The novel _Watermeads_ (1916), particularly welcome to me because the
friend who wore a grotesque mask in _Upsidonia_ showed his healthy,
agreeable, English face again, opens characteristically with the entire
family gathered around the tea-table in a sunlit room in an old manor
house. This story is mainly concerned with the waxing and waning of a
marriage-engagement; the rich fiancée seems well enough among her own
people and in her own environment; her lack of breeding appears with
steadily increasing emphasis when she is brought into the circle of the
squire's household. The restraint shown by Mr. Marshall in contrasting
her with the people among whom she is expected to live is worthy of the
highest praise. There is nothing exaggerated, not a trace of burlesque;
little touches, shades of speech and conduct, the expression at the
corners of the girl's mouth when she is displeased or unsatisfied, all
combine to lower the temperature in her lover's heart. Nor is there
anything snobbish in this increasing coldness. No matter how important
may be a difference in manners or social breeding, love could make a
happy fusion; it is, however, not in one act of villainy, but in many
trifles light as air that the young woman is finally, even to the
myopic eyes of passion, revealed as wholly selfish.
Two accidents--youth and cash--give to this girl an assurance that
finally makes her odious; but women who have neither can be equally
offensive. Her prospective mother-in-law, the squire's wife, parades
the decline in the family's finances so obtrusively that she becomes
as tiresome as a flapping curtain. When Lord Kirby is shown by her
through the ancestral home, he escapes with a sense of enormous relief,
saying to his wife, "That's an awful woman. You hear about people being
purse-proud, but she seems to be empty-purse-proud, and I don't know
that that isn't worse. If people are as hard up as that they ought to
hide it."
In _Abington Abbey_ (1917) and _The Graftons_ (1918) we have really one
book, and the last page of the sequel makes me hope that the history of
this charming family may be continued--I don't care through how many
volumes. Mr. Grafton is a gentleman, and the way in which he settles
the various problems of family discipline and the affairs of the
estate springs from his unerring good sense. His daughters adore their
widower-father, but each in her own manner. And though they are all
attractive, I know which one I like the best.
Mr. Marshall published with _The Graftons_ an exceedingly interesting
Introduction, containing a defense of his methods which is not
needed by intelligent readers, but which may enlighten those who
do not understand what he is about. In a personal letter, however,
he expressed himself in words that I like better than his printed
apologia. "The Grafton family isn't so rich in varied interest as the
Clinton family, but I hope they will make their friends. I think they
are as 'nice' a family as any I've drawn. I set out simply to show
them in their country home, and make their country neighbours display
themselves in the light of their critical humour, without much idea of
a story. It turned into something rather different, and I'm not quite
sure about it yet. And it has taken two books to work it out."
Now the reason why I like this ink-epistle better than the formal
preface is because in the latter Mr. Marshall seemed to think it
necessary to reply to those critics who said he ought to discuss in
his novels the economic questions concerned with the tenure of the
land. If he should by some evil temptation make economic questions
the basis of his stories of English country life, he would commit the
cardinal sin that has corrupted so much of contemporary fiction, the
sin that I condemned at the outset of this essay. The most conspicuous
element in his art is Charm. If some one should persuade him that he
ought to become more "serious," his novels would lose their atmosphere;
and he might find himself writing like that earnest student of modern
movements, Mrs. Humphry Ward.
I am aware that the most insulting epithet that can be applied to a
book, or a play, or a human being is the word "Puritan"; and I remember
reading a review somewhere of _Abington Abbey_ which commented rather
satirically on the interview between Grafton and Lassigny, and most
satirically of all on the conclusion of the interview, which left the
stiff, prejudiced, puritanical British parent in possession of the
field. But once more, Mr. Marshall is not trying to prove a thesis;
he is representing the Englishman and the Frenchman in a hot debate,
where neither is right and neither is wrong, but where each is partly
right and partly wrong. Each says in the heat of the contest something
injudicious, even as men do when they are angry. But when Lassigny
literally takes French leave, we do not care who has scored the most
points; the real winner is the one who is not present--the girl
herself. For when two men fight about a woman, as they do somewhere
every day, the truly important question is not, which man wins the
fight? The only real question is, does the woman win?
It will never do to make generalizations from merely one of Mr.
Marshall's novels. If we had only _Abington Abbey_, we might imagine
that he detested the clergy, for the clergyman in this book is surely
detestable; but in _The Greatest of These_ there are two clergymen who
are admirable characters, and a third who is by no means wholly or
even mainly evil. Like an honest student of life, Mr. Marshall never
considers a man as a representative of a business, but as a human
being. No man is good because he is a clergyman; but it would be well
perhaps if every member of that highest of all professions were a
clergyman because he was good.