MRS. PARR'S SHORTER TALES.*
MRS. PARR has a soft and delicate touch which gives even to the slightest of these stories,—and some of them, " Sylvia," for • The Gosau Smithy, and other Stories. By Mrs. Parr, Author of "Dorothy Fox," Ac. In 2 vols. London: Daldy, Isbister, and Co. instance, are very slight,--the grace and lightness of a definite artistic effect, even in relation to a common-place subject,—now and then only in relation to one of real freshness and originality. But after reading the very slightest of these tales, you are never tempted to regret that you have read it, or to think the reading a waste of time. Some of them have very little indeed in them by which you can remember them, but there is never a single touch of mere conventional artificiality, and the state of mind in which you lay most of them down is that of a gratified ideal feeling, the same with which you turn away from the fair, soft faces of rather ordinary English ladies and children, such as you find represented in the pictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds. We are conscious of this gratified ideal feeling in a much higher degree, however, in the case of the first tale, though it ends tragically, than in that of any other in these two volumes. The tragedy of "The Gosau Smithy" is, in a sense, happy tragedy, and though we do not at all expect the denouement—though we expect the tale to end happily up to the very close—there is something so ideally satisfying in it, and so fine, in its small way, in the life of brooding remorse and awe-struck suspense in which the evil nature of the tale is left, that we can hardly regard this little German tale as a mere fortunate stroke of literary talent. It may be to some extent accident,—for accident enters into all artistic effort more perhaps than our literary pride is willing to admit,—but to our minds, the effect of the exquisite little story, the scene of which is laid in the Salzkammergut, a scene worthy of the tale itself, is of a higher order than that which any common skill in apprehending the superficial traits of•human character and piecing together human fates, could produce. This tale leaves on us the impression of one which might have been thrown off by a very great literary artist. There is a simplicity and beauty of tone in the whole, a perfectly human naturalness in the incident, and yet a real fitness in it to be the source of legend ; a truth of local colour, as well to the German character as to the character of the simple mountainering land in which the special scene is laid ; and most of all, a depth of light and shadow, and a power of contrast between them,—between the sunny peasant loves of Max and Mahley, and the cloud of morbid illusion and misunderstood remorse which settles down on the mind of Fritz, after their unexplained disappearence,— which leaves on the reader a great deal more of the effect of a slight sketch by a great artist, than of a successful study by one who, though sometimes charming, and always truthful, easy, and graceful, has done nothing as yet to attract the admiration of the world. It is now some weeks since we read "The Gosau Smithy,"—and how- ever little the plan of waiting for the effect produced upon the memory by any work of art would suit the zeal of the publishers for an early' notice, it is a plan which is apt to test the true merit of such a work better, perhaps, than any exercise of sheer judgment upon it, however strenuous,—and the only result of the intervening cloud of events has been to enhance the beauty and the singleness of the effect on the mind. The fascination of this little mountain pastoral, with the sudden plunge of its happy lovers into eternity, as they walk hand in hand with joyous talk through the twilight across the frozen lake, and leave alike to those who have loved and wronged them, and to those who have loved and never wronged them, the mysterious grief of an unresolved suspense, increases upon one as one recalls it amidst the hurry of life, till we come to think of it more as the bright, swift sketch of a high poetic imagination, than as one of the best of a series of slight, modern tales by a free, deft hand.
However, there are other tales in this volume of real merit, though none that can compare in the unique character of its workmanship with this. " Little Nan" has a good share of charm in it, though the ending, with its somewhat too snug and elderly cosiness, after the wild lights and shadows of the story, produces on one an effect just the reverse of that of " The Gosau Smithy," —a sort of disappointment at the domesticating of all that is wild and wayward in human nature till it purrs itself to sleep by the warm parlour fire, and completely forgets the sighing of the winds and the glitter of the stars. If so, the impression left is corrected again in the pathetic little Normandy tale called " La Bonne Mere Nannette," where there is no rounding-off of the sorrows of life into the finite sleepiness of a fire-side oblivion, and where the fidelity to the evil of human nature is quite painful enough. But pathetic as the story is, it has not the depth of beauty, or the wild, mountain voices of "The Gosau Smithy."
The tales of the second volume are of an altogether inferior calibre to those of the first. They do not miss their aim, but they aim at little beyond natural sketches of modern life and manners, without any depth of tone in them. There is vivacity
in all of them, and humour in some, but there is no touch in any of them that goes beyond the lively picture of such incidents as meet us all from time to time, without demanding any very deep observation, or any great capacity for feeling, from the observer of them. Still they all supply amusing reading, from the ease and freshness of the style, as well as from the skill with which Mrs. Parr draws a picture without seeming to make a study. Indeed, there is only one point on which we must venture a protest. Mrs. Parr is, we are happy to say, not a moralist, for a moralist and a novelist in one is a detestable mongrel. Still, she need not paint the unscrupulous mendacity of the elderly lover of Sylvia in so very attractive a light as she does. The admirable generosity of his motive is no excuse for his telling such deliberate fibs, and we doubt whether the man she describes, who had all the intellectual habits of a. scrupulous gentleman well worn into him before the story begins, would have done so. Mrs. Parr is evidently fond of elderly lovers. In these few stories she gives us two,— both of them taking persons,—one in " Little Nan" and one in " Sylvia." But she should remember that middle-aged gentle- men have acquired habits of mind which they could not, even if they would, break through simply in order to manoeuvre more easily the selfishness of a widowed sister, to gratify the wishes of a departed friend, or to soothe the sensitive pride of a pretty ward. We fear Mrs. Parr has no more scruple on the subject of white lies for generous objects than Victor Hugo. Certainly she makes Mr. Kenison in this tale not only invent them ad libitum, but act one throughout life, in deference to the motive we have indicated, and we are greatly inclined to doubt the naturalness of the assumption. Quite apart from the conscience, the intellect of most educated men recoils from these fibs, and is moulded by long habit into a genuine incapacity for accommodating itself to the comparative complexity of falsehood. However, this is the only protest we have to enter against the morality of a selection of tales the three first of which have much more than common depth of feeling in them, and all of which are light, lively, and natural.
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