THE LATEST OF LOCKE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 10, 12 January 1929, Page 19

THE LATEST OF LOCKE

'Joslniii'a Vision." By "William J. Locke. London: John Lane, the Bodley Head.' Through Dymoek's, Sydney.

Joshua Fendick inherited a big boot manufacturing business in what is thinly disguised in the novel, but is clearly Northamptonshire. His reflections on his enormous stock recalls Kipling's verses on "Boots," for it is said that hi Joshua's factory "there were "forty thousand million pairs of them," at any rate a vast number.' But Joshua's father, who had .founded the business and was a keen, hard business man, apparently, did , not discern in his son artistic tendencies, and if ho did ho ignored them and kept his son hard down to business, with the result that Joshua inherited a highly prosperous concern, kept hard, at it, but when he thought it could be run as a company and do without; his personal supervision he withdrew from active work in it and turned artist. He had already married a tradesman's daughter •in Trentanpton (? Northampton), and by her had a son named Sutton. But Joshua was a rich, lonely man, for his wife died. He was taken in hand by a woman of the w.orld, who helped him to polish himself up for presentation in, society, who helped him in his artistic career. He would have married her, but she was already married, as he subsequently discovered. Their relations were- strictly platonic, > however. But in pursuit of • his art •as a sculptor Joshua met Susan, a model, a ■beautiful girl, but in temperament like poor Trilby when under the influence of Svengali. Susan is listless and cold; nothing seems to interest her. Travel and luxury leave- her chilly. The girl is a mystery. There is a tragedy- in her life, and it would not be fair to the novelist or the .reader to, disclose, it!in this notice. Joshua falls in love with Susan, and so, too, does his son Sutton. Susan vvas ready to become Joshua's mistress, but not. his wife. However, he yields to the claims of his son in. a magnanimously and- truly Lockeian spirit. Joshua on hearing Susan's partiality, for his son says:— "If you were good enough for me to marry— I asked you—why, confound it all, you're good enough for .Sutton. I 'don't say that I'm not in an awkward position—part of, the mess I was talking,'about. But If it would clear up everything and make us all happy you can marry Sutton to-morrow so fur as I am concerned." -" However, Sutton was not so important in Susan's life as the reader might support. There is too much improbability in "Joshua's seision" to class this.latest with the best of Locke.