Fiction
Divers Women in Story r cuckoo sings by kind. By Valentine Dobnie. (Knopf.
is. 611.) Overbury Mystery. By Judge.Parry. (Fisher Unwin. 7s. 6d.) protagonist of the average novel is more and more iiently a woman. These four books in their very different s are concerned with the feminine temperament.
Ice Magic, in quaint reversal to the epistolary form, nts the super-woman at her crudest. Deep-eyed and
vv-tressed, she smiles as deliberately as a " vamp," but y she is " too bright and good for human nature's daily , a creature of romantic and mysterious origin, a splendid ged genius whose superb drama of "Tainted Blood" horrified an innocent London, evidently forgetful of its n and Brieux. Adoring men offer her sympathy ; but flies to Algeria, and discovers she is really a desert-woman. has more adventures and more triumphs ; but is drowned e Mediterranean, and becomes reincarnate in the " blue desired by two of her acolytes. There is a dashing air ulture about the chief letter-writers ; but the allusions Tonally miss fire. When one admirer describis the radiant as "lassata, non satiata," he seems to have forgotten the text. This is quite an amusing book, though perhaps the or did not so intend it.
he publishers create a slight prejudice against A Shadowy ti by stating on the wrapper that it is very, very modern, could not pessibly have been written twenty years ago. anguish caused by the sudden separation of two young led people who are also lovers—the theme of this book— passionately and tragically described in a novel concerning Richard Feverel, in dim Victorian days. Virginia would have included Meredith in her list of " clear " people ; but modernity is merely a matter of quotations and a confused (1. She and Evan are shadowy young folk analysing flirtations with an infantile seriousness. But that is ibly because the mistaken author has a true gift for relating he and happy matters in a pale pastel style that might have own charm. Virginia resting in the lovely garden is finely sweetly touched sometimes. There are occasional ations of rare feeling in the book, like the description of chilly disappointment of a meeting too ardently expected. Young men are rather foolish ; but at its best this youthful el breathes the troubled and fugitive promise of a February our cuckoo sings by kind surprises with an original record a nice sense of language. The matter is the life of a girl- between eleven and fourteen, told in the lucid impersonal r of a Recording Angel, with just so much sympathy as is Fled by perfect justice. Readers who have the Barrie- vision of children will not love Christina. She is uncouth, use of her spiritual solitude, inhibited from grace by lolls assaults on her seeking soul. But the inarticulate tina is as much a " child of quality " as the exquisite lady of Prior, for she has imagination, intellectual honesty, a Power of noble passion that terrifies herself, so that she eed the Ugly Duckling who through much misery will ride as a Swan upon the lordlier waters. Farrowfield is a's hell, where average stupid people by mere careless- and impatience behave like demons, and horrors come enly about her through her very innocence. She has r initiations ; as if pressing together the raw edges of Prehensible wounds, she stumbles through dark places, she sees the world of daffodils and birch trees unsteadied by And like all lonely children she._ discovers Aims**
tricks and ways of escape into a kind of infinite ecstasy some- thing akin to an Oriental fakir'i.
Christina passes to Braemore,. where her spirit is healed by exquisite hands, and shee-learns to accept as a delightful ritual the necessary etiquette of life. Yet Farrowfield lives in her for evil and good, casting a dark flame that heightens the felicity it seems to threaten, and keeping alive the conflict from which must emerge no placid and elegant existence, but life in higher terms of defeat and triumph.
The crystal language of Christina's tale spaces out sometimes into pools that mirror lovely images like a landscape or a white marble lady on a tomb. Sometimes a rare and amethyst word is precisely placed like a pale enamel in silverwork. Christina's final reverie, a succession of trivial, terrible, magnificent notions, is a most convincing meditation in the Proustian manner. Sometimes the book falters, for it attempts evasive and difficult things ; but it is always sardonic, delicate and stratum.
Frances Carr, Countess of Somerset, had brief childhood of any kind, since at twelve she became a bride and a court lady ; and, not so long after, a mistress of intrigue and an initiate into the Black Art. Judge Parry's account of The Ourrbary Mystery has been published before ; and his evocation of the many glittering figures who tread that intricate dance of guilt is lively and vigorous. His partiality for Frances, who was merely luxurious, conscienceless, and cruel, really spoils her dramatic effect. She had a simple nature ; and her beauty was so great that it seemed invincible. Ben Jonson wrote her first wedding masque ; the chastity of the grave and beautiful Prince Henry melted beneath her eyes. Campion's lutes and Donne's pagan epithalamy mingled with the bright insolence of her second nuptials. Sir Edward Coke and Francis Bacon brought her to her doom. The tale of the obscure death of Sir Thomas Overbury is thick with historic names. It evokes a vision of Jacobean London—barges of delight and dread crossing on the river, maskers golden in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, hooded figures knocking at the door of the lone house in Lambeth Fields which belonged to Simon Forman, magician. As for Frances, she had better have died on Tower Hill when she took her fan and walked out from the judgment of her peers, stately in black and white, with the officers of justice attending her like her gentlemen in waiting. But she lingered long, with her husband's hate devouring her more cruelly than the cancer at her breast.
R. ANNAND
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