NOVELS.
ANTHONY BRITTEN.*
THERE is a type of novel in which the reader is genuinely interested while he reads, but which he leaves with only a confused sense of what it has been all about. Either the characters or their deeds are wrapt in haze ; life is seen, as
it were, through a veil, and the tale of it is like the hum of a great city heard from a distance. Clearly this is not as it
should be. The drama should be clean-cut, leaving a single and unique impression upon the spectator, for dimness in such a sphere is a confession of artistic failure. The defect is due, as a rule, to an insufficient realisation on the author's part of his people and their motives. But in Mr. Macilwaine's case this is not the explanation. His characters, with scarcely an exception, are living and recognisable, awl there is no doubt about the motif of the book. The haziness comes from the manner of representation, and mainly from the undue affluence
of words. " Beware of the plague of words," says one of his people, and it would have been well if the author had taken the advice to heart. He revels in discussion, in self-analysis and interminable soliloquies, most of them only remotely relevant to his object. And the result is that his portraits tend to become blurred and lifeless, and the dramatic force of his story to die away or revive only at spasmodic moments. It is a fault greatly to be regretted, for Mr. Macilwaine has a remarkable knowledge of life, an acute eye for character, and an instinct for dramatic situations,—none of which gifts can have their adequate effect when wrapped in the cotton-wool of unnecessary words.
In its intention the book is a study of revolt. Different people in a conventional world are driven to rebel against the tyranny of forms and catchwords, and to face life in all its cruelty and hardness in the quest for a more abiding satis- faction. Anthony Britten, the central figure, returns after a dozen years of vagabondage in the Colonies with a fortune.
But on his home-coming be finds himself in a world which stifles him ; he does not tell his family of his success, and is patronised as a failure ; he finds every one busied with childish fads ; and finally the sight of cruelty to a servant drives him to the streets. He meets an old friend, Grant, who is a prosperous bachelor, and under his tutorship is initiated into the easy life of a comfortable man-about-town. But he soon wearies of it all. The misery of the underworld—the world in
which he had himself lived for long—preys upon his heart, and he goes off to the slums on an errand of mercy. There he meets a strange figure, one Father Wells, whom he had known as a fighting parson in New Zealand. Like him, Wells is in
revolt, and has fled to the East End to escape the bonds of a fashionable congregation. Through the parson, and still more through the influence of a certain Mrs. Herron-Vallance, Britten finds his feet. His original aim had been " to end his old-time hunger and solitude in security and cleanliness " ; his next, "to remedy the irremediable, because it was written
in the book of destiny that he himself was to be a stranger to rest and contentment." But at last he, too, finds content-
ment, apparently in a crusade against shams and in saving from them the lady of his affections :— "' But you have not been content just to repeat the formula and live happily among the formularies. Because you saw that if in ninety-nine cases it might be technically true, in the hundredth it was a lie so shameful that you could not breathe the air in which it was uttered.. . . .' Anthony had squeezed a clenched fist tightly upon the table, and was looking at it as though some living thing that he feared were imprisoned beneath it. !I think I see,' he said slowly. Yes. But how . . . . I'm still in the cul-de-sac. You said there was a way out of it.'— • Ah, but I said the way out led into new country. That is the glory of it—you are heading for the unknown.' "
The unknown for which he is beading is to our eyes very
obscure. Unless we grossly misjudge the hero's nature, he would be back in his perplexities in a month. The mere fact,
however, that the reader is driven to speculate on Mr. Anthony Britten's futur3 is a proof that the author has created a living character. As a study of the detached spirit brought suddenly into a formal world the book is remarkably clever. The first half especially, where the contrast is still fresh and simple, is entirely convincing. The later chapters, where the vagabond soul is immersed in stray speculations regarding the pillars of • Anthony Britten. By H. C. Macilwaine. London : A. Constable and Co. [6c.] society, leave us a little bewildered. We refuse to believe in Mrs.Herron-Vallance ; and Father Wells, who begins admirably, fades away into a moral allegory. Mr. Macilwaine, we fear, has been smitten with "the plague of words." Apart from the discussions, the story is told with a vividness and force which show that the author possesses in a high degree con- structive imagination. He has also a pretty gift of satire, as in his picture of the tea-party of faddists at the beginning and of Mr. Auberon Carless at the end of the book. The style is now and then over-coloured and strained, but Mr. Macilwaine can write good English when he pleases. We trust that in his next novel he will ride his gift of analysis on the curb, and givo the drama within him a fairer chance.
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