NOVELS.
PEOPLE OF POPHAM.*
MRS. WEMYSS, who has already made many friends by The Professional Aunt, will ingratiate herself further with the reading public by her new venture. These ran- dom chronicles of a village are universal in their appeal, since we know that all the world loves a lover, and the tender passion is liberally treated in these genial chapters. People who love children and their sayings are also generously catered for, while in her attitude towards motherhood Mrs. Wemyss is a confirmed disciple of Mr. Roosevelt. In some respects the book is positively reactionary. The cult of ugliness, which has even infected the toys of the rising generation, finds no support in these pages. The great majority of the young women who disport themselves for our entertainment are pretty, and the good genius of the plot, Mary Howard, is of a bewildering loveliness. And the mention of Mrs. Howard reminds us that Irishmen and Irishwomen will view with special favour a book in which the engaging qualities of their race find so superlatively attractive an embodiment. Mary Howard's career is one long conquest. Her face was a fortune in itself, but it was supplemented by a heart of gold. For the rest, her outfit was of the scantiest :- "Mary set out for London with a few possessions, among them a pearl necklace, a miniature of a very beautiful grandmother, and her great-grandmother's tea-set. Not much to start lifo with 1 * People of Popham. By lire. George Wemyse. London : Covetable angCo.— Os.]
And she didn't start even with a tea-set intact—for this reason : the old butler packed it himself with great care, and, to make quite sure, wrote ` This side up with care' on all four sides! An English mind will readily realize the consequences, whereas an Irish one could hardly be expected to anticipate them."
Mary might have married anybody, "instead of which" she linked her lot to that of an impecunious literary man—here Mrs. Wemyss conciliates the reviewer—and became the mother of a large family. Nothing, however, affected her angelic temper or her good looks, and in due course a rich grand-uncle left her a charming place in the country and a small fortune to keep it up with. It is with the advent of the Howards to Popham and Mary's humanizing influence on its inhabitants that these chapters are chiefly concerned. In the choice of a narrator Mrs. Wemyss deviates from ordinary usage. Christian Hope is not, as one might guess, a benevolent elderly bachelor, but a good-looking young lady, an orphan, who lives in a cottage with her faithful servant, Jane Somerset. Christian's antecedents are slightly nebulous, and it is not until the close of the book that we learn why she returned from India and cut herself off from her relations. The episode of the frustrated elopement and the amazing behaviour of Christian's twin sister are extremely improbable, and, indeed, border on absurdity. But this weak- ness may be readily overlooked. Christian's past does not really matter. The great thing is that she is there, in Pop- ham, taking "an enormous interest in people, even in people I have never seen," making friends with everybody, gentle and simple, old and young, with a keen eye to their faults and foibles, but a no less sympathetic appreciation of their good points.
Perhaps the best notion of the quality of the book may be gathered from a few of the sayings of the principal characters. Let us begin with Christian herself :- " Children are apt to differentiate between lovers and husbands, and to think of fathers as husbands only. It is, perhaps, natural."
" Aunt Augusta called having no area-gate social ostracism."
" There are some men who are never too old to feel a pang of resentment when a beautiful girl marries."
" I believe Aunt Augusta's heart was hard from want of using. Having children had never made a mother of her. That was the secret of the whole thing."
" Jane [the narrator's servant] has never quite forgiven Maud her name. She thinks I ought to have called her Emma, and have done with it. But Maud was in mourning for her mother when she came, and I did not like to suggest a change. Jane could not see why."
The following obiter dicta are culled from the conversation of Lady Victoria Popham :— " Cynthia is dreadfully sentimental about him [the curate]. She has knitted innumerable woollen crossovers and has a per- petual cold in the nose in consequence. No girl knits wool in July without meaning it."
" People never are comfortable who love their servants. If you really love your kitchen-maid you couldn't ask her to get up in the dark on a cold morning."
Lastly, we may close the anthology with a gnomic utter- ance of Jane's :—
"Lots of women could put up with a husband if it wasn't for Sundays."
We are tempted to quote the passage in which Christian describes her " wish-book "—in which wishes are recorded in three columns under the headings " formed," " gratified," and " abandoned " ; the chapter—the shortest in the book— describing the desolation of the charwoman after the Howards had left their town house for good ; and the specimen of Mr. Gray's genius for putting his foot in it. But we have written and quoted enough to show that this is a real addition to that class of books of which Cranford is the classic exemplar. Mrs. Wemyss is perhaps overprone to pluck at our heartstrings where children are concerned, and some of Christian's audacities of speech are a little out of the picture. We doubt, again, whether an Irish girl, fresh from Ireland too, would have spoken of "a burn in spate." But fault-finding is invidious where the general impression is so engaging, and we take reluctant leave of People of Popham in a mood of genuine gratitude, not excluding a lively anticipation of favours still to come from the same pen.
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