FICTION.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF HARRIETT FREAN.* THOUGH the material which Miss May Sinclair uses in her new book consists, of course, of the events in the life of a real human being, yet her novel closely resembles those pictures of still

life—a brace of dead pheasants hanging from a nail, or a hare hung by its heels—which we are all accustomed to see on the walls of friends with mid-Victorian tastes.

These, as we all know, were often executed with extremely minute and delicate art. Yet the results were invariably displeasing, for the representation of the fixed tranquillity of death can only be successful as a piece of realism, and if this is so with material death, how much more do we feel it when the subject represented is the death of mind and spirit ? For

such, and nothing else, is the picture presented to us by the author in her study of The Life and Death of Harriett Frean. It is difficult, indeed, to imagine why Miss Sinclair uses the

word "Life," for "Existence and Death" would be a far more descriptive title. Harriett, born of two admirably virtuous parents in the 'forties of the last century, is a finished study in repressions. Her very virtues lead to the degeneration of her character, and the renunciation of her only love affair works misery for a whole group of persons. The facts stated baldly are as follows. Harriett has one close friend, Priscilla Heaven, who lives in a poor and unhappy home, out of which her engage- ment to Robin Lethbridge promises escape. Robin, however, coming up to London and being welcomed at Harriett's home, falls desperately in love with Harriett and proposes to jilt Priscilla. There is about Robin no gallant sentiment—" I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more." He presses his suit, though not in a particularly passionate manner, but it is Harriett who feels that she cannot betray her friend, and she forces him to return to Priscilla. It is this loyal decision with which a girl, thirty years afterwards, reproaches her as having been inspired by "foolish selfishness." There is, of course, nothing original about the situation, which has been discussed and rediscussed by countless generations of young people. It is a problem for which there is so much to be said on both sides that it might almost be called insoluble.

Some people may prefer a loyal fool to a selfish traitor, though it may be allowed that in most cases the greatest happiness for the greatest number is obtained by the selfish traitor. At any rate, this is the only &Anglia of an event in Harriett's life. Her parents carry her abroad to recover her spirits—an event which becomes annual, though, as they entirely surround themselves with the books and the papers which they would have read at home, their travels are hardly enlarging to the mind. And here we come to a small problem which it isa delicate matter

to discuss in these columns. Hilton Frean, the father, is repre- sented as a constant subscriber to the Spectator, and we are told

that "sometimes an article appeared there understood to have been written by" him. We must confess that we doubt it ! Under the vigorous editorship of this journal in the last century contributions from so negative a source as a pen wielded by Mr. Hilton Frean would hardly have been accepted. Further on we are told that Harriett :—

"Read more and more novels from the circulating libraries of a kind demanding less and less effort of attention. And always her inability to concentrate appeared to her as a just demand for clarity : 'The man has no business to write so that I can't understand him.' She laid in a weekly stock of opinions from the Spectator, and by this means contrived a semblance of intellectual life."

Here we think Miss Sirtclair's diagnosis of Harriett's literary capability is faulty. She might have subscribed to the Spectator, • The Life and Death at Varriett Frean. By May Sinclair. London: Collins. lea. net.]

but she would certainly have gone to sleep over its pages, and what would then have became of the weekly stock of opinions which she hoped to absorb ? The book, after Harriett's visit to her old lover and his second wife, becomes still moro dismal reading as we witness the further deterioration of her nature into the depths of a pale materialism :—

" She was appeased more and more by the rhythm of the seasons, of the weeks, of day and night, by the first coming up of the pink and wine-brown velvet primulas, by the pungent, burnt smell of her morning coffee, the smell of a mid-day stew, of hot cakes baking for tea-time ; by the lighting of the lamp, the lighting of autumn fires, the round of her visits. She waited with a strained, expectant desire for the moment when it would be time to see Lizzie or Sarah or Connie Pennefather again. Seeing them was a habit she couldn't get over. But it no longer gave her keen pleasure."

Harriett dies under an operation at the end of the book, though, indeed, she has been dead most of the way through, except in so far as her material life is concerned.

While the novel in its detailed analysis is an unmistakably clever piece of work, the reader cannot help feeling that, 118 a

whole, it is distinctly anaemic—the result probably of there being absolutely no vigorous personality among the characters.

Harriett, her father, her mother, her three girl friends, Robin and Priscilla are all pale and shadow-like forms into whose nostrils the author has not succeeded in breathing the breath of life. We

cannot feel sure of their existence, for they lie stretched before us in a lifeless torpor from which they are never completely

roused. There is ability, but no vigour, on every page of the book. The reader will close it with a feeling of relief, and will wish that Miss Sinclair had employed her analytical gifts on a less bloodless subject.