Fiction

By BONAMY DOBREE • 7s. 6d.)

A FORTNIGHT ago I ventured. to suggest that the English novel often failed to make its effect- because the authors did not stick to their theme, or unify their story. In Family Skeleton Miss Coyle provides us with an exception. At least, there is one story in the book, and everything in the book contributes to that story. The theme, clear enough, but never insisted upon, is, broadly speaking, that of the necessity for love, so that through intuition we can be led to sympathy and understanding. We are never too conscious of the theme, because the story is so designed as to bear

it naturally. When very young, Mary Grace had run away with a gamekeeper (no, this has nothing to do with D. H.

Lawrence) who died on their honeymoon. His posthumous daughter Laura becomes' a -singer, through whom Mary Grace meets her second-husband, Stabler, a fambui musician, who dies some years later leaving his widow with another daughter, Stella, who studies under- Jung in Vienna. Laura marries, and when Stella appears likely to do so, Mrs. Stabler decides to go back at last to her home at ,Laverock. There she is faced with the problem of resolving her mother's complex, which centres about the death of her son Tony (this contains a surprise which is not revealed till the end), and the " case " of the curate, who is driven to the verge of madness by the death of his mother. He suffers, in fact, from the effects of a mother-fixation which has dominated his life. I do not wish to give the idea that this is a tiresomely psycho-analytical novel ; it is not. The analysis is necessary to the story, but is easily absorbed into it : we have here the scientific knowledge of our day properly used to enrich and illuminate life. Miss Coyle writes with delicacy and humour, and manages to be light even at her tensest moments : her economy is that of subtraction, of taking away anything that might be too heavy, rather than that of putting in only what might be of weight. Yet the poignancy is there, and develops with the development of the story, which

ends with death and reconciliation.

The theme of Mr. Bruce Marshall's Prayer for the Liring is a more obvious One, the hypocrisy of schoolmaster clergy- men. The setting is a " typical " Scottish Public School, and the interest of the book is the minds of the masters. It is a pity that so much space should have been given to the boys, whom we :do not qUite believe in, and anyway we are always suspicious of school stories where the head boy falls in love with the headmaster's daughter. That the interest of a school story can be concentrated in the masters is proved by Mr. Walpole's Mr. Perrin and Mr. Trail', which might have been taken as a model. Mr. Marshall is vigorous and amusing, witty and inventive, but a little crude. There is, of course, a great deal of cant and humbug about Public School religion, but Mr. Marshall would have strengthened his ease if he had allowed some of the parsons at least small • residuum of real religious feeling. The publishers tell us on the cover that the book " will annoy a lot of

people." All honestly scathing satire is valuable, PlIt flippancy, though amusing, tends to make the reader react in the direction opposite to the one intended by the writer.

For instance the account of the -Headmaster, Tired Tm, discussing transubstantiation with a junior clerical master

while they play a round of golf is too near farce to cap/ conviction.

I have it. Transubstantiation, of course. Do you knew I once knew a man at Oriel who thought that transubstantiation was a musical instrument. With saekbut, Psalter, and transub- stantiation.' Tired Tim's face was like a full harvest moon seen through a stained glass window of the Massacre of St. Bartholoniew• Do you hear that, Penthorne ? ' ho bawled out at Jason,

t0

so 813 make sure that Jason heard. eI once knew a man at Oriel Who thought that transubstantiation was the name of a musical instru- ment ! And the blighter's a bishop now ! Hi, Ogilvie, tieout the pin. Yes, that's. it. Now put it down and stand your heels at an angle of forty-fiVe degrees just behind the hole. . .•

That sort of treatment will certainly " annoy a lot of people,"

-arid it may tot otOthe2 lietiple.- --BISt-the people Whoa

it will annoy will become only more what Mr. Marshall wants to cure them of being ; those who will be amused already think as Mr. Marshall does. There_ is a great deal to be attacked in Public School religion, .and one would like to

see a lot of it swept away ; but Marshall, one feel-, does not use the right sort of brodm. Yet his is an enterti in.ng book, and contains as well a spice of happily suggested War- fever satire.

If Mr. Marshall's book is anti-Christian in effect, Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith's Superstition Corner is the reverse. It is a romance dealing with the intense Roman Catholic persecution which immediately succeeded the failure of the Spanish Armada. The heroine, Catherine Alard, is " a wild piece," who rides astride about the country. in a hoydenish manner, and is devoted to the faith and to her brother, who has gone to Rome to become a priest so as to undertake the English mission, and is thus almost certainly vowed to martyrdom. In her intense eagerness, Catherine brings doom upon a house she loved by indiscreetly giving away the secret of Mass being said there to a parson who had gone over to the reformed faith, but whom she trusted. She sees her father killed by her mother's lover ; she witnesses, in every repulsive detail, the execution of two priests for high treason ; she meets her brother, hears Mass, and dies. Miss Kaye-Smith has written a readable romance, of which the actuality is a little spoilt by the use of a rather stilted style :

" He himself was a man well-learned in science and philosophy, of a studious, contemplative cast of mind, loving peace and kind- ness. also the homely tasks and pleasures of country life. But her heart was empty of filial piety, just as at the moment it was empty of grief and reprobation. Horror had swept it, and it was an empty chamber. Old Joan the nurse and housekeeper would see that her Master made a decent corpse—and she would not feel what .Catherine would have felt when she looked upon his face.

" ' Father ! ' she cried suddenly. ' Father ! '

" Her voice was automatic, and wrung with an anguish which was as yet only half conscious."

Not. that Miss Kaye-Smith always writes in that manner : and the story leaves us with considetable sympathy for the persecuted Roman Catholics, and .a further realization of what happens in the way of hysteria at moments of political excitement.

On turning to Signor Pirandello's book of short stories, The Naked Truth, we find ourselves transported to a different plane of reality. The sureness and ease of the tales proclaim the master, even in translation, for a book must lose in translation even when so excellently done as it is in this case by Arthur and Henrie Mayne. There are twelve stories in this book, strong yet subtle, all of which ledve a 'distinct impression on the mind. The characters give the sense of being in the round, thought they are all seen only from one angle, a view admirable for the short story, but apt to become boring in a novel, as it often does (let us say .it with bated breath) in those of Dickens. Signor Pirandello has dis- covered the secret of pace : the stories all move with the requisite swiftness, yet give -the sense of infinite leisure. He also has the exact proportion of meat to roughage which makes a thoroughly satisfying meal. It is the lack of these two last qualities which somewhat weakens Miss Coyle's book. Family Skeleton goes a trifle too fast : it has sometimes procured lightness at the expense of necessary bulk : there is not always enough to chew. But Signor Pirandello writes so as to rank with the great masters of the short story, whether he is giving us a harsh picture as in " The Benedic- tion," a piece of horror as in " The Red Booklet," or a scene of pure comedy as in " The Naked Truth." This last story, the second in the book which bears its title, reveals how much Signor Pirandello owes to the technique he has acquired as a dramatist : it might well form the scenario of a three-act play ; and throughout, in the arrangement and the dialogue we can scent the benefit of the other discipline. Tchekov too, we remember, was a playwright, and perhaps it is this faculty which removes the slightly metallic ring we hear in the work of other masters of the short story,- Maupassant, say, and Mr. Kipling. Signor Pirandello deals largely with the superstitious peasant mind, and though he never criticizes this, we are all the time aware that we have a modern writer dealing with it, with understanding, and a tenderness of . judgement, which give the stories their undoubted but never obtrusive philosophic background.