RECENT NOVELS.* MR. W. E. Nonurs has a very level
manner, some readers may say a provokingly level manner, but that is a point which we are not now concerned to discuss. We simply mean that it is not his habit to surprise us by un- expected ascensions or unlooked-for lapses ; and we note the fact now, that we may prepare the mind of the reader for a certain not altogether agreeable surprise that is provided by The Countess Radna. When one has to say something that one is compelled to say, but, would much rather not say if one could help it, the best plan is to say it at once without any deprecatory or apologetic introduction, and therefore we blurt out the fact that Mr. Norris's latest novel is a terribly dull affair. The dullness is more provoking because it was not inevitable ; it is the result of yielding to a temptation which would only have beset a man justly con- scious of excel:). tional ability,—the temptation to make bricks without straw. The inferior artist naturally chooses a theme the intrinsic interest of which may suffice to cover or supple- ment his own deficiencies; the more clipable man of a certain type is fascinated by the theme which must owe to him any interest it may be found to possess ; he will show himself a Dean Swift, and write charmingly about a broomstick. This is all very well in its way, but some broomsticks are altogether im- practicable, and Mr. Norris has been unlucky enough to choose one of them. His new novel deals with the matrimonial life of a couple who found marriage a failure, the cause of the failure being due to the fact that the man made the mistake of marrying the wrong woman, and the woman made the mistake of marrying at all. The portrait of the Countess Radna, who becomes the wife of that good-tempbred, loyal, and in every way wholesome-natured English gentleman, Douglas Colborne, is a very elaborate and exceedingly clever study of wrong- headedness; but 'mere wrong-headedness, when analysed and illustrated through three volumes, is as fatiguing as would be the constant presence of a character who never spoke without a bad stutter. An alienation that is caused by mere " cussed- ness " on one side, and by a certain slight want of tact and firm self-assertion on the other, may serve as a good side-dish at a banquet of fiction ; but when it is made the piece de thistance, the guests are likely to feel that they have had a savourless and unsatisfactory dinner. Mr. Norris's real side- dish is the very familiar story of a girl whose father and mother are determined that she shall marry one man, while she herself in a somewhat contemptibly ineffectual sort of way indicates her desire to marry another. The abject cowardice of Lady Florence Carey is as exasperating as the wrong- headedness of the Countess ; and, indeed, no one in the story seems to have any backbone, except that very capable young squiress, Peggy Rowley, whom Douglas Colborne ought to have married at first, and whom we are led to believe he will marry in the end. Such a meal as that at which Mr. Norris acts the part of host can only be made palatable by a very liberal supply of the sauce of humour, and of this appetiser * (1.) The Countess Radna. By W. R. Norris. 3 vols. London : W. Heine- mann — (2.) For Otte Season Only. By Mrs. Robert Jocelyn. 3 vols. London F. V. White and 30 The Ideal Artist. By F. Hayford Harrison. 3 vols. Loud n: Hurst and Blookett.— (4.) Perdita. By Mary E. Mann. 2 vols. London : R. Bentley and Son.--(5.) Innes Blairavon. By Colin Middleton. 3 vols. London Kt and Blaolcott.—(8.) An Excellent knave. By J. Fitz. Kerald Molloy. 8 vols. London : Hutchinson and 00,—(7.) The Last Tenant, By 5. L. Farjeon London : Hutchinson and Co. he is much more sparing than usual. Even Peggy is more wooden and lumpish than such a writer as Anthony Trollope would have made her—she seems a mere Dutch doll when placed beside such an all-alive woman as Miss Dunstable—and we have to seek for our humour in the unfrequent utterances of Miss Rowley's head-gardener, Mr. Peter Chervil. He is really good, but there is very little of him,—certainly not enough to save The Countess Radna from all-round heaviness. However, we are all dull sometimea, and only an ingrate would be hard upon the single lapse of a writer to whom we owe His Grace, and that most delightful story, The Rogue.
