Like a well-used hackney-coach, the stricture that in all spheres critical standards are declining is beginning to creak: it is a commonplace in everyday criticism whose place is so common that like other similar phrases—‘learning for its own sake’ and ‘the cultures of freedom loving peoples’—it is a statement which now employed seems all but empty of content. Narrowing the stricture here to the treatment meted out to the novel, one is forced to the conclusion by the standard of current criticism exhibited in fiction-reviewing that the decline is one caused principally by ignorance: ignorance about the purpose of a novel and the history of the novel. This charge which is general must regrettably include much of the Catholic press, where the confusion only becomes greater by the haphazard use of the term ‘Catholic novel’. For this reason therefore in the present essay an attempt will be made first to trace the emergence of the novel in English fiction and, secondly, to see how in this larger context what is termed the ‘Catholic novel’ came into being. Finally the actual term ‘Catholic novel’ will be examined.

The great growth in adult education through the tutorial and other types of classes has been one of the most interesting educational developments of recent years. This in its turn has led to an increase in the numbers of adult educational centres and colleges; these vary from the purely technical non-residential schools to long-term residential colleges such as the Catholic Workers’ College and Ruskin College at Oxford. There are also shorter courses, normally of a week or week-end, running throughout the year at places like Ashridge, Burton Manor and Grantley Hall. Many of the ideas which inspired the founding of this latter type of college are attributable to the Danish Folk High Schools, and in England, to the work of Sir Richard Livingstone, in particular to his valuable little book, The Future in Education. The other force behind this growth in adult education centres has been and still is the work and ideals of bodies such as the Workers Educational Association and the University Extra-Mural Departments. Those who attend tutorial classes, one-year, or terminal classes, have in many cases wanted to meet together away from their normal, and often grim, environment; this desire has been met by holding summer schools in the universities or other large residential centres.

During the nineteenth century the Christian conscience, what was left of it, had become increasingly uneasy by the sight of great poverty and great wealth existing side by side, by the problems presented in the fast growing industrial areas, by the sense that the poor had been dispossessed and that some form of restitution was due to them. John Buskin preached, William Morris practised, one or two rich young men took our Lord at his word and sold all that they had, many of the well-to-do gave much of their time and energy in ‘Social Service’, and men of good will supported charitable works according to their means. The ‘gay nineties’ saw the opening of many clubs for working men in poor parishes, the universities had their settlements or missions, and the late Canon Bartlett founded Toynbee Hall (Whitechapel) with a well planned educational objective. The normal cleavage of society into rich and poor had not then been recognised as constituting two distinct classes —employer and employed—with differing responsibilities to the State; that fateful distinction of status only reached the statute book with the passing of the insurance Act.

The modern printed editions of the Dominican Chant which, as is well known, differ widely from those of the Roman rite, preserve accurately the text of the Correctorium of Fr Humbert de Romans, who undertook the work at the instigation of the General Chapter of the Order held at Buda in 1254. When at the beginning of the twentieth century the reform of Gregorian Chant was introduced attention was drawn also to the origins of the Dominican version of Plainchant. P. Wagner, the first musicologist to investigate the problem, discovered that remarkable similarities existed between the Dominican and Cistercian tradition of Plain-chant, as can be seen from his Neumenkunde (second edition, 1912, pp. 471 sqq.). But he considered that it was impossible to find out whether Humbert took the Cistercian Chant as a model or whether both versions were derived from a common source; namely the theory of chant used in Paris at that time. No progress has been made in solving this question since the publication of Peter Wagner’s book. Now, at last, Père Dominique Delalande has taken up the examination of the question on a wide scale. From the comparison of the melodies of the Dominican Gradual with those of the Cistercian he comes to the conclusion that the Dominican Gradual was derived from that of the Cistercians.

Parents are often heard to lament the lack of books capable of explaining the Bible to their children. There is a very obvious lack in this matter among Catholic books, but the deficiency is not restricted to Catholics. There are, of course, a certain number of picture books illustrating the life of Christ or episodes in the Bible, but they are generally prepared on the false assumption that the only sense of Scripture a child can grasp is the literal sense. Herein lies a serious fallacy, for the child’s mind is instinctively symbolic and metaphorical; the poet exists in the young mind long-before the philosopher is born in him, long before he can analyse the meaning of his signs and make-believe. But when an artist tries to give only the literal sense to the child he begins by painting Jews and Arab sheiks as they are said to have been at the time of Christ. He then goes on to apply certain aspects of the universal appeal of Christ to every individual with an almost complete univocity in which our Lord appears not only as a baby but also as a sailor boy and fighter pilot. And since Christ in this respect has to appear as the lowest common denominator among all these types of humanity he has to be robbed pictorially of any definite character. The ‘baby-Jesus’ style of art turns the Word Incarnate into a simpering doll, meant to represent the neighbours’ little Sally aged eighteen months without excluding cousin Tom who is two years older. The holy Child must be no more than an outline of round cheeks and chubby limbs in order to fit into it any child character one chooses.

During the autumn two exhibitions appeared in London, which although widely different in stylistic characteristics and historical circumstance, admit an identity of purpose. Careful comparison might prove provocative in that both, although possessing a similar sense of direction, have failed to attain to the same measure of success in the communication of this principle. One of these shows consisted of work by the early Netherlandish painter, Gerard David and two of his followers, while the other, the first to be held at the Ashley Galleries, was confined to examples of church art and smaller devotional pieces by contemporary artists. It could be argued that any critical comparison would be unfair, even fruitless, and viewed superficially this is so. We are here concerned with technical arrangement only in so far as it detracts from, or heightens, the artist’s power to broadcast his message, rather than with a deliberate attempt to try to prove the existence of technical parallels which in fact are not there.

Briefly the issue is whether religious painting can flourish without the endurance of a broader tradition strong enough to support certain weaknesses in the artist’s vision when the grander impetus, such as was found in the major epochs of European art, is dwindling or lost. Mr Wyndham Lewis in a somewhat shallow commentary on the show impatiently dismisses its value on account of David’s lack of notable genius, regarding it as a dismal venture. Looking for corroboration he quotes from M. J. Friedlander’s introduction to the catalogue where he wrote thus, ‘In the history of art David represents the end, the tuneful knell of the fifteenth century in an ageing city (Bruges) ‘.