It is not clear why Mr. Frank Swinnerton has called his new novel Coquette. A coquette, one had always understood, was a lady who loved the work for its own sake, who found the evocation and frustration of desire a satisfying sport in itself; but his Sally Minto was moved in her first encounter with a man by real passion and in her second by ambition. A novel about a coquette would be primarily … a discussion of the mystery of athleticism, that passion which leads human beings to spend their lives attaining proficiency in occupations which are obviously not of a kind that will print through this world into the next and be placed to their credit in eternity. But Sally Minto's story is something far other than this. It is first of all a virtuosic study of character. Throughout the book there are signs that Mr. Swinnerton is capable of talking conventional nonsense about women in general. He subscribes, for instance, to the legend that a set of girls will inevitably be jealous of the most attractive of their number, and makes all the hands in the dressmaking establishment where Sally works look on her with disfavour. This is Victorian. Experience is all against it; every pretty schoolgirl collects a train of plainer girl adorers, and while there may be rivalry among such leaders there is no jealousy felt by the plain against the pretty. This is not to say that there is no jealousy between women. There is, just as there is between men, but it is the jealousy the unhappy feel against the happy…. But the jealousy Mr. Swinnerton ascribes to the girls at Madame Gala's is a dusty convention with which a writer of his realist ambition ought to have nothing to do. It does in fact deprive him of one chance of exhibiting Sally's character. She would have shown her quality nicely in exploiting her adorers just to keep her hand in.
But Sally herself is a magnificent piece of work…. Her slenderness is half the desirable slenderness of youth and half the thinness of a dustheap cat. She is a child of Murderous London…. She is a most characteristic member of the class of murderers, who invariably have something genteel and select about them …, who have something really respectable and pathetic about them so diligently do they set about their work, and with such an air of being compelled to act in despite of their own hearts' kindliness by some darker sister of Necessity. Admirably does Mr. Swinnerton depict the season of aspiration to loot taking the place of normal adolescence in this nipped creature's heart, which sends her out to henna her hair and find a place in a West End workroom. There is not a false note in the subtle and intricate adventure in which he has enmeshed her. She would inevitably have liked the young brute Toby just as she would inevitably have liked a pickle and a cup of hot strong tea. For her it would have been possible to have had a genuine and transcending passion for Toby, and yet have felt it absolutely necessary to marry Madame Gala's weakly son Gaga because that meant wealth and power. It is in the description of Sally's relations with Gaga that Mr. Swinnerton shows, for the first time since Nocturne, to what intensity his imagination can attain.
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