Fiction

Bv L. A. G. STRONG.

Mundy's Child. By Alice Lindley. (Allan. 7s. 6d.) INDIVIDUALITY in writing is always easier to appreciate than to define. It is true that some authors make a particular subject so much their own that their work can be at once recognized because of it, but I am thinking rather of the individuality that is apparent no matter what subject the author is treating. It best appears, in fiction at any rate, as a quality of the writing rather than of the author. We do not want too much of the author in a novel—only so much as is revealed in the handling of the story. The story must come first, and we must be allowed to be interested in it exclusively until we have put it down. If our attention is every now and then attracted to the author, through some excess of individual quality, the novel is that much the less effective. What constitutes excess of individuality must of course be largely a matter of taste ; but the principle is sound.

It is in this respect, and in this respect alone, that Miss Butts seems to me to fail with her Death of Felicity Taverner. The novel is of a high standard, even brilliant in parts : the characters are sharply understood : the writing is subtle': there is a well-constructed story, with drama, conflict, and suspense. Often, however, the writing is so conscious and mannered as to hold up the reader's attention ; the way of saying a thing distracts one from the thing said. The kingdom of fiction is wide, and there is plenty of room in it for the conscious and mannered novel, but Miss Butts has not persuaded me that her manner of telling this story is inevitable ; and it is noteworthy that in several exciting passages, such as the scene where Malin makes his infamous threat to old Mrs. Taverner, and the scene where Boris lures him to his doom, Miss Butts's style is admirably direct.

Felicity is dead :

"Her death was still a kind of death to the three of them, to whose family the two houses in the hollow land belonged. . . . It was now spring, but the thought of their cousin's death in the past winter remained like a small tide mounting and retreating, reversing the usual formula for death. They wore no mourning for her, but there was a stain under Scylla's eyes as though a dead violet had brushed them, and her light hair flung back from her white forehead sometimes hung raggedly, as though combed by her fingers trying to tear thoughts out of the brain. She loved her cousin ; did not know if it had been suicide which had left her, bloody and dusty, beside the road, under a rock where the Lower Corniche rises above Villefranche."

The three discuss her with a friend, trying to adjust their minds to the rare memory :

" . . . Felicity seemed always to be perched up an almond tree or a pear, shaking down petals for blessings on the unjust and the just. If you protested, she said that Nature did that. 'Like the sweet apple.' Oh, she was always off, robbing some heavenly orchard and sharing the spoil. Only it seemed that a warning went with her, like a cream-dipped-in-coal thunder-cloud, that far menace that sits along the horizon and means that the weather will break ! "

Soon they are defending the beloved memory, and the beloved territory, from soiling and exploitation. How they do this Miss Butts, save for the flaw mentioned above, relates to admiration. She is obviously going to be a writer of importance : she is forming a distinguished style : and perhaps the strongest augury for her future is the fact that her characters are at their best when they succeed in running away from her.

Two books of short stories follow, each with individuality clearly stamped upon it. In the first, this quality has survived translation, a rare enough occurrence, even though few foreign writers are so fortunate as Signor Fracchia is with Sir S. H. Scott. The four stories in this book, with their poetic simplicity of attack, have a quality which is hard to analyse :

"Sometimes his face seemed to light up a little when, walking by the river, he threw in a stone, and watched the ripples over widening and gradually fading away ; or when he discovered sons) vague resemblance to a human figure in the shadow of a tree as ho walked along the avenues in an evening. Then he tossed his head, and seemed as if he could almost smile. He was good, he was gentle. He never passed a small child without stroking its head

and murmuring : Poor child. . . He would turn to Lucille and ask her : 'Why do you love me, Lucille ? ' And Lucille with her face buried in her hands, asked herself now : ' Why ? ' "

This short passage, describing the unhappy Arturo of "The Wedding Day," may give a hint of Signor Fracchia's individual touch, but it is each story as a whole, rather than any extract, which makes one realize that here is a short story writer of the first rank. "Autumn Rain" might have formed a subject for many living writers, but I cannot think of one who would have handled it precisely in this way. Robino is a book for the connoisseur.

Mr. Alexander Bone's sketches show individuality of the rarer kind. He has no characteristic mannerisms, his style is bare and business-like, yet we have only to read a page in order to be aware of a definite literary personality. A malicious flavour was added to my enjoyment as I read this book, to think how shocked the professional writer would be by Mr. Bone's prodigality of ideas. Fancy throwing away the material for a five-thousand-word story on a four- page sketch ! We must be thankful that Mr. Bone is in this sense an amateur, and enjoy the best. collection of sea pieces that has come our way for a very long time. Nothing

could be more effective in its way than "A Sea Grave." Conrad would have made something else of it, Jack London something else again : Mr. Bone has seen it as a simple incident, and as such has given it full value. This rare book is introduced by Mr. H. M. Tomlinson, and illustrated with excellent woodcuts by Freda Bone.

Herr Torberg leaves us uncertain as to his purpose, for the villain of his story as he relates it is not the Matura, the dreaded examination which all German boys have to take in order to qualify for their profession, but circumstance. It looks as if Herr Torberg had intended to attack the examination system. If so, he has weakened his attack by stating a special case. An examination of this kind must prey heavily on any sensitive and highly strung boy, but Kurt had to contend with Kupfer, the cruel schoolmaster who continually humiliated him, and with the inconstant Lisa, who recognized the special quality of his devotion in the only way left to her, i.e., by refusing him the favours she granted to all and sundry. The story is therefore the tragedy of an individual, rather than of a victim of the system. It is related in a high-strung, nervous prose suited to its subject. Herr Torberg errs sometimes on the side of over-statement, but the novel is to be recommended for the insight it gives into conditions unlike anything in this country.

And now for something more frivolous. Mundy's Child

signed herself " Sookey," and Mundy was her godfather to whom she wrote the letters here assembled. A blend of the Preferred Blonde with the heroine of Daddy Long-legs, she chronicles house parties, dances, and a number of scatter- brained episodes in a conversational style admirably suited to her material. She gets her, deserts (i.e., Nicholas) in the end, but we cannot help wishing that some of her earlier victims had had the courage to tell her what they thought of her. An amusing, light-hearted book, of an extreme

respectability.

Miss Mitford evidently believes that Christmas pudding should be well spiced. We are as familiar by this time with the country-house formula as with a Christmas pudding, but Miss Mitford demonstrates that one may be as full of pleasant surprises as the other. Her story is exceedingly amusing. There is a very happy scene in which presents get mixed and an indignant lady receives a highly unsuitable book, which is most pleasantly recorded. All the same, do not send it to any staid elderly relative from whom you have expectations, as its attitude towards what are some- times termed" the things that matter" may not be altogether to her liking. I, being old in sin (in the literary sense) enjoyed it very much indeed.