F ICT ION
By FORREST REID
Pray Do Not Venture. By Joanna Cannan. 75. 6d.)
Sing Holiday. By Peter Chamberlain. (Barker. 7s. 6d.)
IT is difficult to make of the historical novel so living a thing that the reader while reading forgets that it is an historical novel. Yet it is possible,' for A.Uatole France, notably in La Rotisserie de la Reine Pidauque, has done it. Herr Feuchtwanger, though* -his new-rnittatiee is plausible, learned, and possesses all .the features that made his earlier books so popular, has not. It is the story of Terence, a potter, who for a brief period succeeded in impersonating the Emperor Nero, thirteen years after the latter's death. A servant of the senator Varro,; Terence had performed his impersonation ; once or twice even in Nero's lifetime, and for his amusement. But then it was a there jest, and if Varro had not been at loggerheads with -Cejonius; the new • Roman Governor , of Syria, it never would •have: been carried further. Varro, however, now for years established in the East, is irritated by everything Cejonius says and does. • It is a temperamental antagonism. Cynical, contemptuous, more than half oriental- ised, Varro is 'still loyal - to the memory of- Nero, believes in his Eastern policy, and has lost' all:I-sympathy with the Roirie . of Titus.... The idea of using Terence to I'discomfit Cejonius appeals to his imagindtiOn. It is, he knows, a fantastic and dangerous idea, but there have always been rumours that Nero had secretly escaped, and the likeness between the murdered Emperor and the potter is extraordinary If Terence should be accepted in the East, Varro reasons—then anything may happen I . - - The preliminary_ intrigues with oriental rulers, the hatchi41 of the plot, the sudden rise and fall of the false Emperor, • are woven into_a_narrative. that-keeps one's curiosity at a high pitch. It does not, perhaps, do much more than this, for the novel is not of the first rank. Several of the characters— Terence himself, and the astute and lileasure-loying Varlet— are carefully drawn.; nevertheless they,remain in some degree puppets, with more sawdust than blood in their veins, while the whole conception of John of Patmos, upon whom Herr Feuchtwanger has lavished equal care, -is a -,meltic failure. Still, this is an ingettious_and exciting:tale, at tirries rising to considerable power, and the translation by Edwin and Willa Muir is excellent.
Mr. jack Lindsay's romance of the Civil War between Cavaliers and Roundheads is less deftly constructed. Sue Verney is the daughter of a Royalist family, and the book is designed to give a picture of the rough and precarious domestic life of the time, not of the actual military struggles, which indeed reach us only by way of news. But the action from the beginning is- somewhat confused:' Sue's -uneasy teirlhood is darkened by the inisforttmes of her. faMily, and when she marries it is -oily to meet furth, er_ trouble. Her husband is a weak and feckless drunkard, Own' ing an impoverished estate which Sue—a practical and courageous woman—works hard to improve. She-_ is successful—in some measure at any rate—but does not live long enough to reap the reward of her efforts, and in the last pages we leave her husband con- templating a fresh niarriage. A note of coarseness runs through the book, and, while this ::dOubtless, is true to the time, there is nobody—not evert Sue', among the characters to whom we feel attracted. We neither like them nor par- ticularly dislike them, and -the story itself, though something is constantly happening, remains-rather ..dull.
