SARAH DE BERENGER.*
Ir is to be feared that great novels cannot be written, as some great ships are built, on the compartment principle. But for this unfortunate circumstance, we should have said that not only is Miss Ingelow's new story very remarkable and in- teresting, but positively great. It suffers not from poverty of incident or character, but from an embarrassment of riches in both. Sarah de Berenger is, in reality, two (if not three) good novels rolled, not quite artistically, into one. We have, in the first instance, the story of Hannah Dill, and her children, and her husband, the cobbler, drunkard, bigamist, murderer, and temperance lecturer. In the next place, we have the daily life of the great brewer-house of the De Berengers, with Sir Samuel, the head and grandfather ; and Sarah, the wise —rather too wise—aunt ; and Felix, the clerical nephew ; and Amias, the scapegrace, whose chief offence, however, consists in rebelling against beer and all its works. We • Sarah de Berenger. By Jean Ingelow. London : Sampson Low and Co. 1886. might even say that there is a third novel in Sarah de Berenger, dealing with philanthropy (tempered with buffoonery) in high life, and in which there figure certain personages who go about under such nicknames as "Lord
Bob" and "Peep." But this is so clumsily put together, that the less said of it the better. There is no doubt a literary sub- way between the De Berenger department of Miss Ingelow's new novel and the Dill department ; and in the end, marriage mixes the two families up hopelessly. But Miss Ingelow would have succeeded ever so much better had she given us the Dills without the De Berengers, or the De Berengers without the Dills.
Regarded as the history of Hannah Dill, her husband, and her children, Sarah de Berenger must be allowed to be as truly original a novel as has appeared for a long time. As a study of certain developments of humble life streaked with misery and religion—if the word " religiosity " could be used in this case without offence, we should prefer to say "religiosity "—it is very powerful, though it can hardly be said to be attractive. Hannah Dill, the wife of a drunken cobbler, who is in prison for robbery, and who to her knowledge has been grossly unfaithful to herself, falls heir to some property. She is seized thereupon with a powerful, almost a frantic, desire to save herself, and still more her children, from the clutches of her husband when he comes out of prison. She changes her name to " Snaith," and coming accidentally across the name "De Berenger," gives the children that name. For virtually the whole of the story, therefore, poor Hannah Dill is seen with fear and trembling sustaining the rOle of Mrs. Snaith, nurse to Amabel and Delia de Berenger, and entrusted with the dis- pensation of a sum of money for their support. Her simple cunning gets her into difficulties. The real De Berengers turn up, and insist on identifying Amabel and Delia as the children of John de Berenger, one of their family. Partly because she is unable to baffle the inquiries put to her—she is too veracious, and even too stupid, to concoct plausible falsehoods—she allows the children to drift into the De Berenger life, and she dies in the end comparatively contented, if not happy, through seeing them finally absorbed in that life. But the moment that she has so long dreaded comes. She stumbles upon and is identified by her husband, Uzziah Dill, now out of prison, a temperance lecturer, and a "reformed character." Not unnaturally, she distrusts him and his aggressive humility, and his heart-on-the-sleeve piety. She is afraid that he is a hypocrite, as the chaplain in his prison was afraid before her. But she is mistaken ; poor Tfzziah—sin-stained, weak, querulous—is sincere. She is made aware of this by a long prayer for Divine guidance which, in a paroxysm of misery, he utters one night, when they are discussing the question whether they ought to live together Or not :—
"The moon came out—she was near her southing—and as she went down, Hannah Dill saw her husband's face, and knew that it was changed. A soft waft of summer air came about her now and again, dropping as if from the stars ; her husband's voice came upon it and died as it fell, and that was changed ; no such tones in it had
reached her ears of old She saw her husband rise, and a thrill of joy ran through her veins, when she observed that he did not mean to approach her. She made out in the dimness that comes just before dawn, that he went slowly to a little rise where the heather was thickest, and that he laid himself down in it. She knew that he was a heavy sleeper, and that in a few minutes he would be asleep. Was she not alone ? Could she not now steal away from him ? No. Before the thought was fully formed she knew that she could not. The sleeping man's prayer had power over her; it seemed to wake yet while he slept. And now that she could feel herself retired from all human eyes, she also arose, and kneeled down and spread out her hands, as if she would lay her case before the Lord. Not a word to say, not one word ; bat a thought in her mind like this : It is not because I can- not make my statement clear, that God does not see and pity my case ; let my God look upon me and decide, for whatever it is to be, I consent.' A long time silent thus, even till the grass turned green about her, and the birds began to wake—even till the first streak of gold was lying along the brink of the hill, and till the utter peacefulness of the new dawn seemed to make her aware that in her own mind also was dawning a resignation that was almost like peace. If all joy was gone, and all comfort given up, at least they had been stolen away gently, and, as it were, almost with her own consent. Thou knowest that / cannot bear it,' she said quietly ; oh, bear it for me ; take my burden on Thyself !' and almost as she spoke, she felt aware that she had been helped—that all should be right and was right. Then she, too, rose from her knees, and heard the lame man approaching. She sat down on the bank, and he sat beside her."
Hannah—having, woman-like, made certain that there is now no rival near her throne—decides to rejoin her husband ; a child is the result of the reunion. But fresh blows descend upon the Dills. Poor TJzziah relapses—though for only a time—into
drunkenness. He confesses to having committed a murder. This murder finds him out and hunts him down ; he dies in prison.
Hannah does not long survive him ; her death is gladdened with the assurance that her self-effacement has not been in vain. Hannah Dill's self-effacement stands out of this story so pre-eminently as the one thing in it, that one almost wearies of the company and long discussions of the brewing and the anti- brewing De Berengers. Yet the essentially selfish and worldly Sir Samuel is well drawn, and so is his clerical nephew, the Rev. Felix, in spite of his being rather too much given to preach-
ing when out of the pulpit. One gets tired of Amias, however, with his weakness for flying off at moral tangents. As for
Aunt Sarah—it would be difficult to say to whom in the story she is not aunt, and still more difficult to say why she gives the book its name—she makes one good, almost Mrs. Poyserish, remark. Her nephew, the clergyman, has been maundering about "the will of Providence :"—
" 'Providence,' said Sarah, not irreverently, must be allowed to do as it pleases. But I do not and cannot see how you will find out what that pleasure is till it is made manifest. I cannot see what right you have to run on in your own thoughts, and be so sure what Providence is going to do, and so eager to help before the event. Yes! I call that patronising Providence.'"
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