NOVELS
JEREMY. By Hugh Walpole. Cassell. 7s. net.
THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN. By F. Brett Young. Collins. 7s. net.
POOR RELATIONS. By Compton Mackenzie. Secker. 7s. 6d. net.
THE TENDER CONSCIENCE. By Bohun Lynch. Secker. 7s. net.
SEPTEMBER. By Frank Swinnerton. Methuen. 7s. net.
TIME AND ETERNITY. By Gilbert Cannan. Chapman & Hall. 7s. net.
RICHARD KURT. By Stephen Hudson. Secker. 7s. net.
The literary arena of England is at this moment strewn with the forms of discouraged novelists who were hailed as coming great men and who have never yet been able to make any adequate reply to the hail. The arrival of Mr. Conrad, Mr. Wells, and Mr. Bennett, as writers concerning whom, in whatever tenor, our questions are answered, is within recent memory. Soon after that event a new generation rose. Henry James stooped from Olympus to examine them; and there was a good deal of excitement abroad as to their future performance. But where are they now? Mr. Walpole's latest book carries the history of a child up to his first departure from school. Mr. Compton Mackenzie shows us a popular dramatist struggling for life in the midst of a farcical crowd of relations. Mr. Swinnerton produces punctually one book a year in time for the autumn publishing season. But meanwhile what is happening to the English novel? Is anything happening to it?
It is certainly true that there is no perceptible curve of development or change. There are fashions. Two of the books before us illustrate one of the most popular of them, a fashion begun and now abandoned by Mr. Mackenzie. Mr. Walpole pushes the novel of adolescence to its extreme, or beyond the extreme, by the tender age at which he takes his hero. Mr. Brett Young goes through with it in conventional fashion, conducting Edwin Ingleby from early years at school to his final medical examination and the beginning of life. Mr. Walpole's Jeremy is a very faithful and exact record, and yet it is not easy to say why he should have written it.
Mary, however, was there, and in the very middle of her game, searching for him, as she was always doing, she found him desolate under the shadow of the oak. She slipped away, and, coming up to him with the shyness and fear that she always had when she approached him, because she loved him so much and he could so easily hurt her, said:
"Aren't you coming to play, Jeremy?"
"I don't care," he answered gruffly.
"It isn't any fun without you." She paused and added: "Would you mind if I stayed here too?"
"I'd rather you played," he said; and yet he was comforted by her, determined, as he was, that she should never know it!
"I'd rather stay," she said, and then gazed with that melancholy stare through her large spectacles, that always irritated Jeremy, out across the garden.
"I'm all right," he said again; "only my stocking tickles, and I can't get at it—it's the back of my leg. I say, Mary, don't you hate the Dean's Ernest?"
A not too exigent reader might still fail to be surprised or delighted by that passage or by a hundred like it, and of such passages the book is made up. If Mr. Walpole continues the child's career on the same scale his followers will groan; and yet perhaps as Jeremy grew older he might grow more interesting. For it is unlikely that, except in rare cases, a grown man will remember enough of childhood to make the material of a long novel. And the character of even the most remarkable child is not, after all, sufficiently broad, sufficiently varied, to bear the weight of this exhaustive description.
Mr. Brett Young's less unusual design gives him better opportunities for the use of his talent, but not often the opportunities his talent deserves. He came into notice a little later than that younger generation which we have mentioned, and in some ways his gifts are superior to those of any novelist of his own age. But it is a matter for doubt whether they are strictly the gifts of a novelist. In the row of his books, all sincere, all well written, all with obvious merits, the best is undeniably his account of the East African Campaign, Marching on Tanga, the second his collection of poems, Five Degrees South. In these two, landscape and his delight in it had an uncontested supremacy. In his novels up to now that supremacy has been contested by the characters, who have, however, faded away in the end against the background like puffs of smoke. This certainly allowed the author's best talent to be displayed at advantage, and yet it is a doubtful recommendation of a novel to say that the persons in it can hardly be noticed.
