NOVELS.
A MOTHER'S SON.•
NOVELS with an athletic Admirable Crichton for hero were more connuou forty years ago than to-day, and we have no quarrel with Mr. and Mrs. Fry for reviving a type of hero which they are so welt qualified to depict. Wilkie Collins in
one of his forgotten novels attempted to show the reverse of the medal and to illustrate the brutalising effect of the un- limited cult of athletics, but we doubt whether he made many converts by his lurid picture. At any rate, here we have a vigorous and whole-hearted vindication of pastime and sport as the best school for shaping an English gentleman. Unluckily, there is a tradition governing novels of this type that the athlete should also be a man of sentiment, and the sentimental side of the narrative, though perfectly sincere, is at times of a rather cloying quality. "Long Crawford of the Buffs," when be endeavours to correct the excess of sentiment in others, is quite an engaging character. But when this " big, gawky" soldier• indulges in it himself the spell is broken, as may be gathered from a passage which illustrates both sides of his character
"'By all means,' said Long Crawford; 'make him a man. Keep his head straight. Give him a stout heart and a stiff lip. But, for pity's sake, don't harden the little beggar. Keep his wings flapping. Keep him kind. And now, Mary,' he added, getting up and going to the piano, 'will you sing "Ia the Gleaming" before I go back, just once P—please do.'" There is a good deal of this sort of thing in A Mother's Son,
and readers who like it wilt enjoy it greatly. As representing what is probably a minority view, we find the merit of the
book to reside chiefly in its descriptive passages—the steeple- chase, which is worthy of the author of Frank Fairleigh, the really thrilling account of an England v. Australia test match —and, above all, in some quite remarkable minor portraits, of which the best is that of the "odd man" Churcher, • A Mother's Son. By B. and C. B. Fry. Loudon: Methuen and Co. [Se.
• who carried wash to Mrs. Lovell's pig's, milked her two cows, fed her poultry, groomed her fat white pony, caught her rats and moles, cleaned her boots and knives, and who wore habitually the expression of one dismally disappointed with the whole universe." He was really at heart a worshipper of Mark's, but nothing would induce him to show his feelings; witness the delightful scene in which Mark comes to say good- bye before going to school for the first time:— •
"On the morning of his departure he went into the garden after breakfast, and made his way to the farmyard in search of Churcher. ' I'm going to school to-day,' he said. Major Craw- ford's coming to fetch me in an hour's time.' Churcher, who was engaged in tossing up the bedding iu the cow-pens, replied that book learning was fiddle-faddliug half the brains in the country, and that he didn't held by schools not a bit, he didn't. 'I expect I shall get on all right ; don't you, Churcher ? ' Mark asked.- ' I shouldn't be surprised if you doan't," answered Churcher, shaking the damp straw vigorously.—' If I have a fight I shall try to win,' went on Mark, repeating a lesson he had received from Long Crawford; and if I'm beat I shall try not to cry.'- ' All right then, doan't make a song about it,' said Churcher.- 'Good-bye for the present, Churcher,' said Mark, stretching out his hand. ' come and tell you on Saturday all about Oh, doan't you come worritin' me with your school tales,' replied Churcher, who had been at a night-school for a fortnight and had come away with a supreme contempt, for the alphabet.. • I've no time for that there muck ; I'm a man of haction, I am.' He broke off with a cry of, 'Oh, you're there, are you!' and delivered a smashing blow with his prong at a little mouse, which ran along under the crib and disappeared down a hole beside one of the oak posts. • Dang them mice !' he said. If they was rats; we'd ferret 'em ; wouldn't us, Master Mark ?'" Another faithfully observed character is the porter Noakes at Mark's first school, an old-fashioned preparatory establish- ment presided over by an eccentric scholar and his managing wife. Dr. Pinker, who had become in his old age so "addicted to his silver Dorkings and his black Spanish that only with the greatest difficulty could he be brought from his poultry-yard to discharge his easy authority in the dingy school-room," is thoroughly lifelike, and there is a curiously vivid description of the running amok of one of the boys and his capture after a cross-country chase. With the regenera- tion of the school under a new and reforming Head-Master the narrative becomes less interesting, and the well-nigh un- interrupted brilliancy of Mark's career at Minchester makes for monotony. The drama of public-school life is seen almost exclusively as it is enacted on the playing-fields, though the authors are careful to show us how Mark's moral growth was affected by the stimulating influence of his mother, the advice of Lord Matechley (au old Whig Peer and M.P.H.), and by a visit to the Highlands, where he makes friends with his uncle, a simple-minded laird with a strong religious bent. With Mark's removal to Oxford there is a brief check in the triumphal procession of his athletic achievements. He fails to get into the University eleven his first year, and in the end only represents Oxford in three capacities: (Mr. Alfred Lyttelton, if we are not mistaken, was a quintuple " blue.") He develops an eclectic taste in art., becomes addicted to highly coloured hose, and was by way for a while of posing as the founder of a salon ; but the pose soon passed, and cricket, football, and the running-path claimed him as their own. We cannot be certain how he fared in the schools. He went up with a demyship to Magdalen, and when his godfather came up to pay his bills talked about pulling off a First in Greats and a Fellowship. Anyhow, he caught the spirit of Oxford, which the authors define as " the spirit of repressed enthusiasm and age-long calm," and became the idol of the undergraduate world after his second year.' The sequel is soon told. The year after be came down from Oxford " there came to Mark two of the greatest honours which can fall to mortal sporting flesh." In other words, he Was chosen to play for England against Australia, making a century for the home country, and he won the Grand National. Then, after a brief interval, he settled down as Lord•Matechley's agent, and married the lovely, amiable, and richly dowered Madeleine Westcott. In the exuberant phrase of the narrators, "Mark was married in the autumn—a scarlet wedding—to Madeleine, with her Titian hair and green eyes." Mark, however, had failed to propitiate Nemesis, and the authors, though old-fashioned in many respects, disregard the convention of the happy ending. A stormy discussion with
Lord Matechley on the merits of the Boer War leads Mark to resign his agency and volunteer for South Africa, where an act of reckless gallantry cuts short his meteoric career. Enough has been said to show that A Mother's Son is not a great work of art or a first-rate novel. For the most part it is written in an alert, full,blooded, journalistic style, in which the conventional epithet is riotously prominent. But .it has good points—the authors are always on the side of the angels —and some shining moments. The cricket match is splendidly exciting, and whenever the authors "come to the 'oases" they write with an enthusiasm which might infect a tailor.
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