FICTION
By CATHERINE CARSWELL
" I HAVE decided that life is both sad and glorious, if you can make up your mind not to do anything sudden that you
might be sorry for." This pronouncement, which occurs in a letter from Mr. Horgan's young hero, Danny Milford, to his benefactor, Professor Winston Burlington, fairly repre- sents the opinion of these six modern novelists. Life to them seems at once glorious and sad. At the same time their stories are evolved from the human propensity to do sudden things that are bound to be regretted later. Danny Milford comes to us as a balance carried forward from an earlier book, Main Line West, and there are signs that he will appear in a later. He is a waif who strikes it rough at first but is well- beloved and well--befriended, notably by the Professor, who had graduated only in the school of life and taken his degree in fraud, and he hai the seeds of greatness in him. So, at least, people are always telling him ; he admits it himself ; his creator has no doubt about it. All that appears uncertain is 'whether he will emerge as a saviour of mankind or merely a President of the United States. For the book is representa- tively American in its measure, as in its beautiful and beastly incident, its sentiment and its overhanging cloudy idealism.
The incident and characterisation are admirable within their convention, the children are well understood, and the story is one to be read with leisurely enjoyment.
In The Swift Shadow Mr. 'Strong is back in the Devonshire
he knows so well and so skilfully. Against a primitive country background we follow the progress of Esther Nancarrow, strong and beautiful, with a mother no better than she should be. Esther is full of impassioned womanly resentment against the three men who desire her as much as they attract and repel her. In a scene of violence the most manly of the three is bereft (on her behalf) of his manliness and is thrown on her hands as a querulous invalid. Esther's generous tenderness is rewarded upon his death by marriage with the less forceful but more reliable of her admirers. " Whatever its troubles, life would be easy for her now," says the author in his con- cluding sentence. We must doubt this, no matter how highly we may rank his fine tale.
In ordinary life a sally lunn is a simple kind of tea-cake which is made attractive to the palate by being toasted and buttered and eaten hot. The heroine of Mr. Walmsley's pleasant English sea-coast romance lives up to her name in every good sense. She goes to London as a lady's maid, but having sailor blood in her veins as well as external graces, returns to the parental cottage with relief and, after some delay caused by jealousy, takes a fisherman husband almost against his will. Mr. Walmsley has a sure touch for the fishing village, and his Sally is lively enough to create lively pleasure in readers who can see what an excellent wife she will make.
Miss Lane, wittiest and wisest of our authors taken in this order, is concerned with a more sophisticated group of people who, in their endeavour to fly from London sophistication, discover themselves crudely to themselves and each other.
Russell Murray, a novelist whose stwas d'estime does not suffice to pay his wine-merchant's bill, is a delightful creation— absurd without ever becoming a caricature, and at least half redeemed by the tragedy that overtakes him. The delays, annoying to him but diverting to us, and the final carrying out of his dream, provide the loose scheme of an entertain- ment which benefits by several deep shadows. His peculiar family are intensely alive, and each one wins sympathy. Especially lovable is Cornelia, the American Slade student who accompanies the Murrays for her own reasons, but we are as dubious about the happy ending to her love-affair- though for other reasons—as we are about Esther Nancarrow's.
The two historical novels on this list exhibit instructively two aspects of the art of historical fiction. Miss Gordon has,
I could wager, been at as much pains as Herr Mann in mastering the records of a complicated period. But, in presenting her picture of the American Civil War, she has elected to introduce its famous figures rather as points anal landmarks than as individuals with whom we can become intimate. In all that concerns the War and the times she is strictly faithful and well informed. She clairni first interest, however, for a ramified family, the members of which reflect in themselves all that actually happened. The Allards of Kentucky—planters and slave-owners—are supplied as our mirror, and they are so well supplied that they have a reality impossible to historical figures not shaped by a poet who is also a dramatist. At Fontaine Allard's birthday party we come rapidly to know and like his wife, his children, his nephews and grand-children. And, because his sixty-first birthday coincides with the eve of the War, we go on to partake of the experience that must have fallen to the lot of all such families. The young glory of the War's opening, the horrors of its course, and the sordid wastefulness of its aftermath affect us as though we had shared in them. Here ii one way of writing historical fiction.
It is not Herr Mann's way. More ambitious, he takes none but the personages of his era—Henry of Navarre, Jeanne D'Albret, Marguerite of Valois, Charles the Ninth, Admiral Coligny, Catherine di Medici and the rest—and, relegating his readers to the auditorium, tries to galvanise these famous ones into novelistic characters. Where history has omitted to record conversations he invents them, and he supplies the untold thoughts and the motives for every action. He mag- nificently knows his history, and his effort is itself magnificent. We are impressed. The spectacle is gorgeous and violent.
But his effects are too effective, too poster-like. We may be carried away, but we do not believe in his puppets. A further trouble resides in the verbal style which, in parts, follows the pseudo-Scriptural convention employed by Thomas Mann in his Old Testament novel about Joseph and his brethren. Now we launch out in this kind of narrative : " There is a town in Provence called Salon, where dwelt a famous man whom Henri had encountered at this time."
Again, we find compressed into a single Biblical paragraph a dozen historical events and movements. But these things are sandwiched between " scenes " of sixteenth-century violence and romantic interludes furbished out in a manner that has nothing Biblical about it. The characters lean . against chairs and hiss out whole sentences. They even hiss into ladies' necks, " a truce to your buffoonery." Their lips " curl," their eyes " cloud with anguish," and they murmur things like " Henri ! Your body is made to the classic norm for a man's body. By my honour, you deserve a reward for that." It is not to be thought that Mr. Eric Sutton, who is above suspicion as a translator, has been at fault. Such passages are perfectly in keeping with the awl' m's description of a silence said to be so deep that everybody, though out cf doors, heard the tears of a returning courier " dripping on to his jerkin." Period acoustics !
If you can allow for this, or if you like your history this way, King Wren is- your book. Some may prefer either a drier exposition of events or a franker slant of fiction from which to view them, forming their own opinions accordingly. It depends largely upon one's view of what history is. With confidence it can be said that, for any reader who wishes to become acquainted with the outlines and incidents, the figures and the facts of all that heralded and followed the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, Herr Mann will prove to be a safe guide as well as an exciting one. His landscapes are airy and beautiful, his interiors fine and correct, his great folk nobly conceived yet human. Henry of Navarre, especially, emerges as a fascinating man built upon the grand scale, and this he undoubtedly was. Reckless, generous, amorous, tolerant, faulty, and full of high virtues, he appears on the first page as a wild and grubby child of four running about his -native hills, and we follow him through all his huge adventures without losing interest in one who never forfeits his virile integrity. Such .achieveme,nts' are not easy. We are at liberty to dislike the author's method and yet .to applaud the success of his- undertaking.
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