RECENT NOVELS.*
THERE was a time when Mr. Howells showed a tendency to dissipate his talent in minute analysis and unimportant detail. In his recent books, however, he has emerged from this " meticulous " mood, and given us work which has the double merit of being at once thoroughly enjoyable and thoroughly American. How difficult and delicate is the task which Mr. Howells has set himself in The Story of a Play, and how tact- fully he has acquitted himself in its execution, may be suffi- ciently estimated from the fact that, although the two principal characters are a honeymooning couple, lie never imposes on his readers any sense of One or being in the way. In a word, he has drawn the honeymoon minus the honeymoon calf love. As the title indicates, the story is all about a play. When Brice Maxwell, a brilliant young Boston journalist, was a blighted bachelor, he communicated to a successful young actor his scheme for a strong melodramatic play. The actor was bitten by the idea, and a few months later, when he was " rest- ing " at the seaside, began to pay Maxwell daily visits, with a view to discussing the development of the play, and of his part in particular. Meanwhile, Maxwell's lady love had exer- cised the privilege of her sex and married him. Being greatly enamoured of her husband's intellect, Mrs. Maxwell is tre- mendously interested in his play ; and when he is at a dead- lock in the development of the love interest which the actor has insisted on his interpolating into the piece, Mrs. Maxwell heroically suggests to him to turn her own courtship to dramatic account,—a suggestion which had already occurred to him mentally. Louise, it should be explained, is actuated by the purest spirit of self-sacrifice, but, as it turns out, is cruelly punished for her generous indiscretion. For after the usual agonising delays that attend the production of every first play, the part in which Louise Maxwell now takes such a poignant interest is eventually entrusted to Mrs. Harley, a woman whom she intensely dislikes, and who has more than half guessed the secret of its origin. Happily, histrionic jealousy comes to the rescue, and the actor, finding himself likely to be overshadowed by the powerful though unmodulated performance of Mrs. Harley, breaks his engagement with her, and secures another and more grateful interpreter for the part. Whether one regards the book as an excellent illustration of the Nemesis that falls on any one who turns him or herself into "copy," or as a kindly yet Iubtle satire upon the histrionic temperament, or as a study of a thoroughly devoted yet really ill-assorted couple, the result is in any case an admirable and engrossing entertainment. More space is devoted to the male than to the female characters, but Mrs. Maxwell dominates the story, and that is true to life.. For in the social drama of modern American life, the brilliant roles are all monopolised by the women. Yet the • (1.) The Story of a Play. By W. D. Howells. London Harper and Brothere. —(2.) The Actor-Manager. By Leonard Merrick. London : Grant Richards. —(3.) Sons of Adversity. By L. Cope Cornford. London : Methuen and Co.
—(4.) Ber Ladyship's Elephant. By D. D. Wells. London: William Heine- mann.
men not only glory in their self-effacement, but render in the person of Mr. Howells the most poetic justice to the charm of their conquerors.
There are strong points of resemblance, as well as of contrast, to Mr. Howells's novel in that of Mr. Leonard Merrick, the opening chapters of which might very well be described as "the story of a play." But in The Actor- Manager the leading roles are all assigned to professional actors and actresses, the atmosphere is theatrical through- out, and the novel is primarily a study of the histrionic rather than the artistic or creative temperament. Like Mr. Merrick's previous work, it is both powerful and in- teresting, and he once more gives proof of the rare gift of being able to handle strong and delicate situations with a virility that never deviates into violence, with a subtlety that is void of suggestiveness. The opening scene, in which a struggling actor and actress, both reduced to the verge of destitution, are thrown together on Christmas Day at a Bloomsbury eating-house, is admirably told, though it gives rise to expectations which are never fulfilled. For Mr. Merrick, having introduced us to a really charming and courageous heroine, whisks her off to South Africa,. and though she reappears later on as the good genius and oonsoler of the luckless hero, she practically vanishes from the story. This is a real disappointment to the reader,. though it was doubtless necessary to the development of the central idea of the story,—the disillusionment of an idealist. Royce Oliphant is an ex-public school and University man who takes to the stage, and after seven years in the provinces migrates to London. He is reduced to his last shilling when his play is accepted and produced with moderate success. Gratitude to the young actress who makes a great. " hit " in the part of the heroine blinds him to her shallow- ness, and lures him into a marriage which brings him, material success and domestic infelicity. Blanche Oliphant induces her husband's weak but amiable millionaire friend to. finance a theatre for their benefit, and Oliphant is at last able to carry out his scheme of appealing to an elect audience. His wife, hungering for mere popularity, rebels against this Quixotic campaign, and finally forces her husband, by playing on his regard for his friend's pocket, to abandon unremunera,- tive high art for lucrative adaptations from the French. Meantime Blanche's callous behaviour on the death or their only child, instead of drawing them together, has led to an inseparable estrangement, and it only remains for Blanche to complete her work as a conjugal Anarchist by persuading the invertebrate and reluctant millionaire into an elopement. The ending is painful but not un- necessarily so ; indeed, the element of the gratuitous is. conspicuously absent throughout this extremely clever book. Again, although the history of a disappointment,. the novel is neither pessimistic nor cynical in its tone. Mr. Merrick does not spare the faux bonhommes or the hector- ing bullies of the theatrical profession; while in Blanche he has given us a masterly analysis of the peculiar self-love which is fostered by the footlights. But he has also the power of creating really sympathetic personages, and from. first to last his hero inspires a warm liking, only enhanced by the compassion provoked by his unmerited misfortune.
