Bellamy. By Elinor Mordaunt. (Methuen and Co. 6s.)— There have
been few bits of writing in recent fiction as good or as comprehensive as Miss Mordaunt's account of the workers' life in the silk factories of North Staffordshire. Even a story of the Five Towns district she contrives to make her own, and shapes it to be a worthy possession. And the fact that Walter Bellamy was a man who cared for nothing but enterprise and "push" and success throws the whole setting of his portrait into the right proportions, making the sordidness of the factory system apparent but not repulsive, its vileness temporal, not eternal. Miss Mordaunt's technical knowledge is impressive, but far more impressive is her ability to present at once the realistic and the dramatic aspeot of a situation. Even when Bellamy, on the road to success, comes to London and to a position in a "beauty parlour," and the atmosphere of the book tends to be more conventional, its spirit does not flag; for the figures of Gale and Jane Irwin are intimate and delightful. They are throughout more full of interest than is Bellamy himself, who is certainly not charming I indeed, if he were he would scarcely be true to his type, to the bard-headed business man of a Staffordshire factory.
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