RECENT NOVELS.*
THE work of Mrs. Alfred Marks is never commonplace, never deficient in a certain arresting quality; but her latest book is exceptionally striking and impressive. It is a long time since we have had a study of the disintegrating effects of sin at • (1.) Dr. Willoughby Smith. By Mrs. Alfred Marks (Mary A. M. Hoppus). vols. London : R. Bentley and Son.—(2.) The Soul of' Lilith. By Marie Corelli. 3 vols. London : R. Bentley and Son.—(3.) A Man and a Brother. By Mrs. Herbert Martin. London : Ward and Downey.—(4.) Pastor and Prelate. By " Roy Tellet." 3 vols. Edinburgh and London : W. Blackwood and Sons.—(5.) Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea. By W. Clark Russell. 3 vols. London : Chatto and Windna.----(8.) Nor Wife nor Maid. By Mrs. Hungerford. 3 vols. London : William Heinemann.—(7.) Stolen Honey. By Margaret B. Cross. 2 vole. London Hurst and Blackett. once so truthful, so powerful, so terrible, and yet so fascinating as that which is to be found in the pages of Dr. Willoughby Smith. It is all the more intimately interesting in a creepy sort of way, because the central character does not seem of the stuff of which a criminal or a very gross sinner of any kind could possibly be made. We feel inclined to say to ourselves : If he could become a murderer, so might any one of us.' His intellectual endowments are certainly above the average ; his moral endowments certainly do not fall below it; and he has one of those symmetrical individualities which seem to pre- sent no loopholes for the entrance of the most obviously vile forms of temptation. And yet it is to just such a temptation that he actually succumbs,—the temptation to a sin in which cruelty, lust, and treachery hold equal shares ; the kind of sin which we are wont to regard as indicative of a nature that has long been thoroughly depraved. There can be little doubt that, as a rule, such indication is not misleading. The state of heart and mind in which it becomes possible for a man to commit a crime which, if known, would subject him to universal execration, is seldom, perhaps never, attained per saltum ; but we are convinced that there are cases—and Mrs. Marks deals with one of them—in which a startling moral collapse seems to have no efficient antecedents, because the tapping of the resisting moral vitality has been so secret and insidious that even the victim himself is not aware of it. Twenty-four hours before his crime, Dr. Willoughby Smith was conscious of no declension from his original integrity, save the growth of an interest in Mrs. Hayward which was disturbing and injudicious, and which might, if not watched and guarded, become clearly dishonourable; and yet, while in this position, which seemed hardly serious enough to pro- duce apprehension of danger, the mere possibility of grati- fying his desires suddenly presented itself with such force of appeal, that with a certain fiendishness of cunning delibera- tion, he did to death the friend, the guest, and the patient whom every possible consideration of humanity, honour, and loyalty urged him to guard and cherish. Told thus in brief, the story of Willoughby Smith's crime may seem not only repellent, but forced and unnatural ; told as Mrs. Marks tells it, it is a convincingly truthful presentation of that treacherous insidiousness of an evil impulse to which is due almost every one of those sudden moral cata- strophes which startle as much as they horrify. With the commission of the crime the purely moral interest of the book culminates, but the intellectual interest remains as strong as ever ; and as mere narrative, the third volume is the most impressive portion of the book. The out- ward imperturbability of the murderer, with, behind it, the growing sense of a steady diminution of his power of self- control, is delineated with an imaginative power that is ren- dered all the more effective by the consistent reticence of the literary treatment. The chapter in which the criminal tells something of his own story, as the story of a patient, to the strange clergyman whom he has heard preaching on the sub- ject of confession, and that other chapter in which he loses his head in making his appeal to Mrs. Hayward, are wonderful studies in the phenomena of incipient insanity,—the insanity of a nature which has voluntarily destroyed its own equi- librium. Dr. Willoughby Smith is what many people will call an " unpleasant" book, and, indeed, it does not aim at pleasantness; but as a study of the antecedents and conse- quences of crime in a nature not originally depraved, it must be regarded as a sombre masterpiece.
