (see Genesis) and is streaked, moreover, by a curious little vein of senile malice. Which of us, at one time or another, has not suffered from it? Kindly note, nevertheless, that the catastrophe would not have occurred and that the All-Highest would have been delightfully outwitted, but for the refusal of the princess to ask for the key. What made her refuse? "Sheer wrongness—wrongness and pride." Pride—hybris: that unforgivable sin which brings about the downfall of mortals.

Thus Douglas attempted, with indifferent success, to maintain a balance between the opposing teams. Both sides have weaknesses. The All-Highest has the incongruities characteristic of anthropomorphic deities. He has, from the human point of view, that disconcerting flaw that poor Job discovered: he is neither just nor consistent. The Princess has the flaw of humanity which the Greeks discovered: she is proud, immoderate, and shortsighted. It is obvious that Theophilus contains much of Douglas' own character and temperament. He is the lover of beauty, the Machiavellian, the gentleman of perfect taste. But he has the problem that all Satans in literature have faced: he is by definition unable to overcome his adversary.

Although the deepest conflicts of the plot are those between the antithetical cosmic forces, the little weaknesses of men play their parts in the turn of events. Without the personality of the King, the needs of the Queen, the hybris of the Princess, and the flawed mind of Aithryn, things would not have come about as they did. Thus Douglas apparently tried to keep a balance also between fate and human responsibility—the kind of balance which forms part of the achievement of Greek tragedy and epic. The people in They Went make their own fate to a degree, but their very nature makes it impossible for the best that is in them to win out. They get the god they deserve. Manthis is right in her perception of human weakness; but she has her own flaw, and the handling of the story makes her flaw perhaps the worst of all. She is allied with the forces of betterment which will always thwart man in his efforts to fulfill his potentialities for beauty and civilization, and these latter values are clearly the ones to which the author gives his nod of approval. Rebecca West has adroitly summed up what happens in the story and what the outcome implies:

…this struggle between the artist and the moralist is illusory. It comes to no decisions; it merely embellishes the pattern of life by adding to the intricacy of events, and the course of history is settled by things quite other. The city was washed away not by any machination of the devil or the missionary, but because the barbarian king, jealous of this rival kingdom and barred from any constructive belligerent policy by the effects of a crack on the skull, sent spies overseas to tamper with the embankment. It is stupidity that always finishes the argument between the artist and the saint, the cracked skull of humanity that is the decisive factor in the affairs of men. [New Statesman, 2 October 1920]

Concerning the principal characters, Douglas had something to say also. Theophilus, unlike the Princess and her parents, had no precedent in other versions of the legend. He was introduced because "the semi-savage Princess Ahes could never have reared a town surpassing Paris in splendour "without the help of the great Master-Builder of medieval days.…" In regard to the devil Douglas had written in Siren Land: "And what lends the devil his charm? His quasi-human attributes; his bargainings, his ill-treatment at the hands of heaven. Beings wholly divine are inevitably endowed with qualities of good and evil identical with our own: they are mere caricatures of good or bad men." Douglas made his devil in They Went human and appealing. Though astute and masterful, Theophilus is also tactful and sympathetic; he does not push himself in where he is not wanted. He is sensitive to beauty, kind when it is not necessary to be otherwise, and much affected by the sight of suffering. And, despite a few outbursts, he is resigned and relatively humble before the state of things—as far from the proud rebel of the earlier books of Paradise Lost as from the suave Voltarian of Goethe's Faust. A true gentleman, Theophilus has the sense of proportion that Douglas admired. Douglas' own analysis of this character emphasizes the commendable human qualities of enlightenment and creativity, but it emphasizes also the tragic dimension: "Ever to aspire and ever to be thwarted; that is the curse, the tragedy, of Theophilus and other Light-bringers. Well may they 'despair of mankind!' I grant he is not the devil of the schoolmen. He is the devil as he ought to be."

