Part 3

"In _The Green Mirror_ Hugh Walpole shows his masterly skill in building up a really dramatic novel out of plot material that is almost without action. His crises are always crises of feeling and no one equals Mr. Walpole in his analysis of the feeling of his characters and his exposition of their motives, development and change."--_Cincinnati Enquirer_.

"_The Green Mirror_ will serve further to intensify the belief that Mr. Walpole is one of the great novelists of the time. The reviewer does not hesitate to proclaim the conviction that he will be the greatest novelist of his generation who uses English as the medium of his expression."--_Providence Journal_.

"Mr. Walpole has written a most unusual story and has handled it in an exceedingly capable manner. His plot is so out of the ordinary and is so well worked out that _The Green Mirror_ may well be classed as an exceptional novel and as such is likely to rank high among the fiction of the present years."--_Brooklyn Daily Eagle_.

"As a picture of contemporary life, the novel contains some elements that are as fundamental as those which make Dickens characters of old London real flesh and blood to readers of today. As a study in motives animating society the book is worthy the best traditions of English literature. _The Green Mirror_ is a distinct contribution to literature."--_Detroit News Tribune_.

"_The Green Mirror_ has not one touch of aniline in all its warm colors, rich presences and faithful portraiture. It is a fine novel, grappling bravely with the great ironies of mother-love."--_New Republic_.

"In the development and disclosure of the essential and incidental scenes of the domestic embroilment following upon disclosure of the central situation Walpole vindicates his title to the primacy in the ranks of British fictionists who have undertaken to represent imaginatively the source, spirit and outcome of insularity translated in terms of selfishness and family pride. It is life transcribed as inexorable and fatalistic as _Fortitude_ and _Duchess of Wrexe_."--_Philadelphia North American_.

FORTITUDE

The novel which first introduced Walpole to America was _Fortitude_, that most beautiful, most strong story of a man's fight against heredity and circumstance for mastery over himself. The theme of the book lies in a saying of the Cornish fisherman, old Frosted Moses: "'Tisn't life that matters, but the courage you bring to it."

Peter Westcott, son of the black and sullen generations of Scaw House, heard Frosted Moses say that, as he, a tiny little boy, crouched in a chimney corner at the old inn and heard the sages talk of ancient Cornish legends, and of the glory of the great world without. So did he imbibe a spirit of adventure which he never lost.

He left Scaw House and his gloomy father, fought his way through school, through the welter of a London boarding-house, through poverty and failure to success as a novelist. But his struggle and his success were not the poor desire for petty fame which many conventional heroes of fiction regard as struggle. What he desired in life was fortitude, not headlines; the power to face failure as well as the ability to become known. The spirit of adventure, humanity, these ever stirred him, and he lost neither in becoming a victor.

Of the woman who loved Peter and the woman whom Peter loved, Walpole makes a magnificent love story. There were many hours of dramatic misunderstanding in the passion that sprang up between the solid, broad-shouldered Peter, with his quiet desire to write and be friendly toward all sorts of people, and Clare, the slender, nervous, gay, red-haired girl who had always been protected. But there was a great and beautiful wonder of passion as well; and the happiness of the little London house to which they returned from the honeymoon is not to be forgotten.

And throughout there are very many people who are not to be forgotten--Stephen, the Cornishman, huge and bearded and bewildered and inarticulate, loving the youngster Peter and the girl he could not have, tramping the hard white roads of England, an outcast for love; Zanti, the "foreigner," always a-quiver with babbling excitement over some new adventure on whose trail he was following; quiet Norah, untidy and pale, yet burning with a love which gave back his fortitude to Peter when it seemed lost; Cardillac, the elegant; Galleon, the great novelist; the kiddies who adored big Peter; Peter's own son, whom he so terribly loved.

It is a marvellous gallery, and more marvellous, even, is the gallery of scenes, not painted in long and laborious descriptions, but in quick snatches, which show the fact that Walpole watches sky and wind and tree as does no other novelist.

