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The New Coterie  Volume 1   Issue: 3  Summer, 1926  Page: 5
 
 Editorial
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EDITORIAL
 
HOW far do press notices affect sales? We mention what is perhaps the most baffling of literary enigmas, only to remark that if the sales of THE NEW COTERIE depended even in the slightest degree upon press notices, we should not be writing these lines. About one hundred copies of the first number of THE NEW COTERIE were distributed to the press. The number of notices (we use this word as liberally as possible) was four. This statement, let us add, is purely statistical. We are not complaining, but recording. And if there is any moral to be drawn from the proportion between four and one hundred, our readers will probably be able to discover it for themselves.

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There can be no doubt, we think, that the subject of press notices is one upon which our views must necessarily be quite impartial, and we therefore cannot be accused of prejudice if we suggest that the present general standard of them is deplorably low. But the London papers still include among their contributors a handful of men who write conspicuously better than the average pork-butcher’s manager, let us say. Thus, Mr. P. C. Kennedy, of The New Statesman, is one of the very few reviewers who is also a critic. Mr. Kennedy on contemporary novels is always worth reading and sometimes worth copying. For example, we would draw the attention of our readers (and more especially of our prospective contributors) to Mr. Kennedy’s article which appeared on March 6th last. He is reviewing (and criticising) a novel by a young writer, and by means of well-chosen examples he shows that the young writer, as he plainly puts it, “does not know how to write.” Mr. Kennedy then pursues his argument as follows:
The New Coterie  Volume 1   Issue: 3  Summer, 1926  Page: 6
 
 Editorial
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“I … can draw elephants. Heaven knows, I claim no natural talent, still less any acquired technique. When I say I can draw elephants, I mean you would know — anyway, you would probably know — that they were meant to be elephants. But the point is that I don’t exhibit them. (I admit I have seen shows where they might have toed the line and excited no adverse remark.) The ability to draw crudely and approximately what one means is as widespread as the ability to express it crudely and approximately in the written word … It is, however, only in writing that the disregard of technique is taken for granted. I continue to be astonished.”

So do we.

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For if we intended to compile an anthology of the worst contemporary English prose, where should we find the most flagrant specimens? Well, in The Observer of April 11th, Mr. Gerald Gould, reviewing the work of a young novelist, selected the following passage for criticism:

“The long thin street of mean depressing houses was gloomy and grim to behold. Behind the tottering walls tragedies that can only happen in human life were being enacted, yet people still passed along the pavement outside, and every dawn brought its accompanying twilight.”

This is Mr. Gould’s comment:

“Why ‘to behold’? Could the street be gloomy to anything else? ‘Tragedies that can only happen in human life’ is bad grammar and doubtful sense; and what on earth are dawns expected to bring? It is perhaps, too, a little late to talk of a girl giving ‘vent to her pent-up feelings,’ when you mean that she cried, or of a mother ‘preparing the children for their youthful slumbers’ when you mean that she put them to bed …”

Just so. And we are duly gratified to note that Mr. Gould, like Mr. Kennedy, takes his duties as a reviewer seriously enough to tell young authors why their prose style is faulty. But we suggest that there are certain older authors among the Sabbath colleagues of Mr. Gould whose weekly signed articles are nearly everything that good prose ought not to be. And, as we were saying, if we intended to compile an anthology of the worst contemporary English prose, — but here we will take refuge behind Mr. Sassoon’s most effective line of poetry: Enough enough enough enough enough!
The New Coterie  Volume 1   Issue: 3  Summer, 1926  Page: 7
 
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And yet, not quite. We have been discussing reviews, and our argument would be incomplete without the following instructive quotation:

 

“The worthless young woman who, as it is now mildly called, commits indiscretions from mere vapidness of mind, seems to be getting a trifle too much attention from some novelists at the present moment. Lindy in this story is the latest recruit to the ranks of spineless, mindless heroines, and her history is a mere sticky dribble. She is supposed to resemble a bowl of whipped cream, the pretty fancy of one of her admirers. Thin whipped cream at that, we should say, with a sickly amount of vanilla flavouring.

 

“She has a father, Lucius Thornhill, a husband, General Hawkins, a recalcitrant lover not at all anxious to marry her, two admirers, the Margrave of Gratz (called Tono) and the Prince Pinesco, and a dearest woman friend called Vera. The latter is half-Hungarian, because Mr. Moss has some sweet peppers left over from his last concoction, who declines an offer of marriage from a bluff young naval man ‘as she has a vocation for virginity’ which she explains in pages that the publishers call daring. Unluckily these daring scenes are fast becoming standardised; the time and texture of the kisses exchanged are also according to pattern. The plot? Oh, yes. General Hawkins casts off Lindy because of an indiscretion. She lives in Chelsea and then abroad, with Vera, and heaps of admirers. Vera adores her, but arranges that General Hawkins shall take her back. Vera has a final kissing scene with her own adorer, who, dedicated to nothing but thoughts of her for the future, is about to go somewhere ‘off the map.’ She herself goes back to Hungary to be lonely, lonely, lonely … or words to that effect.”

 

You may ask: In what young, revolutionary, outspoken periodical was Mr. Geoffrey Moss's “Whipped Cream” awarded this hearty snub, forming so brusque a contrast to the soft words with which mediocrity, garbage and twaddle are usually greeted by London reviewers? And the answer is: The Times Literary Supplement.

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In the Mercure de France of April 1st last, M. Henri D. Davray shows a gratifying comprehension of the aims of THE NEW COTERIE, to which he devoted a page and a half of comments. He concludes by hoping that success will compel us to appear once a month. It is a beautiful thought and we thank M. Davray for uttering it. But although London has known of at least
The New Coterie  Volume 1   Issue: 3  Summer, 1926  Page: 8
 
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one monthly paper which transformed itself into a quarterly, we doubt whether the reverse process ever has been witnessed here, and we are even more doubtful whether it ever will.

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In the meantime, THE NEW COTERIE continues to be a quarterly. If we mention this fact, it is chiefly because several contributors, in tones varying from meekness to sarcasm, and covering most of the intermediate cadences, have favoured us with inquiries about their manuscripts. A little easy mental arithmetic would have made it plain to them that delays can hardly be avoided in dealing with contributions to a paper which appears once every three months. Of course, we could name journals which are able to return unwanted manuscripts within two days, but they are equipped with a staff of office boys. The editors of THE NEW COTERIE, however, attend carefully to the reading of manuscripts, and therefore cannot undertake to achieve rapidity, either in their rejection or acceptance.