HERR EBERS'S LAST NOVEL.*
Tux realism which is the key-note, and also in some measure the bane of our modern spirit, in its artistic expression, has in Germany, in the domain of fiction, not yet developed into naturalism. For the German, the craze for actuality is satisfied by historical accuracy; always fond of instructing himself, and being instructed, he asks from his work of art that it should teach him something. Professor Ebers has very happily apprehended this demand on the part of his countrymen, and to this apprehension he owes the great success that has un- questionably attended his work. If excellence of workmanship be commensurate with popularity, then, beyond doubt, Ebers is the greatest of living German novelists ; for his works, and his alone, command a large public, and are read and bought in a country which, notwithstanding its reputation for learning, reads few and buys fewer books. For ourselves, we have never had a great regard for Ebers' semi-sentimental, cumbrous treatment of historical subjects ; but, at the same time, we cannot deny to him a certain graphic power, which, combined with his really accurate knowledge of ancient matters, enables him to cause the past to live again before our eyes,—a past, however, always skilfully draped with a certain nineteenth- century decency and refinement. His Egyptian Princess was an eminently readable book. But of late, Ebers has steadily declined, and has written too hastily. It has become the fashion of late that no German Christmas gift-table is complete, if there be not upon it a new volume from the pen of this favourite author, who ever writes with such decorum, who never permits himself to forget that it has been said that novels are written "pour lea jeunes gees et les femmes ;" and Ebers has been only too true to this demand. His latest Christmas gift, while in some respects superior to the Burgomaster's Daughter, suffers yet more from hasty and careless workmanship. In point of style, this is one of the least admirable of his produc- tions ; it would seem at times as if the Professor had forgotten how to handle his mother-tongue, such strange pranks does he play with her adjectives and verbs,—her involved sentences grow yet more so in his hands. He cannot surely have read his own proofs, or it could not have escaped so excel- lent a scholar that he occasionally perpetrates nonsense. If, therefore, his English translator has now and then fallen into the same trap, she can scarcely be blamed, for in one or two cases her error is merely too strict fidelity to her original. Her work also suffers a little from hastiness, but as a whole, Miss Bell has, as before, acquitted herself bravely in her task, though her alternate redundance and economy of punctuation certainly do not enhance the enjoyment of reading.
Only a Word misses excellence. The book falls sharply into two parts, that do not cohere. It would almost appear that the author, while writing, had entirely changed his design. Like moat German novels, the composition is faulty and ill-pro- portioned; and while the beginning is detailed, related with warmth and poetry, the later portion is hurried, and becomes at last a mere dry chronicle of historical actions. No doubt, Pro- fessor Ebers modelled his new tale upon the mediaeval German novel of adventure, which, in some respects, it resembles ; but in adapting it in 14826M. Delphini, he has made it, in great part, a tedious, twice-told tale. And a twice-told tale it is indeed, for in its pages we have quite a microcosm of contemporary mediaeval history,—the Spanish persecutions in Flanders, the battle of Lepanto, Andrea Doria and the Genoese victories in
• Bin Wort. Von G. Ebers. Stuttgart : Hallberger. 1893. Only a Word. By G. Ebers. Translated by Clara Bell. London: Macmillan.
the East, the Court of Philip of Spain, Venice in the times of Titian, and what not else, all grouped, or rather dragged,with more or less success round the protagonist, the Swabian boy, whose pursuit of a word has led him thus far afield. This word is the keynote of the tale, and as a fundamental idea is so charming that we regret the more that it is not more skilfully worked out. The young Black Forester, Ulrich, the son of the sturdy, worthy smith, Adam, lives with his father among the outcasts of the Richtberg, where lives also a learned Spanish Jew, whose daughter is the play and lesson-mate of the boy. Costa is an outcast for his faith's sake, Adam a self-constituted pariah, for he is unable to bear the shame brought upon him by his light- natured, frivolous wife, who left him years ago to follow the wandering instincts of her nature and the silken clothes of a gay, young cavalier. Ulrich and little Ruth are imaginative children. They have seen the grave Hebrew brood over his books, and in answer to their inquiry as to what he sought therein, they have extracted the reply, "A word !" A word,— their childish fancy transforms this into a conjuror's tale, they seek the word that shall change them into fairy princess and prince, they plan a thousand splendid things that the word shall perform for them and theirs, and among these is ever foremost the secret desire of Ulrich that his " mammy " may return, the sweet-voiced, fair-visaged woman whom he remem- bers in his dreams, for whom he cherishes a tender memory, that remains alive for all his father's prohibitions against his lost wife's name being mentioned in his presence. The blood of his mother is strong in the boy, the world of his fancy is far different from that of the brainless lads around him. The image of the un- happy woman, of whom no one had ever spoken a good word to him, who had abandoned him, and whose faithlessness had given other boys a right to laugh him to scorn, ever floated before his eyes ; he sees his mother, he beholds motherhood in every pure and sacred virgin that graces the altar shrines, and through love for his mother there awakes in the lad's mind a love for art, which is wisely fostered by the Jew. The visit of a Benedictine friar ends the childish idyl of free intercourse between Christian and Jew ; on pain of persecution for Costa, he forces Adam to send his boy to the convent school. While here, he learns that his beloved tutor is to be put to the rack, and he effects an escape, to warn the Jew of the danger that awaits him at the hands of the monks. The smith, Ulrich, Costa, his wife, and child, all flee in the dead of night, protected by a snowstorm that wipes out their traces, to seek across the