FICTION.
PRINCE IIEMPSEED.*.
IN this autobiography of Richard Kurt from a child to a young man, Mr. Hudson has really put himself in an unfortunate position. Richard is the son of wealthy parents, a father who thinks 'that work and success are the objects of life, and a
mother who is beautiful, beloved, and luxurious. It is not surprising that he develops into a vaguely artistic and abnor- mally sensitive boy, with a great gulf between him and his father, and a correspondingly great and hampering adoration for his mother. His emotions are chiefly negative, and in the end we are left with little promise of sterner things to come :-
" I'm not really keen upon going to Oxford. I don't think I should gain much from going there. All I do feel is that as I have to go on down this river which always gets broader and uglier and dirtier as it flows on, I'd rather be in the same boat with the sort of men I should know at Oxford than with men like Mr. Colhoun. . . . For the further I go on down the river, the less shall I be able to resist. If it is yellow and dirty now, what will it be before it reaches the sea 7 "
But it is in this very form of introspective autobiography which the author has chosen, with which he designed to give the final touch of complete conviction to his work, that he has made his one mistake. Richard's feelings, and all his little weaknesses, are exactly, almost diabolically, true to life, and are the material for a fine and sympathetic. story such as one feels that Mr. Hudson would have been as capable as most people of writing, but the introspection of a mind so delicate and so vague are of necessity chiefly instinctive and unrelated. What the author has done is to give us, in style and expression which imperceptibly, and with great skill, develop as they would according to the age and development of his hero, a series of impressions of his German relatives, his
• Primo Renamed. By Stephen Hadattn. London : Martin Seeker. [Os. WA] / mother's admirers, his friend at school, his one and only sexual experience, and so on. There is so much ground to cover that we are continually tantalized with a glimpse of what seems like the heart of the matter at last, from which we are switched off with an inconsequence and restless- ness that appear almost superficial just because it is so genuinely Richard himself, and not his creator, who is telling the story. Prince Hempseed is a remarkable book in many ways, but what at any rate might have been a fine creation remains a rather brilliant tour de force. Mr. Hudson will never have a large public, but those discerning people who read him are likely to remember his characters.
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