Princess Ahes was not intended to be as sympathetic a character as Theophilus: she is coarser and less self-sufficient. But she demonstrates a facet of Douglas that is sometimes overlooked; she represents an effort to show that pure intellectuality, without some tincture of warmheartedness, is objectionable. Douglas described her:

…a cold, earthly thinker, an egoist predestined from birth to fall under his [Theophilus'] influence, which moulds her character in singular fashion, softening it here, and hardening it there. She too has troubles, troubles that move her to tears. Yet they fail to enlist our compassion; we find it a strain to sympathize with the griefs, however acute, however sincere, of those whose head controls their heart. Many tragic figures were murderers; none has ever been a pure intellectual.

They Went has serious defects, not the least of which is the obtrusive repetition which will be discussed elsewhere. There are elements of preciousness and snideness of tone which are at times offensive to the most kindly disposed reader. But it has the saving qualities of Douglas' felicitous prose and his potent wit, as well as remarkable economy—thanks to its author's pithy style and his belief in the unities—and a bizarre and engaging mood. Its tone—a peculiar compound of sophistication, cynicism, and equanimity—is distinctively Douglas.

IV In the Beginning

In the Beginning (1927) was also based on legendary material: the tale of Ninus and Semiramis, the mythological founders of the Assyrian Empire. They are mentioned by Herodotus, and their story is discussed by Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough. Douglas claimed in Late Harvest that he had consulted all the ancient writers and "not a few of their modern commentators.…" But the legend itself is so slight and vague that the plot of In the Beginning can be considered original with Douglas. It is, in fact, his most sustained and complex plot; and a detailed summary of this little-known novel is necessary to make discussion possible.

The story takes place long ago, when mankind lived naked and unashamed and the gods took their pleasures not only in their own celestial halls but among the sons of men. Young Linus, a goatherd, is in love with Ayra, the daughter of a fisherman. They know little, but both feel some mysterious need. Often Linus draws the girl to a shady forest glen and caresses her clumsily, saying to himself, "This time, yes!" But her answer is always, "Oh, Linus, another day."

Ayra's father disturbed by the boy's slowness, also wonders about his wits because Linus has often reported seeing a fish of prodigious size and splendid hue, and the old man knows of no such monster. Ayra excuses her lover as a "dreamy boy" and secretly wonders whether he has not seen some immortal.

Linus has also seen a giant figure stepping across the jagged white spires which are visible halfway up the eastern sky and which are, unknown to men, a great chain of mountains. This figure is indeed the Earth god, off to pay a visit to the distant Colocynthians, whom he likes to tease with earthquakes. The Colocynthians have an advanced culture: they cultivate their land, build tall buildings, and powder their hair. It is they who have given the Earth god the nickname "O-Boum"—the Clat terer—which he resents.

The gods live in leisurely pleasure. They are immortal and fearless—but not passionless—and thrive on the worship of mortals. There are multitudes of them, peopling earth and sky, and also many half-gods products of "tender dalliance" between gods and mortals. These half-gods live on earth. They are fair and, like their divine parents, lazy, frivolous, and mischievous. Poor human beings, subject to the divine caprices of their deities, toil, suffer, and die; but they are always trying, usually in vain, to propitiate the gods.

There is, at the moment, great merriment in the celestial halls because Menetha the Maiden, cleverest of the goddesses and favorite daughter of the Great Father of the gods, has fallen in love with the young moon, who, alone among immortals, is sterile. The Clatterer laughs especially heartily, because Menetha has often chided him about his diversions, but she claims that her love for the moon is of another kind. Some of the gods think that the clever Menetha has chosen well, for she will not have to bear the pangs of childbirth from which gods are not immune. The Great Mother is pleased; there are too many philanderings with mortals and too many half-gods about. The moon, for his part, says it is all a rumor and the fault of the gossiping wind. It is quickly agreed that the wind shall be bottled up and rolled about again—one of the favorite sports in the celestial halls. It is left to Menetha to "put the moon to rights."

