THROUGH THE KARPATHIANS IN KNICKER- BOCKERS.*
Miss DOWIE, a young Scotchwoman, on the right side of five-and-twenty, as she is careful to inform us, has given to all enterprising members of her sex an infallible recipe for that Return to Nature which is, in her opinion, the only true remedy for the maladie (la si6cle. Take one knickerbocker- suit, a revolver, and an unlimited supply of cigarettes, and go out into the wilderness by yourself for at least six weeks. It does not matter much whither you " excurse," as Miss Dowie would say, so long as you " exeurse " by yourself. The cigarettes are indispensable, because they are a proof positive to foreigners that you are not an Englishwoman, and apparently it is injudicious to appear to be English. The knicker- bocker-suit has the grand recommendation of possessing pockets, the only enviable thing about the miserable male per- son ; and the revolver,—well, it is at least always handy if Judge Brack or any of his tribe come prowling about in the wilder- ness. Having reached your destination, "it is better to imitate
Nebuchadnezzar and go out to grass ' Give your whims a loose rein, follow the promptings of that queer live soul in you which always retains its affinity to simpleness and green- growing things, and be prepared to be thought very odd when you come back." But the game is decidedly worth the candle, for "you will have acquired a calm smile, an ability to suffer fools gladly, which will stand you in good stead." The witless comments of the public can make no more impression on such a coat of mail than water on a duck's back. Nebuchadnezzar in knickerbockers may well defy the whole chorus of indolent and insolent reviewers.
The choice of the Karpathians as the fittest spot for the Return to Nature, seems to have been a mere matter of acci- dent, unless it was that, like knickerbockers, they began, or might be made to begin, with the letter " K." But, on the whole, Miss Dowie seems to have been well pleased with her choice. Eastern Galicia, to judge from her account, is a place " Where every prospect pleases, And only man is vilo.'
Morality, as we understand the term, does not exist, even as a name. Women contend with men for the palm of inebriety. Both sexes suffer terribly from• the goitre and lung-diseases. Their houses are filthy, and their natures destitute of the spur of am- bition. Moreover, every dwelling-place is infested with anthro. pophagous insects, the ravages of which our author describes with an exuberance of detail and a lack of taste calculated to arouse the envy of an American reporter. Against these and other drawbacks must be set the picturesque costume of the peasantry—a matter always calculated to make a favourable impression on a female pilgrim, even when returning to Nature—and above all, the scenery and air of the country. Of the latter, Miss Dowie writes with an enthusiasm and a per- ception which go far to redeem the predominant slanginess and flippancy of her style. As to the risks of her trip, she declares that she has been given " absurdly too much credit " for doing what was most easy and congenial to her. "If you are to feel frightened of anything," continues Miss Dowie, " when you sleep out (in an uncivilised country such as Czernagdra), it must be of the mystery of the coming of the day among the hills. All has been said by great poets that may be said of this, and no adjectives would stead me ; besides, it is a service and sacrament that is to worship at, not to speak aloud of ; but I will grant that what inspires to wide-eyed marvel, im- potent humility, and even a bowed head, may grow akin to fear when the pale, glistening morning waits among the mysterious angles of the mountains, and then steals greenly, Boldly down to the valleys." Such a passage, spite of its • A Girl in the Katiguthiano. By Maio Muriel Bowie, London o ()gorge Philip and Boil.
extravagances of diction, has the merit of having been penned by one who has had her eye on the scene described. Un- happily, Miss Dowie is not always in this reverent mood. One Sunday afternoon she took a problem with her up a pine- hill, and having ended with the "half-cross, half-amused feeling that, hang it, there the people were, and one might
as well take an interest in them, and not sheer off at the first evidences of a depressing lack of sanity," she
came down from her mountain " with a vague' notion that having recourse to mountains when the worries of this world become overwhelming is a very old game, and some one whose name I have forgotten used to play at it—right back there in the Old Testament." This spirit, which has its outcome now in such cheap profanity as the above, but generally in mere tasteless flippancy, is the besetting sin of the author, Her style is a wonderful and motley com- pound of colloquialisms and purple patches, and her coinages —such as " luminant " and " ltingy "—can hardly be welcomed as desirable additions to our vocabulary. In one passage she talks of slipping her watch into " a knicker pocket," an abbreviation which no self-respecting tailor—mere fraction of the inferior animal though he be—could ever demean himself by using. One might multiply instances of this sort indefinitely ; but in virtue of the qualities of candour, good-humour, and high spirits, which are the redeeming features of the book, we can almost find it in our hearts to forgive Miss Dowie for her tasteless and elaborate "appreciations" of the Karpathian
flea; for her too evident desire to stick pins into Mrs. Grundy; for her frequent allusions to her al fresco ablutions ; and, last and worst crime of all, that hideous reference to her " knicker pocket." As an instance of her candour, we may take the following delightful passage. In describing a funeral service, Miss Dowie begins by saying that "the ceremony began by the Popo [priest] wrestling into a red damask canopy." Finally, she tells us how he emerged from the church, " this time in a green panoply." And then she continues :—" I don't
know if it is panoply or canopy; I've been uncertain from the first. I tried canopy, and it didn't seem to ring quite ; but I'm not sure, now I say it, that panoply is any better." Even better is the spirit shown in the subjoined extract, notwith- standing the characteristic advertisement of her agnostic attitude with which it ends :-
" There were many articles of dress and other little matters I could have wished to buy, but the honesty of offering the peasants money for what they had, seemed to me questionable, and I re- frained as far as possible from doing it. Money, oven if one gives more than tho original price, does not represent the queer brass ornament that Feeder has worn at his belt for ten years, nor the tobacco-pouch that has stuck to him in sunshine and in rain ; nor to Jewdochn (Yevdocha) could it be the equivalent of the gown she has embroidered in a long winter,—the gown that he told her she looked so pretty in : as well buy the smiles from their faces, or the laughter from their eyes, if that were possible ; and that they would gladly sell you the lot is no argument in your favour. I have never boon very clear as to the nature of conscience and the worth of it, or its propor place in one's moral economy, but it seems to come in here as well as anywhere."
That serenity of which Miss Dowie was herself in search when she set out on her trip, will hardly be attained by a perusal of her pages. The book, with all its cleverness, is irritating, aggressive, egotistic, and unrefined. But it is at least the outcome of a vigorous and healthy nature, endowed with a keen sense of picturesque effect, and a considerable capacity for entering into the lives and aims of others.
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