RECENT NOVELS.*
THE mere ordinary perusal of such a novel as The Dancer in Yellow hardly suffices for due appreeiation of the singular charm of Mr. W. E. Norris's literary manner. For such appreciation one has not simply to read the book, even with the deliberation demanded by what one knows to be worth it; when the reading is completed one has to survey in reflection the ground which it has covered, and ask oneself bow many novelists of our time—or indeed of any time—could, by the simple magic of literary art, have conferred continuity of interest upon so tenuous and unpromising a narrative theme. The younger son of an English country gentleman, who is thoroughly honest and rather foolish—both his honesty and his folly being unmitigatedly commonplace—falls in love with and marries that very public character, Miss Daisy Villiers —née Black—who, by her persistent favouring of one colour in costume, has become known to fame as the "dancer in yellow." She is vulgar, virtuous, eminently good-natured, and still more eminently Bohemian ; she loves her husband, but her consent to marry him has been mainly a whim ; and that she may retain her liberty absolutely untrammelled, she insists upon the marriage being kept a secret. From the point of view of the ordinary woman this was a blunder, for the pres- sure of a tangible bond would have kept Frank Coplestone faithful in thought as well as in deed ; but as it is, there is little wonder that, during his two years' absence on military service, he and his wife should drift away from each other. Then enters the charming, refined young widow, Mrs. Trafford, and we see that poor Daisy's chance has gone for ever ; but we have to get through two fairly well-filled volumes before the "dancer in yellow" is laid in her Brighton grave, upon which Frank and his second wife plant appropriate daffodils. This is really all the story, and yet one has no sense of padding or dragging or literary marking time, or any of the other expedients for covering pages which the right-minded novel-reader so properly detests. A com- plete analysis of Mr. Norris's success would demand space, but it depends largely upon the fact that he never writes save with perfect taste, and that he hardly ever deals with a phase of life of which he is ignorant. We say "hardly ever," for in this very book the chapter devoted to the Blacks is simply a coarsely-drawn caricature, but this is a rare lapse. There is no other character who, for one instant, falls from artistic grace, and Daisy herself is a masterpiece,--certainly one of the finest of Mr. Norris's very fine portraits.
Miss Margery Mollie in Up in Arms, treats, perhaps, too lengthily, but with considerable grace and skill, the not very unfamiliar theme of a husband and wife falling in love with each other after marriage. Noel Everard might have had no story to tell, but for the accident which happens on her wedding-day, and which, by transforming her husband, the impecunious Piers Fordham, into the wealthy Sir Piers, reveals to her the fact that the man whose wife she is has sought her not for herself, but for her fortune alone. She has the double humiliation of believing that not • (1.) The Dancer in Yellow. By W. E. Morris. S vols. London : W. Heine. mann.—(2.) Up in Arms. By Margery Hollis. S vols. London: R. Bentley' and Son.—(3.) Friend or Rival, By Elizabeth NeaL S TO13. London: Hard and Bleakett.—(4.) A Modern Crusader. By Sophie F. F. Vetch. London: Adam and Charles Black.—(5.) The Masquerade Mystery. By Fergus Hume. Lnndon : Digby, Long, and CO.—(6.) When Greek insets Greek. By Joseph Hatton. London: Hutchinson and Co.—(7.) The Phantom Death, and other , Storms. By W. Clark AusselL London: Chatto and Wincluz—(8.) 1Vandering I Heath : Stories, Sketches, and Studies. By Q. London : Cassell and Co: only is she herself an encumbrance, but that even her money is a superfluity; and having heard of a recent legal judgment empowering a wife to live her own life without molestation from her husband, she determines to avail herself of it, and takes up her abode with some relatives who introduce her to their friends as Mrs. Johnson, a young widow. Accident decrees that the worthy Mrs. Meredith, Noel's aunt, shall pitch her tent in a village close to Sir Piers Fordham's chosen residence, and of course it is inevitable that from time to time husband and wife should be thrown into each other's society. As a matter of fact, Fordham has not been so purely mercenary as his wife has supposed him, nor is she so uncom- promisingly implacable as he thinks her, or indeed as she thinks herself. This being the condition of things, the coming together of the perversely separated pair is a foregone con- elusion, and there is a large class of novel-readers who are reasonably or unreasonably impatient of inventions which are obviously designed to retard the inevitable. It was of this class we were thinking when we spoke of Up in Arms as being possibly too lengthy; but it must be admitted that the obstacles which present themselves in the way of a repentant Noel are so natural and probable that the critic who objects to them has really very little to say for himself. Never once does Up in Arms become exciting, but never once does it become dull or flat. Simple as the story is, it is told with a refinement, a vivacity, and an occasional touch of humour which makes it very agreeable.
