THORNICROFT'S MODEL.*

IT is curious to note the different strata of intellectual life indicated by the romances of particular periods of national history. We forget who it is who has said that "The fables of a nation are amongst its greatest facts," but there is point in the epigram. For the novelist is, or rather may be, the true representative man of his age. Any way, it is interesting at this moment to trace how what we may term the didactic novels of twenty or fifty years ago have been succeeded by something far more nearly approaching Greek unconsciousness. In place of the struggle whether some one passion should prove master of the man or the man master of himself, we now often have life in its simpler aspects, in its mixture of good and evil; and Art once more has assumed a prominent, in some cases dominant, place in our better works of fiction. We say better advisedly, as quite distinct from best, for the highest art in fiction will still be occupied with the deeper problems of human life, with the mystery of pain, and the complex threads which form the strange woof and warp of human weakness and human greatness of aspiration and of failure. But on the next level—one far from the lowest— where the ordinary novel-reader was wont to encounter only one phase of life played out with infinite small variations, till all but the veriest novice knew beforehand how the misunderstanding must end, and was at least sure that the last chapter of the third volume would find hero and heroine "living happy ever after," we have now at least exchanged the jargon of the drawing-room for that of the studio or the counting-house, and anyone has only to compare a few such novels as Akestis, Only Eve, A Novel with Two heroes, or the one before us, with a score which will at once suggest themselves, to see how considerably we'are the gainers.

After all, the interest of a man's life lies very much in his work. The happiness of his life may be made or marred by a woman ; probably, as a rule, it often is. Pygmalion is still unsatisfied while his statue lacks the living breath, but life has interests out- side happiness and outside misery too, and to bring ns face to face with these interests in spheres other than our own is worthy work on the part of the novelist, and really widens the sympa- thies, and consequently the life of the reader, as no mere romance is capable of doing. But we have lingered too long before coming to the subject which has suggested these thoughts. The book before us is a clever, readable work, with a few glaring defects and some improbabilities, but full of interest wherever the writer deals with artistic details. The two first volumes are decidedly the best, though we may safely predict no, one will lay the story down without finishing the third, which, by the way, contains a sketch of the MacScumbles, which is among the finest in the book. The plan of the story is well arranged, and can be suffi- ciently indicated without in any way destroying the reader's further interest. Thornicroft, a rising young artist, with an honest desire to do good work, never so really happy as when painting, finds his finest conceptions spoiled by the wretched models with whom hitherto he has had to be content. We are introduced to him while at work, endeavouring to transfer to his canvas the picture present to his mind, which was this :— "Iphigenia robed in saffron, standing by the altar ready crowned for death—standing, as it were, alone; but serried ranges of shields and a thorny hedge of bristling spears circling around behind her, showed she was hemmed in by hard, cruel, impatient men, who thought it right she should die. From these her eyes were turned away to the masts of the fleet in the narrow strait below, one or two of which wore just visible in one corner. The foreground was a fragment of 'Diana's flowery mead,' with tho flowers all braised and crushed by the armed host who had come to see the maiden die—as the flower of her young life was so soon to be crushed also. Ho had not brought in Calchas, from a fooling of repulsion—only a part of his robe was seen on the left side, and the point of a sharp sword."

But where was he to find an Iphigenia ? To understand Thornicroft's subsequent conduct, we must remember that he is a man courageous in the presence of external danger, "weak and cowardly in the presence of danger from within," and that he belonged to the number of those whom George Eliot has delineated with unerring hand when she makes Romola say of Tito, "There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for be was young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle and kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds,—such as make men infamous." Twenty times in the course of reading this story, this passage crossed our minds, as possibly it crossed the writer's also ; but

• Thornicrojrz Model. By Averil Beaumont. London: Chapman and Hall. 1878.

this is a story of the conventional life of the nineteenth century, and the lights and shadows are not those of Rembrandt,

but of Phillips. Leaning over a book and devouring its con- tents, in a second-hand bookshop in Chapel Street, is the girl destined to be Thornicroft's " Iphigenia." She is exceedingly well drawn, and so is the whole history of Thornicroft's relations with her, until the hour that he asks her to be his wife, and she, " pushing his face just far enough from her own to look into his eyes, and full of sadness, says, 'You are doing it out of pity, because you know my home is not happy, and I am such a fool, and I love you so much, that I can't help letting you do it.'" With the contrast between the humble home, the vulgar mother, and the coarse surroundings, and the dinner at the Dartmores to which Thornicroft hurries, only just in time, and where he is once more emphatically at home among a picked set of men and women, the wittiest barrister in London, the poet of the time, the adven- turous traveller, with the wives and daughters pretty, witty, agreeable, and well-dressed,—all is admirably described, and no

whit overdrawn.

