HARRY JO SCELYN.*
A VISITOR to a flower-show, describing a particular rose he has seen there, may perhaps speak of it as not tea-scented enough to please him, or say that its shade of colour is not quite deep enough, or its petals quite sufficiently rounded, to come up to his idea of perfection ; yet in spite of this criticism, he is firmly convinced that roses excel all other flowers in beauty, and would not dream of denying that the subject of his remarks was in truth a lovely specimen of its kind, and worthy of high rank amongst them. And with somewhat the same sort of feel- ing does the reviewer sot to work to criticise a book by so well- known and justly popular a writer as Mrs. Oliphant. Having once stated that it is from her pen, cola va sans dire that there will be something in it, and that it will be pleasant, well written, and immeasurably superior to ninety-nine out of a hundred of the novels whose names make a brief appear- ance on the lists of circulating libraries, and thou vanish for ever, without the world. being one pin the wiser or the worse. Her name on the title-page is a guarantee that the
+Harry Jocelyn. By Hrs. Oliphant. London : Hurst and Blaokott.
book will be free from faults of style, plot, and composition to which inferior authors are liable ; and therefore the critic's office is to be chiefly performed by expressing an opinion on the doings and sayings of her characters, as 'though talking over the proceedings of actual flesh-and-blood acquaintances. The rose might possibly come a little nearer to our beau ideal than it does,—but it is an unmistakable rose, nevertheless. And having stated this by way of preface, we will proceed to comment upon Harry Joscelyn, a work which we consider thoroughly characteristic of its author, though not to be classed quite as high as the Chronicles of Carlingford, and one or two other of her masterpieces.
Home life, with all its constituent parts and relations, is a sub- ject which Mrs. Oliphant well knows how to handle, and forms the theme of the book now before us. The tale opens with a bluster- ing domestic storm, which recalls to mind the proverbially lion- like entry of an English March, and carries on the analogy still further, by the lamb-like state of general bliss and concord in which it terminates. The Joscelyns are a half-yeoman and half- gentleman family of very old blood, but reduced social position, living in the Fells of Westmoreland. The youngest son, Harry, rushes away from home to seek his fortune in the wide world, in consequence of a quarrel with his father ; goes to Liver- pool, and thence (undeterred by not knowing a word of any language but his own, and having no acquaintances in Italy) takes steamer to Leghorn,—which, by-the-bye, seems to us a decided improvement on that common refuge for young men in difficulties, America. He is simple, and rather stupid ; but he is also honourable, big, strong, good-looking, and straightforward; and by dint of these qualities and of good- fortune in the matter of a drunken man whom he knocks down, he makes his way with astonishing facility. Yet his experiment was certainly a hazardous one, and we do not recommend ignorant young men in general to think it a model that they may safely follow, for we much doubt every one being so fortunate as he was in meeting with honest Livornese. At all events, our own short experience of the town has been less favourable; for the result of a couple of hours we once spent there was to make us thoroughly agree for the moment with the vindictive remark of a fellow-traveller, who said that to call Italians extortionate thieves was gross flattery. Mrs. Oliphant shows excellently well her hero's distaste for the foreign manners and customs into the midst of which his practical, but prejudiced, untravelled, and essentially English nature finds itself suddenly plunged. He does not like the black coffee, nor the " queer '
bread,—which is only queer because different to anything he has himself ever seen before; and how thoroughly English that adjective is 1 He takes no interest in pictures and sights, and as soon as he is landed says, " I don't care about seeing your palaces ; what I want is to get something to do. Ain't there a Times, or something with advertisements, where a fellow could see what's wanted P" The author has evidently studied atten- tively the behaviour of our countrymen abroad, and we must acknowledge with shame how much foundation there is for saying that Paolo's experience of Englishmen was that they were often rude. But we really do think that Harry is made rather more of a brute than need be. His offensive patronage of and contempt for Paolo, and absolute want of comprehension for the generous self-devotion of the enthusiastic little Italian, who places himself and everything belonging to him unhesitat- ingly at the disposal of an " amico," seem a little overdrawn, and make the picture more a caricature of John Bull, than that faithful representation of human nature as it is, which Mrs. Oliphant's
portraits usually are. There are other unamiable traits about the hero which make us feel angry with him. For one thing,
he is imbued with a form of selfishness peculiar to his sex, to which Mrs. Oliphant always appears very much alive, and which makes men consider it a matter of course for women con- tentedly to accept the lives of dull monotony which the lords of creation scornfully reject as intolerable for themselves. This feeling is especially evident in the scene between Harry and his sister Joan, when she has come down from her bed in the middle of a cold night to let him in, on his return from the public-house. Their father locks them both out, but though Joan in her night-gown is, of course, more likely to suffer from it than her brother, and though her exposure to the cold is the result of her kindness to him, he feels little or no compunction on her account, being too much engrossed in himself to pay Uttention to her :—