In The Young Physician the persons are not so unobtrusive, and the hero, if we had not been aware of him before, would have forced himself on our attention by committing manslaughter in the last pages of the book. He does, however, live and move before that, and the characters around him at home, at school, at the university where he studies medicine, are living and moving human beings. But the more clearly we see Edwin and his surroundings the less, very unfortunately, we see of those poetical qualities to which we have grown accustomed in Mr. Brett Young. Certain of the human relations are indeed very well drawn. Edwin's love for his mother and his grief at her death make moving passages. The episode in which he is drawn closer to his lonely father is excellently done. But the second part of the book, where Mr. Brett Young voluntarily confines himself in North Bromwich, is not, on the whole, a distinguished piece of work. Here the author is without his hills, trees, and clouds, and is compelled to exert himself in the observation and delineation of character. But though he does his work here cleanly and honestly, as we have a right to expect from him, he does it lifelessly and without enthusiasm. "W. G.," Boyce, even Rosie Beaucaire are alive and credible, but it is hard for the reader not to suspect that Mr. Brett Young takes but little interest in them and impossible, with that suspicion in his mind, to take much interest in them himself. Much the best part of the book is the description of the journey made by Edwin and his father to the deserted mining village in the Mendips, which had been the father's home. Here Mr. Brett Young has his opportunity for description and uses it well in a dozen passages.
And, from a final crest, the road suddenly fell steeply through the scattered buildings of a hamlet. An inn, with a wide space for carts to turn in, stood on a sort of platform at the right-hand side of the highway, and in front of the travellers lay the mass of Mendip: the black bow of Axdown with its shaggy flanks, the level cliffs of Callow, and a bold seaward spur, so lost in watery vapours that it might well have claimed its ancient continuity with the islands that swam beyond in the grey sea. In the light of his new enthusiasms Edwin found it more impressive than any scene that he remembered; more inspiring, though less vast in its perspective, than the dreamy plain of the Severn's upper waters that he had seen so many times from Uffdown. For these hills were very mountains, and mightier in that they rose sheer from a plain that had been bathed in water within the memory of man. And more than all this ... far more ... they were the home of his fathers.
This quotation does not indicate, a dozen such could not exhaust, the grace and charm of the episode in the Mendips. Here, perhaps, for a moment in the midst of an unsatisfactory book Mr. Brett Young has attained a higher level of achievement than ever before. His persons do not here fade into the landscape, but rather blend with it into one picture, of which they are as essential a part as the hills and clouds. There is still, it must be confessed, a certain lack of vigour in the presentation, but if the author could compose a whole book in this manner it would be a very fine and remarkable performance. Perhaps he may still do so. It would be very rash to decide at this moment that the novel is not the form of art which he ought to pursue. But even if we reserve judgment on this point, there can be no doubt that the scheme of The Young Physician is in any case not well adapted to his particular gifts.
Mr. Compton Mackenzie, however, who invented and popularised this kind of novel, has, in his latest production, thought fit to drop it. It was indeed desirable, after the unfortunate affair of Sylvia and Michael, that he should attempt to break new ground; but we think that many of his admirers will read Poor Relations in a mood of pleasure mingled with dismay. One critic observed of Guy and Pauline that the future of the English novel was, to a quite considerable extent, in Mr. Mackenzie's hands. But the future of the English novel does not really lie in the direction of rattling books for railway journeys, where humour is derived from cows, comic clergymen, and an overwhelming hair-wash. Those who fixed Mr. Mackenzie with solemn expressions of expectation on the ground of Carnival and Sinister Street will probably be hard put to it to know what to make of this romping and boisterous piece of work. It contains little more of what the author has been praised for than his vitality—which was much diminished in Sylvia and Michael—and his verbal ingenuity. But it does show high spirits and an eye not blind to those obvious humorous effects, such as bad wine, mischievous and inquisitive children, the nervous author with his secretary, and so forth, which when they are whole-heartedly embraced are, after all, still humorous. If the future of the English novel really is in Mr. Mackenzie's hands and if he continues in his present mood, the English novel is going to have a queer time of it. But if he has done nothing else, he has proved himself free of priggishness.
