DODO.

Dodo is a delightfully witty sketch of the " smart " people of society as it is in the Row and the house-party " of the day. We know no cleverer "impression" of the jumble of

old and new habits of life as they are mixed in the froth of " all London." The writer is a showman with keen insight and sympathy, and he is a true artist in his presentation and selection of materials, which speak for themselves without labels. They are of the slightest, but so truthfully given that they suggest their world, and its movement and colour, with- out a word of padding or moralising. There is probably por- traiture in some characteristics of his personages, particularly in the women of the story ; but while the whole book is a telling"human document," he never dissects, even when he introduces us to souls or "apostles " who are nothing if not subtle and psychological as they faintly echo Ibsen and Bourget. Mr. Benson's men are more satisfactorily " bar- barian" than his women, if not as novel. They have what may be called the healthy open-air virtues of English gen- tlemen, which some popular and pessimistic, and let us add ignorant, painters of society have for some time back left out of their representations. It is true that the portrait of the heroine, Dodo, which is the most elaborate study in the book, is as little like our grandmothers as possible. She is lifted to higher, and not lower, levels by the man who adores her, and this is a satisfactory new departure in fiction, which, even at its worst, perseveres in the old convention that women are, or ought to be, superior beings, which, as a matter of fact, they have not been since Eden or before.

Dodo incarnates in a brilliant and charming fashion a new type,—woman as she has become since she cast herself loose from the customs built up during so many centuries. Dodo has beauty and the genius of fragmentary wit, but how in- tolerable would be a wilderness of women aping her and suffering from the same enfranchisement ! She is meantime quite different from the creations of French fiction, and though her nerves are as highly strung and her heart as small as those of any Parisian heroine, she is as English as any breezy young woman who gallops early in the Park. She marries

the Marquis of Cheeterford for money and position, while she likes his cousin, Jack Broxton, better. As for love, she feels it only for her brilliant self, and even her love for herself is a shallow passion. Bore is the protagonist of the book. Bore 13 the origin of all its evil. Her baby bores her, and within three weeks of its death she goes to a ball as her only relief. L 3t us introduce her to the reader :- " The music from the band was quite loud enough to be heard distinctly in a small, rather unfrequented sitting-out room, and there Dodo had displayed her incomparable grace of movement and limb to the highest advantage. Dodo danced that night with unusual perfection, and who has not felt the exquisite beauty of such motion ? Her figure, clad in its long clinging folds of diaphanous, almost luminous texture, stood out like a radiant statue of dawn against the dark panelling of the room ; her graceful figure bending this way and that, her wonderful white arms now holding aside her long skirt, or clasped above her head ; above all, the supreme distinction and conscious modesty of every posture seemed, to the little circle who saw her, to be almost a new revelation of the perfection of form, colour, and grace,"

She is adored by her loyal and chivalrous husband, who bzlieves in her according to old-fashioned faith in women as angels,—a faith for the first time shaken by her indifference to their child. In vain she really tries to act her part properly as an attentive and agreeable wife, for she has the energy and perseverance which are gained by long habit of society. Bore overcomes all her intentions of fine performance of her part as Lord Chesterford's wife, and she suddenly asks Jack Broxton to run away with her, having previously ordered her carriage to take them to the nearest station the same evening. He refuses, in a well-drawn scene, and she forgets all about the carriage, and is as cheery as ever hunting next morning with her husband. This is all very shocking, yet it is touched with so light a hand that we are no more shocked than Charles Lamb was by the dramatists of the Restoration. We are chiefly sorry for the forlorn female intellect unballasted by love, drifting hither and thither among the quicksands of circumstance, unstayed by any unseen power even of passion.

She is very pitiful in her incapacity for any emotions except those which her "play-acting" provides for her. She is an inimitable comrade, but she should not have let herself be caught in the meshes of man's honest and faithful love. When

* Dodo : a Detail of the Dev. By 3: F. Demon. London : bletlanen and Po.

she meets it face to face,—" I don't know what to do," she exclaims, "it isn't my fault that I am made like this. I want to know what love is, and I can't. I can't I" With

wit free as the song of birds and that has something of genius in its spontaniety, Dodo is absolute queen of her set, and her set is "all London." To amuse and to be amused is her aim in life, as it is of many in " all London," and she allows no echoes of the Catechism or even of Mrs. Grundy's voice to interfere with her whims. She is

egotism in excelsis, egotism triumphant, for men and women alike delight in her. If she wrecks the happiness of others she is sorry, and can sob and cry as a child might for a broken toy, yet even to us in the seat of judgment she is charming, and we wonder what fresh victim Dodo will discover, with a. sense that the victim is enviable. The author draws the two Lords Cheaterford with a fine conception of young English gentlemen, the very flower of European civilisation. Dodo's

husband, by his truth and tender strength and courage, enhances all her follies, and yet shields them to the reader; both he and his cousin are governed by the fine honesty of honour. " Surely there is something divine in these men we thought most human," says the painter of them, and we agree with him.

