Byronic Beautification

SPARKENBROKE -- Charles Morgan --Macmillan ($2.75).

When Charles Morgan wrote The Fountain (1932) it was variously hailed as a big book, a pretentious imposture, a masterpiece, a phony. Sparkenbroke will raise the same contradictory contentions. Like its predecessor it is a long (551 pp.), serious novel on a solemn theme. Whether it was heavily ridiculous or gravely sublime was a question for the reader's taste, sympathy, sense of humor. Discerning readers last week gave Sparkenbroke high marks for good intentions and pomposity, refused to consider it as a masterpiece, but conceded that its weighty persistence was more impressive than the average novel's. In a prose that at times had echoes of the late George Moore's, at others wore the same spurious air of well-bred indifference as Joseph Hergesheimer's. Author Morgan's story beautified the Byronic hero as lover, as artist.

Piers, Lord Sparkenbroke, was a dazzling child with the mark of genius on his pallid brow. Because of an intense experience in his childhood, his poetic imagination took on a somewhat morbid tinge: he worshipped love, life and death as aspects of a trinity. This attitude, with his handsome face and title, made him a devastating lover but an unsatisfactory husband. While his adoring wile and son lived for his infrequent visits home, Sparkenbroke loved, suffered and wrote in his villa in Italy, with his valet, a kind of super-Jeeves, as his only steady companion. Though apparently he wrote only poetry and poetic novels, his fame was international and his earnings very fair (-L-6,000 advance royalties on one book). Now & again he made a quick trip back into aristocratic society or home to Sparkenbroke Hall, to tell his still-hopeful wife politely that he no longer loved her, to sniff the fragrance of his native woodland and brood awhile in the interior of his family vault.

On one of these visits his woodland solitude was broken by a fair young maiden, Mary, who was much too good for the beefy cricketer she was engaged to. One encounter with Sparkenbroke showed her her mistake, and before she knew who he was, she decided to break her engagement. To Sparkenbroke, Mary was just fair game, but to middle-aged bachelor

George, the village doctor, she was a goddess. Mary went to stay with George's family, but she visited Sparkenbroke on the sly. In time's nick Sparkenbroke packed up and left for Italy, and Mary married George. Everyone but the reader thought her temptations were over.

After they had been married some months, George and Mary took a belated honeymoon in Sicily, foolishly taking his invalid sister with them. When George had to get back to his practice, leaving the two women to follow later, the sister collapsed. Of course it was Sparkenbroke who came to the rescue. By the time George got there to take Mary home, she and Sparkenbroke were more in love than ever. By terrific clenchings of spiritual muscle they kept it platonic, but agreed it would be unsafe to meet again. When Sparkenbroke had finished his book and gone back to England they did meet again, and once more the fat was in the fire. This time they decided to run away together. One night Mary slipped out of her house, leaving a note for George, to meet her lover. When she missed him at the rendezvous, her despair made her try to hang herself. Having allowed herself too much rope, she did not try again, but went home to bed. Meantime Sparkenbroke died of angina pectoris in his family vault. Wise Husband George, though he found his wife's farewell note, saw and understood the rope-scars on her throat, let sleeping might-have-beens lie.

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