NOVELS.
THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S.*
THE obvious thing to say about Mr. Dickinson's book is that he has been unable to reach that detachment of view which the novelist should aim at. He cannot stand outside the life he describes or refrain from identifying himself with his characters, and, since his chief figure is a very crude young man, it follows that the book is very crude fiction. Such a criticism does Mr. Dickinson something less than justice. He has had the courage to write a political novel of an uncom- promising type. Politics are the only interest, the one woman who matters in the book matters as a politician, and there is not a hint of love-making from cover to cover. The drama is pro- vided solely by a Parliamentary election. Now if a story is to find its sole interest in politics, the politics must be in themselves dramatic, involving great issues and great careers.
The downfall of Mr. Parnell would be such a subject, whereas a by-election in a Cathedral city would not. But if the said by-election seems to the writer a matter of immense import- ance, if he regards the protagonists as demigods and the victory of his cause as the triumph of light over darkness, it
is possible to raise that by-election into something very like a fit subject. A novelist dealing with the coup d'itat of Louis Napoleon may stand outside his story and treat his characters as puppets are treated by their benevolent creator, because the subject has an interest sufficiently universal to stand it. But a by-election conducted by young gentlemen of twenty-two must be treated with a passionate conviction or not at all. Detachment would slip at once into satire, and all sense of reality would be gone. We see this result in University novels, which seem to us an impossible form of art. The characters cannot be taken seriously, and with this lack of conviction on the part of the authors there goes lack of interest on the part of the reader. Mr. Dickinson has not made this mistake. Whatever his book lacks, it has the vitality which must follow when an author is in deadly earnest about his people and their creed.
It is the story of the conversion of Lord Charles Brandon, who has just left Oxford, from Jingo-Socialism to that type of Imperialism the patron-saint of which is Mr. Chamberlain. Lord Charles, a high-spirited, disreputable young man, becomes the accepted Liberal candidate for the town of Gayle, as against Willoughby; his Eton and Oxford friend, who personifies virtuous, old-fashioned Con- servatism. He is the friend of every working man in the place, and, while frowned on by the middle classes, has a large popular following. Then comes Mr. Chamberlain's speech, and in a dramatic scene the Liberal candidate recants and ranges himself on the Tory side. But he soon begins to
• Things that are Caesar's. By H. N. Dickinson. London: W. Heinemann. Os.] see that he is as far removed from Willoughby as from hil former Liberal friends, and by means of a rather doubtful intrigue he succeeds in getting accepted as Conservative candidate in Willoughby's place, and the book ends with his election. Such are the bare lines of the story; but there is a host of incidents, many of them really dramatic, which carry the narrative along at a high level of interest. Lord Charles himself, in spite of a thousand absurdities, is a living figure. His boyish madness is convincing, and we do not doubt his power of attraction. What we doubt is his ability and insight,
which attract older and soberer men, and which, in the absence of proof, we must take on trust from the author.
Sometimes the volcanic element is a little overdone, and we come perilously near that most odious form of cant which is always declaiming against cant. The Brandonites as a body are altogether too alcoholic. They are always splashing brandy into large glasses, and their conversation, like that of
Mr. Anstey's cowboy, is "mostly oaths." "If we could make them all drink blood," cries Brandon at one supreme moment; and the sentiment is so boyish that our gravity is rudely disturbed. He is always crying out about German invasions and the big nations, until we suffer from a surfeit of im- mensities. But the author is so intensely in love with his hero that we cannot shake off the mesmerism of his worship. Take this sentence, after Lord Charles has broken his leg :—
"Yet his pity proved him no true Brandonite of the purest essence. Others, had they found the leader lying like one dead, with hollow eyes and flagging spirits, and the hoof-marks of calamity stamped on his face, would have felt something nearer fear than pity."
He almost persuades us to share that fear,—we presume for the future of England. Mr. Dickinson has a very genuine power of realising his characters, and compelling the reader to accept them.
But if by his enthusiasm he escapes one form of unreality, it is only to fall into another. Like all political novels, the book is crammed with political talk, and that talk is a very odd mixture. Some of it is excellent ; there are many good sayings, many acute reflections ; and the long discussion between Lord Charles and the Bishop, in spite of a touch of farce, is a clever piece of dialectic. But, for all his intelligence, Mr. Dickinson does not quite understand the creeds of his opponents, and he does not quite understand his own. The result is that the book is academic,—if the author will forgive us the word. We are given pages of half-truths, the kind of talk which all young men indulge in, which is a most useful experience for them, but which when set out with a Sinaitio fervour has the unreality of a dream. The author can persuade us to take Brandon seriously, but not Brandonism. As he grows older Mr. Dickinson will advance in political wisdom, and if he can maintain the same imaginative vigour and power of observation, he may write books of per- manent value. At present he is more of the novelist than the political thinker, and for the form he has chosen both talents are requisite.
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