BOOK OF THE WEEK

Taranaki Daily News, 17 August 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

BOOK OF THE WEEK

BITTER-SWEET COMEDY

“Captain Nicholas,” by Hugh Walpole. MacMillan and Co. Ltd., London. A. J. Fyfe Ltd., New Plymouth.

Mr. Walpole- defines his novel as a “modem comedy,” but the return of Captain Nicholas Coventry to London came perilously near to bringing tragedy to his sister, Fanny Carlisle, and her family. The Carlisles were one of the comfortably off upper middle-class people Mr. Walpole describes so happily. Charles Carlisle had retired from the Stock Exchange with what he considered an ample competency, and was a good-natured rather lazy individual who idolised his wife, and thought his three children were a credit to their parents. His mother, and Fanny’s brother, Matthew, and sister, Grace Coventry, shared the house in “Smith Square,” and as each had their own income and contributed to the costs of running the house they lived together without friction. Into this somewhat remarkable community of relations came Captain Nicholas Coventry, after ten' years of silence as to his whereabouts. He brought with his his daughter, Lizzie, and a cheerful admission that he was the black sheep of the family. Rascal as he was, Nicholas had a charm of manner that had enabled him to live on his wits, and apparently live well, for many years. Only two of his relations refused to succumb to it, his daughtetr Lizzie, who had seen him in his darker periods, but knew that his love for her was the one sincerity in his life, and his brother Mathew. He remembered the brutality which which Nicholas had treated him when they were both schoolboys, and remembered also that with all his brilliance and charm Nicholas was always mean and selfish where his own interests were concerned. j

Mathew Coventry is a curious study. The. reader feels that he is intended to reflect a very exquisite soul, one who is desperately anxious to keep in touch with the Infinite, fears self-deception, but has evolved for himself and shares with others a kind of pseudo-religious ecstasy which, until Nicholas returned, seemed to Mathew to be as suitable for a workaday world as. for his own retiring and sheltered personality. As a matter of fact he is rather too near being a prig to make enjoyable company. He arouses the plain man’s distrust of the too exquisite character. Fanny Carlisle was delighted to welcome her brother and his child. The reactions of her son Romney and her daughter Nell, to Nicholas’ charm were slower, but ultimately they and Charles Carlisle succumbed to his influence. Nicholas had not been many days in Smith Square before he had borrowed money from Charles, and in the comfort of having money in his pocket he “assorted himself.” As he walked from the house “he felt, with a warnj, almost animal pleasure, his other life streaming in upon him—the life of risks and adventures, rascals and scoundrels, the life without law or principle that was really his. . . . The high lights in it—the flight from Jamaica, the death of his wife in Paris, Bawtrey’s suicide in Monte Carlo, the thieving in Rapalio, Saunders’ death in- Venice, these might once have been called melodrama. . . drab and unromantic though they always were in reality. J . . He moved surrounded by a constant company of men, out of a job, ready to do anything for money, by suicide, murder and robbery with violence. One figure led to another ... always a little lower. “Certainly during those last- months in Italy he had kept some queer com pany, and oh the whole it was as well that he had pulled himself out of it when he did. /But the thing that: he loved was the contrast of these two worlds. To pass, as he was now doing, from the English domesticity of the house in Westminster, the quiet oldfashionedness of those people who all felt so safe. . . with one step into this other real world where society was disintegrating into chaos, where there were no laws, no rules except that , the cleverest collared the booty—yes, thjs was a sensation that stirred his blood.” Nicholas was no Mephistopeles seeking to betray the trust of a- simple Marguerite. His thrill was in compelling the trust, the affection and the pride of those who first regarded him with suspicion and desired nothing from him but to be left alone. He - succeeded in obtaining many of his desires. Almost imperceptibly an atmosphere of criticism and unrest arises in the house in Smith Square. Nicholas learns of Charles’ brief infatuation for another woman while his wife was away from home, he discovers the silly make-believe that Grace, a sex-repressed old maid, has been indulging in, he learns of Nell’s liaison with a married man, and -gives the advice that makes her the mistress of her lover, and while he is kindness and sympathy embodied to all of them, they all feel more or less under his control, and on edge with the other members of the family. , Nicholas’ influence starts his sister Fanny on a course of introspection quite foreign to her hitherto robust and happy nature. Her discovery, thanks to Nicholas, Of her husband’s infidelilty, and of her daughter’s unchastity, leave Fanny with two alternatives. She must either remove the noxious influence from her household or she must withdraw herself from the family she believed depended so much upon her willing care and devotion.

Her choice brings about the climax of this bitter-sweet story. Captain Nicholas is a likeable rascal and his gay devilry has an effective background in the smugness of the Smith Square household, the otherworldliness of his brother Mathew, and the extreme seriousness with which his relatives regard themselves and their connections. The reader finds at times a difficulty in deciding whether Mr. Walpole means his book to be vision or comedy. He has sympathy with young people and old. But the feeling remains that it is rather professional sympathy, and that if the Coventrys and Carlisles could have laughed at or with each other a lot oftener they would not have been so overcome by the sophistication of Nicholas or so blind to his very apparent defects. The minor characters are well drawn. Janet, the old servant, who loathes Nicholas, Abel Mandez, the captain’s evil shadow, are prominent. Edward and Lizzie are sketched with that understanding of school children which is characteristic of Mr. Walpole.

We have just opened up the following titles in Jonathan Cape’s library—Price 3s, postage 3d. “Lawrence and the Arabs,” by Robert Graves; “Roses Austey,” by Ronald Fraser; “The Brfinming Cup,” by Dorothy Canfield; “Cry Havoc,” by Beverley Nichols; “The Game of the Season,” by Hugh de Selincourt; “Free Air,” by Sinclair Lewis; “Three Fevers,” by Leo Walmsley; “Moonfleet,” by J. Meade Faulkner; “Ralph Rashleigh,” by Lord Birkenhead. A. J. Fyfe, Ltd., “The Book People,” next to “The Kash.” Phone 1397.*