NOVELS.
111E GRAND BABYLON HOTEL.'
SnwE Miss Braddon abandoned the field of sensation so diligently exploited by her for a quarter of a century fpr the more tranquil domains of historical romance, no successor of uncontested superiority has arisen to occupy her throne. Miss Warden promised well, but her later ventures have proved disappointing ; Miss Adeline Sergeant has paid a divided allegiance to serious character analysis and lurid melodrama; and Mrs. Williamson has thrown away quite a pretty talent for comedy on "shockers" which tax the credulity of the most omnivorous appetite. That there is a demand for such books we have not the slightest shadow of a doubt. One of the very ablest and most hard-working Oxford philosophy dons that the writer knew could never resist a " yellow back." They may be destitute in regard to detail of any correspondence with the facts of life, utterly innocent of edification, and yet capable of providing perfectly harmless entertainment. This result we take to be due to the fact that the methods of sensationalism, as inter- preted by most practitioners, are, by their kaleidoscopic character and reliance on a never-ceasing succession of incidents, incompatible with a deliberate insistence on morbid details or the leisurely delineation of moral deteriora- tion. Sensationalism, again, in its essence makes for optimism, since the conflict between the forces of good and evil, if it is to be exciting, cannot be one-sided ; and in regard to the ultimate issue the Adelphi formula still holds the field, which is, after all, only in keeping with the statistics annually issued by the Chief Commissioner of Police.
With these reservations we can extend a cordial welcome to Mr. Arnold Bennett, whose Grand Babylon. Hotel, described in its alternative title as "a fantasia on modern themes," is a very favourable specimen of its class. The author has discerned with no little shrewdness the opportunities for romantic crime furnished by the temporary contact of that shifting cosmopolitan society which frequents the modern fashionable monster hotel, where the management asks no questions as to the antecedents of the guests nor interferes with their freedom of action so long as they conform to a certain standard of living and pay their way. The story opens excellently with a brilliant piece of extravagance on the part of an American multi-millionaire. Foiled in his request for a special American pick-me-up, and meeting unexpected difficulties in the way of gratifying his capricious daughter's desire for a peculiarly homely dinner, he carries his point by purchasing the hotel "on the nail "for the modest sum of 2100,000. The assumption of the cares of management at once brings him into close quarters with a mysterious plot connected with the visit of a German Grand Duke and his youthful uncle, Prince Aribert of Posen, who while travelling incognito the previous year had fallen in love with the millionaire's daughter. The aim of the conspirators —chief of whom are the incomparable head-waiter Jules and the unique chef Rocco—is to upset the financial negotiations by which the Grand Duke proposes to regularise his position before being accepted as the suitor of an exalted German Princess, since if he is unable to show a clean bill of health, financially speaking, by a certain date, the reversion of the Princess's hand falls to the King of Bosnia, the contriver of the plot and paymaster of Jules and Rocco. These two villains, who combine superb urbanity of manner with diabolical unscrupulousness of method, play the game of their patron with mediteval thoroughness backed by all the resources of modern science. Toxicology, electricity, dis- guises, abduction,—the whole armoury of the plutocratic criminal is employed against the luckless Grand Duke, but at every turn the artistic assassins are confronted by the indomitable millionaire and his heroic daughter. To say any more of the plot and its catastrophe would be to detract from the pleasure of the reader, so we shall confine ourselves to a quotation by way of illustrating Mr. Bennett's gift for descriptive narrative. The scene in question describes the attempt of the millionaire, Theodore Racksole, to capture the villains by night on the Thames :-
" That night, just after dark, Theodore Racksole embarked with his new friend, George Hazel], in one of the black-painted
• The Grand Babylon Hotel. By Arnold Bennett. London: Mato and Winans. CS•l Customs wherries manned by a crew of two men—both the latter freemen of the river, a distinction which carries with it certain privileges unfamiliar to the mere landsman. It was a cloudy and oppressive evening. not a star showing to illumine the slow tide, now just past its flood. The vast forms of steamers at anchor-- chiefly those of the General Steam Navigation and the Aberdeen Line—heaved themselves high out of the water, straining sluggishly at their mooring buoys. On either side the naked walls of warehouses rose like grey precipices from the stream, holding forth quaint arms of steam-cranes.' To the West the Tower Bridge spanned the river with its formidable arch, and above that its suspended footpath—a hundred and fifty feet from earth. Down towards the East and the Pool of London a forest of funnels and masts were dimly outlined against the sinister sky. Huge barges, each steered by a single man at the end of a pair of 'giant oars, lumbered and swirled down-stream at all angles. Occasionally a tug snorted busily past, flashing its red and green signals and dragging an unwieldy tail of barges in its wake. Then a Margate passenger steamer, its electric lights gleaming from every porthole, swerved round to anchor, with its load of two thousand fatigued excursionists. Over everything brooded an air of mystery—a spirit and feeling of strangeness, remoteness, and the inexplicable. As the broad flat little boat bobbed its way under the shadow of enormous hulks, beneath stretched hawsers, and past buoys covered with green slime, Racksole could scarcely believe that ho was in the very heart of London—the most prosaic city in the world. He had a queer idea that almost anything might happen in this seeming waste of waters at this weird hour of ten o'clock.. It appeared incredible to him that only a mile or two away people were sitting in theatres applauding farces, and that at Cannon Street Station, a few yards off, other people were calmly taking the train to various highly respectable suburbs, whose names he was gradually learning. He bad the uplifting sensation of being in another world which comes to us some- times amid surroundings violently different from our usual surroundings. The most ordinary noises—of men calling, of a chain running through a slot, of a distant syren—translated themselves to his ears into terrible and haunting sounds, full of portentous significance. He looked over the side of the boat into the brown water, and asked himself what frightful secrets lay hidden in its depth. Then he put his hand into his hip-pocket and touched the stock of his Colt revolver —that familiar sub- stance comforted him."
Mr. Bennett, as we think the foregoing passage sufficiently shows, has, by the artistic way in which he diffuses an atmosphere of suspense and uneasy anticipation, shown him- self capable of work on a higher level than that of the melo-
drama—excellent of its kind—which forms the staple of his present venture.
Previous page
