the mere insolence which he had to tolerate in the criticisms of Mr. A.B.  Walkley, were demonstrations of the fact that he was a genuine writer.  What he lacked was creative energy.  He could interest but he could not powerfully grip you.  His most precious quality—­particularly precious in England—­was his calm intellectual curiosity, his perfect absence of fear at the logical consequences of an argument.  He would follow an argument anywhere.  He was not one, of those wretched poltroons who say:  “But if I admit x to be true, I am doing away with the incentive to righteousness. Therefore I shall not admit x to be true.”  There are thousands of these highly educated poltroons between St. Stephen’s, Westminster, and Aberystwith University, and St. John Hankin was their foe.

* * * * *

The last time I conversed with him was at the dress rehearsal of a comedy.  Between the sloppy sounds of charwomen washing the floor of the pit and the feverish cries of photographers taking photographs on the stage, we discussed the plays of Tchehkoff and other things.  He was one of the few men in England who had ever heard of Tchehkoff’s plays.  When I asked him in what edition he had obtained them, he replied that he had read them in manuscript.  I have little doubt that one day these plays will be performed in England.  St. John Hankin was an exceedingly good talker, rather elaborate in the construction of his phrases, and occasionally dandiacal in his choice of words.  One does not arrive at his skill in conversation without taking thought, and he must have devoted a lot of thought to the art of talking.  Hence he talked self-consciously, fully aware all the time that talking was an art and himself an artist.  Beneath the somewhat finicking manner there was visible the intelligence that cared for neither conventions nor traditions, nor for possible inconvenient results, but solely for intellectual honesty amid conditions of intellectual freedom.

UNCLEAN BOOKS

[8 July ’09]

The Rev. Dr. W.F.  Barry, himself a novelist, has set about to belabour novelists, and to enliven the end of a dull season, in a highly explosive article concerning “the plague of unclean books, and especially of dangerous fiction.”  He says:  “I never leave my house to journey in any direction, but I am forced to see, and solicited to buy, works flamingly advertised of which the gospel is adultery and the apocalypse the right of suicide.” (No!  I am not parodying Dr. Barry.  I am quoting from his article, which may be read in the Bookman.  It ought to have appeared in Punch.) One naturally asks oneself:  “What is the geographical situation of this house of Dr. Barry’s, hemmed in by flaming and immoral advertisements and by soliciting sellers of naughtiness?” Dr. Barry probably expects to be taken seriously.  But he will never