Fiction
By MONICA REDLICH.
Ann Vickers. By Sinclair Lewis. (Cape. 75. 6d.) Waiting for a Ship. By Marcus Lauesen. (Cassell. as. 6d.)
6s.)
A Winter Journey. By Alec Brown. (Cape. 7s. 6d.) THE word " competent " is sometimes used almost in derision, to imply a sort of pedestrian talent that is hardly worth men- tioning. Applied to Mr. Sinclair 'Lewis, however, it takes on its right meaning, as a term of the highest praise. Mr. Lewis is one of the great novelists of our time : and Ann Vickers. which will take its place among his finest work, proves again that he succeeds by the supreme virtue of being competent.
Ann Vickers is both his central character and the mind with which he surveys a certain America. Mr. Lewis is deeply occupied with social problems, especially with prison reform, but Ann comes first, and all these things are shown to us only as they mattered to her. He respects her whole- heartedly, and the book gains thereby. Ann developed her good qualities in the little Illinois town where she was born, and was never able to shake them off. She continued to be, as her father the professor had been, honest, loyal, and proud. Even at college she began to realize her executive powers, and her perpetual need to fight for some cause. First she worked as a suffragette, then she tried Settlement life, and then she began her lifelong battle for better prisons. Her experiences as matron at the Copperhead Gap Penitentiary make terrible reading, and Mr. Lewis assures us that, though not actual, they are based on actual facts. After that she became Superintendent of a model Industrial Home for Women, which was to Copperhead Gap as heaven is to hell.
. But reform did not fill her whole life. She was attractive and high-spirited, and she wanted love. For a long time she could not find the right man. Lafe Resnick failed her : and, after an operation which made her, too, " criminal," she knew that she would always be on the side of her prisoners. Another man failed her, and then, in despair, she married Russell Spaulding. This marriage is the one thing in the book that leaves me in doubt. Russell is a bouncing sentimentalist, less a character than a caricature, and it seems hardly conceivable that the clear-sighted Ann would have bolted into matrimony with him. She was very unhappy. Then she fell in love with a judge, Barney Dolphin, and he, just after their child was born, was sent to prison for corruption. Ann's troubles become more and more involved : but, at the end, Barney is back, and they think they see the way to happiness. It is a great story, brilliantly done. It has form—the form of Ann's life. It has speed, and life, and colour. Every character makes an immediate impression, notably Dr. Malvina Wormser and the convicts, Birdie Wallop and Kate Cognac. It has humour and satiric purpose, and it gives a brilliant summary of the changes in twentieth-century America. Competence, in fact, covers a multitude of virtues.- W ailing for a Ship describes the last days of a matriarch. Fru Juliane Ilegemeyer was eighty, and lived in Skovsmolle. She came of a rich shipowning family, but now, her wealth and her glory diminished, she lived alone with her maid. At Christmas, however, her married sons came back to her, and she really enjoyed herself, giving hospitality to her relations, and ruling them. Then she discovered that her heart was failing. In the few days of which Mr. Lauesen writes, she suddenly loses her power. She cannot keep Jurgen and Chris. tian from fighting, or give advice to those who ask for it. All the strength of her will is needed to keep at bay the terror with which she waits for her ship. She abdicates, makes her peace at last, and dies. It is Fru Juliane who holds the book together, as she held her family together. Apart from her, it seems to me, quite frankly, dull. There are vivid scenes, such as the great dinner-party, and terrible scenes, notably the madman's murder of his blackmailer. Fru Juliane's family was plentifully. varied, including one actual and one Potential homicidal maniac as well as the more orthodox sea- captains. It is hard, though, to take any interest in the troubles of Jurgen and his wife and secretary, or of Christian, or of the horrible Georg, or to care who strangles whom. Waiting for a Ship has a good theme and a great heroine, and,, where she is concerned, moves surely to its appointed end. The sea-captains' talk of bygone days is interesting, and so are Fru Juliane's reminiscences. For the rest, I found it com- pletely unconvincing.
In other hands, Miss Storm Jameson's story might have been merely unpleasant. In hers, it is tragic and touched with beauty. The woman who takes the day off is drawing near to the ultimate"- horror of her profession, old age. Gebrge nu longer visits her, and it is three weeks since he Sent her any money. She goes from her bedroom off Tottenham Courb
Road to spend the day in Richmond Park :
" The bright warm lightly-moving air, distraction of faces and colours sliding past the edge of her eye into vacancy, ripples of sound from a street band splitting the other noises of the street, flowed over it, pressing it down, and out of eight. A dress shop in Shaftesbury Avenue caught her eye. She pressed close to the window. Black satin and of course too narrow, but they've pinned it over behind—perhaps Wider than it looks. Nothing to lot out, I suppose. No, I didn't think so. Can we copy it for you, madam ? Reluctantly she turned away from the window. No use even asking about it, she hadn't the money, nor would unless George— But the thought of George was definitely unpleasant. As always, she tried instinctively to close her mind. What shall you do if ? —thoughts that began in this way terrified her. No, no, her mind cried. Not now, not yet. Think of something. I am thinking. Think. I'm. not old yet, I'll look that chart out and exercise every morning. She felt a vague comfort, sprung from all the other moments in which she had made an identical resolution."
In the sun at Richmond, she re-lives old scenes which are more real to her than the present : scenes with Ernst, with whom she kept a restaurant, and with the young couple who killed themselves, and with George. At the end, she steals an old woman's bag in a teashop, sells it to Mr. Gapalous, and goes home to look for George's letter. Miss Jameson's touch is so sure and sympathetic that she makes the namelesi woman not only muddleheaded, bedraggled, and self-engrossed, but human and much to be pitied.
The nouvelle, or long short story, is an honourable form, and Herr Zweig might surely have remembered that it is distinct from the novelette. His Letter from an Unknown Woman reaches a famous author at his home in Vienna when he has just returned from a holiday. Reassuring him that she will have died of influenza by the time he gets her letter, the woman explains that she has always worshipped him. She did so in her lanky childhood, when she lived opposite him, and he never noticed her. When her family left Vienna, she came back as a dressmaker's apprentice, so that she could stand outside his flat and watch the lighted windows. Then he did notice her, and, casually as he had done with scores of other women, he asked her in. Ah, but she was different, though she wouldn't have dreamt of telling him so. The boy who has just died was her son—his son . . . She has never loved anyone but those two ; she has had -other lovers, but only to get money. She came again to the author's flat, when she was rich—but, of course, he won't remember, and Will he please buy himself some white roses on his
birthday. . • • - .
So that was where the white roses came from, year by year. The famous author's reaction to this emetic narrative almost explains his ever having occasioned it. The letter fell .from his nerveless hands, and the thought of the dead woman stirred in his mind like the sound of distant music.
The author of Chadwick Roundabouts has turned his thoughts to the quiet life of a Norfolk farm. He tells of Philip Western and his adopted daughter Cecily, who both loved Elmtose Farm more than anything. Ceeily fell in love with a young Norwich doctor. Philip, wishing to give them money to marry on, tried to impoverish the farm, and Cecily with infinite difficulty persuaded him to put back his money where she most wished it to be. Neither Cecily nor- Dick is always completely convincing, but the old farmer is excellently done. A Winter Journey is quiet and spacious, like the East Anglian landscapes which it describes; -
[We regret that Mr. Strong is ill with influenza. He hopes to resume his weekly articles in a fortnight's time. Next week's review of Fiction will be by Mr. Graham Greene.]
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