Conversation and Mrs. Wharton
Washburn, Claude C.
September 8, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 425 CONVERSATION AND MRS. WHARTON By CLAUDE...
...Justine There is a further objection that is often made to Ward, Dom Virgil, and the other teachers at the school, but the use of much conversation in novels, which deserves by daily practical demonstrations of Gregorian singing by a consideration, though it seems to me a fallacy...
...The little turns of phrase charnovelists to get into more direct contact with their acteristic of the different individuals must be retained material...
...Every one of these students will return home-not only with a desire ingenuous as to be puerile...
...It is, in the last analysis, the is doing the selecting...
...I think, as I said, that they are mistaken...
...A few years ago, in The Life and freshness to the novel and impels writers to hold their Death of Harriet Frean, Miss May Sinclair tried the faces close to the material they are observing...
...in the pure Gregorian that Catholic liturgical music reaches It may be admitted that here, too, a little vividness its summit of achievement...
...Which is a very different words...
...As a craftsmanship is so universally esteemed that it be- result of this reaction not a few novelists today seek hooves every writer to consider her argument...
...In a novel, all this material must There is an obvious tendency among contemporary be sifted carefully...
...Pages of talk can at You get both even in Ulysses, which apparently sets any time be condensed into a few paragraphs of nar- out to chronicle everything that passed through a rative...
...A novel treating of this society-and most generosity of Mrs...
...dialogue, "that precious adjunct, should Dorothy Richardson, for example, presents one with never be more than an adjunct," and should be used the bewildering hodge-podge of sensation in her heroskilfully and sparingly-reserved for the culminating ine's mind, and Mr...
...Wharton's novels...
...she lived rather futilely...
...It has restored reading the book...
...but talk, talk, talk It is this practical instruction in liturgical singing which about facts...
...Miss of a novel...
...Wharton's own subject palely and refracted as through water...
...It is of good omen that Mother Stevens, the director of The truth is that the world in which nearly all the school, is already in receipt of requests for the furnishing those live who are apt to see this article is a world of such teachers-these requests coming from all parts of the almost entirely made up of talk, and that this does United States, and one from as far away as New Zealand...
...Justine Ward, and under the splendid direcnovels written by members of it will perforce treat tion of Mother G. Stevens, is already one of the most brilof it-can hardly disregard the fact...
...The substitution of dialogue for narrative everybody else two-better...
...It is, indeed, scarcely less a trick than the it is at present in Catholic circles...
...In short, conversation in novels is a New York City, ought to be far more widely known than trick...
...Sin- from dioceses in all parts of the union, it is abundantly eviclair Lewis was dealing with people so simple and dent what a power for good the course has been...
...body of children capable of singing it, and makes possible the the manufacturer "barks an order" (I believe that education of the most capable of these children so that they also may become teachers of what they have learned...
...and Mrs...
...Personally, I feel the lack of this fresh- ist than in the conversation of his characters-whereness in Mrs...
...But so can the whole plot of a novel be con- man's mind during the course of one day...
...but otherwise, of all the mass of spoken words that would have been poured out by By GRENVILLE VERNON living men and women of the kind and under the cir- T HE extraordinary work, a work both religious and culcumstances depicted, only those that reveal their tural, which is being accomplished by the Pius X School speakers' personalities and push the story onward may of Liturgical Music, at the College of the Sacred Heart in be employed...
...but, be- freshness of immediate contact with the facts, conversides admiration for the author's cleverness, the only sation can hardly be relegated to a minor position in impression the book left on one reader at least was novels...
...turn to become teachers...
...a feeling that through too much art, too (though used sparingly) and there must be interrup426 THE COMMONWEAL September 8, 1926 tions, unfinished remarks, exclamations, to give the A FOUNT OF CULTURE effect of actuality...
...It is speakers really had to say...
...I do not think this is apparent-a most delightful combination...
...pression of hearing the speakers' voices...
...not only by the lectures of Mother Stevens, Mrs...
...September 8, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 425 CONVERSATION AND MRS...
...she died...
...In addition, the Justine Ward down to what kind of man he means you usually dis- High School has an enrolment of thirty graduates of the cover that he does not mean a bricklayer or a plumber parish school, chosen because of their brilliancy in musical but a successful business man or a manufacturer...
...The desire that the Pius X School, the only school of its kind trick is not invariably convincing...
...facts than in narrative...
...I have a vague feeling Nevertheless, the tendency is of value, and will that a book actually exists, recording in this manner probably be of greatest value later on to other novelthe plots of the "hundred best novels" ; but the reason ists than those who at present follow it to an imposthe feeling is vague is that I never heard of anyone's sible and self-contradictory extreme...
...I like a man who does things," Gregorian style...
...The mere thought of hearing any actual conversation, for so, too, did those of her master, Henry James, even the most brilliant, reproduced by a dictaphone the best of which are written as freshly as Tom Jones...
...You get something direct (almost)-not .Three Sisters or The Rector of Wyck...
