THE NOVELS OF HENRY GREEN
493
A great difficulty in writing about Henry Green is that a mere
precis of his "plots" serves almost no purpose at all.
Caught,
for ex–
ample, might be described as the
degringolade
of a fire officer during
the early raids on London. In it there are vivid and terrible descrip–
tions of fire fighting (Green was an active member of the London
fire service throughout the war); there is a sub-plot which is con–
cerned with the abduction of a child by the fire officer's crazy sister,
and there is a climax in Pye's final
folie de grandeur. Loving
is
a
comedy about the servants in a large Anglo-Irish house, a comedy
in which almost nothing happens except the discovery by the ser–
vants of adultery among the gentry.
Back
is the description of an Eng–
lish prisoner of war's first months in England after several years'
absence. While Charlie has been away, his girl has died, and the
theme of the book lies in his refusal to recognize this fact, his in–
sistence that the girl's half sister is herself, still alive but refusing to
recognize him. From these descriptions it might be supposed that
Caught
was the most conventional of the three books, since its plot,
though unusual, is at least describable in other than the book's own
terms. Certainly it would be impossible to describe the devious and
apparently trivial episodes which follow each other so inconsequen–
tially in
Loving,
and it might well be imagined that the curious no–
tion which inspired
Back
,,'ould suffice at most for a somewhat tenuous
short story. But the fact is that any approach to Green in these terms
is certain to be abortive. By this I don't imply that the subject matter
of his novels are of no importance; they are vitalJy important, but
important principally as the vehicle for something else.
Already on several occasions in this article I have been obliged
to use the word "vision" when writing of Green's achievement. In
this context it is a word which requires definition as sternly as it defies
it. Certainly
Weltanschauung
will not do instead, implying as it does
a consciously held and readily expressible body of belief. Henry
Green is totally and remarkably without a
Weltanschauung;
it has
proved one of the most awkward facts about him to those critics
who are forever anxious to explain in their own words the precise
message which their victims intended to purvey. I am not suggesting
that this is a bad form of criticism. When Mr. Trilling writes almost
exclusively in these terms abou t E. M. Forster he is applying his keen
and argumentative mind to an admirably suitable field. In fact the
