Fiction
THE historical novel is one of the hardest forms, in the under- taking of which the novelist should decide between two courses: me first, to take the reader back to the time of the novel ; the secona to bring that time forward into the present. To do the first is extremely difficult, and the result either smacks of the lamp, as in Hypatia, or else it becomes " arty " and " period." Scott, perhaps, did this as well as anybody, and at any rate
his terrific vitality, his continuous interest in all sorts of things, carries him forward to a triumphant end. But even he erred, as in The Fortunes of Nigel. Most writers fall between the two stools, or find an uneasy seat on one of them, while hanging on to the other with a hand outstretched in panic. It may be that the attempt to bring the past into the present inevitably " dates " in the end, since the present itself becomes the past, yet it
does seem that in our own time two novelists have succeeded is doing this to perfection, namely Mr. Myers in The Root and the Flower and The Pool of Vishnu, and Mr. Graves in his Claudius couple, and in his Sergeant Lamb doublet; of the two, Mr. Graves seems to have done it best. The Claudius books are perfect, with a style exactly fitted to the theme, although Mr. Graves might be talking about the statesmen of our own day, so alive, so real, so present do his people and their problems become.
One is not quite so sure about Sergeant Lamb. There is just a slight taint of the " period piece " about them, perhaps because they are not distant enough in time • and the difference in language, slight as it is, just makes all the difference. But one must hasten to say that this volume is even better than the first (Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth); its romance is less fanciful, though equally exciting. Just as Gibbon's service in the Militia served the historian of Rome, so Mr. Graves's own war-experience has served him as an historical novelist. The original documents not being available to us, we cannot tell how much Mr. Graves adds : nor do we care, for the whole account is so coherent, so built up of verisimilitude—which is at any rate more important than truth—that Lamb lives with us by our side. We take up his story after he had become a prisoner at Saratoga, and are told of his escape to New York, where he was transferred to 'the 23rd Foot (The Royal Welch, Mr. Graves's own regiment), helped to capture Charleston, and suffered in the humiliation of Yorktown. So much is brought in, as much as can be in a story told in the- first person, of a lowly situated and very intelligent being; so much is like today; so much is as it always was and always will be, that the book is an enchantment as well as an adventure from end to end. It can be read separately from its predecessor without any hurt.
I do not know if Mr. Graves has learnt from Defoe (as some of our writers so obviously have), but he has something of Defoe in him, in his directness, in the use he makes of passing and seemingly irrelevant detail, in his intense interest in all manner of men combined with an almost scientific detachment which yet goes with moral judgement. Not so Mr. Gould, whose story, also in the first person, is indeed exciting enough, but lacking in that corroborative if apparently useless detail. His hero, a schoolmaster, takes on the job of tutoring a rich man's son on a sea voyage just before the war. The war catches them, they are submarined, and some of them voyage for days in an open boat, or a derelict sailing ship. It is all a little too selected, too vou/u : and besides, the beginning, and again here and there, is smudged by the picture of the hero after it has all happened. It is what is called a " strong " story ; it is exciting, it has surprises, the characters are consistent, it has all except that little something (which can be analysed though not in a sentence or two) which would raise it above a hundred and one other books. It is, however, good light reading, and it gets an atmosphere.
Miss Johnstone gives us something very odd and entertaining in Temperate Zone. The book really belongs to the South Wind type, though it lacks the entrancing philosophic conversations. It is a pity that the heroine, Pipitza, is so ravishing: in her presence the story, instead of being a rollicking satire, almost becomes a romance. Yet, a true Mexican half-breed, she shows up in all their shoddiness the English and Americans who enjoy themselves in Mexico, or prey on it. The book is highly diverting, and a gay and healthy impropriety maintains the momentum of the attack. Miss Johnstone evidently knows her Mexico, and a good deal about the Indians as well as about their language, and now and again the Plumed Serpent ruffles the air about us as we read. Miss Johnstone keeps us alert, she keeps us amused, and she does not allow us to ignore the deeper impli- cations. What snore can one ask than that at the level which
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