New Novels -
Hackenfeller's Ape. By Brigid Brophy. (Rupert Hart-Davis.
9s. 64.)
Waiting for Camilla. By Elizabeth Montagu. (Heinemann. 10s. 6d.) THERE are some novels to which, on the strength of one short passage, or even a sentence, we give our immediate trust. Three of these are of that kind ; one is that, and very much more.
Written in Portugal more than # hundred years ago, Cousin Bazilio is a triumphant example of what a mature novelist can do when his theme and his abilities are smoothly matched. Long and full, it has not a word too many : simple in outline, it surprises the reader with turn after turn so naturally made as to command wonder- ing but immediate acceptance.
The theme is one of the world's oldest. Luiza, beautiful, virtuous, happily married to Jorge, is visited by her cousin, Bazilio, her first sweetheart, a fleshy handsome cad who decides it will amuse him to seduce her. Expert in providing a contrast to a girl's accustomed life and aided by Jorge's absence on business, he succeeds. As so often happens, the impact of the coarse nature on the sensitive is disastrous ; what is a game to one is life and death for the other. Luiza's maid finds out, and blackmails her. Bazilio, already grow- ing bored, shrugs and clears out. By a lucky stroke, the menace of blackmail is removed : but Luiza, weakened by long terror, cannot stand the sudden release.
This is a gloriously complete and satisfying novel. De Queiroz knows the human heart from its most urgent leap to its minutest, anti-climactic fluttering. The characters are beautifully rounded. Even the smallest, mere passers-by, are sharply and swiftly drawn. Line after line proclaims a writer one can tryst : " Alas, I was different, Councillor, in those days. My digestion was excellent, I was another woman altogether, and very free from wind."
" As God wills it, madam, as God wills it," said the Councillor slowly rubbing his hands. He coughed and was about to get up, when Delia Felicidade said : " I hope that this interest is real."
I could fill pages with points to praise : the assured professional legerdemain with which we are prepared for the solution of Luiza's problem with Juliana the maid, only to have our attention so dis- tracted by suspense that it surprises us ; the Councillor's persisteht hanging on to Luiza when, already late, she is aching to join Bazilio in " Paradise " ; the dinner which he gives to celebrate his decora- tion ; Paulo, characterised in a line—" I lament the misfortune. I lament it, but we are all mortal," and, a masterstroke of the novel- ist's art, the way in which Ernestinho's preposterous play, which has seemed mere comic relief, is suddenly folded into the plot and becomes an image of tragic compassion ; there is so much to admire that 1 hardly know where to choose.
The story has been superbly translated by Roy Campbell—but someone should have helped to correct the proofs. There is an extraordinary crop of misprints.
Cousin Bazilio is warm, relaxed, widespread, a generous Southern climate. The Priest is by comparison thin, dry, tense, and sharply focused. A young French jewess, left a widow with a daughter, survives the corruptions of the Occupation and, through defying a priest, conceives a devotion to him and what he stands for. Try as she will, she can neither shock nor shake him : and his composure wins her. The story twists its way through a pattern of executions, Lesbians, soiled linen, and flushed lavatories to an end more satis- factory perhaps to the sectarian than to the humanist. I do not doubt that the widow's conversion is genuine and the priest a saint ; but the conclusion is conditioned. There is a rigidity about it that will exclude many readers. if the impact of Cousin Bazilio is a punch from a huge gloved fist, The Priest stabs with a sharp pointed ferule. The translation, by Constantine Fitzgibbon, is excellent.
From the short story Miss Brophy feels her way, surely and delicately, to the conte. Two sentences on the second page confirm her quality. People have arrived too soon at the Zoo gates, and must wait.
The children were the most resentful of the contretemps, sulky because their parents had proved not to be omnipotent. They resisted as'they were pulled away : to gain time, they gazed upward as they went, pretending they could not walk straight, staring at an aeroplane that was doubling to and fro in the sky.
Percy, an ape of the breed nearest to man, cannot accede to the desires of his mate Edwina because his love for the Professor who observes him has taught him human inhibitions. Not till he has been let out (by a female pickpocket whom the Professor blackmails into assisting him) and has returned of his own accord, can his half- human love for Edwina be consummated. The Professor, who set him free to save him from being discharged experimentally in a rocket, has undone him by teaching him to love mankind. It is a clean, astringent parable, this, with its • unstressed contrast between Percy–Edwina and Clement–Gloria, and other implicit comment not wholly to the credit of homo sapiens. When Miss Brophy writes a full-length novel, may I be there to read. Waiting for Camilla, another first novel, is mature, sure-footed, and most satisfying. Judged by the test of the sentence or short passage that wins our trust, Miss Montagu scores again and again. " They were like two people stuck together in a lift." " It is happening now, Philip Carter. This is happening to you how. Now ! " And, of a child, " Adult misery he found confusing. It seemed odd that living as they chose they should be unhappy." The plot concerns the return to a house where a woman is dying, of another woman linked in many ways with the people who inhabit and frequent it. Miss Montagu moves her characters slowly and carefully, like a chess player ; but, of the three, her story best survives measurement against the standard set by Cousin Bazilio ; Miss Brophy's, remark- able as it is, being on the slight side.
L. A. 9. STRONG
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