The holiday season is not the most favourable time for the publication of any book, even of a book of fiction ; but Mrs. Robert Jocelyn's new story, like all its predecessors, has such a bright, breezy, and pleasant open-air atmosphere that there seems something specially fitting in its appearance during a month when the reading, as well as the non-reading, world is making the most of life out of doors. The present writer, who is far from being an expert, cannot profess to criticise the technical details of sport which Mrs. Jocelyn always brings so well to the front. They may be all right, or they may be deplorably wrong; but after all, this is a matter which is of supreme importance only to a small circle, and the world at large is more concerned with the fact that whatever else the author may know, she knows how to put together and tell a brisk, pleasant story. Mrs. Jocelyn has for her latest heroine a young woman of the modern capable type, with plenty of self-reliance, a confirmed habit of calling a spade a spade, a keen scent for humbug, a fine capacity for putting in their places people who seem inclined to stray out of them, and the assured pecuniary position that "goes well" with these other endowments. Georgina Pem- brooks, in order that she may appear in the field with the Mudshire hounds, becomes—to use the fashionable euphemism —a" paying guest " at Maofiuster Hall "for one season only ; " and there, in the intervals of hunting, she devotes herself to a brisk social campaign, in which her enemy is her mean, priggish, pompous host, Mr. Tomlinson, and her dependent ally his pretty and utterly neglected daughter Charlotte, on whose behalf Miss Pembrooke takes up the cudgels with characteristic vigour. An undesirable suitor is routed and put to flight, an eminently suitable substitute is provided, Charlotte is well-mounted and well-dressed, is sent to London that she may see something of the world ; and—best of all from the campaigner's point of view—the niggardly Mr. Tom- linson has to put his hand into his pocket. Of course, in in- tellectual weight and literary skill, For One Season Only is not to be compared to The Countess Radna ; but if a novel exists to entertain, Mrs. Jocelyn's book has a more sufficing raison. d'gtre.
There is something in the general tone and manner of Mr. Bayford Harrison's novel that suggests a certain knowledge of the world ; there is a good deal in its substance that suggests ignorance of human nature. The story is con- structed on thoroughly conventional lines ; there are indica- tions that it has been written without being thoroughly thought out ; and the portion of the narrative in which Lord Lillebonne and Tothill figure most prominently is by no means free from positive absurdities. Still, we are inclined to regard these defeats as mainly the results of inexperience, and to believe that the author will gradually work himself free from them, though we see no indications in The Meat Artist of a power to rise above conventional and pleasing mediocrity. The main story, which deals with the love-affair of the struggling artist, Felix Vereker, and the beautiful Lady Flora Vere de Vere, is so dreadfully hackneyed that it would be altogether tiresome, were it not for the vivacity and brightness with which Mr. Harrison tells it; and it has the addi- tional merit—which is quite a rarity in stories of this kind— of absolute freedom from mawkish sentimentality. The sub- story of Lord Lillebonne and the literary blackmailer, Tothill, is too ridiculous to be hackneyed ; and we are astonished that a writer of Mr. Harrison's cleverness does not make a more serious attempt to minimise its incredibilities. True, he makes. Lord Lillebonne a very nervous and a very fatuous person, but he is not intended to be an absolute imbecile ; and nothing but imbecility would explain his payment of large sums to. Tothill for silence concerning a secret of the nature of which he was ignorant, especially in the absence of any guarantee that the blackmailer would keep faith with him. There is yet another sub-story, that of the courtship and marriage of Vereker's studio-chum, Coleman, to the consumptive model, Edith Crane, which is far away the best thing in the book,— the thing which suggests most of hope for Mr. Harrison's future ; for it has a freshness of conception which is lacking elsewhere, and a pathos which is all the more affecting for not being in the least obtrusive. We hope we have not dwelt unduly upon the defects of The Ideal Lover, for, in spite of them all, it is a very pleasant and wholesome novel.
The same praise may honestly be awarded to Perdita; and Miss Mann has a little more command of the levers and cranks of the machinery of fiction than is displayed by Mr. Harrison. The loving and beloved husband of Perdita Sant disappears on the evening of their wedding-day, and she has reasons, which seem to her sufficient, for believing that his return to her has been prevented by his sudden death. The same evening, the unloving and unloved husband of Pauline Ash- ford also disappears ; but in this case there is no mystery at all, for he is arrested as a swindler in his own house, and in the presence of his wife. The most simple-minded novel- reader is from the first aware that Sant and Ashford are two names for one man, who brings about the clgnouement by a tragic reappearance at the close of the novel ; but the interest of the story depends not upon him, but upon the mutual rela- tions of the two deserted women, who are brought by circum- stances into somewhat close connection, and upon the compli- cated love-affairs of Perdita, who, of course, believes herself to be a widow. In the portraiture and the situations there are cleverness, grace, and a quiet humour which lightens and brightens a story which in its absence might have been rather sombre. Mrs. Ashford-Barrington, as she calls herself, is a grimly lifelike figure, and Perdita's two lovers are very effectively contrasted ; but if, in speaking of a novel that is so good throughout, an expression of preference is not invidious, we may say that Barbara Norris, the enthusiastic and imaginative school-girl who makes Perdita the heroine of her unwritten and unconcluded romances, is Miss Mann's great triumph. Perdita herself is charming, though perhaps somewhat characterless, and we are not sure that the author is altogether successful in her variation upon the Jekyll- Hyde motive ; but these things are not of great importance. They concern the critic rather than the general reader ; and if the latter does not care for Perdita, he must be a very exigent person.
