The early worm.Prospective Mistress."Are you a consistently early riser?"Maid."Not arf! Why, Mum, in my last place the master's pet name for me was 'the early worm.'"
Prospective Mistress."Are you a consistently early riser?"
Maid."Not arf! Why, Mum, in my last place the master's pet name for me was 'the early worm.'"
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Rescue(Dent) is a story in the authentic manner of Mr.Joseph Conradat his unapproachable best. If it is true, as one has heard, that the book was begun twenty-five years ago and resumed lately, this explains but does nothing to minimize a fact upon which we can all congratulate ourselves. The setting is the shallow seas of the Malay coast, whereLingard, an adventurer (most typicallyConrad) whose passion in life is love for his brig, has pledged himself to aid an exiled young Rajah in the recovery of his rights. At the last moment however, when his plans are at point of action, the whole scheme is thwarted by the stranding of a private yacht containing certain persons whose rescue (complicated by his sudden subjection to the woman of the party) eventually involvesLingardin the loss of fortune and credit. Perhaps you can suppose what Mr.Conradmakes of a theme so congenial; how the tale moves under his hand in what was once well called that "smoky magnificence" of atmosphere, just permitting the reader to observe at any moment so much and no more of its direction. Of the style it would now be superfluous to speak. It has been given to Mr.Conrad, working in what is originally a foreign medium, to use it with a dignity unsurpassed by any of our native craftsmen. Such phrases as (of the prudent mate remonstrating withLingard): "What he really wanted was to have his existence left intact, for his own cherishing and pride;" or again, "The situation was too complicated to be entrusted to a cynical or shameless hope," give one the quick pleasure of words so delicately and deftly used as to seem newly coined.Rescue, in short, is probably the greatest novel of the year, one by which its author has again enriched our literature with work of profound and moving quality.
I was inclined to flatter myself that nothing in the plot ofThe Silver Tea-shop(Stanley Paul) could possibly take me by surprise, but I found towards the end that MissE. Everett Greenhad contrived to slip in the real villain all unsuspected while I, as she meant me to, was staring hard at the supposed one, so that there I must acknowledge myself defeated. With a stolen invention, an old gentleman found shot in his room, and a son under a vow to avenge his father, the story provides plenty of thrills, and the "Silver Tea-shop" itself has the fascination that business ventures in books often exercise. It seems to be run on such lavish lines for the prices charged that I found myself looking hungrily for its address. I wish the author had not referred to her hero as having "mobile digits" and burdened her ingenuous story with anything so important as a prologue. By making the villain's deserted offspring not one baby girl only, or even twins, but triplets, MissEverett Greenprovides waitresses all of one family for the "Silver Tea-shop," and that, though a happy arrangement, is a little too uncommon to add to the likelihood of an unconvincing tale.
When a book is succinctly labelledLove Stories(Doran), at least no one has any right to complain that he wasn't warned beforehand of the character of its contents. As a matter of fact, human nature being what it is, I have little doubt that Mrs.Mary Roberts Rineharthas hit upon a distinctly profitable title. Indeed I believe that this has already been proved in the Land of Freedom, from which the work comes to us, where (I am given to understand) the vogue of sentimental fiction is even greater than with ourselves.What the name does nothing to indicate is that the stories are almost all of them laid in or about hospital wards. For some, perhaps most, of the author's admirers this may serve only to increase the charm; for others, who prefer their romance unflavoured with iodoform, not. Undeniable that she has a smiling way with her, and a gift of sympathetic enjoyment that carries off the old, old dialogues, even imparting freshness to the tale of the patientin extremiswho persuades his attractive nurse into a death-bed marriage, treatment that the slightest experience of fiction should have warned her to be invariably curative. Perhaps the best of the tales is "Jane," which tells very amusingly the results of a hospital strike that in actual life would, I imagine, have provided little humorous relief. By this time you may have gathered that what matters about Mrs.Rinehartis not what she says but the way that she says it; upon which hint you can act as fancy dictates.
