MR. GEORGE'S SISTERS, AND OTHERS

Henry Brinsley

A MONTH or two ago I was more than usually interested in Miss May Sinclair's admirable novel "The Three Sisters," and now I find myself equally interested in another admirable novel about three sisters by Mr. W. L. George, entitled "The Second Blooming." Miss Sinclair's chief concern was in the first blooming of her Sisters (one of them, though, bloomed only in a spiritual sense); Mr. George's chief concern is in the problem confronting his Sisters after the first absorbing charm and adequacy of matrimony has faded—that of finding an interest in life, emotional or intellectual, that will stimulate a jaded personality into some more complete form of self-expression or satisfaction, into a richer flowering. Back of this, the psychological interest in each book is the same. Miss Sinclair as a pathologist is a great specialist: her novel is a "woman's book" by a woman, and I believe what she says unhesitatingly. Mr. George on the same ground is a profound and brilliant student: his novel is a "woman's book" by a man. Whether I believe in his inerrancy or not, I admire his three portraits immensely—he has made them at least seem vitally real, and, after all in art that is the same thing.

Mr. George's three Sisters are Clara, Grace, and. Mary Westfield, carefully reared in Victorian traditions by their excellent, prosperous, middle class Victorian parents. A wholesome "bourgeoise" family (to use a word for which Mr. George has an obsession) in which the proper objective of the daughters is to marry, increase and multiply, and transmit all their stodgy British traditions untarnished by intellectual stress. Clara marries a correct and colorless baronet and Member of Parliament. Childless, her second blooming takes the form of becoming highly political, of organizing Leagues, and generally falling a victim to the intellectual prickly heat that afflicts so many of her class. Grace marries an able, egocentric, good-looking barrister with a fatal talent for verbal buffoonery. When her two children, thanks to competent nurses and governesses, no longer feel any need for her and her husband thoroughly palls, she blooms again under the touch of an intelligent and very up-to-date .lover. Mary marries a City man, and blooms-continuously, till you forget to count her offspring. And yet with all this well-nigh vegetable fertility, Mary has a second blooming of a rare sort, for, with no definite indication of anything resembling a mind, she achieves a spiritual sympathy for her sisters' rebellions, a love that amounts to understanding and that, after their respective batterings, brings them to a better and more tranquil knowledge of themselves

DRAMATICALLY, Grace's affairs are the most absorbing, and on them Mr. George has lavished a wealth of analysis as brilliant as it is satisfying: in such a situation as hers he is mentally all there. Meanwhile, however, he does not forget the other two pictures— like the contributory outer panels of a triptych, and Grace thus framed becomes, artistically, a much more important thing than if isolated. The men are lightly sketched, justly but cursorily, although the lover, Enoch Fenor, is a bit more filled in because, with his striking independence of mind, he is a variation from the usual, more interesting than the others. But the women, of course, are the absorbing, real thing: the three of them are more bursting with personality than any I have met since Miss Sinclair's, to whom they form a singularly well-balanced companion picture. Mr. George's style is full of movement and color, abounding in detail yet nervously brisk: an exceptionally competent, flexible medium, with here and there a touch of real beauty (and once or twice perhaps just the faintest little suspicion of a bigarrure jaune which the tact of a sincere artist will quickly expunge). Mr. George is indisputably a sincere artist, and after such a book as "The Second Blooming," I feel that he is rapidly becoming an important one.

MR. TARKINGTON is; I think, going to score a hit with "The Turmoil." Already the advertising tom-toms are booming lustily, the linotype reviews are gleaming in serried ranks, the whole beautifully equipped commercial paraphernalia of a literary Success is up and doing—and I, for one, am not at all averse to adding a little helpful contribution. For " The Turmoil" is a very good piece of work, and has a quiet charm that may even survive the exaggerated beatings of the tom-toms. Once before, long ago, Mr. Tarkington scored a hit— with "Monsieur Beaucaire," which was really more of a little libretto than anything else. Meanwhile he has steadily grown until now, without losing a scrap of his early deftness and charm, he has been able to put on a fullsized canvas a sketch of something more essentially poetic and far more real. He has many gifts, not the least of which is his delightful humor, but the chief one is, I think, his sympathy, a sympathy that is based on a shrewd insight into character—a wide knowledge of, and consequently a warm affection for, his typically American fellow-beings. The "Turmoil" is of two kinds: the turmoil of business and social life in a grimy, smoke-laden city worshiping and struggling after a Bigness, and the spiritual turmoil of a representative, successful, "new," family. The head of this, Mr. Sheridan, embodies the very spirit of the city and the youngest son of which, Bibbs, after a revolt from materialism, brings, through love of a very lovable girl, a better idealism to the "Big" tasks set him by his father.

