THE NOVEL OF THE WEEK.*
THAT Mr. Stephen Gwynn would sooner or later write a novel was a foregone conclusion, seeing that it was about the only department of humane literature unexplored by his intrepid pen. As a writer of verse, both grave and gay, he has found an appreciative public amongst the readers of the 'Spectator and elsewhere. As essayist and critic he has commanded attention and stimulated controversy. Of the modern literary guide-book it would be hard to find a more delightful example than his volume on Donegal. His scholarship has been attested by editions of the classics, his interest in actualities by his articles on the new industrial movement Ireland. Indeed, this very versatility might well excite DAB' givings as to the result of a. fresh plunge into
the perilous
seas of fiction. Admirable Criehtons, literary or otherwise, find their limitations sooner or later, and if Mr. Gwynn, who has • The Oki Enowlege. By Stephen Gwynn. London : Idnemillan and Co. PIO done so many other things right well, bad fatarits a novelist, his literary reputation would still have remaineesecure. But such hypothetical misgivings have been happily dispelled by The Old Knowledge, which, if it cannot be pronounced an epoch-making work,rat least conibines three important deside- rata to a degree that lifts it far above the level of a mere 3 • credit/Ye. It is admirably written ; it has an interest- ing theme ; and its development, in plot and characterisation, while successfully avoiding the obvious, is in faithful corre- 3pondence with the facts of life. In a word, the book is both ,lharming and convincing.
In a story where environment counts for much in the development of character the writer who knows and loves his x,enny has a great initial advantage. Mr. Gwynn does not weary us with overmuch landscape painting, but introduces it with an unerring sense of its psychological value, witness the following picture of the surroundings of the central figure of his story "Far away in the west of Donegal is a wild, grey valley that looks across the ocean to America and the setting sun. Ringed about with mountains, it lies flat and spacious, hardly raised above the level of the sea. An arm of the Atlantic it should be, but for a strong mole of rocky hillocks, some two hundred yards in width, that blocks the entrance, and through these a little river finds its tortuous way. The bar of rock piled up with sandhills avails to keep the wave out, but makes no shelter from the wind ; and far to the landward sine the roads and paths, silted up with blown sand and sea wrack, testify to the force of winter gales. A bluff front of mountain to the south, to the north a headland fronting the sea with a sheer cliff all but a thousand feet in height, mark the valley's boundaries ; and the wind striking on these portals finds between them open passage, and scours up the level floor. Trees are none in sight, scarce a bush even; and into the walls of every cottage are built project- ing stones round which ropes are fastened, lest the roof be suddenly lifted and hurled into the air. Boats you shall see, three or four, perhaps, on the sloping shingle of one cleft in the rock, but hauled so high above the water-line that it would seem a day's labour to launch them. And, in truth, the days when it it is safe to launch a boat, or beach a boat, in that inhospitable nook are for months together few or none. Nature, that in so many bays seems to call vessels inward with alluring shores and windings of the waterway, has here set up a mark that might be a beacon to warn seafarers from the coast; for, off the corner of the great cliff, there towers one h uge fragment, a mountainous pillar of rock, fallen apart and outwards, severed at the base from the shore, as though some fierce sword-wielder had struck down once and for all upon the headland and cleft the steep contour into sheer precipice, determined that here, at least, earth should be inaccessible from the sea; here, at least, the eagle should breed secure. And yet this glen, so girt about with all the savagery of sea, and rock, and sky, is thickly peopled. Tiny plots of land show tillage, corn or potatoes crouching under the shelter of massive stone walla and mounded banks ; yet these plots must yield scant provender for all those huts that nestle close into the folds of the hills. How they live, these folk—not fishers, for the harbourless sea forbids—must be a wonder ; but here in this valley, for immemorial ages, men have been thick upon the ground. Monuments of time before history attest their presence; great Druid rings, grottoes raised of enormous upright stones, and roofed with even huger slabs, once the shrine of a forgotten cult, now sometimes turned to styes or stables ; subterranean passages covered in with great flagstones that three men could scarcely lift; all these speak of the older days. And on the mountain side a ruined chapel, still a place of pilgrimage, keeps alive the memory of Donegal's great saint; a cairn of stones speaks the multitude of worshippers that have piled it, leaving each his pebble. Centuries have passed over the valley, and made little change ; a church, a school house, here and there a slated roof; but still in its wind-swept space, man and his dwellings seem a little thing, hard set to keep their hold among wild elements, and yet man and his dwellings are still there, looking out from a treeless earth upon a selfless sea." This valley is the birthplace of Owen Conroy, the bee- keeper, mystic, and representative of "the old know- ledge," a Gaelic-speaking peasant living with an old aunt—a reputed witch—yet, in virtue of his native refine- ment and distinction of mind, treated more or less 08 S1 equal by the members of the landlord class. But While the sympathetic and well-mannered curiosity of young -'.rank Norman fails' to ruffle the equanimity of the visionary, sit. Is quite another matter when Millicent Carteret, an enthu- siastic "bachelor girl" from London, swims into his ken. For Millicent, along with her fondness for the bicycle, cigarettes, and trout-fishing, is a serious student of art., and the imme- diate interest excited by their first interview is heightened hwteil waking brings her his unearthly, Blake-like drawing of g visions, expounds his theories as to the relations Of their caiginals'
of Celtic in as atmosphe re with the soil, and envelops her gradually e c glamour. All the while that
Millicent is falling more and more under the intellectual spell of Conroy's personality—her admiration for his gifts being reinforced by the pathos of his loneliness and his ingenuous gratitude for her appreciation—she is insensibly slipping into a closer camaraderie with Frank Norman, the nephew of the local landlord,—a cheerful, sane, and natural young man, free from the class prejudice of his ancestors, but with a true prevision of the mutual danger to Millicent and Conroy of an intimacy in which the man can never win more than pity and intellectual admiration. But the mischief has been done. Conroy's peace of mind is gone ; he has been shaken out of his crepuscular calm by contact with a beautiful woman of the world, and when he realises that she cannot return his love he resorts to the arts of "the old knowledge" to bend her will to his. What follows is treated with admirable good sense, good feeling, and artistic discretion. It would have been so easy to deviate into melodrama, tragedy, or suicide. But Mr. Gwynn, while conveying a distinct touch of eeriness in his account of Conroy's uncanny rites, prepares a dimoue- ment entirely and wholesomely in keeping with the ante- cedents of all concerned. Millicent's robust common-sense revolts successfully against the pretensions of the magician. Conroy, though defeated in the contest of wills, retains his dignity and pathetic quality to the last, and Mr. Frank Norman is duly rewarded for the exemplary patience with which he plays a waiting game. Though the story narrowly misses a tragical ending, and is in its main current of a serious cast, there is abundant relief in the way of episode and dialogue. The heart of every angler will be gladdened by the spirited chapter which tells how Millicent caught her first salmon. It is characteristic of the new age in which we live that the hero should rescue the heroine when she has been run away with, not by a horse, but by a bicycle, and it is no small proof of Mr. Gwynn's skill that he should have handled this episode in a manner which, if not deeply romantic, is entirely void of absurdity. But this discreet blending of the old and the new is one of the chief charms of this admirable romance, the latest of the many variations on the Greek sage's advice, aarl oxen' LCUTbt,
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