The Spanish Farm
9781465684585
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
“THE Spanish Farm” attracts a preface because it exhibits a new form, distinct even in this experimental epoch; and because one has not before met with such a good realization of French character by an Englishman, unless Renée, in “Beauchamp’s Career,” be excepted. For four years and three months the British Army was in France, many thousands of educated Englishmen were in touch with French character, and, so far as I know, Madeleine in this book is the only full, solid, intimate piece of French characterization which has resulted from that long and varied contact. Madeleine is amazingly lifelike. I suspect her to be a composite creation rather than drawn directly from one living prototype; however that may be, there she is, an individual Frenchwoman of the North, firm as ever stood on excellent legs—no compromise about her outlines, nothing fluffy and nothing sketchy in her portrait from beginning to end. She imposes herself, page by page, with her tenacity, her clear knowledge of what she wants, her determined way of getting it, her quick blood, her business capacity, and once more, her tenacity—the tenacity which has kept the Spanish farm in her family since the days of Alva. Besides being a warm blooded, efficient, decisive human being, with a wonderful eye to the main chance, she is evidence on French character extremely valuable to those among us who really want to understand the French. And the minor portraits, of her lover Georges, and his old parents, of her father, her sister, and the housekeeper at the château, with the young English officer as foil, fill in a convincing picture of French life and atmosphere in the war zone. I suppose you would call this a war book, but it is unlike any other war book that I, at least, have met with. Its defined and realized scope, its fidelity and entire freedom from meretricity make it a singularly individual piece of work. And that brings me to its form—the chief reason for this short preface. “The Spanish Farm” is not precisely a novel, and it is not altogether a chronicle; and here the interest comes in—quite clearly the author did not mean it to be a novel, and fail; nor did he mean it to be a chronicle, and fail. In other words, he was guided by mood and subject matter into discovery of a new vehicle of expression—going straight ahead with that bold directness which guarantees originality. Easy enough to find fault with “The Spanish Farm” if you judge it strictly as a novel, or strictly as a chronicle, in fact if you take it strictly for what it is not—that pet weakness of hasty criticism. The book has its imperfections;—what book has not?—but I do not think the serious critic can miss the peculiar unforced feeling of novelty its form has given me. You do not put it down saying: “I see perfectly what form the fellow was trying for, but he didn’t bring it off.” You put it down thinking: “The fellow didn’t seem to be trying for any form, but he did bring it off.”
