A Group of New Novels

IN his more recent stories John Buchan ranges far in strange places, but the farther lie goes from his native heather the less he appears to be able to catch the true spirit of romance. The Courts of the Morning strikes one as overingenious. The author has been compelled by the exigencies of his plan to invent not only a plot but a country, a political system, and a war, with the result that the reader becomes bewildered in the effort to keep his bearings. The country is South American, and the proprietor of certain mines there has exploited human labor by drugging his workmen. In the war of emancipation which follows a group ol Englishmen and Americans outwit him and end by converting him from his cynical philosophy. The story of a war conducted almost without bloodshed is interesting as parable or demonstration, but at times it reads like a treatise on military strategy. One who has approached each of Mr. Buchan’s romances with keen appetite feels a little defeated and sighs for the less carefully documented preposterous ness of some of his earlier books. This is a matter of taste, of course. I only mean that Mr. Buchan has no right to become heavy, when he knows so well how to spin a good yarn in delectable English. Of late his inventiveness has seemed to hamper his imagination.

The Lady of Laws of Susanne Trautwein has a remarkable quality which I can only call stereoscopic; for in this story of Renaissance Italy, where ‘brains, high-blooded, ticked six ‘centuries since,’ the characters have the rebel and roundness of pictures seen through the magic glass of our boyhood front parlors. And the story has great beauty and power. It concerns a woman jurist of rank and learning, raped in her youth by an unknown man, and her successful struggle to rise above that infamy. The portrait of the heroine would be better it some of the speeches assigned to her did not have a slightly priggish ring. It is a noble portrait, nevertheless; and the way in which base passions and lofty actions, sacrifice and greed, brutality and loveliness, are fused, and the horrors of the time are subordinated to its heroisms, deserves all praise. The men, especially, are so vigorous and true that it is hard to believe that they were created by a woman.

If The Lady ofLaws is stereoscopic, The Seven Vices of Guglielmo Ferrero is kaleidoscopic, for the threads of interest are many and intricate and the characters swarm. Conceived somewhat in the spirit of The Ring and the Book, it is superficially a study of a murder, or rather of

the effects of a murder upon the people of Rome, some thirty years ago; and it is, moreover, like Browning’s great poem, at bottom a study of Truth. The parts of the book which no doubt many readers will skip — the passages of allegory concerning History and Poetry, Truth, Logic, and Justice — are its heart, or at least its philosophic centre. They represent a historian’s ponderings upon the relations of History and Poetry in the search for truth; but for many they will be objectionable as impeding the story. The tracing of the subtly precarious hair line between truth and falsehood nevertheless provides an intellectual treat, whatever may be the shortcomings of the novel as a work of art. And the personages who crowd its pages are convincingly individual, and the story is told with great vivacity. Particularly good is the portrayal of the great toxicologist, Guieciarelli, who, having made a mistake in identifying a poison, is torn between his desire to keep his reputation and his sense of scientific honesty.

The Tryphena of Eden Phillpotts is a dramatic idyl, in which the character of a girl is presented almost entirely in dialogue and action, without either the elaborate local color of the author’s earlier Devon novels or the excitement of his later mystery stories. A quiet story of likable people, the narrative revolves about the situation of Tryphena, a foundling adopted by a farmer and his wife, who, when she is seventeen, discovers her parentage. Her father, a country gentleman, seeks to reclaim her, but she remains true to the ideals of the class in which she has been reared. It is these ideals which are the theme of the novel, the entire drift of which is that they are honest and sound. It is unfortunate that the situation of Tryphena necessitates endless talk, which becomes monotonously repetitive in subject. One nevertheless dwells with pleasure upon the humors of Grandfather Henry, the lovely miniatures of farm and countryside, and the homely mixture of idealism and common sense in the rustic folk. Such scenes as that of Tryphena making Honiton lace while she talks with old Henry under the walnut tree, though few, are beautiful.

