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Tim Victorian family, we understand, was an august and sacred affair. The father was the representative of the ever-displeased Victorian God ; the mother was the revered and slightly invalided mediatrix ; the children were subjects choosing between heavenly obedience and unspeakable rebellion. At least, that was the theory. Undoubtedly there was something menacing in the fabric. Any gesture of dissent from authority took on an appalling significance. In this atmosphere mere differences of opinion developed a parricidal or fratricidal. quality. Brooding. resentments became unnatural hatreds. There were curses that carried far, and feuds that were unhealed by death. A kind of sombre superstition gave family divisions- a tragic dignity.- And now to-day, when we have changed all that ; and parents are the gay companions of their children, under the excitement of the ingenious Freudian analysis the novelist again finds many of his themes in the fevers that flicker, the wounds that throb in the. intensiVe`PlOt of the family experi- ence. The books named. above . all ;deal' with the problems of people liVing under the -preskurc- of close relationship. The best of them presents the case of a Canadian woman, emotionally starved, frustrated in all her sweeter solicitudes and finally driven into desolation, all because of the heavy change of her heart in one day of shocking disillusionment z during her childhood, when the gay cavalier-like father she has passionately adored reveals himself a scorner, a coward, -a drunkard, a fraud, and a destroyer. After this catastrophic ex- . perience Mary Ferrenden alters into Clara Barron, the name of the mother to whom she instantly transfers her devotion. Her efforts and failures, the invincible clumsiness, a legacy . from her, day of childish horror, the painful hypocrisy of . hardness and insensibility with which she conceals the glowing ,tenderness of her heart, the queer psychical liaison with the fragile Shelley-like dreamer she finds in New York, her advance into power as a feminist, journalist, and politician, her dis- covery of Lopise, an unsuspecting half-sister, on whom she lavishes all her treasure of love, only to be again and forever defeated,... her disappearance in besieged Antwerp—all this unusual story is told with a fine compassion, a sad humour, and the respect the heroine deserves. We have met such baffling figures in whom we divine buried treasure on which some bolt has slipped, and caught under some stupid bloir of chance, a blow that no locksmith is subtle or patient Jenough to undo. The .grim.. pathos of Clara lingers in the memory with an odd sense of guilt.
Miss May Sinclair's family. study is a little- puzzling. She is a fluent and eloquent writer ; she has used the New Pathology very deftly at times if in too dogmatic a way. She can fill in a crowded canvas like The DivineFire and etch a hittei little masterpiece like The Life and Death of Ilarrkt Frain. So why she chooses to give an effect of crudity to The Allinghams it is hard to know. Here are Father, Mather and Aunt—the most alive person in the book—and sin thildren whose noses carefully described, are more guishable than. their souls.-- The.aix children and the with whom they fall in loVe carry on the action in exe staccato conversations which are often merely silly. pa is a little stern, mother is a little sweet ; but both are ex ingly stupid, considering that they live in the early yeah the present century. When the family taint appears in Margaret's childish hysteria, surely at that time of they would have taken her to a nerve-specialist. And the cure of Robin's dipsomania I cannot believe. Ste is a poet, but his conversation is even more fatuous than of the others, though his Egeria says : " Stephen, you wonderful." In an atmosphere of gross bourgeois coin they all carry out their little loves, evidently unaware of sweep of the world's affairs, till you have an insane d for wild air and the company of gipsies. It may be all Sinclair's irony ; but if so she should have made it a distinct.
Good conversation, brilliant conversation even, you certainly find in Cousin Georgina. The theme here is problem of a dynasty rather than a family, the passing o violent proud race, not without noble qualities. Skalesh the sombre keep of the Valyers, standing on the sea the windy gold of the northern skies, dominates the though the drama moves in many gracious places, involves a number of charming people, such expensive flow of grace and gaiety as grow naturally from generations spacious and picturesque privilege. Roger Valyers, last his race, and justifying its tradition, is an engaging and impassioned spirit. But Cousin Georgina, a creature eternal youth, wearing her seventy years like an idle charming you with her mirth, her comprehension, her m her bright raiment, her audacity, is the enchanting pe in the story: As she stands at the end in the Deanery C playing with 'ma-' tches and imagining Skaleshead C escaping in flame from an ignoble occupation, even the convinced democrat will applaud her.
The Wife of Evelyn Strode was married to a man nat unfitted to belong to any family. Evelyn Strode's genital neuroticism was increased by a dreadful ship during which he made a bargain with God. So he an ascetic, which was really an indulgence of his own de , The author seems to think him, a kind of saint ; but, in s of much sentimental writing, it is difficult to afford sympa either for him or his somewhat coarse-fibred lady. hysteric fluctuations could hardly be of interest to church ; and a spirit that can find no beauty among poor has little true relation to Christianity.
RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR.
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