Fiction
LY L. A. G. &mom°.
Lark Ascending. By Mazo de•la Roche. (Macmillan. 7s. 6d.)
Lark Ascending happens to be the first of Miss Maw de la Roches novels which I have read. On the strength of her reputation, and the things which eminent critics have said about her chronicles of the White Oak family, I judge it to be something of a holiday. I do not mean that it is not very good of its kind, but, sincere and accurate though it is, it definitely belongs to the category of lighter reading. Fay Palmas, its chief character, has mixed blood in her veins, some of it pirate, -some of it Red Indian, and the rest vaguely Latin. She has a fine voice, and was ambitious to become a singer, but fate decreed that, by the time the story opens, she should be the widow of a Saltport baker, continuing his business with the help of Josie, her adopted daughter, and with a good deal less help from Diego, her son. Diego can paint. He has genius without application, and Josie, who has no genius, is able to finish his pictures for him and make them significant. After mooning along for some time, and letting the business go down, the trio decide to sell it and migrate to Europe. They are joined by Purley Bond, the lcical druggist, who likewise harbours disappointed ambitions, and is in love with Fay. The strange quartet embarks. Diego enjoys himself vastly, Josie and Purley are less happy, and Fay simply revels in the change.
-" -From the day she appoared on deck in her long black fur- trimmed coat, she was the subject of speculation among the other passengers. Her height, her long, swinging walk, her swarthy skin, arched brows and brilliant eyes made her singular. She had an air at once naive and reckless. She was eager to investigate every part of the ship from engine-room to captain's bridge. She studied the maps on the walls of the promenade deck. She read the ship's newspaper from end to end, and, when she came upon an item from Massachusetts, she wondered if she had ever lived there. She tried to drop her New England drawl, and imitated in turn the accents of various people on board whom she admired. Sometimes she hurried up to Bond and began talking to him like a Southerner— calling him Pully. Sometimes she imitated quite successfully, for an hour or more, the grave unhurried accents of a Harvard professor. She was not above trying out the peculiar tones of the Detroiter. But, after an evening-spent in the company of a-young Chicagoan, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, she settled down to imitate the fine frenzy of his accent alone. She was trying to absorb in haste what life had so long denied her."
At Teneriffe, her fancy is taken by a stranger of magnificent appearance who professes to be a Sicilian nobleman. She giVes him money, and sonic of Diego's clothes, and adopts him as one of the party. When they reach Sicily, his story turns out to be true. Fay marries him, and they set up business as bakery and antique shop combined.
The book ends neatly and ingeniously. It is careful, lively, and amusing. The characters are sincerely studied. The best things in it are the full-length and elaborate portrait of Fay, and the descriptions of scenery. The extract above, and this concluding extract, give the atmosphere of a satisfactory and charming story.
" They stood on the balcony together looking down on the bay that stretched in changeful blueness to the gold-misted horizon. Capri raised a golden shoulder from its depths. A dozen small white sails moved like blown flower-petals across its surface. Vesuvius, clothed by the sunset in a jewelled robe, reared her proud plume and forgot her rages. From the shadow of the Castel dell' Ovo three racing shells, maimed by young Neopolitans, shot into the open. Their coxswains shouted to them in musical tones, athletic bodies phone like bronze. Two soldiers in long capes and plumed hats stopped by the balustrade to watch them. A friar passed by, his bare red heels shewing at each stop beneath his dark robe. A little boy selling chestnuts cried his wares in a sweet melting treble. Horse cabs clattered by. Hysterical motor horns sounded gaspingly. Diego leaned far across the balcony and had a glimpse of the funnel of the ship."
