" SHEAVES."

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 27, 1 February 1908, Page 12

" SHEAVES."

«» .I. - DISPARITY OF AGE IN RIAGEIn "Sheaves," Mr. E. F. Benson has attacked ono of the most difficult problems a story-teller can set himself — tho problem of disparity of ages. It is one that constantly recurs in fiction, as for example in "ffenry Esmond," "Indian Summer," "Alice-for-Short" — the list of novels old and new might be stretched out indefinitely. The problem occurs in four variations : (a) he is too old, happy ending j (b) the same* Unhappy ending ; (c) she is too old, happy ending j (d) the same, unhappy ending. Speaking in a general way, there is no such thing in fiction us a hero's being too old so long as he retains the use of his faculties, and romance has a specially kind regard for the match between the worn warrior of forty and the debutante. If ho is uncommonly strong, brave, and unhappy, he may be fifty, and a widower, or divorced, or anything one pleases. But inasmuch as the largest consumer of fiction is the young person of the unsentimental sex, it is unreasonable to expect a similar toleration where tho disparity is in the opposite direction. It is seldom indeed that a- novelist has dared so greatly as Mr. Benson. Thackeray and Mr. Howolls ci'avenly hedged— propounded the problem with a string attached. Harry Esmond marries Lady Castlowood, certainly, and is moderately happy^ ever after, but after all there is less disparity than there would havo been in a marriage with Beatrix. The scales are cleverly loaded to tip as they were meant to tip. Mr. Howells has made them tip in the same direction, but with a different loading, so that they settle more naturally and inevitably in their place. Here the disparity is to the man's disadvantage, but his hero is no squareijawed figure of romance, but an ordinary, middle-aged American who feels draughts and has lost his enthusiasm for dancing all night. He is fascinated by the young heroine's charms and - grace, but after trying books and life with her, he' is forced to recognise that he is a contemporary of her mother. Now Mr. Benson, except at the very end, has faced his problem with the utmost gallantry, put it in its most difficult form, and then employed all his literary art to make it '"go down." He has put the disparity of /ago on the wrong side, and has made it, for that side, almost excessive. The heroine is forty-two, the hero twenty-five. Thero are tho figures baldly put. Turned about, they would be admirable ; it has been commonly urged by experts in those matters that a wife should bs twelve years younger than her husband, and if seventeen years' difference is excessive for a beginning, time will operate to reduce it. But as Edith's sister Peggy pitilessly points out, for lovo of her, in ten years Hugh will bs but thirty-five and still s. young man, an opera singer at tho height of his carear, while Edith will be fifty-two. In another decade tho disparity will be greater yetj at forty-five Hugh would bo well mated with a wife of twenty-five, but what of one of sixtytwo ? Well, what would have happened ? Even Mr. Benson's co.urage has falliui short of letting-his tale run out into the dry sands of middle ago to see which stream would evaporate first. Quite arbitrarily he has provided Edith with a phthisis which operates to end the story at the right moment, attcr a brief and happy married life. This is better than the altruistic simile that seems to be th© fashion, as for example in Hamlin Garland's "Money Magic." where the elderly husband obligingly hastens by'poison the question of disease. Nevertheless, the case Mr. Benson has pui is one that occurs within every one's observation in real life; it should be within a novelist's province to find out, what happens and make a report in literary form. The phthisis confuses tho issue, eliminates the question of age, and substitutes at the last moment the problem of engines offered by Elizabeth Robins in "The Open Question." But Mr. Benson does not write problem fiction. He is much more bent upon his story, and it is to be said that if his, dose is not of the most palatable sort to tho young, person of the, unsentimental sex, he has artfully sugar-coat-ed it till it is hardly to be distinguished from caramel. As good a case as possible, to begin with, is made out for Edith. Her first marriage is shown as having bepn unhappy enough to entitle her to large compensation. She 13 made a btately beauty, a Juno at forty, without a gray hair, and looking twentyfive; Nature is not lacking in such miracles*. Then as "Andrew Kobb" she has won celebrity as a playwright, revealed intellectual and emotional powers of the highest order, and as the history of art and literature shows, if genius is not. exempt from the ' operation, of time, it is much given to overleaping such ob stacks. Some of the "affaires celebres" to which whole libraries are not very profitably devoted, are of precisely this sort, though on the wicked "continent" ifc is not always a question of marriage. Mr. Benson has put his case well, and he has skilfully chosen his subordinate matter to enlighten. and enliven his tale. It is full of nursery nonsense, frolics with children, games of imagination, in which Hugh shows himself as good a child as the rest. Mr. Benson does this sort of thing very well, and while it is a thing that can be overdone, for adult readers of the sentimental sex who are uot frequently thrilled by the spectacle of six-year-olds playing Indian, in this case the subject gives a logical justification, as does the subject of "The Younger Set." But Mr. Chambers has set h?s stage in tiie~ more popular fashion— grizaled military hero, faithless frivolous wife, tender debutante. In the filling out of his novel, fhe selection of people and scenes and' incidents ; all the things that m old-fashioned treatises or rhetoric were called "amplification" and to novelwriters 'are sometimes known as "padding," Mr. Benson has wisoly chosen lightness and humour to offset his subject. The book has the quality of "The Challoners," not the harshness of "Dodo." "The Relentless City," and "Scarlet and Hyssop.' It is an amusing and agreeablo satirical picture, which he gives of a narrow provincial life. The picture of Canon Alington is a little awkward, and a vety little exaggeration, but ifc is as good a presentation as comes at the moment to mind of the prosaic, kindhearted, narrow-minded man who has gone in tremendously for culture, prides himself on his liberality of intellect his appreciation of art, and all that sort of thing. The portrait gives very much the effect of having been done from life, and with just « little more geniality of tone it would deserve a place in any gallery of noted ptigs in fiction. Unluckily Mr. Benson cann6t quite keep out of such pictures a slight touch of resentment as though he had not forgotten intolerable hours of boredom. — Springfield Republican.