Various

The part played by “high life” in fiction. The significance of its popularity as a theme for new novels illustrated by recent books. “The Marriage of William Ashe,” “Belchamber,” “The Dark Lantern.” Other books. The twenty-five best selling books of the month

THERE is at least one field in fiction that will probably never be exhausted; at any rate, not until the distinctions that have always divided human beings into classes become obliterated. High life has always possessed, as it does to-day, peculiar attractions both for the novel writer and the novel reader. Whatever may be the truth about the importance of the part played by the devotees of society from a purely utilitarian point of view, whatever may be said about their follies and extravagances and even immoralities, it still remains true that their doings and characters constitute a theme in fiction which is perennially active.

Other “types” come and go as manners and methods change, just as, in recent years, we have seen the development of the “industrial” or “commercial” novel, but the society story still flourishes, as it always has. The Englishman is not the only one who dearly loves a lord. Though we have no nobility on this side of the water, there is no lack among us of interest in the class that in America supplies its place. The society columns in the daily newspapers furnish sufficient evidence of this, for it is not to be presumed that so much space would be devoted to a topic if there were not a widespread interest in it.

What is done by the votaries of fashion is of little importance, so long as they do something. It may be that they shock sober-minded people and supply material for satirists. Their scandals, of which probably they have no more than their fair share, and their monkey dinners, may be offenses against propriety and good taste, but those who object still consume the news that comes from Fifth Avenue and Newport and Belgravia, whether it is told in newspapers or in the latest novel.

The significance of all this is that, even if we ourselves have not the time for play in our strenuous lives, we still like to hear about those whose chief pursuit is entertainment and recreation. The leisure class in every community is the conspicuous class, just as is the successful man. The toilers and the failures may be sure that they will be undisturbed and forgotten, and take what comfort they can in the knowledge that their right to privacy will be respected.

But social leaders must pay the penalty of their leadership. The publicity that those in humbler walks of life shrink from, they must accept as part of the day’s work. They must submit to satire, caricature, and even slander, without concern. They must not complain if, as has recently been intimated, envious novelists misrepresent them and their customs and traditions. They are to remember that they exist, not only to entertain and amuse themselves, but to do the same for the lookers-on, who are not part of the show.

Mrs. Humphry Ward has outdone herself in the interest aroused by “The Marriage of William Ashe,” Harpers, and the book has kept readers and reviewers busy, with many editions, since its publication. The surmise that its author provided herself with some historical backing for her portraiture of Lady Kitty and Geoffry Cliffe, in the characters of Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron, by no means diminishes admiration of her creative powers. The background of reality merely serves to protect her from the charge of over-exaggeration, while the personality of the restless and many-sided little heroine herself takes too strong a hold upon all readers to leave much room for criticism in this respect.

Ashe is, as the best type of English gentleman and statesman, capitally done. Mary Lyster would have been as perfect a portrait of the same class of social product but for the author’s inartistic slip in degrading her unexpectedly to the rÔle of stage villain, the jarring note in this clever story. Logically, Mary would have been William’s wife but for Kitty’s appeal to the latter at a time when his sympathies were most vulnerable. Their marriage is, from the first, an incongruous one; Ashe’s indulgence and blindness throw Kitty’s absurdities into increasingly conspicuous relief, and his absorption in political exigencies is broken only at intervals by some startling misdemeanor on her part, resulting in scenes of passionate and half-remorseful affection. Cliffe’s strange influence upon Kitty forms a powerful developing force upon her destiny. Her occasional revolt against it is quite in keeping with the strength which now and then manifests itself in her untrained and abnormal make-up. The character of Lady Caroline is followed in main events; seldom overdrawn, though in the capacity of hostess she is now and then allowed to lapse into a lower grade of social standards than one would expect, and her heartlessness toward her child seems inconsistent with certain other outbreaks of maternal passion.

The gentle, worldly-wise little Dean must not be passed over. Perhaps the strongest point in the whole story is laid in the closing scene, where he brings home to Ashe the latter’s terrible responsibility for his wife’s degradation because of the poverty of a love which has taken no account of the soul and its claims in his policy of blindness and indulgence. Poor Lady Kitty discovers that same soul, too late for the discovery to be of much use either to herself or her husband, but one is rather relieved to leave them reconciled, even with the interruption of Lady Kitty’s demise, and to wish William a more serene period of existence. For Mrs. Ward’s heroes and heroines are very real people, moving in familiar paths, and the charm of her stories is that one forgets the fictitious in a thoroughly absorbing interest.

“A Dark Lantern,” by Elizabeth Robins, Macmillan Company, is another story of English society, and involves a somewhat striking study of character, though that is by no means all there is to the book.

Katharine Dereham is a very human and a very charming personality, in spite of the almost incredible inconsistencies which mark her relations with Prince Anton of Breitenlohe-Waldenstein in the beginning, and Garth Vincent at the end. It is not altogether incomprehensible that she should have been both attracted and repelled by the prince, when one considers the innate deceitfulness of his nature, and perhaps, after her experience with him, it is not so strange that she should have turned with relief to Vincent, whose sincerity was indomitable, even if it was habitually brutal.

