FICTION
By FORREST REID Mister Johnson. By Joyce Cary. (Gollancz. 78. 6d.) Nothing is Past. By Kay Agutter. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d.)
READERS who, like myself, feel that they never again wish to read a " significant " novel dealing with world crises, politics, wars and dictators, cannot do better than to procure Mr. Joyce Cary's admirable Mister Yohnson. I use " significant " in Mr. Aldous Huxley's sense of the word, which means momentarily fashionable among the intelligentsia, and has nothing whatever to do with the more permanent qualities upon which literature depends. Henry James is not a " significant " writer ; Mr. Huxley himself, I am afraid, is. Yet we read him—or I at least read him—for those very qualities that are not "significant," his excellent style and his ironic humour.
Now Mister lohnson has nothing to do with world crises; it is as remote from them as is Conrad's An Outpost of Pro- gress, and though its mood is more genial than the mood of that pessimistic little masterpiece, the story presents very much the same ituation—with the white man helplessly doing his best in surroundings that he cannot understand, under a tropical sun that saps his vitality and in communion with natives to whom those surroundings and that sun are as the breath of life. I fancy I could adapt myself to these condi- tions if not to the climate, but this may be an illusion and only mean that I should be content to "go native "—an appalling disgrace in the white man's eyes. The first thing to be recognised, at any rate, is that the native virtues are the virtues of animals, and that to expect a moral sense, as we understand it, is absurd. Oddly enough, the absence of this moral sense appears to carry with it an absence of cor- ruption: at least, it seems odd until we remember that animals never are corrupt—a rather disquieting thought for moralists. The amiable and debonair Mister Johnson, for instance, is a liar, a thief, and in the end a murderer, yet he certainly is not corrupt, and it is to be remembered that, though he possesses a wife and a baby, after all his age is only seventeen. He is black as ebony, and he is devoted with a dog-like devo- tion to Mister Rudbeck, the Nigerian Government official whose clerk he is. Mister Rudbeck is constructing a road, and Johnson, who has an influence with the natives, is his right-hand man. Mister Rudbeck soon becomes quite fond of Johnson. Therefore, being a kindly person, when he has first to try, and then to sentence his protégé, he feels it deeply. But the boy bears no malice ; Rudbeck still remains his idol. Only he admits that he dreads the thought of being hanged. So, kneeling in prayer, and seeing Rudbeck borrow- ing the sentry's gun, he burst out in gratitude: "Oh Lord, I tank you for my frien' Mister Rudbeck—de bigges' heart in de worl'."
The novel is written in the present tense, s form I usu- ally dislike, but here it adds somehow to the impressionistic method, and the brilliant colour and atmosphere of the exotic scenes are produced effortlessly, as if from a profound and prolonged experience. In this respect, indeed, the tale creates the same authentic effect as did the early Conrad tales, though Mr. Cary's manner does not in the least recall Conrad, except perhaps in a certain detached irony of presentation, as in the portraits of old Waziri and his boy favourites. Johnson him- self, I am convinced, is done to the life. That he should be condemned to be hanged we feel to be absurd, a part of the general futility of the white man's rule, for he is the most affectionate creature on the face of the earth. But then, in a way, the whole thing is absurd—natives and whites at per- petual cross-purposes. The enforced civilisation is never really understood, never really penetrates below the surface, but results only in an outward compliance with arbitrary and meaningless taboos. They are the white man's laws, and the white man is powerful, so must either be deceived or obeyed. Mr. Cary takes no side, simply paints his picture. leaving the rest to us.
Miss Rawlings' first novel, The Yearling, proved a great success. In her new novel, Golden Apples, she again lays the scene in Florida, but I think the more discerning among her admirers will be disappointed. The charm of The Year- ling was largely the charm of a very pleasing and unusual subject treated with delicacy and understanding : the subject of Golden Apples is less original, and, for me at least, possessed no charm whatever. Yet the opening of the book is promising. It shows us a boy of fourteen and his younger sister trying, unassisted, to run the farm of their dead parents. • Unfortunately, upon this episode the curtain quickly drops, and when it rises again Luke and Allie are grown-up, have been evicted, and are living in a deserted shack in a clearing in the forest.
And now the real hero of the book enters. Tordell is a young Englishman who has been banished from home on the same false charge that Phaedra long ago brought against Hippolytos. Embittered, without ambitions, without plans, he finds his way to the shack where Luke and Allie have taken refuge, because it actually, with the land around it, belongs to his own father. He contracts a fever there, and during Luke's absence the innocent and devoted Allie nurses him back to life—in return for which he seduces her. Such, stated baldly, is the plot, and though Miss Rawlings tries hard to arouse sympathy for her hero, I don't think she succeeds. True, when—after everybody else—he discovers that Allie is going to have a baby he offers to marry her. But the offer is made in a tone of cold superiority, and because, as he explains, marriage means nothing to him. Neither, by this time, does it to poor Allie, but Miss Rawlings gets rid of that awkwardness by killing both her and her child. My difficulty was that I could not see Tordell in a romantic light. His picturesque aloofness and Byronic attitude did not impress me. In fact, he struck me as a cad, and his whole story as showing a marked falling-off from The Yearling. The streak of senti- mentality that in the earlier tale spoiled the portrait of Jody's father is here exaggerated in the portrait of Dr. Albury, who exudes goodness and benevolence at every pore. He expresses it, moreover, with what I think is intended to be a quaint charm, though in actual life it would be maddening. Dickens, in his most Christmas spirit, never conceived a more tire- somely warm-hearted character than Dr. Albury. He has a surly blackguard of a son whom he idolises, and even this paternal affection is irritating. It is irritating because it is sloppy and foolish, yet Dr. Albury is supposed to be no fool. Golden Apples, in short, is a bid for popularity, and perhaps I have been taking it too seriously. The story has a super- ficial realism, a plausibility quite sufficient to illude the novel-reading public at large ; but there is no fundamental realism, no depth ; spiritually and intellectually the note throughout is commonplace.
" Commonplace " is the last epithet one could apply to Nothing is Past. This is a first novel by a writer who may go very far indeed. Mr. Agutter has talent, and by talent I mean that his work has nothing to do with commercial fiction. The book primarily is the study of an unbalanced mind. Dominic Haest has returned from China with nerves hopelessly jangled by the horrors he has experienced there, and his struggles to appear perfectly sane form a large part of the tale. All this, I may say, could not be better done ; but in addition—and it is most important—there is the presentment of the normal characters, which is equally convincing. Nobody could be more normal—more blatantly normal if it comes to that— than Haest's wife, yet Cressy—" vulgar, vital, and un- scrupulous "—lives. At first we do not like her ; in the end we do. At first there is nothing to like, for she marries Haest quite frankly for his position and money, not because she cares for him, and had things gone well she almost certainly would have let him down badly. Strangely enough. it is the fact that things go anything but well, that her husband's mental condition becomes increasingly dangerous, which brings out a certain fighting spirit of loyalty in her. She does not love him, but he is utterly dependent upon her, society is against him, and she makes up her mind that she is going to see him through. We admire Cressy. The novel is not sensational, but it grips the imagination with an interest that comes very close to excitement. To call it promising would be inadequate, for it is a brilliant achievement.
Previous page
