BOOKS.
MR. STEPHEN REYNOLDS'S TALES AND TRAVELS.*
Mn. STEPHEN REYNOLDS is at an interesting stage in his literary career. His first (and best) book showed that he had penetrated in a way rarely possible for a conventionally educated man into the life of the poor, and had brought back with him a sane and wholesome philosophy. "The likes o' they don't know what we got to contend with, an' if you tells 'em they won't believe 'ee "—these words may be taken as the motto of this interpreter. He revealed clear and remarkable powers of description and an acute interest in subtleties of character. Since then he has elaborated the philosophy of self-respecting poverty and analysed for us that civilization which is different indeed from the ordinary middle-class thing, but in many ways far superior. There is, however, an obvious danger in this point of view. A man is apt to slip into a new class pride, a kind of inverted snobbery, and extol the merits of his adopted circle at the expense of all others. Mr. Reynolds has not altogether escaped this vice. Sometimes his sane and genial exposition has been marred by the shrill note of the propagandist. Therefore, in our opinion, it was time that he should turn from sociological inquiry to the humaner field of art. He has magnificent material at his command ; his perception of character and his sense of drama are alike keen and true ; we look to Mr. Reynolds for work in fiction which shall be free from the "pathetic fallacy," and give us something of the larger emotions of life.
The book is a miscellany in which short stories predominate. But not the least good are the sketches of travel—the story of the fisherman's trip to Marseilles, and the delightful episode of the new motor boat and its journey from Dart- mouth home. The descriptions are extraordinarily vivid, and the humour is as racy and unforced as the admirable discus- sions, that aged philosophy of the beach which "reels itself off as slick as antiphonal singing in church or the choruses of a Greek play." We hope for many more of these "small travels." As for the tales the first thing that strikes one is that they have been badly selected. They are surprisingly unequal in merit, and some have no merit at all. What possessed Mr. Reynolds to reprint a piece of dreary jocosity like "The Engineer's Kiss ' "Silly Saltie " is an inconsequent episode, and "Turned Out" a piece of raw pathos scarcely worth doing and not particu- larly well done. Mr. Reynolds is apt to let his work tail off into a flat undistinguished close or to look for vigour at the end in something not unlike melodrama. "To Save Life,' for example, excellent in conception, is spoiled by an artificial dinotument. Closely allied to this fault is a tendency to caricature which mars the fine realism of his work. The middle-class man is a perpetual butt, and the result is that he carries as much conviction in these pages as the hero of an old circulating-library novel. Vivian Maddicks in the first story is a preposterous figure, as Mr. Reynolds knows very well. He seems to be always seeking for a foil to the people be likes, but an artist must see to it that his foil is not con- temptible, or he will spoil the realism of the whole tale.
• How 'Twilit! Short Marisa and Small, Travels. By Stephen Reynolds. London: Macmillan & Co. 15s. net.]
Having said this much in criticism, we have a great deal to say in praise. " Jaspar Brained's Boat," for example, could :hardly be bettered. It is the story of an old man who has won a certain race at the regatta for many years, until a new rule is made by his enemies which disqualifies his boat because of its length. He cuts it down, thereby spoiling its beauty, but he wins the race, and with it a young wife. Here there is just that economy of language and that selection of detail which constitute the art of the etude. "The Missioner," which tells of a dreamy fisherman whose taste for revivalism is expelled by love and cold water, is almost equally good, though the inspiration ebbs a little before the close. "His Majesty's Medal" is a good example of Mr. Reynolds's humour, from which irony is never far distant. It tells of the giving of a long-service medal to a naval reservist, his sudden exaltation, and his subsequent disappointment. "The almost absurd innocence of it all" is Mr. Reynolds's comment, and the phrase is an apt description of the whole comedy. Still, taking one with another, he is most successful in his tragic moods. "Self-exiled" has nothing to do with Devon fisher- men, and is whollf alien to the mood of the book. It is a horrible little study in pathology, the story of a broken-down Englishman in a cheap Parisian cafi who is cut off from home and kindred by a self-tormenting hatred. It is uncommonly well done, but we had rather Mr. Reynolds left such studies to other people. "A Love's Hunger" is another exercise in the curious, telling of a woman who was starved for love because her husband bad no gift of utterance. "It is but a short time since her husband also died. He called on his wife as a man might call upon God for succour, but she was beyond hearing." By far the best, however, is "An Unofficial Divorce," which seems to the present writer almost the finest thing Mr. Reynolds has written. It is, however, by no means a story virginibus puerisque.
Mr. Reynolds starts, as we have said, with a fine equipment. He is a student of character, and, what is more important, he has the capacity to understand it. His business is to mould his raw material to the purposes of art and, if we might advise, to forget any social speculations in this larger purpose. A novelist who has the key to character has already won half his battle, and—save for his middle-class butts—he never falters in the truth and vigour of his characterization. Take the little sketch called "The Beachcomber." In a few slight strokes he sets the figure of his wastrel in strong relief against a world of purposeful men. As an example of a subtler study we might quote the description of the young fisherman in "The Missioner."
"Jim Forder, the younger son, was the dubious member of the family. Dark, tall, stooping, and raw-boned, he nevertheless gave the impression that he had got to grow in some way. He looked anywhere, at sea or on land, a little awkward and out of place, and by some means or other he managed to spoil the general effect of nearly everything he did. As a boy his dreams and restlessness had been a nuisance ; he had been mad to go to sea and had not gone ; he had refused to fight a man one day and had provoked a fight with him the next week; he had sought heaven and feared hell in two or three religious sects ; and, worst of all, he had fallen headlong in love with several girls, yet still was unmarried. . He constantly annoyed his father because he stuck so firmly to his own opinions, which, as any one could find out by baiting him, swayed and tore like seaweed in a storm. . . . The hymning appealed particularly to Jim, who, being spiritually a tenderfoot, and ill at ease in any path, had sought fresh roads all the days of his life. He shared the feelings of those around him, but what for them was walking idly, for him was running the race. . . . He was, so to speak, an idealist without ideals. He stood con- victed, not of sins, but of sin. An extraordinary longing—akin to that which causes primitive peoples to worship collectively and to share their mental troubles—was compelling him to take all men into his confidence. With hesitation, he stepped still farther
forward to testify. 'Dear brothers, . . he began. . . . He lost grip of what he had wanted to say. The very desire to testify was slipping away from him."
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