A Great Success (Smith, Elder) is about a new-risen literary star, Arthur Meadows, his loving, unbrilliant wife, and a coruscating society lion-huntress, Lady Dunstable. Having heard this much, you will hardly need to be told that Lady D. takes up the author violently, that he is dazzled by the glitter of her conversational snares, and that the story resolves itself into a duel between her ladyship and (I quote the publishers) "the wife whom she despises and tries to set down." Nor are you likely to be in any uncertainty about the final victory. This is brought about, with the assistance of the long arm of coincidence, by Doris, the neglected wife, finding herself in a position to prevent her rival's unsatisfactory son from contracting matrimony with a very undesirable alien. Doris indeed, and another female victim of Lady Dunstable (also deposited on the scene by the same obliging arm), get busy unearthing so various a past for the undesirable one that she retires baffled, epigrammatic brilliance bites the dust, and domesticity is left triumphant. It is a jolly little story, very short, refreshingly simple, and constructed throughout on the most approved library lines. If the writer's name were not Mrs. Humphry Ward, I should say that she ought to be encouraged to persevere, and even recommended to try her hand next time at something a little more substantial.
Let me recommend Mr. Rothay Reynolds' My Slav Friends (Mills and Boon) as a corrective to Mr. Stephen Graham's Holy Russia, which I prescribed some while ago with faint reservations. Both writers set out to interpret our mysterious ally to us. Mr. Graham always looks through a rosy-tinted monocle. Mr. Reynolds takes the road of balanced appreciations, candour and kindly humour—unquestionably more effective in the matter of making sincere proselytes. He has produced a fascinating book, discreetly discursive—a book that seems to let you into the real secrets of a people's soul. He believes in the sincerity of Russian promises to Poland, and claims that the Poles share his belief, but he does not pretend that this most unfortunate of nations has no grievances against its suzerain. I wonder whether our perverse Intelligences are capable of making the deduction that, if the progressives in Russia can forget their quarrel with reaction for sake of our great common cause, they themselves might mitigate some of the severity of their anti-tsarism. Mr. Reynolds has much that is to the point to say about the good old British legends of darkest Russia now chiefly kept going by third-rate novelists and unscrupulous journalists. He makes it clear that, though there is much to change, changes are coming as fast as they can be assimilated, indeed even a little faster. Finally I wish that those who control the destinies of our theatre might read what is written here of the traditions of the stage in a country where the drama is an art, not a mere speculation.
Despite its name there is a simple directness about the theme of Mr. Warwick Deeping's Unrest (Cassell) that I found refreshing. Martin Frensham was a dramatist, and the fortunate possessor of an adoring wife, a charming home and a successful reputation. So quite naturally he grew bored with all three. Then there came on the scene one Judith Ruddiger, a widow, with red lips, who drove a great touring-car with abandon, played masculine golf and generally appealed in Frensham to the elemental what-d'you-call-'ems. So these two decided to plunge into the freer life by the process of elopement. I was a little disappointed here. There had been so much chat about the Big Things that I had expected a rather more expansive setting to their adventure than Monte Carlo, followed by a round of first-class hotels. Moreover Judith, had a way of addressing her companion as "partner," which emphasised her wild Western personality to a degree that must have been almost painful at a winter-sports' resort full of schoolmasters. So I was hardly at all astonished when before long Frensham grew more bored than ever. Meanwhile the adoring wife (whom the author has sketched very sympathetically and well) had refused to divorce him; and so in the long run—well, you can see from the start where the long-run is destined to end. But you will probably not like a pleasant tale the less for this. Mr. Deeping certainly has courage. There is a scene or two in which he takes his amazonian Judith to the very edge of bathos. "She could shoot straight with a pistol, and proved it by bringing a revolver to the summer-house, and making Frensham hang his hat on the rail-fence that ran along the wood." Rough wooing for timid dramatists! I couldn't resist picturing how the late Mr. Pélissier would have handled this situation.
Contributor to "Poet's Corner" in country paper. "I'm afraid I'll have to charge something for my poems now that paper has gone up."