Unfulfilled Expectations
A Lady of Leisure, by Ethel Sidgwick. [Small, Maynard and Company, Boston.]
Long, diffuse, sometimes clever, sometimes pointless conversations mark this latest book of an author from whom we had come to expect only the best. Miss Sidgwick could not write anything that did not have passages of keen insight and shrewd handling of our commonplace humanity, but here their value is hidden under an avalanche of words—words—words. The slight plot—which of course is no fault—deals with the whims of the daughter of a great London surgeon. She overcomes parental objection and enters a dressmaking establishment; but we are given no particularly vital picture of this life. There are several young people whose love affairs become mutually mixed, but ultimately untangled—all of which is done by means of conversations, jerky, exclamatory, unrestrained. This method is true to life because such chatter is exactly the way modern people talk, but nevertheless our ears ache with it, and we find ourselves longing for a paragraph of straightaway description or narration, which never comes.
The frivolous and empty atmosphere is all well enough for a relish, but it is unsatisfying as a total, particularly from one who can give too much that is worth while. It is like a continuous afternoon tea, or a lemon meringue pie with nothing but the meringue.
M. A. S.