RECENT NOVELS.*
THE only previous work of Mr. Paul Cushing's which the present writer remembers to have read is Misogyny and the Maiden, a clever, brilliant, albeit somewhat fantastic and tanta- lising story. His latest novel, or romance—for we know not exactly which to call it—has all the merits of its predecessor with few of its defects, and has. moreover, certain additional merits which are all its own. In the matter of construction, there is a decided advance, for The Blacksmith of Voe has a compact and shapely organism of invention : it is a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end,—a steady, uninterrupted progress towards a goal which is in sight from the opening of the novel. The scene is laid in a rural, picturesque, out- of-the-world village in Derbyshire, thinly and somewhat unnecessarily disguised as Peakshire, and the period of the story seems to be, though no dates are given, some half-century ago. As a study of life in a place where, and at a time when, people for the most part " had quiet ways," and a very little excitement sufficed to raise–a local hurricane of emotion, The Blacksmith of Voe is picturesque, interesting, and effective, with that peculiar kind of effectiveness often best secured by the writer whose imagination is courageous enough to forego literal veracity of detail in order to secure general truth- fulness of impression. Mr. Cushing's background is specially good because specially artistic in its management. We have no wearisomely elaborate descriptions of scenery, or persons, or customs. Mr. Cushing makes no apparent effort to be pictorial ; but by a multitude of happy touches he achieves the very end which he seems to ignore, and becomes pictorial in the only legitimate literary sense of the word, not by painting pictures, but by suggesting pictures for painting. The Black- smith of Voe is a story with a plot, though it is a plot with the minimum of mystery, for which we cannot but be thankful, as a mystery in any hands save the most skilful is apt to be more irritating than interesting. The least experienced novel- reader knows that Christopher Kneebone, the stranger who drops down suddenly upon Voe, and provides talk for many more than nine days by bidding and paying a fancy price for the village smithy, is none other than the shepherd, Abel Boden, who has suddenly disappeared years before ; and we are curious only to know how the revelation of identity will be led up to, and what will come of it. The situation is un- doubtedly a strange one. Abel is supposed by the villagers to have attempted the life of his cross-grained brother Luke, and to have fled from justice ; the fact being that Abel, not Luke, has really been the victim, and the brother who walks unsuspected among his fellow-villagers, believes that the bones of the man who is his nearest of kin are lying at the bottom of the disused shaft into which he has thrown the apparently lifeless body. The portrait of the murderer— for such he is to himself—is drawn with both vigour and subtlety; and strange as it may at first seem, there is real troth to human nature in the author's presentation of him as moved to relentless hatred, rather than to penitent tenderness, by the proximity of the son of his victim. The relations between young Abel and Christopher Kneebone during the time when the former knows the latter only as his employer. and never dreams that he is his father, are delineated with real beauty ; and there is a quite remarkable combination of power, imagination, and pathos in the chapter which tells the story of how Abel and his cousin and sweetheart Ruth are rescued from the flood, and how, in the supreme moment of terrible anxiety, the stranger unwittingly reveals his identity to his old companion, Nathan Wass. We spoke of Misogyny and the Maiden as being somewhat fantastic ; here too, there is an element of fantasy supplied by the quaint pair, Gentle- * (1.) The Blacksmith of Voe. By Paul Cushing. 3 vole. Edinburgh and London : W. Blackwood and Sons.—(2.) Joan Vellacot. By Esma Stuart. 3 vols. London : R. Bentley and Son.-13.) The Devil's Die. By Grant Allen. 3 vole. London: Chatto and Windus.—(4.) Miracle Cold. By Richard Dowling. 3 vols. London : Ward and Downey.—(5.) Boaavent urn. By George W. Cable. London : Simpson Low and Co.—(6.) Sara Cretce, and Edtthi's Burglar. By Frances Hodgson Burnett. London : F. Warne and Co. man Phythian and his sister Janoca ; but it is such graceful, pleasant fantasy, that we would not be without it, and it cer- tainly brightens a story which, without it, might be a trifle too sombre in tone.