Do you not come from the heart of dusty country back to the sea again as you read this? If you do not, then you do not love the sea, whose very breath is here in this description from _Fortitude_:

"They were at the top of the hill now. The sea broke upon them with an instant menacing roar. Between them and this violence there was now only moorland, rough with gorse bushes, uneven with little pits of sand, scented with sea pinks, with stony tracks here and there where the moonlight touched it."

Put this with the first lines in _Maradick at Forty_ and you have a whole seaside holiday:

"The gray twilight gives to the long, pale stretches of sand the sense of something strangely unreal. As far as the eye can reach, it curves out into the mist, the last vanishing garments of some fleeing ghost. The sea comes smoothly, quite silently, over the breast of it; there is a trembling whisper as it catches the highest stretch of sand and drags it for a moment down the slope; then, with a little sigh, creeps back again a defeated lover."

Or, if you will have the soul of the gay city, here it is in a quotation from _Fortitude_:

"The street stirred with the pattering of dogs out for an airing. The light slid down the sky--voices rang in the clear air softly as though the dying day besought them to be tender. The colours of the shops, of the green trees, of slim and beautifully dressed houses, were powdered with gold-dust; the church in Sloane Square began to ring its bells."

But it is not so much beautiful imagery, not so much interesting people, that distinguish _Fortitude_ and make it a great-hearted book, as the courage for life, the demand for fortitude.

"_Fortitude_ is a book in which the writer has put much passionate intensity of thought and conviction. It has no faults of insincerity, weakness, nor poverty of mind or heart. It is fascinating. It is the expression of a born writer. One reads it all. There is humor, there is generosity; as of some big man overflowing with ideas. There is a noble spirit in the book that blows fresh upon one, like a wind from the sea. The wind may have blown through desperate places and seen bitter things, but it is clean and bracing, and one is glad of it."--_Hildegarde Hawthorne In The New York Times_.

"_Fortitude_ is a story that one will like to linger over after it is read. It is reminiscent of Thackeray at his best, mellowed with the charity of well-proportioned truth."--_New York American_.

"_Fortitude_ is impressive. Its revelations of life strike deeply into those springs of youth from which are filled the wells of manhood."--_The New York World_.

"This novel is a genuine performance. All is worked out in the finest detail, like the careful etching of a great, stone-made cathedral."--_The Chicago Evening Post_.

"Hugh Walpole is a literary force to be reckoned with. He knows life; he is not afraid to depict it. He can be sympathetic without being sentimental. He is afraid neither of pleasure nor pain--nor of seeming to fear the conventionalities. He has the true idea of romance. He knows that the enchanted land of adventure may be found in a London boarding house as surely as on stormy seas or in deep hidden gold mines. He knows that man's fiercest battles seldom are fought to the accompaniment of cannon. He knows that loneliness is one of the hardest, one of the most universal of humanity's tests and sorrows. _Fortitude_ is a book to read more than once, to ponder. Instinct with life and vigor, lovers of sentiment, fighting, psychology, romance, realism, each will find it worth while."--_The Chicago Record-Herald_.

"_Fortitude_ is a book of splendid strength and significance. It is done with much care for workmanship and with a large understanding of the meaning of life, so proving doubly worth while.... Throughout the book is marked by a penetrating knowledge of humanity, so that it brings one continually into touch with real people and real human crises."--_The Continent_.

"Mr. Hugh Walpole has the faculty of infusing vibrant life into his characters in fiction, and in _Fortitude_ he presents one of the strongest and best novels of the season."--_The Baltimore Sun_.

"The people here are as real as life. The theme is big. The movement is controlled and steady, a leisurely movement, as stories that deal with character rather than action must be. The sketches of London, in their whimsically personal note, make one think of Dickens in the same field. The whole is big in every sense. One of the two or three or maybe four novels of the year that will live to celebrate even a single birthday."--_The Washington Evening Star_.

"There is not a dull page in the book. Its people are real flesh and blood beings, with courage, with love and with humor in their souls. All of them are interesting, while the circumstances which surround them in _Fortitude_ increase the delight of the many readers the book is certain to achieve."--_The Boston Globe_.

