Londoners: An Absurdity

This volume was published in 1898. The Green Carnation was among the most amusing society sketches that recent years have given us. After it Mr. Hichens perhaps wisely devoted himself to much more serious work. In The Londoners he returns to his original manner without making his burlesque so personal. It is the story of a smart woman wearied by her position and its duties who seeks to get out of society. The idea is an original one and when contrasted with the efforts of a second heroine to get into society the result is wholly delightful. The story has already attained a considerable popularity. An excerpt: Mrs. Verulam came into her drawing-room slowly and rather wearily. It was a sultry afternoon in May — indeed the papers were quite in a ferment about the exceptional heat-wave that was passing over London ; and a premature old general anxious apparently to be up to time had just died of tropical apoplexy in Park Lane. Possibly it was the weather that had painted the pallor on Mrs. Verulam's exceedingly pretty face. Beneath her mist of yellow hair her dark-gray eyes looked out pathetically with the sort of pathos that means nothing in particular — the grace of an indefinite sorrow. She was clad in a pale-pink tea-gown elaborately embroid- ered in dull green and gold and she was followed by her maid the faithful Marriner whose hands were full of bright-coloured cushions. The windows of the drawing- room which faced Park Lane and commanded a distant view of the Parade on Sunday mornings stood open and striped awnings defied the sunbeams above them. London hummed gently in the heat; and an admiral in the next house but one might almost be heard ordering his valet with many terrible expressions of the sea to get out his ducks and be quick about it.