Just as Ardath was the most successful, so is The Soul of Lilith undoubtedly the least successful, of Miss Marie Corelli's semi-preternatural romances. Even Ardath was unequal, for while the Al-Kyris part of it was very fine, the London part was particularly poor ; and perhaps the author's present failure is due to the fact that the writer never gets far away from the Metropolis, the atmosphere of which seems to have both a depressing and embittering influence upon her. Her new man of mystery, El Rimi-Zarinos is at once a persona grata in London society, and an adept in occult arts, by means of which he preserves the body of a dead girl in a state of quiescent animation, in the hope of obtaining from it—or rather, from the soul which is not entirely detached from it —some knowledge of the apparently unknowable, some proof of the apparently unprovable. El Ritual's two roles do not harmonise at all satisfactorily, and if we are to accept as serious Miss Corelli's introductory statement that her
story "is simply the record of a strange and daring experi- ment once actually attempted," we can only say that the experimenter has lost all his flesh-and-blood in passing from real life into her pages, and has become as anomalous a being as the ordinary ghost or goblin of the stage. When Miss Corelli is not bewilderingly transcendental, she is depres- singly cynical ; and in the expression of her cynicism, she is perplexingly inconsistent. For example, she has nothing but scorn for a person "presuming to call himself a poet, and in the same breath declaring that he despises' the world ; " but on the very page which bears this contemptuous utterance, she records with approval the conviction of her hero, El
that there is "something truly horrible and dis- couraging in the hopeless, helpless, absolute stupidity of the majority of mankind." The only inference to be drawn is that an opinion which is unworthy in a poet is admirable in a magician or a novelist, for Miss Corelli's own scorn for people in general is only excelled by her withering contempt for literary critics in particular. Considering the nature of the extracts given in the publishers' advertisements of the author's books, this last expression of emotion seems rather ungrateful; but it is difficult even for the- most amiable critic—supposing him to be competent as well—to indulge in ardent praise of a romance like The Soul of Lilith. There is plenty of imagina- tion in the story, but it is uncoordinated, and therefore comparatively ineffective.
At the crisis of the story told in A Man and a Brother, there is a certain sentimentality of treatment that, to our mind, somewhat impairs the general effect of a novel which is, like the rest of Mrs. Martin's work, of more than average excel- lence. The relations between the brothers Monro are delineated very skilfully, with a finer and more complex truthfulness than that which belongs to a similar situation in that attractive story, Arm,orel of Lycmesse. Mrs. Martin is, perhaps naturally, careful to explain that her story, being written before Mr. Besant's, could not have been borrowed from it; but for sensible readers there was no need for the disclaimer. The memorable Belt trial rendered the "ghost motive," as it may be called, common property; and its capa- city for effective narrative-treatment is too obvious to allow us to wonder that a couple of novelists should avail them- selves of it. Mrs. Martin's impostor is less amusing than Mr. Besant's —indeed, " the cleverest man in London" is a true comedy figure—but Julius Monro is the more lifelike and credible; and the whole story of the fraud in the new book has greater vraisernblance than the similar story in its prede- cessor. Each is good in its way, but the ways are very different. The picture in AMan and a Brother of an originally noble nature straggling to raise itself from the degradation produced by the combined action of misfortune, alcohol, and opium, is drawn with real pathos and power; and if here and there we have a false touch, it must be admitted that the subject is one of great difficulty. There is not a single false touch in the portrait of the heroine, Marjorie Fletcher, who is satisfactory from first to last. Her bright shrewdness, her surface-hardness, and apparent lack of quick sympathy, with, underneath them, a capacity for passion, and even for a certain measure of abandonment under the influence of a pure and strong emotion, are indicated by a fine dramatic subtlety, and not with the easier though more pretentious analysis of mere description. Indeed, A Man and a Brother is a capital story, which no intelligent novel-reader can fail to enjoy.
In Pastor and Prelate, as in his first powerful novel, The Outcasts, "Roy Tenet" deals with a theme which is evidently attractive to him,—the woes of a good man who is made a social pariah by the pressure of hostile circumstance and unfounded suspicion, with the inevitable contrast between his wretchedness and the fall-fed, complacent prosperity of a sinner who has been able to conceal his sin, and to live a life which is one long pretence. The construction of the story has its weak place, for there is a certain lack of coherence in the accumulation of troubles by which the Rev. Marmaduke Jones is borne down to the earth. The evidence of misconduct is so ridiculously inadequate to prove the charge brought against him before the Bishop's commis- sioners, that even the prejudiced parishioners of Huckleston could hardly have been impressed by it ; and the mere fact of the prejudice—or rather, of its virulence—is left without sufficing explanation. The shy poet, scholar, and metaphysician might have been despised by the coarse-fibred Hucklestonians,
but he could hardly have been hated ; and yet it is upon the relentless manifestations of their hatred that the story hangs. When, however, this one complaint has been made, no material is left for further carping at a very strong, fascinating, and pathetic novel. There is a grim irony of fate in the series of events which brings the old college friends, the Bishop and the Vicar, into the relations of judge and accused,—an irony which reveals itself with the gradual dis- closure of the facts by which their true positions have been reversed. The Vicar is a singularly fine study of a sensitive, shrinking nature, with no capacity whatever for aggressive conflict, but with a certain power of passive resistance indica- tive of latent strength, or of that inertia which serves many of the purposes of strength, which is often exhibited by such natures when pushed to the wall and compelled to act in self- defence. The sub-story of Leonard Kyngdon's love for Gwendreth, and his entanglement with that wily specimen of young-womanhood, Eggley Quicksett, is very well managed ; and there are some finely intimate touches in the presenta- tion of Eggley and elsewhere in the book, which incline one to think that "she," and not "he," may be the proper pro- noun to use in speaking of " Roy Tellet." However this may be, Pastor and Prelate is a novel of considerable imaginative grasp, and of real literary excellence. It lacks the sombre impressiveness of its writer's first book, but it has a wider range, an added maturity, and a certain reserve of strength, which all indicate growth.
