A First Novel of Genius
Hanging Johnny. By Myrtle Johnston. (Murray. 7s. 6d.)
Sow:THING of the siniit of Jude the Obscure pervades this extraordinarily mature first novel by an author of only eighteen years. There is no obvious imitation, and we do not suggest, of course, that Miss Johnston is at present com- parable with Mr. Hardy: Yet few readerS, we think, will close Hanging Johnny without at least being reminded of the WesseX master. Miss Johnston's grimness, with its under- lying compassion ; her irony ; and her straightforward nar- rative Style, with its simple; vivid diction : all these recall in some measure the creator of Jude. Our established novelists would-gain credit by such a- book as Hanging Johnny. As the work of so young a writer is altogether remarkable.
The `scene is Ireland in the eighteen-seventies. Johnny Croghan is a hangman. He is no ordinary one, however. He is, in fact, judged by any standards; somewhat abnormal. Given complete sanity, he might, with his aesthetic, dreamy face, hive been a poet. As it is, he has drifted into his present job partly through his disinclination and incapacity for steady work, and partly because, even while he loathes the task of sending poor wretches to their doom, it yet has an inescapable fascination for him. When the story opens, Tim Derrybawn, convicted of murder, is entering the execution shed. Tim was a friend of Johnny—the only friend he has ever had ; and Johnny and the officiating chaplain, who figures later in the book as a half-crazed wandering evangelist, denouncing the sin of "Capital punishment and helping by his imprecations to drive Johnny to his final fate, are both sure of Tim's innocence. But the law, though it has blundered, has to be carried. out ; and it is a poignant scene in which the two friendssr–Tim on the scaffold, and Johnny with his hand on the lever—meet for the last time.
Public opinion also disbelieves in Tim's guilt, and the normal unpopularity of the hangman is increased by the general knowledge that the executed man was his chum. Outside the prison an angry rabble waits for Johnny. Thanks to elaborate official precautions, he escapes its vengeance ; but he is forced to flee his native town, where on this occasion the hanging has taken place. After wandering the countryside as a tramp for some weeks, he falls ill in the road, and is taken in and tended by a young woman: - Anna Murphy, nearing her twenty-fifth birthday, is the only daughter of James, her widowed father, who is a grocer and is about to hand over to Anna the complete management of the business. He is indignant when Anna harbours a tramp, • and passionately angry when, Johnny being con- valescent and working about the garden, she falls in love and elopes with him. Anna's love is no passing infatuation. Capable, stolid, kind but unimaginative, her devotion to Johnny never wavers, and is never wanner than when she is goading his unpractical but sensitive spirit to despair by her scoldings. She is the sort of woman who needs someone to
mother and to manage. She wants a child, more than a husband, and Johnny is a child in her hands from the start.
The odyssey of the sufferings of Johnny and Anna begins on the very night of their marriage. At the inn where they
are sleeping Johnny is lured into a game of cards and loses .most of his wife's savings. Actual starvation- faces the trti," happy couple, when news comes of a pending execution: Johnny, kindled by the strange itch to be at his old profession once more, confesses to Anna that he is a hangman. She is not, as he anticipated, shocks:xl. She does' not suffer from nerves ; the executioner's is after all, " respectable Govern- ment:employment " ; and why turn away good money ? She encourages Johnny to apply for the job, which he secures. We cannot follow in detail the further grim development of the story. -Johnny and Anna settle inn mean Dublin street, where for a time Johnny helps to run a small cobbler's shop and where his son, Michael, is born. But settled work is not in Johnny's line, and his life continues to be punctuated by' executions, from each of which he returns a trifle more eccen-: tric. At last the crisis comes. Alienated by Anna's apparent lack of sympathy and by her objection to his instructing Michael in the secrets of the hangman's craft, he finds solace in the companionship of Rosa Fogarty, the shrivelled, hen- pecked, sluttish, but warm-hearted wife of a neighbouring publican. Fogarty's jealousy, however, is aroused. Finding Rosa and Johnny together one night, he " goes" for her. With a shriek audible all over the house she threatens to kill him. Johnny does the deed instead. But Rosa is arrested and condemned on circumstantial evidence. Out of pity for Johnny, she keeps the secret of her innocence ; and when, on the morning of execution, her cell door is opened, her twitching, scared eyes catch a second's glimpse of Johnny ere he draws the white cap over them. Johnny, who has suffered tortures of self-remorse and indecision during the weeks that have elapsed since Rosa's trial, ends by going stark mad. As the curtain falls, we see him solemnly hanging a rag doll from a nail in the wall by a piece of old, charred rope.
We have already noted the great merit of Miss Johnston's novel. Tribute, however, must also be paid to her natural handling of the many minor characters. She describes won- derfully well a domestic interior, whether it be that of the grocery shop at Ballyboulteen or the Dublin slum cottage in which a number of women are gossiping over the tea-cups. Finally, though it is in no sense a tract, Hanging Johnny should awaken fresh interest in the question of capital punishment. The present reviewer came straight to the book from a reading of Major Wallace Blake's Quod, in which the late Governor of Pentonville says that an execution is never carried out to-day by the responsible officials without " a keen sense of personal shame." Miss Johnston's accurate and haunting descriptions of hanging should help to quicken the public conscience in
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