RECENT NOVELS.*
THOUGH Simon Dale is described as a historical novel, we may be pardoned for doubting whether it is based on any very profound study of contemporary documents, while in regard to the presentment of facts, and the delineation of character, Mr. Anthony Hope treats historians much as love treats lock- smiths. That is to say, he is not in the least indebted to Von Ranke's masterly illumination of the tortuous foreign policy of Charles IL, nor is he concerned to emphasise the unedifying aspects of Nell Gwyn's career, to whom the role of good genius is assigned, in this exceedingly agreeable if unconvincing romance. As a picture of the times its value is of the slightest : as a free fantasia in the Ruritanian manner it is a spirited and ingenious performance. The central idea—that of the honest country gentleman who comes to Court, and not only preserves his honesty but achieves his heart's desire in the teeth of Kings, courtiers, spies, and bravos—is a commonplace of recent writers of romantic fiction. What distinguishes Mr. Anthony Hope from his compeers, however, is the lightness of his touch, the elegance of his manner, and the point of his dialogue. There are no "things better left unsaid" in a novel by Mr. Anthony Hope, for he is a past master of the art of reticence. Where the ice is thin he skims over it with admirable discretion. Nothing could be more irreproachable than his treatment of the crucial episode of the story, in which the hero is employed as an agent in the negotiations for an exchange of Court favourites between Charles II. and Louis XIV., the situation being complicated by the fact that the English lady, who is ignorant of her real destination, is an innocent girl in love with Simon himself. Simon's triumph over the Roi Soleil is conceived and carried out in true Zenda fashion, and it is followed by a swimming exploit almost equal to the amazing performance in Mr. Meredith's Lord Ormont and his Aminta. It only remains for Nell Gwyn to say, in so many words, • (1.) Simon Dale. By Anthony Hope. London : Methuen and Oa—(2.) Shrewsbury: a Romance. By Stanley J. Weyman. With 24 Illustrations by Claude d. Shepperson. London : Lon Green, and Oo.—(3.) The Fight for the Crown. By W. B. Norris. ndon Seeley and Co.—(4 ) The Trtumyh of Death. By Gabriela &Annunzio. Translated by Georgina Harding. London : William lisinemann.— 5.) The Tragedy of the Iforosko. By A.. Conan Doyle. London: 8,nith and Elder.-03.) Lin McLean. By Owen Mister. Lond.m Harper Brothers.—(7 ) Rough Justice. By M. E. Braddon. London: Simpkio, Mal shall, stud ro.—(8.) A Villain of Parts. By B. Paul Neuman. London: Harper brothers.
" Bless you, my children," and for Simon to address a tre- mendous rebuke to his own King before retiring to lead a life of dignified leisure in the country. The absence of Wardour Street affectation is one of the numerous minor merits of this ingenious tale.
