Fiction
For Better, for Worse ",
Accident. By Arnold Bennett. (Cassell. 7a. 6d.) Ultima Thule. By Henry Handel Richardson. (Heinemann. is. 6d.)
IF you believe that it is unpardonable of Mr. Arnold Bennett to have presented humanity, out of his boundless vitality; with so few masterpieces, you will not be placated by Accident. Some who read last week.the distinguished author's reiterated insistence that the need of the English novel is brutality, and its foe sentimentality, may be excited or dismayed. Accident is as " brutal " as a lump of barley sugar ; and, since it distils tears, kisses, and scent at two pounds per bottle, and concludes in facile reconciliations, why should one not call it sentimental ? The Arnold Bennett who theo- retically adores the great French and Russian novelists is far away. It is as difficult to think of the writer of Accident lost. in the perusal of Dostoevsky or Maupassant as to believe his heroine, the elegant Pearl, when she asserts that she has read " the .Hammonds' books." ...
Accident is simply one of Mr. Bennett's entertaining gestures ; and, because his own zest never palls, entertained we are. Only we have been better amused in the days when the dream of wealth was a merry magic and the Grand Babylon Hotel the caravanserai for an Arabian Nights' amazement. Nowadays we almost resent, occasionally, these hard-bitten
millionaires, grimly concealing an astonishing uxoriousness, these spoiled and ever-bridling young women, far more mysterious to the author than to us, and all this joyous preoccupation with the little luxuries of the very rich. We remember the young Sophia, the tender Anna of the Five Towns, the mothering heart of Elsie, and regard artificial Pearls with ingratitude.
Real ingratitude, for, after all, Accident intends nothing but diversion, for I hardly take seriously the references to the Prelude, occasionally read by Alan Frith-Walter in the train-de-luxe that bears him to his wife in Genoa. As an unusually sensitive and tolerant capitalist, he observes porters, attendants, and the like, with a reflection that there is another world than his own. Still, it appears merely to add piquancy to his own happy lot. But when, after many delays and encounters, he meets his daughter-in-law, the beautiful Pearl, in the corridor of the train, he learns that his son Jack has become so deeply agitated by the social problem that he proposes to become a Labour member of Parliament. The newly-wedded Pearl, infuriated because such a course would make her look ridiculous, has suddenly taken flight towards her mother. (Cause and effect seem slightly antiquated.) Alan, charmed by the beauty, the chic, and what he considers the intelligence of the young woman, pleads that perhaps Jack should not be penalized for an honest conviction ; but without success. In the end, partly because Jack dashingly takes an aeroplane to catch the train at Aix-les-Bains, partly because they are all emotionally shaken by _a dramatic rail- accident, the two capitulate to each other,' though Pearl, having used her sex-fascination triumphally, decides that she can endure marriage even with a Labour member. Alan thinks they will have a stormy and splendid matrimonial career.
The slight story, of course, is supported by many light bright dialogues, and scenes - of much vivacity like those at Boulogne and Modane. But the author's tumultuous vocabu- lary becomes alarmingly limited, and his mannerisms take on a mechanic ring. " It was nothing, and it was tremen- dous:' Very good—but not for all the time. When things really trivial constantly become amazing, terrific, marvellous, in Mr. Bennett's glorified slang, what is left for the something prodigious that does happen occasionally l'—Ingratitude again, for this gaily turned piece of amusement ! It is only that we have become hungry for the essentials rather than the accidents of Mr. Bennett's genius.
" Marriage is a continuous, charming, frightful, perilous battle between the sexes " lays the author of Accident. The third voltme of Henry Handel Richardson's. Australian trilogy, Ultima Thule, resolves itself into an intimate and detailed chronicle of the last phase- of such conflict, *hen all the charm is gone, and heroic -compassion alone outlasts the thickening perils of the way.. Conflict-it must be, when one or other refuses the candour of. comradeship. In the first volume of The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney, the hero, gazing on little Polly's oval face, vows to print only lines of happiness there. With sombre patience, with relentless fidelity to charac-
ter, the third now achieves the melancholy irony of the author's purpose. From the first, the strain of diffidence, the haughti- ness, the dreaminess, at once Richard's weakness and his apology, proves him no effective colonist. We find him back in Australia for the third time, at the age of fifty, his fortune gone, partly by his own lack of foresight, partly by the rascality of others. His wife Mary, altered from the Victorian idolizing girl into a capable and courageous woman, embittered sometimes by her husband's follies of self-confidence, follows with three small children. In Melbourne, in the evil and desolating Barambogie, in seaside Shortlands, he fights to recover a decent income for his family, and fails. He is physically and mentally outworn. Mary struggles, endlessly disappointed by Richard's vain hopes, vacillations, and evasions, tortured into hatred by the caprices that are really symptoms of an insanity of fear. Richard's agonizing defeat under the crude and mocking regard of Barambogie and Shortlands is related with an intense comprehension of flayed nerves and collapsing brain which reminds one of Dreiser's description of the fall of Hurstwood, though the style in this novel, maintaining a certain old-fashioned dignity, refusing to share the agitation of its matter, achieves a different effect. The heroic Mary becomes a postmistress in iron-grey Gymgurra, rescues her husband from the misery of a callous asylum, and tends him with unfailing pity till his too slowly approaching death. - This part is very moving, for the author does not shrink from observing the wrongs of pity. Compassion for the husband in this case means the shame, the disquiet, the horror of the children. , Composed, deliberate, a little otiose as is the manner of this writer, a relentless sincerity harrows the record of life fairly begun, honourably • continued, and lost in the everyday misery of false friends, the death of children, crushing debt, intimate altercation, and gradual insanity. Australia has been no friend to Richard, who never gave her his affection. Yet one feels the Spirit of the country behind the sorrowful story, choosing her own lovers, rejecting nostalgic hearts, flinging snares of her peculiar colour, sound, and scent round the infants born on her soil, working out her destiny. It may need a patient reader to appreciate the patient method of Henry Handel Richardson—to realize the large scale of the picture, the come and go of minor characters, the minute psychology with its flashes of illumination. Whoever reads to the end must reflect how much is suffered, how much endured, how much resented, how much forgiven, in the history of an average pair of mortals seeking to feed and educate
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