Fiction
Lucia. By Gwenda Hollander. (Macdonald. 8s. 6d.)
Brass Farthing. By Rupert Croft-Cooke. (Werner Laurie. 9s. 6d.)
MR. ROBERT GRAVES seems to me far and away our best writer of historical novels. Ever since I can first remember, my most intense curiosity has been to know what it was like to be alive at any time in the past ; and Mr. Graves tells me. His stories show immense research, but where so many other historical novels lumber along beneath their load of conscientious detail, Mr. Graves's imagination is invariably stimulated by what he finds. Nothing is allowed to blur the intensely personal focus of his perceptions, yet one never feels, as with certain other writers of strong individuality, that the picture is arbitrarily drawn. To this sure hold on the material are Added a poet's energy and precision, which give the story a deeper level of reality, an extra dimension. Of contemporary writers, only Miss Helen Waddell gives me the same feeling that I am there, with all my senses and feelings.
The Isles of Unwisdom is the story of a voyage of exploration. In 1595 the General Alvaro de Mendafia led an expedition, which, setting sail from Lima in Peru, made its tormented and tormenting way to the Marquesas, the Solomons and the Philippines. With the General was his wife, the Dofia Ysabel, a monster of arrogance and egotism, .and a number of officers who fell little short of her. Rapacity, corruption, self-seeking and double-dealing hampered every stage of the voyage, till of the fleet one vessel only came to harbour, the General dead, his widow in command. There were a few good men on board, but the savages encountered by these violent Christians show well by comparison.
It is Mr. Graves's especial triumph that he makes one believe in the sufferings, the splendours, the all but inconceivable stupidities of the voyagers to the extent of vehemently willing them to behave more reasonably. The steaming, straining, sweating shiploads stagger from adventure to adventure, loud, mean, preposterous, splendid and passionately alive. I could not stop reading about them.
Mr. Frank Kendon is also a poet. Martin Makesure implies a good deal more than it says, but its implications may safely be left to the reader. Picaresque in form; it follows the adventures of a young man who decides one fine autumn to leave London and make for the country. His wife, thus challenged, sets out on a similar quest, and the end is satisfactory to them both. These journeys take a leisurely course, enabling the reader to savour country sights and tasks and pastimes as they are recorded by the 'heightened per- ceptions of a poet. One facet of this sensitivity is an extraordinary sympathy with animals. The dying tat, the frightened bullock are understood even in their conflict with humanity. The country people are real, too, and I prefer their comments to the conversation of the more sophisticated characters.
'NOW where are you leading me ? ' he asked. 'Into what dangerous, dark places and recklzss avowals ? No, I'm rot super-
stitious about " women," certainly not about you. I don't at all believe that because you are a woman you can see the future. But I do, I find, assume that you have a quicker, straighter grasp of lives—persons encountered—than we have. All the same, if you had a feeling that a dead man was buried in that chalk it wouldn't weigh a pennyweight with me.'
' I'm afraid,' she said, with a. sort of sigh, if you told me your hunches I should run to accept them as your wisdom.'
No,' said Robert. 'Everyone knows that a situation unsolved is a powerful temptation, and that the human imagination has a luxurious bias towards the odd, the ugly, and the grim. Perhaps, by indulging the worst before it happens, we think we could avoid it? " 'That would be dangerous, too,' she quietly said. "He agreed. 'The unattainable best of all is a brave imagination but an open mind. Then instead of running out of sight ahead after imagination's lurid choice, we might get somewhere near the truth. If we patiently set out all the few facts in clear view that we have bearing upon this man's whereabouts, orderliness might lead us to him.' " I feel more at home with the bullock.
Lucia presents the reviewer with a problem not often met, and makes him wonder anxiously whether, in the past, an immature vocabulary has made him infer an immature outlook on life. Lucia contains a deal of honest and sound observation and an under- standing of human problems, which it expresses in terms appropriate to one of the glossier women's magazines. Lucia is a woman of dominating personality who takes benevolent charge of the lives of her friends, and advises them in what she believes to be their best interests. The friends, men and women, love and admire her. Then, imperceptibly, suspicion rises. I must not give away a story which is built up, by no means unskilfully, to a satisfying climax. Can the Lucias of this world be brought to realise their error and the ugliness that underlies their concern for others' welfare ? If the people she has been shoving around get wise to her, and stage a showdown, how will Lucia take it ? What will happen to her husband ?
Mrs. Hollander provides 'the answers in a first novel which deserves attention. Her writing is at present liable to collapse into clichés, which misrepresent a serious purpose and a clear insight. What she has here achieved suggests that she may develop into a popular novelist ; but there are possibilities of something more.
Mr. Rupert Croft-Cooke has made a wide reputation as a skilful teller of good stories. Like Lucia, Brass Farthing is built round an idea. Suppose a spinster, no longer young, who had spent her life ministering to her selfish father, found herself heiress to a large fortune, how would she behave ? That depends on—and so the idea is worked out, plausibly, logically, yet with surprises. It is all very clear and humorous and credible ; the writing is con- scientious and, unless you are in a hurry, easy to read, and one is left with a firm respect for the author. The limitation is that Mr. Croft-Cooke has, no doubt deliberately, restricted himself to the surface of life. Braisi Farthing is a story of behaviour. If I may put the matter in another way, its movement is horizontal only. It does not include a vertical dimension. The others do. Mr. Kendon I suspect of being happier in this than in the horizontal ; happier in his meaning than in the drama which conveys it. The vertical dimension is important for Mrs. Hollander, but she has not yet the skill to express all she knows. It is left for Mr. Graves to unite the Iwo in a story which one or two critics have strangely censured
as unedifying ; to be both serpent and dove. L. A. G. STRONG.
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