Gerald Bullet t’s work has the qualities ofthe type of realism represented by Mr. Polly, Young Felix, and Clayhanger. Ordinary people living in rather stuffy surroundings are presented with a sympathy and humor that do not in the least avoid or gloss over the sordidness of their lives, but never lose sight of the aspirations and dreams that make even such lives exciting. The History of Egg Pandervil is a most enjoyable

story of a man who, after a country boyhood and a youthful romance with a girl of higher station, drifts to London and becomes a grocer — he himself never knows just how or why. His case is very like that of Mr. Polly, but whereas the latter finds salvation in revolt, Egg finds it in his son, Nicky — about whom, by the way, Mr. Bullett is writing another novel. What strikes one most in this novel is a saliency of character and a radiancy of style that make each main episode imprint itself powerfully upon the mind: Willy’s killing of the dog, Fang; the tea party in the hayfield; Egg reading the Bible to exasperating Mrs. Noom; Bob’s birthday party; Mrs. Noom’s histrionics in the street — all are narrated with a tine zest . Readers who love Dickens will like Egg Pandervil.

The Young May Moon of Martha Ostenso, after an unfortunate beginning in a chapter or two of melodramatic writing, quiets down to an interesting story of small-town characters;although the author throughout strains too much after the effective phrase. The plot grows out of a situation that might have been powerfully tragic but that evaporates in sentiment. A young wife, having run away from her husband, changes her mind and returns a few hours later, to find that he has committed suicide. She manages, however, to rise above her sense of guilt and even to reconquer the esteem of her neighbors, to whom in a passionate moment she has told the facts. The best part of the story is that which deals with the town characters and their gossip. Marcia’s forbidding mother-in-law and old Jonas are particularly striking. As a whole the novel lacks both the power of If Wild Geese and the humanity of The Mad Carews.

It is said that in The Romantic ComediansEllen Glasgow wrote a novel to suit herself, without any regard to what readers of Her earlier books might expect of her. The result was very enjoyable comedy. In They Stooped to holly she continues to suit herself, and the book is great fun. But it is much more than that, of course, because under the surface coruscations of her almost incessant wit is a serious subject, ingeniously presented by throwing into juxtaposition three women who, like the forlorn heroine of Goldsmith’s little poem, have stooped to folly. Aunt Agatha, who stooped in the eighteenseventies, has been a blighted soul ever since, and only since the war lias shown an autumnal flippancy by going to moving pictures and eating banana sundaes. Mrs. Dalrymple, who stooped in the nineties, — a more buoyant soul, — has gained toleration if not happiness by defying the society that condemned her. And Milly Burden, who stooped in 1914, after some years of misery rises gallantly above her past and puts it almost nonchalantly behind her. But although these women give point to the narrative, they are no more interesting than the scapegrace elderly artist Marmaduke, Mr. Littlepage, likable and puzzled, his wife Victoria, his daughter, and Mrs. Burden — the last a depressing picture of a perfectly ‘good’ woman. It will be seen that the novel is a study of the evolution of moral sanctions and standards. One Could wish that the theme were less trite, but there is scarcely anything else to wish for. The book is a joy.

What can be said of Evelyn Scott’s The Wave that has not been said? The author calls it ‘narratives of the Civil War,’ apparently disclaiming any idea of having written a novel. Of course, the sketches, stories, descriptions, excerpts from diaries, newspapers, and letters, though they have no connection, have an underlying unity, because they are all surface indications of one great movement, one wave, in history; and in their totality they are intended to leave upon the mind one overpowering effect In the motto, quoted from Lake’s Physical Geography, we read that ‘the waves travel in some definite direction, but a cork thrown into the water does not travel with the waves. The passage, which is much longer than the partquoted, no doubt suggests the author s artistic design, and it is fascinating, while reading the successive sections, to keep in mind the metaphor of the cork and the wave. Some men are more corklike than others, and some are caught up into eddies and gales; but most merely bob up and down, conscious of an intense agitation and even deluded by a sense of going somewhere. The wave, in short, is a phenomenon of nature and man is really a part of it. The variety, fertility, and strength of the author’s invention are remarkable, and yet one cannot help wishing that they had been expended upon a coördinated narrative. Her view of the segment of history she has described is not unlike that of Tolstoy, in War and Peace, and she has been able to convey the same effect of human puppets borne on a wave; but the necessity tier method involves of beginning again and again with a new and discontinuous succession of incidents compels, her to sacrifice unity to variety and a great climax to a series of minor crises. The result is a mosaic which it almost staggers the mind to fuse into a whole, instead of an epic in which various threads of action converge to produce a grand single effect. And yet what richness, solidity, she does achieve, and what a panorama of a nation! The Wave is really a noble book.

R. M. GAY