Unsigned review article, The Eye-Witness, 3 August 1911, p. 220
[Biting ironical criticism, full of entertaining faint praise and sledge-hammer blows of damnation, with Ransome’s style and preoccupations evident; the very title a wry mockery. Punctuation is that of the original article.]
The Plate-Glass Window
The technique of those writers, gradually increasing in number, who usually style themselves ‘creative artists’ is now reasonably familiar to the majority of readers. Mr. Swinnerton is a promising recruit to the band. In his third novel* he proves his ability to write a novel, a stage of artistic development which many more popular writers will never attain. He observes justly and translates the nicety of his observation with accuracy. He knows exactly what he wishes to say and says it. Both his characterisation and his descriptions are always well done, and he avoids the appearance of a studied effect by substituting gentleness for the acerbity so characteristic of the phraseology of some better-known novelists. And he is something of a symbolist in that he prefers suggestion to explanation. Throughout the book there is a spirit of natural grace delicately expressed.
But all that can be said simply amounts to stating Mr. Swinnerton’s ability as a novelist. The fact remains that he has wasted that ability in writing “The Casement.” The book was not worth writing. It is a mass of platitudes decked in the guise of subtleties. It is an attempt to make a Kemp [sic] window out of plate-glass. Mr. Swinnerton is selling soiled goods in gilded wrappers, and the name of Swinnerton is on every packet. There is not a character in the book we have not met before. Paul Trevell with his philosophic maundering is as Michael Reay with his undigested anarchy. That the writer should apparently fail to see this infuses into the book a discordant sentimentalism that rises to a shriek in the last few pages where Michael’s future regeneration is suggested. Robert Burton, as an antithesis to Paul Trevell, is a mere lay figure, and Olivia, as a foil to Loraine, is even less interesting. Loraine, herself, is a delicate study, but she is too indeterminate, too vague, too self-conscious to be fascinating to anyone less weak than herself. It explains Paul Trevell’s character that he fell in love with her.
Mr. Swinnerton calls his book “A Diversion.” To him it may be; to us it is not. It is rather the pitiable spectacle of an artistic ability wasted by lack of courage to attack material worthy the craft. If he will throw aside his timidity and grasp at things he can only as yet apprehend he may become a novelist of distinction.
*The Casement. By Frank Swinnerton. Chatto and Windus. 6s.