A COLONIAL AND THREE ENGLISH NOVELS.*
A PRESENTMENT of humanity as it develops itself amongst the exigences and surroundings of existence at the Antipodes, is necessarily a welcome and refreshing change to jaded readers of ordinary English novels; and more especially so when it takes the form of an original, clever, carefully thought- out and written story such as Our Pleasant Vices. Mr. Macmaster's knowledge of his subject is evidently not derived from the merely superficial acquaintance of a visitor, but so thorough as to leave no doubt of his being himself indigenous to the soil described ; and if Colonial produce in fiction is to be judged by the sample he supplies, novelists in the Old Country will have to look to their laurels,—certainly his is very decidedly the best of the four now before us. He knows how to observe and think, to give the result of his observe- • (1.) Our Pleasant Vices. By Milner Macmaster. London: Sampson Low and Co.—(2.) Margaret Byng. By P. O. Philips and Percy Pendell. London : F. V. White and Oo.—(3 ) Loeuga. By W. Ontram Trietram Vies Valentine. By T. Ashworth Taylor. London : Ward and Downey.
tions and brain-work without borrowing from other people, and to make his men and women real and lifelike.
The scene is laid in Victoria, and from the picture of squatterdom given by the book, one conclusion, at any rate, to be drawn is, that the male portion of society there is a rough, shrewd, hard-drinking set, not over-squeamish, and quick to perceive and turn to account the weaknesses of companions; whilst at the same time there exists also, even amongst the lowest and roughest, a sort of instinctive appreciation of honesty which (taken in conjunction with the high esteem accorded to wealth) gives enormous influence to any big squatter who is really upright and "straight," and enables him to be much more of a real power in the land than is his English equivalent, the squire. The outline of the story is, briefly, this. Two people, having secret reasons for desiring the marriage of a particular couple, fear that their scheme will be interfered with by the attractions of a charming governess with whom the young man is inclined to flirt, and therefore wish to get her out of the way by driving her from her situation. The unconscious tool they employ for their purpose is an excellently drawn, prejudiced, spiteful, meddle- some old woman who always feels a call to act as deputy- Providence to her fellow-creatures, and who is so convinced of the natural depravity of the human heart, that (as her own daughter remarks) she thinks people commit crimes for the sake of being found out and sent to prison ; consequently, she sees nothing unlikely in the idea of a lady stealing a few pounds when she could have had them for the asking, and is easily induced to bring a charge of theft against the inno- cent governess. Here a true knight steps in to the rescue, and the remaining two volumes contain an exciting account of the researches of amateur detectives for evidence which has to be hunted for in remote places, until the pursuit finally culminates in a satisfactory denouement of virtue triumphant, and the false accusation recoiling upon those who brought it. The book's interest does not by any means depend only upon the action, for there is also plenty of humour and good character-drawing to keep the attention from flagging ; and the numerous threads of which it is constructed are combined, and made to work together, for the production of the entire web, with a skill which is more or less visible all through, but cannot be done full justice to until the end is reached and the work contemplated as a whole. Then too can be perceived how strangely the history of the "'unable instrument," Jarrett, has been worked in and out with that of others so as to make it, in truth, the unsuspected key-stone to the whole edifice. And though during the greater part of the tale the only sentiment she excites is the unmitigated contempt and disgust due to a servile, hypocritical spy, yet when her whole story is known, there mingles also an emotion of pity which makes one take leave of her with a disposition to leniency that would have been quite impossible at an earlier period.
Anybody wanting a book to pass an idle hour without either profit or the reverse, and then be forgotten promptly, will find Margaret Byng, though not particularly exciting or probable, yet capable of holding the attention sufficiently for his requirements. The principal personage (for it seems an abuse of the word " heroine " to apply it to any one so desti- tute of heroic qualities as Margaret) is one of the hard, adven- turess type of ladies whom Mr. Philips usually depicts; and a slight sketch will be enough to give those who are already familiar with his works a very fair idea of what sort of story to expect in these pages. Married to a man hopelessly in debt, and of whom she is tired, she has a " brilliant inspira- tion " of how to set herself free ; and, profiting by the occasion of his receiving an unexpected £'200, gets him to give her half (quite regardless, be it observed, of the claims of unpaid creditors), and to consent to a year's separation. Having thus procured her independence, she hurries off to gamble at Monte Carlo, and exist in a reckless, hand-to-mouth fashion for a few months, until the catastrophe which ter- minates the book. Wholly selfish, making an idol of money, and utterly destitute of honesty, principles, heart, greatness of mind, or good feeling of any kind, she is in herself so unloveable and uninteresting as to make it no small compli- ment to the joint-writers' skill to say that one does not grow too tired of her company to want to put the book down until one knows how her career ends. That it ends badly, is quite right and as it should be, having regard to the principle that, as a rule, fiction should inculcate the wholesome moral of guilt meeting
sooner or later with the punishment it merits. But in the present instance, we must say we think that purpose would have been accomplished more satisfactorily if the story had shown more clearly than it does that the reason why she deserved punish- ment was because of the worse than worthlessness of her whole character and existence, and not on account of her almost accidental participation in a crime which is represented as being the sole cause of her mental discomfort and final tragic fate. Why her authors should speak of her as ever having "noble moments," is an unrevealed mystery, seeing that there is nothing in the book to justify such an assertion.
