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Novels and Novelists

A Party

A Party

Uncle Lionel — By S. P. B. Mais

Has it ever happened to the reader to be ushered into a room where there are a large number of persons who know one another so well, so incredibly well, who are upon such charming, familiar terms that he would imagine they had been at one golden time all babies together in a common nursery, leaping about in the firelight while good Nanny prepared their baths? It is not the most comfortable experience for the stranger. Man may be an adaptable creature, but to slough off a skin, acquire a protective colouring, equip himself with a hood and sting or velvet paws, is not an affair of five minutes. The only possible adjustment in the circumstances is to adopt an air of keen animation and plunge—listening, taking it all for granted, knowing it all inside out. The reader to whom this has happened will remember, perhaps, how he smiled until he felt himself in yellow stockings cross-gartered; how, page 162 finally he was conscious of that air of animation withdrawing from him, beam by beam, until it set in his bosom like a declining sun.

‘Uncle Lionel’ puts us in mind of this experience, but with the difference that this time we are buttonholed by the person who really does know more about everybody else than they could know about themselves, though he is for ever telling us in the same breath that this world is not his world any more than it is ours. This estrangement is valuable because it frees him from the necessity of explaining ‘why.’ These are the facts—make of them what you please—and if you must have a Kaiser to hang, there is always the modern spirit lurking over there in the corner and calling the tune.

So we find ourselves in the midst of Patricia and Michael and Joan and Renton and Phyllis and Wreford and Hélène and Trefusis, and where they met each other or how long they have known each other we cannot make out. Suffice it that they are all talking at once and squabbling and going off with one another, and falling in and out of love for no earthly reason we can discover. There is no plan and Michael and Patricia are only more prominent than the others because they are more extravagant. Who is Patricia? A collection of ugly, shrewish, slangy remarks delivered at Michael, who adores her, and has the habit of disappearing—to be discovered by Uncle Lionel in surroundings that are of a decidedly Russian blend. But they have no more body or soul than the rest of their ‘set.’ Again we find ourselves wondering at the author's patience—nay, it is more than that—at the ease with which he can amuse himself, for that he is roundly, soundly amused from cover to cover is plain to see. For him there are still traces of dew upon the old story of innocent little Phyllis taken to Brighton by the villain, only to find out at the last possible moment that his bedroom key is the same as her bedroom key. It is sorry fun to watch Mr. Mais gathering this shop-soiled old flower with quite an air and putting it in his pages. But we should page 163 have been prepared by the remark of a minor heroine a little earlier:

‘Hélène,’ snorted Beatrice, ‘do preserve some sense of decency.’

‘But I shall. We've thrashed it all out. We're going to have strings and strings of babies….’

It is a nice question which of these two emotional moments is the more faded.

But come, let us slip away. The party is still going on. The party is going on for ever; but so, thank God, are the sky and the moving sea.

(February 27, 1920.)