RECENT NOVELS.*

• (1.) Lucille: en Experiment. By Alice Spinner. London: Began Paul and Co.—(2.) Emberrammints. By Henry James. London: Heinemann.—(3.) A Question of Degree. By Caroline Futhergill. London: A. and 0. Blaak.—(4.) Lord Hever. By Percy Hnlburd. London : B.. Bentley and Son.—i&) Gland'', Pemberton. By Florence M. S. Scott. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. —(6 ) The Truth-Tellers. By John Strange Winter. London: F. V. White and Co.—(7.) Lord Harborough. By Anne Elliot. London : Hurst and Blacketn—(8.) Flotsam,. By Germ. Scion Merliman. London: Lengmans, Green, and Co.

WE wonder what would be the feelings of Tom Cringle if he were cast ashore on "San Jose," the scene of the latest West Indian novel from the graphic pen of the author of A Study in Colour. In such a contingency it would be interesting to hear from so candid a critic whether he thought that pro- gress in the West Indies had kept pace with the march of civilisation in the rest of the world. As for Miss Spinner's qualifications to deal with the subject, they have already been proved, and are even more convincingly illustrated in her new work. To take only one point, nothing could be more artistic than the way in which the West Indian landscape, and the flora and fauna of the tropics, are used as a back- ground for the picture, without ever being obtruded at the expense of the narrative. The story, hinging as it does on the ill-starred matrimonial experiment of an !English girl, is inevitably sad in the main, but the author has mercifully given us the brightest ending possible in the circum- stances, and the general gloom of the narrative is irradiated by flashes of genuine humour. The enthusiastic little entomologist is a delightful character, while Miss Gale, the schoolmistress, is a beautiful one, truly "the salt of the earth," without whom life under such conditions as obtained at San Jose' would be well-nigh impossible. Any one, in con- clusion, who is interested in the West Indies, any one interested in the future of the negro, any one who is in search of an engrossing and original story, ought to read this admirable novel. The balance is fairly held. If such people as Madame de Souza and Lids Morales really exist, there is hope for the negro in spite of himself and of such rash experimenters as Lucille.

Whatever measure of success has been achieved by Mr. Henry James in his new volume of stories is entirely indepen- dent of their literary form, which we confess to finding simply atrocious. Setting aside the constant use of slang—e.g., "It was bang upon this completeness all the same that the turn arrived," &c.—there is hardly a page undisfigurod by some gross slovenliness or obscurity of expression. "The effect of my visit to Bridges," we read on p. 7, "was to turn me out for more profundity." On p. 75 the narrator—he is an artist— observes,—" It was an effect of these things that from the very first, with every one listening, I could mention that my main business with her would be jest to have a go at her head, and to arrange in that view for an early sitting." Worse still, on p. 159, we find the following sentence :—" Pretty pink Maud, so lovely then, before her troubles, that dusky Jane was gratefully conscious of all she made up for, Maud Stannace, very literary too, very languishing and extremely bullied by her mother, had yielded, invidiously as it might have struck me, to Ray Limbert's suit, which Mrs. Stannace was not the woman to stomach." Really these stories are often Embarrassments in a sense other than that intended by their author. Happily the matter, though of extreme tenuity of texture, is a great improvement onthe manner. "The Figure in the Carpet" strikes us chiefly in the light of a satire on the extravagances of modern literary hero - worship, but we have an uneasy consciousness that this may not be the aim of the writer. Embarrassment No. 2 is a decidedly clever and rather pathetic study of a girl consumed by an idolatrous worship of her own beauty. The denouement, though dramatic and touching, is marred by its inherent improbability. No person who was stone-blind could contrive to impose upon a shrewd observer in the way that Flora succeeds in doing. The third story, though too full of literary and journalistic "shop," is by far the best in the collection. Here Mr. James gives us an acute and sympathetic sketch of a writer of genius, entrusted with an esoteric mandate, driven by stress of circumstances to coin his brains, striving deliberately and desperately to write down to the level of the gross public, but failing again and again in the attempt. As

• his friend says of him, "When he went abroad to gather garlic he came home with heliotrope." The last tale is a brief but tantalising excursion into the domain of the quasi-super- natural. One rises from the perusal of these stories with a ready recognition of the ability of their author, mingled with dismay at the elaborate futility of most of the subjects he has chosen and the strange amalgam of slipshod colloquialism and preciosity of which his style is compounded. The finicking ways of the narrator, in conclusion, are a constant source of irritation. The man who alludes to his male acquaintances as "poor dear" is bad enough in real life ; he is detestable in fiction.

