You felt homesick." Cornwall
is notoriously inhabited by queer people, and the _Pendragon_ family
was not merely queer but hereditarily rotten and decadent: the old
father, who burns a valuable old book of his own to appease his
violent temper; the granddaughter a kleptomaniac; the son of forty
addicted to hideous cruelties. Unpleasant but well drawn, all of them.
Mrs. C. A. DAWSON SCOTT has powerfully suggested the atmosphere of
the strange and tragic household, mourning its dead mistress; and she
understands the peculiar quality of the Cornish people and the Cornish
seas. I have not read her other novels, but, if she will promise to
wrestle with one or two rather irritating mannerisms, I will promise
to look out for her next one. I have no prejudice against the Wellsian
triplet of dots, but really Mrs. Scott does overdo it. And a good deal
of her quite penetrating psycho-thingummy was spoiled for me by her
trick of conveying nearly every impression and reflection of her
characters through an impersonal "you" or "one." This means an economy
of words and for a short time a certain vividness, but it soon becomes
tedious. One knows what a tangle you get into if one starts using
"one's" and "you's" in your letters; and you find that the author
has been caught once or twice.
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