Fiction
Headlines. By Janette Cooper. (Hamish Hamilton. 7s. lid.)
Ma. H. W. FREEMAN conies to the chronicling of the English countryside with many assets, one of which is a first-hand knowledge of farming. This, to so good an artist, is perhaps of less importance than might appear. Imagination, as we saw only last week, in the case of Miss McHugh, can create in intimate detail and with authority a life of which the author has no physical knowledge. Yet such knowledge has one great value, in that it relieves the artist from all necessity of convincing himself. Imaginative knowledge must be checked, lest its detail be inconsistent. Factual knowledge checks itself.
Fathers of their People seems to me an extraordinarily fine book. I am, I admit, biassed in favour of the country novel, but I do not need my bias in recommending Mr. Freeman's story. It is admirably written : every paragraph is interesting and easy to read : there is a vigorous, naturally growing story: the characters are strongly drawn, and their
speech is a happy compromise between verisimilitude I intelligibility. One need know nothing of the countryside to enjoy and be convinced by this tale of a Suffolk farm, one of the few relics of the Feudal System, with Adam Brandish at its head, and his son Dick coming on, as a labourer with the rest, to learn his trade. The feud between farmer and molecatcher, the cruelty of Rumbelow, the plight of Abner and his Polly, need no bucolic lore to understand them. Those who know the country will treasure this book. Those who do not will, by the time they have read it, know enough to treasure it just the same. Mr. Freeman is developing steadily and in the grand succession.
Morning Tide was the lyrical expression of a single back- ground and a single mood, a lovely book, almost perfect of its kind. In his new novel Mr. Neil Gunn has introduced characters of an alien culture. He has attempted more than in Morning Tide ; in some ways, he has achieved more ; but The Lost Glen is technically far less successful, simply because its various ingredients, though honestly studied, have not blended to make a single whole. Ewan, a fisherman's son, returning in disgrace from the university, loses his father in a storm and settles down as a gillic. Four characters pre- dominate in the story : Ewan ; Clare, a sophisticated visitor who falls for hint ; Colonel Hicks, a pukka sahib whose idea of
demonstrating his station is to insult his inferiors and seduce their womenfolk ; and Mary; Ewan's old love. The book. soon develops from a three-sided to a four-sided struggle, When the Colonel assaults Mary, and finally Ewan settles with him a score which has come to represent far more than a personal protest. There is no doubt of the book's importance as a document of Highland problems ; but not all Mr. Gunn's vigour nor the beauty of occasional passages must be allowed to blind us to the fact that it is not an organic whole. Mr. Gunn is not happy with Clare, not altogether happy with his symbolism, in fact, not quite certain of himself ; and his uneasiness is manifest in an occasional tendency to over-write, and to make single incidents bear more than their due burden in the story. I have the greatest respect and admiration for Mr. Gunn's gifts, but they do .not work harmoniously in 2'he Lost Glen.
Sophka is is violent tale of Serbia. It has little story. Its heroine, beautiful daughter of an old impoverished family, is married to the son of a wealthy peasant. Her bridegroom is little more than a child, and his father is with difficulty pre- vented from taking his place. Sophka tends the boy, and he grows to love her. Then her father insults him, and he deserts her. Occasionally he comes back to present Sophka with a series of unsatisfactory children. The book depends for its effect on striking and vivid scenes, such as the gathering of women in the bath-house, and the wedding feast, and on a general richness of style which after a time becomes rather indigestible. It reads as a faithful enough record of barbaric life, animal and lusty, but fails in sustained interest through a lack of depth and variety in the characters.
Mr. Jubenka bailed also, I suspect, from the Balkans : but he is not at all like any of Mr. StankOvitch's characters. Paul IV. of Strubania, red-haired, red-bearded, is exiled by a revolution. His fiancée suggests that he go to England incognito with a couple of followers, so that he may get into touch with ordinary people. Paul (alias Mr. Jubenka), Count Jansic, and Marshal Globkje are singularly unsuccessful at the Regal Palace Hotel, but fare much better as paying guests at Rusty Hamlet Vicarage. They are getting on quite nicely, when the vicar's son discovers Mr. Jubenka's identity from a postage stamp, and the secret leaks out to Fatty Hartop's journalist uncle. Then—but I must not spoil Mr: Alington's fun. He is our most good-humoured satirist. Nothing escapes his mocking eye, and yet he hurts no one. Mr. Jubenka is a de- lightful book, sure of popularity, and I recommend it to all and sundry with the greatest confidence: A woman who has lived for some years with her husband on terms of love and trust suddenly discovers, through the re- porters who crowd into her room,. that he has been arrested for the murder of a woman whom he has bigamously married. She has no money for his defence. The reporters drive a bar- gain with her. Her husband is condemned. She fights for him, but to no purpose, her last interview with' him taking place a couple of hours before his death. That is the outline of Miss Cooper's book, which, though 'written as a novel, is a perfectly true story. This being so, it is hardly a book to discuss critically. It is a testament of suffering which will, hope, find Many readers. The 'treatment offered to "Mrs. Kendall " by the American Press needs to *be read to be believed. It proves that films such as The Front Page, far from being exaggerations, are mere sentimental understatements of the truth. The story is told clearly, without pretence or artifice, and is exceedingly moving—to say the least of it.
L. A. G. STRONG.
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