FICTION.
GRAND CHAIN.•
Aer eminent statesman in one of his occasional addresses; some twenty years ago, while commenting on the alleged exhaustion of normal themes for fietion, commended. to novelists the cultivation of the life-history as a profitable field for their activities. Novels cast
• Grand Chian. ty G. B. Stern. London: J. Nisbet and Co. '1651 in this form were not by any means unknown before he gave his advice, but whether post hoc or propter hoc, they have certainly multiplied of late years, and Mr. Stern's latest venture is an example, though in some ways an irregular one, of this type of fiction. The scheme has its advantages as well as its drawbacks. The popularity of biographies—to judge by the number which have been produced of late years—affords some guarantee of sympathetic interest in an imaginative attempt to trace the fortunes of a hero or heroine, if not from the cradle to the grave, at least from childhood till middle age. It also makes for length, and a good many readers like to get full value for their money. Long novels, again, are easier to write than short ones, especially if they are planned on the life-history principle, because the scheme does not involve rigorous compression or con- densation, and is entirely free from the fetters of the unities. There must be gaps of course—in the book before us there is one of about eighteen years—but they give scope for the exercise of the art of emission, and when discreetly bridged may even furnish relief. The drawbacks are obvious. Length is not always free from longu.eurs, and the central figure, unless capable of retaining the interest of the reader, may end by wearying him. Not, it should lie frankly admitted, by excellence or undeviating rectitude. The day of the stainless hero and heroine is past. The danger is of our being fatigued by the kaleidoscopic vagaries and inconsistencies of neurotic or artistic temperaments.
t The life-history of Dermod Randell takes him up to the age of forty-one ; but the age is not chosen for military reasons, as the novel deals exclusively with pre-war conditions. Dermod's father, fortunately eliminated at the outset of the narrative, was disreputable in his life and ignoble in his death. His wife was a virtuous but tiresome woman who could not refrain from treating her son as a whipping-boy for the dead. She was always fearfully looking out for the emergence of the traits which had ruined her domestic life. These, however, never fully materialized. Dermod inherited his father's charm and instability, but he was never allowed to forget the dangers he ran ; he saw them writ large in his sister, and refrained from following her example. He was sorry for his mother, and was troubled by intermittent searchings of conscience. In fine, the virus of his inherited disreputability was sufficiently attenuat ed to keep him free from achieving a resounding scandal. He was at worst a half-hearted waster, unable peccare foriiter, and ready at the crisis of his fortunes to give up the only woman he ever loved, the " hydro-girl," Miss Bronwyn Lou, daughter of a lady entertainer, and marry, to please his mother, a strenuous and virtuous damsel of ample means. The price he paid for this filial act was heavy. His wife, a strong-minded lady, decided that the only way to subjugate his full-blooded temperament was to give him adventure. Hence a series of arduous expeditions to remote quarters of the globe, and a corresponding series of stodgy but popular hooks of travel, in which the unfortunate Dermod was impressed as a reluctant collaborator. This long period of penance, briefly and sardonically dismissed in a few pages, was only terminated by the removal of Mrs. permed, who was stung by a poisoned fly while placidly discussing Our Tour in Tibet, and died in a few days. Dermod honeymooned with his grief for a period of two years, and then, remembering his family—there were four children—returned to make their acquaintance. Meanwhile the " hydro-girl " had fallen in love with a beautiful country house and consoled herself with its owner, a blameless and kindly but shadowy gentleman. Mrs. Angus—to call her by her new name—was a near neighbour of the Randells ; she had also a marriageable daughter, with whom Stephen, Dermod's eldest son, fell in love, and Dermod, while himself prepared to elope with Mrs. Angus, was by no means sympathetic to his son's matrimonial aims. Hence rebellion on Stephen's part, culminating in his frank but brutal remark that it made him sick to see his father making a ridiculous ass of himself. The worst of it was that it was true ; and that Mrs. Angus was really far too fond of her stately home to elope to Canada with Dermod. After this second abortive effort to cultivate a grand passion, we gather that Dermod was content to look forward to practising l'art itre grand-pare. From this rough outline it will
be gathered that this is not •a serious study of heredity, though Mr. Stern occasionally deviates into seriousness, so much as a satirical comedy, in which the good, the bad, and the indifferent are treated with an almost cynical impartiality. Some authors no doubt display an exasperating affection for their characters, but Mr. Stern has no respect for his creations, and, as an exception to the rule hid down by Aristotle, he appeals to the intellect rather than the heart.
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