GRIF.*
T1118 is a decidedly remarkable novel, not merely on account of its purely Australian colouring of scenery, incident, and character, but in a certain degree of genuine literary power. We presume that Mr. Farjeon is a born Australian, or, at all events, an Australian resident for a long space of time, and he points a very favourable comparison with the writer of a novel which we recently * Grif; a Story of Australian Life. By B. L. Farjeon. 2 TOiB. London: Thisley. 1870. noticed, who, though an Australian, excused himself from writing an Australian novel on the grounds that Geoffrey Hamlyn could not be surpassed, and therefore wrote a very indifferent English story. Mr. Farjeon's story, on the other hand, is Australian to the backbone, and though we regret that he should have chosen such painful and even revolting phases of Australian life for illustration, we congratulate the colony of Victoria on the production of a novelist of Mr. Farjeon's power. The story itself is fairly good as a somewhat sensational story, though, as we have intimated, it deals a good deal with the violent incidents of crime common to new countries, and its lines have for the most part fallen in very unpleasant places. Mr. Farjeon's besetting sin is his inability to resist the temptation of exercising to the utmost the great power he possesses of painting in startlingly real colours the life of the worst and most vicious of the criminal classes, as well as of subtly analyzing their morbid moral instincts, and he is apt to become a little too realistic in his anxiety to heighten the effect of the accessories of his picture of vicious life in Melbourne and the gold- fields. There are many scenes in the book which, though strik- ingly original and dramatic, would not really have lost by a little more delicacy of touch, and a little less evident gloating on the part of the author in his power to place before the reader what is hideous and repulsive in humanity in its naked reality.
Mr. Farjeon's great success is the character whose single name gives the title to the story, and whose brief career as a Melbourne Street Arab forms its connecting thread. Grif is a homeless, foodless, ragged boy, with no object in life but that of obtaining "grub and a blanket," and a thief because no other means of obtaining them has ever occurred to him. His only companion is a still younger boy, even lower still in the mental and moral scale, with whom and a stray dog he shares the old barrel that serves him for sleep. He steals pies when he is hungry, and a blanket when he is cold, and shares them with his protige, Little Peter, and his dog Rough. Nobody would employ him, even were he useful for anything, and nobOdy looks after him. Ile has been preached to, and told to be honest, and had stories from the Bible read to him. But in his experience, honesty and starvation are convertible terms, and the story read to him of a deserted infant being found in the bulrushes and well treated only suggests to him a wonderful sense of injustice in his being deserted and never rescued. Such is Grif when we are first introduced to him, his only feelings higher than the mere instinct of avoiding starvation being a sort of sense of duty to the helpless child and affection for his friend the dog. Sometimes, however, he has a strange won- dering as to what it all means, why he should starve and be an outcast when other people were not, why he should be kicked and cuffed by policemen, and looked upon with horror by people who had enough to eat, why none of the good things of the world should ever come to his lot.
"He does not openly rebel against his fate. He knows that it is, and, without any concerted action of the mind to assist him to that con- clusion, he feels that he cannot alter it. He does not repine ; he only wonders sometimes that things are so. Of course, when ho is hungry he suffers ; that he cannot help. But ho suffers in silence, and thereby shows that he has within him the qualities that would make a hero. But still the fact remains that he aspires no higher ; still the fact remains that he is dead to the conscious exercise of the nobler virtues. Spread them before him, if such were possible, and he would not oven wonder. But his eyes would light up, and all his intellectual forces would he gratified, at the sight of a bone with a little meat upon it. Such is Grit, a human waif living in the midst of a grand and mighty civilization."
