NOVELS.
CARNIVAL* MR. COMPTON MACKENZIE, who commenced novelist with a vivacious tour de force in the pomander vein, relieved by a good deal of irrelevant strong language, has now deviated abruptly into modern realism of a type eminently characteristic of the present phase of contemporary fiction. There is somewhat of a slump in genuine tales of the slums, and stories of the stately homes of the English nobility are hardly attuned to the temper of the enlightened democracy, though Mr. Gals- worthy rendered something more than poetic justice to the well-groomed aristocrat in The Patrician, and not very long ago we remember reading a novel in which the only personage who was not of high social standing was an extremely elegant lady's maid. But these are exceptions ; it is the middle class that has come by its own in the fiction of to-day ; a literary fact that is typical of an age in which social barriers have been levelled by wealth, in which widespread efficient mediocrity replaces isolated eminence, and people who betray any fastidiousness or resentment with the vagaries of triumphant vulgarity are at once rudely rebuked as obsenrantists or prudes. The best defence of such a book as Carnival is to be found in Sir Hubert Parry's recently published lectures on Style in Musical Art when he speaks of the illumination thrown by the progress of literature on music :-
" People complain that there are no great authors. We have had them, and that should be sufficient. Now there are thousands of writers who, have oyes to see what their follow-creatures are doing, and try to interpret tons what they see. . . . And there is also a new kind of composer presenting himself, surging with rebellion against all the respectabilities of tradition and against the evidences of what the great ones of the past thought consistent with the dignity of art, and present- ing to us their particular temperamental qualities in frank, and sometimes surprisingly unconventional, terms. The latest phase seems, indeed, to bo in accordance with Rousseau's advice, a reversion to the native woodman wild ; slightly, even scantily, clad, and resentful of any kind of con- straint. The principle is consistent with the art's evolution, which is inevitably towards the greater differentiation. . Morality in art is much the same as in general life. One may adapt a famous French saying and put it that the'more we truly know the greater becomes the scope of our charity.' It is better at least to soo even baseness frankly expressed' than to be deceived by its masquerading in the guise of respectability. But it is quite a subordinate function of temperament to counteract respectability."
Music, though the youngest of the arts, has made such wonderful strides in the last half-century that she has caught up literature and now advances pari ram with its elder sister. Hence nearly everything that Sir Hubert Parry says of the modern temperamental composer, with his bent for indiscri- minate characterization, his lack of reticence, and his tendency to consult the taste of big towns, can be laid to the charge of the temperamental novelist. The analogy also holds good in regard to style, since in literature, as in music, a great deal of modern work is "extraordinarily clever in technique— brilliantly expressed—surprising in its vivacity and certainty of effect, but of lower intrinsic quality." Any student, as it has been said, can score for a full orchestra now- adays, and in richness and pungency of presentment Mr. Mackenzie leaves little to be desired. But there is a strange contrast between the matter and the style, and here again the musical parallel fits in. "It must be admitted that the phraseology, of the lowest forms of art, the slang, the familiar idioms, the misapplication of artistic methods, the grotesque irresponsibilities of the gutter, have already crept
• Carnival. By Compton Mackenzie. London: Martin Seeker. [6s.]
into the higher branches of this art, as the same types of utterance have crept into literature and poetry." In descriptive passages and in his psychological commentary Mr. Mackenzie verges on a sophisticated preciosity. Here, as an example of his " scoring," is a picture of the heroine in her transition
from childhood to womanhood:— "Hero was a child worthy of a Naiad's maternity, if grace of limb counted immortally, and when for the first time she was given the world to look at, her finite vision and infinite aspirations wore never set in relation to each other. She was given a tele- scope, and nobody had taken off the shutter. Her soul was a singing bird in a cage. Freedom was tho only ideal. She might have been moved by Catholicism, but nobody gave it to her. It may be idle to speculate on the effect of incense-haunted chapels, of blazing windows and the dim accoutrements of Mass. Perhaps, after all, they would merely have struck her comically. Perhaps she was a true product of London generations, yet maybe her Cockney wit would have glittered more wonderfully in a richer setting—haply in LacedEemon, with sea-green tunic blown to the outline of slim beauty by each wind coming southward from Thossaly."