I HAVE said that the canvas is full sized, and yet called the picture a sketch. Well, Mr. Tarkington has taken a subject for a novel that is a big one: there are many characters, incidents, situations: there is a largeness and richness in the conception that is exhilarating. Nevertheless it is all very lightly brushed in; the pigment is thin. The characters, neatly indicated, never blurred, already individualized, some with humor, some with tenderness, some with uncompromising justness, are not yet seemingly capable, with possibly the exception of the father, of walking full-bloodedly out of the canvas by themselves—as are Mr. George's women. Even Bibbs, on whom the author spends most pains, is rather less finished and more of a sketch than the others. I wish Mr. Tarkington hadn't chosen to publish serially, for I feel he has somewhat fitted his novel to certain professionally well-known magazine standards which sometimes weaken a great deal of serious work. But it's a charming sketch, true to life, as far as it goes, and skilfully handled. It will probably be immensely liked, and it will well repay reading. For one thing, you will get, and it's fairly unusual, an impression of an immensely likable personality—that of the author.

MR. CURWOOD is, to my regret, beginning to show signs of "standardizing" his work. His latest novel, "God's Country—and the Woman " (I don't care for the title—much), is in many respects an oddly conventional composite of the Frozen North School. All the men are endowed with a bravery that would make Thor seem a weakling, or are cursed with a brand beside which that of Cain would be a quaintly pleasing birth-mark. All the women combine the most salient characteristics of Brunhilde, Helen of Troy and Little Eva. The Frozen North may be a wonderful and noble little simplifier of Life, but I wish it wouldn't reduce Art to quite these elementary terms. Mr. Curwood is as good as the best of them when he uses his well-trained eyes and jots down what he sees and how it impresses him (the account of the little porcupine coming to drink at the stream before dawn is an exquisite bit); but he throws away his chief merit when he abandons this and relies almost wholly on melodrama. Still, I like adventure, as melodramatic as you please, when it's brisk and stirring. Mr. Curwood's is all that, and his. plot is ingenious enough to sustain one's, attention throughout.

Books Reviewed

THE SECOND BLOOMING By W. L. George

Little Brown and Co., Boston $1.35

THE TURMOIL By Booth Tarkington

Harper & Brothers, New York $1.35

GOD'S COUNTRY—AND THE

WOMAN By James Oliver Curwood

Doubleday. Page Co., New York $1.25

THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN

By Gilbert K. Chesterton John Lane Co., New York $1.30

QUINNEY'S _ By Horace Annesley Vachell

George H. Doran Co., New York $1.25

(Continued on page 86)

(Continued from page 51)

"THE Wisdom of Father Brown" gathers together a number of short magazine stories of Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. They are all "detective" stories, and many of them could perfectly well dispense with Father Brown; still, somebody has to unravel the knots and so, however fortuitously, Father Brown manages to pop up in each of them, often very much as the head of Charles the First popped up in Mr. Dick's "Memorials." Sometimes a professional detective has to be introduced, so there, following his jejune bent, Mr. Chesterton introduces a stupid one, Monsieur Flambeau, whose role, by a simple reversal, is to play Watson to Father Brown's Holmes. Some of the stories are very ingenious, some are far-fetched, some merely mechanical, and some mildly dull: none is inspired, and all are of a pleasantly readable "magazine" quality, written in Mr. Chesterton's slightly heavy style. You can wile away spare half hours very comfortably with the book—I still think that Mr. Zangwill has written the best detective story of our day.

An agreeable light novel is "Quinney's," by Mr. Horace Annesley Vachell. Quinney is the one honest London dealer in antiquities—old furniture and porcelains, and the intrigues of the profession make interesting reading. Furthermore, Quinney himself is a thoroughly attractive fellow, and he's written about in a thoroughly pleasant style.