Among these novelists only two, Mr. Swinnerton and Mr. Lynch, much concern themselves with what was once an urgent topic of conversation, with the business, namely, of giving the novel shape and compactness. This, it was at one time announced, was the direction in which English fiction was moving, and perhaps it is still the most significant movement, though it is accidentally a little veiled at present. But Mr. Swinnerton, who is a novelist pure and simple, who follows no extravagant theory, has no doctrinaire axe to grind, seems bent on making shipwreck of his powers. Some novels can be written, as was Mademoiselle de Maupin, in six weeks. But Mr. Swinnerton has not yet written a novel like Mademoiselle de Maupin, nor does it appear probable that he will do so. He seems to have fallen into the habit of producing a cross between a good book and "the commercial article" in good time for the autumn publishing season once a year. Thus are the hopes raised by Nocturne disappointed; and those who were disconcerted but cheerful last year under the stroke administered by Shops and Houses will possibly falter in despair this year under the more poignant blow of September. It is the theme of a beautiful woman, whose placid life does not flower into passion until she is nearing middle age. Cherry Mant, who hardly hurts Marian Forster by tampering with the affections of her good fellow of a husband, wounds her deeply by making off with her youthful lover, Nigel Sinclair; and both acts of rapine are cleverly introduced by a silly joke about the name of a brand of cigarettes. It is true: Mr. Swinnerton knows his business. And if he has not the final fusing fire of genius, he has talent in great quantities, experience, and knowledge and cleverness. He has learnt his art, but rather than apply his learning he gives us once a year the irritating phantom of a good book. His theme and his conception of its treatment are excellent. But he will not pursue sufficiently deeply his researches into character, and unless he can resign himself to missing the season now and again, he will be lost to the English novel. His is not one of those talents that shine in rash and careless brilliance. It requires intensive labour to make the best of it.
The same judgment applies with equal force to Mr. Lynch's talent. The difference between him and Mr. Swinnerton is that he has taken the trouble to make the best he can of his theme, which is exiguous and yet sufficient. The story turns on Jimmy Guise's gradual discovery of his wife's worthlessness; and the hasty reader might complain that in a short book Mr. Lynch has spent a great deal of time over a very small matter. But those who range through contemporary fiction, anxious to be hopeful, will be more interested in the care which he has spent on every facet of the tale. The device, by which Jimmy is at once presented, full length and in detail, to the reader, while Blanche is gradually discovered, is one of those solid and sufficient inventions which immediately command respect. The exact and measured discovery of her worthlessness takes place by slow, inexorable degrees which show that the author has never once relaxed his vigilance over his composition. There are, it is true, irrelevancies even in so short a work. Jessie Carruthers was not really necessary as a foil to Blanche. The "New Department," though it is deliciously sketched, takes too prominent a place. But these irrelevancies do not noticeably distort the general scheme, and are in fact probably the result of Mr. Lynch's unconscious recognition that his plot was a little too slender for even so brief a novel. But, in spite of this initial difficulty, The Tender Conscience is a very creditable and satisfactory performance and gives grounds for looking forward with much interest to Mr. Lynch's future development.
The novels of Mr. Gilbert Cannan and Mr. Stephen Hudson are of the sort in which an attempt is made to simulate distinction by gratuitous eccentricity. Some painters, in order to improve the landscapes with which nature has provided them, screw up their eyes until the scene before them runs into a confused blur. Mr. Cannan and Mr. Hudson make this grimace before the spectacle of life. It is a fashion like another, but it has less usefulness and, we imagine, less durability than the novel of adolescence.
Mr. Cannan's book contains a gentleman named Perekatov with a "massive Jewish face, thick, sensitive lips, a heavy blue chin, and tragic, short-sighted eyes," another gentleman named Stephen Lawrie, whose characteristics are not so obvious, and a young lady named Valérie du Toit, who appears to be the incarnation of all that Mr. Cannan considers glorious. The thesis of the story, so far as we have been able to discern it in the gyrations of these and other characters, is that the true England was not in the war, but sat unheeded, forgotten, alone, in a little garret until the fighting was over. Mr. Cannan is plainly dissatisfied about something, but he lacks a brain sufficiently clear to make the reader understand what it is or what he wishes done. Meanwhile he creates unreal scenes of physical and mental misery and squalor through which the stoutest hearted could not drag themselves unyawning or undepressed. Their yawns and their depression are, it is true, in some sort a tribute to Mr. Cannan's powers. He creates these scenes with a certain vigour and finish, but his qualities will be for ever wasted unless he can raise himself out of his present state of aimless gloom.
