Fiction
Old Friends and New
Windfall's Eve. By E. V. Lucas. (Methuen. 7s. fid.) Frolic Wind. By Richard Oke. (Oollancz. 7s. 6d.)
REVIEWERS are among the many people gently and tolerantly satirized by Mr. Lucas in his latest " entertainment." At the end of the book, indeed, he presents us with some imaginary " Extracts from First Reviews," in which, amid pure bur- lesquing, he forestalls his critics in reiterating the obvious phrase. Well, the obvious phrase is sometimes the in- evitable one, and we impenitently echo the verdict of The Chelsea Lynx and The Adjudicator that this is an essayist's novel." We agree, moreover, with The Bloomsbury Review that " Mr. Lucas in prefacing his book with the well-known line from The Anti-Jacobin, Story, God bless you, I have none to tell, Sir,' has laid his cards upon the table " ; nor (happily !) can we contradict The Modern Urge when it remarks that " for Mr. Lucas, the adventurous activities of Freud and Havelock Ellis would seem to have been so much waste effort." We cannot, however, accept the view of " Solon " in Pen and Ink that Windfall's Eve is merely " a disorderly array of episodes and conversations " ; and still less do we share the fears of The Nonconformist Conscience that " this otherwise innocuous book " will have the effect of " stimulating, or even creating, in its readers the passion for gambling."
It is true that the hero, who tells his own story and is nameless, is a British Museum Official who wins the first prize in the Calcutta Sweepstake. But the innocent manner in which he acquires sudden wealth—he has no desire for it, and is on sick-leave, in mid-ocean on a ship without wireless, when the Derby is run—is only matched by the innocent way in which he spends it. He becomes an easy and willing victim to the wiles of relatives and friends, and engages in nothing more adventurous than acquiring a partnership in an antique shop in a cathedral city and indulging his passion for English scenery and life by touring the country in a Rolls-Royce. From such slight material the author has woven as pleasant and companionable a diversion as any he has given us. Mr. Lucas's peculiar strength as an essayist lies not only in his insatiable curiosity and vitality, but in the possession of two ra- ely blended qualities. With his wide experience and mature wisdom he retains the spirit of youth. He is sophistication itself ; and yet he can still see the world through the fresh eyes of childhood. These two strands are admirably exemplified in his latest book. The hero represents
the childlike spirit, finding inexhaustible pleasure in the simplest things ; while the reactions of his friends supply Mr. Lucas with ample targets for those darts of gently malicious satire on human foibles which he aims with unerring precision.
If Mr. Lucas incidentally manifests the childlike spirit, Mr. Chesterton didactically expounds it. His hero is a young poet and painter, who is regarded by the wise characters of the story—a doctor, the wife of a squire, and so on—as a lunatic. But at the end of each fresh episode, combining the fantastic with the natural in Mr. Chesterton's well-known manner, it is, of course, the practical people who prove to be the fools and the poet to be the only sane person. It is im- possible not to admire Mr. Chesterton's passionate sincerity, and the gospel of the inner life, as opposed to the worship of external " progress," is certainly one which needs preaching to-day. As to how far the book succeeds as fiction : that is another question. Despite his ingenuity and vigour, Mr. Chesterton cannot always prevent his rather ponderous stage-machinery from creaking. He produces, nevertheless, some brilliant and engaging effects.
Frolic Wind is an unusual and very clever first novel. It describes a country-house party at Pagnell Bois, which is a veritable museum of bric-a-brac presented by notabilities to successive generations of the Jeune family. The present representatives of the Jeunes are four sisters, all spinsters or widowed. Their ages range from seventy to eighty-four, but they carry on the Pagnell Bois tradition of entertaining the " advanced " celebrities of the day. There is delightfully pert (and often pertinent) fun in the presentment not only of the old ladies themselves, but of at least a dozen of their guests. While most of the characters are either mawkish or freakish, two of them—Alexis Charlecote and Cecilia Jewell, a humble dependent of the Jeunes—exhibit a healthy, if primitive, vigour. The sudden transition to fantasy is, perhaps, an artistic blunder. But the dramatic climax in which Alexis and Cecilia involve themselves, and by which they uncon- sciously produce so strange an effect on the assembled company, is conceived with great originality and force, and offers a piquant, if too impetuous, challenge to humbug. Mr. Oke, we imagine, is young. He has the defects of his virtues. He is, at all events, thoroughly alive. Here—we hope Mr, Lucas will not see this cliche !—is a writer to be watched.
Given Burma for the background and The Huntress for the title, we might expect a novel of the conventionally amorous kind. Mr. Lowis gives us something quite different. His huntress, who is outwardly an English girl, but who traces her lineage to the royal founder of the city of Mandalay, is essentially a spiritual huntress, and her influence on Guy Sibthorpe, the young Government official, who falls passion- ately in love with her and risks his career by sheltering her rebel brother whom it is his business to catch, works out quietly, but convincingly. There is a good plot, and some natural excitement. But Mr. Lowis has sought truth, not sensation. His story, with its admirably drawn background, is a serious but very interesting picture of 'Burmese life as it might in fact be lived.
Mr. Tully also deals with actuality. His book is hardly a novel at all. Like his Circus Parade, it is a chapter of auto- biography, presenting a series of portraits and scenes, drawn from his own childhood's memories, of the raw life of Irish emigrants in America. Combining stark realism with tender whimsicality, it is a simple, powerful, and poignant record.
GILBERT THOMAS.
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