borders the peace. the right to live their lives after their own fashion, that is denied to them at home. They are betrayed and pursued ; Ulrich is decoyed, Costa is basely murdered while he pleads for the life of his persecutor, and Adam is left alone with the sickly wife and little daughter of the Hebrew. At this point the story suddenly makes a break. Up to this point it has been full of freshness and charm, and written with a crispness in which Ebers has touched once again the level of his highest work. The hundred pages in which these incidents are condensed are full of pictures, the feeling of the middle ages is reproduced with easy power, without sense or evidence of effort. The descriptive scenes recall the objective treatment of nature that is so attractive a feature in the poems of the Meister and Minnesingers of the time. We are attracted, too, by the burly, true-hearted smith, the gentle-spirited, learned Jew, lord of the wide world of thought, and desiring no other or better world. Ruth, too, the poetic little maiden, has endeared herself to us. Yet at one fell swoop all these attractive characters are blotted out of the story, and we follow the fortunes of Ulrich only, fortunes too crowded with incidents, too baldly told to hold our interest. The farther we read the more tedious do these grow, and at the last we weary heartily of the manifold adventures of this plaything of a word. For though the break between the early and latter portion of Ebers' book is sharply delineated in the figure of his hero also, he yet retains of his old self the fancy that life can be rendered easy and successful at the bidding of a word. Bnt that word ? What is it ? A fugitive on the wayside, Ulrich is rescued by the Dutch painter Antonio Moro, who is on his road to Spain, to paint for Philip. While halting at a wayside inn, he hears a rough soldier's song, whose confident burden is ever the word " Good-fortune," "good-fortune." Ulrich shouts, catching the refrain with rapturous glee, that surely is the word he has been seeking. And indeed, for- a while, Fortune seems to justify his choice ; she showers gifts from her cornucopia over his head. He is the favourite, the pupil of Moro, he is the inmate of the Spanish palace, nothing disturbs his enjoyment, save the thought that perchance Art be the word to enclose within it Good-Fortune. It is a pity that Ebers has marred what might have been a most original psychological study by his desire to pander to the German love of instruction. At the Spanish Court wo have to endure an Ebers version of Don Carlos, we are obliged to meet many well-known characters, we are wearied by the number of personages that flit across the scene without connection with the tale ; and even that fascinating Italian, Sofonisba Anguisciola, becomes tiresome at this author's hands. Then, too, how far Ebers is justified in the picture that he draws of Philip II. is a matter for question. His Philip is scarcely the one with whom history has rendered us familiar. Yet, having respect for Ebers' historical knowledge, we should, perhaps, accept him upon his authority, but for the astonishing family likeness he bears to the same writer's portrait of the Emperor Hadrian. Even the incident in The Emperor where Hadrian tries his hand at sculpture is here reproduced, under the altered form of painting. In all other respects, the two episodes and their ultimate outcomes are alike.
Meanwhile, good-fortune, while obedient to our hero in all else, fails him in Art, and this because his mother's light blood moves in him, and makes him want to take things too easily ; the drudgery of his profession is distasteful to him. Her begins to doubt himself, his future, the word and the efficacy of its spell. A visit to Italy disgusts' him with his own paintings, and turns him into a gambler ; his inherited restlessness and love of self-display, the vagabond nature of his mother, come uppermost ; he becomes a soldier, under Don Juan of Austria, and we are forced to be present with him at the battle of Lepanto. " Glory " is now the word he lives for ; he is convinced that glory is the word, the last and highest goal of man's en- deavour. We encounter him next in the Netherlands, per- petrating the grossest inhumanities in the name of Christ and his Church, yet finding that glory, too, fails to fulfil his expecta- tions. Then he remembers that Don Juan has said that laurels. are leaves that wither, that power is a field to till, and hence- forth " Power " is the word that he pursues. He gets himself chosen Electo, that is, leader of the mutinous army that clamoured for towns to sack, in return for arrears of pay. Here in the camp he finds his mother, who has sunk to a common camp-follower, the soldier's sibyl, fortune-teller, mistress, boon companion. Yet Ulrich is not repelled at finding her again thus. This may be psychologically correct, but in what follows Ebers is both absurd and wanting in good-taste. He would have us credit that, in spite of the foul associations of camp life, this woman has kept herself superior and absolutely high- minded. All this episode concerning the camp sibyl is truly unpleasant, and casts an ugly reflection upon the poetic remem- brance ever cherished by Ulrich, and which was the one high note in his life that was never shifted, even when he touched his lowest depths of mental abasement. Accident reveals to the Electo that his father is still alive and at Antwerp, where he has become a noted armourer and a Protestant. Instantly Ulrich dreams of a reconciliation between his parents. He hurries to Antwerpjo find that old Adam not only does not take the same view of his wife's purity as her son, but that he will have nothing to say to this blood-stained man in Spanish uniform. Stunned, overwhelmed with grief, Ulrich returns to the camp, to find his mother stabbed in a fit of jealousy by one of her lovers. With more fury than before he throws himself into his duties as Electo, and leads his troops on to the sack of Antwerp. Wounded, he is rescued by his father, nursed by Ruth, and learns to know that the word is still in a measure Art, but that there is a truer and higher word,—and that word is Love. Thus, after all, this story of wild adventures ends, as all properly-conducted stories should, with marriage-bells and a general harmony. This may be possible, with Ebers' faith that character remains untarnished by even the vilest acts. For ourselves, we doubt it.
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