Fiction
Dv L. A. G. STRONG.
75. ad.) Livingstones. By Derrick Leon. (Hogarth Press. 10s. 8d.)
THOSE who enjoy classifying and ticketing' writers must find Mr. Walpole a strangely refractory subject. The most thorough-going romantic among established novelists, bringing to his work a tremendous energy and vitality, an emotional yet robust writer, he is continually reaching out towards the intangible, endeavouring to come to terms with the imponder- able, and allowing a kind of ghoulish scepticism to undermine the comfortable rotundities and certainties of the life he sets before us. His new book of stories -shows him in all his moods, and it shows that he is never so sure and so effective as when he bids this cold breath .from a spiritual graveyard to blow down his readers' necks and set them shuddering. It is a curious power. In the out-and-out ghost story, he does not excel other Writers, but of the uncomfortable story, the story which hints at some hideous slippery question behind the brocaded curtain or beneath the homely, reassuring bed, he is a master. The best in this kind he has placed second in his volume. It is called " The Silver Mask." On the surface it is. simply a tale of a middle-aged and wealthy woman taking pity on an attractive young ruffian from the streets, and gradually falling a victim to him and to his family until she has lost her name, her health, and her liberty. Common- place enough ; in most writers' hands it would be simply a psychological study, a character slowly disintegrating before our eyes. Mr. Walpole makes it absolutely terrifying. All backbone, all possibility of resistance, melts as one reads ; not only the poor victim's backbone, but our own. The thing is inevitable, an assault upon ordinary human security. "The Silver Mask" is a brilliantly horrible story. Some- thing of the same power marks "The Staircase." I disliked this story as I read, feeling that it was sentimental, and that the evocation of a definite personality in the house and furniture was being done the wrong way, but the climax justified everything, and though I still dislike the story, I am forced to admit that Mr. Walpole has triumphantly brought it 'tiff. There are many other kinds of story in the book, including such simple and good-natured pieces as "Mr. Oddy," but they are put in the shade by the uneasy stories. Incidentally, Mr. Walpole allows himself some lapses from strict grammar, which as an ex-school-master I must deprecate.
Mr. Mottram resumes his task as historian of a changing England with a study of a country pub. not many miles from Easthampton. He traces the fortunes of.' The Lame Dog' during, and immediately after, the long life of Earl Barningham, the landlord. Earl, horse coper and close- lipped man of business, saw many changes, none of them to his taste. His Old Lordship died, his Young Lordship was killed fighting the Boers, and the Hall passed into the hands of one who rode about in one of these here new-fangled motors. The doom of the horse had sounded. 'The Lame Dog' lost custom : Marianne, Earl's best daughter, married Jim Pardon, former butler at the Hall : only his son Shotover remained to keep things going, and gradually to assume responsibility for changes. The Great War gave Earl his last chance as a horse dealer, and he used it well. Then came the petrol pumps : and when the last gallant fatal outing had done what a paralytic stroke could not do, his four children set about effecting the final metamorphosis.
The story begins drily, rather than dully. Not till Marianne's wedding feast does Mr. Mottram really warm to it. Then, and afterwards, he is in very good form—and good humour : " He sat down (after saying grace) and all opened their eyes. Some did so with an expression denoting how much benefit they had received from this benediction, some with manifest doubt as to whether they ought to have been thus prayed over for the second time on a week-day morning ; some merely with the look of persons emerging from cold water into which, as a matter of principle, not of enjoyment, they had resolutely dived. In the main, how- ever, the effect of the office upon the feast was precisely that of the marriage ceremony upon the nuptial bliss it heralded. In both
eases Cod had been duly petitioned. It was assumed that Ho had assented. He had, in fact, said 'Go! ' It only remained for those who, in either ease, had restrained themselves to this prop, point, to lose no further time."
Earl is a fine old ruffian, hard as tealc, with the gift ol calling affection from those about him. One of the truest and most moving touches in the book is the grief of old Sweetnin', his handyman, after his death. The most attractive characters are Shotover—all the passages between him and his father are delightful—and Marianne. Save for the death of Albert, the story has no very dramatic incidents: and of this, and its effects, Mr. Mottram makes comparatively little.
In 1836, Oliver Benson, a young New York merchant, murdered a famous prostitute called Jane Holden because she pestered him with her love. His trial lasted over a week and became a cause celebre. All New York, from the fine ladies to the Bowery boys, took sides for and against him. His defence was undertaken, from motives of personal spite, by John Henderson ; and, in spite of overwhelming testimony from the inhabitants of the brothel where Jane lived, Henderson got him acquitted. This was due to a little grocer named Henry Boole, who so longed for publicity of any kind that he was able to imagine that Benson had been with him in his shop on that fatal Saturday night, and to establish an alibi. Such is the core of Mr. Komroffs story, which goes on to the after-effects of the crime : Benson's misery, Boole's misery, Henderson's duel With his rival, Polly Marsh's determination to bring Benson to justice for her friend's murder, and Benson's death. It is a crowded and most competently managed story, told with complete detachment. Mr. Komroff has no sympathies : only curiosity. There are many memorable scenes, from which stand out the rat-hunting in the unspeakable Bowery, and the whole of the trial. An impressive, highly-coloured, but ultimately unsatisfying performance.
Swings and Roundabouts would be all very well if its author had not once written a book called War Among Ladies, ineffaceable memories of which force us to observe that Miss Scott has not the same grasp of the cocktail-drinking idiom as of the scholastic. An unpleasant mother of three daughters, finding herself financially embarrassed, marries a nice solid country doctor. She and her daughters behave abominably to him in his own house, and, when the impossible situation comes to an end, she tries to annex the fiancé of one of the girls. Finally she loses all three of them, the youngest and nicest returning to the doctor. A competent and readable piece of work ; but War Among Ladies was a good deal more.
Livingsiones, a first novel, is a big achievement. It is a long and enormously detailed account of the personnel of the furnishing firm of Livingstones, Ltd. It concerns everybody connected with the business, from the great Mr. Livingstone and his wife and son down to Pearl Jessup the workgirl, ' and the vanrnen. Huge as it is, it is not shapeless, for everyone is connected, as Mrs. Livingstone discovers at the end, by "the spacious continuity of life, (the) curious hidden way in which people, in which things, were linked together." Mr. Leon is one of those whos like to stand and stare ; and this involves the one great limitation of his story. It is all observation. We learn about his characters just what can be learned by watching them, and no snore. The model, with its enthusiastic piling up of detail, is French. Mr. Livingstone, arriving on the morning when he had to break the news of wage-cuts and dismissals to his employees, did not in his nervousness merely light a cigarette. "He took out his flat, chased, platinum cigarette-case from his pocket and lit a cigarette with the elaborate ease that invariably accompanied this trivial action." There are several scenes, such as Erie's attempt to rescue the drowning Ernie, and Willard's denunciation of the firm that has sacked him, which indicate that Mr. Leon can go beyond the limits of observa- tion. Meanwhile he must be congratulated without reserve upon a remarkable use of it. Like Livingstones themselves, he has an eye for the whole effect, and his whole effect is made up of carefully co-ordinated detail, of moulding and panel, of chosen chair, curtain and tallboy, combined in all elaborate harmony.
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