The Great Father has long since lapsed into lethargy and is no longer as jovial and as inventive as he once was. He is enveloped in a starry mist from which his stainless hand occasionally emerges to grasp a cup of myut, the wondrous liquor of the gods.

Linus, who is an orphan, lives with his grandmother, a woman with a reputation for great wisdom. One day he returns to their hut to find the old woman dead and learns from the First One, eldest of the three rulers of the village, that her last instructions were for the boy to visit Neahuni, the satyr.

The satyrs were a race of semidivine creatures who once peopled the earth. They were master builders, agriculturists, and scientists; but the Great Father became jealous and fearful of them and cursed them with sterility. Although their race was long-lived, the satyrs finally died out; now only Nea-huni remains. Rather than leave the earth unpeopled, the Great Father, who loved to invent things, created the race of men, fashioning them from the dung of Hapso, the loathly fowl. They are subservient creatures, good for nothing but to be laughed at. But before the satyrs disappeared, they taught many of their arts to the Colocynthians.

Nea-huni dwells alone, having outlived his beloved companion Azdhubal, fighter of demons. For a time Nea-huni was respected as a seer and healer, but now a rumor has circulated among men that this peaceful vegetarian satyr is a cannibal, and no one dares to approach him.

Linus and the First One spend several days with the gentle satyr and learn from him that Linus is a half-god, son of the Clatterer himself, and that he will one day cultivate the desolate plains again as they were cultivated in the days of the satyrs. Nea-huni also tells them of a visit he has had from the Earth god, who asked his help in capturing the demon Aroudi, haunter of outskirts, hater of men, and maker of floods and droughts. Nea-huni gave the Clatterer a magic potion with which to drug Aroudi and in return received a promise that his old friend Azdhubal would be returned to life and that the plain would be cultivated again.

In Eskion, a dusky old village at the other end of the world, something is wrong. A terrible drought is destroying the land. Heat is radiating from the temple of Derco, the maiden fish-goddess, a moody, vindictive creature who has caused this sort of thing before. When the disquieted populace is about to burn the temple, they notice that the flame which denotes the presence of the goddess has disappeared from its place.

At this instant, far away, Linus is resting on a river bank after his visit to the sanctuary of the satyr. Once again he sees the great spangled fish, and this time there is a sudden flash of light and Derco stands before him, gloriously beautiful. She tells the youth that he alone can quench her flames. Linus, who is after all his father's son, proves an apt pupil; and Derco has never in her age-long experience known such transport. Linus awakes from a refreshing slumber no longer a dreamy boy. He sets out to find Ayra, muttering to himself, "This time, yes."

Derco returns to Eskion confident that her latest lover will soon die as do all mortals who lie with gods. Prosperity and happiness return to Eskion, and the merchant Babramolok, an old Derco-worshiper, donates money for a new temple. Then one day the flame disappears again. Derco is with child. New miseries are in store. Babramolok is exiled.

Now all the gods laugh at Derco, who has been driven from her temple because the Eskions prefer a virgin goddess and have replaced her with another protector. Neither Menetha, nor the Great Father, nor Nea-huni can help her. She pays a visit to Linus, is at first surprised to find him alive, and then is enraged to learn that he has taken a mortal in his arms after lying with a divine lover. Transforming herself into a monstrous worm, she sucks out his blood and then burns the hut of Ayra and her father. But before the soul of Linus can flit away, it is caught up by the Earth god, taken to his workshop under the earth, and there revived.

Later, in a lonely cave where Derco is awaiting the birth of her child, she receives a visit from the gossipy wind, who tells her that Linus is the son of the Clatterer, who has rescued him. In return for the information, Derco agrees to help the wind the next time the gods decide to bottle him up and roll him about.

