Herbert v. The Divorce Law

Holy Deadlock. By A. P. Herbert. (Methuen. 7s. Gd.)

Ma. HERBERT is convinced that the Divorce Law in England is unreasonable, unjust ridiculous, and productive

of 'much unhappiness. Most people who know, and have thought, a little about the subject will agree with him. Very many of his readers, probably, have thought little, about it, and know less, and it is towards these that his book is directed. It will be successful in converting many of them to his views.

Holy Deadlock is a piece of propaganda. It has not much merit as a novel, for several reasons. First, the characters

are barely alive : a husband whose innocence is hardly

distinguishable from ineptitude ; a wife who is supposed to be a musical comedy star, but forgets so completely that she entered the book fresh from a country rectory as a social worker in Bethnal Green that the reader cannot help remem- bering it, incredulously, throughout ; a pair of paramours, one for each spouse, who rival each other in the blamelessness, the suppressed intensity, of their, passion—in describing these, together with a troop of lawyers, detectives and chambermaids, Mr. Herbert's effort seems to have been to make them true rather to type than to life.

If the characters are somewhat lifeless, the plot is somewhat mechanical ; what happens, happens not because the people in the story are what they, are, but because of the exigencies.

of Mr. Herbert's ulterior aim. The plot is , governed from without, not from within. Finally, there is a good deal of

sentimental writing : the heroine is a markedly" golden girl " : the passionate episodes are in the best traditions of British love-making. In short, Mr. Herbert supplies us with the materials for a human tragedy ; a human tragedy (such as was The Secret Battle) is just that that he does not achieve..

• But the book's defects as a novel arc its merits as propa- ganda: if the characters are types, failing to create their own destiny, then, we feel, their hardships might befall anyone ; if the plot is mechanical, and imposed (so to speak) upon its participants by a series of legal situations, it is, after all, the law's disregard of human values and motives that the author wishes to expose. And if the emotional quality of the book falls short of the noble, we may reflect that had it been a true tragedy its more sensitive readers might have been content to regard it simply as a work of art, and that, being what it is, it is likely to have a more popular appeal.

Mr. Herbert has valuable qualities for a propagandist : he can make his own side amusing instead of priggish and the other side ridiculous without indulging in caricature ; he knows the technicalities of his subject ; his zeal never causes him to lose his head. He is sensible, he is witty, he is dry : "That would be more the sort of one," murmurs his innocent

and embarrassed hero, trying to choose .a .partner in adultery from among numerous candidates in Jermyn Street, "but

what does one do if there are two ? 7 The court scenes (which occupy a large part of the book) are,realistic without being dull, and the lawyers are neither impossible nor repellent. "It isn't the lawyers who are to blame, but the law," says one of Mr. Herbert's characters. That is a conclusion

with which not only lawyers will agree. And if the law needs alteration, the remedy, lies with Parliament. Mr. Herbert recognizes this and does not waste time talking the usual nonsense about the avarice and dilatoriness of solicitors, the casualness_ and cynicism of the Bar, the ignorance and prejudice of the Bench. Those people, are a body of, for the most part, experienced and quick-witted men administering dispassionately a system of which their critics are usually ignorant in detail and even in outline. The critics of divorce law would do more to advance the reforms they desire by attacking the. system itself. Some of its more deplorable features are catalogued in Holy Deadlock: young ladies of unblemished virtue but a somewhat tarnished outlook on life, whose profession it is to, accompany would-be respondents to Brighton ; spies paid by jealous parties—or by the taxpayerto rout out evidence of adultery.; an almost exclusive importance attached to that physical act ; facilities for the rich to which the poor have no access ; shameless Publicity, capricious in its operation and effects ; a perpetual shackle and a perpetual blight on the lives of persons affected.

Mr. .Herbert's plot is ingeniously constructed so as to exhibit the maximum number of these inconsistencies, injustices, and hardships, and though it is complicated, full of tech- nicalities and lacking in deep emotion, it will hold its readers and leave them at once indignant and well-informed.

One or two reflections are prompted by Mr. Herbert's book. First, he avoids arguing. And he is right. For though one may argue about methods and details, the funds-

Mental issue here is one which is settled in the end by feeling. Secondly, he makes no constructive suggestion. Here again he is wise. One is not conscious in his writing of that under- current which seems to determine the trend of thought in the minds of so many reformers, that feeling, difficult to understand and impossible to share, which draws strength from the conviction that it is possible to make an ultimate advance, to get something important on behalf of humanity for nothing—in a word, hope.

Whatever reforms may be introduced into the divorce law,

we may be sure that there will be hard cases still, that there will be injustice, futile suffering, despair. Law is an unfortunate necessity ; its function largely is to make the best of a bad job —human nature. Moreover, nothing can protect the best of laws entirely from abuse, or from the selfishness and cruelty and untruthfulness of those whom it affects ; and these things will always make justice expensive. In a difficult matter like divorce it is particularly easy to attack any suggested amend- ment in the law. Just as the good is the enemy of the best, so the bad is the friend of the worse. "Present conditions are good enough" is one answer to reformers ; "Your suggested improvements would not be perfect" is another. But these reflections should not kill all change. Even if all changes are open to attack, and even if the sum of human happiness will not be much affected by any change in law, it is quite clear that people now want to be unhappy in a different way from that which is illogically, inconsistently, unequally imposed upon them in England by our present laws concerning sex.

One paradox must be observed ; the immediate function,

in the matter of divorce, is imposed not by law, but by the Society which demands that the law should be changed. The punishment that Mr. Herbert's characters fear is the alienation of their friends and families, the losing of their jobs—not imprisonment or fines. The answer is that if certain things were not treated by law as wrong, people would not think them wrong ; it is a certain specialized kind of publicity that makes them shocking ; if that were removed, people would in time accept them. This con- sideration removes one of the possible objections to a change in the divorce laws ; but it shows that public opinion, the basis on which all reforms must rest, is as uncertain and illogical in its operation as is the law itself.

Jonx SPARROW.