FICTION.
JAMESIE.•
Ix writing this sequel to Hatchways, the principal characters in which reappear after an interval of seven years, Miss Sidgwick has varied her method of presentation. She has adopted the epistolary medium, but disregards the usual literary convention. Novels written in the form of letters are nearly always self-explaining; or, to put it in another way, the letters are so expanded or doctored by the author that they need no commentary. Miss Sidgwick has preferred to give us the letters in their natural shape, selected, with annotations, dialogues, and a few narrative links, by two of the characters concerned, an English bagister and a Frenchman, though the bulk of the editing has been done by the Englishman. The device is defensible, though it is hard to imagine how all the letters were procured, and in one instance we gather that recourse was had to theft. Anyhow, in the interests of realism, the canons of probability are frequently violated, and the result rather justifies than disproves the common view of sequels. Our friends in Hatchways, with the exception of Gabriel du Frettay, the chivalrous Frenchman, have not improved with age or matrimony. In
• Jantesie. By Ethel Sidgwick. London : Sidgwick and Jackson. 15s. act.]
particular, Lord Iveagh Suir has grown more moody and irritable. His marriage has not brought him happiness, save in his little son Jamesie, a wonderfully precocious child of six or seven, for that, we gather by internal evidence, must be the limit of his age. The story opens brightly on the eve of the war with a mixed cricket match and " birthday rag " in honour of the young Duchess of Wickford. But underneath the surface gaiety there are numerous elements of upheaval and discord, mainly provided by the Pennant sisters—handsome, audacious, emancipated girls. There is also vague unrest on the Duke's Irish estates, where Lord Iveagh Suir acts as his agent. The war scatters the dramatis personae, eliminates some sources of domestic danger, furnishes an outlet for some undisciplined energies, but brings happiness to none:; and the child hero, idolized by all, unspoiled and untainted by his surroundings, is lost in a torpedoed cross-Channel steamer. The comment of the principal " editor " on this agonizing denoinzent is as follows : " What had Jamesie to do with the fiend incarnate that killed him, the slashing, grasping, cowardly fiend that spreads nets and mines upon the Eternity's open seas '7 I do not mean Germany, Germany is not what we are making for. Or rather, and fearless of an ungenerous response, I put to our Enemy here and now this question." The italics are the author's, not ours. Mr. Herbert, who offers this comment, is described in the Preface as " not a politician properly, beyond, let us hope, a general sense of justice, since his business was the Law." It is not-to be assumed, therefore, that his views are shared by all the characters in this drama. But any evidences of enthusiasm for our cause are mainly confined to personages whose record inspires little confidence, and conversely those for whom it is clearly the author's intention to enlist our respect say very little about the issues of the 'war, and that little is more or less on the lines of the quotation above.
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