Fiction
Variations in Personality
. 78. 6d.)
OF all the myths and mysteries of the spring, that of Demeter and Persephone is the most profound and beautiful. Can an artist of G. B. Stern's quality really think that the stainless goddess-girl who was rapt from the flowers of Enna to the dark chariot of Aidoneus may be imagined in the same instant as her reckless Loveday, " ragamuffin one," gold- digger, demi-vierge, or that the fussy, jealous little parent of that Loveday could wear one moment the grave raiment
of the Mourning Mother, the Hellenic Madonna ? Miss Stern is still disinclined for her more serious work ;- and though Jack a' Manory proves that she can be deft at a gay enter- tainment, Debonair seems a mistake. She strikes the great Demeter chord of lamentation, and syncopates the theme into very bad jazz. The rush of Loveday's irresponsible adventures is given with a captivating expertise ; and most of the characters are lively puppets. Loveday is so tenderly described that we half believe that her eyes and mouth are " debonair " even if her speech and deeds are not. In short, the book is a jarring disappointment ; but it is not dull.
In Keeping Up Appearances Miss Rose Macaulay joyously renews her attack on the follies of her day. Her dexterity is unfailing, her derision is contagious, and her impatience with fads, cranks, and poses as brilliant as it is salutary. All her unsparing knowledge of the shams and subterfuges of the human consciousness is here applied to the sad case of Daphne Daisy Simpson, who, like many another, had at least three personalities. Daisy, her conscious self, is a weak, nerve- stricken creature aged thirty, who " keeps up appearances " in the shape of her day-dream Daphne, a courageous, attractive, gamine person, radiating vitality to the eyes that observe her, especially the eyes of Raymond Folyot, with whom she is desperately in love. Some elfin and wistful spirit, crying behind all this, is Daphne-Daisy's real self.- But there is an embarrassing extension -of Daisy in Miss Marjorie Wynne, author of novels like Summer's Over, and chief contributor to the Woman's Page of the Daily Wire. When Raymond becomes engaged to her, Daisy, distracted between her mother and step-relatives, Cockney and kind, and the Folyot family, given to hobbies but extremely " cultured," by nervous lying gets herself into an imbroglio at once cruel and funny. She is lost in snobbish betrayals, and by night is " blown about by black winds from Dis." There is a dreadful exposure scene, and Daisy releases Raymond. Here now, before she sails for America, might Daisy's true self come fluttering into her desolate state. But a lady says some conventional words of admiration on the liner. Daphne walks brightly in to luncheon ; Daisy begins to back her up, and Miss Wynne prepares to face a lecturing tour. " Oh, what am I to do ? ' whispered the little bewildered voice that belonged to none of these three, and" . fled shivering for cover. - Daphne-Daisy goes her uncertain way through a scene crowded with amusing people and an atmosphere thick with mordant shafts of satire. Through Daisy's activities, and those of her step-brother " Ed," a deadly battery of contempt is directed at journalistic ways. In some other matters ;the author is not inevitably right, though she is always shrewd. Her gaze at humanity sometimes seems a little hard ; and her humours rarely drop their bright plummets very deep. She scorns to appear _moved ; and only in a comparison or a swift impression will she whisper an admission of things eternal.
M. Henri de Montherlant is a distinguished French author ; and those who are aware of his literary descent from Banes and Maurras and -his passion for " latinisme " will certainly read his work in the original. The translator of Bullfighters would have been well advised to set some brief preface before his version of this early episode in the career of the adolescent hero of Le Songe. Alban de Briconte appears here in his seventeenth year, spending a holiday in Andalusia to satisfy hiS passion for the bull-fight. So Roman are the boy's dreams that words like " arena " and " vestiarii " even can enchant him, and, like 'a true Mithraic adept, he loves the bull he slays. This is an unusual study of Latin youth ; and those who can make the intellectual effort to realize a bull-fight as a sacerdotal mystery will find some fascination in the obscure and haughty soul of the young devotee of Imperial Rome.
Not in Geneva would we naturally look for such compre. hension ; but apparently bloodshed of a more secret kind does brighten up the tale of " conversations " and councils.: So Peter Oldfield asserts in The Death of a Diplomat. A diamond and a secret treaty vanish after a murder ; John Lavington, aided by the delightful journalist Betty Marshall, recovers the treaty. The other way round, really ; for Lavington seems rather a novice at this game. But this actually is an exciting story ; and the slightly bureaucratic style seems to heighten the effect. The reader feels distinctly " let down " in the last chapter, when he is told that the dangerously recovered treaty has been published the night before by the contracting parties. I do not believe it. But John and Betty fall into each other's arms, all the same.
The Mad Carews belong to those families of insolent grace that come to ruin with such pride of bearing that they pass in pardon. This novel is a love story of a simple and noble kind, set in the hollows of Minnesota, and intimate with seedtime and harvest. It is written with real eloquence ; and the final scene on the mountain is beautiful.
In The Ninth Vibration Mrs. Adams Beck presents eight stories dipped in the mythologies of the East. The two longest are still spoiled for some tastes by too wordy description and a vague exaltation which is not true mysticism. But others have a new reticence and a dramatic power which gives them real imaginative value. " The Incomparable Lady " has a charming irony of manner ; and " The Hatred of the Queen " is most moving. Perhaps Mrs. Adams Beck has found her artistic form of expression in the short story.
RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR.
Previous page
