Mr. Mackenzie's Treat

The Vanity Girl — By Compton Mackenzie

We will not deny that we have had our doubts before. We have imagined that too many pastries went in at the door and too much conversation came out of the window; but with ‘The Vanity Girl’ there can scarcely be more than one mind about the matter—Mr. Compton Mackenzie has set the pot boiling and invited all the flappers in the United Kingdom to tea. It is not so easy at any time to make the pot boil, even when the author is content with a delicate crackle or two, a handful of sparks, a jet of quick flame—and the whole ending in half-a-dozen bubbles and a plume of waving steam. But here's a great ‘wessel’ filled with heavy cream and slow-melting chocolate slabs, and here's, while they slowly dissolve, such a spread of pastry and general jamminess and stickiness that 'tis a sight, as Betsy might declare, ‘to make the Evings themselves look down!’ Nothing is missing; we hardly dare think how those mock appetites will be gorged, or of what Mr. Mackenzie, with his talent extra-ordinary for producing chocolate-pot boilers, will have left to put upon the table next time.

It was our fortune some time ago to overhear the following conversation:

‘Is that a new one, dear?’

‘Well, yes, dear, I suppose it is.’

page 186

‘How far have you got, dear?’

‘Chapter twenty-seven.’

‘Make room, dear; let's read the synopsis.’

‘Oh, that's not new, dear. That's just the same as usual.’

The heroine of Mr. Mackenzie's novel is too beautiful for words—hair, teeth, ankles, figure, style—all are perfect. Her mother is meek, her father is horrid; she is the eldest of a family of nine, and they live in the wilds—Oh, those wilds—of West Kensington. We are told that Nor ah is clever, but she is not real enough to be clever; perhaps she has a little maid—Pert, Sly,—call her what you will, who is willing to do the answering back, and the getting on. Her friend Lily's mother—who has ‘a complexion like a field of clover seen from a passing train’ and ‘a coiffure like a tinned pineapple’—dies, so Lily is free to go on the stage with Norah. On page 54 Lily and Norah, whose stage name is Dorothy Lonsdale, find themselves in the train from Manchester to Birmingham, and Sylvia Scarlett is in the same carriage with them. Oh, what a surprise for Mr. Mackenzie's readers! However, it is Dorothy's book this time, and not Sylvia's. Soon, beautifully soon, they arrive at Oxford, and there is the tall young man ‘whose immediately conspicuous feature was a pair of white flannel trousers down the seams of which ran stripes of vivid blue; but when he was introduced to Dorothy as Lord Clarehaven she forgot about his trousers in the more vivid blue of his name.’ We are given almost four whole pages of Debrett to blow our excitement into flame, and then Dorothy goes back to London and makes a new friend, Olive, and the two share a flat in Half-Moon Street which is provided for them by a very great man of high rank, who does not make love to them, but likes to have a little simple girlish gaiety to turn to when he gets tired of … Buckingham Palace. And then Clarehaven returns, and Olive puts into Dorothy's head the amazing notion that he might marry page 187 her. “‘But why not?” thought Dorothy in bed that night, “He's independent … Countess of Clarehaven,” she murmured…. The title took away her breath … and it seemed as if the very traffic of Piccadilly paused in the presence of a solemn mystery.’

Of course, after the usual trouble, she marries him, and is in no time the idol of his family, of the ancient villagers, retainers, and the M.F.H. We have a sample of every kind of delicious triumph a young girl from West Kensington could dream of, to Tony in pink silk pyjamas and Dorothy ‘in a déshabille of peach bloom,’ and for background the dark panelled walls. The coming of the child provides a very orgy of emotion, even to … ‘The grace and beauty with which she expressed her state [compared with most women] was that of a seedling daffodil beside a farrowing sow.’ And then the confinement, and the child is born dead, and the husband turns gambler and gives up the cards for horses, and loses all, and she has a miscarriage, and he goes to the war and is killed, and she finds herself with child again, and this time all is well, and she marries the man who had always loved her and had purchased Clarehaven from her husband….

In whatever contempt Mr. Mackenzie may hold his public—how is it possible that he should dare to invite them to partake of such sickly food? We should not waste space upon so pretentious and stupid a book were it not that we have believed in his gifts and desire to protest that he should so betray them.