And here, as an example of melody or "thematic material," is a typical conversation between the heroine and her elder sister :- "' Jenny,' said the latter suddenly, 'I done it.' Done what, you date?' Myself, I suppose.' What d'ye mean ? " You know,' said Edie. Oh yes, I know, that's why I'm asking.' 'You remember that follow I was going about with? "Bert Harding P "Yes, Bert.' You're never going to marry him, Ede ? "I got to—if I can.' Jenny sat up on the bed. Yon don't mean he's sprung it on you ?"That's right,' said Edie. Whatever made you let—go on, Ede, you're swanking.' I wish I was.' You're not. CH t how awful am a fool,' said Edie helplessly. But can't you —" I tried. It wasn't no good.' Whatever will Mlle say ? ' Jenny wondered. What's it got to do with Alfie P " I don't know, only he's very particular. But this Bert of yours, I suppose he will marry you ?" He says so. Ho says nothing wouldn't stop him.' 'Men!' cried Jenny. think men are the dirtiest rotters on earth.' Bert isn't so bad,' said Edie in defence of her folly. 'Are you struck on him P You know, potty " I like him very well.' Are you mad to marry him P" I must." But you don't want to P' I wouldn't—not if I hadn't got to. I wouldn't marry anybody for a bit." I wouldn't anyhow,' said Jenny decidedly. ' Don't talk silly. I've got to.' "
Jenny Raeburn, whose life history from birth to death is narrated with relentless detail in Carnival, is the grand- daughter of a prosperous butcher on the father's, and a highly respectable chemist on the mother's side. But the chemist's daughter married a joiner, a mean little sot, and though in struggling circumstances refused the offer of her well-to-do aunts—fanatical Evangelicals—to adopt her daughter. So Jenny, a vivacious, high-spirited, mutinous child, tumbled up in a squalid household until the lodger, a retired clown, detected and encouraged her genius for dancing.
Her mother, at once proud of and puzzled by the child, somewhat reluctantly acquiesces in the choice, and Jenny is sent to a dancing school, afterwards securing engage- ments in provincial and London pantomimes, Covent Garden Opera, and, finally, at a leading music-hall. Mr. Mackenzie is bent on telling us everything about the life of a dancing girl—its hardships, amenities, and temptations—and, as he does not understand or believe in the art of omission, the record is full enough to satisfy the most exacting curiosity.
It is not a book for squeamish palates, or for young persons, or for readers who are in search of innocent refreshment or food for mirth. It is not the allurement but the corruption of the theatrical atmosphere on which he insists, and the impression created on the present reader is one in which pity is largely swallowed up in disgust. It is the old duel of sex, but the dice are always loaded on the side of the man. Jenny's life is one long struggle with male enemies in various forms, mostly of the type of satyr. When she does fall in love it is with a selfish, self-protective weakling, and when he deserts her she yields out of pique to the advances of the most sinister of her admirers. Then her mother dies miserably, and to secure the future of her crippled sister Jenny marries a repulsive Cornish farmer, of wolfish aspect, knowing him to be "a dirty rotter." The last scenes are laid in Cornwall, where Trewhella—the farmer—develops insane jealousy, as well as religious mania, and, after employing his farm bands to spy on his wife, shoots her at the very moment that she is repelling the renewed overtures of her faithless lover.
We have reviewed Mr. Mackenzie's novel at length not because it has given us any pleasure to read or because we can recommend it without reserves. But it deserves notice
for its unquestioned if undisciplined talent and occasional brilliancy of presentation, for its frank disregard of the con- ventional canons of taste, and for the curious hostility towards the male sex betrayed by the author. There is only one of the prominent male characters in whom there is a spark of chivalry or who inspires the reader with any respect in his relations with womankind, and his interventions are wholly ineffectual. For the rest the motto is honto fentinae lupus. Mr. Mackenzie evidently writes with a considerable first-hand knowledge of theatrical life and its parasites. To that extent his book may serve as a warning to those who are drawn by the lure of the footlights. But we should be very sorry to accept his picture as a faithful study of humanity seen steadily and whole.
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