Anthony Hope, página 2 de 8

On the Greek island of Phrosos, Count Antonio has forsaken his rank and his Prince for what he thinks is Right. He now lives as an outlaw in the hill yet he is still remembered fondly by those who knew him. Ambrose the Franciscan goes through archives and to meet people who met him to learn more, and even the Prince would do well to listen to what he comes to discover.

No character in recent fiction has excited greater interest than the beautiful, wilful, cruel, tender-hearted, proud, witty, and wholly delightful Princess Osra. Anthony Hope is at his best in the stories of which she is the heroine.The Heart of Princess Osra is full of throbs and incidents, and though there are not less than nine of the ladys passages damour, and le pays du tendre is criss-crossed in all directions, you still want a bakers dozen of these stories.

This new story is in the authors most finished and delicate style. The gallant Captain is a French soldier of fortune, and the surprising adventures into which he is projected, by his choice of a nights lodging in the Castle of Fieramondi, form the basis of a characteristically ingenious and interesting tale.

Mr. Anthony Hope is original, and original with a light-handed grace not too often found in English writers of fiction. His Comedies of Courtship remind one of pretty dances. The step of the dancers is light and firm, the figures graceful and lively. The whole leaves a sense of harmony and completeness. As in a dance, too, the people are real, the movements artificial. The plots of these tales can scarcely be taken quite seriously. But the young men and women in whom Mr. Hope delights, and makes us delight, talk and behave in the most natural manner. Through these comedies there runs a spice of smiling mischiefit is not even a distant cousin to cynicismwhich unites the reader and author in bonds of pleasant fraternity. It is a skilful thing to place behind his smiling groups, as Mr. Hope sometimes does, a background of slightly but well-defined tragedya ghastly or pathetic bygone incident of family history, against which plays the modern scene. Tennis parties, afternoon tea ; the bright girls with the ready tongues, and the men who answer deliberately but so much to the point also, are haunted pleasantly hauntedby the shadow of the past. Between the whiffs of the cigarettes you see the plaintive eyes of a Lady Agatha of a former age looking down on her descendants from a portrait on the wall ; and you suspect that by some imaginative laws of heredity she guides the freakish plot. Merimee was a great master of this art of threading a tragic underplot with the every-day realism of a modern tale which Mr. Hope also uses.

The many thousands who have read and admired The Prisoner of Zenda will reach eagerly for its sequel, which has been published under the title Rupert of Hentzau. They will not be disappointed. Sequels of successful stories are frequently weaker and somewhat forced, but in this case it must be admitted that Anthony Hope has given us a book as powerful, vigorous and fascinating as the first. It is a cleverly wrought out romance, resplendent with stirring incidents and ingeniously invented adventures, told with the visor which carries the reader swiftly to the end, and which we are accustomed to find in all of Hopes writings. The book will doubtless have as large a sale as The Prisoner of Zenda, and will be gladly welcomed by many a person, who after having been wearied by the daily cares, seeks rest of mind and diversion in a good story.

Mr. Hopes new romance pictures the life of a prince and king under conditions modern, and yet shared by representatives of royalty almost throughout history. The interactions of the people and royalty, the aspirations of the prince, the intrigues surrounding him, the cares of state, and the craving for love, are some of the motives developed, with the accompaniments of incident and adventure, wherein the author proves his mastery of suspended interest and dramatic effect. It is a romance which will not only absorb the attention of readers, but impress them with a new admiration for the authors power.

Mr. Anthony Hope offers from time to time a welcome relief from the special brand of seriousness that has come to be the hall-mark of the school of British novelists. Not that he fails to take himself seriously; on the contrary, few writers in England show a greater contrast between their earlier and their later work than the author of The Prisoner of Zenda and of the A Young Mans Year. From the rainbow air-castles of sheer romance to the practical problem of a young mans first start in the working world is surely a broad enough step to satisfy any demand that present-day fiction shall be serious. But the big difference between the newer school and that which Mr. Hopes later manner typifies is that his interest remains centred in the individual, in spite of all the new problems, social, ethical, moral or religious, that may have their formative influence; while writers like Galsworthy, Wells, and their followers although able to picture memorable characters when they choose to, are obviously more interested in movements and tendencies and problems than they are in the individual man or woman, and not infrequently give us characters that are really little more than types, standing symbolically for groups rather than for persons. That is why Mr. Hopes new volume, without being a big achievement, is a welcome diversion. Yet it is simply a careful, minute and at the same time vivid chronicle of just one year in the early life of Arthur Lisle, who when.we first meet him is a specimen of that essentially British creation, a briefless barrister. As yet he has by no means made up his mind whether he will welcome his first brief, if it ever comes. He is diffident and self-distrustful, and the mere thought of rising to address the Court fills him with an anticipatory ague. Meanwhile, time hanging heavily upon him, he seeks to fill it in by various social relaxations, and forms friendships, some more desirable than others.

A study of modern marriage as it exists in modern London life especially. Three couples are closely described, and the author writes in the most uncompromising English and discusses some of the most intricate problems of "double harness." Uncontrollable temper, increasing idealism, love of pleasure, consideration of worldly status, claims of children, sympathetic friendships, etc., etc., are a few of the problems that are finally solved into a good story.

Sport Royal is a collection of Anthony Hopes best short stories. It includes these works:Sport RoyalA Tragedy In Outline.A Malapropos Parent.How They Stopped The "Run."A Little Joke.A Guardian Of Morality.Not A Bad Deal.Middletons Model.My Astral Body.The Nebraska Loadstone.A Successful Rehearsal.

