Life — June 1, 1899 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

The ITH his wonted nicety of eye for psychic and social val in “The Awkward Age” (Harper) Henry James has caught for theme a modern phase in the life of the social organism, showing. the growing pains of the awk- ward age in which it, conversationally speaking, finds itself during the eman- cipating process of the young person, It long has been acknowledged by those in search of standards that, fora criterion of what must be suppressed in conversation, literature and art, one must consult the modest blushes of the generation that is now @ grandparent, since the contemporaneous mother is notoriously lax, and the young person of to-day a creature of unblushing cheek. It is a recognition in fiction of this phase that constitutes the motif of the book, and whilo Mr, James works it out with the playful grace of ono catching egg-shells and cannon-balls on a Dresden china plate, none the less does he show the outcome to the young person to bo tragedy—well-bred, drawing-room, con- versational, suppressed, lurid tragedy. In Mrs, Brookenham’'s salon at Buck- Ingham Crescent clever talk has been brought to the nth power of express- iveness, No one {is so banal as to be scrupulous, 80 dull as to halt at person- alities; nothing in life is too sacred or too nasty to be reduced to the terms of airy persiflage, Buta day comes when the young person must be reckoned with. Nanda bas been kept over-long In the nursery by a mother addicted to the trick of youth; sho 18 not yet seasoned to the fine franchise of her mother’s circle, yet sho is much aware of what young porsons aro not supposed to know, made 80 by the suggestive gaps In her elders’ talk, caused by the wet-blanket of her youthful prosence—too aware to bo conversationally innocent, too intrin- sically noble to bo In conduct anything else, Throwing into high relief her informed modernity, there is a flne old background of grandmother, a lavender and rose-leat memory of Lady Julia, whom Nanda startling!y reproduces in all but the point of view. Lady Julia's rejected but faithful lover, Mr. Longdon, a beautiful old thing of the snuff-box era, has lain dormant in a pleached garden with his memories while the length of a generation’s stride has been added to the tether of young persons, When poor Nanda reads in his shocked eye the contrast between the grace of ancestral suppressions and her own mental nudity, she naturally exclaims: “But granny wasn't the kind of girl sho couldn't have been—and so noither ami That is the tragedy. Tho young per- son is at tho awkward ago of tho century for a happy matrimonial fate. Tho possible orthodox husband whom Nanda worships cannot master his prepos- session in favor of ante-nuptial unawaro- ness, and the tale is suspended—for Mr. James could not be 80 obvious as to end a tale on the sad chord of the unfulfilled, In characterization the book {s pecu- lintly felicitous, though the author's estimate of his personages’ cleverness suffers by the reader's appreciation of the author's owa cleverness, Mrs, Brook, for instance, whose every speech {s sealed with such applausive exclama- tions us “Superb! Magnificent! Won- derful! Prodigious! Complete!” ia no more scintillating than Nanda or the Duchess, while tho delightfully human Mitchy is the best of all, One feels that even the footmen would be analytic or epigrammatic if they got a chance, The style isin the author's own James- fest way—subtlo, lucid, brilliant, involved, suggested and detailed. Everything in action, nothing in conversation, is left to the imagination. One yearns to know the effect on Vanderbank ot Nanda's floal, wonderful interview with him, and yearos in vain; but one is never forced to depend ona mere question mark, for instance, to recognize a question; every questionary shade of the questiouer's voice is thrown In to ald one's reeog- nition of Its interrogative quality. Whole chunks of psychicand descriptive excel- lence read as if clumsily translated from “English as Sho is Spoke.” “Do you then so very much like the little Aggie?” smacks of Ollendorf rather than nature, Formulate Gallicisms abound in such lines as, “1am of a brillianey; thou art of a frequency ; ho is of a density.” But as for the book, the masterly achieve- mont, it is of a pathos and a power! Marguerite Merrington, Willing to Suffer. ee ILLIE (whack), this hurts me (whack) almost as much as it does (whack) you.” “Then keep it up. ttand it. I guess I can Four Popular Novels. Out-Door Life. 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