FICTION.

'GENTLE 'GENTLE AND GOOD MR. GALSWORTHY.

Young Mrs. Cruse. By Viola Meynell. (Arnold. 7s. 6d. net.)

SUPPOSE Mr. Galsworthy wrote a life of St. Francis or Caesar Borgia. . . . I am sure that his impartiality would not fail

him. He would know so well the balance of virtue and vice in the human soul. Not even a Borgia could impose upon that sweet, reasonable heart of his : no, Mr. Galsworthy would understand and pity his shortcomings. Ile would see the kindliness of St. Francis, too, and portray him as a human being, good and bad in a pathetic, rather lovable mixture. It takes two to make a scoundrel : it takes two to make a saint. Mr. Galsworthy has a great probity of artistic con- science. He would never be a party to such a conspiracy of two. In all circumstances he would be disinterested and detached ; but he would always think the best.

In a way, we can honour that detachment. An author botches his work if he sides with one set of characters and blackguards the other. The villain of an Elizabethan play sometimes creeps to the front of the stage and expounds the

true wickedness of his nature. He puts himself out to draw the anger of the audience. There is nothing to be done but laugh at the naiveté of the playwright. But that is extreme.

It is an aesthetic childishness if there is an obvious and unredeemed villain at all. The problem of being fair to all the characters in a work of fiction is very serious ; but the solution does not lie in Mr. Galsworthy's procedure. There is always in Mr. Galsworthy a weakness, a lack of power, that shows us we are not in the presence of greatness. The cause of it is exactly this pale charity of his.

The truth, I imagine, is something like this :—The author must not take sides, but he must give the reader an oppor- tunity for taking sides. Even that need not be a blank, straightforward, crude opportunity ; good and evil may be dispersed among the characters as far as you wish ; it is rather that an idea must be set loose in the tale upon which it is impossible for the reader not to make a judgment. The idea need not be explicit, and certainly the judgment must not be prejudiced. It does not matter, you see, where the problem lies ; you may even have a division into sheep and goats, now, so long as the reader is allowed to choose (or to think that he chooses) which he will take for sheep and which for goats. Or you may, if you wish it, conduct your story much more abstractly. The design of Aeschylus in the Prometheus trilogy seems to have been to state the opposition of the human and the divine code in the universe ; and you will find yourself taking sides, one way or the other, in accordance with your own height of consciousness and your own essential judgments. But you do not lose sympathy with Prometheus or with Zeus whichever side you take : you do not lose awareness, that is, of an issue. The magnitude of the issue has dignified both contestants : you judge indeed, but you judge with a free mind, never seduced by attacks on your physical affections or your casual opinions.

There are no issues of any force in Mr. Galsworthy ; and he has so many small competences that we are saddened to observe how little he really works upon us. The White Monkey is one of his best novels ; there is a cleanliness and tact in it that wins admiration. If only he could blow more strongly I Isn't it, by the way, a mark of deficient energy that Mr. Galsworthy should devote himself so single-heartedly to the Forsytes ? He never explodes into novels of a different genre ; he never abandons the country in which he has made himself at home. Yet the best thing in the book is incidental, and has no Forsytes at all deeply involved. Mr. Bicket, a Cockney, steals books from his employer to sell ; his wife has pneumonia and his wages aren't big enougll to pay for doctors and foods and medicines. Of course, he isn't clever at it : he is soon caught and dismissed from his job. But Mrs. Bicket

is almost recovered, and when she sees her husband struggling against poverty and despair she commits a greater crime than his : she poses in the nude for an artist. Here Mr. Galsworthy's .tenderness has free and full play ; and as their consciousness of sin is in some degree the villain of the piece the story gains a small air of importance. The Forsyte instalment is simpler

and more continuous than usual : it is less impressive but more direct.

Miss Margaret Kennedy's new novel, The Constant Nymph, is very jolly to read, and she manages a great number of characters with an admirable ease. We begin with a house

in the Tyrol, overrun with the wild children of a promiscuous genius. They have had no education and much experience ; they have no manners and few morals ; but some of them, at least, inherit intelligence and personality—it depends which mother they belong to ; there is one strain of utter stupidity. Their father dies and they are rescued from their squalor by disapproving relatives. Miss Kennedy has the astonishing good sense to make the taming they undergo fairly good for them—or anyhow not downright bad for them. The most interesting and enchanting of all the children is the hardest used. She has a very grown-up and very child-like love for another savage of genius, a friend of her father's, and they have a woeful time between them. This is certainly the best novel I have read in which a genius plays any part. Miss Homer Wilson, who had a vogue two or three years ago, is ludicrous in esmparison with Miss Kennedy.

But a genius is never a suitable subject for a novel. Miss Kennedy gives us the conventional type of genius, a man for whom no other people exist, who is quite without ethical standards or moral stamina. She certainly makes the type both extravagant and convincing. But just because a genius expresses himself in his work primarily, and not so essentially, quite, in his life, he really banishes himself from geed fiction. Either we are disappointed in the references to his own creation, or we see him to be a little second-rate as an clement for situations. For in novels the characters are geniuses exactly in their own contribution to the story ; that is their supreme life, and they are complete and poignant only in the stretch of action that takes place in the novel itself. They must not be allowed any qualities that are not lived cut before us. Miss Meynell has arranged her volume Of short stories very oddly. There are two excellent stories ; one is put in the middle and one at the end. Now, since Miss Meynell's prose is lifeless and sober, we are not prepared at all for the shock of excellence. Her prose becomes adequate when

there is passion and thought behind it ; but we find it discour- aging when she is merely being intelligent or slightly complex.

And the better of the two stories is the last story in the book. There is a charm in this abstention from showmanship, but there is a danger, too ; a reader could so easily tire before he got his reward. "We Were Just Saying" . . . is a beautiful and distressing account of a conversation carried on in front

of a deaf old lady. All the time she is looking affably and brightly at the speakers, very eager that one of them should

notice her and shout into her ear some account of the conver- sation ; and all the time they are discussing cruelly and bitterly what a nuisance the old lady is :—

" This that I'm going to toll you is only one little detail of all the trying things l've had to endure from her for a year. In my efforts to make her hear I've sometimes shouted myself ill almost, and she's drawn back as if I hurt her, and said that I didn't need to shout so'loud: So I've not only had to speak too low, if you please, but not too loud either. I've been supposed to imow exactly the pitch of voice required. You'd think that

to be spoken to at all they'd take as a favour. . . "

" As unnoticeably as possible, Bertha spoke to Laura : ' What is it they are saying ? Something very interesting, I know ! couldn't quite hear. What are they talking about, dear ? ' "

ANDREW CAREY.