A WOMAN-HATER.*

THERE are some authors with whom, despite their attractiveness to us, we never feel altogether safe ; they are like certain states- men or patent coffee-making machines, one never quite knows what they will do next. Of such authors, Mr. Charles Reade is the most notorious. Possessed of great skill in the construction and narration of a story, gifted with considerable insight into character, and with a bright, graphic style of writing, he has all the requisites of a first-rate story-teller. And indeed many of his works, especially his earlier ones, could hardly be bettered in their peculiar style. But of late years he has endangered, if not altogether ruined his popularity through the indulgence of two or three special whims. The worst of these is his incessant introduction of his own personality into the body of the story on which he is engaged. Not content with making the majority of the characters mouth-pieces for his own theories, prejudices, and fancies, he constantly breaks in, in person, into the action, and explains to the reader, what lie, Charles Reade, thinks about the matter in hand, and also how the reader is to be sure and not misunderstand him.

The naivete with which he assumes that his opinions as to the actions of his characters are of the greatest consequence, though amusing at first, soon grows excessively wearisome, and we tire completely of receiving at every step the, so to speak, stage in.. structions of the author. It need hardly be pointed out how this practice takes away from the reality of the story, reminding us at every turn that we are in the hands of a literary taskmaster, and must take our fiction in the manner he wishes. And there is another drawback which operates against Mr. Reade's story- telling powers, and frequently mars the interest of his narrative. This is his almost universal selection of some popular grievance, abuse, or folly to illustrate, and if possible, to remedy. If there is a thing which has been thoroughly proved in novel-writing, it is that novels with a purpose are mistakes,—that the serious pur- pose always must either interfere with the interest and progress of the story, and be dragged in neck-and-crop, without rhyme or reason, at every possible place ; or else that it must be treated in- cidentally in a dramatic fashion, which can hardly be productive of grave result. Now, in almost all his books has Charles Reade committed himself to this style of writing. From prison reform to private lunatic asylums and their abuses, from the evils of con- fessionals and jealousy in Griffith Gaunt, to those of the bad education of women and their preposterous ignorance of the com- monest laws of health and economy in a A Simpleton, and on many other more or less cognate topics, has Mr. Reade flourished in his books, making the story of each a vehicle for the conveyance of much strong language on these various subjects. The strong language has in many instances been justified, and there is some reason to believe that in the case of private lunatic asylums Mr. Reade did, by his exertions in real life as well as in fiction, succeed in throwing a little clear light upon a question which much needed such illumination. And now, in the Woman-lieter, we have our author again taking up the cudgels and smiting right and left without mercy, the subject this time being the wrongs of women in not having equal privileges of medical study with the stronger sex. "Women," says Mr. Reade, by the mouth of one of his char- acters, "are by nature the medical and the unmusical sex,"—and all this time we have thought the contrary Alas, what a state of darkness has the world been in these many years !

Principally against the students and authorities of the Edin- burgh Hospital is the chief accusation preferred, and to them certainly no mercy is shown. Students and doctors are collec- tively branded as a trade-union ; their opposition to the admis- sion of female students is unhesitatingly attributed to the lowest and meanest of reasons, and even their moral character does not escape withering comment. It is true that Rhoda Gale, M.D.,

* 4 Women-ilater. By Merles Made. Edinburgh: Blackwood and Go, from whose mouth issues all this violent language, is in some measure apologised for by Mr. Reade at the end of the book, and the readers aro told to remember that she was "speaking as a partisan ;" but nevertheless the language remains, and for one who remembers the apology, ten will be struck by the vivid force of the accusation. The book ends with a fervent appeal to the State to open tho study and practice of medicine to women, but of the difficulties in the way of their practice the author says nothing, and indeed, the whole book on this head resembles more the speech of an honest, but injudicious advocate against the opponents of women-doctors, rather than reasoning for their being so. In fact, it is hardly a question which can fairly be discussed in the pages of a novel, and in spite of Mr. Reade's assertion that Rhoda Gale, M.D., is not an excrescence, but an organic portion of his story, we must take leave to doubt whether the book, as a novel, would not have been improved by her absence, or at all events by her silence upon medical subjects.

The real raison d'e'tre of the story, as we conceive, is to exhibit the workings of the female mind under various phases of feeling, and to exhibit Mr. Reade's power of female analysis. The book is taken up with the doings of four women and two men. One of the men, being "the woman-hater," naturally spends all his time with members of that sex, or with a friend who is depicted as far more like a woman than a man. It is true that this woman-hater, Harrington Vizard by name, is perpetually saying the rudest and silliest things imaginable to this female cohort, but nevertheless he does apparently confine him- self chiefly to their society ; is always in love, and rescues, with a mixture of chivalry and rudeness, any oppressed or deserted female he may come across. The following is the account of his first meeting with Rhoda Gale, M.D., in the garden in Leicester Square :— " Vizard's observant eye saw a young lady rise up from a seat to go, but turn polo directly, and sit down upon the arm of the seat, as if for ,suppert. Hallo ! ' said Vizard, in his blunt way ; 'you are not well.

What can I do for you ? I am all right,' said Bile; please

go on,'—tho latter words in a tone which implied she was not a novice, and the attentions of gentlemen to strange ladies were suspected.-4 I beg your pardon, said Vizard, coolly, you are not all right ; you look as if you wore going to faint.'— What, are my lips blue ?'—'Ne, but they are palo.'—' Well, then, it is not a OEM of fainting. It may be exhaustion.'—, You know best. What shall we do Why, nothing. Yes ; mind our own business.'— 'With all my heart, My business just now is to offer you some re- storative,— a glass of wine.'—' Oh yes ! Tho idea of my going into a public-house with you! Besides, I don't believe in stimulants. Strength can only enter the human body one way. I know what is the matter with me.'—' What is it ?'—' I am not obliged to toll you.'—, Of course you are not obliged, but you might as well.'—' Well, then, it is Hunger!'

