Fiction
Phrase and Fable
High Table. By Joanna Cannan. (Bonn. 78. 6d.) Somebody Must. By Guy Pocock. (Dent. 7s. 6d.)
Miss CANNAN'S new novel illustrates brilliantly the axiom that the fable is nothing and the telling everything. Theodore Fletcher, " the meagre fruit of duty," suffered from adenoids, a shiny nose, and a well-founded sense of physical inferiority to other children. Scholarship was his refuge. It took him to St. Mary's : and, while he was still of undergraduate age, it led him, indirectly, to his one experience of passion. Hester Adams, the publican's daughter, to whom he lent his Milton and his Marco Polo, seemed as different from other girls as Theodore from other men. An • inevitable accident disillu- sioned them both. Theodore, told that he was to become a father, lost what little nerve he had : Hester, in revulsion, married the despised Sam Twigg. Soon afterwards Theodore won a fellowship at his beloved college, and shrank into the shelter of its kindly walls.
When 1914 came Theodore was Warden. He had been elected to keep out a more dynamic man, and knew it. The War stirred him, and he remembered his son. By chance, Lennie Twigg came as a cadet to St. Mary's. The Warden met him, and played fairy godfather to his romance. Lennie was killed, and Hester, meeting the Warden at the dedication of a memorial, told him that the boy was not his after all.
This story might easily have been depressing. Miss Cannan will not allow it a depressing syllable. She has written a novel of uncommon qualities, and the most uncommon is that none sticks out. She has sympathy and insight : she can hit hard,
she can be witty, and she has a fine gift of phrase—see the description of Theodore in the second sentence : but the real achievement of High Table is its evenness of texture. Every quality is comprehended in, and sustained by, the harmonious working of the author's mind. Miss Cannan's touch is light and delicate : she is always mistress of the situation. Her workmanship is scrupulous ; even so small a matter as Lennie's taking tea alone with the Warden is accounted for, and she selects from those temping heaps of material, Oxford in war-time, and North Oxford at any time, not one atom more than her story needs. This accomplishment, and this self. knowledge, make the thought of Miss Cannan's future more than exciting. If her admirers will subscribe and buy her a textbook of English grammar, her future must be assured. What would Theodore have said if he had been told that hi, rooms were " very coveted " ?
Mr. Pocock illustrates the same axiom, but in the opposite manner. The story of the Lamburns' battle with adversity, from the move into Alma Crescent to the success of Ted's play, is, considered objectively, sound enough ; but Mr. Pocock's way of telling it so distresses me that I can hardly judge Somebody Must. The conversation of the children embarrasses me—and, what is worse, they make remarks for the benefit of the reader. " He calls me ' Puss ' and I hate him." Would a child need to give her brother this information about their uncle ? The conversation of Gran'ma Pudmore is more than embarrassing. Moreover, Mr, Pocock moves among his characters less like an author than like a hearty vicar showing the " young people-" of his choir round Madame Tussaud's. I cannot abide to be taken on a conducted tour, to be nudged and told what to appreciate. " Somebody must," perhaps : I beg to be excused.
M. Ferdynand Goetel tells his story with an ingenuity which only the strongest of fables could survive. His hero, Stanislaw, keeps a diary of his present life while he is writing a novel of his past. The novel is not finished, but its heroine, Marusia, emerges from it into the final pages of the diary. Stanislaw, snatched away by war from his wife and child, was taken prisoner, and sent to a farm on the steppe. The farm is dominated by the personality of the girl Marusia. A priest and a judge are interested in her, and Stanislaw is recalled to the prison camp. He manages to return. Marusia is his. He goes off to make a life for her, to be freed• from his wife and child. This, crudely, is the gist of the novel. The diary, with which it is interspersed, shows him back with his wife and child, inert, defeated, dragged into small intrigues—a man decaying as we read. Marusia dies; but sends him their son : and the story ends by Stanislaw going off, no one knows where, with a semi-allegorical character called " The Motorist."
The theme is powerful, the emotion savage and deep, the characters clear and varied. From Day to Day misses greatness (to my mind) by a narrow margin. There is a suspicion of virtuosity in the telling ; for exaznple, the cancelled passages in the novel : and the end seems relatively undecided. But this is a book of exceptional interest, which seems richer the longer one thinks about it. The translation is excellent.
Marka of the Pits achieves, both in fable and phrase, the lowest common denominator of the Russian novel. " The Pits " were an abomination, a sort of squalid Alsatia : Marks, tall and beautiful, was unlike their daughters. Her_father is drowned, her dog killed ; you can guess the rest. The pub- lishers themselves call the novel " intensely morbid and miserable." It contains good things, notably the description of the ice breaking on the Volga, and the last paragraph of all: but their verdict may be allowed to stand.
L. A. G. STRONG.
Previous page
