Maid in Waiting
THE MAN of the MONTH
[Scribners, $2.50]
APPEARING four years after the last novel of the Forsyte series, Maid in Waiting is again, in distinction of style, in truth of characterization and emotion, in humor, and in saddened thoughtfulness, the essence of Mr. Galsworthy — yet with a difference.
The Forsytes are as real to us as our late grandfathers and great-aunts. So it is with a sense of familiarity that we discover that Dinny Cherrell, the Maid in Waiting of the new novel, is cousin to Michael Mont and hence cousin by marriage to Fleur Forsyte. However, in the contrast between Fleur and Dinny is embodied the essential difference between this book and The Forsyte Saga. For each girl is the daughter of her line. The spirited and charming Dinny is pronounced by that wise man her uncle, Sir Lawrence Mont, to ‘contain the answer to the riddle of the English lady.’ Unlike the frank individualist Fleur, predatory and none too scrupulous, Dinny is the child of traditions. The Cherrells belong to ‘an order bred to go on doing the job, not because it saw benefit to others, not because it sighted advantage to self, but because to turn tail on the job was equivalent to desertion.’ Of Hilary Cherrell, incumbent of St. Augustine-in-the-Meads, Mr. Galsworthy says, ‘It was bred into Hilary, coming of families who for generations had manned the Services, to wear himself out, leading, directing and doing things for people about him, without conviction that in his leadership or ministrations he was more than marking the time of his own duty.’ To Dinny, the obligation to lend a hand is a matter of course. The inner significance, however, of her title of Maid in Waiting is her fastidious refusal of half-baked emotional experience.
A lesser difference between Maid in Waiting and The Forsyte Saga is in the more highly colored drama of the new novel. The madness of Ronald Ferse, and the plight of young Hubert Cherrell, accused of the murder of a Bolivian whom he shot in self-defense, furnish a strong element of excitement and suspense. The author himself suggests — thus anticipating the reader — that in the plot for the rescue of Hubert there is a whiff of the films. But if the sequences of this drama were the heart of the book, it would mean that Mr. Galsworthy had ceased to be himself. The heart of the book is once more the author’s preoccupation with the problems of human suffering and of injustice.
A point of interest is the incidental discussion of the reason for the imperfect sympathy between Britons and Americans. Much wisdom on this matter is put into the mouth of Sir Lawrence Mont, and some into the mouth of Professor Hallorsen, the American. Perhaps it is carping at trifles to suggest that the author slightly itsables his own judgment when he has Hallorsen say of English toppers, ‘They seem to me so cunning.’ I would swear an oath that no American man could be found who would thus phrase his opinion of male headgear.
This novel, like the rest, is rich with the love of English earth and the sense of the divine continuity of beauty. I think that for the counterpart of the English essence in his landscapes, particularly in his fragrant nocturnes, one must look back to the lyrics of Matthew Arnold.
ETHEL WALLACE HAWKINS