I very distinctly feel that "Katharine Tynan" could have made a first-rate novel ofDenys the Dreamer(Collins) and have had plenty over for a good second if she had taken the trouble. But her fluent pen runs away with her down paths that lead nowhere in particular, instead of developing her main characters and situations to an intelligible and satisfactory point.Denysis of a gentle Irish family that has come down to very small farming. He dreams good, solid and rather Anglo-Saxon dreams of draining bogs on the sea-coast estates ofLord Leenane, whose agent he becomes (and whose daughter he loves from afar), and of a great port that is to rival Belfast. Unexpected, not to say incredible, assistance comes from a Jew money-lender and his wife. The portraits ofMr.andMrs. Aaronsare the best things in the book, and I hope Mrs.Hinksonwill make a novel about these two admirable people some day soon.Denysmakes his own and his patron's fortune and I am sure lives happily ever after withDawn, who is the palest wraith of a girl, owing to the shameful neglect of her author, who is too busy putting large sums of money into the pockets of the principal puppets. Indeed, for a West Coast of Ireland story a demoralising amount of money is going about.
The principal scenes ofThe North Door(Constable) are laid in the Cornwall of some hundred-and-thirty years ago, and I welcome Dr.Greville Macdonaldas an expert in the Cornish language and character. Cornwall, as all readers of fiction know, has during the last few years been attacked again and again by novelists, and most of them would do well to study Dr.Macdonald'sromance and most thoroughly to digest it. In form, however, he will have little to teach them, for his book is very indifferently constructed. It may seem ungrateful in these rather skimpy days to complain of a surfeit of matter, but there is stuff in this book for two if not three novels. One cannot blame Dr.Macdonaldfor his indignation at the miseries of child-labour, but here it is perhaps out of place. HisMr. Trevenna, the mystical parson, friend of smugglers and of everyone who suffered from laws (unrighteous or righteous), is a great figure; and I shall not soon forget either his correspondence withLady Evangeline Walrondor his superhuman kindliness of heart. If you want to get at the true flavour of Cornwall you have only to openThe North Door.
A young clerk in an insurance office, who wanted to go as a missionary to India, is the hero, if there is one, of Mrs.Alice Perrin'slatest novel,The Vow of Silence(Cassell). I have never read a book about India which made such an ambition seem more courageous, for it gives such a hot and thirsty picture of that country whenHarold Williamsat last reaches it that it is positively uncomfortable to read it in Summer weather.Haroldand his brother and sister missionaries live in a state of stuffy discomfort which soon undermines his health and leaves him no defence against the charms ofElaine Taverner, who has a large cool drawing-room and dainty frocks, and a young soldier lover and an old scholar husband, and all the other things we expect of pretty young women in Anglo-Indian novels. PoorHarold, consumed at once by a zeal which makes him long to saveElaine'ssoul and a passion which makes him embrace a parcel of herlingerie, very naturally loses the remains of his reason and paves the way for her marriage with her lover by obligingly pushing the elderly husband into the jaws of a crocodile. If it were more convincing it would be a painful story—in some hands it might have been a great one; as it is, Mrs.Perrinseems for once to have missed her opportunity.
If the publisher ofAbout It And Abouthad told me on the wrapper that Mr.D. Willoughbyhas an excellent fund of literary reminiscence, on which he draws for the modelling of a very pretty epigrammatical style, I should, after reading the book, have agreed with him heartily. What Mr.T. Fisher Unwindoes say about these short essays, which embrace most of the subjects on which people have violent opinions, is that the author's "point of view is that of the natural historian making an unprejudiced examination." An unprejudiced man, I take it, is a man whose sentiments are the same as mine, and I happen to disagree with Mr.Willoughbyas profoundly as possible on several of the themes he has chosen. On fox-hunting, for instance, which he considers a more decadent sport than bull-fighting; and on Ulster, which he attacks bitterly by comparison with the rest of Ireland, for cherishing antiquated political animosities and talking about the Battle of the Boyne. But will Mr.Willoughbynot have been hearing of "the curse ofCromwell"? Let us rather agree to be impatient with Yorkshire for her absurd tranquillity with regard toWilliam the First. I repeat that Mr.Willoughbyhas a very clever style, but, bless his heart, he is as bigoted as I am myself.
Entirely self-made.Occupant of Pew."Entirely self-made. Originally a waiter, as you can see."
Occupant of Pew."Entirely self-made. Originally a waiter, as you can see."