FICTION
By FORREST REID Divide the Desolation. By Kathryn Jean Macfarlane. (Harrap. 8s. 6d.) Tucker Sees India. By M. L. Skinner. (Seeker. 7s. 6d.)
ADMIRERS of the " Tietjens " novels had better be warned at once that Vive Le Roy is a very different kind of book. Mr. Ford's style and technique; of course, are there, but the tale itself is an altogether lighter and slighter thing, written in a different spirit, in fact, not a realistic novel at all, but an extravaganza, an entertainment. On the wrapper it is described as a mystery story, but the mystery is so very transparent that I can hardly think it will puzzle anyone for long. As early as the second chapter I, at any rate, guessed what had happened and was going to happen to Walter, though it may be that this perspicacity was due to my having read so recently Herr Feuchtwanger's False Nero, which is based on a similar idea. At all events the fascination of the novel does not depend upon ingenuity of plot, nor even on the fate of Walter, whom we know mil enough to be in perfectly safe keeping. We are really interested in the methods and personality of Mr. Penkethman, the fat and elderly detective, and in Walter's fiancée, Cassie Mathers, the young American artist. For both are delightful, Penkethman especially, and we see them at their best in their relations with each other. Penkethmar, uninvited, is helping Cassie to find her lost lover, who on the day after their arrival in Paris disappears. The whole thing, as I have said, is an entertainment—improbable, fantastic, yet thanks to the reality of the characters, as we read, credible.
To begin with there has been a revolution in France, and the Royalists have triumphed. This leads to Cassie's lover Walter, a young physician, being sent over to Paris on a secret mission by the Communist Party in New York. On the boat he and Cassie make the acquaintance of Inspector Penkethman, and of Penthievre, a distinguished Royalist agent. They also (the news comes by wireless) learn that the French king has been assassinated, though later this report is contradicted. When, therefore, we remember that in casual conversation Penthievre has remarked upon the striking resemblance between Walter and the kiLig, we already possess the key to the plot, which is not of any great importance except as a device to bring Penkethman and Cassie together. These two are among Mr. Ford's happiest creations. Penkethman is wise, benevolent, and beautifully intelligent : Cassie is at once innocent and " hard boiled." The story from the beginning moves more briskly than Mr. Ford's novels usually do, being, for him at least, a straightforward yarn. It is also an amusing, and at moments an exciting one.
Mr. Ralph Bates's new book consists of four stories, the first of which, Rainbow Fish, fills up half the volume. It is a strange book—individual, living, coloured, sensuous, violent—and it leaves one in no doubt as to Mr. Bates's talent. The tales, moreover, cover a wide field. Rainbow Fish itself is essentially a story of the sea, though there are long interludes of life on land. But the call of the sea is there, or rather of the sponge fisheries of Skarpa Island, last refuge of the dregs of society, where no questions are asked. In five chapters, picturing widely different scenes, we are told how certain of the sponge fishers reached Skarpa. It is a method rather than a form, leaving the author free to introduce what he pleases. Thus we are given the boyhood of Robert Freeth in London, though Freeth is not really at the centre of the story, and we might with equal propriety have been given the boyhood of Captain Skinner, who, though he has deliberately wrecked more than one ship, is the most sympathetic figure among these rascals, simply because of his fine effort to save their rotten boat on its last voyage.
Mr. Bates has an extraordinary creative gift, the warm pulse of life beats everywhere in his work, but in the rush of inspiration he seems too impatient to prune it and to shape it. His stories are crowded with impressions and characters presented in detached chapters, each of which in itself resembles a short story. In Rainbow Fish the only con- nccting link between these chapters is Skarpa : in "The Other Land" we get a series of dissolving views of London life held together merely by the fact that the characters know one another : in "Dead End of the Sky " alone is there a definite design. Here the several chapters are planned each to throw its peculiar light on the main subject, which is the story of a friendship, the two friends being a writer and a painter. The thing succeeds, has indeed, in its atmosphere of spiritual torment, an amazing power and intensity. It is painful, but it is brilliantly done, for the genius of both men is convincing, and through brutality we catch glimpses of beauty.
Since Mrs. Gaskell's day so much has been written concern- ing the Brontës, the few external happenings of their lives have become so well known, that it is hardly necessary to say more of the story in Miss Macfarlane's novel based on the life of Emily Brontë than that it keeps closely to biographical tradi- tion. What is new is the reconstruction of certain chosen scenes, the dialogue, the interpretation of character—and the genesis of Wuthering Heights.
There was a time not so long ago when Charlotte would inevitably have been the central figure in even an imaginative work about the Brontes ; in Divide the Desolation she is not much more important than Anne, and considerably less important than Branwell. Personally, I think that Miss Macfarlane is too kind to Branwell, and not kind enough to Charlotte. Both are used, perhaps unconsciously, to help in the portrait of Emily—Branwell sympathetically, Charlotte at times almost in the nature of a foil—and the question is whether that portrait is successful. I admit at once that Miss Macfarlane has drawn a consistent and lifelike figure—a figure one could accept without reserve had one not to reconcile it with the impression produced by Wuthering Heights and the best of the poems. But can we do this ? Let me quote a single sentence from the former. " I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home ; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth ; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights ; where I woke sobbing for joy."
Of coarse we cannot expect Miss Macfarlane to write like that ; nevertheless that is Emily ; in that speech of Cathy's Emily is speaking ; she is Cathy, and she is Heathcliff. Her spirit permeates the whole substance and texture of Wuthering Heights ; the novel is the spontaneous creation of an emotion which could find no outlet in real life. I believe she expressed herself in it once and for all ; behind it is the longing of unsatis- fied love, the ide7. of a dream-mate, which probably had haunted her from childhood. This, however, is a personal view, and twice only in Miss Macfarlane's book did I find anything with which to quarrel. The first occasion is when she makes Emily beat her bulldog on his face, half blinding him—a thing she never would have done : the second is when she makes a Mrs. Earnshaw, a teacher at Law Hill School, tell Emily the story of Wuthering Heights, with the characters already more or less ach mbraled. Emily in turn tells it to Branwell, who writes the first chapters, and for a time they work at it in collaboration. That, I suppose, is why Branwell in the novel is given a share of her genius. It is plausible, and it is extremely interesting ; but I don't believe a word of it, and would recommend those who are inclined to accept it to turn to Miss May Sinclair's The Three Bronzes. A completely satisfying portrait of Emily could not, I think, be given in a novel, except perhaps by Emily herself.
In Tucker Sees India I imagine Mr. Skinner has had a shot at creating the popular type of hero who, if he catches on, can be used in subsequent tales of a more or less episodic nature. The present book is just such a collection of episodes, held together by the eccentric personality of Tucker, and by the Indian background. Only Mr. Skinner fails to make his incidents exciting, and the comedy is feeble. I can enjoy the adventures of Raffles, and Bulldog Drummond, and particularly those of Arsene Lupin, but this does not seem to Ere a good book of its kind.
Previous page
