FICTION
THE EXQUISITE PERDITA. By E. Barrington. (Harrap. 7s. 6d. net.)—Nothing less like The Memoirs of Perdita published in 1784. than the present gay embroidery on the same ground could well be imagined. Mrs. Robinson, the subject of both biographies, is shown in the " Memoirs," by a scandalous and anonymous editor, to be no more than a fashionable plaything on whose smirched reputation scabrous tales of gallantry might easily be fastened. The Exquisite Perdita of the present author is the sympathetic central figure of an ornate period tale with a forlorn ending, which succeeds in convincing us that Mrs. Robinson was no wanton favour-seeker, but a trembling beauty, neglected by a sad rogue of a husband and forced to seek the stage as a means of livelihood.
The innocent creature yielded to the ardent entreaties of her Sovereign's son after long denials and then only out of love. That and her subsequent liaisons are glossed over with pity for so frail and friendless a child as she seems, and we blame the coarse age and the coarser politico-social life of eighteenth-century London that corrupted not only Perdita, but the greater Sheridan when he, too, fell into the Princely -toils.- - - - • -
Our author most cunningly spreads a .delicate melan- choly over all that vanished glitter and intrigue, and makes a captivating story out of all the sensibility, the raptures and the heartaches of a remodelled yesterday. The character of Perdita is a real creation : full as she is of contradictions and impulses, compound of charm and weakness, the beauty is real enough and lives vividly. And since it is shown how her adventures sprang not only from circumstances but also from defaults or at least peculiarities of character, the novel has a solidity and power of its own even apart from the fascination of its panorama of the past.
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