FICTION.
AN AVERAGE MAN.* Ix this story Father Benson shows himself once again to have something of that combination of the idealist, the scholar, and the man of the world which brought fame and power to the Jesuits. We hasten to deprecate in advance any suspicion on the part of Father Benson that we mention the Jesuits in the unfriendly spirit he might possibly expect from a mere Protestant critic. When Father Benson becomes " silky" in his argument—to borrow a phrase which he applies to Anglican conceptions of Roman Catholic methods—he by no means has the silkiness of intellectual slyness. His silkiness, we fancy, is rather the result of a man of the world's desire to prove that he understands, sympathizes with, and is not shocked by, the ways of young men, and above all, of Protestant young men. Thus he fre- quently tries to conciliate by going more than half-way to meet the preconceptions of his opponents. He is willing to say unflattering things (when they do not very much matter) about his Roman Catholic friends. Even in the structure of this new story, written, of course, more or less ostensibly for the glorification of the Roman Church, there is a silken subtlety, for he rejects the obvious idea of making his hero, a young man of great possessions, devote himself to the Roman Church. The young man, on the contrary, breaks away from the Roman faith shortly after he has been converted to • An Average Man. By Robert Hugh Benson. London: Hutchinson. [68.]
it. The sole convert which Roman Catholicism makes in the course of the story is an admittedly ineffective Anglican curate. This tragical figure of a man, being married, cannot become a Roman priest. He therefore unfrocks himself and becomes a Roman Catholic layman. He makes a fresh start in life as a commercial traveller, and is soon dismissed from his job for sheer and unwitting incompetence. Truly this convert is hardly a head to count when the captives of war are being reckoned up. It is necessary to read the story, then, before the reader can appreciate how Father Benson is able to glorify his Church out of such externally discouraging events. The Roman Catholic Church, he seems to say, is the prize of the humble and meek ; she is beyond the grasp or the ultimate understanding of the " average man," however sincere his first advances towards her may be.
Percy Brandreth Smith, a clerk in the City, whose father is a doctor, and whose mother is a member of a county family who has got out of the track of her relations, is presented to us as the "average man." He is persuaded by a brother clerk to attend a service in a Franciscan church in London. He is "knocked over" by the sermon. He is, as Evangelicals would say, "converted " or " born again." His approach to the Roman Church is thus purely emotional, and is not, as perhaps more usually happens, the result of historical considerations. Father Benson describes the process as only one could who has experienced it. But he does not add to the reality of the picture when be says in one place that Percy was like a dragon-fly, who looked with contemptuous pity upon (uncon- verted) grubs, and soon afterwards that an effect of conversion upon him was that all faces round him seemed gracious and all people his friends. Percy's family try to save him for their own faith when he declares his intention of becoming a Roman Catholic, and they do so by the most clumsy botchery —really incredible on the part of the mother, who proves herself later in the story more than a match for any situation. "A good talk with the Vicar" has, in fact, disastrous results. The vicar, mistrusting his own powers, transfers the task of re-converting the young man to a blatant renegade Roman priest. The vulgarity of the creature, who addresses his victim like a public meeting, sends Percy more resolutely towards the arms of the Roman Church.
We recognize that if the young man had remained in his dull suburban home, and had continued to be a clerk, and had continued for only a little longer to sing in the choir of his parish church (which Father Benson, with one of the occasional lapses of taste to which he is subject, likens to a "shoddy heaven "), his reception into the Roman Church would have been a very rapid affair. But the deceitfulness of riches came to him. His mother unexpectedly inherited a fine property and a large income—stated by the author in one passage to be £12,000 a year and in another £15,000. The adaptation of the doctor and his wife to their new surroundings in "the county" is most lightly and agreeably told. Percy's first experiences of shooting are delightfully handled. We are surprised that his managing mother did not tell him that he was out of the picture in which he studied to be included when he wore, as we incidentally learn he did, " knickerbockers and pumps " at eleven o'clock in the morning, or when he expended lavish thought on the style of his evening trousers for a dinner and theatre in London only to top them with a "dinner jacket."
The leaven of riches works slowly but surely. Percy looks back from the plough to which he had put his hand. He throws over an actress to whom he is secretly engaged, plead- ing that as she has divorced her husband he will not be allowed to marry her when he is received into the Roman Church. Soon afterwards he throws over the Roman Church. In brief he sacrifices his love to his faith and his faith to his position in the county. It is all extremely readable, though we miss in most of the book the dry humour which graces the earlier chapters.
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