NOVELS-.
THE MAJOR'S NIECE.*
THERE were occasional moments, we confess, in the last of the Ballymoy Series—The Simpkins Plot—when we found the irresponsible exuberance of the Rev. Joseph John Meldon a trifle fatiguing. But The Major's Niece has cured us of this heresy. Here we have " J. J. " once more at his best. When Garibaldi visited England at the zenith of his fame someone suggested that they ought to find him an English wife. When it was mildly suggested that he had got a wife already Lord Palmerston is alleged to have observed that there was a very simple way out of the difficulty. All they had to do was to get Mr. Gladstone to explain her away. Parvum componere magno,this is oneof "J. J.'s" great qualities. When Major Kent took him into his confidence about the im- pending arrival of his niece, Marjorie,one of the ten children of a sister who had been for twenty odd years in Australia," J. J." soon convinced his friend, by an admirably sustained chain of logical argument, that Marjorie was grown up, and took the necessary preparations in hand with the utmost promptitude and despatch. But when Marjorie turned out to be a child of ten years old, and all the Major's plans had to be readjusted, "J. J." proved more than equal to the occasion. The grown-up Marjorie was explained away and new plans made with inexhaustible fertility of resource. The fact that "J. J." was so often wrong counted for nothing. He over- whelmed all opposition. Part of the original scheme had been to entrust Marjorie with the duty of presenting a bouquet to the Lord Lieutenant's wife on the occasion of her visit. When her age was 'halved "J. J." resolved to retain her for the function, but in the character of an Irish fairy. Mr. Doyle, the chief tradesman, and president of all the local Leagues, recognized the absurdity of the idea, but had to give way. "Previous experience had convinced him that there was nothing to be gained by opposing any plan which Meldon was determined to carry out. He foresaw that unless he gave way at once his life would be made unbearable by the continuous flow of Meldon's argu- ments." But we are anticipating. The visit of the Lord Lieutenant is the climax of a series of diversions, excitements, and adventures in which Marjorie is the central figure, with Paudeen, the stable boy, as her reluctant satellite. Marjorie, in the words of a famous lyric,
"was what nurses call a limb, One of those small, misguided creature, Who, though their intellects are dim, Are one too many for their teachers."
Her Australian upbringing had rendered her absolutely fearless. She was an infant Amazon, with the instincts of a bushranger and a serene disregard for all authority. "J. J." was the only person who could manage her, but his views on the sub- ject of education were decidedly unorthodox :— "'You'll find,' said Meldon, 'that it's the people who haven't got any children who take the keenest interest in education. All the authorities on the subject—those who invent the new theories —are either unmarried women or confirmed old bachelors. John Stuart Mill, who wrote one of the best books thereis on education, is a case in point. The moment people—men or women--get even one child of their own, their interest in education begins to flag. When they get two or three children it requires the utmost exer- tion of the Parents' Union and other similar societies to keep them up to, the mark. Those who have really large families know what utter rot the whole thing is, and nothing ahort of the. Com- pulsory Education Act will induce them to send the poor little things to school' " "4"1,14111,fees,Niter. By-George A. Birmingham. 'London: Smith, Elder wide% [es.] Marjorie, it should be added, though not a model child, was quite free from guile, and her impishness has always an engaging side. Besides one cannot blame her for exploitT ing her emancipation from the tiresome rules and regulations
of an educational faddist like her mother. When Major Kent ordered boiled chicken and rice pudding for her luncheon, and was told that no chicken was available, he left the arrange- ment of the menu to his cook, Mrs. O'Halloran, stating, at the same time, that he would not himself be at home for luncheon. The result of this was that Mary Garry, the parlour-maid,
after consultation with. Mrs. O'Hallora.u, asked Marjorie what she would like, and Marjorie chose sardines on toast, to be followed by whipped cream and raspberry jam. Marjorie had a superb digestion, but her conscience was only imperfectly developed. Pandeen, on the other hand, had been taught by the experience of life that " anything which is rapturously pleasant to do is extremely injurious to the thing it is done to " Nothing could have been pleasanter, for instance, than coursing the black-polled Angas calf round the tennis-court. It therefore turned out afterwards that the game was harmful both to the calf and the lawn. ' He knew in his heart that it. could not be right to leap from one side of the punt to the other, and bear her down with a bump upon the stones which strewed the upper part of the beach."
But though his conscience pricked him, he was unable to carry conviction to his partner. As Mr. Birmingham puts it, Paudeen "could never have been a leader of men, for he lacked initiative, but, born at an earlier period, he might have developed into a subordinate buccaneer."
When Mr. Birmingham wrote serious-novels on the Ireland of to-day some people complained that be gave them more information than guidance. In his new role of an irrespon-
sible entertainer he still contrives to give us &-great deal of enlightenment on the ways of those who 'Jive: in and on Ireland. None escape the lash of_ "1. J.'s " agile and omniscient tongue, be they Lords Lieutenant, village patriots, journalists, literary revivalists, or clerics of all denomina- tions. When "J. J.," by way of obliterating the original Marjorie legend, conceived the idea of dresbing her up as a. fairy to welcome the Viceroy, he has, first of all, to convince Mr. Doyle, the principal tradesman in Ballymoy and had of the reception committee. This is how he did it :—
" When I say that fairies are the proper thing you may take it that they are. You set up to be president or vice-president of half a dozen different leagues, as well as being Chairman of the Urban District Council and an ex-officio magistrate, but you.'re utterly uneducated man. It's just as well for you to realize that fact at once. You don't know what's going on in Ireland outside of your own wretched board-room. As it just happens, every intellectual man in the country at the present moment is simply devoted to folk-lore and popular mythology and esoteric mysticism generally. You probably don't know what those sciences are, but I'll tell you. They're fairies, pure unmitigated fairies—which, of course, includes leprechauns—and nothing else. Very well. The Lord-Lieutenant naturally wants to associate with intellectual men. That's what brings him to Ireland.. He knows that there's more real genius in Ireland than anywhere else. You have the usual old-fashioned notion in your head that Dublin Castle is fall of landlords going up the front stairs, priests going down the back stairs, and politicians waiting'about in the basement storey expecting to be made into County Court judges. That's what you think; and, of course, you're perfectly right as to the facts. Where you make the mistake is in supposing that the Lord- Lieutenant likes that kind of thing. He doesn't. He puts up with it simply because he's paid to put up with it. In reality he hates the whole business. The sight of a landlord turns him actually sick, and he's so fed up with priests and politicians that he wouldn't care if every one of the whole crew was at the bottom of the sea, with some kind of a floating tombstone anchored to his dead body. What he really wants—what he indulges in when he gets away by himself to a quiet place where nobody sees him—is, poets and philosophers ; that is to say, the men who will talk to him freely about really interesting things—fairies, the earth-spirit, and everything else of that time. '
This is good fooling, with a sub-stratum of well-directed satire. But as a neighbour we expect " J. J." fully deserved the tribute of Mrs. O'Halloran: "There isn't iii the inside of the four seas of holy Ireland another but just yourself that would have thought of such divilment."
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