EVELYN BRANSCOMBE PETTER has much that is interesting to say about men and women, and packs her thought (I risk the "her") into a quasi-Meredithian form of phrasing which does not always escape obscurity. But how much better this than a limpid flow of words without notable content! Souls in the Making (CHAPMAN AND HALL) is mainly an analysis of two love episodes in the life of a young man, the liberally educated son of an ambitious self-made soapmaker. The first—with Sue, the pretty waitress—is thwarted by a very persistent and unpleasant clerk; the second—with Virginia, a girl of birth and breeding—is threatened by the intrusion of the girl's cousin, a queerly morbid ne'er-do-well. There is no action to speak of, so one can't speak of it. I can only say that the interest of the shrewd analysis held me, and that if my guess as to the sex of the writer be sound it is noteworthy that more pains and skill are bestowed upon the characters of the men than of the two girls, who are some thing shadowy—charming unfinished sketches. There is a vigour and an effect of personality in the writing that put this novel above the large class of the merely competent.
Odd what a vogue has lately developed for what I might call the ultra-domestic school of fiction. Here is another example, Married Life (CASSELL), in which Miss MAY EDGINTON, following the mode, unites her hero and heroine at the beginning and leaves them to flounder for our edification amid the trials of double blessedness. I am sorry to say it, but her great solution for the eternal problem of How to be Happy though Married appears to be the possession of a sufficient bank-balance to prevent the chain from galling. In other words, not to be too much married. All this love-in-a-cottage talk has clearly no allurement for Miss EDGINTON. With her, the protagonists, Osborne and his young wife, are no sooner wed than their troubles begin—troubles of the domestic budget, of cooking and stove lighting and the rest. (By the way, for all its carefully British topography, I strongly suspect the whole story of an exotic origin, chiefly from certain odd-sounding words that seem to have slipped in here and there. Does our island womanhood really talk of a matinée, in the sense of an article of attire? If so, this is the first I hear of it). To return to the Kerr household. In the midst of their bothers Osborne is given a post as traveller in motor-cars at a big salary. So off he goes, while Marie, like the other little pig of the poem, stays at home, and enjoys herself hugely. When he returns she hardly cares about him at all; and might indeed have continued this attitude of indifference—who knows how long?—had not some Higher Power (perhaps the Paper Controller) decreed a happy ending on page 340. A lesson, I am sure, to us all; but of what character remains ambiguous.
In such a title as The North East Corner (GRANT RICHARDS) there is something bleak and uninviting, something suggestive of the bitter mercies of an average English April, that is by no means confirmed in the story itself. Windy it certainly is—it runs to 496 pages—for I do not remember any other recent volume where the characters really do talk so much "like a book," and though, of course, this may be a true way of presenting the customs of a hundred years ago, one feels that it can be over-done. Frank Hamilton, the magnanimous friend, facile politician and all-but hero, was the worst offender, not only making love to the Marquis's unhandsome daughter in stately periods, and invariably addressing pretty Sarah Owen, who was much too good for his and the author's treatment of her, in the language of a Cabinet meeting (as popularly imagined), but being hardly able even to lose his temper decently in honest ejaculation. Rolfe, his friend, was a Jacobin of the blackest, who preached sedition and the right of tenants to vote as they chose; and the Hamiltons were renegades who gained titles and honours by supporting a failing Ministry, from the most opportunely patriotic of motives. The general drift of the plot is neither very readily to be summarised nor indeed very satisfactory, and one might disagree with Mr. JOHN HERON LEPPER at several points. At the same time, as his many friends would expect, there is much to be grateful for in this quiet study of Irish times and politics very different from our own. There is a ring of sincerity for one thing, matched by a literary grace that saves his chapters from ever becoming irritating even when they move most slowly.
If the vintage to which "Miss KATHARINE TYNAN'S" novels belong is so old that some of its flavour has departed, there is no doubt that many of us are still glad enough to sample it. In these nervous times it is in fact very restful to read a book as calm and detached as Miss Mary (MURRAY). Not that Mary refrained from allowing her heart to flutter in the wrong direction, but even the simplest of us couldn't really be alarmed by this excursion. Mrs. HINKSON seems to take all her nice characters under her protective wing, and to include you and me (if we are nice) in a pleasant family party. So at little outlay you have the chance to go to Ireland and stay quietly and decorously with the de Burghs. There you will meet a very saint in Lady de Burgh, and you will breathe the right local atmosphere, and have, on the whole, a good and tranquillizing time.