There is nothing in the least remarkable about Friend or Rival, which in various respects is more faithful to certain respectable conventions of fiction than to the observed facts of ordinary human nature, but which, nevertheless, is a very creditable and pleasing story. The person who suggests the doubt indicated by the title is an exceedingly clever young gentleman, one Sergins Orme, who is half an Englishman and half a Russian. He is the comrade of Percival Leicester, first at school and afterwards at the University, and in the com- petitions in which they take part, always manages to get the leading place, leaving Percival in the not dishonourable but tantalising position of proxime accessit. Sergins, however, is not content to snatch from his friend scholastic and athletic honours, but sets himself to be also his successful rival in love, and in this last strife for the foremost place he strains to the very utmost the proverb which declares that all is fair in love and war. It is at this point that the story beoomes a little unreal. Sergius develops into a scoundrel rather too suddenly, and chooses a kind of scoundrelism which is much more common in fiction than it is in the actual lives of even not very highly principled young men. Indeed both in the rascality of one of Vein's suitors and the credulous simple- mindedness of the other, there is a certain overstepping of the -na-lesty of nature, though perhaps not more of it than is to he found in nine novels out of ten. On the other hand, Vera herself, with her whims, her moods, and her perversities, is as lifelike as she is charming, and keeps her secret in the story, just as it certainly would be kept by a Vera of flesh and blood. She alone would suffice to commend Friend or Rival.
After Margaret Drummond, Millionaire, with which Miss Sophie Veitch made so promising a beginning, it must be confessed that A Modern Crusader is rather disappointing. It is also rather perplexing, for while there is no doubt whatsoever that it must be numbered among novels with a purpose, it is very difficult to define that purpose, or indeed to say anything about it save that it is somehow connected with "the drink." The hasty critic who classes A Modern Crusader with such a book as Mrs. Henry Wood's Danesbury House, and lightly dismisses it as a teetotal story, will certainly be wrong ; for if spirit-dealers are the objects of Miss Veitch's hatred, total abstainers seem to be hardly less the objects of her contempt,—at any rate, those who are introduced into these pages make an unmistakably disagreeable and de- spicable group. Unfortunately, even among the few characters who do not offend, either by producing alcohol or by refusing to consume it, the ordinary reader will fail to find any one who appeals to him very pleasantly, except, indeed, that wholesome, genial young fellow, Dr. Munro, and he is simply a super- numerary who counts for little or nothing. As for the Rev. Arthur Reid, the "crusader" of the title, he is the most conspicuous failure in the book. There is—to paraphrase a famous saying—but one step from the heroic to the priggish, and little does Miss Veitch imagine how successful she has been in portraying the lineaments of the ideal prig, while attempting a counterfeit presentment of the genuine hero! The whisky-demon, Mr. Duff, is certainly as objectionable as the novelist knows how to make him ; but when he and the parson have their little skirmishes, it must regretfully be admitted that the latter, with his ghastly lack of humour, is not the one who shows to advantage. In A Modern Crusades Miss Veitch seems somehow to have missed her way.
