Fiction
Many Perspectives To the Mountains. By Anthony Bertram. (Knopf. 8s. 6d.) IT is a critic's confession of failure when he says that the charm of a book is indefinable, for a good part of his duty
is analysis ; and if his response had been clearer, his thought more continuous, he could have made his appreciation definite. The charm of Mr. Strong's volume of short stories is very great ; it is very individual ; and it is difficult to define. We might observe :—he catches atmospheres : he has a quiet sense of humour : there is freshness in his character drawing : he writes without excess, in a clear and concrete style. We should still have failed to distinguish him from many other writers.
Those who have read Dewar Rides have seen Mr. Strong use his gifts on a large canvas. He is no less at home in the short story. Perhaps the most noticeable feeling when we have read these stories is that each of them is its own size, completed and satisfying, with the proportions true, with no more to say and nothing left out. Mr. Strong avoids—. or rather, is not tempted by—the two vices into which so many writers of short stories fall. The first is the more irritating ; a deliberate inconclusiveness, leaving the reader in the air, giving him the shame of thinking that if he were a little more clever he would have understood it all. But the other vice is just as bad : the author has an idea for a
short story and proceeds to write it up. The story is not organic ; it does not grow ; it is not alive all the time. A synopsis would have *told us everything, and the writing is so much more additional labour.
The fact that Mr. Strong's stories seem really to live makes a synopsis quite insufficient. The Gales, for example, is the tale of how old Sam Henniker overslept himself, and after years of punctual attention to duty allowed a railway train to foul the gates. He took the disaster hard. Ile had always been a proud and aloof man, with exacting
standards for himself and others. Now the neighbours could sympathize with him, and he even found himself needing their sympathy. He became, in a way, more likeable and more human, but, with his pride gone, there was nothing more to live for. Here is the synopsis of the story ; but, in
making a synopsis, the quickness and reality has passed out of it. It is the same with the other stories ; only two• of them The Seal and The Tide, have an air of being first conceived, then written ; the rest are rich -in the continual interest of their own growth.
The Beautiful Years is a novel written before Mr. Williamson bore off the Hawthornden Prize, now revised and reissued. The sun shines, and it is time to make hay. The author tells of the childhood of a delicate boy, only son of a reserved father, left to his own devices in the countryside he loves. As we should expect, it is full of the observation of nature ; some of it clear and imaginative, some of it deliberate and heavy, after the fashion of nature-writers. The descent of the book is queer : Mr. Williamson has been influenced almost equally by Tom Sawyer and Richard Jefferies. He is pleased with fine phrases—" under the lacustrine wistfulness of the sky sang the larks " : his rustics are most undeniable rustics —" 'Es, midear ! A gude 'un, thaccy ! " : but the narrative is quite easy and the reader's attention does not flag. It is a bit of a relief, however, when young Willie is packed off to the grammar school and, for the time being, is away from the spink-spink of the blackbird, the soughing of the lapwings, and the wistful eyes of rabbits.
As soon as Mr. Thomas Burke gets under way with The FlGwer of Life he writes simply, with an unstrained pathos. He gives the biography of a poor woman, meeting with courage the difficulties of her life, clean and industrious, with a horror of receiving charity, yet driven, at the end of her days, to the workhouse. "Well," she remarks, as she accepts this final reverse, "I've had some happy times. Perhaps I shall still." There are memorable pictures in this book ; it is written with knowledge and delicacy. One of the most vivid chapters tells of the visit of Jane's father to the country house in which she had taken service for the first time ; how he conducted himself just as a father should, made him- self agreeable to Nurse, to the groom, to the butler, to Lady Mellonspar herself ; knew his place exactly and was a very great credit to his daughter all the time.
Shard is the story of a selfish family, Jenepher, Catherine, and Michael, three children brought up together in a great house, their parents both dead ; three children who felt themselves to be different from everybody else, and who made an alliance against the rest of the world. It is a book of insight and accuracy, written in a staccato style ; not exactly a pleasant book, but a book of great talent. Miss Lambart is detached from her characters ; she gives them the whole stage, and allows them to live their lives without interposing her own comments. She singles out each of the three in turn, and shows their incursions into life and their retreat into the old family solidarity ; a method which leaves the reader with an impression of concentration and lustre.
"A book that is as good as a -holiday," the publishers say of Mr. Anthony Bertram's reminiscences. To The Moun- tains is hardly a novel and not quite a travel diary. It is a very ingenious, very readable record of quaint scenes and amusing episodes. The author starts out with a friend on a walking tour, with the top of the Zugspitze as his objective, but the story of the journey is diversified with a hundred recollections of other journeys and other events. The writing is mannered and much influenced by Mr. Belloc and Mr. Norman Douglas ; but the manner is one which Mr.
Bertram carries off with unusual grace. ALAN PORTER.
THE DEANS. By Dot Allan. (Jarrolds. 7s. 6d.)—Here we have a very pleasantly written story of a Scottish family, living in a tenement house in Glasgow. The father was a feckless ne'er-do-well, and the mother, ambitious -for her children, tried to provide for their future by earning money in an illicit way. The rest of the story is concerned with the children's adventures after their mother's imprisonment. The Deans is not a brilliant book, but it is carefully written, easy to read, and contains several subtle character studies of self- made Scots. Miss Allan depends a little too much on coinci- dences, but apart from these the machinery of her novel is not obtrusive.
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