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TITLE: THE BEST BRITISH SHORT STORIES OF 1922
AUTHOR: EDWARD J. O'BRIEN
EBOOK: E07176 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

THE BEST BRITISH SHORT STORIES OF 1922

EDITED BY EDWARD J. O'BRIEN AND JOHN COURNOS

TO STACY AUMONIER

BY WAY OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Grateful acknowledgement for permission to include the stories and
other material in this volume is made to the following authors,
editors, literary agents, and publishers:

To the Editor of _The Saturday Evening Post_, the Editor of _The Dial_,
the Editor of _The Freeman_, the Editor of _The English Review_, the
Editor of _The Century Magazine_, the Editor of _Harpers' Bazar_, the
Editor of _The Ladies' Home Journal_, the Editor of _The Chicago
Tribune_ Syndicate Service, Alfred A. Knopf, The Golden Cockerel Press,
B.W. Huebsch, The Talbot Press, Dodd, Mead and Co., Stacy Aumonier,
J.D. Beresford, Algernon Blackwood, Harold Brighouse, William Caine,
A.E. Coppard, Miss R.C. Lamburn, Walter de la Mare, Miss Dorothy
Easton, Miss May Edginton, John Galsworthy, Alan Graham, Holloway Horn,
Rowland Kenney, Miss Rosamond Langbridge, Mrs. Mary St. Leger Harrison,
Mrs. J. Middleton Murry, Mrs. Elinor Mordaunt, Max Pemberton, Roland
Pertwee, Miss May Sinclair, Sidney Southgate, Mrs. Geoffrey Holdsworth,
Mrs. Basil Hargrave, and Hugh Walpole; to Curtis Brown, Ltd., as agent
for Stacy Aumonier, May Edginton, Elinor Mordaunt, Roland Pertwee, and
May Sinclair; to J.B. Pinker as agent for J.D. Beresford, Walter de la
Mare, John Galsworthy, G.B. Stern, and Hugh Walpole; to A.P. Watt and
Son as agent for Algernon Blackwood and Lucas Malet; to Andrew H.
Dakers as agent for A.E. Coppard; to Cotterill and Cromb as agent for
Alan Graham; and to Christy and Moore, Ltd., as agent for Holloway
Horn.

Acknowledgements are specially due to _The Boston Evening Transcript_
for permission to reprint the large body of material previously
published in its pages. We ask pardon of any one whose rights we may
have accidentally overlooked.

We shall be grateful to our readers for corrections, and particularly
for suggestions leading to the wider usefulness of this annual volume.
We shall particularly welcome the receipt from authors, editors,
agents, and publishers, of stories printed during the year beginning
July 1, 1922, which have qualities of distinction but yet are not
published in periodicals falling under our regular notice. Such
communications may be addressed to _Edward J. O'Brien, Forest Hill,
Oxfordshire_.

E.J.O.

J.C.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

WHERE WAS WYCH STREET? By Stacy Aumonier
(From _The Strand Magazine_ and _The Saturday Evening Post_)

THE LOOKING-GLASS. By J.D. Beresford
(From _The Cornhill Magazine_)

THE OLIVE. By Algernon Blackwood
(From _Pearson's Magazine, London_)

ONCE A HERO. By Harold Brighouse
(From _Pan_)

"THE PENSIONER." By William Caine
(From _The Graphic_)

BROADSHEET BALLAD. By A.E. Coppard
(From _The Dial_)

THE CHRISTMAS PRESENT. By Richmal Crompton
(From _Truth_)

SEATON'S AUNT. By Walter de la Mare
(From _The London Mercury_)

THE REAPER. By Dorothy Easton
(From _The English Review_)

THE SONG. By May Edginton
(From _Lloyd's Story Magazine_)

A HEDONIST. By John Galsworthy
(From _Pears' Annual_, 1921 and _The Century Magazine_)

THE BAT AND BELFRY INN. By Alan Graham
(From _The Story-Teller_)

