NOVELS.
THE YOUNGER SET.t THE evolution of Mr. Chambers's talent is following a course not unfamiliar amongst novelists on this side of the Atlantic.
• The Crusaders in the East : a Brief History of the Wars of Islam, with the Latins in Syria during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. By W. B. Stevenson. Cambridge: at the University Press. [7s. 6d. net.] t The Younger Set. By Robert W. Chambers. London: A. Constable and
Co. [6s.]
After making his name as a writer of romances in which the adventurous element predominates, he has of late deviated into the delineation of fashionable life. While we cannot profess ourselves altogether satisfied with the result, there is no denying the energy and enthusiasm which he brings to
bear on his task, and as a highly coloured picture of the extravagances of the idle rich in modern New York The Younger Set is worth careful study. The milieu chosen is very much the same as that dealt with in Mrs. Wharton's The House of Mirth, but in every other respect the two books are poles apart. Mr. Chambers is violently on the side of the angels. Chivalry, domesticity, conjugal affection, never had a more thoroughgoing or eloquent champion. The wickedness of the " smart set " is denounced with the fervour of Father Vaughan. At the same time, the sumptuous surroundings of that class—their gorgeous apparel, mag- nificently upholstered motor-cars, rococo elevators, Lucullan banquets, lovely complexions, and cataracts of red-gold hair—
are described with such inexhaustible unction that it is im- possible to regard Mr. Chambers in the light of a social satirist. Politics and poverty are alike eliminated from his recital ; of the seamy side of finance, it is true, we get some occasional glimpses ; but for the most part it is a world of ceaseless gaiety and entertainment to which Mr. Chambers introduces us, in which when virtuous matrons weep they " daintily efface " the trace of tears ; when heroines go a-bathing they cannot dispense with the assistance of a maid; and when strenuous heroes are embarrassed their faces assume a "silken pallor."
Captain Philip Selwyn, the hero of the story, is a man of thirty-five, and, like nearly all the characters in the plot, of great physical attractions. Volunteering for service in the Far East, he sacrificed a promising career to shield a guilty wife, and at the opening of the story we find him back in New York installed in the house of his married sister, a superb young matron with a bevy of beautiful but insub- ordinate children. Nina Austin, however, not content with the cares of her household and her nursery and her social engagements, has undertaken the charge in her first season of Miss Eileen Erroll, a young lady who is best introduced in the words of her chaperon :—
"‘ She's only nineteen ; pathetically unspoiled—a perfect dear. Men are going to rave over her and—not spoil her. Did you ever see such hair ?—that thick, ruddy, lustrous, copper tint ?—and sometimes it's like gold afire. And a skin like snow and peaches ! —she's sound to the core. I've had her exercised and groomed and hardened and trained from the very beginning—every inch of her minutely cared for exactly like my own babies. I've done my best,' she concluded with a satisfied sigh, and dropped into a chair beside her brother."
But this is not all. Let Miss Erroll herself now reveal the higher qualities which combine with figure, hair, and com- plexion to render her the most amazing of modern heroines :— "' When I was ten years old I was taken abroad for the winter. I saw the excavations in Crete for the buried city which father discovered near Prusos. We lived for a while with Professor Flanders in the Fayum district ; I saw the ruins of Kahun, built nearly three thousand years before the coming of Christ; I myself picked up a scarab as old as the ruins ! . . . Captain Selwyn—I was only a child of ten ; I could understand very little of what I saw and heard, but I have never, never forgotten the happiness of that winter. . . . And that is why, at times, pleasures tire me a little ; and a little discontent creeps in. It is ungrateful and un- gracious of me to say so, but I did wish so much to go to college —to have something to care for—as mother cared for father's work. Why, do you know that my mother accidentally discovered the thirty-seventh sign in the Karian Signary ? " No,' said Selwyn, did not know that.' He forbore to add that he did not know what a Signary resembled or where Karia might be."
As they are thrown a great deal together, and as Captain Selwyn is after all only human, the prospects of his finding speedy consolation must needs be thwarted by fresh mani- festations of Quixotry on his part. As a necessary corollary of his return to society he is constantly meeting his divorced wife, now married to a rake and a gambler; and what between Captain Selwyn's susceptibility and his chivalry, there is no telling what complications would have arisen if Mrs. Jack Ruthven—his late wife—did not opportunely develop insanity and " clear the decks " by pistolling her husband and herself. As a picture of high life in New York we know nothing to equal this extraordinary performance, passages in which recall " Ouida " in her most sumptuous manner. Nowhere else can one look for characters so oddly compounded of saint and sybarite, crusader and hedonist. The tone of luscious sentiment which pervades the text is faithfully reproduced in the illustrations ; and in parting from The Younger Set we heartily wish Mr. Chambers a speedy return to his earlier manner. He is best when he deals with the fighting man, and the fighting man is always a more impressive figure at Cannae than at Capua.
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