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New Season's Novels

A Tale that is Told — By Frederick Niven
The Amorous Cheat — By Basil Creighton
The Granite Hills — By C. E. Heanley

The new season has begun, and again we open our papers to read what the reviewers have to say about the new novels. In spite of all the novels and all the reviews we have read, we confess the moment still thrills us. There are, we believe, majestic beings who can pass the new novel by without so much as a swerve, who can ignore the little stir it causes, who dare swear it to be ‘only another poor author having a fit’—and so to the Masterpieces. But who can be sure? Mightn't it be—mightn't it be—and the possibilities are so overwhelming—something brought from a far country, something never dreamed of, something new, marvellous, dazzling—changing the whole of life. … ‘But really!’ the poor author may cry, tossing a handful of cold water on our trembling, tiptoe flame. ‘Now it is you who are going too far in the other direction. Attention, consideration, an adequate appreciation of what I set out to do—well and good. But whoever said that I claimed my novel to be the startling, extravagant creature you would have it?’

‘Didn't you?’ we hear ourselves answering. And then there is a pause, and we hear ourselves whispering, ‘No, I don't suppose you did.’

(And yet—when the idea was still an idea—before a word had been written—were there not mysterious moments when you felt that naught save a new world could contain your creations?)

A glance at such reviews as have appeared, a careful reading of the three novels before us and the author's protest is felt to be just. There is, at least in so far as these three novels are concerned, nothing new—or rather nothing that was not equally new last season and the season before that. They are new novels within the page 264 limits imposed by the old. There is the plain fact, to be wondered at or not, as the reader chooses. But before we examine their merits, might we inquire a little further into this feeling that, in spite of such substantial evidence to the contrary, the novel which is not an attempt at nothing short of Truth is doomed? We are leaving out of account for the moment the pastime novel, but how are we to be expected to take seriously—as seriously as we take ‘War and Peace,’ for example—any work which appears to have engaged less than the whole passionate attention of its author? To be fobbed off, at the last, with something which we feel to be less true than the author knew it to be, challenges the importance of the whole art of writing, and instead of enlarging the bounds of our experience, it leaves them where they are.

Now the prologue to Mr. Frederick Niven's ‘A Tale that is Told’ promises a great deal. In it the teller of the tale gives us his reasons for writing it. They are the best reasons in the world: ‘Because I am interested.’ He continues: ‘I think the result is going to be a blend of what that young novelist, Mr. Hugh Walpole, calls “a case,” and at the same time partakes slightly of the qualities of the “slice of life” school…. What I am I shall not be able to hide even if I try. You will see me between the lines; you will discover me as I discover others to you….’ And his hero goes on to tell us how he has been haunted all his life by a feeling that it is only part of a greater life. The prologue ends thus: ‘… And I think the best beginning would be to tell how my father ate the sweetbreads shortly before we went for our holiday to Irvine.’

Why should our spirits have fallen so woefully at those last words? Why should we have felt that in their familiar tones we had the whole capacity of the book? Nay, we venture to assure Mr. Niven that, the opening chords given, there is scarce a reader of The Athenœum who could not pipe a very fair version of the occasion. It is, as he gives it to us, a charming interlude, full of delicate page 265 degrees of tone, the accents nicely stressed, the touch sustained. And in it his whole book is contained. The family rises from the table, it goes about its appointed ways. It scatters—the father dies. And all these things happen to the accompaniment of just that blend of sentiment and truth which accompanied the sweetbreads. But that hint of the greater life lies buried in the prologue. It is as though the author realized its importance, and yet could find no other place for it in his quiet book than in the churchyard.

‘The Amorous Cheat’ is the second book of an author whose name is unfamiliar to us. It is accomplished skating over thin emotions; it is highly skilled revolving and turning in champagne air. The author is positively never at a loss for a fresh caper, and the train who follow in the wake of Edward and V. is made up of figures who are pleasantly unusual and lightly fantastic. But there is a dreadful feeling throughout that if the air were to become one whit less brightly cold, not only the ice would melt. The tragedy does not happen; the ice holds; but in spite of our admiration at such a display of virtuosity we are more fatigued than is complimentary. If only Edward and V. would be still for a moment; but that is just what, for the purposes of ‘The Amorous Cheat’ they cannot be.

There remains a first novel—‘The Granite Hills’—by a writer whose youth looks out of every chapter. The scene is Cornwall; the matter is high passion. Both are so like other examples of their kind that we might almost call them typical Cornish ware. The hills, the granite stones, Curnows and Trevales, splits, cream and boiled leg of pork—these are all in the setting. And then there is the gently bred girl who is poor and marries the young farmer for the sake of what he can buy her, and has scarce learned to repent before the handsome stranger of her own class comes along and woos her with talk of Iseult. There is the tragedy averted and the slow building of a real heroine at one with the aforetime hostile sea and moor page 266 and granite and splits and cream, and the last paragraph dissolves, bathed in sunset light. ‘The Granite Hills’ is naive because it is a first novel, and it is neatly put together; the turnings are neat, the seams are fair. But we wish the author would cut out a whole new pattern for herself next time.