THE LIE. By Holloway Horn
(From _The Blue Magazine_)

A GIRL IN IT. By Rowland Kenney
(From _The New Age_)

THE BACKSTAIRS OF THE MIND. By Rosamond Langbridge
(From _The Manchester Guardian_)

THE BIRTH OF A MASTERPIECE. By Lucas Malet
(From _The Story-Teller_)

"GENIUS." By Elinor Mordaunt
(From _Hutchinson's Magazine_ and _The Century Magazine_)

THE DEVIL TO PAY. By Max Pemberton
(From _The Story-Teller_)

EMPTY ARMS. By Roland Pertwee
(From _The Ladies' Home Journal_)

LENA WRACE. By May Sinclair
(From _The Dial_)

THE DICE THROWER. By Sidney Southgate
(From _Colour_)

THE STRANGER WOMAN. By G.B. Stern
(From _John o'London's Weekly_)

THE WOMAN WHO SAT STILL. By Parry Truscott
(From _Colour_)

MAJOR WILBRAHAM. By Hugh Walpole
(From _The Chicago Tribune_)

THE YEARBOOK OF THE BRITISH AND IRISH SHORT STORY, JULY, 1921, TO JUNE,
1922

Abbreviations

Addresses of Periodicals Publishing Short Stories

The Roll of Honour

A List of Other Distinctive Stories

Articles on the Short Story in British Periodicals

Volumes of Short Stories Published in Great Britain and Ireland

INTRODUCTION

When Edward J. O'Brien asked me to cooperate with him in choosing each
year's best English short stories, to be published as a companion
volume to his annual selection of the best American short stories, I
had not realized that at the end of my arduous task, which has involved
the reading of many hundreds of stories in the English magazines of an
entire year, I should find myself asking the simple question: What is a
short story?

I do not suppose that a hundred years ago such a question could have
occurred to any one. Then all that a story was and could be was implied
in the simple phrase: "Tell me a story...." We all know what that
means. How many stories published today would stand this simple if
final test of being told by word of mouth? I doubt whether fifty per
cent would. Surely the universality of the printing press and the
linotype machine have done something to alter the character of
literature, just as the train and the telephone have done not a little
to abolish polite correspondence. Most stories of today are to be read,
not told. Hence great importance must be attached to the manner of
writing; in some instances, the whole effect of a modern tale is
dependent on the manner of presentation. Henry James is, possibly, an
extreme example. Has any one ever attempted to tell a tale in the Henry
James manner by word of mouth, even when the manner pretends to be
conversational? I, for one, have yet to experience this pleasure,
though I have listened to a good many able and experienced tale-tellers
in my time.

Now, there is a great connection between the manner or method of a
writer and the matter upon which he works his manner or method. Henry
James was not an accident. Life, as he found it, was full of
trivialities and polite surfaces; and a great deal of manner--style, if
you like--is needful to give life and meaning to trivial things.

And James was, by no means, an isolated phenomenon. In Russia Chekhov
was creating an artistic significance out of the uneventful lives of
the petty bourgeoisie, whose hitherto small numbers had vastly
increased with the advent of machinery and the industrialization of the
country; as the villages became towns, the last vestiges of the
"romantic" and "heroic" elements seemed to have departed from
contemporary Russian literature. As widely divergent as the two writers
were in their choice of materials and methods of expression, they yet
met on common ground in their devotion to form, their painstaking
perfecting of their expressions; and this tense effort alone was often
enough the very life and soul of their adventure. They were like
magicians creating marvels with the flimsiest of materials; they did
not complain of the poverty of life, but as often as not created bricks
without straw. Not for them Herman Melville's dictum, to be found in
_Moby Dick_: "To produce a mighty book you must choose a mighty theme."

Roughly, then, there are two schools of creative literature, and round
them there have grown up two schools of criticism. The one maintains
that form is everything, that not only is perfect form essential, and
interesting material non-essential, but that actually interesting

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