Probably the feminine reader will more thoroughly understand and sympathize with Kitty Dereham’s distress of mind and spirit in her struggles with the problems presented to her, and even with her unconditional surrender to Garth Vincent.

If so, it will be because women lay greater stress upon uncompromising truthfulness in a man than in a mere artificial exterior.

These three characters are the predominating ones in the book, and they are drawn with a good deal of skill; those who assume the minor rÔles are used with good effect to carry on the action and develop the story naturally and logically.

The style of the narrative is a little vexatious at times, but, on the whole, the story is extremely well told, and there is a succession of more or less dramatic episodes that make the book very interesting reading.

It happens, sometimes, that a novel is written for the publication of which no good reason can be given. Fortunately, such occurrences are rare, even in these days of “the literary deluge.” One such book has lately appeared from the press of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, under the title of “Belchamber,” the author of which is Howard Overing Sturgis.

The book is one of undeniable literary excellence in many respects, a fact which merely adds to the regret one must feel at its equally undeniable immorality in tone, its artistic iconoclasm, its distinctly pessimistic tendency, and its deplorably bad taste in its frank discussion of conjugal matters, some of which are commonly referred to only in treatises on physiology.

It is a story of English society, and, notwithstanding all the unpleasant truths that have been and may be told of this branch of “high life,” it is difficult to believe that any such considerable portion of it as Mr. Sturgis deals with is so destitute of attractive characters. It is for this reason that the book cannot be read without a feeling of depression. People as depraved as Cissy Eccleston and Claude Morland, so sordidly unprincipled as Lady Eccleston, so uselessly selfish as Arthur, so nearly degenerate, physically and mentally, as Sainty, the hero, is intentionally represented to be, should, if they are to be used in fiction at all, be subjected to the counterbalancing influence of decent people; but in “Belchamber” there is no such relief.

Sainty, otherwise Lord Belchamber, in spite of the fictitious virtues with which his creator seeks to invest him, cannot but repel the healthy-minded reader by his pitiable weakness of character, to say nothing of his physical infirmities, the more that they are the consequences of the excesses of his progenitors.

A superficial reading of “The Fire of Spring,” by Margaret Potter, D. Appleton & Co., might lead to the conclusion that the book is very different from “The Flame Gatherers,” the last work of the same author, which was published a year ago, but, as a matter of fact, they are, in substance, not at all dissimilar. In one respect, at least, they are identical, and that is the point of view from which the love element is considered. The time and space which separate the scene of the action of the two stories have not modified the primitive quality of the love which supplies the motif. It is a love in which the material predominates.

It must be confessed that there were grounds for the doubt felt by Charles Van Studdiford’s two companions as to the possibility of his being in love “with a young girl, of gentle birth and highest breeding, as unassailable by the coarser methods as the women Charles had hitherto known would have been by the finer.” Nevertheless, he cannot justly be blamed for all of the trouble that followed his marriage with Virginia Merrill. As she took him obviously for his money, her distress at the subsequent discovery of his grossness is not likely to provoke much sympathy for her, and in becoming entangled with Philip Atkinson, “the erotic man,” she sacrificed her last claim to respect.

The theme and plot are more or less familiar, but the author has, with an unusual subtlety and power, imparted to them a vitality that not merely engages the attention, but actually involves the reader as an active participant. She has given evidences of a rather unique gift of magnetism, the development of which will bear watching.

“Lady Noggs, Peeress,” by Edgar Jepson, McClure, Phillips & Co., though a story of children, or, rather, of a child, for her contemporaries play an inconspicuous part through most of the tale, is essentially a book for the grown-ups, and unhappy must the man or woman be who cannot enjoy it. Lady Noggs, who would, if she were actually what she is represented to be, have her place in “Burke’s Peerage” as Lady Felicia Grandison, is a delightful mixture of dignity and impudence. Full to brimming over with a harmless mischief that is instinctive in a healthy, normal child, yet when the occasion requires she never fails to exact the homage which she considers due to her position as a peeress and her birth as a British subject, as the Prince and Princess of Meiningen-Schwerin found to their cost.

If her uncle, the prime minister, was invariably baffled and perplexed by her vagaries and distressed by the consequences of her escapades, Mr. Borrodaile and Miss Caldecott had reason to be grateful for her aid in straightening out their affairs.

Mr. Beresford Caldecott’s dismay at the openly expressed admiration and persistent attentions of the Lady Noggs, the Admirable Tinker and Elsie will not excite much sympathy; on the contrary, the emotions of the children will be appreciated and shared by most readers. For “a dapper little man with a very red face and a very shiny top hat” to assume such a sobriquet as “Tiger Jake” is calculated to stir the suspicions even of children; and when such children begin to suspect that they are being imposed upon, the results are likely to be unpleasant for the offender.

“The Belted Seas,” by Arthur Colton, Henry Holt & Co., is a story, or, strictly speaking, a series of stories, told in the course of a winter’s afternoon by Captain Buckingham, who, with his audience, was seated “by Pemberton’s Chimney.”