After reviving Linus in the subterranean laboratory, the Clatterer stops a while to taunt Aroudi, where the powerful demon is chained. The desert maker, whom the gods can never kill, strains at his bonds and swears revenge. He threatens the god with what will happen if men are not held in check: "I foresee the day when you will grow out of your fondness for such groveling creatures, when every fair spot has been scarred by their hands and deformed to their mean purposes, the rivers made turbid and hills and forests leveled away and all the wild green places smothered under cities full of smoke and clanking metal; when the Sun himself, the steadiest of your inconstant breed, will refuse to peer down through their foul vapors.…"

The Clatterer, remembering his promise to Nea-huni, returns Adzhubal to life. He also gives Linus great wisdom and sends him to the two satyrs to learn how to cultivate the plains. In two years the young man is a great king; he has cleared jungles, drained marshes, irrigated deserts, invented many new devices, and gathered great armies about him.

Derco gives birth to a daughter whom she leaves on a mountain to be found and raised in the traditional fashion by a goatherd. The girl, Symira, is much like her mother; and, growing up among lascivious goats and doves, she becomes extraordinarily hot-blooded and impulsive. When she reaches young womanhood, her foster mother gives her to Oannes, a powerful and savage chieftain of a primitive army. Symira diligently learns the arts of war from Oannes, then strangles him and declares herself chief. With her vast army of warriors, one or another of whom is brought to her tent every night only to depart in disgrace in the morning, she descends upon the lands of Linus and conquers them. But after one night in Symira's tent, Linus proves to the savage queen that he is superior to other men; thereafter, the two rule the earth together.

Derco has been able to return to Eskion, for Babramolok, back from his exile, has sent to the city an unsatisfactory god, an old woman-chaser whom the Colocynthians brought down from heaven especially to foist upon their unsuspecting enemies. The Eskions soon have enough of him and are ready to bring back Derco, who has been changed by motherhood from a capricious virgin goddess to a kindly mother goddess, full of love and joy. All is well now. The new motto of the city is "Nobody should be a virgin." The goddess has given up her sport with mortals, and the wind is known to blow strangely often within her temple.

Linus and Symira build a magnificent kingdom, vying with each other for new and fruitful ideas. Symira builds the temple of the doves to house the flocks of those birds which have followed her since her birth. In it she installs sixty-nine dancing girls known as the Doves or the Pleasant Ones. In charge of Fatuita, a pleasure-loving old harlot, their duty is to teach the art of love to the young men of the kingdom. So successful is the institution that even those who need no lessons, even Linus himself, patronize the Doves. Symira gratifies her old instincts by frequently visiting the House of the Doves and playing the part of a Pleasant One herself. But since this is not completely satisfactory, at the suggestion of Fatutta there is established a personal bodyguard for the Queen, composed of ninety-nine chosen warriors.

Then one day Linus conceives the notion of building a temple to the Great Father. The languishing old deity is so pleased that he becomes gay again. He is seen sporting about the earth in goatish disguises and is even known to be inventing things once more, producing oddities such as a star with a ring around it, a comet without a tail, and bearded women.

Once while hunting, Linus is seized by Aroudi, who has been released by the Clatterer for the sake of a little excitement. The demon warns Linus to stay out of the wilderness, which is his. After this fright, Linus changes. He gives up hunting and begins to devote more and more time to the Pleasant Ones. Despite his godlike powers, he becomes weak from overindulgence and reduces himself to a senile spendthrift and a danger to the kingdom. Moreover, he begins to think himself a god. Taking advantage of this eccentricity, Symira, who sees that her consort will have to go, convinces him that he should have himself burned to death so that he can soar to the celestial halls and visit the other immortals.

Things go well for a time, with Symira ruling the kingdom alone; then she too begins to change, developing a dislike for men and becoming herself more mannish. The ninety-nine warriors are cast aside and Symira "begins to develop longings as ardent as they are outrageous." Fatutta tries to keep the changes secret, but this is impossible. Soon there are tales abroad "—unpleasant tales about dwarfs, and apes, and horses, and other abominations.…"

