Vindication* The Old Order in England Is Passing

Vindication*; The Old Order in England Is Passing

The Story. Gloria Britton’s mother had been a Spanish singer. Her father is a gentleman of impeccable antecedents and no money, who lives by his wits and on whisky. His income he derives equally from the card-table, from his women folks, by deft manipulation of his creditors. Their home is a squalid tenement with a good address.

From these inauspicious beginnings, Gloria sets out to make her fortune. Her life she divides impartially amongst those of her friends who are most agreeable in the bestowal of invitations and gifts, flitting brilliantly from country house to country house, studying the technique of the social order of younger Britain. Gloria is equipped with two leading suitors. There is Freddie Kendaile, ironical philanderer with a devious mind, full pocket, doubtful pedigree; there is also Norman Cartwright, clipped of moustache and austere of temperament, his whole life revolving around ancient and embattled Newbridge— the seat of his family since the beginnings of families.

Gloria falls in love with Norman, despite his mother’s croaking misgivings. They arrange to be married— though the impecunious match may mean the loss of Newbridge. Unfortunately, circumstances and the adroit courtship of Freddie finally cause her to weaken, and she jilts Norman for his rival.

Things go from bad to worse. Freddie reverts to type, and promptly has an affair with a dancer. Gloria leaves him. Even their child has turned out to be of the wrong sex. Gloria’s eventual return is not really a reconciliation.

Meanwhile Norman’s heart is patched by a new love—Margery May-Kingston, heiress. He marries her, and they go together to Newbridge. Margery is hardly more than a child and an extraordinarily naive one. Inevitably she falls into the arms of Freddie Kendaile, and their intrigue is not ended until an accident gives her a fresh start.

An anonymous communication from a discharged servant-girl apprises Gloria of the episode and she, with considered cruelty, tells Norman. He wrests a confession from his wife, is barely prevented from killing Freddie, and passes another period of acute misery.

The end of the book is happy in a cynical way. Gloria and Freddie are reconciled. Norman and Margery bask in a reborn love.

The Significance. The book is, like its author’s others, a study of post-War England, particularly its flashy younger political and financial groups. Mr. McKenna writes sharply, a little bitterly, always entertainingly. A keen line of sardonic humor runs through the volume. The style is clear, economical, without decoration. The old order in England is passing. The Cartwrights are dying as their tradition is dying. Their ancestral halls have become little more than museums, their family names have become little more than commodities to buy and sell in the marital marts. In their place comes a glittering new order—the wealthy middle class, noisy, a little coarse, self-cen-tered. Their vices and virtues, brilliance and uncertain refinement are seen with a very sure eye. The book is less keen in knowledge of feminine psychology and as a social study than Sonia, but it is interesting and shrewd.

The Critics:

The Literary Review: “Mr. McKenna is maturing. . . While he has tinges of Glynnishness, while at times he rivals Leonard Merrick in stripping off the shreds of Victorian sentiment from every relation in life, nevertheless he has a consciousness of the deepest forces at work in human souls, and a knack of recording their effects on outward conduct and speech that entitle him to be mentioned only a few breaths after Galsworthy, and even his great model, George Eliot.”

The New York Times: “He gropes both in his thinking and in his style. The book improves as it progresses; and it will be found provocative. And if not to be taken too seriously, it is not to be dismissed too lightly.”

The Author. Stephen McKenna is an English bachelor, a graduate of Oxford. He has traveled a great deal, and was in the Intelligence Section, War Trade Intelligence Department, during the War. He was a member of the Balfour Mission to the U. S., 1917. His best-known works are Sonia, Sonia Married, Midas and Son, The Secret Victory,

New Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

A CONQUEROR PASSES—Larry Barr-etto—Little, Brown ($2.00). Stephen Wicker, ex-ambulance driver, is engaged to Annice Reed. The War has left him too restless to be content with his old job. He takes it, but is unhappy, unable to settle down. Then Annice breaks the engagement and there is no need for him to. So he loses his job in despair and starts merrily to the dogs. When he has practically reached them he is rescued ‘from freezing to death by Minna Geiger. She falls in love with him, but he realizes that they will never be happy together so he leaves her. He goes back to France, still restless, but he finds that France has changed too and does not satisfy him. Then, by accident, he reads of the suicide of Annice’s father. He comes back to her. They marry. And he manages to find some measure of content. This is a first novel. It is the story of the ex-soldier who cannot adjust himself and, as such, should be widely interesting. It is not well planned, however, and written with hardly enough distinction to command quite all the praise it has received.

STIFFS—Melbourne Garahan—Seltzer ($2.00). If a goodly number of books of fiction are as dull as fact, here is a book of fact—or so the publishers claim it to be—that is as romantic as fiction. It is impossible to give away the plot, because there is nothing that could really be called a plot. But there are plenty of interesting adventures and extraordinary characters and one can recommend this story (which begins in an oculist’s office with a pair of near-sighted eyes) to anybody—which means everybody—who has ever cherished a secret ambition to become a hobo.

LOVE — AND THE PHILOSOPHER — Marie Corelli—Doran ($2.00). The ingredients of this story are a “grim and selfish” philosopher, a poor and handsome young man, a pretty but sentimental girl. Also, there is the girl’s father and the War. Of course the “grim and selfish” philosopher turns out to be not as grim and selfish as he was supposed to be, and the young man discovers that he is the heir to a great deal of money, and of course at the end there is a wedding. “Has my heroine chosen the right partner for life?” asks the novelist. Well, has she? Whether she has or not this is a modern fairy story with the Beautiful Princess and the Handsome Prince and the Elderly Lover translated into up-to-date characters which should please all those who are fond of the novels of the second writer to come from Stratford-on-Avon.

John Weaver

He Grows Older

John V. A. Weaver, the spry author of In American, Finders, etc., has now vanished to Florida where, having encased his slender form in a bathing suit, he is doubtless polishing the surface of his play—a play written, I hear, in “the American language.”

Mr. Weaver is slim, dark, active, almost jumpy. He is perennially young; at least he looks easily ten years younger than he is, and he’s still under thirty. He is a Southerner, but long years in the Middle West have quite obliterated any trace of a Southern accent. He attended Hamilton College—this he holds a bond in common with Alexander Woollcott, the increasingly weighty dramatic critic of The New York Herald. As a bitter and somewhat bumptious critic Mr. Weaver made his early reputation on the Chicago Daily News. His columns in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle have been characterized by fearless honesty and a remarkable freshness of expression. Certain of his critics have intimated that Mr. Weaver was and is the only extant member of the so-called “Younger Generation.” This is, perhaps, unjust. Mr. Weaver grows old slowly; but he is growing older day by day.

I know of no other American poet who has succeeded so subtly in combining real sentiment with the vernacular. His poems in slang have been at once beautiful, tender, well written. He has intuitive knowledge of the boy and girl of shop and street, their trials, their loves. If his play possesses the same quality of joy and sorrow that is shown in his poetry, it should run forever, and even if he forgets the popular accents of New York on the sands of Palm Beach, he cannot lose there his wistful, shy boys and girls who drift through his pages.

One often asks: “How do authors collect dialect expressions?” The answer is, I think, usually, that they don’t. Ernest Poole once told me that now that the saloon had vanished as a place in which to overhear conversations, the bus top was the ideal place for garnering a store of epithets, tender and vituperative. That may be; but I am practically certain that with John Weaver it is largely a question of things heard on the run, of the seeping in of idiom, of a certain eager understanding of the way the ordinary mind works. I doubt the accuracy of his ex-pressions—but I am sure of the spirit of them—and, therefore, they are nearer right than any academicians’ accurate transcription of dialogue could be.

J. F.

*VINDICATION — Stephen McKenna — Little, Brown ($2.00).