TRANSPLANTED. By Brand Whitlock. (D. Appleton and Co. 42-50.)—This is
a study of an international marriage, an American heiress wedding the eldest son of an ancient and of course impoverished family, still of consequence in ranee. The usual surprises and conflicts follow ; and the bride finds it difficult to adapt her individual transatlantic morality to the etiquette and ethic of the French family group. The situation is capably handled by an author who has had much experience of both American and French society ; and if our interest, though real, is of a sober kind, that is because the subject has been treated before, possibly With less fidelity to fact but certainly with more triumph in art. Henry James himself first made us familiar with flinching Supersensitive contacts between citizens of the States and fragile, marvellous descendants of historical families in faded faubourgs and beautiful ghostly châteaux. Edith Wharton touched the theme in her rich and mellow manner. And recently Mary Borden presented a story—Jane--Our Stranger —much like Mr. Whitlock's in its incidents, but with a brilliance Of treatment and a sense of the bizarre in psychology beside -which Transplanted-seems colourless and- heavy:- Mr.-Whitlock
is very honest about his heroine, Dorothy, who marries because she is in love with the idea of being Comtesse de Grandvallon, and reigning in the Château de Chaunois. She seems a brainless young woman, though she has a business instinct. The historic family is somewhat heavy and red- faced ; and the society of the " exclusive " in Paris glitters only in its clothes. That is probably Mr. Whitlock's engaging candour again ; but we feel in a frustrated way that brilliance is necessary to that society as an excuse. And we feel frus- trated again when Dorothy solves her problem, created by her husband's intrigue, in the old, old way by discovering that she is to have a baby. There is something frank and almost con- fiding in the style that makes the book likeable, though its people are not. And the Château de Chaunois in its lavenders and - greys, terraced among the poplars, the woods, and the pastures of the amicable landscape of Northern France, has a personality of its own.
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