WON BY A HEAD.*
NARCISSUS, we all know, never got tired of looking at his own fea- tures, but observers failed to derive equal satisfaction from the con- templation of his charms. Now the hero of Mr. Austin's novel is an intellectual Narcissus. He is of course superbly handsome, wonderfully fascinating, and gifted with prodigious strength. But his strong point is his moral excellence. A sort of Jack Horner of fiction, he is always calling out " What a good boy am I I" In his former novel, the Artist's Proof, the author endeavoured to show the trials through which his hero was raised to a capability of "leading the God-like life." In the present novel, however, we only become acquainted with the model, whom we are called upon to reverence and admire, when he has attained to the full measure of his strength. We are given generally to understand that in his years of wandering, he had gone through the usual experiences of life deemed requisite to produce the perfect man. Paris, and Vienna, and Naples, the ways of wicked capitals and the women of many lands, were known to him before he presents himself to our admir- ing vision. " Passages from the Life of a Model Man" is the title we should be disposed ourselves to assign to Won by a Head.. We have therein presented to us the narrative of how the hero loved, wooed, and finally won the lady of his affections, but the one object of the story is to show how brilliantly he bore himself in every phase of his courtship, and how by so doing he raised himself if possible to a higher pitch of intellectual grandeur than he had previously attained. In order that the lesson may not be lost on those unintelligent readers who will never read what is good for them, let us endeavour to show how the " brave, noble gentleman" conducts himself in the character of a suitor.
Sir Everard Delafosse, then, is the son of a disreputable old baronet, who left him heir to an encumbered property. However, he has still a genteel competency of some three thousand a year, out of which he annually lays by two for the redemption of the mortgages on his estates. For many years he lives abroad, partly for economy, this being one of Sir Everard's innumerable virtues, still more with the view of cultivating his higher nature. He pays occasional visits to his country seat, where, chiefly because he will not go to church,- be acquires a most undeserved reputation. of being a wild and godless reprobate. In his salad days he writes a satire, which is the talk of town, and is thus de- scribed :—
" It was certainly a remarkable book. In the first place, it was. different in form from anything that had been published for years, resembling in style the classical models so long neglected. It had, however, nothing in common with their calmness, still less. with their coldness. It was polished but impetuous, measured but romantic, and sarcastic, though with the sarcasm that did not despair of the possibility of better things. Many were outraged by its defiant frankness, all delighted with what they were pleased. to call its terse and luminous periods. Some said that lt was true, some that it was false ; these that it was horribly unjust, those that it was not half outspoken enough. One side urged that it would. do a great deal of good, the other that it was itself but an additional ingredient in the mischief which it professed to condemn. The truth probably was, that its offensiveness and its literary merits were both overrated, and that all its critics were partly right and partly wrong.. All perhaps, however, were wrong in this : they failed to see in its pages. the mind of a truth-loving young man, who, though with evidently strong capacity for hard hitting, would very soon devote himself to something better than literary pugilism, or end by doing nothing literary at alL" However, after the book had passed through three editions, and the public were eagerly clamouring for more, the author refused to allow any more to be published. He then rested on his laurels, and after a brief and meteoric appearance in the world of fashion he retired abroad, in order to resume the process of self-culture. At the age of nine-and-twenty he seems to have come to the conclusion that his training was pretty well accom- plished, and that he might safely come back to England. So at the commencement of the novel we find him once more in his ancestral halls, ready to admit the contingency of marriage, an homme a marier, a Ccelebs, not indeed in search of a wife, but not unwilling to be sought by a wife, if the fates should so will it. His views on the subject of matrimony are thus expressed :— "It was two years or more since he had come to the conclusion that it would be well for him to marry, if he could. But the more the wish • Won by a Read. By Alfred Austin. Loudon: Chapman and Hall.
to marry is based upon reflection and conviction, and the less upon mere impulse, the more difficult is it for a man to find one whom, always supposing that he could win her, his head would accept at the i
instigation of his heart. It is time to insist upon a moral truth, not only usually disregarded, but by most people denied, that in this matter of love, sentiment has no more right to unshackled supremacy than in any other concern of life. The heart is an excellently good genius, and often suggests what is the best thing to do ; but the reason is sovereign, and can alone authorize final action on the part of impulse. This is no cold, chilling creed, but merely the assertion of an important doctrine, that between the intellect and the passions there should never be even temporary estrangement, much less permanent divorce. They are the co-urgent wings to steady the flight, which is otherwise but fluttering and spasmodic."
Holding such views, he resolves, after due and careful delibera- tion, that the Sultan may drop his handkerchief without derogating from his high principles at the feet of Lily Swetenham, only daughter and heiress of a wealthy clergyman, whose living lay near the Delafosse estates. Lily of course succumbs at once to the irresistible charms of the hero, and the course of true love would run smooth enough, but for the stupid prejudices of the clergyman and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Swetenham, and unbelievers in the Delafossian creed. They consider him to be poor, they believe him to be unsound in his theology and incorrect in his life, and finally, they prefer a worthy young gentleman farmer called Philip Pemberton to the excellent baronet. After all, there is no account- ing for tastes.