It is just at this time that the Great Father looks down, sees what is happening, and loses his temper. He straightway lets loose upon the earth a terrible dust or powder which taints the wits of mortals. It infects them with prepostrous ideas about good and evil, which have hitherto been none of their business, and with a passion for quarreling. People are sick for only a few days, but they are left sadly altered: "They called themselves good, and forthwith began to act in accordance with frantic notions engendered by the disease." They cease to cultivate the fields and spend all their time arguing about the welfare of their souls, "as though it were something quite apart from the welfare of their bodies.…"

A new race of men grows up from among those who have not contracted the disease. These call themselves "dreamers" and love to think about old times and about the future, searching for some more reasonable way of life. They look to Aroudi as their savior. And the haunter of outskirts, enemy of toilers and quarrelers but friend to solitaries like these, is not asleep. Oblitering the vestiges of human folly, he gladdens the dreamers by charming the world once more into desert.

Meanwhile the malady rages. Men lose their capacity for joy and learn what it means to fear. A band of prophets and lawgivers arises who capitalize on men's fear and promulgate thousands of laws concerning good and evil which no one could possibly abide by. "All delight fled from earth, and mortals, for the most part, grew to be the fools and cowards they have since remained."

Symira herself takes the infection and becomes "better" than anyone else. It is plain that any subjects who wish to retain their lives must contract the disease. The Pleasant Ones and the ninety-nine warriors are condemned to death, but Fatutta saves them and herself by reporting erroneously that they have all taken the illness.

Symira gives up worldly pursuits and retires to rule the House of Doves. She enforces strict rules requiring that the sixty-nine Pleasant Ones, now known as the Good Ones, wear only sack cloth and eat only the most meager of rations. In effect, she establishes the first convent.

In a few years the kingdom has gone to pieces; the few remaining sane people escape to Eskion, where pleasure can still be had. The Queen dies one night, a bitter and abstemious old woman. In a final feverish wakefulness, she cries out: "Such horrible dreams, Fatutta! About horses.…" She leaves a sack of rubies, which are to be used to build a monument to her memory. But Fatutta spends the money on a tremendous banquet for the sixty-nine Good Ones, for old time's sake. She even invites the ninety-nine guards, who do their duty nobly.

The novel ends with a conversation between Nea-huni and Adzhubal. Nea-huni has given men up as a complete loss and both express their views concerning men and gods: "To the crocodiles, with both of them!"

The reviewers of In the Beginning were not kind to the book. They were disturbed by what seemed to them pornographic passages. The English Saturday Review said, "dull, spiritless impropriety." [L. P. Harley, 22 September 1928]. The American New Republic [6 June 1928] said, "Professional salaciousness." Regretting that Douglas' "refreshing paganism" had given way to "shrill impatience," the reviewer found that "The sexual debaucheries of his characters are drawn into the narrative so gratuitously and so often that they end by attracting our attention for their own sake instead of contributing to a satirical picture." The most severe attack came from the Saturday Review of Literature:

In the Beginning is a feeble specimen of that chirping pornography that passes for strength among the weak.… A sort of cancerous proud-flesh has been forced to attach itself to the dry bones of the legend. If Herodotus, or Ctesius … alludes to some amiable sexual aberration, Mr. Douglas enlarges, envelops and expatiates. He seems completely unaware of the beauty and dignity and wonder that once were the attributes of the principle of generation. And his tone as he narrates the procreant exploits of his gods and heros and heroines is a vulgar cross between the hysterical smirking of an ill-bred fifth former and the gross crackle of a worn-out boulevardier.… It will bore anyone it could conceivably hurt. [Leonard Bacon, "Norman Douglas' Latest," June, 1928]

It is difficult to defend Douglas against accusations that the disturbing passages in the book were there for their own sake. Indeed, he would no doubt have rejected such defense just as Aristophanes or Rabelais would have done. Moreover, from the perspective of a different cultural climate, and in light of the kinds of literary themes and scenes that are now accepted as a matter of course, an elaborate defense of Douglas' practice would be pointless. Douglas himself had an explanation for the critics' disapproval of In the Beginning. He wrote of the book in Looking Back:

It lacks the admixture of saccharine which is prescribed by the taste of today. Its antidemocratic and uncompromising outlook is disquieting: "Too awful to contemplate," writes one of them, "especially the last chapter." How seriously these humans take themselves and their affairs! I do not find it awful; I find it good fun, especially the last chapter. But I understand his state of mind. I know what he wants. He wants his comforter, his treacle, his dose of irra tionalism. He would have liked me to insert a touch of that "hopefulness" with which the present generation likes to delude itself, in defiance of the teaching of all history.

