NOVELS.
PLACE AND POWER.*
THE inequalities of Miss Fowler's equipment have never been more signally illustrated than in her new book. There is the same profusion of smart sayings, sometimes really shrewd and incisive, sometimes only the diluted variants of historic dicta —e.g., "Perhaps of all the disappointed people in this world there are none so bitterly disappointed as those who have got what they wanted "—the same excellent portraiture of homely, narrow-minded, angular, provincial "parlour folk " ; the same battledore-and-shuttlecock dialogue on the part of smart society personages ; and the same unimpeachable atmosphere of respectability about all the principal characters. The wonder is that so much vivacity, intelligence, shrewdness, and even wit should be combined with such an amount of unintentional caricature in the characterisation and of artificiality in the plot. The central idea of the story, the gradual disciplining of a hard, ambitious, successful materialist in the school of adversity, is sound enough, but Conrad Clayton's self-sufficiency is so odious as to exhaust the forbearance of the most gentle reader before the story is half told. It is impossible to retain any interest in a man who immediately before asking a girl to marry him informs her that if any one whom he loved became delicate she would become positively repulsive to him, and immediately after her acceptance observes : "I want a wife who will help me in my career,—not one who will expect me to help her in
hers you must always remember that the ruling passion of my life is ambition, and therefore that any woman who came between me and my ambition would eventually
• Place and Power. By Ellen Thorneyeroft Fowler (Mrs. Alfred Laurence Felkin). London : Hutchinson and Co. [68..1 forfeit my love." This, remember, is the deliberate opinion, not of a youth who has had an abnormal bringing up, but of a young man who has been at a first-rate public school, come out Second Wrangler at Cambridge, and been called to the Bar. And to make matters worse, Conrad is not only a monstrous and ridiculous prig, but he is capable of translating his inhuman egotism into practice,—witness the episode of the nine-year-old gipsy-boy whom he catches red- handed with a hare, and, in spite of the passionate entreaties of his mother, hales off to the police-station and sends to prison for six months. We could easily multiply instances of Conrad's lack of humanity and taste, chivalry and good breeding. Only once is his self-esteem shaken, by a penniless Irish beauty, but he has no difficulty in finding a beautiful girl who cheerfully acquiesces in his door-mat theory of the duty of a wife. (It is true that her name is Griselda Gaukrodger, but in all other respects she is an eligible parti.) Twenty-five years elapse before the opening of the second book, and in the interval Conrad, now Sir Conrad Clayton, has risen to Cabinet rank. But he has to wait ten years more, to become a grandfather, and to reach the altitude of Prime Minister before discovering that he has another legitimate son, who is none other than his rival and successor in the Premiership ! It appears that during Conrad's absence from England his wife and another young married lady were both seriously injured in a carriage accident. Mrs. Stillingfleet's child was born dead, while Mrs. Clayton became the mother of twins, one healthy, the other a puny and almost deformed infant. Accordingly Mrs. Clayton (nix Gaukrodger) deter- mined on an amiable imposture to accelerate her friend's recovery on her regaining consciousness, and induced her to believe that the deformed infant was her own, while the healthier and younger twin was brought up as the heir of the future Premier.
Now we are reluctantly obliged to declare that no amount of cleverness and vivacity can redeem the inherent absurdity of such a plot. There is, of course, an historic precedent for the case of a father and son successively holding the Premiership, but this justification is destroyed by the astounding circumstances attending so exceptional a succession. Conrad Clayton, it may be added, is so complete and inhuman a prig that the fact of his being in addition a blatant atheist must leave even the most orthodox reader cold. It is logical enough that so entirely self-absorbed an egotist should worship no God but himself. What is less easy to accept is the assurance of his uninterrupted progress to the highest position in the land in spite of a conceit which in real life would at every turn have exposed him to humiliation and ridicule. But Miss Fowler is not content with having invented this monster, she must needs convert him by the supernatural apparatus of a curse, delivered by an itinerant preacher, which is not lifted until the momentous discovery of the unexpected son. Nothing needs more delicate handling than conversion, even when the subject is an interesting and human personage. In the volume before us, it can only be compared to the somersault of a puppet. We are sorry to have to speak thus harshly of a writer who in the past has ministered so freely to the entertainment of her readers, and in the present instance is evidently actuated by a sincere desire to convey a whole- some moral. But it would be a dereliction of duty on the part of a critic to abstain from condemning the inartistic and un- convincing means by which Miss Fowler has endeavoured to achieve her aim.
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