THE NOVELS OF HENRY GREEN
497
Whatever Henry Green does next-and he has already proved the
unwisdom of making prophecies about his future-he has already
written three of the most original and stimulating English novels of
our time. His curious manner has been a wonderfully apt vehicle
for his curious vision. Since they are inseparable it may be well to
finish this article with a quotation.
A country bus drew up below the church and a young man got out.
This he had to do carefully, because he had a peg leg.
The roadway was asphalted blue.
It was a summer day in England. Rain clouds were amassed back
of a church tower which stood on rising ground. As he looked up he
noted well those slits, built for defense, in the blood-colored brick. Then
he ran his eye with caution over cypresses and between grave stones.
He might have been watching for a trap, who had lost his leg in France
for not noticing the gun beneath a rose.
For, climbing around and up these trees of mourning, was rose
after rose after rose, while, here and there, the spray overburdened by
the mass of flower, a live wreath lay fallen on a wreath of stone, or on
a box in marble colder than this day, or onto frosted paper blooms
which, under glass, marked each bed of earth wherein the dear de–
parted encouraged life above in the green grass, the cypresses and in
those roses gay and bright which, as still as this dark afternoon, started
at whosoever looked, or hung their heads to droop, to grow stained, to
die when their turn came.
This, the opening passage of
Back,
is the later Green at his most
exuberant. Nobody could deny that it is mannered writing, at least
in the sense that it is not what one has become accustomed to. But
it is the only kind of writing which is natural to the natural vision of
this unusual man. For my own part I find this passage both beautiful
and effective. I am persuaded by it. I am seduced into the mood
which the writer urges on me, and at the end of the book I feel that
I have been well rewarded for my willing seduction.
