Carson the Advocate
by
[Macmillan, $3.00]
THE last reward of the Biographer is to write a great Life — and please the widow. Edward Marjoribanks aimed higher still. He attempted to write a great Life — and please the Liver. For it was at Lord Carson’s own request that this cleverest of young Tories undertook to tell the furious story of his career as advocate and politician. Marjoribanks came to it with the laurels of his biography of Marshall Hall still unwithered, and plunged into this new drama of the law courts with the same histrionic dare-deviltry. But the story comes to have a tired strain, as if some premonition of impending tragedy were already in the author’s mind as he whips himself to keep the pace. The searing agony of the trial of Oscar Wilde is perhaps beyond his understanding sympathy, but he tells the horrible story with fairness, and the procession of murders, libels, and divorces which made up Carson’s brilliant practice each have their stirring day in court. Lawyers are better than laymen at reading this sort of thing, but chapter after chapter is a coup de theatre for any audience. Yet, as he turns over the last page of this unfinished book, it is not of the grizzled hero the reviewer thinks, but rather of his young idolater, who hoped to shape himself into just such another when the Fates, most, jealous when least niggardly of gifts, overtook him in the dark, and his bright light went out.
ELLERY SEDGWICK