Mr. Fergus Hume is BO enamoured of the narrative idea of that marvellous first venture of his, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, that he has returned to it after many days, and all the old tricks for alternately arousing and baulking the reader's curiosity reappear in his latest book. The Masqueradi Mystery is, like its famous predecessor, a mystery complicated by processes which seem to be Mr. Fergus flume's own patent, and it is a patent which we should not think that any one is likely to infringe. There are—speaking roughly, for we have not made an accurate enumeration—about a dozen characters introduced into the story, which is of course the story of a murder, and the author shows his ingenuity in fixing our suspicions first upon A, then upon B, then upon C, and so on, until he reaches K or L. Before, however, we get to these letters, we are thrown off our coarse by the discovery that the man whose murderer we have been tracking down has been alive all the time, and so we are brought face to face with a new victim and a new series of clues. It all seems rather childish, but there evidently are people who like this kind of thing, so Mr. Fergus Hume is not mysterious in vain.
Every novelist of the old-fashioned kind who does not devote himself to sex or problem fiction, but who simply tells the most interesting story he can invent, is bound to write at least one novel dealing with the French Revolution. It has almost become a convention, like the Royal Academician's diploma picture, and now Mr. Joseph Hatton has followed the example of Lord Lytton, Charles Dickens, Henry Kingsley, and the rest ; he has fallen into line and given us his Revolution story. There is not really very much to be said about When Oreek meets Greek after one has noted the fact that the title is rather a bad misquotation—a kind of thing that is apt to irritate one to a perhaps unreasonable degree, as certain awkward gestures will destroy the effect of an admirable oration. The new story seems to us one of the least striking of its author's books. Mr. Hatton cannot help being vivacious and readable ; but there is not in When Greek meets Greek, as there is in almost every one of its author's other books, a character or a series of connected incidents which at once arrests us and bolds us by simple skill in story- telling. Mr. Hatton's work seems a little perfunctory ; and we are inclined to think that be bad his eye on the stage rather than on the library-table, for hie latest novel is not by any means such good reading as one or two of its pre- decessors; we believe it would make an effective drama. There is certainly one scene—that of the death of Gr4bauval and the subsequent impersonation of the dead man by De Fournier—which, if well-managed, would bring down the house.
At this time of day it is superfluous to praise the literary workmanship of the writer who chooses to be known as" Q." ; but of the two volumes of short stories which come at the close of our list we prefer The Phantom, Death to 'Wandering Heath. Both Mr. Clark Russell and " Q." are seen at their best when their imagination has plenty of room in which to dis- port itself ; but the former suffers less than the latter from being cabin'd, cribb'd, confined into the compass of some twenty or thirty pages. Indeed, Mr. Clark Russell is as familiar with the demands of the short story as with those of the three-volume novel ; he knows just how much of narra- tive it will hear; and such tales as "The Lazarette of the 'Huntress,'" "The Major's Commission," "A Memory of the Pacific," and the gruesome but cleverly handled title- story, are almost perfect specimens of the species to which they belong. " Q.'s " Wandering Heath is described on the title-page as a collection of "Stories, Studies, and Sketches," and the inevitable result of such a mixture is a certain want of unity and general scrappinesii of effect. Then, too, there is among the various papers a very considerable inequality of merit, some of them being little artistic morceaux, in which "Q." is seem at his best, but others mere pot - boilers which, in spite of a certain facile cleverness, are not really worthy of preservation.
The latter need not be indicated, but among the former must certainly be numbered that really beautiful story, "The Roll-Call of the Reef," which tells how trumpeter Tallifer and drummer Christian became friends in life, and how in death, strangely enough, they were not divided. "The Bishop of Eucalyptus" deals with one of Mr. Bret Harte's subjects, and therefore looks rather lost among its Cornish com- panions, but it has both tenderness and humour ; and there are at least half-a-dozen items in " Q.'s " latest collection which are sufficiently good to float a book, some pages of which are a little ponderous.
Previous page