. . . .The poor Woman-hater's bowels began to yearn. 'Look here, you little spitfire he said ; if you don't instantly take my arm, I'll catch you up and carry you over, with no more troublo than I would carry a thread-paper!'"

The result is, of course, that Miss Gale does take his arm, and they adjourn to the eating-house, where she has three plates of cold beef, and immediately begins the long discourse against the Scotch hospital to which we have referred above.

The main love-story of the book is a description of Zoo Vizard's (the Woman-hater's sister) love for Walter Severne, an atrocious blackguard, who has married and deserted a public singer. This public singer, Ina Klosking by name, is seen and heard in the opera by Vizard, who then and there falls in love with her, but with a perverseness truly characteristic will not make her acquaintance, for fear he should be disenchanted by finding a lover with "a wash-leather face in the background," This, it appears, has been his fate on several previous occasions. Ina Klosking is not un- naturally in search of her recreant husband, and when she finds him, it is under Vizard's roof, engaged to his sister and living on the fat of the land. In order that our readers may appreciate how very fat the land was on which Mr. Severne was living, we append a description of his bedroom .—

"It was of great size, to begin. The oriel window was twenty foot wide, and had half-a-dozen casements, each with rose-coloured.blinds,

though some of them needed no blinds, for green creepers, with flowers like clusters of grapes, curled round the mullions, and the sun shone mellowed throqh their loaves. Enormous curtains of purple cloth, with gold borders, hung at each side in mighty folds, to be drawn at night- time, when the eye should nood roposo from feasting upon colour. There wore throe brass bedsteads in a row, only four foot broad, with spring beds, hair mattresses a foot thick, and snowy sheets for coverlets instead of counterpanes, so that if you were feverish or sleepless in one bed, you might try another or two. Thick earpois and rugs, satinwood wardrobes, prodigious washhand-stands, with china backs four feet high. Towel-horses nearly as big as a donkey, with short towels, long towels, thick towels, thin towels, bathing-sheets,

dto., &e. ; baths of every shape, and cans of every size • a large knee-hole table, paper and envelopes of every size. In short, a room to sloop in, study in, live in, and stick fast in night and day. But what is this ? A Goalie arch, curtainod with violet merino. He draws the curtain. It is an anteroom. Ono-half of it is a bath-room, screened and paved with encaustic tiles that run up the walls, so that you may splash to your heart's content. The rest is a studio, and contains a choice little libiary of well-bound books in glass. oases, a pianoforte and a harmonium. Severna tried them, they were both in perfect tune. Two clocks, one in each room, were also in per- fect time. Thereat ho wondered."

We cannot find room for more about this bedroom, but refer our- readers for further particulars to the book itself.

We have said very little about the story, and have done so on purpose, for it is not one which bears analysing at all, or even repeating. It is extravagant and dull, and not all Mr. Reade'. ability can prevent us being very tired with the woman-hating hero and the woman-loving hero,—for Edward Severne is explained as being always in love with every fresh face he sees. It is, we feel, inconceivable that a pure-minded, noble girl, as Zoe Vizard is represented to be, could care for such an unredeemed black- guard as this Severne, more especially as lie is throughout the book always exposing himself more or less, and being found out in some meanness or falsehood.

The denouement between the injured wife and the guilty husband takes place, as we have hinted, at Vizard's country house, and soon after the husband disappears through a conveniently open trap-door, as he is pursuing a ballet-dancer behind the scenes.

Every one is glad when he dies in the book, and every reader will share their pleasure. A more over-drawn, tiresome, and extravagant character we have rarely met with in fiction. Ina Klosking marries, as soon as is correct, the woman-hating squire. Zoe marries a lord, who has been hanging about her, off and on during the whole story. The third female character whom. we have not spoken of, and who is supposed to be an unreclaimed

flirt, marries appropriately the curate, and ends her life in teaching the Sunday-school ; and Rhoda Gale, M.D., backed by Lord Uxmoor and Harrington Vizard, continues to practise- upon the bodies of her Majesty's lieges in Barfordshire. It is impossible that any book of Mr. Reado's should be altogether- uninteresting, as the author has nearly always something to may, and says it strongly and well ; but in the present instance, even the personal ability of the author does not compensate for the dullness of an equally improbable and unpleasant plot, and there is no character-painting worth speaking of to redeem it. Compare, for instance, the character of Rhoda Gale with that of Dr. Simpson, in Hard Cash; or that of the heroine, Zoe,

with Christie Johnstone, in the novel of that name. There is just all the difference between wax-work and life,—real people, whom we feel we understand, sympathise with, and know, and lay figures. In fact, Mr. Reade has not in the work before us succeeded in individualising his characters, but has given the reader little more than several bundles of qualities, put up, as it were, in parcels, and labelled with certain names. The action of the story, though full of life, is the life of the melodrama, not of reality, and it may be doubted whether any set of individuals ever acted, spoke, and behaved in such an intolerably jerky man-

ner as is described. To conclude, though A Woman-Rater has not the coarseness of parts of A Terrible Temptation or the utter- absurdities of A Simpleton, it must, nevertheless, be ranked with those books, rather than with the earlier and greater works of our author, and it is quite unworthy of the author of Christie Johnstone, Griffith Gaunt, a,nd Hard Cash.