As Joan. Vellacot is from the pen of Esme Stuart, it is almost unnecessary to say that it is full of good writing and good workmanship. The literary style is throughout excellent, and the admirably grouped characters which really live for us have a sharp distinctness of outline which is achieved with hardly a single touch of caricature or exaggeration. Some readers may think that the rapidity with which Major Duncan and Joan fall in love with each other, and Margaret Austin with Major Duncan, is a slight violation of the modesty of nature ; but considerate critics will remember that when a long story has to be told in a given space, there is a strong temptation to parsimony of that space in dealing with preliminaries. We should be more inclined to complain that the commonness, almost vulgarity, of the language of the self-made Mr. Austin is a little overdone ; but both these criticisms deal with matters of comparatively trifling consequence, and if Joan Vellacot had no other faults than these, it would be an almost faultless novel. Unfortunately, the whole structure of the story rests upon one of those incredibilities of action which destroy the pleasure of every intelligent reader. Major Duncan, a V.C., and therefore a military hero, but other- wise a very weak and unheroic person, is invited to the house of Sir Henry Vellacot to witness some tableaux vivants, in which Sir Henry's younger daughter, Joan, plays the part of Cleopatra. The new Cleopatra finds a new Antony, to whom she on her part is far from indifferent ; and, indeed, Major Duncan is made as certain of Joan's love as he could be made by anything but an explicit verbal avowal of it. He happens, however, to hear a casual statement to the effect that Joan is engaged, or is on the point of becoming engaged, to his friend, John Peel, and, without making the slightest en- deavour to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the report, at once—that is, in a few hours—offers his hand to Margaret Austin, the daughter of the rich manufacturer. He is accepted, and the very day after his acceptance he learns his mistake ; but it is too late to undo what has been done, for the Major is above all things a "man of honour." The marriage, of course, takes place ; equally of course, Major Duncan and Joan Vellacot meet again ; and, unfortunately, the honour which compelled him to marry the woman he did not love is not strong enough to' prevent him from neglecting her for the sake of the woman to whom his heart has been given once for all. The usual harrowing complications follow,— the veil is partially removed from Margaret's eyes; but just when she is beginning to hope that the coveted prize of her husband's love may yet be hers, she is finally undeceived, and a sudden fall down a precipice brings her troubles to an end. Major Duncan disappears ignominiously from the scene ; Joan, after a period of weak, ineffectual remorse, finds utterly undeserved comfort in the faithful but somewhat fatuous love of her old suitor, John Peel ; and so the story comes to an end. Of all the characters in Joan Vellacot, Margaret is the only one who can be regarded with unqualified satisfaction. She reminds us constantly and very pleasantly of George Eliot's Dorothea. She has the same large ideals, the same self-distrust ; her idealisation of Major Duncan is very like Dorothea's idealisation of Mr. Casanbon ; and the chapter in which she tries to help the poor, vain, frivolous Cecily whom Carey Vellacot has married, though much less rich in power and pathos than the interview between Dorothea and Rosamund, has still something in common with that memorable scene. To say this is to say much ; but we might have said more, had not the author ruined the intellectual effect of her work by the mistake made at the opening of the story.
