AN IMPERFECT MOTHER. By J. D. Beresford. Collins. 7s. 6d. net.
ELI OF THE DOWNS. By C. M. A. Peake. Heinemann. 7s. net.
THE BANNER. By Hugh F. Spender. Collins. 7s. net.
ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM. By Edna Ferber. Methuen. 6s. net.
In An Imperfect Mother Mr. J. D. Beresford has set himself the extraordinarily difficult and delicate task of describing a mother's unorthodoxy as seen by her grown-up children. Of Mr. Beresford it can generally be said that he is quite fearless of the troubles he makes for himself. Yet in this particular instance some doubt might be left in the reader's mind as to whether his designing of the book was hurried or certain obvious issues deliberately shirked. Some compromise may be arrived at between the two alternatives when we consider the overwhelming evidence of this author's sincerity and his inflexible allegiance to his art. Here the reader cannot fail to ask himself—what would I do—what could I say, if my mother had run off with someone?—well knowing that in an enormous preponderance of cases such a question is comfortably absurd. It is even indecent to put such a question to yourself, is it not? It is the defilement of a sacred place? Exactly. So is the book condemned at the very outset because its theme is "disagreeable" or "delicate" or "unusually unpleasant"? That is where one's first doubts of Mr. Beresford's complete fearlessness are bred. In his treatment of that disagreeable idea there is nothing disagreeable. You feel that there should be. Mr. Beresford has gilded his pill with a sugar of a too vigorous refinement. He has been at pains too great to disguise the fact of its nastiness.
What did these children think and do? The boy Stephen, just leaving school, is the only one that counts for much, though his two sisters, sketchy as is their appearance in the story, are excellently considered. Before the actual crash comes they whisper together about their mother's goings on, try to make their father speak of what they believe should be uppermost in his mind, and insist on a full discussion with Stephen. One of them was a school teacher, the other subsequently married an elderly chemist. In a way they enjoy the scandal; you feel that some excitement has come into their dull lives, with the piquancy of self-righteousness added to outraged innocence. They want to make the most of it. They are not genuinely ashamed.
Emily turned the embarrassment of her steady gaze immovably upon her father.
"I don't know what's come to mother lately," she said.
Mr. Kirkwood began to fidget with his sparse little beard. "She's a little out of sorts, perhaps," he hazarded feebly.
"Well, oughtn't we to do something, father?" Emily continued, still pinning him with her stare.
"Oh! What can you do?" put in Stephen irritably....
Emily turned herself about and focused her attention upon her brother. "If she's out of sorts she ought to see a doctor," she said.
"That wouldn't be any good," Stephen returned without hesitation.
"Well, but why wouldn't it?" Emily inquired, with a meaning in her tone that could not be mistaken.
"No good asking me," was Stephen's evasion.
"Well, I think it's time something was done," Emily said, sharpening the point of her now obvious intention.
"I don't know what you mean, Emily," little Kirkwood put in nervously.
Emily knew, they all three knew, that their father's remark had been intended as a reminder that any open discussion of a mother's failings was impossible between father and children; but Emily had made up her mind that the time had come when they must, in her own phrase, "face the facts."
"I don't think it's right for us to let things go on and not make any effort to stop them," she said in a low but determined voice. "I don't see the good of our going on pretending, when we all know perfectly well what's happening. Do you, Hilda?"
"No, I don't," Hilda emphatically agreed.
But with Stephen it is different. He really cares very little about appearances, though he dreads facing his schoolfellows. He is wounded because his mother prefers another man to his father and himself. And there is an occasion when he might have changed his mother's decision had he known. Does he really want her, does he need her? she asks herself. And just on that very day Stephen had been smiled upon by the little daughter of his headmaster. She is fourteen, he seventeen. Impossible dreams fill his mind. He has said nothing to his mother, but she knows. As though she had seen the whole of the little trifling play enacted—for it was no more than one bright smile cast over a dainty shoulder; no word had been spoken—she knew that another interest had come, since yesterday, into the boy's life. He doesn't need her any more. His protestations would have been passionate had they been genuine. She goes.
The view of the children towards the problem must depend entirely upon their upbringing and the degree of sensitiveness in their relation to their mother. In regard to Cecilia Kirkwood's family, Mr. Beresford has expected a good deal of our faith in him. They were born and bred in a small cathedral town, their father was a bookseller, their degree was humble but respectable. Yet from beginning to end Stephen can only find it in his heart to think of his mother's flight as a callous desertion. He appears to be completely oblivious of the moral involved and of all that is implied by his mother's running away with the handsome organist. A closer scrutiny would have been horrible! Yes: but would not Stephen have made it, and, unpleasant or not, should there not be in the story some indication that he did make it?
To speak of a "handsome organist" is, in passing, liable to misconstruction, for Dr. Threlfall was not only good-looking but clever and accomplished in manner; not only an organist, for when he left Medboro' he gave up playing the organ for the composition of light opera, and became an emphatic success. Taking Cecilia for granted, we can well imagine that she would run away with Threlfall, and would do all the other things that Mr. Beresford makes her do, and talk as she does. But it is hard for the reader to take her for granted, just as it was hard for her neighbours in Medboro'. Cecilia's father was a philosophic tuner of pianos. He had been against her marriage in the first instance, but he rather approves of her adultery ... but it is understood that the nature of piano-tuners is warped.