" ' I can't see you, Harry ; but I know you're down, though I can't see.'—' Down ' he said, ' can a fellow be anything but down with a raging wild beast for a father, and shut out of every shelter through' a cold spring night P'—' That's very true,' said Joan, and I'm no, example, as you've seen ; but still I'm in the same box, if that's any consolation.'—' No, it is no consolation,' said Harry ; it makes it worse ; for if you are here perishing of cold, it's all on my account.' I'm not perishing of cold. I'm as hearty as a cricket. If he thinks he'll break my spirit he's much mistaken, and that's all about. it. It did touch me the first minute. I feel that I was just a big baby. But after all, Harry, if you will stay out till all the hours of the night, and go to that " Red Lion," which is known to have ruined
many a Ob, hold your tongue about the " Red Lion !" you are as bad as old Isaac. Where am I to go ?'—' What's to pre- vent you biding at home P' said Joan. Dear me, you're not such a deal better than I am, Harry Joscelyn. Where do I ever go P I've been as young as you once upon a time, and what diversion was ever given to me ? and I'm not to say so dreadful old yet. Can you not put up for a week with what I have put up with all my life ?'—' You don't understand—it's quite different,' said Harry, hotly ; you're a woman, you're an old— Good Lord ! can't you see the difference ? Where should you be but at home P but what would you have me do,. stuck between two women and that—that father of mine ?' "
Another blot in Harry's character is his neglecting to write and tell his mother and sister what had become of him ; they had done all they could to help him, and he knew how anxious they would be, and yet he treated them with what can only be called odious ingratitude.
There is one phase of the relations of every-day family life. which seems to have made a great impression on Mrs. Oliphant, for it is a more or less marked feature in all her novels,—more. strongly developed in Miss Marjoribanks, perhaps, than in any other. We allude to the keen appreciation which children are apt to have of the peculiarities, both objectionable and the reverse, of their parents, and the way in which they often. regard their progenitors with a critical eye, and a strange mix- ture between severity for their failings and affection. In the present book, this is shown, especially in the case of Mrs:. Joscelyn and her daughter Joan. The mother is intensely fussy and nervous, and the daughter is calm, and regards all such demonstrations with quiet disapproval; yet Joan has a genuine love for her mother all the same, and entertains the profoundest belief in Mrs. Joscelyn's superior gifts of education and refinement. Here is the introduction to these two women :- " Mrs. joseelyn was a pale woman, of a very different aspect. She was, people thought at the first glance, not so old as her daughter, notwithstanding the advantage which a calm temperament is supposed to have over an excitable one. But it is not always true that the sensitive and self-tormenting grow old sooner than their more tran- quil companions. Joan had never been young at all, so to speak: Her mother was young still in the freshness of a mind which would not be controlled by experience, which trusted every new promise. and embraced every new hope, and was as bitterly disappointed by every failure of her hopes as if she had never known a disappointments before. How many pangs this temperament brought to her it would be impossible to reckon ; but it kept a sentiment of youth about her,. a sense of living such as her daughter in her best days never knew. Both of them, howeirer agreed in believing that this temperament was a curse, and not a blessing ; the daughter, with heartfelt astonish- ment at the power which her mother possessed of tormenting herself, —if indeed it were not a fictitious torture which sbe rather liked than. otherwise, as Joan sometimes imagined, with instinctive contempt ; while the mother as often sighed, Oh, that she could take things as quietly, give up making a fuss, bear her troubles with the same calm as Joan !' But neither could the one bring herself to the level of the other, nor either understand the different conditions which made- similar action impossible. Joan for her part followed Mrs. Joscolyn's restless movements with a wonder which she could never get over. What good could it do ? Why couldn't she sit down and, get her work, and occupy herself ? Even, Joan thought, it would be' better to got a book and read (though that was a waste of time), and take her mind off' the thing that so troubled her."
Joan's surprise at herself, when she, too, gets into a fuss about something, and her astonishment at finding that she has " so, much of mother" in her, are very amusing.
Our remarks have taken longer than we expected, and we have only room to observe in conclusion that the denouement is somewhat too much spun out ; that we found Rita a particularly graceful and captivating individual ; that the only character we altogether object to is Harry's father, a violent, coarse,. savage boor, whose appearance on the scene is never welcome ; and that, though the book is less decidedly humorous than Phoebe Junior, and some others of Mrs. Oliphant's previous works, yet that touches of quiet humour occur with sufficient frequency to make skipping unwise, lest any of them may thereby be lost.
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