FICTION
VARIOUS. HEROES
The Professor's House: . Cather. - •(Heinerriann.
7s. 6d. net.) - - (Elkin,Mathews, - 7s. -6d.,ne.t..)' -
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Fon all its formlessness theie is a fastidious restraint and sincerity about The Professor's House which is extremely pleasing. A character study rather than a novel on con-- ventional lines, it crystallizei the" nebulous personality of a professor of history at an American university. His prac- tical wife with her mature charms and coquetry, his two married daughters—a Goneiil and a Cordelia—and their husbands, play about the central figure of the ageing savant, but not on- their own account. It 'is their effect. on his more sensitive, more reflective nature which is important, not they themselves. - They are, indeed,Of no more account than the young scientist—killed in the War before the story opens— once the professor's favourite pupil and his eldest daughter's fiance, whose intimacy with the family had been so dear to Professor St.-Peter. It is not the intention of The Professor's House to astonish or excite the reader, but to stimulate his mind by deliberate words to derive pleasure from :the :Con- templation of a serious man's spiritual- life, as he approaches old age and learns that henceforth he must eidst. -without keen emotions, detached and philosophic. It is a .fault-. that a third of the book is taken up with the.adventures .of. the dead pupil. Interesting in itself as this is and finelywritten; it throws the proportions out, " and diverts- the' _reader's attention from the .central figure of the, book to-the adventiwes
of a person outside the limits of 'its • -
In Masterson, Mr. Frankau has plainly -intended . to draw such a picture of the present moral-and political life of England as shall help to purge a sick world. His taste,- his political morality too; is unfortunately Of an order hardly more elevated than that of the sensational. daily Press, and while his intentions are honourable his execution is much_ less than -elicellent.' Masterson has-nothing of the nobility and vision - that made Mrs. Humphry Ward's novels on somewhat pimilar lines ,sp„ effective. Irene Carslake, the heroine, is one of thoSe excessively amorous women of the less-reputable. section of smart society whom Mr. Arlefi hal patented, and in ,insisting on her low order -of sensuality Mr.- Frankau sonietiines verges upon abiuntiey and indifferent taste at the same time: At a boxing match . • _ " the stark picture of naked manhood struck real terror at her soul. . . . Irene Carslake knew heMelf hypnotized by their semi-nudity." Of her pre-nuptial behaviour, one of her beaux recalls "those many hectic moments when, pressing his mouth to hers, he had so nearly savoured the whole core of that sweet fruit which her youth, questing for experience, had dangled before his virile maturity."
When this distasteful Irene marries the stern millionaire; hero set upon saving England from wicked Socialists, she is, -of course, quickly bored by him, and almost as quickly unfaithful. In the end her husband is left with a better sort of female companion, being as earnestly a patriot as ever. But the telling of his story is hardly calculated to inspire the average reader to folloW his -excellent ekainiile, and consequently Mr. Frankau has somewhat failed in his endeavour to create n helpful tract for the times. • •
There is real nobility of soul in the three vividly romantic stories which Lady • Cromartie - has written under the general title of The Temple of the Winds. These transport us to the spacious, vigorous times when the Phoenician rovers were the terror of -the Mediterranean and deeds both terrible and doughty were done in the name Of Baal.
Heremon, the more than mortally beautiful King, whose regal magnificence and greatness-of hart dominate all three tales, is certainly romanticized.; - nevertheless he is much more like the kind of human being one cares to read about than the squalid heroines and bumptious heroes of all too many novels of contemporary life. The best story undoubtedlY- is Mago, which relates. the- adventures of a Varthaginiiin pirate :-
" Cruel, licentious . . . he was iidnetable upcii 'one 'point. end - that was his only and Motherless sOn. . "." • • - Father and son are bound by a more than common love After many _adventures_ on land and _sea, related with a , breathless vigour that is sometimes elliptic but oftener invigorating, a woman crosses their path. But no tragedy can part these great hearts, and they pursue their fierce ways, together ever, until the son falls in battle, and the wild father - dies, as perhaps only the untutored and unruly can, of a broken heart and the lack of any desire to live without the "one object of his affections. - -Never described, the sea- and the rocky coasts of Syria, Crete and Africa loom up vividly behind the half-heroic, half-brutal figures, who with their instinctive dignity and sureness of themselves make one sigh a little for simpler, more dangerous days and for other books 'as direct and as fresh as this.
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