Mr. Alec Waugh also understands perfectly well that the first duty of the professional novelist is to be readable, and I gratefully admit that I read him with an enjoyment which I do not always derive from those I am bound to consider his betters. There is something very forthright and likeable about Mr. Waugh's work. " Here's my story," he seems to say, with a disarming smile•; and, if it is not always a very good story, it is always easy to read, and there are often excellent things in it. There are excellent things in No Quarter, and para. graphs of good and vigorous prose. There are also less goad things, and paragraphs of prose that is far from good ; but the sum total is enjoyable. No Quarter, which is more directly concerned with pirate blood than Lark Ascending, has an ambitious theme. It is a " family " novel with a buccaneering background. Mr. Waugh makei his list of characters less unwieldy by dealing with them one at a time, yet from Roger Vaisseau, buccaneer, born in 1682, to Francois Doublon, business magnate, born in 1892, is a long stretch to be eon. tamed- in 310 pages; Tortuga and the pirates ; San Domingo, the planters, and their slave raids on the African coast ; the negro revolt and Toussaint L'Ouverture ; Trinidad, Martinique, and the eruption of Mont Pelee ; Mr. Waugh takes us through them all, to give us, in his last thirty pages, the War and the return of Francois Doublon to the France from which Roger Vaisseau set sail three centuries before. The idea connecting these incidents is that Roger's descendants are all rovers, neither giving nor expecting quarter. The book is very neatly rounded off. Mr. Waugh's craftsmanship grows surely, but his characterization is still on the superficial side.
Another most readable novel comes from the experienced pen of Mr. Robert Hichens. Mortimer Brice is a h4py example of good-humoured satire. The hero has a heroic body, but, as he too well knows, an unheroic head : ". . . There were moments when, standing in front of the glass before or after doing his morning exercises he said to himself :
Is this body of mine going to work my ruin ? ' "
The ladies, at any rate, seemed quite satisfied with it. They loved him—literally—for himselfalone ; and he felt no difficulty about responding. At last, however, having posed for a statue entitled Disharmony, and taken Muriel, who loves him for his better self alone, to see it, he finds the strength of mind to resist Joan, take a new job as physical instructor, and settle down to a good woman's love. It is all very amusing, and the temptation scene shows how well Mr. Hichens can write ; while the love of detail with which the circumstances of Mortimer's life are described suggests that he reads and admires his Baizac.
On the eve of his wedding Jim Norton had a letter from his fiancee. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever read :
" But he was not conscious of the beauty, beauty which was near to tears, and which brought tears to his own eyes. All he know was one thing : Constance Burnett would marry him. Now he was in for it."
She did, and he was. Alas, there were nearly as many ladies interested in him as were interested in Mr. lichen's' Mortimer. It was a pity about Zoe. "Only a Friend, says Man in Girl- Poet's Love Death." Constance said a good_cleal more, and left him when she had finished. Mr. Waugh says that Forever and Ever is very moving. I am afraid I take a lighter view of it, but I found it slick, competent, and easy to read.
So much for the books that are professionally handled. The Golden Pheasant is amateurish, but in its essence the most serious of the five. Pendred Rushbrooke, a well-known scientist, feeling the reaction of peace after the War in.which he had served with distinction, is offered a three-years' research job at Farnworth Park, the home of Sir Michael Sebright. He settles happily at Manor Cottage, works at his laboratories, and is on friendly terms with the Sebrights. IIe falls in love with Lady Sebright, and, seeing that she cannot possibly leave her home, decides to resign and keep out of her way. She turns up unexpectedly at a friend's house, and they arrange to meet one evening in her observatory. The story ends tragically. The amateurish parts of it are the accidental way in which the tragedy is contrived, the enormously elaborate series of omens which presage it, and the equally unnecessary series which, earlier in the book, bellow to the reader that Rush- brooke will fall in love with Anna Sebright. The writing is Often tortuous, and the dialogue often improbable. In spite Of this heavy load of ballast, the book rises to a considerable height. With its author, things seen are less important than things felt, but she feels deeply, and the mismanaged characters have such virtue of their own that The Golden Pheasant is an unusually interesting story.
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