Fiction
Books of Distinction
The Woburn Books, including A Wedding Morn, by Sheila Kaye Smith ; The Portrait of the Misses Harlowe, by Martin Armstrong ; The Sword of Wood, by G. K. Chesterton ; The Old Dovecote, by David Garnett ; The Man Who Missed the 'Bus, by Stella Benson ; The Dewpond, by T. F. Powys ; The Apple Disdained, by R. H. Mottram. (Elkin Mathews and Marrot. 6s. each.)
As Far as Jane's Grandmother's. By Edith Olivier. (Martin Seeker. 7s. 6d.) To those who cherish good writing in attractive and unusual volumes, yet can pay but little for their pleasure, the Woburn Books convey the privileges of the Limited Edition. There are only a limited number of these brief works by distinguished authors, whose authentic signatures provide in themselves a fascinating study in differences. They arc charming in
paper, print, and shape, and will appeal with equal effect to the bibliophile and the expert in fiction.
The matter is all of high quality, though in one or two cases perhaps a little fragmentary. ..A Wedding Morn, by Sheila Kaye Smith, reveals a bride in the slummier squares of Kensington, moving " from passion to security." It is a glimpse of Cockneyism, at once grim and wistful, though the tact is not unerring. Mr. Martin Armstrong in The Portrait of the Misses Harlowe sketches two feminine faces, one aquiline and resolute, the other childish and luminous, in the penumbra of a funeral, day, when the scent and light of summer gardens assails the drawn blinds. This hushed prelude is most sensi- tively written ; but it so obviously forebodes a tale of throb- bing conflict and defeat that it leaves the reader with a frustrate emotion. Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in The Sword of Wood, is very much himself with a picturesque episode and its symbolic suggestions : the moral seems slightly confused. A plangent historic note is struck once or twice in this incident of the reign of " the swarthy young man with the sour humorous face," who was Charles II., and who encouraged the Royal Society that sent out the Magnetic Sword. Mr. David Garnett's irony, deadly quiet, sinks steel through the heart thrice in the three brevities of experience called The Old Dovecote. His reserved style is at its best in this small volume. The Man Who Missed the 'Bus is a finished example
of Miss Stella Benson's airy and dreadful play with minds hovering on the abyss of madness. Mr. Robinson, lonely, shy, tortured by hyperaesthesia, does literally go over the precipice near St. Pierre, the unfriendly hamlet overhanging the twisted strands of the Rhone. The mounting horror of his obsession, so coolly and lightly suggested, uncannily clings to the memory.
The Dewpond is a lovely and complete idyll concerning one
of those holy innocents that are found in the Pagan villages
of Mr. T. F. Powys. Mr. Gasser, a gentle clergyman of a very Franciscan kind, who loves- to believe what seems impossible, perishes meekly because- his delicate Sister the Dew does not descend of her own accord into the pond he has tenderly pre- .pared for her, and so confute the sceptic Squire. The Apple Disdained evokes a really enchanting strange girl, who seventy years ago eloped from a school, strict and elegant among Cathedral closes. Mr. Mottram's- false shame in the presence of romance arranges that the narrator of a story like vanishing Music should be surrounded by some English Misses of nieces who punctuate his fair discourse with cries of " Gosh " and " Golly." - They are - incredible ; but they fail to ruin the exquisite touch of the flitting fragrant little tale.
As Par as" Jane's Grandmother's is a novel of distinction. In this divining and pensive study Miss Olivier can describe a hunt ball or an elopement in the manner of Jane Austen ; yet the period of her story lies immediately before and after the War. But in the serene assurance and seclusion of Mountsorrel, the Augustan residence of +Jane's grandmother, Mrs. Basildon, -Time folds his wing, and even War-service is tamed to become effective without profaning it. The theme is tragic, for it is the death of a soul, a volatile and flame-like soul. So unsensational is Miss Olivier's way, so reticent her satire, so gradual the lapses of Jane's desire 'of life, that you hardly realize this is tragedy till you turn from the prudish bigoted woman at the end to the-quick-breathing girl of hidden fantasy and elfin beauty, gathering " snowdrops shaped like little folded wings and scented like the 'waters of Paradise," near the beginning, and recollect that both are one.
Mrs. Basildon had reigned competent and fine in her great, beautiful house,' ordering her world by good taste and cynicism. Her daughter Margaret had made a desperate elopement, only to liVe Invalided thereafter, imposing her way on her ,household by a decorative inutility and a- sacred negation. Jane, her child, in contact with no quick love, lives on dreams divoreed from reality, wearing -a docile mask that begins to fit too well At her parents' sudden death her grandmother claims her. - Julian, her lover, fails to snatch her in time. She continues to adore him in the Gazebo, out of time, out of reality, to doubt him under Mrs. Basildon's casual ironies. Merciless soft stroke on stroke, the author shows the mask petrify into Jane's very face ; the light fetters of assumed opinion become part of her- spiritual substance. -She -fails her lover ; she fails her friends ; she is fascinated by Port Royal and St. Augustine, and fails her dream of heaven--always applying to them her grandmother's canons of good sense and good breeding. At thirty-if-ire she is free and mistress Of Mount- sorrel. It is too late. She is not even a success as a 'copy of her grandmother, for she has no original impulse. ' For a moment it seems as if Julian and she might love again .; but, shocked at the harmless spectacle of boys and girls 'gliding like fish in a bathing pool, she protests, shrilly as Mis. Basildon would not have done, returns to Mountsoirel, and tells the gardener to-let- the Gazebo fall. Perhaps Julian is not very clearly. realized. But Mrs. Basildon and the orderly beauty of Mountsorrel become so actual that it is easy to understand the surrenders of Jane, who from the beginning had no grip of reality. The style is clear and pure, with passages of grave and dew-bright beauty ; and Jane, very immediate to the sight with her white pointed face and dark listening eyes and golden hair, retains, for all her cowardice, an odd fascination.
RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR.
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