Miss Caroline Fothergill has set herself a difficult task in her new novel, and if she has not altogether succeeded in setting forth her conclusions in a convincing light, she has attacked the problem with the utmost earnestness and courage. Theodora, the wilful, high-spirited, generous heroine, is just the sort of girl to prefer the semi-feminine grace of a man like David Baldwin to the solid merit and chivalrous reserve of her worthier suitor, Oliver Woodford, a character of whom we see all too little. But the poignant interest of the story does not reside in the relations between Theodora and her lovers. It is concentrated in the fierce jealousy with which Bald- win's mother, wrapped up in her only son, regards the prospect of his marriage and the painful interviews between her and Theodora. And here it may be doubted whether a mother, who is so entirely devoted to her son, as Mrs. Baldwin is represented to be, would have displayed such cruel candour in dilating on her grievance to his fiancee. "My son's marriage," she says„ "is of such immense importance to me. I hoped he would never never marry, that all I have done and suffered for him would have been repaid in that way, that I should always have kept him I think sometimes it is a curse to be a mother, and to have one's children taken away. I have been silent till now, but I must speak at last : you have robbed me without pity, and though I try to love you and forgive you, I cannot."

The situation is not wanting in pathos, but -eproaches happen to be quite undeserved, as Theodora had kept her lover at arm's-length as long as she could. And the sequel is full of the irony of fate, for Theodora, pleading for delay in the interests of the mother, estranges the son, who is, in good truth, a selfish and cold-blooded young man. His ready abandonment of Theodora would seem highly improbable were it not that he has two strings to his bow ; another young lady, quite as clever and almost as handsome as Theodora, being desperately in love with him. MrejyReldwin, accordingly, gains nothing by her outburst, as her smeet_arries within six months. Theodora, we read, returns to Londiar - the scene is laid in Yorkshire—" a sadder and a wiser woman," but in reality she is much to be congratulated on her escape. We only hope the excellent Oliver was repaid for the magnanimity with which he played the waiting game. The story is told almost entirely in dialogue, good in its way, but too consistently strenuous in tone and lacking in humorous relief.

There is a great deal of ill-regulated cleverness in Lord Hever —it may be remarked, in passing, that Mr. Hulburd is not to be congratulated on his coinages of proper names—the pre- vailing sentimentality of the novel being occasionally relieved by scenes of broad comedy. Even in these days the plot must be considered remarkable. For events gradually work up to the climax at which Winifred Carteret, a beautiful high- minded and accomplished girl, having fallen in love at first sight with Lord Hever, the uncle and advocate of a highly estimable and eligible suitor, agrees to elope and become the mistress—or at least to accept a position which can only be construed in that light by the world at large—of Lord Bexhill, a brutal wife-beating satyr, so that Lady Bexhill, her high-minded and adorable protectoress, may be free to obtain a divorce and marry her old and high-minded lover, who ie. none other than Lord Hever himself ! From this monstrous. act of self-immolation, which she is represented as under- taking in a spirit of holy and heroic unselfishness, Winifred is relea sed by Lord Hever's crippled son, who opportunely shoots Lord Bexhill in a sort of irregular duel in which the cripple is fatally wounded by his opponent. Lord Hever marries. Lady Bexhill, and Winifred pairs off contentedly with the nephew, who, by the simple device of growing a beard, has developed an extraordinary likeness to his adorable uncle. The plot, to speak frankly, is preposterous, and the behaviour of these high-minded, spiritual, and heroic personages nothing- short of outrageous. Honour is saved, but only by a species. of acrobatic somersault on the part of the author at the eleventh hour. And yet it would be unfair to denounce Lord.

