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Novels and Novelists

Two Modern Novels

Two Modern Novels

An Imperfect Mother — By J. D. Beresford
Two Sisters — By R. H. Bretherton

Mr. Beresford and Mr. Bretherton, two of our more thoughtful writers, turning from the crowded noisy town where everybody knows everybody else, and there is not a house to be had or even a room that is bare of associations, turning equally from the vague outlines and spaces of the open country, have chosen to build their new novels in what might be called the Garden City of literature. It is only recently that the possibilities and the attractions of this desirable site have been discovered by the psychoanalysts, and the houses are still scattered and few, but there is no doubt as to its dawning popularity with the novelists. They do not seem to mind the chill hygienic atmosphere of a Garden City; the gardens in which poor Adam and Eve never could find a hiding-place from the awful eye of God or man; the asphalt roads with meek trees on either side standing up, as it were, to an ‘artistic’ dance; the wire receptacles ready to catch the orange or banana peel of some non-resident savage, and the brand-new exposed houses which seem to breathe white enamel and cork linoleum and the works of Freud and Jung, which seem to defy you to find in them a dark corner or a shadowy stair, which seem to promise you that there never shall be a book upside down on the shelves or an unclaimed toothbrush in the bathroom, or a big summer hat—belonging to whom?—on the top of the wardrobe, or a page 171 box under the bed. All is ‘carefully thought out,’ ‘arranged for,’ all is in admirable order, and we imagine Mr. Beresford and Mr. Bretherton throwing open the doors of their new houses and declaring them ready for inspection….

‘An Imperfect Mother’ is an account of the youth and early manhood of Stephen Kirkwood, a pleasant, diligent boy whose ambition is to be a successful builder. His father is a bookseller; he has two sisters, one with spectacles and one without, and his imperfect mother is an artist. She plays the piano, she has a charming talent for telling little stones, and she is—we are told—gay, laughing, beautiful in a way that shocks the staid cathedral city of Medboro'. Up to the time the story opens she and Stephen have been, it is suggested, all in all to each other, but now she has fallen in love with the organist and her heart is divided. Stephen, too, smiled upon by the fourteen-year-old Margaret Weatherby, feels the stirring of a new affection, and thus it happens that when his mother puts his loyalty to a final test he fails her and she runs away from home. It is only later that we realize the significance of the scene when Stephen follows her, begs her to come back—and she laughs. Her cruel, hysterical laughter shocks him profoundly, and she lets him go.

Seven years pass and Stephen, highly successful in the building trade, is sent up to London to supervise a £150,000 job on the Embankment. There, in his loneliness, he seeks out his mother, and relations of a kind are renewed. But at the very moment of their meeting Margaret Weatherby reappears and again smiles…. There is a repetition of the old conflict under a new guise. His mother, again on the point of running away, turns to him; but this time he is in love, and this time when he shows his heart to Margaret, she it is who laughs hysterically, cruelly. This is not to be borne, and in Stephen's despair he flings the problem at his mother. Why does he mind so much? Now we have the explanation. She remembers how when he was ‘a little bit of a toddling page 172 tiling’ he had got into one of his rages with her, and she had laughed, wildly, hysterically, cruelly, until he banged his head against the wall to stop her and had ‘a kind of fit.’ This has left a dark place in his mind, and it is this that accounts for his extreme susceptibility to callous laughter…. But, continuing the explanation, she tells him that the second time she laughed it was a sign of her despair. ‘I couldn't keep you off. That laugh was the best effort to defend myself.’ And—doesn't he now see that Margaret's laughter had the same meaning? He does, and his imperfect mother brings them together, even though she realizes that in so doing she loses Stephen for ever. But has she ever had him? Mr. Beresford does not allow us one single glimpse of their life together, in the early days, and in the ‘seven years after’ meeting there is not a trace of real emotion. At his mother's demand to know why he wanted to know her we are told Stephen ‘plunged into essentials.’ This is a very cold plunge and, as far as we can see, a useless one. He brings nothing from the vasty deep. And does that explanation, which is intended, evidently, to warm and light up the whole pale book, do anything more than reveal its essential emptiness? The house is not furnished at all; nobody lives there. We should not be surprised if Mr. Beresford had written ‘To Let’ on the last page….

In the opening chapters of ‘Two Sisters’ the temperature is still depressingly low. There were two sisters; one was Ethel and one was Nell. Ethel was very, very good, but a prig; Nell was very, very bad and painted her face and waved at soldiers in passing trains, but she was not a prig. Ethel was married to Jim, a very architectural architect, and a modern house with all conveniences, but Nell was not married. ‘Oh, Nell, why are you so wicked?’ ‘Don't bother me, Ethel!’ ‘You must not talk to Ethel like that,’ says Jim. This goes on for a long time. Then the father of the two sisters loses all his money, and Nell goes away to start a music school and so help to keep her parents in their old home, but Ethel page 173 refuses to help them because they will not give up the old home. ‘Can Ethel be a little cold-hearted?’ thinks Jim, and is ashamed of the thought. Nell, finding herself with a Bohemian brother and sister for partners, discovers that she is not really fond of wickedness. She turns over a new leaf and becomes, in no time, a pattern young woman. But when her female partner decamps and leaves her alone in the house with Leonard, Ethel interferes.

Up to this point we have been led so gently and by such easy stages, that it is surprising to find Mr. Bretherton means to make an example of that priggish Ethel. Virtuous matron that she is, she refuses to believe in Nell's transformation, and after accusing her of living in sin, because the same roof sheltered her and Leonard, Ethel ruins her sister's character by making her accusations public. To the pure all things are impure, and poor Nell has only to return home, ill and shattered as a result of Ethel's campaign, for the virtuous sister to diagnose her illness as ‘going to have a baby.’ Oh, how the reader hates Ethel when she makes her discovery known to her mother and to the family doctor, and how disappointed he is when the doctor lets Ethel off so lightly after all! Even Jim, the architect, when he appreciates the full extent of his wife's guilt, is not really angry. He could not be angry. There is, as it were, no place for him to be angry in. The author himself is in the same dilemma. Having placed Ethel in the Garden City and the modern house, he must, at all costs, keep her within bounds. And so we find ourselves positively ashamed of our little spurt of rage and only too ready to believe that Ethel will learn to be—not more charitable in future—but a great deal more careful!

(April 9, 1920.)