STARVECROW FARM.*
THE period of Mr. Stanley Weyman's new story is that of the industrial upheaval which followed hard on the termina- tion of the Great War, the jumping-off place, so to speak, being the massacre of Peterloo. Yet although a few minor historical personages cross and recross his pages, such as the saturnine Thistlewood of the Cato Street Conspiracy, and although the social and political temper of the times are accurately enough reflected therein, Mr. Weyman wisely refrains from describing Starvecrow Farm as an historical romance. The situations which lend the plot its special character could not very well have arisen at a later date, and in the main grow legitimately enough out of the revolu- tionary temper of the discontented classes in the second decade of the last century. But after all, it is not so much as a picture of the time as a study of humanity that Starvecrow Farm, claims attention. The limitations of the environment are helpful in that they make for artistic concentration, and deter- mine the treatment of the theme, but the essential traits of the central figure are common to heroines of all ages—high spirits, courage, and devotion. When to these admirable qualities there remain to be added the indiscretion and ignorance of youth, a chequered career follows inevitably enough. In the case of Henrietta Darner, however, her difficulties are so multiplied from the very outset that some tender-hearted readers may be inclined to charge Mr. Weyman with breaking the rules of the game. You may make your heroine as distressful as you please, they will say, but at least allow her to combine distress with dignity. An elopement is all very well, but how can a heroine ever recover from the ignominy of eloping in the very first chapter with a half-hearted agitator, who conceals his hfimble birth under an alias, and has left his deserted wife and children to fend for themselves P There is no discredit in being abducted by a villain, but to fall in love with an impostor is another matter entirely. Miss Thackeray essayed a somewhat similar task in Miss Angel, though she had the excuse of not invent- ing a situation, but borrowing it straight from fact ; but it needed all the tenderness of her delicate talent to rob the theme of its inherent painfulness. Here we are dealing with the trials of an imaginary character, and though poor Henrietta is severely punished for her folly, she is at least granted the consolation that her betrayal is free from dis- honour. Her humiliation, however, is only enhanced by the fact that she owes her rescue to the intervention of a rejected suitor, a middle-aged retired sea-captain, now a Magistrate and Member of Parliament, who has acquired an unenviable notoriety for his severity in repressing disorder, and who cruelly turns the tables on Henrietta, when she is cast off by her family, by proposing that his chaplain should marry her out of hand. Again, the position of Henrietta is not only humiliating, it is perilous, since she has unwittingly rendered herself an accomplice in the schemes of a political incendiary who is " wanted " by the police on a grave charge, and her persistent refusal to betray his whereabouts results in her being sent to gaol. The task that Mr, Weyman has set himself is truly of formidable proportions. It is not enough that he.should extricate Henrietta from prison and clear her • Starescrow Farm. By Stanley Weyman. Landon: Hutchinson dceo. [es.] character of stain. He must, if she is to be worthy of the• role of heroine, rehabilitate her in her self-esteem and devise some plausible means whereby she may ultimately cry gaits with her rescuer. The opportunity arises when her fortunes are at their lowest ebb, and though it presupposes a fortitude almost incredible if we are to accept as accurate the portraits of young ladies given in the fiction of the period, Henrietta rises to the occasion, and at the risk of her own life completely reverses the balance of indebtedness between herself and Captain Lyne. The story, which furnishes excellent, and at times exciting, reading, and is told throughout in Mr. Wey- man's terse and unaffected manner, suffers, in our opinion, from two drawbacks. The initial humiliation of Henrietta is too overpowering and the love interest too perfunctorily treated for the book to satisfy the claims of high romance. But as a vigorous, wholesome, and well-constructed tale it deserves to win wide acceptance.
Peace on Earth. By Reginald Turner. (Alston Rivers. es.)— Mr. Reginald Turner has covered so long a period of time in his rather short novel that the effect of the work as a whole is inevitably somewhat sketchy. The most successful figure in the book is that of the social reformer, Jasper Sladen, an avowed enemy of the existing social system, who takes up as his work in life the consolation of those victims of society, released convicts. From the point of view of the extremists in the book— with whom the author's own sympathies seem to lie—the world would be a far better place if all its inhabitants were swept away. No efficient substitute for the human race appears, how- ever, to have occurred to these enthusiasts, so that their efforts at reformation seem to be a little pointless. The character of the unfortunate Paul is interesting, if not altogether credible, and his end gives a touch of tragedy to a rather dreary piece of fiction. Mr. Turner should, before setting to work, have decided whether he wished the main theme of his book to be the impossi- bility of obtaining universal peace in the world, or the considera- tion of the policy of destroying mankind as a triumph of human justice. A novel is too small a canvas to contain even the barest outline of two such very large ideas.
At the Sign of the Pea. By "Barbara." (Macmillan and Co. 6s.)—The author of "The Garden of a Commuter's Wife" has not, by substituting fiction for her usual notes on men and manners, lost the qualities of gentle irony which distinguish her writing. At the Sign of the Foe is a story of modern life in America written with quick insight into the motives which prompt the actions of human beings. The heroine, who, unfor- tunately, bears the Christian name of Brooke (horribly hard and unattractive to British ears), is well drawn and lifelike, though it is a little difficult to believe in the love affair which reaches its climax on the last page of the book. The pictures in the first chapters of New York society, and later of life on an American farm, are all deeply interesting to those English people who welcome descriptions of what life in America is really like. The story is eminently readable, although it has not, perhaps, quite the subtle charm which distinguished the first book by this author.
The Man who Won. By Mrs. Baillie Reynolds. (Hutchinson and Co. 6s.)—Mrs. Reynolds's new novel marks a decided advance on " Phcebe in Fetters." It is just as pleasantly written, and has much more in it than her earlier book. The opening chapters, in which the scene is laid in South Africa, are vividly written, and convince the reader of the truth of the picture which they represent. The least successful parts of the book are the scenes in which the heroine shares the life of some cousins in a country vicarage. It is very difficult to imagine a family conducted on the lines adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, and this part of the novel does not ring true. But Melicent Lutwyche is an attractive figure, and the house which she builds for "Captain Brooke" or "Bert Mestaer "—the man of the title—sounds exceedingly delightful.
C URRENT LITERATURE.
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