Mr. Cope Cornford has already made his mark as a writer of adventurous romance, and Sons of Adversity shows no falling-off from the level of achievement reached in his earlier efforts. In one notable particular it diverges boldly from the traditions of the capa y espacla romance, one of the conven- tions of which may be summed up in the French proverb, "Bon chien chasse de race." That is to say, the hero must come of good stock and find a constant spur to deeds of gallantry in the contemplation of his father's record. Now Mr. Cope Cornford, on the other band, has given us in his new novel the story of a son's disillusionment, Roger Nettle- stone, after a long and painful quest, undertaken from the filial motive of righting his father in the eyes of the world, being in the end overwhelmingly convinced of that father's base and treasonable practices. The scene is laid partly in England, partly in Holland, in the early days of Elizabeth's reign, and the story has for its central figure the narrator's father, Stokely Nettlestone, a Hampshire gentleman of good position and repute, but in reality a false Protestant, an adherent of Queen Mary, a mercenary of Spain, and an accomplice in the Basing House plot. In accordance with the shifting policy of King Philip, Nettlestcne has received orders to withdraw himself from the intrigue of his fellow-conspirators, who were the agents of the Duke of Guise. Furthermore, being an inveterate gamester, and having lost his estate to a neighbour, Sir John Marston, Nettlestone hastily quits the country in the hope of selling the Dutch into the hands of King Philip in order to repair his losses with the price of their destruction. But destiny, using his own son as its instrument, brings his schemes to naught, and on his return to England, though acquitted by the clemency of his Sovereign, he perishes miserably by the sword of a fellow-traitor. This sombre story, which we have epitomised mainly in the words of the author, is relieved to a certain extent by the extremely picturesque and vivid chapters which describe the strange amphibious warfare which raged around Leyden, whither the treacherous Nettlestone is pursued by his unsuspecting son. But the clgnouement is so ruinously complete, that young Nettlestone's subsequent rehabilitation appears rather in the light of a concession to the convention of the happy ending. The love interest is subsidiary and unimpressive, and Mr. Cornford is far more successful in the delineation of sinister -characters and incidents than of the normal amenities of life. But in spite of these deductions, Sons of Adversity is a striking and finely written novel.
There is no lack of high spirits and cheerful frivolity in Her Ladyship's Elephant, which may best be described as a very good substitute for an evening spent in witnessing a farcical comedy. Everything grows out of an ingenious but artificial parallelism. Thus an American marries an English girl and an Englishman marries an American girl on the same day. The American husband and the American wife each conceal the destination of their marriage trip from their respective partners, and both couples start by the same train. At Basingstoke the husbands meet on the platform, and while conversing, each with the other's wife, are carried off in separate portions of the train to different destinations. Mr. D. D. Wells has really shown considerable cleverness in devising the chapter of accidents which follow in rapid succession on the initial contretemps. The episode of the elephant is hardly so successful, and the laughable character of the incidents is little, if at all, reinforced by the dialogue, which, while plea- santly alert, makes no pretence to wit. But the fun of the piece is at least perfectly decorous, and for a railway journey of two hours or thereabouts Her Ladyship's Elephant may be recommended as very lively company.
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