The Dial

The Dial, edited by C. H. Shannon and C. S. Ricketts, the First Number of the Series (The Vale, King’s Road, Chelsea), has assumed an honoured name; but notwithstanding the energy of its promoters, the real beauty, of a sort, of the leading illustration (the meaning of which we have not fathomed), and the cleverness of an initial letter or two, the “first number” is likely to be the last of the series. Except grammar, we have found no literary element in the essays and tales of which it is composed. The writers seem to be a school of literary Impressionists. There are touches—we were going to write splashes—of intense local colour in the terribly confused and confusing narrative Mr. C. H. Shannon calls ‘A Simple Story,’ but all there is to tell might have been given in ten lines. There is movement and also some effective local colour, but no method, in Mr. C. Ricketts’s ‘Glimpse of Heaven.’ The contributors are so terribly in earnest that, despite their affectations and cravings for Parisian studio alang and argot, it is to be hoped the abler two of their number will soon get rid of their fantastic whims. If they do so we shall welcome them as painters, if not as prose poet. Mr. Shannon has the making of a capital painter in him.