...Yet, despite all obstacles, development skilful writers occasionally, but warily, the summer session just closed drew to it no less than 17& make of it by summarizing a conversation in the third students, while the regular yearly course had an enrolment person in such manner as to give the reader the im- of more than one hundred and fifty...
...is the proper phrase...
...acters and their development...
...At bottom, this very is wasteful and roundabout, and "the greater effect noticeable tendency in novel-writing is a revolt against of animation, of presentness, produced by its exces- literature itself, and therefore sterile-since literature sive use," is paid for too dearly...
...And it is always in America, might, during its summer session, give itself withthe writer, a different person from the speaker, who out compromise to the ideal...
...Wharton is chary of conversation, but In real life, conversation is a heart-breaking morass I think she is chary of conversation partly because where people stumble along up to their knees in mud, she does not sufficiently esteem freshness or because surprised and pleased if now and then two or three she is incapable of writing freshly...
...In this way the Pius X School at The business man dictates a letter of great importance once educates its own students toward a mastery of the forms to his stenographer, or in conference with his associates of liturgical music permitted by the Motu Proprio, trains a arrives through spoken words at a crucial decision...
...The real life...
...because Mrs...
...obviously wasteful of space...
...her novels deal with delicate psychological problems...
...WHARTON By CLAUDE C. WASHBURN M RS...
...James Joyce goes her one-and moments...
...and those who make the objection are has given the Pius X School a distinction which is probably those who protest equally against the same thing in unique-not only in America but in Europe as well...
...but when you pin the speaker in ages from six to fourteen...
...The amazing vividness of love for the Gregorian Chant which the Pius X School aims Babbitt seems to me largely due to the fact that in to spread throughout our churches...
...is that it is not facts themselves...
...Neither do I of them happen to emerge together upon the same think this lack of freshness explained by the fact that hummock...
...The reason that you do not loses vividness, and is, moreover, in danger of losing- (and also the reason why I disagree with Mrs...
...experiment of relating the whole story of a woman's At any rate, given this proper demand for the life in some sixty pages of rather large type...
...It is aimless and heavy with repetitions...
...children of the parish school of the Church of the Annunciation There is a vast deal of talk in life that is a futile waste are all trained in Gregorian singing by students of the regular winter course of the Pius X School-these students qualiof energy (it is found as commonly as anywhere else fying in this way as practical teachers of liturgical music and in "literary circles") but there is another kind of talk at the same time training a large body of children in the that is itself action...
...Similarly, if one gains something by the drastic cur- At least, you should be made to feel that you do...
...The studies...
...You get the characters' actual What does it matter...
...Holy Father himself that all other forms of music permitted But it is a perfectly fair trick, since it gives, with by the Motu Proprio of 1903 be omitted in favor of what their own revealing turns of phrase, all that the may well be denominated a "counsel of perfection...
...Talk!-but equally action...
...at second-hand...
...These children, about five hundred, range is a common phrase...
...to reproduce the raw material of art, deliberately callNarrative, she says, should furnish the substance ing upon the reader to do his own selection...
...and thus the session just that novel the characters did talk almost as they would ended has been peculiarly true to the purposes of the institution have talked in real life-with the same vagueness, As the 178 students, of whom fifteen were priests, came repetitions and aimlessness...
...makes one shudder...
...tailing of conversation in a novel, one also, I think, Actually you do not...
...If you It can be admitted that conversation in a novel is have art you must have selection and arrangement...
...This choir of 200 children of the Church of the Annunciation...
...and it was the Holy Father's is lost by the writer's selection and condensation...
...or of never achieving-that quality of freshness which Wharton's contention as to the wastefulness of conseems to me of almost supreme importance in a novel, versation) is that nowhere else are selection, arrangeand is, at any rate, something no truly great novel is ment, and condensation more employed by the novelever without...
...but their action is al- These girls, upon their graduation, are competent in their most entirely through words, largely spoken words...
...latter are, in fact, men of action...
...is perforce a report on life, not life itself...
...But in Babbitt, Mr...
...You get densed into a three-page synopsis which may even both, if for no other reason, because the chronicling give the reader a tolerably accurate idea of the char- is being done by another man with individual traits...
...From beginning to as, if he is a good novelist, nowhere else are they less end, they strike me as tired...
...WHARTON has recently given warn- much selection and arrangement of material, the fresh ing against the use of much conversation in sense of reality has been lost, so that one sees the novel-writing...
...In it you are one step closer to the original "She was born...
...and as his thesis itself for reforming the music in their parish churches, but with was just their aggressive futility it was actually helped a knowledge of how to set about doing it-a knowledge fostered by their being permitted to run on in that lifelike way...
...not in the least mean that it is not also a world of The Pius X School, made possible through the devotion and action...
...liant exemplars of Catholic culture in the new world...
...He hadn't, The summer session has been devoted entirely to instruction in the Gregorian Chant, as it was the suggestion of the she said, done what she expected-oh, he hadn't...
...you hear-or should-the very intonation of impression indeed from that left in the mind by The their voices...
Vol. 4 • September 1926 • No. 18