Sir Everard in consequence meets with a point-blank refusal at the hands of his beloved's parents, and is politely requested to drop their acquaintance. Miss Lily thereupon requests her lover to elope, an offer that he declines pnipt-blank, " in an affectionate, but prudent and deterring strain." The young lady thereupon elopes on her own account, escapes in the most mysterious manner from her home and family, and, much to the reader's relief, never appears again till the close of the last volume. Sir Everard is too true a philosopher to allow his serene complacency to be disturbed by such an occurrence beyond a certain point. He makes every reasonable effort he can to discover his lost love, and then, having done his duty, makes the best of a bad business. He returns to his home, by no means brokenhearted, and " pour passer le temps" engages in a very deep flirtation with a certain Rosie Raffles, a fast young authoress, who comes down and lives in a cottage upon his estate, for the sole purpose. of worshipping her idol, and if possible entrapping him into a match. Miss Raffles makes love no doubt after the warmest fashion ; but the preux chevalier refuses to succumb at the critical moment. Virtue triumphs in the end ; but possibly old-fashioned moralists who do not understand the creed of self-culture may be unable to ap- preciate the highmindedness of the hero, who allows a girl to sacrifice her reputation by living in such a manner as to make the world believe that she is his mistress. Happily for her or for him, as the reader chooses to consider, Sir Everard discovers, or fancies that he discovers, that Rosie is false to her Platonic affec- tion, and thereupon leaves her without a word. Then he goes abroad, and the reader is favoured with sundry descriptions of Italian travel, which, though well done, have no particular bearing on the development of the hero's higher nature. Being deprived of the consoling influences of Miss Ratiles's flattery, he becomes conscious that life is worthless to him without Lily. Still, though broken- hearted, he permits himself to be worshipped by a young Florentine lady of American extraction, who worships him after the fashion *goat befitting his grandeur of mind and beauty. Everything is pro- per to the most rigid degree, but " from sheer natural compassion, coupled with the familiar affection he felt for her," this young unmarried gentleman of thirty takes to kissing a girl quite old enough to think of marrying. Again affairs are growing critical, and the reader grows alarmed at the possible consequences of these exceptional intimacies, when Lily turns up again. Those who want to know why she ever ran away, and why she ever came back, must look for an explanation in the pages of Won by a Head. if they have any very clear conception about the matter after perusing the novel they will be cleverer than we profess to be ; but still there, and there only, must they seek for information. All's well that ends well ; Sir Everard, in spite of his flirta- tions, has never loved anybody but Lily, and they are married in due form, and live happily ever afterwards. Our only fear is that he must have been given to prose most lamentably after din- ner. Nobody, we all know, is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, and even a model hero may be a bore to his wife. Poor Lily must have been sadly punished for her disobedience to her parents, if her lord and master often soliloquized after the following fashion
" Such is not my opinion, be sure. Men will tell you how corn-laden ships lay fast-bound in foreign harbours, all the while that ravenous little ones prayed for the beautiful white meal that Heaven, their mothers
thought, was not good enough to send them; and even now, under the Southern Cross, fat sheep are being boiled down for tallow, whilst beneath the Great Bear mutton at ninepence a pound is beyond poor folks' stomachs, be they ever so pinched. This one has more than ho knows what to do with, and this other just none at all. Liberty has solved many of these economic problems, and will solve the rest if she be only allowed. Yea, and she can solve all your social problems for you too, 0 you of little faith ! and this perpetual love problem for you among the rest. Of such force is she, and such virtue is there in her straightforward cunning. But then she will do away with your rigid exclusions, and of your almost as rigid protection she will hear not a word. Neither will she stoop to bargain, nor accept a sliding scale, adjusted to admit the proscribed qualities, when the superior Fan no longer be had, or had only. at famine prices. She will admit all and protect none. She will throw society wide open, and let each and every one find his and her own other wanted heart without let or hinderanee, and abolish for ever and a day all parental and family and sectarian and whatsoever other prejudicial vested interests, whose cry of horror is now raised to drown any more words I may yet have to say."
Still, in spite of the wearisome and endless glorification of Sir Everard's merits of which the book is composed, there is clever- ness of a high order about Won by a Head. Mr. Austin writes good English, and never degenerates into slang. Being in love with his own hero he expects everybody else to be in love with him also, but this is the common error of lovers. Our more serious objection is to the supernumeraries whom he introduces on the stage. Mr. and Mrs. Narracott, Rosie Raffles, and Ambrose Champion are too sketchy to be creations of the author's, too life- like not to be reminiscences. Now it does seem to us that the mere fact of being a novelist no more bestows upon a writer the liberty of putting his acquaintances into a novel, than the fact of being a jeweller authorizes a tradesman to pocket the silver spoons at any dinner-table to which he happens to be invited. We have had a great deal too much lately of this literary photography. Private individuals have in our opinion as much right to the copyright of theif faces and habits as authors have to the copyright of their books, and we bold that any outrage on the privileges of private life should be visited with immediate censure. It is quite true that if we choose to depict our friends and acquaintances in a novel not one reader in a hundred perhaps recognizes the portrait, but the person pourtrayed or caricatured perceives the likeness at once, and winces beneath the operation.
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