“Pemberton’s” was a small hotel near the village of Greenough, somewhere, perhaps anywhere, on the southern coast of Long Island, frequented mostly by sailors, not superannuated exactly, but at least of the age when men who have had an active and adventurous life like to sit around and tell of what they have seen and done, or listen while some one else tells of their experiences. Of course, if a landsman happens along, he hears many strange tales, and, if he is an author, gets “copy.” And on this particular winter afternoon such a landsman was present while Captain Buckingham talked. Hence “The Belted Seas.”

The captain, according to his own account, had had some extraordinary adventures, shared by extraordinary companions, Stevey Todd, Sadler and Captain Abe Dalrimple. It seems doubtful, however, if Captain Buckingham would have had such a fund of rich material to draw upon for his yarns if it had not been for Sadler’s genius for creating original situations. The latter’s doings in Portale and Saleratus would make a book of themselves, if they were duly amplified.

The “Hotel Helen Mar” was an inspiration, and only goes to show how buoyant and optimistic dispositions may, with a little ingenuity, turn disaster into prosperity.

The stories are deliberately told, a little too much so, perhaps, for sustained interest, though it is to be remembered that an old sailor cannot be hurried while he is spinning a yarn.

Miss Marie Van Vorst, who collaborated with her sister-in-law, Mrs. John Van Vorst, in the authorship of “The Woman Who Toils,” the book which, it will be remembered, provoked President Roosevelt’s famous utterance concerning race suicide, has published, through Dodd, Mead & Co., a novel that ought to make a permanent place for itself, and add much to its author’s fame.

If it can be classified at all, it must be said to belong to the industrial type; the scene of its action is laid in the cotton mills of the South, and its special problem is the employment of child labor—though it is not to be understood that it is a problem novel in the strict sense of the term.

The degradation of Henry Euston, his descent into the moral and physical depths which he has reached at the opening of the story, and his subsequent regeneration; Amanda’s development from a child of the “poor whites” to the impressively elegant young woman, are the main threads about which the story is woven. Other matters, incidents and characters alike, are subordinate to these two, but are of a nature to combine in making a very strong story. The book is full of dramatic climaxes, more or less strenuous, and it cannot be said to be lacking at any point in interest; it is a book to be read more than once if it is to be thoroughly digested and appreciated.

If it contains any faults, they are to be found in the construction rather than in conception or style. There is rather forced upon the reader the impression of deficiency in this respect, which seems to be due to the author’s failure to grasp thoroughly and hold firmly at all times the details of the plot, with a resulting lack of co-ordination in the action.

It must be said of John F. Whitson’s new book, “Justin Wingate, Ranchman,” Little, Brown & Co., that in it the author has failed to realize the promise of his earlier book, “The Rainbow Chasers.” This is partly due, doubtless, to the fact that, compared with the latter story, the theme of “Justin Wingate” is more or less threadbare. The lumber camps of Arkansas furnished a new setting for a story, and their customs and local color were intrinsically interesting, even though, aside from this, the story was a good one.

But the sheep and cattle ranch, especially the latter, and the cowboy, have figured so often in novels, that to make a commendable tale of such material nowadays, there must be a decided human and dramatic interest, and a considerable degree of literary skill.

The Twenty-five Best Selling Books of the Month.

“The Marriage of William Ashe,” Mrs. Humphry Ward, Harper & Bros.

“The Masquerader,” Katherine C. Thurston, Harper & Bros.

“The Accomplice,” Fred’k Trevor Hill, Harper & Bros.

“The Orchid,” Robert Grant, Chas. Scribner’s Sons.

“A Dark Lantern,” Elizabeth Robins, Macmillan Co.

“The Game,” Jack London, Macmillan Co.

“The Life Worth Living,” Thos. Dixon, Doubleday, Page & Co.

“The Clansman,” Thos. Dixon, Doubleday, Page & Co.

“Sandy,” Alice Hegan Rice, Century Co.

“Mrs. Essington,” Esther and Lucia Chamberlain, Century Co.

“Constance Trescot,” S. Weir Mitchell, Century Co.

“Pam,” Bettina von Hutten, Dodd, Mead & Co.

“The Purple Parasol,” George B. McCutcheon, Dodd, Mead & Co.

“The Princess Passes,” C. N. and A. M. Williamson, Henry Holt & Co.

“The Divine Fire,” May Sinclair, Henry Holt & Co.

“Nancy Stair,” Elinor M. Lane, D. Appleton & Co.

“The Garden of Allah,” Robert Hichens, F.A. Stokes & Co.

“The Rose of the World,” Agnes and Egerton Castle, F.A. Stokes & Co.

“The Man on the Box,” Harold McGrath, Bobbs-Merrill.

“The Master Mummer,” E. Phillips Oppenheim, Little, Brown.

“The Breath of the Gods,” Sidney McCall, Little, Brown.

“The Great Mogul,” Louis Tracy, E. J. Clode.

“JÖrn Uhl,” Gustav Frenssen, Dana, Estes & Co.

“For the White Christ,” Robert A. Bennet, McClurg Co.

“The Ravenels,” Harris Dickson, J. B. Lippincott Co.