Our interest in Thornicroft's work increases, and we watch the

progress of the " Althea " till all the horror, piled up to agony- point by the sensation-school, pales before the creepy feeling with

which we see Mrs. Morris, the mother-in-law, enter the momen- tarily deserted studio with that duster, and know that the paint is still wet ! Even at this crisis we see, what the writer has pointed

out throughout, how far Helen's meek deference and obedience was fatal to the love of a man like Thornicroft. When the moment came when he must declare his marriage, and by declaring it cut himself off for a time at least from much he has found so pleasant hitherto, he shrinks back, and Helen

suffers ; he will first paint a picture which shall establish his fame, and give him the right in social opinion to take his own way. In

a word, the world shall not be able to do without him before he ventures to break any of its chains. " ' The world forgetting,' " says the writer, is a sublime and enviable condition of mind. " ' By the world forgot,'—well, that is a state one likes to have a

choice about." Meantime, like all men tortured with a double self, Thornicroft grows irritable, and Helen bears all, but too patiently. Then, as so often in real life, an entirely fresh set of faces comes upon the scene, and each day takes a different colouring. With one of the principal characters in her book we think the author has been singularly unfortunate. Captain Almeric Robert Powerscourt Wymondham, " cadet of a noble house," is an im- possible snob. Snobbism has a wide margin, but there are forms of it impossible to men of gentle birth. Arrogant self-distrust lies far oftener at its roots than arrogant self-esteem. The younger son of any noble house, certainly of such an one as Captain Almeric claimed to represent, could not consider himself demeaned by marrying the daughter of a member of the Supreme Court of Bengal, the grand-daughter and adopted child of a rich baronet, third of the name, of good estate, and honorably known.

Nor would he, under any circumstances that we can conceive,

write a letter to ask permission " to pay his addresses " to the young lady in question ; or, when she gives pence to a boy with a monkey, exclaim, " Is it possible that you actually—you, a lady— can bring yourself to carry that dirty, common-looking money in your pocket" ? No, we must set down Captain Wymondham as a failure ; he is not even a caricature. However, though an impor- tant personage in the story, he has no large part to play, so that we are not often bored with his presence. The entire second volume is filled with the description of a six months' tour, under- taken by Sir Willoughby Markham and his party, including

Thornicroft, and is charming. The story of Sir Willoughby and the priest in the Coliseum would almost alone make the book worth

reading. And how well one knows all the regular table d'hote

guests. Here is a bit of description of a German seated next Winifred, one of the girls of the party :— "However small or however enormous these Germans are, they all have sentimental souls, and pine for some one to whose name they can tack a diminutive, and who will take an interest in their• mental development. He described to her the growth of his understanding, and what he was doing for it now ; and if painstaking study of his temples and other antiquities would do it, be sure he would hereafter be the luminary of many a Kriinzchen in the Vaterland. He had saved up a small salary to give his soul this pleasure, and told her all the stages of the proceeding with quaint natural touches, and many mis- givings that there was something wrong in having such unmitigated enjoyment. He had had a grandfather, a like-minded man to himself, who, living as far north as Memel, resolved in his youth to see Rome, and ways and means not being forthcoming, went thither on foot. When at last, footsore and weary, he reached a point where the long-yearned- for towers were visible, he turned back, saying 'Der Mensch muss Bich beherrschen ;' and, still on foot, toiled back to his Northern home. `What do you think, mein Fraiilein, of that man? Was it not a fine

character ? Now I could not have done that,—no, not to save my life. And now, I have not only seen Rome, but Athens also.'" And to Athens also our party proceeded. The events of the last few years have given only a too sad vraisemblance to their adventures there, which are certainly splendidly told. Thorni- croft's physical courage and mental cowardice come out in full relief, and before we have done with him, we have alternately echoed the admiration of his friends and the opinion of Mac Stumble, his fellow-artist, " God forgive you, Thornicroft ! If that be true, I must say I should not like to know many such rascals as you are."

We cannot dwell on the improbable elements in the story with- out telling the whole, which would be scarcely fair. Difficulties, natural, social, and legal, are got over with a surprising amount of ease, hardly compatible with the stern realities of actual life ; but there is enough of genuine interest in the book to cover deficien- cies such as these, which, with a very little more care, might have been wholly avoided. If the author will give us more scenes like those in Athens, more lifelike sketches like the MacScumbles, we shall hail her next work as a probable fresh pleasure for an idle hour.