TWO 'VOLUMES OF SHORT STORIES.* No matter how pessimistic a
view one may take of the ten- dencies of modern fiction, it is impossible not to feel a certain complacency when one contemplates the achievements of our short-story writers. Here, at any rate, work is being pro- duced by half a dozen writers of whom we may well feel proud, and of all the workers in this field none strikes a more individual or resonant note than Mr. H. G. Wells. In his. audacious imaginative insight into the romantic possibilities. underlying the discoveries or the suggestions of modern science, he stands unrivalled. The circumstantial quality of his narrative often reminds one of Swift. Take, for example, the singularly vivid and convincing story of the daring. inventor who, wearying of delays and piqued by the half- contemptuous scepticism of the public, embarks on a prema- ture voyage in his flying-machine, and re-enacts the tragedy of Icarus in the very mid-heart of modern London. The- impression left on the reader by the description is almost as acute as if one had read it in the news columns of the Times. It is just like a transcript from real life, recalling the best, work of Poe in its accent of sincerity, and surpassing it in the felicity and sobriety of style. Even better is the truly thrilling narrative entitled "The Sea Raiders," which ie calculated to impair the popularity of boating and sea- bathing during the present summer. The famous fight with the octopus in Victor Hugo's Travailleurs de la Mer is pale and colourless alongside of the exploits on the coast of Devonshire' of Mr. Wells's Haploteuthis ferox. The story opens with the pre- cision of a paper read before the zoological section of the British Association. The central figure is Mr. Fison, a retired tea- dealer stopping at a Sidmouth boarding-house. Nothing, in short, could be more businesslike or prosaic. Yet in a page or two the horror and mystery of "the sunless depths of the middle seas" grip us with paralysing force. Where Mr. Wells's. tales are of the frankly impossible order, or hinge on some- supernatural incident like the exchange of bodies in "The Story of the late Mr. Elveeham," the effects are far less im- pressive. The apparatus of magical powders is unworthy of Mr. Wells ; indeed the closer he keeps to the region of possi- bilities, the more brilliant are the results he achieves. Thus,, in his ghost-story, "The Red Room," there is no ghost ; the ghost-seeker is engaged in a duel with the impalpable influ- ences of Fear, and the gradual stages of his defeat are indi- cated with extraordinary skill. In "Pollock and the Porroh Man," again, we have a masterly study in hallucination— somewhat akin in its motive to Lucas Malet's The Carissim,or —which deserves to be read 'in connection with Miss Mary Kingsley's writings on African witchcraft. The last half- dozen stories form an agreeable contrast to the horrors that have gone before. Here Mr. Wells relaxes the tension of his lurid imagination, and exchanges his Doctor Moreau vein for the r6le of the comedian who delighted us in The Wheels of Chance. The revolt of the small shopman against the tyranny of his wife and her friends ; the averted catas- trophe of the struggling draper and his devoted wife; the
• (L) The Plattner Store and Others. By H. G. Wells. London 1 Methuen and Co.—(2.) The Outspan Tates of South Africa. By J. Percy Fitzpatrick. London : W. Heinemann.
courtship and jilting of a suburban housemaid ; the sad story of the dramatic critic irresistibly drawn against his better judgment into the vortex of histrionic affectation,— these are some of the lighter themes handled by Mr. Wells with that happy mingling of whimsicality and sympathy which renders his work so valuable and needful a supple- ment to the consistently gloomy portraiture of middle-class life given us by Mr. George Gissing.
We take it that Mr. J. P. Fitzpatrick, the author of The Out span, a collection of short stories and sketches of South African life, has not acquired his knowledge of local colour in the manner recently described by a literary "para- graphist." "Mrs. — was the tenant of — Hall during this spring and early summer in order to study the ways and dialect of the country folk around, as the scene of her forthcoming novel is laid in that part of the country." Mr. Fitzpatrick's familiarity with the scenes and types described does not seem to have been purchased in this desperately cold-blooded way. He has no special pretensions to literary distinction, but at least he writes—as it seems to us—from that knowledge which has not been hastily or de- liberately acquired for the purpose of literary exploitation, but is the outcome of intimate and, so to speak, organic connection with the social system which be has now under- taken to delineate. In other words, Mr. Fitzpatrick, if we read him aright, did not go out to Africa with the intention of turning his experiences into " copy ; " the idea of writing stories was probably an afterthought ; but they have not suffered in the telling from this fact, but rather the reverse. Unstudied and unconventional in their style, they give a forcible and candid picture of the peculiar way in which the traits of British character are affected by the con- ditions of South African life in the mines, on the reld, and in contact with savage tribes. Of all the types of character illustrated in these half-dozen sketches none is more interesting than that of the "white nigger," —that is to say, the white man who settles down among the natives, adopts their mode of life, but sooner or later "gets the ' hanker ' for white life," and is invariably wrecked and ruined in the effort to emerge from barbarism. Mr. Fitzpatrick's own views are probably given in the words of the narrator of the first story, and they are worth citing : —" The Kaffir ambition may be a temporary one, or it may be that the return to white ways is the passing mania. Who knows, arty way ? From my own experience of them, I can say that the return to their own colour almost invariably means
their doom and rain And you know there's a sense of justice in that, too. Civilisation scorned and flouted, being the instrument of its own revenge ! If one could vest the abstract with personal feelings, what an ample revenge would be hers at the sight of the renegade—sick-hearted, weary, and shame-faced—coming back to the ways of his youth and race, and succumbing to some one part of that which he had despised and rejected in tote." Here we have the motive of two of the best stories of the book, those of Sebougwaan and Induna Nairn, both English- men of culture, ability, and good social standing who abandon civilisation for a life among the natives without losing their better instincts, and who realise their mistake when it is all too late. The story of Nairn, who while riding across country falls in with some settlers, saves the life of a charming English girl at a swollen ford, and when he realises that her affections are engaged, takes honourable refuge in flight to his home and native wife, is finely conceived and strikes a genuinely tragic note. Excellent also is the sketch of the young German greenhorn Soltko, guileless, credulous, and fearless, who joins forces with a party of English prospectors, and after being the butt of endless hoaxes and practical jokes, wins their affection by his transparent honesty, his unfailing good humour, and undaunted courage. Soltke is a most engaging figure, and his end is most pathetic. His gun bursts and shatters his leg, and the only doctor within reach is a notorious drunkard, who is brought into camp like a prisoner by one of the party, and is physically incapable of rendering assistance until it is too late. Cone could wish that the incident was imaginary, but there is probably no part of the world in which men are greater slaves to drink than South Africa. The last two stories in the book are of inferior psychological interest. "The Pool" has little to recommend it but its gruesomeness, and the "Two Christmas Days " borders on the melodramatic. But " Cassidy " is a curious study of an Irishman who, in an act of unavailing heroism, is so hideously disfigured by an ex- plosion in a mine that he sinks his social status and devotes all his energies to assisting the widow of his worthless partner. Here Mr. Fitzpatrick has, in our opinion, unnecessarily aggravated the painfulness of the unhappy man's position by leaving the reader in doubt as to the true cause of his terrible appearance till the end of the story, while the mystery attaching to his relations with the widow is artificially handled. Still, in spite of occasional lapses, Mr. Fitzpatrick seldom strikes a false note. He has enabled us to realise, what we have found it somewhat difficult to believe of late, that there are other and nobler motive forces amongst men of action in South Africa than greed of gain.
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