FICTION
By FORREST REID The Moth and The Star. By J. H. Pollock. (Talbot Press. 7s. 6d.)
OF the novels sent to me last week Mr. Sinclair Lewis's The Prodigal Parents easily takes first place both as the most vital and the most entertaining. It is a story of modern American family life, treated with ironic humour. Mr. Lewis is definitely on the side of the parents and so am I— particularly on the side of the male parent, Fred Cornplow, who bears on his shoulders the full weight of a tale that without him would be drab enough. But Fred is a delightful creation ; he has charm and pathos, though he would have hated to be thought Pathetic. He knows that he is a shrewd, hard-working, and extremely successful business man. He does not know that he is very simple, very lovable, possessing beneath his determination, enterprise, and common sense an inexhaustible supply of rather puzzled benevolence. To his children, Sara and Howard, his views seem merely old- fashioned prejudices. Because he is not enthusiastic about Soviet Russia, about vague Communistic schemes, about psychiatry and Youth movements, they feel towards him a patronising superiority, which at the same time does not lead them to try to be self-supporting. And Fred gives them a good deal of liberty, he is remarkably long-suffering, though he is not for a moment duped. He even tolerates their young friend and hero, Eugene Silga, a professional agitator, who in private life does not hesitate to pick a pocket. Or only hesitates. " Stealing ? " reasons Eugene. " Nothing but a word. One of my last holdovers from bourgeois morals . . . Didn't Stalin himself rob banks, as a youngster, to get money for the Cause ? " So from inside comrade Howard's coat Eugene takes " a billfold which contains three ten-dollar bills, six ones and a five," and, after removing one ten and three ones, slips " the billfold back into the pocket where (but only according to outmoded bourgeois ethics, of course) it belongs."
Now poor Fred is quite frankly a " bourjoyce." That is why he sees that his son Howard has all the makings of a " bum," and that his daughter Sara, at twenty-eight, is becoming increasingly difficult. She writes inflammatory articles for Eugene's paper, pouring contempt upon such employers of labour as Fred. He does not interfere ; he listens patiently to their views.
While Fred tried to look relaxed and impartial, and did look as relaxed and impartial as a cat on flypaper, Eugene informed him that it was a good thought that Great Britain would soon lose India and Egypt, France lose Indo-China, and Holland lose Java ; that it was an even better thought that during the first three months of the Next War, Russia would take over Alaska, western Canada, China, Scan- dinavia and Poland, and make their inhabitants as joyous as the Russian peasants."
That is the note of the book, and I do not think it far-fetched to see in both its humour and irony a resemblance to the humour and irony of Mark Twain. Yet there is no bitterness. Realistic in detail, the story moves to a more optimistic con- clusion than might have been expected. Sara's Communism, founded on a romantic interest in Silga, fails to survive that young revolutionary's indifference to sentiment. Howard goes to the bad, but only temporarily, in the end latent good qualities emerge and triumph. And this is due to the influence of Fred, to his help, his tact, his wisdom and unselfishness. There are rows naturally, because Fred will finance no wild-cat schemes, and, when necessary, cuts off supplies. But he is always ready to forgive and forget; and finally he is appreciated at something approximating to his true value. It is the right conclusion—granting that there was any virtue at all in Sara and Howard. We leave them both on the right path—Sara happily married, Howard determined to help his father in his business. It is an excellent tale—lively, amusing, and very human.
There is less humour in The Merry Merry Maidens, who are not, as it turns out, particularly merry. Miss Carlisle is a competent and conscientious writer, but she has not Mr. Lewis's talent, and no character in her novel stands out with anything like the charm and actuality of Fred. The six girls whose careers she follows, though carefully studied, are types rather than individuals. Ruth is the domestic type ; Carol the literary type; Wanda the fatal type ; Maida the society type ; Lisa the saintly type ; Bertha the plodding and serious type. It is Ruth who,- writing in the first person and telling her own story, tells all their stories, from the days when they were schoolgirls together until middle-age. But this device has several drawbacks. For one thing, we feel that Ruth, absorbed in Ernie and the children, was not really the person for the task. Miss Carlisle, I imagine, has chosen her because she represents the norm of happy womanhood, while her friends are more or less exceptional. It is at least a reason, the only one I can think of, but the plan presents technical difficulties which have not always been overcome. Ruth is made to tell a lot of things she could not possibly have known, and to describe in detail scenes at which she was not present. The six continue to be friends. Bertha becomes secretary to a Russian, marries him, and goes to Russia ; Ruth settles down with Ernie in New York ; the love affairs of the others are more complicated. Wanda's is tragic ; Maida steals Lisa's lover ; Lisa, condemned to a lonely life, becomes a music teacher ; Carol, after long years of unsatisfactory attachment to a bibulous journalist, goes blind ; whereupon he reforms and they get married. Here again Miss Carlisle left me dubious. And there is a hint of convention- ality in Wanda's sudden success as an actress, in the opportune death of her lover, and even, I am afraid, in the success of Lisa's musical prodigy. I do not say that these things are impossible (on the contrary, they are among the stock incidents of fiction), merely that their familiarity is not here redeemed by any particular freshness of treatment.
There is at all events nothing conventional about Mr. Gathorne-Hardy's psychological fantasy, The Wind and the Waterfall. It is a strange romance. Raymond Kinlock and his wife, visiting one of the islands of the Hebrides, are held stormbound there for several days, during which they are the guests of old Miss Petworth, a poetess of the last century. They have never met Miss Petworth before, and now find themselves among a group of modern intellectuals, literary, artistic, and political. Kinlock, addicted to amorous adventure, yields almost instantly to the overtures of a pre- datory female novelist, and from that moment things begin to go wrong. The people around him change, the real world gives place to a nightmare world of fiction, even the books in Miss Petworth's library become " books within books," the works of imaginary authors—chiefly those of Henry James's creation, though the poems of Enoch Soames are there too. Then Miss Petworth is found murdered, and the story in which Kinlock is living becomes a detective story. The murder alone is real ; all the rest is subjective, existing only in Kinlock's mind, which temporarily has become deranged. Just how or why this happens, just how or why later there is a return to normality, is never made very clear. It seems to be the result of his infidelity : on the other hand, he has frequently been unfaithful before, when apparently nothing happened. As I say, it is a strange tale. Some readers may be lured to credulity ; I, though I like strange tales, and at times found this one thrilling, on the whole was not. The complete imaginative realisation that makes convincing such a thing as The Great Good Place seemed to me to be lacking. Even in writing that depends primarily on suggestion there must be, I think, more logic than Mr. Gathorne-Hardy has supplied.
The first part of The Moth and the Star, which tells of Shelley's visit to Dublin and of his meeting with Amelia Curran, I thought interesting ; the second part, describing the poet's last years in Italy, seemed to me dull. That was because there is nothing in this second part nearly so good as the portraits of the sinister Dr. MacLise, and of Amelia's father, the Master of the Rolls. Moreover, in these Irish scenes, where Shelley is but a passing boyish figure, the care- lessness of Mr. Pollock's writing matters less. Later, when he is picturing a more cultured society, the persistent splitting of infinitives, and such sentences as " I sense you as an enthusi- astic champion," or " Neither of us are likely to forget," have an unfortunate effect.
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