It is altogether a charming narrative, full of pretty descriptive passages, and colored by the evident satisfaction the authors took in writing it.
“The Secret Woman,” by Eden Phillpotts, Macmillan Company, is a little tale of English farm life, with a picturesque setting, great intensity of action and passion, and some indefiniteness as to what code of morals the rather unpleasant performances of its characters should be judged by.
As adultery, usury, murder and suicide are among these little eccentricities, offset against superstition, religion and rationalism, the reader may take his choice of theories. Interest is sustained without question, and the two women—an older and a younger one—who as heroines and wrongdoers enlist our sympathy, are attractive and painted in clearer colors than the men. One or two minor personalities, however, are clearly drawn, and the dramatic element forcefully developed.
It would be difficult to hit upon a novelist who shows wider divergences in his work than Booth Tarkington, not because he gives in it any special evidence of versatility—a word which implies something like genius, or at least talent. This peculiarity is due rather to an arbitrary method in the choice of themes.
In his latest book, “In the Arena,” published by McClure, Phillips & Co., he has given a striking demonstration of this. It is a collection of six short stories, dealing with the subject of State and municipal politics. The question of cause and effect here is comparatively unimportant; whether Mr. Tarkington went to the Indiana legislature to get material for short stories, or whether he has written these because of his experience as an assemblyman, is not a matter of literary interest.
The narrations are not particularly convincing. Those who are familiar with the practical politician, and his followers and their modern methods, will find few parallels in the characters and descriptions in these tales. Political bosses nowadays seldom resort to the crude device of ballot-box stuffing and threatened blackmail to defeat reformers, and reformers are unlikely to be so easily frightened as Farwell was. The game is much more complex than it used to be, principally because the reformers have learned to play it more intelligently, and those who fail to give them credit for astuteness know little about the rules; the politicians themselves have ceased to make the mistake of underrating their antagonists.
The female lobbyist is a character that “once-upon-a-time” flourished at the national and in State capitals, but modern methods have made her, to a large degree, superfluous, and now the high-priced lawyer, representing the Trust, deals directly with the party boss instead of the individual lawmaker. It is cheaper and quicker.
Mr. Tarkington’s friends, Boss Gorgett and Mrs. Protheroe, belong to a species that is extinct—at any rate, outside of Indiana.