From Grub to Butterfly. By Joseph Forster. (Ward and Downey.)—This
story, which in many respects is not more in- credible than most novels of the kind it belongs to, is spoiled by onehideous—and, it is to be hoped, hideously incredible —incident. It is not impossible that Selina Smith, the daughter of drunken parents, living in circumstances of sordid degrada- tion in the neighbourhood of Walworth Road Station, should attain celebrity as a music-hall dancer. It is not quite impos- sible, too, that in spite of her having become the wife of the drunken singer, Peter Prance, she should take the New World by storm, and bring to her feet the heir to a peerage, and even the Peer himself. But that she with her good sense, and even good feelings should have sunk so low as to become for a time the mistress of a selfish and third-rate villain like Captain Sharker, is out of the question. But allowing for the possibility of such a descent, the fact would surely have been fatal to a proposal of marriage from even such a booby as the Hon. Algernon Wildby. Mr. Forster's conduct in introducing this incident is not excusable any more than it is explicable. He hardly even pretends to be a thoroughgoing realist ; his slum scenes are invariably relieved by good-nature. Towards the close, also, the story proceeds 'with all the ease of an ordinary romance with a happy ending. Some of Mr. Forster's secondary characters are well drawn, notably Mrs. Smith, Selina's drunken, but not irreclaimable, mother, and, above all, the good angel of the story, Heron, the dirty, flashy, but kindly and well-in tentioned manager of the Apollo Music Hall. There is plenty of life in Mr. Forster's work ;
but he is lacking in the self-control which distinguishes the con- summate artist, even in realism.
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