FICTION HEROINES OF TO-DAY AND -*YESTERDAY- -
Clad in Purple Mist. By Catherine Dodd. (Jarrold. 78.. 6d.) EvEwsi tenth person one. meets under the age of forty, and even so_ me considerably over, seems to harbour nsecret longing to act for the films. This being so, it is to be hoped that all the aspirants will read Minnie Flynn for the vivid picture it gives of the agonies attendant upon success as a kinema star. The novel is written by Miss Frances Marion, one-of the most celebrated American film scenario-writers : and the sketch of life she presents is consequently authentic and convincing. It is sharply and pointedly rather than well written, this melodramatic tale of the rise and decline of a vain, empty- headed little girl. Examples enough warned her : she had heard a girl like herself, once famous and courted, now broken and poor, cry passionately : " God damn this rotten motion picture business ! It saps us so ! 7 She might have recognized that her success was due to her . unstudied. naturalness, the abandon and quiCk feelings -of. a . girl of tge peoplU. But sheSianfed to be a lady; Weir jewels;." use scents. Whose names-she couldn't pronounce, and be adored • by flash beaux ill, eXlienis-14-e - Honour, 11e.s-, `decency, even common sense, went by the board. 'There are actually scores like her : and not a few whose fate has been far more terrible. -For, as the book shows, the entertainment world is a cruel machine and: devOurs all but the very best and finest of thosewho serve it.
By contrast nothing could be less modern, less crude than The Venetian Glass. Nepheiv, an exquisitely written and delicate tale of eighteenth-century Venice. It concerns Peter Innocent Bon, an aged cardinal whose smile " impressed eyen the most-impious as a small flame burning perpetually within. the silver shadow of hiseconntenance" - To oblige this adorable
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ancient's desire for a nepheW, no less a personage than Casanova, he of the Memoirs to be written later, makes by intensely complex- and diverting:magical operations a young man of finest glass—hunian enough if brittle, and too beautiful for words. The rest of the book concerns itself with a delicate and poignant love affair between the crystal nephew and a sublime girl " soft and inscrutable as a Persian kitten." She was not soft enough in movement, however, for a crystal lover, and in time the kind elders again brought difficult magic to play upon the beauty to make her a fitter bride for so exqui- sitely fragile a groom. This is all most graciously and musically told by the authoress : and those who enjoy the savour of well- made prose as vehicle for a gay and tender tale will do well to keep this charming vOlume at hand, for it repays re-ieading and is diverting and witty.
Clad in Purple Mist does not lose itself in meaningless psychologizings and subtleties : after a depressing preface it relates surely, and with real feeling, an old-time story— rather like one of Charles Reade's but from the woman's, not the ill-treated convict lover's point of view. The heroine, a true Victorian, keeps faith with a disgraced sweetheart, works for him and eventually restores him to honour and happiness. Many of the scenes are set in the Isle of Man, and the book incorporates naturally and 'pleasingly much of the old-time lore of the little, fiercely-independent island. After a surfeit of over-clever, over-sitphisticated fiction, one gladly succumbs to Miss Dodcrs nicely contrived tale of honest flesh-and-blood people, who did not conceive faith: and honour as jokes, but as ideals which, if well served, brought with them the best of human happiness.
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