A Glitter of Purple Water

Every time I read Marjorie Bowen's "The Sign-Painter And The Crystal Fishes," I begin with doubts, but end with praise.

The doubts are justified. Bowen writes with an intensely visual style, but her descriptions are often static:

The house was built beside a river. In the evening the sun would lie reflected in the dark water, a stain of red in between the thick shadows cast by the buildings. It was twilight now, and there was the long ripple of dull crimson, shifting as the water rippled sullenly between the high houses.

Beneath this house was an old stake, hung at the bottom with stagnant green, white and dry at the top. A rotting boat that fluttered the tattered remains of faded crimson cushions was affixed to the stake by a fraying rope. Sometimes the boat was thrown against the post by the strong evil ripples, and there was a dismal creaking noise.

While undeniably vivid, these images are better suited to the script of a stage play than to a narrative meant to involve the reader.

When the characters appear, they, too, are described as if they were actors on a stage:

There was no glass in the window, and the shutters swung loose on broken hinges. Now and again they creaked against the flat brick front of the house, and then Lucius Cranfield winced.

He held a round, clear mirror in his hand, and sometimes he looked away from the solitary tree to glance into it. When he did so he beheld a pallid face surrounded with straight brown hair, lips that had once been beautiful, and blurred eyes veined with red like some curious stone.

As the red sunlight began to grow fainter in the water a step sounded on the rotting stairway, the useless splitting door was pushed open, and Lord James Fontaine entered.

Slowly, and with a mincing step, he came across the dusty floor. He wore a dress of bright violet watered silk, his hair was rolled fantastically, and powdered such a pure white that his face looked sallow by contrast. To remedy this he had painted his cheeks and his lips, and powdered his forehead and chin. But the impression made was not of a pink and fresh complexion, but of a yellow countenance rouged. There were long pearls in his ears and under his left eye an enormous patch. His eyes slanted towards his nose, his nostrils curved upwards, and his thin lips were smiling.

Bowen has a good eye, but not always a good ear. She often falls back on adverbs to compensate for weak verbs:

"You have a very splendid painting swinging outside your own door," said Lord James suavely. "Never did I see fairer drawing nor brighter hues. It is your work?" he questioned.

"Mine, yes," assented the sign-painter drearily.

As the story develops, the few lapses in her style fade into the background, while the visual sense remains up front:

The bright dark eyes of the visitor flickered from right to left. He moved a little nearer the window, where, despite the thickening twilight, his violet silk coat gleamed like the light on a sheet of water....

She cast off her long earrings, her bracelets, her rings, the necklace Lord James had given her. This slipped, like a glitter of purple water, through her fingers, and shone in a little heap of stars on the gleaming waxed floor.

From beginning to end, Bowen maintains a tone of detached omniscience. This makes it impossible to read the story as a particpant, only as a spectator, but the compensations of visual detail make the spectacle worth seeing.

I also think she was right to keep readers off the stage. Allowing us to see into the minds of her characters would have undermined the twistings of the plot.

To say anything else would ruin the impact of a story that not only surprises, but develops a mood of quiet eeriness that creeped under my skin years ago when I first read it, and one that comes back to me with each new reading.