Lover and Husband. By Ennis Graham. 3 vols. (Skeet.)—It may
be as well to say that though the " lover " and the "husband" are different persons, this novel is written with the strictest propriety. The story is of a very familiar type ; mutual love between two persons ; separation ; misadventure of letter ; poverty of heroine, and marriage in hope that she may learn to loco, ; then the " agnosco voteris vestigia flammes," and so on to the end, which is altogether as it should be. The writer begins by making a great mistake. It is necessary that what we may call a " snag " should be put down to make the course of true love ran unsmoothly, but this particular " snag " is not very happily chosen. A young lady of good position, dec., anxious to earn a little money, which she wants to help her brother out of a scrape, goes out as a daily governess under a false name, the name being first 'ingested by the mistake of the deaf old lady who employs her. We cannot see that anything particular comes of this monstrously improbable proceeding, anything, at all events, that might not have been brought about by a much simpler machinery. If the letter had to go wrong, a necessity which we acknowledge, why not use the expedient, natural enough, as habituis of the Continent will acknowledge, of making an hotel messenger destroy it for the sake of the postage ? We make a free gift of the suggestion to anyone who may fancy it. But the story, on the whole, is better than the beginning. It is written with good taste, naturally and simply ; the conversations are easy ; the characters, if not profoundly studied, are life-like. That part of the tale, where the hero, the "husband " hero, that is, takes to the life of a manufacturing town, is full of interest and pathos. On the whole, we can recommend the book.
Previous page