The women of the sketch are altogether on a lower level,

and as yet unknown in the weary mass of daily fiction, that lives by outraging the old traditions or flattering them, and always with some turnover of the old properties in search of novelty. Miss Grantham talks startling paradoxes, and pre- tends to feel pulses of Wagner and Schopenhaner stirring in her veins. Miss Staines is, we imagine, a portrait. A girl who can compose a " Sanctus" which makes Dodo wish she were a Roman Catholic Archbishop, and the scherzo of a symphony which almost makes the chairs and tables dance, is certainly not a barbarian. Whether music be her pro-

tection or not, Edith Staines is sound at heart, which the psychological " Grantie " is not, though she would "walk ten miles any day in order to have an emotion." When one of Dodo's loyal lovers remarks, " There are some emotions that I would walk further to avoid," Miss Grantham observes :-

" Oh, of course the common emotions, " the litany things," as Dodo calls them,' said Miss Grantham, dismissing them lightly with a wave of her hand. 'But what I like is a nice, little, sad emotion that makes you feel so melancholy you don't know what to do with yourself. I don't mean deaths and that sort of thing, but seeing someone you love being dreadfully unhappy and ex- tremely prosperous at the same time.'—' But it's rather expensive for the people you love,' said Jack.—' Oh, we must all make sacri- fices,' said Miss Grantham. 'It's quite worth while if you gratify your friends. I would not mind being acutely unhappy, if I could dissect my own emotions and have them photographed and sent. round to my friends."

Miss Staines composes Masses, and it is arranged that, in- stead of going to church, the party at Lord Chesterford's country place will have a " delicious little service in the drawing-room," A tremendous German swell who "conducts at the Crystal Palace" is telegraphed for, Dodo arranges the " play-bill," and Miss Staines' Mass in G is naturally its chief item :- "' We must move all the sofas out of the room, because they don't look religious,' Dodo said, and I shall cover up the picture of Venus and Adonis. I have got the sweetest little praying- table upstairs, and a skull. Do you think we'd better have the skull, Edith P I think it makes one feel Sunday-like. I shall put the praying-table in the window, and shall read the lessons from there. Perhaps the skull might frighten old Truffier. I have found two dreadfully nice lessons. I quite forgot the Bible was such a good book. I think I shall go on with it One of them is about the bones in Ezekiel, which were very dry— you know it—and the other is out of the Revelations. I think—'—' Dodo,' broke in Edith, " I don't believe you're a bit serious. You think it will be rather amusing, and that's all. If you're not serious I shan't come.'—' Dear Edith,' said Dodo demurely, I'm perfectly serious. I want it all to be just as nice as it can be. Do you think I should take all the trouble with the praying-table, and so on, if I wasn't ? You want to make it dramatic,' said Edith, decidedly, Now, I mean it to be religious. You are rather too dramatic at times, you know, and this isn't an occasion for it. You can be dramatic afterwards, if you like. Herr Truffen is awfully religious. I used to go with him to Roman Catholic services, and once to Con- fession. I nearly became a Roman Catholic.'—' Oh, I should like to be a nice little nun,' said Dodo ; 'those black-and-white dresses are awfully becoming, with a dear trotty rosary, you know, on one side, and a twisty cord round one's waist, and an alms-box. But I must go and arrange the drawing-room. Tell me when your conductor comes. I hope he isn't awfully German. Would he like some beer first ? I think the piano is in tune. I suppose he'll play, won't he ? Make him play a voluntary when we come

in. I am afraid we can't have a procession, though. That's a pity. Oh. I'm sorry, Edith. I'm really going to be quite serious. think it will be charming.' " The brilliant little picture is so essentially English that when its figures are transported to Zermatt, much of the veri- similitude of the novel is lost. It has less of fresh-air charm, and becomes commonplace, as a French story might be. The noisy wit of Dodo has, for the first time, a hint of vulgar in- appropriateness in the shadow of the Matterhorn. She herself feels that Swiss scenery is not her right background, and at the same time she becomes aware of her final defeat at the hands of Adam. It requires a somewhat melodramatic Austrian Prince to restore the supremacy of man over this emancipated Eve. We leave the story for our readers to guess, or probably not to guess, and only say that the sudden and irretrievable collapse of Dodo is excellent art. We feel curiosity and even pity for her leap in the very dark company of an "unmitigated scoundrel."

It were breaking a butterfly upon a wheel to say much of what these feminine portents mean. As long as an in- heritance of good custom and secure police remain, they need only amuse the lookers-on. But we are sorry for Adam if he has no better Eve by his side in hours of trouble than the bewitching but extremely mundane Valkyr Dodo ; the para- doxical " Grantie"; or even the smoking, shooting, screaming composer of Masses, Miss Staines. Certainly, since Cleopatra there has been no woman of more "infinite variety" than Dodo.