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Novels and Novelists

Observation Only

Observation Only

The Captives — By Hugh Walpole

If an infinite capacity for taking pains were what is needed to produce a great novel, we should have to hail Mr. Walpole's latest book as a masterpiece. But here it is—four parts, four hundred and seventy pages, packed as tight as they can hold with an assortment of strange creatures and furnishings; and we cannot, with the best will in the world, see in the result more than a task—faithfully and conscientiously performed to the best of the author's power—but a ‘task accomplished,’ and not even successfully at that. For we feel that it is determination rather than inspiration, strength of will rather than the artist's compulsion, which has produced ‘The Captives.’ Still, while we honour the author for these qualities, is it not a lamentable fact that they can render him so little assistance at the last—can give him no hand page 270 with this whole great group of horses captured at such a cost of time and labour, and brought down to the mysterious water only that they shall drink? But, alas! they will not drink for Mr. Walpole; he has not the magic word for them; he is not their master. In a word, for all his devotion to writing, we think the critic, after an examination of ‘The Captives,’ would find it hard to state with any conviction that Mr. Walpole is a creative artist. These are hard words; we shall endeavour to justify our use of them.

But first let us try to see what it is that Mr. Walpole has intended to ‘express’ in his novel—what is its central idea. ‘If this life be not a real fight in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success…’ It is, we imagine, contained in these words of William James. A real fight—that is the heart of the matter—and waged in this life and for this life that something may be eternally gained. Maggie Cardinal, a simple, ardent creature with a passion to live, to be free, to be herself and of this world, is caught as she steps over the threshold of her Aunt Anne's house in a burning, fiery trap. Maggie is, we are told over and over, a child of nature, ignorant, simple, rough, but with a loving heart. She has a persistent feeling, however, that she is different from all the rest of the world, and that she will never belong to anyone. Her nineteen years of life have been spent in the wilds with a disreputable father. But at his death she is captured by her Aunt Anne and by the fanatic religious sect to which her Aunt belongs. The head of the Kingscote Brethren is Mr. Warlock, and Martin, his son, is the second captive. Maggie's father and Maggie's aunt are determined, with all the passion of their fanatic souls, to offer these two to God when he descends, as they believe he may do at any moment, in his chariot of fire. Hence their cry, torn from them, to be free—to be allowed to fight in this world; hence their struggle. But when, after endless complications and separations, they are released from their fiery bonds, what happens? What has been the page 271 significance of all this to them? We are led to believe that both of them are conscious, while they are fighting the world of Aunt Anne and Mr. Warlock, that, nevertheless, they do acknowledge the power of some mysterious force outside themselves—which may … some day … what? We are left absolutely in the air. Maggie and Martin, together at last—Martin, a broken man, and Maggie happy because somebody needs her—are not living beings at the end any more than they are at the beginning; they will not, when Mr. Walpole's pen is lifted, exist for a moment.

But apart from the author's failure to realize his idea, the working out of ‘The Captives’ is most curiously superficial. Mr. Walpole acts as our guide to these strange people, but what does he know of them? We cannot remember a novel where we were more conscious of the author's presence on every page; but he is there as a stranger, as an observer, as someone outside it all. How hard he tries—how painfully he fails! His method is simply to amass observations—to crowd and crowd his book with figures, scenes, bizarre and fantastic environments, queer people, oddities. But we feel that no one observation is nearer the truth than another. For example, take his description of Aunt Anne's house. The hall, we are told, smelt of ‘damp and geraniums,’ on another occasion of ‘damp biscuits and wet umbrellas,’ on another of ‘cracknel biscuits and lamp oil.’ What did it smell of? And how many times is hissing gas mentioned to make our blood creep? The disquiet pursues us even to the sordid lodgings in King's Cross, where the hall is lighted by a flickering candle, and yet Maggie, in the filthy little sitting-room, presses the bell for the servant-maid. But above all let us take Maggie. She has read practically nothing—‘that masterpiece, “Alice in Wonderland,”’ and ‘that masterpiece, “Robinson Crusoe,”’ ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho,’ and certain other books. But ‘the child (for she was nothing more),’ as the author countless times assures us, was totally ignorant. Yet page 272 entering her aunt's drawing-room for the first time, and stumbling: ‘They'll think me an idiot who can't enter a room properly,’ she reflects. This is a highly sophisticated reflection, surely. And she takes a taxi, pays a call, knows just how to address the London maid at the door—behaves, in fact, like a perfect lady. Yet ‘it is a sufficient witness to Maggie's youth and inexperience’ that she is startled and amazed by a cuckoo clock. She did not know such things existed! Again, would that girl notice how much stronger and firmer her uncle's thighs looked when he came to see her in London—would she notice too, at a moment of dreadful stress, the size and plumpness of her husband's thighs ‘pressing out against the shiny black cloth of his trousers’? Are these her observations? No, they are the literary observations of the author. And above all, is it possible that the greenest of young persons would trust the gay, saucy Miss Caroline Smith? In describing Maggie's relation to Caroline, Mr. Walpole appears to have relied on Dickens for his female psychology and his manner; but Dickens is a false friend to his heroine. And who could have taught Aunt Anne's parrot ‘Her golden hair was hanging down her back’? And why should Mr. Warlock, in the aunt's drawing-room, ask Maggie to ‘forgive’ his speaking to her—as though they had met at a pillar-box? And who can accept her marriage with the Reverend Paul, in the ‘shadow of whose heart’—for all her physical horror of him—she ‘fell into deep, dreamless slumber’?

Thus do we receive shock after minute shock, each one leaving us chillier. But in spite of it all, the feeling that remains is the liveliest possible regret that Mr. Walpole should have misjudged his powers—so bravely.

(October 15, 1920.)