Fiction
Historical, More or Less
" My Wife, Pbor Wretch." By EMilla Beatrice Brunnor. (Besant. 7s. 6d.) The Orange Court. By Lily Anne Coppard. (Cape. 7s. 13d.) THE novelists of Germany are busied with the past, and espe- cially with the strange glowing world of Renaissance Italy,
which their ancestors desired so thirstily while they destroyed it. Among vaster, more pretentioua works, Our Lady of Laws comes like a lovely surprise. It is a book original, rhythmic, and gracious ; its dream-like quality is of too clear a strain to let it pass into nightmare, as some modern historic novels do. The Lady of Laws, Olimpia di Porta Ravegnana, professor in the ancient University of Bologna, is a creation in the Renaissance taste, an enigmatic, double- natured virgin with something divine in her. She is violated in.the dark, among the laurels and the stars, nor knows if her assailant be god or bandit ; but, when she intervenes com- passionately in her city's distracted hour, Bologna accepts her son as the child of miracle. She protects the defeated when the violent Lambertazzi makes himself despot, and dwells between her boy and her students, adored and rapt in medita- tion, till the tyrant, losing his heir, claims her son as his also, and sullies her honour by declaring she has lived as his mistress. Distraught in her agony, she wanders to the plague camp, like a lost Madonna, and perishes there with her patients. But her son avenges the chastity of her soul. It is the figure of Ravegnana that makes the book--a figure remote and proud, something of a Hypatia, something of a Mary, unique of its kind and so condemned to loneliness. The city and country around her are very lucidly visible, though more in the mediaeval than the Renaissance key. The groups in the festival gardens, listening to the lutes ; the children playing in the river while the lord and lady hold baffling converse in the meadow ; Lambertazzi's gold mantle falling over his son as he embraces him ; La Ravegnana's fair fastidious house, prepared as if for an Annunciation—these are memor- able pictures. The horrors of Sfiga's martial quarters, and the soft, ghastly colloquies outside the plague camp, are quite as insistent ; but they are subdued to the mournful music of the lady's destiny. Inviolable though violated, La Ravegnana could find her way back to God only through the ultimate resignations. This is a poignant and haughty story, very sensitively translated.
The action of Max Brod's Rettheni, Prince of the Jews, moves darkly and confusedly in the vexed period of time imme- diately before and after the Sack of Rome ; and, since it eddies about the pulsating secret life of the Ghettos in Bohemia, Italy, and Portugal, the atmosphere does often become night- marish, heavy with daemonic wings, and startled with ominous cries. Yet the conception of the- boy David, hating in his Prague &veiling the departure of beauty from Israel, deter- mining to restore pride and splendour to his grovelling race, even if he has to honour God " with evil instincts " of/guile and deception, is instinct with subtlety and strength. We find him again as Reubeni, ambassador and soldier from the mysterious country of Chator, where dwell the princely and unbroken tribes of his people. He treats with Pope Clement, talks with Arabic), shuffles with Machiavelli, sits to Michel- angelo as he works at Moses. The apparition of Molcho, the pure ecstatic who unconsciously confutes all his guile, brings him to final disgrace, yet saves something of his dream, Inchoate and wordy as the novel seems at times, it has passages of visionary splendour.
It is a sudden transition to the audacious days of the English Restoration, and the limited, if lively, ideals of Mr. Samuel Pepys; In My Wife, Poor Wretch, Miss Brunner has presented Rlimbeth's impression of life with the immortal diarist—and so ingeniously that few of his warmest admirers will refuse her the tribute of some appreciative smiles. The fashions, the amusements, the little excitements of the day run brightly together ; Elizabeth's love and jeakiusy "flame- and fade ; Airs.- Knipp- shows her detested -faCe-;__pretty Nelly giVes sound advice .; . and Will Hewer runs frantically about at his offices of reconciliation. Here is a rollicking account of how - Mr. Pepys really came to end his diary. But though it be amusing, we are not easily to be cheated of the moving 'sin- cerity of those concluding words. Since he did take his " poor wretch " to Holland when he finished, and since she died very soon after, he found his life too changed to bellin again, whatever befell his eyes. For he married her for love when she was fifteen, and continued to love her—" in his fashion." Miss Brunner's is a gay piece of comedy, ringingly accented.
Those who enjoyed The Private Life of Helen of Troy will proceed to like Penelope's Man. Opinion was early divided upon the character of Odysseus ; and tradition soon mur- -mured that Ithaca and the queen had no abiding charm for him, and that he set sail again for the Happy Isles. But why it should amuse anybody to find the favourite of the grey-eyed goddess turned into a mild Babbitt, enduring a little back- chat from Circe, and Calypso, and the Sirens, I do not quite understand. " Mr. Erskine makes it plain that he thinks all mankind very much alike," remarks his publisher. The plain man will be grateful. Parody is good ; satire is good. When Shakespeare most desired to express his despair of humanity he mocked at the Homeric heroes ; but he did it with rage and torment, and he left chivalry to Hector, wild beauty to Troilus—and great words to Odysseus. Mr. Erskine's notion of life is so very banal. However, if you can endure his depre- -elation of golden Helen, see what he makes of the mysterions sun-goddess who tested the souls of men, or of candid Nausicaa.
The Orange Court, by Mrs. Coppard, is washed by the waves of the enchanted sea. It is a warm bright book, all aglow with orange trees. An Englishwoman, wronged by her lover, comes to San Maurizio. She is allowed to gather her oranges from the tree ; and so " goes Italian," chained to Liguria, while the susceptible Southerns heal her heart with their skilful love-making. Pauline never becomes definite enough to account for so much adoration ; but the story does not much matter. The vivid moody young Italians are engaging ; and the ebb and flow of summer life around the bay with its pageant of clear colours seems very attractive en a winter's day. There's something appealing, if a little inconsequent, about the tale. But why does Mrs. Coppard, whose descriptive style promises well freely indulge in a barbarism like " enthuse " ? It makes one shiver among the orange trees.
RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR.
Previous page
