BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 11642, 31 August 1901, Page 3

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

'Sister Teresa.' j By George Moore. London: T. Fisher Unwin. The above is a continuation of 'Evelyn Innes.' It takes up her life from that moment when, having renounced the pomps and vanities of the stage, she stands in doubt as to her future careert After a brief renewal of her acquaintance with the concert stage, society, and former lovers, she determines to seek the peaceful, contemplative life that a convent affords, and devote her remaining years to the service of God. Doubt, weariness, and temptation assail her here as elsewhere, and she has to pass through much tribulation of body and mind until, worn by illness and conflict, she, after many years, arrives at that goal wherein she can see "God everywhere—in every flower, in every star, in all the interspaces," and knows " that to seek the Real Presence on the altar alone ?s a denial of the Divine Being elsewhere." Her long discipline, physical and spiritual, has left her without her 'Wonderful voice, without desire to re-enter the world, with nothing but the sweet inspiring faith that "life.is the will of God, and to enter into the will of God we must forget ourselves, for so long as we live Jiis will it does not seem to matter where we live." The book is characterised by a clearness of language that is vigorous and explicit, a high standard of morality, and a purity of tone that is, if somewhat mournful, free from sectarian bias and admirably presented. On the other hand, the sensuous and the sensual, where they occasionally appear, are unnecessarily realistic; and though they confirm the general impression we gain from a perusal of other novels as to the utter rottenness of a large section of English high society—country houses, in Mr Moore's opinion, being merely houses of assignation—it seems a pity that the general effect of the work should be marred by their introduction. ' The Sacred Fount.' By Henry James. London : Methuen and Co. Dunedrn: Wiiitcombe and Tombs. It is necessary in reviewing any work of Henry James to keep our ideal of a novel, if we have one, clearly before us, otherwise we may be accused of unfairness and (of course) ignorance in daring to criticise adversely the work of one who has a reputation and a following—both of which, however, are somewhat restricted and Avithin easily comprehended limits. If tho test of a novel be its ability to touch the springs of tears and laughter and to leave an impression that the reader has during its perusal been mingling with living entities—creatures of flesh and blood, such as, in a measure, he does, or can, associate with in his daily life, then Mr Henry James, so far as ho is known to us, is" not a novelist. He may have "distinction " and style, and he may be an essayist and "analyst," the founder of a school and the master of many disciples, but he is not a dealer in men and women, nor an artist in character drawing, nor a writer that touches one single emotion in our common nature, save, perhaps, that of half-amused, halfcontemptuous admiration. The three hundred odd pages of the above deal with a problem which may bo stated thusly: If A has changed intellectually and physically, what has caused it? And the answer being "a woman," the further soul-absorb-ing problem presents itself: Has A committed a breach of the Seventh Commandment with B or C, or both? And it is around this utterly worthless and nauseating query—borrowed, as so many writers nowadays borrow, from a land popularly but ignomntly supposed to have a monopoly of this sort of thing—that the narrative hinges. Plot, character, mirth, honest love, manhood and womanhood, are invisible, their place being usurped bv some 300 pages of moralising, questioning, theory-building, and imagining—cleverly done, we admit, but oh! the weariness and folly of it all. Mr James terms it "a proof, surely, that for real excitement there are no such adventures as intellectual ones." We take the liberty, however, of questioning the greatness o*f the intellectual exercise necessary to prove that A and B are guilty of conduct that does not appear very romantic when viewed through the sordid • details of the divorce court. Not, of course, that Mr James is in any place, or at any time, definite in his statements. His art is the antithesis of the defiant nastiness of Le Gallienne. But the emptiness of it all is there just the same. One feels neither profited nor intellectually the richer after reading through his subtleties, Ms elusive hints, his dialogues, and his soliloquies—if they are soliloquies. Literature, we maintain, has other aims in life than this. If the mind and heart cannot be touched and cheered, Boftened and elevated, and the individual outlook on life made less pessimistic, then it fails to justify its being. We know that, the members of a section of the wealthy and high-born are not patterns of chastity, nor objects for imitation, but it is time that their vices were treated as vices and not as mere lapses from a bourgeoise standard of virtue, with which they have no concern, and which, when tricked out m the seductive guise that the modern male and the yet more modern female give to them in novels, do not appear as vices at all, but rather as thines to be smiled at, perhaps imitated, provided always that you conform to the conventionalties.