Hever as a dangerous book. It is, in its essentials, too grc- itesquely improbable to impress the most susceptible reader. Winifred and Ernest Poole—the crippled boy, a hysterical, pseudo-pathetic figure—are of phantasmal unreality, fanatical altruists whose capacity for gratuitious self-sacrifice is only -eomparable to the endurance of an Indian fakir. Lord Hever himself is at times an engaging personage, and some of the minor characters are excellent. The suave, but silly, aristo- cratic vicar is well drawn, and Mr. Hulburd gives us a truly diverting picture of an old lady with a genius for indiscreet and irrelevant philanthropy, "vindictive about generalities, but helplessly good-natured to every individual." The exploits and impostures of her protégés form a series of welcome oases in a wilderness of well-written but oppressive sentimentality. Exception must also be made in favour of the delightful passages in which an elderly farmer dilates on a special gift of his own grandfather :—

" Folks came from far and near to grandfather, folk as hadn't strengktht of mind to do their own cursing, and grandfather he'd curse their son or their daughter, as the case might be. for 'em, just out of hearty goodwill like. But still, in his old age folks did say as he overdid it; the old Rector as lived in that day, and was a bit jealous of grandfather, be said it was his overweaning pride, and maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't ; but if grandfather overwean himself, it was only in his second childhood, and it wasn't for the old Rector, who was none so hearty himself, to point it out to him. You see, the old Rector he farmed the Glebe Farm himself in those days, and that's how his opposition with grandfather began Grandfather said as how the old Rector only prayed for rain to suit his own crops, and that was what just gave him his first call for cursing."

We hope that in his next book Mr. Hullmrd will give his rustics a longer innings.

Fragmentary in construction and bearing obvious traces of inexperience in the technique of story-telling, Gwladys Pem- berton is, nevertheless, a work of distinct charm and decided promise. The heroine, who in virtue of an ingrained idealism rises superior to her worldly, artificial, and self-seeking sur- roundings, is a happily conceived and gracious character, and the elevating influence she exerts on her lover, a healthy, honest, but unintellectual athlete, is indicated with consider- able skill. The story drifts along in a somewhat disconnected style up to the episode of an outbreak of typhoid-fever in a

Welsb- rillagE- –Then all the characters reveal themselves in their true colours in the face of suffering and danger, and in vidence of the shrewd observation of thc author we may quote a curious remark, a propos of the courage and -Coolness

of one of her less agreeable characters :—" Human beings have a tiresome habit of refusing to arrange themselves in classes, and occasionally act in an unexpected manner. Mrs. "Wynne had that intense feelingfor illness and physical suffering which is not found always in the best women and is sometimes absent from the worst, but which by its very existence makes every sacrifice easy and every burden light." This opinion is expressed in a slightly exaggerated form, for no woman could be called really bad who is capable of this devotion, but it is true in the main. Once and again Miss Scott gives us the impression—as in the case of the silly clergyman with a turn for fulsome compliments—that she is inclined to draw too closely from the life ; but much may be forgiven her for her really touching picture of the same clergyman's two little girls. The relations between these two sisters are at once original and convincing. Miss Scott has such a true genius for the delineation of child life that we regret she -should have fallen into the artistic error of protracting the pathos of their tragic end.

