RECENT NOVELS.* Miss HELEN SHIPTON is one of those novelists
in whose companionship we have a comfortable sense of security; for we know that we shall never be bored and never irritated, and such knowledge is great content. There is plenty of vigour and no little originality in Alston Crucis, especially in the very effective portrait of the hero, a manly, likeable young fellow who is by descent half-English country-gentleman and half-gipsy. The two strains of breeding are both influential in determining his career, and in shaping his performance of the task which he accepts as the first duty of his life,—the vindication of the fair fame of his dead father, and the dis- covery of the true author of the crime of which, in the opinion of the local wiseacres, that father has been guilty. A scheme of this kind naturally involves Miss Shipton in a somewhat complicated plot, for Harold Malreward finds that the un- known enemy has assailed not only his father's reputa- tion, but his own right to the name that he bears ; and as at least some of the interest of the book depends upon the preservation of the author's secret, it must not be revealed here. Happily, there is no great temptation to such in- discretion, for quite apart from the simple narrative pro- blem, Alston Crucis has no lack of substantially interesting matter. Miss Shipton is not merely able to tell a story smoothly ; she can break up the smoothness by intro- ducing, in an unforced way, a number of vigorous situations in which the interest is concentrated, and many of these situa-
* (1.) Alston Crucin. By Helen Shipton. 3 vols. London : Hurst and Blao.kett.—(2.) The Tower of Taddeo. By Outdo.. 8 vole. London : W. Heine- mann.---(3.) Laura Buthvou's Widowhood. By C. J. Wills and John David- son. 8 vole. London: Laurence and Bullen.—(4.) Sir Godfroy's Granddaughters. By Rosa Nonchette Carey. 3 vols. London: Richard Bentley and Son.— (8.) .d Sister's Sin. By Mrs. Lovett Cameron. 3 vole. Loudon : F. V. White and Co.—(8.) When Charles the First was King. By J. S. Fletcher. 3 vole. London Richard Bentley and Son.—(7.) Whither ? By M. E. Francis. 3 vols. London : Griffith, Ferran, and Co.
tions are both dramatic and pictorial. Among those which are specially noteworthy, are the conversation in the old hall between Harold and his gipsy grandmother, which would lend itself to effective illustration ; the scene in Mr. Walrond's house, where Harold, in his disguise, is taken as a prisoner and is recognised by Elizabeth ; the affray in the market- place, where the life of Thornton Harris is saved by the young avenger who has sworn to hunt him down ; and the death of the villain of the story in the lonely house on Calton Edge. We do not know whether Miss Shipton could write a good play ; but there is dramatic material in Alston Crucis which a skilful adaptor might turn to capital account. In its present form, it is certainly an able and interesting novel.
For a good many years, critics of the better sort have made a dead set against the romancer who calls herself "Guido," as, about a generation ago, they made a similar set against the pseudo-poet Martin Tupper. Neither writer can be called an entirely innocent victim. Tupper's pretentious platitudes were not things to be endured without protest, and in various stories of '1 Guida's " there is enough unwholesomeness of matter and crude garishness of manner to call for just casti- gation. Still, it is about time—so far, at any rate, as the living writer is concerned—to remember that the proverb about giving a dog a bad name is hardly an adequate embodi- ment of the 'principles of eternal justice ; and the critics who write as if " Ouida's " voluminous contribution to fiction were fairly represented by such books as Strathmore and Moths betray either ignorance or something even more culpable. That " Ouida's " writing seldom loses a certain floridity, repellent to people of quiet tastes, may be frankly admitted ; but floridity is consistent with many substantial virtues; and from the graver or less tolerable defects of several early books, the greater part of her later work is conspicuously free. Here, for example, is The Tower of Taddeo, which, though by no means faultless, has not one of the faults with which the pseudonym " Ouida " is commonly associated, save, perhaps, a tendency to force the pathetic note and to make her more sombre pages un- duly harrowing. The prominent defect of the book is, indeed, a somewhat surprising one, for it is the defect of thinness. The accumulating misfortunes of the old man—bibliophile by nature, bookseller by necessity—who garners his treasures in the ancient Florentine tower, might have supplied a theme for one of those short stories in which " Guide," is wont to show herself at her best ; but they hardly suffice for the satis- factory filling of three volumes. Indeed, The Tower of Taddeo is less a story than an elaborated sketch of one side of Floren- tine life, and as such it has a genuine charm. The author really knows and loves the old Italian cities ; and whenever she uses their towers and palaces and quaint streets as a back- ground for one of her romantic dramas, she always achieves effects of captivating picturesqueness. Her latest story has real beauty, though it might with advantage have been briefer and less gloomy.
