NOVELS.
MR. CLUTTERRUCK'S ELECTION.*
ALL who enjoyed Mr. Belloc'e Emanuel Burden will naturally read Mr. Clutterbuck's Election. They will not be dis- appointed in one sense, because, however much of a failure a new book by Mr. Belloc might be, it would still have rare qualities of wit and mental distinction which would differentiate it from the highest flight of the ordinary novelist. But in another sense they probably will be disappointed, because they will find that, although Mr. Belloc's ca,stigations of Englishmen are capable of very wide, and therefore varied, application, the form of the satire is actually inelastic. The satire of Mr. Clutterbuck's Election is precisely the satire of Emanuel Burden, with the defect aggravated ; it is more chilling. If Mr. Belloc could persuade Mr. Chesterton to illustrate his next satire in the manner in which he illustrated Emanuel ,Burden, a little more geniality might be introduced. The trick of describing the conventions of the British race, which, of course, Mr. Belloc dislikes and despises, in elaborately honorific language is very effective at first; but after a time the reader feels that he could do all that part for himself without troubling Mr. Belloc. Satire should employ numerous weapons, even though it be aiming all the time at one mark. Is it not a familiar fact that the greatest difficulty of the satirist is to "keep it up" ? An air of " sameness " quicker than anything produces the sense of flagging indigna- tion. Another point is that satire must be perfectly clear; the reader must never be in the slightest doubt as to the object of the attack or the reason of it. Was a reader of Swift ever in doubt, or a reader of Juvenal ? Mr. Clutter. buck's Election, which begins with most satisfying clearness, does not "keep it up," and the end of the story is a giddy whirl of wirepulling, in which the satirical intention is utterly obscured, if not engulfed.
The first chapter, which introduces us to Clutterbuck, an honest, amiable, stupid merchant, is masterly. There is a perfect economy of words; the implicit irony is handled with power and accuracy, and we know our man before we have read many pages. Clutterbuck stumbles into wealth,—by two acts of fortunate insanity on his own part, and a third on the part of his clerk. He rises from his humble villa in Croydon to a magnate's palace of his own creation in Caterham Valley. He falls under the cynical and worldly guidance of a secretary—a member of "the ruling classes "—to whom political intrigue is as hunting or shooting to other men. The great world is so new to Clutterbuck that he drinks in knowledge and questions nothing :— "Nothing perhaps struck Mr. Clutterbuck more in the great soeiety he had entered than the superb ease which distinguished it. Every member of that world seemed free to pursue his own appetite or inclination without restraint of form, and yet the whole was bound by just that invisible limit which is the frame- work of good breeding. Here on his right was Lord Steyning, talking at the top of his voice; a little nearer Charlie Fitzgerald was whispering across his neighbour, Miss Carey, to another guest whose name Mr. Clutterbuck did not know. The Duke of Battersea felt no necessity to talk to any one beside his hostess, or to take his eyes for more than a moment from her face ; while Mr. William Bailey shocked no one by maintaining a perfect silence, and staring gloomily through his spectacles at a ` Reynolds ' of his great grandfather, the Nabob, which he had frequently declared in mixed company to be a forgery. It was this atmosphere of freedom that gave Mr. Clutterbuck his chief pleasure in an evening which he heartily, thoroughly, and uninterruptedly enjoyed."
Clutterbuck is bustled into Parliament, and bustled out again (being unseated on petition), and at last he is left, as it were, hot and panting on the ground, the more or less contented possessor of a knighthood. He excites neither auger nor sympathy. He is neither a Jonathan Wild nor a Jourdain. Meanwhilee-and this is the heart of the matter—Mr. Belloc has castigated Imperialism, and the financial world, and fashionable society, and politicians, and Cabinet Ministers, and every one and anything else that comes handy. He places his story a little in advance of the present day. Under the assumed conditions the old political parties are scarcely recognisable ; a new " National " Party is in existence, which comes somewhere between them; Free-trade is dead, the Tariff having already reached its second form; and women have votes. Clutterbuck is swept into Parliament on a wave
• Mr. Cluttarbucte s Election. By H. Belloc. London : Eveleigh Nash. [Gs.] of popular passion excited by the imprisonment of two workmen who have refused to be bound in an industrial dispute by the Compulsory Arbitration Act. The weighty and considered judgment (as Mr. Belloc might call it) of Mr. Justice Hunnybubble that contracts are binding on both sides is execrated by mob prejudice, and Clutter- buck has only to join in the outcry to find himself a god for the time being. We notice that after Clutterbuck's election the Spectator (which, being a British convention that Las to be knocked down, must bear as well as it can the stinging title of "the premier review of the Anglo-Saxon race ") changes its ground and accepts the popular argument as valid. It is not for us to argue the point of consistency— that must be left to our readers to decide—but at least we may say that Mr. Belloc would have hit us much harder if he had not put us in the wrong about the very principle to which we have so often expressed a thick-and-thin allegiance. This, however, does not matter ; we disinterestedly make him a present of the suggestion for future use. What matters more is that Mr. Belloc's choice of other pegs to hang bis satire on is still more unfortunate. Why associate episodes of shady finance in England with people who are interested In the Congo P We cannot fairly complain that Clutterbuok himself is not castigated, although he is a type, and of course it is types that are the only fair object of public satire ; but we reasonably can complain that Mr. William Bailey, who is made ridiculous as a fanatical Anti-Semite, is not a British type at all. But although we adjure Mr. Belloc to run his satire in future on new wheels, or at least to give the old ones a rest, we must advise every one to read this book. At least the first half of it might be used as a standard test of irony.
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