The ease with which the nuptial knotIn Yankee-land is severed—such isThe underlying theme of whatThe Letter of the Contracttouches;So, but thatBasil Kinghas brainAnd uses it when he is writing,The book (fromMethuen) might containLittle that's novel or inviting.Yet it's so good it's doomed to miss,I rather fear, the approbationOf folk who hope such books as thisMay help the cause of reformation;For, if divorce in U.S.A.Inspires such work, it stands to reasonTo change the law in any wayAmounts to literary treason.
The ease with which the nuptial knotIn Yankee-land is severed—such isThe underlying theme of whatThe Letter of the Contracttouches;So, but thatBasil Kinghas brainAnd uses it when he is writing,The book (fromMethuen) might containLittle that's novel or inviting.
The ease with which the nuptial knot
In Yankee-land is severed—such is
The underlying theme of what
The Letter of the Contracttouches;
So, but thatBasil Kinghas brain
And uses it when he is writing,
The book (fromMethuen) might contain
Little that's novel or inviting.
Yet it's so good it's doomed to miss,I rather fear, the approbationOf folk who hope such books as thisMay help the cause of reformation;For, if divorce in U.S.A.Inspires such work, it stands to reasonTo change the law in any wayAmounts to literary treason.
Yet it's so good it's doomed to miss,
I rather fear, the approbation
Of folk who hope such books as this
May help the cause of reformation;
For, if divorce in U.S.A.
Inspires such work, it stands to reason
To change the law in any way
Amounts to literary treason.
In contemplating the present season's output of fiction I have been impressed by the number of novels that might apparently have been written with an eye to the conditions that attended their publication. Which, unless one credits our romancers with much further sight than is commonly supposed to be their portion, is absurd. The thing is a coincidence; and of this there is no more striking example than the story thatAnne Douglas Sedgwickhas prepared for the world this autumn. She calls itThe Encounter(Arnold), and it is all about the struggle between "the Nietzschean attitude of mind in Germany," as exemplified in an egotistical, crack-brained genius namedLudwig Wehlitz, and the ideals of civilized Christianity exemplified in severalother more agreeable persons. You will own that this is at leastá propos. The whole thing is, of course, quite charmingly told. All the characters are thoroughly alive; most of all perhaps the placid, tolerant and entirely practical mother of the heroine.Persis Fennamyhad been introduced to the genius as a suitable disciple and possible helpmate by theSignorina Zardo, who worshipped him from afar.PersismetLudwig, was interested, impressed and even willing to admire. There were two other men also, attendant upon the great one:Conrad Sachs, who was gentle and deformed, andGraf von Ludenstein, who represented another type of German manhood. He represented it so well, indeed, that, whenMrs. Fennamydiscovered that he had takenPersisoff for an intimate conversation in a wood, even her tolerant placidity was deranged. But it was all right, andPersisescapes heart-whole from the lot of them, clay superman and all. She is to be congratulated. So is the author, for her book is both apt to the moment and interesting in itself.
There is, for all its gaiety, a certain external quality of pathos (now that the German is to us so sinister a figure) in much ofThe Pastor's Wife(Smith, Elder) with its types of an East Prussian village drawn in with those deft, half kindly, half malicious touches to which the creatrix ofElizabethof the Garden has accustomed us.Ingeborgis the daughter of an English bishop—a bishop, by the way, so needlessly odious that even those who would cheerfully believe the worst of the order must protest against this hitting below the gaiters—and she meets her pastor in a railway carriage on a cheap trip to Lucerne. This so-utterly-by-the-pursuit-of-knowledge-dominatedHerr Dremmel(his subject is scientific manure) has a lapse from the even paths of research into the disturbing realms of love, and with an egotistic single-mindedness which is beyond all praise overwhelms her into marriage by the heroic process of ignoring all objections, refusals and obstacles. And lo! in this manse of lonely Kökensee we have a problem!Elizabeth, tongue in cheek, in the mask ofIbsen!... I couldn't get myself to believe in the ineffable preoccupations ofHerr Dremmelthat made so desolate a pastor's wife; nor could I see the later enchantingIngeborgin the little negligible mouse of the episcopal study (though I liked them both); and, as I said, I entirely refused to accept the bishop. But I heartily and thoroughly enjoyed the story, the happy little strokes of humour and irony, the apt, pert thumbnail-sketches of the subsidiary characters, the tender love of country things and moods; and saw that I'd been an ass to take it all too seriously. It was written to charm—and it's charming.
Laughter in these dark days is so wholesome a corrective that we mustn't be too exacting with Mr.Phillips Oppenheim, that fertile spinner of yarns, when inThe Double Life of Mr. Alfred Burton(Methuen) he presents us with the diverting idea of a mean, little, loud, untruthful auctioneer's clerk converted by the eating of a mysterious brown bean into a paragon of candid truth, refined taste and romantic desire. There's an amusing scene whenBurton'schief, a thoroughly resourceful specimen of his tribe, cries down, under the same mysterious influence, the pseudo-antiques he is selling, and so intrigues his old friends the dealers that, with a curiousnaïveté, they make absurdly high bids in the belief that the auctioneer is up to some profitable little game.Mr. Alfred Burtonhimself becomes at a stroke a famous author just by merely writing what he sees and seeing true. (But wouldn't his readers also need a nibble at the bean?) Finally falling from grace as the effect of this food of the gods wears off, he accepts a directorship of the new mind-food company, "Menatogen," which brings him untold wealth. Quite innocent fooling which yet leaves one with the impression that our popular authors let themselves off rather lightly from the labour of working out their themes.
A GARGOYLE OF NÔTRE DAME DE PARIS.A GARGOYLE OF NÔTRE DAME DE PARIS.(With acknowledgments to the etching by M. Méryon.)Spirits of evil, when they're thrownOut of a church, are turned to stone;But the above was petrifiedEven before he got inside.
(With acknowledgments to the etching by M. Méryon.)