CAN WRONG BE RIGHT? *
OVER the body of this work the publishers are still at war, though one would have thought that on the principle de mi- nimis non carat lex, it might have been allowed to slip through the meshes of the legal sieve. Mrs. Hall's name as a lively and clever writer of Irish stories, and the very hearty and unfastidious con- sumption by a circulating-library-public of unquestionable romancing of any kind, makes it, we suppose, a question of money value to whom the copyright of the work belongs. It originally adorned the pages of the St. James's Magazine, and the proprietor of that pro- found periodical holds that he still retains a right of property in that imaginative solution of the ethical problem, "Can wrong be right ? " which is here offered to the public. We may at once say that the exchangeable value of the work does not in any way depend on the nature of Mrs. S. C. Hall's answer, which is not novel, nor even paradoxical, but simply consists in the reply "certainly not,"—a sound answer, and quite as instructive as the question permitted, but that is all. But though the answer is given in capital letters, it is not given, nor even attempted, in living characters. So far as the question sug- gests a subject it certainly suggests that of a self-deceiving mind that takes up a specious theory of right with a fundamental shadow of doubt, equivalent to a real though reluctant conviction that it is wrong, at the bottom, and works it out into consequences that some- times almost confirm the illusion, though always undermined by the same sense of hollowness, till at length the shadow expands and frowns down an irresistible confutation, and the wrong asserts itself in gloom of infinite certainty. Such is the subject suggested by the author's title; but there is no such subject in her book. Indeed there could not have been, for the authoress is a woman of lively observation, with a quick eye for local manners, and no subtlety or ideal imagina- tion at all. In her book the wrong is always wrong,—wrong at the beginning,—wrong at the middle, and wrong at the end, and there is never any doubt at all about the matter. The gentleman who performs the astounding feat of exchanging his intended wife for another young woman within about two hours of the wedding (license difficulties being apparently disregarded), and the young per- son herself who steps thus hastily into the intended bride's place, never either of them suppose for a moment that the step is right, nor indeed give it sufficient consideration to be self-deceived on the sub- ject. Again, when the bride thus hastily extemporized finds herself in the way of her husband's happiness, and makes a resolve to take herself out of the way and leave him free for the old intended mar- riage, she gives no calm consideration to the subject at all, but acts in sheer passion, and is apparently never for a moment really under the delusion that she was doing a wise or virtuous act in leaving him to suppose that she was dead when she was not, and so entrapping both her husband and her successor into a very unenviable position. On all these things there is never a shadow of doubt, and such mental conflict as is intended to be delineated is not therefore that of a mind deceiving itself as to what is right, but only that of a woman who, knowing she has gone utterly wrong, is very helpless and wretched as to what to do next.
Aiming at a sort of story in which it was impossible for her to succeed, Mrs. Hall has very naturally made up for failure in deline- ating a self-deception, by painting as much general disturbance of her heroine's spiritual interior throughout the course of the novel as she can. So much white moral foam has rarely been exhibited since the last passionate heroine that Mrs. Marsh drew for us—the one (was it not Angela?) who used to relieve her feelings by lying on the' hearth-rug and tapping the floor with her boots. Not that Mrs. Hall's school- master's daughter goes so fax as this in the animation of her passion. When she is shut up in the Italian convent under very humiliating and overwhelming circumstances she does indeed embark, by her own confession, in a private commination service of her own against the nuns and abbess ; but this is the only deviation from outward decorum, and being probably in English, might not be quite so bad to her Italian auditors as it sounds in the narrative. Still the white inward
• Cow Wrong be Bight 4 Tale by Mrs. 8.0. Hall. In two vole. Horst and Blacken.