Our first demand of a novel which aims simply at enter- tainment, is that it should be entertaining, and in this matter Dr. Wills and his various collaborators seldom fail. Laura Buthven's Widowhood has little specific gravity, and no narra- tive-plan to speak of. It consists of nothing more than the re- cital of the various discomfitures of a series of suitors for the hand and purse of a pretty and rich young widow ; but this is just the kind of scheme which gives Dr. Wills an opportunity for exploiting the gay, irresponsible, and farcical kind of humour in which his soul delights. It is certainly the sort of thing in which he is most at home, for Meyriek Tunstall, the distinguished editor of the Dreadnought, who is an attempt at serious portraiture, is hardly a success. He is intended to be a very heroic and impressive person : the novelist has succeeded in making him only a tiresome prig, a specimen of the enigmatic variety of that detestable species. It is pleasant to think that he is not one whit less impos- sible than are the unscrupulous clergyman, the worldly-wise actor, and the amorous schoolboy who successively and unavailingly compete for the place vacated by the late John Ruthven ; but he is a great deal less amusing than they ; in fact, he is not amusing at all, but only fatiguing, as people always are who never act or speak save at an un- natural high-pressure. Happily, he appears somewhat late on in the story, so there is not so much of him as there might have been ; but there is more than we want. The rejected suitors, absurd as they are, are much better company,—for though they are one and all incredible, they are incredible in an amusing way. There is just one scene in the book which rises above the general farcical level,—the encounter of the lively American, Mrs. Van Settle, with the distinguished editor, who, for this one occasion, assumes the role of a pragmatical St. Anthony. Here the art is a little more careful and serious, but here only. It may, however, be said that if Laura Ruthven's Widowhood is innutritious, it is also innocuous, and very easy of digestion.
Some critic or critics will, in all probability, stigmatise Sir Godfrey's Granddaughters as a decidedly tame novel ; and though "tame" is a much more disparaging epithet than we should feel inclined to use, we see that it might be used with- out injustice of the more glaring kind. Miss Carey is cer- tainly rather too long in getting her story well under way ; and when the narrative-voyage is fairly begun, it is, perhaps, more deficient than it might be in attractive variety of incident. This is disappointing, but the reader who perseveres--and perseverance is not hard—will find some fairly satisfying compensations. The kind of excitement which keeps us out of bed a couple of hours beyond our ordinary bed-time is a good deal commoner, and a good deal less valuable, than the quietly truthful handling of ordinary character and treatment of familiar domestic situations, to which Miss Carey mainly devotes herself ; and almost any kind of so-called tameness is preferable to certain kinds of wildness. Still, one may say that the novel would have been all the better for dealing with a less hackneyed theme. We suppose there are stupid and pig-headed elderly men like Sir Godfrey, who insist upon making matches for their young feminine relatives, and who, when events do not favour their schemes, " carry on " like lunatics ; but we are certain that the proportion of them in fiction is very much larger than it is in real life, and anyhow, the type is one of which we are getting rather tired. As is often the case, the writer's most attractive work is seen in the background rather than in the foreground of her story The best use is made of the people who have nothing to do but to fill up the odd corners,—such people, for example, as the wooden, insensitive cleric, Mr. Glyn, who is one-third admirable, two.t.hirde exasperating ; and the sweet-mannered, artistic, and utterly selfish Julius Vincent, wbo is wholly exasperating and not admirable at all. Why does not some one write a novel in which there is neither hero nor heroine, but in which all the characters are subsidiary P The question is, of course, a bull ; but we are convinced that the idea of it is a good one, and Miss Carey is just the writer to work it out capitally.
