page 66

Hand Made

Storm in a Teacup — By Eden Phillpotts

There were two suitors for Medora's hand: one, Jordan Kellock, a sober, earnest-minded young Socialist, who ‘wanted to leave the world better than he found it’; the other, Ned Dingle, a simple, happy-go-lucky fellow, fond of a laugh, and of fishing and shooting. Medora chose Ned Dingle, and chose quite rightly; he was her very man. But she would have liked to have Kellock, too. For she was one of that vast number of young women who have no real individual being and no convictions—save that they could be an inspiration and a star to any number of entirely different young men. What tragedy, then, to be married to one who is arrogant (and loving) enough to imagine that he has the whole of her, who would even laugh to scorn the notion of those undiscovered mines of varied treasure….

Such simplicity and uprightness not only exasperated Medora, but succeeded in pushing into the free air and light her preposterous flowers of longing. Ned wasn't good enough for her, and Kellock was a saint of a man and far above her. This changed, as she brooded over it, into: Ned was horrible to her, and Kellock alone could save. Up they came, the false feelings, so strong and so sturdy that they seemed out of her control; they seemed real and none of her planting. Until Ned Dingle was a villain who beat his wife and all Kellock could do was to take her away and promise her marriage as soon as they were ‘free.’ But instead of the fine adventure she had anticipated, the going away proved a rod that beat Medora back into her senses. For Kellock held her in such reverence as a poor martyr with the almost divine courage to leave all and come to him that it was easy for him to treat her as a sister while they waited for their freedom. Then Medora turned and twisted, threw him the ugly page 67 mask she had worn and went back to her husband, positively refreshed by the affair, with the renewed love of life and gaiety and gentleness of a convalescent.

The ‘Storm in a Teacup’ rages in a little village on a hillside, on the banks of the river Dart. The little village is full of life, for above the small neat houses lying in their gardens and smothering apple orchards there rises a huge building—Dene Mill—where beautiful hand-made paper is produced. The conditions necessary to its production are good air, sunlight, running water, exquisite cleanliness, and above all honest workmen who not only take a pride in their craft, but are eager for the reputation of their mill. This engaging state of affairs sounds fantastic, nowadays, yet Mr. Phillpotts, by describing every separate stage of manufacture, bringing us in touch with the men and women engaged, showing us how beautiful is a vatman's fine ‘stroke,’ what disaster it were to lose it, succeeds in making us believe in its existence. His three central figures are workers at the mill, and their comedy of character is acted before a shrewd, exacting audience of fellow-workers, admirably portrayed.

What an oasis is this in the sooty desert of novels whose milieu is the factory—powerful novels, slices of life, reeking, bawling novels, where the heroine is none the worse for a fight with hatpins against her mother, for preference, and the hero breaks up the home for a burnt bloater|