FICTION
By FORREST REID Phibbs. Engravings by Clifford Webb. (Golden Cockerel Press. 8s. 6d.)
The Moon is Feminine is unlike any other novel by Clemence Dane I have read. It is a- fantasy, a fairy-tale, a romance : the time is the beginning of the last century, and the scene Brighton. It is a sign of the book's fascination that I very much wanted it to end in a particular way. I felt pretty sure that it would not end in this way (which was altogether too much my own), yet it might, and I hoped it would, and was disappointed. Not, I hasten to add, in the novel itself, but merely in this respect : I wanted Henry Cope to get back to St. Martin's Land, and I wanted the Sea Boy to take him there. It was clear from the beginning that everybody could _not be happy, but I wished these .two to be happy, and was willing, I am afraid; to sacrifice Lady Molly Jessell, whom nevertheless I very much liked. And after all Miss Dane sacrifices her, and sacrifices Henry, too; and the whole tale has a , tragic
conclusion. .
When I say this, I am taking it literally and straightforwardly, which may /tot be Miss Dane's idea, for it would be quite possible to read into it a symbolism that would give it a different meaning. The chief human characters, Henry and Molly, are completely real ; the Sea Boy to me was equally real, though he belongs to another world, and the rest do not much matter. The novel begins as an ordinary enough love story, except that the dialogue has a charm and distinction not at all ordinary. I feel that Henry is perhaps a little selfish, yet he is delightful ; Molly is more instinctive, less selfish and less subtle. Then comes Henry's encounter with the seal who has got entangled in the fishing nets, and the book is immediately placed upon its true plane. This scene is beautiful and touching, and so presented that it is quite impossible it should not have a sig- nificance beyond that of a chance episode. The seal goes back to the sea, and Henry goes back to his home, but a relation has been established ; we know this is not to be the end of the matter.
Henry is an odd person. Only superficially is he a Cope, spiritually he is a Greene, and he has shown Molly the Greene family Bible in which strange kindred are noted down—Night- Monsters, Sea Folk, and the Green People who live in St. Martin's Land. Henry has told Molly a good deal because, though he is loth to admit it, he is very fond of her ; yet when it comes to the point of describing his adventure on the beach he hesi- tates. He feels more reluctant still when the Sea Boy comes to him, bringing a gift of an amber cup, and thanking him for saving the seal, his pet. The Sea Boy is strangely attractive, though he belongs to " the generations of the damned." The coldness and beefily of the water have passed into him ; he is lovely to look upon. Henry wants to go with him yet does not want to leave Molly ; and Molly knows something has happened, and feels that Henry is in danger.
I have told a little of the story because I don't think otherwise I could have given any idea of the book. It is written with great beauty and simplicity :
" Henry stood stricken with shyness . . . He was dazzled with so much beauty, so much informal grace. He did not know how to respond . . . He began ignobly to feel in his pocket, and at the same time took a step forward as he saw that in the brown cup filled with sea-water lay his penknife ; but when he tried to take it out the boy frowned. Rising out of the water, he shuffled forward so that he knelt upon the sand. Then he thrust the cup and its contents into Henry's palm. Their fingers met. Never was anything living so cold as the boy's hand. There was the sting of frost in his touch ...
' For you,' the boy was saying in his slightly hoarse voice, in his slightly unreal English . . . For you . . . Because you gave help to my dog '."
It is an imaginative world in which I feel very much at home, so that with some reluctance I abandon it for one of everyday life. Yet Spring Always Comes is an attractive novel. It is a chronicle of the Russell family—father, mother, son, and three daughters—all most likeable people. Charles Russell, the father, has been a poet, and when the tale opens is a country parson. James is still at Oxford, Margaret .N interested in social work, Cecily in teaching, Jasmine is begin- ning to write. They are created with sympathy and humour. The death of Charles leaves the family badly off; the girls get jobs, James goes into business. The great charm of the book lies in its portraits, and perhaps the happiest of these is that of Arthur Harman, a wealthy middle-aged author, whose secretary Jasmine becomes. Arthur is very intelligent, rather prim and rather aloof. He and Jasmine work together on a life of Charles, and their relations, which never become sentimental, are treated with great delicacy. Delicacy, indeed, is a feature of the novel ; Miss Cambridge is a realist of Jane Austen's school. She writes with restraint and good taste, and she writes of people whom in actual life one would wish to know. The book rings true, yet from start to finish it leaves one with a respect for humanity. Gradually the members of the Russell family become separated. Each has his or her own story, though they continue to meet, and there is nothing fragmentary in the effect of the tale. The method of Miss Cambridge is selective : she does not bring all the stories to a conclusion. James is left on the brink of a new career, Margaret is settled, Jasmine also perhaps, for Cecily I picture ultimately a union with the admirable Mr. Nilson, in whose two little girls she is so interested. The novel at any rate is an unusally pleasant one, well observed, well written, intelligent, and reflecting every- where a spirit of kindness and sympathy.
A World .1 Never Made pleased me less. It is a study of the " back-blocks of Chicago "—sordid, depressing, with nothing in the writing to relieve the ugliness of the general impression. That the people Mr. Farrell has created are real I do not doubt, for they are my own people, and, though many years of slum life in Chicago have had an unfortunate effect upon them, they still remain essentially Irish. But they are like children who have lost their innocence. The O'Flahertys and O'Neills hover on the brink of the underworld ; one can see them becoming criminals and gangsters as easily as one can see them struggling for respectability. In Danny O'Neill, we are told, Mr. Farrell has drawn a portrait of himself, but Danny is only seven, and is very like other little boys of seven ; his brother Bill, four years older, is already distinctly a " tough." The book gives a picture of the O'Neills and the O'Flahertys in the year 1911; in the ordinary sense there is no story whatever, and we leave Danny precisely as we found him. Yet some tie, of blood holds these people together. They may quarrel, and get drunk, and use foul language, and be immoral, but they help one another, they want the children to do well; in different conditions they might themselves have been different. It is not a novel I enjoyed reading ; one never escapes for a moment from the life of mean streets, the dirt and the squalor, the poverty and the noise. And all this is described photographically, with the accuracy of the camera, that picks out every detail ; the personal note, which might have trans- formed it, have shown it in relation to something finer, is lacking. Yet if fiction is to be an art I think it must be more than mere realistic reporting, must be a source of inspiration, emotion, vision. All indeed depends on the mind of the artist. Nobody, I dare say, found beauty in the monotonous dripping of rain till Verlaine wrote his poem about it ; nobody found beauty in fogs until Whistler paints,' them.
The White Llama is a collection of stories about Peru. The characters are Indians' and Spaniards, the tales very short, and distinctly violent both in incident and colour. But they are effective in their way, and the translation is good. They reflect a life which it is difficult for me to understand and impossible to find sympathetic—crude, cruel, sensual, superstitious. In the only story that made any appeal to me, " Yacu-Mama,' a boa-constrictor sacrifices its life to save a small boy from tiger. I am afraid it is not a true story, though I may be wrong, and at least a snake seems more likely to perform such an action than any of the humans in Mr. Calderon's pages. The eight wood engravings by Clifford Webb add, I think, little to the value of the book. But then, my period of English illustration is the "'sixties," and a highly conventionalised and artificial style such as Mr. Webb's bores me.
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