Fiction
The Castle on the Hill. By Elizabeth Goudge. (Duckworth. 8s.
CONFRONTED with the problems of a major war, the novelist m solve the problems of his own conscience. He can ignore the w placing his story in a time-sequence peculiarly its own. He admit it and struggle gamely in the unhappy flood with the od against him; or he can retreat into the historic past. The pub we know, prefers the contemporary scene, for it has the merit being familiar. But war is a blight over all, and yesterday, for its courage, will have lost perspective by tomorrow. What, then, to be done? The answer is for the individual, for he alone attempt a solution. Many novelists have given. up the struggle a time, others have sought a solution in history.
At the conclusion of his first novel, in a series of curiou fascinating notes, Mr. Hugh Ross Williamson gives an account how he came to write Captain Thomas Schofield. The Captain a real person, but unable to discover any but the most meagre facts, he became something of a private King Charles head to author ; who eventually decided to invent him. Mr. Williams makes a special plea for the professional historian turned noveli suggesting that it " is not quite the same thing as an historical no by a professional fiction writer." We are, it would seem, " entitl to redress the balance by demanding from him a much gre accuracy of background."
The period of the novel covers fifteen months, opening in Ju 1647, when Schofield was in Germany. Near the ruined keep Wolframsheim he meets an elderly woman, and, believing her gift with the powers of divination, he persuades her to prophesy. S tells him : " In the Valley of Desolation you will find at last dear stones of your home. But before you come to it, betwe Hallowe'en and Hallowe'en, you will deny your faith and reno your love, unmake a king and betray your trust, kill what has say you and save what would kill you." How Schofield returns England in the gay company of the rascally Cornelius, how he g home to find his father dead, slain in the Civil War on the Royal side, how he himself gets caught up in the conflict on the other si and how the prophecy is fulfilled to its end are all told with sk imagination and conviction. But there is more to the novel than t for the period covers the final desperate tussle between Charles Cromwell. Mr. Williamson has a theory that the problem of King's execution was not political but personal. His solution plausible and exciting. He draws a vivid and compelling picture a curious age with wealth of convincing detail. A stimulating p formance, which might well excite the envy of all professio fiction-writers concerned in the exploitation of history.
Sir Walter Scott left behind him an unfinished manuscript dea with the Knights of St. John and their historic defence of M against the infidel. The Siege of Malta (of which this volume but the first of two—the second is announced for July) is ba upon Sir Walter's ideas and plan. The period is Elizabethan, an Englishman, Sir Oliver Starkey, secretary to the Grand Mast plays an important part in Mr. Wright's romance. The ch character is a beautiful, rich and young female of noble bi masquerading in doublet and hose. Her numerous adventures of course, more exciting than credible. Complications ensue, fo second glamorous male impersonator, of low birth and morals, to vigorously in the game. The volume ends with the fall of St. E Botany Bay, also a collaboration, is a queer, not very pleas mixture of realism and romance. The novel has two heroes, American who took the side of the English in the war for in pendence, the other a native-born highwayman. These men sentenced to transportation for life. While in Newgate they m friends with a small group of people, all are sent out in due co to the penal colony, among them the widow of a farmer with wh the men had sheltered. The voyage of the convict hulks is descn with gruesome gusto. They land in Australia eventually, and Eh are plenty of adventures, romantic and horrible. The two escape and return to England aboard a Dutch vessel with lk Garth. Hugh finds his Sally in London together with a fort Mrs. Garth finds a new husband, but poor Tom is caught a_ and ends on the scaffold. The book closes with the departure Hugh, respected and respectable, and his American wife to se
in New South Wales. It should please those who like a combination of toughness and sentimentality.
With The Castle on the Hill we are brought to our own age with its attendant horrors of gas-masks and bombs. Again we are offered a queer concoction of romance and reality. The characters are numerous and the plot complex, but the genial elderly male historian, who plays so large a part in me affairs of poor little Miss Brown, cannot make the story less difficult to swallow, for all his plausibility. Miss Goudge over-works coincidence ; she should remember fiction needs the strangeness of truth, if it is to carry conviction. She has talent, but her material is considerably weakened by the sentimentality of her attack. JOHN HANIPSON.
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