Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/161

MR. GRANVILLE BARKER AND AN ALIBI 135 world — that little world which is always, willy-nilly, whether he be realist or romanticist, a Barker, Bennett, Barrie, James, or Wells, just a mimic model of his vision of what the outside world would look like if only it were cleaned of its encumbering litter and debris. All our artists, in that sense, are Futurists, prophets ; all their books are books of revelation. II And in the case of Granville Barker it is particularly necessary to remember these things, for in his case they are specially easily forgotten ; and, forgotten, we go finely astray. For at the Kingsway Theatre, at the Savoy Theatre, at the Little Theatre, and else- where, the most convincing incarnations of him may be seen in full career, doing all sorts of splendid things with splendid dash and fire — so vivid, so vital, so charmingly alive, that the idea of there being any other completer Granville Barker becomes in their presence quite absurd. All the evidence leans so much the other way. Enviably famous as an actor ; far and away our best producer ; the only manager, apparently, in the whole of London, who can double a succks d'estlme and a succhs fou ; but represented, as an author, by but a book and a bit ^ — and not an over- whelmingly successful book at that : the natural in- ference would seem to be that he is essentially an actor-manager-producer who has done a little writing with his left hand in off hours ; and that any effective- ness the writing has is due to the technical tips and wrinkles passed on indulgently to the amateur author by his working partners. And yet the truth, I am convinced, is almost exactly the reverse. The genuine Barker is the writing one — ' Three Plays and its annexe The Madras Hoicse (both published by Messrs. Sidgwick & Jackson).