In Locusts, we have a spirited, one-volume, historical romance, not without freshness and vigour, which contains startling adventures, poisonings, crimes, and some absurdities, and exhibits undeniable powers of imagination, though not, perhaps, to be exactly depended on as an altogether accurate picture of the people and times of which it treats. Un- attractive and unamiable as James I. was, he is not generally supposed to have been quite as sottish and unnatural a monster as he is here made to appear ; and to represent him as being the undoubted murderer of his son, seems taking greater liberties with history than is at all permissible. The book's leading incident is the poisoning, in 1612, of the then Prince of Wales by a bunch of grapes, prepared for that purpose by Anne Turner and Sir Thomas Overbury at the King's command, whose complicity is proved by a note to Overbury :—" Let the grapes, good Sir Thomas, to be bestowed on our son be sugared, if they be not ripe.—(Signed), JAKES R." And from this unreal foundation springs the rest of the story, which relates how all concerned in the crime were tracked down and destroyed by the hero, D'Amalos, the mur- dered Prince's devoted friend, a stern, somewhat fantastic and melodramatic avenger, who is not content with merely taking the lives of those whom he dooms, but insists also on regulating the exact manner in which their fate shall overtake them. Relent- less, all-accomplished, fabulously rich and strong, he is a rather Monte-Christo-like figure in whom the animating spirit of vengeance is roused by wrong done to a friend, and not to himself. Marvellous as was the escape of Dumas' hero from the Ch&teau d'If, still more marvellous is that of D'Amalos from the horrible well into which he is flung,—so much so, indeed, that we should not like to say certainly that it is humanly possible. When a well has had a big iron chest, one or two similarly substantial articles, and five dead bodies thrown down it, one fancies it would be so much obstructed that even a fresh and unfatigued person would hardly be able to make his escape from it by diving, and -crawling out through the mouth of a conduit which, being narrow and situated at the very bottom, must naturally have been a good deal choked and covered over by the foreign sub- stances introduced ; and it is yet more difficult to believe that such a feat could be performed by a man whose strength and powers of endurance were already taxed to the utmost by well-nigh superhuman exertions. And was it by miracle or magic that D'Amalos, after swimming round and round in the dark for long, and having (as is particularly mentioned) lost all count of time, managed suddenly to know the exact number of hours be had been in the well P In criticising people's conduct in any given situation, one is so apt to be a good deal guided by precedent, taken either from one's own or some one else's experience, that one is distrustful of one's judgment when deprived of that assistance. Consequently, we do not presume to offer an opinion as to whether the heroine of Vice Valentine does or does not act as is to be expected in the altogether unheard-of predicament in which she is placed, when, having usurped the position of wife to a man whom she has never seen, and who has never seen her, she is accepted as such, not only by the world at large, but also by the supposed husband. Another point, also, as to which we cannot speak confidently is, whether she is intended to be considered as a high-minded, loftily independent, frank, and upright sort of individual, or the reverse ; for though some- times she seems to be held up to admiration for honesty, yet, on the other hand, she certainly " stoops to deceit" often enough for the stoop to leave a very vivid impression on the reader's mind. The other personages are rather to be called wavering shadows than definite individualities, and clear, incisive touch is conspicuously absent in Miss (Dirs.?) Taylor's delineations. She displays considerable ingenuity in having invented and contrived to bring about the practically (if not
actually) impossible situation mentioned above, but does not succeed in arousing sufficient interest in the complications caused thereby to justify the extension of her work to two volumes.
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