Fiction
Variety in the Historical Novel
Lewis. With an Introduction by William McFee. (Cape. 7s. 6d.)
Louis XI. of France, that squalid and enigmatic sovereign, has engaged as much attention as any of the more splendid princes of the House of Valois. His duplicity, his greed, his cruelty, his terror of death, his exactions from humanity and his placations of God, his beaver hat with the little saints' images in it of gold, silver, and lead—but mostly of lead, the collar of rubies and pearls for his little dog Chier-Ami, the ribald humour. of his conversation and his gross passages of sen- suality, his oubliettes and his aviaries, his provost-marshal Tristan l'Hermitte and his close counsellor the barber, Oliver le Dain, Oliver the Devil—the Deuce, as the English translator mildly calls him—have all attracted the historian and the novelist.
In modern times Louis XI. has been credited with long views of statesmanship, and called the founder of the French monarchy. He emerges a better politician but no better a man. Sir Walter Scott's vigorous portrait of Louis in Quentin Durward is now challenged by Alfred Neumann, one of the new group of German historical novelists. His book has had a great success ; it is not altogether easy to see why. It has none of the historic sweep and energy of Feuehtwanger's large canvases. The book is full of longueurs, pages of unabsorbed summaries of incident. The visualizing power is low : Ghent, Paris, Amboise,the nightmare Plessis, do not attack our eyes. Yet this is the France of Villon. No! The gestures and speech are not credibly mediaeval : Oliver says grandiloquent things never uttered by anybody outside a Disraeli novel. The sensa- tional appeal of the book seems to lie in a-vague pseudo-mystic- ism by which the relation between Louis and his barber friend Oliver is sentimentalized into a supernatural soul-affinity. This reaches such a confusion of identity that Anne, Oliver's wife (an invented person), can love them both. The climax of Anne's drama is astonishing ; and the style cannot make it credible. Why Oliver, as at once the time damn& and the " conscience " of Louis, should permit so much cruelty at some times and suggest restraint at others is quite obscure. The author seems to be groping after an early Maeterlinckian idea that the soul is of a substance so adamantine that it can- not share in the sins of the body ; and may remain pure even amidst a murder. But his intentions are muzzy, and Louis is too repulsive in his habit for a treatment that almost slobbers at times. Yet sentimentality, sensuality, and violence, with lapses of mere dullness, do induce a queer reaction which evidently persuades many into considering The Deuce an
original book. We are in a more clearly realized world with Naomi Mitchi-
son's Black Sparta, a volume of thirteen stories concerning the Greek world, with interspersed lyrics. Most of these have beauty, clarity, and real divination. The ruthless and jealous tyranny of the military State that brought Athens to her end gives deadly point to several of the episodes, especially that in which the boy Charilas is left weeping his heart out at the civic outrage to his humanity, The musical lyric that follows under the name of " Charilas, in exile, Remembers Sparta," delicately indicates his fate. Yet in that austere hollow land, washed by the swift Eurotas, Hyacinthus walked with Apollo and Leda beheld the Swan, so we catch gracious glimpses of aristocratic Spartan youth, with curled gold hair and haughty manners, In other tales Pindar, young, breaks a boy's heart in composing his triumph-song, or, grown old, listens wearily to a tale of distant revolution and the death of friends. Aspasia sets her feet to , Athens, and Socrates bereaves Plato of the hope of a poet, There is picture enough —cups, rings, robes, bright heads wreathed with heavy ivy, the glory of the Games. It is only the speech that often gives pause. It seems often far too ingenuous in its babble ; and why should educated Greeks, made to converse in English, commit the atrocity of using " like " as a conjunction ? Still,
it is a good book ; perhaps the best of its gifts is its intimacy with the earth, with pure springs, scented turf, beds of rushes wherein lie darkly-golden violets.
Mr. Aloysius Horn, encouraged by Mrs. Ethelreda Lewis, makes a spirited excursion into early English history with the killing lads" of Harold the Webbed, whose father, "Rodger the Bold," has "keeps and castles" in the Faroe Isles. Mr.
Horn insists on the value of his folklore, but no false pedantry inhibits him when he has a vision of "the glory and the glitter of Caesar's fleet shining in the sun, all S.P.Q.R." But that last sentence occurs in one of the conversations with Mrs. Lewis, in which he annotates and illuminates his plot. The story itself, written in a style somewhat reminiscent of The Young Visiters, though applied to richer matter, is exceedingly funny. Mr. Horn confides to Mrs. Lewis that the Americans want "a laff plus instruction" : the " laff " at least is delightful. But the inimitable conversations, in which the author ceases to practise the restraint he considers neces- sary for written work, naturally provide the rich red meat of the book. The juices are as generous as ever ; no conscious- ness of fame had arrested the speaker's flow when this book was made. So he goes on felicitously discoursing on the nobilities of Lancashire, the character of Elizabeth, the price of the demi-monde, the nature of poverty, the theory of the " paramounts," prohibition, the sea-sickness of Eyetalians, silken sails, the superiority of the Nordic blue-eyed man, rivers, Jonathan Rider, Lucy Verga, scientific warfare, bow- strings, and a hundred other things. Since the reviewer can do little but quote, it is better to advise readers to acquire the wise, original, and humorous book at once. If it fails to enchant him, he is what Aloysius Horn calls " homo stultus."
RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR.
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