Mr. Grant Allen has proved himself a very accomplished novelist, as well as a very charming scientific expositor ; but we think he will show his wisdom by keeping his novel-writing and his scientific exposition apart. At any rate, should he be again tempted to try the combination, we hope he will be led to a less unpleasant subject than that which provides the plot- scheme of The Devil's Die,—one of the most gruesome books which it has ever been our misfortune to read. The intro- duction of disease-germs as factors in the evolution of a story is, so far as we know, an original experiment ; but its originality is its only merit, and having seen it tried once, we are more than satisfied to forego a repetition. In the pages of Mr. Wilkie Collins's Heart and Science, and in the more re- cently published anonymous story, St. Bernard's, the portraits of medical men with a turn for physiological and pathological investigation are the reverse of flattering ; but in revoltingly diabolical ingenuity of wickedness, both Dr. Benjulia and Mr. Crowe must give the pas to Dr. Harry Chichele. This devotee of science is specially anxious to obtain some germs of the disease known as lodging-house fever, and being in attendance upon a hospital patient who is suffering from that complaint, he hits upon an ingenious contrivance by means of which he can, without—as he imagines—exciting any suspicion, give his patient the chill which he knows must prove fatal. The woman dies, the germs are procured, and the result of Dr. Chichele's investigations is the attainment of a position which enables him at once to marry the beautiful and winning Olwen Tregellas. After the intoxication of the honeymoon has passed away, he begins to find his wife some- what insipid ; and, unfortunately, at this juncture the pair make the acquaintance of a woman even more beautiful than Olwen, and unspeakably more brilliant, Seeta Mayne, the famous novelist, to whose charms Chichele at once falls an unresisting victim. The attraction is mutual ; but Seeta, though she has allowed her vanity to lead her into a position of danger, has a nature at once strong and loyal, and Chichele is made to understand that so long as Olwen stands between him and his new enslaver, there can be nothing in their rela- tions beyond calm friendship. At this point Olwen falls ill, and her husband is employing injections of morphia to relieve. pain and to procure sleep, when it occurs to him that if he substituted for the morphia an infusion containing the germs of Asiatic cholera—a prize which he had just pro- cured—the obstacle to the gratification of his passion would almost certainly be removed from his path. The revolting deed is done, but we will not pursue the story further, and those who wish to acquaint themselves with its pro- gress beyond this point, must do so in Mr. Grant Allen's own pages. It must in fairness be said that though the interest of the book is morbid, it is very strong ; and readers whose nerves are vigorous enough to carry them through the earlier half of the first volume are certain to read. on until the story is finished. The sickening plot is worked out with much more care than it deserves ; the characters of Seeta Mayne and Harry Chichele are clearly conceived and vividly realised ; and in spite of its unpleasantness, the book may be useful (all the more useful because written by a scientific man, and not a mere " sentimental " and " hysterical " outsider) as an imaginative presentation of a truth often emphasised in these columns,—that the curiosity of science, uncontrolled by fixed and recognised principles of morality, may become one of the most terrible factors of evil the world has yet seen. We may ask whether Mr. Grant Allen, usually so careful in matters of detail, has not made one rather bad blunder. Dr. Mohammad All is of pure Arab descent, and yet he is repeatedly spoken of, not only by others but by him- self, as "a black man," between whom and a white woman there is an impassable barrier. Surely this is a mistake. An Arab is no more a black man than is a Parsee, and the marriage of a Parsee to an English lady is by no means an unheard-of event.
We do not know any novelist of equal power who disappoints us so frequently as Mr. Richard Dowling. His earliest novel, published eight or nine years ago, was unmistakably the work of a man of genius rather than of mere talent ; but, like many of the first works of such men, it bore obvious marks of inex- perience and immaturity; it was, in short, pre-eminently a book of promise. Unfortunately, in his succeeding works this early promise has not been fulfilled, but, on the contrary, it has been at once repeated and falsified. Here, for example, in Miracle Gold, we have the familiar strokes of genius— indeed, more than strokes, for there are chapters in which, from beginning to end, we never lose the consciousness of imaginative power—but the book as a whole lacks form, pro- portion, discriminating delicacy of touch; and in that art of managing materials dexterity in which comes by practice to every competent workman, Mr. Dowling seems to have made little or no progress. Even the central character, the only character in whom we can feel much interest, is not made real to the imagination. Oscar Leigh, the hunchback, is evidently intended to be a man whose physical affliction has intensified to a quite morbid ex- tent the natural cravings for love and beauty and fame, —a fine conception which, if adequately worked out, might without doubt have been made very impressive, but which Mr. Dowling ruins at the outset by handling which is not only clumsy, but quite unimaginative. When on our first intro- duction to Oscar Leigh we see him leering at the young girl whom he is engaging as his mother's companion, and on the very evening that she enters his house endeavouring to kiss her, we think of him only as a vulgar satyr, who is rendered more repulsive by his deformity ; and unless our notion of Mr. Dowling's intention in the character be altogether erroneous, he allows Leigh to give us at starting an altogether libellous impression of himself. Indeed, the story altogether, both in the matter of character and incident, seems to have been im- perfectly thought out. The wonderful clock, which is to leave the clock at Strasburg far behind, and to win for its maker an immortality of fame, the miracle-gold business which is at first an alchemist's dream, but which degenerates into commonplace trafficking with a receiver of stolen property, Oscar's devotion to Dora Ashton, and Edith Grace's discovery of her descent from a Polish King, are simply raw materials of fiction, which are not amalgamated by artistic manufacture, but simply thrown together. The romance—for such it must be called—is irritating, because we feel not only that it might have been a good book, but that Mr. Dowling might have made it so. We regret his failure all the more because our opinion of his powers is such as to make it a personal disappointment.
