HOLLYWOOD.*
FAMILY pride is one of the most overworked motives of the English novel. Of its utility to writers of fiction, there can be no question ; we have only to observe how dull and helpless American story-tellers are for want of such a resource ; but there are risks and dangers in its indis- criminate employment. Chief among these is the assignment to it of absolute power in human lives; first, because it is con- trary to experience that any single motive should govern a whole existence; and next, because it is one of those abstract motives which must necessarily, by the force of things, yield to circum- stances, if strongly opposed by them. In Hollywood, we find this forcibly illustrated. The story, an interesting and cleverly constructed one, shows how the whole fabric of a life which was built upon the treacherous foundation of family pride was rudely shaken, and came tumbling down. Miss Walker has pushed the motive to extreme lengths, no doubt, and only the novelist's liberty of dealing at will with time can be pleaded in justifi- cation of the duration of the concealment which is the main strength of the plot ; but she employs the demolishing action of circumstances justly and cleverly, shaping the rough-hewn ends in satisfactory imitation of Providence.
Hollywood is the best novel which its author has yet written ; the plot is the most cleverly contrived, and carefully worked out, and the people of the book are the most interesting and real with whom Miss Walker has made us acquainted. She has done rather a daring thing in making the reader a party from the beginning to the secret, which is to be kept until the end from all the personages of the story whom it most nearly concerns. There is considerable difficulty for a story-teller in holding the attention of an audience to the working-out of a foregone conclusion. This difficulty is surmounted in Hollywood, if not triumphantly, at least creditably. There are weak points in the story, in addition to the main improbability that a family secret of great magnitude should be kept undivalged for a long term of years, while involving false positions for several persons living in close neighbourhood to the two parties to that secret; but the strong points outnumber the weak, and the merits of the novel are much more stilling than its defects.
Among the former we include with gratitude the author's style. The absence of pretentiousness, of every kind of slang and jargon, the welcome dearth of mock science and flippant impiety, the pure and womanly tone, the pleasant talk among the young men and maidens of the households into which Miss
• Hollywood. By Annie L. Walker, Author of "Against iter WW," ac. London : Samuel Tinsley and Co. Walker introduces her readers, talk neither ungrammatical nor twaddly, are recommendations which experience teaches the reviewer of latter-day novels to prize highly. Nevertheless we cannot but regard Hollywood as an example of the diffi- culty which is created by the compulsory three-volume system for novelists who have not yet attained what we must prosaically define as the command of the market. If Miss Walker could have compressed her story into two volumes, we feel sure that she would not have weakened it by the interposition of a long postponement of the mutual understanding between her hero and heroine, through a clumsy mistake on the part of one of the principal personages. This incident, which we could not quote without injury to the interest of the story, is one of the gravest faults of the plot, for the error would have been rectified at once in real life. Indeed, the origin of Sir Herbert's mistake, a. woman's supreme influence, is contradicted by the powerless- ness of that woman instantly to repair the error by the exercise of the same influence. This is manifestly a conces- sion to the third volume, reminding us of the swollen torrent and broken bridge of the old romances, before things could be " mixed " by the handy interposition of a railway accident. This system ought to be suppressed, in the interests of writers and readers ; it is highly injurious to the art, as distinguished from the handicraft, of novel-writing, and it is regarded by Americans, who buy and read books to an ex- tent of which we can hardly form an idea, as a remnant of the dark ages of publishing and bookselling.
In Hollywood, we find many bright and pleasant sketches of character. Lady Elizabeth Lyne, a somewhat conventional old lady in invariable velvet, the grandmother of the heroine, to whose family pride the family welfare is ruthlessly sacri- ficed, is less successful than the other personages. She poses too much and too constantly; there is a want of atmosphere about her ; we feel that she must sometimes have put her- hobby in the stable, and given what he called her mind to something besides the grandeur of the Lynes of Hollywood, and the terrible possibility of any one of them marrying beneath her estimate of their claims ; and we should have liked to have a peep at her in one of those lucid intervals. The last scene in which the stately and unreasonable old lady appears is admir- able; there is real power and true taste in the catastrophe. Mildred Clifford is one of the pleasantest girls we have met with in fiction for a long time. And although the young men of the book are not very mannish young men, they are equally far from the objectionable types which have been for too long favourites with lady novelists. George Lyne is not a wise person, and Arthur Warden occasionally borders remotely upon the confines of priggism ; but they both improve wonder- fully towards the end of the story. It is pleasant to have to record a success achieved by a writer whose work hail always had the power to interest us, and to note progress that tells of care and pains.
Previous page
