Vol. I No. 12 - Modernist Magazines Project

284 THE NEW ENGLISH WEEKLY JULY 7, 1932
" My Lord of Burleigh " are in a sense pre-Diaghileff.
It tells a very simple story in a surprisingly direct
manner. It may possibly be vicious, but it is never in
any sense vulgar. Ashton has assimilated his material
and balletised it in a manner he was unable to do in
." High Yellow," so that although it is an earlier work
it is far more mature.
It is very much Markova's ballet, and one of her
finest roles. She has caught the mood to perfection,
sailed as near vulgarity as possible, and because of her
perfect restraint and the fact that she keeps her audience
at a respectful distance, she has made of it an
exceedingly subtle portrait. Markova translates her
emotions so perfectly into terms of ballet that one does
not always give her full credit for her acting ability.
Always competent, it rises very high at times, as in the
present case. This has been very much a Markova
season, she has at the age of 21 made a new career
and scored a real personal success, not only as a
ballerina in " The Swan Lake," but in the lead of the
majority of the new works. She has always been a
perfect craftsman, now she is rapidly gaining a mature
artistic expression.
Lydia Lopokova is excellent in the latter part of the
ballet, and her air of complete bewilderment at what
has occurred to her is genuinely pathetic, but immediately
after her first appearance she seems to me to be
over-acting. Frankly, I prefer her in such ballets as
" The Origin of Design," where the characterisation
is less definite, and she can express herself more
through her dancing. She is far more of the dancer
than the actress. Suitably cast she can be the most
youthful, impish, mischievous soubrette on the ballet
stage. I can remember her, too, as an adorable
Sylphide, unlike any other I have seen. As a Good-
Humoured Lady her wit was light and spontaneous,
while of late she has laboured and underlined it.
Walter Gore is an admirable happy-go-lucky, carefree
sailor, exceedingly virile and athletic. His movements
are full of humour, while William Chappell as a
more languid, beachcombing type is an admirable foil
to the flashy Markova.
For the first time the chorus has been well worked
into the ballet, a hint at the only rational method of
presenting most operas, so that it will please eye as well
as ear.
The music is admirably danceable. It has been said
that the whole spirit of the work is antagonistic to it.
I doubt it. Probably Constant Lambert alone can tell,
and his conducting seems to signify approval. As a
conductor he is the ballet dancer's dream, neither mechanical
nor temperamental; always considerate and
conscious of the fact that he is not conducting a concert,
but is an element in a complicated whole. His
sympathetic understanding is an immense help to
dancing in this country; also as a composer of ballet
music he thinks in terms of dancers, decor and the
stage in general. Too much of the season's music has
been compiled from various sources, and has purely
musical rather than theatrical value : economic necessity
again, and also the lack of co-operation between
artists that I mentioned in my introduction. The music
of " Giselle " may be definitely poor, but once the whole
convention of the period is accepted, it has undoubted
theatrical value, another very excellent reason why
Mr. Newman should not discuss ballet under the heading
" This Week's Music."
In spite of all the season's mistakes there has been a
very genuine advance except on the decorative side.
Markova and Dolin, Ruth French and others whom I
have mentioned, have laid once and for all the English
dancing bogey.
When I think of my luncheon conversation with
P. J. S. Richardson, of our hopes and our fears, I feel
a very real thrill that the curtain has gone up at last,
and I am grateful to those who have been able to turn
our spade work into something very beautiful in so
short a time.
A Recent Novel
It has become almost obligatory on young novelists
to make a grand tour, preferably outside Europe, and
to record their experiences in the form of memoirs or
of a novel. A great many of these books—from the
writer's desire to be in the foreground, delicately
savouring, suffering, or merely feeling bored—are only
tiresome, and we catch ourselves wishing that the
young author had not been able to raise the price of
a round ticket. When we find an author of Mr.
Priestley's maturity and experience setting out with
us on one of these conducted tours we expect from
him everything that the young author has neither the
mind nor the heart to give us. " Faraway " takes
us on a long voyage, from Southampton through New
York, Chicago, San Francisco, to Tahiti, Easter
Island, and various other named and unnamed islands,
including the one for which Mr. Priestley is personally
responsible, and so home to Buntingham, Suffolk, with
a head full of memories—and what else? Nourished
and enriched by that we have seen and endured? Our
perceptions quickened by our contact, through Mr.
Priestley's mind, with a new experience? This and
nothing less than this is what, when we begin to read,
we have the right to expect. And then, as we turn
page after page—expecting each moment to feel ourselves
seized, made to live again in the book with a
quickened responsiveness, made to see, to feel, more
clearly and sharply, forced to cry out: ' Yes, that's it,
now I understand, that is what life is, that is what
without knowing it I have felt '—a sense of bewilder­
ment overtakes us. We turn back, feeling that we
must have missed some essential pages, some phrase,
perhaps, that will let us into the author's secret. But,
no, there was nothing. Incredulous and reluctant, we
realise that the author has no secret. He is telling
us all he knows and feels. This—this we can see at
the first glance—is all. But look for yourself.
When the book opens, William Dursley, a man of
forty who does not look his age, is playing chess with
his friend as he does every Tuesday night. William,
we are told, is vaguely dissatisfied with his staid life
as head of the family malting business, in which
nothing happens. Almost at once Uncle Baldwin happens.
He bursts upon Buntingham, with every attribute
proper (in fiction) to a retired Pacific trader, a