Produced by Al Haines. [Illustration: Cover] [Illustration: HUGH WALPOLE] HUGH WALPOLE _An Appreciation_ _by_ JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER Author of "Three Black Pennys" "Java Head", etc. _Together with Notes and Comments on the Novels of Hugh Walpole_ NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, 1919 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY BOOKS BY HUGH WALPOLE NOVELS THE WOODEN HORSE MR. PERRIN AND MR. TRAILL THE GREEN MIRROR THE DARK FOREST THE SECRET CITY ROMANCES THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE FORTITUDE THE DUCHESS OF WREXE MARADICK AT FORTY BOOKS ABOUT CHILDREN THE GOLDEN SCARECROW JEREMY BELLES-LETTRES JOSEPH CONRAD: A CRITICAL STUDY HUGH WALPOLE _An Appreciation_ JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER I It is with an uncommon feeling of gratification that I am able to begin a paper on Hugh Walpole with the words, in their completest sense, an appreciation. But this rises from no greater fact than a personal difficulty in agreeing with the world at large about the most desirable elements for a novel. Here it is possible to say that Mr. Walpole possesses almost entirely the qualities which seem to me the base, the absolute foundation, of a beauty without which creative writing is empty. In him, to become as specific as possible, there is splendidly joined the consciousness of both the inner and outer worlds. And, for a particular purpose, I shall put my conviction about his novels into an arbitrary arrangement with no reference to the actual order of appearance of his dignified row of volumes. Such a choice opens with a consideration of what is purely a story of inner pressures, it continues to embrace books devoted principally to the visible world, to London, and ends with a mingling of the seen and unseen in Russia.