Tue Taner ix tae Dust. By Constance Holme. London: Mills and Boon, Pp. 236. 83, 6d. net.
To write of "the poor" without a patronising humour and equally without a ferocious belief in their misery is rather uncommon, The author of this book with the queer title manages to do it. Or—for the distinction strikes one suddenly—to write of poor women. There is not a man (save the good-natured butcher who helped Mes. Clapham when she was hurt) in the tale.
It is the drama of a day, and the chief actors are an elderly charwoman and her daughter's sinister mother-in-law, neighbouring women serving as chorus. Mrs, Clapham, big, clean, hard-working, respectable, is hoping to hear that she has been elected to the vacant almshouse which has always seemed to her a place of rest in which she would thankfully spend her last years, She is still hardy, at sixty-five, and aware of a stiffish knee and a heart that troubles her occasionally. Her neighbours, with the exception of ratfish' Martha Jane Fell, who is also a candidate for the almshouse, wish her well, and rejoice when she gets the news of her election. (it is an admire able scene, painted finely, whea the chorus is commenting on Mrs. Graham's chances). Lut we.are quite conscious of Fate waiting to strike, and Fate is suggested by the grimly cruel Emma Catterall. The day ends with the little house for-gone.
It sounds very bald, but the whole thing is alive and instinct with the drama of simple ambitions and suffering. The writer (of the North Cowiiry surely, and te North-country people above all this book is commended) has a tne touch and a sympathy that is keen and never mawkish. She writes with a clear simplicity that suits the subject, and her sense of character is acute and delicate. There is much beauty in her work, though it is, perhaps, of too grave a cast to catch the eye that asks for, violent colour, and her humour is, like her sense of beauty, quiet as the growth of a flower. The sinister figure of Emma Catterall has Bronte-ish look, but she is presented more unspectacularly than was the Bronte manner. We confess to staring at her doubtfully. She is the one thing in the book we fail to recognize, but the atmosphere she creates, the effect of her and her house (that had been long ago an old slaughter-house), is certainly impressive.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.