MISS RIVES'S NEW NOVEL.*
Miss AMiLIE RIVES is one of those provoking writers of whom it is hard to speak, except in terms which can appear little else than a series of contradictions and opposing state- ments. It is as impossible to read her novels and be in- different about them, as it would be to read them and find them dull. She can be by turns clever, provoking, unex- pected, audacious ; sometimes delightful in her frank uncon- ventionality, at other times laboured and extravagant, and even grotesque, in her determination to be original at any cost. And in spite of all that is flighty and absurd in what she has written, there can be no question that she possesses in an unusual degree the gift of telling a story, with a bright freshness and an eager unconstraint of style, that conveys in all she says a vivid sense of life and colour and movement, and gives to her work a peculiar and individual interest of its own. Her characters are almost always limited in their range to certain highly emotional types, whose sameness is scarcely dis- guised even under their varying conditions and circumstances. It is likely enough that neither knowledge nor sympathy would be sufficient to enable Miss Rives to pass far beyond these limits ; but within them she is confident, experienced, courageous; working with an accurate and even delicate power of observation, which often takes us by surprise in its happy skill, and its certainty of instinct. And, indeed, the world into which she takes us needs for its effective portrayal, a quick eye and a sure and rapid hand. Without them, and without some deep and underlying sympathy with the natures which she has undertaken to interpret, it would be impossible to paint the constant changes and variations of feeling and emotion and passion through which her characters live and act; the instincts which overpower reason and judgment, and the impulses which rule with a morbid intensity ; the acts of wild and strangely distorted self-sacrifice, audaciously claiming the sanction of the most sacred and solemn truths, through which alone conscience and principle seem capable of displaying themselves. The novel before us, with its perplexing title, whose meaning only becomes intelligible in the con- cluding pages, is in every way a very characteristic one. Of plot and action, in the ordinary sense of the words, there is not much, the only point of the story being an unfortunate and unhappy second marriage. But it offers a picture all the more striking because, as it seems to us, it is an unintentional
• According to St. John. By Ameie Rives. London ; Heinemann.
one, of the scene of confused misery which can so easily be brought about, where feverishly excitable and morbid natures have never prepared themselves to face the discipline of life, when it calls for moral courage or self-control, or for the endurance of suffering and disappointment.
The scene of the story is laid in Paris ; but with one ex- ception all the characters are American, for the most part artists and art-students, who live together in a second-class boarding-house. Place and people are described with a great deal of cleverness. The distinctive aspects of a great city, under its many and changing conditions, are caught with the quick appreciation of an eye watching for new and unaccustomed impressions ; and hardly less vigorous is the sketch of the shabby, shiftless life of the Maison Roget, with its oddly mixed assemblage of inmates, whose unconventional and easy intercourse allow at once a great deal of critical deprecia- tion of each other's artistic merits, and the interchange of many good offices and acts of kindly unselfishness. More elaborate than these slightly sketched figures is the study of a middle-aged, coarse Frenchwoman, a combination of odious follies and weaknesses, and of tragic unhappiness. The study is a powerful one in many ways, wanting neither in keenness of observation nor force of expression ; but it is made unneces- sarily distasteful by the perverse preference which Miss Rives too often shows, for insisting with emphasis on all the more ignoble details, and the unlovely physical peculiarities of her subject.
But the strength of the book, as well as its weakness, is shown in three central characters, on whom the course of the story depends, an artist, Adrian Farrance, his dying wife, and. a young Virginian who has come over with her Negro maid to Paris, to study music. Miss Rives, who is always much more vivid and interesting when she writes of women than of men, does not succeed in giving any but a very vague impression of Farrance, who seems to us merely an inferior masculine edition of the impulsive and emotional natures which she draws with so much instinctive sympathy. Far more individuality and force are shown, both in the fantastic but curiously appealing figure of Mrs. Farrance, the beautiful woman, "extravagantly blonde," in whom the anticipation of death arouses such passionate regrets for past happiness, and in the portrait of the young girl whose freshness and grace and simplicity engage all our sympathy, until the false sentiment of the conclusion destroys any possibility of interest in the story. The second marriage of which we have spoken, is one which takes place, after his wife's death, between Farrance and this young girl. To her it seems a step into a life of confident and undoubting happiness, but no sooner are they married,. than Farrance finds himself assailed by ever-recurring regrets,. and by a haunting sense of divided loyalty. For a time he keeps his secret ; but at last, by means of a somewhat threadbare expedient, it is discovered by his wife. It is only at this point that the significance of the title given to the book breaks upon us. In her despair, and with a confused sense of freeing her husband from an unendurable burden, the girl commits suicide by the injection of an over-dose of morphia,—justifying her action by the words in St. John's Gospel : "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." And so the story abruptly ends.
It is hard to speak patiently of so audacious an attempt to heighten the climax of a story by the introduction of such sacred words. Judged merely as a matter of taste, or of artistic instinct, the fault is a sufficiently grave one. There is a false ring about this part of the book, which makes one suspect, as one reads, that Miss Rives was more intent on creating an impression of daring originality, than on adding any true pathos to her story. But whatever the motive, there is something shocking in the thought that any one can read the passage in St. John's Gospel, in which these words appear, and yet can let themselves be tempted into such wicked and, foolish irreverence.
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