The "take-off" of The Truth-Tellers, John Strange Win- ter's latest novel, is hackneyed enough, but it is one of those "openings" which lends itself in the hands of a clever writer to such infinite variety of treatment, that its resurrection is legitimate enough, provided the working- out is artistic. The Truth-Tellers are a young family of orphans born and bred in the Shetland Islands, and entrusted on his death by their father — a "bluff, good - natured, crotchetty, cranky baronet "—to the guardianship of a rich and worldly maiden-aunt in London. The young Blortimers,

who have been taught on all possible occasions to speak the truth and nothing but the truth, arrive in their tartans accompanied by a piper, and the fun begins. The nature of

that fun is best summarised in the words of the maiden-aunt: "When old ladies get their top-knots discussed as scalps with perfect openness before a crowd of people, and when a child tells some one with the most palpably false teeth in the world that now she understands bow some people's teeth rattle like castanets, it becomes very awkward for the guardian of those children." True ; and it is at the same time very distasteful to the gentle reader. The constant detection of dyed hair, rouge, and other artificial " adjuncts " to the feminine toilet, constitute the chief exploits of this veracious crew. Even the venerable " not-at-home " fraud is subjected to their merciless scrutiny. We were always given to understand that truth was stranger than fiction ; we are now impelled to express the pious hope that this sort of truth may remain a stranger to fiction as well.

In Lord Harborough Miss Anne Elliot has given us a very pretty story of the interpenetration of social strata, and if we grant her premisses, for which we have no doubt that the pages of Debrett will furnish ample justification, there is no difficulty in accepting the subsequent development of an in- teresting and romantic situation. Gerald Ford is the post- humous child of a misalliance between Lord Harborough's eldest son and a girl of humble origin. Gerald's sister has been recognised and brought up by her grandfather, but the boy is reared in entire ignorance of his parentage and ante- cedents, by his uncle, a working man of Socialistic leanings. Gerald is taught his uncle's trade, that of a carpenter, inoculated in his Socialistic doctrines, given a fair general education, and suddenly on his twenty-first birthday is launched by the uncle at the head of his unsuspecting grand- father, on the eve of the coming.of-age festivities of another grandson. There is no attempt on the part of the uncle to blackmail old Lord Harborough ; his motives are a mixture of revenge on the family of the man who spoilt his sister's life, and a desire to farther the cause of Socialism by introducing a champion of that doctrine into the enemy's camp. As the proofs of his descent and his legitimacy are irrefragable, Gerald is accepted by his grand- father, a weary but honourable old patrician, and put into training to fit him for his new responsibilities. Needless to say, Gerald's position is exceedingly delicate and difficult, but Miss Elliot has on the whole achieved considerable success in her delineation of the various stages through which her hero fights his way to real, as opposed to formal, recog- nition at the hands of his family. And she is none the less convincing for realising, on occasion, the humorous aspects of the situation. It is, however, a terrible uphill fight for the ex-working man, though in the issue he extorts first the esteem and finally the admiration and affection of his new- found relations. The Socialist bombshell misses its mark, for Gerald was never a thick-and-thin supporter of the modern gospel of labour, but he is no renegade, never disowns his humble past, and proves a generous yet discriminating friend to the working classes. Gerald Ford's elevation is one of the not impossible freaks of fortune which a cynic would describe as the setting of a beggar on horseback. Miss Elliot has supplied a spirited refutation of the proverbial moral which the cynic would regard as inevitably deducible from the data in the present case.

The reputation rapidly earned by Mr. Merriman within the last few years as a writer of well-constructed and interesting novels will not be enhanced or even maintained by his latest venture. Flotsam, if we except the spirited sketches of the fighting before and in the streets of Delhi, is a vigorous but depressing study of a wasted life. Harry Wylam has apparently everything in his favour,—wealth, good looks, strength, and courage. He loves and is beloved by the charming daughter of his shrewd but generous guardian, is consistently befriended by the best officer in his regiment, but with equal consistency invariably follows the promptings of his evil genius. The story is robbed of the element of surprise by the fact that in every single episode Harry's conduct is a foregone conclusion. And this may perhaps account for a certain perfunctoriness in the workmanship of the book, as though the author were anxious to hurry through an irksome and uncongenial task. The style more than once gives evidence of haste, and the Christian name of the villain is always misspelt "Phillip." To sum up, Flotsam hardly rises above the level of a high-class "yellow back," and Mr. Merriman has only himself to blame if his reviewers decline to be contented with such an achievement.