Mr. Weyman styles his new book simply a romance, but is in reality a historical novel, and an uncommonly able and interesting piece of work into the bargain. The author'e success is all the more significant because he deliberately discards at the outset all the cut-and-dried passports to. popularity familiar to the workers in this domain of fiction.. The hero of the story is not brought on the scene until the eighth chapter, and then disappears for another hundred pages, while the central figure and narrator is a social cipher, destitute of personal charm, alternately the dupe and tool of the stormy petrels of that seething age of intrigue,—the last decade of the seventeenth century. A writer of less popularity than Mr. Weyman could hardly have ventured to delay the entry of his principal dramatis persona so long ; and we con- fess to having found the opening chapters of Shrewsbury, in which the sordid beginnings of Richard Price's career are set forth with relentless detail, somewhat irksome read- ing. But the reader is amply rewarded for his perseverance, and when once the scene shifts to London, and the ex-usher is drawn into the vortex of Jacobite intrigue, Mr. Weyman holds us with unrelaxing grip. The mainspring of the story is the physical likeness which exists between Price and hie patron, Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury, a likeness which the enemies of the King and the Duke resolve to exploit with a view to compromising the latter and furthering the Jacobite interests. In this scheme the leading parts are played by historical personages,—Robert Ferguson, " the Plotter ; " the Duke's mother, that terrible old woman who connived at the assassination of her husband ; and Matthew Smith, the in- former ; Sir John Fenwick, the Jacobite emissary, being the victim of the successful impersonation of Shrewsbury by his. secretary. All these characters are drawn with a skill and force for which Mr. Weyman's previous novels had not pre- pared us. Setting aside the invented episode of the imperso- nation, Mr. Wey man supplies a very plausible vindication for the inconsistencies, to call them nothing harsher, of Shrews- bury's career. His portrait of the old Countess is a brilliants study in vindictive malignity, nor is he less felicitous in his treatment of the plotter Ferguson—who, by the way, was. whitewashed in a forgotten novel published in 1873, For Liberty's Salce, by J. B. Marsh—and his associate, Matt Smith, though in the last-named case he deviates from the accepted view that Smith was a weak tool, and represents him as a per- son of Machiavellian cunning and great personal magnetism,. But the great triumph of the book is really the self-revelation of the narrator. The psychology of cowardice has seldom been more elaborately set forth in a work of fiction, white Price's supreme and redeeming exhibition of moral courage, at the prompting of his sweetheart, is not only in keeping with the man's true instincts, but it is led up to and narrated in a manner which carries conviction. As we have said so much in praise of this admirable story, Mr. Weyman will bear with us if we point out that the text is disfigured by a good deal of bad and misspelt French, and some dubious Latin. It is just possible that this is intentional, but in that case the stupid reader should have been put on his guard.
The Fight for the Crown may, perhaps, be taken as evidence, together with The School for Saints and Sir George Tressady, of the revival of the political novel. But although the story traces the conversion of a gelatinous Gladstonian into a limp Liberal- Unionist during the period which had for its central episode the Phcenix Park murders, Mr. Norris does little to rekindle the ignes suppositos cineri doloso. To plunge headlong into the cockpit of party politics would, indeed, mark a strange deviation from the urbanity and self-possession which are the distinguishing features of his method. He takes us to Ireland, it is true, and gives us a glimpse of the Invincible. on their way from the Park and afterwards in the dock, but his treatment of the subject is singularly perfunctory. Nor is this to be wondered at, for themes that call for dramatic intensity, aba ndon, or emotion are entirely unsuited to Mr. Norris's method. The life in the delineation of which he excels is that regulated by the canons of good and bad " form," and the qualities which he consciously or unconsciously represents as most desirable are those of tolerance, acquies- cence, and tact. Wilfrid Elles, the quasi-hero of the plot, is a very nice young man of attractive exterior and well-lined purse, who is captured by Lady Virginia Lethbridge, a fascinating lady of Gladatonian proclivities, and attached to her household in the character of a political tame cat. By way of completing his education he has visited Ireland and half lost his heart to the lovely.daughter of a distressed Irish landlord. With characteristic caution he has abstained from declaring himself, bat when Miss, Nora Power goes on the stage and accepts the attentions of Lord Southfield, Lady Virginia's brother, a disreputable young nobleman, the political tame cat, if we may be pardoned the " bull," develops into a dog-in-the-manger. The situation is complicated by Lady Virginia's efforts to marry her brother to the plain daughter of a wealthy parvenu, and her sister (who is in love with Wilfrid) to the parvenu himself. Lady Virginia's cold-blooded worldliness is only equalled by the fatuous blindness of her protege, who does not in the least deserve his ultimate good fortune. The part of the amused looker-on as played by a genial cynic, Lady Virginia's husband, who has the last word, bien entendu. The Irish girl is well drawn, though she is a trifle too shrewd and level-headed to be typical ; and Mr. Norris needs to be reminded that no Irish- woman, gentle or simple, ever says " indade, indade." That as a transpontine solecism which we hardly expected to see perpetuated in Mr. Norris's pages, Signor Gabriele d'Annunzio's novel has for its heroine a nineteenth-century Falsirena, and in other particulars it would not be difficult to find parallels between the long-drawn voluptuousness of Marino's Adone and the roses and rap- tures of The Triumph of Death. There is the same "tyranny of the kiss," the same odious mixture of religiosity and sensuality, for " Marino prefaced each canto with an allegory, declaring that Adonis and Venus symbolise the human soul abandoned to vice and the allurements of sensuality which work its ruin, while in the body of the poem they are consis- tently treated as a pair of enviable, devoted, and at last unfor. nate lovers " (Symonds's Italian Renaissance, Vol. VIL, p. 291). So, too, d'Annunzio's admirers insist on the profoundly im- pressive moral of his story. The faculty which some people display for unearthing morals from unpromising soil is only comparable to the skill of those projectors who undertook to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. For ourselves, we are more impressed by the tribute paid to Signor d'Annunzio by another section of the community. For, according to a story which went the round of the papers last year, a gang of burglars who had broken into the novelist's house, were so penetrated with remorse on learning the identity of the owner, that they returned all their booty with an effusive apology testifying their unqualified admiration for his noble works. We can quite imagine, after a perusal of this novel, that the works of its author would be the favourite reading of the Italian criminal classes. We console ourselves with the reflection that The Triumph of Death would be almost
too luscious for the simple taste of the British burglar. It only remains for us to add that the translation, which omits some characteristic exuberances in the original, has been exe- cuted with fluency and ability by an English lady whose name appears on the title-page.
Mr. Wells has endeavoured to show us in his War of the Worlds bow a whole nation would behave in the face of an unforeseen and abnormal disaster. Dr. Conan Doyle in The Tragedy of the Sorosko has essayed the more modest task of illustrating the effect on the morale of a mixed party of excursionists in Egypt of a sufficiently terrifying but per- fectly conceivable series of adventures and perils. The story, or episode, is of the simplest. A dozen tourists, English, American, and Frenoh, engaged on a holiday trip up the Nile, are beset by the Dervishes in the immediate neighbour- hood of the Second Cataract; three escape, two are killed, and the remainder, after a few days of agonising suspense, are rescued by the Camel Corps from Wady Haifa and Sarras. The story is sure of an especially attentive perusal by that large number of persons who, under the dynasty of Cook, have made the trip in question. It is proverbially agreeable to play the looker-on at perils tua sine parte pericli, doubly so when you yourself have sat in the "siege perilous." But the tale appeals to the general public as well by virtue of its alert narrative, its incisive charac- terisation, and its admirably graphic pictures of the Nubian landscape. The dramatis persona are well chosen and con- trasted, and Dr. Conan Doyle, in showing how minor differ- ences of taste and temper are obliterated by community of misfortune, strikes a deeper note than is commonly to be found in this cheery optimist. Another engaging feature in the book is its fervid patriotism, its robust enthusiasm for our work in Egypt. Its worst faults, in our opinion, are an occasional tendency to caricature, as in the grotesque pedantry of the Manchester solicitor, and in the references to the devices by which Colonel Cochrane defies the ravages of time. We know that nc man is a hero to his valet, but the Colonel shows such true grit that we resent being admitted to the valet's standpoint. Lastly, we object to the collective disparagement implied in the remark that Mr. Cecil Brown, the dandy diplomat, steeped in preciosity, was " slightly tainted with the Oxford manner." It is rather amusing, however, to find that this young decadent, seeking to find an artistic analogy to a night in the desert, remarks that " there is a movement in one of Mendelssohn's songs which seems to embody it all." Why, Mendelssohn represents the nadir of Bceotian commonplace to the esoteric humanist of to-day !
