FICTION
By FORREST REID The Great Squire. By Francis Stuart. (Collins. 8s. 6d.)
A DESIRE for continuity ever urges me to begin these articles with an introductory preamble, but a limitation of space as constantly defeats this instinct, compelling a plunge straight into the thick of things. So I make my plunge now with the bald statement that though Mr. Stuart lays its opening scene in a Liverpool workhouse, The Great Squire is a tale of Ireland at the close of the eighteenth century. From the Galilee Home, described in all its squalor, two small persons flee into a stormy night—Ike Salaman, a precociously clever Jew-boy, and Sue, who is to become the heroine of the book and the most attractive character in it. They hide on board a boat, imagining that it will carry them to France, but actually it lands them in Dublin, where the story proper begins. Thenceforward the scene shifts between that city and Bara- yore Castle, the home of Garrett O'Neil, the Great Squire. It is the Ireland of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the United Irishmen, yet this is not a political novel ; Mr. Stuart's object is to paint a picture of the social life of the period—its routs and gambling and profligacy—its English overlords and Irish gentry—with the squireens and peasantry in the background. Sue is taken into Baravore, where she becomes a protegee of O'Neil's, while Ike, two or three years older, soon finds a job in Dublin, having attracted the roving and amorous eye of the Widow Clancy. The first half of the book leads up to and culminates in the race between O'Neil's pig and Lord Glen- dessary's racehorse, a contest which, originating in a drunken wager, speedily becomes an event of national importance, sym- bolising for the natives the struggle between Ireland and England.
The chapters describing the secret training of the pig, and finally the race itself, form to my mind the most exciting part of the story. They are extraordinarily well done. At the end O'Neil emerges as the most popular figure in Ireland, while incidentally he wins £58,000, so reaching the zenith of his fortunes. He is now a national hero—an odd mixture of pride and recklessness, of generosity and debauchery—and the latter half of the book is devoted to tracing his equally rapid decline. It is a brilliantly convincing portrait, and for a while our sympathies are with him: then, as the novel proceeded, my own sympathy began to wane. For there is a sort of devil in O'Neil, urging him to actions which satisfy the restless impulse of the moment, but which he himself knows can hardly fail to have disastrous results. He staked his whole fortune on that pig, for instance, and luck happened to be with him ; but other escapades are less innocent, and one, stupidly obsti- nate and pointless, involves the sacrifice of his lifelong and only friend. There is much good in him, but it is wasted, because it usually comes out too late. Thus, after the death of his friend he is filled with remorse, yet one cannot help feeling that in spite of this he would do the same thing again. He has no stability, little self-control. Besides, any man who reduces himself to poverty by spending £58,000 in three years on drink, gambling and women seems to me a fool, whatever brains he possesses. I prefer the Jew-boy, who in the same period, thanks to a financial genius, laid the foundations of his career. Of course, it was O'Neil who gave him his chance, but he had the indomitable determination that in itself creates chances. O'Neil—the Widow Clancy—failing them he would have found something or somebody else. And all this time there is Sue, devoted to the Great Squire, and determined to save him if she can. But I shall not say how the book ends : it is an unexpected ending. The novel is picturesque, romantic, alive, and Mr. Stuart writes so well that I wish he would avoid spite infinitives and sentences like " Neither of the little girls were in the least responsive." After all, he must know that the verb should be in the singular. The Great Squire is an excellent novel—planned on a large scale and filled with living figures, ranging from the hangman to the Squire's bastard young brother, who is almost, if not quite, a saint.
Wickham's Fancy is less a novel than a pastoral conte bleu, and the great difficulty in writing a .:onte bleu is to avoid the
sentimental. Miss Keown, to my mind, has not always avoided it. Her aim has been to create an atmosphere of innocence and charm and simplicity, and in this she has suc- ceeded, thanks to a sense of humour and a sympathy with birds and beasts as well as with humanity : nevertheless there are occasional lapses into over-sweetness. The characters belong to the villages of Great and Little Dewberry, and the chief character is old Mr. Wickham, who works in his garden, reads the classics in .cribs, and acts as benevolent father and adviser to everybody. All problems, whether spiritual or material, are solved by Mr. Wickham, or by his mysterious friend, who never comes to see him, and concerning whom the liveliest curiosity is rife.
Even the parson feels strangely comforted after a visit to Mr. Wickham, though Mr. Wickham does not go to church, and never talks about religion. I must be cleverer than the people in the book, for I guessed the identity of Mr. Wick- ham's friend at once. His fellow villagers do not, and the more sceptical among them are even inclined to suspect a masculine Mrs. Harris. There is a streak of oddness in the tale that appealed to me. The Reverend Warlock, for instance, is troubled by the conduct of the rooks who dwell so close to him. Their talk strikes him as ribald and improper; he feels he should do something about it, and has a vague idea of bap- tising them, but the glassy eye of his Bishop is not encourag- ing. And Mr. Deadman, the ditcher, is equally troubled by the derisive voices of the frogs. Lonely and timid, he solaces himself by keeping up an intermittent conversation with his donkey, who wanders in freedom on the Common, but never fails to reply affectionately to the distant yodel. Further, there is the haunted region of Old Dewberry Church, now, alas ! in the power of demons, because a notorious un- believer, buried in the church grounds hundreds of years ago, still lies there undisturbed. So the demons tear down the roof every time it is restored, and the devout suffer from rheumatism.
Some of the scenes are delightful, as when Mr. Fiddler sets out to break the ice on the pond on the Common, and is fol- lowed by an eager procession of ducks and geese headed by Mr. Deadman's donkey, all anxious to participate in the fun. I carefully skipped the bull-baiting chapter in Mr. Stuart's romance, but this is the kind of thing I like: in fact, any novel that does justice to animals is sure of a welcome from me. And right through the middle of this peaceful pastoral country it is proposed to build an arterial road, and so intro- duce all the horrors of motor-'buses, petrol pumps, and com- mercial traffic. Little wonder that Mr. Wickham is against it and consults his friend. But it is not his friend, it is the demons of Old Dewberry Church who take the situation in hand.
Miss Renault, I imagine, would find very little use for a conte bleu, and certainly she has not written one. The work- ing of a great hospital forms the background of her Purposes of Love, and rather more than the background, for the romance of Mic, a young pathologist, and Vivian, a nurse, is shaped, and to a considerable extent coloured, by the nature of their employment. All this is to the good, has the ring of authenticity, no outsider could have written it. The story, too, progresses with increasing power and is a good story. Nevertheless it would have been a better one, and would even have gained in intensity, had it been told with more reticence, with less insistence on the physical side, on undressings and dressings, mutual bathings and dryings. These detract from, or at any rate distract attention from, the spiritual relation, which after all is the only relation that is interesting. But the novel is a first one, and the author will doubtless leave behind her certain crudities of taste that disfigure the present work.
Wife of Colum is a slender story, hardly more than a tragic episode. Three characters are concerned—a city-bred and temperamental woman, her husband, who is a clever prig, and the husband's brother, a simple-minded young farmer whom she lures on to become her lover, and then abandons for conscience's sake. It may seem an old story, but it has the freshness that most Irish fiction possesses, a kind of poetry springing from the soil.
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