Vol. 2 No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

NEW WRITERS
On the next page comes a story. Three Talented Children,
for which I feel a good deal of respect. I respect it because,
though the author shows up his characters, he does so
without a cheap wink. The decencies and the justice of
art are, in the long run, the same as human justice and
decencies—one must not expose a character to humiliation
or one must not exhibit a character in humiliation, unless
he has courted this by a course of action designed to
humiliate someone else. In the case of the Three Talented
Children, the family's aspiration was innocent : modest,
but given to self-expression through dancing and singing,
the family are led by a friend to believe their accomplishments
worth money. They hope to relieve their own
extreme poverty—and if, beyond this, they figure out
for themselves a brilliant worldly career, who is to blame
them ? Dreams are innocent things. The explosion of
the dream by a hard fact—as when a child's balloon hits
the spike of a gas-bracket—is sad, but it leaves the family
honour intact. Also, this story has a wideness about it
—it is a very well generalised picture of our people abroad:
talented children all of us, unsure of our market value,
at once defenceless and haughty, living in our own dream.
The technique of this story seems to me sure and sound.
Domhnall O'Conaill seems certain, from the beginning,
of the angle from which he wished to photograph. The
story is told with no error of moral taste, and without
undue exposure of painful feeling, because it is told by the
youngest child. The little boy, passive throughout, emits,
and remembers, no emotion, though he sees the signs of
emotion in other people—his second sister's dropped
eyelids of quick shame. I found the story's opening overslow,
and thought this a bit of a risk. But the writer's
intention—the vital guide to all stories—appeared on the
scene just in time, and got back my confidence.
E.B.