The manners and morals of the hopeful "cow-puncher" who fills the title-role in Mr. Wister's story, Lin McLean, may not be always above reproach, and he almost forfeits our sympathy by the suicidal folly of his plunge into matri- m ony with the mature " biscuit-shooter," alias railway bar- maid. Still, with all his faults, Lin McLean is a very taking figure, and the picture which Mr. Winter gives of rough life in the West, "when Wyoming was a Territory with a future, instead of a State with a past," is full of life, movement, and colour. Lin's adventures as cowboy, prospector, gold-miner, and apothecary's assistant are all breezily told, as may be gathered from this laconic account of an episode in the life of his partner : "Through excellent card-playing he won a pinto from a small Mexican horse-thief who came into town from the south, and who cried bitterly when he delivered up his pet pony to its new owner. The new owner, being a man of the world and agile on his feet, was only slightly stabbed that evening as he walked to the dance-hall at the edge of the town. The Mexican was buried on the next day but one." One of the best chapters in the book describes the sporting, though some- what irregular, behaviour of the Governor of Cheyenne in commissioning a professional rain-maker from Kansas to end the drought. The sketch of Jode, the representative of orthodox meteorology, is quite delightful. As the narrator puts it,—" We had come to look at our enterprise as a game between a well-established, respectable weather-bureau and an upstart charlatan. And it was the charlatan that had our sympathy,—as all charlatans, whether religions, military, medical, political, or what not, have with the average American." The death of McLean's bigamous wife is rather gruesome, and there is a touch of effusiveness in the senti- mental scenes throughout. But we have found it an excellent restorative after the enervating lusciousness of The Triumph of Death.
In the villain of Miss Braddon's new novel—for she has reverted in her latest venture to villains, murder, and mystery —we trace a family resemblance to " Mister William," the hero of one of Mr. Gilbert's Bab Ballads, who, having led a perfectly irreproachable life until he was thirty-six, determined to in- demnify himself for his abstention from crime by a momentary lapse into " infamy untold." So he forged a cheque for half a million pounds, and got imprisoned for life, "which annoyed him very much." Oliver Greawold in Rough Justice escapes more easily. He is an eloquent social reformer, a profes- sional philanthropist, who murders his cousin, Lilian Carford, in order to secure at once the fortune which he had counted on, but which had been left to her with reversion to himself. Sus- picion falls on Lilian's lover, who had recently deserted her, and the story is concerned with Arnold Wentworth's efforts to clear his character in the eyes of the woman he wishes to marry. In the end, thanks to the indefatigable exertions of Mr. Fannce, a highly accomplished detective, the guilt is brought home to Qreswold ; but Wentworth is content with a signed confession, which is witnessed by Wentworth's innamorata and then burned. Greswold is accordingly spared to continue his philanthropical labours, "and everywhere, among the people who try to leave the world better than they .found it, his name commands admiration and respect." Bough Justice is not an agreeable story ; but in point of construction, narrative ability, and animation of dialogue, it shows no falling off from the author's previous efforts. One point is to be noted, in conclusion, as characteristic of Miss Braddon, and no doubt as contributing to her popularity. Although she has been writing novels for forty years, or thereabouts, she has never failed to adapt her standpoint to that of the moment at which she happens to be writing. The latest fads, fashions, and foibles are all alluded to in Bough Justice.
What Mr. Neuman calls in his dedication an "experiment in trap-doors" turns out to be an excellent sensational story on entirely original lines. The notion of a company of burglars, forgers, and smugglers establishing themselves in a sham almshouse styled the "Home for Antient Christian Traders" is decidedly engaging. The scene of A Villain of Parts is laid in the wilds of Yorkshire half a century back, and the kidnapping of the Squire's little daughter, her rescue by the narrator, a schoolboy on a visit to the house of a schoolmate, and the subsequent blockade and defeat—after a sanguinary conflict — of the Antient Traders, form the materials of a truly thrilling story, in which the part of chief thrill-maker is played to admiration by a truly terrifying villain.
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