heat is maintained throughout the tale, and though not always without sufficient exciting cause in the outward circumstances—which are very harrowing—yet certainly a good deal of it is spontaneous combus- tion. For example, Mildred falls in love in a fashion even more violent and sudden than the normal case of love at first sight. We don't object to a passion arising, say from five minutes' sentimental inter- change of thought. That is legitimate. But such a header as the following we suppose even the most adventurous of young ladies has seldom taken:
"Presently I heard a horse coming ; it approached so leisurely that I imagined it must be one of the village dames returning from market. When it was within a few spaces of the tree, I raised my eyes, and, sitting his horse with the firmness of an Englishman and the grace of an Arab, a stranger rode quietly onwards, restraining the impetuosity of his horse, without any apparent effort, to the pace which the spirited creature de- sired to turn into a gallop. I had no power to move, or to withdraw my gaze. When the rider had nearly passed he looked up, and lifted his hat as men who have profited by foreign travel usually do when they pass a woman. I saw his hand check the bridle, and he seemed about to ask a question ; I trembled lest he should speak, for I could not have replied. He rode on; I grasped the rail of ray seat with both hands, and, clinging to it, bent forward and looked after him. At almost the same moment he turned his head. I could have rejoiced, while sinking back, if the tree had opened and closed me in for ever ; I felt ashamed of my forwardness— so humbled ! What could the gentleman think ? I, who was so quoted by mothers for my propriety; what possessed me to fix my eyes upon, and then gaze after him,—and he to see it ! I sat for a long while, my work un- touched, bewildered by the new emotion that stirred within me, until at last I covered my burning cheeks with my trembling hands." Mrs. Hall does not, we hope, mean this very alarming description as pointing to any universal facts. This .horseman might have been married, or might have been a Catholic priest, or, worse still, a Registrar-General calculating the local statistics as he rode along, in all which connexions there would be something shoeking to social delicacy in conceiving the possibility. of the moral phenomenon alleged. Yet if the way a man sits his horse is sufficient to fascinate the affec- tions of a "passion-full" mind, how are such deep moral disorders ever to be avoided by human prudence ? The whole book is up to this level. And there is one peculiarly aggravating circumstance about the story that this bewildering passion is described by its subject for the benefit of a granddaughter, after it has all burnt out, so that the fluid lava hisses at times through a cold meditun of venerable beneficial comment. If there is any grievously distressing element in your passionate novel, it is to have it told by that mild old lady with grey hairs, who improves her own youth in this moonlight style : am no longer the slave of passion • yet the memory of the burning sirocco that withered my youth, and drove me to the verge of insanity— even now, I say, the memory of my earnest, passion-fall youth, thrills my blood, and binds again a scorching circle roand my brow !—!"
The worst of this kind of candid old lady is that she is never at all sincere in the blame which she lavishes on her youthful sins. She speaks of her passionate and impetuous acts as crimes of the most awful character, but she always makes you see the profoundly dis- interested and noble form of character which lies beneath these im- petuosities, and obliges the reader to take part against her own nominal blame by the very exaggeration with which she lays it on. For example, this story begins :
"This, which I write for you, say own beloved Mary, shall be the truth, the whole truth—and nothing but the truth!'
"Hold!-.-I have promised too much :--unless, indeed, I write with an iron pm ; and record the trembling weaknesses, the pitiful suggestions, the terrible deceptions—worse, far worse than these—unless I record them all, I have promised too much!
"U1 Mary, it is often difficult and hazardous to tell the plain un- varnished truth of others ; how then is it possible to see it in all its bearings, to divest it of all its coverings, to conceal nothing of its actual form and character,—and tell it of ourselves !"
We had no sooner read this than we knew the old lady, with her aspirations for an iron pen (as if she were not likely to be much franker, if that is her object, with a good quill!) to be a sentimental and insincere old person, who was preparing us to behold a very lofty character with a touch of fascinating passion in it, under the kind of self-deception which people commit to private diaries. And this is the sort of thing all 'through. Mildred is (except during the swearing episode before alluded to) always an angel of disinterested purity, who has made a tremendous false step in momentary passion, but is continually sacrificing herself afresh with new tortures to those she loves. And yet the old lady (like a bashful artist uncovering a ehefeceuvre) is always talking of the effort it costs her to show her- self up so to her (admiring) grandchild, who was quite likely to admire the passion at least as much as the self-devotion. She has a Pecksniffian style of depreciating herself too. For example, con- cerning her child :
"Daring his infancy, now in his early childhood, I was all to him, but the time was fast coming when his education and his temper would require a father's care and control. I still laboured nightly to acquire what tutors only are believed to be capable of teaching—but what of that?"
The" what of that?" is a perfect touch of Mr. Pecksniff's manner, who hesitates in just the same way, it will be remembered, when he is ostensibly doubting whether to show his daughter's room (previously got ready for the purpose) to his new pupil. "Mr. Pecksiuff opened another door on the same floor, then shut it again all at once. But be- fore he had well done so, he looked smilingly round and said, Why not?'
daughters' room.' A poor first floor to us, but a bower to them, Very neat—very airy. Plants you observe ; hyacinths; books again; birds.' That is just the kind of benevolent humility with which .Mrs. Hall's aged confessor unfolds the "passion-fail" beauty of her youth- ful life to the granddaughter for whose instruction she makes this humiliating effort of unfolding her early self-sacrifices. There are one or two little hits of observation scattered here 'and there through the book ; a parliamentary messenger and his wife are not ill-described, and an Irish beggerman appears once, whose speech is fresh and true to nature. But for the most part it is all in that peculiar school of romance which we may describe as the "sad-and- purified-heart-school," which we object to. inore decidedly, and usually find less sincere and real, than any other known species. If there is a painful literal, dodge in the world, it is the only too common "puri- fied-by-suffering" dodge, and,—though no doubt without any kind of error except errors of taste and literary feeling,—it is this stock ro- mantic artifice which gives its tone to the work before us. Mrs. Hall's healthy old Irish stories are infinitely better.
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