Mr. Colin Middleton is a new writer who seems to have the root of the matter in him, though he, like Mr. Hayford Harri- son, has a good deal to learn. lanes of Blairaivon is much too long, being made so, partly by needless prolixity in the treat- ment of unimportant details—such, for example, as the capture of a flea in the bedroom of a Welsh inn—and partly by the introduction of lengthy conversations upon "topics," which though easy, natural, and interesting enough in themselves, are irritating drags upon the progress of a story which never moves with any great rapidity. These blemishes, however, eould be easily removed, and even as they stand they have not hindered us from finding lanes of Blairavon a very likeable novel. The present writer feels specially drawn to the book (and this column will probably be read by some who will feel the same drawing), because it has reminded him, not once or twice, but a dozen times, of the best story of its kind that our generation has been privi- leged to welcome,—Henry Kingsley's delightful Ravenshoe. General Ainslie has caught Lord Saltire's trick of speech ; Allan Innes's Oxford career has much in common with that of Charles Ravenshoe ; and the heroes of both books disappear from society in a very foolish manner, thereby giving their friends much anxiety, and bringing down con- siderable trouble upon themselves. Of course, we are not intending to bring one of those silly charges of plagiarism which have of late been a common literary nuisance. The -differences between the books are fully as numerous as their similarities, and we have spoken by way of praise, not of blame. It is in manliness, healthfulness, and in quick-pulsing life that the new book resembles its predecessor, and, happily, these are qualities in which no writer can claim a monopoly ; but it would surprise us very much to learn that Bavenshoe was not one of Mr. Middleton's favourite stories. Whether we are right or wrong in this hypothesis, we think that most readers will think us right in commending Lutes of Blairavan as an interesting, wholesome, and bracing novel. The two remaining books on our list need not detain us long. They are both stories the interest of which depends upon the tying and untying of a tangled kind of mystery, and unless the critic gives some hint of the manner in which the latter process is performed (a manifestly unfair proceeding), there is really very little for him to say. There is, indeed, no neces- sity for saying anything, save that Mr. Fitzgerald Molloy's book is an exceedingly poor specimen, and Mr. Farjeon's book an exceedingly good specimen, of the class of story to which they both belong. Where a writer begins with a murder, the perpetrator of which gets away without leaving anything whatever in the shape of a clue behind him, we know that the story of the discovery of the unknown criminal will con- tain a good many improbabilities, and probably a few down- right absurdities as well. These, however, we are prepared for; and if they are not poured upon us in too great profusion, they are accepted as being, like kicks at football, inevitable accidents of the game ; but when the kicks become vicious, or the absurdities gratuitously monstrous, the meekest person feels that he has a right to resent them ; and in An Excellent Knave Mr. Molloy outrages common-sense with a deliberation which puts leniency out of the question. The Court can pass no less severe sentence than that of five years' penal absti- nence from plot-invention.
The Last Tenant, on the contrary, is a really ingenious Chinese puzzle of romance, the various pieces of which fit into one another with most charming nicety. The alternate excite- ment and satisfaction of curiosity are so skilfully managed that at the end of every chapter we feel that we shall be quite satisfied to put the book down and go to bed at the end of one chapter more ; but at the end of that chapter the ex- perience is repeated, and so—unless the reader be a very strong-minddd person—there is a probability that the thirty chapters will be bolted at a single sitting. When we say that Mr. Farjeon introduces a new detective agency in the shape of the ghost of a domestic cat, and that he actually makes the feline spook blood-curdling rather than ludicrous, the judicious will recognise the fact that we pay a high tribute to his powers. Too many books like The Last Tenant would be injurious to the public health ; but one every now and then will do nobody any harm.
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