Pharisees. By A. Kevill-Davies. (Ward and Loct.)—This is a very
clever, in parts very powerful, but by no means pleasant, American story. One fears, indeed, at the beginning that the book is to be nothing but a series of pictures of "Bowery" realism. Nina Harwood, by the death of her father, who has been discarded by his father, becomes an English millionaire, and has not found a fortune in America, left absolutely destitute in an East-End tenement in New York. She applies to her grandfather for help, but receives no answer from him. At least a third of the story is taken up with Nina's desperate efforts to obtain em- ployment. She has to make the acquaintance of poverty, and, being beautiful, of insults at the hands of men. She is actually reduced to vagrancy ; and her best friend is a police-officer. This portion of Pharisees is written with great ability; the pictures it gives of the squalor of New York poverty, and of the hypocrisy, selfishness, and sensuality that are associated with New York wealth, are admirably executed. Nina, to all appearance, escapes from her environment through marriage with Paul Simms, an American banker, who is a few years her senior, and who is her ardent admirer. But in a short time she discovers that Simms has not got rid of a troublesome first wife. After giving birth to a child which dies, Nina thinks it her duty to leave Paul, and, having become an heiress on the death of her grandfather, goes to England. There she might marry a Peer or even a Prince. But her heart is with Paul, and on his writing to her, "The first Mrs. Paul Simms has handed in her checks, and is now, I trust, climbing the golden stairs," she sends for him, and they are reunited in an absolutely legal fashion. The second part of Pharisees is not nearly so good as the first; and there is a good deal of probably unintentional caricature in the picture it contains of English society. Yet, when everything is taken into consideration, Pharisees must be regarded as a book of promise no less than of power.
Previous page
