The title of _The Green Mirror_ is symbolic. In the drawing-room of the
London house of the Trenchards, not far from Westminster Abbey, it
represented the past and the present of a great and typical English
family.
"Above the wide stone fireplace was a large old gold mirror, a mirror
that took into its expanse the whole of the room, so that, standing
before it, with your back to the door, you could see everything that
happened behind you. The mirror was old, and gave to the view that it
embraced some comfortable touch, so that everything within it was soft
and still and at rest." Henry Trenchard, gazing into it, saw "the
reflection of the room, the green walls, the green carpet, the old faded
green place, like moss covering dead ground. Soft, dark, damp.... The
people, his family, his many, many relations, his world, he thought,
were all inside the mirror--all imbedded in that green, soft, silent
inclosure. He saw, stretching from one end of England to the other, in
all provincial towns, in neat little houses with neat little gardens, in
cathedral cities with their sequestered closes, in villages with the
deep green lanes leading up to the rectory gardens, in old country
places by the sea, all these people happily, peacefully sunk up to their
very necks in the green moss.... His own family passed before him. His
grandfather, his great-aunt Sarah, his mother and his father, Aunt Aggie
and Aunt Betty, Uncle Tim, Millicent, Katherine."
Katherine embodied the spirit of revolt from the tyranny of family.
When Philip Mark, a young Englishman, who has spent the greater part of
his life in Russia, and whose experiences have made him more Russian
than English, comes wooing in tempestuous fashion, she throws off the
yoke of her family and chooses for herself. It is when the ties of
family are about to be shattered that Henry Trenchard, in a fit of
passion, flings a book at Mark, the invader, who has shaken Katherine's
faith in the family, and, instead of hitting Mark, demolishes the
mirror. "There was a tinkle of falling glass, and instantly the whole
room seemed to tumble into pieces, the old walls, the old prints and
water colors, the green carpet, the solemn bookcases, the large
armchairs--and with the room the house, Westminster, Garth, Glebeshire,
Trenchard and Trenchard traditions--all represented now by splinters and
fragments of glass."
"_The Green Mirror_, the second in the series of the _Rising City_
series, which was opened by _The Duchess of Wrexe_, is not only quite
individual in style but the story is told with a most vivid sense of
that which the realists are supposed to lack--form. But there is no
sacrifice of truth to it. The psychology of the characters rings true.
The reaction of an unimaginative, sober, righteous family to a
prospective son-in-law has seldom been better done. The story will add
to Mr. Walpole's reputation and will not at all suffer from the fact
that it was written before the war, as his overmodest preface might
indicate that he fears."--_Chicago Evening Post_.
"Henry James once said of the author that he was 'saturated' with youth,
and in this story Walpole idealizes the triumph of the youth of the new
generation that breaks the cords that bind it to the old and starts out
for itself--a careful, coherent and brilliant study."--_St. Louis
Globe-Democrat_.
"This is a splendid study, the love story is charming and altogether the
book is an exceptionally good piece of work."--_The New York Tribune_.
"In _The Green Mirror_ Hugh Walpole shows his masterly skill in building
up a really dramatic novel out of plot material that is almost without
action. His crises are always crises of feeling and no one equals Mr.
Walpole in his analysis of the feeling of his characters and his
exposition of their motives, development and change."--_Cincinnati
Enquirer_.
"_The Green Mirror_ will serve further to intensify the belief that Mr.
Walpole is one of the great novelists of the time. The reviewer does
not hesitate to proclaim the conviction that he will be the greatest
novelist of his generation who uses English as the medium of his
expression."--_Providence Journal_.
"Mr. Walpole has written a most unusual story and has handled it in an
exceedingly capable manner. His plot is so out of the ordinary and is
so well worked out that _The Green Mirror_ may well be classed as an
exceptional novel and as such is likely to rank high among the fiction
of the present years."--_Brooklyn Daily Eagle_.
"As a picture of contemporary life, the novel contains some elements
that are as fundamental as those which make Dickens characters of old
London real flesh and blood to readers of today. As a study in motives
animating society the book is worthy the best traditions of English
literature. _The Green Mirror_ is a distinct contribution to
literature."--_Detroit News Tribune_.
"_The Green Mirror_ has not one touch of aniline in all its warm colors,
rich presences and faithful portraiture. It is a fine novel, grappling
bravely with the great ironies of mother-love."--_New Republic_.
"In the development and disclosure of the essential and incidental
scenes of the domestic embroilment following upon disclosure of the
central situation Walpole vindicates his title to the primacy in the
ranks of British fictionists who have undertaken to represent
imaginatively the source, spirit and outcome of insularity translated in
terms of selfishness and family pride. It is life transcribed as
inexorable and fatalistic as _Fortitude_ and _Duchess of
Wrexe_."--_Philadelphia North American_.