SOME RECENT FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2132, 25 April 1914, Page 9

SOME RECENT FICTION.

MARVELLOUS WM. DE MORGAN. Mr: William De Morgan—young; a:s ever at 1 seventy-five!—gives his admirers uncommonly good measure in his latest novel, "When Ghost MeetF Ghost" (William Hoinemann; per George Robertson and Co.), for the story is jnst two and a half pages short of being nine hundred pages in length. Some there may be who may hold such a prodigality as' beicg what Mr. Samuel Wellor called "rayther. too rich," but although, by tho introduction of a motif, the subsidiary to. the main plot, the story may have beeii unduly lengthened, yet would not, I have it.-be one page shorter. For thero is no other writer of to-day who could give us a richer feast of ingenuously-con-trived incident, dramatic effects which ring true, brilliant character-drawing, wholesome sentiment, and equally wholesome and most diverting comedy. Tho style is the style of "Joseph Vance" and "Alico for Short," rather, than that of "An Affair of Dishonour" and "A Likely Story," and I, for one, rejoice at the return to the old manner. It is a wonderful complex manner. At times there is a distinctly Thackerayan flavour; at others, especially in the Loudon scenes, thero ia more than a mero suggestion of Dickens. Yet again, not only in certain details of its plot, and the drawing of the background, but in its_ very spirit and wording, tho story reminds mo not :i- littlo' of "Geoffrey Hamlyn" and "Ravonshoe" —especially the latter — those two- brilliant, but nowadays, I fear, sadly neglected stories by Henry Kingsley, ever to be considered', to my mind, a much greater writer than bis better-known brother, the author of "Ravenshoe" —especially the latter— tho plot of "When Ghost Meets Ghost" would take far moro space than I can afford, but a- few notes on the main motif are imperative. Two sisters marry two brothers. One of the husbands, a terrible scoundrel, commits i forgery, and is sent to Van Diemon's Land. Tho wife follows him, but eventually desires to return, to England to' see her sister. . To prevent this, or to secure her early return to Tasmania, the' husband forges letters, purporting to prove the death of the sister, and goes further in his villainy, for he forges other documents to show that his. own.wife is dead. Tho wife does go to but, misled by the forged letters, imagines her sister dead. On '.her..side tho other woman belieyos her !siiterj to haves' died ihVAustra'lia.; •jAlid yet these two women do meet after all, after being .separated for over fifty years. One of th<?m, alas, tho one who, "went to Australia, has the' happiness of her old age-poisoned and_ destroyed by her son, a yet more devilishly cruel monster than' liis father, and an'; unkind fate ordains, that ho should also have ruined the life of a woman who, in his mother's old age, acts as her faithful friend, each being always ignorant of the true identity of the other and of their actual relationship. How tho two dear old creatures are finally brought together is worked out with quite wonderful ingenuity. _ It may be that the long arm of coincidence is strained a little, hut in the piecing together of this marvellous mosaic, Mr. Do Morgan displays a wealth of imagination and a genius for literary construction which would suffice to provide plots for half a dozen ordinary novels of the day. It is, however, in the characterisation that Mr. De Morgan has scored his greatest triumph. The two old grannies, tho long-separated sisters, are miniature portraits of exquisite pathos and beauty. In Uncle Mo, a retired exheavyweight champion pugilist, and Aunt M'ria, the unhappy wife of the convict father in Tasmania, Mr. De Morgan gives two studies which most surely live so long as thero aro.readers who appreciate really good fiction. The simple-hearted, quaintly humorous, splendidly loyal and scrupulously honest old prize-fighter l's as good in its way as anything to be found in Dickens, and for genuine pathos the description of the struggles of poor Aunt M'ria, between her old love for her worthless husband, and her dread that his renewed villainies may iujuro tlioso whom sho loves, is a positive masterpiece. Then, again, as is generally the case with a Do Morgan story, some delightfully "human boys," to use a favourite phraso of the late Mark Twain, play, incidentally, important rolos in the domestic drama. It is doubtful whether Mr. De Morgan might not have done better to have pruned down the excessive, detail with which he describes tho connection with the story of Mrs. Marrable arid Mrs. Davorill of an aristocratic family, but Lady Gw'on, who really solves the mystery of the two sisters, is as charming a character that we'ntay well pardon tho interpolated and over-lengthy story of her spinster aunt and elderly her lover. Mr. De Morgan is, as usual, specially delightful in his side-touches. He possesses the old Thackerayan art of button-holing, as it were, liis readers, and many ot these little side-touches are replete with quiet humour and that mellowed, all-tolerant, philosophy which only comes with age. After, the over-studied smartness, tho too-carefully elaborated ultra modernity of so much latter-day fiction, such a story as "When Ghost meets Ghost" is delightfully reposeful and fascinating. The_ atmosphere of the period, tho earlier 'sixties of the last century, is skilfully suggested. Only once have I caught the author guilty of an anachronism. This is where, after having previously alluded to "Bleak House," and having told us, in one of his delightful asides, that "this fixes the period of the story," he makes a referenco to the Impressionist school of painting. Now, tho term "Impressionism" was born in France, in the later 'sixties, and was not, I believe, acclimatised in England until tho 'eighties. By all means do not fail to road Mr. Do Morgan's latest. It is a book to bo read leisuroly. It is no story for the "novel gobblers," who devour the "detectivo story" and similar fictional catmag; nor is it a story which 'will appeal to those who talc© their pleasures sadly in the reading of morbid studies of latter-day decadence and pessimism. It is cheery, good-humoured, essentially wholesome, a. book which leaves a pleasant flavour on the palate, a book one can have about, and yet a book without one single trace of cither mawkish sentiment or timid cant. Wonderful Do Morgan, to have written such a book at seventytwo! Long may.the veteran live lo give tho'world such eminently agreeable and inuocont pleasure as that which' cannot fail to be found by all who peiuso his longest, latest, and in many ways nios', j [brilliant effort,