It happens, sometimes, that a novel is written for the publication of which no good reason can be given. Fortunately, such occurrences are rare, even in these days of “the literary deluge.” One such book has lately appeared from the press of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, under the title of “Belchamber,” the author of which is Howard Overing Sturgis.
The book is one of undeniable literary excellence in many respects, a fact which merely adds to the regret one must feel at its equally undeniable immorality in tone, its artistic iconoclasm, its distinctly pessimistic tendency, and its deplorably bad taste in its frank discussion of conjugal matters, some of which are commonly referred to only in treatises on physiology.
It is a story of English society, and, notwithstanding all the unpleasant truths that have been and may be told of this branch of “high life,” it is difficult to believe that any such considerable portion of it as Mr. Sturgis deals with is so destitute of attractive characters. It is for this reason that the book cannot be read without a feeling of depression. People as depraved as Cissy Eccleston and Claude Morland, so sordidly unprincipled as Lady Eccleston, so uselessly selfish as Arthur, so nearly degenerate, physically and mentally, as Sainty, the hero, is intentionally represented to be, should, if they are to be used in fiction at all, be subjected to the counterbalancing influence of decent people; but in “Belchamber” there is no such relief.
Sainty, otherwise Lord Belchamber, in spite of the fictitious virtues with which his creator seeks to invest him, cannot but repel the healthy-minded reader by his pitiable weakness of character, to say nothing of his physical infirmities, the more that they are the consequences of the excesses of his progenitors.
A superficial reading of “The Fire of Spring,” by Margaret Potter, D. Appleton & Co., might lead to the conclusion that the book is very different from “The Flame Gatherers,” the last work of the same author, which was published a year ago, but, as a matter of fact, they are, in substance, not at all dissimilar. In one respect, at least, they are identical, and that is the point of view from which the love element is considered. The time and space which separate the scene of the action of the two stories have not modified the primitive quality of the love which supplies the motif. It is a love in which the material predominates.
It must be confessed that there were grounds for the doubt felt by Charles Van Studdiford’s two companions as to the possibility of his being in love “with a young girl, of gentle birth and highest breeding, as unassailable by the coarser methods as the women Charles had hitherto known would have been by the finer.” Nevertheless, he cannot justly be blamed for all of the trouble that followed his marriage with Virginia Merrill. As she took him obviously for his money, her distress at the subsequent discovery of his grossness is not likely to provoke much sympathy for her, and in becoming entangled with Philip Atkinson, “the erotic man,” she sacrificed her last claim to respect.
The theme and plot are more or less familiar, but the author has, with an unusual subtlety and power, imparted to them a vitality that not merely engages the attention, but actually involves the reader as an active participant. She has given evidences of a rather unique gift of magnetism, the development of which will bear watching.