Mn. PERCY WHITE has for some time past claimed attention
as an alert and entertaining delineator of the vagaries, foibles, and extravagances of smart society. To call him a social satirist would be to overshoot the mark, for his indignation is carefully veiled, and castigation is so gently administered that we cannot imagine that his methods are deeply resented in the particular circles which afford him the materials and opportunity for his social studies. In The System Mr. White has adopted a somewhat different formula from that governing the construction of his recent novels, and with decidedly encouraging results. Instead of focussing atten- tion on the vagaries of fashion and the vulgarities of convention, he has allotted the central role to a pioneer of revolt who is by the triple force of antecedents, environment, and temperament condemned to play the part of a tragi- comedian. Carey Butler is the son of a Tory squire; his brother is a famous cricketer ; his sister a capable, shrewd, rather worldly girl with sound instincts and con• ventional ideals. Carey, on the other hand, is the family freak, who combines academic culture with anarchical views on society, politics, and religion. After a distinguished University career, Carey Butler makes a startling entry on local politics by supporting a blatant demagogue at a public meeting in the nearest town. The platform is stormed ; Carey's head is broken ; county feeling is outraged ; and, as the result of a family council of war, the squire makes the cricketer his heir, Carey having a small independent fortune of his own. After a brief and disastrous amatory interlude, in which Carey mistakes the interested encouragement of an ambitious beauty for genuine and generous sympathy with his schemes, he resumes windmill-tilting in the journalistic arena, having enlisted the aid of a rich dilettante, professing kindred aims, in the foundation of a new journal. The fortunes of the Sentinel are described with a good deal of humour, notably in regard to the collaboration of Mr. Harold Needham, a pushing, semi-literate " hustler," destitute of any delicate feelings, but with an acute instinct for playing down to his audience. Naturally enough, the attempted compromise proves unworkable in practice. The social opportunities afforded by his wealth lure the rich dilettante from the cult of plain living and high thinking, and his marriage
to Carey's sister only completes the severance of their partnership. Undaunted by disaster, Carey Butler makes yet another attempt to educate public opinion, this time by starting a school on rational principles, only to achieve the most resounding failure of all by unwittingly compromising the most devoted of his disciples. To disclose
more of the plot would discount the pleasure which is in store for readers of this very lively and entertaining romance.
Carey Butler is impracticable and injudicious, but he is always more of a Quixote than a prig, and it is this strain
• The System. By Percy White. London ; Methuen and Co. [8s.]
of chivalrous disinterestedness which commands the respect, and even the sympathy, of the reader. Even his Philistine r3la tions have something more than a sneaking liking for the amiable firebrand, and the late but complete awakening of the more human side of his character brings about as effective a reconciliation as could be expected between the representatives of social orthodoxy and antinomianism.
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