It is superfluous to say that a novel by Mr. Clark Russell bearing such a title as Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea, is a story of the ocean ; but it differs from most of its predecessors inasmuch as the interest of maritime adventure, pure and simple, is subordinated to another kind of interest which various dry-land novelists have of late selected as likely to be attractive to their readers. Mrs. John Campbell, a young married woman, is staying with her husband, her sister, and her two little children, at a quiet watering-place on the Bristol Channel ; and during Mr. Campbell's temporary absence, she goes out alone for a sail with an old and trustworthy fisher- man whom she has often employed. A fog comes on, and while the voyagers are making the best of their devious way homewards, the boatman falls overboard—apparently in a sudden spasm of some form of heart-disease—and is drowned, if, indeed, death had not overtaken him before reaching the water. The masterless boat drifts out to sea, and when Mrs. Campbell is rescued by a passing vessel, she is discovered to have received injuries which have entirely destroyed her memory of everything but her language,—an exception rendered necessary by the exigencies of the narrative. As she speaks English, she is presumably an Englishwoman ; but she cannot recall her nationality, her name, or even her condition as wife and mother. Of course this absolute wiping-out of her past prepares the way for some complications,—among them an offer of marriage ; and it is the peculiar repugnance excited by this proposal which suggests to her the thought that she must be a married woman. Whether all the details of the " case" are according to the books, we cannot say, and the leading idea has recently become rather hackneyed ; but Mr. Clark Russell has treated it with considerable freshness of invention, and has produced a most readable story, the course of which must not be further disclosed.
The novels of the author of Molly Baton and Phyllis are well written and interesting, to say nothing of other good qualities; but if any one were asked to describe them by a single epithet, be would say that they were pre-eminently bright books. No one could possibly call Nor Wife nor Maid a bright book. True, it ends happily, which is a great recom- mendation to a large class of readers ; but the happy ending is only reached after wading through a perfect bog of miseries calculated utterly to depress and demoralise anybody who has not a morbid delight in being harrowed. There is certainly some relief, which is not to be despised, but, on the contrary, very much enjoyed, in the delightfully funny love-affair of the shy and learned Lord Pilminster and the neither shy nor learned Arabella ; but it crops up too seldom to have any marked effect in the way of promoting cheerfulness. The harrowing business is done very well ; indeed, our complaint is that it is done too well, for we are much more miserable than we should be in the hands of an artist inferior to Mrs Hungerford. We will not say what the trouble is all about, save that it arises from an experience which is happily more
common in fiction than in life; for as everybody who knows what is good puts Mrs. Hungerford's hooks upon his or her library list, all courageous readers will find it out for them- selves, and they must be supported by our single disclosure of the author's secrets,—the fact of the happy ending. They may find other support as well, for though the story is far too doleful, the writer's literary form has never been better than it is here.
Seeing the obvious improbability of the situation, there is something surprising in the number of novels which tell the story of a bigamy committed by a man who is represented as a most admirable, indeed noble, person. As the crime is one of special treachery and meanness, it is not easy to make its commission the act of any one who is not a thorough scoundrel ; but some novelists overcome the difficulty with considerable ingenuity, and it is so overcome in Stolen Honey. Of course every reader knows that in real life the kindly and honourable Major Blake could not possibly have wronged so callously and cruelly the innocent daughter of his old friend ; and his crime must, we suppose, be regarded as analogous to the old legal fictions of John Doe and Richard Roe, those non-existent persons who were used as expedients to bring the flesh-and-blood suitor within the cognisance of the Court. It is not, so to speak, part of the story proper, but a means to an end,—the platform by which the story is supported ; and if the platform be accepted, there is little in the structure to lend itself to hostile criticism. Major Blake, when he has got well into his difficulties, shows himself a good deal more genuinely manlike than the majority of the masculine creations of feminine novelists, and his hard, narrow wife is a character very true to the nature of a certain class of women who seem most admirable to those who are brought least closely into association with them. In the story of Stolen Honey, there is little that is specially pleasing or edifying, but it is brightly told, with no lapse from refinement or good taste.
Previous page
