THE FAIR MAID OF WARD OUR STREET.* Tins novel should
sell, for it is of the type which appeals to a large number of novel-readers. It is concerned with love and hatred; it is picturesque, violent, emotional and full of variety and movement. It is the story of Jael Prude, daughter of a violent father and a moody Mother; and of her marriage, estrangement, and final reconciliation to Ilielnnond Drew. The stone is laid in' a -wild arel bleak moorland, and-the narra- tive is pitched inn highly romantic and "poetical" key. What more does the average, unsophisticated reader require ? But for the More difficult -reader, for the ciitte who is bothered by notion S that the Writing Of neVelicis'a great art, The Pitiful Wife is not a first-rate novel. Its writer's chief fault is that she mistakes violence for strength and verbal poetry for human pask,:--ezu In her attempt to convey Strength she reinindS one of those imitators of Michelangelo who thought' that bright pink flesh and carefally arranged blobs of muscle eMistitidea go rho Pitiful AV. By Storm Jameson. Constable. Us. Od. itél in themselves a Hercules. Here is a fragment from a fight in which Jael's father, John Prude, took a distinguished part :—
" . . they laid about them doucely, and more than one of the attackers went to the floor with a broken skull. Prude took a man by the ankles, and swinging him round and round, cleared a space about himself, then let the wretch slip, so that he hurtled across the room and fell down by the wall."
On a certain occasion in later life Trude laughed :— " The veins stood out on him like clusters of grapes, he sucked in great rushing breaths and blew them out with choked bellowing noises. Richmond's gorge rose and he. . . thought wildly of crashing a fist through that fantastic fungus of a face."
So much for the violence. Here is some of the poetry. Rich- mond, at the age of fourteen, has his first glimpse of Jael :— " The boy caught his breath. He was an artist, though as yet he hardly acknowledged it, but it was not the artist in his blood that caught fire and flamed into a tremulous ecstasy. He saw that her cheeks were thin, and pale with the fabulous pallor of wind flowers.', And this is what happened when Jael told Richmond that she loved him :— " He thought that was what she said and then he thought she could not have said it. The path below his feet was slung from hill to hill and shook with the roaring winds of space. He saw that one of the trees had thrust its farthest top through a star, and he knew they had been reft from earth and flung up and out upon the net of night."
That is what we have called "verbal poetry." By the use of certain words and phrases it produces a certain facile emotional effect, but it will not bear inspection, because it has no real depth. In fact, what is wrong with the novel is what Richmond declared was wrong with Jael :— " I've grown to understand life,' he told her. 'You're living in a mediaeval romance, my dear. In a dream.'" But if Richmond was right about Jan!, he was wrong about himself, for there is little evidence in the book that Richmond understood much more about life than she did. In short, The Pitiful Wife is "Wardour Street." Wardour Street has certain merits and Miss Storm Jameson writes very good Wardour Street, but in the world of serious art Wardour Street is not to be found, and we hope that Miss Jameson will exercise her powers, which are by no means to be despised, on something more worthy of them. M. ARMSTRONG.
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