"The book is full of thought. Mr. Walpole has written a chapter of life, pure and simple. The reader cannot skip one page."--_The Philadelphia Public Ledger_.

"Fortitude is a great book. It marks the arrival of Hugh Walpole as a novelist to be reckoned with. We will await further performance with an anticipation like that with which we look forward to a new Five Towns tale by Bennett."--_Norma Bright Carson in Book News Monthly_.

"One of the remarkable novels of the year. This is a great book."--_The San Francisco Chronicle_.

"This book of humor, romance, and realism is a paean of youth and strength and love, a valiant and bracing sermon."--_The Nashville Tennessean_.

THE DUCHESS OF WREXE

Walpole's constantly increasing perception of the breadth and dignity of the world has given to _The Duchess of Wrexe: A Romantic Commentary_ a spaciousness, a universality which make it apply to the big problems of today wherever found--yet his ceaseless interest in human nature keep it a pleasant tale to read, with a surge of power.

It is the story of the second generation's struggle for freedom, for the right to think and grow and love and form social circles as it wills, against the tradition which commends them to do as tradition wills. It is the struggle which is identical all over the world, whether in London or San Francisco, Paris or Peking. It is the struggle which expresses itself in feminism, in changing art, in growing rationalism of manner and speech and thought.

The Duchess of Wrexe is the autocrat of the autocrats; the modern cavalier; old, shriveled, feeble of body, but keen of eye as ever, with her cynical wit and sophisticated manner unchanged, who until she is dead will never give up her fight to keep the race of cavaliers ruling the nation, to keep the despised race of ordinary people (especially the _nouveau riche_) in their places. From her darkened rooms, where she sits in a great chair with grim china dragons on either side, she plots against the spread of democracy shrewdly, ruthlessly, ceaselessly.

The spirit of the times is proving toe much for the Duchess. But she fights on. However glad the reader may be of the defeat of all the tyranny for which the Duchess stands, he cannot but be touched by her plucky fight and the grim persistence of her cynical wit.

It may be mentioned that Walpole does not, like many writers, draw on imagination entirely for his pictures of aristocracy and smart society. Essential democrat though he is, Hugh Walpole is the cousin of the Earl of Orford, the son of a bishop, and a descendant of the famous prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole.

"_The Duchess of Wrexe_ is a wonderful piece of creative character study. There is a maturity, a sureness of touch in the book that marks the man who knows just what he can do with his medium and does it enthusiastically and well."--_Book News Monthly_.

"A definite and notable addition to English letters is made when a new novel by Hugh Walpole is published. His latest book, _The Duchess of Wrexe_, deals on large elemental lines with the restless, changing spirit of the time. To the strange medley of modern life the novelist's powers of invention, description and characterization are highly addressed. His spirited and finished portrayal of one phase of the changing social order exemplifies finely and naturally the picturesque realism of new-century romance."--_Philadelphia North American_.

"_The Duchess of Wrexe_ stimulates thought and encourages reflection. It contains a multitude of ideas and it also allows the reader to think for himself. It is energetic and vigorous without being truculent; it sets forth social conditions without being polemic. It is genuinely a story, and it is at the same time a suggestive commentary on life. _On every page it dignifies the art of the novelist_.... With all his subtlety, with all his restraint, with all his ingenuity in making it a social study, Mr. Walpole has not made _The Duchess of Wrexe_ any the less effective as a story. It is a novel that entertains, that charms. On a single page of it will be found more about mankind and life than is discoverable in the entirety of many another novel.... He has lavished upon it ideas, situations, events and characters sufficient for the lifework of numerous other novelists."--_Boston Transcript_.

"Those who take Mr. Walpole's work as a plain story will find it of compelling interest. Those who read its message complete will be impressed by the sense of a great theme thoughtfully and powerfully presented. There is no flattery in the statement that this book is _one of the really great pieces of modern fiction_."--_New York World_.

