Fiction
Old-Fashioned and New
STANLEY WEYMAN'S swan song fills us with wonderment that its author could for so many years before his recent death have remained comparatively silent. It may be that he was
wise in vowing, two decades ago, to write no more fiction. But The Lively Peggy proves that he was, at any rate, equally wise in not holding too strictly to his oath. If the springs of romance had indeed run dry, there was certainly, towards the end of his life, a very full resurgence. Spontaneity glows upon every page of his last novel, which is worthy to rank with his best work. It is old-fashioned, of course. It belongs, almost, to the world of Westward Ho! But who, save the fools who can worship no gods but those of the passing moment, would Wish Stanley Weyman to have marched with the times ?
There are two lively Peggies. One is a ship, and the other a girl. The ship is a privateer—fitted out, it is to be feared, more for gain than for simple patriotism—belonging to the little Devonshire port of Beremouth. The period is that of the Napoleonic Wars. Excitement is not lacking; but it is in the development of the characters ashore, whose fortunes are all variously involved with those of the vessel, that the main interest of the story lies. The dominating personality is that of Dr. Portnal, the proud, worldly Rector, with his two daughters—the imperious, heartless Augusta, and the impul- sive, affectionate Peggy. The Rector intends Peggy to marry Sir .Albery Wyke, whom the scheming Augusta wants for herself. Peggy, on the other hand, has fallen in -love with-the young, one-armed Charles Bligh, whose true worth she alone insists on seeing after he has been dismissed from the Service for being drunk while on duty. Bligh finds a temporary and minor berth with Isaac Btidgen, the builder and ostensible proprietor of 'The Lively Peggy.' But actually the ship is mortgaged to the Rector, who threatens unpleasant things unless Budgen dispenses with Bligh. Everything, however, comes right in the end. Bligh, supported through thick and thin by Peggy, makes good ; the Rector is converted by his troubles into the best type of benevolent pastor ; while Augusta, though sadly discomfited when Sir Albery Wyke bestows his favours upon one of her own friends, is able, because she has no heart, to make a comfortable marriage with a wealthy nonentity. It is a simple enough tale, but one full of cleansing breeziness and mellow beauty.
Sir Edward Parry is not the master-craftsman that Stanley Weyman was. But his book has the same type of old-world charm. Nic Berrington, his hero, was, as many readers will know, an actual character. The most familiar episodes of his life belong to the early history of Georgia—to the Governor- ship of Captain Oglethorpe and the visits of John and Charles Wesley. But Sir Edward, who describes in his, preface a remarkable series of coincidences which have serve a to arouse his interest in Berrington, allows his imagination to play around Nic's " early life-in England, when, orphaned and sent to live with a sea-captain in Sussex, he came under the influence of the notorious criminal, Jonathan Wild, ind himself, while keeping his character essentially clean, became an adventurer and a runner." There is something a little mechanical in the author's contrivance of Nic's story so as to exhibit various aspects of eighteenth-century town and country life. But Sir Edward is obviously steeped in know- ledge of the period, to which he gives pleasant vitality.
It is a far cry from such gentle, leisurely chronicles to the insistent modernity of Mr. Alec Waugh. It is true that Mr. Waugh has succeeded in writing a novel without cocktails. But a knowing air of worldliness and post-War disillusionment are again the characteristic features of his work. Life at the best seems to Mr. Waugh to be a sorry business. But one thing at least kindles his enthusiasm—namely, the compara- tive easiness of modem divorce. His hook, written retro- spectively in the form of a narrative told to himself, after a lapse of years, by the main actor in the drama, describes the separation of lovers who, under the milder divorce regime of to-day, might have married. It is a slight story, padded with skilful essay writing, and finally melting away into a vague, rhetorical mysticism. But it contains at least two admirably drawn portraits, and in his own way Mr. Waugh is seldom less than capable. His work, indeed, suggests a very efficient and highly polished machine that needs, for its adequate use, to be fed with better material. Cannot Mr. Waugh find that better material ?
The Phantom Passenger describes the cruise upon which the pleasure yacht Alonca ' sets out from New York. Among the passengers is a young violinist who was recently seen wearing pearls known to belong to a celebrated New York hostess. The story, told in the first person by an amateur detective who joins the boat at the last moment, has many • clever, if sometimes over-elaborated, surprises. It is also made readable by its breezy atmosphere and its deft sketches of the various types of society abroad. GILBERT TuomAs.
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