FICTION.
filAURICE GUEST.*
THERE is no severer handicap to a good book than a prefatory puff by a writer of note : and even Mr. Hugh Walpole's admirably lucid, appreciative, and erroneous introduction to this reprint of "Mr." H. IL Richanlson's Maurice Guest cannot but be regarded in this light. If the publisher felt the need of the weight of Mr. Walpole's- name, he should have persuaded him to write a Commendatory Sonnet to the Ingenious Author, -with
which the reviewer would be under no necessity to quarrel. But of the Introducer's statement (amongst others) that it is the secret reading of Maurice Guest by the elite which has made the modern novel what it is, the present writer feels singularly distrustful. On the contrary, Maurice Guest is a very good
book indeed ; and, this is not merely a cheap kwpaer:SOlerTrow, but a sober fact : the book is purely classical 'in the sense that it shows an almost perfect mastery of a singularly complicated
and candid technique and an almost perfect impartiality on moral issues : the sort of book, in feet, which does not prelude
a new movement—however original many of its qualities may be—except in the sense of its final completion of the achievement of the old. It is, indeed, a salutary pill to the arrogant young Georgian that the dark °ages of 1908 saw the first publication of
such an exceptionally fine piece of work.
The composition of eulogy is always a critic's most diffioult task : but it is one which honesty from time to time compels him, however reluctantly, to face in all humility. The author of Maurice Guest has contrived to give an amaringly informative picture of oosmopolitan musical society at Leipzig—probably
the most convincing description of University life ever written— and at the same time to work out quite impartially and inevitably,
• with no apparent strain, a tragedy of temperaments that entirely lacks that exasperating fininkiness which is the weakness of much subtle psychological writing. She has contrived to keep her characters in remarkable relative proportion : and thus, while never praising or condemning morally, does indicate pretty explicitly the calibre of her persons, from the towering figures of
the "despicable" Sohilsky and Louise down to the minute but lovable Phemie, the amiable Dove, and the intermediate Madeleines and Johannes.
But to attempt a " wordish description" either of plot or characterization would be inevitably unsatisfactory : one cannot summarize a book of which not one of the five hundred odd pages is unnecessary or dull. Nor can one quote easily where, as with Trollope, so much depends on the invisible sureness of construction which lies behind every detail. But to take a descriptive passage purely at random :— "Late one afternoon about this time, Franz might have been found, together with his friends Krafft and Schilsky, at 'the lattees lodging in the Talstrasse. He was astride a chair, over the back of which he had folded his arms ; and his chubby, rubicund face glistened with moisture- In the middle of the room, at the corner of a bare deal table that was piled with loose music and manuscript, Schilsky sat improving the tails and bodies of hastily made notes. He was still in his nightshirt, over which he had thrown coat and trousers ; and, wide open at the neck, it exposed to the waist a skin of the dead whiteness peculiar to red-haired people. His face, on the other hand, was sallow and unfresh ; and the reddish rims of the eyes and the coarsely self-indulgent mouth contrasted strikingly with the general youthfulness of his appearance. He had the true musician's head : round as a cannon-ball, with a vast, bumpy forehead, upon which the fluffy hair began far back, and stood out like a nimbus. His eyes were either desperately dreamy or desperately sharp, never normally attentive or at rest ; his blunted nose and chin
• Maurice Guest. By H. H. Richardson. London: Heinemann. L7s. ed.] were so short as to make the face look top heavy. A carefully tended young moustache stood straight out along his cheeks, He had large, slender hands and quick movements. The air of the room was like a thin grey veiling, for all three pulled hard at cigarettes. Without removing his from between his teeth, So ilsky related an adventure of the night before. He spoke in Jerks, with a strong lisp, and was more intent on what he was doing than on what he was saying."
The book is too complete an achievement in itself to be much of an " influence " but nevertheless it cannot but be read with absorption both by the readers and the writers of fiction. And while it may prove rather strong meat for the timid, it is even more certain that to the prurient minded it will be but prison fare.
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