Mr. Cable's Bonaventure is, in one respect, like truffles, caviare, and pole de foie Bras : by those who like it at all, it will be regarded as a great delicacy ; but it is not a book to be recommended indiscriminately to everybody. It is a story— or rather three stories, for each part has a certain unity and completeness of its own—of very slow movement, told with a minute attention to the surroundings of each situation, as if the writer were recalling memories or dreaming dreams for his own pleasure, and were anxious rather to prolong his delights than to get to the end of his tale,—a method hardly likely to be popular in an age of hurry. Then, too, these same surroundings are of a nature to repel rather than attract those for whom they have not the charm of familiarity; they seem strange, and yet lacking in the kind of strangeness which inspires interest. Bonaventure is a story of Acadia, the home of Longfellow's Evangeline; but it tells of days long later than hers,—modern days, when the great civil war has been fought, and which are not far enough from us to be seen through that atmosphere which rounds prosaic outlines and softens crude colours. Mr. Cable is a realist—rather too uncom- promising a realist in the matter of dialect, for some of his pages are terribly difficult, at any rate to an English reader—but he is not one of those superficial realists who are content with the obvious prose of the actual, though he is content slowly to work his way through the prose to the poetry which he knows to be beneath. " Fine-writing !" a captious reader may exclaim ; " what does it mean?" Well, the above sentence has a look of fine-writing, and we frankly admit that we can- not explain our meaning, if to explain it means to put it in other words ; and yet, if the reader will turn from our sen- tence to Mr. Cable's book, we think he will cease to find in the former any obscurity. Perhaps we may put it more clearly this way,—that while almost every detail belongs to the region of homeliest prose, the total effect left on the mind by_the book is that of three lovely and perfectly poetic idylls. Bonaventure himself is a beautiful conception, and one that satisfies the reader's mind, and the three stories between which he is a connecting-link—stories which might be headed " Conflict," " Victory," and " Rest " — are singularly fine examples of work which dares to be literal and yet succeeds in being truly ideal.
From one point of view, we think it rather unfortunate that the external appearance of Mrs. Burnett's latest volume should so closely resemble that of Little Lord Fauntleroy. In addition to this external resemblance, there is a certain internal like- ness, for both books deal with child-life ; and a natural conse- quence of this double similarity will be a series of comparisons more than usually odious because more than usually unreason- able. Little Lord Fauntleroy was charming in its way, Sara Crewe and Editha's Burglar are charming in their way ; but as the ways are wholly different, there is no common standard of comparison. The two volumes bear the same relation to each other that any work of imagination bears to any work of fancy, and the first question to be asked of either is, whether it is good of its kind. Now, these last two stories are very good, with the special kind of goodness that is con- sistent with a certain Want of body, which in more ambitious work would be felt as a defect, but is not a defect here. Neither Sara nor Editha is a flesh-and-blood child in the same way that Cedric Errol is a flesh-and-blood child ; but there is a charm which is independent of flesh-and-blood, and they happen to have it. As an idealised portrait of a child who makes a wretched life not only endurable, but positively enjoyable, by living it in a world of pure imagina- tion, Sara Crewe is perfect ; and if her rescuer, Mr. Carrisford, is somewhat of a deus ex machind, his interposition is in harmony with the general design. The episode of the starving child to whom Sara gives five of the six buns which she in her hunger could have eaten so well herself, is a bit of very pretty and simple pathos ; and if Sara Crewe is taken for what it is, it cannot fail to be enjoyed. Editha's Burglar is still slighter and still more fanciful ; the little child's colloquy with the housebreaker involves a situation which in itself almost belongs to the region of farce rather than of pure comedy, but its pathetic grace saves it from farcical suggestions. In one respect only the new book can be legitimately compared with its popular predecessor, and the comparison is not in its favour. The illustrations, with one or two exceptions, are much inferior to those of Little Lord Fauntleroy.
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