Splendid Mourning. By Cranstoun Metcalfe. (Ward, Lock, and Co. 3s.
ed.)—There is a great deal that is good in this novel, though the author seems, to use a vulgar ex- pression, to have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, and confused causes with consequences. Starting with a trans- lated motto from Madame de Staffi, "Fame is for women only a splendid mourning for happiness," the author proceeds to advance the thesis that the cause of his (or her) married heroine's drifting apart from her husband is her taking to literature to pass her leisure time, and thus creating a separate career for herself. As a matter of fact, Edith Glanville is so self-absorbed that under any circumstances she would probably have drifted away from her husband. She is represented as young, pretty, childless, fairly rich, and as living in Nevern Square, Earl's Court. She possesses (lucky woman) excellent servants, and has, conse- quently, very little necessary occupation whilst her husband (a rising lawyer) is at work. Under these circumstances, literature is probably the best thing Mrs. Glanville could take to. It is im- possible that the housekeeping in a small London house should provide enough occupation for an active, healthy young woman, and did she not strike out a line for herself Satan would probably be as busy as usual in devising work for an idle mind,—a far worse thing than idle hands. From the author's own point of view the book is cleverly arranged to illustrate his (or her) point. But " Cranstouu Metcalfe" forgets the alternative. A woman cannot go to sleep from 9 o'clock to 6 o'clock and wake up fresh and attrac- tive to greet her returning lord. She must fill in the hours of his absence with some occupation, and housekeeping is not sufficient. The author seems to have imbibed some quaintly false ideas on contemporary literature. A literary young woman, for instance, is made to say : "Once get a name and you can do all sorts of things with impunity. Exactly the same reviewers say exactly the SELMO
things about every book I write." Splendid Mourning appears tO be a first book. "Cmnstoun Metcalfe" will, therefore, be able to test the truth of his character's dictum when he gives the world his next work of fiction.
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