Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Skeleton Key
Not only in his poems, but in the very titles of his poems. In the case of many works of Bernard Capes, The Lake of Wine, for instance, the title is itself a poem. And that case would alone illus trate what I mean about (a certain transforming individual magic, with which he touched the mere melodrama of mere modernity. Numberless novels of crime have been concerned with a lost or stolen jewel; and The Lake of Wine was merely the name of a ruby. Yet even the name is original, exactly in 'the detail that is hardly ever original. Hundreds of such precious stones have been scattered through sensational fiction; and hundreds of them have been called 'the Sun of the Sultani or 'the Eye of Vishnu' or 'the Star of Bengal.' But even in such a tri?e as the choice of the title, an indescribable and individual fancy is felt; a sub-conscious dream of some sea like a sunset, red as blood and intoxicant as wine. This is but a small example but the same element clings, as if unconsciously, to the course of the same story. Many another eighteenth century hero has ridden on a long road to a lonely house; but Bernard Capes, by something fine and personal in the treatment, does succeed inw suggesting that at least along that' particular road, to that particular house, no man had ever ridden before. We might put this truth ?ippantly, and therefore falsely, by saying he put superior work into inferior works. I should not admit the distinction; for I deny, that there is necessarily anything inferior in sensationalism, when it can.
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