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Old Writers and New

Manhood End — By Mrs. Henry Dudeney
Quiet Interior — By E. B. C. Jones

Whatever faults Mrs. Dudeney may possess, she cannot be accused of having kept her talent hid in a napkin. Rather, we receive the impression that the cry of rapture with which she hailed this treasure to be hers has never ceased sounding through her books. It rings again in ‘Manhood End,’ and the note is as high, as astonished, as delighted as ever. Never did a writer gloat more openly over a sweet possession; never was a writer more persistently agog to play with it. But a talent is not—as Mrs. Dudeney seems to believe—a kind of glorified toy. One may perhaps play with it—but warily—as one would play with a young lion without a keeper rather than a mechanical canary. That is not, however, nor has it been, Mrs. Dudeney's way, and the result is that after eighteen novels, after so prolonged a diet of hard bright seed, chickweed and sugar lumps, nothing remains of her lion but the colour of his feathers—he is turned into a very canary of canaries. As such he shakes, shrills, quivers, flirts through ‘Manhood End’ without a break, without a pause, until we cannot hear the characters speak. When they do they partake of the general jerkiness. Even the plot itself is affected, and hops from perch to swing until the reader is dizzy. The scene is Sussex—a tiny village between Chichester and the sea. ‘If there was a coquette in the whole land of England it was this flat, sheltered bit of South Country—laughing, weeping, just as it chose.’

The time is forty years ago. Freddy Rainbird, Rector of Streetway, calls himself a priest, and does not believe in marriage until he meets Sophia Lulham. Their courtship consists of conversations which culminate in a toasting party by firelight.

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He watched her scramble up when her slice of bread was toasted. She buttered it, then, laughing again, sat down.

‘We've got to feel for our mouths, haven't we? But mine's so big there's no risk of missing.’

This curious statement, which might very well have ‘pierced through their perfect hour,’ did not prevent him from proposing. And they were married, and such was the intensity of their passion for each other they talked like this. Rainbird was in his dressing-room.

She went mischievously to the door and spoke through the keyhole.

‘Bad boy! you're not washing yourself. There isn't any splashing.’

He did not answer. She spoke again.

‘Freddy! you are false, you are neglectful. You said you wanted to kiss my arms, and yet you went off without even shaking hands.’

After five years she had tired of this capriciousness, of ‘bubbling … with a hundred little springs of fascination.’

‘Why didn't we have children? If there'd been a baby waking up to be fed! If little Johnny had a pain in his tummy; if Jane wouldn't go to sleep…. I shouldn't have played the fool down here. with you two men if I'd had a nursery. Don't you see?’

So off she goes with a lover, and stays away for five years. Then she reappears and makes the coffee in her bewildering, charming way, and just when she is about to be bored again the baby saves her. But it isn't a strong baby.

She looked up wistfully. ‘I haven't done it quite properly, Freddy. I'm never perfect. There's always some sort of a flaw.’

‘What flaw?’ he seemed puzzled.

‘This.’ Her fingers moved on the fast emptying bottle.

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After its death she runs again—to the East—to Bond Street—to anywhere. And her final return is to a broken Freddy who drinks coffee made from ‘some stuff in a tin.’ They die soon after, while planning another honeymoon.

It is melancholy to remember, when laying aside ‘Manhood End,’ how, years ago, when the canarification of her talent was still far from complete, we looked forward to a new book by Mrs. Dudeney.

The price of novels is a mystery. Why is it that some publishers are compelled to print their books on grey, black-haired paper, to squeeze them between the covers that used to contain ‘ninepennies’ in the old days and to price them at nine shillings, when Mr. Cobden-Sanderson can produce a volume so attractive in appearance as ‘Quiet Interior’ at eight? And do some publishers imagine that the reading public is really tempted by paper-covers which remind one of those dread platefuls in English teashops known as ‘mixed pastries’? We are certain that the book which is adorned with the enigmatic couple or the anaemic girl in coloured margarine and plaster-of-paris on a white icing background starts its career with a severe handicap. It has to prove that it is not what it appears to be, and that is very difficult when the appearance is vulgar, for in that case the chances are the reader will not even begin to listen. How often we have heard the scornful: ‘Don't bother to open it; it looks the most awful rubbish’! Whereas Miss Jones' novel in a blue linen-faced cover with the title in plain lettering attracts one immediately. It looks like a novel that is well worth reading, and in this case the author is not deceived after a closer investigation.

‘Quiet Interior’ is the study of the temperament of an unusual, fastidious girl in surroundings which we vaguely term modern. Her home is in London; her parents are wealthy; her friends are artists and musicians and gay young people who go to parties and dances. She is in fact an emancipated daughter in an upper middle-class page 296 family—but not too emancipated for her to possess in a high degree that subtle quality called ‘charm.’ One might say her whole claim to acceptance lies in its possession, but of what it is composed—that is the problem that the author has set herself to solve. Claire Norris is not a simple character. She is one of those who are ‘precious —but not generally prized.’ Her feeling for life is exquisite; she is capable of rare appreciations, rare intensities—but for some mysterious reason life withholds its gifts from her. They go to lesser people who deserve them less and do not so greatly care. Why should this be? What has she done that she, who could cherish so beautifully, should be left empty-handed? The moment in her life when this question becomes urgent is the moment which is revealed here. There is a young man living in the country, farming his land; his name is Clement. He is shy, difficult, a being apart, himself. With the adorable faith of young persons and children, Claire turns to Life and cries: ‘I know what I want. I want Clement. Give him to me.’ But Life explains Clement is not for her; he is for her pretty sister Pauline. And Claire must be a good girl and not spoil her sister's pleasure by showing that she minds, but put on a bright face and behave as though nothing has happened. Instead of rebelling she is gravely obedient, but while renouncing Clement she discovers that she has lost one world only to gain another—her inner world, the kingdom of the spirit. Claire realizes that up till now she has lived on the borders of that world; she has never been of it. Yet, because its shadow rested upon her, she was, for all her love of it, strange to the world of reality. Now that she has made her choice, even her suffering grows light. Nothing can touch her; she is in harmony with life.

The psychology of Claire is sufficiently realized for us to feel the importance of this revelation to her. She strangely compels our admiration by the quality of her adventure. But this whole novel is carried beyond the page 297 bounds of commonplace by its distinction of style. We feel that the author has tried to keep faith with Truth rather than with Truth's ugly and stupid half-sister, Frankness. Her heroine is, of course, the full-length portrait upon which she has lavished her finest care, but Pauline, Henriette and Lucien and Hilary—all are real and convincing. For a first novel it is remarkably well constructed. The weakest part is the beginning. It reads as though the author were determined that we should fall in love with her heroine on the spot. ‘She is like this and this and this,’ we are told. It is only, in fact, when the author has forgotten all about us that Claire begins to emerge. And again there are moments when the author wastes her energy, as it were, over the details; she does not always distinguish between what is fascinating and what is essential. This is an important point. For there are many writers—alas! how many!—who can describe a frock, a conversation, a supper party, or a room as well as she.