"All the grim, unyielding pride of race of England's old autocracy is made incarnate in the personality of one aged woman, the ever-dominating title-character in this admirable study of changing social orders. It is a heroic picture that the author paints of this grim old head of the house of Beaminster. She stands out supreme amid the pages, one of the most notable figures put into a book in a long time."--_Philadelphia Press_.

"Walpole has strengthened his claim to position by proving that he is not a man of one book, for _The Duchess of Wrexe_ is without doubt one of the big novels of the year. It is a novel of extreme significance."--_Samuel Abbott in The Boston Post_.

THE GOLDEN SCARECROW

"If you love enough we are with you everywhere--forever"--that is the word of the little children that stupid people call "dead." Always here, playing in the room they loved. Such is the end of _The Golden Scarecrow_, the most original book by the author of _Fortitude_. It is the story of a dozen children living about a spacious old square, a square filled with leisure and the sound of leaves, in the heart of London. The son of a duke is one, and one the forlornly playing child of a housekeeper who drank and was untidy, but their lives were all bound together by the Friend--who is the Friend of Stevenson's child-verses--who in dangerous or unhappy moments comes to children and with his great warm arm guides them.... There is a wonderful fancifulness in _The Golden Scarecrow_, a mellow and gentle beauty; and a really remarkable ability to enter into the children's own world, where carpets are vast moors, and the fire whispers secrets, and the lashing out of a whip of wind suggests things vast and secret and perilous. Mr. Walpole has "loved enough"; has so loved children and the little land of the imagination that he has put into this book the quality which can never be quite plumbed--tenderness. And it is not the awkward tenderness of the person not born to write; but graceful and perfect and winning as a Greek vase.

"The fact that childhood is not a mere prelude to adult life but worth while for its own sake has seldom been more beautifully expressed."--_Chicago Evening Post_.

"Few adults preserve their line of communication with that world of fancy so real to children. But when one of rare fancy visualizes it a chord of kinship is struck; memory rolls back the years, and the heart responds. Barrie did it in _The Little White Bird_. Hugh Walpole joins him with _The Golden Scarecrow_."--_Boston Herald_.

"Only those readers of Mr. Walpole's novels who have missed any real sense of them will be surprised by this singularly attractive series of sketches. There is an infinite pathos and a quite exquisite charm in the first sketch, the one which suggests the spirit of them all.... It cannot be too strongly insisted upon that in these child-studies there is not a whiff of the pseudo-sentiment about childhood which in some writings has reached the nauseating point. Mr. Walpole simply has the very rare gift of actually getting the child's point of view, and we always feel that he really understands what he is talking about."--_Providence Journal_.

"In one sense it bears kinship to Barrie's _Peter Pan_ and Maeterlink's _Blue Bird_, for although it is unlike either of these fairy tales in material and treatment, it is related to them in that it recreates for older readers the magical world of the imagination that plays so large a part in the lives of little folk. Mr. Walpole writes with charm and tenderness."--_Philadelphia Press_.

"It is as beautiful as it is unusual--a wonderfully sympathetic and illuminating study of the mind of the child done with an understanding and sympathy so complete that it is uncanny."--_New York Evening Mail_.

THE WOODEN HORSE

With hesitation one approaches the first novel of an author whose growth has been so steady as that of Walpole. It is therefore a double delight to find _The Wooden Horse_ a thoroughly good story. Indeed, it has in it certain qualities which should, as Walpole's work becomes more and more known in mass, be one of his most popular. For it is filled with the youth's first joy of expression; its excitement about life and its yearning for strange new roads.

_The Wooden Horse_ is the story of the Trojans, a family which accepted as tranquilly as did the Duchess of Wrexe the belief that they were the people for whom the world was created. But when Harry Trojan came home after twenty years in New Zealand, with the democracy learned by working his hands, he was the "wooden horse" who boldly carried into the Trojan walls a whole army of alien ideals, which made of that egotistic family a group of human beings content to be human.

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 passionate 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 surpassed. 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 GODS 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 Gods 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 Gods 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 Gods and Mr. Perrin_ is not a drably disagreeable novel which will frighten off soft-minded readers.