Late Harvest contained a few comments concerning the composition of In the Beginning: "The book was a strain on my inventive faculties. Some twenty new words were coined, and a fresh heaven had to be created with eight major deities, as well as half-gods and demons and a brace of gentle satyrs, not to speak of hitherto unknown races of men. Lucian was of some help in regard to the divine members of this community, while the Great Father himself is modelled upon my conception of that old Javeh of the Jews." There is also the suggestion that part of the "moral" of In the Beginning is that "Nothing on earth is permanent save only change, unless, of course, we include the changeless race of Gods, the Great Father and his more or less disreputable brood of children—call him Jupiter if you like—those phantasms whom we create in our own image, and endow with our own facets of good or bad humour, of lust and wisdom and inconstancy."

The book presents no great problems of interpretation. Douglas hated the Jewish God, who was a spying, "upstairs" God created by the proletariat which "loves to humiliate itself." He preferred the Classical "downstairs" gods who "were invented by intellectuals who felt themselves capable of maintaining a kind of comradeship with their deities [south wind]." Hence the happier days of In the Beginning are of the period when unconcerned and pleasure-loving anthropomorphic gods roamed the world.

The important aspects of the theme are the exaltation of amoral individualism and free sensuous living, the condemnation of the practice of separating body and soul, and the satire of humanity's practice of making gods. There is also present the primitivistic strain which caused Douglas to seek the refreshment of lonely places. In his essay on Doughty's Arabia Deserta, Douglas had made significant remarks concerning the Great Red Desert:

We learn… that the so-called Empty Quarter, the Great Red Desert, has not yet been seen by western eyes. Long may it remain invisible, a solace for future generations! Deserts have their uses, and the Empty Quarter, let us hope, will sooner or later demonstrate its raison d'être by stirring that first intrepid beholder as he gazes down upon its trackless ocean of billowing dunes, into some rare utterance—a paragraph or two, a sonnet, or some poignant little epigram: an epigram that shall justify the existence of a million leagues of useless sand, and the non-existence of several myriad useful cultivators. [Experiments]

Thus we find Aroudi, the maker of deserts, presented as a cleansing savior to a world which has been corrupted by the fanatical practices of men.

In its largest effect In the Beginning is a satirical history of human folly as Douglas saw it. It is unreasonable and uncompromising as is most satire. Presenting all sides of the story is not the job of the satirist; if it were, Douglas could never have been one. There is, indeed, a note of bitterness. Perhaps the aging libertine, losing his ability to enjoy the sensuous life, found gratification in indulging his hedonism by presenting it written large in these prodigious and carefree gods and half-gods, and in aiming some spiteful shafts at the dullards who so stubbornly refused to exploit life as he no longer could.

Not all critics have deplored the book. Edward Garnett liked it and wrote to Douglas, "I am glad you have nailed our colours to the mast." He called the supper party of the harlots "pure gorgonzola," "which," said Douglas, "was exactly what I intended it to be [Late Harvest]." Rachel Taylor, reviewing the book for the Spectator [18 September 1928], praised the "limpid, iridescent prose," which Douglas himself considered among his best writing, and called it the nearest thing in the language to the manner of Anatole France. Edward McDonald, a staunch Douglas admirer, found Linus a character who touches the heart more than any character in South Wind. But his final judgment of the book echoed the consensus of critics: "Perhaps a travesty designed on so huge a scale must inevitably fall of its own weight. In any event, fall it certainly does, and in the midst of its scaffolding."