But Grif meets a good angel in the shape of a good and beautiful woman, Alice Handfield, who has been disowned by her friends, and thrown into poverty and misery through her husband having been betrayed into the power of a gang of desperate criminals, who are every day trying to rivet their chains on him, so as to secure his assistance for a burglary at the house of her wealthy father. Grif for the first time in his life receives kind treatment ; he is be- wildered at the novelty, but is grateful. He is struck, too, by her devotion to her unfortunate husband ; he knows something of the gang, and resolves to do all he can to aid her in rescuing him. And in the development of Grins character after this point Mr. Farjeon shows very striking power of a really original kind. At first Grif tries once more to be honest, but starves and gives it up. He tries to be truthful, but fails through utter inability to under- stand why truthfulness should be required. But his whole nature is changed by his gratitude for kindness, and his wondering admir- ation for the goodness and purity under tribulation of his benefac- tress. Without neglecting Little Peter, or ceasing to bemoan the loss of Rough, who has been poisoned by one of the gang, he determines to devote himself to her assistance. His own father, who ablandoned him in infancy, is in the gang, which is led by "The Tender-Hearted Oysterman," — a. curiously repulsive study of the cruel criminal,—and he is further acquainted with their proceedings through an unhappy woman who has been betrayed by one of them, and finally dies from drink in a scene which would have been all the better for a good deal of toning down. She also has done Grif a good turn, and his gratitude to her, together with his obscure, instinc- tive consciousness of the contrast between her life of shame and the womanly parity of his idol, gives Mr. Farjeon occasion for some extremely clever analysis of feeling. At last, after the development of a very ingeniously constructed plot, introducing some capital local description, some good gold-field stories, and much quiet satire on the weak points in Australian social and political life, the crisis of Grif's life arrives. The Tender-Hearted Oysterman has murdered a man under circumstances which throw overwhelming suspicion upon Alice's husband, and thus got him so completely into his power as to compel him to join the gang in the burglary, his knowledge of the house being indispensable. Alice knows this, but is unable to rescue him ; Grif reaches the house on the eve of the attack, and reflects thus :— ‘" She wants a witness,' he said. She's got her husband, and she'd be all right if she had a witness. It's not a bit of good her comin' all the waup here, if she don't get a witness. What did Dick Handfield say? If he had a witness who could swear that he heard the Oysterman confess to stealin' his knife and murderin' the poor cove with it, his innocence would be proved ! Yes, that was what he said. If be don't get that witness, he'll be took up for murder, and somethin' dreadful 'II happen to Ally. And if his innocence is proved, Ally will be happy all her life. That'd be very good, that would. 'Eaven will send the witness, Ally said. No, it won't. For I'll be the witness ! And 'Eaven don't send me ! Not a bit of it ! Only think of the Oysterman langhin' all the while he told how be murdered poor Tom ! ' (Grif lingered lovingly over the memory of Welsh Tom, as if they had been friends.) 'He's a reaper, is the Oysterman ! But I'll be even with him. If I can get in with the gang--but they'd suspect me. I was moral when the Oyster- man and Jim sor me in Melbourne,—they won't blieve I ain't moral now. How shall I manage it? I've got to be very careful with 'em. They're up to pretty nearly every move. I've got it!' he cried, after pondering for a few moments. say I've been sent up by Old Flick, to tell 'em that Dick Handfield's going to peach upon 'em. They'll b'lieve that! Dick Handfield's runnin' away to-day '11 make 'em b'lieve it. They won't be up to that dodge. And I'll tell Jim Pizey that Milly's dead, and that she made me promise to come and see him at once, and arks him to take care of the baby. That's a artful move, that is, and no mis- take! He liked /dilly, did Jim, and he'll be sorry to hear she's dead.' (Grif laughed and hugged himself as he thought of his scheme.) And father's in the gang, too. I heard Dick tell Ally that ; though he said it in a whisper, and didn't want me to hear. I ain't seen father since he shied that bottle at my head for stealin' pies. He said I'd disgraced him, and that he never was in qnod for stealin' pies. He wouldn't mind if
I'd been in quod for somethin' worse. I know what do. I'll tell him I'm a regular plucky 'un, a regular bad 'un, up to anythin', and I'll get him to tell me all about the 4iysterman's plot. Then I'll go and be a witness. Lord ! ' be mused, what a queer move it is ! They'll kill me when they find it out, but I don't care. It'll make Ally happy, and she'll like me all the better. Then there's the Oysterman ! I'll cry quits with him, now, for pizenin' Rough ! Won't be be savage !'"
Grif is shot by his father during the attack before he gets con- firmation with his own ears of the Oysterman's plot. He dies splendide mendax, deposing on oath that he had heard the Oyster- man glory in his diabolical scheme for gaining Handfield. Handfield is cleared by other evidence as well, the Oysterman is killed, all goes well, and so the story ends. Here are Grif's last words ; Milly is the woman already referred to :- "' It wasn't my fault that I wasn't no good. I only wanted my grub and a blanket. If any swell 'ad a-given 'em to me, it 'd been all right. I tried to be moral, but I couldn't be. I wasn't out out for it. Why, there's Milly !' and he suddenly raised himself, and a bright expression came over his face. Alice held him in her arms, and watched the fading light in his eyes. 'And there's Rough. Rough ! Rough ! And the old pie-woman, too !' he cried, as his arm stole round Alice's neck. What was it Milly said the other night ? Oh, I know ! Forgive me, God ! ' And with that supplication upon his lips, and with his head on Alice's breast, Grif closed his eyes upon the world."
As our readers can imagine, this is not a pleasant story ; in many respects it is a very unpleasant one ; but the writer who can work out the development of a character like that of Grif when first we meet him as Mr. Farjeon has done, is no mere novel- maker, and we trust that before long we may find him manifesting equal power in connection with a less gloomy story than that of Grif.
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