Anecdotage: Arthur Machen, Ernest Benn, A. L. Greening and the Stage

In discussing the two publishers Greening & Co. and Ernest Benn in recent posts, memories of Arthur Machen were aroused. Arthur Machen was a "reader" for Ernest Benn in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and upon being let go of this position at age 70, Benn commissioned a short novel from him for 50 pounds. Machen was not a young man, and yet he managed to finish the novel called The Green Round for this rather lukewarm-hearted commission and it was eventually published in 1933. Benn wanted it for his Ninepenny Novelist series. In a letter to his friend Colin Summerford, Machen wrote:


"Poor Uncle Ernest. What he will say to The Green Round, I do not know. Gollancz told me that Sir Ernest was a man absolutely without religion; but I trust that this is not the case. He will want consolation." (quoted on page 149 of Arthur Machen: a Biography by Aidan Reynolds and William Charlton).


The book did not sell well. This was not unusual for Machen. For another commission for The Faith Press, he wrote The Great Return which was published in 1915. This too did not sell at all well. A few years later, Machen was browsing in a bookshop and came across a large dusty stack of the title. Reynolds and Charlton in their biography relate that: "The bookseller had not sold one for a long time, but when Machen told him who he was, he had not the heart to charge him for a copy." (ibid., p. 116).

The trial of Oscar Wilde created a backlash among publishers towards any type of literature which could possibly be considered decadent, and though Machen's works were not, he suffered from this reluctance, making the last half-decade of the 1890s a rather challenging period. Machen eventually tried his hand as an actor. He made his debut in 1901 and became a strolling player with Sir Frank Benson's company. An interesting crossover, writing to acting. Arthur Greening, the publisher, had been involved with light theatre, variety, musicals, and he switched over to publishing. I have yet to find if Machen ever met Greening but I rather doubt they would have gotten along. Different fish altogether. The only connection I have found so far, is the journalist and hack writer, T. W. H. Crossland who was involved with Greening and edited an edition of Hudibras for the publisher. Crossland reviewed books for various periodicals, and was a rather malicious enemy of Machen. He always referred to him as "MacHen".

Like anyone involved with the theatre, there are stories and anecdotes galore. Arthur Machen had his store as well. Reynolds and Charlton quote from O. B. Clarence's autobiography No Complaints, where he describes Machen's initial steps as a strolling player: "It pleased him [Machen] later on to make one of the crowd in several of the productions. I remember him among the rioters in Coriolanus. We were all brandishing clubs and shouting ourselves hoarse--'Down with him. Traitor', etc., and there at the back stood Machen muttering softly in mild disapproval of Coriolanus--'Down with him. Traitor. Oh, yes, distinctly traitor, oh impossible fellow.' Before long, however, he was shouting with the best." (ibid., p. 84).

Machen seems to have found his footing--and possessed natural talent--for in 1907 playing Sir Daniel Ridgeley in Pinero's His House in Order, in such small venues as Market Driffield, Hexham, and Ledbury, he was quite a comic turn. Reynolds and Charlton write: "Whenever Machen appeared, there were howls of mirth--'by the end of the show there was an old fellow in the front row who was reduced to nothing but a rattle and a wheeze and an agony in the region of the ribs'. There must have lived about Ledbury then a dreary long-winded, long-bearded bore ejecting moral sentiments in a pompous voice. Years later members of the company were still calling Machen 'The Ledbury Pet.' " (ibid., p.93).

Postman's Horn, or, Foreword into the Past.

Having recently finished rereading Arthur Machen's autobiographical work, Far Off Things (1922), I was once again left with that evocative image with which he begins, and rounds off his narrative, an image that rather lingers in the shadows of my day beckoning me to slow down and think upon a period when the perception of time and space was different, and the very accessibility of the written word was dramatically so. He was recalling a time when he was a young man of 21 living in his native Gwent, translating The Heptameron of Marguerite of Navarre into English, and he would walk a mile each day to a place where the postman would pass:

Here a footpath over the fields crossed the road, and by the stile I would wait for the postman. I would hear him coming from far away, for he blew a horn as he walked, so that people in the scattered farms might come out with their letters if they had any. I lounged on the stile and waited, and when the postman came I would give him my packet-the day's portion of "copy" of that Heptarmeron translation that I was then making and sending to the publisher in York Street, Covent Garden. The postman would put the parcel in his bag, cross the road, and go striding off into the dim country beyond, finding his way on a track that no townsman could see...

It was also his habit, three or four times a week, to walk four miles to the Pontypool Road Station in order to purchase the London newspapers:

Here, then, of a "celestial" agent of W. H. Smith I bought my papers; usually the "Standard" and the "Daily Telegraph" . . . I would make my way out of the station and along the high road till I came to the stile and the lonely path across the fields, and alone under a tree or in the shelter of a friendly hedge I would open my paper, cut their pages, and plunge into their garden of delights.

The accessibility to the printed word in the 1880s in the fairly remote prospect of Gwent, contrasts so greatly even with the 1920s, when he finally published his memoir, but today, the contrast is indeed great. I can start my day reading newspapers and magazines without ever having glimpsed the day outside. The internet has brought the world to that window of darkness, my computer screen. The short walk from the kitchen to the study with a cup of tea is less exhausting than a four mile hike, but certainly not as memorable. In gaining something, we lose something else. It is as if there is a balance sheet with a celestial accountant.

A recent letter to the editor of the Times Literary Supplement in response to an article (James Fergusson, "Collected Editions", Febuary 23, 2007)about the second-hand book trade, also made me think of the changing times. The revolution in bookselling has been swift. The author of the letter stated that "What has emerged is soulless but wonderfully efficient, a golden age for book buyers", and concludes: "One hopes Fergusson's world of musty shops, personal relationships, catalogues and bookfairs will manage to hang on in a few civilized outposts, but personally I wouldn't bet on it." The balance sheet of time once again. I found it interesting that the author of this letter lives in Llandrindod Wells, Wales, seemingly more remote than Usk and Pontypool, but really just a hop over the Brecon Beacons National Park with my Google Maps tool, and if there was data, I could perhaps zero in on a visual using Google's Satellite images, and then fire off an e-mail to the bookseller there to see if he had a copy of Far Off Things by Arthur Machen.

I think I shall leave off with Arthur Machen's meditations on his past, an image that will stay with me as if it were a memory of mine own:

And I, with time to spare, walk slowly, meditatively down the hill, holding my manuscript, hoping that the day's portion has been well done. As I come to the stile there sounds faint through the rising of the melancholy night wind the note of the postman's horn. He has climbed the steep road that leads from Llandegveth village and is now two or three fields away.