The " Dolly Dialogues " serve much the same purpose that the ballet does in an operathey are a divertissement pure and simple. The winsome, irresponsible "Dolly" picks her steps amid the conversational pitfalls which the adroit " Mr. Carter" spreads for her, with as much dainty sureness as a premiere danseuse, and we cannot but admire and applaud her grace and vivacity. There is no hidden meaning to the "Dialogues " any more than there is to "Dolly." They but reveal the polished inanity of the modern ball-room, the fashionable frivolity of the five oclock tea-table, and the harmless flirtations of the lawn-tennis court. As "trifles light as air," Mr. Hope offered them to us; as trifles we accept them, and who but the most nobly serious could refuse to smile over their gracefulness, their immaculate innuendo! As a hand-book on "Polite Conversations; or, The Art of Saying Nothing Gracefully," these " Dolly Dialogues " might almost take rank as a serious classic.

A novel by one of the greatest of all English romantic writers. The story is laid in the time of Charles II. and has chiefly to do with the English and French courts. These furnish materials for a tale of love, intrigue, and adventure that could not be surpassed, and the author has availed himself of his opportunities in a remarkable manner. The work lies in a slightly different field from that which be has previously cultivated, although the same brilliant and original touch which is so strongly shown throughout Phroso and The Prisoner of Zenda is noticeable in this story.

For this story there can be nothing but praise. It is true that it can scarcely be called literature, as doubtless no one knows better than the author. A writer who leaves off such work as Half a Hero and takes a royal road to fortune, if not to fame, with The Prisoner of Zenda, must be conscious of the change of method. But the work is quite as fine in its different way as if it were of much finer literary quality, and far more interesting than many a better written story. Too many books are worn thin by overuse of literatures tools, too few are endowed with the vitality that makes this tale vividly alive. From beginning to end it moves with a breathless rush. The plot is the purchase by an English nobleman ot an isolated island inhabited by semi-civilised Greeks who have a confirmed habit of killing any man who buys the island. They kill the old lord who sells it, and who dies just as the new owner arrives, so that the story opens with murder, to be followed by attempted assassination, all leading to blood and adventures galore.

Anthony Hopes novel, "Half a Hero," is a study of political and social life in the English colony of New Lindsey, which may possibly be New Zealand. The half hero is one Medland, leader of the radicals, who by a coalition comes into power as premier. He had been a common laborer, had risen by integrity and energy, and although unpolished of manners shows qualities that make the true man. The humor of the situation arises from the necessity forced upon the snobbish family of the titled governor to receive him and his daughter on terms of social equality. Later on it appears that there has been something "irregular" about Medlands marriage, but when disgrace is threatened and he has the chance to silence his enemies by a skilful distribution of spoils he refuses to submit and dares political death and social obloquy rather than sacrifice his manliness. The end of the story is tragic.

Father Stafford is veritably a tragic tale, albeit it appears that he has seen t to give it more the setting of a comi-tragedy. But when the heart of a noble, maguanimous character, like that of Father Stafford, is involved in a serious love affair, with no future but that of blighted hopes and disappointment, one feels like looking upon such scenes with a solemn, thoughtful mien , yet one must smile occasionally, for Anthony Hope has the knack of applying the most sparkling and humorous of dialogues exactly at the right moment, thus saving his dramatic and tragical scenes from going utterly to pieces. However, this is Anthony Hope over and over again. We recognized him as the prince of dialogue in " The Prisoner of Zenda," and although the story of " Father Stafford " is of entirely different aspect, the " speaking parts" are just as delicious. Father Stafford is an Anglican clergyman, and a man of remarkable talents, yet his inclinations would probably have been better directed had he turned them toward affairs of the world. As it is, a good, well-meaning man, who has bound himself to prayers, self-abnegation, and the Church, also taking the vow of celibacy, discovers too late that the esh of mankind is weak, and that love is king of all emotions. His life is one of peacefulness until he meets Lady Claudia Territon at the English houseparty where the story is cast, when life for the " pope," as she charmingly dubs him, begins to drift into other spheres, different from the altitude of the religious devotee, and extremely unfortunate for the young minister, whose duty it is to walk in the ways of the righteous ...

Second String, by Anthony Hope,brings to mind a new tendency in British fiction which has quite been creeping in during the last years of the 19th century; namely, the tendency to concern itself more and more with the social life of middle class people rather than the upper circles. Second String deals with the extremely mixed society of a small English town, in which the hero, Andy Hayes, upon returning home after some years in the Canadian lumber district, finds it somewhat embarrassing to steer successfully between the distinctly "high-life" people on his fathers side of the house and Jack Rock, the village butcher, with whom he is connected through his mothers second marriage. There is nothing of great importance in the main thread of the story; it is a tranquil chronicle of how Vivian Welgood, a frail, timid sort of girl, while engaging herself to another man, discovers that there is something in the physical presence of strong, big Andy Hayes that gives her a certain borrowed courage and self-reliance. And of courseit is no surprise to the reader when the other man finally elopes with Vivians hired companion that she promptly and indeed gladly turns to Andy as second string. The value of the book lies in the deft portrayal of present-day manners, and as such, slight and modest as it is, it rings true.

A highly clever performance, with little touches that recall both Balzac and Meredith. Mr. Hope, being disinclined to follow any of the beaten tracks of romance writing, is endowed with exceeding originality.The tragic undercurrent but increases the charm of the pervading wit and humor of the tale, which embodies a study of character as skillful and true as anything we have lately had, but at the same time so simple and unpretentious as to be very welcome indeed amid the flood of inartistic analysis which we are compelled to accept in so many recent novels.