Hugh Walpole: An Appreciation Part 4

Interesting are his struggles against stubborn prejudice; dreamlike the pictures of the old Trojan house, rising from the edge of the gray Cornish cliff like an older cliff, yet surrounded by fragrant rose gardens; but what most distinguishes _The Wooden Horse_ is its pa.s.sionate adoration of the sea, the cliffs, the weather-worn old Cornish houses, where bearded men tell of haunted moors and the winds of the deep.

"Reading this story after reading his later ones will not prove the disappointment that such a procedure usually is. Here are no signs of faults outgrown, no weaknesses that will hurt the lover of Walpole's later works--by which statement we do not wish to be taken as denying that he has developed. Mr. Walpole is a realist with a wide angle vision to whom not only the littered and close ways of short-sighted and selfish men are real, but to whom the large species of nature and her healing quiet are just as real. He sees life steadily and sees it whole--yet keeps his temper and his hopes."--Llwellyn Jones in _The Chicago Evening Post_.

"Nowhere has Walpole shown a greater grip upon life's realities, a stronger appreciation of the elusiveness of man-made conventionalities and a better artistic sense of the dramatic value of contrasts. In describing the subtle changes brought about in the family circle by the presence of one outside influence, Walpole has displayed much skill and literary power. There are no long disquisitions, no democratic preachments, but his dramatic personae, when brought face to face with new situations, are moved to action according to their light. This is one of the very best novels from the pen of Mr. Walpole, and that is saying much."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger_.

"A most notable piece of artistry. In Harry Trojan, the 'unrepentant prodigal,' Mr. Walpole has given us a splendid vigorous personality whose acquaintance is a delight to readers wearied by heroes of the type of Harry's semidecadent son. The picture of the Trojan family is one which for vividness could scarcely be surpa.s.sed. And, indeed, Mr.

Walpole has scarcely written anything more excellent than the account of the dying of Sir Jeremy Trojan--'I am going, but I don't regret anything--your sins are experience--and the greatest sin of all is not having any.' That, in a sense, is the motto of the book. _The Wooden Horse_ is one of the few novels which not only may be read, but must be read by the discriminating reader."--_Providence Journal_.

"If one wishes to read a good story without being preached at, he can do no better than read _The Wooden Horse_. The story catches the atmosphere of the Cornish coast, and you have the feel of the salt spray in your nostrils as you read."--_Indianapolis News_.

"As delicate a piece of work as any modern novelist has attempted and superlatively well done."--_Lexington Kentucky Herald_.

THE G.o.dS AND MR. PERRIN

Hugh Walpole spent some time as a master at an English provincial school, and consequently he has been able to put into _The G.o.ds and Mr.

Perrin_ quite all the atmosphere of a school where the system, the confinement, the routine of petty tasks get on everyone's nerves and turn a group of human beings into strange hybrids that are at once machines and animals with raw nerves sticking out all over them.

Whoever has--whether in the confinement of a school or an unhappy office or a jarring household--been smothered by the atmosphere of some set of human beings, will find himself in this book, and rejoice with Perrin's fight to break free.

_The G.o.ds and Mr. Perrin_ finds Mr. Perrin coming back to the workhouse-like school for boys at the beginning of term-time, determined to be kind this year. But the drudgery, the smell of cold mutton and chalk, the endless succession of frightened boys, the smug ironies of the reverend head-master, get on his nerves, and then the Cat of Cruelty begins to whisper at his ear and suggest that it would be pleasant to twist one boy's ear and cuff another.

He bursts out, at last, gloriously, and at a solemn gathering of the school for the awarding of prizes, tells what he really thinks of the hypocritical headmaster and the drab futility of the whole school.

Uncompromisingly, unflinchingly, Walpole has painted that school as it is. His picture should be enough to make any head-master who still believes in education by repression go off and commit suicide. It should be enough to make any man who is yearly growing more choked, more afraid of life, more smothered in a stuffy environment, rebel and fight his way out of that kingdom of dullness, cost what it may.

But because of that very spirit of revolt, _The G.o.ds and Mr. Perrin_ is not a drably disagreeable novel which will frighten off soft-minded readers.

"Marked by technical excellence, insight, imagination, and beauty--Walpole at his best."--_San Francis...o...b..lletin_.

"The psychological crisis in the life of a schoolmaster, uncouth, unhappy and unloved, is keenly a.n.a.lyzed by the hand of a master. The hysteria that attacks the faculty of a boys' school at examination time has never been so well described as in the moving chronicle of the 'Battle of the Umbrella' which proves that Mr. Walpole has the crowning gift of humor."--_The Independent_.

THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE

So excellent is the versatility of Hugh Walpole that this writer of dignified and realistic and always beautiful pictures of life has among his books one with all the tension and strange plot of a Poe masterpiece--_The Prelude to Adventure_. It starts with a murder. Dune the silent, the cleverest yet laziest and most sn.o.bbish man in his cla.s.s at Cambridge, has struck down a red-faced, silly, ign.o.ble, beast of an undergraduate who has been boasting of his conquest over a poor little shopgirl. He did not mean to do murder, but there lay the man dead, where the gray Druids' Wood dripped with rain and gray twilight.

He calmly went back to his rooms and kept silent. What happened is so filled with suspense that, very real and human though it is, the plot comes to have all the unexpectedness of the cleverest detective story.

And Dune's vision of G.o.d, as a great gray spirit standing gigantic there on the campus, waiting, waiting, is a revelation in spiritual motives.

Dune's love story, too, is fascinating--and his victory.

Suspense--color of life--love--fear--triumph--they all mingle in an atmosphere as effective as the Cornish sea.

"A powerful novel of Cambridge life, or rather the story of a Cambridge student with the university sketched in with rapid and sure strokes as a place through which Dune's tragic and lonely figure moves. The sentiment is lofty and manly--Hugh Walpole walks with a sure and firm tread toward a definite goal."--_The Independent_.

MARAd.i.c.k AT FORTY

The theme of _Marad.i.c.k at Forty_ again gets into the life of every man and every woman; a theme equally timely in 1000 B.C., 1000 A.D. and 10000 A.D.--the question of what is to be done when a man wakes up to find himself getting almost old, with life slipping from him to the next generation. One may smile at the white slave terror, and be quite selfish as regards educational movements, but one cannot smile away the progress of one's self from the forties into the fifties.

Marad.i.c.k, strong, large, well-bred, a capable stock broker, awakes at forty to find that life has eluded him. He has married respectably--his fussy little wife does not love him. His children are dutiful--they are not admiring. His business is safe--it is not absorbing.

While spending the summer at the "Man at Arms," that marvelous dark old inn with unexpected bits of gardens and tower rooms rambling over the Cornwall cliffs and fronting a vast sweep of sea and sky, he meets with a young man to whom life and poetry are real, to whom women and seas are "bully! marvelous!" The youngster's youth stirs Marad.i.c.k to demand that he no longer be taken for granted by wife and children and business--and life! He plunges into a spiritual adventure which is the Adventure of Everyman.