Who was the sister whose sin gives a title to Mrs. Lovett Cameron's novel P Lil Gander, we suppose,—indeed, the absurdly chosen quotation from Hood on the fly-leaf leaves us in "no possible doubt whatever,"—but, in reality, Daphne, in spite of her self-abnegating loyalty, was surely the greater sinner of the two, as the offences of love must always be more venial than the offences of bate. Lil, a half-invalid, mother- less girl, who spends most of her time on the cleawing-room couch, and whose only knowledge of life is derived from the study of novels, has the ill-fortune to attract the admiring notice of the shallow-hearted, cowardly Eric Denison, on. whose mother's estate Mr. Gamier is the agent; and Lil loves not wisely and not well. Eric might have fulfilled his promise and made Lil his wife had he been left to himself, but he is very easily persuaded into marrying his mother's nominee, and the deserted girl finds in suicide a refuge from shame, So far, the story is trite enough ; but Lil's doleful romance is only a prologue to the more elaborate, less familiar, and certainly less natural, story of her sister Daphne's vengeance. She, also, has a lover, a very different type of man from Eric, but she turns her back upon him and upon all the ordinary interests of a girl's life to wander about the Continent with a vague hope that some chance encounter with the unpunished scoundrel may put it in her power to make him feel pain not less intense than that which he wantonly inflicted upon Lil. Of course the improbable chance presents itself, as it always does when it is demanded by the exigencies of fiction ; and equally, of course, the re- mainder of the novel is devoted to a setting forth of the moral that successful revenge is one of the Dead-Sea apples of life. We cannot get ourselves interested in the book. Mrs. Lovett Cameron has the knack of narrative which ensures a modest success at Mudie's; but there is little value or vitality in A Sister's Sin. The only character in it who seems really alive is Dr. Grant's half-sister Therese,—an unpleasant but undoubtedly clever portrait.
The historical novel, so popular in the days of Scott and his would-be successor, G. P. R. James, has somewhat lost its hold upon the public ; but the success of such books are Kingsley's Westward Ho ! among the seniors of our genera- tion, and Mr. Besant's Dorothy Forster and Dr. Conan Doyle's Micah Clarke among the juniors, proves that, even in a somewhat unfashionable species, really good work will tell. Mr. Fletcher need, therefore, have no apprehensions con- cerning the fate of When Charles the First was King,. which is very good work indeed. It may not be—it is not— another Westward Ho ! but it is quite worthy of a place beside the two more recent of the romances named. It is written in the somewhat archaic style so often adopted for this kind of tale ; and though Mr. Fletcher is not pedantically anxious t o avoid anachronisms of language or thought, the literary manner accomplishes very effectively its intended purpose,— the telling of the story as it might have been told by a simple- minded but intelligent and observant young Yorkshire farmer who was an eye-witness of the events which he records. Thus we have some vigorous incident-sketches illustrating the. growth of disaffection to the Royal cause among the sturdy Yorkshire dalesmen, and most picturesque descriptions of the great fight at Marston Moor, the siege of Pontefract Castle and the scene in front of the banqueting-chamber at Whitehall on the eventful January 30th 1649. Mr. Fletcher gives us just a glimpse of the fiery Rupert, and several times we encounter the Huntingdonshire farmer whom William Dale, Royalist as he is recognises as one who. will give to the world assurance of a man and a con- queror. There is not a little bright humour in the book,. most of which is supplied by the good-natured coward and glutton, Ben Tuekett; and the picture of Rupert Wat- son, blind and mad, riding to his death, shows Mr. Fletcher to be a master of the terrible. When Charles the First was King is not merely a novel of promise : it is a very pleasant performance.
The name of M. E. Francis is unknown to us, but the initials are, we should say, feminine ; and the lady to- whom they belong may be honestly congratulated upon her first attempt in fiction. There is nothing remarkable about Whither ? except its title, which is to us an unsolved and apparently insoluble mystery; but it is, in the main, a. very graceful and pretty story. We say "in the main," because we confess we are not greatly enamoured of the way in which Mrs. Francis sandwiches her village idyll between two slabs of rather lurid melodrama; and there seems something a little gratuitous in the sad ending. This, however, is a mere expression of personal feeling, which will not, and ought not, to count for much. All the chapters for the sake of which the book has evidently been written, are excellent. At the time of the Reformation, rural south-west Lancashire remained largely loyal to the old faith ; and there are to this day various quiet villages which do not number a single Pro- testant among their inhabitants. In one of these, the much suffering Virginia Wentworth finds herself installed, under an assumed name, as village schoolmistress, and the main incidents of the story arise naturally out of her anomalous position. Mrs. Francis sketches with humour and truthfulness some simple types of Lancashire village life. The parish priest, Canon De Mevins, is a very winning figure which gives us the impression of being a study from a living original,—as,. indeed, do several of the portraits. Whither ? is clearly an outcome of long and loving observation of the life depicted in it ; a second book may show whether the author will succeed so well when she has to rely more largely upon invention.
Previous page
