Fiction
By L. A.
G. STRONG.
Fanfare for Tin Trumpets. By Margery Sharp. (Barker.
THERE would seem to be something about the air of Wales-- to judge from current fiction—which makes its women savagely 'devoted to their native place, and ready to sacrifice to it any mere human being. First there was Miss Vaughan's Gentlewoman, and now there is Miss 'Inglis Jones' 'Catherine. Crumbling Pageant is the story of a Welsh doctor's daughter in the mid-nineteenth century, and of her small but varied world, comprising a genteel and lifeless home, a host of farming relations, and the wild Moryses of the ruined castle Morfa. Catherine's upbringing gave her false social aspirations, but her childish fascination for Morfa was very much her own, and she kept it secret. In time she made her way there, came to know Richard and his beautiful mother, and spent the free hours of her childhood either with Richard or with her cousin William on the farm. Catherine's mother, who had been a governess, disapproved of them both, and sent her away to school. When, later, William wanted to marry her, she felt that she would have to agree. Richard had gone, his mother was dead, and her home, with two invalid parents, was unbearable. " Fate destined her for Penllan." Richard, however, came back. They fell passionately in love, and became engaged ; but Catherine, with her love for Morfa, did not suit the money-making Richard, and they were estranged. Meanwhile, she had lost her farmer lover, William.
From thii point Catherine decays on the human side. She achieves her dream of living at Morfa and restoring it, by marrying Erasmus Morys, who is thirty-two years her senior. Morfa comes first : Catherine neglects the tenantry, is deserted by her children, loses her drunken husband, and is left alone with her possessions.
This rather harsh story is exceedingly well told. Its special quality is that it combines a strong, almost masculine percep- tion of country things with a real understanding of Catherine's problems and aspirations. It is social satire, with sympathy for the victim. The characters are well done, even those who are types, such as Mrs. Jones and Richard. If we accept Catherine, we must accept the rest of this well-knit and welt- proportioned story.
The Wales of Miss Ruth Holland is much more gracious and much more kindly, though Jinnie loves it as passionately as did Catherine. The Lost Generation is a book so much after my own heart that I am afraid of over-praising it. First of all here is a writer to be added to the very small band of those who can re-live their childhood :
" Only little children wanted to keep their cakes and eat them slowly, said Nansi. A competition who can eat their cake most quickly, she announced. Jinnie and Lance were too old to be taken in, but the two youngest were thoroughly done. They sat like two little owls with wide flabbergasted eyes, so if something awful had happened, looking at Nansi's piece of cake that was still intact. She laughed at them because their mouths were so full, and slowly, cruelly relished her cake, morsel by morsel, to the last crumb.
You're a cheat . . you said you were going to eat your cake.. .
" I was fair . . . you did it yourself . . . I didn't tell you to cat your cake. . . No, I didn't. . . I didn't say I was going to eat my cake. . . I said, Who can eat their cake fastest ? . . . Esther, didn't I ? ' But Esther did not even know she was being addressed. She stirred her last cup of tea round and round, and her eyes stared into space, lost in inexpressible thoughts of her own.'
And again : " On hot heavy days the children played games to try and make the long road seem less tedious ; shutting their eyes and pretending to be blind, and letting themselves be led, walking along in a strange blankness with little lightning dazzles running across their eyelids that seemed to bob up and down with them as they walked, and then opening their eyes with surprise to find how far they had come ; walking on the cracks or not walking on the cracks. They oven paced out the whole distance so that they knew exactly when they were half way, a quarter of the way. They made terrible vows to themselves : 'If that tramcar passes me before I roach the corner, Mother will be dead when I get home,' and then raced for their lives."
When it comes to Jinnie's adult life, Miss Holland's touch is just as sure. There were, in her story, two victims of the War ; Eliot, who was killed, and Philip, who survived. Jinnie's life had been twined with the one, and slowly, reluctantly, she let it be twined with the other. She did not want to be hurt again. The story tells how she was hurt and healed. Miss Holland has vivid, almost clairvoyant perceptions, which range from an absolute accuracy of' physical metaphor to the perfect, other-dimensional justice of Eliot's return in a dream. She can catch up a small world of experience in a phrase- " The organ was playing loudly, consolidating the present against the wastes of time." She has wisdom and beauty of mind, she writes straightforwardly, and she is never solemn. Her task as an artist will be to strengthen the framework of her novels, for The Lost Generation, though in its essence reminiscent and leisurely, tends to come undone and sprawl before the end. It is one of those quietly lovely books which find a permanent place in the bookshelves of the discerning, and to which readers return again and again for a reminder of vanished summers.
Miss Ada Harrison's first novel, which is here presented for the first time in a cheap edition, did not attract anything like the attention which was its due ; and it is to be hoped that in its new form a larger public will appreciate its merits. Too short a time has elapsed since its appearance for us to be justified in allowing it much space to-day, but it is as unusual, and has the same qualities of wit and observation, as There and Back, with a greater variety of substance. The Balance is only one of a series of noteworthy reprints which Messrs. Dent are publishing at the same price.
A new publisher makes his bow with an exceedingly attractive first novel. Alistair comes to London with his friend Henry, possessed of a hundred pounds, and determined to make his fortune by his pen. His Uncle Severus' offer of a safe job is temporarily turned down, to allow of this period of probation. The pair settle at Number 15 Bloom Street, and proceed to make the acquaintance of the other inhabitants. Prominent among these are Winnie Parker, Mr. Hickey the 'bus driver, and Eddie Cribb, the future champion boxer. Alistair gets an introduction to literary society which brings him into contact with the stage. Between the successful actress, the unsuccessful actress, and Winnie Parker, he learns a great deal that he was never taught at school, and goes back at the end of the year, wiser but only temporarily sadder, to Uncle Severus. The story is justly and humorously told, and, except that I cannot for a moment believe that any actress and her manager would have believed in Alistair as a playwright, everything in it carries conviction. Miss Sharp is a real find, and I enjoyed every word of her pleasant, amusing and unpretentious story.
Mr. Hanley once more assures us how thoroughly unpleasant it is to be a boy. Certainly Condron, Dago and Burns found little enough in life to make them fond of it. For romance, they had the old man with his dirty postcards. For amuse- ment, they had the pictures, when they could afford them, and the slaughterhouse when they could not : and they worked hard, doing a man's work at the docks, for the pittance of a boy's pocket-money. Condron was genuinely fond of his old deaf and dumb mother, and did his clumsy best to protect her from the officiousness of priest and neighbours, but she could not understand him, and he could not express the little he understood of her. Burns' mother was a drunkard, and his sister a bullying slut. Ebb and Flood is loosely constructed, and at times Mr. Hanley writes carelessly ; but the breath of life is in it, as in all his work, and the scene where the three boys gamble for their wages, with its climax in the suicide of Burns, is magnificently told.
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