Horatio Gilbert Parker, now Sir Gilbert, is both English and Canadian. His career has been marked by a great variety of experience, as his books show. Born in Ontario in 1802, he became a teacher, then a curate, then an instructor in a deaf and dumb asylum, went to Australia for his health and there took up journalism and play-writing, returned to Canada and became a novelist. Later he decided to live in England and went into Parliament. Many of his earlier novels are of Canadian life. When Valmond Came to Pontiac, The Seats of the Mighty, and The Right of Way are among the best of his early books. Later he wrote The Weavers, a strange mingling of East and West in the story of a Quaker in modern Egypt. His best recent novel is The Judgment House, having for its theme English society in the time of the Boer War. His versatility in turning from one scene to another, and from one type of character to another, is remarkable. Canada, Egypt, London, and Africa are all familiar ground to him, and trappers, Indians, Frenchmen of the seventeenth century, and men and women of to-day in cities are all equally well drawn. His early style was perhaps too diffuse, but his later stories are briefer and more direct. Read from The Seats of the Mighty and The Judgment House. Note his different types in his books and discuss them. Read also from the scenes in the different countries and see the local color.
VIII—HERBERT G. WELLS
Herbert G. Wells was born in Kent in 1866. He had a scientific training, and his first book was a text book on biology. Later he became one of the staff of The Saturday Review and then combined science and literature in a series of romantic novels: His Time Machine, The Wheels of Chance and The War of the Worlds are all stories in which his scientific education was utilized. In 1906 he came to America to study social conditions and since then has written two books in quite another vein—Tono Bungay, a story of finance, and Marriage, a study of modern conditions of love and society.
His earlier work is marked by wild imagination; his later by swift analysis and warm sympathy. Compare the realistic description of village life in Part I. of Tono Bungay with that of the Five Towns in Arnold Bennett's Old Wives' Tale, mentioned later. Note Wells's socialistic leanings.
Read from The War of the Worlds and Marriage. Contrast the two styles; discuss the character of Marjorie in the latter; is she a possible woman?
IX—WILLIAM J. LOCKE
William J. Locke, born of English parents in Barbadoes in 1803, was educated at Cambridge, where he took the highest honors in mathematics. He became a teacher, and it was only after years of hated drudgery that he obtained a secretary's position and leisure to write. For long his novels were little known, though At the Gate of Samaria, The Derelicts, Idols, and The White Dove were all full of interest and promise. Then with The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne, called his greatest book, and The Beloved Vagabond, his most popular, he suddenly became famous. Septimus, Simon the Jester and The Glory of Clementina have followed one another rapidly, and Septimus has been dramatized.
Locke's style is so easy as to conceal its art. His plots are lightly constructed and many of his novels have unexpected endings. His men are much alike, but so delightful that no one would have them altered. Each has a certain chivalry, an ability to endure hardships, a lack of practical judgment, but a simple goodness that is irresistible. Their humor is charming, and their gentle philosophy convincing. Locke holds the theory that life should be accepted cheerfully; this is his dominant theme.
Clubs should read the amusing diatribe against teaching, and especially against teaching mathematics, in Marcus. Read also the first and last chapters of the Vagabond and Clementina. Compare his women and his men.