Grey Roses by Henry Harland (1895)

Finally Henry Harland goes to the bigger place. His stories to date have been pleasantly amusing, occasionally clever, but have left little in the memory, touched nothing of the heart. I think this may be the 'crossover volume,' where this appeal to the emotions takes weight in his work. Four stories of these nine are richer in impact: A Broken Looking-Glass with a heartfelt stab of lonely regret over lost love; The Reward of Virtue with regret over the vicissitudes of politics crushing a life, denying the liver a reasonable modest chance; When I am King with regret over unfulfilled promise, a friend discovering years later a friend who had hidden himself in shame over not making the name which had once promised; and A Responsibility, with its appalling regret over not having responded to the shy, disturbed overtures of someone who later succumbed to their loneliness. That's a 'yes' to the notion that I think this volume, slimmed down to its best, could have been called Regret, and could have held a significant minor place in literature under that banner. The remaining five are quite enjoyable. Castles Near Spain is a stylish frippery of a novella in limpid notes. The rest are in Harland's earlier mode of fun ideas but little impact. Now to see whether he maintained this more searching style in subsequent volumes. Patience has paid off.