Life — October 22, 1896 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

> LIFE: old familiar way, and that, before the great silence falls, the work of his maturity is to be before the world, completed by him to the final word. . . HERE is a suggestion of Du Maurier’s lighter vein in ‘* The Sprightly Romance of Marsac” (Scribner's), by Molly Elliott Seawell. Itis a tale of Bohemian life in Paris, and is pure farce-comedy from the first page to the last. Moreover, it is surprisingly good farce-comedy ; it goes snapping along through the pages with the bubbling vitality of ‘* Too Much Johnson” or ‘A Trip to Chinatown.” In addition, it is written (as they are not) with a great deal of literary art. The fun is spontaneous ; the artifices and deceptions of Afarsac never make you doubt that he is a good fellow, without a touch of the charlatan about him. Yy long a MO T It has been a time since an American novel has so successfully caught the true spirit of fun, and has been content to be rollicking and witty. . is superfiuous to tell the patrons of Lire that the handsome folio volume in which Mr. Wenzell has collected nearly a . * hundred of his best drawings, under the title “In Vanity Fair” (R. H. Russell & Son), is one of the indispensable books of the autumn season. DU MAURIER’S LAST NOVEL, HIS is the beginning of the season of literary events— or rather, of publishing events. Time only can reveal how many of them have a literary reason for being. Most of the handsomely illustrated books which have been a year in preparaticn are saved for these autumn months, and will come tumbling from the press in the next few weeks so rapidly that the average buyer will lose all standards for comparison, and buy on the cover. The big serial guns of the magazines for the past year are now crystallizing into books, some of them to be even less read as books than as serials. And this is not a happy destiny for so much effort and advertising. And the new batteries of the magazines for 1897 are now being brought into position. Already the first gun has been fired by Harper's with Du Maurier’s ** The Martian.” It is safe to say that it isa serial that will be read from the first page. The opening chapters show all of the expected charms of style and fascination of character. There is no doubt of the reality of Sarty after the fifth page. He steps into the firelight glow of your fancy and domesticates himself at your hearth, The task which Du Maurier set himself—to depict ‘‘the greatest literary genius this century has pro- duced '’—is not an easy one. Such an announcement on the first page of a novel rather staggers the credulity of the reader and puts him in the attitude of unbelief. If the rest of the book really succeeds in making the reader believe that Barty possessed the qualities of a transcendent literary genius, it is to be a very great novel. Since these lines were written Du Maurier himself has passed beyond the echo of popular applause or literary appreciation. It is good to know that he left “ The Mar- tian” completely finished ; that his great public is, for a year, to read his words as he would have them read ; that every month there will still be new drawings, signed in the Mr. Wenzell has a surprising genius for decorative effects in wash-drawing. His backgrounds are sumptuous, his rich fabrics ‘stand alone,” and his women are gorgeously beau- tiful. Their shoulders are the despair of all but the most favored maidens, and their eyes have the wide-open gleam and glitter that jealous actresses ascribe to belladonna. They are all brunettes, and blonde men will hang over these pages in rapt admiration. As for his old men, soldiers and horses, they have the manner and the unmistakable style of a continental capital. The whole volume is in excellent taste, as to printing, binding and arrangement. Droch. “OH, COME UNTO THESE YELLOW SaNps.”