FICTION.
LADY INTO FOX.t " WaxnEarta, or supernatural events are not so uncommon, rather they are irregular in their incidence. Thus there may not be one marvel to speak of in a century, and then often enough comes a plentiful crop of them ; monsters of all sorts swarm suddenly upon the earth, comets blaze in the sky, eclipses frighten nature, meteors fall in rain, while mermaids and sirens beguile, and sea-serpents env if every passing ship, and terrible cataclysms beset humanity. But the strange event which I shall here relate came alone, un- supported, without companions into a hostile world, and for that very reason claimed little of the general attention of mankind. For the sudden changing of Mrs. Tebrick into a vixen is an estab- lished fact, which we may attempt to account for as we will. Certainly it is in the explanation of the fact, and the reconciling it with our general notions, that we shall find most difficulty, and not in accepting for true a story which is so fully proved, and that not by one witness, but by a dozen, all respectable, and with no possibility of collusion between them."
In this grave and courteous manner Mr. Garnett disarms the incredulous, and quietly webs them up in such a net of • (1) Dually. By V. de S. Pinto. Oxford : Basil Blaekwell. [2a. net.]— (2) .qyringa. By Gwen John. London: Selwyn and Blount. 12s. 6d. net.]— (3) The Wild Garden. By James Guthrie. Same publishers. [2.. net.] t hag into Pox. By David Garnett. London: (Amato and Windus. [5e. net.]
circumstantial detail—nay, of irrefutable proof—that they are incapable even of faintly wagging the finger of disbelief.
He is not so foolish as to attempt any explanation of the strange event which makes his story : he pretends to no better reason than his readers have for faith ; indeed, can suggest no reason in nature or supernature for that sudden and cruel metamorphosis ; most strange, as he says, because most sudden. " The sprouting of a tail, the gradual extension of hair all over the body . . . by a process of growth, though it would have been monstrous, would not have been so difficult to reconcile to our ordinary conceptions, particularly had it happened in a young child." Nor is Mr. Garnett a man easily gulled by rumour—with• good reason, for " In this way," he says, "I met not long ago with someone who, after talking to me some little while, and not knowing me or who I was, told me that David Garnett was dead, and died of being bitten by a cat after he had tormented it. He had long grown a nuisance to his friends as an exorbitant sponge on them, and the world was well rid of him."
It is in inexplicability that lies the difference between magic and conjuring ; and it is by this very inexplicability that Mr. Garnett wins our belief, shames us by his own naive faith out of any ill-mannered incredulity. Never does he falter in this attitude of naive gravity, this courteous archaism of style ; sitting with one elbow on the Works of Dean Swift, the other on Herodotus ; with an lEsop and a Bible ready to hand to back the truth of the more incredible passages in the encyclopaedia. And once the fact of the metamor- phosis is accepted, lie passes from phase to phase of his sad and witty story with a sort of reserve of conviction that leaves no further flaw for the sceptic ; tells how poor young It Tebrick in the year 1879, from being at first simply a lady in a, vixen's form, too modest even so to run about naked, showing " so little wildness in her demeanour . . . that her husband began to fancy that they could be happy enough if they could escape the world and live always alone," playing picquet and reading Clarissa Marlowe—gradually changed into the very nature and essence of a beast ; how, after the terrible moment when she killed the rabbit, she repented and " motioned to the portable stereoscope, and thus they spent the rest of the afternoon together, very happily looking through the collection of views which he had purchased of Italy, Spain and Scotland " ; but how with each lapse she grew wilder, till she lived with a dog-fox in an earth in the woods ; and her desperate and adoring husband clung to each last shred of her affection ; in whose arms, at last, the hounds tore her.
To face the fact of the matter, it is not often the reviewer chances on such an exceptionally good book ; a book in which wit and beauty move so smoothly under the restraint of gravity and a direct simplicity ; where the technique, though quite easily discernible and modelled on the best classical authors, is yet so lacking in awkwardness, in conven- tionality, in offence ; where fantasy, satire, allegory and realism are all kept firmly on the leash (letting the Hare of Art course free).
It is not surprising that the reader loses his function of reason as completely as poor Mr. Tebrick did, but more happily. With regard to the illustrations, the medium of woodcutting is most nicely appropriate to Mrs. Garnett's style and the tenor of the book ; she is certainly to be congratulated.
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