Pray Do Not Venture, also a period novel, is-at once a simpler end more readable book. Agos:i woman occupies the fore- most place. The tale opens in the 'forties, in the Lake District; and among -the visitors; of Harriet Unwin's -Mamma are the Coleridges, the Wordsworths ..and Miss 'Martineau. These distinguished guests,- however,- are -there not -to --be used dramatically, but merely as figures in a decoration, though the Wordsworths are given a speech or two, and Harriet is unimpressed by the poet. Site is' an .active, open* girl, candid, pleasant, adventurous. Her predestined husband seems to be David Moore, with whom she has been brought up from childhood. But David should have, been the girl, Harriet the boy, and, while she feels a half-amused affection for him, she is very far indeed from falling in love. Nor is the prim and proper David a very ardent wooer, so Harriet marries a darkly romantic stranger, wild turns out, as one guesses he will, to' be everything that is undesirable. With this the true Harriet emerges. David has been appointed to a post in Au:stralia; and she determines to accompany him, the el .iande"of-trairel--and, of an active and adventurous life being whit "the \always longed for. She half bullies, half cajoles.Divitlinikatcepting a siltation of which he is terrified, dibtigh itWorks out fofhinatfely enough. In spite of the fact that they are; living with is a great deal happier wi Harriet to look after :him than .he would have been alone. Agitated letters,-of course,'-arrive- from Mamma, which Harriet _regards: humnrtnislie and 'Davie_ with -secret approval. He everileels that he is acting generously when, on the death of -Harriet's husband, he offers to marry her. But again we know -thit this is- not' to be her fa-ie.:I:She is a woman of character, and -has been created for no such humdrum anticlimax. .jt is a pleintly written book, the manners and speech a the time being skilfully caught, though I think in- the dialogueE there are occasional slips. Harriet in the 'fifties would not have said, " I- glimpsed ,._ a fine nature," nor David, " I sensed Those—and l- am one of tly&t—who believe that the possess- ion of a moral .sense is as important as anything else in the equipment- of a . writer will find nothing to admire in Mr. Hoff's complereemancipation from old-fashioned standards. Mr. Hoff himself probably 'will think me dreadfully heavy to take so gay and sprightly a work as Lisa_ • Can only plead.lhat_I -really luitl..1*;,* tich-farmer- occasionally does haaen, huindur hai'` -to do *itli' sexual impropriety. Fortunately, both for his sake and ours, he makes no attempt to pass off his hero as a great lover or to plead extenuating circumstances. He is a lover of sorts, I suppose, for :the, novel! from: , tart to: finish is a, ;chronicle of illicit amorous btu he is not impdisioned, still less affectionate raiicrtheTendirig of an affair is,. less: important to him thanrthe. lairs of,a manuscript. YouSee, he also is a novelist, and-t-whichis :a great deal more' surprishig—'-a novelist named Harry:Hoff,' WhoSeviorki-appAtv to be Idertheal with those of creator.' Tbis maybe merely a literary device, , designed in the interests . of verisimilitude and borrowed- from -Mr.- Max Beerbolun,•- who has so frequently usekitf-to:tell-how different Anad: sof story ! But the most discoOccrting,sentence in the book isc,a remark made by Harry's' friend-Leo. `You, think far loo many things are in bad taste," Leo says, and evidently means it It is extraordinary-;. :we. feel quite 'indignant.' Hairy, at any rate, deservei swab. _reproof- matters of '-'taste, as in matters of morals, he isnottling if notbrgad-rninded. Only, where does,Ilarry's taste, encrald 'Mr. Hoff's begin ? The novel, for all that, does posi*:diiiimirig qualities : it is without malice, -it is not dull,--and- once at least, in Harry's letters to Mr. Thomson, it made me laugh aloud.
Buckskin Breeches is 'a- romance of pioneering adireriture in the Middle West. It deals largely with the fortunes of a single family and "is a well-written tale of its kind, solid and unpretentious, With a picturesque background of settlement life. Sing Holiday I imagined was going to be a quiet, leisurely, rather charming novel, for it opens like that, with Mr. Matthew's,' its elderly hero, preparing for a week's holiday in the Isle of Min. It takeS the ituthdr nearly a Hundred Pages to stow us Mr. Matthews getting up, having his breakfast, packing, and catching his train ; but then we are also shoWn the Garbetts, who, look after his house, and the pleasing dog, George, whO' enlivens it. Unfp.rtunately 'on- reaching his journey's end Mr. Matthews is plunged into the society of a number of young Men whothave come over for the Motor races, and for the rest of thehOok we get nothing but these young men, who, whether sober and 'driving their .cars, or drunk and wandering naked about the hotel, are boring in the extreme.
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