Mr. Hudson, perhaps even more than Mr. Cannan, has forgotten the limitations imposed on him by his material, which is life. In this story of Richard Kurt, his shallow and philandering wife, Elinor, and his crafty young mistress, Virginia, he seems to suppose that nothing more than his bare word is needed to carry off impossible events and unnatural psychology. But the novelist's task is not so easy as this. He cannot secure originality by willing it or by producing an unexpected situation out of the void. The unusual situation must be justified, not only by itself, but by all that has preceded it. The novel effect which is obtained by suddenly altering a character already defined is below childishness. As for the rest, this is a tale of the idle and indigent rich and their experiments in adultery. Richard Kurt appears to be a perfectly worthless person, so irritating in his sins and weaknesses, that it is easy to understand the feelings of his disagreeable father and his frivolous, selfish, restless wife. Virginia, unfortunately, does not in a strict sense, exist. The maiden, whose one desire it is to be seduced without appearing to consent or even to be aware of the incident, may live somewhere in the case-books of the pathologists; but Mr. Hudson has not delivered her from that prison-house. He tells us that such was her behaviour and such her motives, but the reader involuntarily declines to accept the assertion. Nor is it likely that the reader would much care if it were true.
OVER AND ABOVE. By J. E. Gurdon. Collins. 7s. 6d. net.
This is a curiously naïve and artless story of the adventures of an airman, as seen through the eyes of one Warton, whom we meet crossing to France for the first time and leave going back to England on transfer to home service, with a Military Cross and two bars. It is written with evident knowledge and covers most of the typical incidents in an airman's life at the front. It is written, too, with complete sincerity, and it is easy to discern the author's personality behind the speeches of his characters and his own asides. Yet for all this it is hardly a success, hardly so convincing or informing as a number of books that have been built on a much slighter foundation of first-hand knowledge. The fights described are not clear or lucid, the persons introduced never become real. All this goes to show that both some natural gift for, and some practice in, literary composition are necessary for any book as well as experience of the life it depicts.
THE NEW DECAMERON. By Various Authors. Blackwell. 6s. net.
The New Decameron is a fascinating title which covers a disappointing book. The greatness of the original Decameron springs, after all, in the first place from the extraordinary beauty of the introduction, which sets the reader in a proper state of mind for the stories that follow and which lingers with him ever afterwards if he reads a story here and there at random. But the state of mind produced by the setting here, in which a miscellaneous collection of rather disagreeable persons is becalmed in mid-Channel in an excursion steamer, by no means recalls the magic of the Tuscan garden. The stories vary greatly in quality, but none of them is entitled to be considered very seriously. The best would make pleasant patches in our magazines, and the worst would be bad anywhere. The jokes at the expense of German dullness in the "Professor's Tale" are made with neatness and point. The Stone House Affair is not a bad detective story. The Upper Room is a decadent effort of a somewhat antiquated kind, but it is not too ill-written. There is no reason why these stories should not have been both written and published. But the great name under which they are announced and the elaboration of their frame make them seem perhaps more insignificant than they really are.
THE REVOLT OF YOUTH. By Coralie Hobson. Werner Laurie. 6s. net.
The squalors of theatrical touring companies seem to be, and no doubt are, capable of indefinite exploitation by novelists. Readers who care to be mildly harrowed by these topics will find in this volume all the pabulum to which they have been accustomed in innumerable other books. But those who have no particular taste for this sort of thing beyond moderation will confine themselves to wondering in what the revolt of youth here consists and in what way they are expected to find it a moving performance. Louie breaks away from home, goes on the stage, is a failure, returns and marries her cousin. There is a suicide and a good deal of illicit love-making, and at the end the heroine behaves with conventionally noble unconventionality. But these things are wearisome if one has no special taste for them.