NOT A LOVE-STORY.* THE novel as a record of domestic
incident whose main turning- point is love-making, owes its origin to Richardson. Scott and Cooper added to it adventure, the other great feature of the old romances. The more modern school seems to have separated the two. On the one band we get Mr. Howells, with his psycho. logical studies and commonplace events ; on the other, Mr. R. L. Stevenson's stories make us thrill with the magic of reality, . impossible as it is to believe that they bear any relation to any- thing real either in the sphere of science or in that of the human mind. In the psychological novel there seems a tendency to substitute some other human interest or passion for the never- ending changes which can be rung out of the ordinary romance. There is some boldness required to do so, and great skill. Still, a little change of scene at intervals might not be a bad thing. That there is no passion so universally interesting as love-making is a truism. Nevertheless, the changes that have been rung on it in many hundreds of novels render originality difficult. Besides, the conventional limits assigned to the English novelist do not allow him to cover the whole field of this passion. It is more than well that it is so. There never was a more unwholesome idea than that every human passion is to be written about. There are many things which cannot be written about without doing almost un- mitigated mischief. It is not the moral put in at the tag-end of the book, and which nobody reads, which shows its moral tendency. It is not only the way in which a subject is handled which does harm or good. It is the subjects that are handled. The fact that a nation produces and reads novels written on foul subjects is a fearful test of its state of mind, and no amount of moral writing on foul subjects will cure it. The only possible salvation for it is to draw its attention else- where. It must be educated to something better. When the circulating libraries made their protest last year against the so- called realistic school of novel, they were not only acting in perfect accord with the vast majority of their subscribers, but were preserving that tradition of the English novel which was started by Richardson and Sir Walter Scott, and has made the -novel what it is, both in England and America. If any one were to tell us that be thinks the realistic school more manly than that of Sir Walter, we should rate his unconscious criticism of himself as of considerably higher value than his criticism of literature.
This is why we attach a great deal of importance to the un- doubted popularity of books like the books of the author of John Halifax. They are books which display a great deal of
' King Arthur; not a Lore-Btorp. By the Author of "John Halifax, Gentle- man." London Macmillan and Co.
insight into human nature, male and female. They are a woman's books ; but whether or not it be true that men write novels for the instruction of women, it is certainly true that women do, or might, write much for the instruction of men. There is little or no passion in them. But human life cannot be conducted on the basis of passion. Passion, unless strongly controlled, disintegrates human life just as much as it dis- integrates human character. The story of an uncontrolled passion is dangerous just in proportion as it is fascinating. If passion is to be celebrated in prose or verse, it should either be shown in its social consequences, as in Othello, or it should be a passion strongly controlled and successfully conquered. Human life is best furthered and improved by strong affection controlled by reason, not by unrestrained emotion, however estimable the emotion may be in itself. It is strong affection controlled by strong common-sense which is celebrated in King Arthur. If there is a passion in human nature which is nearly equal in its universality to the passion of love-making, it is the passion of the mother for her child. This is what the author endeavours to portray in King Arthur, and she portrays it well. There are admirable touches in the well-drawn contrast between the unnatural and heartless mother of the boy, and his adopted mother, the quiet, sensible, but no less deeply loving human being. It is almost unncessary to say that in Mrs. Oraik's book there is at least one inimitably drawn character. Next to that of the childless wife who adopts the hero of the book, her husband, the thoroughly good and thoroughly un- practical Rector, is the best. Without the least intending it, he throws all the difficulties of the world upon his wife. No one will be surprised to hear that, with his utter incapacity to cope with the affairs of life, it took him years, not to win, but to wed. her. It was certainly fortunate for him that he managed it at last, for what he would have done without her it is impossible to conceive. The man who, after sacrificing his private fortune and the best part of his prospect of married happiness for a scamp of a brother—who kept coming back, not "like the proverbial prodigal, in rags and repentance," but " fat and well liking, yet with the same never-ending cry, like the daughters of the horse-leech, Give, give !' "—could give him twenty pounds, with only twenty-five at the bank and a butcher's bill to pay, certainly wanted a wife to look after him. His wife had a more wholesome idea of the obligation to this kind of poor relation. The author declares in the title that this is not a love-story ; but in spite of this, she cannot keep it quite free from that imputation, if it is an imputation. She cannot make a hero even of a baby without making him as he grows up the hero of a woman not his mother ; and the love-story involved, if it is told slightly and in outline, is sweetly told too. The chief drawback to the writing of the author of John Halifax is a tendency to draw out sentiment into sentimentality, and that drawback is not absent from King Arthur. There is also a great want of humour in the book, although some of the situations ought to have called it oat. There is plenty of pathos, but the pathos is untouched by that quality which makes us doubtful whether to laugh or cry, and which is one of the marks of a really great writer. The melodramatic ending to the book, too, is quite unworthy of the rest. The story is said to be " founded on fact." But that the child, deserted by an unknown mother on the St. Gothard, should turn out to be an English Baronet, is so like a tale of the Princess's Theatre, that if that part of the story were literally " founded on fact," as it apparently is not, it should have been avoided in a novel as good as this is.
Previous page
